Temperance

It is a pleasure to be back. It seems like it's been a long time. That's a... then again, well, people always ask me what I'm up to, how are things are going, and they're going well. I don't feel like I've had a lot of extra time that I've been sitting at home and said, boy, I wish they'd invite me over to Portsmouth, but I do miss being here and think about it often, so... We are very pleased to be back, and hello to the folks down in Prestonsburg. It's funny, because I was asking, so I said, have we been in Portsmouth since Passover? And I don't think that we have. So I guess I've been to Prestonsburg more recently, so... I'm glad you can see me, and I can't see you, but I know you're inside those cameras. And it's funny, I've been telling people, people say it's good to see you, and I've been saying it's really good to see you. I hadn't noisied it around that much, but some people had heard that I was having problems with my vision. So I'll give you the update on that. Actually, a week and a half ago, I had surgery on my right eye. It was cataract surgery, so nothing more serious than that, but it was very successful. I'm very pleased. Now, instead of you being somewhat I could see you from my left eye and not see you much at all out of my right, now it's the other way. You're pretty clear in the right eye, and still a little blurry in the left. I was a little disappointed. I grew up watching the $6 million man, for those of you who are old enough. So I was waiting for the built-in telescope and the x-ray vision, and they let me down. All it does is see. But that was a big improvement. And actually, I'll be having the left eye done this coming week. Get it done just in time to go off to summer camp so I can see what's going on around me. So that's the big thing, personally. We had graduation at ABC. Seems like we just did it, but it's been coming up on a month already. We're busily planning. We have the one-week continuing education program starting Monday. So we've got 43 people coming in for that, and we'll have seven hours of class every day for those five days. And I know Kathy DeCampos does most of the work getting ready for that. But we're excited. That'll be a good time, and we're planning some samplers here and there. The first one we'll be doing is down in Orlando. Darris McNeely and I will be traveling. I was kind of excited because it dawned on me that this will be the... going down there will be the furthest I've traveled from home. That's not the way I wanted to say that. Well, I did one in Cleveland last year, and when I went to Cleveland, I said, this is the furthest I've traveled from home in two years, and that was Cleveland, which is not something you usually consider much of a trip. Anyway, so we'll be doing that. We're doing one in London, Kentucky, and then Mike Arrod invited me to come over, asked if I would go to Roanoke to do one day. We hadn't done that before, but it works out pretty well, so I'm excited to visit the brethren there.

I'm pausing now because it seems like there was something else I wanted to say before I started. I can't for the life of me remember what it was, but it'll probably pop into my memory later. I know one thing I was going to say, I appreciate Mr. Call's sermonette. As he stood up there, I thought, oh, I'll bet he's filling in for Ken Shoemaker, and he's going to realize how much harder it is to go back down to that shorter time once you get used to having the long time, although he did admirably. I'm pleased because I have to confess I didn't even think about Father's Day when I was thinking of a message to give.

For the last several years, we've been at Camp Catubik when Father's Day came around, so it's usually the last thing on my mind. I hope you won't be disappointed that I didn't plan a Father's Day message, but I'm glad Mr. Call did. So you've got that taken care of. I guess, in a way, Sue's given me a Father's Day gift every year because I said for years before I was married that whoever I marry doesn't have to come to camp with me every summer, but she has to be willing to let me go. And that's what she's done. My Father's Day present has been to let me go off and play at camp every year. I'm excited. Of course, that'll be the next week after our continuing ed, and we're busy working on that. So anyways, if I remember something else I forgot, I'll just interject then. But I'm glad I was hoping somebody would have the water here. You know, cold water. Actually, I wanted to use it as a prop for my introduction. Besides that, I like having a drink. You know, to us, it's a nice refreshing drink. This time of year, we often crave a cold drink of water if we're working outside much. Or if you're like me, you like those salty snacks in the evening. You might not realize, a hundred years ago in the United States, there was a social reform movement that went by the name often of the Cold Water Movement. Cold Water, because this was the high point of the movement for prohibition. Temperance. Tea Totler. It's gone by a lot of different names.

And of course, prohibition was a movement to try to make the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. And if you studied your history, I don't think anybody here is old enough to remember firsthand. If so, you're young for your age, young-looking. But it's interesting that movement's greatest success came only a short time before its greatest failure.

Because the 18th Amendment to the Constitution outlawed the production and sale of alcoholic beverages in the 1920s. But it seems as soon as it was passed and went into action, bootlegging sprang up. And, you know, hidden stills up in the mountains and such. So that soon there were additional problems from smuggling and organized crime, leaped into the vacuum that was there to reap the profits. And of course, the organized crime, the mobsters like Al Capone and others, are considered the worst part of prohibition. If there's one enduring thing that came from it, depending on your view, most historians that study it say NASCAR actually got its origins from prohibition. Because the bootleggers needed to have fast cars to outrun the police and the customs agents. And it turns out when they weren't running from the law, they decided, hey, let's get our fast cars together and see which is the fastest. And I didn't make that up. They really say that's where NASCAR came from. Some of you are nodding. I'm hoping some of you have heard that. Or have you heard it so much you don't care? Anyways, after only 13 years of prohibition, which was widely considered by that time to be an utter failure, the 21st Amendment was passed, repealing it and letting Americans legally drink, which was good because people wanted to drown their depression that was coming from the Great Depression and the approaching war. But I stopped and think, wow, that trying to outlaw it completely and having that frustrated and then bringing it back, how far was that from what was the goal of the original temperance movement? There was a social reform movement that actually began about the mid-1800s encouraging temperance. And when it started, they were actually going for the original meaning of that word. The definition of temperance doesn't mean abstinence. It means moderate use.

So when the movement began in the mid-1800s, moderation was what it was all about. Not abstinence, not prohibition. Although I learned when I was studying the late colonial and early republic periods of American history, moderation would have been a step sort of in a certain direction.

