Are You "Glutton" Free?

00:00 - Speaker 1
Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture.

00:09 - Speaker 2
Hey, listen, this is no commercial. But do you eat too much? Do you find yourself feeling bloated, sleeping difficult at night? Well, stay tuned, because we've got the cure for you. And that is. What about your body? How are we to be living and how are you to be ready when Jesus perhaps gives you the 911 call to do something for him in the moment? Will you be able to respond or will your body get in the way?

00:35 - Speaker 1
You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to https://jackhibbs.com slash podcast Today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five-star ratings. To us that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen Now open your hearts to what God's Word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs.

01:04 - Speaker 2
Hey, welcome to the podcast today, and I would think that you are probably getting pretty used to us talking about straightforward, hard-hitting things and yet I don't know if you're ready for this next episode of our podcast together. I'm not sure if I'm ready for it, and I say that with tongue in cheek, so to speak, because there's not enough research I could do on this topic, because it's almost endless and I am actually not going to tell you exactly what the topic is up front. We're going to get to it and when I get to it I'm going to say and this is the topic for today, we're going to start with this In Luke's gospel, chapter seven, verse 34, listen carefully, jesus is responding to the attacks and to the just the heel nipping, if I could put it that way. Heel nipping, you know, like a little dog biting you on the heels. I see the Pharisees and the scribes and the students of the law nipping on Jesus's heels like a little, like a little nuisance dogs. And Jesus responds to them and says in verse 34, luke 7, says in verse 34, luke 7, the son of man has come eating and drinking and you say look, a glutton and a wine bibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. And what's interesting about that is the next verse says but wisdom is justified by her children. I love that statement Wisdom is justified by her children. In other words, wisdom has her offspring and her offspring conduct themselves wisely. I love that wrapping, that bow that he puts on top of a very interesting thing that we're going to talk about today. It's extremely rare.

03:01
You may not like what I have to say, but you must admit that it's in the Bible and you've not heard, you've never heard, a sermon on this, I would think, and if ever, even a podcast, at least in this Christian genre, maybe a podcast in some health type of forum. But so Jesus says you guys are blaming me for eating and being a glutton and drinking and so being a wine bibber, and so let's talk about that. Let's talk about what they're actually accusing him of, and I'm wondering if you're aware of that. They are accusing Jesus of being out of control. If you're Jesus, if you're the Jesus that's doing all this stuff and you're from God, how can you be doing all of this stuff when you hang out with sinners, okay, and common people, publicans, they flock to you.

04:08
So we don't like that. Right from the get-go. You need to be holy like us. Where nobody likes us, because we're so righteous and holy and stuck up and just full of arrogance and self-righteousness, we're pretty disgusting to people. See how holy we are, that's how holy we are. Everybody hates us because we're so holy. And Jesus wasn't like that.

04:32
Jesus without compromise listen to this without Jesus compromising his incredible presence, god incarnate. He not only didn't compromise, he didn't even get close to the fence. Okay, so what are we talking about here? We're talking about Jesus having such a loving, awesome, winsome spirit about himself that children wanted to get near him, common people wanted to get near him and sinners wanted to get near him. That's the person of Jesus. So just settle that in right now.

05:13
Jesus didn't dress up like in some gang member outfit to go minister to the gang members. He didn't dress up like a fisherman to reach out to Peter and James and John like a fisherman to reach out to Peter and James and John. Jesus didn't, you know, throw Molotov cocktails into the windows, like you know, james the zealot. He didn't do that stuff. Jesus was authentic and he revealed how a human was supposed to be under the power of God. Think about that. That's Jesus. Jesus shows us what it's like to be a human under the power of the Holy Spirit of God.

05:57
But here's two words, or a connection, I should say, because there's the words eating and gluttony, and drinking and wine, beer were two words, really four words. So let's talk about eating. They accuse him of eating to be a glutton. So he's eating and Jesus didn't have like, apparently he didn't have like one olive and one falafel dipped in hummus. Right, he would have eaten those things. He might've been sitting down and talking and being around a table like you do and talking, and maybe it's going on for hours and he'll just pop in an olive and they're talking, and he might take some pita and he's dipping that and they're talking. It's not on Jesus's mind to clear the table and to stack up, you know, all this food around him, like he's some sort of Jabba on Star Wars and he's going to eat all this stuff and he's a glutton. But they accuse him of that and I think Jesus was a man's man and I think Jesus took care of himself, because we want to take care of ourselves and we're going to talk as to the reason why. But here's where this gets kind of rough for some people and I want you to think about this as I begin to talk about eating and drinking gluttony and wine bibbing Is, first of all, if you have a medical.

