Self Control

Well, you can turn in your Bible to the book of Proverbs chapter 25 as we handle one verse. I call it Spurgeon style because it might surprise you to find out that maybe the most famous Baptist preacher in history did not preach expositorily. Um, a lot of people don't know that about Spurgeon, but he did on occasion, but his main preaching ministry was not that. He would preach more subjects or like what I'm doing here I didn't get this from Spurgeon, but this is the kind of thing he would do, is take one verse and kind of dig all the practicals out of it.

Well, I don't know if you know this, and it might surprise you to feel, to hear, but we live in a society that doesn't have a lot of self-control. Did you know that? Is that shocking to you to find that out? Are you all distraught and offended? Anybody clutching their pearls right now? How dare you! America is very self-controlled and temperate. Well, no, we have a problem, obviously. And the reason we have a problem is because our society doesn't have the wisdom of God. We've been talking about that on Wednesday nights, that the wisdom of God makes you trust God, and when you trust God, you live a life of temperance and care, and you're thoughtful about the choices you make.

Um, we live in a society where— maybe you are attentive to this, or maybe not— that people can have any number of thoughts in their heads and their lives that are conflicting and contradictory and just think that that's all right. Have you ever heard the phrase, snitches get stitches? And end up in ditches? Okay, the people you hung around took it a little too far. The idea being there is that you could be a criminal and a murderer, and any other thing, anything but somebody who tattles or snitches on someone, right? So you can have this standard where you might steal from your own mother, but you can't lie or steal, or you can't tell on somebody or turn somebody in for those kind of things. That's kind of what I mean. That's a— there's contradiction all over the place. And I think when we don't have any sort of operating principles, the operating principle is whatever we feel at the time. That we're operating by emotion.

And we definitely see it, definitely in the Bible too, we'll see, if you pay attention to such things, that one of the things, if you hold to the pre-millennial, pre-tribulational eschatology, is that one of the things that happens in the Great Tribulation is that the restraint of the Holy Spirit is taken out of the world so that people are essentially given over. And then we will— well, we won't because we won't be here if our eschatology is right. We'll be rapture. But if you believe that, then you know what the world looks like when there's no restraint. You see that in the Scripture where things just go as bad as they can when there is no restraint.

Well, that's sort of what the proverb is going to be telling us about today, that when you have no self-control, when you have— when you're not ruled by any principle, when you're not operating under any sort of intentional self-control, then everything falls apart. That's kind of literally what the text will say. And if you didn't know this, you might think that, well, if there's no rule, if there's no guidance, if there's no operating principles, if there's no structure, if there's nothing, no schematic to follow, no instruction, no blueprint, then why wouldn't we do what's right? Wouldn't we just by nature of being good people do what's right? Well, that's when you find out that there are no good people and nobody drifts toward God.

That's something that I wish you would— I'm not a tattoo person, but that would be the kind of thing that might be a tattoo thing. Don't get a tattoo. But the kind of thing to permanently put somewhere where you see it all the time. Put it on a t-shirt. Put it in your mirror so that you see it, is that we never drift toward God. Nobody ever accidentally becomes more spiritual. And that happens to be because we are in sin. When Adam fell, we got a sin nature, and we only sin when we're in Adam. And now we're talking about Christians, but the principle is still the same. If you don't have an operating principle, if you don't have control, if you don't have a good structure or authority in your life that would make you follow the structure and lead to good and follow the Lord and move in His path, then you are probably going the wrong direction because nobody accidentally goes toward God.

That's what I'm saying. It's that if you don't purposefully go toward God, you will accidentally go away from Him. But you won't accidentally go toward him. And so this text tells us that anybody that doesn't have an operating principle or self-control essentially falls apart. That's what the text is before us.

