Let's turn to 1 Timothy, please. Chapter 6, 1 Timothy 6. I was
struggling with whether to preach this now or preach it at Lexington,
but I prepared this with you on my heart, and I really want
you to hear it, so I'll preach it to you. Verse 3 says, If any
man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even
the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is
according to godliness, he's proud. The merchant says he's
a fool. Knowing nothing, but doting,
and that word is sick. His mind is sick. He's diseased
in his mind. with questions and strifes of
words. Whereof cometh envy, you know,
the love of God envieth not. So there's the problem, there's
an absence of the love of God. Whereof cometh envy, strife,
railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt
minds galling one another. destitute of the truth, and watch
this, supposing that gain is godliness, from such withdraw
thyself. But godliness with contentment
is great gain. For we brought nothing into this
world, and it's certain we can carry nothing out. And having
food and raiment, let us be therewith content. But they that will be
rich fall into temptation and a snare, and many foolish and
hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.
For the love of money is the root of all evil, which while
some coveted after, they've erred from the faith and pierced themselves
through with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee
these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith,
love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith. Lay hold on eternal life whereunto
thou art also called and has professed a good profession before
many witnesses. Now the Apostle Paul is teaching
Timothy to turn from false preachers. And in the midst of this, among
other descriptions of these false preachers, he said that they
suppose that gain is godliness. Now some translations have it
this way. Imagining godliness is a means
of gain. Some are in religion and it's
just strictly for a means of gain. They think to be in religion,
to be put on a show of godliness is for gain, for personal gain. Their religion is called by Paul
a cloak of covetousness. That's what he calls it. But
our translation says this. Now look at that phrase. Supposing
that gain is godliness. It doesn't say supposing that
godliness is gain. It says supposing that gain is
godliness. And there's many that teach this
and there's all men in religion and out believe this. That gain
is godliness. They believe that if you have
material gain, You're godly. You're in God's favor. That's
what they believe. If you have gain in this world
and material things, you're in God's favor. If men come into
great material wealth, they say things like, oh, he must be living
right. And if they lose wealth, I wonder what he's done. I saw
a man playing a good game of golf recently, and the announcer
said, the gods must be smiling down on him today. Gain. He's godliness. That's what natural
man thinks. But listen to what Paul says
by the Spirit of God. Verse 6, but godliness with contentment
is great gain. Godliness with contentment is
great gain. He didn't say gain is godliness.
He said godliness with contentment is great gain. And that's my
subject, great gain. Godliness with contentment is
great gain. It means this, Christ having
preeminence in our heart so that we're content with whatever he
gives, that's great gain. Christ having the preeminence
in our heart so that we're content with whatever he gives, that
is great gain. I just want to look at two divisions,
godliness and contentment. First of all, godliness is Christ
having preeminence in our hearts so that we live unto Him. Godliness,
the best way I know to define it is Christ has preeminence
in our heart which makes us live to Him. That's godliness. Until
we're born again of God, Scripture says we are ungodly. We're ungodly. We're unrighteous, we're unholy,
we're ungodly. There's no fear of God, no reverence
for God in a natural man's heart, in the natural heart of any sinner.
Go to Romans 3. I want our young people especially
to read this. This message is on my heart and
I want you to see this. Romans 3.9, Paul's quoting up
a bunch of Old Testament scriptures here. He says, What then? Are
we better than they? No, and no wise, for we've before
proved both Jews and Gentiles, that means everybody, they're
all under sin. Now Paul is about to quote from
Psalm 14, and let me tell you what Psalm 14 says. The Lord
looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if
there were any that didn't understand and seek God. They are all gone
aside, they are all together become filthy. So Paul says,
as it's written, there's none righteous, no not one, there's
none that understandeth. You mean of all the religious
hosts in this world, there's none that understand God? Not
if they're natural men. Not if they're unregenerate men.
They don't understand God. There's none that seeketh after
God. No sinner seeks after God. They're
all going out of the way. They're together become unprofitable.
There's none that doeth good, no not one. Their throat's an
open sepulcher. With their tongues they've used
deceit. The poison of snakes is under
their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing
and bitterness. Their feet swift to shed blood.
Destruction and misery are in their ways. This is the description
of all men in this world who are natural unregenerate sinners.
This is a description of everybody. Some may be a little better than
others. You may look at some and say, well, he's a good man.
