Like A City Without Walls

Let's take our bibles and stand up to our feet. We're gonna honor the reading of God's word from Proverbs 25:28. Just one verse that we will hang the message on this morning. We'll range and roam a little bit through Proverbs with the Lord's help.

We pray this morning for the help of your Holy Spirit. You have not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of self control. Would your Holy Spirit be at work even now as we receive this word? May we grow in the wisdom of Jesus Christ that we might live for your glory, and that we might find life abundant in following after your son Jesus? It's in his name we pray, amen.

You've seen this play out 100 different times. You're watching your favorite football team on TV. You're up by about a point. It's in the fourth quarter. The clock is ticking down. The other team's got the ball. It's fourth down. You're holding your breath, but the defense gets the stop. There's just a few seconds left on the clock. The sideline goes nuts. They're fist pumping. They're hugging. They're cheering. The stadium is roaring. The game is on ice. But there's just that one linebacker. He took a little bit too much of that pre workout stuff before the game, and that testosterone's pumping, and he just can't resist putting that late lick on the quarterback. And while he's got him down, he points his finger in his face, he's screaming. He gets up, he flexes, he dances. And that's when you hear it. Does anybody have one of those good whistles? Let it out. There you go. You hear that whistle: "Unsportsmanlike conduct on the defense, 15 yard penalty, automatic first down." And with seconds left, the other team drills the go ahead field goal to win the game.

Why did your team lose? Lack of talent? No. Lack of opportunity? No. Bad officiating? No. Bad weather? No. You'll hear all of those excuses. But the real reason your team lost was a lack of self-control. Don't you hate it when that happens? It'll get you every time.

This young person in Proverbs who we've been following around since August has finally graduated from high school and is on the road of life. Last week was a little heavy. We took him to Mount Hermon Cemetery and gave him a good look at his headstone. We talked to him about his legacy that he'll leave behind at the end of his life. Now, we want to take several weeks and just walk with this young man or this young woman through those early adult years. At one point, we're going to let this young lady interview for a job and go to work. We're going to watch this young man fall in love and get married. We're even going to see these young people have children of their own, start their own families, and begin to pass down the wisdom of God to the next generation, just like they received it from their parents and from their grandparents. It's gonna be a lot of fun. But before we can get to those major life milestones, and before this young man is ready to be a good employee, or a good husband, or a good father, before any of that happens, there are still some personal wisdom issues that he needs to get locked down.

Proverbs 10-31 continue to guide this young man or this young woman who's walking with Jesus Christ. The wisdom of God through life continues to point out specific areas that we need to focus on if we want to live skillfully and successfully. Now, you may be way beyond young adulthood, but It's never too late. Proverbs says it was written to make the simple wise. It was written to give fools insight. If you're simple, if you're a fool, you're a leading candidate for Proverbs. Jesus is ready to make your life better starting now. Would you agree that the earlier we can get some of these things down in life, the better?

What we're going to do for these next few weeks is look at some of these personal wisdom issues that really end up being kind of make or break in the quality of our lives. We're going to talk about things like humility versus pride and our speech. Today, we're going to think about what Proverbs says about self-control.

You heard the verse a moment ago. Proverbs 25:28, "A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. Think about one of those ancient cities in bible times. In that context, it doesn't matter how big your population is. It doesn't matter how effective your economy is running. It doesn't mater what kind of military you have or what sort of technology is available to you. If you did not have big strong walls, walls with integrity, walls that kept the bad guys out, walls that protected you, if your walls were breached, it's just a matter of time before your city is going to be attacked and destroyed, and before you are conquered. You've got to be protected by those strong walls.

The Bible says that is true about a human life. If you don't have self-control in your life, you can be intelligent, beautiful, athletic, popular, have all kinds of skills, come from a terrific family, you can love God, know your Bible, have big dreams, have opportunities handed to you on a silver platter, but if you lack self control, if you can't rule over your own desires and your own words and your own actions, if you can't rule over yourself, if you can't manage yourself, it will sabotage your life. Am I right? It will sabotage your life. It will spoil every good thing you undertake to do.