Because I learned in the 1600s and 1700s, Americans consumed a surprisingly high amount of alcoholic beverages. Not for reasons that you might think, though. At that point in time, safe, clean drinking water was hard to come by. It was hard to find a place where you knew you could trust the water and it wasn't contaminated by what we now know are germs. They didn't necessarily understand that, but they knew it could make you sick or it might taste bad. So clean water was rare, but fruit trees were abundant.

And so the most common drink in America was cider. It wasn't all that strong, but it was hard. A lot of us are surprised. I was surprised to learn that it actually wasn't mostly apple cider. It was generally pear, because pear trees were more abundant until Johnny Chapman changed those things. We know him as Johnny Appleseed. But it's fortunate, studying the period, not that many people had addiction problems. It was consumed widely, and some people had their problems, but it wasn't unusual.

But it was going in that direction. And of course, those people who lived in the Appalachian Mountains or this side of them, when they had extra crop, they learned that before railroads and canals, it was tough to get that extra crop to market.

So what do you do with all that extra corn? Well, you turn it into what the hillbillies call corn squeezings. You know, you cook it and distill it into whiskey, which is easily transportable and won't rot or spoil. So it's not that hard to realize, as we came into the 1800s, excess of alcoholic consumption was a problem in some areas.

And so, at a time when social reform movements were springing up for almost everything, and I know I've talked about that in sermons before, in the 1800s they were trying to reform the economy, reform the diet, have exercise programs. Of course, abolition was the leading reform movement, but temperance wasn't far behind. And as that progressed, within a surprisingly short amount of time, the goal of the movement changed. And they sort of changed the meaning of a word in the process. Temperance, in people's minds, shifted from its original meaning of moderation, of self-control, and in their minds they heard that word and started thinking of complete abstinence.

As an alternative to drinking any alcohol at all, they promoted cold water. Safe water could be safely found, mostly by then. And I like cold water. You can see, I drink a lot of it. I don't want to think of it. I even sip hot water when I've had more caffeine than I know I need. That's been a funny thing at school this last year.

The students having me around every day got used to it. I've got this insulated mug, because the rules in the home office are you're not supposed to bring cups into the meeting room area unless they're covered, because they just had new carpet they didn't want to spill. So I've got one of those big insulated mugs. And when I'd come into class, they'd say, okay, is it water or coffee? Because you might have heard I've got a reputation for sometimes talking rapidly. And the students would say, the more coffee I had that day, the more rapidly the words came out. So I might have hot water, I might have coffee.

But it's nice to have a choice, isn't it? Variety. I don't want to spend the rest of my life drinking only water. I don't want to have to spend my life drinking only beer or only whiskey. Better than either of those options is what the reformers in America did originally want. Temperance. Moderate use of various things. Which is made possible by self-control. I've got my notes here.

I wondered how long it would take me to get to this point. Because you might think, and you might have already guessed, that I'm moving towards giving a sermon about alcohol.

But actually, I just wanted to use that historical example to move towards the actual topic that I wanted to speak on, which is temperance. Self-control. A person who has self-control can enjoy moderate use of something that a person without self-control can't or shouldn't. So temperance, self-control, is an excellent trait to have. One we need to have. In fact, it must be because the Apostle Paul lists it as one of the fruits of the Spirit. In Galatians 5, verses 22 and 23, I'll turn there, although I'm betting a lot of you haven't memorized. And I forgot, in your discussions, you've been going through the fruits of the Spirit, am I right? For the roundtable?

So I'm a little ahead of you. And I'll explain a little bit why, but of course, there, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, or, if you have an older King James, temperance. Against such is no law.

When I first began serving in the pastoral ministry, one of the things I had concern about was, how do you come up with an idea for a sermon every week? I'm pleased it didn't turn out to be as tough as I thought it would be, but still, I thought, I've got to have some strategies, and also to make sure I have variety.

So one of the things I set for myself was, I'm going to, over time, every now and then, come back to speak on one of the fruits of the Spirit.

And as I was looking ahead at this assignment, I said, I'm going to look through my files, and I discovered something. I've given a number of... none... you'd think I'd had too much coffee. I've given a number of sermons on love. I've spoken on joy, peace, goodness, gentleness, patience, meekness, kindness.

But although I've touched on it in passing, if my records are correct, I've never given a full sermon on temperance or self-control.

So, I've driven an hour and a half from Cincinnati today to take care of some unfinished business.

And of course, I wrote an extra note, though, to say, by me saying I'm doing that, I'm not at all implying that you haven't heard sermons on the topic, and I know you're going to have a roundtable discussion. So, I'm not saying that you're lacking that area, just that I haven't talked about it.

So, I wanted to do that. Talk about self-control and temperance.

If you still have your Bible open there to Galatians, I'll mention the word that the Apostle Paul used there in the Greek is ecratia. I don't have the Strong's number down, but if you want me to spell a transliteration, it's E-G-K-R-A-T-E-I-A.

And that's as hard to spell it as it is to pronounce. E-G-K-R-A-T-E-A. And the definitions they use are very good. Self-control is what it means.

But I noted from the glossary that it comes from a base word, ecrates, which means strong in a thing.

Being strong in something. I paused when I saw that and said, being from the Star Wars generation, I thought, yes, that young one is strong with the Force. But ecratia implies having a strength in controlling your appetites, strong in controlling your urges and desires. That's a good thing. Or we could just call it self-discipline.

A person who's exerting control over him or herself instead of following impulses, whether they be physical or emotional. That's a person that limits the degree to which they let appetites drive them to do things.

And self-discipline, we know, comes from having, when we're younger, external discipline applied to us. I've thought about that a lot over the last five years. Little children don't have a lot of self-discipline. Their parents impose discipline. You're allowed to do this now. You're not allowed to do this. You've had enough of that. Stop. And hopefully, over time, they start to internalize those guidelines, and then, as they grow to mature, they exercise self-discipline.

Some people naturally have a greater degree of that than others.

Some people seem to come naturally with their character, and others, it doesn't as much.

