

This work is dedicated to the members of Christ Church of Acadiana who have graciously supported my family and me. Their sacrifices made all the research, reflection, and labor possible. My prayer is that this work might be a blessing to every one of them. Here's to more to come.

The Seven Deadly Sins

Brandon Nealy

Edited by Lori Briggs

Published by Lori Briggs at Smashwords

Copyright © 2017 Brandon Nealy

Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Contents

Chapter 1: You Might Be a Stiffneck

Chapter 2: Green with Envy

Chapter 3: Sloth Isn't What You Think

Chapter 4: The Gospel of Greed

Chapter 5: The Mad Man

Chapter 6: Gospel of Gluttony

Chapter 7: Honorable and Holy Sex

_Chapter 1: You Might Be a Stiffneck_

# What Man Proposes

Let us consider three great men in the eyes of the world: Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, and Jack Dawson. Napoleon Bonaparte was a genius general, a grand tactician, who crowned himself emperor of France. He may have been the most powerful man in the world at one point in time. Right before his famous last battle, the Battle of Waterloo, a young man came up to Napoleon as he was planning his strategy and posed the question, "Know ye not, Napoleon, that man proposes but God disposes?" In other words, "The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD" (Proverbs 21:31).

Napoleon, in his typical fashion, responded to the young man, "Know ye not, that whatever Napoleon Bonaparte proposes, Napoleon Bonaparte disposes?" But that night the rains came and the dust turned to mud, so the soldiers couldn't march, the cavalry couldn't run and flank, and the artillery could not maneuver as he had proposed, and God disposed of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon Bonaparte, the great general of Western Europe, disposed by precipitation.

Now we move on to the second great man of note, Alexander the Great. He was one of the greatest kings of all time; by the age of 32 he ruled the entire known world. One night in 363 BC, Alexander got a fever and as he was lying in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II, he slipped away to meet the king of kings, Jesus Christ. Most scholars say that what killed Alexander the Great was a mosquito, passing on West Nile virus or malaria with its blood-sucking bite.

Napoleon taken out by rain, Alexander the Great taken out by a mosquito, and Jack Dawson, taken out by an unforeseen iceberg and a freezing ocean. Jack stood on the bow of the Titanic, the ship that was supposedly unsinkable even by God, and he leaned against the railings and spread his arms out wide and shouted, "I'm the king of the world!" It was on that journey that he would meet the real king of the world due to an unforeseen iceberg.

What do these three men have in common? What is it that did them in? Napoleon Bonaparte didn't know that a little rain was going to do him in. Jack Dawson didn't have any idea that an iceberg was headed his way. Alexander the Great didn't know about the mosquito. The sin of pride had infected all three of these men, who were great in their own eyes. In seven chapters, we're going to cover the seven deadly sins, which can also be called the seven daily sins. Let's discuss how they were first identified.

## The beginning of a long battle

The seven deadly sins were codified and counted over 1500 years ago by a Monk named Evagrius. Evagrius and his monks went far away from civilization out to the desert to be in a perfect little religious bubble and established a monastery. These super-Christians separated themselves physically from the world—no television, no internet, no politics—just the Christians in their Christian bubble in the desert. It was there, in isolation, that they discovered the seven deadly sins. They put them into a list that we still have to this day.

They discovered that while alone in the desert, without a woman in sight, with no internet and no magazines, that lust was still with them in their hearts. They had no fine-dining restaurants and no Little Debbies; over their simple bowls of porridge, they discovered a dining companion called gluttony. They discovered there in isolation, away from the "bad world," without any private property or promotions, that they still hoarded with greed.

They discovered in complete isolation that the line between good and evil ran right through the middle of their hearts. They learned that what is wrong and broken with the world is also what's broken with them. They tried to have heaven on earth, a perfect utopia, but in the end they themselves ruined it. What was ruining their community and killing them softly was the seven deadly sins—the seven daily sins.

The culprits of calamity, anxiety, and sin in our daily lives are one or multiple of the seven deadly sins. They hide in the grass; they lurk and crouch and must be exposed. Imagine you want to go hunting. Small animals, like birds or rabbits, are difficult to target because they hide in the bushes. You need hunting dogs to scare them out. When they fly up, then you can target them. That's the way it is with the seven deadly sins. They hide in the deadly thorn bushes of your heart, and you need a dog (a pastor) to run ahead and shake the thorn bushes of your heart so that the seven deadly sins will be exposed and you can have success in taking them down.

# Defining Pride

The first one we'll talk about is pride. We start with pride because it is the fountainhead of all sins and is the sneakiest of them all. It has undergone a grand transformation in our society in that what used to be considered a vice is now considered a virtue. It has transformed into a beautiful angel of light and most Christians are falling prey to it.

Society might ask, "What's wrong with pride?" Isn't it true that the main job we have as parents is to instill a good sense of self-worth in our children? If you look up self-worth in a dictionary or thesaurus, one of the synonyms is pride. Society would say that our job as parents is to instill in our children a good sense of healthy pride. What's wrong with that? What's wrong with Black pride, or Southern pride? Is there anything wrong with cheese being the pride of Wisconsin? I can't think of anything wrong with this kind of pride, but the illustrations of pride and humility in the Bible tell me to be suspicious.

## Vice as a virtue and vice-versa

Imagine you're taking an English grammar multiple choice test. The question is about selecting the version of the sentence that is correct. As a student from a small town with lax grammar in its dialect, you circle the one that just "sounds right." But the students that get "A"s every single time are the ones who study the grammar rule book. A lot of Christians approach ethics and morality in the same way as the student that just circles what "sounds right." They trust their ethical gut, but the problem is that their ethical gut is influenced by their sinful nature as well as a sinful society. When they trust their ethical gut, they do enough to make a "C." The way to solve moral or ethical problems as Christians is to study the book and answer according to what it says—not according to what sounds right. Our ethical gut might get us a C but it is never going to earn an A.

As a grammar book contradicts the way people talk in your small-town neighborhood, the Bible contradicts the ethics (or lack thereof) of society. In the case of pride, society may say it's right, but the Bible says it's wrong. Society says the main reason people are in prison is that they have a really low opinion of themselves. But what if they are really in prison because they have too high a view of themselves? What if the question of self-esteem is tricking people like the questions on that grammar test did? If crime is the result of a low view of self, can we say that a low view of self was the cause of the greatest crime in history—the crime of the Nazis? Did the Nazis perpetrate the Holocaust because they had a low sense of self or was it because they had too much nationalistic pride and too high a view of themselves?

You may argue, "But sometimes we use the word pride in a different sense." For example, we have "pride" in our accomplishments. "Can't we say that?" Maybe we can use the word that way, but as a Christian with the Bible as my guide, I am suspicious of any use of the word "pride" in the Christian's life. If we can at least agree to be suspicious, let's look at what the Bible says about pride.

## The center of the universe

Solomon tells us in the book of Proverbs that "there are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him" (6:16). The first one he lists is "haughty eyes"—pride (6:17). Solomon, the greatest man who ever walked the planet, said that God hates pride. Luke, the greatest historian in the Bible and perhaps one of the greatest historians of all time, tells the story of King Herod, who was eaten up by worms and died when he received applause and took credit for something that God deserved. Through this historic anecdote we see that God hates pride. The apostle Paul taught that Jesus Christ was equal with God yet "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped"; rather, he lowered himself, "taking the form of a servant," humbling himself even "to the point of death" (Philippians 2:6-8). The entire life of Jesus Christ can be characterized by humility.

I believe the passage of the Bible that best shows us God's feelings toward pride is Daniel 4, where we have the testimony of Nebuchadnezzar the Great, who was in his lifetime the most powerful man on the planet. He himself wrote Daniel 4. In my experience, I find the best testimonies always start with a dream, like this one. Nebuchadnezzar, the man who built the hanging gardens of Babylon, gives us a good picture of pride starting in Daniel 4:10:

The visions of my head as I lay in bed were these: I saw, and behold, a tree in the midst of the earth, and its height was great. The tree grew and became strong, and its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth. Its leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant, and in it was food for all. The beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the heavens lived in its branches, and all flesh was fed from it. (verses 10-12)

This tree is an ancient metaphor. It extends from earth to heaven—the bridge between man and God. The tree's branches extend all over the globe; all who seek rest, provision, and protection go and dwell in the branches of this tree. This tree is the center of the divine ecosystem; it's the axis around which everything else in the universe revolves. Nebuchadnezzar thinks himself to have become the tree—the center of the universe, around which everything revolves.

Pride is thinking yourself to be this tree. In other words, pride is thinking yourself to be God—thinking and imagining yourself to be that which provides protection and provision for all of mankind, around which everything else should revolve. Out of that heart of pride will come expectations for other people, anxiety, a feeling that God owes you, and an inaccurate image of yourself. Pride leads you to be out of touch with reality. Out of the prideful heart comes bragging.

In Daniel 4:30, Nebuchadnezzar brags: "And the king answered and said, 'Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?' While the words were still in the king's mouth...." There he is, on the bow of the ship, his arms spread out wide, shouting, "I'm the king of the world!" And as the words come out of his mouth, chop. Down goes the tree. Pride starts in the heart, imagining that you stand in the place of God, and out of that comes bragging.

Pride is more insidious and more hideous than you realize. Think about what it means to "toot your own horn." The saying actually comes from the account of Jesus' rebuke toward the pride of the Pharisees, who blew trumpets in the streets as they gave alms to the poor (Matthew 6:2). Before God created humanity, he created a host of angelic beings. These angelic beings included cherubim, seraphim, and other heavenly creatures, and they all sang one song in harmony and in unison, "Holy, holy, holy" (Isaiah 6:3).

They all sang the praises of God. God was the tree and they orbited around the tree. God was the center of the divine ecosystem, and all the angels sang his praises and exalted him. All of the universe was in perfect order. It was paradise. But then one particular angel, Lucifer, began to be filled with pride in his heart. He began to see himself in the place of God and began to think of himself as the tree. Out of that heart of pride, he began to sing his own praises. Isaiah recorded the prideful song of Satan, which is filled with "I will"s (14:13-14). Satan began to toot his own horn and a third of all the angelic beings put on choir robes and began to sing with him and toot his horn. They also all began to toot their own horns. And then there was not one song in harmony and in unison but multiple songs in the universe. This entire fallen race of angels who were all singing their own praises yielded chaos, pain, sin, and brokenness.

## The off-centeredness of pride

Musicians have a word for when you play two notes that don't sound well together—dissonance. Musicians use dissonance to create a feeling of tension in the middle of their songs. Dissonance can be used to communicate a feeling of pain, sorrow, or calamity. This dissonance creates in listeners an expectation and desire for resolution. In other words, dissonance gives the music a plot. There were now two songs playing at the same time; when Satan began to toot his own horn, he introduced conflict.

When we toot our own horns, we introduce dissonance into our circles—our relationships, our society, and our world. The universe is broken and destroyed because of the seven deadly sins, and pride if the fountainhead of those sins. When we are filled with pride, thinking ourselves to be God and thinking everyone else should orbit around us, we introduce disorder into the universe, singing the same song as Satan himself.

So where does that put us in the universe with a God who sings a different tune and who has promised to bring a resolution to this composition? Where does tooting our own horns put us with a God who is just and has promised to wipe away every tear, all pain, and all sorrow and reintroduce harmony? Pride introduces enmity with God. It puts us exactly opposite him, and that's exactly where Nebuchadnezzar found himself.

If you're a Christian, you're probably confessing to yourself right now that you sing your own praises quite often. That confession is half the battle. But you also sing God's praises. When we come together corporately, we are trying to realign ourselves with reality by saying, "I'm not God; you are God." We sing about God being God to try to get that reality back into our hearts in the place of pride. We sit still and listen about God being God because we fight to believe the reality that God is the center of the universe and not us. We are constantly fighting this tension—this dissonance—in our lives. This is called worship—realigning ourselves with the reality that God is God.

# Diagnosing Pride

If you don't think you're wearing Satan's choir robes or tooting your own horn, here's a diagnostic test. We can call it, "You might be a stiffneck (an Old Testament name for someone who is full of pride) if....":

...while driving, you consider the speed you are driving to be the standard.

...your Facebook updates are mostly complaints and selfies.

...others accuse you of being too defensive, thin-skinned, or hypersensitive.

...you constantly worry about what others think of you.

...you have said, "I don't care what others think of me."

...you have trouble-making friends because there is something wrong with everyone else.

...you find it hard to admit weaknesses, can't stop thinking about your weaknesses, or can't think of any weaknesses.

...you won't ask for help during hard times or you use those hard times to make everyone feel sorry for you.

...you find it hard to confess your sins or like to confess your sins to "get close to people" and not to be necessarily healed of the sin.

...you find it hard to ask for advice, even in areas where you are constantly wrong.

...you feel that God owes you something.

...you try to punish yourself for your own mistakes.

...you use your children to prove that you are better than others.

...you think no one and nothing is good enough for your children.

...you ever prayed, "Thank you, God, that I'm not like those sinners."

...you ever prayed, "Thank you, God, that I'm not like those church people."

...you ever prayed, "Thank you, God, that I'm not like my parents."

...you can't let it go when people don't recognize your service and accomplishments.

...taking this test makes you feel pretty good about yourself.

...you've ever sinned.

...you think you've never sinned.

...you've answered one or more of these questions.

Pride leads to bragging, which introduces dissonance into your relationships and ultimately into the universe and pits you against a God who is the center of the universe and has promised to bring order to the world. How then does God deal with us? We are just as guilty as King Nebuchadnezzar. He was greater than we are, but we are all guilty of the same pride. In Daniel 4:31-33, God humbled Nebuchadnezzar:

"O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will." Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles' feathers, and his nails were like birds' claws.

Do you want to know how God deals with pride? If you make yourself to be God, he will cause you to be an animal. But if you humbly say, "I am just a man," he will cause you to be all a man was ever intended to be (Matthew 23:12). Nebuchadnezzar was high up on his ladder, and God lowered him. Learn humility from this. If you do not fall down in worship, God will cause you to fall down in wrath. It's just a matter of a time. If you take the gifts that he's given you and use them to write your own composition for other to sings your praises and not his, he will ultimately lower you and end your existence.

# Fighting Pride

I know there are a lot of preachers out there who preach only Jesus' love and compassion. Jesus most certainly is loving and compassionate, but we have to understand that God is also wrathful and just. According to C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, God is a good lion, to be sure, but he's also not a tame lion. He has a roar. Most of us understand that God has promised to bring justice into this world and have some feeling that we had better watch out. That's a good feeling. Would you hit the ground if someone fired a gun? Would you move out of the way of a fastball? Would you jump out of the way of a speeding bus?

I would, because they're bigger and stronger than me and would be painful. Jesus says, "Fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28). Will you be in harmony or disharmony with the one who will bring a resolution to the dissonance in his universe?

As a kid, I was afraid of God's wrath, but I didn't understand God's love. Fearing wrath will get you halfway. You also need what Nebuchadnezzar had—a vision of a tree. 2000 years ago, the actual king and center of the universe came to this world and was crucified on a cross. Nebuchadnezzar thought himself to be the tree; Jesus Christ came and was placed on a tree. His nails didn't grow out like an animal's, but he was nailed to the cross. His hair did become like matted feathers, not because he was like an animal, but because of the blood that had coagulated on his scalp. He was stripped naked, not because he was insane, but because the men crucifying him were insane with anger and wrath.

He was nailed upon the cross and humiliated this way not because he got on top of his palace and strutted his stuff and said, "I'm the king of the world!" He was actually taken to the highest point of the world by Satan and shown all the kingdoms of the world but declined the offer. The reason Jesus Christ, the actual king of the universe, came down and was crucified on a cross is because we are the ones strutting our stuff. We are the ones standing on top of our palaces of accomplishments and talents and well-behaved children, saying, "Look at me; look at what I have built!" He was treated like a beast because we have made ourselves to be God. To the degree that you don't just duck from wrath but also get the mercy of the cross of Christ in your heart, you will have victory over pride in your own life.
Chapter 2: Green with Envy

#  Cut Off the Blood Supply

Like special forces, they're the first on the shore. They HALO-jump in (High Altitude Military Parachuting). They fly belong the radar, underneath your defenses. They are already mingling like spies in your ranks. You're trying to do battle with sin, but the seven deadly sins are already there, performing all sorts of subterfuge and sabotage. They've located your weak points; they've targeted them and they are preparing the way for the entire evil army to land on your shores and kill you. This is why we are discussing the seven deadly sins. Because they are deadly. It's not exactly the seven deadly sins themselves that are so deadly; it's what comes after.

After pride comes arrogance. They may seem like the same thing, but I think they are not. In my opinion, hubris, which is not just pride, but excessive pride and self-confidence, is that final step right before sinners fall into the pit. After the basic sin of lust comes pornography, fornication, and adultery. After the sin of gluttony comes self-loathing and more gluttony. Coming in on the heels of greed is theft and embezzlement.

In those examples, you may begin to see that the seven deadly sins are the foundation of many other sins that we deal with in life. They are like tumors and we need to cut off their blood supply before they grow and kill us. If you can locate, expose, and battle the seven deadly sins—in other words, if you can cut off their blood supply, killing them before they kill you—you will do abundant good in your personal struggle against sin. In this chapter, we discuss how to go after envy before it grows into selfish ambition, hatred of others, malice, divisions, dissensions, rivalries, and church splits.

