This chapter 2, we'll be reading verses 11-15, and this is found on page 998 in the blue Bibles in front of you. Please rise out of respect for God's Holy Word. Titus 2, beginning in verse 11. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, who are zealous for good works. Declare these things. Exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. Thus far, the reading of God's Word. Turn now to the Word of God and to our sermon text, continuing our path through the book of Proverbs and tracking particular themes that run through the book Our sermon text, as it's taken from several different Proverbs, is found on the back of your white insert there, on the back of the sermon outline. Please rise for the reading of God's inspired and infallible Word. Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man. Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? Those who tarry long over wine. Those who go to try mixed wine. Do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly. In the end, it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder. Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart will utter perverse things. You'll be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast. They struck me, you will say, but I was not hurt. They beat me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake? I must have another drink. Hear, my son, and be wise, and direct your heart in the way. Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags. He who loves wisdom makes his father glad, but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth. Whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man. He who loves wine and oil will not be rich. The fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied. He will not be visited by harm. If you've found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it. Remove far from me falsehood and lying. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full. and deny you and say, who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God. Thus far the reading of God's Holy Word. You may be seated. Let's pray. Lord, how we thank you for your Word which challenges us and speaks in a timely way to us just what we need to hear when we need to hear it. We pray that this word would indeed be a timely word to us all. That Lord, we would not only be challenged by our sin and need to repent, but also that we'd be encouraged by that grace upon grace which is given through the precious Savior given to us, Jesus Christ. And it's in His name that we pray. Amen. Well, should I go for that second dessert? Should I stay up and play another round? Should I splurge on the big purchase? These are everyday kinds of questions, and yet when we start to understand the significance of these questions, we realize that they are crossroads kinds of questions. They're tiny crossroads, little decisions, but they set big trajectories. They're tiny on the surface, but they reveal big things about our hearts. And I hardly have to tell you that we live in a hedonistic culture that absolutely worships pleasure and tells us that indulgence is okay. I mean, at least every now and then. Go ahead, indulge yourself. Spoil yourself. Those are exact quotes from a couple of ads that I found, mostly for chocolate. So, you've got this worship of pleasure in the present time. You know, the ancient world, they worshipped pleasure too. There was this whole school of thought called Epicureanism. It was all about, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die. And in response to that ancient worship of pleasure, The early church tried what's called asceticism. Asceticism is the idea that all earthly pleasure is bad, and so if you're a real Christian, you'll deny yourself all pleasure. So you think of like the monks in the desert, right? But what did they find? Well, they found asceticism wanting. It didn't work. Why did asceticism not work? Well, one reason is it's based on a falsehood. It's based on the falsehood that the good things that God made are not actually good. And instead, it calls sinful, or at least compromised, people who enjoy things like a feast, or that special love within marriage, or time with friends and delighting in the goodness of the earth. There is no law against those things. And so why Why should we say that if you're a true Christian, you'll deny yourself those things? So, forgoing all pleasure, that's not the solution. That's a false standard. But then, we still have the reality of overdoing it as a real problem. That's called indulgence. And that is a sin. So when does legitimate enjoyment cross over into illegitimate indulgence? And after all, what is so bad about indulgence anyway? Why is that so sinful? And once we realize just how sinful it actually is, how do we resist such a powerful force in our lives? The force of our desires. The temptation to indulge. Well, those are some questions that now we're going to answer in turn as we look and seek the wisdom of the book of Proverbs on, in particular, of indulgence and its corresponding virtue, which is satisfaction and contentment. So let's get clear, first of all, on what we mean when we're talking about indulgence. Well, there's two kinds. You see this on the outline there. There's two kinds. The first kind of indulgence is indulgence in sin. So, stealing