Gluttony (Part 2)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

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My name is Mike Abendroth, and we are talking about biblical issues in an edgy, provocative way.

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No Compromise Radio, we don't want to compromise on biblical truth. We want to talk about Bible truth in a provocative way and in that order.

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Certainly if we provoke you to think, I never talk about the Bible, that would not be good. Today I'm talking for the second day about gluttony, the inordinate consumption of food, the obsessiveness that comes along with the desire to eat all the time, overeat, and you have your life revolving around food.

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I said yesterday that many people run to the Old Testament, some of these books, the

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Genesis Diet by Gordon Tesler, and basically what happens is you just go to the

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Bible. He said the most complete and nutritious diet for man can be found in the

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Bible. And so you have someone like Rex Russell, who writes what the

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Bible says about healthy living. David Mintz, entitled, there's a book entitled

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Eating by the Book, what the Bible says about food, fat, fitness, and faith. Of course you've got

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Gwen Shamblin, who uses Exodus as a metaphor for her program, the

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Weigh Down Diet, and move into the promised land of anti -Trinitarian legalistic cultic things.

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Most often, when you see a Christian book on diet, since there's nothing in the

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New Testament about food in terms of particulars, since there's nothing in the New Testament except if you're thankful to God, eat whatever.

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Whatever you want, if you're thankful for, enjoy it, short of making another

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Christian stumble. If you want rules, if you want a to -do list, if you want moralism, if you want to book a list to live your life by, and someone to put a shopping list together for you before you go to Hannaford's, Demoula, or in the

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Midwest, Piggly Wiggly, or Hinky Dinky, you need to have a list.

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And the only list you're going to have is a list that God gave Moses to give to Israel to make them a peculiar people.

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People say, well, you know, they weren't allowed to eat pork because it's going to give you trigonosis. That might be a sub -benefit of God's requirement for the

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Jews not to eat any kind of pork. Not eating shellfish or shrimp because they're bottom -gatherers and it's going to make you sick more often, or people are allergic and are going to have an anaphylactic shock or something.

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That might be a sub -reason for God to tell Israel that. But mainly it was to make

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Israel different, sanctified, set apart, unique. Pagans acted this way,

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Israel acted this way, because they were God's unique people. So they had these rules, and here's one of the rules found in Deuteronomy chapter 14.

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You are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

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And then God, through Moses, gives some food laws. Not all the food laws here that I'll talk about, but some, because I find

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Deuteronomy 14 fascinating. You shall not eat any detestable thing. Well, who would want to?

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These are the animals which you may eat. And so this was the list. The ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle.

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I've had a lot of weird food in my life. I had a jungle kebab once, and it had kangaroo on it. It had bison, it had ostrich, it had alligator that tasted quite fishy.

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And so here's the list. I haven't ever had gazelle though, that might be interesting.

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The roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the mountain sheep.

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God said, eat those as much as you want. Verse 6, and any animal that divides the hoof and that has a hoof split in two and chews the cud among the animals that you may eat.

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And so, just take a look, if you don't know if it's on the list, take a look if it's hoof, take a look if it's mouth, does it chew the cud?

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Nevertheless, you are not to eat any of these things which chew the cud. So there's some more particular rules, are among those that divide the hoof in two.

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Here's some exceptions. The camel and the rabbit and the rock badger, for though they chew the cud, they do not divide the hoof.

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If they are unclean for you. So I don't know about rock badgers, what they taste like. My mother did give me and our family, my brother and sister, rabbit on Easter one

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Sunday back in Nebraska, must have been about 1970. That explains my peculiar thoughts, is

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I was, you know, mentally deranged and horribly affected by eating little bunny foo -foo hopping through the forest on Easter Sunday of all things.

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Probably still believed in the Easter bunny then, as well. Well, we are looking at this passage, my name is

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Mike Abendroth, and we're looking at Old Testament food laws, which we're not under. And if somebody says, obey this rule for the

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New Testament diary book, and you're going to be thin and slim and healthy and wise, just ignore that.

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They said it's, don't eat, verse 8, the pig because it divides the hoof but does not chew the cud.

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It's unclean, don't even touch it. If you want to eat something that's in the water, if it's got fins and scales, you may eat it.

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But if it does not, it is unclean. You can eat clean birds, but these are the birds you can't eat. Eagles, vultures, buzzards, red kites, falcons, ravens, ostrich, oops, the owl, seagull, and the hawk and their kinds.

