Timeless Wisdom: A Satisfied Heart | Weekend Sunday Service | Josiah Smith

Those of you who may not know, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes uh about 20 years ago.

And uh they say it's hereditary, of course it's hereditary, but uh we don't know of anyone on either side of our family that has type 1 diabetes.

So I just hit the jackpot and uh here we are.

Um but one of the things that if you know anything about type 1 diabetes, one of the things that can often plague type 1 diabetics is low blood sugars.

Anyone in there ever had a low blood sugar by raising hand?

Low blood sugar?

Does anyone know what that feels like?

Maybe just me, okay.

Uh but I have low blood sugars on a somewhat uh, I wouldn't say regular, but it's not uh out of the realm of my experience as a type 1 diabetic.

And uh low blood sugars can cause a myriad of symptoms.

I mean, your palms can sweat, your hands can shake, you can actually kind of become mentally foggy, and you can actually start kind of speaking jitterish and slurring your words, your vision can get blurred.

Uh, but one of the symptoms that's really consistent and prominent for me uh is insatiable hunger, where of course there's something biologically going on in my body that we need carbohydrates, I need sugar in the cells, I don't know how it all works, but I know I need it.

And so uh when I don't have enough, when my lip my blood sugar is low, my body's like, you need to eat.

And so there's something that gets switched off in my brain, at least that's how it feels, uh, that tells me you're full, and it's just becomes a vacuum.

And typically this happens kind of in the early hours of the morning.

3 a.m.

is really when I prowl around for the food in the pantry.

And McKinsey likes to call what I do at night when I'm trying to raise my blood sugar raccooning.

Uh, and so I'm fighting for my life, and she's saying I'm raccooning in the pantry.

But it really is.

I mean, I I to be honest, because I get so hungry and because my hunger feels genuinely insatiable, a lot of times I will eat too much too quickly, and then my blood sugar will swing the opposite direction, and then I'll shoot really high into the high 200s, and then I'll feel awful for the rest of the day.

Uh, but uh, there's just genuinely there's this hunger, and nothing really seems to satisfy.

Of course, when you eat carbohydrates or if you eat glucose tablets or whatever to raise your blood sugar, it takes a little bit of time to enter into your bloodstream.

So, about 15 minutes, you're supposed to.

If I was a really, really good diabetic, uh, I was supposed to eat, you know, let's say 15 grams of glucose and then wait 15 minutes, test my blood sugar and eat 15 more grams and wait 15 minutes.

I mean, nobody's got time for this.

And so I just eat until I feel full, and then I go back to bed, and then I wake up in more pain.

Um but there's just this insatiable hunger, right?

That nothing really seems to satisfy.

My wife, again, affectionately says I raccoon, which is fine, I guess.

I'm rummaging through the trash to try to save my life in the middle of the night because my blood sugar is low.

Now, now, spiritually speaking, stay with me here.

I want you to think about it this way.

Uh, when you have low satisfaction in Christ, there is a kind of a similar experience that you will feel.

There's gonna be an insatiable hunger, if you will, in your heart for oftentimes the things of this world, and even specifically things in this world that might be a good gift from God.

Now, even in our text in Proverbs chapter 23, one of those good gifts is food.

Proverbs 23 · chapter mention

But when there's a low satisfaction in Christ, that will inevitably lead to a disordered hunger, a disordered craving for things in this world, even good things like food.

And that disordered hunger, if we're not on top of it, biblically speaking, if we're not tuned into it, if we're not intentionally seeking to put to death the disordered appetites in our lives, uh, it can lead to perhaps a pendulum swing, much like in my low blood sugar to high blood sugar, it can lead to an overconsumption of things that perhaps are even intended for your good.

And there's actually a kind of spiritual poverty that you can experience if you over-indulge, if you are prone to an insatiable hunger, if your appetites are ungoverned, there is actually a spiritual kind of poverty that you'll experience in your relationship with Christ.

Now, not threatening if you're a genuine Christian, it's not threatening your salvation, but it is threatening your growth in the Lord, your joy in the Lord, uh, even your maturity in Christ.

Those things can sort of wax and wane based off of your obedience to Christ or disobedience to him and a low satisfaction in Christ.

All I'm saying that we're gonna see here in Proverbs 23 will lead to a disordered, insatiable hunger for things that perhaps are even good.

And that'll lead you towards a type of spiritual poverty that is something that, of course, you want to avoid.

So, what we're gonna see today in Proverbs 23, 19 through 21, is some encouragements for what to do in order to stay satisfied, to have, as the title suggests on your note sheet, a satisfied heart.

So if you've got your Bibles, please go there, Proverbs 23.

We're just gonna be in three verses, verses 19, 20, and 21.