Let's pray and we'll look at it together. Father, I think we know these things, but that's the problem is with us humans and sinners. The problem is, is that we think we know things and then we get full of ourselves. We get to thinking we have things figured out and then we stop listening. We stop looking at your word and consulting your word. But this is a great passage. This is one of the most simple phrases. It's one sentence and it says so much. And Father, it's just that kind of thing that we need to be attentive to, that when your word has a beautiful, simple, concise teaching and there's so much nourishment in it, that we should be nourished and not take it for granted. So I'd ask, Father, that we would hear this one verse for all it's worth and take it with us and internalize the lesson in it. And make sure our lives are lives of temperance and self-control so that we're not wild and we're not like animals, but that we're governed by a good governor and according to your word. So please help us in Jesus' name. Amen.

So Proverbs 25:28, I could just— let me read the whole thing. Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down without walls. This is a really good example of having good hermeneutics, of knowing the right sound principles of biblical interpretation. Because a city, broken, walls, those are all words that are used here. And they're all words that we use differently than a biblical writer would. So maybe today I'll be worth something to you because I'll explain those things. The idea being that if you just read through that and we put our modern thinking, our modern definitions, our modern dictionary, we plug it into the text, it could still give us a lesson, but it won't be as rich as if we go back in time to the proverb and get what's going on there.

So the first thing is I want you to see is that this is to whoever. And that could be a general principle and it could be specific to believers. And do you want to know what the answer to that is? Which is which? Is it to everybody or is it to believers? Well, the answer is yes. 'Cause Proverbs are like that. Proverbs have the nature of being principles. They're pithy statements, principled statements that operate as universal truths that everybody can understand. And they are true because they're true. They're true because they're in God's Word. But I think we all know that the Word of God was not ever intended to just be a book of principles and truths for people in general. The Bible is God's Word to his people, for his people. To the given audiences for our benefit. So whoever here— yes, it could be general. This could be a principle that you could give to a next-door neighbor who's lacking control. You could absolutely talk about that. But I think the real principle, obviously, for us as Christians is that this is speaking to us. This is speaking to God's people so that we recognize the importance in our lives as Christians that self-control is important. So the whoever is— whoever— I put whoever in italics. Maybe if I lean like this, does that italicize it? So the whoever is whoever, but I want us to make sure as Christians we're taking it in. Like, this is something God preserved for our good, that we can add this to our lives, the kind of thing that we might tell our kids when we're working in the fields or whatever.

Whoever has no rule. The next phrase is has no rule. Now, this is a bit difficult because— there is a sense that you could say there is no such thing as having no rule, because if you have no authority, you're still self-ruling. But the irony here is that we're supposed to be self-ruling, right? The point of this text is self-control, that we are supposed to be controlling ourselves. So you might get the idea like, okay, well, that's what the criminal is doing. He's controlling himself. He has self-control. He's controlling himself and doing the wrong thing. But that's not really what this means. This really means an authority. This is more like not wanting to be an anarchist, throwing off authority. This doesn't mean whoever has nobody ruling them. It really means whoever has no restraint, no direction, no structured authority, no leadership, nobody guiding them, whoever has no guiding principle, who has no master or sovereign that they respond to. In other words, whoever has no ruler, this could be thought of, right? Whoever has no boss. And I don't know, you kids, do you kids still say, you're not the boss of me? Does anybody still say that? I'll throw that around every once in a while to my wife. It's weird for a 50-something-year-old to say, you're not the boss of me. But she's not the boss of me, just so you know. I just want to make sure we're clear. Jamie, don't even think it.

Whoever has nothing controlling them. Whoever lacks being controlled. That's the idea. Have you ever heard this? I know you'll know this. Have you ever heard this phrase that teams win games, but coaches lose games? Ever heard that before? Teams win games, coaches lose games. Do you know what that means? I mean, coaches know what that means, right? The idea is that the responsibility of the wins and losses in theory falls on the coach, but a good coach gives his team the credit for winning the game, right? So a good coach doesn't blame his team for a loss. A good coach takes responsibility for the loss because he says, "That's under my control." But he wants to give credit to the team for the win because that was under their control, the execution and the performance of the plays. But the idea here being that if a team has no good control, well, in this case, the team's going to lose. If it doesn't have good leadership, the team is going to lose. So the idea is that winning and losing rises and falls on the quality of the leadership. And if you don't have a leader, you shouldn't expect to win in your life. So if you have no rule, that's the idea.