# Greener Grass

We can go just about anywhere in the Bible to find an example of envy. There's not a chapter in the Bible that is the "envy chapter." The ramification of envy is a theme throughout the entire Bible. But one of the best examples of envy in the life of a Christian is in Psalm 73:

Truly God is good to Israel,

to those who are pure in heart.

But as for me,

my feet had almost stumbled,

my steps had nearly slipped.

For I was envious of the arrogant

when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

For they have no pangs until death;

their bodies are fat and sleek.

They are not in trouble as others are;

they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.

Therefore pride is their necklace (verses 1-6a).

"Israel," or "those who are pure in heart," are Christians. The psalmist says, "God is good to Christians, but not to me personally." He says that his "feet had almost stumbled" and his "steps had nearly slipped," which is a metaphor for saying that he was struggling with doubt in his Christian life. The reason he was struggling is because he "was envious of the arrogant" when he "saw the prosperity of the wicked." That's a poetic way of saying he had a neighbor who was a jerk. He had a neighbor who beat his dog, performed abortions, and voted differently than him. He looked over at this wicked and arrogant neighbor who had bought a Lexus and had a bigger house, a prettier wife, a fatter bank account and said, "God, I thought you were good to Israel. What about me?"

The psalmists goes on to say that the wicked "have no pangs until death." In our day and age, if we have a pang, we go to the doctor and very often, they can fix it. But in those days, if you had a cavity, it could kill you; it could turn into an infection that would get down into the roots, abscess, and eventually lock up your entire face, causing massive headaches. They didn't have the technology to deal with those problems like we do today. So many people went to their graves because of a cavity. And the psalmist says, "Look at my evil neighbor. He doesn't have any pain in his life, all the way until the point of death, when he'll just quietly slip away. But as for me, my teeth are abscessed, I've got an infected gallbladder, and I've got broken bones."

He goes on to say, "Their bodies are fat and sleek." That doesn't sound like a compliment these days, but in those days, when there was drought and famine, to be a little husky meant that you were rich and successful enough to have plenty of food. The wicked people who this man is envious of are fat and sleek. They're polished. They have all the expensive oils. The psalmist is sun-scorched. His skin is dried up and cracked. He writes, "They are not troubled like others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace." They're prancing around like peacocks. And that makes him envious.

You may not be envious of other people on account of their "fat and sleek" bodies, but are you still green with envy? Do you envy others' body types, looks, abilities to make friends, positions, titles, prosperity, safety, and attractive wives or successful husbands? It may not be as easy for you to confess envy as it is to confess the sin of pride. "You got me. I am pretty talented. I do have good looks. It's not as easy as you think, being the blond-haired, blue-eyed bombshell. We all have our own crosses to bear, and maybe I do have a little bit of pride."

It's easy enough to confess pride, because you can confess pride in a proud way and get away with it. Around here, you can confess gluttony and everyone laughs. Even with lust, their are circles of friends that joke about it together. But when you confess envy, it means you're small. It means you're the loser in the competition. It means you're weasley and slimy. You want to be "number one" and you don't mind slithering up the back of that other person to get it. Envy is humiliating, so as we talk about it, you can be sure that it's hiding itself from you. As long as it hides in the grass, you can't get a bead on it. As long as it crouches down, you can't fight it accurately. So be looking for it as we talk about it in this chapter.

So, are you green with envy? How do you know what envy is? Do you feel like the runner-up beauty pageant contestant, who stands there and has a smile on her face, holding a consolation prize while the winner is adorning her brow with a tiara? Beauty pageant runner-ups have to smile and applaud as their opponent gets all the adoration, because to let even just a small bit of envy show is humiliating. But really what she's thinking inside is, "I know what I'd like to do with these flowers." Is your life characterized by that feeling? To make sure, we're going to define, identify, and try our best to defeat envy in our own lives.

# Defining Envy

The first thing to do when we want to define something in the Bible is to notice context. Context is, in fact, more important than looking up the word in a dictionary. If we look around the word envious in Psalm 73, we see that the psalmist is comparing himself to his neighbor and wants his life. He also doesn't think that his neighbor deserves it. Here we find the definition of envy through context. Envy is begrudging someone else's goods, gifts, and graces. God has given some people things such as the ability to make friends, a polished look, the ability to make money, and the ability to make the right decisions. And it makes you kind of irritated. This is envy.

TItus 3:3 lumps envy in with malice and hatred of other people. James 3:14 partners envy and selfish ambition. In this context, envy is something that is aimed at other people and is for your own benefit. When Martha Stewart, the envy of housewives, gardeners, and mothers everywhere, was dragged off in handcuffs, she "got what was coming to her," didn't she? The press drooled over her downfall, revealing something about one of the deepest sins in our nation, the sin of envy.

When a young man really likes a young woman, he might talk to his friends about her to ask them what they think. Maybe he just wants to make sure that he's made a wise decision. But maybe it's really because he's trying to gauge whether or not she will improve his status, making him the envy of his friends. I hope, however, that it goes without saying that when choosing a mate, you don't choose someone who's going to boost your status and make you the envy of all your friends but choose someone to love for the rest of your life. When wives are constantly looking sideways at other husbands, seeing their success, and comparing their husbands to them, they're killing their husbands with their envy. God is the one who sits on the throne and gives goods, gifts, and graces to men. It is not up to us which goods, gifts, and graces we or others have. Envy literally means to "look in" or "look upon." That's exactly what we do with envy; we don't look at ourselves or God, we look upon other people's situations and compare.

One of the ten commandments has to do with coveting. There is a slight difference between coveting and envying, but it's worthwhile to talk about, because they are not far from each other. First, what's the difference between a shotgun and a rifle? Rifles are long-range weapons. Shotguns are short-range weapons. Envy and covetousness are similar to shotguns and rifles. Covetousness is a long-range weapon. You covet through TV screens, magazine pages, and shop windows. You covet things that you know you're not necessarily ever going to get. In other words, they're not really a worthy comparison with you. For example, you may want to be like a certain celebrity—walk like them, talk like them, and dress like them—but you don't mind them having their fame. You don't mind celebrity athletes being able to do fancy technical moves and getting paid for them. They grew up in a different neighborhood, went to a different school, and maybe their parents paid for them to put them in Juilliard or Yale. It makes sense, but you do want what they have. That's called covetousness. It's a long-range sin; you covet at a distance.

But envy is a short-range sin. Envy is a small town sin, a sin between friends. You only envy people who make a good comparison with you—from the same town, with the same upbringing, from the same school, with similar talents and opportunities. You say, "I grew up with that person, and they don't deserve all that! There they are with all of that and here I am with nothing, and it's not fair." With envy, you not only want what they have, but you don't think they deserve it in the first place. You begrudge them having it. When they rejoice, you weep, and when they weep, you rejoice. Envy is a short-range killer, church-splitter, and communion killer.

# Diagnosing Envy

Now that we've defined envy, you may think you don't have a problem with it. But before you jump to that conclusion, I wonder if you would know if you had a brain tumor right now? Could you see it? How would you know that it was there? If you did have a brain tumor, you might only discover it when you started having really bad headaches. When those really bad headaches, which could also be a symptom of the fact that you didn't drink coffee that morning, are persistent, you go to the doctor. He examines the symptoms with a closer look and finds that brain tumor. You didn't know it was there, yet there it was. I just described envy to you, and envy, like a brain tumor, hides. You don't know it's there until you examine the symptoms. If you find that you have all of the symptoms of envy, you should entertain the notion that you are infected with envy.

## Sadness

When Evagrius, the desert monk, counted and codified the seven deadly sins, he actually called the sin of envy "sadness." Thomas Aquinas said that sadness is a symptom of envy. There is a direct correlation between the sideways glance and sadness. I think we have a perfect example of this in Numbers 11. The children of Israel had been freed from slavery in Egypt and they were in the desert region on their way to the promised land. They began to grumble and moan and eventually weep with sorrow. Numbers 11:4-6 says that "the people of Israel also wept again and said, 'Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.'"

Here they are in the desert, on the way to the promised land, and they couldn't stop thinking about all the wonderful food that they had back in Egypt. What was causing them to weep over and over again with sadness was not the fact that they were in a desert or the fact that God had manna tasted like coriander seed formed from the dew of the morning and could be made into bread (Numbers 11:7-8). It was not because God gave them water from a rock and gave them his presence 24 hours a day (Numbers 20:11, Exodus 13:21).

If you are in a desert with God and he's nourishing you with water from the rock and bread from heaven, you have all that is necessary to have the most joy-filled life. Their sadness was not on account of their situation or location; it was on account of the fact that they kept comparing their situation and location with all others. They compared their current situation with their past situation. Even today we might say, "Back in the glory days. Back when my husband cared. If I could only get over this one hurdle. The grass is greener on the other side."

Comparisonitis, constantly comparing your current situation with past and future situations, is a disease that will suck the joy out of your life. It caused the Israelites to be incapable of enjoying bread from heaven and water from a rock, which typified Christ, and the presence of God, which culminated in Jesus Christ. Your comparisonitis, your envy, is killing you and your joy. You're not going to be able to enjoy your own children, spouse, job, or situation because you can't stop being filled with envy for other situations.

Not only are the Israelites comparing their current situation with past situations, they are comparing their current location with their past location, Egypt. We do that as well. Everyone has their own promised land. If you're a "real" Christian, maybe it's Dallas. Or if you're me, it's Louiseville, with the seminary that has all the books I can read. Everyone has their personal holy city. If we could only get there. "If only my husband would get a better job or he would get promoted and we can get out of this dump." The joy is being sucked out of your life when you are constantly comparing your current house with other houses, your current spouse with other spouses, and your current location with other locations.

Contentment is the key to happiness, but envy brings about sadness. You who say, "No, Pastor, they are sad because they are in a desert." That makes sense. And they are even saying, "Our strength is dried up" (Numbers 11:6). Do they mean physical strength or spiritual strength? It's hard to tell because the original Hebrew word can be translated as both "strength" and "life." In this verse, I think they actually think that their physical strength is drying up, because sadness begins to affect us physically, doesn't it?

But aren't they out of touch with reality? When they were back in Egypt, weren't they crying out for God to rescue them? They were enslaved, yet now they think they had it better. They were being abused and exploited. Their children were being taken and murdered. But here they are longing for "the glory days." Their envy has made them delusional. Have you ever envied another person's spouse and told them? They probably laughed in response and said something like, "You don't know what you're talking about." The grass isn't greener on the other side. Envy creates a delusion in your mind. And here they are with another delusion, that they can barely take another step in this desert.

God says to them in Deuteronomy 8:4, "Your clothing did not wear out and your foot did not swell these forty years." It may sound strange, because the only kind of foot swelling that we know of is when women are pregnant. But if you were a pirate, and you didn't have enough fruits and vegetables, you'd eventually get scurvy and your feet would swell. Feet swelling is a sign of malnourishment. But God said to Israel, "I gave you manna, your clothes never wore out on you, and you were never malnourished. I always took care of you" (Deuteronomy 8:3-4).

It wasn't really their physical strength that was dried up. It was their spiritual strength, because envy causes us to not even be able to enjoy the very presence of God, from whom all life flows. Even in the garden of Eden, with God's full-blown presence and all the trees and plants with fruit to eat in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve found reason to be discontent with a little prodding from Satan. He enters and says, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" Eve replies, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die'" (Genesis 3:1-3). And Satan keeps prodding. "I bet it it is the best one. I bet it is the one tree that could cause you to be like God." So envy comes from the heart of Satan into the hearts of Adam and Eve, and suddenly they are unhappy with the garden of Eden. If envy could ruin the garden of Eden for you, don't think it couldn't ruin your current situation with sadness. Are you marked by this symptom?

## Separation

Envy originated in the heart of Satan, and He was separated from God because of it. Envy was also introduced into the hearts of Adam and Eve, and then they were separated from God, too. Cain killed Abel over envy, and then he was cast out of the garden of Eden. Sarah envied Hagar, driving Hagar to flee from her harsh mistress. Jacob and Esau took turns envying each other, which resulted in many years being separated from each other. Rachel and Leah, sisters, envied each other, too, fighting over who could bear the most children to Jacob. Then Joseph's brothers all envied him, leading them to sell him into slavery and separate him from his family for many years. The book of Genesis contains one story after another about envy tearing apart families.

If your life is characterized by a high friend turnover rate, in which you change friends like Burger King changes fry guys, are constantly sizing up your friends and knocking them down, you may be green with envy. In this case, envy is tearing apart your relationships. It is a sin that causes separation. In the book of Galatians, Paul lists the effects of the sin of envy as rivalry, dissension, and division (5:20). He is showing that envy starts in the heart and begins to pull friends apart from each other. It begins to breed competition and rivalry. And the friends begins to gossip, slander, create false narratives about each other (as opposed to giving the benefit of the doubt [1 Corinthians 13:7]), and marginalize each other. I believe the Australians call it the tall poppy syndrome. Any time there's a flower that's a little bit taller than the others, the others come together and knock it down. That's why envy drives a person to do. Perhaps envy is driving you to do that to your friends, and all of sudden there will be dissension, in which everyone is gossiping about each other. There's dissension in the ranks of your social clique, your church, your school, etc. Dissension eventually breaks down into full-blown division in which people are taking sides. This leads to rivalry as you begin to compete against each other. This is how churches split and friendships end. If you have a high friend turnover rate and there is constant separation in your life, you might be green with envy.

## Slavery

Solomon, the wisest man who ever walked on the planet other than Jesus and possibly pre-Fall Adam, said, "Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man's envy of his neighbor" (Ecclesiastes 4:4). The reason some people get up in the morning, work hard, and develop skills is because they envy their neighbors. Is that you? Do you work hard because you have someone you're competing with—because you have a rival? Is that why you're getting out of bed in the morning, because you're a slave to envy?

When the press interviewed the woman who started one of the largest maid services in the nation, they asked her what motivated her to establish this huge and successful business. And she said, "Well, all those days I was cleaning those rich people's houses, I began to think that they were a lot like me, and I wanted what they had." Her covetousness, envy, and discontent eventually led her to establish a business. Is that your motivation in life? Are you working as unto the Lord, or are you working out of envy, as a slave (Colossians 3:22-24)?

## Sloth

Envy not only causes slavery and workaholism; it also causes sloth. When people are filled with envy and they're always looking at another person, never looking at themselves or what God has given them, they will be prone to say things like, "What's the use? I do all this work and nothing ever works out. He might barely lift a finger and everything works for him. He has the Midas touch; everything he touches is successful." They just give up and sit on the couch, saying, "Why even try? What's the use?" Sadness, separation, slavery, and sloth are the headaches caused by the brain tumor of envy.

We had a diagnostic test for pride, and now here's one for envy. If any one of these is you, you probably have a problem with envy. You might be green with envy if...

...you are highly critical of others.

...you always discern the difference between a Tahoe and an Escalade.

...you constantly remind your wife that Channing Tatum is a bad actor.

....you are constantly rooting for the underdog.

...you give up easily and tend towards laziness.

...you resent others, not just for their stuff, but for their traits, their looks, their families, their positions, etc.

...you treat powerful, polished, talented, and/or rich people with contempt, always assuming the worst of them.

...you have negative feelings towards those people in groups who are cool, polished, or successful, very often believing the worst of them.

...you are prone to judging people immediately on their appearances.

...you feel threatened by people with similar giftings to you.

...you size people up all the time.

...it is difficult for you to enjoy the successes of others.

...you meditate on the fact that some have things that they don't deserve.

...you are constantly discontent.

Envy is killing us softly, quietly, and slowly. How do we fight it? For the two or three of us who can admit that we have an envy problem—to admit it is humiliating—I guarantee you there is a cure. There is an antidote. Here's how to fight it:

# Defeating Envy

## Follow the envy trail.

One way to fight it is to use it. "Pastor, are you saying I'm supposed to use my sin? I thought we're not supposed to have any sin?" Envy is probably always going to be with us this side of heaven. Hopefully hatred towards others, malice, selfish ambition, division, rivalry, and dissension—all those little grandbabies of envy—aren't going to be around all the time, but envy is probably something that's always going to be fighting you, like our archenemy—our besetting sin. So you use it. Paul tells us that "we are more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Romans 8:37). In ancient times, a conqueror was someone who destroyed a whole people. Back in those days, you didn't just defeat your enemies, however; you'd enslave your enemies after beating them. That's what it means to be more than a conqueror. When it comes to sin, Satan, trials, and suffering in our lives, we are not just conquerors. We don't just beat them; we use them. We exploit, oppress, and enslave them to our purposes.

We can beat envy up and make it our slave in the power of the Holy Spirit, by what Jesus Christ has accomplished for us. They say if you want to know where someone's heart is, you follow the money. If you want to know where your idols are—where the shrine of your heart is, what your false righteousness is, the thing that you are trusting other than Jesus, the thing that is the highest competition to God in your life—follow the envy trail.

I have a wife who loves to cook. There is no competition between us when it comes to cooking. Do you want to know why? Cooking is not my righteousness. But if my wife were a preacher, there would be some competition, because preaching is probably an idol of mine. I'll admit that. I have friends who are great chefs. I applaud them with absolute sincerity. I rejoice with them. Because cooking is not what makes me feel like a somebody. Whatever your righteousness is, whatever makes you feel like a somebody, or whatever you worship in competition with God is also what is hard to applaud others for. You might hesitantly applaud, or you might malign or make excuses about their success. You don't want to be in comparison with them. You want to make sure that you're not too close to them, because someone might look at you both side by side and see that they're better. If you follow the envy trail, you can find out where your idol is. Use that enemy in your heart.