07:32
Listen, if you have a medical condition maybe you were born with it, maybe it was an onset disease or issue and it has affected your body you have a legitimate reason why somebody might say, oh, you're just a glutton, implying you're overweight, that's all you do is eat. You don't take care of yourself. They might accuse you of that, but they don't know that you actually have a gland problem or you have a birth problem. There's something wrong in your chemistry or your thyroid or your hormone problem, and that's not who I'm talking about today. If you have a medical condition because of some ailment that causes what we would say is obesity, I'm not talking to you today. I pray God's healing power on you. I pray God's mercy upon you and I'm very sorry that you have to battle that. I can't imagine that's got to be so, so hard, and you're not who I'm talking to. I pray God's blessing upon your life abundantly.

08:49
I'm talking about the person who eats because they, for all kinds of reasons, won't stop eating. They eat when they're worried, they eat. They eat when they're anxious. They eat when they're happy. They eat when they're worried, they eat. They eat when they're anxious. They eat when they're happy. They eat when they're sad. They just eat. They won't stop, and you know that you weren't like that before, but it's increasingly happened to you and you find it easier to eat and be comforted than to pray.

09:29
Let's reverse it this way. Some people would come home from work or from a really rough day and they would say, oh, what a day. Oh, boy, my beat, what a rough day and you got to crack open a beer or you got to crack open a martini to calm your nerves. Okay, this is the same thing. If you are doing these things because you find comfort in these things, because you find rest in these things, because you unplug from reality in these things, let's talk about what you're doing to yourself, and I'm talking to the Christian, I'm not talking to the non-believer right now, to the Christian.

10:10
Here's what we're doing when we're not eating right, we are inflicting our bodies. How, so? We are introducing into our bodies fats that are not healthy, a combination of the various, either nutrients or chemicals, or characteristics that come with a particular food of any type. Maybe it's too much rice, maybe it's too much flour, Maybe it's too much, whatever. Look, you can have too much protein, it doesn't matter what it is. If you take this stuff in, you start to feel funny, you start to feel weird. Look, I'm going to be really honest with you right now to hopefully put a little grace into this.

10:59
I try to take care of myself, not very hard though. It's just me'm always on the go. I think that helps me kind of keep control of my weight. But I don't jog, I'm, I don't work out, um, but um, I I know that I should eat better. I can feel it even without a blood test or without going to see my doctor. I can just tell.

11:27
So, for example, today, this morning, up until from 8 am to about 1 o'clock, from about 8 am to 1, I was up in the Altadena, pasadena, fire-ravaged regions, up there with Samaritan's Purse, did not have breakfast. That's not good of some sorts. I should have had breakfast. I didn't Drove up there, we did filming. We met with devastated families, we had a team meeting with Samaritan's Purse and then drove back home and on the way home, the film crew, somebody had the idea. Hey, there's the hat. There's the hat, pull over, let's eat lunch. We're starving. Okay, if you don't know, in Southern California, everybody knows. In Southern California the hat is off the chart.

12:23
Food, predominantly pastrami, like Renown Not good for you, and it's this big. And they have French fries with gravy poured on top of them. I mean, that's a heart attack. I think every cardiologist wants their patients to probably go there. You know it's not good.

12:50
And so what did I do? I said to myself well, I didn't eat breakfast, and this is so big I probably won't eat dinner. And even while I was free to eat it, I ate it all the while. Did I enjoy it? No, why? Because it was the introduction of stuff that I know is not good for me. Because why should I care? Because I want to be usable to God. I want to be able to have my body be used for what he wants to do.

13:18
At the drop of a hat. No pun intended, the hat, get it, the hat. Drop of a hat, anyway. No pun intended, the hat, get it, the hat. Drop of a hat. Anyway, when we find some sort of comfort in comfort food or we just reach for look, the last time I checked Lay's potato chips, I probably shouldn't say that I'll get sued Generic potato chips.

13:45
Eating a bag of those you know with Pepsi not a good idea. Just because you can buy it and just because you can get it all in your mouth doesn't mean it's good for you. But if you have to do that, okay, you may have a gluttony problem. You say how dare you say this? Listen, the Bible tells us that gluttony is a sin. And in America, in America, we are very guilty of finding comfort and passing time by eating unnecessarily. And it's not that I have to care. I'm not saying that I'm telling you how to eat. I'm telling you that you and I are supposed to keep our bodies ready for the 911 call from Jesus to go do this, to go do that. So we sleep well which is hard enough for me anyway because I have insomnia, but just sleeping well. What you eat matters. Well, what you eat matters.

