Gluttony and Moderations

Here is the auto transcript from this week’s sermon on the Gluttony Abstinence is not deliverance

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day.

We thank you for the opportunity to stand here in this sauna today.

We thank you that we have HVAC.

There's so many people who don't have that.

And so, Lord, today, we just bless you for the opportunity to be here.

We bless you for the opportunity to remember one of many times that you have kept your word and saved your people.

And so, Lord, we just bless you.

We praise you.

May the words that are spoken today, Lord, may they be by your spirit, and may they be your words alone, not from me, Lord.

And so we commit this time to you in the name of Yeshua, our Messiah.

Amen and amen.

You have the ability and the gifts to do whatever you want.

It is your turn now to change the world.

Yes, we can.

Anybody remember that?

Okay, so we've talked about pride.

We've talked about lust.

Both clearly setting to the forefront of our life this conflict between the dual natures inside of us.

The one that would be considered the evil appetite, the nature of the flesh, and then the other one that would be the Holy Spirit, God, living inside of us.

However, I would say that in a culture like America, our Western culture, we are greatly lacking in the severity of our approach to gluttony.

If it's not America's favorite sin, if it's not America's favorite sin, it's at least our most tolerated sin.

Gluttony, the dysfunctional relationship with food and other things that we consume in excess.

See, gluttony, we like to talk a lot about overeating.

However, gluttony is an indulgence in consuming things that are unhealthy.

That could be food, but it also could be a lot of other things.

We live in a day now where we have a dysfunctional relationship with the gluttony of social media.

Constantly.

There's algorithms upon algorithms.

You don't even think for yourself anymore.

I didn't fully understand this, but the DeFatos had shared a movie with me a couple years ago.

And they're like, "You need to really watch this movie." I think it was on Netflix or whatever.

It talked about the agenda of social media and how those things went.

And so, yes, we do have a food problem.

We definitely have a food problem.

But we have a gluttony problem that's more than just the consuming of food.

It's more than just the consuming of alcohol.

It's more than just food or drink.

We are two parts.

We are physical and we are spiritual.

And so what we're consuming in the physical should also be a reflection of what we're consuming in the spiritual.

Once again, I told everybody I'm going to say it every single week.

I'm not here to guilt you, to shame you, or to bring condemnation upon you.

That's not my goal.

My goal is not to make you feel guilty about what you're doing in your life.

My goal is to inform you what the Word of God says and maybe, just maybe, give you something that you could make an adjustment in in your daily walk with the Lord.

Because if any of these sins or any of these thoughts are engaged in your daily life, then that's a hindrance to the power of God inside you.

Whether you like it or not, it's definitely a hindrance.

Because if you're walking in pride, which the Bible says all of us has pride.

So literally all of us, including me, have pride.

That there's an area of our life where pride takes over and by pride taking over, the Lord can't take over.

The Holy Spirit can't take over.

Same thing with lust.

If we have an unhealthy desire towards things that are not of God, because the Bible tells us where our desires should be, those are areas that we take over, not God.

Well, the same thing with gluttony.

Our overindulgence to never quench the thirst or the hunger or the void.

Now, this one kind of hits close to home.

And so I understand when you start talking about food and you start talking about overeating, the immediate thought process is to look at the outward appearance of an individual and make a judgment based upon whether they're gluttonous or not.

We could stack two body types up here, male or female, and naturally in America, it's just been programmed in our mind that one body type would be considered to be the appropriate and the other would be considered to be the gluttonous.

However, that's not necessarily true because you have to take into account many different factors that are there.

One, genetics.

How many of you have been driving to work or driving around and there's somebody in their 70s and they're sprinting down the road and they got one of those like backpacks that's got like one of those tubes that I want to do for football Sunday, but they're drinking water in and they're running out.

And I'm like, in my 20s, I could have never done that.

And it's true.

Why is it true?

Because up until I was in my junior year of high school, so I would have been 16 to 17, I was six foot and 320 pounds.

Now, this morning.

I stepped on the scale.

And I was 205 pounds and I am roughly six foot seven.

I don't know.

I haven't I'm not sure if I'm shrinking yet or not.

And there's that when you get over the hill and you start to like go backwards.

And so I very much understand the sin of gluttony in the sense that just because I was 320 pounds doesn't mean I was gluttonous.

But I remember why I was eating and overeating.

And it was because my parents were divorced when I was two.

I had emotional scars.

I had emotional baggage.