## Count your blessings.

The Christian life is not merely a life of passivity, sitting on your couch and waiting for God to zap you with the holiness wand. It doesn't work that way. You have to be active. You have to train yourself up for godliness, taking part in the spiritual disciplines, studying to show yourself a worker who need not be ashamed, "work[ing] out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (1 Timothy 4:7, 2:15, Philippians 2:12-13). If you want to become more like Jesus, you have to actively pursue righteousness through reading your Bible, praying, and being faithful in covenant with your church in corporate worship, which includes singing, listening to God's word, taking the Lord's Supper, and witnessing baptism together. Graces comes to us through faith in remembering the gospel of Jesus Christ as a church. You can't skip church all the time and expect to become more like Jesus.

One of the spiritual disciplines by which we receive grace is the discipline of thanksgiving. Make a list, in your head or on paper, of the blessings you've received. Pull out the other list you've been making all your life of the things that God hasn't done. In fact, you probably don't even have to pull it out; it's always right there in your lap.Take that list and compare it to the list of blessings. The top of the blessings list may look something like this:

  * Water from the rock

  * Manna from heaven

  * Redemption from my past

  * Forgiveness of all the idolatries and sin I've ever committed

  * The hope of future glory in the promised land where I will eat milk and honey in the presence of God for all eternity

Don't you see how irrational it is to have a list of all the things that God hasn't done for you in light of the neverending list of all the things that God _has_ done for you? Add Ephesians 3:7-8 to your list of blessings. Paul says that the blessings that God gives us in our life are innumerable—boundless, endless, unsearchable. They go on for all infinity. Romans 8:32 says, "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" Add that to the list as well. If there is something that God is withholding from you right now, there's a good reason, isn't there?

Because he gave you his most precious possession, Jesus Christ, if he's withholding anything from you, there's a good reason. If he's causing you to be the guy behind the camera, there's a good reason. If he's causing you to be the guy in front of the camera, there's a good reason. If he's causing you to be childless, to have ten kids, to be single, to be married, etc., there's a good reason. He has concocted a plan for your life that will turn you into Jesus Christ. He knows exactly what you need. He promises to give you all things. Add one more verse, Romans 8:18, which says, "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

Now you have these two lists next to each other: a list of a few things in life that you wish you had versus a list of infinite blessings that you can't even imagine (Ephesians 3:20). You can't even imagine the blessings you have in store for you when you cross over the Jordan river and enter the land of milk and honey (Deuteronomy 27:3). Count up all the blessings you _can_ imagine, then let it dawn on you that you can't count that many, and then let it dawn on you that you can't even imagine all the blessings that God has in store for you. And then you put those two lists next to each other and realize that you shouldn't even be comparing them, that you have been out of touch with reality. Realizing this, you should no longer be envious.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is bad news and good news. The bad news is that nobody deserves anything. The good news is that Jesus Christ came down and gave us everything despite that. Matthew 27:18 says, "[Pilate] knew that it was out of envy that [the Pharisees] had delivered [Jesus] up." Jesus Christ was crucified because of envy—the envy of the people in the mob back then and the envy of us today.

Though our hearts were filled with envy towards Jesus Christ—we wanted the power that he had—he came down to earth to give us the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of power! He came down to earth to give us all the affirmation that we would need, through faith. We wanted the position that Jesus Christ had—to be sons of God—and he came down to earth to freely give us an inheritance and adopt us as children of God.

We didn't have to be envious of Jesus. We don't have to be envious of anyone. It was because of our envy that he was murdered. Yet he said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). The most important thing in defeating envy in our hearts is knowing that Jesus Christ did not begrudge us receiving the world when we didn't deserve it. Therefore we should not begrudge anyone getting the things that they don't deserve. When we get this, we become less green with envy and are made more like Christ.

Chapter 3: Sloth Isn't What You Think

# A Trademark of Fallen Humanity

So far we have covered pride and envy in our series on the "Seven Deadly Sins"; today we cover the sin of sloth. Our society really doesn't consider the seven deadly sins to be all that serious. The famous kid's cartoon _Spongebob Squarepants_ has characters that are representative of each one of the seven deadly sins. The characters in _The Goonies_ are also each representative of one of the seven deadly sins. Our society considers them to be utterly ubiquitous, to be even kind of funny. They deal with them in cartoons, saying, "That's just what it means to be human."

But Christians see the seven deadly sins not as a trademark of humanity but as a trademark of _fallen_ humanity. We see them as truly deadly, as the cause for all the brokenness in the world—the brokenness between friends, between families, between nations, and in churches. They are deadly to us physically, spiritually, and emotionally. If we can nip them in the bud, we can stop a lot of the damage that they do in our own lives and in the Church's life.

Pride leads to arrogance, conceit, and eventually a fall. But if we nip pride in the bud we can perhaps alleviate some of those other problems. Gluttony leads to self-hatred, which might manifest itself with more gluttony. They all lead to bigger, worse, and more external sins. But we don't want to wait till lust turns into adultery and pornography to deal with it. We want to see it in our hearts as it is and do warfare before it gets to that point. Today we cover the sin of sloth. We want to define it, diagnose it in our own hearts, and then prescribe weapons to fight it. Let's define it.

# Defining Sloth

There is not one particular chapter in the Bible that is the "sloth chapter." There are, however, several places in the Bible that talk about sloth. We are going to start with Romans 12:11. If I were to ask you right now what you think sloth is, I feel fairly certain that you would answer, "Laziness." But it's not laziness. John Piper preached a whole sermon because he didn't know the definition of the word "acedia," which means "sloth." Sloth is a sin that is incredibly hard to define and it's also so "American" that we miss it. It's the air we breathe, so prevalent that we don't notice it. We're like fish in a fishbowl trying to define what water is. How do you define darkness, for example? To define darkness, we would have to contrast it with light. If there was no light and all we knew was darkness, would we be able to define it? We wouldn't know that it even existed. Darkness is the absence of light.

## Defining it by what is missing

Let's try to define a donut. How do you define it? It's fried lard, I think. A circular suicide for the gluten-intolerant. We know what it is. But what is the hole in the middle of a donut? How do you define that space of nothingness? You can only define it in regards to the donut around it, because it's not a something, it's a nothing. And that's what sloth is: not a something, rather a nothing. If pride is misdirected love or worship—love and worship for the self that should be directed toward God—sloth is the absence of love in worship.

Martin Luther said that pride and sloth together are the root of all sins. Pride is the root of all sins of commission and sloth is the root of all sins of omission. It's the foundation of all "do-nothingness." If lust is misdirected passion towards that which doesn't belong to us, sloth is an absence of passion—apathy. The ESV translators decided to use the word "slothful" in Romans 12:11, which says, "Do not be _slothful_ in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord" (emphasis added). Paul doesn't want Christians to live a life characterized by an absence of zeal. Sloth is an absence of zeal, of passion. Another way of saying "zeal" is "fervent in spirit." And then flowing from zeal is service to the Lord. We need deep fervency in spirit to serve the Lord.

But there's something we need even deeper than zeal, which is the very heart of all sacrificial service and zeal for others and God. This is the fruit of the spirit that we call love. It's love for another that produces zeal in the heart and goes forth in sacrificial service. The book of Isaiah says that the zeal of the Lord would accomplish the gospel of Jesus Christ" (9:7). It was the love God had for us that produced the zeal to send his son to the world in sacrificial service.

Sloth is ultimately the absence of this love that drives passion, zeal, and service. It is the black hole of all sins that absorbs everything else into the self. Jesus describes it well in the parable of the talents. There are multiple servants who are given different bags of gold. One is given ten, one is given five, and one is given one. Their only "calling" in life is to invest the bags of gold, to turn a profit. Maybe take some risks and get out there. The master goes out of town and when he returns he expects to have a profit. All of the servants except one invest their bags of gold. The one buries his bag of gold in the ground, not investing what he has or fulfilling his calling. He is not zealous, he has no fervency, and he does not serve the master in any way. He simply sits on what he has. He maintains the status quo. He conserves but he doesn't progress. When the master returns, he calls this servant "wicked and slothful" (Matthew 25:14-30).

## Indifference

Sloth is the mother of inactivity. If sloth were a painting, it would be a painting of a big, comfortable armchair. There is a man sitting in the armchair next to the fire. That's what we call leisure, or rest, and we are called to rest as unto the Lord just as we are called to work as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23). But this man's life is characterized by sitting in a chair next to the fire. His wife is standing over him holding out a Bible and he is waving it away, because he doesn't have the zeal and fervency of spirit to maintain spiritual disciplines that he might grow in faith in the knowledge of the Lord.

If sloth were a child, it wouldn't be the child who shakes his fist at you, the child who curses at you, or the child who defiantly says, "No!" It would be the child who pretends not to hear you. It's the child who says they'll do it, but they casually and often forget to carry out their obedience. This forgetfulness is apathy toward following the will of the parents.

If sloth were a highway, it would be the "Exit Only" lane all the way to the right. If you stay in that lane, you're going to drift off. Sloth is not the type of sin in which you leave the path as you are lured away by other temptations; sloth is the type of sin that pulls you away from the Christian faith simply by tempting you to do nothing.

If sloth were a life verse (a verse that people pick for themselves that have special meaning for their lives), it would be the second half of Titus 2:14, which says, "Jesus gave himself for us." Sloth fails to read the rest of the verse, which says, "to purify for himself a people who are zealous for good works."

If sloth were apostasy, it would be deadly for sure, but it would kill you slowly and softly. A lot of people leave the faith due to a big blow-up; that's not how sloth operates. With sloth, you don't backslide; you _slouch_ toward apostasy. Slothful apostasy is one day after the next following the status quo, conserving your energy in a sleepy faith that is filled with apathy and a lack of concern; day by day your faith slowly ebbs away.

Your children notice it. And then it dawns on you that the only thing Christian about you is the title. You're a nominal Christian, a victim of sloth, slowly pulling away and drifting, refusing to change, to answer his call, and to push through the pain. If a mother is pregnant and the baby is about to be born, she must push through the pain. If she stays inactive, the baby dies a slow suffocation. But if she pushes through with fervency of spirit, the baby is born. Sloth causes the slow suffocation of our faith, not because you're doing anything evil, but because you're not doing anything.

## Sins of omission

Jesus came head to head with the government officials and declared himself king. The crowds worshipped him, whether they knew who they were following or not, and the leaders did not like this. They envied him this power and so planned to kill him. On the day Jesus was delivered up to Pilate for judgment, the crowds were shouting, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" And Pilate, according to Matthew 25, knew that the crowds wanted to crucify Jesus out of envy. They were jealous of his power, his popularity, and his position. But Pilate was not envious nor had he any beef with Jesus at all. He knew Jesus' innocence. Yet he gave him up to the crowd to be crucified (Matthew 27:15-26, Mark 15:1-15, Luke 23:13-25, John 18:28-40). From this account, it seems that Pilate not only gave way to fear of man but also to apathy. He washed his hands of the situation. Someone who has zeal about a cause does not give it up so easily.

Sloth is the mother sin of all sins of omission. He should have stood up for justice as a government official, but he stood by and watched as they crucified Jesus. And our own sins are responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ—not only our envy, but also our sloth. It is not only those who are actively against Jesus who are against Jesus; it is also those who pretend not to hear him. It is those who say they're going to follow him but never fulfill their calling. And that's why Jesus said, "Whoever is not with me is against me" (Matthew 12:30).

You can either be at the top of the mountain or the bottom of the mountain. He will not allow you to hold the middle ground of sloth. You either crown him or kill him. And when you crown him, that means you bow to him, worship him, trust him, love him, and submit every single aspect of your life to his power. Or you kill him. The middle ground of sloth is simply a more American, churchy version of rebellion against God.

# Diagnosing Sloth

Because sloth is that serious, we need to see if we can identify it in our own lives. If you don't see sloth in your life, wisdom is at least suspecting that it might be there. Let's look at a few symptoms.

## Sluggardliness

The first symptom of sloth is sluggardliness. Another word for it might be "laziness," but usually when we talk about laziness we think of inactivity. That's not what laziness or sluggardliness is in the Bible. However, we don't have a predisposed definition for sluggardliness like we do laziness, and Proverbs is a good place to define it. See if you can spot this symptom in your life looking at Proverbs 6:6-11, a meditation written by the wise king Solomon:

Go to the ant, O sluggard;

consider her ways, and be wise.

Without having any chief,

officer, or ruler,

she prepares her bread in summer

and gathers her food in harvest.

How long will you lie there, O sluggard?

When will you arise from your sleep?

A little sleep, a little slumber,

a little folding of the hands to rest,

and poverty will come upon you like a robber,

and want like an armed man.

According to Proverbs, when it's time to work, the sluggard is not working. When he has time to prepare for the future, he's not working. When he doesn't have a boss or someone to tell him what to do, he's not working. Solomon and I do not mean that the sluggard isn't doing _anything_. He's just not bringing in a harvest. Sluggardliness does not mean inactivity. It means all sorts of activities—hobbies, games, television, video games, socializing, etc.—but the one thing that the sluggard is called to do, he won't do. When you confront the sluggard, she may say she's "so busy," but the one thing she's called to do is to bring in the harvest, and there's no harvest to be seen.

To apply this to our lives, we'll follow Solomon's admonition to "go to the ant." That simply means to think about ants and meditate on their ways. It may sound silly, but Christians are not only to meditate on scripture, but also on the revelations that God gives us in nature. Every ant has a particular function. There are ants in the Amazon that make life rafts in the water, with the queen sitting on top. There are all these little ants that are specially designed to care for the egg, and there are all these little ants that are specially designed to stand in the water and "take one for the team." They hope to float off and find land at some point, and when they find land, they carry the queen onto the ground.

Every ant has its gifts, talents, and skills to use for the good of the colony. Of course, you are much more than an ant, but you also have gifts, talents, and skills to be used for the good of the community. You have areas of your life where you have been able to bring in a harvest. Not everyone is a shovel, not everyone is a rake, not everyone a combine tractor, not everyone a fertilizer, and not everyone an irrigation specialist. But everyone has to be engaged in bringing in a harvest.

If you've been working a shovel for years and you've come up with nothing, you probably need to get a different job. You're not going to be happy if you're not in your calling. I understand that you need money to support your family. To that, I say, obediently do your best to be where you need to be and trust God to provide. In other words, do what you can do to bring in a harvest and quit all activity that doesn't bring in a harvest.

Another manifestation of sluggardliness is procrastination. Maybe the sluggard _wants_ to bring in a harvest, but he's putting it off. He's "waiting for a better time." Procrastination is rampant in our culture and we may not treat it too seriously. But when we take the word "procrastination" and put it in the context of sloth, shouldn't we be a little more suspicious of it? It might just be a refusal to do what God has called us to do. We're just putting off that one thing that we're actually supposed to be doing, and we're covering that guilt with other activities. For example, college students are no strangers to procrastination. Why do you think that is? As a college student, you are currently called to study and make it through school. Do you keep yourself busy so you can avoid it? Do you constantly find yourself spread too thin?

## "Big-talking"

Another symptom of sloth is big-talking. The book of Proverbs depicts a character called "the fool." The fool runs his mouth all the time. There is some overlap between the fool and the sluggard. The sluggard is a big-talker, too. Proverbs 26:13 says, "The sluggard says, 'There is a lion in the streets.'" The sluggard is a big excuse-maker. In this particular situation, he's laying in his bed and turning like a door on its hinges. He won't get out to work and fulfill his calling because there are so many obstacles that he has dreamed up. It's not just in the bed where the sluggard turns like a door on its hinges; it's in life in general that he turns to this and that and makes up excuses to not do what he's supposed to do.

He's not only a big-talker in excuse-making, but according to Proverbs 26:16, "The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly." Why is there a connection between ignorance and sluggardliness? Because a sluggard won't take the time to partake of the spiritual disciplines and train himself in godliness. As time goes on, she's not only a big-time excuse-maker with all sorts of fruitless activity filling her days, but she is also ignorant. It's okay to be ignorant. Everyone of us is ignorant of certain things. What's not okay is wilful ignorance mixed with arrogance. There's nothing worse.

## Fruitlessness

Proverbs 10:4 says, "A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich." There is a scale in the Bible, especially in the book of Proverbs, between "slackness" and "diligence." The scale we usually think about is between laziness and workaholism, but the biblical scale of slackness and diligence is not the same. The scale of laziness and workaholism shows that there are people who do nothing and there are people who are working too much. On the scale of slackness and diligence, however, people who weigh on the slackness end are not necessarily doing nothing. And on the scale of laziness and workaholism, people who weigh on the workaholism are not necessarily being fruitful in diligence. In actuality, working too little and working too much can both be symptoms of the sin of sloth.

