“Godliness
with
Contentment Is Great Gain
Thankfulness”
By Chris Ulrich
April 21st,
2013
Click here to download printable sermon
notes in pdf format.
Our
theme for the month is sound
doctrine and, when I first heard that, I thought, “That’s a broad and
widely
encompassing subject matter,” but, I was talking with Tom yesterday,
and
there’s probably a hundred different topics that you could incorporate
under
that header, but, the truth is, it’s not like we’re trying to get into
areas
that people aren’t really gonna remember; or that aren’t going to be
things
that you can use day-to-day. We
have to
know that we can’t ever stray from biblical teaching and think we’re
still OK
with God. Bob
Heirtzler preached on the
plan of salvation a couple weeks ago and talked about why Jesus’ name
is
important and used a lot of New Testament scriptures to prove the
validity of
being born again. That’s
something that
stays with you; it’s not something that you just get baptized—I like
what you
shared, Delmy, about the first time you got baptized it didn’t really
sink in,
but now, you’re realizing that you want to do it and that you want to
stick
with it. That’s
something that’s near
and dear to our hearts—to my heart.
Parrish
delivered the sermon last week about having faith—I have to say that I
had
never heard the story about how they gave you power over the
department, and
they had a power outage (I’m laughing with
you). This was a
pretty major
thing. For those of
you that weren’t
here, Parrish works at Baxter out in Round Lake.
About five years ago, he was working at a
department that does maintenance.
Baxter
is a huge facility; for those of you who have never seen it, when you
drive by
there, it’s like its own planet. I
kid
you not. What
happened was, there were a
lot of the leaders were out of town, so they were going to get somebody
who’s
been with the company a long time, like Parrish, so we’re going to give
him the
reins. The second
day that you had the
department, you guys had a massive power outage that had the potential
to cost
the company millions and millions if it wasn’t corrected. At that point, I’m sure he
was like, “You’ve
got to be kidding me!” Shaking
your
head, and putting on sackcloth and ashes.
I appreciate that message, because, in the end, God
got the victory, and
it wasn’t like uplifting yourself, it was just a matter of seeking God,
and the
people around him saw that difference, and I appreciate that. So, we’re going to be
talking about this
topic this month, sound doctrine, and we’re going to be looking at some
verses
that pertain to that.
Titus
2:1-8 But speak
thou the things which become sound
doctrine:...
There’s two verses that really stand
out: the first one is, (verse 1) speak thou the things that become
sound
doctrine. That’s
our lifeline. If
we’re not speaking sound doctrine, and
we’re basically just giving a good speech, or words to no affect… I listened to this guy
this past week—I work
at Grainger, and we had a sales meeting (which is an annual meeting)
and this
guy was on point. I
mean, he was on
point with his subject matter. What
I
liked it about was (I’m sure he’d rehearsed it to some extent) it
wasn’t like
he was reading from a script. That,
to
me, stood out a lot, and he spoke with a degree of passion. There were some things
that, if you wanted to
nit-pick, you could say, “Well, I found fault with this, and that part
he
didn’t do correctly,” or whatever, but, overall, I thought he did very
well. Ultimately,
the sound doctrine
part of it, that’s something that we have to have down pat. That’s something that we
have to look at from
the perspective that we’re in this for the long haul.
There is a difference between knowing the
truth of God, being born again, and having the power of God in our
lives. The Bible
talks about being blown about by
every wind of doctrine (Ephesians 4:14).
The second verse is (verse 7), showing yourself a
pattern of good works;
that we’re steady, that we’re reliable.
I remember, just shortly after I got baptized
myself, a guy gave a
testimony that really stood out quite a bit.
He talked about stability.
That
was something that I personally felt like I needed to hear. It’s not like he just
decided that was what
people needed to hear in advance, it was something that just stood out. It was something that made
a big
difference. Which
brings us to the title
of today’s message, it’s really a two-part message:
The first part of the message is, “Godliness
with Contentment Is Great Gain,” and the second part is, “Being
Thankful.”
Godliness
with
Contentment Is Great Gain
I’m
going to ask a couple of
questions: Are we
satisfied and at peace
with what God has given us as of right now, right this minute? Or is there always that
elusive dream car,
that dream house, dream trip, dream romance, chasing the rainbow as
they
say? It’s something
you have to ask
yourself; we all have to. We
go through
ups and downs in this life. You’ve
heard
the expression, “Well, they’ve got it made.”