We see this all the time in the public eye. When I was growing up, I loved to read sports biographies. I just totally devoured him. I remember reading about Babe Ruth, a fantastic baseball player, maybe the greatest baseball player who ever lived. He's was a hitter and a pitcher. He could absolutely do it all. But the babe had zero self-control, and he lived hard. By the time he was 38 years old, he couldn't run. He couldn't play ball. He hadn't saved any money. His personal life was in absolute shambles. He ends up dying by the time he's in his early fifties. It's really sad. Mickey Mantle was another fantastic Yankee who had incredible, incredible talent. But he lived wild and paid the price in his body. And he paid the price in his family. There are so many stories like that. I remember Len Bias, the great University of Maryland basketball player. 1986 is the year I was born. He was drafted number two overall by the Boston Celtics. He had the world by the tail with all kinds of talent. He was going to play with Larry Bird and Kevin McHale and all those cats. But through a cocaine overdose right after the draft, Len Bias dies, and he never gets to play a single quarter in the NBA. It's so sad.

Those kinds of stories really shaped me as a child growing up. You've seen it play out in the lives of musicians like Hank Williams Sr. You've seen it with lottery winners. All of a sudden they have all this money, all these opportunities, all these people around them, and because of a lack of self control, they completely implode.

I'm sensitive to this one, but I see it in all kinds of high profile ministers and pastors who are incredibly, incredibly gifted, and influential, and beloved and used of God. But because they can't control their speech, or their sexual appetites, or their anger, or they think they can play around with the church's finances like it's their own, everything that they spent years and years and years building and investing in and developing is just taken from them in one day. And it's so, so sad.

Self-control is a huge issue all throughout Proverbs. It's also a huge issue in The New Testament. If you can remember back to a sermon series at the beginning of the year, we worked through the little letter of Titus. Paul is speaking to a group of people who've gotten saved and are following Jesus on the island of Crete. The Cretans are known for being "evil beasts, liars, and lazy gluttons." And Paul looks at this church, particularly the young men, and he says, "the way that you're gonna make the gospel look real in Crete is by living with self-control. Jesus died and forgave your sins. And he is at work in your life through the Holy Spirit to give you self-control.

You turn over to Galatians 5 and Paul walks through all of these works of the flesh, these sinful, selfish appetites that we're all supposed to fight and flee from. Then he begins to work through all these beautiful graces and virtues. The spirit wants to produce in us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness. You get to the final fruit of the spirit. Does anybody know what the last one on the list is? What's the one that crowns it all? Self-control! Why is that the crowning fruit of the spirit? Because if you don't have that, you can forget the rest of them. You've got to have self-control. It's been called the secret sauce of the wise and successful life in Proverbs, because if you don't get a hold of this one, then all the other stuff we're gonna talk about as pertains to wisdom is gonna be really fleeting for you and for me.

What I want to do today is just look at a handful of areas that Proverbs repeatedly comes to us and says, "You need to get a handle on this. If you want to live a successful, significant, and happy life, these are some areas you need to really focus on getting control of with the help of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God.

We're talking about your emotions and your feelings. Proverbs 16:32, "Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city." This is the ability to rule over your spirit, to be able to manage your own emotions, to restrain your passions and your feelings. If you can get that, then it sends you into life in a stronger position than a conquering army. What a thought! Emotions are a wonderful gift from God, aren't they? Proverbs has a lot to say about our emotions. But if you give your emotions and your feelings the steering wheel, then they're gonna drive your life right off of a cliff.

I know there are a lot of issues with it, but we like the movie Inside Out. There are all these different feelings inside this little girl named Riley. There's Anger, and Fear, and Joy, and Sadness. It's a very funny movie. In fact, I think there's a lot of good insights in it, but there's also some issues with the movie. One is that it gives you the impression that we kind of move through life just passively at the mercy of whatever emotion happens to be seated in that control panel at any one moment.

