Philippians chapter 4, beginning at verse 10, I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me." This is the word of the Lord. And you may be seated. Well, as we've seen, the saints at Philippi were a faithful and a long-supporting group of people, a congregation behind the Apostle Paul and his ministry. But for the last four years, his incarceration had made it quite difficult for them to make connection as he was moved about from place to place. So whenever he finally ended up in a Roman prison, the Philippians collected a generous gift and they sent one of their own, Epaphroditus, as an emissary on this long journey to deliver this gift to Paul. In response, the apostle writes a joyful letter of thanksgiving. But as we've seen, there is a priority in his gratitude. He opens the letter by thanking God for these saints for the character of Christ exhibited by their love for him and their zeal for the gospel. And then he closes the letter by rejoicing in the Lord, not so much for their gift as for their renewed connection and the sacrificial love that they displayed by preferring the apostle over themselves. Remember, their own resources were quite sparse This was a sacrifice to give. And so they were thinking and acting like Christ. They were putting the interests of a fellow brother in Christ ahead of their own. Well, this is how Paul wants them to treat one another. They've been having difficulty on this front, and so he spends a good deal of time in this book addressing that issue. But he wants them to know that he's far more concerned with the godly character responsible for the gift than for the gift itself. And the apostle uses his commendation of these saints as an opportunity for teaching. And he himself, he tells them, has learned to be content no matter the situation, no matter his provisions or lack of them, whether he has little or whether he has much, it's irrelevant. He has learned that knowing Christ as the Savior is far more than enough. Our Lord and Savior is himself the greatest treasure. He's the source of inexpressible joy. He's the fount of incomprehensible peace. He's the wellspring of infinite love. What more could you ask for? And so when Paul says, I have learned this valuable lesson, he knows that of which he speaks. Before Christ confronted him, he was living what a lot of people would have called the good life. Before Christ confronted him, he belonged to a wealthy family. He's now been disowned. He'd received a superior education, which he now knows was deficient. And according to the standards of his age, he had the best of both worlds. He was not only renowned in Jewish circles, he was also a Roman citizen. You know, it didn't get much better than that for a Jew in the first century, and yet, When Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus, he suddenly realized he had nothing. He was bankrupt before God. So he turned from everything that he once treasured for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. That's what he says. What a remarkable lesson to learn. To be content no matter what you face, or to put it another way, to never be discontent with your situation, whatever it may be. This is a lesson we can only learn by the grace of God. After all, as I said last week, we're born discontent. We emerge from the womb kicking and screaming, don't we? And we were made to worship and adore the God who created us. We were made to set our affections on him. However, being born in sin and shaped by iniquity, we enter this world corrupt and estranged from the God we were created to worship. And that's why there's this inner sense of emptiness and discontent. Throughout our lives, we yearn for something to fill this sense of a void within our souls. But as Romans 1 says, we're ungrateful creatures who refuse to honor the God who made us. And so we set our affections on substitutes for God. Then we pursue those things that we have decided to love instead of God, things that we think will fill the longing in our souls. So in vain then we spend our lives seeking respite for our restless hearts, searching for fulfillment that we never can find, longing for lasting contentment that always seems to be out of our reach. We may search the world over, but we will never find true and lasting contentment because, quite simply, we're asking of the world what the world cannot give. The void within the human heart seems insatiable, so much so that even if we could gain the whole world, we would still be discontent. The emptiness inside seems infinite because the world is not enough. It's true. Since we were made in the image of the infinite God, only the infinite God can seemingly fill the infinite void in our restless souls. Only He. In this relentless search for contentment then, The world continues to promise what it can't give, and it keeps everyone searching. There's always something more that the world promises, a new and greater degree of contentment. They keep you on the hook, right? And for the few who are able to somehow achieve the goals that they set for themselves, those goals that they think will make them content, well, once they arrive, they realize that those achievements and those acquisitions haven't made them content as they had hoped they would, right? And at that point, there's nothing left to do but set your sights on some other goal, some other new pursuit that you think will bring contentment. And so people may often say, I know I have a lot, I know that there is much that I have been given, but if I just had