Gluttony

Sermon Transcript

Today we’re continuing our series in the book of Proverbs by looking at what the proverbs say about gluttony. As I even just say the word, I trust many of you already feel guilty. One of the few biblical moral imperatives that our world still seems to impose upon us is the duty of moderating our appetite for food. On the other hand, America is an affluent nation known to overconsume calories and suffer with above average rates of obesity. So many Americans get the worst of both worlds with food: We still overconsume foods we’re told are unhealthy because they’re all around us, and, let’s face it, they taste good, but we may not fully enjoy them because we feel a little guilty about it the whole time. You might think this is less the case when it comes to alcohol—though our world sees alcoholism as a disease in need of treatment, recreational drinking still seems quite popular. Yet even here changes are apparent, as a recent study suggests Gen Z is consuming one third less beer and wine than millennials. We like our food and drink, but we also want to stay healthy and look good, and Christians can often unwittingly adopt the world’s priorities or end up confused about how we can eat and drink to the glory of God. As we come to look at proverbs on gluttony, I can tell you that none of them hold up to us the value of looking good, nor is the emphasis on optimizing the health of our bodies. But the proverbs do hold up to us the value of wisdom, and without demonizing food and drink, they show us how food and drink can lead us astray from the path of wisdom when our desire for them becomes inordinate. So, don’t let food and drink lead you astray from the path of wisdom, and we’ll look at four ways to not let that happen from proverbs: Consider the consequences, guard your eyes, choose your company, and restrain yourself.

 

Consider the consequences

 

As is typically the case with proverbs, the bulk of what the proverbs about gluttony focus on is the consequences. Wisdom is the art of perceiving reality and living in accordance with it, and that includes perceiving the likely consequences of our actions. Food and drink can taste good and produce in us a pleasurable sensation, but wisdom inclines us to consider the consequences of indulging it. So Proverbs 20:1 says, “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.” Alcoholic beverages are not inherently bad in the Bible; elsewhere we read that God created them to gladden the heart of man (Psalm 104:15), and that everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving (1 Tim 4:4). But Proverbs 20:1 is alerting us to the reality that alcoholic beverages in particular can lead us astray from the path of wisdom.

 

So when the book of Proverbs records the words of King Lemuel’s mother to him later in the book, we read her telling him “It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted” (Prov 31:4-5). Her concern here is obviously that drunkenness impairs your mental faculties, and that’s especially problematic for a ruler who is responsible to administer justice. Under the influence of alcohol, a ruler may forget the law God has given and thereby neglect to defend the rights of the afflicted. So when we come to the New Testament we see all Christians are prohibited from drunkenness (Eph 5:18), and that drunkards will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:10), but that elders and deacons in particular must be “not a drunkard” (1 Tim 3:3) and “not addicted to much wine” (1 Tim 3:8).

 

Now of course, the question that often comes at this point is, “What counts as drunkenness?” and it is a fair question. If God did give wine to gladden the heart of man, as Psalm 104:15 says, and yet God commands us not to get drunk, what is the difference between enjoying wine’s gladdening effect and getting drunk with it? The simplest answer seems to be impairment. When you’ve drank enough alcohol that your judgment is impaired by it, you’ve gotten drunk, and I hasten to remind you at this point that a “buzz” is not a biblical category, and is often just one way we excuse sin under a nicer-sounding name. As it gets more extreme, drunkenness typically also shows itself in other more observable ways: slurred speech, loss of balance, bloodshot or glassy eyes, vomiting, and so on. The state of Pennsylvania has determined that a blood alcohol content of .08 % impairs your judgment enough that it is illegal for you to drive at that point—that’s about 4-5 drinks over a 2-hour period for the average adult male, and 3-4 drinks over a 2-hour period for the average adult female. That’s just the state of Pennsylvania, not the Bible, but you need to be honest with yourself and open to the feedback of other wise Christians if you are going to drink at all about when alcohol has begun to impair your judgment. To the degree that it does, it leads you astray from the path of wisdom.

 

And while food doesn’t work in exactly the same way as alcohol, Proverbs also tells us that an inordinate love of food can impair your judgment. “When you sit down with to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food…Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy; do not desire his delicacies, for he is like one who is inwardly calculating, ‘Eat and drink!’ he says to you, but his heart is not with you” (Prov 23:1-3, 6-7). What are these verses saying? They’re saying that whether you sit down to eat with a ruler or with a stingy man, in either case if you are too controlled by their delicacies, you’re also susceptible to being controlled by them. There are ways we recognize this as a society: Rules about how college sports coaches can spend money as they recruit college students, laws regulating lobbyists taking congresspeople out for fancy dinners, and the like. But what about when a salesman buys a nicer dinner for you and your co-workers than you would ever buy for yourself? Or when your boss does it? They may be doing that as a sincere act of kindness and gratitude for your work, but if you love the food too much, it’s easy for your allegiance to be co-opted by such meals.

