Contentment Over Gluttony

Hey everyone, this is Josh from Encounter Church Henley and thanks so much for tuning

into our podcast.

Our prayer is that through this podcast you can have an encounter with Jesus that will

change your life.

And now get ready for an inspiring message from our preaching team.

Hello church, welcome.

For those who don't know me, my name is Tex, I'm one of the pastors here.

We're going to start today with a bit of a slide with a content creator because everybody

loves content online these days.

So there's content creator by the name of, and I'm going to try and get this right,

and I just got to be how it sounds right, Nicocado Avocado.

I don't know if those are knowing laughs or not, but that's okay.

So in front of me we're going to get a bit of a slide going that helps to show who Nicocado

Avocado is.

This is him seated in front of by my calculations, I went on to, you can do calorie calculators

online, approximately 18,000 calories worth of fast food, which for someone of my size

and stature is about a week's worth of food.

Now why is he seated in front of 18,000 calories for all the world to see?

Okay, it's going to be everybody's favorite, going to start a new segment right now which

I've had to learn, we're going to have to do.

This is internet subculture explanation time.

So for some of you in the room, like Pastor Tim, when I asked him, do you know what a

mukbang is to which he responded with a very blank look, which to be fair is the same look

he gave me when I asked if he knew who Sabrina Carpenter was, but that's a different story.

So I don't know, we either talk to Tim after, pray for him.

So mukbangs are a trend in which people will just eat an incredible amount of food on a

live stream while chatting with their followers because reasons, right?

Like why does anything exist on the internet?

Now Nicocato's videos feature him eating different ones, I Googled a few, 10,000 calories worth

of instant ramen and one go, a 21 pound lobster and meals like the one shown all going down

in one sitting.

Now he didn't actually start here, he started as a vegan content creator before taking this

turn.

He transitioned to mukbang videos and even his earlier ones were a little bit more tame

than the ones behind me.

But as these things tend to go step by step and choice by choice, they escalated.

Now I said niche internet subculture time.

In 2023 Nicocato's various social media platforms had actually reached just over 10 million

subscribers and a total of just under 2.7 billion total views.

It doesn't feel so niche anymore, does it?

Now his gluttonous lifestyle was profiting an estimated 100 grand a month every month

in advertising revenue.

But all of that was at the expense of his own health, his own well-being.

Nicocato was literally dying of his own success.

I want to make really clear, I am not trying to score cheap points here at his expense.

But I think mukbangs really represent and highlight an extreme version of modern gluttony

that's pretty hard to ignore.

And Nicocato is one of the biggest names in that scene.

Now despite what we may think gluttony is not just about food, it is the first thing

that tends to come to mind.

Gluttony is actually made up of three different facets and each of them is really rooted in

a perceived lack of fulfillment and a hope that we can find contentment through a heightened

pursuit of want.

It tends to be really broken down into three different chunks, which is we want too much,

we want too extravagant and we want it too fast.

We see people like Nicocato and we kind of, if we're being honest, most of us probably

roll our eyes, our mouths are a bit of a gape, we're kind of shocked at the excess on display.

But gluttony has actually impacted every facet of Western culture.

We've invited it in, we've celebrated it, we just gave it a different name now, something

that makes it a little bit more palatable.

Now we just call it consumerism.

Entire industries have been built out of tricking us into thinking that more quantity,

more extravagance and immediacy will not only improve our lives, it will make them better

and it will be happier and it will lead us to a feeling of contentment.

Apple literally has us lining up every single year to drop two and a half grand on a two

year old Samsung.

Through advertising and manipulation, we continue to seek contentment in the wrong places.

We seek it through gluttony over contentment.

We seek it in the wrong spot and small step after small step and small purchase after

small purchase, we do that towards these less obvious but equally gluttonous pursuits.

We want too much.

People say, no I don't.

Well how's your wardrobe looking?

Because I know you just really had to have that cute jumper that cost 20 bucks and you

really needed that new pair of white sneakers because your old ones like mine were looking

a little bit gray and a little bit mucky these days.

Retailers like H&M are actually making a killing off fast fashion, both figuratively

and literally.

Our insatiable desire for more not only creates excessive waste but working conditions for

H&M was so bad that in 2018, 850,000 of their manufacturing workers said they were not earning

a living wage.

A majority of them female and many of them to boot were complaining of severe physical

and sexual abuse in these conditions.