But there's a lot here that I think is gonna be really helpful for us in my prayer as I've wrestled through this throughout the week, is that we would humbly submit to what God's Word says here about our appetites and how we are to govern them, and that we would experience the joy and the blessing that comes from obedience to the word of God.

So let's read it.

Let me read it for us, Proverbs 23, beginning verse 19.

It says, Hear my son and be wise.

Now, of course, we've been in the Proverbs now all summer.

And so hopefully that that verbiage, hear, listen, pay attention, is familiar to you at this point.

The father often speaking to the son, saying, Hear, listen, remember, recall, store in your heart again and again and again, hear my son and be wise, it says in verse 19.

And direct your heart in the way.

Verse 20, be not among drunkards.

Now notice the kind of ungoverned appetites and the categories that are spoken of here in verses 21 and 22.

Here's the first one be not among drunkards.

That's an ungoverned appetite for alcohol or wine, as it's mentioned here in 20 Proverbs 23.

Be not among drunkards or those given to wine, or among gluttonous eaters of meat.

So two categories: one's drinking, and one is gluttony, overconsumption, ungoverned appetites.

Be not among them, those who are gluttonous eaters of meat.

Why?

For the drunkard and the glutton, they will come to poverty.

And slumber, now we've entered even something else, uh, sleep, something that is a basic necessity for us, and slumber will clothe them with rags.

There's a kind of poverty that people are going to experience if they are over-indulgent, if they do not have satisfaction in Christ that leads to these kind of ungoverned appetites.

Well, let's start again here in verse 19, because I want you to see this interesting phrasing.

So, of course, the father says, Hear my son, and be wise.

Some standard language there.

It even begins back in chapter one or chapter two, where the father speaks to the son and says this here, here, here.

We talked about a spiritual kind of hearing where we are to listen and humbly submit to what God's word says.

But then it goes on and says something interesting.

Look at this.

It says, And direct your heart in the way.

Now, if you're familiar with Proverbs, the shape of Proverbs as a whole, there's this, you could call it a dichotomy in Proverbs.

There's two paths, two ways.

There's the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked, the way of the blessed and the way of those who are going to experience uh punishment, if you will.

Think of even Psalm 1, right?

The two paths.

We see those kind of overlaid here in Proverbs.

And so the way of the wicked, of course, is often warned against, and the way of the righteous is encouraged.

And so here the Father says, direct your heart in the way, in the way of the righteous.

And that's an interesting word, direct your heart.

It can kind of mean guide.

So think about it this way.

I often, even in the way that I conceive of this, it's like staying on top of your heart to steer it and direct it to a particular destination, on a particular path.

I mean, that's what it says.

Direct your heart in the way.

So there's this encouragement that we got to stay on top of our heart.

Now, if you were with us earlier in the summer, where we talked about the heart in Proverbs 4.23, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.

We said that the heart, biblically speaking, is the control center of who you are as a person.

And so here, the instruction from God's word is that we are to guide, to direct our heart in a specific way.

There's these two paths, the way of the righteous, the way of the wicked.

Of course, the encouragement is direct your heart, steal your steer your heart, aim your heart in the way of the righteous.

Now, one of the things that that implies very directly, very overtly, is that if you need to be told to direct your heart in a specific way, then it would naturally follow that your heart is inclined to going in another way, right?

It would make no sense if your heart naturally went the way that it was supposed to go, for me to tell you to direct your heart in the way that your heart is already being directed, right?

So there's an implication that our hearts have a tendency to be directed or to drift away from the way, the way that of the righteous, the way that the Proverbs are directing us towards, the way that is rooted in the fear of the Lord, that it's the beginning of wisdom, the beginning of knowledge.

So there's this uh reality in our hearts as humans, where sin can creep in, and we can not direct our way or direct our heart in the way of the righteous, but we can kind of drift or even sometimes run headlong into the way of the wicked.

So I want you to, point number one, I want you to recognize this tendency.

Recognize the tendency for heart drift, as I'm calling it.

Again, these there's these two paths, the righteous, the wicked, the blessed, those who will experience uh punishment.

And there is this instruction, these very clear instructions, you are to stay on top of your heart, you are to direct it and steer it in the way of the Lord that is rooted in the fear of the Lord.

And as a part of that pursuit, you need to recognize that within your heart, that can sometimes be desperately wicked, there is a propensity to be steered or drift away from what we see here as being the way of wisdom.

Of course, we, even if if you were with us when we talked about this in Hebrews, uh, the author of Hebrews says we must pay much closer attention lest we drift away.

And so this idea is all across the the scriptures.

There's a tendency for our heart to drift.

Now, this phrase, your heart, is an interesting phrase.

It's found 22 times across 10 different chapters in the book of Proverbs.

22 times you're gonna see the phrase your heart.

Let me give you just a couple examples of this.

So all the way back in chapter 3, verse 1, it says, Let your heart keep my commandments.