And so I turned to that.

To try to heal me, to try to make the pain go away.

Well, some of us don't turn to food.

Some of us turn to alcohol.

Some of us, we don't turn to alcohol.

We turn to social media.

Some of us don't turn to social media because we don't have social media.

So we'll turn to things like pornography or things like gaming or things that are out there all while if it's not of God, it's a distraction.

And I say that again is the chief sinner.

Because I have a social media account.

I have five children.

I help coach baseball.

I do all these things that we do on a daily basis that aren't necessarily bad.

But there's a line.

And that line is different for each and every one of us.

So when you're thirsty, when you're hungry, whether it's your physical body or it's your spiritual body or your mental components, remember that on the last day of the feast,

the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink."

We talked a little bit last week about the power of God that he tells us in Genesis 4, 7, this is the story of Cain and Abel, that we must master sin.

Now, for my type A friends in this room, we like to master things.

We like to overcome things.

We like to learn things.

We like to take perfectly fine clocks apart and try to put them back together.

We like to take perfectly fine automobiles apart and put them back together.

We like to take things and we like to learn how they tick and how they work and how these things, it's just who we are.

We like to work with our hands.

But mastering sin is something that seems to be fleeting.

How are you going to do that when all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God?

How are we going to overcome the very issues that our flesh has by trying to fix them with our flesh?

You see, you never will.

It's not possible because we talked about this multiple times over.

We talked about this internal struggle and what the Jewish sages would call the "Yetzirah" or the evil appetite.

See, gluttony is a very physical sin according to America.

But biblically, it also includes the mental, emotional, and spiritual sense of overindulgence of things that aren't of the Lord.

We can't fight or fill the evil appetite with anything other than Jesus.

Anything.

You take your pick, you take your poison, it doesn't matter.

Maybe it's Instagram, maybe it's Jack Daniels, maybe it's the best filet mignon that's out there.

Take your pick. If it's not Jesus, it's never going to fill it.

It's just not going to happen.

Not every person who's overweight is gluttonous, for food or for drink.

And when we constantly just look at the outward opinion of individuals, we're missing the very spiritual component.

Because if we just talk about gluttony as being a physical thing, we can see, well, this person is in shape, that person is not in shape.

Then how does the Bible tell us whether they're spiritually in shape or not?

Because there's two components to who we are.

What about the person who has an overindulgence of their protein powder?

That's never happened.

Who laughed? Russ?

I'm glad I can make you laugh.

I actually overindulged on my protein powder this week.

And then my wife was going to send me to Costco because she's in Dallas.

But we had more protein powder, so this is why it got into my notes.

So thank you for laughing at my expense this week. I appreciate that.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

It is a double blessing. It is a prayer of miracle.

You will have all the protein you need.

An overindulgence of consuming something that isn't God.

Jesus answered them and said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.

You do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life,

which the Son of Man will give you, for on him God the Father has set his seal."

Interestingly enough, here in John chapter 6, Jesus is being a little snarky.

Because all of a sudden you have the fishes and the loaves.

There's a great miracle that happened there, and he fed people with what shouldn't have worked.

We had a similar experience last year at the OKC Passover.

We had purchased catering from Hummus for 100 people, and when it showed up, it looked like it was probably catering for 50.

And the Yurdaks are out there praying over it, and they're like, "Please, Lord, make sure there's enough Baba Kaddush for everybody here.

Make sure there's enough Hummus for everybody. There's about to be a revolt in here."

And sure enough, there was.

But Jesus is saying that you're not actually seeking me.

You're not actually following me because of me.

You're following me because I fed you, because you're full, because you had plenty.

We see this all the time. It's called "keep up with the Joneses."

You're not actually seeking after that individual because there's something that they have that you really want.

Because you really don't know what they have.

You just see from a vantage point.

My son, a Lamborghini.

He doesn't even know what a Lamborghini looks like, but he wants a Lamborghini because he heard, I think it's KB or one of the Christian rap guys talk about a Lamborghini.

So every time a cool-looking car drives by, he's like, "Lamborghini."

I was like, "That's a Corvette."

"Lamborghini." "That's a Tesla."

"Lamborghini." He doesn't know.

So in the same way, America has created an entire culture of what you should be.

And the church is exactly the same.

Can I let you in on the million-dollar secret?

It's all fake.

And the church has been playing along with it.

It's all fake.

We're going to keep up with the Joneses. Keep up with the Joneses.