But the fact that we see self-discipline, or temperance, or self-control listed among the fruits of the Spirit, tells us that the ability to practice and exercise that self-control is something that we, as Christians, will all grow in. It's a fruit of the Spirit.

If Jesus Christ is dwelling in us through the Spirit, over time, that fruit will grow and mature if we subject ourselves to Him and let Him exercise it through us.

So, even if I'm naturally lacking self-discipline when God first calls me, over time, as I'm submitting to God and letting Him work through me, I should notice myself developing more and more self-control.

That doesn't mean that it doesn't take effort. Of course it takes effort. We have to do our part to develop the fruits of the Spirit.

But we can have trust and confidence that it is happening, and it is going to.

So I want to go through some examples and some things we can learn in the Bible from that.

Sorry, I'm debating whether to put on my glasses to read my notes or not.

It's one thing my bionic eye doesn't flex, so I have to have reading glasses now.

I was surprised when I went into this. I was studying, looking for examples and looking for uses of the Word.

The Old Testament shows it to us in action, but I was surprised. I didn't see, at least in the translations we normally use, primarily the King James or New King James, the word self-control or temperance doesn't even appear in the Old Testament.

Now, I didn't check every translation, so there might be some in English where it does.

And I thought, we know kind of what it looks like in action, especially lack of it.

If I say lack of self-control, I wouldn't be surprised if in your mind you're envisioning someone you know, or sometime you've seen it, maybe in yourself even.

But even so, even though maybe you can imagine it, I thought it might be worth considering an example.

I wanted to look at some examples in the Old Testament.

And the person I have in mind for lack of self-control is Samson, the judge.

I'm not sure if that will surprise you at first, but if you want to turn there, his story shows up in the book of Judges.

I believe, starting about verse 14, but I'm going to summarize much of his story because I don't want to just read right through all of it.

But if you remember, of course, Samson was born to a couple of parents. He was of the tribe of Dan.

His father, Manoah, and his mother, whose name were not given, wanted to have children, but for some reason they didn't.

And they did a smart thing. They appealed to God. They cried out to him, Let us have children. And God decided to answer their prayer.

Now, this is at a time when the nation of Israel was being oppressed by the Philistines. So God had a special plan for the child he would give them. And he sent an angelic messenger, which that's kind of redundant since angel means messenger, but they sent a messenger to explain to them they were going to have a child and he would be special.

He's going to be a Nazarite his whole life from birth.

So they warned the mother, Don't even drink any wine now, or alcoholic beverages.

That's something most mothers, or expecting mothers, do these days.

And of course, a Nazarite was a person who took a special vow, we believe, to be at service to God.

So this child would be a Nazarite all of his life, and he would have some restrictions.

No alcohol, no products from grapevines. Also, they were never to cut their hair while they were under the vow, not touch any dead bodies, or things like that.

Now, that's interesting. When I say, of course, not cut hair, that's what Samson is most known for.

We know he grew long hair, and what else is he known for? Super strength.

I wonder if his muscles really bulge that much.

But we know that the story, and of course, what he's most known for is eventually his hair was cut.

He'd used that great strength to fight the oppression of the Philistines, but he wasn't that devoted to God at times.

So he gave in, you know, he broke his vow. His hair was cut, and he lost that strength that God had gave him to defeat Israel's enemies.

Interestingly, there's no record of him ever drinking alcohol. He never had wine.

There's no indication that he had trouble controlling that appetite.

I'm not sure if I would call it temperance, since I made the point that abstinence is a little bit different.

He didn't have to exercise moderation. He just couldn't have it at all.

But there was an appetite that Samson could have and should have controlled, but he didn't.

Samson had an appetite for women, as it turned out, Philistine women.

First thing he did, well, not the first thing he did, but one of the first things in his story was he saw a young lady in the Philistine town that really caught his attention.

He told his parents, I found this woman. She's the one for me. Get her for me, a wife.

I should have thought about that. I don't know. When I was young, instead of finding one myself, I should have went to my parents.

Go get me a wife. But his parents said, couldn't you find an Israelite woman? No, no, she's the one for me.

But there were problems. They did arrange the marriage against their better judgment.

But before they were even married, the bride-to-be would betray Samson.

And of course, well, I'll describe the story because I've got a little bit of time. Of course, he was going down there and a lion attacked him.

The great strength God gave him came on. He just ripped the lion apart and killed it with his bare hands.

Later on, he's passing the same way and sees a hive of bees had set up there, and there was honey.

So he takes the honey, he's eating some, gives some to his parents.

And so during the one week leading up to the wedding, the seven-day festival, he poses a riddle to all the men, not all the men that are there, but they bring him 30 men to be his groomsmen.

That's kind of impressive. I was rereading the account today. It says, when they saw Samson, they brought these 30 men in.

Maybe Samson was so imposing, they said, we'd better get a bodyguard on this guy.

And as time passed, he said, well, let's make a wager. I've got a riddle.

And there's 30 of you. If you can solve my riddle, I'll buy a new set of clothes for each one of you.

Or I'll give you a set of clothes, but if you can't guess my riddle, each one of you gives me an outfit of clothes, which is pretty good.

30 new suits would be a nice thing.

Well, they pressed on Samson's fiancee, and eventually, you know, she pressed him to tell her the truth, to tell her the riddle, and she immediately gave it away.

And they said, oh, what's sweeter than honey? What's stronger than a lion?

He said, yeah, if you hadn't plowed with my heifer, you wouldn't have got my riddle.

Which is a fancy way of saying, you got it from my wife, and he goes off. And it's funny, in my notes, I wrote, murderous rage. I'm not sure if that's quite the term, but he said, okay, I've got to give 30 changes of clothes.

I'm going to go down and kill 30 Philistines and bring you their clothes.

And he goes on from there to fight the Philistines in a number of ways, you know, killing many of them, helping to throw off the repression of Israel.

But not doing it, I think, the way God would have originally planned. That's why I'm summarizing the story.

Samson still had an appetite. As we'll see, I want to start reading in Judges 16. Judges 16.

We'll see that he hasn't developed the self-control in that area.