Of course, that's another way of saying, direct your heart in the way.

Keep my commandments, let your heart keep my commandments.

Uh chapter three, verse three, write them on the tablet of your heart.

There's a permanence to the commandments, to the way that's supposed to be inscribed on our hearts.

And we are to direct our hearts in that way.

Chapter 3, verse 5, trust in the Lord with all of your heart.

Chapter 4, verse 23, keep your heart with all vigilance.

Chapter 6, verse 21, bind them on your heart.

Of course, in our chapter, chapter 23, verse 12, apply your heart to instruction.

Now, do you see the repeated theme again and again and again?

That's just a sampling of the 22 instances of this phrase.

But it's clear that in Proverbs, your heart, there's always this command to remember the commandments, remember the teaching, remember the way, and direct your heart in that way.

Keep your heart, trust in the Lord with all of your heart.

Do everything that God has commanded you to do, rooted in the fear of the Lord, by directing your heart in the way.

Now, the danger is, of course, that if unchecked, if our hearts are left unchecked, they can wander from the way.

I mean, that's the danger, the the warning that we are trying to avoid.

The danger is, of course, if our heart is left unchecked, if it's ungoverned, if we're not directing it in the way, it can drift, it can wander from the way.

If you're in Proverbs, flip over to chapter seven.

I want you to see just an example of this.

Proverbs chapter seven, verses twenty five to twenty-seven.

This is an example of a heart that turns away from the way, that turns away from the way of wisdom, the way of righteousness.

This is the chapter that kind of focuses on the adulteress woman.

This is where the father says to the son, I have looked out the window of my lattice, I have perceived among the youth, among the simple, a young man lacking sense.

And he does all of these things.

He walks by the corner of the adulterous woman, the temptress.

He's in proximity to her, and of course he succumbs ultimately to uh the temptress or the temptation of adultery.

And so what we see here in Proverbs 7 is a heart gone astray.

Look at it with me in verse even 24.

It says, And now, O sons, listen to me and be attentive to the words of my mouth.

Listen, pay attention.

Let not your heart turn aside to her ways.

Now there's another way.

There's a way here that the Father is very uh he's adamant that his son does not turn towards.

You see it there in verse 25.

Let not your heart turn aside to her ways.

Well, what way is that?

It's the way of the adulterous woman, the way of this temptress.

Let not your heart turn aside from the way of righteousness to the way of this temptation to adultery.

Do not stray into her past, don't drift into this sin.

For many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng.

So, from our perspective, from an earthly vantage point, these people were strong, and yet the temptation was stronger in their heart that pulled them away, that drift that made them drift into, or maybe run headlong into the path of adultery, the path of sin.

For many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng.

Her house is the way to shield the place of the dead, going down to the chambers of death.

So this is the reality.

I mean, even we we talk, if you read in Proverbs, it talks about do not turn to the right or to the left.

Stay on the way, stay on the path, the path that is marked for you, the path of wisdom, the path that is again uh begins and ends with the fear of the Lord.

And if we don't do that, there's a there's a tendency and a reality that our heart can drift, it can uh turn to a different path that is filled with sinful appetites and sinful indulgences.

So I I had a mental image in my mind.

Indulge me.

This is um it's a little strange, but I think it's vivid, right?

I want you when you think about Proverbs 23, verse 19, when it says, direct your heart in the way, I want you to conceive of that as a mental picture of keeping your heart on a leash.

Proverbs 23:19

Keep your heart on a leash.

Now, early into Mackenzie and I's marriage, we adopted an English bulldog.

If you know anything about English bulldogs, they were bred to die, basically, because they have so many medical problems, they cannot live apart from human intervention.

It just is not, she's got the facefuls, and she she would get infections in her face and infections in her eyes and infections in her ears.

It was bad.

I mean, she was a walking proverb.

I mean, she would return, she would return to her vomit.

I mean, all of it.

She was it was gross.

But we would take her on walks, and she was highly aggressive.

She did not like other dogs.

She loved, she loved humans, and in fact, she would get very hurt if we didn't give her enough attention, right?

Like would love humans, loved attention, loved belly rubs, loved all of it.

But when we took her outside, uh, we made sure to put that dog on a leash because if there was a sighting of any other dog, it was automatic aggression, right?

And you know those people they walk with their dogs and they get all growling, they're really friendly.

Uh Stella, Stella, our dog, she was not friendly.

Okay, so uh we it was paramount that we kept her on a leash, right?

And she would get distracted, she'd pull, she's a very strong dog, she'd pull off the sidewalk or off the path, and uh, she would go into the grass and that she would eat uh leftover things from other dogs, right?

Like it was it was gross.

And so it if we didn't, we never left the house without her on a leash.

It was we just didn't do it uh because she would go buckwild and it would be a disaster, right?