He's a benevolent man. But this is God's description
of everybody. Destruction and misery are in
their ways. The way of peace have they not
known. They've not known the way of
contentment. They don't know the way of peace. There is no
fear of God. No reverence for God before their
eyes. The only thing an unregenerate
man lives for is the lust of his flesh. And in 1 Timothy,
go back there now, 1 Timothy 6, Paul tells us what the root
of all evil in this world is. This is at the heart of everything,
everything we just read about is the evil of man, right there.
how evil man he is by nature. Now here's the root in what every,
what is everybody doing in this world? What's everybody going
after? What are they doing? Here it is. Verse 9. They that will be rich. Now catch
what he said. He didn't say they that are rich.
He said, even those that will be, even those that want to be,
those that desire to be rich, fall into temptation and a snare,
and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction
and perdition. Because, now here it is, the
love of money, not money itself, Not riches themselves. There's
no sin in any material thing at all. None. There's no sin in a material
thing. There's nothing sinful about this pulpit. There's nothing
sinful about money. There's nothing sinful about
wine. There's nothing sinful in things.
Where's the sin? It's the sinner's love of money. That is, listen to this, the
root of all evil. All of it. At the heart of it. Which while some coveted after,
they've erred from the faith and pierced themselves through
with many sorrows. Sometimes, you know, you'll hear
about a bill in Congress and they report on it in the news
and you think, well that would be good for everybody. Why doesn't
that get passed? The love of money is the root
of all evil. It's going to hit some politician
in the pocketbook and he ain't going to vote for that. And there's
some corporation that don't want it and they're not going to let
it be voted on. The love of money is the root
of all evil. Or you take religion. You take
a man who's preached the gospel for years and years and years
in truth and then one day He leaves the gospel. He quits preaching
the gospel. Starts preaching something else.
Starts preaching man's will or man's works or whatever. What
happened? Paul said of one of his dear fellow laborers, he
said, Demas hath forsaken me having loved this present world. The reason this message is on
my heart is because we're living in a world right now that's in
constant pursuit of what unregenerate sinners think is great gain.
money, fame, to be a great influencer over others. People are paid
to influence others on social media just because they're rich
or have a name or whatever. You have people, this gal that
was elected to office, not on principle or whatever she stood
for, just because she had so many followers on social media
that it was going to be politically inconvenient if they didn't vote
her in. You got young and old and they
believe this notion that material gain is going to bring peace
of mind and is going to bring some sort of happiness. I heard
a man recently, this man was a Wall Street banker and he said
he worked 100 hours a week and he amassed a fortune of 700 million
dollars. And he lost it all because in
2008 he got busted because everything he was doing was illegal. And
he made this statement. He said, those who imagine great
wealth will bring peace of mind. They imagine great wealth will
bring peace of mind. They're chasing a mirage, he
said. He said, I was sitting with my
wife and he said, we were having dinner and there was three yachts
parked there. And I said, that one, that one
or that one, pick whichever one you want, it's yours. And she
said, I want you to just turn off your cell phone and let's
have dinner. That's pathetic, isn't it? Young
people, and I say this to not so young too, don't go after
this world. It's not godliness. There's nothing
about gain that's godliness. And there is no contentment to
be had in it. None whatsoever. Godliness is
Christ having the preeminence in our heart. That's godliness.
Godliness is produced by God when we're born again of God.
It's God putting a fear of God in our hearts and a reverence
for God in our hearts. And when the Spirit's given you
a new spirit, and He teaches you the things that God's freely
given to you of God, that's when He'll produce godliness in His
child. This thing of godliness is of God. The Spirit of God
exalts Christ so that, you behold, He's all in all. First, you have
to see you're ungodly. You have to be made to see you're
a sinner and that you can't do anything to save yourself. And
that sin has got to be made real to you. You hear me preach this
and you think, well, I'm going to try to learn that we're depraved. Okay, I've learned that. I believe
that. But you don't really believe it. When you believe it, you're
going to start crying out for somebody to save you. And you're
not going to stop until you find him. or He finds you, better
way to put it. But He humbles us, He teaches
us, we didn't seek Him, He sought us. He teaches us, we are not
the ones that first loved Him, He first loved us. And that's
a great comfort because if He loved me by His grace freely
without any cause in me, then there's nothing about my sinful
self or my sinful works that's going to make it change. The
grace and love of God is how sinners are elected unto salvation. He brings all that you thought
was your righteousnesses and all you thought that was your
holiness. He brings it to nothing and shows you Christ is the righteousness
and holiness of His people. Next time when we're in 1 John,
we're going to see 1 John 5, 6 says, this is He that came
by water and blood. Even Jesus Christ, not by water
only, but by water and blood. And it's the Spirit that bears
witness because the Spirit is true. What does the Spirit teach
a sinner in our heart? That Christ is righteousness
and sanctification. Out of His wounded side flowed
water and blood to teach us that washing and purification and
holiness is through the cross of Christ. And righteousness
is through the cross of Christ. It's not of us. It's not a co-effort
between us and God. They're wrapped up together.
