Gluttony is not about the outward. It's not about body size, not even about how much one eats. It’s an inward issue of the heart. We’re always going to go there.

Gluttons come in every shape and size. We all struggle with it in some way. Gluttony is really about our complex relationship to food—to eating, to drink. It’s a relationship that affects much of our lives. It includes our relationship with Christ.

We’ve been talking in this series about these entrenched heart-level sins. Things like false beliefs, wrong ways of thinking about things, and what we value, what we worship, and where we find satisfaction and pleasure.

Those are all issues that are inward heart-level sins which are barriers that keep us from experiencing God; from growing and keep us from finding life and joy in Him.

We’ve seen vainglory, envy, greed. These are all self-focused. They prevent us from truly experiencing the love of God and faith in Jesus Christ and His grace. All those things are found in and through Jesus Christ.

We’ve been pointing to Christ in all of those. So it is with gluttony. Gluttony is the daily experience of finding pleasure in food that keeps us from the greater pleasures in God.

Why is gluttony one of these sins? (Historically they are called the Seven Deadly Sins.) It’s not because the Bible says a whole lot about it directly, but rather because it’s a persistent multiple-times-daily temptation for us.

Gluttony is so easy because we simply have to eat. My desire is that we would all think about our relationship to food and drink. And we would wrestle honestly with the whys of eating.

Why do we eat? We would see that God has good purposes in it. And we would focus on those. In this we find the truths of the gospel. All of these bring us back to Christ and the gospel.

The truth of the gospel always brings us back to grace. Grace if you are discouraged and grace for a self-condemning heart.

~~~