The Bible describes, and I don't want you to be offended here, but the Bible describes your heart in that same way.

You are Stella, you're you're aggressive.

You're you're you're the proverb that talks about the dog returning to the vomit is is not really said about dogs, it's said about us, right?

When we're acting like fools.

And so we need to recognize that if if we are unleashed, if you will, if our hearts are unleashed, our hearts are prone towards aggressively pursuing the wrong things.

They are prone towards veering off the path.

They are prone, if they're not directed, if they're not leashed, biblically speaking, they're prone to pulling you towards things that are not honoring to the Lord.

And you know this.

I don't have to convince you of this.

You know that even sometimes when you feel like you're spiritually at your best, suddenly a thought comes into your mind, a desire comes into your heart, and you go, Why am I thinking that?

Why am I feeling that?

Or maybe even more than that, you fall into a temptation, maybe you've had victory over that for some time, you fall into it and you go, How did this happen?

Because your heart, if it's unleashed, it's always aggressively pursuing the wrong things.

And so you need to leash it, to direct it in the way.

Now, indulge me here again.

The leash I'm gonna say is made up of three different chords.

Of course, you know that verse.

They're three chord strand cannot easily be broken.

The leash that you are to put on your hearts, to direct your heart in the way, governed by the Spirit of God in the Word of God, is made up of prayer, God's word, and God's people.

And those three separate chords, as they weave together, they form a strong leash.

Something that you can utilize by the help of the Spirit.

This is not something you do in your own strength, in your own flesh.

You can utilize that leash to reign in your heart, to keep it on the path through prayer, dependence on the Lord, through God's word, submitting to what he says, and being surrounded by God's people.

Right?

And what you need to recognize is that each strand is necessary for a strong leash.

Now, Stella was a strong dog.

She needed a strong leash.

If I put a piece of yarn around her neck and said, let's go outside, that would have been a joke.

She would have ripped right through it.

She would have gone and eaten some other dog and some other dog stuff, and you know, it would have just been a nightmare.

She needed a strong leash because she was a strong dog.

You need a strong leash because you have a strong heart that often desires and aggressively craves things that perhaps you shouldn't.

And so you need prayer, you need God's word, you need God's people.

And those three things woven together equal a strong leash.

And when you remove one of those cords, when you stop praying, maybe you keep going to church, maybe you keep reading God's word, but when you stop praying, the cord gets weakened, the leash gets weakened.

When you stop surrounding yourself with God's people, the leash gets weakened.

And then what you'll find is that you will not as readily direct your heart in the way.

You're gonna drift or you're gonna even plunge headlong into the temptations of the flesh.

You need to keep your harsh, your harsh, your heart, harshly on a leash.

That's what you need.

So here's the question: what will an unleashed heart gravitate towards?

And that's what we're talking about.

The analogy of my dog.

You know, she was all over the place.

What is an unleashed heart?

What is it gonna gravitate towards?

Well, the answer is there in our text.

Look at verse 20 of chapter 23.

Now, this is just an example, it's not a whole list of things, but in this example, a heart that is not directed in the way, a heart that is not leashed by prayer, God's word, and God's people, it says it's gonna be given over to kind of this over-indulgence specifically with appetites.

Verse 20 says, Be not among drunkards.

Do you see the over-indulgence there?

Or among gluttonous eaters of meat.

For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags.

So we have these kind of ungoverned appetites.

We have an over-consumption of alcohol, an over-consumption, or at least an ungoverned uh interaction with food and with drink and even with sleep.

And that and that's what an unleashed heart does.

It aggressively pursues things, it may be even good things.

There's nothing wrong with meat, praise the Lord, right?

We can eat meat, but it says gluttonous eaters of meat.

There's an over-indulgence, there is an over-consumption, there's an ungoverned appetite.

Point number two, you need to watch out for ungoverned appetites.

An unleashed heart will inevitably pursue ungoverned appetites.

Of course, these are kind of similar ways to talk about the same thing.

An ungoverned appetite is an unleashed heart.

An unleashed heart leads to an ungoverned appetite, and vice versa.

Now, here's another strange analogy for you.

Picture your heart.

Picture specifically an ungoverned heart, an unleashed heart as a little Pac Man that is always seeking more.

You guys know Pac-Man?

You played that before?

Waka, waka, waka, waka, waka, waka.

Right.

If you don't know Pac Man, um here it is.

The point of Pac Man is to guide the yellow character through a Maze, the yellow character is Pac-Man.

Eat all the small dots and get the highest score possible while avoiding four colorful ghosts named Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde.

I mean, that's Clyde got the normal name in that.

We've got Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde.

He he got the good name.

Um, but that imagine your heart as just a Pac-Man.

That if you if you played the game, you eat all the dots, and then what happens?

More dots, right?

Walka, walka, walka, walka, waka.

