206. [Lent Study] Lust, Gluttony, And The Lie Of More

Lust and gluttony don’t start in your body, they start in your story about what will finally make you feel okay. We go after the deeper question behind the habits: what am I trying to soothe, and what am I willing to cross to get it?

We pick up our Lent teaching series on the seven deadly sins by naming why these two are so persistent. Drawing from John Cassian, Augustine, and Aquinas, we talk about why lust and gluttony are “long wars” and why they often drive the excuses behind other struggles. You’ll hear a reframing that cuts through shallow definitions: lust isn’t only sexual sin, and gluttony isn’t only overeating. Gluttony is consuming a good thing beyond its purpose to medicate pain or insecurity. Lust is craving fulfillment in a way that bypasses God’s will, timing, or boundaries.

From dopamine shopping and information overload to validation chasing, relationship dependency, and achievement obsession, we apply ancient wisdom to modern patterns with a clear goal: move from the city of man, where we try to fix ourselves with man-made steps, to the City of God, where we live by the Spirit and the blood of Jesus. We close with Galatians 2 and a simple, searching practice: ask what love requires of you right now.

My hope is that this podcast helps grow your faith and equips you to accomplish your dreams and goals!

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Transcript

Welcome And Why It Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Today I'm going to be sharing a teaching that I recently did at our Staff Chapel. My hope is that this encourages you and that your love for God's word keeps. Okay. I uh we didn't have Staff Chapel last week. Um I did do a podcast on Acadia. And so if that interests you, it's on my podcast. Um I do feel like um acadia is probably the most common sin pattern that people have of this current generation. Um and like I would say it's pride and it's acadia. And Acadia basically says that I want love, but I don't want to do the things that love requires. I'm fast to move towards things of the world, but I'm slow to move to the things of God. So if the, in other words, if the things of the world told you that you had to do these things, you'd be quick to do them. But when God asked you to do something simple, slow to do it. Like I want love, I want connection. We see this in our marriages when you have beef between each other, Tylan and Courtney, when you had that one fight in your whole marriage. And it was Pastor Ty that was wrong. And and Pastor Ty knew to reconnect love, all he had to do is go talk to you, but he didn't want to. He wanted love, but he didn't want to do what love required, which was repentance. So he chooses isolation because it's easier. And so then what people will do is they'll silent treatment each other for five days and then come back and act like nothing happened. The problem is Acadia. You want love, but you don't want to do what love requires. So Acadia like has two facets to it. And so I talk more about that on my podcast, but I really do think it's so common when I hear people and I listen to people, I'm like, man, even um we talk about it on the podcast, but um, Emily was talking about a situation she had with Zachary, and Zachary got frustrated in a moment that we all do. And it would be easy to look at the situation and say the problem was anger. But actually, the problem wasn't anger, it was Acadia. He didn't want to do what love required, and what love was requiring of him in that moment was to slow down and to pay attention to what matters most. Acadia is so rampant in our culture, our society, because we're instant. We want things fast, and spiritual formation is not fast. Being in love with Jesus is not fast, prayer is not fast, like time in the word is not fast, worship is not fast, and because it's not fast, we want this deep, intimate relationship without what it requires. That sin is Acadia, and it's called the sloth. Um, by it started being named the sloth, and then through the Reformation, shout out Martin Luther for freaking us all up. Um, Acadia got watered down to basically do's and don'ts of behavior, and it became behavior modification instead of looking at the interior motive of the heart. Which brings me to today, um, we're wrapping up the seven deadly sins and we're gonna talk about lust and gluttony. Lust and gluttony. Are y'all having fun yet? You're gonna be so glad to be out of Lent. The whole purpose of Lent is to get you to, I am a sinner, I need the cross. If you're not there yet, we have one more week. So uh John Cassian says, until the um till we have been uh they have been revealed, with they being the seven sins, um, they are unknown to everyone, even though we are all hurt by them, and they are found in everyone. And I think the whole purpose of all of these things is that we cannot confront what we don't define. And a lot of us, the whole purpose of the seven deadly sins, we