The word "slackness" is used to describe a bow string that has _slack_ in it. Can a bow string with slack be fired? Yes. And the slothful person fires away, but they never hit the target. They work foolishly and frantically; they might even be a workaholic. But the one thing they're not is diligent, which is working wisely. Sloth sometimes does produce inactivity and laziness, but it also produces someone who fires shots anywhere but never hits the bullseye. The slothful person is not found working at their calling. They're being pulled apart by all sorts of sin and temptation. A diligent person identifies the bullseye and determines to hit it, and so they shoot there every time. A diligent person determines to do their work to bring in the harvest. Day after day they bring in this harvest, thereby producing fruit.

Fruitlessness is a symptom of sloth. If you are in a job and not producing any fruit, then you're probably not in your calling. If that's the case, find another job or figure out a way to work that out. Are there jobs that are inherently evil out there and you shouldn't work? Yes. Don't be a crack dealer. But there are some jobs that have more potential for fruit and diligence than others. In America, God has given us the freedom to find another job, for the most part.

## Selfishness

Proverbs 10:5 says, "he who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame" (emphasis added). In this agricultural world, everyone in the village had a part to play in bringing in the harvest. There were very strict social codes to ensure that everyone was doing their part. In those societies, a family gained great status by having a lot of boys to bring in more harvest than anyone else. Notice in that proverb the word "shame." Guilt is when you violate a rule, but shame is when you break a heart. It's when you let somebody down. In the agricultural society, the son who didn't bring in a harvest, who refused to play his part, was a shame to his community.

Not only is a slothful person fruitless, they are also selfish, sinning against the community. As a Christian, you should find a job that benefits the community. If you don't have the ability to produce fruit in your current job, get another one. If you are in a job in which you are not able to serve the community—if you're not useful in any way—you're not going to happy or fulfilled. You're not going to reach all that God intends for humans to reach. You need to find a different spot. Most of the time, with a few tweaks, you can figure out how to produce more fruit in the job you currently have. Talking to other Christians in your field is beneficial; they can keep you in the loop of what is best for the community. That's what we need to do as a church. We have a whole community to help us figure out how can we can answer our callings in our careers. Some careers are more communal than others, but make sure as a Christian that you're doing something to serve the community.

## Restlessness

Do you get back from vacations only to think that you need a vacation from your vacation? Another mark of a life consumed by sloth is always frantically trying to get rest but never quite getting there. Sloth is probably ruining your ability to rest. If you're not producing fruit in all the activity that you do, you're not going to be able to rest. You will be able to sit and do nothing, but the spirit of restlessness will plague your life. The sabbath principle from the Bible says that we are supposed to work six days and rest on the seventh day, just as God did in creation (Genesis 1:1-2:3). But there will never be any rest on that seventh day if on the other six days of the week you are frantically shooting off arrows and hitting nothing or if you are sitting around doing nothing.

## A diagnostics test

For every one of the seven deadly sins so far I've given a diagnostic test. These are the pastoral "check engine" lights. When you have a new vehicle and the "check engine" light comes on, you pop the hood and take a look. It might be serious, or it might be no big deal. When you have an older vehicle and that engine light comes on, sometimes it's just a sensor problem. You've checked everything you could and the sensor is still on. You might have already checked under your hood and you know you're good to go. But if an engine light comes on as I read these diagnostic check points, just pop the hood and take a look just in case. These are not Bible verses, but they are what I think might be evidences of a life embroiled in sloth. So, you might be a sloth if...

...you no longer see a goal in life. You don't have a bullseye.

...you love to point the finger at workaholics because it makes you feel justified in your inactivity.

...your attempts at rest are frantic, complicated, expensive, and ultimately restless. →

...you have no time to meditate on the word of God and pray.

...you are constantly sapped of energy and can never get around to work.

...you very often leave your projects unfinished because you just don't care about them anymore.→

...you find yourself fantasizing about running off to other, "more fulfilling" places, but wherever you go you take sloth with you.

...you have given up on life and are just going through the motions.

...in school and in church you are shifty and restless; your mind is vacant, distracted, and sleepy.

...you often forget to fulfill your responsibilities and promises.

...you are forever busy but barely fruitful and get very offended if someone challenges you on it.

...you are constantly reminded of things you should be doing but never get around to doing them.

...you fail to grow and profit from Bible teaching.

...you casually attend church, admitting laziness nonchalantly.

...you casually study your Bible, pray, and shepherd your children because you're "just so busy."

Would you admit it if you recognized any of these in your own heart? It's okay and even good if you did admit it. That's what Christians do. We do it because we don't have to be afraid of judgment, because Jesus loved us before we were even born and he loves us in spite of our performance. He loves us because he loves us and our admitting sin does not take away from that one iota. After we openly admit we have sloth, we turn to Jesus for help fighting it.

# Fighting Sloth

The first step in fighting sin is very often getting your beliefs and theology right. Theology means "the study of God." If you open your Bible and commit to studying God, one thing that you will discover is that God works. Jesus said in John 5:17 that he and God are always at work, and we also know from the book of Genesis that God works. Before mankind was created, God was a gardener. He was the first gardener and the first person to toil in the dirt, bringing life to the formless and void earth (Genesis 1:2). In other words, God is blue collar. His very character gives dignity to all professions—other than certain inherently immoral ones. We need this theology of work. You don't have to be a preacher to serve the Lord. We have enough poor preachers. We don't need anymore. What we need is for you to work at your calling in the community, producing fruit and bringing in a harvest.

God was a gardener before he was a preacher. Other religions, including the American religion of our society, don't believe this. These religions believe that work is part of the curse. The origin myth of Pandora's box, for example, says that when it is opened, it unleashes bad things like decay, disease, and death, but also work. In the Enûma Eliš, which is another origins myth from Mesopotamia, the gods create the earth but they realize it needs a lot of work, so they then create mankind to be their slaves, to do all the menial work so they can rest and be the aristocrats. Not our God. Our God worked before we were ever born.

Not only do we need theology of work, you need anthropology of work. Anthropology is the study of man. If you open the Bible and commit to studying mankind, another thing you will discover is that God made man in his own image (Genesis 1:26-27). God works; therefore, man works. Sloth has a particular way of attacking your God-imaging work. It takes the fruitfulness, community, joy, love, and passion out of your work. By killing your work, sloth kills you, because you are human and you were made to work. Work is to your living as lungs are to your breathing. Work is a part of who you are in your very essence. When we go to heaven, we will work. Sloth is hitting us right where it hurts. And why is it so easy for sloth to take advantage of us in this world?

We will discover the answer to that with hamartiology, the study of sin. Sin comes into this world, and the ground is cursed (Genesis 3:17). It is so easy for sloth to take over our work because it is being choked by thorns and thistles (Genesis 3:18). Because of the fall and the curse, it's laborious, sometimes very slow-going and very stressful. Sloth comes in lures us away from this laborious work with temptations of "better" occupations.

To understand and fight sloth, we also need christology, the study of Christ. Jesus Christ came into this world, and the thorns that came into our careers and callings were placed on Jesus Christ's head. Galatians teaches that he became a curse for us by bearing the curse of our sin (Galatians 3:13). The gospel of Jesus Christ means that you can have victory over sloth, that you can be fruitful and answer your calling to work. Your labor is not in vain on account of what Jesus accomplished for us on calvary. Do you have zeal for this truth, or is sloth sucking your joy out of the very gospel that I am preaching at the moment?

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:58, "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." "Immovable" means, in some sense, "Don't change lanes." Don't drift off or be pulled off the path by the temptations of sloth. To always abound in the work of the Lord, however, in some sense, means to change lanes. Don't be sucked into the inactivity caused by sloth. Stay strong and unmovable, but also move forward.

There may have been a time when you were younger and you wanted to "do something great" for the Lord, but now you may feel it's too late. But the cross of Christ says it's not too late. According to the old hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," his love is so amazing and so divine that it demands our lives, our souls, and our "all." 2 Corinthians 5:14 says, "Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died" (NIV).
Chapter 4: The Gospel of Greed

# Defining Greed

In this chapter we continue discussing the seven deadly sins, or in our case, the seven _daily_ sins. We're now talking about the deadly sin of greed. Just like with the others, we're going to define greed as it is shown in the Bible, diagnose it by looking for symptoms in our lives, and then look at ways to fight it, not with legalism, guilt, or fear, but with the Gospel.

## The heart of the matter

We see greed in Luke 12. An important thing to remember when looking in the Bible to define something is that the Bible is not a dictionary. We don't look up greed as a listing. We have to look at stories and context. In Luke 12, a man comes to Jesus with a problem; his greedy older brother won't share his inheritance with him. The young man says, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me" (Luke 12:13). And Jesus, like a good teacher, preacher, pastor, and lover of souls, does not get wrapped up in the details of this man's legal struggles. He goes straight for the heart of the matter. He knows that what is killing the man is not a lack of inheritance; what is killing the man is greed, or covetousness.

## The ravens and the lilies

In response to his query, Jesus says, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions" (Luke 12:15). Then he gives us two categories we can use to recognize greed. "Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on" (Luke 12:22). These categories are 1) anxiety for security and vitality and 2) anxiety for what you will wear. Jesus gives two real-life examples to represent these categories: the ravens and the lilies. Of the ravens, Jesus says, "Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them" (Luke 12:24). Ravens aren't anxious about their life or what they will eat. They don't have 401ks and roth IRAs. God keeps them alive as long as he wants to keep them alive. He sustains them and keeps them safe and secure.

And of the lilies, Jesus says, "Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these" (Luke 12:27). The lilies are not nearly as image-conscious as we are, yet God gives them clothes and makes them as beautiful as he sees fit. We are called in this chapter of Luke to be like the ravens and lilies, but the greedy man whining about his greedy brother is directly in contrast.

## Greed as a preacher

This is where we find the definition of greed. It's a human thing; it's not an animal or plant thing. It's a heart disposition of anxiety and fear that comes when we don't feel safe or pretty enough. We look to money to secure that which only God can provide, serving it as a god itself in exchange for the promise of security. The man who has a problem with his greedy older brother is poor, demonstrating that greed is not just a rich person thing. Jesus said that you can't serve both God and money because he knew that there would be temptations to serve money as a god (Luke 16:13).

If money is a god, then there must be a gospel of money as well. It would be more accurately called the gospel of greed. Every god has a message of salvation. If the message of salvation that God gives us is Jesus Christ, then the message of salvation that money preaches is greed and covetousness. In Luke 12, Jesus tells us to watch out for greed because greed is a liar that says abundant, victorious, safe, beautiful, glorious life consists in all the stuff that you surround yourself with. That's the gospel of money and greed.

If money is a god and it has a gospel, how should we compare its gospel to our gospel? Our gospel says that if you have God you have life. If you live in paradise, in the presence of God, you will flourish and reach your full potential. None of us will have life at its fullest potential until we are ultimately and finally in the presence of God. In other words, having God is life and not having God is not life. This is exactly what the gospel of money preaches: if you have money, you have life, and if you don't have money, you don't have life. In biblical times, they didn't keep large sums of money in banks; rather, they measured wealth by how many goods someone had. Translated in this way, if you have an abundance of possessions, you have life, and if you don't have an abundance of possessions, you don't have life.

## Getting god

If money is a god and that god has a gospel, there must be a way of bridging the gap. God is here, you are there, and if you have God, you have life—but how _do_ you get God? The Bible says we get God "by grace...through faith...not a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9) We get God not because we worked for him but because God came down to earth and performed all that was necessary to bridge the gap between himself and man. But the gospel of money claims that money is life, and in order to bridge the gap—to earn your salvation, to get in the presence of this god—you have to work. Here we can see that the religion of money joins ranks with every other religion on the planet as works salvation.

How's that working for you? You work, get your money, take it to the temple—if you're a raven, your temple is the bank, and if you're a lily, your temple is the mall—and participate in the sacraments of that temple. Is the grace flowing? Or does your god, every time you serve him, _not_ deliver on his promises, but say, "Go back and work a little bit more. Maybe next time." Isn't that what he does to you? That's why Jesus says to watch out for greed. Greed's a liar. Life doesn't consist in the abundance of possessions, and Jesus has to say that because we're all believing the lie that it does.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with money, banks, or malls. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with reaping from a "good hard day's work." There's also nothing intrinsically wrong with saving up a little money for your children, being wise, finding good deals, window shopping, etc. The problem is when you are doing those good things out of a heart that believes a false gospel. There's nothing wrong with spending money, saving, working hard, and shopping, unless you believe the gospel of greed, which says that life consists in an abundance of possessions. And if you _are_ pursuing money and "stuff" out of a heart that believes the gospel of greed, it's worship of a false god.

# Diagnosing Greed

Your first reflex might be to deny that you're worshipping a false god. However, I believe each and every one of us believes the gospel of greed to some degree. We are going to look at the symptoms of greed and see if we can't find it in our own lives. Luke 12 is a chapter from the Bible from which we can observe symptoms of greed. Let's start with perhaps the most common one, and therefore easiest to talk about: anxiety. I know that every one of us has anxiety about money from time to time. Let's consider the lilies and the ravens for a moment as Jesus instructs.

## Craving an image

Let us first consider the lilies. They don't work or make their own clothing. They don't follow the latest fashion trends. They don't shop at the latest trendy stores. Yet they're beautiful, because God adorns them beautifully. Their beautiful image is given to them by God; they don't work for it in any way. Are you trying to purchase your image with money? That is a symptom of greed. The lily type of person tries to do this. Are you a Tommy Hilfiger or Foogoo kind of person? Are you Mac or PC? Are you Ford or Chevy? When you buy these things, are you buying a wardrobe, computer, or truck or are you buying an identity? Jesus says not to worry about that stuff. Let Jesus be your image. He'll make you more beautiful than Solomon ever dreamed.

Maybe you don't shop at all those fancy stores, trying to buy your image. Instead you shop at Goodwill. You proudly and only buy second-hand clothing and drive second-hand cars. But Jesus didn't say to watch out for a lot of money; he said to watch out for greed. There are a lot of people who intentionally shop second-hand because they too are trying to purchase their image. But again, let Jesus be your image.

Why do you think that Kindle all of a sudden decided to promote their merchandise through supporting homosexual marriage? Why does Geiko use a Gecko? Why does E Insurance use anime? Why does Wheaties use Michael Jordan? Why do all of these particular products have these commercials that have nothing to do with the product? Because they know that young people especially are not just buying products; they're buying an identity and an image. They're buying things in order to be a part of something bigger than themselves. They're buying things because they want a sense of longing and a sense of permanence. These products are using your deep-seated anxiety for beauty and glory to sell their merchandise. This is what prophesy is. Biblical prophets use the deep-seated anxiety for security and beauty to preach their message of true salvation. Advertisers are comparable to prophets in this way, yet they don't preach a message of true or lasting salvation.

## Craving security

Let's now consider the raven. Ravens don't stockpile or hoard. They don't have 401ks and Roth IRAs and pension plans. They don't worry about those things at all, but God takes care of them and keeps them safe and secure and keeps them for as many days as he wants to keep them. But some of you are attempting to purchase safety and security with money. Unlike the lily type of person, you don't go to the mall. In fact, you look down on people who go to the mall. Instead, you go to the bank and stockpile money. And the bigger the stockpile gets, the safer you feel. The bigger the stack of bills gets, the more you feel you can maintain control amidst all the volatility of life. But the raven of Luke 12 looks at you and says, "Life is way too volatile and insecure for you to be able to purchase your safety and security. Let God be your safety and security and stop worshipping at the altar of an anti-savior."

## Head held high

Another symptom of greed is manifested in looking down on others. Either you're a raven and you look down on lilies or you're a lily and look down on ravens. For example, the older ravens look at the young lilies and call them frivolous and wrapped up in the latest fashion. And the lilies look at the ravens and say, "Those old folks are so grumpy. They can never spend a dollar." Both are characteristics of someone who believes the gospel of greed. You probably fit in one or two of them or in some degree both.

## Holding riches loosely

Let's move on and meditate on this particular rich fool in Luke 12. There are so many things we can say about him. One is that he's a gloater. Riches do that to you. When you get rich, you get arrogant and start to think you're good at everything. It's a snare. The rich young fool not only had a gloating problem, but also inordinate lust and greed for comfort, luxury, and leisure. He conspicuously stockpiled things for himself. He is inordinately pursuing "the good life."

Deuteronomy 14 shows different kinds of tithes and Old Testament taxes in the government of Israel. For example, every year all of Israel would take ten percent of everything they owned. Unlike what we think of as tithing, they wouldn't just take ten percent of their profits; they would take ten percent of all their network and assets. They didn't have money in banks; they had money in furniture and lands and houses and grain, and so if they couldn't carry it, they would liquidate it. They would sell it and take the money to the tabernacle and have a party—a massive nationwide celebration. That's why the psalmist said it's good to go to the house of the Lord, because there was a massive feast. The whole nation was invited, and one-tenth of the nation's spoils was spent enjoying the presence of God and the gifts that he gave them.

## The spiritual discipline of moderation

The bearing this has on us today is that you don't have to be a dour, gloomy, all-black-wearing Christian. In fact, I'm not sure that's even Christian. Jesus said when you fast and make sacrifices to wash your face and don't let people see you fasting and sacrificing (Matthew 6:16-18). We're supposed to be Christians walking around with joy and happiness; we're supposed to let our lights shine, not walking around dour and gloomy. You're not supposed to be wearing black unless you're in mourning and we're not supposed to always be in mourning.