You get all the dots, you avoid blinky, inky, Clyde, and everyone else, and then you get more dots.

You just keep consuming and consuming and consuming and consuming.

That's what an ungoverned heart does.

It's a little Pac-Man that's always seeking more.

Or maybe here's another analogy for the more mechanically inclined, right?

An engine governor is essential to the proper functioning of an engine, right?

It automatically regulates and maintains rotational speed.

And here's some of the things that it does, right?

It regulates speed, it has an over speed protection, it has idle and maximum control, uh, it has load sharing things that it does.

All that to say a faulty governor can lead to catastrophic engine failure.

Have you heard the phrase a runaway engine before?

That's because a governor failed.

And a runaway engine is prone to be destroyed, to have catastrophic failure.

So whether it's a walka-waka Pac-Man or it's a governor on an engine that fails, that's what's going on in the heart when you are not being directed in the way, when your heart's not on the biblical leash.

And Proverbs 2320 is warning us of the dangers of ungoverned appetites.

And interestingly enough, it even cautions us of even being around those who willfully give themselves to those ungoverned appetites.

Do you see that there in verse 20?

Be not among, do not surround yourself with.

Of course, Paul picks up on this, uh, I believe it's in Corinthians, where he says, uh, bad company corrupts good morals.

But it says, Be not among drunkards, or those who are given to wine, or among gluttonous eaters of meat.

For the drunkard and the glutton, something's gonna happen to them, they're gonna come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags.

So Proverbs 2320 is a warning.

This is an ungoverned heart.

These are ungoverned appetites.

This is an unleashed heart that's not being directed in the way.

And what does it lead towards?

Overconsumption.

It leads towards ungoverned appetites in unhealthy ways, and it leads to poverty.

I mean, that's the reality.

And it gives us kind of multiple categories to think through.

The first is drunkards.

Now, drunkards perhaps is more intuitive and just even more commonly understood today within the context of the church.

It's easy to define and identify a drunkard.

As much as people want to quibble about, you know, oh, I don't get drunk, I get buzzed, or whatever.

It's easy to see someone who's a drunkard.

We recognize that.

But Proverbs 23 continues to kind of talk about this and even illustrates it later on in the chapter.

So if you're there, go to verse 29 of chapter 23.

This is an ungoverned appetite.

This is an ungoverned consumption of wine or alcohol.

And here's what it says happens in verse 29.

Who has woe?

Who has sorrow?

Who has strife?

Who has complaining?

Who has wounds without cause?

Who has redness of eyes?

Who's got ninety-nine problems?

Verse 30.

Those who tarry long over wine, those who linger a little bit too long with wine, those who are consumed with an ungoverned appetite with wine, those who go to try mixed wine.

Verse 31, do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly.

In the end, it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder.

Your eyes will see strange things.

What biblical wisdom?

When you are drunk, your eyes will see strange things, and your heart utter perverse things.

I mean, this is what happens to those with an over-indulgence in something like wine.

There's an ungoverned appetite.

But again, that one's more obvious.

We talk about that one.

We understand that one.

We could identify perhaps more clearly a drunkard.

The next category is gluttons.

Now, this category is something that maybe we don't talk about as much.

It's something that maybe we aren't as familiar.

It's a little bit trickier to try to point your finger, not saying that you should, but point your finger at someone and say, you're a glutton.

I mean, you it just feels a little bit more hard to wrap your arms around.

But I want you to see biblically what a glutton is and think critically about whether or not this is something that is kind of lodged in your heart.

So in the Bible, if you look up glutton, there are six instances of gluttony being talked about.

In almost every single one, not all of them, but almost every single one, gluttony is paired with drunkenness.

They're almost always together.

Of course, they're together in our text, Proverbs 23, verse 20.

Proverbs 23:20

Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat.

But there's six instances.

Let me just read them all for you.

The first comes in Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 20.

Deuteronomy 21:20

This is when parents are seeking some sort of restitution from a legal perspective from Moses because of their son's actions and rebellion and disobedience.

So it says Deuteronomy 21, 20, and they shall say to the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious.

He will not obey our voice.

He is a glutton and a drunkard.

So mom and dad are saying to the elders, he is ungoverned in his appetites.

He is uncontrolled.

There is no leash, there is no governor, he is uncontrolled.

He is a glutton and a drunkard.

That's the first time that we see gluttony in the scriptures.

The second time is, of course, in Proverbs 23, 20, what we're talking about today.

Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags.

The next instance, the third, is Proverbs 28, verse 7.

Proverbs 28:7

This one does not mention alcohol or drunkenness, but it does say the one who keeps the law is a son with understanding, but a companion of gluttons shames his father.

The next two instances are kind of a parallel account in the synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke, where Jesus is being accused of being a drunkard and a glutton.

So Matthew 11, 19 says, the Son of Man came eating and drinking.

