Finding True Contentment in the One Who Is Content in Himself
September 13, 2026
Preached by Ron Smith
Discussion Questions
How do you answer the first two questions of the sermon: how content are you with your life? Where do you find contentment? What things tempt you to look for your contentment outside of the Lord?
How would you define contentment?
Why is knowing the LORD important for us finding contentment?
What is something difficult you have faced in your life that when you look back, you see the blessing of the Lord?
What does it mean practically for your daily life that Jesus is the blessing and the LORD who gives the blessing?
Scripture Reading
Numbers 6:22-27
22 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 23 “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,
24 The Lord bless you and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
27 “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”
Let’s start off with a little private 2 question quiz. How content are you with your life (with what is happening in your life, with where you are in life, your status in life, the things you have)? How content are you? Scale of 1-10.
Where do you find contentment? Where do you look for it? What are you depending on to bring you joy? To fill your life with peace? To give you satisfaction? Another way to think about the question is like this: if I only had (fill in the blank – new car, new job, healed body) then I would be satisfied, content.
Heavenly Father…
This morning we begin a new series: Contentment in the Wilderness. We are doing this series because one of this year’s goal as a church is to work on finding our contentment in the Lord.
Of course this begs the question, what is contentment? Back in the 1600s a puritan by the name of Jeremiah Burroughs preached a series of sermons on contentment. For that series he defined contentment like this: “Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.” If you are interested in reading the sermons for yourself, they have been published under the title The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.
That is a wonderfully deep and rich definition. But for our purposes this morning I would like to define Christian contentment simply as “finding our satisfaction in the God who is satisfied in himself in every circumstance of our life.”
To encourage us to find our contentment in the Lord, we will be focusing the next 10 weeks on the book of Numbers. Now, you might think this is a curious choice. Numbers is a book about the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites as they left Egypt on their way to the Promised Land. On top of that, you may already know that in Numbers, the people of Israel rebel quite a bit. They grumble and complain. They desire to go back to Egypt. Fear overcomes them. And they end up being punished by the Lord - wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years.
So why a series on finding contentment in the Lord in Numbers when there don’t seem to be many, if any, examples of true contentment? Well, in a way, it will help us see what contentment is not. But more than that, what we see on display in Numbers is how easily our hearts can be led astray to find contentment in anything but the Lord.
We often look for contentment in all the wrong places - respect from others, approval from others, obedient children, children who follow the Lord, more money in the checking account, better job, vacation. The list never ends. And Notice that none of the things I mention are bad. The problem is that when we search for contentment outside of the Lord, we are always going to be left unsatisfied. Feeling like we are missing something. We will always need more. We will be forever disappointed. A journey through Numbers will help reorient our gaze to look to the Lord to find true contentment.
With that in mind, we are going to start this series in Numbers 6. The verses you heard read this morning are familiar verses. They are the blessing that the priests were to pronounce over the people of God.
I want to focus on this blessing from two angles. One is learning to be content with the blessings the LORD gives. And the second angle is looking to the LORD who is content in himself.
Learning to be Content With the Blessings the LORD Gives
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 23 “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them
Aaron and his sons were chosen by the Lord to be the high priests of Israel. In that role they were responsible for making sacrifices for the people for the forgiveness of their sins. So, this blessing is set in the context of the worship of God as they have been forgiven of their sins.
But don’t miss something essential: God desires to bless his people – this is his initiative. God desires to bless you! In fact as we go on to read the actual blessing in verses 24-26, realize that the “you” in these verses, are all singular. So while Aaron was to address the congregation of Isreal with these words, this blessing rests each individual person. God wants to bless you.
What is the blessing the Lord gives us?
The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
This blessing (the whole thing is a blessing despite the word bless showing up in the first line) is made up of three phrases (3-5-7; 12, 14, 16) each containing an attitude of God towards his people and an action God does for his people.