I will not— do you remember the people of Israel at the time of Jesus' crucifixion? We will not have this man rule over us. The text here fits that. These are people who have no rule. They will not be ruled. And so we Americans need to be careful for that. I think when we threw off the restraint of the King of England, I think sometimes we act as though we will have no ruler, not even the Lord, not even the laws, not even my neighborhoods, not even my family. We have no authority. I'm my own authority. Have you heard of the Sovereign Citizen Movement? That is a funny movement. You should look into that sometime. By the way, it never goes good for those guys, so don't adopt the Sovereign Citizen mindset. It never goes good. So whoever has no governing authority, no operating principle, whoever is operating like an anarchist with no rules, whoever has no structure, and to put in our language today, whoever has no control over their life.

And then now we see the next little phrase in verse 28, "over his own spirit." So in this text, who is supposed to rule us? Now, I know you're a Christian, you want to say the Lord. That's what you want to say. God is sovereign. God is the boss. God is the king. God is the master. He's the only one who rules over us. That's not what the text says. The text says that you are in control of your actions. That's what it says. And you might be thinking about throwing a rock at me right now. Hey, wait a second, Sloan. You say all the time you're a Calvinist. You say we don't actually have an autonomous free will. Ah, but I never said we didn't have a choice. Everybody has a choice. It's just that God's choice is sovereign over all other choices. But at no point does God say we do not have control over our own spirit. So those are not contradictory to say God is sovereign and I'm supposed to control myself. In fact, it's the other way around.

Hey, what if I asked you, like a class— I mean, it's afternoon service, so I can get away with this. Whose fault was it that Adam fell into sin? Not one of you said Eve. I thought one of you men would throw Eve under the bus right there. We all agree that it's Adam's fault, right? Whose fault did Adam think it was? So you all understand. Everybody understands. I didn't— even the kids in the room knew the answer. Whose fault was it? Adam's fault. Whose fault did Adam say it was? Eve's. So who had control over Adam? Well, in Adam's mind, the devil made me do it, or the woman made me do it, right? You said that, I didn't. Wendy, he's close to you, you can—

So I think you all see what I'm driving at here, is that Adam could not rightfully before the Lord say, I didn't have control over my own spirit. I did not have rule over my spirit. Eve did. Or the devil did, or the boss did, or my governor did, or my pastor did. Somebody else made me do it. We say the devil made me do it. Well, you see in your notes what I put there. The me made me do it. Right? So self-control is always an option. I don't care what you believe about depravity. What you can't say is you're not in control of your own actions. We are in control of our own actions. Our actions have consequences. And we're accountable for those actions.

And it is possible, by the way, that there can be stumbling and the cause— so I'm going to say this quietly. In a small group like this, it might be safe. In a big group, it might not be safe. But I'm going to say it quietly. I say this a lot, but I always say it with qualification, like I want to sneak over in the corner and whisper it to you because I don't want to get myself in trouble. But I want you to notice something in the Garden of Eden when all that mess happened. And Satan did what he did, and Eve did what she did, and Adam did what he did. That when the fall happened and God enters back into the garden and Adam and Eve try to hide and they fail, and God asked Adam what happened, Adam blamed his wife, right? We all agree with that. Um, just so you know, God doesn't say you don't get to blame your wife. Did you all notice that? Did you ever notice that God didn't say, don't try to blame her, this is your fault? Who's the very next person that God talks to after Adam says, "The woman you gave me"? He talks to the woman because she caused him to stumble. She was accountable. She wasn't fully to blame because her husband should have led his house better. But she was not innocent. And God didn't say, "It isn't her fault. It's your fault." And then what does the woman do? She blames the serpent. And then who does God talk to next? Ah, wait a second. The devil did make her do it. There was blame. Absolutely, there was blame. Both were true. The devil did make her do it, and she did it under her own power. Those are both true.