So the reason you're angry right now and out of control is because anger is in the seat. The movie infers that you need anger. Anger is a really good thing. It leaves the impression that every emotion is legitimate at any given moment as long as it's authentic, and as long as it really expresses how you're feeling. But that's not really true. What we've had to tell our kids and tell ourselves is, "Look, you have something that little Riley didn't have! You got the Holy Ghost! You're saved. Jesus now sits at the control panel. You don't just have to hand everything over to sadness. You don't have to hand everything over to fear. You don't have to let anger get those knobs and go full throttle. You don't have to do that because you've got Jesus Christ ruling in your life and ruling in your heart! All those emotions have their place and are so beneficial when they're under the authority of the son of God. But when you give them control, well, they're gonna make your life very, very difficult.

Proverbs says this about all of our feelings and our emotions as a father, and as a husband, and as a pastor, as a leader. I've found I can't let sadness control me. There's a lot of things to be sad about in this life. Would you agree? There's a lot of things that you can get down about, get discouraged about, just because there are people you love who go through things. Sadness is legitimate. But if I come home moping around with my tail dragging the ground just because I'm sad, I can't lead my family like that. Y'all don't want me coming in here on Sunday morning moping and depressed. You don't wanna follow that. Sometimes you just got to buck up in the power of the Holy Spirit and say, "Lord, help me put on joy so that I can be who you need me to be and I can be who these other people need me to be."

That's true for every emotion. We've got to bring them under our control. We don't need to be controlled by them. Proverbs especially hammers anger. Proverbs 12:16, "The vexation (the anger), of a fool is known at once." You don't have to wonder if a fool is angry because he's gonna let you know immediately. "But the prudent ignores an insult." It's got it under control. Proverbs 14:29, "Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly." The question is, how do you respond when life does not go your way? At home, or at the ball field, or in the workplace, or at church? How do you respond when life doesn't go your way? Do you soil up, and pout, and withdraw emotionally from everybody and kind of punish them in this icy silence? Or maybe you get real loud and throw a tantrum and you raise your voice and you stomp around and nobody has to wonder how you feel about it? Maybe you even get physical with the people in your lives when you get angry because you just can't get control of these passions in your heart?

Now, the world sometimes calls that passion. "He's got a lot of passion." If you watch college football as much as I do on Saturdays, you hear those commentators say, "You know, I like the passion." But that's not the good kind of passion. God calls that foolishness and immaturity. There's a group of people in our church who we expect to not have control over their anger and emotions. Martha Frazier takes care of them every week on the nursery hallway. So for a grown man or a grown woman to not have control over anger when life doesn't go their way, that's unacceptable for a follower of Jesus. That's a discipleship issue that we need to focus on starting today. You cannot be who God has called you to be, you cannot be the wise person the people in your life need you to be, if you don't have control of your anger, and especially if you're a young person.

I can't tell you how much out of control anger is gonna cost you in life. It will cost you so much. It will cost you relationships. It will cost you the respect of your peers. It will cost you opportunities. Often, you won't even know how much anger is costing you because people are just kind of quietly filing it away. "That's an angry woman. That's an angry man. I'm gonna take three steps back. I can't rely on that person. I can't trust them with anything important because they're unstable and unreliable." Do you understand what I'm saying? Those are hard words, but we need to hear them from God's word.

God tells us to avoid angry people. Proverbs 22:24-25, "Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare." God tells me to steer clear, give a wide berth, to an angry person. If you're angry, then the people in your life who are obedient to God are gonna be nice to you, but they're gonna keep their distance from you. And you won't even realize that it's happening. I think about what God said to Cain in Genesis 4:6, "Cain, do you do well to be angry? Why has your face fallen, Cain? Be careful. Sin is crouching at your door. It wants to master you, but you better master it with the help of God." Y'all, if we're gonna be the wise people that Jesus calls us to be, we have got to control our spirits! We've got to control our emotions. You don't have to like it, but do you know that? It is true.