Verse 1, it says, Samson went to Gaza, that's one of the five Philistine cities, and he saw a harlot there, and he went into her.

Now, this is not an example of a man of God.

The Gazites were told, Samson has come here. He's got quite a reputation.

They surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night. They're hoping they can get him unsuspecting when he first wakes up.

Saying, in the morning, when it's daylight, we'll kill him. Samson lay low till midnight, and he rose at midnight.

And here's where we see Samson has a sense of humor. He doesn't just sneak out.

He goes to the gates and uproots the gates of the city. He says he takes the two gateposts, pulled them up, the gate of the city, the two gateposts, which are probably the size of telephone poles, and the bar, and carries them to the top of a hill several miles away across from Hebron.

I just wanted to emphasize that because I always think it's funny.

If you have any of the old Bible stories that Basil Woolverton wrote and illustrated, shows this gate on top of a hill I imagine deserted, and it's miles away from the city where it belongs.

Samson's strength saved him that time.

And in a way, that's kind of unfortunate because he still didn't suffer the consequences from not controlling his appetite.

He moved on directly from there to suffer again.

In verse 4, Well, I'm not going to read all of this, but she sets about to do this.

Turns out Delilah was not as devoted to Samson as Samson was to Delilah.

Now, he doesn't give it away. At first, he lets that sense of humor come out, and he tells her several false ways that she thinks can take his strength.

But if we drop down to verse 15, she said to him, How can you say I love you when your heart is not with me?

Interestingly, she accuses him of the exact thing that she's guilty of.

Her heart was not with him.

But she says, You've mocked me these three times.

You've not told me where your great strength lies.

It came to pass when she pestered him daily with her words and pressed him so that his soul was vexed to death, so that he told her all his heart.

Interesting.

She's pressing him in a way that's going to make him vulnerable, that's going to make him lose his strength.

Self-control might have led him to say, Hey, this woman is not the right one for me.

I should get out of this.

I should be doing the right thing.

But instead, he can't give in.

He doesn't have the self-control to leave her.

He told her all his heart.

He says, No razor has ever come on my head.

I've been a Nazarite to God for my mother's womb.

Now, he probably had to explain to her what a Nazarite was because she wasn't an Israelite and didn't know.

He said, If I'm shaven, my strength will leave me, and I'll become weak and be like any other man.

And I'm not going to read the next verses, but you know exactly what happened.

She got him to fall asleep and brought in a barber, cut off the hair, and the strength did leave him.

Now, one thing I can say for Samson, now there's different ways to interpret this, but I like to see the best in people, at least I hope to.

I like to believe at that point, he finally came to himself and realized how foolish he'd been.

Because his hair starts to grow back, but I'd like to think his faith and his trust in God also started to grow back.

Because at the end, he didn't try to get back with Delilah.

Instead, he said, God, please give me back my strength so that I can avenge myself on these Philistines.

And the famous story, of course, there are thousands of them are gathered in this temple or someplace to make fun of him and to worship their false god, Dagon.

He pushes on the bars, or I always wonder if he pushed or pulled, but he breaks the pillars, and the house collapses, and it says he killed more people in his death than he'd killed in his life.

And he'd slain a lot of Philistines.

But it's too bad.

He didn't control his appetite.

He wasn't strong in controlling his appetite.

Not with liquor. That wasn't a problem.

We don't know that he ate too many Twinkies, but there's various ways that you can...

various appetites that need to be controlled.

Samson couldn't control his appetite for Philistine women, and that led to his ultimate betrayal.

That tells us temperance applies to sex as much as to food or drink.

I'm going to turn to 1 Corinthians 7. We call this the marriage chapter, often.

1 Corinthians 7, beginning in verse 2.

One says, Because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, let each woman have her own husband.

Let each man have his own wife, not a succession of Philistine women.

In verse 3, And he goes on to say, The wife doesn't have authority over her body. The husband does.

The husband doesn't have authority over his body. The wife does.

Do not deprive one another, except with consent for a time, that you may give yourself to fasting and prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control, because of a lack of ecratia.

Same word here, as Paul listed in Galatians 5, as one of the fruits of the Spirit.

What Paul means by this statement is that, you could, well, actually, let me read the next part.

He says, This is a concession, not a commandment.

I wish that all men were even as myself.

And our understanding is that Paul was single at this time.

There is debate, was he ever married, or was he always single?

He said, Just as soon all men were like me, but let each have his own gift from God, one in this matter and another that.

So Paul is saying, God doesn't require anyone to marry.

Most people prefer to be married.

That seems to be the normal state.

But he says, if a person does marry, he or she is required to practice, you know, physical relations with their spouse, with ecratia.

Self-control, moderation, not abstinence, not, whatever the extreme of not abstinence is, I guess.

I remember, you know, Steve Myers talking about this, I heard in one of the class saying, you know, certainly in Hebrews it says, that the marriage bed is undefiled.

That doesn't mean all kids are going to be married.

That kind of weird, crazy stuff is acceptable.

God wants ecratia in our marriages.

Self-control.

If you look at verse 9, he says, he's saying to the unmarried, matter of fact, I'll start in verse 8, I say to the unmarried and the widows, it's good for them if they remain even as I am.

But if they cannot exercise self-control, if you don't have ecratia, then get married.

It's better to marry than to burn with passion.

That's the same point that Solomon makes a number of times in the book Song of Solomon.

That's a great, epic poem, and this famous love story, which it's hard to understand because of all what looked like to us, totally bizarre metaphors and analogies.

But if you get through those, it is very enlightening.

Several times, such as Song of Solomon 8, verse 4, I'm not going to turn there, but there's three different places where it says, I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, don't stir up or awaken love until it pleases.

That's saying what Paul says, in a sense, don't stir up this appetite until you're ready to control it and use it in a proper way.

Of course, the proper way is in marriage.

That's what God intended.

But I'm not wanting to stress that entirely, of course.

Well, I don't want to stress just sex.

