OPEN: We showed this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpyNoA1b20g (From timestamp 0.0 to 0.35)
Just so you know, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to get this at Kentucky Fried Chicken any time soon. An order of 10 of these wings will cost you $45 and an order of 50 wings (plus champagne) will set you back $1000.
When I first saw that video, the term “More money than sense” came to mind. Why on earth, would people do stuff like this? (Pause) Well, because they can. They have the money, they feel they deserve it, and it’s all the rage in places like NYC. There’s a kind of “snob” factor involved here. People can brag “I ate some 24 karat chicken wings!!!!"
But what this is really all about is the reflection of a self-absorbed culture. It’s a culture where some folks have money to burn… and they don’t know what to spend it on. And so they end up spending their money on bizarre food fads like this one.
Now this is really nothing new. This type of thing has been happening for centuries. In fact, here in our text this morning, that may even have been what happened in Sodom: “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: "she and her daughters had… (an) excess of food...” Ezekiel 16:49
They apparently had so much food they didn’t know what to do with all of it. As I was researching the text for this morning’s sermon, I found that most scholars identified this sin as being the sin of “GLUTTONY’
• Proverbs 23:20-21 “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.”
• Proverbs 28:7 “He who keeps the law is a discerning son, but a companion of gluttons disgraces his father.”
• Proverbs 23:2 “Put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony.” (all these verses are from the HCSB)
Now being overweight is NOT what Proverbs is talking about. A heavy-set comedian from the 50’s named Buddy Hackett once said “I was reading one of those weight and height charts the other day, and I discovered something --- I’m not too fat, I’m too short.”
Being overweight is NOT what Proverbs is talking. Now granted, being overweight CAN BE the end result of gluttony, but THIS sin talked about in Proverbs is something different. Gluttony is when people “drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat” Proverbs 23:20
These are the type of people who don’t eat to live… they live to eat, They stuff themselves until they’re uncomfortable. When they go to a smorgasbord, they take the phrase “All you can eat” as if it’s a personal challenge. When they eat they literally “pig out.”
Often, this is the behavior of lazy people. Paul condemned the people in Crete by quoting the proverb of one of their prophets that said: “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” (Titus 1:12) They were known to be totally focused on self gratification and self-indulgence.
ILLUS: At my home church we had Thursday Nite suppers. About 60 or more people would show up for a Carry-in, Bible Study, and Choir practice (since my family was in the choir we showed up every Thursday. One year I remember a guy who started coming at the beginning of the Fall. At first he just picked up a dish and went through piling food on the dish as he went. But after a couple of weeks he apparently went out and bought himself a huge food tray (it looked a lot like this: http://www.amgoodsupply.com/thunder-group-stainless-steel-6-compartment-tray-pack-of-12-slcst006). Every week he piled that huge tray high with food. And I remember thinking – that’s an awful lot of food. I like the food (it was always good) but that’s an awful lot of food. And I watched him week after week, and as time went by he got fatter and fatter. And over that time life got rough for him, his wife left him and I think I remember that he lost his job. Looking back I’m convinced that “gluttony” was a symptom of something deeper and more troubling in his life.
Proverbs says that if you have a problem with this temptation of gorging yourself you should “Put a knife to your throat…” Proverbs 23:2 (HCSB version). In other words… get control of this, deliberately cut back on portions. Do something to change your obsession with food.
ILLUS: The Biblical discipline of fasting is a great way to train yourself to do without food. I remember years ago when a guy from the church I served then was in the ER. He was a really heavy young man, mostly from overeating, and he’d come to the ER because he was experiencing chest pains. The chest pains were not heart related – they were pains in his chest because of his overeating! He looked up at me from the gurney and asked me to pray for him because he’d not eaten in 24 hours. And I remembering thinking “you’d do well not to eat for another 24 hours or more.” He could have survived for weeks on the amount of girth he’d attained. But the complaint about not eating struck me as odd. What I told him was this: “You’ll be OK. You need to remember that Jesus survived without eating for 40 days. If He could do it… so could you.”