On this Veterans Day weekend, I think about visiting the World War Two Museum in New Orleans. That place is amazing. If you've never been to it before, it's super well done. They had all these propaganda posters that circulated during the war. And one of my favorite ones showed this battleship kind of upended like going down under the water, and a person doing this over to the side. And do you remember the slogan that they put with that? "Loose lips sink ships." "Loose lips sink ships." Don't talk. Don't tell what you know. If your husband is in the service, and he lets you know where he's at, and what their maneuvers are, and all that stuff, you gotta keep that to yourself. You can't share it because your words can carry this really destructive power that you can't even imagine.

Proverbs warns us a lot about loose lips, about reckless speech. Proverbs 21:23. You may want to write this one down. "Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble." Show of hands.. how many people can say, "my mouth has got me into trouble before?" Anybody? It looks like we're all in good company. And there are some maybe truly quiet people, and then lots of liars in the room. My mouth has got me into trouble! When I was at school, I spent many 1st and 2nd grade lunch periods sitting up against the wall in the cafeteria with my nose in the corner, eating my little lunch because I could not stop talking when I was supposed to be quiet.

Trouble with parents often revolves around that smart mouth. Trouble with friends usually involves careless speech, whether things we say to our friends' faces or things that we say behind their backs. I know trouble at church often can be traced back to speech that was careless and reckless, negative things, critical things, rumors, slander. One smart remark can derail a really good evening with your spouse. Can I get an amen? You just had to say it. You had to get that last word in son. "Do you wanna be right or do you want to be happy?" You know what I mean? You can crush your kids with harsh demeaning speech.

Now, Proverbs goes into a lot of detail about my mouth. Lord willing, we're going to look at those details on another Sunday. I'm not gonna tell you when or you won't come. Proverbs says a lot about my mouth, but here's the bottom line. It is really just saying one thing. I've got to control my mouth. If I'm gonna be wise and live for God's glory, I've got to control my mouth. I've got to set a guard on my mouth. I have to control what comes out of it and what doesn't come out of it. Ephesians 4:29, "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth. But only that which is good for building up, that fits the occasion, that gives grace to those who hear." I'm in control of what comes out and what stays in with the help of the Holy Spirit. You decide, you choose, you control your mouth.

This includes the words that you type and post. There is not a statute of limitations on this thing. There's not an excuse clause for what you post online. In fact, that's often even more destructive because it's so far reaching and it's so instant. Here is a social media Proverb for you to memorize, Proverbs 29:11. "A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back." You really don't have to express every thought, every feeling, every opinion. You really don't. You can choose to keep those to yourself. In fact, there are many occasions when in the heat of the moment, when we're all worked up about whatever it is, when we get online and we slam whatever business made us wait in line or we go on some big rant in a passive aggressive way about these people in our lives, we don't name their names so we can't be pinned with it, but everybody in the world knows who we're talking about, there are many occasions where we do things like that online and with any reflection, one hour later, we deeply regret it. If we have any self awareness, when we look back at that, we think, "man, I wish I could get that one back because anybody in the world who sees that and has any kind of wisdom will say, "that is someone I don't need to get close to because this person gives full vent to their spirit just at the drop of a hat and they show their tail to the world on the internet just immediately, and so I'm gonna love that person, I'm gonna be nice to that person, I'm gonna try to minister to that person, but I don't need to get real close to that person because whatever they feel in an instant, it's going out to the planet." Y'all know what I'm saying?

Now, I don't have Facebook so I don't know what y'all say. I'm definitely not picking on anybody because I don't know. And one reason why I don't have Facebook is I don't want to know what you say. I want to be like every other pastor in history and just live in oblivion about what people say during the week. So whoever you are, wherever this applies, it's a fool who gives vent to his spirit. It's the wise person who knows how to hold it back. Proverbs 17:28, "Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent." You will look smarter and wiser than you are if you just know how to lock it down. I say that as someone who talks way too much. So we gotta control our spirits. We gotta control our speech.

