Seek Contentment (Seek #1)
Welcome to Advent. Can you believe it? January started about three weeks ago, and here we are a month from Christmas. This year has flown by.
So I have to ask: how many of you have Christmas presents purchased already?
It happened by accident at our house. We did not go into the weekend planning to buy anything, and suddenly we had three or four gifts. So yes, children, there are already some presents set aside for you.
How many of you have all your shopping done? Good — I am normal.
Black Friday and the Search for Contentment
This past Friday was Black Friday. Because of the pandemic and the way retailers have shifted their approach, I assumed it would not be a normal one.
You know what a normal Black Friday looks like: people standing outside an electronics store at four in the morning, waiting for the doors to open at five so they can grab an enormous television, haul it home, mount it on the wall, and watch their team beat mine.
Given that sales had started more than a week earlier and everything now bleeds into Cyber Monday, I expected something different this year.
I was wrong. I saw video of people standing outside a store at five in the morning waiting to get in and score a big-screen television. We are apparently right back to normal — people going to extraordinary lengths to find the perfect gift so they can watch joy break across someone’s face.
And I am here to tell you it does not work.
Do not misunderstand me. People stand in line and they do get the deal. But it does not ultimately deliver what they are after — because so many of the people in those lines are looking for contentment. They believe that if they can just get that particular item for that particular person — maybe including themselves — then everything will be fine.
And the proof that it does not work is that exactly one year later, they are standing outside the same store at five in the morning trying to score another deal.
Because our contentment in our stuff fades.
How Quickly It Fades
Years ago a good friend upgraded his phone and decided to support a poor church planter by handing me his old one. It was only a year old, and I loved that thing. I was constantly reading on it, researching, watching videos, playing games, and occasionally even making a phone call.
I have been through several phones since. Each one faster, with better features, and bigger. If you handed me that original device today, I would look at it and think: this is tiny. It is slow. It is not cool. How did I ever like this?
Because our enjoyment of our stuff fades.
Now, some of you may be more mature than I am and are still perfectly happy with a decade-old phone. If so, well done — teach me.
But there are other things in your life that have faded.
Relationships. How many of you had some romantic fling in middle school? He or she was all you could think about — and then it faded, and you realized how annoying they actually were. Or you had a close friend in high school or college and were certain you would be inseparable forever — and now you barely keep in touch.
Jobs. You got the new position, or the promotion. You are finally going to earn what you deserve. Everything is wonderful and you are completely content — and then you meet your coworkers. Or you discover how unhappy the customers are. Or you learn your boss is not entirely ethical, and that certain promises made to you were not true. And suddenly the new job is not what it was.
I could keep going. We look for contentment in more money, or a bigger house, or whatever it is. And our contentment always fades.
Sometimes it fades because we are simply fickle — that is certainly the case with me and my phone.
But sometimes it fades because of difficulty. The job turns out not to be what you thought. The relationship is not going the way it should. A device breaks, as my computer did this week. And in the face of difficulty, contentment collapses.
A Couple Who Should Not Have Been Content
Today we are going to look at a couple who go through something genuinely awful — and discover that their contentment does not fade. It holds steady. It is what Scripture calls a peace that surpasses understanding.
And by looking at Mary and Joseph, I hope you will find a way toward contentment this Advent, and beyond it.
The Text: Luke 2:1–7
“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.
And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
The census
The famous Christmas story opens with a census.
In our day, when the government wants to count us, they mail forms and, at worst, send someone to knock on the door. In their day, people were required to travel to be registered — in this case to the town of their birth or family ancestry.
So because Joseph descends from King David, he must go to the city of David: the small town of Bethlehem.
The journey
Mary and Joseph were living in Nazareth, roughly sixty to seventy miles from Bethlehem as the crow flies.
They could not fly. They could not throw bags in a car and drive it in ninety minutes. Their transportation was their feet — and not in decent walking shoes, but thin sandals. Tradition holds they brought a donkey, and even so a donkey does not move quickly, and a heavily pregnant woman would be riding it.
They also most likely did not take the direct route through Samaria. For various reasons, most Jews of that era avoided it — which would have added another fifteen to twenty miles.
So we are talking about roughly an eighty-five to ninety mile journey through mountainous terrain, on foot. That would take a minimum of four days, more likely five, and quite possibly six or seven.
