“A Recipe for Contentment”
Contentment, inner peace, serenity, terribly elusive but desired states of mind in our culture. Often sought after through worldly pursuits, which may bring fleeting glimpses of it, but ultimately are temporary. The New Testament word for contentment in it’s different forms means “enough”, “is sufficient”, or basically freedom or independence from worry about our needs being met. It most often refers to possessions or wealth and this is one of the reasons I believe it is applicable to the parable of the two debtors that we will look at shortly.
Why do people seek God in the first place? I would like to suggest that today one major reason is the same reason many people seek counseling. When people would come for counseling they usually knew at least in the back of their mind that no other person could fix their life. I would ask new clients the question: “How will you know when your counseling is over” and the most common response I would get was, “I will be content or have peace of mind”. In other words, freedom from anxiety or worry even if they could not erase the past or change their circumstances. I have come to realize that it’s impossible to find true, lasting contentment or peace of mind without a clear knowledge of our nature, our need, and our negation of self regardless of our circumstances. Our nature as sinners, our need of forgiveness, and our negation or denial of self. How we mentally respond to our circumstances will determine our actions, and we have a choice about this.
In a few minutes I am going to suggest a biblical recipe for the kind of contentment just described, based on a short parable and the surrounding text from Luke chapter 7. But before we begin I think it’s important to briefly discuss the words of Jesus in the New Testament. A professor once told me that everything Jesus said in His parables was to give us an idea of what the Kingdom of Heaven was like, and the principles for living in the Kingdom, so let’s remember this as we look at the parables in Luke over the summer. Another important thing is to make sure that we read the text around Jesus’ words. The danger in the red letter versions of the Bible is that there is sometimes a tendency to just read the red parts because we think that’s the important stuff, Jesus’ own words, but this is a dangerous error that may cause us to take his words out of context and at the very least not understand what he is really saying and why. Much like the following young man did.
When I went to university back in the eighties, many people were defaulting on their student loans. I had a relatively small loan of about 7,000 dollars and I certainly didn’t want to pay it back, but the payments were pretty small so I did, and it felt good when it was finally gone. I heard of a young person recently who claimed to be a Christian, who said that he shouldn’t have to pay back his student loan because the Bible says that people should forgive our debts if we feel we can’t pay them back. This person mistakenly used the parable of the two debtors that we are going to talk about today as support for his view.
Today I am going to speak on this very small parable of the two debtors in verses 41-43 of Luke chapter 7, which seems pretty self-explanatory on the surface. But to do it justice we must read the larger text. One of the great things about having the time to really let a passage of scripture become a part of you when preparing to preach on it, is that more things become apparent and you start to see the overall picture more clearly. This last section of chapter 7 is profoundly important for us today, and the parable is really just an illustration of the whole point of this section of Scripture. As we read it, we see that it is every bit as significant as Paul’s more well known words about the nature of salvation by faith in Ephesians 2 and Romans 3. In fact I believe this passage in Luke shows more clearly what this faith looks like practically, how we can practice it in our life, and what the benefits are.
So please open your Bibles with me to Luke 7 verses 36-50.
To begin with, I just want to share a few summarizing statements about the parable in verses 41-43 then we will go into more detail a little later. First of all notice that the Pharisee calls Jesus teacher just before verse 41. The Jewish religious leaders never called him master or Lord, just teacher or Rabbi. This reflects their overall attitude of doubt about him being the messiah. Secondly, the moneylender clearly represents God, and the great discrepancy between the amounts of debt shows that it doesn’t matter how much or how little we have sinned, we need forgiveness, and God will forgive us if we repent. Thirdly, the answer is obvious who will love him more even though Simon interestingly says “I suppose” when he answers this obvious question. I would suggest that Jesus could have just as easily asked “who will be more grateful or who will be more content”. Finally Jesus is trying to indirectly imply that the Pharisees especially need a saviour because of their blindness, and are going to have a hard time entering the Kingdom because they don’t believe they are sinners.
We love Jesus because we have been forgiven and recognized the need to be. Can we love the Lord in such a way that we would wash his feet with our tears of gratitude and kiss his feet in public because of what he has done for us? Remember this sinful woman we read about did this even before Jesus died and was raised.
