Sermon Tone Analysis

Sinclair Ferguson.

He’s a professor and pastor in South Carolina.

He said, “Contentment is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord at His disposal.”

So when we use the word “contentment,”

And in , the writer says this to the church.

“Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?””

So this is a normal conversation.

This idea of contentment was a normal thing that was talked about in the early church.

Of course, if you keep reading, you learn in that almost immediately after man is created, man is tempted away from this content posture of heart that he was created to live in.

You see the Satan in the serpent come on the scene in the garden and he begins to question what God has told the man and the woman.

As the man and woman actually lend their ears to his counsel, to his deception, you see distrust and discontentment begin to blossom in their hearts.

Man is content, on the scene comes the serpent and begins to deceive and twist God’s word and man lends his heart to what the serpent says.

As he does, discontentment blossoms and gives birth to sin and rebellion against God.

Discontentment leads to rebellion.

tells us, “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”

In this horrific moment, the man and the woman, in rebelling against God out of their discontentment, plunged themselves along with the rest of humanity into absolute disarray and futility.

They plunged themselves, creation and all of history along with them into futility.

The first sin in the bible was not pride, it wasn’t trying to be God.

It was discontentment with God blessing.

It was to look at the God who had provided for every need, and with whom Adam had known as a friend and to say....this is not good enough.

And I can read the story and say, “Adam what were you thinking!!??”

How could you look God in the eyes and say....all that you have provided is not good enough?

As I run after a million things a week that proclaim the same thing.

God all that you have provided is no good enough, so I will run crazy after all these other things that could never satisfy, never bring me contentment.

All I have needed they hand hath provided; great is they faithfulness.

There is holy discontent- there is nothing wrong with that.

We should desire the return of Christ.

We should be discontent with evil in the world- it should make us disconnect when we see children abused, women mistreated, waring nations, a complete disregard for all that God would call pure- to quote Paul’s words from last weeks passage, when we see a complete disregard for “what is pure and lovely, and commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise” we should be disconnect- not hopeless, but discontent with that stuff.

That id an outward discontent that is mixed with a concern for justice and an understanding of the dignity of humanity made in the image of God.

When the Bible talks about discontentment it means to murmur, and grumble, ..look at all that God has provided and say----”this is not good enough”.

And I will not be content until you change things.

manioty made in the image of God.When the Bible talks about discontentment it means to murmur, and grumble, ..look at all that God has provided and say----”this is not good enough”.

And I will not be content until you change things.

That is a dangerous place to go…for you and for everyone who surrounds you.

A life of disconnect, can take over and be ugly, and if its root is not dealt with, it can run wild and overtake your life.

If you flip thayt

Have you ever been

removing counter at old house., water....bugs....disintegrating.

Pastor Mark helped me rip the entire thing out and we had to rebuild it.

So what I want to do is flip the rock of your discontentment

One of our favourite memories as a family was on Whitby Island flipping rocks.

And when your kids are small, they get prepared for whatever is going to be there when the rock is flipped.

You see crabs of course, but you also see small sea snails and weird water bugs, some centipede looking things, sometimes eels.

You do not know what you are going to get until you flip the rock.

I want to invite you to flip the rock on your discontentment this morning.

To take a look at what lies beneath the surface hiding.

Now the wonderful thing on is that the line that will shine on all that is lurking under the rock is the light of the Gospel.

And the Gospel says that as ugly as some of that stuff is, it isn’t very powerful, like a dime sized crab snapping his claws.

One of the things that would make the crabs seem les scary was when dad would pick them up and hold them out of the muck to the light and in my hand they seemed less scary.

Then they want to pet it.

—pet a crab??

They will give a show but in light of all that Jesus has done and wants to do in our lives, they are small and powerless in his hands.