Which means packing all their food and enduring whatever came — blazing heat, pouring rain, cold nights. Simply surviving it.
And arriving did not make it easier
Verse 7 says there was no place for them in the inn. The word translated inn simply means guest room.
It is possible there was a lodging house with no vacancy. But more likely they went to a distant relative whose guest room was already filled with other relatives who had come for the census — leaving Mary and Joseph without space.
Some scholars suggest that many homes of that period were two levels, with the family living above and animals housed below. So perhaps Mary and Joseph were given space on the ground floor among the animals. It is also possible that there were caves around Bethlehem used essentially as storage, and a relative let them use one.
What we know is this: they did not get a comfortable room with a comfortable bed. They were in difficult circumstances.
And then she goes into labor
Now she has to give birth in an uncomfortable and unsanitary place.
Mary was most likely thirteen to sixteen years old — the typical age of marriage then. She would have been considered a woman, but this is her first child.
Normally her mother would be there to help, or at least women from her own community whom she knew and trusted. Instead she is far from everyone, surrounded by people she does not know, in an intensely intimate and vulnerable moment. And it is happening in a stable.
We think it was a stable because of where they laid him. The rest of verse 7 says they wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger.
Those swaddling cloths were simply rags. No baby blanket. No infant clothes. No disposable diapers. Just whatever strips of cloth they could find, wrapped around him to keep him warm and clean.
And a manger is a feeding trough. Joseph presumably found the cleanest hay available — and it is still a bed of hay in a feeding trough.
Let us recap
They made a ninety-mile journey on foot while she was in her final month of pregnancy. They arrived in a city they did not know. They had to register for a census. And there she went into labor, assisted by people she had never met.
And I skipped something important: childbirth in that era was nothing like ours.
Today, when someone in our church family is expecting, we are not sitting in fear wondering whether mother and baby will survive. With our medicine and our doctors and our accumulated knowledge, we simply assume they will be fine.
In their day, mothers sometimes died in labor. Sometimes the baby did not survive.
Now, given that God was directly involved and an angel had spoken, they had reason to be confident about the child. But there was no such guarantee about Mary.
Put Yourself in Their Sandals
Sit in that for a moment. What would all of this have felt like?
Because I know that if I were Joseph, I would be looking up at heaven saying: Really? This is how you are bringing your Messiah into the world? We trusted you. You told Mary through an angel. You told me in a dream. We have made this enormous unexpected journey. We are now staying somewhere we do not know anyone. We are out here in a barn with animals trying to nose at our newborn. This is how you are treating us?
I would not be content.
And Yet They Were at Peace
A few verses later, in verse 19, we get the tell.
What happens just before is that shepherds arrive. An angel has told them the Messiah has been born, and they come to find him — we will look at their story next week. What you need to know is that shepherds were the social outcasts of their day. Some were socially awkward. They smelled like the outdoors and like their flocks.
And they suddenly turn up in this unsanitary place to see your newborn.
And verse 19 says: “But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.”
She treasured it.
I treasure watching my children open a Christmas present and light up with joy. I treasure walking hand in hand with my wife on vacation. I would treasure a cabin in the mountains with a mug of tea, a book, and a fire going in the fireplace.
Having a group of unwashed strangers walk in after an exhausting journey and a difficult labor in an unsanitary place? I do not think I would be treasuring that.
And she does.
How? How is Mary so content? How, with this much difficulty pressing in, is she at peace?
The Answer Is a Chapter Earlier
Turn back to Luke 1:26, where the angel Gabriel appears to Mary.
“And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!’ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’
And Mary said to the angel, ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’ And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’
And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’”
Did you catch it at the end? Let it be to me according to your word.
In other words: All right. That is fine. I am content with this.
Understand what she was accepting
Mary and Joseph were betrothed. In the eyes of their culture they were in some sense already married, but they had not yet had the wedding night — that typically waited nine to twelve months after the engagement began.
So for her to turn up pregnant during that period meant everyone would assume the worst: that they had not waited. And in that day, that carried enormous shame. They would have been thoroughly ostracized by their community.
So the whole story begins in difficulty. And she says: all right, I will do this. I am content.
Why She Could Say That
Mary was a devout Jewish girl. She had grown up going to synagogue, hearing the Scriptures read, hearing the stories.