And yet everybody who keeps up with the Joneses ends up on a VH1 behind the music talking about how empty their life was.

Because there was a gluttonous overindulgence of something that wasn't real.

And yet Yeshua says constantly throughout his teaching, "I'm the only thing that can fill you."

I'm the only thing.

I think this is important for us to understand from where we come from.

Where we come from in our corner of Christianity puts a lot of emphasis on, again, what we can do with these.

And yet, what was one of the first commandments that the Lord gave Adam in the garden?

Even before the Sabbath day.

It was to protect and to work the garden.

And then all of a sudden there's the fall of man.

And what happens? It says that you will toil and you will labor and you will labor and you will labor and you will labor.

And it was different.

I know I'm fast forwarding a little bit to our laziness portion of the seven deadly sins.

But God actually said, "You're supposed to do something."

"Man, I'm going to put you in this garden and you're supposed to do something."

But when we fall, now this something that we were supposed to do has a whole other impact on us.

A whole other weight.

Well, the more we overindulge in the food, in the drink, in our pride, in our lust, in our social media likes and shares, in our obtaining of wealth.

Everybody's looking to obtain wealth.

Wealth is different to a lot of people.

We talked about earlier on in a sermon series that wealth used to be time, leisure.

And now wealth is considered material possessions.

It's tangible.

But yet all the material possessions that are created nowadays are not created to last the same way.

Ikea furniture has a shelf life of six months.

And if you have toddlers, not even that.

But yet I got to go and walk through Northside Christian Church with Brent.

And I don't even know when that church building was built.

I'm getting to the point in time in life where I'm having a really hard time judging differences.

The other day I saw people walking down the street and I was like, "Babe, look, they let their 13-year-olds walk down the street."

"I won't let them walk around the corner."

And she's like, "Sweetie, oh, that's cute. They're like juniors in college."

I was like, "Man, I'm getting old."

But we were walking through Northside Christian Church and helping Brent and just beautiful things that are happening

and just being able to be a part of the greater kingdom of God.

And that building is like rock solid.

Like you're looking at the sanctuary and it's got these beautiful beams and there's just all these things.

They don't make anything like that nowadays.

Everything's temporal.

And Jesus says, "Don't just follow after me because I fed you."

Kind of like you would say to your friend, "Well, don't just go out to lunch with me because I have money."

Or, "Don't just go with me because I have power, I have influence."

This is what America teaches us to do.

This is why I say, if it's not at least the most kind of like ignored sin,

it would be our greatest sin because it's involved in every bit of the fabric of this country.

I only hang out with you because you can do something for me.

I only am a part of this because you can do something.

It is transactional.

And we've allowed it to creep into our relationship with God.

God, if you will do this for me, I'll do this for you.

Nobody's ever prayed that prayer.

Lord Jesus, if you can just make this happen, I will never sin this way again for five minutes.

If it would be your will, because we're being humble,

if it would be your will, would you help and bless me through this situation?

He's like, "Yes, I will help and bless you through. I will honor your request.

I'm going to put your face in the dirt and I'm going to make you humble up.

I'm going to make you change. I'm going to make you teshuva. I'm going to make you do something.

Be careful what you pray for because sometimes it gives you what you want.

An overindulgent culture.

Is this how we operate with the Lord?

Transactionally?

Lord, you have fed me, so today I will go to church.

Oh, church is optional for a lot of people.

So we're not even like the people in John chapter six who were out there being fed.

Now we're like, "Jesus, you fed me. You've clothed me. You've given me hair.

You've given me all this wealth, whatever you consider to be wealth."

But I can't. Oh, man.

I can't be there on Saturday.

I can't be there on Sunday.

Oh, I've got to check my schedule.

Sorry, Jesus, can you do April 17th at 6 p.m.?

It's transactional.

Jesus tells us if we continuously come to him that the thirst and the hunger will be removed.

So if we're talking about just a physical hunger, he can remove it.

If we're talking about a desire, a lust, a pride, or something that we use as sustenance in our life that is not of God,

he also can remove it and replace it.

Why is that so foreign to us?

We're a Hebrew passionate congregation who understands the story of the first exodus

and some of the first things that God does when he delivers them,

which in and of itself was pretty cool.

Anybody else seen a sea split open?

I haven't. I mean, it's pretty cool.

Anybody seen that?

So that happens, but then he starts making food rain from heaven.

What?

He starts making your provision, your sustenance come.