think of them because of the reformation, we think about it as behavior. In fact, even the way we've defined the seven deadly sins, we make sure to define the behavior as something being so far outside of us that we're not guilty of them. And so even myself, when I first read through the seven deadly sins, I was like, dude, I'm doing good. But as I study it, and as I read Augustine, as I read uh Cassian, as I read Aquinas, I'm like, actually, I'm guilty of all of these. And that's what John Cassian is saying. Until they're until they're revealed to us, they're unknown. And as long as they're unknown, they have power over us. And so we've got to define them, know what they are. And so all of sins, um Augustine talks about sins is this all of sins are lies. They lie to us, telling us that our fulfillment is found in our obedience to them. And only for us do they uh do they do them. So we find ourselves in deeper levels of despair. So Augustine talks about it how sin lies to us that when we do this thing, we're gonna be fulfilled. Only whenever we do it, we find that we're not fulfilled, but we buy into the lie that the next time it will bring fulfillment. And by doing this, we are a slave, Paul would say, to that sin, because you are a slave to whatever you obey. And so the sin, all these sins, what they do is you're gonna be happy if you just do this. Like just do this one more time and you're gonna be good. It's literally the serpent in the garden um lying to them that their fulfillment was something outside of what God had told them it would be. John Cassian again says um about lust and gluttony. He says, This savage war is longer than the others and greater duration. He's talking about lust and gluttony. And it is completely won by only a few, because although it begins in battles against humankind from the first onset of puberty, it is not terminated until the other vices have been overcome. For twofold is the attack that rises in aggression, armed with a double, uh doubled viciousness, and therefore it must be resisted by a doubled um double force attempt. So he's saying that we're gonna battle against lust and gluttony both spiritually and physically. He's like, it's an interior battle before it's a physical battle, and it's we can't do the physical battle without doing the interior work. And he says that lust and gluttony are the hardest of all the seven. He, in fact, in his writings, John Cassian, he addresses lust and uh gluttony as the first things to conquer before anything else. Because he says these two begin to drive and make an excuse for everything else. Now, just as we go into the word lust, you're thinking sexually. And the word lust in the Bible, a lot of times, doesn't have anything to do with sexual sin. And we think as long as we're sexually pure, we're free of lust. But although if we're not sexually pure, it does not mean that we're free of lust. Does that make sense? Like it's like it's like this back and forth, but it's more than having to do with that. And when we think of gluttony, we think of food. But it's more than that. As just as all of these sins we have because of the reformation, we have this surface level. If I keep myself sexually pure, if I don't overindulge in food, then I'm not gluttonous and I'm not lustful, I'm free of these sins. But you're gonna see by the end of this one, we're all guilty of this. So are you having fun yet? Gluttony and lust are not about what you consume, but how and why you consume. So when we think about this, um, we think about I want I want to challenge you with Augustine, says that there's two cities that a city that a believer resides in. God bless you. There's the city of God and there's the city of man. And the city of man is dictated by the impulses of the flesh. But Augustine goes in on book 14 of the book, uh City of God. He talks about how in the city of man, they want to overcome lust and gluttony. So what they do is they come up with steps and ways to overcome it. And he's like, and by adhering to such, they would appear to have had victory. But because they are living in freedom by the lists of man, they are still in the city of man and not in the city of God. And again, our thought process should be is not, am I a good person, but am I being made pure by the blood of the Lamb? And Augustine is saying that in arriving to our purity, our is our reliance on our own steps, our own methods that are all man-made. And by doing so, we're still putting ourselves under the law. Instead of, Lord, thank you for the blood, and it's by the blood that I'm enabled to live a pure life. That there may be steps that I'm doing, but the motivation to um obtain those steps or to reach those steps is only by the blood of Jesus. And so he talks about how in the city of man, we are all trying to get victory over lust and gluttony because these two are the primary, he would say, um, sins that we battle with. But in doing so, he's like, we arrive at victory, calling ourselves