Welcome to the Islands Christian Church podcast.
Subscribe to hear a new episode every week.
Thanks for joining us. So we have been in a series over
the past few weeks, a series that we have called Enough is
Enough, and we've been talking a lot about contentment.
You guys remember this. You've been around for a few
weeks. You remember, You remember this
in week 1:00, we, we said this, that that Paul showed us that
godliness leads to contentment, that when God becomes our
treasurer, when he's first in our life, then we find peace.
And then Week 2, we taught that that commitment is learned.
Paul taught us this from Philippians.
Commitment is learned. It's independent of
circumstances and contentment is rooted in dependence on Christ.
And so today we're asking the next natural question in this
series. And here it is if you're a note
taker. How do we grow and protect
contentment? How do we grow and protect
contentment? So if we if we if we gain it by
godliness by putting God first leads us to contentment.
If we have to learn it and it's independent of our circumstances
and it's through dependence on Christ that leads to
contentment. OK, well, how do we grow and how
do we protect contentment? And Psalm 100 is where we're
going to be today. So if you have your Bibles, go
to Psalm 100 and here's what I want you to hear me say.
This is kind of the bottom line of the whole sermon.
So if you want to hear this and then check out or something,
that's OK You ready? Here's the whole bottom line of
the whole sermon. Here's the thesis, if you will.
Here's the main point. Thanksgiving is the practice
that nurtures contentment. Thanksgiving, giving thanks, is
the practice that nurtures contentment.
Now, Thanksgiving is not something we do after we feel
content. It's a habit that we do which
forms contentment in our heart. So let me say it super clearly,
If you want to be a content person, if you want to be a
content person, like if this is something you're like, man, I've
got a lot of discontent. I'm not content in my life.
I want to be a more content person.
If you want to be a content person, you ready become a
thankful person. It's just that simple, super
easy. That's what grows and protects
contentment. Thanksgiving, the practice of
giving thanks, nurtures contentment.
So Psalm 100 shows us why Thanksgiving is such a powerful
spiritual habit for shaping our hearts toward contentment.
So we're going to read Psalm 100 and we're going to walk through
it a few. We're going to walk through the
verses together and learn what it teaches us.
Psalm 100 verses one through 5. You ready?
The psalmist says shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord of the gladness.
Come before him with joyful songs.
Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are
His. We are His people, and the sheep
of His pasture enter his gates with Thanksgiving and His courts
with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise
His name for the Lord is good, and His love endures forever.
His faithfulness continues through all generations.
Now there are three clear commands in Psalm 100.
Do you see the three clear commands?
There's verse 2, worship the Lord.
You could say shout for joy as well, but that's encompassed and
worship the Lord. Verse two.
Number one is worship the Lord #2 which is verse 3 #2 which is
verse 3, Know who God is and who you are.
That's the clear command. Know who God is and know who you
are. And then there's a third clear
command, which is verse four and five, Give thanks.
So those are the three clear commands.
Worship the Lord, know who God is and who we are, and give
thanks. Now if you practice those 3
commands, you will arrive to a content heart.
That's what happens. That's where contentment
naturally grows and it thrives. Now for you note takers, let me
say it super simply for you. You ready?
This is how we're going to walk through this passage today.
You ready. Content people worship.
Content people know who and whose they are.
Content people worship, content people know who and whose they
are, and #3 content people give things, content people give
things. So content people worship,
Content people know who and whose they are, and content
people give things. Now, what I'm not saying today
is that you have to be content before you can worship.
I'm not saying that you have to be content before you can know
your identity. I'm not saying you have to be
content before you can give things.
I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying, to be very
clear, is this. Doing these three things
consistently, worshipping, knowing who you are and whose
you are, and giving thanks to God.
Doing those three things consistently is what forms
contentment in you. Those three things fuel
contentment. They grow contentment.
They protect contentment. So first of all #1 content
people worship. Worship is our response to God.
It's our response to God. It's it's how God forms
contentment in US. It's through you worshiping.
Worship is what naturally comes out of you when you consider the
goodness and the glory of God. It's the most powerful way that
we express our thanks to Him. So when we gather and we sing
and we worship, or when you're by yourself and you're playing
worship music and you're singing to God.
Or to think about what John said this morning.
When you wake up in the morning and the first thing that comes
off your mouth is, wow, God, you are good.
I thank you for being good. That act of worshiping God that
forms contentment in your heart. Listen to verses 1 and 2 again.
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness, come before him with joyful
songs. And the psalmist isn't just
using poetic language. The psalmist is commanding us
shout for joy to the Lord all the earth.