And they say, Look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.

Same account, similar, but in a different gospel, Luke 7, 34.

The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, Look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

And the last instance of gluttony is Titus chapter 1, verse 12.

Titus 1:12

One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.

So we have six instances of gluttony in the Bible.

It's to be honest, it's not a ton of data, but we can infer from what we see in all of these passages, and specifically from our passage in Proverbs 2023, verse 20, what gluttony is.

But that begs the question: what is gluttony?

How do we define it?

Let me give you just a simple definition of gluttony.

Gluttony is the sinful engagement with the gift of food.

Now notice I said sinful engagement.

I didn't say sinful overconsumption, because that, of course, is a natural part of gluttony.

It's perhaps the most obvious form of gluttony, but it's not the only part of gluttony.

So the sinful engagement with the gift of food.

So here's just a two-word summary of that.

It's food worship or it's food idolatry.

That's what gluttony is.

So think about it this way: it's not simply overeating, it's not always connected to your weight, though sometimes it may be, but it's not simply overeating, it's also overemphasis on food.

It's an it's it's too much, it's too little, it's too frequent, it's too infrequent.

In a sense, you are controlled by food.

Perhaps if you're a glutton, you are anxious about uh food.

And in a sense, to use the word that we've been using, you are governed by your relationship with food.

That is biblical gluttony.

It's a sinful engagement with the gift of food.

It's food idolatry, it's food worship.

Now, this is fascinating, and I wanted to just give you this for context.

C.

S.

Lewis made the distinction between gluttony of excess, that's the more obvious form of gluttony, right?

We eat too much.

Uh, but he made the distinction between gluttony of excess and gluttony of what he calls delicacy.

He made this in the screw tape letters.

If you're not familiar with that great, fantastic book came out kind of in the 1940s.

Uh, it's essentially written from the vantage point of a senior demon that is giving instructions to a junior demon on how to tempt.

And so it's a really fascinating, very kind of creative way to think about sin and temptation from a different vantage point.

And so it's uh Wormwood is the is the one that's being trained.

And so he's writing uh this letter to to Wormwood, the senior demon, and he's talking about gluttony, gluttony of excess versus gluttony of delicacy.

Let me just read a section of letter 16 from the screw tape letters.

I think this is helpful.

So letter 16, it starts by saying, My dear Wormwood, the contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls in your last letter, it only shows your ignorance, little young demon.

One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe.

This has largely been affected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of delicacy, not gluttony of excess.

Your patient's mother, as I learned from the dossier, and you might have learned from Glubos, who's another demon, is a good example.

She would be astonished, and one day I hope will be, to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small.

But what do quantities matter?

Provided we can use a human belly and a palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern.

I was going to give some examples of this.

Glubos, this demon, has this old woman well in hand.

She is a positive terror to hostresses and servants.

She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile, Oh, please, please, all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, in the teeny, sweeniest bit of really crisp toast.

This is super British.

You see?

Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her.

She never recognizes as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others.

At the very moment of indulging her appetite, she believes that she is practicing temperance.

In a crowded restaurant, she gives a little scream at the plate, which comes uh over which comes by an overworked waitress that has set this before her and says, Oh, that's far, far too much.

Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it.

If challenged, she would say she would she was doing this to avoid waste.

In reality, she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.

Just a very uh fascinating way to think about gluttony.

Uh, gluttony comes in in many shapes and forms.

Of course, the most obvious is gluttony of excess, where you overconsume.

Uh but gluttony, let me just put it in the context of our modern day.

Gluttony, if we're defining it properly, and I believe we are, with food worship, food idolatry, the sinful engagement with the gift of food.

I would say gluttony comes uh again from over over over-emphasis, but uh under-emphasis.

Even think about in our modern day, how much I would even say food anxiety there is about chemicals, about uh things being clean and organic.

And listen, I'm not telling you to go to the store and get the most souped-up chemical food that you can get.

That's not what I'm saying.

Uh, but what I am saying is that that can govern your life, that can consume you, that can cause an anxiety in your heart where suddenly you think about food so much, you worry about food so much, you refuse food, maybe in circumstances that would be unreasonable because you're governed by the fear of what's in the food.

That can be a form of gluttony.

Uh, even, and I know in our modern context, that our relationship with food for certain people can be very, very challenging.

It can have layers of difficulty attached to it.

Uh, but sometimes, even you know, the food and what we eat often is connected to how we look and how we feel.

And you can just see how those things can so quickly and so easily become idolatry.

How I look, how I feel, what I consume, when I consume it, all of those things, none of them are bad in and of themselves.

Of course, we our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

We are to take care of it.

But if we're governed by those things, that is a form of gluttony that we need freedom from.

If we're anxious about food, if we're constantly refusing food that we could or maybe should eat, and it's unreasonable, and it's and it's just a constant fight in your mind.