And even then he's like, "Well, I only really have one rule.

Just gather what you need to on this day and don't go gather on that day."

They can't even do that.

It's like, "Oh, this man is a killer.

I'm going to gather as much as I can."

And it would rot and it would go to waste.

It is literally still the very same thing that's plaguing us today.

And I understand because it plagues me too.

I love food.

I also love when people like me.

Never used to.

It was so much easier when I didn't care what anybody else thought.

But, of course, you know, there's that song,

"If I only had a brain, well, if I only had a heart, I guess I was the tin man."

But when those things start to happen, you do care about what's happening.

And so when you look at what you must do for the Lord to be that filling up,

the filling up of your hunger, the filling up of your thirst,

the filling up of your desire, the filling up of your power,

the filling up of whatever those things are, how do we combat it?

Fasting.

Now, we need to be careful when we're talking about fasting

because people will say, "Well, there's a lot of talk about fasting in the Bible."

Yeah, there is.

But there's also times where the Lord says, "Like, your fasting stinks."

Caught myself.

Stinks.

I don't want that.

Go eat a burger because this ain't--I want nothing to do with whatever this is.

"Oh, Lord, I'm fasting for you. I've got my sackcloth in ashes."

Yeah, that's hogwash. That's malarkey.

That's not what I want.

So if you can abstain from food, and the Lord will say, "That's not what I want,"

what must we do?

First off, we must understand that fasting is more than just food.

I say that because we're coming up on the 28 days.

And there's some conditions that people have that they should not abstain from food

for prolonged periods of time.

They might be on medicines.

There might be--my son's a type 1 diabetic.

If it's not done right, like, he could go super low.

He could die.

All these things.

There's conditions that are there.

My wife did not fast when she was nursing our children.

She would fast from a certain type of food.

But that was it.

So how does a church or a body or a nation come together and fast

if not everybody can abstain from the same thing?

It's easy.

Not everybody's wrestling with the same thing.

Not everybody wrestles with the same deadly sin.

Not everybody wrestles with the same issue.

And so maybe you can't abstain or fast from food,

but maybe that's not your issue.

Maybe food is not your God.

What?

Is it social media?

If it's not social media, some people in this room are like,

"Dude, this is why I got off social media back in 2008

when Tom was running it on MySpace."

Maybe it's not social media.

Maybe it's the television.

Maybe it's drama.

We should all be fasting from drama.

Easier said than done.

There's something we can fast from or abstain from at any point in time.

See, the act of fasting and abstaining is to afflict the evil nature of our flesh,

and in that affliction we can be made whole.

The affliction of the soul was interpreted by the rabbis to mean fasting

since our nefesh, our soul, can also be translated as an appetite.

And since our yetzirah is framed as an evil appetite,

the way to subdue it is to exercise control over it.

But abstinence is not deliverance, church.

The goal is not just to abstain from satisfying that evil appetite.

It's to actually be set free,

to have a spiritual appetite that is greater in preference in our lives

than the physical.

How many of you, when you're talking about, "Let's go out to dinner,"

you're thinking about the spiritual atmosphere that you're going to be in?

I mean, I've gone out to some restaurants.

I've never thought about the atmosphere I'm going to be in.

I'm like, "I want a burger. Who's got the best burger?

I want a steak. Who's got the best steak?

Hey, they have some beef empanadas. I want the best beef empanadas.

Now I'm hungry. Dang it."

The evil appetite.

I fast before I sing or before I preach

because I have a phobia that I'm just going to be talking

and just let out the loudest belch.

I've let you into the most inner side of my psyche.

And so when you start talking about food, I'm just like...

(exhales)

Has a preacher ever door-dashed while he's preaching?

Anybody know?

Thank you, Lord.

But see, Jesus exposes the spiritual nature of our appetite in other ways as well.

Let's listen to his words from Matthew 15.

"Hear and understand.

It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person,

but what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person."

Luke 6:45, "The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good,

and the evil person out of his evil treasures produces evil.

For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks."

Food isn't a bad thing. Dining's not a bad thing.

Going out to eat's not a bad thing.

You know, we had that whole purity abstinence culture

where it's like, "Oh, well, we need to really talk negatively about all these taboo topics

because that will somehow..."

No. Almost everything that we see, that we wrestle with,

are things that God created for a good purpose.

God has no problem with you enjoying a beautiful steak dinner.

God has no problem with you--there I say it--

He has no problem with you having an alcoholic beverage.