This is what we saw Sunday. It's by Christ fulfilling the
will of God that we're sanctified and that will of God was that
He justify us. That's sanctification and righteousness.
And Christ is both to His people. But it takes the Spirit of God.
It says, of Him are you in Christ Jesus who of God is made unto
us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
It takes God revealing Him to us. Now the devil would like
nothing more for you to leave the gospel, you know, get up
old enough and think, well, I'm just tired of that, I've done
that, I've sat under that because my mom and dad wanted me to and
I'm smarter than that, I'm not going to fool for all that. The
devil would love for you to do that and leave the gospel altogether. Just leave it. You know why?
Because if God does anything for you, this is how he's going
to do it, through the preaching of the Word. Look back up at
verse 3. When He teaches you the gospel,
this is what He's going to make you do. He's going to make you,
number 3, verse 3, consent to wholesome words, even the words
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according
to godliness. This gospel right here, all of
that is just saying this gospel. Go over to Titus. I'll show you
this. Titus 1.1. Paul, a servant of
God, an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's
elect, and the acknowledging of the truth, which is after
godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie
promised before the world began, but hath in due time manifested
His word through preaching, which is committed unto me according
to the commandment of God our Savior." He said, it's this gospel
that's according to godliness. It's this gospel. Some people
imagine, vainly, that if you preach the gospel of free and
sovereign grace, that's going to make sinners think they can
sin, they have license to sin. Sinners already think that. It's
not the gospel that's going to make them think that. They already
think that. What's going to save them from
that? Preaching the truth of God's
free and sovereign grace. He saves them from that. This
message is according to God. This is wholesome words. These
are the words of eternal life. These are the words whereby God
births a sinner anew. This is the incorruptible seed
whereby the gospel is preached unto you, whereby God creates
life in a sinner and He turns you successfully from yourself
and your sin and the world to Him. But he's going to do it
through the message that glorifies Him and gives Him all the glory.
That's calling God foolish and ignorant to say that the very
truth of God would make a person want to sin. Anybody that makes
that statement, he's revealing, I really want to sin. That's
what he's revealing. Because God's people don't feel
that way. This Word right here, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ, is the doctrine by which the Spirit of God produces godliness
in His people, constraining us by the love of Christ. You hear
about Christ's everlasting love, how He became the surety for
His people, and when He entered covenant to redeem us, He became
the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. That don't make
me want to sin. That makes me want to live for
Him. When you hear about Christ's redeeming love, how He took flesh
and He took our sin and He took our curse and He bore that in
the place of His people. That don't make me want to sin.
That makes me want to live for Him. You hear about Christ's
irresistible love, how He sought out His sheep and found us where
we were dead in our sins and put His little lamb on His shoulder
and brought us back to the fold. That's constraining love. His preserving love, how He keeps
His people and says, I'm going to finish that which I've begun
in you and I'm not going to let you go. And you're not going
to turn from me. I'm not going to let it happen. That's the message we need to
hear. This is the message of God's saving grace. The gospel
doesn't make people want to sin. It makes us want to live for
Him. This is food for our soul. Godliness is fearing God and
believing His Word concerning His Son. That's what He makes
you. He makes you fear God and believe
the Word concerning His Son so that you arrange your life now
around the preaching of the Gospel. Now, everything you're doing
in your life, whereas before it was just for self, before
it was just looking for this mirage called happiness and peace,
you were looking for that. Now that you have it, now you
know I can use everything God's provided me for the furtherance
of the gospel, I can provide for my brethren and help them
any way I can to keep them focused on the gospel. And this thing
of godliness makes you to where you really love your brethren
so that you're not going to forsake assembling together with them.
Because all of this is in the context of the gospel because
this is the means whereby God's bringing all His sheep into the
fold. And so he's going to fitly frame us in this unity, the unity
of the Spirit. He'll keep you united. And this
is what godliness makes you do. It makes you live for Him rather
than for this world. So I'm saying here to you, to
all of you, to young and old, don't buy into what this world's
trying to sell you. This world is trying to convince
you that, you know, all the glitter and the glamour and the gold,
that there's some happiness in that. I've been in that mess
before. And I can tell you, nobody involved
in that, they act like they all love one another and they're
just all best friends. Behind closed doors, they hate
one another because they want what the other one's got. And
they're clawing and scratching and biting and doing everything
they can on one another to get it over the other one. I've been
there. Those born of God can say with
Job, I've esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary
food. When you're brought to that place
where Christ is all and in all and His gospel is food, you need
it more than you need your everyday food on your table, God's made
you a godly person. Now let's look at this second
thing. Wherever God creates godliness, God gives contentment. and it's
godliness with contentment that is great gain. Now, go over to
1 Corinthians 9. He says there godliness with
contentment is great gain. I want to show you something
in 1 Corinthians 9. That word that's translated contentment,
that word is sufficiency. It's translated sufficiency here
in 1 Corinthians 9. Now here's true contentment.