Beautiful imagery reveals the attitude God has for his people. We already noted that that God desires to bless them. And now we can add that the Lord’s face is favorable towards them. His face lights up with pleasure towards his people. He does not hide his face in anger and displeasure, but he lifts it up for them to see his delight in them. He accepts them.
You might imagine the way a parent looks proudly at their child with a beaming smile, eyes full of love. Parents of a newborn baby.
And this attitude moves the Lord to action. He reveals how he will bless them. He says that he is going to keep you, be gracious to you, and give you peace. Wonderful blessings. But before we go any further we need to think about what blessing means. We hear it said so often. When you buy your groceries at the grocery store, the clerk gives you your receipt and says “bless you.” As you leave the restaurant the waitress says, “bless you.” You sneeze and someone says, “bless you.” What does it mean?
We can’t deny that the biblical idea behind the word bless does contain physical blessings. As the Israelites entered the Promised Land, the Lord was going to bless them with children, with land that produced crops, with cattle, with food, with victory in battle, and with good health.
My guess is that when we hear “bless you,” in today’s world, these are the types of things that are intended. It is wish for more good stuff in your life. Or to put it another way, more of the things in your life to make you more comfortable.
Our problem is that we want to limit the interpretation of these blessings - the Lord keeping us, being gracious to use, giving us peace – we want to interpret these blessings through the lens of the easy life. What is going to make my life better? Better job, more money, perfect health, friends who meet my needs, approval from others, more gadgets, nicer house, perfect spouse, easy exams at school, no homework… Blessing for us is comfort. Whatever will make our life easier.
But biblical blessing isn’t limited to things that make our lives easier. This blessing from the Lord comes at a strange time for the Israelites. On the one hand they have been brought up out of slavery in Egypt. The Lord had performed powerful signs and wonders to bring them out. They looted the Egyptians as they left. Their enemy was defeated. God visited them on Mount Sinai. Gave them a law. All of which are blessings in our normal way of thinking.
But on the other hand, they went days with no food or water (we go a few hours with no food or water and we complain). They begged to go back to Egypt. They turned away from the Lord and made idols. And they were in the dessert. It wasn’t easy!
Into the midst of that reality, the Lord speaks his blessing. I will bless you when you are hungry and have no water. I will keep you when your enemies are bearing down on you wanting to destroy you. My face will shine upon you when you are sweltering in the dessert and don’t know where you are going. I will be gracious to you even when you turn away from me. And when all hope seems to be lost and your world is following apart, I will give you peace.
The Lord’s blessing comes as he guides us through difficulties and gives the grace we need to make it through the darkest of days. Sometimes that is the unexplainable internal peace we have. The sure hope that this is not all there is. Sometimes blessings are tangible: new job, a baby being born, healing from sickness, or as I experienced this summer a wheelchair ramp being built by 10 strangers for my dad. Let me explain.
I shared two weeks ago that my father passed away from pancreatic cancer on August 17. When he was diagnosed a month earlier, we began to brainstorm how we could make things as easy and comfortable as possible. One of those things was a wheelchair ramp to make it easier to get him to doctors’ appointments or even just take him on car rides around town. We called a local church in town that has a ministry of building ramps. (Ramp picture) A few days later there were 10 strangers outside of my parents’ home building a ramp. Took them three hours. And before they left, they nailed a small brass plate to the rail with Bible verses. You want to guess what verses were on that plate? (Zoomed in picture). Curious verses for a ramp. Doesn’t seem like there are blessings in a ramp. Doesn’t a ramp scream the exact opposite of blessing? It is a visual reminder that you can’t walk like you used to. You don’t have the energy you used to. You are weak, broken, frail.
And yet, I can tell you that it was a blessing. We rejoiced the day it was built. We thanked the Lord. And my dad took one more step further away from us in his journey with cancer.