So I want to make sure you're clear. When you see that blame game in the garden, God never once says, "Stop blaming. Take responsibility yourself." He never says that. He acknowledges the person that's blamed because the person that's blamed caused stumbling. And God counts it when you cause stumbling. So both things are true. You can cause stumbling, but it doesn't make the stumbler innocent. Right? So even if I could blame you for something I did wrong, I'm in charge of me doing wrong. Does everybody got that? So you leave your car windows down and a purse or a wallet in your console, and somebody walks by and they look in there and they say, "Oh, there's a person there with a phone in it." And they reach in and grab it. They might blame you for leaving your window down, and you might be blamed for your window being down. That might have been irresponsible, but that doesn't mean the thief is innocent. Got it?

So in this text, whoever has no rule, no control over his own spirit tells us if God says it, we're supposed to have control over our own spirit. If God says you're supposed to have control over your own spirit, you can never say, I don't have control over my own spirit. You don't get to say that. So both things are true. Stumbling can be caused, but stumblers are never innocent. Right? They're both true, not either or, both and. We're accountable for our choices. We're accountable for not ruling ourselves. We're accountable for not ruling ourself and putting ourselves under God's rule, coming to subjection under the Lord and letting him have a say-so over our life. So sometimes those things can be— they might seem tough to navigate. You have children and one of them causes the other one to stumble. And that kid, poor kid stumbles because big brother, big sister, little brother, little sister causes them to stumble. As a parent, you need to be careful in that moment to do the right thing in both counts. Because causing stumbling is bad, but stumbling is bad. Right? Both are true.

All right. So whoever has— whoever is anyone— who has no rule, no authority, no structure, no restraint, no operating principles. And then here it is from their own spirit or by their own spirit or over their own spirit. In other words, the thing that's missing here is not control from somewhere else outside, from somebody controlling us, from somebody making us do what we ought to do. We're supposed to do it. Then he says, "is like a city." Now, this is the part where our hermeneutics come to play. What does it look like when we have no rule over our own spirit, when we have no self-control, no temperance? Well, a couple— you see in your notes, I think it's— or if you don't have your notes, not today. I forgot I didn't give notes. But I have "not that city" italicized. Real quick. Get the city idea, to get that established. The Bible talks about a city of God, right? There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God, the most holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High. That's in Psalm 46. Or in Psalm 87, glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God, Selah. That's in Psalm 87:3. There's this idea of the city of God, right? I don't think this text is really trying to get us to narrow down on one particular city over another. But I do want to make sure we're clear that when you see that language in the Bible, the Old Testament, the city of God, the idea is that there is a good, fortified, strong city, right? There is such a thing as a city that is a God-honoring city. You think of places like Jerusalem or Zion, and Zion's more of a concept or a region. But the idea being is Bethel— remember those places where God— the people set up an altar to God, and those places became important in the history of Israel? Jerusalem is probably the one we think the most pointed at, that Jerusalem was God's designated city where his people would worship at the temple. So city, the city idea in the Bible would have the idea of worship and like a hub of righteousness. The city of God and that idea that God's kind of city would be a city that was where the market was. It was where the exchange of ideas was. It's where the people fortify themselves. If the city's strong, the surrounding areas will be strong, right? Like the city is the place where you go to do business or where you go to get judgments or those kind of things.