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The little owl, the great owl, the white owl, the pelican, the carrion vulture, and the list goes on and on and on.

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And don't eat anything that dies of itself. We are not under this Mosaic food law, no matter what the

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Seventh -day Adventists try to tell us. We are free to eat. What does the

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Christian do? Well, the Christian culture, the Christian bookstores, the Christian media -driven machine is going to try to get you to do all kinds of things.

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There are love -hunger action plans. There are Victor Cain's devotions for dieters.

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There is C .S. Lovett's little booklet, Help, Lord, the Devil Wants Me Fat, 1977.

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There is Believer Size. There is Jesus is the Way, W -E -I -G -H,

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Jesus is the Way. There's Praise Aerobics. There's Jim Tear's Fed Up with Fat.

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Health Begins with Jesus, 1995. One lady wrote, her name's

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Jody Venker, was Jesus, or the Messiah, a vegetarian? You've seen the billboards, maybe?

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I think they're PETA billboards. Jesus was a vegetarian. Follow Him. You don't want to have something that you have to kill.

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You want non -violent diets. Did you know Pat Robertson and Robert Shuler in the day began endorsing

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George Malcomus's Hallelujah Diet? And that was a vegetarian plan based on Genesis 1, verse 29.

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I give you all the plants bearing seed, everywhere on earth and every tree bearing fruit, they shall be yours for food.

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And so how would we look at Jesus and His life? I think WWJD falls through the cracks on many, many cases, but if you'd like to use it this particular case,

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I don't think you should. But how would Jesus celebrate Passover without eating any of the lamb?

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We are not Jews, though. We don't have to be set apart now because we are the Church.

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We don't need to read Colbert's book called What Would Jesus Eat and conform somehow to His diet.

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Following Jesus means following His diet. I don't think we need to ask the questions, what would

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Jesus eat? We might ask ourselves the question, why should I eat this? That might be a good question.

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But we shouldn't say, well, Jesus never ate processed foods and high -fructose corn syrup, therefore

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I never should. You can look at Acts 10 and 1 Timothy 4. We eat things now as Christians because we are able to eat things, and we need to make sure the issue for us is not somehow defilement on the outside, but defilement on the inside.

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Mark chapter 7, our Lord Jesus Christ deals with this very thing. The importance of being clean before the

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Lord on the inside. After He called the multitudes to Him again, He began to say to them, listen to Me, all of you, and understand.

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Now pay attention. There's an issue here, and the issue is defilement is not just a surface thing.

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It runs deep into the fabric of the being, into the warp and woof of the person.

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Corruption, depravity is down deep. You're going to have to look into the heart to find out.

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You'll need some kind of spiritual MRI to look down there and find out what's going on.

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Verse 15 of Mark 7, there is nothing outside the man which going into him can defile him.

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Did you hear that? It doesn't matter what you eat, that doesn't defile you. But the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man.

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And so, if your view of sin is so low, it's just a matter of what you eat or don't eat, this is going to pose a problem for you.

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Jesus teaching depravity in the heart of a man. Every area then of his life, the sinner's life, is tainted by sin because the heart controls it all.

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It's the mission control center. Verse 17, and when leaving the multitude he had entered the house, his disciples questioned him about the parable.

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They'd like to talk a little bit more in detail. The surgeon has just done his operation, and now the residents ask the chief of staff for a little bit of information, explain what's going on.

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And Jesus says in Mark 7, verse 18 and 19, here's the inside scoop. Are you so lacking to understand also?

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Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him? Because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach and is eliminated, thus

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Jesus declared all foods clean. All foods clean.

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When you eat some kind of funky, defiled food, it doesn't go through your heart and have some of the impurities cling on to your heart.

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It bypasses the heart, and it bypasses the heart, the spiritual heart we're talking about here, loving the

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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, not your cardiovascular heart. It goes past your heart and just goes down your esophagus, into your stomach, small intestine, large intestine, and out it goes.

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And Jesus says all foods are clean. Then he gives an illustration. That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man.

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For from within, it's not what you put into your mouth, it's what comes out of your mouth, shows what's down in your heart.

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Out of the heart of men proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.

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Look at all the plurals in that list. Look at what Jesus says about the human heart.

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It is a sewage container. It is a cesspool. It is a putrid garbage heap.

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Foods are clean. Hearts are unclean when they talk like that.