Sex, alcohol, video games, posting on Facebook, all that kind of stuff.

Posting on Facebook, all of these are things that can get out of control and people, we all need to exercise that ecratia, that self-control, moderation or temperance.

Oh, yes, good thing I put my glasses on.

Actually, I could see I've got, I wrote in red ink to remind me to tell all of us, and good to remind ourselves, if a person realizes that they're prone to or actually have an addiction in a certain area, that's not a place where you want to say, but I'll exercise moderation, I'll do it a little.

There are some things, if you have a sickness, be it emotional, mental or physical, it's okay to practice abstinence in a certain area.

You know, there are some people, I've heard some people who speak on alcoholism who say, you know, when I was an alcoholic, you know, I just, I couldn't take one little drink without having the whole bottle, so I don't have any.

So I want to stand here to tell you, if that's you, don't practice moderation whenever it is.

You know, there are some areas where if it's prone to some type of a sickness, then it's okay to practice abstinence.

There will be plenty of other areas to work on moderation.

But for most of us, and most of the things that God allows, you know, moderation, self-control is what we want.

Having said that, let's look at some good examples.

I look at Samson as an example of someone who didn't control a certain appetite.

I've got a couple of examples from, actually both of them turned out to be women, although it wasn't my goal to find women, but of women who you might not think of right off the bat as ones who are famous for self-control or moderation.

But I kind of like that.

The first one I want to look at is the example of Ruth.

As I said, Justice Samson isn't mostly known for, you know, lack of self-control.

Ruth is known for a great many other traits.

I'm going to read a little bit in the book of Ruth, so if you want to turn there, summarize most of her story in advance, as I did with Samson's.

Of course, I think it's a story most of us are pretty familiar with.

Ruth was a Moabite woman who...

There we go. I was looking for it before Judges. It's after Judges.

She was a Moabite who married an Israelite who was sojourning in the land of Moab.

A fella named Malon. Malon and his family had moved to Moab because of a famine back in Israel.

So the family moved, and while they were there, two young men married.

But of course, disaster was going to strike the family.

First, the leader of the family, a limolec, would die.

Is it a limolec? Now my mind's...

Yeah, it was a limolec.

He died first, leaving a widow. And then, unfortunately, the two Moabite men who...

Or the two Israelite men died. Malon died and left Ruth a widow.

They were living with her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law.

And they got news that the famine was over.

God has visited Israel with rain and there's food again.

Naomi decided she was going to go home.

She was kind of bitter and sad at this point.

Now I don't want to spend too much time on all that story.

But it's worth us knowing that.

Both of the sisters decide to go with her. Naomi says, no, no, stay home. Go back to your parents' house. You can marry again.

One sister, Orpah, decides to do that.

But not Ruth. Ruth wants to go with Naomi.

And she very movingly says, no, nothing's going to part me from you but death.

Where you go, I'm going. Not only that, but she wants to adopt, and probably has already adopted, the Israelite religion. Your God will be my God. Your people will be my people. She's going to adopt the Israelite culture and way of living.

Fortunately for these two widows, that Israelite culture included a way for poor people to support themselves. They had a system that we call gleaning. We call gleaning because that's what the Bible calls it.

When the harvest was going on, the able-bodied poor of the land were allowed to follow the reapers. And they could get bits of grain or stalks that either they missed or they'd let drop.

And so they could provide for themselves. Ruth set out to glean. And she happened on the field of a man that was actually a fairly close relative to her departed husband.

That was Boaz. We're going to pick up the story in chapter 2. I'm not going to start reading yet, but Boaz sees this young woman, relatively young woman there in the asset. Who is that? She must have got his attention because he went out of his way to find out what her story was. By the time he talks to her, he said, I've heard what you're doing, how you're taking care of your mother-in-law and you're doing these good things.

He calls her a virtuous woman. He is determined to help her. He tells some of the workmen, Hey, little, little extra grain dropped. And if she gets into the sheaves, don't rebuke her. He basically says, let her get a good haul. Make sure she gets plenty of food. And then he invites her to come and eat lunch with them. Chapter 2 and verse 14. Boaz said to her at mealtime, they probably started working as soon as there was enough light, and they would go all day.

You know, those of you that are into farming, which I'm not, but I know that harvest time is work time. You don't know when it's going to rain. You don't know what's going to happen. You've got to make hay while the sun shines, or get your barley crop in when the weather is good. So they probably started early, and lunch comes probably late, maybe well afternoon.

And the hot, sweaty fellas gather around a table, and boy, they must be hungry. I imagine food is piled up. If you want men to work hard, you've got to feed them, right? So there's not going to be a shortage of food available here. But who has known a shortage of food? Well, Ruth is there because she's poor. She's out there gleaning. Now she's brought up to a place where there's probably piles of food, and all these big workmen who are going to eat way more than her.

So there's food available. And Ruth says to her at mealtime, Come here, eat of the bread. Dip your piece of bread in the vinegar. So come on up here and eat. She could be saying, Have your fill. So she sat beside the reapers. He passed parched grain to her. And she ate, and was satisfied, and kept some back. That's always stood out to me. I'm not sure why, but it could have just said she came and ate, and she was nice, but she ate enough to be satisfied and stopped.

You think of someone who's known what it's like to be hungry. Perhaps she was hungry when she showed up that day, and yet she didn't gorge herself. If what I'm saying is true, there was so much food, they wouldn't have noticed. She could have made a pig of herself, but she exercised ecratia. Only, she was speaking Hebrew, so it wasn't ecratia. It was whatever the Hebrew word is, and I didn't look it up. But if we drop down to verse 18, she kept some back. In verse 18, she took it up. This was what she had threshed out of the barley.

And went into the city, and her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned, and she brought out and gave to her what she had kept back after she'd been satisfied. Ruth exercised that self-control. I've had enough. I'm going to stop. I'm going to save some of this lunch and take it back to my mother-in-law and make sure she has some. That's pretty good. How often do we do that? I brought a little prop. You ever have one of these?