from the cookie jar. Watching movies on your phone when you're supposed to be working. Looking at immoral garbage on the internet, those are never okay, even a little bit. And if you give in, even a little bit, then you're indulging in something that God has completely forbidden. When He said, you shall not steal, and He said, you shall not commit adultery, those are clear lines. And He says, don't cross those lines, even a little bit. So that's one kind of indulgence. Indulgence in sin, even a little bit, is not okay. But then, there's indulgence in the good things that God has made. And this is a little trickier. You know, there's nothing inherently wrong in eating chocolate. I'm sure many people here are sighing with relief. There's nothing inherently wrong with enjoying a delicious dinner. There's nothing inherently wrong with alcohol, which God, in Psalm 104.15, has said that He gave to gladden our hearts. I mean, Jesus turned the water into wine. That's an endorsement that this is not Inherently sinful. Indeed, all of these things and other pleasures we enjoy in this life are good. They are created by God for our enjoyment. Did you realize the Bible says that? 1 Timothy 6, 17. Look it up. God created these good things. Why? Because he loves us and he wants us to enjoy them. But here's the catch. Here's the thing we have to reckon with. They're not okay. if we go over the top. So just think about this. The Bible, what does it call overeating, like going over the top with food? It calls that gluttony. That's a sin. Or overdrinking, what does it call that? Well, obviously, drunkenness, or it also uses the word debauchery. Or overdoing it with purchases, or overdoing it with collecting stuff, what does it call that? Well, greed, or covetousness. Oversleeping, indulging in extra sleep, What's it called that? Well, we just heard about this. Laziness. What about binge-watching TV or movies or games? Well, okay, maybe those things didn't exist back then. But there's a name for that general binge on pleasure, which is sensuality. Sensuality or indulgence. And the scriptures are just so clear. I was kind of amazed how many scriptures I found. So this is just a very, very short A couple of scriptures on this, but Colossians 3.5, So that coveting, that wanting it so, so bad, overdoing it kind of wanting it, it says, equal sign, idolatry, worship of the creation. Or Philippians 3.19, their end is destruction, their God is their belly, and they glory in their shame with minds set on earthly things. So that picture, their God is their belly. That's another way of saying indulgence is sin. And you know, this is who, not who we are anymore. This is who we used to be before Christ got hold of us. Titus 3.3, Paul himself includes himself in this. He says, we also ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, and then what does he say? Slaves to various lusts and pleasures. Slaves to pleasure. That's indulgence. And that's sin. And whether it's indulgence in sin, you know, taking a little bit of something we're not allowed to have, or indulgence in good things, overdoing it with things that are legitimate to enjoy, Both of those are sin. And why is it? Why is this so offensive to God when we indulge in either of these ways? Well, the Book of Proverbs helps us understand what's so bad about this. And the first verse we'll look at is 2720. Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of men. So Sheol and Abaddon, those are Old Testament names for where people go when they die. And it's saying, look, people are constantly dying, and yet the place of the dead never gets full. In the same way, selfish, sinful desire is like that bottomless pit, where you can just have all this stuff going in, and what happens? Never satisfied. Never, never satisfied. Always consuming, never satisfied. And why is that so sinful? Well, it's saying God is not enough. God is not enough. Adam and Eve, they had it all. They had everything. And they said, God is not enough. We want more. We are not satisfied, oh God, with where you have put us here in the garden. So they ate the fruit. And so when we binge on whatever our favorite pleasure is, we're saying basically the same thing. God, you're not enough. But this, oh, this, if I had just a little bit more of this, ah, then I'll be satisfied. And that's not okay. Because you realize what we're doing there? We're substituting the creation for the creator. We're taking the all-good, unspeakably glorious creator and saying, oh, you know, no thanks, I'll go with this. I prefer to have this over him. We're looking to created things to satisfy us in the way that only our Creator can satisfy us. The way Keller puts it is, sin is making good things into ultimate things. And that's what the Bible calls idolatry or indulgence. And so there's these two kinds of indulgence, you know, taking a little sample of the the forbidden thing, or just gorging ourselves in the good thing. And in both of those cases, there's the same underlying sin, which is, we're never satisfied. Never satisfied with God. We're looking at this other thing to fill us up, and we're saying to God, uh, no thanks. He's not really doing it for me. We need to fight this. I hope you're starting to see the evil of this, the way it dishonors God. We need to fight against this as Christians, and