 

Now again, much like drunkenness, how do you know when you love food too much? What’s the difference between enjoying a meal with thanksgiving to the glory of God and gluttony? Admittedly, it is harder to tell with food than with alcohol, and even with alcohol we saw there isn’t some clearly identifiable line that you can’t cross. When in doubt, we return to the law of love. When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment is, he said it was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then he said a second was like it: To love your neighbor as yourself. So a simple way to describe gluttony is a love of food that exceeds the love of God and our neighbor. The ancient African theologian Augustine described sin as disordered love, and this is just another example. The most obvious way to tell when it is happening is when you are willing to disobey a commandment of God to attain food, as when someone lies or steals to get into a certain restaurant or afford a certain meal, but you might also suspect the presence of gluttony in your life if you find yourself thinking about food a lot in comparison to how much you think about God, if you get hangry, if you struggle to be content with the food that God has given you or that others serve you, if you turn to food to relieve anxiety rather than turning to God, and if the amount of money you spend on food hinders your generosity toward God and others.

 

Those are some ways to identify it, but back to the consequences: The verses we just looked at in Proverbs 23 show us that if we do have an inordinate love for food, we are susceptible to being manipulated by the people who have the power and money to provide us with the tastiest, most expensive forms of it. You may make a foolish purchase because a salesman ingratiated himself to you through the lavish dinners his company bought you. You may tone down your obedience to Christ at work because your company has subtly won your allegiance through the lifestyle it enables you to live.

 

In addition, an inordinate love of food and drink can lead to poverty. Proverbs 21:17 puts its simply – “Whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man; he who loves wine and oil will not be rich.” Why? Just verses later we read: “Precious treasure and oil are in a wise man’s dwelling, but a foolish man devours it” (Prov 21:20). Gareth talked about money last week so I won’t belabor the point here, but the one loves wine and oil will not be rich because as he accumulates precious treasure, he spends it on wine and oil, devours it, and has no treasure left. One of the fast tracks to poverty is to spend all the money you bring in, and then to spend more on a credit card and get into debt in order to satisfy an inordinate desire for food and drink. It may be a helpful exercise for some of you today to take a look at your spending over the past year and assess how much of it you spent on alcohol and eating out. Of course, it’s reasonable that you would spend some of your money on food—that and housing are two of most peoples’ main expenses because they are two of our most basic needs. But wine and oil are mentioned in these proverbs because they aren’t needs; they’re luxuries, typically associated with special feasts. And special feasts can be glorifying to God occasionally, but when you constantly feel like you need a feast, that’s gluttony, and it’s a fast track to poverty.

 

And, finally, the consequence of gluttony, whether with regard to food or drink, is pain. Proverbs 23:8 says if you are a slave to the delicacies of others, “You will vomit up the morsels you have eaten”. Similarly, Proverbs 25:16 tells us that if you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it. I mentioned earlier some of the physical indicators of drunkenness, and while less clear, there are some physical indicators of gluttony too, vomiting being the most obvious, but most of us also know the feeling of eating too much, and we’ve become more aware of “diseases of affluence” in America, ways that overeating can damage our long-term health. More specific to alcohol, Proverbs 23:29-30 asks, “Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without case? Who has redness of eyes? Those who tarry long over wine; those who go to try mixed wine.” Who wakes up after a night of drunkenness and feels good? Who thinks that night of drunkenness is contributing positively to their long-term health? Who’s ever met a drunkard whose life is going well, or whose life at least wouldn’t be better if they cut out the drunkenness?

 

Gluttony, whether of food or drink, leads you astray from the path of wisdom, and when you wander off the path of wisdom, you are living out of accordance with reality, and that does not generally end well. It will impair your judgment, it will make you more easily manipulated by others, it will lead you down a path to poverty, and it will end in pain. Consider the consequences, not just how good it tastes now, so that you don’t let food and drink lead you astray from the path of wisdom. And guard your eyes.