I had to hide this from Connor and say, Oh, wow, look at this, M&Ms! I'm going to have some. I don't know if I should eat in front of the congregation, but Mr. Caulkin forbid me from coming back. I've had enough. Especially with such a small bag. M&Ms can just disappear, right? But having self-control is enough. I'm going to stop, set it back, maybe I'll share some later.

I know a little boy that might like to share some later. I'm not sure if this is a good comparison, though. It's hard to control M&Ms. If someone would give me a basket of Brussels sprouts, it's easier for me to say, I've had enough. I don't need to have a whole lot of self-control there. Here's where I'm going to refer to a scripture I like to refer to in Proverbs. It's chapter 25, verse 16, where Solomon gave some very good advice.

I'm going to turn there, but it says, have you found honey? Eat so much as is sufficient for you. Eat just enough, and it's implied then stop, lest you be filled with it and vomit. You got some M&Ms? Eat just enough, and then stop. Practice temperance. Exercise self-control, or else there's going to be bad consequences. Now, there in Proverbs, Solomon doesn't say, well, how do you have that self-control?

We'll talk about that a little bit more later. First, I want to look at one more positive example. Another young woman who... There's something in her story that implies this, even though it's not the first thing we think of. That's Esther. Like Ruth, Esther is known for other things. In her case, especially her courage. But in her story, there's also a mention of moderation that I think fits well with her other virtues.

If we want to turn to the book of Esther, I'll read a little bit, and then I'll summarize mostly. We know that Esther was among the Jews who were living, we would say, in captivity. She's far from her homeland. So she's Jewish, but she's not living in Judea. She's in the Persian Empire. The reason, of course, they're there is because Nebuchadnezzar led the Babylonians and conquered the city and taken the people away captive.

But that was a few generations earlier. Now, the Persian Empire has defeated the Babylonians. They allowed the Jews who wanted to to go back. And of course, you can read in Ezra and Nehemiah, some did go back. They built a new temple. A community was established, which was necessary so that Christ could come back to a temple.

And that's going to happen a little bit later. So now Esther is living in the Persian Empire, and she's not a slave. She's a normal citizen. And she's there when King Ahasuerus I think that's pronouncing it correctly. Ahasuerus, he's known in history as Emperor Xerxes. And Xerxes is not only easier to say, but sounds cooler. So I might say that. But he happens to be looking for a new wife. The first part of the book of Esther explains how Queen Vashti annoyed Ahasuerus and was put away.

And then later he sits around and says, Hmm, I kind of need a new wife. Although that puzzles me because if you read the story you find out he's got a bunch of them already. He's got a whole harem, but he wants a queen. Well, several beautiful young women are brought in and they're going to have what seems like this bizarre beauty contest to see who's going to become queen.

Esther is one of them. And for other reasons that are important to the story that we're not going to cover, she keeps secret that she's Jewish. That doesn't matter here. But the women are brought in and they're prepared to meet the king. Let's look at Esther 2, beginning in verse 12.

Now, I haven't studied that much into Persian culture, but it sounds to me like the women were told, Go get a spa treatment for a year, and then you go to the king. I mean, that's spa for a year and... Okay. Moving on. Thus prepared, in verse 13, Each young woman went into the king, and she was given whatever she desired to take with her from the women's quarters. Anything you want. There's no prices on it.

You want it, you got it. To me, that does not sound like a recipe for temperance or self-control, does it? And that's one of the things, when I was thinking about this sermon, I thought, Wow! That's kind of what exists in our society today. Now, none of us are going to the spa for a year that I know of, and no one in my family does, but we live in a country where things are cheap, relatively.

You can go to Walmart, and there's lots of stuff available. The shelves are stocked. You go to the pharmacy area, there's preparations. There's more than just oil of myrrh and other beauty products. There's tons of stuff. And we're relatively rich. Women today, and actually, I shouldn't just say women, because men today can go to extremes, and some do, am I right? You want to decorate your body? Get a mark printed on you. And some people do it all over.

You want to color your hair? Two or three different colors. Make it a different style. And we can find examples of not self-control, of the opposite of temperance. Bizarre colors, styles. A little jewelry can be nice. Some people are putting stuff stuck in them all over the place. It's kind of bizarre to me. And I'm not saying this to make a statement on all that, but what I want to point out is, we don't know how many women went into King Ahasuerus, but it said they could take whatever they wanted.

And I'll bet some of them really went after it. But Esther was different. In verse 15, When the turn came for Esther, the daughter of Abbehale, the uncle of Mordecai who had taken her daughter to go to the king, she requested nothing. But what hell guy? The king's eunuch, the custodian of the women, advised. So whatever you say, I'm not asking for anything extra.

She apparently exercised great self-control. Now, we don't know what he advised, and maybe he knew the king well enough to say, hey, he likes this kind of stuff. But she didn't give weight or appetites. You can have anything you want and as much of it as you want. She does nothing but what you would suggest. And of course, she was the one that found favor in the sight of... She obtained favor in the sight of all who found her.

She was taken in, of course, verse 17, The king loved Esther more than all the other women. She obtained grace and favor, and he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti. I'm going to stop there. Of course, the most important part of the story is yet to come. She showed loyalty to her new husband and to her people. She exercised courage, faith, and trust in God, and she was able to save her people from annihilation.

Again, here's a person who had virtue in many ways, and among all those virtues and character strengths was moderation. I think it's not a coincidence. Having temperance among other good traits is how we see it portrayed in the New Testament. And I'm going to turn to the New Testament to see those traits fitting together. And part of the reason for that is we almost have to.

I found that when I was looking for it in the New Testament, ecratia or self-control isn't a frequent subject of discussion. The Apostle Paul didn't go on and on about it. It's most often mentioned in passing as one of many good traits. As I said, I already read Galatians.

I'm wondering if I should turn there again. I think I'm going to for good measure. Galatians 5, 22. The fruit of the Spirit is... Sometimes we wonder. I've heard people debate, and I've seen it in the scholars' writing. Is it one fruit that has many different aspects, or should there be a tea at the end of fruits?