This is just getting worse and worse. I read a biography of Thomas Jefferson a little while back. He is probably our most brilliant founding father. I knew that he wasn't perfect, and that he had some issues in his life. What I wasn't expecting when I read that biography was to find out what a crazy, wild, out of control spender he was. The guy spent $25,000 a year in 1801 on wine imported from France! He was spending when he did not have it to spend. He was deeply, deeply in debt, and he just kept on throwing out new wings at Monticello and importing all of this fancy food and hosting these huge parties. I come from generations of tight wads. I got chest pains reading this book. He just kept spending. I was like, "Stop, stop!" I'm serious. I needed to be medicated. It was insane. But he just kept digging this pit deeper and deeper. His grandchildren were still trying to deal with his debt. They had to sell Monticello. They had to sell everything. And it still wasn't enough. Generations were dealing with his reckless spending.

Proverbs says a lot about this. If you're a young person, if you can get a handle on this early on, you will be so grateful later. I promise. Proverbs 21:5, "The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty." Let's get real. Buying stuff is exciting. It's fun. We all love to do it. And look, when it's the result of planning, and hard work, and saving, and it fits into everything else the Bible says about money, it's all good. It's so sweet. Some of our happiest memories as a family are when we bought some fun things that we all got to enjoy, or when we got to take some fun trip together. There's no shade on buying stuff. That's not the point. But undisciplined spending will hobble you all through life.

Proverbs 21:20, "Precious treasure and oil are in a wise man's dwelling, but a foolish man devours it." If you don't know this, you can be a wonderful godly person, yet dig yourself into a terribly deep pit because there's not self control in this area of spending, either because you're spending what you make as fast as you make it, or even worse, you're spending what you're not making and you're going into debt and running up credit card bills. If that's your M.O., your life is going to be so much harder and more stressful than it has to be. It really will be. If you are in debt for assets that are depreciating and interest is mounting month by month, and yet you still have all these other expenses and obligations that you're having to meet, then listen, no matter how good the rest of your life is that will eat at you. It will be on your mind all the time. It will rob you of sleep. It will strain your marriage. It will hinder you from being generous in the ways that you want to be. It will tempt you to do unethical stuff to try to fix it. You don't want that. You want to control your spending. You don't want to be controlled by it. I'm not saying this as someone who's got this all figured out. I'm just explaining what the wisdom of God is to all of us. I'm sitting under this word. I don't want to be controlled by my spending. I wanna have control over it with the Lord's help. Do you understand what I'm saying?

How can we get control over our spending? I think it starts by recognizing your wanter is never gonna be satisfied. Proverbs 27:20, "Sheol and Abbadon (which is a word for the grave) are never satisfied." There will never be a time where the cemeteries in this world say, "You know what, no more dead people." People are just gonna keep on dying, and we're gonna keep burying them, and the grave is gonna be happy to just keep getting more and more and more people. The grave is never satisfied. "And never satisfied are the eyes of man." I think we really deceive ourselves when we think, "Ok, this next purchase, after that, man, I'm gonna be satisfied. I'm gonna be content. I'm not gonna want anything else. I'm gonna take that trip like my friends took. I'm gonna remodel my house like that thing on the Pinterest board said to do. I'm gonna buy this toy. I'm gonna do this or do that, and then I'm gonna be good. You will be good for 30 minutes! And then something new is on the Pinterest board. Somebody takes another trip. You see something else that you've never even thought of before. Y'all, that is not even because you're evil. That's just the way your heart works. Its the way my eyes work. The wanter is never going to be satisfied. It will fool you. Go ahead and make peace with it. Even if you're planning to purchase something, that's great. But just tell yourself the truth, "This isn't gonna satisfy me. It's not gonna make me content. I'm not gonna be good to go for the rest of my life." If I'm purchasing something, thinking that it's going to do that for my soul, I don't need to purchase it. As long as I understand, it's a tool, it's a resource that I can use for God's glory, then, ok. But don't think it's gonna satisfy that wanter.

Another thing that we've got to do if we're gonna be wise about spending, we can't compare our lifestyles to other people. This is another good reason to get off social media. Don't look at all the great stuff that everybody else is buying, and getting, and having, and going. You don't have to live that life! For one thing, you don't know half the story. I mean, they may be in up to their eyeballs in debt. Proverbs talks about this. Proverbs 13:7, One pretends to be rich, yet has nothing. Another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth." You don't know the story. Don't compare yourself to someone else and try to keep up.