 

Guard your eyes

 

Proverbs 23:31 tells us, “Do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly.” It’s one thing to drink wine; it’s another to adore it, to savor it with your eyes as it sits in the cup and goes down smoothly, and what’s the danger of that? The danger of that is that what you see looks wholly desirable, and what you don’t see, which is nonetheless real, is the woe, the sorrow, the strife, the complaints, the wounds without cause, which are mentioned in the verses just before this one. The consequences, real as they are, are not visible to our eyes in the moment of eating and drinking, and so this is yet another area in which we must walk by faith in what God has said more than by sight. You have to able to say in your heart, “Yes, I know this looks like it will be all pleasure, no pain, but if I give my heart to this, in the end it will be pain without pleasure.”

 

The eyes have been an entry point for temptation since the first sin was committed, which was uncoincidentally a sin of eating, eating from the one tree of which the first man and first woman were commanded not to eat. We read in Genesis 3:6 that when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Now earlier in Genesis 2:9 we read that God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, so enjoying the look of beautiful things is part of God’s good creation, but again the issue is when we become controlled by them, when the things our eyes can see become the source of our fixation and adoration rather than the God we can’t see.

 

When that happens, our eyes will never be satisfied. We were created in the image of God to know God himself as our supreme good, to be fixated on him, to adore him who is infinite, independent, all powerful, present everywhere, unchangeable, eternal, holy, wise, just, love, faithful, true, gracious, and merciful. You say, “But how can we do that when we are such visual creatures?” Well, God created us as visual creatures and called it good, so there must be a way, and it’s something like what we do when we see beautiful things now. When people look at the Mona Lisa, they don’t just say, “Wow, the Mona Lisa is beautiful”; they say, “Wow; Leonardo Da Vinci was a genius.” When many of us saw Saquon Barkley reverse hurdle a defender in an Eagles game this year, we didn’t just say, “Wow; sweet move”; we said, “Wow; Saquon Barkley is a freak.” We recognize the greatness of the one who generates the image when we see something beautiful; we are clearly capable of that. So our problem with God, then, is not that we are visual creatures; it’s that we are sinful creatures. It’s that though he has revealed himself in all that he’s made, and though much of it is pleasant to the sight and good for food, instead of receiving it with thanksgiving to him, we fixate on those things and adore them instead of him.

 

And so we are like a car that was made to run on gas, but keeps trying to fill itself with oil. So Proverbs 27:20 says, “Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man.” If you put motor oil in your gas tank, you’ll never put enough in to make your car run. The gas tank will never be satisfied, because it wasn’t made to run on oil! And if you try to fill your soul up on food or drink or even sex or friends or family or travel or hobbies or any other good thing God made that your eyes see, you’ll never be satisfied. Live by what your eyes see and you will never be satisfied, for never satisfied are the eyes of man.

 

Consider, then, at what you spend most of your time looking. The obvious answer for many of us in 2025 Philadelphia is screens: Computer screens, television screens, phone screens. And what is on those screens? At least some of the time, what is on them are fast-moving, colorful images that have been carefully designed by someone who understands how to manipulate our brain chemistry into wanting whatever they’re selling, or least into wanting to spend more time on that app. I don’t mean to imply that’s always nefarious on the part of advertisers, but I do mean to imply that it is powerful, and that it shapes us in ways of which we are often not conscious. Not long ago I had a month or two on Instagram during which I found myself watching video after video of food recipes and preparation. What was that doing to my soul? It was increasing my love of food, and at times, to an inordinate level. If you spend your time looking at fancy food and drink, don’t be surprised if your heart never feels satisfied with the food and drink you have. If you spend your time looking at fitness models with finely toned physiques, don’t be surprised if your eyes are never satisfied with your body image, and so on. Guard your eyes, and, choose your company.

 

Choose your company

 

Proverbs 23:20-21 says, “Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags.” We’ve talked plenty about drunkenness and gluttony already, but this proverb doesn’t just tell us not to be drunkards ourselves, nor not to be gluttonous eaters of meat ourselves; it tells us, rather, to not even be among drunkards or gluttonous eaters of meat, because the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags. We’ve already talked about the consequences of drunkenness and gluttony, but why not even be among drunkards and gluttonous eaters of meat? The obvious implication is that if you are among them, you are more likely to become like them, and then to share in their painful fate.

 

We were just talking about being cognizant of what you spend most of your time looking at; now this proverb exhorts us to be cognizant of who we spend most of our time with. Many of you probably spend a lot of your time with your co-workers, and that’s not a problem per se. The Bible’s ideal for Christians is not that they go out of the world (1 Cor 5:10). This proverb isn’t even saying you can never eat a meal or share a drink with a glutton or a drunkard; Jesus himself somewhat famously ate with tax collectors and sinners (Luke 5:29-32), but this proverb does call us to an honest assessment of the temptations such situations are likely to produce, and to an assessment of with whom we cultivate our deepest relationships.

