Gluttony

What’s Gluttony?

• Evagrius’ definition: Obsessive preoccupation with food, especially when and how much it's eaten
• Pope Gregory I: The disordered pursuit of pleasure in food and drink, leading to unseemly joy, scurrility, uncleanness, loquaciousness, and dullness of mind
• Thomas Aquinas: Loving the pleasure of eating & drinking too much; eating too soon, too expensively, too much, too greedily, and too daintily
• Modern scholars and psychologists: Self-centered bodily gratification, a misdirected search for comfort or security, masking other essential human needs, or replacing God with bodily pleasures
   
  • The modern list isn’t just limited to food and drink, but anything triggering a dopamine response in your brain

Provision and Consumption Are Good

• God made us physical beings, and He’s given us all bodily pleasures (food, drink, sex, work, clothing, etc) as gifts to keep us alive and give us joy.
• We see God’s provision of bodily needs and pleasures throughout the Bible:
   
• The garden for Adam & Eve (Genesis 1 & 2)
• Meat as food (Genesis 9:1-3)
• A land flowing with milk and honey for Israel (Exodus 3:17)
• Manna for Israel (Exodus 16:4-5)
• Celebratory feasts throughout the year (Leviticus 23)
• Food, wine, oil, and bread (Psalm 104:14-15)
• Great wine at a wedding (John 2:1-11)
• Divinely multiplying picnics (John 6:1-14, Matthew 15:32-39)
• Communion at the Passover meal (Matthew 26:17-29)
• God’s Kingdom as a wedding feast (Matthew 22, Revelation 19)

• Ecclesiastes 9:7-10: “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.”

Gluttony in the Bible

• Wisdom books: Gluttony will leave you in conflict, impoverished, foolish, sick, unsafe, grieved, insensate, and unable to see God.

• Proverbs 20:1: “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.”

• Proverbs 21:17: “Whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man; he who loves wine and oil will not be rich.”

• Proverbs 21:21: “Precious treasure and oil are in a wise man’s dwelling, but a foolish man devours it.”

• Proverbs 23:20: “Be not among drunkards nor among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags."

• Proverbs 25:16: “If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it.”

• Proverbs 25:27, 28: “It is not good to eat much honey, nor is it glorious to seek one’s own glory. A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.”

•  Proverbs 23:29-35: “Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? Those who tarry long over wine; those who go to try mixed wine. Do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. In the end it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart utter perverse things. You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast. ‘They struck me,’ you will say, ‘but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake? I must have another drink.’”

•  Proverbs 30:7-9: “Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’"

•  Ecclesiastes 2:1-12: “I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself. ’ But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, ‘It is mad,’ and of pleasure, ‘What use is it?’ I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”

• Prophets: Gluttony eventually leads to theft, abuse of power, poverty for others, and ultimately God's intervening justice.
   

  • Isaiah 3:13-24: “The Lord has taken his place to contend; he stands to judge peoples. The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: 'It is you who have devoured the vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?' declares the Lord God of hosts. The Lord said: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks, glancing wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet, therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts. In that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarves; the headdresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets; the signet rings and nose rings; the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; the mirrors, the linen garments, the turbans, and the veils. Instead of perfume there will be rottenness; and instead of a belt, a rope; and instead of well-set hair, baldness; and instead of a rich robe, a skirt of sackcloth; and branding instead of beauty."

•  Isaiah 5:11-14: "Woe to those who rise early in the morning, that they may run after strong drink, who tarry late into the evening as wine inflames them! They have lyre and harp, tambourine and flute and wine at their feasts, but they do not regard the deeds of the Lord, or see the work of his hands. Therefore my people go into exile for lack of knowledge; their honored men go hungry, and their multitude is parched with thirst. Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure, and the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude will go down, her revelers and he who exults in her.”

•  Amos 6:4-7: “Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David invent for themselves instruments of music, who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! Therefore they shall now be the first of those who go into exile, and the revelry of those who stretch themselves out shall pass away.”

•  Ezekiel 34:1-4: “The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them."

•  Ezekiel 16:48-50: "As I live, declares the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it."

• And in case you though this might just be an Old Testament issue, it’s not. Though the NT doesn’t focus on the effects of gluttony (it doesn’t really need to after the list we just saw), it does appear. Jesus says the Pharisees called him a glutton, and in one of Paul’s letters, he has to call out a church for getting wasted on communion wine:
   

• Matthew 11:18-19: ”For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”

•  1 Corinthians 11:17, 20-22: “But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse… When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.”

The Big Gluttony Example: Manna & Quail

• These stories are told in Exodus 16 and Numbers 11, displaying much of what we’ve already talked about
   
  • We see multiple of the definitions and types of gluttony at play:
     
    • Obsessive preoccupation with food & the disordered pursuit of it
  •  Eating too daintily
  •  Eating too greedily
  •  Eating too much
• We also get to see the Bible’s warnings about gluttony play out:
  • Conflict
  •  Sickness and unsafely
  •  Grief
  •  Inability to see God

Separating Our Needs & Going to the Right Places

•  Physical pleasures are gifts that that sustain and enhance our lives. But Jesus sustains us both today and forever like no physical thing can.
•  When we glut, we’re trying to get spiritual effects out to earthly things, and it doesn’t work.

Practical Remedy: Temperance

• Definition: "Moderation in desire"
•  If you want to practically fight against gluttony, there are three disciplines of temperance people have practiced for ages, and they all come straight from scripture.
   
  • Fasting: Abstaining from food & training your desire toward God
  •  Almsgiving: Redirecting excess resources to the poor
  •  Gratitude in Eating: Receiving food as a gift, not an idol