victorious, but we've done it by man-made systems and man-made ways. And he's like, and in doing so, we've deceived ourselves and made the blood of no effect. And and I I think about this because I think all of us want to obtain righteousness without Christ, which is self-righteous. We want to be, we want to have this thing of like, I would, I made myself pure, I did it, I kept myself. We don't do anything. Actually, all of grace is Jesus does it. He infuses in us a desire to live pure and holy. And from that infused desire, I, the outworking expression of it is a pure and holy life. But if I'm reading a book on the 10 steps to be pure, I'm just like the Pharisees. If I'm reading a book on how to do fasting so I can abstain from the sin of gluttony, I'm still just like the Pharisees. However, if I'm reading those, but the power of everything is through the blood of Christ, that I cannot do any of these steps without you, Jesus, that you're the one that has victory over it, then now does this make sense? I've moved from being in the city of man and I'm in the city of God. So gluttony, gluttony says, Um, I will soothe myself. I will soothe myself. Gluttony goes beyond the bounds that is set for it. And it's it's okay because there's room there. There's it's not like you're breaking a boundary, you're you're doing more than you have to have, but it's okay because there's not like a clear parameter where lust breaks boundaries to obtain what it desires. So gluttony, there's like room to move, and you you take beyond what you need, but there wasn't like a boundary of how much you could take. Does this make sense? Where lust says there's a boundary, but I want what's outside of that boundary line set for me. And there's a goat near a house, and that goat, Brian calls it hey, because it's like the chicken from Moana. And He Hey has all this land that it could chill on, but He He always wants the grass that's outside the boundary line set for it. And because of it, my son, when his wisdom teeth got taken out, was chasing Hei Hey down the road with his big old tooth wrap on his head, trying to catch the goat to put it back in the fence. Brian has had to multiple times put the goat back inside the fence. It's gotten hung on the fence. It's like all these things. And every time they patch up a spot on the fence, the goat finds another thing. The problem's not the fence. The problem's inside of Hei Hey, it believes that what is best is outside the boundary line. And that's what lust says. Lust says, what is best for me is outside of the boundaries that have been set for me. Gluttony says there's no boundary, so I'll just take more than what I need. I'll take more than what I need. Okay, so when thinking about uh gluttony and lust, again, we think of food and sex, but Aquinas says that they're related to each other. And so he begins to say that um, he begins to define that whenever we cannot control our stomachs, he says we also will not be able to control our passions on the outside. And so Aquinas, um, in his writings, he begins in his Summa Theologica, he talks about how these two things are linked together. And he's like, if you have lust, you also have gluttony. If you have gluttony, you have less, which I think is interesting because I read recently um in a journal article that they found in 1983, they termed this the first time a sexual addict. Um, that began to be a term and a diagnosis, if you will, in 1983. And so through it, they began to do research on people to see if people who were sexual addicts did they have other struggles. And they found that 38% had a reported abuse of food. They had some kind of disordered food addiction, whether it was an eating disorder where they're starving themselves or an eating disorder and over overindulging. And so this made them research further, and then they found that the other people that weren't inside that 38% had some kind of drug or alcohol overindulgence. And so what they're saying in the 80s and 90s, and that as they were doing this research, and then it goes into the 2000s and they were just showing the progression, as people are more sexually promiscuous, we're also uh breaking boundary lines in the area of gluttony. And so we're finding as much as I can, because I will soothe myself, is what gluttony says. I am gonna soothe myself. So we may do it through drugs, we may do it through alcohol, we may be doing um fill in the blank, whatever it is, but they're seeing these two things being paralleled together, and that as a society, they're both rising at the same um effects. So Aquinas was right. He says that the food, the stomach, and the passions are connected. And so he's saying that we need to begin to have um victory over them both. Okay, this is so fun. Uh Saint Gregory put it, pride has often been uh to many a seed plot of lust for while their spirit raised them, as it were, on high, their flesh purged them, plunged them in the lowest steps. And so he talks about how in our pride, we're