 

If you are a Christian, I trust that you want to love your neighbor as yourself, regardless of their belief status, and generally that means you want to spend time with them. I trust you especially want to extend to them the offer of abundant life in Jesus and tell them how through repentance and faith they too can enjoy that life, which also involves spending time with them, and often includes a lot of time talking through questions and objections, reading scripture together and discussing it, and so on. Sometimes you may even do that over a meal, alcoholic beverage, or both. But the more the event centers around drunkenness and gluttony, the more careful you need to be, and the more willing you need to be to either decline the invitation or leave early when the drunkenness begins to escalate. A wedding, for example, is an event at which the main point is at least in theory still the wedding, such that you can likely attend the wedding of even a drunkard and a glutton and just be prepared to leave the reception if and when the level of intoxication reaches a point at which it will become a temptation for you or inhibit any kind of redemptive conversation. A bar crawl, on the other hand, kind of has drunkenness as its goal, and so you should be much leerier of even participating at all in such an event. You say, “But I want to love the person and this helps the build the relationship.” Ok, maybe it does, but if it builds the relationship around drunkenness or gluttony, that’s doing more harm than good both to you and the other person. Sometimes the best thing you can do to love your unbelieving friends is to say no to something they’re excited about and thus show them that your life is built on something different from theirs.

 

The company you keep influences you, especially those with whom you spend the most time. So consider not only how you will handle certain events or invitations, but with whom you will spend the most of your “elective” time, with whom you will share your heart and bring into your closest confidence. We’ll talk about this more when we look at what the proverbs say about friendship, but here I’m thinking of your 1-5 closest friends. Friendship is a chosen relationship; you don’t owe it to anyone to be one of their closest friends, and no one owes that to you. If you want to walk the path of wisdom, you should choose wise friends, and if you want to not let food and drink lead you astray from the path of wisdom, you should not choose drunkards and gluttons as your closest friends. Humans are inherently social beings, and what we see the people closest to us doing the most will become normal to us, whether we like it or not, such that even if in your mind you think it’s foolish, the sheer amount of time you spend with people doing it who seem to be enjoying it will begin to desensitize you to it. How many of us are desensitized to drunkenness and gluttony already by the utter normalcy of it in the lives of people around us, and perhaps even in our own lives? How many have a hard time seeing it as sin, despite the Bible’s clear teaching on it, and instead view it as people just “having a good time”?

 

If your closest friends are always talking about and excited about trying that cool restaurant or getting out to the bar or getting that expensive bottle of wine, guess what you will tend to start getting excited about? Those same things. This is one of the beauties I’ve observed in peoples’ lives who are deeply imbedded in a church family. Every church has some diversity of income in it; anytime you put a group of people together, some have more than others. But in a lot of groups, the gap is small. Neighbors, co-workers, and even the people we meet through our hobbies tend occupy the same socioeconomic class. Some of that’s natural and happens in churches too, but churches also have a way of bringing together people of very different socioeconomic classes, and I’ve seen that happen in this church. I’ve seen Citygroups consider ways to spend time together and decide not to all go out to a bar together because they realized that for some people in the Citygroup, 25$ on dinner would be a big expenditure, while for others a bar isn’t the best place for them to be because of their unique temptations. So instead, they all meet at a member’s house and eat homecooked food, or pack food for a picnic in the park. Now don’t get me wrong; some of you all still make some pretty killer food for such things, but do you see what happens when that’s the company you keep? It builds that company on Christ, rather than on food and drink, and when you spend time together around that, it cultivates more love for him, rather than for food and drink.

 

If you want to not let food and drink lead you astray from the path of wisdom, choose to keep your closest company with those who are growing together in God’s wisdom, rather than with drunkards and gluttonous eaters of meat. And finally, the perhaps obvious thing you must do to not let yourself be led astray from the path of wisdom by food and drink is to simply restrain yourself.