There's actually commandments.

Now, you should abstain from that if that's an issue you have.

Sexual desires are not bad when done right.

All the things that we see are things that were created to be beautiful for us

that the adversary tries to step in and pervert to make them be your God.

And America has a belly-God problem.

I have a belly-God problem.

One thing I want you to understand is that God is not the reason

why I will spend the rest of my life with a little pooch as a belly.

I am.

Now, yes, I work out and I fast and I do all these things.

I've got my protein powders, and Riley found me a chocolate protein powder in coffee.

It's, "Oh, to die for."

And all these things.

There are consequences for the decisions we make in our life,

and with gluttony sometimes there's consequences.

There's a residual effect.

Now, thank God mine is just purely physical.

I'm just going to have a little pooch from being 320 pounds.

I've got some stretch marks. I've got some wears and tears on the side.

That's my cross to bear.

I'll have to do that for the rest of my life

because I don't have enough money to get surgery to make it go away.

And honestly, even if I did, they remind me of the time

where I needed God the most, and I was looking at him in a carton of ice cream

when I was looking for him in potato chips.

Some of you, that wouldn't be ice cream, that would be potato chips.

Some of you, that would be on your phone at night.

Some of you, it would be at a bar.

Some of you, it would be, "I'm a workaholic."

Yeah, you can actually overindulge in your work as well.

We have a society who is overindulged in their work.

They can't even take a day off and meet with the Lord,

let alone a day off and stay with their family.

Overindulgence and gluttony is many different things,

and ultimately it becomes idolatry.

You've taken God off the throne of your life,

and at least in one area of your life, you've put something else there.

I know teens aren't in this room, but a lot of times at that certain age,

there's that little window where they become boy crazy or they become girl crazy.

They'll take God as the primary person in their life,

and they'll put him down here to maybe number two or number three,

and they'll elevate that boyfriend or that girlfriend.

"I can't wait for him to text me. Oh, I've got butterflies."

And the boy's over there like, "Can we go mudding today?"

He's not thinking.

God should always be first in everything you do--

your friendship, your relationship, your marriage, everything.

This church, if somebody says something from the pulpit

that doesn't align with the Word of God, God comes first.

Always. Matthew 26, 29.

"I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine

until the day when I drink it anew with you in the Father's kingdom."

Jesus abstains from drinking the final cup.

We're almost to the Pesach time, the Passover.

He abstains from drinking the final cup until we meet again in the Father's kingdom.

So Jesus is, in a way, fasting of the final cup until we can do it together.

Think about that for a second.

We kind of gloss over the Passover Seder.

A couple years in, we're kind of like, "Oh, we're just going to do the same thing over again."

Jesus says, like, this cup of rejoicing, this cup, like,

"I'm not going to drink it until we can do it together in the kingdom."

He cares enough about us to say, like, "I want to wait and do that with you."

So Jesus himself sets forth an example of there's a time and a place for everything.

Yet nothing we can have in this life.

No food or drink or dopamine hit will ever match the moment that we get to sit in the kingdom

with the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and all this evil appetite is gone.

Nothing will take the place of that.

Gilettini teaches you to live for today, while the entire Scripture teaches you

that you must die today so on the day he comes back you can live.

The counter of the culture.

Gilettini induces laziness, and laziness brings poverty, and poverty induces hopelessness.

We find this in Philippians chapter 3 and in Titus chapter 1.

But as apprentices of God's creation, we're called to be caretakers of this creation.

Through gluttony, we put our desires and our importance ahead of the entire creation,

and we make it about us rather than the entire creation of God.

1 Corinthians 11 20 through 22, Paul had to address this in the church of Corinth,

where even the Lord's Supper was being exploited by people's selfishness.

Never would happen.

"Therefore, when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper,

for you and your eating, each one of you takes his own supper first."

I should have waited for this to be the non-kids class week, just to read about the Corinth.

All the kids during the benediction, Brent's still up here praying for them,

and they're out there like, "I gotta get some buffalo chicken dip."

He wasn't talking about buffalo chicken dip, he's talking about the Lord's Supper,

but if the shoe fits.

"And one is hungry and another is drunk."

Somebody got drunk off the communion wine.

I'm not saying we shouldn't pay attention to Passover this year, I'm just saying.

Like, communion wine, Passover wine, there's four cups, you have a cup or two with dinner,

that's a lot of wine.

Nothing wrong with drinking wine.