So you think of the city not the way we think of the city. I think when you and I think of city, we think of like San Francisco or New York or Los Angeles, and we probably automatically make this kind of face, ugh, when we think of city. We think of city as the big yucky place where all the bad stuff happens. And that is true in our day. But in the Bible, that's not the first way to think of city. The first way to think of city is like your capital city for a righteous nation. That's the concept here, that when the Proverb writer is saying, whoever has no rule is like a city, I don't want you to think of the word of city itself as negative. The idea here is the city that should be doing good, the city that should be fortified, the city where the command center of God's military is. Like it's the place where, you know, Jerusalem, think of Jerusalem in its heyday, the best part of the city. When you go to the city, you get excited because that's where God's temple is and that's where the marketplace is and that's where the commerce is happening. This is where we sell things and it's all good. Think of positive commerce, positive military, positive community, you know, righteousness, theocratic rule of God. So I want you to think first positively of city. Right?

So then when I say that now and I spell that out where we think of city in the biblical terms instead of city in our terms, and you have that in your head, you think of Jerusalem at the peak. Think of Jerusalem. Think of the day— what is it, 1 Kings 8— when the kingdom was— the temple was built and Solomon dedicates the kingdom.

And you— is it 1 Kings 8 or 2 Kings 8? 1 Kings, I think. And the temple gets dedicated and the people are just— worshipping and honouring the Lord, right? That's what I want you to think of city. So if you have no rule and you should have rule over yourself, you could be like that city. Everybody with me? You could be that city, a fortified, strong bastion of hope, a display of God's character in the world, right? Think of the Thessalonikans in the New Testament. Like, man, that place, the word of God sounded forth from Thessalonica. Everybody knew if you go to Thessalonica, you're going to hear the word of God. Remember, those were the good people that did the testing and tested themselves.

So whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city, and you almost want to say a good city until you get the next phrase, which is broken down. So this is a bad thing when the city is broken down. Don't just automatically think all cities are broken down. No, only the city without self-control and without righteousness and without God's principles is broken down. How is our city doing? I mean, have you been downtown Modesto lately? Have you been— this is the wild part— have you been downtown Riverbank? Riverbank's a tiny little city. It's City of Action, but it's a tiny little city. And the homelessness and the empty businesses and the boarded-up windows.

I was born in Modesto, folks. I was born at Modesto City Hospital. Most of you don't even remember what that is. This is my hometown. And so when I'm in my city and I see these things, it grieves me. It grieves me when my city that I love is broken down. Not that it used to be all that righteous. I'm not saying that my city was like Jerusalem, but I am trying to get you in that mindset. Your city, your people, the people that maybe in times past there was some respect and honor.

Well, when a city loses self-control, self-control on its people, so they're given over to addiction and all manner of trouble, right? Self-control on its government, not ruling the government well, being bad stewards. Self-control in the bureaucracy, self-control in the education, self-control. Right? When a city loses self-control, the city crumbles. And that's why he's giving that example here. When an individual has no ruler over themself, they're like a broken-down city. You want to think of the word disintegrate. Do you ever think of the word disintegrate? What does integrate mean? It means put together. When something is integral, It's put together. When Isaiah talks about seeing the Lord in the temple, he says something like, "Woe is me, I am undone." He disintegrated. He was together, and then when he saw the Lord in His holiness, he fell apart.

So a person who has no authority, there's no structure in their life, and then they themselves don't control their own actions and their own behavior, who don't operate under sound, solid principles with the commands of God, that person is like a city that has disintegrated. It no longer has market value. It's no longer respected. It's no longer seen as the hope of a community or a surrounding community. The people in the surrounding areas don't look to the city for respect and honor. They don't want to go to the city to go to be educated by the city anymore. They don't want to go to the city to to do commerce and to trade and to interact with people. They certainly don't go to the city to learn about healthy righteousness and things like that.