For me, it means that I don't have to feel guilty when I go on vacation, and you don't either. We can enjoy the gifts that God has given us. In fact, Paul says in his letters to Timothy that we should enjoy the good gifts of God, including food and marriage, and that to tell people to abstain from good and marriage is "doctrines of demons" (1 Timothy 4:1-4, NKJV). Turning down a gift from God in the name of "sacrifice" is not Christian. It is actually Platonic. Platonism is a philosophy that flows from the teachings of Plato, who said that the way to bridge the gap between God and man and to live life is to remove all desires and passions for things—to make sure that you don't surround yourself with _any_ possessions. Buddha also said that.

On the flip side of that is Freud and Nietzsche, the philosophers who currently dominate our society. Freud said that it's futile to repress those desires. You can't repress your need for stuff and your greedy passion, and if you can't beat greed, you might as well join greed. So live it up. "Eat, drink, for tomorrow we die"—Paul says that would be true if there weren't a resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:32). That's why you hear songs on the radio saying, "I'm going to get mine, so you better get yours." That is a worldly, Freudian lifestyle. It doesn't say "Enjoy the gifts of God." It says, "Greedily grab everything you can reach. Get yours." And that's the American mindset. Buddha and Plato lost a long time ago.

Where does the Christian find themselves in all of this? It's right there in Deuteronomy 14. It's called the spiritual discipline of moderation. You take one-tenth of all your assets, you liquidate them, you bring them to the temple of the Lord, you enjoy God's good gifts, and you share with everyone. But that's only with one-tenth of your wealth. Americans have flipped that principle upside down and we spend nine-tenths on leisure and luxury and one-tenth, maybe, on others. The key to enjoying God's gifts rightly is enjoying them in moderation.

My children and I sometimes enter into a temple in Lafayette called Toys-R-Us. I'm aware that it is a temple for some people, and if I enter thinking that life consists in the abundance of possessions, I am a worshipper just like everyone else, hoping to purchase lily-style life for my children. I am fully aware that the people around me are worshipping and also that I am capable of the same thing. My children don't watch commercials, not because we're "holy" but because we only have Netflix. But I'm happy about that because they don't know what's for sale out there. They don't get to hear the prophets of the gospel of greed constantly preaching at them, "Life consists in the abundance of these toys." But it's still deep down there, because the line between good and evil goes directly through the middle of hearts, so when they enter Toys-R-Us, the heavenly horns are sounding and there is awe.

There are multiple problems with my children when we go in, and since I'm a preacher, my kids are always getting preached at. My son on one hand keeps saying, "Daddy, can I have this? How about this? Can I have this?" And I say, "If I get you this toy, are you going to be happy, or are you going to want another one later?" And he looks at me with a smirk and says, "I'll be happy with just this." But he knows that he won't be. But when he keeps asking, I have to remind him that I am allowing him one toy and enough is enough. Do we ever tell ourselves, "Enough is enough"?

On the other hand, my daughter looks at the glamorous toys, particularly big pink jeeps, and says, "Woah, Daddy, that's probably too expensive. We probably can't afford that." I could say, "Yeah, you're right, we can't." But the truth of the matter is, "We can afford it, but we're not going to get it." We don't have to grab everything that is within reach. It's the anxiety that you're not going to beautiful, a somebody, or safe that causes you to grab everything that you can possibly reach with the hopes that one of the things will finally save you and satiate that anxiety in your heart, but it never will. For the Christian, moderation is, "We can reach this far, but we only go this far."

## A diagnostics test

Now I'll list diagnostics for you. Some of these I got from other pastors and some of these I thought of as things I think are signs of someone with a greed problem. If you're exploring or new to Christianity, the good news is coming soon, so don't stop reading yet. But we have to accept the truth about ourselves before we can be healed. You might have a greed problem if...

...you're constantly struggling to climb out of debt because you purchased things you didn't need.

...when the new electronic gadget hits the shelf, you immediately buy it or immediately worry because you can't.

...money is burning a hole in your pocket.

...you spend more money on things you don't need than in service to others.

...you go shopping for things you don't need every week.

...you cheat on your taxes or do them with such a frivolous attitude that you probably are making some mistakes but you know your audit is so low that they won't check.

...you steal from your workplace.

...you're unable to go on vacation and rest or party, or you do those things too much.

...others would say that you have a greed problem if you showed them your spending habits.

...another Christian in your church that isn't your friend would say you had a greed problem if you showed them your spending habits.

...someone from another county would say you had a greed problem if you showed them your spending habits.

...you are never content with what you have but see things as half-empty instead of half-full.

...you are all hot and bothered about your private property.

...you are perpetually lonely (because greed puts you in competition with others).

...you hoard and stockpile on earth but have no treasure in heaven.

...you wolf down all your possessions, ravenous for more. (The word "greed" is an Anglo-Saxon word that means wolfing down your food.)

Do you see it in your life? We all have a money sickness. We all have a greed problem. If you see it in your life, it's a good step, but you also have to see it as an incredibly significant sickness that is killing you. That is probably something the Holy Spirit will have to drive home for you.

We all know that it was Judas who betrayed Jesus. For thousands of years, theologians have been trying to ascribe some deeper theological reason to Judas for betraying him. Maybe he was a zealot or a political rebel and wasn't happy that Jesus wasn't going to finally take out the Romans and he just wanted to be on the winning team. But the Bible actually tells us that Judas's motives were 30 pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15). What if it was one of us sitting at that table? I don't know if I should be happy or sad that Judas was there and not me. It could have been any one of the disciples. Greed is in all our hearts, but it is a significant problem in our society especially. Our society builds a monument to greed and dresses it up with Christmas lights. That monument is right in the middle of the road of faith. It is an obstacle on your way to heaven and in your relationship with Jesus Christ. It is coming between you and your master and if you don't beat it, it will beat you.

# Fighting Greed

As with the other deadly sins we've discussed so far, we fight greed with the gospel. Mark 10 tells the story of the rich, young ruler. In this story is the first key to beating the sin of greed. The rich, young ruler came to Jesus as a guy who had it all together, so "good" that he knew he wasn't perfect. He went to Jesus to find that one thing he was missing.

Jesus looked into the man's heart and knew the man's problem was greed. So Jesus said, "If you would enter life, keep the commandments" (Matthew 19:17). And the rich, young ruler replied that he'd been keeping the ten commandments since he was a boy. Then Jesus tested the rich, young ruler's keeping of the first commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3). He told him, "Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me" (Matthew 19:21). But he couldn't do it. It's not simply that he wouldn't do it. He was enslaved to greed. He loved his stuff more than God and was in violation of the first commandment, and _that_ was the roadblock on his way to heaven and to a relationship with God.

## The greediness of good guys

The disciples witnessed this exchange and saw Jesus send this "good guy" away. Most churches, I'm afraid, would say something along the lines of, "If there's one thing you're lacking, we're going to tell you what it is. Just do a little bit of this and God will give you the a-okay. Put a little money in the plate, say a little prayer, do a little song and dance, and everything will be okay." But Jesus sent this "good guy" packing because of a greed problem. The disciples were perplexed. If this guy couldn't go to heaven, who could (Mark 10:26)? Jesus, with a wink in his eye, I imagine, said, "With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God" (Mark 10:27).

## Realizing you can't

If you want to fight greed, the first thing you have to understand is that you can't. Without God's supernatural, miraculous power in your life, called the new birth, in which he has taken out the old heart and put in a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26), you can't fight greed and you can't even notice it. You must be born again, and that's not something you can do. Only God can, and you should pray for that.

## Watching out

Second thing is, if you've been born again, you are no longer under the bondage of sin and death. You can beat sin and there are some simple things you can do to help in the fight against greed. "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions" (Luke 12:15). What do you do when you're on guard duty? You peer closely into the darkness to detect intruders. You peer closely into your own heart and ask, "Who goes there? Is that greed? And if you're on guard duty in a good military unit, you're on guard with a partner. You give them the binoculars and let them peer into your heart. Let them see if greed is out there lurking in the bushes to kill you.

Young people share their internet histories. They have their accountability partners to make sure they're not being lustful. Why don't we share our spending habits and make sure we're not being greedy? We never do that. We don't have greed accountability partners, only lust, but greed is a bigger problem. Jesus says to watch out because greed is so sneaky. You know when you're committing adultery. It's not a secret. Everyone knows when you're fornicating and trying to move in with your boyfriend before you're married. We don't watch out for that; we _run_ from that (1 Corinthians 6:18). But with greed the command is "watch out."

## Get in touch with reality

One of the things involved with watching out is getting in touch with reality. When you watch a commercial, check: is that reality? When the sultry baritone voice of Allstate commercials says to elderly people who are worrying about life changes and health, "You're in good hands." Allstate might as well say, "We've got the whole world in our hands." They're literally trying to sell you security. When my car was totalled, I was not singing _Amazing Grace_ afterwards. I didn't feel like their covenant with me was unconditional. They're full of it. I don't have a particular problem with Allstate, but they do _not_ have the whole world in their hands, and you are _not_ "in good hands" with Allstate; they just know you're trying to buy your security so they're going to sell it.

Get some wisdom and get in touch with reality. Watch out for the false prophets and don't buy lies. If you go into a new car lot, don't believe the gospel of greed. First go to a junkyard and get a reality check. When you get this reality-check wisdom and see how the world actually works and that these things are not going to last, you're less likely to fall like a sucker and believe the gospel of greed.

For something conceptual to help with this, Luke 12:32 says, "Fear not, little flock." You're running around so anxious with raven-style and lily-style greed. "Little flock" is a term of endearment. It means Jesus loves you. "Consider the ravens....God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds" (Luke 12:24)! If God takes care of them, he is going to take care of you. "Consider the lilies....even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass...how much more will he clothe you" (Luke 12:27-28)?

## The Father's good pleasure

You have a bigger problem with greed than you can ever imagine but you are also more valuable to God than you can ever imagine. You are his little flock. If you know that, you don't have to purchase your safety or your image. He values you. How much? God so loved the world that he generously gave you his son (John 3:16). He loves you more than anything else in his creation and he will not withhold any good thing from you (Romans 8:32). If that gets from your head down to your heart, you will no longer have to run around like the pagans, trying to buy security and looking to money for that which God provides because you know he loves you and he's going to provide it.

The rest of Luke 12:32 says, "For it is your father's good pleasure" to give you everything. You don't earn it or work for it. You are rich in God if you just get this down in your heart! You're rich in God on account of what Jesus Christ has done for you in his perfect life, in his death, and in his resurrection (Ephesians 2:7). That, my friends, is the concept and truth that will set you free from the bondage of greed.
Chapter 5: The Mad Man

#  The Angriest Man in the Bible

In this chapter we continue a series on the seven deadly sins, which we call the seven daily sins because we wrestle with them daily. In this chapter we look at the sin of anger or wrath. Before we can define anger, identity anger in our own lives, and fight anger with the Gospel, we need to talk about one of the angriest men in the Bible, Esau. Esau's anger problems began when he was born. His birth was unique. He was a first-born twin (Genesis 25:24-25). In that culture being the first born meant that he was the one who would inherit the lion's share of the wealth and the family name. He was the one through whom the Messiah would come. But a message from God came to his parents, Isaac and Rebekah, and God said, "The older shall serve the younger" (Genesis 25:23). In other words, God had plans to turn their culturally preconceived notions upside down. He chose the younger son and blessed him before they were even born.

This created quite a dilemma, because Isaac wouldn't believe this promise of God. He doted on and favored Esau, which wasn't difficult because Esau was a man's man. He was the son every father wants. With a manly beard and a chest full of hair, he was a hunter. But he grew up indulged by his father and became impulsive and foolish. Jacob, on the other hand, grew up in the tents. The tents was where they wove baskets and baked cakes. Jacob was raised among the women and became a man who tried to get what he wanted through manipulation and deception. He was favored by his mother (Genesis 25:27-28).

This family division came to a head when Isaac got old and it became time for him to pass down the family name and inheritance. Instead of believing the promise of God and walking by faith and not by sight (no pun intended, as he was blind), he stubbornly still favored his firstborn. He called Esau to himself, preparing to bless him and give him the family name and inheritance (Genesis 27:1). However, Rebekah, the mother, overheard and hatched a plot with Jacob to deceive his father. He wore goat's hair on his arm, and his father was fooled. He took the blessing (Genesis 27:5-29).

Not long after, Esau came home from a hunting trip and he said, "My father, please sit up and eat some of my game, so that you may give me your blessing" (Genesis 27:31). Then Isaac realized what had happened and "trembled very violently" (Genesis 27:33). Esau also realized what had happened and cried out bitterly, "Is there any blessing left for me? (Genesis 27:34). This particular event would shape the rest of Esau's life. This wound, this offense, this moment in which Esau was cheated of everything he believed he deserved, would shape his life and he would go on to become a madman, a bitter man.

Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, "The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob. But the words of Esau her older son were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called Jacob her younger son and said to him, "Behold, your brother Esau _comforts_ himself about you by _planning_ to kill you. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise, flee to Laban my brother in Haran and stay with him a while, until your brother's _fury_ turns away—until your brother's _anger_ turns away from you." (Genesis 27:41-45)

# Defining Anger

When referring to the Bible for the definition of a word, we must remember that the Bible is not a dictionary and we don't necessarily get "dictionary" definitions of words from it. We must glean it from the context of stories. We want a practical and helpful word that we can apply to our own lives and to define anger from this story, but we must remember that this is not the first or last story of anger from the Bible. The first story of anger in the Bible is the story of Cain and Abel, which describes the first brother killing his own brother out of envy and bitterness, and the last story of anger in the Bible is of Jesus, his eyes like blazing fire, wearing a robe dipped in blood. "From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations" (Revelation 19:12:13, 15).

If Cain was angry and sinned, is Jesus also sinning in his anger as he drives out the Pharisees and the religious rich from the courts of the temple (Mark 11:15-17)? No, of course not. The problem with defining the deadly sin of anger is that anger itself is not a sin. Paul tells us, "Be angry and do not sin" (Ephesians 4:26). In fact, the Church should probably be a little more angry than it actually is.

## The Greeks vs the Christians

Here's where we're going to separate the philosophy of the world and the philosophy of Christianity. Christianity is not a religion in which we learn not to get our feathers ruffled. It is actually a religion in which we learn to get our feathers ruffled in the right place, the right time, and right manner. The Church is not a place for hushed tones and polite manners. The Church is a place of anger and processing that anger. It's a place for mad men. The church that is nonchalant with the sins of society and the injustices of this world and holds a university-like, academic indifference to the evil in our hearts will soon not be a church. Christianity is not a religion of moderation in _all_ things. Only in some things. In fact, the philosophy that says, "Never let them see you sweat," is not biblical. That is Greek philosophy, coming from Plato and the Stoics.

Christianity says, "Get involved. Get worked up. But get worked up in the right way." Anger is not inherently a sin but if pointed in the wrong direction can become sin. If Adam had gotten a little more angry, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. When a serpent is hitting on your wife, that is not the time for sloth. That is the time for passion and for anger. He should have done what Jesus did when the serpent started talking to his wife and stomped on his head.

## A bitter kind of anger

The ancient Christians, however, have been talking about the deadly sin of anger for over a thousand years, and they're not wrong. Because they aren't talking about all types of anger. When they speak of the deadly sin of anger, they speak about a particular type of anger. Is it wrath? Well, it could be, but God has wrath. They use the word _ira_ , but that doesn't do us any good because it's Latin.

So we need a word to describe the sin of Esau. What was it? And is it a sin in our own hearts? Hebrews 12 gives us the perfect word: bitterness (v. 15). Is there ever a point in time when bitterness can be thought of as good? Is there ever a point in time when Jesus was bitter? When we say someone's bitter, it's always bad. Taken from the story of Esau, bitterness is a heart disposition of internalized anger that is created when someone doesn't get what they think they deserve.

According to this, would you say you're a bitter person? Is a past offense keeping you from what you think you deserve and making you bitter? I'm not asking if you're a person who gets angry. I hope you are. If you're not a person who gets angry, you're in the clutches of the vice of sloth. I hope you are a person who gets angry at the injustices in the world and the sin in your heart. But are you a person that anger _gets_ or are you a person who uses anger as a motivator to fight poverty, sickness, and sin? Esau believed he was cheated out of what he deserved, and that turned him into a bitter, angry person.

# Diagnosing Anger

If you're not sure if there's a root of bitterness in your heart, let's now try to identify it. Hebrews 12:15 uses the illustration of a root to describe Esau's sin of bitterness. A root is beneath the surface. A root has the DNA and all the potential to burst forth into a forest, producing all sorts of fruits if given the right nurture. If bitterness is in your life, it's bubbling right beneath the surface. Like God said to Cain right before he murdered his brother, it is like a crouching tiger. Cain didn't notice it; it was his blind spot, and God said, "If you don't kill anger, anger will kill you" (Genesis 4:7). Cain didn't repent or listen to the voice of God, gave full vent to his wrath (Proverbs 29:11, NIV), and opened his door to anger and it got him by the jugular.

It began to enslave him and when the right opportunity came, he killed his brother. A root of bitterness sprung forth into a forest of fury. The secret is that it lies beneath the surface and usually only emerges in smoke-filled back rooms, in gossip sections of Bible studies. It's below the surface in a person's life, in a church, in a city, and in a nation. So we have to root it out by looking at the fruit of bitterness. We may not be able to see the root, but we can backtrack from the fruit to the root.