Have you ever been in nature and you heard all the critters
singing and making noise and, and you're just kind of like the
birds and the crickets? And are you guys ever heard this
before you got them out in nature?
I remind myself when I'm in nature and I'm hearing those
critters make all that noise that you know what?
The frogs and the whatever else that these are the this is the
earth crying out to God. This is the earth shouting that
all things worship the Lord, all things praise God.
And God has invited you to join with all of nature and to
worship him. And here's the thing, you are
commanded to come before God with joy, gladness, and song.
This is what the text says. You're commanded to come before
God with joy, gladness, and song.
Why? Because when we worship and when
we come to God with worship and joy and gladness, follow me
here. That only happens when our heart
is satisfied with God in God. So what I mean is if I come
before God with joy and gladness and I worship him, then I'm my
heart's acknowledging that my God is worthy of this worship,
that my God is enough, that my God has given me joy, my God has
given me gladness. Now you could say, well, what if
I don't have that joy and gladness?
Well, here's the beautiful thing about worship.
It works in the inverse as well. If I come before God and I don't
have the joy and gladness, but I obey the command to worship him,
then what happens? Come on, somebody say this is
true, right? Then what happens is I worship
Him anyway out of obedience. Then God begins to do a work in
my heart, and He brings to my heart joy and gladness.
This is how worship works. I bring to God my joy and
gladness and worship Him. And if I don't have joy and
gladness, I worship Him out of obedience, out of obligation.
And I know we don't like obligation when it comes to our
faith. We're like, oh, I should just
feel it. No, sometimes you don't feel it.
Sometimes you just do it because the Lord has commanded you to do
it. And so you worship him and you
sing to Him. And what we receive is joy,
gladness, because our heart is reminded that we only find
satisfaction in God alone, that He has given us Himself, that He
has given us everything we truly need.
And that what happens is when you worship Him, even if you're
not sure if you believe that or not, your heart begins to be
trained to believe that. Does this make sense?
Am I making sense at all? Worship produces an inner
satisfaction inside of you. And if there is an inner
satisfaction already inside of you that produces worship.
You see how it's circular. It's circular worship.
When you worship God, when you sing to God, when you praise
God, it lifts your eyes off of what you wish you had, what you
wish were different, what you, what you wish would happen.
It lifts your eyes off of that and it turns your eyes toward
God, who is already giving you, giving you everything you need
ultimately in Him. And This is why I worship and
singing to God is so powerful because it not only generates
contentment, but it also preserves contentment.
This is why the discipline of worship is so important, because
if I don't have contentment, it will help bring about
contentment. And if I do have contentment, it
will help preserve that contentment.
When you worship, even when life is painful or uncertain, you are
reminding your heart, this is it.
God is enough. I can trust Him.
He has me. He's got me in his hands.
And you say, well, Stephen, what if I don't feel it?
I have people tell me this all the time.
I just don't feel God. I just, I don't feel content.
I don't feel happy. What if your heart is unsettled
or anxious and you find yourself in a worship setting?
This is exactly, in my opinion, when worship becomes even more
important because as the psalmist has said, and as I've
said to you, worship is commanded to you, which means
sometimes we worship before we feel it.
We choose obedience before emotion.
Your emotions will always follow your will.
If you didn't write that down, you missed it.
That was a good one. Your emotions.
We don't believe that. We usually write that down.
So you don't believe it. You think you have to feel
something in order to do something.
You don't. You have to decide something to
do something. You decide to do it and then
your emotions follow that. So people say well I fell out of
love with her, I fell out of love with him.
No, just decide to be in love. Act and and and function as if
you are still in love with them. If you make that decision, guess
what will happen to your emotions?
Emotions always follow will. Emotions always follow will.
When you worship, you are making a decision to choose obedience
before emotion, and when you do, something beautiful happens.
Worship recenters our hearts. Worship awakens trust in God.
Worship creates the joy and the gladness that the psalmist
promises. So sometimes we don't always
have the joy and gladness. Sometimes we get the joy and
gladness through worship. And listen to this.
Worship trains your heart toward contentment.
Worship can generate contentment.
I'm telling you, friend, if you will literally play worship
music throughout your day and sing, and even if you don't,
you're not a singer, maybe you just listen to it.
If you just let it saturate in your heart throughout your day,
you will generate more contentment in your heart.
And a contented heart is not a quiet heart.
It's a worshipping heart. It sings, it rejoices, it
celebrates God, God's goodness, not because your life is
perfect, not because everything is worked out for you, but
because you know God is worthy of worship.
He's faithful. You can trust him.
Content people worship. That's what the psalmist says.