Establish some biblical priorities. What are the things God wants me to focus on with my resources? Then set some goals of things that you and your family want to purchase. That would be a blessing to you that y'all can glorify God and that's great. Set some goals then work as a team to meet those goals. Say no to this now. You can say yes to this later. Keep a watch on where everything is going. I love Proverbs 27:23, "Know well the condition of your flocks." Know what you've got. Know where it's going. Why? Because you'll end up nickel and diming yourself on lattes and Chinese take out. And then when you want to take the trip with your family, you can't do it. Or when the tire blows out, all your savings goes to that because you didn't know where everything was going. There's a hole in the money bag. Y'all know what I'm saying?

If you want to live just a free, available, happy life, you're going to need to get control over your spending and learn the discipline of saying, "We just don't need to do that right now." In fact, can you all say that with me? "We just don't need to do that right now." That doesn't make you a loser. The world tells us that we're losers if we ever say that. That is such a lie! Guess what the world is making money off of? You thinking that you're a loser for not spending money all the time! So let's all take another deep breath and let's say it again. This just warms my little tight heart, "We just don't need to do this right now." Look, we're all still breathing. It's OK to say that. We can learn to say that for the glory of God. And then when the time comes, we can do that right now, because by God's grace, he's given us the wisdom to manage things as we need to. But you want to get control of this.

We're gonna close with this one.

We're talking about your body here. Proverbs 23:19-21. "Hear, my son, and be wise, and direct your heart in the way. Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags." We're talking about eating, drinking, and sleeping. This Proverb is about managing the pleasures and the comforts of the flesh. Now look, Proverbs is not calling us to asceticism, being a monk, making life as difficult and severe to your body as you can. That's not what the Bible is all about. The Bible says that God has given us all things richly to enjoy. Everything given by God is good and it's meant to be received with thanksgiving by his children, because it's sanctified by the word of God in prayer. We're not anti-pleasure, not at all. Proverbs, the book itself, celebrates things like eating, drinking, sleeping, relaxing, goofing off, having fun, having a big time, even sexual pleasure in its right context. Proverbs celebrates that as much as any book in the Bible, but the wise person is in control of these pleasures, not controlled by them. Wisdom knows that sometimes you have to tell your body "no." And sometimes you have to make your body do what it doesn't want to do, right? 

This is true for all the Proverbs about sexual desires. I know we've talked about that a lot in Proverbs 5 and 7. I'll be quick today. Here's just a brief reminder, God placed a strong sexual appetite in you. That's a good thing. It's part of being a human being. He has a purpose for those desires, brought under obedience to the word, devoted to His glory. They are good. But your sexual desires cannot rule you. If you follow Jesus Christ, you've got to learn to control your own sexual desires. What Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 is, "This is the will of God for you, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that you learn how to control your own vessel with honor." We should be the people who control our bodies with honor.

What is a gentleman? A gentleman is not someone who is a eunuch who has no sexual desires or appetites. A gentleman is someone who has brought his sexual appetites under control and is able to practice chastity, and nobility, and chivalry, and fidelity. That's what a gentleman is. He's submitted to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It goes for sexual desire.

It also goes for laziness. The Sluggard's body says "It's hot. This is no fun. I'm tired." That's what the Sluggard's body tells him. Guess what the wise person's body tells him? The same thing! You know the difference? The Sluggard always says "yes" to his body. The wise person says to his body, "Get up and get going. We got stuff that we gotta do." The result of the Sluggard always listening to his body, always comforting his body, never making the hard choice, is in Proverbs 13:4, "The soul of the Sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied." The Sluggard wants all kinds of stuff, but he's never able to get it. He's never able to obtain it because he's not ever able to say "no" to his body. He's not ever able to practice delayed gratification. It's the soul of the diligent that's richly supplied.

Friends, if we're gonna be wise, we've got to learn to tell our bodies "no." Sometimes, in fact, you're gonna have to tell your body "no" a lot of the time.