There's something going on where food is governing, it's not being governed, it's not on the leash.

It's controlling you, it's leading you in specific directions, it's consuming your mind, it's uh growing fearful in your heart.

And so we need to recognize that gluttony, again, it can be overeating, and that's perhaps the most common way of understanding it, but it can also be many other things.

It's just it's it's a wrong way of viewing the gift of food.

Let me just put it this way: very simply, gluttony is making too much of the gift of food.

For good or for bad.

Right?

Over too much as in overeating, or too much as in just the anxiety and the fear and all of the things that can come with it.

It's making too much of it.

It's a gift, it's meant to be enjoyed, it's for our good, it's for our pleasure.

We praise the Lord for the food that he gives us, the food that he provides.

But if we're governed by the food, it's idolatry.

That's food worship.

And we need to be freed from that.

So, how do we do that?

How do we fight gluttony with um what God has said in his word?

Well, let me just give you one specific thing in this point, then we'll talk more about something in the next.

You should fight gluttony with fasting.

Of course, this is the most obvious way to fight gluttony because gluttony centers on food, your relationship with food and fasting.

I know it's very common today to talk about fasting from social media, fasting from this, fasting from that.

I get the heart behind that, but biblically, fasting is always connected to food and water.

And so fasting is connected to, of course, what we eat and what we drink.

And that would, if we're talking about gluttony, we're talking about food governing our lives, we're talking about anxiety and fear and all of those things that are centered on food, then of course the natural remedy that God has even graciously provided for us is fasting.

Now, I'm not saying don't eat any food for the next seven days or anything crazy like that.

But what I am saying is that this is a spiritual discipline.

It's a it's a spiritual practice, if you will, that God has given us, I think, to directly counteract the sin of gluttony.

It's one of the ways, by God's grace, that we can do this.

So here's a here's a working definition uh of fasting.

Fasting is a Christian discipline through which a believer intentionally abstains from food.

We're basically saying, hey, I'm not gonna be controlled by food.

I'm not gonna be controlled by my appetites, I'm not gonna be governed by this.

I'm gonna give it up, I'm gonna abstain for a specified period of time.

So they have intentionally abstained from food and or water for a period of time as an expression of humility, repentance, and dependence on God.

And often we are seeking spiritual renewal, guidance, and alignment with God's will.

So if gluttony is something that you would say, even as you kind of process through this, there's parts of gluttony lodged into your heart.

One of the God-given means for you to tackle that and to get over that is to practice fasting, to remove and abstain from the very thing that governs your life.

There is a chapter on prayer and fasting in a book called Teach Us to Pray.

This is a book that was put together by the pastors of various compass Bible churches.

Uh, I wrote one of the chapters in there, I believe it's chapter three.

Um, I wrote on something else, but the the chapter I'm talking about is on prayer and fasting.

So we do have copies of that in the bookstore in the back, if that's something that you want to do a deeper dive in.

But I think this is one of the ways that you can fight gluttony with fasting.

Prayer and fasting.

All right, let's keep going.

Verse 21.

So we have these two categories of people drunkards.

There's an ungoverned consumption, gluttons, and ungoverned consumption of meat.

Verse 21.

For the drunkard and the glutton, here's what happens to them: they will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags.

So this is the destination, this is the result, the product of ungoverned appetites.

There's a kind of poverty that happens.

Now, even practically speaking, of course, the Proverbs are or they're accomplishing multiple things at the same time.

Meaning that, of course, if you are spending excess amount of money on food, perhaps money that you don't have, then there is a literal way in which you can come to poverty.

And that happens to people.

They overspend, they overbuy.

That's a that's a part of this.

Um, but I think there's also kind of a spiritual poverty that we're talking about that can happen as well.

There's this, our hearts that are ungoverned and unleashed.

They can become overrun with the things of this world, the idols of this world.

Again, that can choke out our joy in the Lord, choke out our obedience in the Lord.

And there's a kind of spiritual poverty that we can all experience, even if our bank account is never touched.

I think that's what we are seeing here in Proverbs 23.

The drunkard and the glutton, they will come to poverty.

They're going to come to some kind of ruin.

They're going to be lacking.

And slumber, sleep, will clothe them with rags.

So, what's the solution to all of this?

How do we fight all of this?

Well, point number three, you should prayerfully pursue deepening satisfaction in Christ.

Now, we started with the whole analogy of me being a diabetic and the low blood sugar, the insatiable hunger that's never satisfied.

If if our heart is like that, and I believe that it is, right, according to the scriptures, if our heart needs a leash, if our heart needs to be governed, if our appetites tend to run wild and out of control, then of course the remedy to that, holistically speaking, is a satisfaction in Christ, which is why the title of the sermon is a satisfied heart.