All that to produce our, I won't say your, our $20 jumper that becomes tomorrow's salvo

drop off.

Now the average Australian also donates 12 kilograms of clothing to charity every single

year.

Now, the generous part of me says I really, really love that we're donating to charity.

I just hate that that need for that donation is born out of really just pure excess unnecessary

purchases.

Now I said earlier that, you know, another facet of gluttony is we're just too excessive.

We want something a little bit too extravagant.

To the tune of there's 11.8 million credit cards currently active in Australia.

This is just Australia average debt on each of $3,317.

Do the quick math.

That's cool.

$39 billion in credit card debt.

Thank you.

I agree.

That is just credit card debt, not afterpay, not store cards, not zip pay, not mortgages.

That's credit cards.

So yes, I accept that for some people it's become a feeling of necessity due to a current

cost of living crisis that we're all in.

So let's not pretend we're not.

But I think you'll also find that our history with credit cards predates our modern day

as well.

Not right just right now.

We want everything a little bit too quickly.

It's that last facet of gluttony.

To the point where we've built an industry on shortcuts.

Uber Eats will bring dinner to your house now.

Amazon Prime will bring a TV to your house now.

Tinder has cut out the middleman and has allowed us to have 12 conversations with potential

partners at once, cutting out awkward introductions.

And just brought it to our doorstep.

Even OnlyFans will deliver a personalized sexual experience to the phone in your pocket

right now.

We have sped up everything and we are worse for it.

This is summed up for me.

I'm a middle-aged, middle-class white man.

So of course Fight Club is very important in my growing up.

Chuck Philanix 97 nihilistic, anarchistic, anti-consumerism novel Fight Club states

this, we buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.

That is gluttony at its core.

I mean he's literally just described clout chasing on Instagram before the little heart

that you can click was even invented.

Thank goodness as we sit here in a church on a Sunday that this is only a secular affliction.

We have, let's face it, we have churches being treated as a service that is offered

to be utilized and consumed.

What can church do for me?

Not viewed as a loving community to join, an extension of Jesus himself, just another

product.

At its most extreme we have the prosperity gospel in the American evangelical circles,

running rampant, one in which individuals lack of faith and thus lack of giving is incorrectly

attributed to their own misfortune.

Many leaders in those churches living lavish lifestyles in 40 room mansions with Ferraris

and custom garages.

Nice to know, right?

Don't worry, we're safe.

The Littlefits don't live beachfront, I didn't rock up in a Lambo, Encounter is safe.

Obviously, no gluttony here.

But what about youth group?

If I can bring it down to a real macular level, what about youth group games where we time

kids and cheer them on as they swallow down as many donuts as they can in a shorter time

period as possible, where we have them sculling cups of drinking chocolate at the end of the

night with a smile on our face, I don't know what else to call that.

Let's not start on the side impact of what that is telling our young people about their

relationships with food.

And we've done it all in the name of fun, which I'm sure is the exact same excuse that

Nicocato would use for what he's been doing.

And as disciples under Jesus, we claim to want to see God's will on earth or in Henley

as it is in heaven, but far too often and in reality, we'd really like to see it now

and we'd really like to see it in a way that suits us best.

And what are we saying when our deepest cries out to Jesus are replaced by verbose and lengthy

monologues that are there for the ears of our listeners and not for the heart of our

Creator?

When our prayers turned to frustrations because we didn't get what we wanted and we didn't

get it when we asked for it.

God your will not mine, huh?

But let us never forget God in your time, not mine as well.

We want too much, we are too excessive and we want it too fast.

So why are we choosing gluttony over contentment when we know that contentment is the choice

we should be making over gluttony?

The truth is we don't ever start at any of those positions, but through our words and

our actions and our choices, we've allowed this gluttonous consumer lifestyle to choice

by choice infiltrate absolutely everything.

Unfortunately even our relationship with Jesus.

We continue to choose gluttony over contentment.

Now I'll take a little breath, have a little sip of water.

You do not have to shuffle nervously in your seats because there's not just a solution

to all of this.

There's also a model to follow and best of all, it's completely accessible to all of

us.

It won't even cost you anything.

Today's teaching text finds an imprisoned apostle Paul writing a letter to the church

that he's established in Philippi.

He's doing this for two main reasons.

The first is to encourage and thank them.

He praises the Lord for their concern for him and alleviates any fears they may have

had about not being able to help him because he's in prison.