we should be known as Christians as people of self-control. Or the way the New Testament puts it a couple places, we should be sober-minded. And so what does that mean? It means we're going to have to really fight this sin hard in a culture that's constantly telling us, hey, it's okay to overdo it now and then. So how are we going to fight it? Well, if you really want to pull up a weed, you've got to get all the way down to the root. So we're going to look at the root, And we're going to look at where this sin leads to. We're going to look at the fruit here. And by the way, you know, this is what the Bible is always trying to do for us. And this is part of how you become wise. Is when you start to understand, hey, it's not just about like, I need to change my behaviors and like, oh, I should not do that. I should stop doing that. Yeah, you do need to stop. But the only way people actually can stop, the only way you can actually really change is when you get down to the heart and get down to the lies that are controlling your heart that are making you want to do that which does not please God. When you get to the heart and you address the heart, then we start to see the truth of God's Word replacing the falsehood of sin. So what's at the root of indulgence? What's the sin of indulgence say deep in our heart that makes us want to indulge? Well, it says a lot of things. One thing indulgence says is I deserve this. I've worked hard and it's time to reward myself. And you know, this is actually a really sad thing to say to yourself. You know why it's sad? It's sad because it's saying that you need to reward yourself. That you can't trust God to bless you in his own way. You realize there's sort of a functional atheism in saying, I deserve this, I've worked hard for this, now it's time to reward myself It's basically saying, my portion is in this life, and if I'm going to get a reward, it's going to have to come from little old me, because there's no one else looking out for me. But you realize that whole thing, that my portion is in this life, the reward is in this life? Look, that's what the Bible says about unbelievers. Psalm 17, 14. They're the ones that are saying to themselves, in the words of Isaiah 22, let's eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. You shouldn't want to be saying that. So one lie of indulgence is, God won't reward me, so I need to reward myself. That's not true. You need to uproot that. Here's another thing indulgence says. This is very, very common. I need this. Look, you don't understand. You don't know what I'm going through. I need this, okay? I'm not going to be happy without this. And just listen to that for a second. Reflect on that. Let's look at that. There's a deep satisfaction in that, isn't there? There's a deep satisfaction that says, I need this. And what's sort of the sub-point that's going on there? Well, God's not going to get me out of this. God's not going to get me out of this. In fact, God, you made my life too hard. I need this pleasure in order to cope. Or here's another way of saying this. This is a very common variation. My situation is not just bad, it's hopeless. There's no use even trying to do what's right or trying to fix this. And so, but this, this thing here, if I indulge in this pleasure, well, at least it'll make the despair go away for a little while. So I ask you, are there areas where you feel profound disappointment? Where your dreams have been dashed and the problems just seem like they're just impossible? Well, many times we will use indulgence to medicate. We'll use those situations as a justification for indulgence, but that's a lie too. It's a lie because it's saying that God is not going to make things right for me, and I have to make them right myself. And so part of what I'm trying to get us to see is this, and I hope you're starting to see this, yeah, if we have the outward trouble with indulgence, it's often a symptom of a much deeper inner struggle that may have nothing to do with the surface pleasure, but actually some deep satisfaction, deep struggle with other areas of our lives. What is indulgence saying in your heart? There's lots of other things it could be saying. One thing indulgence sometimes says is, well, everybody else is overdoing it, so I better overdo it, too, to belong. That's a lie, too. Or, hey, this won't hurt anybody. Actually, it will. Or, I just want life to be easy. All these things are things that we say to justify indulgence. If you're going to fight indulgence, you have to fight it at the root. You have to get down to what is your indulgence saying, and you need to counter it with truth. We also can help ourselves in this fight against indulgence by just remembering, and this is another path of wisdom here, by remembering where does this all lead? Where is this all going? We need to consider, in other words, the fruit of indulgence. And just think about this. We've seen this a couple times now in Proverbs. Sin makes really big promises. In the case of indulgence, like, you take this in, you enjoy this to the max, and you'll feel better. Well, part of what wisdom is, is seeing through those false promises and realizing, hey, that's actually a hoax. That's actually not true. What's the real outcome of indulgence? Well, Proverbs is going to help us. And one of the