Jonathan Edwards #20
Resolved, To maintain the strictest temperance in eating and drinking.
And this is coming from a guy who did not have to deal with the temptations of quick-and-easy drive thrus! The heart of this resolution I believe is discipline. And it challenges us not to be consumed with our flesh.
Let’s be honest: eating and drinking to the point of self exaltation has become a staple within American culture today. Philippians 3:19 NKJV says “Whose end [is] destruction, whose God [is their] belly, and [whose] glory [is] in their shame, who mind earthly things.” The sin of drunkenness is still commonly preached on, but gluttony of food is a topic rarely even spoken about nowadays. Not just in the pulpit, but on blogs, in books, and just plain discussions. It simply is just not brought up. Perhaps it is because America in general has such an appetite for food that we have more or less accepted that eating a lot and thinking about food a ton is okay. What do you think? This pressing issue makes me to think. I love food and think about it quiet often, but I am convicted by Philippians 3:19? Do I think more about food and drink more than I dwell on the riches of Christ, making my own belly an idol before God? It is quite an unconventional topic to ponder which Edwards has challenged us with.
There’s a great quote from John Piper’s Hunger for God. The book is about fasting, but the exhortation certainly applies to the glutton in all of us. You can read it in regards to food or drink:
When you take your stand on the finished work of God in Christ, and begin to drink at the River of Life and eat the Bread of Heaven, and know that you have found the end of all your longings, you only get hungrier for God. The more satisfaction you experience from God, while still in this world, the greater your desire for the next. For, as C. S. Lewis said, “Our best havings are wantings.”
The more deeply you walk with Christ, the hungrier you get for Christ … the more homesick you get for heaven… the more you want “all the fullness of God”… the more you want to be done with sin… the more you want the Bridegroom to come again … the more you want the Church revived and purified with the beauty of Jesus…the more you want a great awakening to God’s reality in the cities… the more you want to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ penetrate the darkness of all the unreached peoples of the world… the more you want to see false worldviews yield to the force of Truth… the more you want to see pain relieved and tears wiped away and death destroyed… the more you long for every wrong to be made right and the justice and grace of God to fill the earth like the waters cover the sea.
If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great. God did not create you for this. There is an appetite for God. And it can be awakened. I invite you to turn from the dulling effects of food and the dangers of idolatry, and to say with some simple fast: “This much, O God, I want you.”
—John Piper, A Hunger for God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1997), 23.
One Comment on "Resolution #20: Don’t be a glutton or drunkard."
Loved this. As a former alcoholic who can now wine in moderation, I am thankful for Jesus freeing me from sin’s grip or bondage.