This is a very personal act of worship and thanksgiving for the forgiveness of our sins. Perhaps a model for worship in general. I asked myself, has our worship become too corporate only taking place on Sunday mornings at church? How do we worship in private? Is worship only about singing, raising hands and giving money? This woman disregarded everything else to wash his feet regardless of who was watching, how it made her look, what others thought of her, how much it cost. She did it with intense tears of gratitude before he even told her she was forgiven. Remember they didn’t have the Gospel yet. Some people suggest that she was already forgiven by Jesus at a previous time, but there is more evidence to suggest that she had heard Jesus preach elsewhere, repented, and came to Jesus in love and gratitude, in the understanding that she could be forgiven. Something she could have never dreamed of before.
It doesn’t appear that this is the same anointing event that we read of in the other three Gospels. We don’t know for sure who this woman was in Luke. Luke knew Mary’s character well, and would have surely named her if it was her because of his attention to detail. Though the name of the person who hosted the meal was Simon, it is doubtful that this Simon the Pharisee is the same person as Simon the leper in the other Gospels. Regardless, the point is that even if it were the same event, the message is different. The one we look at today is about forgiveness of sins and salvation by faith, the other was to show Judas Iscariot’s attitude and to some degree is prophetic about Jesus’ impending death.
One of the great common denominator teachings in all major religions I have studied is some form of selflessness, whether Buddhist, Muslim, or any other, a major teaching is selflessness. Unfortunately this has often become equated with martyrdom usually for the sake of destroying those who do not believe what you do. Perhaps the goal in this evil form of self-sacrifice has the same ultimate but distorted goal of finding true peace with God. Do you see how this seemingly selfless motivation is actually very selfish? But I think here in Luke this woman shows what is really meant by loving selflessness where she is simply joyfully giving herself completely for what she believes she has already received. Is this not a great lesson for Christians of our culture who are seeking God for what He can do for us, rather than worshipping Him for what he has already done for us?
Let me read a quote from a devotional by Os Hillman:
When we first begin our spiritual journey we often make decisions from convenience. Often, we decide what the outcome is that we want and then make decisions based on the perceived outcome. If it is a positive outcome, then we will make an obedient decision. I call this outcome-based obedience.
However, God desires that each of us live an Obedience-based life. In order to transition us from an outcome-based process to an obedience-based process, he will allow a crisis to come into our lives. This crisis is designed to create pain, or discontent, which motivates us to seek Him to alleviate the pain. Many have heard of "fox-hole" Christianity. There is a place of painful obedience for everyone! However, this is not where God desires us to remain.
Ultimately, God desires us to live a life of obedience and intimacy rooted in conviction. We obey His commands from a heart of love and devotion. During the crisis phase we discover the personal love of God in our lives, which we had never experienced before. Most of us will get to this phase of our walk with God by first living a life of convenience, then we will go through the crisis that will then lead us into an intimate love relationship with God.
The Christian life can be summed up in one word - love. God’s desire for each of us is to know Him intimately and to love Him with all of our heart.
1 Peter 4:8 says, “Love covers a multitude of sins”. Is this sinful woman in Luke forgiven her sins because she ministered to Jesus? The answer has to be no based on verse 50. Verse 50 makes it clear that she was saved by faith. This passage shows her spontaneous outpouring of love because she knew how much she needed forgiveness, and believed that he had already forgiven her before he even told her. I believe he said it out loud for the listener’s sake more than for the woman. She knew who He was and believed Him. That is the faith Jesus speaks of. And look at what he says in the last three words of the chapter: “go in peace”. This is ultimately what we are talking about today.
The first step of faith is knowing and agreeing that we need forgiveness, then knowing the only person who can forgive us. Then, knowing what He has done for us, we love him and love and forgive others because of what he has done for us. Earlier in verse 30 we see that the Pharisees rejected John’s baptism of repentance. They didn’t believe the first part, that they were sinners and needed forgiveness. Doesn’t that sound like much of our society today? Much of this chapter in Luke is about humility and realizing our need for a saviour.
The short parable of the two debtors says that we will love more based on the extent that we need forgiveness. We don’t have the living physical person of Jesus present to verbally forgive us, so we must believe that the historical Jesus has paid our debt in order to be forgiven, and to love as He commands. In order to believe that he paid our debt, we must believe that we have a debt to be paid. This is where most of the Pharisees got stuck and could never find contentment because they were always striving (unsuccessfully) to earn God’s merit through their actions, which made them arrogant and prideful, not loving and generous. This is exactly what Muslim extremists are doing, and over time people who try to gain God’s love through actions not only get arrogant, but also get angry and frustrated. We are able to love and serve others joyfully when we have inner contentment and no longer need to focus on ourselves, and this is how Jesus says they will know we are disciples. It is very difficult to stop thinking about ourselves when we are focused on what we don’t have, and what our problems are, this is not contentment.