## Fruits of bitterness

The first noteworthy fruit of bitterness is rage or wrath. Wrath and rage are not always wrong but they can flow from bitterness. Rebekah knew this. She knew that her son Jacob had better hightail it out of there before his brother had the right opportunity for his bitterness to turn into rage and he killed him like Cain killed Abel. Police officers know this as well. Police officers aren't afraid of burglaries. Burglaries are not personal. What they are afraid of is domestic violence. Domestic violence is something that blows its top after years of bubbling below the surface. John Piper teaches that anger kills more marriages than lust, and I agree. Finally the bitterness builds up into domestic violence and crimes of passion. Those are the bloody, gruesome crime scenes you don't want to see. A particular police officer once said, "When I come upon a criminal who has done a great injustice, I have to force myself not to care. I have to say, 'It's just the job.' Because if I don't fight anger with sloth and develop some sort of coldnesss and indifference, I am likely to burst forth in anger myself and do some really bad things." For the record, sloth is not the right weapon to fight anger, but we'll get to that in a bit.

The second fruit of bitterness is a loss of self-control. In Genesis 27, Isaac prophesies that Esau will be a man who lives by the sword (v.40). He experienced a grievous offense, and it was a valid hurt, by all accounts. But this experience began to color all of his life. It turned him into a man of the sword. With one hand he would tightly grip all the things he thought he deserved and with the other he would hold a sword, so that if anyone ever threatened what he thought he deserved, he would kill. He became a man who would never be vulnerable again, never letting them see him sweat. He became cynical, paying the world back for the sins his brother committed against him. He became out of control, essentially.

An ancient Christian named St. John Cassian said that bitterness inside the heart gives birth to a demon. He doesn't mean a literal demon, with horns and a pitchfork. He means that it gives birth to a power: the power of anger, which begins to possess you. That bitterness that you've kept with you and nursed like a little baby inside of your bosom is getting bigger and bigger and its power is possessing you, taking control of your ears. Now everything you hear is interpreted through the grid of your bitterness. It takes control of your eyes so that everything you see is colored by that bitterness down inside. Your mind is brainwashed. You've lost self-control.

When we say someone has lost control, sometimes we mean that they are being controlled by rage. But there's a much more dangerous loss of control, and that's when your brain has been handcuffed by the bitterness inside your chest. Everything you see and hear, your interpretive grid on life, the way you view your circumstances, and the way you view God, is processed through a fog of anger; that's when you've lost control of your life. You freak out on people and you're always reading into everything, almost actively looking for offense. And if you look for offense in this broken world, you will find it.

The next fruit of bitterness to watch out for is delight. Genesis 27:42 says that Esau comforted himself. What does that mean? Is he patting himself on the back, like when you go to the shrink and they encourage you to hug yourself? Is he looking at himself in the mirror and pumping himself up? No, he's comforting himself with thoughts about harming Jacob (Genesis 27:41). He's meditating and strategizing and fantasizing about the day when he finally gets to kill his brother. That puts a smile on his face. He gets some kind of sick delight and comfort from contemplating his brother's demise.

Frederick Buechner writes, "Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun." Comparatively, envy's not fun, is it? It makes you feel small and sucks the joy out of your life. But Buechner continues that anger is "to lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you." When you dine on anger, all you do is destroy yourself. The worst destruction of all is the loss of control, the rage, and finally the vengeance. Esau wants to pay his brother back and he thinks that the only thing that will satisfy him is if he kills him.

In our culture, we have police officers, prisons, and federal penitentiaries, and none of us want to go there. So our desire to keep ourselves from that horrendous hell keeps us from going around murdering people. This is one of the things that restrains society. But back then they didn't have police officers and prisons, and they did go around murdering people, with "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" as their motto (Exodus 21:24). But we make people pay in other ways, don't we? We don't murder them. We roll our tongue and savor the morsels as we make them pay with jabs and criticisms and gossip and slander and little side looks and shutting them out and giving the cold shoulder. Husbands and wives, are you making each other pay, holding on and nursing those grudges? That bitterness will blow up your marriage, and eventually your family, your church, and even your city.

## A diagnostic test

Having covered the fruits of bitterness to help us identify the root of bitterness, here are a few diagnostics to further help us see them in our own hearts and lives. You might be a madman if...

...you are cynical. You've been hurt by people and you will pay the world back by never trusting them again.

...you nurse your grudges, letting them mature in your heart.

...you find yourself striking out at people in manners disproportionate to the offense.

...you find yourself meditating on all the things you've been cheated of.

...you get depressed when things don't go your way.

...you often blurt out things when riled up that you later regret saying.

...some people are afraid of your bad temper.

...you've gotten so angry at times that you've become physically violent, either hitting or throwing things.

...you still get angry when you think of the bad things people did to you in the past.

...you often find yourself having heated arguments with the people closest to you.

...you don't say anything at the time when someone says or does something that upsets you, but later you spend a lot of time thinking of the cutting replies you wish you would've said.

...people tell you you have a thin skin and short temper.

...your competitive side makes it hard to have fun and enjoy life.

...you are unable to discipline your children without venting your anger on them.

# Defeating Anger

## With truth

I've saved a lot of space in this chapter for the fight, because we definitely need to fight this one. It is rampant. Colossians 3:8 says to put away anger and wrath. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:7 (NIV), "Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?" Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13:7 that "love bears all things." Love doesn't have to pay back. Love endures for a long period of time. I hear Paul and I also hear Jesus when he says that if they ask for your shirt, give them your cloak also (Matthew 5:40). If they ask you to walk one mile, go ahead and walk two (Matthew 5:41). If they slap you in the face, turn the other cheek and say, "I'll have another, sir" (Matthew 5:39).

I hear Jesus saying these things, but frankly, I am lost at how to do them. We know that we are supposed to put away all anger and malice and vitriol. We know that we have a root of bitterness. We have pondered it long enough. Now we have to figure out how to beat it. The Bible prescribes truth and love as weapons in this fight.

Romans 12:19 says, "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God." When you have been cheated of something you believe you deserve—perhaps someone has stolen an opportunity from you or is standing in the way of all your hopes and dreams—don't avenge yourself. Leave it to the wrath of God, because God says, "Vengeance is mine. I will repay" (Hebrews 10:30, Romans 12:19).

This is the weapon of truth. Meditate on this, that God is sovereign and in control; that his eyes run to and fro the earth as he checks hearts rather than criminal records (2 Chronicles 16:9); that he is the all-seeing Spirit who knows our souls, who counts up and measures all the thoughts and words and deeds of mankind; that when he puts you on trial he doesn't need witnesses because he sees everything; and that he is the perfect and pure and holy judge who will bring all to an account (Revelation 6:10). When you know that on the day of the Lord he will right every wrong and when you know that the Messiah has come to preach justice and set the captives free, you can step back take your injustice or offense and give it to God (Isaiah 61:1-3). "The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God," but God's anger does (James 1:20). So we give it over to him. Plunge your hurt and offense into his hands and let him deal with them.

## With love

The problem is if we are supposed to wait for God to repay all those who have hurt us, is it not true that all those who we have hurt are also waiting for God to repay us? If we are waiting for God to right every wrong committed by our enemies, what about when he comes to right every wrong that we commit? If God is going to right every wrong, the whole world would once again erupt into a great flood. But he promised never to do that again (Genesis 8:21). Even then, how do we know the truth of God's sovereignty and still have any hope at all?

Romans 12:19 answers this in its first word: "Beloved." The book of Revelation says that God is coming back with a sword in his mouth to destroy the nations and all those who do not worship him will die (1:16, 11:18). He is just and holy and he is angry at sin. He's not a slothful, indifferent God; his feathers are ruffled in all the right ways. If you know that, you should be filled with joy that Paul calls you "Beloved." If God was angry at everyone, there's no way Paul could call anyone beloved. But he says that you are beloved because God sent his son into this world and he poured out his anger on him; his feathers got ruffled, and he aimed them all as sharp arrows at Jesus Christ on the cross of calvary (Isaiah 53:4-6, Romans 5:8-9). He made him pay. The Lord said vengeance is his to repay, and he poured it out on Jesus Christ (Deuteronomy 32:35). The sky went dark and the earth shook, and Jesus lifted up his said, saying, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:33-34) But there was no voice to answer. God doesn't and won't make you pay if you are in Christ. So don't make others pay. You are not obligated to. God has given you so much, so why not let yourself be cheated? Why not let it go?

When Esau finally reunited with his brother Jacob after many years, Jacob was afraid that he was finally going to vent all of his anger and murder him. But Esau said, "God's given me enough." Jacob said the same and they hugged and wept (Genesis 33). God's given you enough. You don't have to swipe. You don't have to hold the things you feel you deserve with an iron grasp in one hand and a sword in the other hand to threaten those who would take from you. You don't have to be an angry person characterized by bitterness.

## Counting on God to right the wrong

The next time you're filled with resentment because you are not getting what you deserve, remember this: You should be rejoicing that you don't get what you deserve. This is how the gospel beats bitterness. It does take a lifetime being filled with bitterness, fighting it with the gospel. But we press on because we know that Jesus paid it all.

There's one more passage that I want to dive into. It is most definitely the most offensive chapter in the entire Bible. You might say, "But Pastor, you don't know what they did to me. You don't know what God has taken from me." It is true that some of us have been hurt more than others. But I guarantee you that you haven't been hurt as bad as the guy in Psalm 137. In fact, if you could imagine the greatest hurt and injustice that anyone could ever do to you, this would top it. Would it be killing you? No. It would be killing your child. Humiliating them and tormenting them. It would be the worst evil that this world could ever produce.

Psalm 137:1 says, "By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and we wept." The Israelites had been invaded, destroyed, and carried off as slaves to Babylon. They sat down not by the waters of the Jordan river, where God promised they would live forever with eternal bliss, but in their land of exile, Babylon. Things weren't making sense at all, and there they sat down and wept as they remembered what had been seemingly taken from them. "On the willows there we hung up our lyres" (v.2). Their captors taunted them and demanded songs from them about their beloved nation (v.3), but they couldn't play music. They were angry and sad.

It's a terrible thing when a bully torments a little child in school, takes his lunch money, and beats him up. But what's worse is when he makes that little boy beg him in front of his friends. Then it becomes not just oppression but humiliation. A bully like that is playing with the fires of human rage. I heard a story once where a bully picked on all the kids in school and made them beg in front of their friends. But one day he picked on a kid who had a 230-pound, 6'4" older brother. That older brother made that bully go around and kiss the foot of every person in the entire lunchroom, humiliating him to the core. He never came back to school.

It's one thing to be beat up. It's another thing to be demanded to sing a song of joy in the midst of it. This is exactly what happened in Babylon. Babylon, the bully nation, came into Israel and slaughtered them and destroyed all they worked for in so many years, and then they brought them back to Babylon and began taunting them. Psalm 137:7 says, "Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, 'Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!'" The Edomites were the descendants of Esau and were shouting praise and cheering them on. Psalm 137:8-9 continues: "O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!"

I would wager that this is the most offensive verse in the entire Bible. Many years ago, around 586 b.c., Babylon, the bully nation, came into Israel and pillaged and plundered while the Edomites and all the nations around them cheered them on. They razed the city to the ground, flattened the temple, raped and stole everything they could, and they even grabbed babies from their mothers' arms and dashed their heads on the rocks. This historical event is recorded for us in the pages of the Bible in Psalm 137, and here we have the psalmist asking God to pay them back.

Was he following the advice of Paul and not seeking vengeance but rather turning it over to God, who says, "I will repay"? Yes. He knew that the Bible said there was going to be a day of the Lord when the Messiah would come and right every wrong. That's what he means when he asks God to remember them. Like the thief on the cross who said, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom" (Luke 23:42), the psalmist prays, "Remember them when you come into your kingdom."

This is radical because in those days, when one nation went against another, or one person against another, it began a cycle of violence going round and round for years and years. One nation would destroy another, bitterness would stew in the defeated nation for years, and finally it would rise up and destroy the other. The cycle of violence continues down to this very day, but here in this psalm we have the gospel of Jesus Christ interjected into a society and a Christian who says, "I'm not going to repay. I'm going to pray."

## The end of the cycle

If the world would listen to this and turn over to the truth of God's sovereignty and the love he displayed by directing his wrath away from us, the cycle of violence could end. The psalmist does not avenge himself; he turns it over to God. He processes his emotions and anger in prayer. Christians are not people who learn never to get their feathers ruffled; we learn to get our feathers ruffled in all the right ways. He takes the offense and goes to God with it. He's not like a Buddhist monk who comes out of prayer with his face glowing and his mood serene; he's like a madman who comes out of prayer with disheveled hair and red eyes. Madmen like this wrestle with God. Christians wrestle with God and process their anger in prayer, admitting that they have been hurt because they live in a broken world. And the cycle of violence ends.

But what about love for your enemies and turning the other cheek? As Christians knowing the sacrificial love of Jesus, should we pray for God to vent his wrath on others in vengeance? I would say no. Because we now know something that the psalmist doesn't know. When the day of the Lord came, Jesus Christ did not come to condemn and crush and repay. He came to be condemned, crushed, and repaid. It's as though the incarnate God looked down on all the world and all of the violence and said, "Enough is enough." But he didn't send a flood to wipe us all out. He sent his own son to be dashed against the rock of Golgotha, whose blood poured out not like a flood to wipe us out but like a river to wash all the violence away.

And Jesus said, "It is finished" (John 19:30). So we don't pray, "God, please repay them." We pray, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). In that way we become a society of truth and love. Imagine the individual who gets the gospel truth into their hearts. Imagine the church. Imagine the city that can get this truth.
Chapter 6: Gospel vs Gluttony

#  Defining and Defeating Gluttony

Every Christian struggles with one of the seven deadly sins on a daily basis; this is why we are calling this series "The Seven Deadly Sins." In this chapter we will talk about the sin of gluttony. There are two things that make gluttony a difficult topic to discuss: shame and gluttony. When it comes to lust, our society celebrates it. It makes for a great plot line in a romance movie or novel.

According to some economists and capitalists, greed is good; the rich buy a bunch of things and it trickles down to the poor. Pride is probably the ultimate virtue in our society. What is a teacher's job other than to make our children have good self-esteem, which is just a synonym for pride? There are supposedly some good types of pride, but the word should always be suspicious for a Christian.

But no one thinks gluttony is good. In fact, in our culture, gluttony is the unpardonable. Out of one side of its mouth, society says, "You deserve a break today." (Cue the kit-kat commercial.) But as soon as you agree and bite through that candy and indulge, they catch you with shame. They condone with platitudes like "Be yourself" and "Follow your heart." Our hearts tell us to eat real chocolate chip cookies, but they also say, "Don't you want to be thin?"

Our hearts are fickle. How can we follow our heart's desires if they are so opposing? Society uses this shame as a motivator to "lose weight" and "eat right." But that's not how Jesus handles people. Jesus does not deal with us according to our iniquities (Psalm 103:10). He does not market or manipulate the currency of shame to motivate. It is very difficult to talk about gluttony in light of the gospel because we are surrounded by a society that motivates with shame.

It's also very difficult because with all the other sins, like greed and lust, the Bible warns us that they are sneaky. But gluttony doesn't really hide. Gluttony is difficult because it is easy to define: looking to food for that which only God can provide. When the Bible says you can't serve both God and money (Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13), the Greek word for "money" there is _mammon_ , which can be used for money or food. In fact, in those times, rich men didn't always have all their wealth in gold coins; they had it in grain.

The difference between the rich man and Lazarus was that the rich man was feasting and Lazarus was out on the streets competing with the dogs for crumbs. The difference in Jesus's society between the rich and the poor was a lot of food and not enough food. Paul says in Philippians that the belly is oftentimes a god (Philippians 3:19). Jesus says life is more than the abundance of possessions; he also says life is more than food (Luke 12:15).

The definition is not hard to figure out and identifying it in our own lives is also not going to be very hard. The hard part when it comes to gluttony is fighting it. We may be discouraged when we are enslaved to it and it feels like we can't find the key to unlock the shackles of food in our lives. Shame and slavery make gluttony difficult to talk about. The presupposition we must have is that the gospel beats gluttony. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16); when Paul says that, he means that the gospel is the power of God unto sanctification and transformation, and that includes the sin of gluttony.

God wants to remove us from all of our vices and to transform us daily. The gospel can help us dominate our diets rather than letting our diets dominate us. But how? How does the gospel help us dominate diet and why isn't it working? The answer lies in how Jesus deals with shame, the story of the Rechabites in the Old Testament, and a Benjamite from the New Testament, Paul.

## Shame

C.S. Lewis said that it would be very easy for any nation or culture to pack a theater for a strip-tease. But what if we were to go to a country where they were able to pack theaters for food strip-teases? Where, instead of a gorgeous woman, there would be a bowl of gumbo or a juicy Baconator on the stage. What would that be like? The would open the lid on top of the box slowly and close it, again and again.

But C.S. Lewis in his day did not know about the internet. We would not have to travel far for that country; it's called the Republic of Pinterest. And it's not just Pinterest; it's food magazines and the food network. There you are on the edge of your seat, your eyes bulging, heart palpitating, mouth salivating. Wouldn't you think that a country with food strip-teases would be a problem?