But #2 in addition, content people know who and whose they
are. Content people know know who and
whose they are. Last Sunday after worship, a
friend of mine stopped me right at the door.
And he said, Stephen, I've been thinking a lot this week about
not only who God is, but whose I am, that that I'm, I'm possessed
by God, that he owns me. And he says, I've been
reflecting all week on this identity of, of God claiming me
as his own. It's not about who I am, it's
about whose I am. And you know, he was absolutely
right. He was absolutely right.
And this is exactly what Psalm 100 teaches.
Look at verse 3 again. Know that the Lord is good.
It is he who made us, and we are his.
We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Here's the deal, guys. The foundation of contentment is
this simple truth. You ready?
Here's the foundation. God is God, God is good.
God is God, and God is good. And because he is God, and
because he has made you, you belong to him.
So God, God exists. You ready?
There's a God. If you don't believe in a God,
that's OK. Like we can work.
We'll work with you, we'll hang out with you, we'll talk with
you. But if you're sitting here today
and you're like, I believe a God exists, then what that means if
they're a God that exists, then that means you are created.
That means you belong to him. That means you are his idea that
he came up with you, that there is a God that's the foundation
and that you belong to him that he made you.
And so identity, your identity. And when I use the word
identity, what I mean especially think about if you're young,
please get this, please get this.
This is the probably one of the most single important things you
can understand about moving through your life.
When I use the word identity, what I mean is yourself regard
how you view yourself, all right, and how you how you
regard yourself. So when I say your identity,
what I mean is when you think about yourself, what do you
think about? So identity or self regard
begins with knowing who God is. That's what it starts with.
It starts with you knowing who God is.
This is why verse 3 of the psalmist says know that the Lord
is God. In other words, know that there
is a God. All right, so your identity
starts with I'm not an accident. I didn't just crawl out of the
primordial mud some millions and millions of years ago.
No, I had was thought of. God thought of me.
He dreamt me up. He made me.
I'm unique and you know all these details, but let me just
tell you for the sake of maybe you don't know.
Your iris in your eye is unique. None.
No one has ever been born with your iris.
No one will ever be born with your iris.
The fingerprints on your hands are unique.
No one's ever been born with your fingerprints.
No one will ever be born with your fingerprints.
You are unique. You are a unique creation,
thought of, dreamt up by God, made by Him and loved by Him.
You, that is yourself regard, that is your identity.
You have to get that first. I am loved by God.
Identity begins with knowing who God is.
Today people say things like, well, I'm trying to find myself.
Have you ever had a friend say that to you before?
Have you maybe ever said that I'm trying to find myself?
Here's what you can tell your friend.
You can say, listen friend, I love you and I want you to find
yourself because here's the deal.
You can never truly know who you are until you know there was a
God who made you and who loves you.
That's where this starts. You must know that first, the
one who made you. And when you know this God who
made you, you learn some stuff that's life changing.
You are His, you belong to Him. So he didn't just make you, but
He, He, you belong to Him. You were created by him.
You were careful by Him. You are claimed by Him.
In other words, he claims you as his own.
This is what the text says. We are his people.
That's what it says. We are his.
It is he who made us and we are his.
We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
This, this idea that OK, well who am I man?
Who am I? I am owned, loved and possessed
by God. That's my identity.
That's myself regard. We are his people.
We have an identity. The sheep of his pasture.
What does it mean to be the sheep of his pasture?
What that means you have a security and belonging.
You have safety, you're secure, you're safe.
Like this is the reality of your life.
And those three things, identity, security and
belonging, they are the foundation or the soil that
contentment grows up in. In other words, if I know that
I'm not just an accident, that I have an identity that God made
me and loves me, and I know that that I'm safe, that this guy who
made me and who loves me, he's got a plan for me.
He's working things out for my good, that I'm safe.
And if I know that I'm in this pasture that I'm secure, that
whatever comes my way, I can be safe and secure.
If I know these things, that's like, that's like the soil being
broken up and being tended and the soil being fertilized and
being watered and the seed of contentment being planted in
that. And my heart will develop
contentment when I believe these things are true.
Listen to how Jesus said this in John 10, John chapter 10.
I'm going to read verses 14 and 15, and then I'm going to read
27 and 30. This is beautiful.
These are the words of our Savior Jesus.
Listen to what he said. Jesus said I am the Good
Shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep
know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.
Stop right there for a second. This, this is so beautiful to
me. Go back to verse 14 real quick.
I know my sheep and my sheep know me.
Hyphen verse 15, just as the Father knows me and I know the
Father. Whoa, how does the Father and
Jesus know each other? Well, the scripture says they're
one, they're one. They are bound together in one
being. And what Jesus is saying is I
know my sheep and my sheep know me.