This is a church that Paul himself has planted.

These are people that he's journeyed with, that he's been in community with, that he

has loved and they have loved him in return.

Not just a consumptive relationship, but a relationship relationship.

Then he goes on to let them know like, it's actually okay that he knows he's in prison

and that he appreciates everything that they've done for him.

So again, he's writing this from prison, but he says, not that I was ever in need for I

have learned how to be content with whatever I have.

Now, today's big word is in there from today's teaching, which is content.

But what really should jump out there is that he has learned how to be content.

Paul has been in and out of prison, house arrest and literal dungeons for years at this

point.

No doubt at times the gifts and well wishes were pouring in.

At other times, I'm sure he went weeks or months without a peep from anyone.

Anybody that has battled a long-term illness themselves or had a family member battling

a long-term illness can probably relate to this.

Sometimes the phone is ringing and the knocks at the door are so consistent, they're almost

annoying.

And other times you go months without a peep.

And the phone on and off just to make sure it's still working.

Now Paul didn't declare I am content.

He made the statement that he has learned to be content.

And why?

Because contentment really is not, it's not just like this natural state of being.

It's not intrinsic, but it's also not apathetic.

It's not a refusal to act.

It is learned.

And then it must be chosen.

And then it must be implemented.

Paul has learned to live on almost nothing, which is nice to hear because I think for

most of us we think living on almost nothing is the space where we learn contentment because

that's the space we have to learn contentment when we have no other choice but to do so.

And then Paul goes, yeah, but don't worry about that because I've also learned to be

content when I have everything as well.

Interesting.

How? Because Paul's contentment is linked directly to his conviction, not his circumstance.

As a result, his contentment is secure.

It's protected because the source of his contentment simply cannot be taken away from him, not in

any way that material possessions could be.

The two are not linked.

Now a little sidebar here, I found this really interesting.

Paul, as he's writing this letter and talking about contentment and how he's learned to

be content, he's being held in the Mamma Team prison, which according to Roman historian,

salutes.

Few prisons were as dim, dank and dirty as the lower chamber Paul occupied known as

the Telenium Dungeon.

Its neglect darkness and stench gave it a hideous and terrifying appearance straight

out of fantasy novels as by the sounds of things.

And this is where Paul found contentment in a dungeon.

Now, I'll double down on that, because in ancient Rome, prison sentences weren't actually

a thing.

They were an in-between thing.

So you were either being held in a prison for release or you were being held for execution.

So Paul is learning how to be content.

He's saying, don't worry about me, I'm going to be okay.

And he's in a position where he's fully expecting to be executed.

Paul, he's content.

How?

Because the source and supply of Paul's contentment comes from the only place that any of us could

truly find it.

For I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

This is not just everyone's favorite tattoo or hashtag, apologies, past ash.

My bad.

Paul can be content in his excess or in his lacking because his faith in Jesus is the

source of his contentment.

Paul's earlier letter to the Corinthians tells us we do not lose heart though our outer self

is wasting away.

Our inner self is being renewed day by day for this light momentary affliction is preparing

us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the

things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Paul knows the truth.

He knows that our circumstances are temporary, that times of excess and times of despair

and times of extreme joy and times of heartache, they're all temporary.

Our very bodies here on earth are temporary.

And that's weirdly enough why Paul can be and is content because he hasn't put stock

in any of it.

Because he knows that the source of his life, the things unseen, our very salvation is eternal.

Faith by grace, not by deed and absolutely not by possession or consumption.

Now Paul has chosen to believe in the merciful sovereignty of God, refusing to buy into a

consumerist view of the world or a consumerist relationship with God.

Paul can be content because he has chosen the contentment that has been offered to him.

Now why?

Because church, this is one of those times where you simply cannot have both.

You cannot have gluttony and contentment hand in hand, it doesn't work that way.

Because we all have this little built-in bar graph in life and I was going to do it, but

I couldn't work out how to do it and I slide.

So you're going to have to work with me for a second.

Normally what happens is if you hand all the way up above your head and that's where

want sits, there you go, oh you can, you know what, yeah, Ash, let's do that.

What we're going to do is if we put our hand way up above our head, there we go, I love

this, accidental participation time.

No, no, this is great.

If we put our hand all the way up here, normally this is where we find want.

Okay?