 

Restrain yourself

 

Remember these proverbs we already read? “Put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite” (Prov 23:2). “If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it” (Prov 25:16). The principle is simple: Eat enough for you, and then stop, even if more would taste good. It’s simple, but it’s difficult! That’s why Proverbs 23:2 uses such extreme language: Put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. That’s what it may feel like to say no to that next plate at the buffet or that next brownie. Here’s a conversation I’ve often had with myself: “Ok, I’ve had three cookies now, and I would sure like a fourth. I don’t need a fourth, but then again, I didn’t need the first three either. Everything created by God is good, and nothing in the Bible tells me how many cookies to eat. It’s not like a fourth cookie will get me drunk, and I’m not at the point of vomiting, so why not eat one more?” Maybe you relate. And look, I can’t think of anything from these proverbs or anywhere else in the Bible that leads me to think it would necessarily be wrong to eat that fourth cookie.

 

But I do think these proverbs equip us with other questions to ask when faced with such situations. Instead of just asking, “Is it wrong?” they compel us to ask, “Is it wise?” “What love am I feeding by eating more of this?” “Is this pattern of eating growing my love for God or merely my love for food?” “What are the long-term consequences of decisions like this?” Honey isn’t necessary for bodily sustenance, but Proverbs 25:16 still says if you find it, go ahead and eat it. So the wise approach to food and drink is not total abstinence from anything you might actually enjoy eating. Enjoy it with thanksgiving to God, but honestly assess when you are eating or drinking excessively, to the point at which your judgment is impaired, you’re more easily manipulated, you’re discontent, hangry, sick, or in pain, and restrain yourself. Say no to the fourth cookie or the second drink or whatever that number is for you, not because the cookie or the drink is in itself bad, but because you know that by saying yes to it you will feed an inordinate love of food or drink that will lead you astray from the path of wisdom.

 

Simple, right? Does it feel like this goes on the list of things you already knew before coming to church? Then why isn’t it easier? Why don’t you already just restrain yourself? Because as Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, never satisfied are the eyes of man. As long as you’re still trying to run your soul that was made for the infinite creator on finite created things your eyes can see and adore like food and drink, you’ll never be satisfied. But now that we have turned from our creator to the created things, we can’t just choose to leap back into his presence. Sin has rewired us so that we now love that which does not satisfy, like the child so addicted to sugary treats that you cannot get him to eat good, solid meat and vegetables, and God’s law condemns us for turning from him, the creator, and giving the love that is rightly his to things he made instead. This is the tragic state of humans under sin: Created to love God and enjoy food and drink with thanksgiving to him, now we love food and drink rather than him, and so end up controlled by it and separated from him under his judgment. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Virgil explains it to Dante like this: “Heaven calls to you and turns its splendid rings, showing you beauties that can never die, yet you gaze on the earth and earthly things, [and] so you are scourged by Him who sees on high.”

 

We can’t restrain ourselves, we can’t change ourselves, and we can’t forgive ourselves. Maybe with enough discipline you can restrain your eating; there are no doubt some highly devoted dieters out there. But to what end? Instead of feeding your soul on food and drink, what will you feed it on? The soul abhors a vacuum. Looking good? Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, right? Living longer? A lower number on the scale? More earthly things–Do you really think your eyes will then be satisfied with them? No, you were made for the heavenly beauty, and until you are forgiven for turning from it, and until your heart changes to learn to love it once again, you’ll never be satisfied. You can’t change yourself, you can’t forgive yourself, but God is so full of love that he not only provided us with food and drink that are delightful to the eyes and good for food—he provided for us bread from heaven, that if a man eats it, he will live forever. And when Jesus was on earth, he said, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life…I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst…I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:27, 35, 51).

 

On the cross Jesus gave his flesh as the bread of life, and shed his blood as the drink of life. He bore the scourge that we deserved for loving food and drink and any other created thing above our creator, he experienced the poverty, he took the pain, he was even called a glutton and a drunkard, though we were the real drunkards and gluttons. But he was numbered with the transgressors to bear our sins so that we could be forgiven, and he rose from the dead so that we could live forever through faith in him. Turn from the earthly things you’ve given your love to, rest all your hopes for eternal life on Jesus, and from him you will not only get forgiveness, but you will get the power to restrain yourself. As the early medieval Irish missionary to Gaul, Columbanus said, “Unless we long unweariedly with heavenly desires, we must needs be entangled in earthly ones.” As the Spirit of Jesus shows you more of his glory, as you taste and see how good God is in Christ with the eyes of faith, your appetite for the world to come, in which you will see his glory, will grow, and your appetite for this world will get pushed out and reordered. Then food and drink can become what God made them to be: A good gift from him, but not something that consumes much of your thoughts, time, or money, whether by way of fancy foods, foods to relieve your stress, or the healthiest foods. “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17). Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth, will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.