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The craze for more and more coveting, the unrestrained sex, lasciviousness, and impurity, this all shows how sinful the heart can be.

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Verse 23, all these evil things proceed from within and defile the man. And so this corruption is universal.

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This corruption affects the heart, the mind, the will, the ambitions, the conscience, the memory.

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And we have a problem. We have a problem, and that problem is the heart.

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And we know as Christians that heart has been cleansed and redeemed and we have been made born again. Don't let anybody, if you struggle with eating, don't go buy a

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Christian diet book. 99 % of the time, they're just trash. They're worthy of the burning pile, not to the page -turning pile.

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First Timothy chapter 4, this was an issue when Paul writes to Timothy the elder, but the spirit explicitly says that in the later times, some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.

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In the end days, there's going to be deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons taught.

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What do you think they'd teach? It's not like a doctrine about a demon, demonology.

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These are demons teaching doctrines and they're using people to do it, verse 2, by means of hypocritical lie speakers, seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron.

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These people speak falsely, they speak in hypocrisy, they know better, and here they have a cauterized heart.

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And they sell their lies and they have no problem selling their lies. And what do they sell?

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They're two things they particularly sell here in Ephesus and probably here in America as well.

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Men who forbid food and advocate abstaining from foods, which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.

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They teach against marriage, which is a gift from God. They teach against food, which is a gift from God.

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They forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods. When Ellen G.

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White or any of her people come along and say, you've got to eat this or you can't eat that, I want you to go straight to this passage.

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So what happens is when we deal with the issue of gluttony and losing control when we eat, people tend,

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Christians tend, to go by some Christian solution, which I don't have any problem with. It's better than Adler and Skinner and Maslow and somebody like that.

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But most of these Christian books, almost all of them that I've seen, take you into legalism.

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Do this, don't do that or else. In 1 Timothy 4, verse 4, it says, everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude.

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Food isn't the issue. That's not the issue. We don't have to reject certain kinds of food.

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We want to reject that we're under Old Testament law. That is the issue.

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We sanctify food by means of the Word of God and prayer. Food is not inherently sinful.

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That's the issue. Can you eat for the glory of God? I think that rises straight to the top of what we go and what we do and what we say.

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Galatians chapter 5, here's what we're doing. If you just tuned in, you're probably thinking, who is this guy and what is he talking about?

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I started off the series yesterday talking about gluttony and what is a Christian to do? Well, today we talked about what a

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Christian isn't to do. Christian isn't to say, let's get under Old Testament law. That's the ticket.

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That'll cure us. We want to make sure we walk according to the Spirit. And I think if you see yourself walking according to the

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Spirit, you're going to see part of the fruit of the Spirit, and that is self -control. The flesh does set its desire against the

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Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. They are in opposition to one another, so you may not do the things that you please.

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But if you're led by the Spirit, you're not under law. Certainly not under Deuteronomy.

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The law in Deuteronomy, we need to understand that there's a different controller.

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And so Galatians chapter 5 talks about the fruit of the Spirit. When the Spirit is in control of your life, when the

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Spirit is leading you and guiding you, you are going to have the characteristics described in Galatians chapter 5.

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The fruit of the Spirit, this single form, this single form, kind of like one man said a bunch of grapes instead of separate pieces of fruit.

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The fruit of the Spirit. No internal force from your heart can achieve these things.

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You will have to use sanctification with sweat and toil and striving, but this is what the

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Spirit gives. The first fruit of the Spirit is love, and we work our way down through the list.

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And finally, at the end of the list, we see self -control. MacArthur says, self -control is an inward personal mastery that submits my desires to the greater cause of God's will.

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And so with this self -control, think about the opposite of self -control, and you'll probably think of overindulgence.

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Self -control knows when to say no, overindulgence can't do that. It's like a kid, and the kid will just eat as much ice cream, and then they wonder why there's a stomachache later.

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This self -control can be seen in many areas of your life.

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And one particular area that self -control helps is what you put into your mouth.

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And so how does the Spirit work? Here's the question. If the fruit of the Spirit is self -control, how do you get more self -control?

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What do you do? What does the Spirit use? Friends, did you know the Spirit of God today works through His Word?