Well, maybe they do, and maybe they don’t. Everybody’s going to stand
before God. I heard
somebody say years ago, “Nobody’s
getting away with anything.” God
has an
all-seeing eye. We
have to have that
conviction to lead a life of godliness, to lead a life of holiness;
that keeps
us on the straight and narrow. Have
I
been in that boat where I don’t feel like I have enough, where I don’t
feel
like I’ve accomplished enough, where I don’t think I’m where I need to
be at
this juncture in life? Now
here’s where
it gets a little tricky. We
should
always be striving to improve ourselves in some way, shape, or form. And I mean that both
physically and
spiritually speaking. Yes,
there is a
time when you’ve done all you can do but stand, that is Bible
(Ephesians 6:13),
but there’s also a constant striving.
I’m not talking about, “Well, eventually, we’ll find
the truth;” we’ve
found the truth, but it’s just striving towards the perfection of God. Are we perfect? no; the
Bible talks about all
have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23)
but it
also talks about a righteous man falls seven times and rises again
(Proverbs
24:16). We have to
keep picking
ourselves back up, picking ourselves up each day.
That doesn’t mean we’re in a constant state
of turmoil or second-guessing ourselves.
We should have a confidence, when we’ve gone through
something, along
with our efforts to improve, there should also be a healthy balance of
satisfaction in our walk with God.
We
have accomplished some things; we’re nearer than when we believed
(Romans
13:11), but we have to keep striving.
1
Timothy 6:1-8
…But godliness with contentment is
great gain...
One
thing about reading the Bible—I’ve
heard people say, “Well, it’s not applicable to me in this day and age;
it’s
not modernized enough.” Well,
it is if
you let it. If you
look at the
behavior—because that’s the one thing about being taught is behavior,
the ways
of people. It’s not
about
technology. The
Bible isn't something
where we're going to read about, “In the last days there shall be
I-pads and
I-phones.” We have
technology that far
surpasses anything from the days of caravans and chariots. There is one Scripture in
Daniel where it
says that they shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased
(Daniel
12:4). We’ve seen
that in exponential
ways. You just look
at from the
Industrial Revolution until now; some of the advances in technology are
just
mind-boggling. I’m
not impressed by it
like I’m impressed by God. Somebody
said
recently, “Let God impress you.”
I’d
like to spend some time on those
last 3 verses because this is sound doctrine.
You know there’s nothing wrong with having nice
things in this world (we
all have to have a standard of living) and I like nice things like
anyone else. Also,
there’s nothing wrong with
self-improvement, if you have the ability to get a higher education, a
better
job, a better house, do what you can within reason.
I’m not asking them where I work to cut my
pay, or to let me work more hours for less pay.
Every year they give us an increase, and I look at
it like, “I want
twenty percent.” That
doesn’t
happen. I will say
that I’ve been fortunate. I
thank God for that. I’m
not asking to pay more for my home
mortgage or for higher property taxes, although they’ll do that without
asking. Getting to
the balance of those
nice things, Luke 12 that our life consists not in the abundance of the
things
we possess (Luke 12:15). So
what does
our perspective need to be? My
goal here
is to encourage and uplift, not to put anybody on a guilt trip. It’s not about you’ve got
this type of car;
you’ve got this type of house; you go on these types of trips… The Bible tells us a lot
of things about
riches, but that’s not the meaning of the message today. I will say this, in
Philippians it talks about
whatsoever state we are, to therewith be content (Philippians 4:11). You might be just getting
out of high school,
you might be just getting out of the Navy, you might be in retirement,
or
somewhere in between. We’re
all at
various stages of our life. We’re
going
to accumulate some things, but, ultimately, we have to look at it like,
“Am I
accumulating those riches in God?” that’s what going to ultimately
matter in
eternity.
Now I’m going to transition to the
second part of the message.
Being
Thankful
I
think being honest with ourselves we
really have to look at the toll this economic crisis has taken on
everybody. I’m
talking about first and
foremost to individuals, the houses we live in, the companies we work
for
including those who are self-employed, but it’s also taken a toll on
church
organizations. None
of us have been
immune from this downturn. Oh,
I’m not
saying there aren’t glimpses of a turn around, some pockets of
improvements, a
rebounding stock market for what it’s worth.
Pastor Paine said something earlier this year, he
said that at the State
of the Church address he asked the question how many people were making
less
money now than in 2006, and he said that more than half the people
raised their
hands. That really
stuck with me,
because, you might have somebody that’s prosperous, and you might have
somebody
right next to you that’s really been affected.
I left Grainger in 2006, and I took a job in
Milwaukee for a short
time. I had worked
for Grainger for
eight years, and willfully left to work for this other company. Forty-eight days into it,
he comes to me on a
Monday morning and says, “It’s not working out.”