This problem is present in America, especially Acadiana, where the number-one tourist attraction is food. Do we have any hope? Yes. Though our society says that we deserve a break today and food is great (and it is, God gave it to us), deep down inside each and every one of us is a little bit of shame when we indulge in that brownie.

Imagine yourself searching through Pinterest. If not Pinterest, perhaps the cooking magazines. In Latin America, tobacco, sugar, and coffee fills the fields. Where they could be growing vegetables and food, they're growing stuff for Americans to smoke, sweeten desserts, and drink. The amount of seafood that our pets eat is staggering. Imagine a malnourished little boy from Latin America standing in your living room and looking over your shoulder as you scroll through Pinterest or flip through that magazine. How would you feel? It's the same feeling you would have if your wife was sitting with you watching that strip tease. It's the same feeling you would have if Jesus were there. If you're honest with yourself, it would be shame. Shame is the currency of our culture.

So what do we do with it? We're not only looking to fill our bellies with food, but also our hearts. Doctors, shrinks, nutritionists, personal trainers, dieticians, and preachers all deal in shame. Our society uses shame to motivate people to not eat so much. (And how's that working?) They say things like, "Did you know that the amount of money we spend on dieting is greater than the gross domestic product of Ireland?"

But what does Jesus do? Jesus does not shame those that society shames. I'll prove it after giving details about the culture Jesus had to deal with. Today, thin is in and fat is out. In Jesus' time that wasn't the case. Thin was out and being overweight was in. It probably had something to do with the association of being thin with being poor. But what's also "in" today is adultery. This world is set up a particular way by the Designer and he says adultery kills and lust is deadly. But our society says different.

However, in Jesus' day, if you wanted to be shamed by society, you would get caught in adultery. How does Jesus deal with the shamed woman? The crowd comes to her, raising their stones in the air, trying to shame her further, but Jesus starts to write in the sand (John 8:3-8). What is he writing? We don't know. But we do know that when he was done, the passion to shame this woman dissipated. They dropped their stones one by one (John 8:9).

Many people assume that he was wriiting the sins of the crowd or doing something to say to these people they're no better than her. Right before he writes in the sand, he says, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7). Culture shames the glutton. But I want to write in the sand a bit so that we can all see we have no reason to be shaming others.

## The writing in the sand

What I'm going to write in the sand is the different types of gluttony. The obvious one is excessive eating—eating an inordinate amount of food. But did you know the ancient Christians said that gluttony is not just excessive eating, but also being obsessed with food? That manifests itself in many ways in our society. We have entire programs that are designed to take food and then attribute to it a mathematical equation so that people can look at the food not only on a menu or on a plate but on a spreadsheet. They can count and mull over every single calorie, fat particle, and morsel and spend their entire day mapping and plotting their meals down to the very last drop.

The ancients also taught us that there is "sumptuous" eating, and that is demanding that food be "just so"—rich food, having it the way you want. Another type of gluttony is called "daintily eating." We know that the big fat guy with the shirt that doesn't fit and with buffalo sauce on his face and swilling large amounts of beer is a glutton. But the ancients would say that the little priggish granny holding her teacup with her pinky out, who likes her tea sweet, "but not too sweet," who likes a little sugar, "but not too much sugar," is also guilty of gluttony. She is a terror to everyone who invites her to dinner. They set out the food and she protests and insists that it must be to her standards. That's just as much gluttony as the fat guy with the buffalo wings.

And there's another kind of gluttony called eating impulsively. One type says "your way," but this type also says "right away." Burger King knows what they're doing. They're manipulating two types of gluttony. I think of Star Trek and Captain Jean Luc Picard going up to the replicator saying, "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot." He's not a glutton, it's just tea, right? But the ancients say that gluttony appears as wanting food and wanting it immediately.

Whether you eat excessively, obsessively, sumptuously, daintily, or impulsively, we are all guilty of all in some ways. Because none of us are without sin, let's all drop our stones simultaneously. There is one who can cast a stone, who has no sin, and that's Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:21). But he doesn't condemn the woman caught in shame. He also doesn't condone the sin. Right after he says, "Neither do I condemn you," he says, "Go, and from now on sin no more" (John 8:11). Our culture condones then condemns—enables then shames. Jesus doesn't do either. Gluttony is a sin; go and sin no longer.

## Freedom from shame and gluttony

When Jesus, the creator of the universe, who loves you more than you can possibly imagine and knows your sin, comes to you and says "I don't condemn you," shame dissipates. The world may accuse you, but who can bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies, and if it's God who justifies, who can condemn (Romans 8:33)? Not even your own heart can condemn you (1 John 3:20). Not even society can condemn you. Not even the preacher who's gotten a little ahead of himself can condemn you. This means that the church should no longer use shame as a weapon. The gospel says that we're all in the same boat; we're all guilty (Romans 3:23). Jesus, the one who has been appointed judge over all mankind (John 5:20-30), says, "I don't bring shame to you. In fact, I bear your shame on the cross of calvary." Jesus' opinion of you matters way more than anyone else's. You have to let him remove the shame. Take the shame and plunge it into his grace.

But what about slavery to gluttony itself? This woman is caught in slavery to her lust just like we're caught in slavery to our gluttony. I believe when Jesus said to her "Go and sin no more," from that point on she had victory over her sin. She had been looking for love in all the wrong places. She had been sleeping around with lovers all over town. But when she met Jesus, she found the real love of her soul. She had been drinking from all these wells, but when she met Jesus, she finally drank from the well that fulfills. She had been eating from all these tables, trying to eat, eat, and eat to fill up her heart, but then Jesus came and he was the meal that fully satisfied, that filled her to the full.

I believe that when the gospel of Jesus Christ comes to you and you look Jesus in the eyes, the man who takes your shame instead of shaming you, that's when the shackles of gluttony open. It doesn't mean that you don't deal with it for the rest of your life. But it means diet can no longer dominate you because you have the power of the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ and the gospel within you. There are people in the Bible who prove it: The Rechabites and a Benjamite.

# The Rechabites

In Jeremiah 35, God told Jeremiah to bring the tribe of Rechabites to the temple and offer them wine (v. 1-2). When Jeremiah had them in the temple, he brought out the wine. (v. 4-5). But they declined on account of their father's instructions to not drink wine (v. 6). Here we have not people in the South during abolition times, but people of a culture that had no shame in drinking who were able to dominate their drinking habits.

Why and how did they do it? Is it that they had great will power? Did they do it for ego's sake? I heard a preacher once who proudly asserted that never in his entire life had one drop of alcohol touched his lips. But was it for ego's sake? I'm glad that he controlled his drinking habits, but I think he was doing it through the power of pride. That's not exactly what Jesus intends for us. He doesn't intend for us to exchange one idol for the next. Sure, you can beat the idol of gluttony with the goddess of thinness. You can beat gluttony because you want to be thin more than you want to eat that food.

But the Rechabites did not control their drinking out of ego or pride's sake. We aren't exactly sure why, but there is one hint. Historians tell us that they were a tribe of metallurgists. They would go from town to town and produce whatever the town needed. Their ancestor who first discovered how to work with metal made a rule: Don't ever drink wine. Why? Because when you're drunk on wine, you spill the secrets of the trade.

The point is that they were able to control their love of food and drink because they had a greater love. And that is the key to Christian self-control. The world says, on one hand, "Suppress" and the other "Express." In other words, the way to have self-control is to just say no. But others say, just be you. Just discover who you are and let your colors fly. But the Bible says that the key to self-control is rightly ordering your desires with reality. The most beautiful, attractive provider and provision in this universe is God. And he says to love others as yourself (Leviticus 19:18). The Rechabites went down the list of what they loved most and before they hit food they hit "Keeping the secrets of my family."

# A Benjamite's control

How did the apostle Paul control his diet? Was it through ego or through pretending that he didn't have desires? Paul was able to control his love for food with a greater love. In 1 Corinthians 6:12 he wrote, "All things are lawful." Don't you know food is good? In fact, Paul wrote to Timothy and said that people who make up rules about abstaining from food are teaching "doctrines of demons" (1 Timothy 4:1-3). Food is good; God provided it. But there are more categories than right and wrong when it comes to a Christian lifestyle. Even though all things are lawful, "not all things are helpful" and Paul said he would "not be dominated by anything."

Food is good, but Christians are not to be dominated by it. Was he really talking about food? Yes, because the very next thing he wrote is that food is meant for the stomach and the stomach is meant for food, and God will destroy both (1 Cor. 6:13). Food is temporal and if you look to temporal things for eternal benefits, you're going to lose (Matthew 6:2-5,16, James 5:1-6). Paul concluded his whole statement on controlling your food intake and not being dominated by food in 1 Corinthians 10:23 with this: "'All things are lawful,' but not all things are helpful. 'All things things are lawful,' but not all things build up." Paul was concerned with whether or not something was edifying to others; that's the third category for living a Christian lifestyle. There's doing right, staying away from wrong, and also doing what builds up others.

Paul was not going to be dominated by food but he was willing to be dominated by the desire to build up others. And what that means is submitting yourself to the law of love (James 2:12). Paul beat his love of food with the love of others. He loved other people because the love of Christ compelled him (2 Cor. 5:14). He loved because Christ first loved him (1 John 4:19). Look at Jesus, who was condemned in your place (Isaiah 53), and know that he loves you. With that love, you can go out and love other people. If he gave up his life for you, you can give up food for others.

Here's the application. 1 Corinthians 10:24-26 says, "Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For 'the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof.'" In other words, if someone invites you to their house and they put some meat on your table, eat it up. It's all good. But then Paul says in verses 27-29, "If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, 'This has been offered in sacrifice,' then do not eat for the sake of the one who informed and for the sake of conscience—I do not mean your conscience, but his." Paul both ate and abstained out of love for others. He is not being dominated by food but by a higher passion—other people. The way to control your diet and to stop loving food inordinately is to love others and God more.

# A love greater than food

How does this work for us? Paul's love for these people is so specific. He's not condoning their behavior or enabling them. It's not that kind of "walking on eggshells" love. 1 Corinthians 10:32 says, "Give no offense to Jews nor to Greeks nor to the church of God." People are more important than food. Paul said he tried to please everyone in everything he did, not seeking his own advantage, but the advantage of many, that they might have been saved (1 Cor. 10:33). Getting down to it, he both ate and abstained specifically that the others he did it for might be saved.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9 that if you're an athlete running for a gold medal, you submit everything to that one prize (v. 25). If you're going to win it, you have to control what you eat. People who go into the Olympic games have controlled what they've eaten for four years. Not only their eating, but their exercise, their relationships, and their schedule. Everything in their entire lives submits to one thing. Paul said he ran because he was running for a prize (v. 26-27).

Some people butcher the meaning of that; they say he was running for salvation. But that would go against everything Paul ever taught us. He ran for an imperishable crown (v. 25). What is that crown? 1 Thessalonians and Philippians 4 reveal that the people in the churches were his crown. That's the prize he ran for. He submitted everything is his life, pummeling his body so that he might not be disqualified from the race (v. 27), specifically so that others might see the gospel of Jesus Christ in him.

How then do we eat in such a way of loving others and leading to their salvation or at least not impeding it? To Paul it meant not eating meat that was sacrificed to idols. We don't have that issue. I think what it means is that when we sit down to eat, either with others or alone, we have compassion at the forefront. The rich man ate and feasted at his table while the poor man had nothing (Luke 16:19-31). If you want to sit down and eat for the love of others specifically so that they might be saved, eat with compassion.

Another way is moderation. When we eat in moderation, we declare, "I'm eating to fill my belly, not my heart. That means I can cut it off at any point. Jesus is my ultimate satisfaction; he is the one who has filled me up. I don't need this to live. LIfe is more than food." We eat with moderation, hospitality, and compassion, loving others more than our persnickety dieting habits. We eat with health, declaring that God created the body and it's a good thing. We eat realistically, not eating comfort food. We don't need to calm our anxieties; Jesus Christ is our salvation. When we eat in these ways, not only do we communicate the gospel with our mouths, but also with our actions.

# Eating with thanksgiving and love

The Bible is all about food. The beginning is about God spreading a banquet at the garden of Eden. The very end of the Bible is the marriage supper of the Lamb, where God and man eat togeths in fellowship. In between there's manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16), water turned to wine (John 2:9-10), ravens bringing bread (1 Kings 17:16), a widow and cakes (1 Kings 17:12-15), and more. In fact, the entire liturgical, levitical calendar was filled with festivals where people ate food (ref).

But the food in the Bible is really about God who provides that food. When we sit down to eat, we don't look to that food as the provider of life. We look through it to the provider, through the gift to the gift-giver. When we eat with thanksgiving, it will change the way we eat. And when we eat with thanksgiving, we nonverbally communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ, saying that God is more glorious to us than the meal.

The best way to control your breakfast and lunch intake is to schedule a wonderful dinner. What will you then do for breakfast and lunch? You save room. You control yourself for a greater love. Control your diet for a greater passion. When you're eating, save room for dessert. "Taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 43:8).

Food is not just to reveal to us God as the provider; it points us to Jesus as our ultimate provision. That fruit hanging on the tree in the garden is really pointing to the fruit hanging on the tree at Calvary. That bread from heaven was pointing to Jesus Christ who was the bread that came down from heaven (John 6:32-33). That Passover lamb was pointing forward to the ultimate Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7). When you look at food, look through it to the ultimate sustenance, Christ.
Chapter 7: Honorable and Holy Sex

For several chapters we've covered each of the seven deadly sins. We've called them the seven daily sins because of their prevalence in our lives. In this last chapter we cover a very controversial sin, and that is the sin of lust. Let's begin by reading 1 Thessalonians 4:2-8. The apostle Paul writes under the inspiration of the Spirit to the local community of believers:

For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

When we talk about the daily sin of lust, we have to understand that there are multiple voices out there—the voices of the experts and the shrinks and the doctors and even the voice in our own hearts. But if we profess Jesus Christ, we must understand that he is not only a friend and brother but a king. So we must believe in his commandments and take warning of his instructions regarding the sin of lust: Abstain from sexual immorality. In other words, learn how to control yourself, not in the passion of lust, but in holiness and honor.

Paul gives an illustration of what not to be: those who do not know God. He says that we should be viewing and pursuing and thinking about sex in a way that is different from the ways of those who do not know God, and the way that it is different is in holiness and honor instead of in the passion of lust.

If we are going to do these things, we need to define it, identify it, and then learn how to fight lust in our own lives.

# Defining Lust

If you've read or listened to the whole series, you can take the lessons learned from earlier in the series and apply them to this, too. Lust is looking to sex for that which only God can provide. Lust is not necessarily "wanting a bad thing," but wanting a good thing badly. In our text, Paul doesn't say to refrain from sex entirely. He also doesn't say to pursue it unrestrained. Those polar opposites are what society says.

## What the ancient philosophers say

The ancient Greeks and Plato taught that the soul was more valuable and holy than the body—that the body was dirty and so sex was a part of that. If you wanted to pursue God and holiness, you had to abstain from sex. Sex was seen as a "lesser" thing. This Greek philosophy traveled all the way into the Middle Ages when the monks would punish themselves for their desires. They even hid in the mountains from them. Later on in the Victorian era, it was taboo to see the ankle of a woman.

You see this all throughout the history of Western civilization and we even hear it in churches today when preachers stand up and say, "You better not have sex, you'll get an STD, or this or that, etc." They say all these things to make people feel horrible and rotten about their desires. That is not Christian; that is actually Greek philosophy trickling down from Plato and the Gnostics.

## What the modern philosophers say

The Bible never says to refrain from or abstain from sex ultimately, nor does it say to practice and pursue it unrestrained. That would be the modern view of sex, largely thanks to the psychologist and philosopher Dr. Freud. Freud taught that the old, traditional Victorian, religious model of abstaining from sex was unhealthy. He taught that we shouldn't suppress our appetites. "If you're hungry, eat, and sex is just an appetite. Pursue it unrestrained."

Our society follows the thinking of Freud. No matter how many pornographic images they consume, they never get full, because they don't have a true view of sex. The Bible says to pursue and practice sex within two categories: holiness and honor. The Bible also says that the universe is a certain way. It does not become a certain way when we think it does; the universe just is a certain way based on the design of the Designer. The center of the universe is God; it is not an opinion. While philosophers might say, "I think, therefore I am," God, the reality, says, "I AM who I AM" (Exodus 3:14). He's the center whether we like it or not.

## In relation to God and others

Next in importance under "God" are "others." That is communicated in the law of God, which is summarized in two commandments: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27, Mark 12:30). If we use the first commandment as the lens through which we understand the rightful pursuit and practice of sex, we understand it as keeping God at the top and somberly considering his commandments and design for sex and marriage. If we use the second commandment about loving your neighbor as the second lens through which we see the rightful pursuit and practice of sex, then we see honor as keeping others right there in their place as well as keeping God in his place, at the top. Then, under God and others, comes your properly ordered desires for sex.

So, another way to describe lust is to say that lust is simply pursuing and practicing sex inordinately. It is grabbing that forbidden fruit, not for the pleasure of eating fruit, but to become like God. Lust is practicing sex in a way that is dishonoring to another or disregarding the holiness of God. Let's consider 1 Thessalonians 4:4, where we will get our microscopes out and study some words.