this, right, just this one thing, or if only certain circumstances were different, or if only I didn't have to deal with that, then I would be content. But it's not true. The world is not enough, it is never enough, not nearly enough. Now while Paul had learned to be content in every situation, that's what he tells us here in the text, he is clearly talking about earthly provisions and earthly circumstances. The apostle's contentment is not absolute. He is not content in every respect. I mentioned this last week that we were gonna be talking about proper Christian discontentment. There is such a thing. And so the apostle Paul, is not absolute in his contentment. He's not satisfied with everything. There is still that longing in his soul that is shared by all who were created in God's image. But here's the difference. He now knows how it can be filled and who can fill it. He's tasted of that which truly satisfies the deep yearning within us. And he's pursuing the one from whom true contentment comes. So Paul, like all of us, still has a remaining longing within him, at least for now. But the object of his affections have changed. You know, Thomas Chalmers, he was a 19th century Scottish minister, and he said, you have to set before people another object of affection more worthy of the heart's attachment so that The heart shall be prevailed upon to exchange an old affection for a new one. Well, I think that's a rather eloquent way of describing what happened to Paul. In chapter 3, Paul recounted for us his own radical change of heart. When Christ was set before him, everything changed. Now, there's a sense in which after that moment, Paul is still pursuing contentment. Before he was pursuing contentment by his abilities, by the education he had, by his ability to keep the law, or so he thought. And he was seeking contentment through his achievements. Well, that's all gone now. He's pursuing contentment, but not as before. In the past, as I said, he sought it from his worldly status, from his earthly wealth, from his exceptional education, his stellar reputation, his zealous pursuits of righteousness through keeping the law. But meeting Christ opened his eyes. His previous quest for contentment had been a dead-end street. If he continued down that path, he would never know the true contentment he sought. He would never know the true contentment of crossing that finish line and realizing, reaching the goal of full and lasting contentment. He realized that everything he had once considered valuable was actually worthless. Christ is the real treasure, and without him, nothing else ultimately matters. His quest for fulfillment, his satisfaction, His quest for contentment was turned away from the things of this world and his own achievements and his own abilities, and it was turned toward the Lord of heaven who had captured his heart. Paul realized that having Christ as the object of our affection is not only a more worthy attachment of the heart than the things of this world. He realized that having our heart's affection attached to the things of this world is idolatry. And so indeed, the things of this world are temporal and ultimately unfulfilling. And just as an idol as a God is pathetic because an idol can't speak, an idol can't hear, an idol can't do anything, it sits there. But we have the God who created all things and sustains all things. Do you see the vast difference between this? And so indeed, The things of the world are temporal and ultimately unfulfilling. Pursuing them at the expense of pursuing Christ will leave you empty. So getting Christ, knowing him and the fullness of his redemptive work, that's what truly matters. That's the only finish line that we'll ever cross that will bring us lasting contentment. You know what happens to the world as they get caught in this race of finding contentment, and they keep breaking the tape. on course after course, and the contentment's not there. So they have to run a new race, and after a new goal, and a new contentment, and they break the tape on that, and they're still not satisfied. Now, there's only one finish line that we can cross, where we will find lasting contentment, and that is when Christ is at the finish line. So while Paul learned to be content with his temporal provisions and his outward circumstances, here's my point this morning. He was not content with where he was at that moment in his relationship with the Lord. That's what much of the end of chapter three is telling us. He says himself, I haven't arrived. I'm not yet perfect. I'm still running the race. I have a ways to go. So Paul doesn't stop on the track and say, you know, I think I've come far enough. I'm satisfied with my present degree of sanctification. No, that's not Paul. He's not yet perfect. And he won't be until, as Romans 7, 24 says, he is finally delivered from this body of death, this old man, this putrid corpse he drags about with him. He'll not be content. with his spiritual condition until all corruption is laid aside, and he is finally clothed with the incorruption of God's glorification. The world is not enough for us, for any of us. But as I said last week, this works out differently for the believer than for the unbeliever. We recognize the world is not enough, the world doesn't, and so they keep seeking. They keep looking. But we change direction if we have been given eyes to see and ears to hear, if we have believed the gospel. So this world can never satisfy us. Again, as we said last time, because we were made for more than this world. And so