That was not a comfortable next couple of
months. Just prior
to that happening—I
know this is for me; we’ve heard this saying, “This is for somebody,”
and I
hope I is, I hope it’s encouraging—but I know that, just prior to that
happening, I remember (How many believe God speaks to them? I’m not talking about the
way that the media
portrays it, like, oh, a visible God speaks?
They portray Christians as though we actually
believe that there’s a God
standing there (or wherever)… Yes,
I do;
I believe in an unseen power. We
can
just look at some of the examples: electricity, nuclear power, wind;
unseen
power that are parables or analogies of God’s power.
That’s proof to me) God spoke to me and said,
“You have a lot more things to be thankful for than things to worry
about.” And then a
couple of days later…
I remember writing it down in this little book that I have, and I
remember it
coming back to me, and, you know what? I believe that it was something
that God
was preparing me for.
There
are signs of economic
turnaround. There
are also a lot of
doomsayers, “If we keep going at this rate…”
Okay, I’m here to say that whether it gets a whole
lot better or a whole
lot worse or maybe even just stays about the same, I know one thing for
sure, we
still have a lot to be thankful for.
That’s
not always easy; let’s face it, it’s easy to be thankful when
everything is
just cruising along, everything is copacetic. You get that curveball,
you get
that different pass defense, or whatever way you want to look at it,
and it
changes things up. You
have to shift
gears and get into a different mode.
Have you ever come across unthankful, ungrateful,
unhappy people in this
world? There’s a
lot of them. It’s
unfortunate that we do but we do.
And being thankful isn’t the kind of behavior
that can be forced on anybody.
I
will ask this question: what do we do
if we feel a root of bitterness taking hold in our life? It’d be easy for me to
say, just pray it
through, just read the Bible, or just pay a good deed forward. I’m not saying that those
things aren’t going
to work; there are different ways of getting it out.
The Bible talks about in Hebrews about those
having a root of bitterness whereby many may be defiled—and that’s
talking to the church; that’s
talking to us.
It’s one of those things where, have I ever seen it
growing? You know
what? If things especially seem to
be worsening, overall, as far as economically speaking, or maybe you’re
just
getting older, or you’re not as close to your family… whatever the case
might
be where our emotion is deteriorating or declining.
That kind of a thing, we have to be able to
identify it. What’s
bothering us right
now? Is it someone,
or something, an
event from our past, or concern about our future?
Who here worries about the future?
I mean, worry in the sense of—I know Pastor
Wilson, one of our other pastors, has talked in years past about worry
is not
of God—okay, I agree with that, and it tries to attach itself to us a
lot of
times because we’re trying to plan.
We’ve got to have a plan.
I’ve
said this before, if Christ doesn’t come back in our lifetime—I know
that, if
you’re new to the faith, you think, “Christ is coming back; the end is
near!”
and you think that you might be taken that day, or the next day, but
then, it’s
months go by, years, five years, ten years… and then it becomes, “I’m
going to
live my life as though He’s not coming back in my lifetime, but plan as
if He’s
coming back to day.” If
He doesn’t, I’m
going to be ready, but if He does, I’m still going to be ready. We all have things that
weigh us down, some
things may seem trivial, other things may be so painful to us that it’s
hard to
even know where to begin—there’s tragedy.
There’s events like in Boston, where people are
hurt—it does affect us,
and it is emotional, and whether it’s a root of bitterness, or it’s a
wrong-doing that we’ve suffered, or whatever the case might be, and you
know
what? Knowing it
doesn’t necessarily
mean the pain is going to suddenly disappear.
But then we know where to begin and can use the
power God will give us
to get rid of it, to get over it, to move on, because one thing is for
sure, a
root of bitterness will keep us from being thankful, it will
continually gnaw
at us.
Sometimes
we will fight battles that we
don’t even think that we should have to fight.
I’ve talked to people that said, “How could this
happen? How could
this be?” It’s so
blown out of proportion, and
lawmakers will make a law, and then it’s like, this is overly
frustrating and
you want to take action and find a good place to start…
Colossians
3:12-17
…whatsoever ye do in word or
deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and
the Father
by him.
On
the opposite end of the scale (as
opposed to the anger or the bitterness or whatever), what do you feel
you have
to be thankful to God for? This
day,
this week, this month, this year, the air to breathe, a place to live,
food to
eat. An ability to
read, an ability to
reason, and an ability to pray and seek God.
