The Silent Christian Sin

It's not everyday you hear a sermon on gluttony. It's talked about the odd time, like when Kristin and Ben and I talked about it the other night. But even to talk about it is rare. And only in select groups of people does one even feel free to bring it up.

But I actually found and listened to a sermon on gluttony - the first one that I can ever remember hearing. It's by Charles Wilson and is called: The Silent Christian Sin: Gluttony and is currently found 8th from the top of the audio sermon section of Grace Community Church. I can hardly remember how I even found it. lol But I did, and it's worth the listen since most of us won't here a sermon like that very often!

A couple thoughts that came partly out of the sermon, and partly from my thinking about it in the past and lately:

First, as Charles Wilson and others have noted, Sodom wasn't just destroyed because of homosexuality. According to Ezekiel 16:49 one main reason Sodom was destroyed was gluttony: "Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy." Other translations actually use the word "gluttony" there. You get the point. That is enough to show that it's a sin, even without Proverbs which compares it to drunkenness.

That verse is haunting, because doesn't that sound like North America? We are proud, we have things easy, and we have excess of food - and we do not aid the poor and needy like we should! That's us, as a whole! There are exceptions, but that's the general rule. We are proud, affluent, gluttons who don't care for the poor. And it's sin.

Second, when I think of gluttony, I'm reminded of a quote by Thomas a Kempis where he says in Of The Imitation of Christ, "Bridle your gluttony and you shall the better bridle all the desire of the flesh."

Gluttony may seem like a small sin. But it's not. People go to hell for gluttony. Plus it's not small because maybe good ole Thomas from Kempis is right, and if by God's grace we started bridling our gluttony we would also begin to bridle other sins that we consider to be worse.