But if you can't walk out the door, it's a problem.

"What, do you not have houses in which to eat and drink,

or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing?"

Paul goes on to say, "I have no praise for you in this."

Why not? Because they've taken the blessing of the Lord's Supper, a covenant meal,

something that Jesus gave that we could partake in,

and they've turned it into something that they used as selfishness for themselves.

It's exactly what our culture tells us is what we should be doing every day here.

Take for yourself.

As best you can.

The greatest ever.

We keep creating these layers where we can be elevated, where we can be extolled,

where we can have anything our heart desires.

And I'm not saying that America isn't blessed by God, it's not a great land,

because it is a great land.

But part of being an American is also understanding that we are to try to do right by other people,

because it was a country that's founded by a whole lot of other people.

Germans and Irish, Israelis, Hebrews.

"As a church, we're called to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, be fathers to the fatherless,

and look out to the windows." Widows.

You can look out the windows while taking care of the widows.

I told you, I've been messed up since the beef empanadas.

Be the hands and feet of God.

The Holy Spirit will not show up to validate your selfishness.

And gluttony is a manifestation of selfishness that impedes the body both physically and spiritually.

Worship team, you can come back.

This isn't in my notes, but I was really, really wrestling with it all morning, praying to the Lord.

The church has specific callings.

As a Christian, you have specific callings.

As a follower and an apprentice of Jesus, you have specific callings.

Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, be father to the fatherless,

and look out the windows and take care of the widows.

I have to stay consistent with my screw-ups.

Those are consistent callings of the Lord.

So please explain to me why, when the beauty of the Lord is around us every single day,

there's an opportunity to be a witness of Christ to somebody every single day.

Please explain to me why we need the drug of false prophecies.

We need the drug of biblical fear.

There's enough to be fearful around.

But yet, when an eclipse comes, oh, Katie, bar the door.

Let alone if two of the eight Ninevehs are actually in the path.

Yeah, that's right. I know you've seen the Facebook meeting.

There's eight or ten. Only two are actually in the full darkness.

The rest are kind of on the outside. I didn't tell you that because it doesn't fit the biblical fear.

We're gluttonous and overindulgent in fake eschatological things

rather than looking around and saying, "You know what?

How awesome is the Creator of the heavens and the earth that he allowed the sun to rise this morning?"

I actually saw the sun rise coming down of Tecumseh to 60th this morning.

The sun was huge.

Like one of those things you would have seen from some of the 80s graphics

where it's just this gigantic, beautiful sun.

Why aren't we marvelized by that?

Why aren't we in awe of that?

Why does it take a blood moon when every day he makes the moon to rise?

And it still happens.

We struggle being consistent in our own life,

but yet the Lord can make the moon rise for thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

And when he turns it a different color, oh, it's the end of the world.

Why can't we be gluttonous towards doing right by other people?

Zedekah and righteousness.

Why do we have to be gluttonous towards prophecy?

Why do we have to be gluttonous towards all these other things in the scripture?

Why can't we overindulge in spending our money and putting clothes on naked people?

Why can't we overindulge ourself in making sure that whatever food we have in our pantry,

you have a $500 bill to Costco, which is easy to do with some mouse, peanut butter pretzels,

if you ever want to get me a gift.

Why aren't we that zealous for putting food in the mouths of other people who don't have food?

But we're going to worry about the olive tov of a solar eclipse?

Each one of us has some sort of overindulgence in our life.

And it may not be food, it may not be drink.

Why can't it be the things that God actually tells us he wants and desires for us?

Why are we so desperate to see the Lord come back and predict his date when none of us are ready for him?

You could say you're ready for him.

Yeah, you're ready because you want this to stop.

The wrestle and the toil and the work.

I'm not perfect. I'll never be perfect.

God doesn't expect you to be perfect.

He is perfect.

He expects you to die so that he can live in you.

So guys, it's not just what you put in your mouth.

It's not what you eat. It's not just what you drink.

Sometimes you're overindulging yourself on that dopamine hit of spiritual prophecy

or all these other things when God just says, "I need you to do the basics."

You're 17 years into studying the Bible. You're 40 years in the Bible.

Why can't you get this right?

Why can't you help this person?

Why can't you feed this person?

Why can't you clothe this person?

You know, all the mysteries unlocked.

You've been right no times.

You don't want to talk about that.

But why can't we do the basics?