So it's the fruits of the Spirit. I don't think it matters. But love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. All of these together. It's part of a package. With that in mind, if you will, turn with me to 2 Peter. 2 Peter 1. I want to see that this temperance, this ecratia, fits in sort of a package. I've got my Bible that's falling apart back here. I knew most of my stuff was in the Old Testament. I will mention this. When I was having trouble, before I knew I was going to have eye surgery, I said, man, I can't read this stuff.

So I bought a new Bible. It was called Super Giant Print. It had an 18-point font. The thing weighs like 15-20 pounds. I could only get it in the Old King James, though. I like having the new because of the wording, but it's nice having one. I said, man, you could read that from outer space almost. So they are available.

Anyways, let's read 2 Peter 1 and verse 5.

But also, for this very reason, giving all diligence... Now, wait a minute. I want to stop. For this reason, what reason? The reason we can find back just before that in verse 4. At the end of verse 4, it says that through these things, you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that's in the world through lust. I'd like to be a partaker in the divine nature. That means becoming a son of God, getting eternal life, and being in God's family. So for that reason, then giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue. And then to virtue, add knowledge. To knowledge, add self-control. There's ecratia. So temperance. To self-control, perseverance. To perseverance, godliness. To godliness, brotherly kindness. And to brotherly kindness, love. Of course, love agape is the highest. Paul said there's faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. Each of these virtues on their own is worthy of lengthy examination. Another sermon series. If I were here, I guess I had unfinished business, I could come back. But of course, many of them are also listed among the fruits of the Spirit. Some scholars, and in particular I'll mention, William Barkley, who wrote a series of commentaries, I slowed down because in class I kept calling him Charles Barkley. And that's a different guy. William Barkley calls this the ladder of virtue. I like a ladder of virtue. It's like one builds on the other. It's like climbing steps. You're climbing up the steps. So you start with faith, add virtue. Then step up to knowledge. Step up to self-control. These are good things that you build on. I'll add also, I've heard Mr. Antion likes to call this a spiritual life insurance policy. Am I right, Ben? Did he call it? No. Okay. Those of you who have been to ABC, a spiritual life insurance policy because of what Peter writes a little bit later. Look in verse 10.

Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call on election sure. If you do these things, which things? What we just read. Climbing the ladder of virtue, adding all these traits. If you do these things, you will never stumble.

You'll never stumble. You won't fail if you're doing these things. Now, this is not because having these virtues will earn your salvation. It's not going to be that you show up and God's going to say, Oh, well, they did those. They're so good. I have to give them eternal life. Instead, actually, I'm going to come right back here, but if you want to turn a page or so over to the book of Jude, Jude has the one chapter and near the end of it, verse 24, Jude has what's considered one of the most beautiful doxologies in Scripture. It says, I read the whole thing because it is beautiful, but I wanted to focus on the very beginning of it.

There are three or four places in the New Testament where God is called that. God is the one who is able. He's able to do the things that we cannot. If we rely on God and we trust in Him, if we seek to obey Him, He's the one that will make sure we never stumble, to go back to 1 Peter 1 and verse 10. If we're diligent, do these things, we'll never stumble. Not because we're so good, but God will make us able to not fall. And, of course, I could have just gone on to the next verse. I think Peter explains that.

We won't make our own entrance. All the fruits of the Spirit in the world don't make an entrance for us into God's kingdom. He makes the entrance. But He wants us to have these things and He wants us to be in His family. God is more willing, remember the Father who wants to give good gifts? More than we want to give good gifts to our children, He wants to give us the Holy Spirit. And He wants to call us His children and bring us into His family. But, of course, He wants us to do our part, including exercising self-control. And that's adding these virtues. So, having talked about the whole ladder, I'll focus again a little bit on self-control.

We read in Galatians to remind us that this is one of the fruits of the Spirit. It matures in us. I gave a sermon once on the difference between gifts of the Spirit and fruit of the Spirit. Or I said a gift is sort of like an ability that the Spirit can give you immediately, like speaking in another language, or laying hands on someone and healing them.

But a fruit is something that matures over time. A gift, an ability, might be something you do, but the fruit is what you are. And we want self-control to be part of what we are, along with love, joy, peace, and all that. And we can be proactive in building this. Looking back at verse 6, adding these things, to knowledge adds self-control. I don't think it's an accident that Peter arranged these in the order that he did. It takes some knowledge to be able to exercise self-control. We need to know what things may tempt us or overindulge. What are the things that I need to exercise self-control in?

Some things I don't have to worry about. It's not hard to exercise self-control. As I was thinking about that, I thought, there have been a number of 12-step programs developed. I think Alcoholics Anonymous was the first one, but the model works so well, a number of them have been developed for overcoming various problems.

But to my knowledge, there is no 12-step program to help people to stop eating too many vegetables. It doesn't happen. That's not a problem for most people. Rather, we might have to exercise self-control to make sure that we do eat enough vegetables, or fruit, or other things. Similarly, we might have to exercise self-control in spiritual exercise.

I've got to make sure that I do study God's Word every day, that I pray, that I meditate, and especially to fast. I don't do that every day, but you need self-control. It takes knowledge for me to know what physical things I need to control. Again, this I might have to exercise some self-control. I'm able to. Now I'm wondering, should I put it back in the bag or eat it? It's had my fingers all over it, so... But that's the last one. Self-control. So we have to acknowledge of ourselves what are challenges to you personally. Actually, one of the reasons I brought this.

I like M&Ms, but I'm not a big sweet eater. Now, when it comes to chips, if you've talked to Sue, you know that's a different thing. You need self-control there. I've talked about alcohol. I like beer. And I like the taste of whiskey. And I find, you know, if I'm having it, more can go down my throat before I know it.

So I have to exercise self-control so that I'm not having too much and getting drunk. But I've shown some people have a problem with gambling. You know, they feel that thrill and they want to go and try.