Sometimes blessings can be things that make our lives easier, but the context in which those blessings come can be devasting at times. In those hard and difficult times, are you content with what the Lord is giving you? With the way he is blessing you? I would have preferred a different blessing than a ramp. Like, you know, healing. And I certainly prayed for that for my dad. But when the Lord is blessing us in different ways, we need to have a steadfast confidence in him that he knows what he is doing and receive what he is giving us.
And that is true even when things are going great in your life - you get the job promotion, you ace that test at school, you overcome some obstacle in your life. Receive what he is giving you and be content. It’s easy when things are going good to find yourself wanting more. Wishing things could be just a little better.
The blessings the Lord gives you are exactly what you need in any given moment, good or bad. Let’s learn to be satisfied. Or as Jeremiah Burroughs put it, let’s learn to have a “sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.”
Looking to the LORD Who is Content in Himself
What makes this blessing so amazing is not that we receive something, that we are blessed. But rather who it is that is doing the blessing. Let’s look to the Lord who is content (or satisfied) in himself. Let’s read these verses one more time.
24 The Lord bless you and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
27 “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”
The emphasis in these verses is on one person, the Lord. More than likely in your Bible you will notice that the word Lord is in all caps. This is the translators’ way of letting the reader know that the name of the Lord being used in this case is YHWH. This is the name that God revealed to Moses at the burning bush. If you are not familiar with that story, God calls Moses to go to Egypt to deliver the children of Israel out of slavery and take them to the Promised Land – a land flowing with milk and honey. Moses doesn’t just simply respond yes. Ok I’ll do it. He tries to get out of it. And part of that interchange between them is Moses asking God what his name is. Let me read it to you. Exodus 3:13-15.
13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The LORD, [All caps – YHWH] the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
This passage is helpful because it tells us very clearly what this name, YHWH, means. Simply put it means I AM. Or as God also said to Moses, I AM WHO I AM.
This is remarkable. Lots we could say. But for our purposes today, this name tells us that our God is the all-sufficient One. He needs nothing outside of himself. He is complete in himself. He is content in himself. He is satisfied in himself.
If you want to find true contentment, true deep, real satisfaction in your life, you must turn to the One who is content in himself. You must find your satisfaction in the God who is satisfied in himself. For God to look outside of himself to add something to himself, would cause him to cease to be God. For us to look outside of God for the protection that we need, for the safety and sense of security that our soul long for, for the grace and favor that we crave, the peace in our life that is not just an absence of conflict but is a life that is whole and complete, if we look outside of God for these things, we will forever be wanting, craving more, not satisfied. We won’t be content. We must come to God.
Think about what finding our contentment in the Lord would mean for our lives practically. When approval from others doesn’t come, it hurts bad, but our world doesn’t fall apart. When marriages don’t get better, it’s really hard but we won’t give up. When things aren’t going the way we think they should at church, we speak up and we continue to serve with graciousness. When sickness and disease come, we cry and we face it with hope and courage. When we find our contentment in the Lord we are freed from having to please others, from always having to be noticed by others and receive their praise; freed from wanting to control every area of our life; freed to receive the blessings he has for us.
We must come to the Lord and find our satisfaction in him. And the good news is that it isn’t hard to come to him because he has first come to us. The great I AM took on flesh, became one of us, walked in our shoes, suffered the pains of this world just like we do, and can sympathize with us. Jesus is the LORD of this blessing. He gives it freely, he gives it in abundance. He gives himself. Jesus is not only the Lord of this blessing he is the blessing of this blessing. Our lives are hidden in Christ. In Christ, grace in abundance is poured out upon us. In Christ we find his peace that he freely gives us.
In Christ the Heavenly Father looks upon us with delight, ready to bless us. Are you content with his blessing? How content are you with your life? Where do you find contentment for life? Are you coming to the Lord, to Jesus, to find satisfaction and contentment for your life? Find your satisfaction in the Lord who is satisfied in himself in every circumstance of your life. Keep coming to Jesus. He’s enough. He alone satisfies.
The Lord bless you and keep you
The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you
The Lord lift his countenance upon you and give you peace.