A heart that's satisfied doesn't want more.

That's the whole point.

When you're satisfied, it's like I'm good.

I have everything I need.

There's nothing else that I desire in this moment.

I'm satisfied.

I'm good.

So prayerfully pursue that.

Pursue deepening satisfaction in Christ.

Now, what's so fascinating about this text is that it touches on the three basic essentials to human life.

Do you catch that?

Eating, drinking, and sleeping.

I mean, all three of those things are mentioned.

Drinking, of course, by drunkenness, eating by gluttony, sleeping, references there in verse 21 as slumber.

Slumber will clothe them with rags.

So there's an overindulgence in even the three most basic things to just living.

How long can you go without water?

A couple days?

How long can you go without food?

I actually don't know.

But eventually you're gonna run out.

How long can you go without sleep?

Some of you maybe need more than you have.

Uh I don't know.

But eventually your heart's gonna give out, right?

If you don't sleep.

These three things, you cannot exist in this world without eating, drinking, and sleeping.

And yet, those three things, those most basic necessities, can become prominent idols in your heart if they go unchecked and ungoverned.

Our most basic needs can become untethered and they can become ungoverned demands.

And we fight against that through growing in contentment and satisfaction in Christ.

Let me show you this in a couple of places.

First Timothy chapter six.

Let's just turn there.

First Timothy six, verses six through ten, where we get this idea of contentment and satisfaction in Christ.

First Timothy chapter six verses six through ten.

If our appetites can become untethered and ungoverned and become demands, then of course what we need is contentment.

We need satisfaction.

We need satisfaction ultimately in Christ.

So here's what Paul says in First Timothy chapter six, verse six.

But godliness with contentment or a twin word for that, with satisfaction is great gain.

For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.

But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.

Who desire to be rich, those who have an overindulgence, they are governed by things, they have ungoverned appetites, even for wealth, they fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

You see how this parallels with our passage?

Poverty.

These things plunge people into ruin and destruction.

For the love of money, the overindulgence of money, the ungoverned appetite for money is a root of all kinds of evil.

It is through this that crave craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

Godliness with contentment is great gain.

And of course, in Philippians chapter 4, we won't turn there, but in verses 11 through 13, Paul says, I've learned to be content with a lot or a little.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

I know to be wrought low, I know to be to abound.

In any and every circumstance I've learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need, how I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

When I'm satisfied in Christ, Paul says, then I have learned not to be governed by even the most basic needs of this life, like food, water, and even sleep, drinking, eating, and sleeping.

I've learned to be content.

How?

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

And how is he able to say that?

Because of Philippians chapter 3, verse 8.

Philippians 3:8

Paul says, Indeed, I count everything as loss, because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For his sake, I've suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, as nothing, in order that I may gain Christ.

So how do you grow in being satisfied in Christ?

Let me give you just two simple things.

How do you grow in being satisfied in Christ?

One, by consistently meditating on his accomplished work.

You grow in satisfaction in Christ by consistently reminding yourself of who he is, what he did, and the grace that he has given you.

By meditating on his accomplished work, you'll find that your satisfaction will deepen, your contentment will grow.

And along with that, not only do you meditate on his accomplished work, you also devote yourself to his instructive words in the Bible.

When you have those two things, a consistent dwelling and meditating on the accomplished work of Christ on the cross, the righteousness that you do not deserve, that he makes your own through faith in him.

When you devote yourself to what God has instructed, what Jesus has instructed you in his word, your satisfaction in him grows.

And then suddenly John chapter 6 makes sense, where Jesus says, I am the bread of life.

John 6 · chapter mention

Whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.

Those most basic human necessities find, spiritually speaking, their satisfaction in Christ.

And in order for you to grow in that satisfaction, you meditate on who he is, what he did, and what he has commanded in his word.

Our appetites, if we are not careful, can be ungoverned, unleashed, and lead to a kind of poverty that is not honoring to the Lord and is not good for you or even those around you.

We need a kind of satisfaction that roots deeply in our heart that will make its way out in even the ways that we drink, the ways that we eat, and the ways that we sleep.

Those most basic necessities can become demands and idols if we are not satisfied in Christ.

Find satisfaction in Him.

Count everything else as loss for the all-surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, your Lord.

Let's pray.

God, thank you for your word.

Thank you for just even the reminder that our hearts ungoverned can often be directed away from your righteousness, from your word, from fearing you.

God, I pray as a church that we would direct our hearts in the way of righteousness, that we would find our satisfaction and contentment in Christ, and that we would experience what Paul said in 1 Timothy, that godliness with contentment is great gain.

And God, that we as a church, that we would be able to side by side, that we would be able to live in that reality, that great gain that comes from being satisfied wholly and fully in Christ.

May our deepest desires, may our deepest longings find their satisfaction in Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

You are dismissed.