Just we have the relationship, my sheep and me.
We have the type of relationship that my father and I have.
I mean, I'm unioned with them. The rest of verse 15 Just as the
Father knows me and I know the Father hyphen, and I laid down
my life for the sheep. Jump to verse 27.
It says my sheep listen to my voice.
I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and
they shall never perish. No one will snatch them out of
my hand. My Father who has given them to
me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of my
Father's hand. I and the Father are one.
When you're held by Christ, you're safe, when you belong to
Him you are secure, and when He is your shepherd, your life is
guaranteed. What did Jesus say?
He said You, they us shall never perish.
Everybody say perish, perish. You shall never perish.
It just means never wrought, never be done away with it never
disappear. This is a promise right from
Jesus to you. When Jesus is your shepherd,
your life is guaranteed. Here's the beautiful truth of
this. You can't live in God's pastures
and fear starvation. You just can't.
You can't belong to the shepherd and live with a scarcity
mindset. You just can't.
So reflecting on this truth, who God is, I'm made by him.
That's my identity, myself. Regard who we are.
When you reflect on this man, who God is and whose we are, I
belong to him. When you reflect on this, it
nurtures and it protects contentment.
My friend from last week, he was right.
It has a way of growing contentment in your heart when
you reflect on these two truths. There is a God and you belong to
Him. It's who and whose you are.
Content people know who and whose they are.
And lastly #3 content people give things.
Content people give things. Look at verses four and five
again. It says, enter his gates with
Thanksgiving and his course of praise.
Give thanks to Him and praise His name for the Lord is good
and his love endures forever. His faithfulness continues
through all generations. Now, Thanksgiving is not just
something we do when we feel like life is going well again.
Like He commands us to worship. He commands us to know God.
This other command is He commands us to give thanks even
if we don't feel like giving thanks, even if things in our
lives are not going particularly well.
The psalmist gives us 3 reasons to give thanks.
If you just look at the text, they're right out of the text.
Here are the three reasons the psalmist gives us to give
things. Number one, God is good #2 is
love endures and #3 it's faithfulness never ends.
Now, those aren't just general statements.
Those aren't just like, Oh yeah, God is good and you know, he's,
he's faithful to the end and his love endures no matter what.
Those aren't just like, you know, you say that and you're
like, OK, that's kind of nice. God, whatever.
Those aren't just general things we say.
Listen to me carefully. Those are hard truths about the
character of God that are proven as reality through the gospel
message of Jesus Christ. In other words, when we say, oh,
God is good, his love endures, he's faithful to the end.
OK, what does that mean? That means the gospel.
They find their truth, their clearest expression in the
gospel. Because there are times in your
life when you will doubt God's goodness.
There are, there have been in my life.
There are times when you will doubt God's faithfulness.
There are times when you will doubt that his love endures.
And if you ever are wondering, is God faithful?
Is he? Does he actually love?
Does he actually endure? Is he actually good?
That's when you stop and you look at the cross of Jesus
Christ because the clearest and proof, the clearest expression
and the proof of these three ideas that God is good, that is
love endures forever and that is faithfulness to all generation
endures. The clearest proof of that is
the cross of Jesus Christ, the gospel message.
At the cross we see the greatest demonstration of God's goodness
toward his people. At the cross we see a love that
endured. So we see the greatest
demonstration of his goodness. We see a love that endured all
the way to the point of death. It's what Philippians tells us
that he endured even to the point of death, death on a
cross. So we see God's goodness at the
cross. We see God's love that endured
all the way to the death. And listen to this at the cross.
When you look at the cross, you see that God's faithfulness has
spanned across, expands across generations.
Why? Because Christ died 2000 years
ago. And yet the blood of that cross,
the blood of Christ shed on that cross has allowed you into the
family of God. He was faithful even to this
generation. Romans 58 says it so plainly.
You ready? But God demonstrates His own
love for us, and you could say His own faithfulness and His own
goodness in that whole sentence. But God demonstrates His own
love, his own faithfulness, his own goodness for us in this
colon you ready while we were still sinners, Christ did what
for us. Christ died for us.
I mean so so when you're wondering when the psalmist says
God is faithful and God is good and God is his love endures to
the end. When you when you read that it's
not just general statements that finds its truth and clearest
expression in the gospel message of the cross that God put on
display the proof of his love for you that while we were still
his enemies, Christ died for us. So what that means is our
greatest need. Our greatest need is not to
overcome the illness you're currently facing.
Our greatest need is not the financial troubles we're walking
through right now. Our greatest need is not the
health crisis we're dealing with right now.