This passage is obviously about forgiveness, which I believe is a key to contentment. Let me read from Psalm 32:1-5, 11 and 33:1-5 where the word “blessed” means happy or content. In fact in the New Testament the equivalent Greek word describes a state of happiness and well-being such as the gods enjoy.
I would like to share today three lessons I found about contentment in this parable and the surrounding text. Paul said he learned the secret of being content in all situations. I certainly don’t claim to know the secret but I think there are some pretty good lessons here. I also believe that Jesus is talking about the peace of mind and contentment we can expect in the Kingdom because of forgiveness.
We will see from these three lessons that sacrificial serving, gratitude, and forgiveness, which requires humility, are really opposites of the three ungodly words characteristic of the false teachers in 1 Timothy 6, conceit, contentiousness, and covetousness. It goes on to say that real gain comes from Godliness with contentment, or a new way involving detachment from material things, combined with a true relationship with God resulting in great gain in a more spiritual sense. So let’s get to our lessons on contentment.
The first of these lessons is that:
I. Contentment comes from sacrificial serving, which requires self-denial and taking risks.
a. Returning to the parable, first I would like to draw your attention to the moneylender. No doubt forgiving these debts was sacrificial when the amounts are considered. A denarius was worth about a typical day’s wage. So we are talking here about almost two years worth of a person’s wage that was being forgiven. We could estimate that today this would be in the neighborhood of 50 to 80 thousand dollars.
b. Let’s look at the prostitute. She was one of the least respected types of people to the Jews. Even being seen in public or letting her hair down was a degrading experience. Here she risks severe beating or stoning for even entering the Pharisee’s house, but she is willing to sacrifice her physical well-being, expensive perfume, and her dignity to show her love to Jesus.
c. Finally there is Jesus himself. He risked his reputation simply by allowing this woman to come into his presence, not to mention his very life because of his claims that he could forgive sin.
To truly understand the risks these people took in this culture you need to understand the culture where rules were very clear cut, punishment was barbaric and torturous, and your social class was extremely important. Taking these kinds of risks today would pale in comparison to what they meant in the first century Judeo-Roman world. We think gossip is bad in our world, it was nothing compared to then, and in many ways your life depended on your reputation.
A practical though much less severe example for me today might be helping a stranded motorist even though I was on my way to an important golf game, and knew I would miss my tee time. It is about knowing what is more important in the moment.
What all the above people have in common is that they were not concerned with themselves when they performed these acts. The idea is not to float around completely lacking self-awareness, it is to be unconcerned about what people may think or do when you are surrendered to serving Jesus.
Secondly,
II. Contentment comes from gratitude, which requires knowing God and what he has done for us.
a. Can we imagine what the debtors experienced? Have you ever owed a lot of money that you knew you couldn’t pay back and then were told “Ah, don’t worry about it”. How does it feel to be forgiven when you know you are guilty and can never make up for what you did? Talk about relief and going from severe anxiety to peace of mind. We have all experienced some kind of intense gratitude that usually subsides after a time, but think back to a time when you felt this extreme kind of gratitude, what were you like during that brief time? What were you willing to do for others during that time? I think that is how we are supposed to be all the time, and I believe it is how we will be all the time in the Kingdom.
b. Again let’s look at the sinful woman. Somehow she must have had some sense of contentment in her heart to be able to take this risk. You know, I think faith and contentment are very similar states. She believed so much in Jesus that she was at relative ease taking the risks she did and exposing herself emotionally in front of a bunch of potentially hostile strangers. She was unaware of herself. Here I use contentment as the idea of inner peace or fearlessness and it reminds me of what I have experienced preaching in different churches these past few months. I fully expect to be terrified as I used to be when anticipating speaking in public, and I would be completely drained afterwards. But each time I preach, as I pray, go through all the other aspects of the service and finally get up to the pulpit, I feel peace and I am energized. I find myself just walking up there and going to it. I know this is not of my own doing, I could never accomplish it before, it is because I know God is in control and I am completely unaware of myself. I wish I could experience this in more areas of my life, but when it comes to sharing his word, his peace is always there. There is gratitude in advance and I think gratitude gives us power to do things we might not otherwise do because of fear. Doing these things we may not otherwise do then, can lead to even further gratitude and contentment. I used to say to clients “just try to feel anything but joy when you are intentionally focused on gratitude”. Of course this is easier said than done.