not even able to see these things that are corrupting our soul. Like we're not even able to see how these desires, these passions are driving us deeper and further away from God. So um okay. We'll skip that. All right, gluttony. So let's talk about gluttony. The main uh, the main point for them is that for gluttony, whether it's St. Gregory or Aquinas or um John Cassian, is all of them say that the the cure of gluttony is fasting. The cure of gluttony is fasting. And they say that in fasting, their writings is that um as we fast, we're denying our flesh. And as we're denying our flesh, we are telling ourselves that there are proper bounds, even when no bounds are given. And so then um it was Aquinas. He writes, he has this whole long thing where he's asking these questions and he's like, How many days should one fast to have victory over gluttony? Is it found in three weeks? Is it found in 40 days? Is it found in two days? Is it found in one day? Is it found in and he goes through all of these things and basically he comes to the end of it and says that there is not a bound on how many days there is to fast that gives us victory over gluttony? He says that the power is that the practice of fasting is what uh does something inside of the believer, and that to every believer, the day and the amount of time is different. And so I thought that was really good, just in the fact that I think that sometimes we think the magic is in like three days of fasting. Is it in 21 days of fasting? Is it in a day of fasting when God calls us into these seasons of fasting? Like what is the magic of it? And the magic is there is no magic, it's doing as the Spirit wills, and that's where he points us back to the city of God and um Augustine and telling us it's being in the city of God and not having a man-made metric of when I do these things, I will have victory over gluttony. But what Aquinas is saying is that through seasons of fasting, we're teaching our body, we're teaching ourselves, we're teaching our desires that even when there are no bounds, we do have bounds. And even when there are no limits on us, nobody's at home measuring out, you know, are you gluttonous for eating another bag of popcorn or are you gluttonous for eating another bar of chocolate? Like that's not the magic. And if that's what we're looking to, that's not it. But what we're saying is that there are bounds set by the spirit. And when I go into seasons of fasting, times of fasting, I'm putting parameters on myself by the spirit as the spirit wills. So uh okay. Um so gluttony is when I take a good thing and consume it beyond its purpose to soothe something only God can satisfy. A glass of wine in and of itself is not bad. When you're driving home from work and you think I need a glass of wine, now it's sin. Because I'm soothing something. Are y'all following me? I'm soothing something. It's gluttonous at that point. A candy bar in and of itself is not bad. But I had a stressful day, I need a candy bar. Now I'm soothing something, I'm going to it to soothe something that only God can soothe. And again, there's no parameters on those things. There's no like man-made metrics of what is good and what is bad. So, example would be consumption gluttony, Amazon purchases that we don't need, constant upgrades on phones, clothes, shoes, shopping as an emotional regulation. So guilty. So guilty. I don't need it, but I'm dopamine chasing. That's gluttony. Information gluttony, podcasts, sermons, god, nonstop. Like you're consuming, consuming, consuming. You have all this information, but you're not doing anything with it. It's just like as soon as you get done with one podcast, like hit play on another one. It's like I haven't even like applied what I just got. What is that? It's like information gluttony. And again, there's no bounds to these things, but it's this endless pursuit of I'm gonna soothe my need to be intelligent, soothe my need to acquire more knowledge, whatever it is. So gluttony is all about consumption. So in gluttony, you have the money to make the purchase, but just because you have the money to make the purchase doesn't mean you should make the purchase. You have the time to listen to the podcast. But just because you have the time to listen to the podcast doesn't mean you should be listening to the podcast. Are y'all following me? It's like, so with gluttony, it's not that you're breaking any kind of boundary, but it's this overindulging beyond what you actually need to soothe something inside of you instead of going to God. All right, less. Lust is the craving for fulfillment in a way that bypasses God's will, timing, or boundaries. So it's the craving for fulfillment in a way that bypasses God's will, his timing, or his boundaries. Credit card debt is less. Is less. I want something beyond what my financial limitations can afford. I want to break the boundaries of what I can reasonably do to make myself happy. Validation less, needing likes, affirmation, attention, living