You know, when we start to think of others,

the way that Christ thinks of others,

the way Christ thinks of us,

it's kind of hard to be gluttonous.

It's hard to sit there and look at the person on the street corner in Norman,

which is literally out of control.

There's homeless people everywhere.

It's hard to drive to Sam's and not stop and say,

"You know what? I don't need to buy that today because that person might not eat."

When you start looking around and you have a heart change for who the Lord has created you to be,

knowing that He had grace and His grace was sufficient for you,

so His grace is sufficient for them,

things change.

You want to see the Lord come back?

Start preparing the kingdom of God here like He called us to do

by placing His desires above our desires.

By placing your faith in Him,

not in what you can eat or you can drink or what you can obtain with your hands.

There's nothing you have obtained with your hands that God didn't give you.

Nothing in this world dictates your value or your worth.

You can strive after it.

You can wrestle with it.

But it'll be a hole that you'll have to go crawl out of over and over and over again.

It will be a well that you will have to keep pulling the water up and drinking from.

There's only one place where you can eat and be satisfied.

There's only one place that you can drink and be satisfied.

There's only one place that you can turn yourself from and have the Lord actually fill that void for you,

and that's Him.

He is literally the only thing that can fill that void for you.

But that takes the death of yourself.

It takes walking in humility.

It takes putting yourself in a place to realize that the more you overindulge this,

the more this grows.

We're in the Passover season.

In the next 30 days, a little bit of leaven, a little bit of that will puff up everything.

I told on myself, I'm a peanut butter pretzel guy.

Eat a couple peanut butter pretzels and then go drink a big glass of water.

One is healthy for you.

The other is not.

What happens in your stomach?

Like I only had like five.

As it puffs up, it fills up.

Every person in this room has something in their life.

At some point in time, there's some hurt, there's some trauma, there's some overindulgence.

There's something.

Everybody has it.

So before we get to the spring feast this year, how do we actually clean out our closet?

I don't care how many crumbs you have in your couch.

I honestly don't think the Lord does either.

I think he's more worried about how many little sin nuggets and some crumbs of sin you have in your actual heart and your mind.

So we go through the physical process of like, well, I'm going to get a feather duster out

and I'm going to check and see if I left a crumb and inevitably, sometime you get in your wife's car,

she's never in your own car, she's not here, she can't defend herself.

You get in your wife's car and there's a little piece of leather.

I don't care how in detail you go into your couches and under your rugs and that to clean that out.

If you're not looking in your heart, you're not looking in your mind, you're not looking into that portion of you,

that appetite in you, that evil appetite that wants to take the Lord out of you,

and you're purging that out.

Because you can keep going through the process in the physical life all you want.

But one of the most awesome things about the new covenant in Jesus is that he says it's no longer going to be

some tablet, some list, some journal.

I'm going to write it here.

And I'm going to put a new spirit in here.

So that would affect how you think, how you feel, how you speak, how you walk.

We're going to sing a song called Jealous.

I don't repeat.

It says he's a jealous God for us.

He's jealous for me.

God is jealous for you.

When he sees you committing adultery with Facebook, rather than spending time with him, he's mad.

When he sees you going to the restaurant to fill yourself up, when he's like, I just needed to fill, I had the power to fill you up,

he's mad. He's jealous.

He wants to spend that time with you.

He wants to be intimate with you.

He wants to heal you. He wants to set you free.

He wants to put his word on your heart.

He is jealous for you because he loves you more than you love yourself.

I don't know a lot of like super cool things.

But I know one thing.

A God who is willing to take on this, this, he's willing to take on this suit of flesh,

because he loved us so much that he wanted us to be set free.

He was willing to leave the perfect atmosphere of heaven and earth to come here and take on a temple of flesh and bone that was imperfect.

So that we could be set free.

That's a love I don't know I know how to have.

And all throughout all the covenants, the covenant with Moses, the covenant with David, over and over and over again,

when the enemies of Israel tried to kill them, tried to annihilate them, and God would step in and do what he said he was going to do,

he was going to honor his oath, he was going to honor the covenant, and then they turn right around and like,

"Thank you for saving me, I'm going to go back and do it again."

Today, just think back to what God did in saving the Israelite people and saving the Jewish people.

Allow God to permeate your heart and anything in your heart or your mind that is an overindulgence of something that is not of him.

Allow him to put those on the gallows and kill them.

So that he can fill that with a power in the presence of his love, his grace, his mercy, and his Holy Spirit.

Let's worship.