14:49
And when you see people that are unnecessarily overweight, they can't be running on all eight cylinders, so to speak, to physically use their energies for God. Why? Because when we're off in this area, when our hematology is off and our sugars are off and our fats are off. Our body is working so hard to correct all that and God bless our bodies. They're working so hard, they're trying to fix all this and then down the chute comes a big shovel of grease and then it's got to start all over again.

15:20
We need to keep our bodies usable and for some of us, I'm 10 pounds overweight. You say, how do you know? Because I know my body. I'm 5'11" At 190 is my perfect fighting weight. Okay, 190. That's what I'm supposed to be at, okay, since the holidays. Right, I'm exactly at 200. I got to get back to the 190. I can feel it. It bothers me when I bend over, it bothers me when I sit down. I can just feel it and I feel sluggish and I feel more often sleepy. I'll catch myself yawning. I just don't feel tuned up, ready to go right. So you say, jack, that's just preference. No, it's not, because we are all to keep ourselves usable for what the Lord would have us to do and we got to be healthy. And so what causes this podcast to happen.

16:16
I just watched the grilling. All of these Democrats are attacking Robert F Kennedy Jr because he wants to get America healthy again, and I couldn't believe some of these people for crying out loud. There's people that were attacking him and you would have thought that they were fighting over a bag of chips so that he wouldn't get near their chips. I mean people like oh, I forget his name. I mean these people are 50, 100 pounds overweight and they're scolding him and schooling him about getting America healthy and they're all offended so they're attacking him. What's wrong with us getting back to being healthy? What's wrong with the church getting back to being healthy? What if we had just the mindset not another ministry, not starting a health ministry, but for us to have enough self-control to say I'm going to start taking care of myself. I'm even convicted right now about what he's saying.

17:19
I have to get up in the morning. I have to have 16 ounces of Pepsi. Your liver is screaming. Please help me. Don't do that to me. I think it's very, very wise that what we do is that we make sure that we avoid gluttony it's a bad witness and we want to keep ourselves usable, that we're able, body and listen. Hope you don't get mad. I guess you're already mad. How about this? I think we should go to bed earlier, if you can.

17:53
Some people work graveyard. Some people work night shift. I understand that that's tough, that's hard, but I get it. But if you can go to bed earlier, the Bible says you should go to bed earlier and the Bible says you should get up earlier. Did you know that? It's pretty clear from the scripture. The Bible tells us that Jesus woke up before the sun came up. He woke up in the dark. I don't think anybody wants to wake up in the dark, but I fight hard to wake my body up while it's still in the dark in the morning. Why? Because Jesus that's what I understand, and you say. Well, jesus walked on water too. I would love to walk on water. I just don't have the faith to try it. I don't know what good would come out of it even if I did it, except I'd write a book on how I walked on water and you can too and five easy lessons. But I know this I may not be able to walk on water, but I know that Jesus wants me to go to bed earlier and he wants me to get up earlier, if I can.

18:52
Some of you have different timetables and work schedules. I know this, that from this scripture, that I should eat in a way that keeps me alive, but I shouldn't be living to eat. Does that make us? My life shouldn't be dedicated to being a foodie right and plotting my time. That belongs to Jesus. As to how I'm going to eat, where? Next, what if we adopted a discipline that we lived by, where we eat to stay alive but we're not living to eat. There's a big difference in that, where, if I am eating to stay alive, then my body is subjected to my control. My timetable, are you with me? My disciplines, and why is that important? Because all of these vices there are vices that we have perhaps the liberty to do, but they're not good for us. And when I say vice, I mean that very loosely, I guess, because I am not going to talk about people who smoke, and you know somebody who has their beer or their wine with their dinner.

20:20
I'm not going to talk about that, but I will say this the Bible tells us that we cannot get buzzed, you can't come under the influence of any foreign entity. The scripture teaches us but and we cannot stumble somebody else by our actions. Okay, so far, so much, so that I read this morning in my devotional time in Romans I think it was Romans 15, where Paul the Apostle said if you're hanging out with a Christian brother and he's a vegetarian and you like eating meat, he said don't eat your meat in front of the vegetarian and stumble him. But because he is very conscientious about his vegetarianism, paul says don't stumble him, put up with him. And what does that mean? It means eat a salad so the guy doesn't freak out. And then when you say goodbye, then swing by In-N-Out Burger and get a double-double. You just care about other people.