Contentiousness as described in the passage from1 Timothy also includes disagreeing with the truth, or not having understanding, but true gratitude comes from a real knowledge of God and His truth. When we focus on a beautiful sunset, or something else where we find beauty, the feeling is really a sense of gratitude that we have the privilege of witnessing it. The same can be true of God’s majesty. When we really have a relationship with him where we understand who he is, we can feel the same way. And He is always there unlike the sunset.
The third lesson is,
III. Contentment comes from releasing justice, which requires faith and humility.
a. Has anyone ever carried a grudge against someone? Do you feel content and peaceful when you are thinking about the wrongs that others have done to you? Let’s look at the moneylender again. No lender in his right mind would just forgive that kind of debt. Jesus intentionally makes this debt unrealistically huge because he is making the point that God who the moneylender represents, has forgiven such a huge and unpayable debt. I think it also implies that Jesus wants us to know that we could never pay it back, but it doesn’t matter. It is so easy for us to say that God never really needed the debt repayed as if he needed the money to keep his business alive or something. If we think of a normal person as this moneylender, can you imagine the contentment and peace of mind that would come from knowing that he even could forgive such a debt, the incredible faith that he was or would be provided for? The joy of knowing what he was able to do for these debtors. But again I say that this contentment must have been present before he forgave the debt or he never could have done it. This kind of releasing others from justice is freeing for us as much or more as for the person we forgive.
A couple weeks ago we heard in 1 Corinthians 6 verse 7 that it is better to suffer wrong or be defrauded than to ruin our Christian witness. It is a bit of a catch 22 in that we must forgive to find contentment, but in order to forgive we need to have some contentment. That is why we need a deep relationship with the Lord who is our only real source of contentment. So we are told to believe that God’s justice will prevail, and that by our forgiving sins of others God will provide for us. Faith – Contentment, they go together. I keep seeing in Scripture that God requires us to do things that don’t make sense to us, like forgiving big debts. But it is in these circumstances where we can really see God in action.
b. Finally we see Jesus. Where did His contentment come from? Imagine knowing that you have potentially saved an entire civilization from destruction through your selfless obedience to God. Instead of pride, I think I would feel absolutely humbled and awestruck as I believe Jesus did. Because he knew that only through the Father was he able to do this. There is nothing that brings a greater contentment than knowing that you are doing God’s will and that you could only do it with His power working through you.
I know it’s impossible, but just try for a minute to get a sense of what it must have felt like for Jesus to know who he was and what he was capable of. To be that connected to God, to know your destiny so clearly, to humbly know the power that was given to you. Jesus suffered for sure, but I believe he was content. God is content.
It appears to me from this parable that not only is contentment a product of forgiveness, sacrifice, and gratitude, but that it is also a precursor for being able to forgive, sacrifice, and be grateful, making this particular recipe for contentment quite easy. If we want contentment, God says to forgive, sacrifice, and be grateful. I believe that when we intentionally do these things, we will become more content and therefore be able to do more of it.
I ask us all to reflect on whether we truly know who we are in God’s eyes, both as His beloved children, but also as the sinners who caused Him to kill his own Son. Yet he says, “ah, don’t worry about paying me back”. If we don’t want to spend everything we have a on a God like that, there is something seriously wrong.
Church is like a spiritual hospital, we should expect to find the most lost, crazy, and immoral people in the church. That combined with Satan’s hard work is why we should never be surprised when we have trouble in the church, but it is the three lessons we have learned today that should get us sickos through those times. We wouldn’t be here unless we knew what we have done and that we are deeply indebted to God. And us sick folk know we can never leave the church because we have only found any possibility of hope and contentment here in Jesus Christ. Besides isn’t it more amazing to hear that our sins are forgiven versus “you never sinned”? Then what Jesus did is meaningless. We love him because we know who we were and are, and God forbid if we ever forget this.
So as we close today I encourage us all to continually pray for all the outwardly good but inwardly lost people, that they may see who they are in God’s eyes as sinners, and find true contentment in the forgiveness, and love of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let’s pray.
Father God, we thank you for your forgiveness of the debt that we could never repay. Thank you for giving us the ability to forgive others and to claim your peace beyond any peace the world can give us. Help us to be people that love you beyond reason for what you have done for us. Help us want to spend our lives on you. Lord we pray for those who do not yet know you, use us if you will to let them see the reality of your Word.
And now may the God of all peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. And all God’s people said, Amen.