That's never been the least bit tempting to me. To me, I consider buying a lottery ticket the same as taking a few bucks out of my wallet and throw it in a trash can. So I know that about myself. I like the famous quote, lotteries are a way of putting a tax on people who can't do math or who just don't care. But knowing that having the knowledge is important. I understand, or at least I realize that some people have that problem.

And so serving in the ministry, there might be opportunity to help people and realize that it is a problem. Not, you stupid idiot, how could you do that? No, understand it's a problem. Just as knowing yourself. So the knowledge is important. We go on from there back to verse 6. To knowledge add self-control. To self-control add perseverance. It's probably there because Peter recognized that exercising self-control for just a moment doesn't count for that much. We have to continue in that well-doing.

Self-control has to be persistent in order to build righteous character, to become a permanent part of you. Some things we benefit from incrementally. The fruits and vegetables. I need to eat fruits and vegetables pretty much every day to gain a benefit.

Have you seen these commercials? There's some vaccine that I've seen advertisements on TV where they're making the point that you only have to do one thing to get the benefit.

To make the point, they show all these other things that you don't get benefit from doing one time. One guy has this one asparagus spear. I'm going to cook this, I'll eat it, and I'm healthy. Or the guy that does one push-up and he goes into the gym, One! Okay, my heart's healthy. No, it doesn't work that way. We have to persevere. It takes self-control to make yourself exercise or to eat. I like asparagus, so that's not so hard. There's an incremental benefit to doing that. It goes on for other things. The spiritual things. I need to make myself study and pray every day. I can't do it two hours one day and then not for six months. It also applies to the things I need to control. I need to control, make sure I don't drink enough to get drunk tonight. But that's not going to help if the next three days I go on a bender and clear out the liquor store. Or if I manage to stay out of the casino this weekend, but then I go in for most of the next week and blow all my money. You have to continue. You have to do self-control, add perseverance. And of course, before that, you had to have the knowledge to know how to apply it. So I think it's not a coincidence that Peter drew this ladder of virtue step by step.

I want to turn back to 1 Corinthians 6 to add something to that.

1 Corinthians 6, verse 12.

This is a point that applies to exercise in that self-control. Paul says, Now, that can be taken out of context. So I'll back up and clarify it. But all things aren't helpful.

Now, this is breaking in the middle of a discussion. But Paul's making the point that many physical things that God made to be used in moderation, various types of food or substances or sex, are good and proper uses in the right amount. Now, he's not saying that anything and everything is lawful. Some people take this out of context and say, It's all lawful. I can do whatever I want. But he's saying that the things that are lawful for us still have to be used with self-control, with temperance. M&Ms are lawful, but I can't be brought under the power of them. I have to exercise power over them.

That's interesting, because I'm looking and I see these little faces. I'm exercising power over these little cartoon characters. But really, that's exercising power over myself. Don't let yourself be brought under the control of something. Because, of course, if we don't control our appetites, they will control us. Now, while we're in 1 Corinthians, I'm pausing because I'm turning slightly. There's one last point I want to make to this that's a little bit different. But I think it's worth adding to our exercise of self-control. We've been focusing so much on how it benefits us. And it will. It will make us better people. A little bit later, though, Paul shows that sometimes we need to exercise that temperance, that ecratia, for the benefit of other people, even if we don't need it for ourselves in a certain area.

In chapter 8 of 1 Corinthians, Paul spends a fair bit of time explaining that idols don't really affect animals that are sacrificed to them. Because what had happened in that culture, a lot of animals were slain at an idol's temple. And then, all this extra meat, what are we going to do? We'll take it down and sell it at the market. And some people were really concerned. It's like, I've got to find out if this meat was sacrificed to an idol or not, then I can't eat it. And Paul was saying, well, you're not there at the worship ceremony. It doesn't matter. Meat is meat. The idol doesn't have any power to put a hex or affect that meat. It's just meat. Go ahead and eat it. He says, don't ask a question if it's going to bother you. But, he also makes the point that if it does bother you, don't violate your conscience. Don't eat it if it's bothering you to think that it might have been in front of some block of wheat. It's just a block of wood or a piece of rock. It doesn't have any power. But, if it bothers your conscience, don't eat it. And then he goes further because he says, if I'm around someone that it would bother their conscience, I shouldn't eat it for their sake. Let's look at verse 12. He says, But when you thus sin against the brethren and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.

Actually, I should have started with verse 11. Because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died. But if you thus sin against your brethren and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, and here he's talking about food that was sacrificed in some idol's temple, well, if it makes my brother stumble, I won't eat meat. He says, I'll never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.

He's making the point that, okay, we need to exercise self-control for our own good, but once you master self-control, exercise it for the good of others. You know, my brother is offended by, I don't know, maybe he thinks French fries are a product of the devil. Then don't eat French fries in front of that guy. And likewise, if you have a friend who has a problem with alcohol, don't invite him over and have a bottle of wine on the table. Exercise self-control for the sake of others. That's, I think there's something really good about that. We should get to where we're doing it for ourselves automatically. It becomes part of us. The fruit of the Spirit just grows in us. But I think if, also with just a little thought for others, we start doing it for them, we exercise self-control of ourselves. That's pretty redundant. But we control our own appetites to avoid offending other people. That's really showing outgoing love. So to wrap this up, you know, drink of water. We can see it as just a refreshing way to quench my thirst, but we can also see it as a reminder. I've got another one up here. A reminder that there's times that we shouldn't confuse self-control or temperance with absolute abstinence. We need to know the difference and know when to exercise one or the other. There are times when abstinence is necessary and good. But many times we need to learn to exercise a good balance, a balance between not doing something at all and doing it with moderation. That's self-control. It takes knowledge to do so. We have to know what things might be a temptation, what appetites could get out of hand. It takes knowledge to know how much is enough. And we need to then persevere in practicing that self-control. Persistence, endurance. When we do that, along with other virtues and have the other fruits of God's Spirit, God will make sure that we never stumble and He'll make a way for us into His Kingdom.