A tender heart, and a love for God and people. Oh, and by the way, there
is that promise of
eternal life, which, Tom and I were talking about it last week, and if
you
picked a hundred people at random, and asked them, made it multiple
choice and
gave them, say, ten options, what would they pick? Maybe one would be
the best
job, a nice car, a big house, the most beautiful wife (or handsome
husband), a
million dollar mansion... How
many know
that, without a shadow of a doubt, everybody
would pick eternal life? Now,
I could be
wrong. We could go
to the Gallop Poll
people and find out for sure… So,
what
do we have to be thankful for? There’s
a
lot of times unexpected blessings that come along the way, and things
that
just… I’ll give you
a quick example, and
this was just about a month ago, the apartment building that I’m part
owner
with—every month, we pay the mortgage, we’ve been very diligent with
that. For nine
years, I’ve been doing that. Here’s
the interesting part: I
filled out the check, filled out the form,
and was getting ready to mail it back to Citimortgage.
This was a couple of weeks ago, towards the
end of March. I
stuck it in my back
pocket, and I was going to run up and just drop it off in the mailbox. I got to doing some other
things, and
normally I’m not this careless, and, somehow I wind up over at Home
Depot doing
something else after running a couple of other errands, and, “Oh, my
gosh, I
didn’t mail that check!” Now
it’s been
through lot of different places, and it’s very possible, if it had
slipped
out… Yes, there are
safeguards if I had
lost it, I could go and cancel the check and call Citimortgage and on
and
on… But it was
right there. I feel
like I’m one of those that errs on the
side of being a little more cautious when it comes to those kinds of
finances. I thank
God for that. I
don’t recommend being careless with your
mortgage payment; I’d say be careful with that.
I had one just last night planning a trip in early
June, and I made a
hotel reservation at a place in New Mexico.
For some reason, I woke up this morning, about 2:30
in the morning, with
the thought, “Just check your E-mail right quick.”
I can check my E-mail on my phone.
I looked at it, and it was the wrong
date. So I called
them, and explained
the problem, and they fixed it, but, nothing showed me that. I believe that was God. That may be a small thing,
but if I had gotten
there, and they didn’t have my reservation, and there were no more
rooms
available… Those
are the kind of things
that I’m talking about that are very specific as far as being thankful
to God. The list is
really endless if we think about
it and I know that it may vary from person to person depending on your
circumstances, but this is the kind of attitude that keeps us in the
race.
Romans
8:24-28
…all things work together for good to
them that love God...
So,
that last verse: All
things work together for good to them
that love God. That’s
something that
stuck with me for a long time. There’ve
been moments where I just didn’t believe it.
God is quick to remind me, “It’s My Word.” It’s not a forceful thing;
it didn’t knock me
off the chair—He could—here’s what I’m saying:
it’s something to put in your toolbox; it’s
something to remember: All
things work together for good to them
that love God.
It’s
not wrong to have a plan to our
life and to hope our plans go well and even better than what we planned. We Christians aren’t
gluttons for punishment
trying to always do things the hard way or living in some kind of
desperation
constantly. I must
confess there have
been times when things got rougher and more beyond my control that,
again, I didn’t
feel like all things worked together for good for me.
Being truly thankful means feeling that way
even when things aren’t going our way, or aren’t going the way we’d
planned, or
when things aren’t in our complete control, as we might think that they
would
be. It doesn’t mean
that we have to be
thankful for everything no matter what.
I’m not thankful about what happened in Boston. I’m not thankful about a
disease or a
tragedy. We pray to
God for the
understanding and the ability to cope with it, to be able to put it in
the
right perspective. Ultimately,
God saved
our soul, and, yes, tragedy can strike at any time; if I’m ready, then
I’m
ready, and I have to be thankful for that.
That’s the big difference-maker.
I
believe that there are a lot of people that do blame God for whatever
goes
wrong. It’s
becoming a more and more
prominent viewpoint. Not
just in the
media, either, I met a guy that said, “I blame God,” and I’m thinking,
“For
what?” This is a
co-worker’s brother’s
friend that lives in one of the nice high-rises in Chicago… If that’s dug down deep in
your life and you
blame God. I had a
real good discussion
with that guy, and I’m not talking about beating him over the head with
the
Bible or forcing him to convert. You’ve
got to take that and resolve that between you and God.
If you think you’ve got something to blame
God for, well, I just don’t buy into that.
I’m not a glutton for punishment; I’m not saying,
“Bring it on!” to all
the tragedy or hardship. That’s
not the
case.
In
closing, I’d like to point out that
God’s blessings are infinite, but, ultimately, we’re the ones who
decide
individually that we’re going to be thankful or not.
If we remain thankful, we’ll never go
wrong.
Sermon
notes by Pete Shepherd
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