Now, gluttony (gorging ourselves with food) IS a sin, but despite what the Catholic Church teaches – it’s NOT one of the 7 deadly sins. The Catholic church didn’t get that list from Scripture. From what I can gather, they apparently created 7 deadly based upon the teachings of a theologian named Augustine. Augustine had seemingly looked at the culture of his day and decided that those “7 deadly sins” were the mark of a decadent society.
Gluttony IS a deadly sin - it WILL kill you. But nowhere in Scripture does God ever say that this kind of behavior will send us to hell. Gluttony is NOT healthy for us, it’s usually a symptom of a lack of self-control, it’s a poor witness, AND it’s a really bad way to live our lives, but it won’t condemn us to hell. The Bible simply doesn’t teach that. In fact, there are only a few passages that even address this sin (I had to really hunt for the 3 out of Proverbs we read earlier).
That fact that Scripture doesn’t talk about gluttony that much has led me to question the idea that Gluttony was a major reason Sodom was condemned by God. Our passage in Ezekiel tells us that there were 6 sins that sealed the fate of that evil city, and this “abundance of food” was the second sin on the list. But Gluttony (as bad as it is for us) never makes the top 10 in Scripture. I mean in the 10 Commandments it does NOT say: “Thou shalt not eat a bunch of food in front of the TV set!”
So I don’t think gluttony was the main problem in Sodom. I think the sin of Sodom was that they were a self-absorbed culture. They literally had MORE STUFF than sense. In those 3 verses I listed from Proverbs, God used 1 or 2 different words for Gluttony, but here in Ezekiel God didn’t use those words. Instead God used a very a unique phrase to describe Sodom. The phrase God used in Ezekiel was “an abundance of bread.”
Now, when I think bread… I think BREAD. I think of a loaf of bread. But it seems that back in the day of Sodom bread was more than just bread. Bread, for them, may have been a description of their wealthiness as a city. In my research for this sermon I ran across a couple internet sites that explained that (just about the time Sodom was destroyed) ancient Egypt was a powerful nation. They were an agrarian society that raised huge amounts of grain in their field. But the odd thing (for us) was that that great nation apparently didn’t use currency like we do today (coins/ bills). Instead they “bartered” their food for things like household goods. On a wall somewhere in Egypt there’s a painting showing vegetables being exchanged for a fan. In addition, they had “Grain Banks” where farmers could store their surplus grain and then draw on that “bank” for their bartering purposes. (https://www.nbbmuseum.be/en/2012/05/nederlands-geldgebruik-in-het-oude-egypte.htm).
Sodom existed at the same time as this era in Egyptian history. Just like Egypt, you can imagine the Sodomites used their crops for barter. It was their form of money. And so to say a culture of that day had an “abundance of bread” would mean that they were a very wealthy people.
So, what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with being wealthy? Being able to buy STUFF with your STUFF would seem to be a good thing. A lot of people in Scripture were wealthy by that standard. Job was wealthy. So were Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon and a bunch of others - but God never condemned those people JUST because they had money.
What God DID condemn was an attitude where people made money the center of their universe. Paul tells Timothy that “… those who DESIRE to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the LOVE of money (not the possession of money) is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this CRAVING that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” I Timothy 6:9-10
Notice the fact that I emphasized the words “desire”, “love”, and “craving” that Paul used to describe how people idolized their money.
In that same chapter Paul says that Timothy was to teach the rich “… not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.” I Timothy 6:17-19
The danger for wealthy people is the same danger for those who are gluttons. Gluttons (who love food) LIVE to EAT. But those who love money – LIVE to MAKE MONEY. They literally live to GORGE themselves on filling their coffers with as much wealth as they can lay their hands on. They set their hopes on their riches.
Do you remember who Ted Turner was? He was a very wealthy man, and a fairly immoral one. He once said: “Life is a game. Money is how we keep score.”
Hmmm. That’s not an uncommon idea. But, so what if people DO “keep score”? So what if money is the mark of success in life. What would be wrong with that? Well, the problem is what that thinking says about our priorities.
Jesus told a parable about a man who was focused on his wealth: "The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry."’
But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." Luke 12:16-21
ILLUS: Since Ted Turner called life a game I thought we’d play a game this morning. Here’s the game: Let’s say that tomorrow you receive a letter from a lawyer that tells you that one of your distant relatives has just died and left you $1 million. Would you like that? I know that $1million doesn’t buy what it used to… but it’s still a lot of cash. I could use it.