I'm going to turn off my phone and put it on the charger away from my bed, and I'm gonna get some sleep so that I can be available to the Lord in the morning to do all the things that he's called me to do. I'm going to set my alarm, and when it goes off, I'm gonna get out of bed even when my body is pulling me back because I need to read God's word before I go and begin my day. I'm going to make my body sit down and study and apply myself, even though I'd really much rather play right now. I'm going to make my body get up and serve my family, engage with my kids, unload the dishwasher, listen to my spouse, whatever. Even though my body would rather sit in the chair and just scroll my phone and check out because it's been a hard day. We've got to control our bodies! We've got to tell them what to do. Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:17, "Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness." It does take discipline.

I'm a teetotaler, you know, shocker. Proverbs is not a teetotaler, ok? It's not. But Proverbs is very clear and very honest that you better control your consumption of alcohol or it's gonna control you. Proverbs 20:1, "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise." You're going to get into fights, and you're going to get into embarrassing situations if you're led around by alcohol. Proverbs also says that it's not wise to use alcohol to escape from reality and neglect your responsibilities.

Proverbs 31:4-9, "It's not for kings to drink wine or for rulers to take strong drink lest they forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of the afflicted." You're gonna forget what God called you to do. You're not gonna be sharp and clear minded on your responsibility before the Lord. It goes on to say, "Give strong drink to the one who's perishing, wine to those in bitter distress, let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more." That's not really prescriptive. It's just saying that the people who are giving themselves over to alcohol consumption are those who are trying to forget or trying to escape, trying to check out. God's called you to something more. He's called you to bear his image and live for his glory and honor him and serve the people around you. You can't do that if you're checked out. So we want to be careful with that.

We also want to be careful with addiction and developing enslaving reliance on alcohol. Proverbs 23:29-35. I'm not gonna take the time to read it this morning. It's an amazing description of the lies that alcohol tells us, the lies that any kind of mind-altering substance can tell us in the moment versus what the actual results are when we don't get control of it. The bottom line on all the stuff that we've been talking about, whether it's the laziness, the drinking, the sexual temptation, it's all about you learning to control your body. Those who don't know Christ are those who are led around through life by various passions and pleasures. Titus 3. We are those who by the mercies of God have the Holy Spirit and can control our bodies and dedicate them to God's service.

As we close, there are lots of people in the world, lots of really smart people who hear everything I say this morning and totally agree. "You're right, man. I need more self-discipline. I need more self-control. That's what's wrong with this world. That's why it's in the shape that it's in. Everybody's out of control." But they never apply themselves successfully to this lifestyle of self-control. Why? Because they're trying to approach it in their own resources. And they may be able to get up every morning and lift weights. They may be able to get their spending under control. They may be able to do all kinds of disciplined things, but there are gonna be areas of their lives that are just wildly reckless and abandoned that they cannot manage because they're trying to manage their lives and get self-control in their flesh.

Y'all, we don't have what it takes to get control of our lives. But Jesus Christ does. The Bible says we have not been given a spirit of fear, but of love and power and self-control. We need the Holy Spirit to live like that. We need supernatural resources beyond ourselves to live a life of self-control. One of my favorite stories in the Bible about this is a man named Legion. Y'all remember him? He's filled with all these demons. He lives on the other side of the sea from Jesus and his disciples. He's totally possessed by something beyond him. He spends all of his time cutting himself, howling at the moon. He lives among the tombs. The people around him have to chain him up. His life is just in ruins. He's alienated from all other human society. He's totally miserable. His life is a living death because he has no self-control. By the time Jesus is finished with him, at the end of that story, Mark 5 says that he was found clothed in his right mind, and seated at the feet of Jesus.

That's what we've got to do. That's where we've got to go. If we want self-control in the areas that we've talked about today and in every area, you really don't need self-control, you need Christ to control you. So let's start by coming to him. If you've never done that before, today's the day. If you're here today and you do belong to Jesus, and he's putting his finger on some areas that he wants to help you with, let's not resist him. Why would we? Where has a lack of self-control gotten us to this point except a bunch of heartache and misery? Let's come to him and trust him with every area of our lives. Let's pray.

Sermon by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church