My Body Is All About God Series

a. The phrase “Everything is permissible for me” is not God’s philosophy, but is the world’s philosophy, and that’s why the phrase is in quotation marks.

b. Worldly people and worldly Christians might think that everything is permissible, but Paul cautions us that everything is not beneficial, nor should we be mastered or controlled by anything.

4. This is why Scripture forbids gluttony and drunkenness, because both of those things can destroy our bodies and hinder our service to God.

a. Proverbs 23:20-21 says: Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.

K. Gluttony is one of those subjects that we don’t talk about very often.

1. The words translated “glutton, gluttons, and gluttony” actually only appear only 6 times in the whole Bible.

2. They appear twice in the Gospels when Jesus is accused of being “a drunkard and a glutton” (Mt. 11:19; Lk. 7:34)

3. The word appears once in Titus, when Paul says that Cretans are called liars, evil brutes, and lazy gluttons. (Titus 1:12)

4. The other three occurrences of the word for gluttons appear in the Proverbs, and one is the passage we read a minute ago.

5. So, although the Bible casts gluttony in a negative light, it doesn’t make it a huge focus.

6. What I want to briefly say about gluttony, with regard to our bodies belonging to God, is that the gluttonous impulse is a sign of disharmony with God’s provision and creation, and that it can disrupt the spiritual lives of people of every size and shape.

a. And let me also clarify that a person’s size and shape is affected by more than just what they eat, we also must acknowledge the part that heredity and metabolism play.

b. Some people have won the genetics sweepstakes, while other people have not – some people can eat as much of anything they want and it doesn’t show up on the outside.

7. Christians of earlier generations paid more attention to this dimension of spiritual life than our generation does.

a. They understood that over-indulgence in food did not just lead to thickened waistlines and clogged arteries, but rather it led to spiritual disaster.

b. Gluttony isn’t wrong just because it may make us physically unhealthy, rather it is wrong because it is the fruit of self-indulgence.

c. Gluttony can be a form of idol worship and can be an addiction that controls us.

8. In Philippians 3:19, when Paul was talking about people who live as enemies of the cross of Christ, he concluded: Their end is destruction; their god is their stomach; their glory is in their shame; and they are focused on earthly things.

9. When Paul wrote to Timothy he cautioned him about putting too much emphasis on physical exercise over spiritual exercise: For the training of the body has limited benefit, but godliness is beneficial in every way, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. (1 Tim. 4:8)

10. My suggestion is that we avoid extremes when it comes to over-indulgence or under-indulgence in both food and in exercise.