any contentment derived from the good things of creation is insufficient and necessarily temporal. Enjoyment of whatever the world affords, and there is enjoyment to be had from the things that God has created, but it's only momentary. It's a momentary sensation. To illustrate this, I want to take eating and drinking as an example. It's the most basic example I can think of, and one I think that is important, because as a biblical theme, this is where sin begins, right? But hunger and thirst are states of discontentment, right? When you're hungry, you're not content. When you're thirsty, you're not content. And so we eat to satisfy our hunger, and we drink to satiate our thirst. And after a good meal, we're content for a little while. But a few hours later, we're hungry again, or as my children used to say, starving to death, right? When we're desperately thirsty, nothing seems to taste as good as a cool drink of water, does it? When our thirst is quenched, we experience a moment of contentment. But before long, thirsty again. So you see, there is a natural cycle of thirst and satisfaction, hunger, and contentment. And this is the way it is with everything in creation. We can extrapolate that to every good gift that God has given. God made it so. He is the designer of this. This cycle of hunger and satisfaction shows us our need for God. We heard this from Deuteronomy this morning. God put his people in the wilderness and gave them manna from heaven. After he had made them hungry, Why? So they would learn that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from God, so that they would know their source. So here's the point. We would never know the joy of satisfaction had we not first experienced the pangs of hunger, right? We'd never know the richness then of God's provision had we first not recognized the poverty of our need. We weren't created for food and drink, however. Food and drink was created for us. We were created for God. And this is where the ultimate sin lies in Matthew chapter six, when Jesus says, this is what the world seeks after. This is what they're obsessed with. What am I going to eat? What am I going to wear? Right? And listen, this is important. This is important that we recognize this. These things, we were not created for them, they were created for us. We were created for God. So we'll never, ever achieve perpetual contentment by experiencing the things of this world. Nonetheless, sinful humanity continues pursuing lasting contentment from things God has intended to be merely temporal blessings. Blessings, by the way, that should teach us that He, the giver of the blessings, is the only source of eternal contentment. That's what we should learn. As I said, it's God's design. You remember, He put Adam and Eve in a garden that He planted. Don't let these details escape you when you read the text. Man didn't plant the garden. Adam didn't plant it. God planted the garden. a garden filled with luscious and abundant fruit. And we don't know how many trees there were. The Bible doesn't tell us, but it was abundant. So if there was a thousand trees there, 999 were given to them to enjoy. In fact, the command isn't simply to eat. The command was to enjoy and eat. And so This is important. God put them in this garden that he planted with these abundant trees and he only made one tree off limits to test their obedience and to teach them that he's the source, that he is more than enough. But Adam and Eve just had to have it all, didn't they? They weren't content with the abundant provisions that God had given, and so they turned their affection away from God, the God they were made to worship and to adore, and then they set their affection on a piece of fruit. Now, if that isn't the definition of insanity, I don't know what is. Why are human beings so insane today? Well, it goes all the way back to the garden, right? And so as Paul says in Romans chapter one, this is how sinful humanity continues to behave to this day. They continue in the insanity because until the grace of God works in our hearts, we will continue searching in vain for contentment from this world. We will continue down the course of senseless idolatry, storing up treasure on earth as we worship and serve creation rather than the creator. That's the picture Romans 1 paints for us. But here's the important point. Just as Adam set the precedent of sin, the pattern of sin that man has continued down for generation upon generation, Jesus, the second Adam, set the pattern and precedent of righteousness. He lived as we were created to live. He showed us our true need. You know whenever he fasted for 40 days, going back to our food and drink, our most basic of urges that we are born with, when he fasted for 40 days, Satan came to him and tempted him to turn the stones to bread, right? What did Jesus say? We heard it in Sunday school this morning because he's quoting from Deuteronomy. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And then whenever Christ's disciples urged him, Lord, eat something. Do you remember what he said? I have food to eat that you know not of. My food is to do the will of my father. Now there you have, that's essential food. That's essential food. That's the food that brings eternal life. And then after Jesus fed the 5,000, the multitudes the very next day came to him looking for another miracle of multiplying loaves and fishes. Do you remember? They were already hungry again. He fed them to the full and they come looking for more. And Jesus says, listen, what you had to eat yesterday won't sustain you eternally, right? You know, your forefathers, the men in the wilderness, they all died. He says, I'm the bread of life. Whoever comes to me, and this is important, will not hunger. And whoever believes in me will not thirst. This is lasting contentment. This is lasting satisfaction. Jesus is the Word made flesh, that Word by which we live. He is that which truly satisfies. And that's why we can say with the Apostle Paul, knowing Christ is true contentment. True and lasting contentment. Well, this is what Paul has learned regarding this world He had come to be content with every situation because God is his provision. God is his source. God is his true sustenance. He knew real and lasting contentment would never come from the things of this life. He'd been awakened to righteousness. The Holy Spirit had entered him and he now longed for Christ and the consummation of his kingdom. He knew the fullness of redemptive contentment was awaiting him at the finish line of the race that God had set before him. And he knew that full and final satisfaction wouldn't come then until he was in the presence of his Savior. That's when his salvation would finally be complete. You know, we sometimes lose sight of this. Yes, Christ did it all, and we have been saved. But in biblical language, we are also being saved. That's called sanctification. And in biblical language, we will also be saved when Christ comes again. That's glorification. So we have justification. We have been saved. We have sanctification. We are being saved. And we have glorification. We will be saved. That's the fullness of salvation. We have it in part, but it's coming. The completion is coming. So Paul recognizes he hadn't arrived. He wasn't satisfied with how far he had come. So he set his affections on things above. He pressed on toward the mark of a high calling of God in Christ Jesus. And that is proper Christian discontentment, to know that you have not arrived, that there is still more to be traveled. There is still path in front of you, still race to be run. You will run until you run into his arms. And that brings us this morning then to why I titled the message, The Winter of Our Discontent. I don't know if you recognize that phrase, but it's from Shakespeare's Richard III. And I don't mind borrowing language from Shakespeare because Shakespeare borrowed so much of his language from scripture. I don't know if you recognize that or not, but he did. Some have even called him a plagiarizer of the Holy Writ. But now the full quote, In the play, Richard III is, now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by the son of York. Now the winter of discontentment in this context refers to a 32-year War of the Roses which caused bleak winter-like clouds to hang over England. It was a time of great discontentment. But just as the sun on a bright summer day drives away the dreary clouds of winter, glorious summer is on the horizon because Richard's brother, Edward IV, is ascending to the throne. That's the context here. And such is the effect of a regime change. What does it mean for a regime change for the better? That's what we have here. Well, I think this language is a appropriate as a metaphor to describe the Christian life, and I might put it this way, I would massage it just a little. Now is the temporal winter of our discontent made a glorious eternal summer by the Son of Heaven. In other words, our present discontent with our frustratingly slow growth in Christ will give way to the eternal contentment of complete and glorious transformation into his image when Christ our Lord comes again and the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Savior. That's the regime change. Right now, he's already ruling and reigning from heaven. World rulers today don't know that they're not in control. They're not. He is. And yet they go on, God using their sin for a better purpose, to accomplish his purpose. And so indeed, Christ is ruling and reigning, but the scripture says there's a time when he's coming again, when that covert reign of Christ will become an overt reign of Christ, and all the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Savior. Explicitly, with no one denying it, every knee bowing, and every tongue confessing his Lordship. And so my point this morning is the reason for our winter of discontentment, and we are in a winter of discontentment, is because we live in an in-between time. Like Paul, we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. We now know that he alone is the true source of contentment. And we know that our blessed hope is the appearing of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But as he tells the Corinthians and the Ephesians, at present, we've only received a deposit. It's just a down payment on our full redemption. We're no longer of the world. We have been marked out as God's own, but for the moment, we're still in the world, right? We're now citizens of an eternal heavenly kingdom, but we are presently here engaged in a spiritual warfare against the kingdoms of darkness. We're living as pilgrims in this hostile kingdom from which we've been rescued. We're eternal creatures then, living as aliens in a transitory age. This is what we often refer to then as the tension between the already and the not yet. We've already been justified. The work of our Savior has seen to that, but we're not yet glorified. That we await. We're already being renewed in the inner man, but at the same time, the outward man is perishing because it has not