things it says is, if you indulge, if you start making those decisions to indulge, it will leave you not liberated, but trapped. It will leave you trapped, and it will not satisfy. It will actually leave you more hungry in the end. And Proverbs 23, that picture of the drunkard, what a picture. What a picture of this. Right? Here's the guy who's getting blasted. And it's an incredible description of it. And it says, look, even the experience of being drunk is miserable. What's it saying? Well, your eyes see strange things, your heart utters perverse things, you're struck and you don't even realize it. It's like you're at the top of a mast. And then what happens afterwards? Well, you've got the redness of eyes. and all the other stuff, all the other hangover stuff, and the most pathetic of all, when shall I wake? I must have another drink. Does that sound like satisfaction? Does that sound like a thriving life? I don't think so. That's the actual outcome of not just drunkenness, but any kind of indulgence. It will leave you more hungry than when you started. So see through it. See through the false promise. Here's another false promise here. that indulgence will leave you well and rich and prosperous. And indeed, that indulgence is living the rich and prosperous life. Here's what Proverbs says actually the truth is. 23.19-21, The drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty. Or 29.3, He who loves wisdom makes his father glad, but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth. Doesn't that make you think of the prodigal son parable? Like that guy blew the wad and he did it on all kinds of sinful pleasures. Where did it leave him? Mucking out pig stalls. That's poverty, that's not wealth. Or 2117, whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man. He who loves wine and oil will not be rich. You always have money problems. That's at least one of the things it's saying, but it's more than that. It's not just money problems. It's also a deep sense of poverty that not just depletion of our money, but depletion of our life energies. Our life strength goes away. It leaves us worn out. These kinds of pleasures, it does not leave you satisfied. When I was growing up, back in high school, my friends and I would network our computers together and we would play computer games, basically, until the wee hours of the morning, crack of dawn kind of thing, only stopping because we were utterly exhausted. That would, by the way, qualify as indulgence, just to be clear. What was the end result of that? Did we all walk away from that feeling, wow, wasn't that nice? No, no, we felt terrible, felt miserable, felt just blah, you know, and tired. Now contrast that with, what if we had done that just for a couple hours one evening, enjoyed a good time together? Call it a night. See you guys. That would have been much more refreshing. It would have not been the same depletion, impoverishment that comes from indulgence. So that's another thing that indulgence does. It depletes us. Third, it keeps you from usefulness. This is another terrible fruit of indulgence. You know, there's the saying, die in battle, some men die in flames, most men die inch by inch, playing silly games. Indulgence is like that. Instead of being useful for the kingdom, we are dying inch by inch, no longer useful, but caught in this trap of little pleasures and denying ourselves the great pleasure, which is serving our great God. Well, there's one more bad fruit. from indulgence just when you thought, wow, this is a lot of bad fruit. There's another one. It's immaturity. Immaturity. Indulgence will always leave you right where you began. Think about this. We often are using our pleasures, these little pleasures, to cope with sin and cope with troubles. is going on there. We're not actually facing our difficulties when we indulge like this. What's actually going on is we're just deferring it. We're never actually facing the difficulties. We're just medicating them away. What's the end result? Well, there's never going to be any growing in Christ. There's never going to be any fresh discovery of the strength He's given you, the adequacy of Christ for all that you are facing in your life. All that is necessary for life in God in us, He says He has given you, 2 Peter 1. You'll never discover a new sense of love or gratitude for Him if you never take your problems to Him. instead of to the medications. Well, brothers and sisters, I hope you see, indulgence is not your friend. It promises a whole lot, it costs a whole lot, and it gives so, so little. And indeed, if we think about all the costs of it, the worst cost of all is what it says about Jesus. Our lives are no longer, when we're living a life of indulgence, our lives are no longer proclaiming, Jesus is great. Jesus is so worth your entire life. He is so good. Our lives are not saying that. Instead, it's saying, well, you know, there's Jesus, but I really need all this other stuff to make me feel whole. That's not okay. We don't want to indulge when it says something like that about Jesus. So how are we going to be saved from this? How will we change and say no to ungodliness? Well, it is my joy to say that Jesus Christ has come to set us free from bondage to selfish desire. He has come to liberate you and me from the false promises of indulgence so that we can find complete satisfaction And that was the point of reading Titus 2. Let me just read this little bit of it again. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. Okay? Training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions. In other words, renounce indulgence. And to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age. How? Very next line. As we await the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. How does the grace of God give us the strength to renounce ungodliness and worldly desires? How does it give us the power to say no to indulgence? Well, Proverbs 19, 23. The fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied. Did you hear that promise? The fear of the Lord, in other words, trusting in the Lord, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, that leads to life. satisfaction in God. You see, the devil, he's really got us. He's so duped us for so long into thinking, God, who needs him? Who would want him? No satisfaction to be found in him. You want to have true peace and true joy? You're going to have to see to it yourself. And so we go after these little worldly pleasures. And the answer to all of our dissatisfaction, listen very closely, The answer to all of our struggles with dissatisfaction, all of our indulgence, is to go back to that One whom we've so thought and totally passed by and said, there's no way He could ever satisfy me. In other words, to go back to God and to realize that in Him, the true God now, is all that we are seeking everywhere else. He is our true satisfaction. I think many of us are more jaded and cynical than we realize. Of course, there are those who overtly will deny God and say, oh yeah, I tried religion, you know, like in earlier days, left me dry. No need to go back there again. Tried that, been there, no thanks. That's not the true God that you've rejected. You're thinking of a false God, a caricature of the true God, who is life. But even as Christians, we can still say, oh yes, I believe in God, and yet we're enthralled with all these other pleasures. Why is that? Well, we've forgotten who He is. We don't come expecting to be satisfied in Him. Instead, we're sort of like, okay, better go, better read my Bible, better go to church, forgetting that this is the God who says, Psalm 81 10, I am the Lord your God, open wide your mouth and I will fill it. Or as we confessed earlier, delight yourself in the Lord and He will give to you the desires of your heart. Or again, Proverbs 19.23, the fear of the Lord leads to life. Whoever has it rests satisfied. That's the true God. And so the grace of God teaches us to obey by showing us that God really is the fullness of joy and of satisfaction that we're seeking in all the wrong places. Nothing can compare to Him. And as we look at the Lord Jesus Christ, please see Him for all He is. He answers all the lies of indulgence. No, I don't need to reward myself as if I needed to earn my reward. Jesus has earned the reward on my behalf by dying for me. No, I don't need to think of myself as poor and needy. Jesus is raised from the grave and I am raised with Him. I am a co-heir with Christ. of the everlasting Kingdom of God, no, I don't need to flood myself with these little pleasures, with this little fantasy world where everything comes so easily, when the true blessing is yet to come. Jesus Christ is our reward. He is our refuge. He is our refuge for all the difficulties that we turn to pleasures to inoculate ourselves against. And He is truly worth waiting for. The Bible claims that that feeling that we're all seeking of deep peace and deep wellness can only be found in Jesus Christ. And so I exhort you Turn to Him. Find your satisfaction in Him, and having been satisfied in Him, learn to say, that's enough. Being satisfied in Christ means we can say to the pleasure of this world, wow, that was tasty, but I've had enough. Proverbs 25, 16, if you've found honey, great. Eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it. Or Proverbs 30, I love this. What's the aspiration of the godly Christian? Not to become mega-wealthy. He says, give me neither poverty nor riches. Why not riches? Because I don't want to forget my God. The God who gave me all these things and who is my true reward. Let me just say, as we are all yearning to be this kind of sober-minded people, let me just say that this is what your baptism seals to you. Baptism says to you, you are not poor. You are a child of the King and you are an heir of the everlasting Kingdom of God. You are not poor. Baptism says, you are redeemed from empty worldly pleasure for the true and lasting pleasure, which is what? Which is to see the very face of God and have fellowship with Him. You're no longer a slave to sinful pleasure. You've been set free. Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ is our only hope to overcome the horrible power of sin and to have that true blessedness of peace. Let's turn to Him now. Lord, thank You that in Jesus we can be satisfied. For He really is life itself. Forgive us, Lord, for how we have taken the good things that You've made and made them into idols which we seek ultimate satisfaction in. Lord, forgive us and help us to be a people of contentment and of satisfaction in You alone. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.