You think of the nation of Israel under the rule of Rehoboam. Remember when Solomon should have been ruling in righteousness, and he dies and his son takes over, and his son gets bad counsel from the young men instead of the older men, and then the nation divides in two? That is disintegrated. Israel was a nation, and now she's separate into two pieces— two tribes down south, ten tribes up north. They've disintegrated to the point where eventually it almost becomes a civil war in the nation. Why? Because the city didn't exercise— well, in that case, the king didn't exercise self-control. So anybody that doesn't have self-control, rule over their own spirit, operating under a principle biblical principles, they're like a broken-down city. And that's not all.

When the city breaks down, now the inhabitants of the city are without walls. That speaks to safety. That speaks to being defenseless. It speaks to not having strong fortification. I remember vividly, and I don't know why I remember this— I don't remember events like a lot of people do. I sort of remember almost like sentiments and feelings and things like that. I don't remember, like, I'm not that person that smells something, I remember right where I was and what I was wearing. Jamie could do that. I can't do that. You were wearing the green sweater. And I'm like, that's not me. I remember that time. That was great because we were all together and I felt good. That's about as good as I can get with memories.

But let me tell you something. I have a vivid memory of driving my Ford Thunderbird down Oakdale Road past what is the car wash place on the left-hand side down there, where My Chef and all that is, right? The car wash gas station, and I remember on 9/12, it was 9/12, the day after 9/11, and me thinking in that moment, I don't feel safe right now. Me driving my car in Northern California on Oakdale Road thinking, we're not safe. I remember vividly that feeling. After the towers were attacked. I remember my brother calling me, like screaming on the phone, "They're attacking us, brother! They're attacking us!" And I remember that. And that's as close to the Pearl Harbor feeling as I'm going to get, right, at my age. And I remember how strange it felt to not know what was coming next. I remember that was such a strange feeling to be driving to do errands while I'm wondering if my nation's going under, right? It was a wild feeling.

Now I had a lot of confidence in our military. I have to tell you that I was already a pretty solid conservative at that time who thought like, we're going to be okay probably, you know? But I do want you to— that idea of thinking that on American soil we could be made to feel like that. Like that hadn't happened since the Civil War where we would have that kind of clear, to use the real language, and present danger as we had in that moment right there. And I want you to think of that when you think of the walls broken down. I want you to think of that idea like we are not as safe as we think we are. You can have all the security systems you want. You might even be a Second Amendment person and have a concealed carry, and I have a shotgun at my house. I pity the poor person that comes to my house in the middle of the night. You can think you're as strong as you want, but we are not that strong, especially if we throw off the restraint of the Lord, especially if we keep saying, God, we are not going to do it your way.

We might be safe from our next-door neighbor, but we're not safe from the Lord if we turn against him. So this idea of the walls coming down— you remember when Israel had to rebuild her walls? Remember when they had to do the, the trowel and the sword thing, right? Like, you keep your eyes open while you're working. That's because when the walls come down, the city is not safe. And they had to build those walls again to make the city safe and fortify the city. So if somebody doesn't rule themselves, this is not just saying they fall apart, they essentially become a pile of rubble and they're garbage now. They can't function. It's also saying they're not safe. And it means not safe from things like temptation or safe from attack. Or safe from yourself. If your walls are down, that means you're vulnerable. And if you don't have control over your own behavior and consequence and the things you're supposed to do, you're ripe for the picking.

You know, you know that right out in the wild. Predators attack the weak. You know, they find the little baby that's straggling behind, that's the one they're going to attack. And that's what it's like to have no self-control. If you have no self-control, you're open to attack. You're the easy target. And I could say, for the devil. For the devil, you're the easy target. If you don't have self-control, if you're not governing yourself by the principles of God's Word, you're not acting as though you are in control of your own behavior. You're not trying to blame anybody else. You're not trying to get away with anything. You're not trying to throw off restraint. You're not trying to say, "I don't want a ruler. I just want to rule myself." That's not your attitude. Your attitude is, "I know God's Word is safe." I know the safe place for me to be is under the wings of the Lord and to be protected by him. And the only way that's gonna happen is if I commit to being a believer who has principles, who's led by the Spirit, who if I have sin in my life, I'm confessing it regularly. I don't wanna have any division between me or my brothers or me and the Lord. I'm gonna walk with integrity. I'm gonna be integrated. Integrity is integrated. Got it? It's the same word. Instead of dis-integrity, I have integrity. And I'm whole. I don't have walls that are falling down. My spiritual life is not in disrepair. I'm fortified. I'm a soldier. I'm protecting what I'm called to protect.