21:22
So the thing is that we want to exercise self-control. Thing is that we want to exercise self-control. Self-control is a requirement for leadership. Self-control is what we want to be able to communicate to people that I've got this, I can do the job. If we cannot control our food intake, then how can we? Or how can an employer expect us to handle our temper or a rough situation or long hours? What if the project goes crazy and you just got done working seven hours and something went wrong and you're going to have to work another eight hours to fix it? Now I don't even know if that happens in the world anymore. It sure did happen where I worked. But you got to be able to pivot like that and so you want to make sure that you're not enslaved to anything, but that you control everything, so that you might present yourself a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto the Lord, which is your reasonable worship.

22:26
And so I know this might sound brutal to some people, but, as I watched RFK Jr get beat up today about how he wants to make America healthy, the church should lead the way on being healthy. The church should look healthier, should lead the way on being healthy. The church should look healthier. The church should be healthier. We should be very conscientious about our health. For this reason, I want to be used by God until the last moment, because, let's be honest, if we're Christians, we don't want to live on this planet long, forever. You want to live here for 120 years.

23:04
I had some guy tell me that he's going to live 120 years here in this earth. Good luck, I don't want to live here for 120 years. I had some guy tell me that he's going to live 120 years here in this earth. Good luck, I don't want to be dragging my body around like that. Listen, I want to go on the day that God's got my number. He's got my number, he's got your number. Be living healthy so that you can be active all the way through to the day that your number pops up. Now, look, my number could pop up tonight, god knows. If you say, oh look, he ate that pastrami sandwich today and then he died six hours later, listen, you're not going to die too late and you're not going to die too early, you're going to die right on time, and only God knows that time. In the meantime, let's do our best to avoid donuts for breakfast and ice cream for dinner and cupcakes for lunch, because if we don't, we're going to drive our God-given body into an incredible reactionary cycle of defending itself against all these poisonous entities that we are ingesting, and I think that is just vitally important.

24:29
And so this may be a really weird podcast. It is, I understand, strange in that way, but I will say this If you travel around at all Mexico, let me see. I'm thinking of Mexico. I'm thinking many parts of Canada, israel wow, jordan, listen, europe. I'm thinking of places in my mind. I can see these places in my head where I've been, and it's pretty hard to find an overweight, obese person in those countries. You might find a few, a couple maybe, but it's kind of hard to find.

25:23
And if you might want to put this tough talk to a test, when you go out on your next drive or where you go to the next stop at the store somewhere, take a look around and see how many of us Americans are not healthy. And I end by saying this you might be unhealthy right now, but you don't feel it because you're younger. I want you to know something and I'll be the first to tell you how about that, and I'm not even a doctor. If you're 30 years old, 25 years old, if you're 20, if you're 18 and you're overweight because of a lack of self-control, you're not healthy, even though you think you feel okay. Guess what If you got control of your body and stopped listening to it and telling it what to do, you'd feel so much better and then listen.

26:28
The reason why you feel okay is because you're borrowing from your future, your future energy you're spending now so that when you get to your future if it's five years from now, 10 years from now you're going to be an absolute physical wreck. You're going to be a diabetic. You're going to have all kinds of problems. Absolute physical wreck, you're going to be a diabetic. You're going to have all kinds of problems, and your liver, your kidneys, your gallbladder is going to be shipwrecked. And I know that pastors don't talk like this and I'm not a healthcare professional. I'm just telling you that after I ate that pastrami today, I've been feeling sick to my stomach all day. Okay, I can't wait to get over the effect of that stuff sloshing around inside of me, and so maybe that was the genesis of us talking about what we're talking about right now.

27:25
It matters what we ingest. So is true regarding the spirit. If we take in spiritual trash, we're going to be thinking trashy, we're going to be thinking weak, we're going to be thinking anemic. If we take in spiritual meat and potatoes, we're going to be thinking strong, we're going to be thinking power, we're going to be thinking faith. It matters Body, soul and spirit. And guess what I am selling today? This special diet. I'm kidding, of course. I said all of this with nothing to sell. It's because I care. I care for me, I care for you. Let's live strong until Jesus comes again. Wouldn't it be great to be active to the moment he takes us? In Jesus' name, amen, right, amen.

28:25 - Speaker 1
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