She had heard her whole life about everything God had done across the centuries — how he had miraculously rescued her people, displayed his power, declared his wisdom and his justice, and promised a coming Messiah.
And now she hears that God is fulfilling that promise.
So she says yes. Because she trusts God and his sovereignty.
And then she watches it happen. She becomes pregnant. They make the long journey. They end up in miserable accommodations. She gives birth in unsanitary conditions.
And she is fine — because she trusts God.
Here is how I would put it: she trusts God’s word and God’s work.
The Lesson for Us
Too often we keep our eyes fixed on what is happening right here and right now. On our circumstances. Our relationships. Our struggles at work or school. Our broken devices.
And that is precisely when we find ourselves discontent with life.
What Mary did was lift her eyes. She sees God. She trusts his word. She sees his work. And that gives her what she needs to be content.
And we have an advantage she did not
Mary and Joseph were in the middle of it. We are on this side of the entire story.
We can look back and see everything God did. We can read the Scriptures and see how he fulfilled his promises. And we can see his work — we can look at the cross and see Jesus dying for our sins, see him come out of the grave alive, see him ascend and declare that he reigns over all things.
So if you are struggling with contentment heading into this Christmas season, let me encourage you: lift your eyes up. Get them off your circumstances and everything swirling around you, and look to Jesus.
What that does and does not mean
It does not mean everything magically disappears. It does not mean the financial situation suddenly changes, or the relationship is instantly healed, or the job materializes, or life simply gets easier.
I am not trying to change your circumstances. I am trying to change your heart.
I want you to have contentment. I want you to have joy. I want you to experience a peace that surpasses understanding.
Have you ever been around someone going through something genuinely terrible who seems to be doing fine? It is remarkable. I can think of friends who have walked through cancer and appeared to be handling it better than I would have — better, honestly, than I am handling things, and I am not the one with cancer.
If they follow Jesus, what carries them is their faith. They know that even if everything in this world crumbles, they are unchanged, because their life is in Christ. Even if this body dies, they have eternity with God. So they are all right.
That is genuine contentment. And I want it for you.
Seek Contentment by Seeking Christ
So rather than seeking contentment through presents this Christmas — rather than seeking it in some big life change, or in the things of this world — seek contentment by seeking Christ.
If you are not a follower of Jesus, lift your eyes from the things of this world and see him. See him on a cross, dying in your place. See him coming out of that grave alive. See him ascending to reign over all things, including you.
When people realize this story is true — and it is an astonishing story, that God the Son came down and took on human flesh — they confess their sin, recognizing that Jesus gave his life for them, and they give their life to follow him.
Come to the Table
We are moving into communion. If you are not a follower of Jesus, I encourage you not to take the elements. Do not worry about them at all. Instead focus on God. Ask: Is this story real? Is it true? And if it is, would you give your life to him? Would you begin seeking contentment not in the things of this world, but in Christ?
And as I look around this room, I see many in our church family, and I know some of you are in a genuinely hard season and are not content right now.
Use this moment the same way. Lift your eyes up and see Christ.
When you open that wafer, that is his body — he allowed it to be beaten and broken for you. When you take that cup, that is his blood, shed for the forgiveness of your sins.
So at any point during this next song, come. Let the Holy Spirit minister to you. If you need to confess sin, do it. If you need to confess that you have been hunting for contentment in other places, do that.
May you lift your eyes from the things of this world and look to Christ — the one who came into this world in a stable, born to a young woman, wrapped in rags and laid in a feeding trough, who lived a sinless life and then died the sinner’s death.
And may that help you begin this Advent season knowing that your contentment will not be found in the presents, or the schedule, or the relationships — but in him.
Let Us Pray
Heavenly Father, oversee this next moment. Let your Holy Spirit minister to our hearts and work deeply in us.
If there is confession that needs to happen, draw it out. If there is surrender that needs to take place, help us humble ourselves before you. And if someone needs to give their life to you for the first time, may this become their spiritual birthday.
Jesus, we seek you because you first came for us. Because of what you have done — how you promised it and then fulfilled it — help us trust your word and your work.
We celebrate that right now in this beautiful sacrament. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
At any point during the song, come to the elements — or stay in your seat and pray, or stand and sing. This moment is for you to come to God, seek after him, and let him do in you what he needs to do. Let us do this now in remembrance of him.