And then if we put our hand all the way down here, this is normally where we find what

we think our needs and then if we go a little bit higher, quite often that's where what

we've got is.

That varies a little bit.

I love this.

Ash is just mimicking me now.

I feel like I'm in a music video or something.

I don't know if I'm controlling Ash or she's controlling me, but we're going great.

You're doing better than you think Ash or maybe I am.

I don't know anymore.

All right?

So that's what we've got fluctuates, but normally for most the want sits at the very

top, the need sits at the very bottom and we would go to somewhere in between.

So how do we simplify it?

How do we get our wants and our needs and our gots to actually sit closer together?

Because the closer you get those three to almost sit on top of each other, the closer

you are to finding contentment.

Dallas Willard puts it ever so beautifully.

He says, you must, I haven't even spoken yet.

Tim goes, that's good.

You want to get Tim's approach, honestly, just use one of these great theologians,

say their name and Tim is like, yes, I could say anything.

Imagine if he was like, how good's Mac is?

And he's like, well, that's not good.

Dallas Willard puts it beautifully.

He says, you must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy

and confidence in your everyday life with God.

Now Jesus was all about, was that good, Tim?

Just confirming Jesus was all about subverting our expectation and we learned earlier that

gluttony is too much, is too fancy, it's a little bit too fast.

So what if we like Jesus just simply flip the script a bit, we find contentment not

in gluttonous excess, but in our everyday life with God.

So just for something different, I've decided we'll have three different ways to look at

that.

I think Jesus really decided, I just kind of wrote him down.

So we're going to learn to be satisfied with less.

We can do that.

I've got some very direct, straightforward stuff here.

Fast.

Okay.

Remove any temptation to indulge in food or excess.

Fasting is all about a deliberate reduction of food and food intake for a very specific

period of time.

And it could be, if you're never faster before, it can be an absolute game changer.

I've done a few different ones.

I'll talk to you one day about the 48 hour water only fast, which was a vibe.

Fasting forces you to clear your mind of distraction.

It helps us draw closer to God.

It helps us to hear his voice and surrender to his will.

If you've never faster before, honestly, a sun up to sun down fast is a really great

place to start.

You'll feel the hunger pangs, I promise, but those are just a reminder of a choice that

you are currently making, a learning on the journey of choosing contentment over gluttony.

Now, there's another way we can subvert this a little bit.

Let's just get back to the basics.

Let's get away from too fancy, too excessive.

Let's get back to the basics.

If you've never done it, you can try taking a Sabbath.

This reminds us that the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.

So that's good.

You get to do it without guilt.

It's about rest.

It's about time with God.

It's about time in connection with your closest relationships.

Gives you time to be content.

I say just, but I hope you know what I mean.

Like just being with family, just being with friends, just kind of taking joy and satisfaction

in the life that you have, whatever that may look like.

While you're taking time to do that, we're actually just reflecting and reveling in the

joy and the life that Jesus has blessed us with.

Full transparency.

I am not good at this.

Okay.

We're really not.

I do not have a consistent model for my Sabbath.

I am working on it.

Why don't I have one?

It's hard.

Why is a Sabbath hard?

Because you have to choose to do it.

You're not going to accidentally stumble across 24 hours to do this, to not do the washing,

to not stress about work, to not respond to the Slack notification, all that kind of stuff.

It's not easy.

I got to tell you, when the Horners do carve out that time, it's an absolute blessing and

it's a total game changer.

And we are just, I don't know, everything gets better.

Honestly, we talk to each other nicer.

We enjoy our time together.

We stop and we breathe and it is an absolute game changer.

But it's a choice.

You also got to learn how to do it.

Learn how to make it work.

The third point I'm going to go with here is, if being a bit too fast is one of the sources

of gluttony, maybe we just need to slow down.

The Jesus had crowds following him and begging for his time.

He would often take time out to pray, to slow completely.

Now he could have, it would have been pretty easy to think in those instances to seek contentment

and fulfillment from, you know, speaking in front of thousands of people.

But he found it by choosing to spend time with his father.

Again, if this is something you struggle with, we offer some different options here.

We don't just run some of the things that we run here at Encounter Henley because it's

fun or it's just a good idea.

The design to help you draw deeper into discipleship in these spaces, we just finished Word Week

today.

If you don't know how to take time out to just kind of carve and prioritize spending

time in the Bible, talk to any of our team here today.