Now bear in mind, this money is all imaginary. It doesn’t exist. We’re playing a game with money we’ll probably never have. But the game is this: For the next minute or so I’m going ask you to quietly ask yourself what you would do with all that money. Then I’ll try to guess what you may have decided. OK? Go… (I gave the audience a couple moments of quiet to consider their decision).
1. So, was your first thought – “Gee think of all the cool stuff I could buy”, things like a huge TV, fancy new car or a monster truck, or go on a vacation to Europe or the Holy Land, or cruises to one place or another.
2. Or, was your first thought: “I’m going to pay off your debts?” My dad once told me that back during the Depression told me the govt. literally gave money away to farmers. Loans at virtually no interest. Dad used the money to pay off debts and buy needed equipment for farm. But apparently, a lot farmers didn’t do that. Instead, many of them spent the money on STUFF. So, when the loans came due, they didn’t have the money.
3. Or was your first thought “I’m going to set money back for a rainy day?” Saving money is always a good idea. When people get a sudden windfall they often don’t save anything… they just spend it. Then they don’t have anything.
4. Or, was that first thought “I’ll be giving some of the money to God?” Proverbs 3:9 says “Honor the LORD with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce…”
Remember this money doesn’t really exist. It’s all imaginary!!! It won’t matter what you decide to do with the money because the money isn’t real. But when I first played this mind-game with myself I have to admit (to my shame) that God wasn’t my first thought. I’m a preacher for pity’s sake. You’d think God and His kingdom would have been my first thought... but He wasn't. When I realized that, I came to the conclusion that I had to rethink my priorities.
As Paul implied in Timothy, we are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share. IF we are not willing to be rich toward God… why should God bless us? Why should He trust us with anything of any value?
You see, God doesn’t care if we have money as long as we use that money for Him. But apparently Sodom didn’t do that. God was not only NOT their first thought - He never came up in the conversation.
So Ted Turner was kind of right: Money IS how we keep score in life, but the scoring for us who are Christians should be vastly different than the standard Turner had in mind. In Turner’s mindset, the primary goal was “the person who dies with the most toys wins.” For us, our primary goal should be “the person who is generous and ready to share who wins!!!” It’s the one who is rich toward God that God is impressed with and is the one He blesses.
CLOSE: I want to close by telling you about a man who was our nation’s very 1st person to billionaire. At the age of 23, he had become a millionaire, and by the age of 50 he was a billionaire. Every decision, attitude, and relationship was tailored to create his personal power and wealth.
But 3 years later, at the age of 53, he became seriously ill. His body became racked with pain and he lost all the hair on his head. Here was the world's only billionaire, who could buy anything he wanted, but he could only digest milk and crackers. An associate wrote, "He couldn’t sleep, wouldn’t smile and nothing in life meant anything to him.”
His personal, highly skilled physicians predicted he would die within a year. And that final year passed slowly, but one morning he woke from a dream. He could barely recall the dream but knew it had something to do with the realization that he’d not being able to take any of his possessions and wealth with him into the next world. His grave was going to be the same size as a poor man’s and there’d be no room there for all that he’d gained in this world.
He realized he was left with a choice, and so he made that choice. He called his attorneys, accountants, and managers and announced that he wanted to channel his assets to hospitals, research, and mission work. On that day John D. Rockefeller established his foundation.
His financial decision eventually led to the discovery of penicillin, cures for current strains of malaria, tuberculosis and diphtheria – and numerous other major accomplishments that have benefited mankind.
But perhaps the most amazing part of Rockefeller's story is that from the moment he began to give back a portion of all that he had earned, his body's chemistry was altered so significantly that he got better. The man who looked as if he would die at 53 but he lived to be 98. (Brett Blair, www.eSermons.com, September 2001)
Now, you may not have a problem with gluttony, or with misplaced priorities with your finances, but we need to realize that God cares very much how we live our lives and the priorities we set. But even more than that, God cares that our highest priority is to belong to Him and live with Him for eternity in heaven.
INVITATION