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As the Spirit of God inspired, that is, had prophets speak for Him, as the

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Spirit of God would breathe forth the very words of God and use human instruments to write those words down, as the

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Spirit of God illumines our minds so we can understand, as the Spirit of God assists in the preaching of the

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Word of God even in Bible churches today, the Spirit of God uses the

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Word. You have to look pretty far to figure out, well, when does the Spirit of God not directly use the

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Word? If you'd like to be controlled by the Spirit, one of the things that you need to do is you need to open your

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Bibles, and you need to put into your mind what the Scripture says. Not about weight loss, not about Ehud and Eglon, who was a very fat man and then somehow spiritualized that whole thing in 1

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Kings. You need to fill up your mind with Scripture that talks about God, how

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He thinks, what He says, His will, His standards, His perfections,

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His attributes, what He thinks about His Son, what He thinks about human history, and begin to think about the world through God's perspective instead of through our own, through culture, through entertainment, through Fox News, through politicians, and begin to brainwash your mind.

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That's exactly what you need to do. You need to have your mind filled with Scripture. Colossians chapter 3 talks about, let your mind dwell on these things.

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If you take a look at having your life controlled by the Spirit in Ephesians chapter 5, and then you take a look at what the

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Bible says about having your life controlled by the Spirit and what the effects are in Galatians and then in Colossians, you're going to see that the

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Word of God is central. And so you need to read your Bibles. People say, well, that's just, you know, your answer for everything.

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Read your Bible. Well, God could have, at salvation, given you complete

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Bible knowledge, but He has ordained it a different way, and His ordination process is this.

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You have to pick up your Bible, and you have to read it, and you have to study it, and you have to take it in.

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So why don't you read Psalm 119, and it'll tell you and teach you about how great God's Word is.

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So you'll want to keep it. You'll want to read it. You'll want to study it all the more. And as you begin to think about things properly and from God's perspective, you'll see the

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Spirit of God. Take those verses. Take that kind of thinking and begin to, what does Romans chapter 12 say, verse 2, renew your mind.

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Because if you do have a problem with sinful overeating, whether you're skinny or obese, you need to start thinking about things properly.

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You don't think about food properly. You don't think about motivation for eating properly.

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You don't think about what your conscience feels like afterwards from a biblical perspective thinking properly.

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You've bought into the world and your own heart system, and you need to think rightly about these things.

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You don't think about what it does to your testimony rightly, how God certainly thinks or feels.

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There's all kinds of things that that will do. You need to fall in line. That's Galatians, basically.

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Fall in line. He says in verse 25, if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the

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Spirit. And the Spirit of God governs people's lives, and He always governs people's lives through the

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Word. Now, I shouldn't say always, because there's some providential things He does outside of that. But when you have a sanctification issue and you want to say no to sin and yes to righteousness more often, then you need to flood your mind with the

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Bible. Show me a super saint that doesn't have a lot of Bible knowledge, and I'll show you an impossibility.

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Bible saints, mature saints, rather, they know their

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Bibles, don't they? And they've been around the block, and so they know how to deal with temptations.

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They know how to deal with self -control issues. This is a bigger issue than just food.

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This is just a bigger issue than somehow, well, we're going to just deal with our gluttony so we really look good, and then we slide out of gluttony and we slide into vanity.

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How do you master gluttony? How do you master humility?

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St. John Climacus gave his monks specific advice, quote, he who fondles a lion tames it, but he who coddles the body makes it still wilder.

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I don't know if I like that advice or not, but here's what happens. We're not here to coddle the body.

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We are here to have our body be used in the service of the Lord, and reading the Bible will help you understand this as you renew your mind.

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What does the Bible say about gluttony? There's not a whole lot that the Bible says. It does say in Proverbs 23 20, do not be with heavy drinkers of wine or with gluttonous eaters of meat, for the heavy drinker and the glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe one with rags.

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There are some things that the Bible teaches about gluttony. Well, yesterday it was the introduction to gluttony.

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Today was don't buy into Christian programs to help you with food. We also talked today about how food is not the issue.

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That is not the main issue, and that there are things we can do through the Word of God to help us think differently.

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And tomorrow or the next time I talk about gluttony, we'll see what the Bible teaches, and it will not be, set a watch,

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O Lord, before my mouth, keep the doors of my lips shut, somehow taking Psalm 141 and turning it into a gluttonous verse.

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We'll look at some other verses. My name is Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry. Everything's not been said on gluttony, so stay tuned.

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WV &E 760 or NoCompromiseRadio .com. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church, firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WV &E, its staff, or management.