for approval. I'm breaking the boundaries of living for God. So now I'm I'm in a downward spiral because I didn't get the affirmation from the person that I wanted affirmation from, which I actually needed affirmation from God. And it's this lust, this need for approval, this need for being liked, receiving accolades, receiving praise. When ultimately were we doing it for God or were we doing it for man? And in this, it's it's I I need to be seen to feel secure. It's this lust for being seen. Are you having fun yet? Relationship lust. Expecting people to fulfill what only God can. Looking to my spouse for constant validation, security, encouragement. Those things are things that only God can give us. Brian's a wonderful spouse. He's a terrible Lord. I'm a great wife, a terrible lord. Emotional dependency is a form of relational lust. Needing someone to complete you is lust. What you have right now is what you need. So don't break the bounds. Achievement lust. Needing success to feel worthy. Driven by driven identity through performance. It's this thing on the inside of us. If I just get there, I will be enough. So we're like constantly striving for this like mirage of a number or a place. And we're lusting after that for fulfillment. We're just like hey, hey, in that pasture, and God's got all this abundance all around us. Like the relationships you need is all around you. They don't exist in your future, they don't exist in your past. They're right here. But relational less and success less, the achievement less, it tries to make us push past proper bounds to get what's outside of where I am. Are we okay? Okay. Um so in this, less bad less breaks boundaries to get what it wants. It breaks relational boundaries to be fulfilled, it breaks the budget boundary to feel satisfied, and it breaks moral and ethical boundaries to get to the promotion. So in this, to want to be successful, I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that God wants us to be successful. In fact, the person that was commended was the ones that doubled their talents. I don't think that's a bad thing. But it's when success becomes the ultimate goal instead of God. It's when those things, and and I start breaking moral and ethical things to get there. So think about this, like as I was meditating on this. So gluttony would say, gluttony would say there's no right or wrong, there's wiggle room in it, right? So think about this even for staff members on your church card. There's some things that are kind of gray areas. Can I use this of my church card? Can I use this as my as a personal? I don't know. Gluttony takes beyond what it should take because it knows there's no boundary there, so it's just gonna keep taking. Where LUS knows the boundary and takes it anyways. Does this make sense? So think about office hours. The truth is we're all in different buildings. I don't know what you're doing. Denver and Salem, I definitely don't know what they're doing. They're like over there. I have no clue. I have no clue if they get there at 8 35 or if they get there at 10.05. I have no clue. Gluttony would say, because she does not know, and there's room for me, and she's given me room, I'm gonna take more than I should take. Lust would say the boundary is 830, but I'm gonna take 840 because I deserve it. Y'all following me. And so for us, with lust and gluttony, I think it's just looking inwardly and saying, okay, God, like where have where have I done this? I know I'm guilty of both of these. I'm like, yes, John Cassian, like this is real, right? Because there are things that there are no boundary lines that's to be set. That's why people, when they talk to you about their prayer life and their Bible read, they want to know how much time should I pray? How many chapters in my Bible? What do they want? Gluttony. Like, I only just give me a measure. They want to live in that city of man. If you give me a measure, then I can live within that. Or, and then what happens is they begin to take and lust, right? We're we're setting them up for failure instead of saying it's as the spirit wills, look to the spirit. We're training them to be disciples. Is it bad to say the five, five, five? No, I think that's honestly, if you can't do 15 minutes, what the freak are we doing, anyways? Like, I think that's a healthy parameter, but you guys know what I'm saying. Like, it's when we start legislating morality. So, what is the goal? The goal is that we live in the city of God that Augustine talks about. We we are called to live in that city, and it's by the spirit as a spirit. And and again, like I've repeated throughout this whole Lint study, our sin patterns in our life is not something we can help. It's only something that can be won through the victory of the cross. It's the blood of Jesus plus nothing. And the more I fall in love with Jesus, the more I am in tune with his presence, the more my ear is attentive to his voice, the more I begin to not struggle with gluttony. I