I'll give you a few applications, and we might even get out of here somewhat early. Simply put, if you can't govern yourself and your own actions, you don't take responsibility and exercise self-control or temperance, you're going to fall apart. And if you fall apart, not only are you going to be falling apart, but you're also going to be weak. You're not going to be strong. The attacks of this world, the difficulties of life— and you definitely see that. You definitely see people who lack self-control can't handle— every wind that comes knocks them over. Every difficulty knocks them over because they haven't built the strength in the muscles to be strong because of poor decisions. They don't have a habit of building strong muscles.

There's a couple things to take with you that you can— I don't know, just think about this. What if you have self-control but only for a little while? Well, then you're probably prone to be drawn back into sin if you struggle with sin. Like, maybe you're the person who's a roller coaster. You only have self-control in spurts, right? I have self-control like— you have self-control like you make New Year's resolutions. I'm going to start exercising self-control. I'm not a person that has no rules, so for exactly 1 month, I'm going to be the most disciplined person. In fact, that's the way it usually happens. It usually happens especially with young men. Sorry, young men, but that's the way it happens. Sorry to let you know that I see what's happening and I know it because I was a young man once.

But this idea of like, I'm straightening up now. Now I'm going to have discipline. Now I'm going to be a self-controlled person. Now I'm going to have temperance. Now I'm going to live for the Lord. Eh. I want you to say that, but I want you to also have the humility that knows you might not stick to that. So the way you stick to that is instead of trying to aim really high and have giant lofty goals, How about just asking for daily bread? How about just asking for today's forgiveness? How about just going day to day instead of making big lofty promises? So how about self-control one day at a time? Okay? So self-control, instead of for a burst of energy and then fall again, how about self-control, think of day-to-day obedience? You only have today anyway.

And how about self-control in areas of your life, but not all areas? Like I said not long ago in one of the sermons, like you got self-control and discipline with your diet. Oh, I would never eat a processed whatever, right? I only eat the right number of calories. Oh, I'm— you got self-control in that area, but your eyes wander and look at every beautiful woman that walks by with lust, right? So you might think you have self-control, but you have self-control in all areas of life, not just one or two areas or the easy areas where it's easy. Like it's easy for me to eat food that's healthy even though I don't— might not look like it because I can't taste food. So as much as I hate broccoli, I do have the benefit of not having to taste it, right? So I might say that I'm disciplined and I'll eat all the broccoli I need to eat and I'm— but that's not discipline. It's easy for me to do that. It's easy for me to eat any food, okay?

Now how about the discipline of exercising with the good food? Now we're talking difficulty for PJ because I hate working out. Right? So think about that in your Bible study. Yeah, I really— remember I said this morning, I talked about eschatology this morning. I love studying eschatology. Yeah, but are you studying how to raise your kids right? Well, no, I like eschatology. Yeah, but do you have this self-control in all areas? Are you well-rounded in your self-control? Or how about self-control in your discipline or work life?

Habits. You rule yourself well by building and keeping and sustaining good habits. Habits that are good and beneficial, that are biblical kinds of things, that you automatically spend time in the Word, that you— I know there's no such thing as automatically. I already said you drift away from the Lord. But what I mean is you build the muscle that says, I have to do my devotions. I have to spend time in the Word. I'm going to pray with my family. I am going to share the gospel. I have discipline and self-control in the spiritual areas of my life. So I have good habits. Years ago, I really disappointed my wife at the time because when we— the very first time I ever opened the door for her in my truck, garbage fell out. And she didn't think bad of me for that. I think she was relieved, like, oh, he's a normal guy, thank goodness. At least that's how I interpreted that.

