The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE

1. The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE Gluttony

2. Purpose of this Series: The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE NOT Just some head knowledge BUT an awareness of sins So that: 1. We can confess it and be forgiven. 2. We can gain victory over these sins by the power of the Holy Spirit.

3. Pride The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE We made a distinction between pride as a virtue and pride as a vice. To be Like God was the original temptation. Plantinga asks: “What sin makes God more irrelevant? God wants to fill us with his Holy Spirit, but when we are proud we are already full of ourselves. There’s no room for God.”

4. Envy The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE The word “envy” comes from the Latin “invidia” = “to look maliciously upon.” Cain no longer saw Abel as his brother but his rival The green eye of envy – changes our perspective

5. Envy The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE Envy is different from covetousness: Covet = I want what she has = I want to fill my empty hands with someone else’s goods Envy = I want the other person not to have what I don’t have = I want my empty hands to destroy or empty the hands of the envied

6. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE Scripture Reading Philippians 3:12-21

7. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE • Balanced Diet: A cookie in each hand. • I don't exercise at all. If God had wanted me to touch my toes, He would have put them up higher on my body.

8. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE She does weight lifting with the wrong equipment: A KNIFE AND A FORK.

9. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE You have to stay in shape.  My mother started walking five miles a day when she was 60.  She's 97 now and we have no idea where she is.

10. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE

11. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE 65% of North American adults are overweight or obese. Rate of childhood obesity is rising. The acceptable “sin” in many circles.

12. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE N.B. Not every overweight person is struggling with the sin of Gluttony. Not every skinny person is free from the sin of Gluttony.

13. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE Miriam-Webster dictionary definition: Gluttony: 1 : excess in eating or drinking 2 : greedy or excessive indulgence.

14. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE Rick Ezel: “Gluttony is not about appearance; it is an attitude. Not about being overweight; it is overindulgence. Not about too many external effects; it is a lack of balance.” p.128-129

15. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE Gluttony is: “Misdirected hunger.” “…it seeks to feed the soul with the body’s food.”

16. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE “18For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.”Phil 3:18-19.

17. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE Charles Buck: “Their kitchen is their shrine, the cook the priest, the table their alter, and their belly their god.”

18. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE Neil Plantinga describes the deadly spiral of addiction: Delusion [Food is my greatest need] > Obsession [Focusing on food] > pleasure-seeking behaviour [eating that cookie] > despair [blowing your diet] > obsession [eating the whole bag] [cycle begins again]

19. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE Plantinga: “No matter how they start, addictions eventually center in distress and in the self-defeating choice of an agent to relieve that distress. In fact, trying to cure distress with the same thing that caused it is typically the mechanism that closes the trap on the addict...” p. 131

20. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE Plantinga: “What drives addiction is longing – a longing not just of the brain, belly, or loins but finally of the heart. Because they are human beings, addicts long for wholeness, for fulfillment, and for the final good that believers call God. Like all idolatries, addiction taps this vital spiritual force and draws off its energies to objects and processes that drain the addict instead of filling him.” p. 131

21. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE “18For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.”Phil 3:18-19.

22. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE Story about Raynard III, a 14th century duke in present-day Belgium. Rick Ezel p.130

23. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE Gluttony is about gaining power. You can’t control other people but you will show this apple pie who is the boss. This assertion of power leads to the confession, “I have no will-power”

24. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE “In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis has the senior devil, Screwtape, write to his nephew, Wormwood, ‘To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But obedience which the enemy [God the Father] demands of men is quite a different thing . . .’

25. Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE ‘We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in; He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows out.’” C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, pp. 38-39 as quoted by Rick Ezell in The 7 Habits of Highly Defective People, p. 131

26. Overcoming Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE 1. Feeding You need to feed. You need to be fed by God. Feed on his Word, which shows us God supplies our needs.

27. Overcoming Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE 1. Feeding “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” God not only feeds us through the written Word but through the Word made flesh.

28. Overcoming Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE 1. Feeding “Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.’” John 6:35 “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."John 6:51

29. Overcoming Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE 2. Following Christ We follow Christ through the problems not escaping from them. Jesus did not get to Easter morn without going through the cross on Friday

30. Overcoming Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE 2. Following Christ We enter those places of despair not alone but with Christ with us. He has the power to help us break the cycle of addiction. We turn to others to help us alone the way.

31. Overcoming Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE 3. Focusing “Their mind is on earthly things. 20But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” Phil.3:19b-21

32. Overcoming Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE 3. Focusing Rick Ezell: “The object of our focus will determine if we have willpower or, better yet, God’s power working in our lives, if we are a servant to food or a servant of Christ, and if we are devoured by Satan or fed by God.” p. 134

33. Overcoming Gluttony The 7 SINS of HIGHLY defective PEOPLE With God’s help we can overcome the sin of gluttony. Feed Follow Focus