Our greatest need is not the loss that we've endured.
No, our greatest need is to have our sins removed from us and to
be righteous before God, standing completely innocent
before Him. That is our greatest need.
And the cross of Jesus Christ through the bloodshed on that
cross, removes our sin guilt from us and makes us righteous
before God. That is your greatest need, and
that is my greatest need, our need for forgiveness.
I need to have my sins forgiven. That is the greatest need I
have, and that need has been met.
My deepest fear and your deepest fear.
Dying in our sins, having to answer for our sins, that has
been defeated. Our biggest problem, separation
from God, that has been solved forever on the cross.
And This is why, as a Christian, you can give thanks to God in
any and all circumstances. Because even when life is hard,
even when the circumstances are painful, God still has not
failed you. He still has not failed me.
Why? Because he's proven his
goodness. He's proven his love.
He's proven his faithfulness in the most decisive way possible.
By giving his Son for you on the cross, He's proved it.
That's why Thanksgiving nurtures contentment, because every time
you give thanks, you're reminding your heart of this
truth. You know what?
Give thanks to God. His love endures forever, His
faithfulness to all generations. God is good heart.
Remember that He proved it on the cross, that He met your
greatest need, that He paid for your sins, that God has been
faithful to you. My sins are forgiven.
My eternity is secure. And whatever happens next, I
belong to him. Do you see how that attitude and
that belief might stir in you? A content heart, a peaceful
heart, a confident heart that all is well, All is well.
Thanksgiving deepens contentment, and contentment
strengthens Thanksgiving. They feed on each other.
They circle with each other. The more thankful you are, the
more content you are. The more content you are, the
more thankful you are. And around and around and around
it goes. And if you sitting here today
and you're not content, start this way.
Start with a bang. The command to be thankful, give
thanks because that starts the process towards contentment.
It's funny to me because the Bible doesn't just teach this,
but modern psychologist and therapist had discovered this
truth that being a grateful and thankful person leads to better
mental health outcomes. They're working hard to discover
all the things that God has already given us.
Gratitude. Content.
People give things not because life is perfect, but because
they remember the cross and they know that in the cross God has
proven His goodness, His love, and His faithfulness.
So giving thanks, it's one of the ways that God grows and
protects your contentment. It's one of the ways it turns
our attention away from what we lack and back to what we can
never lose. God's love, God's goodness, His
enduring love, His unfailing faithfulness.
So let's zoom out. Let's look at the whole picture
of this whole series so far. Contentment begins when we
desire God above all else. That was the first week.
The second week was contentment grows as we depend on Christ's
strength. And this week contentment
becomes a way of life as you practice Thanksgiving to
practice it. So here's your challenge this
week. Every day, I want you to take
John's advice to wake up and let your first words uttered be
thank you. That's the first challenge.
Let the first words this week out of your mouth.
Well, it's Thanksgiving week. This shouldn't be hard to
remember. This week, every when you wake
up, if you need to put a big sign on your lamp or night stand
or something, say, say thank you.
Thank you, Lord. And then when you get your head
together, however many cups of coffee you have to have, I want
you to write three things that day that you're grateful for.
And it could be the cross, could be #1 every day this week, the
cross. And then two other things.
But I want you to write three things you're grateful for.
I want you to make this a habit. This week, it's Thanksgiving.
It'll be easy to remember. It could be friends, it could be
health, it could be family. Three things.
Just jot it down. Three things you're thankful for
every day. Name three things that you
genuinely, genuinely want to thank God for.
Because here's the thing. Your circumstances will not
change by you being thankful they won't.
Your circumstances will continue to be what they are.
But you know what will change? Your perspective of those
circumstances? Your heart towards those
circumstances. As you give things, you will
remember that you belong to God, that He has called you His own,
that your greatest need has already been met in Jesus, that
your shepherd holds your hand securely, and that you have a
home for all eternity in his pasture.
So be thankful, my brothers and sisters.
Thanksgiving is one of God's greatest gifts for nurturing and
protecting a content heart. Will you stand with me?
I'm going to say a benediction over us.
That you receive these words is my prayer for you.
You ready? May the Lord teach your heart to
give thanks in all things. As you practice Thanksgiving,
may the Spirit deepen your contentment, lift your eyes to
God's goodness, and remind you every day of His love shone for
you on the cross of Calvary. May His faithfulness steady you,
His grace carry you, and the joy of belonging to Him fill your
days with peace. So now, my brothers and sisters,
go in strength, the strength of Christ, who is always enough.
I love you, Amen. See you back here next week.
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hear a new episode every week. You can also worship with us in
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