This is the best way to define contentment right here. 1 Corinthians
9.8. This is what every believer has assurance of and knows. Verse
8. I've turned you to the wrong
place. Hold on one second. 2 Corinthians 9.8. Go there.
2 Corinthians 9.8. Here you go. God is able to make
all grace abound towards you that ye always having all sufficiency. That's the word. Godliness with
full sufficiency. He makes you have all sufficiency
in all things so that you may abound to every good work. Now that's what he's talking
about, about contentment. Read it again, God is able to
make all grace abound towards you that ye always having all
sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work. That's what he's talking about.
Godliness with contentment is great gain. Now of the wicked,
listen to this. Job 20 verse 22 says this. In the fullness of his sufficiency,
this is speaking of a wicked man. In the fullness of his sufficiency,
he shall be in straits. Every hand of the wicked shall
come upon him. You ever heard the saying that
As soon as you make it to the top of the mountain, you're in
everybody's sights and they're all trying to knock you off the
top of the mountain. That's what he's talking about. The wicked
man, when he gets to the fullness of his sufficiency, going after
this world and after worldly gain, he's in straits. How am I going to keep it? How
am I going to keep somebody else from getting this? Because the
scripture says every hand of the wicked comes upon him. In
his thoughts, in reality, He's constantly trying to figure out,
how am I going to keep this? There's no peace there. There's
no contentment there. How am I going to hang on to
this? This world's clamoring for more and more and more and
they're worried about what they're going to have and how they're
going to hang on to what they got. We can say with the Apostle
Paul, this is what he said, I've learned in whatsoever state I
am therewith to be content. While the fullness of the sufficiency
of a wicked man straightens him and he just knows all his wicked
hands are coming upon him, of the godly, he says, in the fullness
of God's sufficiency, we have contentment. Our sufficiency
is not of us. If your sufficiency is of you,
you'll never have peace because you know it can be taken away. If one man, if I got it, another
man can get it. But if your sufficiency is of
God, it can't be taken away. Now you're talking about some
peace. Now you're talking about some contentment. Through His
only begotten Son, God has already made all grace abound toward
His people. He came to you in His Holy Spirit
and He made Christ preeminent in your heart. He abounded towards
you in all grace and made you do what Christ commands. Seek
ye preeminently. Seek ye first the Kingdom of
God and His righteousness. That's what He made you do. That's
abounding grace to you. Because you and I know we couldn't
have done it. There's no way we could have done it. Well,
guess what? The sufficiency that made me
come to Him in the first place is the sufficiency that's going
to keep me coming to Him. That gives me contentment. It
wasn't of me, it was of God. And it's going to continue to
be of God. I can find great contentment in that. Through faith He abounded
toward us by freely giving us the unsearchable riches of Christ. This book says we have eternal
righteousness, eternal holiness, eternal redemption. We have Christ
Himself and He is the sufficiency of it all. He provided it all.
Here is my contentment. Only when somebody can take Christ
off His throne can they take away this sufficiency of eternal
redemption and eternal righteousness and eternal holiness that He
has provided me. That will never happen. I have eternal acceptance
with God by what Christ did. And that will never change, believer.
There is our contentment because our sufficiency is of Him. We've been given all sufficiency
and all things necessary for eternal acceptance with God. So, and in addition to that,
you mean there's more? Well, we got to get through this
life. We got to get through this world. We got all this temptation
around us. We got this world trying to turn
us every way they can. And all it takes is just a A
little notion of what it is your flesh wants and the devil is
ready to bait that hook for you. We used to fish, me and my dad
would go fishing and every evening we'd go bass fishing. There's
a creek down below our house in Louisiana. We'd go down there
and we'd bass fish. You cast it, you know, so you
cast and you throw in the same spot and throw five times and
the bass wouldn't hit it. And you notice something, a lure,
I mean a corn worm's falling or something like that, or sunshine
in a certain way, and you realize, ah, I'm going to put it, I'm
going to change the bait, I'm going to put a worm on there.
