Gluttony: Society's Most Acceptable Sin - Part B

Because God gave His Son to buy you, to place His Holy Spirit in, therefore, our responsibility glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's. In other words, your body should be a billboard to the glory of God. That is, your body should point people to God. A study from 2015 called America, the United States of Excess, detailing how gluttony and overconsumption had become prevalent in the U.S. Connect with Skip Heitzig today as he shares some life-changing reasons for taking care of your body, not just for physical health, but for spiritual impact.

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Now, we're in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 as we get into the message with Skip Heitzig. Question, why do people become gluttons, to use the Bible term? I want to be careful here because I am not a doctor, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a psychologist. There are a variety of reasons that people have food issues, but let me give you one of the most fundamental reasons why a person would resort to gluttony. It's because so many people have a flawed view, the primary view of humanity is flawed. And that is most people, many people in this world, their primary view of humanity is I exist here for my pleasure.

Life is about my personal pleasure. Which, by the way, was the unsaved Corinthians view of life. There's a whole Greek school of thought called Epicureanism. And Epicurus and his followers, the Epicureans, believed that life's sole purpose was for enjoyment, sensual enjoyment, enjoying food, enjoying drink, enjoying all those things in excess as much as you want as long as it brings you pleasure. Now, many times gluttony is the result of trying to cover up some emotional scar.

Gluttony is often regarded as an emotional cry for help, as author Peter De Vries writes, Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign that something is eating us. Back in the 1980s, there was a young man from New York called Christopher Rios. He was a rapper, a rap artist. And his nickname, they called him Big Pun, which stood for Big Punisher. Now, he admitted to eating to seek relief from emotional pressure.

To seek relief from emotional pressure. He eventually died because of obesity. When he would go to the stage, they had to put him in a golf cart just to get him there.

They had to take him off the stage on a golf cart, take him to his room, put him in a van, take him back to his hotel room, etc. And before and after every show, he had to just be hooked up to oxygen just to survive. Well, he died of a heart attack at age 28, most articles will tell you, directly due to obesity.

Then there's actor Marlon Brando. And his eating binges were legendary. He frequently ate two whole chickens, a half a cheesecake, and a pint of ice cream in a single setting. He was also known to drive to food stands in the wee hours to gorge on several hot dogs. So he put on his hat and sunglasses like he's hiding. I mean, come on, he's the godfather. Give me some hot dogs.

Close to his death, Brando weighed over 300 pounds. Did you know that Satan often tempts people with food? He did it with Eve in the garden. He held out food to tempt her. She looked at that and said, it's good for food. Satan tempted Jesus with food. He said, hey, if you're the son of God, command these stones to be turned into bread.

Jesus said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. Satan tempts people with food. But the stomach might be full while the heart remains empty. And for many people, they're just trying to cover up what has long been called the god-sized hole that every person has in their life. There's an emptiness that everyone's born with, a god-sized hole.

People can try to fill it with food, with drink, with sex, with status, with wealth, with experiences, but that hole just grows bigger. Because a god-sized hole can only be filled with God himself. Now, Christian, you and I, we're the temple of the Holy Spirit. And if we're the temple of the Holy Spirit, that means our temple should be filled with what? The Holy Spirit. That's why the Bible says, be filled with the Holy Spirit. So think of it, if your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, you can't lock the Holy Spirit up in some little room in the corner of your temple and say, you're staying in there all week long, except on Sunday, I'll take you out once a week. No, you give him the keys to every single room in your life so it is filled with the Holy Spirit.

Not just one little category, not just one little area. Be filled with the Spirit. Be filled with the very resident that God has placed within you, the Holy Spirit. So your body is a holy place, your body has a holy person.

Let's take it to a third positive thing about this very negative topic. Your body had a hefty price. Want to see what God did to get you and your body, your body and spirit? Verse 19 tells us, Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? Now watch this, and you are not your own.

Whoa, you don't belong to you. For you, verse 20, you were bought at a price. So get this, before you could ever think of saying, It doesn't matter what I do with my body, it really matters what I do with my spirit. Let these verses sink in. God paid a hefty price to get both you, your spirit, and your body in their one package. And that was, according to 1 Peter chapter 1, you were redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. Vance Havner put it this way, salvation is free, but it's not cheap. God paid that hefty price, that means He owns your very life.

As Daniel would say to Belshazzar back in Daniel chapter 5, God holds your very breath in His hand. What that means is, you cannot claim independence. You cannot claim individuality. You cannot claim self-determination. You cannot say, I'm my own person, I'll do whatever I want to do.

No, you're not. You were bought with blood. God bought you for Himself, is Paul's point.