We would love to talk to you about the experience we just had with Word Week.

If you are someone who struggles to pray, we just had a 24-1 prayer day last Saturday.

We run these things because we believe in the power of prayer, but because we also know

we need to learn how to rest in this space.

I have talked to so many people who, through one of our 24 ones, has gone like, I did not

know what I was going to do for an hour.

I will pray it's right there in the title, but they were going to struggle with that.

They were convinced.

The amount of people I talked to were like, I walked in, I put my phone in the little

lock box, I shut it.

Next minute, someone's knocking on the door for me to come out.

Stop and slow down.

You have to choose to prioritize these things.

Much like contentment, these are learned behaviors, learned habits.

If you are informed, you will not accidentally stumble into them.

Now, I don't have a slide, but it's Henley Homework Time.

That's good, Tim.

All right, so, honestly, if you've never spent a chunk of time in either Scripture or in

prayer or you've never fasted before or you've never taken a Sabbath, grab somebody after

church today and have a chat with them and do it together.

That doesn't mean, by the way, like Sabbath means.

I mean, why not?

Why not Sabbath with somebody if you can make your time schedules align?

But if you're going to like fast, you can literally, this is how simple it is, I am

going to fast on Thursday.

Ta-da.

Like, that's it.

Now I just have to do it, right?

But there you go.

That's my promise to you guys.

I'm going to fast Thursday.

Anybody else thinks they can make that work?

I'm going to go sun up till sundown on Thursday.

It's that simple.

Find somebody, talk to them, talk about it.

Talk about the experience you had during, talk about your findings from it.

How did you lean into God in that space and in that time?

I think you'll find it can be an absolute game changer.

Share your insights, grab a coffee, talk about it.

The band can come back up now.

That's cool.

So, through all that, we do that to lean in closer to God, to lean in closer to Jesus.

And we do that because we want to choose contentment, right?

Now Jesus has made it incredibly clear where our contentment is to be found.

John 6.48 and 51 tells us, I am the bread of life.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

Whoever eats this bread will live forever and the bread that I will give is my flesh

for the life of the world.

We talk about that.

He hasn't said specifically contentment, the bread of life.

We talk about that because Jesus knows that you could gather up every bit of food that

you can find and you could just cram it all down your throat and tomorrow you'll still

be hungry again.

You could drink water until your stomach makes that weird sloshy sound and you drown your

organs and tomorrow you're still going to be thirsty again.

These things are of this world.

You can never be fully satisfied.

You will never be contented.

Paul talks about in his letter that he's learnt the secret to contentment.

The awesome news is for us, it's not a secret.

The secret is Jesus.

If you're here today and if you're a follower of Jesus, you know that already, but it's

sometimes it's helpful to re-say it.

Jesus is the bread of life.

Those who eat that bread will never go hungry again.

Jesus is living water, those who drink from that cup will never go thirsty again.

Earthly riches will be left right here on earth making way for treasure in heaven.

You want to talk about an anti-consumerism mindset, how about the fact that our salvation

was just simply given to us?

We can't earn it.

We didn't deserve it.

There's no imaginary bar that we're filling with prayers and tithes and service and work.

Jesus was sacrificed on a cross for us from four hours sins with nothing in return, nothing

we offer in return.

He simply invites us to come and sit and be content with Him.

Church, this isn't restrictive, this is freeing because we don't have to worry about hoarding,

we don't have to worry about excess, desires.

We don't even have to worry about contentment because all of that has, can and will be fulfilled

through Jesus Christ.

A Savior who promises and also delivers in a way that things of this earth again simply

cannot because they are unable to.

I wonder as we come to the close now, if there are areas that you have been seeking contentment

from and they've just not been hitting the bar, you've been feeling that emptiness,

you've been feeling that gap, you've been looking for contentment elsewhere.

I'm going to ask you, if you're looking for contentment and you're not looking for it

with Jesus, why not?

What have you been pursuing with the same passion and enthusiasm that Jesus is pursuing

you with?

Where have you been searching off in an excess and just not finding it?

And then what changes do you need to make to choose contentment?

What steps do you need to take to find that contentment in Jesus?

Thanks so much for tuning into this week's message.

If you felt challenged or need prayer, we'd love to hear from you on Instagram at EncounterHenry.

Or if you're interested in how you can support this ministry, please go to our website EncounterAdelaide.com.au.

Thanks again for listening, God bless you.