And that same spot, you kept throwing and kept throwing, you
throw it back in there and that sucker latches on to it the first time.
The devil will change the bait on you. Whatever it is he feels
like will entice you and pull, he sees some little something,
he, oh, we'll go with that then. Is that what you want? We'll
give you that, if God permits. But here's the thing, God won't
permit it for His people. We would be no match for the
devil, but our sufficiency is not of us, it's of God. In addition,
God gives the believer contentment by promising us this. He said
in Psalm 34.10, the young lions do lack and suffer hunger. Here's
a lion, strong, young, He's going to lack and suffer hunger. It's
a picture of a man in this world living by the sword and just
a beast. He said, but they that seek the
Lord shall not want any good thing. That's a good promise, isn't
it? You will not want any good thing. That means in this life
and in the life to come. Look at 1 Timothy 4 verse 8.
He says there, bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable unto
all things having the promise of the life that now is and of
that which is to come. If Christ has your heart and
you live in this life for Him, worshipping with His people,
giving yourself to His cause, going after Him and continuing
with Him to the end, trusting Him alone, there's a promise
of the life that now is and of that which is to come. God promises
this in Proverbs 1.33. He says, Whoso hearkeneth unto
me shall dwell safely and shall be quiet from fear of evil. Now does that mean I'm never
going to be afraid of anything in this life? Of course not.
There's going to be things that's going to terrify you and me because
we know how weak we are. But God is saying that you really
don't have any reason to fear because nothing's going to happen
to you. What if they kill me? and usher you into eternity?
We don't really fear being killed, we just fear the pain it might
cause to get us there. I don't know, but I feel like
God's probably, His grace is sufficient to get you there without
it being all that bad, if He's willing. The work of righteousness
shall be peace, God said, and the effect of righteousness,
quietness and assurance forever. Yeah, we suffer in this world.
We're going to suffer like everybody else does because we're sinners
living in a sinful world. We still have our flesh. But
the difference is, in the midst of our suffering, we still have
God's sufficiency and therefore we still have contentment. Isn't
that right? You know that so. Even when you're
suffering as a believer, And it gets bad sometimes and you
have no strength in yourself and God will let you see it.
But still, you know, though He slay me, I'm going to trust Him.
He said in this word, I've got nothing to fear. And that's my
contentment. That's my contentment. They shall
be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house, and
thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures."
My grandfather, the man that pastored the church where Brother
Darwin is, he lived and died without much in this world at
all. And my uncle always said he tried his best to die a poor
man. and he just never had anything much to speak of. And we'd see
a big old house on a hill and he would jokingly say, well there's
Mr. Livingood. And one of the last times I saw
my grandfather, he had on a pair of old khaki dirty pants that
he was out in his garden, an old straw hat, a sweat ring around
the top, an old tattered shirt, I said, there's the real Mr.
Living Good. He has got the unsearchable riches
of Christ. He got everything he wants or
needs. That's the key. Everything he
needs and the unsearchable riches of Christ. Eternity. These men that are amassing wealth
and all the stuff you see going on on television and the videos
and all these different things. Look at 1 Timothy 6. Verse 7, For we brought nothing
into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. We
all come in the same way, we all going out the same way with
nothing. I don't care what you're getting
in this world. You're not coming in with anything
of this world. You're not going out with anything
of this world. But if you have Christ, you have everything. You have everything. In the house
of the righteous is much treasure. I don't care if he's just living
in a shack. In the house of the righteous
is much treasure, but in the revenues of the wicked is trouble. Better is little with the fear
of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith. What's
peace of mind worth? Can you put a price on it? Those without Christ, I urge
you, Stay under this gospel. Don't leave the gospel. Because
if God does something for you, this eye is going to do it. Right
here. Right here. And you that have
been given grace and been given all these riches, turn to Psalm
4. Our Redeemer laid down His life for us. And that same One
who laid down His life for us and bought us, He reigns supreme
now. Everything is His, and He is
ruling everything. That same One. And He knows exactly what
we need to sustain us, and He is going to sustain us. And so
the Scripture says, Let your conversation be without covetousness,
and be content with such things as you have. For He said, I will
never leave you nor forsake you. Here is what we can say, believer,
right here. Psalm 4 verse 6. There be many that say, who will
show us any good? Lord, lift up the light of thy
countenance upon us. Look at this. Thou has put gladness
in my heart more than in the time that their corn and their
wine increased. I will both lay me down in peace
and sleep. Why? Now watch this. Thou, Lord,
only makest me dwell in safety." You know what the simple language
of that is? We ain't got nothing to worry
about. Nothing. Nothing. I pray God will bless that.