don't struggle with less. Why? Because the internal convictions of the spirit are what guides me. I'm not looking to what Pastor Jimmy would do or what Pastor Brian would do or what Pastor Denver would do. Those aren't my metrics. My metric is what is the will of God for me? What is what is God saying? It's neither good nor bad. It's just only what's God's will. And I'm looking to those things. When I have the desire for a purchase, it's am I seeking approval? Am I fulfilling, trying to fulfill some need of insecurity or trying to be soothed? Or is this something that actually just like it brings me joy? Like this is a good thing. It's fine to go make this purchase. Are y'all following me? We're not being legalists that all purchases are bad, but we're also not just going and buying whatever we want, but it's by the Spirit. And so in Galatians chapter two, Galatians chapter two, in verse 16, it says this. It says, knowing that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. Even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not of works of the law. For by the works of the law, no flesh shall be justified. In other words, there are no steps to get to righteousness. There is no amount of time of prayer that you can spend that all of a sudden just eradicates lust and gluttony and pride and acadia, all these things out of your life. It is as we are connected to the Spirit by the Spirit. And the whole point of all this Linton season is us looking inwardly and saying, without Christ, I can't do this. And it should lead us to a measure of helplessness. Helplessness, as Pastor Jimmy was talking about in prayer today, helplessness in and of ourselves, I have no victory over this. But because Christ has already been victorious, I'm looking to his victory. And through his victory, I am now made victorious. And so I'm not measuring my life by a metric, a man-made metric of whether I'm good or bad, but I'm measuring the metric of Spirit of God. What are you asking of me? What is love requiring of me? What are you right now convicting me of? And I'm gonna do that thing because in that thing I stay living in the city of God. He says, But if we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves are found sinners. Is Christ therefore a minister of sins? Certainly not. But if I build again those things which are destroyed, I make myself a transgression. In other words, don't rebuild the law when Christ has already conquered the law. And so don't put on yourself these man-made metrics of how to live holy and how to be good. That's not that's not it. We're now a transgressor. We're rebuilding what Christ built. I mean Christ we may have made victorious over. For I, through the law, died to the law that I might live to God. The whole point of all of this is I am dead to the things of this world and I'm alive in the Spirit of God. So the more time I spend communing in the Spirit, the more time I spend measuring, God, what is your will for my life? What is it that you want me to do? Asking him how to be a mom, how to be a wife, how to be a human. Then I become human as Christ is human. And that is the goal of all of this. So, Father, right now we just thank you for your presence. Uh Lord, I just thank you that, Lord, you have victory over sin. That God, we don't have to come up with the 10 steps, seven ways, uh, the three steps of living a righteous life. But God, you've already done it. And so, Father, right now, we thank you for the blood of Jesus that through a one-time sacrifice forgave us of all of our sins, past, present, future. Father, we thank you that you forgive us of our sins, uh both interiorly and externally, that the sins that we commit in thought and in deed. And so, Father, right now, make us holy like you are holy. Lord, I thank you that you are sanctifying us, you are transforming us. God, I thank you that even through these teachings, that God, the things on the inside of us we've been convicted of, I thank you that it's by your spirit that we begin to change. Father, I thank you that you take us, you mold us, Lord. Make us what you will. And so, Father, right now we look ahead with excited anticipation of for Easter Sunday. God, I thank you, Lord, that you have defeated death. And because you've defeated death, hell, and the grave, there is no power so great that it can bring us under submission. That Lord, right now we declare that we are bondservice of Christ. That, Lord, it's your word, it's your way that we obey nothing else. In Jesus' name. And somebody believed it said, Amen, amen. I love you guys. Thanks so much for hanging out here on my podcast. Do me a favor and hit the subscribe button if you haven't done so already, so you never miss out on anything here on my podcast. Also, one of the best ways for us to begin to reach other people is by you sharing. So if you do me a favor and share this podcast with a friend, family member, or maybe on your social media, help us get the word out so we can help others.