## Vessels of honor

First, we examine the word "body" from 1 Thessalonians 4:4. What does Paul mean by "body"? If you read from the KJV, it is translated as "vessel." The metaphor here is beautiful. Paul is talking about a vessel. A vessel is a cup or a bowl, that which delivers to your lips the pleasure of food. It's the container for the pleasure. According to 1 Thessalonians 4:4, we are to control our vessel in a way that is honoring. In Romans 9:21, Paul says that there are vessels for honor and vessels for dishonor, and 2 Timothy 2:20 says something similar. When these letters were written, they didn't have indoor plumbing; they had chamber pots. A chamber pot is obviously a vessel meant for dishonor. It is meant to be discarded.

A vessel meant for honor, on the other hand, is a king's chalice. It's bejeweled and thoroughly polished and only meant for the lips of the king. Paul says to treat your vessel with honor. What is fascinating about this is that we do not exactly know what he means by "vessel." The RSV translates vessel as "wife." 1 Peter 3:7 says to show "honor to the woman as the weaker vessel." So, piecing together the RSV, KJV, and ESV translations, Paul is saying, "Control your own wife with honor," like a king's chalice.

The ESV translates it "body" because Paul also says that our body is an earthen vessel in which our soul is contained (2 Cor. 4:7). Is he referring to the wives of the husbands in the church or is he referring to their bodies? John Piper says that if you translate it as "body" it makes no sense. Doug Wilson says the same thing, and many other scholars say that the "body" translation makes the verse nonsensical. In verse 6 the sin he is referring to is a transgression against a brother or sister in Christ. So in this discussion we will say that "vessel" is the more correct translation, and that the wife is a vessel fit for honor. The man who wishes to be married should treat his wife as an honorable vessel, cherishing her.

Sometimes the church makes too much out of the sin of lust. The sin that takes down more pastors is not lust; it is actually greed that takes down pastors more than any other sin. On the other hand, in church history, lust was often saved for last. But if lust is brought into a marriage, it is deadly. The Bible says that there are many things that are lawful inside of marriage. "All things are lawful," and we should practice them in holiness. But not all things edify (1 Cor. 10:23).

In 1 Corinthians 6:12, Paul says that he will not be a slave of anything. And if you are a slave to sex—if you need it and it makes you feel special when God is supposed to be in that place of making you feel special, and you bring that slavery into your marriage, you will crush your spouse under the expectations that can only be fulfilled by God. And you will crush yourself in the most vulnerable place of all.

## Exceeding the limits

Imagine those country bridges that have signs in front saying, "No trucks." No 18-wheelers are supposed to drive over those bridges. But if a truck continually disregards the weight limits of that bridge week in and week out, the bridge will eventually crumble into the bayou and so will the truck. In the same way, marriages can only handle so much pressure. If you bring your infinite wants and needs that can only be satisfied by God and put them on your spouse, you will exceed the weight limit of what your marriage, your spouse, and sex are designed for, and you will crack them and eventually crush them.

Now let's examine the word "honor" in verse 6, which says that the sin it's regarding is a transgression against a brother or sister in Christ. So "honor" here is not a vertical sin against God but horizontal, referring to the way you treat your vessel—your spouse. Honor refers to how you treat the other person. Therefore, lust is pursuing and practicing sex in a way that dishonors the other person. So what does it mean to honor?

It's a vague word. What does it mean to honor your father and your mother when you're 3? Does it meant to obey them? Yes. What about when you're 33 or 55? No. Honor is one of those things that has to be applied. When you're little, honor means obey. When you're an adult, honor doesn't necessarily mean obey; it means different things. It might mean taking care of your parents financially.

Honor is one of those things you'd better think deeply about. Get together with your husband or wife and ask, "What does it mean to honor you? What are the practices and pursuits that honor you and treat you as a dignified person created in the image of God?" Get together in your accountability groups and community groups and find out what it means to honor in the dating relationship and in the engagement relationship. What does it mean when you've been married for 20, 30, or 40 years?

The lustful fool asks, "Where's the line at which I cross into sin? What exactly is the weight limit?" The wise asks, not "Where is the line of sin," but "How do I honor and treat a brother or sister in Christ with dignity?" There are more categories than right and wrong. "All things are lawful, but not all things are wise" (1 Cor. 6:12).

## Sex with holiness

The next word we're going to look at is "holiness." Holiness is referring to your attitude about God in your pursuit and practice of sex. Paul says, "If you disregard these things, you disregard not man but God" (1 Thess. 4:8). So, lust is the practice and pursuit of sex that disregards the holiness of God, his character, and his commandments. So we have to consider what it means to practice and pursue sex in holiness specifically as a church, as couples, and as individuals.

What does it mean for a single? What does it mean in marriage? The one thing we shouldn't be asking is, "Where is the line at which it becomes sin?" It's much deeper than that. We are dealing with things that are in the essence of our humanity. We're humans; we don't want to be animals. We want to reach the pinnacle of all that God has designed for humanity. A question about crossing the line is a question for fools. We're dealing with something beautiful and deadly, like fire. It would be foolish to ask how much you can play with it before you get burned.

If lust is the practice and pursuit of sex that disregards the holiness of God and dishonors other people, are we not in sin as long as we don't practice it and pursue it? Certainly not. We now add to the definition of lust. Jesus says in Matthew 5:28 that if you look with lust in your heart, you are guilty of adultery. It is not only the practice and pursuit of sex that matters, it's the thoughts, the expectations, and desires.

Then Paul gives a very neat illustration. He tells the church not to carry themselves like those who do not know God. I imagine that when the Thessalonian church read this part of the letter, lightbulbs went off. They would have known exactly what he was referring to. To live the wise, Christian life, we don't just read our Bible. We have to read our society as well. At that point, the Thessalonians' minds are supposed to leave the words on the page and remember what they've "read" about the society around them too. And they've "read" about the Gentiles who do not know God. They've seen them living their lives, and they know how they are not supposed to live, as "the Gentiles who do not know God."

# In the passion of lust

## A Gentile embroiled in the passion of lust

Genesis 39 depicts a Gentile who does not know God and is embroiled in the passion of lust. She is the wife of Potiphar. We can learn what the opposite of honor and regard for God's holiness is from her. Joseph, a Hebrew sold into captivity by his brothers, eventually ended up in the household of a very wealthy citizen named Potiphar. Eventually Joseph becomes the "COO" of the entire estate because Potiphar trusted and loved him. Joseph was not only savvy and hard-working, he was good-looking. Potiphar's wife noticed; she "cast her eyes on Joseph" (Genesis 39:7). And then she noticed and noticed again. For weeks and months she kept on noticing Joseph. Then she commanded him to lie with her. In a roundabout way, he said no.

There is no lust in just noticing someone who is attractive. Her sin was the "look after the look." This was Potiphar's wife going to bed with Joseph in her mind. Notice in her sin how she treats Joseph: Is Joseph a person that she appreciates and sees the reflection of God in? No, Joseph is an object meant to be used and abused by her. See here that lust is not just a male problem. When Joseph says no, because she is "his wife," (verse 9) he means that she is Potiphar's and not Joseph's. Joseph is regarding the holiness of God by regarding God's design for marriage and sex. God has designed sex to be inside of marriage, and that is exactly why Joseph says, "But you're Potiphar's wife."

All major religions on the entire planet for all of time have seen sex outside of marriage as wrong. Only in a tiny little bubble of time, from about the 60s to today, and only on one side of the planet, do people believe that they can throw off the yoke of marriage established as an institution from the very beginning of creation. "We're just evolved apes. If you're hungry, eat!" they say.

If you want to act like an animal and see sex in marriage as simply a contrivance of religion, consider that animals do not read The Purpose Driven Life. Animals do not contemplate the mysteries of the universe. They are not concerned about who made them or where they came from or where they're going in life. If and when a society throws off the dignity and holiness of God and no longer regards sex within the purposes of marriage, they will also begin to throw off everything else that comes with keeping God at the center. They will begin to lose beauty, goodness, and purpose of life. As they say, you can't have your cake and eat it, too.

Joseph understood that sex was designed inside of marriage. He knew that sex is a metaphor. God is a profound preacher and he not only speaks in metaphor and illustration, he creates entire institutions in nature to be the metaphors and illustrations. Joseph heard the stories of Genesis 2 and knew that God established sex and marriage as an illustration, or a foreshadowing, of someone to come. Sex does not only illustrate Christ's relationship with the Church; it also illustrates communion between two souls.

The Bible says that "Two shall become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5, Mark 10:8, 1 Corinthians 6:16, Ephesians 5:31). Two don't literally become one flesh; we don't become two-headed monsters and share DNA. The phrase is a physical metaphor indicating a spiritual reality inside of marriage. When you get married, you promise the other, "I am for you and you are for me." You share not only the same bank account and house, but the same bed and the same life.

Sex is just the physical symbol of all that is true spiritually, emotionally, and relationally. The spiritual reality of two humans created in the image of God becoming one is symbolized in the ritual of sex. Joseph knew that. He said to Potiphar's wife, "We can't lie with each other. We're not married. It would be a lie. It would be out of order with the order of the universe. It would be disastrous. It would begin to break apart our world and separate our bodies and souls. To do physically that which is not true spiritually, emotionally, and relationally would be destructive to everything and everyone around us. No."

But Potiphar's wife had no regard for the holiness of God or his designs because as a Gentile she did not know God. And in verse 13 we see that she responded to Joseph's rejection by using his coat, which he left behind as he fled her advances, to hatch a plot to have Joseph executed. Fortunately, Potiphar liked Joseph, so instead of executing him, he threw him into jail. But notice that when his wife didn't get to use Joseph, she abused Joseph.

Because lust produces no love, she did not love or honor Joseph at all. You cannot disregard the holiness of God without simultaneously dishonoring other people. She intended to have Joseph sexually but no other way. Sex outside of marriage is a charade. In marriage you say, "I belong to you. I commit to you. If you fall, I fall. If you rise, I rise." But sex outside of marriage says, "I want your body, but I don't want to belong to you. I don't want any commitment or promise. I just want to use you as a vessel to bring pleasure to myself." It is a practice of mutual usery and exploitation and hate. It is not born of the love of God and is not true love.

## A Christian embroiled in the passion of lust

We now move from Potiphar's wife to another person embroiled in the sin of lust, because it is not only Gentiles who do not know God who can be caught by the sin of lust. So we turn to Psalm 51, a journal entry written by a Christian caught up in the spiral of lust. Some of you might say, "I know God, and I've fallen into lust, and I want to know if there's any hope for me." There is.

David, who wrote Psalm 51, stood on his rooftop, cast his eyes on Bathsheba, and began a spiral of lust and murder, just like Potiphar's wife did. David wrote Psalm 51 just after the prophet Nathan confronted him with his sin. Maybe just happened to you. You might have just realized your sin and now are wondering how to respond. Can you identify with verse 2, which says, "Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin"? David says, "Create in me a clean heart" (verse 10). Wash, clean, and cleanse are words we use in laundry services. The sin of lust leads to internal feelings of shame. Christian or not Christian, you are operating outside of the boundaries of God's universe. You're putting water in the gas tank and trying to take a bath in mud. The sin of lust will always lead to brokenness.

In verse 3, David writes, "My sin is ever before me."He's meditating on how he failed God. Down in verse 8, he says, "Let me hear joy and gladness." When you are trapped in the sin of lust, you begin to feel isolated from community. You can no longer sing along and smile. You feel as though each and every one of them, God included, is handling you with rubber gloves.

Hope can be found in verse 1. David says, "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love." He doesn't appeal to his mercy according to the fact that he deserves it, or the fact that he has rights, or that "that other person" is also guilty, or because he was set up. He's no longer blame-shifting or making any claims that God owes him anything at all. Instead, he appeals to God's steadfast love. He is going to God after having sinned egregiously. The sinner's only plea is God's steadfast love.

David reminds himself in verse 1 that God is a God who "stands fast" with his children, who has covenanted with them, who never gives up or forsakes them. He acknowledges that he doesn't deserve anything but that God is merciful. When you have been confronted by your sin of lust, this is how you respond and confess. Appeal to God's "abundant mercy" seen in verse 1. David admits he's been slain by the deadly sin of lust and is now throwing himself at God's mercy and love. God is his only hope. He is the good news. That is the confession that frees us from the guilt and shame and dirtiness and loneliness of lust.

The concept of "abundant mercy" is also shown in Joseph's story. Many years after Joseph's brothers threw him into the pit and sold him into slavery, they meet again; this time Joseph has the power to destroy them. Instead of repaying them, though, he weeps out of love and longing for his brothers and has abundant mercy on them (Genesis 43-45).

# Fighting Lust

You might ask, how can God, who is a just and holy judge, simply sweep sins under the rug and treat you like a beloved child and not a hated prisoner. David asks God to "Blot out my transgressions" in Psalm 51:1. "Blotting out" is another laundering phrase, and it's also mentioned in another part of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, when Moses comes down off the mountain and finds the people worshiping the golden calf, a false god. They are dirty now, contaminated by their idolatry and adultery towards God. Rightfully so, God wants to blot them out. Exodus 32:6 says, "the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." This is a Hebrew idiom for gluttony, drunkenness, and sexual orgies (ref?). That's what was going on down at the foot of Mount Sinai in the Christian community, and God wanted to blot them all out for their idolatry (Exodus 32:33). Does this sound harsh? They deserved it.

But Moses, as a foreshadow of Christ, interceded. He said, "Please blot me out of your book" (Exodus 32:32). Moses being blotted out of the book wouldn't save anyone, because Moses himself deserved to be punished for his sins. But in that moment Moses points to Jesus Christ, who would be blotted out on the cross so that his people would not be blotted out because of the sin of lust, among all other sins.

If Jesus has been blotted out for your sake, then God can now get out the hose on you. He can take you out back and scrub you on the washboard of mercy. It hurts, yes, but it's with love. It's so good to be spanked by God, because he spanks you as he does as a beloved child (Deuteronomy 8:5, Hebrews 12:5-8). He doesn't banish you or exile you. He loves you like his own child.

Have you been trapped by the sin of lust? God can wash you as white as snow. Not pink. White. He can because Christ has been blotted out for you.This is the good news that will enable you to be like Joseph and say no to lust and to be like David and come back from it. Guilt or fear of STDs will not enable you to say no or come back out of a spiral of saying "yes" too many times, but the love of Christ, which compels us to stand up for holiness and honor, will.

What Joseph said to Potiphar's wife is amazing. He said, "How could I sin against God? (Genesis 39:9, NIV)." The truth underneath that statement is that God loves Joseph very much. Joseph didn't know that Jesus would die at Calvary for his sins. He didn't foresee all the details of the gospel or the story of the Passover, but he did have the oral traditions of God sparing Abraham's son on the mountain and of God coming to Adam and Eve and slaying an animal for them. In other words, Joseph said, "How could I return God's love with such evil?" God was so attractive and beautiful to him that he didn't just see adultery as the breaking of a rule but the breaking of God's heart.

## Five weapons against lust

This love will give us five weapons with which to fight the temptation of lust. First, instead of trying to fight lust with guilt, fear, and shame as the world does, we can fight lust successfully by arming ourselves with the good news that God loves us. And the knowledge of God's love comes from the Word. When Jesus was tempted, he began his defenses and counterattacks with, "It is written" (Matthew 4:1-11). He fought temptation with the Word of God, and this is also our second weapon to fight lust.

Job mentioned that he made a covenant with his eyes "not to look lustfully at a young woman" (Job 31:1, NIV). The third way you can fight temptation is by resolving not to feed it in the first place, as Paul says to "make no provision for the flesh" (Romans 13:14).

The fourth weapon against lust is simply fleeing it. As mentioned in a previous chapter, if Christ has died for your sins, then your sin is nailed to the cross. It still lashes out at you, but it's slowly dying. If you run, you have a chance. Joseph ran. If you think you don't have a problem with lust, just wait. To switch metaphors, it's not one of those sins that waits for you in the tall grass. It comes after you. That's why Paul says to flee it.

The fifth and final weapon we have in our fight against lust is having someone at our side—in fact, a whole community—to fight with us. Consider how David fought temptation and climbed out of the pit that lust had created. He had Nathan, someone to confront him and hold him accountable. Do you want a Nathan? Be a part of a local church.

## The counterculture

Be a part of not any local church, but one that is trying to be a counterculture. If you're going to be effective in your fight against lust, you have to be a part of the sexual revolution. Seriously. You have to be a part of the countercultural movement of God called the Church. The Christian church grew within 300 years to be the dominant religion in the entire Roman empire. How did that happen? How did they reach Rome, and how will we reach our culture? By being part of a counterculture.

In the church, we are to be generous with our money but greedy with sex. The world is the exact opposite. They're greedy with money and generous with sex. We are to be inside of the counterculture that is in touch with reality; we have to know that the center of the universe is God and therefore pursue and practice all things in light of his holiness, character, and commandments.

You may have been mocked because of your stance on sex inside of marriage. Joseph was thrown in jail for it. Joseph gave up everything for this stance, because he refused to live out of order with the universe that God has established. If you've been persecuted for your stance, you need a counterculture that affirms you and applauds you when you stand up for what's right and what's true. You don't need a church trying their best to be "cool" and "relevant." You need a church that wants to be a counterculture, that is running parallel to society, that puts sex in the right place. Let the church be your "Nathan." Without being in the flock you stand no chance. The wolf that is lust devours those at the fringes.