yet been transformed. For now, this priceless treasure of salvation and inner renewal is hidden in frail and sin-ridden jars of clay. That's Paul's language in 2 Corinthians. So in this life, we suffer the corruption of our mortal bodies. We've already been reconciled to God, the God who satisfies our souls, but we're not yet enjoying the fullness of his glorious presence. So you see, total and complete contentment awaits the consummation of God's wondrous purpose, and we will only be fully and finally content in the life to come. Full enjoyment of God's promised blessings awaits Christ's return when he consummates his kingdom. So you see, as Christians, we mustn't be satisfied with half measures. Nothing less than the fullness of God's redemptive blessings will bring true and lasting contentment to our souls. And so as Paul reminds us, this world is in our home. We're pilgrims, we're strangers traveling through a world that's destined for destruction. And this is why as Christians who are in the world but not of the world, we can be both content and discontent during our sojourn through this world. We're on a journey, a journey to the new heavens and the new earth in which only righteousness dwells. Don't you long for that? But we must keep our eyes on Christ. And if we will, our discontentment will not be then with the hardships we face along the way because those circumstances are temporal. Paul had learned to be content in those. As James says, our lives here are like a vapor. This is momentary. We may be facing difficult times and troubling circumstances, but this too shall pass. So we mustn't let the momentary troubles of life distract us from our destination. We mustn't take our eyes off of Christ and look for contentment in some solution from the world, because that will only delay our progress. We must remember that God is sovereignly in control of the course we take. Another reason Paul was content in whatever situation he was in is because he knew that God had ordained that he be there. The hardships we face along the way are not by accident. They have been carefully weighed and measured by our Lord for their effect upon us. They're meant to advance us on our way. So we can be content as we face the light and momentary afflictions because we know that God is using them for our sanctification. They're working in us a far greater and eternal way of glory. and that's what makes our adversities of life bearable. It's why we can join with the Apostle Paul as he rejoices, not some of the time, but at all times and in all situations, he rejoices in the Lord. So whatever comes our way, we can face it with contentment whenever we look beyond the moment and we set our sights on home. Listen, we should be content because Despite our troubles here and now, we know where we're going. We're headed home. With that in mind, we can learn to be content in every situation. Our discontentment should not be with the situations we encounter on the journey. Our discontentment should stem from the fact that we're not satisfied to stay where we are. You see? We're not satisfied to set down roots anywhere along the journey. We don't ask where the next stop is so we can get off. No, we go on. And our discontentment is we're not yet there, but our contentment is that's where we're going. And we won't allow anything in this world then to bring us discontentment because we will face it and we will go through it because we are still on the way to the promised land. This world affords no lasting contentment. We won't be fully content until we're at home with the Lord. So like Paul, we must forget what is behind. and we must press on toward the goal, because eternal contentment awaits us when we're home. That's where it is. So this world is, we might say, the winter of our discontent, but it's winter. It's the last season before life, right? And it's true not just for us, obviously for all of humanity, but there's a big difference. Again, it plays out differently for the believer than for the unbeliever. For the unbeliever, this is an everlasting winter with no relief. There is no summer coming to dispel the dreary clouds of winter for them. They'll continue searching for contentment that they'll never find, simply because they've turned away from the only true source of lasting contentment. For them, there's only journey. Can you think about anything more futile than that? Just continual journey, no destination where they'll ever find true and lasting contentment. Always seeking, never finding. However, for all of us who have tasted the glorious grace of our Lord and Jesus Christ, this winter of discontent is temporal. This winter of discontent shall pass. God has begun a good work in us and he will surely finish it. We're not content with what's been done because we know there is so much more to come. And yet, that's what gives us hope. We know that God will bring us to the end. The winter of our discontent will soon be made an eternal summer of glory. and it will be done so by the Son of Heaven who loved us and gave Himself for us. Let us learn to be content in whatever situation we are in, even as our discontent is with our growth in Christ. Oh, how we want more, more of Him, more like Him, conformed evermore to His image. This is the journey we're on, and we have a home to look forward to. What wonder awaits us in the presence of our Heavenly Father. In His right hand are pleasures forevermore. And that's ours in Christ, who loved us and gave Himself for us. And to Him be all glory forever and ever.