So wouldn't you want to make lifestyle choices that reflect that great truth? Wouldn't you want to make sure that the base of operations for the Holy Spirit, your body, is kept as pure as possible? Think of your body as a city. In ancient times they would put a wall around the city to keep bad guys from coming in and good guys from getting hurt by them. They had walls around every city for protection. And in those city walls they had city gates.

And that was to monitor the flow of traffic. Let certain people in but not others, let certain people out while protected, but they could come back to that protection. So think of your body that way. You have gates. You have the eye gates. You have ear gates.

You have a mouth gate. You open your eyes and you let images in. You let things into your eye gates. Be very careful what you look at, especially men. Be very careful what you allow your eyes to fixate on. Protect the city by the gate. Be very careful what you allow in your hearing that can be unwholesome. Be very careful in the mouth gate what words you let out.

What foods or items you bring in. Make sure that it's protected. Now someone might be thinking, yeah, but Jesus said it's not what goes into a man that defiles him, but what comes out of a man. You're absolutely correct. We're not talking about being defiled here.

We're talking about being usable as long as is physically possible. Make sure that your body is a well-tuned instrument in God's hands. Because you see gluttony, according to this article that I have, devalues and lowers our quality of life. Quoting from it, it says, obesity is a health hazard. It's a risk factor for such serious health issues as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol levels, heart disease, stroke, colorectal, breast and uterine cancer, gallstones, infertility, joint problems and back pain. Sorry for some of your TMI. But obesity causes 300,000 people a year their lives. That's the rate in this country. Every year 300,000 people die of obesity.

Not to mention the emotional scarring, the depression, the low self-esteem and other factors that are involved. So God did something to purchase you so that the Holy Spirit can then live in you from which He can influence and work on people around you. Now let's close this off and let me give you a fourth positive truth about your physical body. Your body has a heavenly purpose. There's a word in verse 20 that is the hinge word, it's the word therefore. Notice he says, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's. You know that's how Paul writes, he was so logical. He would say stuff, stuff, stuff, more stuff and then he'd go, now therefore.

So I said all that stuff because it's leading to this. All that means this. And here's the hinge, therefore. Because God gave His Son to buy you, to place His Holy Spirit in, therefore, our responsibility, glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's. In other words, your body should be a billboard to the glory of God. That is, your body should point people to God.

Now, I know you've heard that term before, glorify God. It's a Bible sounding term, Bible sounding phrase. What does it mean exactly? Let me tell you what I think it exactly simply means.

I'll break it down. It means your mouth, part of your body, your mouth can preach the gospel. Your hands can help the needy. Your feet can go to the lonely. Your ears can listen to the broken hearted. Your lips can smile at the oppressed.

Your eyes can give attention to the forlorn. And in all these ways you use your body, you are telling a world God cares about you. God loves you. That's how you glorify God in your body. Now, when I start thinking of my life this way, life doesn't become about my pleasure. It becomes about His purpose. So instead of this slogan in Corinth, verse 13, foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, my slogan is my life for His glory, my lips for His glory, my eyes for His glory, my ears for His glory, my whole life for His pleasure. Therefore glorify God.

Now, here's the irony to this. When I live for His pleasure and His purpose, I find pleasure and I find my purpose. It's funny how that works. The more you give your life away, Jesus said, the more you gain your life, the more you pour it out, the more it comes back, the more joy you get by not living for your own pleasure or joy. But you live for His pleasure and purpose and that brings you joy.

It's funny how that works. Best example I know of, Paul the Apostle. Listen to this man standing on the shores of Miletus with the elders of Ephesus around him. And he says, I go bound in the Spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit tells me in every place the chains and tribulation await me. Now listen to his response.

But none of those things move me, nor do I count my own life dear to myself that I might finish my course with joy. What? Who are you, Paul? He says, I know it's going to get bad when I go to Jerusalem.

I know I'm going to get beat up, going to get arrested. The Holy Spirit says that everywhere I go, here I go. Because actually I don't care about my life, I care about what He wants for my life. And that brings me joy.

I live for His plan and for His purpose and that brings me joy. I've said this on several occasions. I'll repeat it again to then turn it around. That the more you do as you please, the less you are pleased with what you do. I know people all over the place, they just do what they please. And the more you do as you please, the less you are pleased with what you do. But here's the reverse of that. It's also true. The more you do as He pleases, the more you are pleased with what you do.

That's how it works. Now having said that, I want to bring this to a conclusion. So I want to ask this question and try to answer it a little bit.

How does one overcome gluttony? Now that's not an easy question. It's not an easy answer. I mean there are food clinics and there are programs that deal with a number of different levels. I just want to make it simpler than that.