But there was a time after we were married a while where that same Thunderbird that I drove down the street on 912. I couldn't stand it anymore, the garbage in my own car. It was driving me crazy. And it always made me mad that my car was dirty. And I finally realized, guess who's the cause of it? It wasn't Eve. I was the one making my car dirty. So I did the thing. I literally did the 21-day thing. They said in 21 days you can form a habit, right? So it didn't even take all that much work. It wasn't even like— I cleaned it really good one day and then just for 21 straight days, I cleaned it every day. Made sure there was never garbage in it. I never left a cup in the cup holder. I never left any garbage in it. I made sure the floors, floor mats were clean. And I have to tell you, I stuck with that. I've never had a dirty car since. That was my fault. I'm not trying to blame anybody. But I don't leave garbage in my car. I don't leave dirt in my car. I built a habit.

Now, does that mean I'm super controlled? No. Because you could go look at the other parts of my house, like in my garage or on the side of the house right now, where the wood that I've been trying to pull nails from for months is there haunting me. Because I don't have the control to go take care of that job. But discipline is a real thing. And habits are a real thing. And I know it might seem impossible to start a good habit, whatever that habit is— health habit, family habit, spend time with your kids habit. Tell somebody you love them, pray for somebody, those kind of things that you can turn into a daily routine. It's not as hard as you think. It's hard to start, but once you get started and you get rolling, it's not as hard as you might think to keep up the habit. It isn't. It's just hard to make it a habit. It's the making a habit that's hard, not keeping a habit. We keep all the bad habits, right? We don't have any trouble at all keeping the bad ones.

So how are you doing on self-control? 'Cause this text doesn't just say it's good and good will come from ruling yourself. It's pretty much saying that bad will come if you don't. That you can expect bad. I think sometimes people get really, like, upset and they're shocked when bad things happen. And sometimes that even makes its way into the pastor's office. "Well, Pastor, we need to talk because this is happening. My kids won't listen to me and my wife's yelling at me. We need to talk about what's going on in my life." Or, "I'm struggling with a sin," or whatever, "and I need to talk to you about things." And then you find out, if you do any— if you can be attentive to anything at all in these kind of passages, that when you take a passage like this and you apply it to their life, you almost want to ask, when was the last time you showed any self-control?

With your kids, you flew off the handle, you lacked, you know, self-control there. With your boss, you lacked self-control and you huffed and puffed and walked away from him and disrespected him, and then you got in trouble or reprimanded, and now there's tension at work. Or with your neighbor or whoever, you just lack self-control, you don't have the that— like, we don't have any of the law enforcement guys here tonight, but that principle of de-escalating, that principle of calming down, that principle of controlling yourself so that you're not a powder keg just waiting to explode, that you're controlling yourself. It— by the way, it shows a lot. That lack of self-control shows in people's lives. And you will reap the whirlwind. It'll happen. If you lack self-control, you'll lose respect. People will— your kids will be afraid of you. Your neighbors won't want to deal with you. It's really a problem.

In fact, you know what it's like if you don't have self-control? You're like a city that's broken down, whose walls have fallen. That's what you're like. And we don't want that. We want a strong city, our families to be strong, our church to be strong. Maybe even we can make our community strong if we do those things.

Let's pray. Father, your word is so rich with good teaching. What a simple thing that we can carry with us. How are we doing with self-control? We might want to blame you when things aren't better, or we might want to blame the devil, but this text is really clear that it's our own spirit that we're in control of. And we just ask that we would leave here today in better control and exercising good, strong, biblical self-control and temperance. And we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.

PJ, if I'd known you were going to talk about me tonight, I wouldn't have come. Just kidding. Just kidding. 30, we're on page 36, right? Immortal, invisible, please stand with us.