I want to begin on a simple level. And I want to say that to begin we need to say yes. We need to say no. And we need to say go.

I want to explain those. First of all we need to say yes. Before we say no we need to say yes to something. And what you need to say yes to is to develop an appetite for truth. An appetite for the word of God. Don't tune me out here.

Don't brush this over. Have you noticed in the Bible how often times the Bible is used with the analogy of food? Like it says in Psalm 34 verse 8, Oh taste and see that the Lord is good. Or 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 2, Desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby. Or Jesus' words Matthew chapter 4 verse 4, Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So you say yes to that.

And allow the Lord to develop within you a real hunger for righteousness, for spiritual things. That's what you say yes to. Second, say no.

Yes, there comes a point when you are sitting at a table and there's stuff in front of you to say no. Daniel said no. King Nebuchadnezzar brought him all the scrumptious fare of Babylon and he said no. It says he purposed in his heart not to defile himself with a portion of the king's delicacies.

He said no. Saying no is self-control. And the Bible says that's part of the fruit of the Spirit.

Here at Galatians 5, for the fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, joy, longsuffering. Down the list is self-control. It means saying no to certain kinds of food. It means saying no to large portions of food. It means saying no to seconds or thirds or fourths.

One of the ultimate ways of saying no is something that is little talked about these days. It's called fasting. The Bible talks about fasting from food.

That's where you say no to food itself for a period of time for a specific purpose. When Jesus spoke about this on the Sermon on the Mount, he said, and listen to how he put it, when you fast, don't be like the hypocrites. Notice he didn't say if you ever fast.

He just assumed you would. So he said when you fast, don't be like the hypocrites who make a big show of it, but do it this way. So when you fast, you are making your appetite your slave. You're saying, appetite? You're not going to control me because your appetite wants to control you.

Because you're thinking, man, it's been 20 minutes. I haven't eaten. And we even say, I'm starving to death. So when you fast, you tell your appetite, get down, behave. You're not going to control me. I'm going to control you so that for a period of time, I can focus on the Lord's voice. So say yes, say no. And then finally, say go.

Now this is very practical. It means get up and move that body around. We live in a very sedentary culture. We live in a desk-bound, chair-bound, couch-bound culture. And sometimes you just need to tell your body, like Paul said, I beat my body into subjection, right? I make it a slave.

Get up and go. 1 Timothy 4, verse 8 tells us, bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things. I've heard people for years quote that as a reason why they don't exercise. Well, bodily exercise just profits a little.

Okay, you need a little help. And yeah, the idea is, godliness is more profitable than bodily exercise, but the idea of the verse is, bodily exercise has some value. So use the value. And keep your instrument, your human physical body, as usable in God's hands, as healthy as possible, until the day He calls you home. I have a friend who's around 80, very healthy, exercises all the time, and I said to him, so what do you like to do?

And he said, oh, don't misunderstand. I hate exercise. I don't like any of it. I do it. I do it frequently, but I don't like it. I said, why do you do it? He said, let me tell you why I do it. I do it because I see it as a way to tell God, thank you for the body you've given me.

I'm a steward of what He's given me, and so for me to take care of this, I'm just giving Him thanks by taking care of the vessel that God gave me. So in conclusion, gluttony, did you know, was once on the list of seven deadly sins? I got to tell you, it's off that list.

It's now on the acceptable sins list. People don't bat an eye at this. Most people don't even think about this. But at the same time, we have to be careful not to judge people based on outward appearance on body type.

There's a number of reasons that people have different sizes and weights, so we can't go there. However, having said that, we also realize the culture that we live in. We live in a culture of fast food. We live in a culture of super-sized drinks. Even the old super-sized me. We live in a culture of Taco Tuesdays and Waffle Wednesdays and French Fry Fridays and all-you-can-eat buffet. I'm making a lot of you hungry.

Self included. There's even a motto in some Christian circles that goes like this, when we meet, we eat. Can I encourage you not to use that motto from now on?

If you do. How about when we meet, we meet each other's needs. When we meet, we eat the depth of God's Word.

Let's meet over those issues. Not that food is good, you need it. Too much food is not good.

Too much of anything, excess of anything. Something that is good can become bad when it's not done for the right reasons, at the right time, with the right amount. That concludes Skip Heitzing's powerful message for you from the series White Collar Sins. Now, we want to share about a special opportunity you have to take your knowledge of the Bible to a deeper level. Personal or small group Bible study is a great way to learn God's Word. But what if you want to learn more?

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800-922-1888. Thank you. Come back again tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares how you can cultivate a powerful habit of prayer in your daily life. You don't want to miss it. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.