Welcome to Unveiled Faces, a Redeemer Presbyterian Church podcast. Please enjoy our feature presentation. Have you found honey? Eat only as much as you need lest you be filled with it and vomit. Have you found honey? Eat only as much as you need, lest you be filled with it and vomit. This concludes the reading as well as the hearing of God's holy and inspired word. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we pray that you would open our understanding to this verse and Father, that we may not just know what is good, but that we may do what is good. And so Father, we pray that you would work in our heart, that your spirit would equip us with both the knowledge and the will. to conform our lives to the pattern of your biblical principles, as well as to accomplish the righteousness that you have called us to. Father, we trust that our salvation and our refuge from sin is not in our own works, but in that of Jesus Christ alone. But Father, that you have redeemed us unto good works, that we should walk in them. And so Father, please, we pray that you would show us that your grace and that you would show us your mercy, as well as how you would have us to respond to having received both your grace and your mercy. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. The proverb that serves as our sermon text this morning identifies a principle for governing the affairs of your life. Solomon writes that you should only eat as much honey as is sufficient for you. And what he means by this is that you should not overindulge yourself in the pleasures of the world. And that is to say you should not overindulge in the pleasant trees of life, food, drink, entertainment, recreation, relaxation. These are all things which can bring you pleasure, but you need to know the appropriate limits for these things. You need to know when enough is enough. If you overindulge in pleasure, then that pleasure turns to pain. Eat too much honey, according to Solomon, and you'll make yourself sick. Take sleep as an example. Sleep is good. Our minds and our bodies require sufficient rest after a full day's activities. And this is why Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 5.12 that the sleep of a laboring man is sweet. And notice he refers to sleep as sweet. The sleep of a laboring man is a pleasure to that man. He lies down in bed at night and he says to himself, Now this feels good. Why did I wait so long? Why didn't I go to bed an hour earlier? Have you ever had this experience? It's one of life's pleasures. But for the man who overindulges in sleep and relaxation, it's as if he's eaten too much honey and he's developing a stomach ache. The rest which was profitable to him in moderation becomes a curse to him in excess. Proverbs 6, 10, and 11, a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep, so shall your poverty come on you like a prowler and your need like an armed man. So there are pleasurable activities and pastimes in this world which we need to be careful not to overindulge in. But this is not always easy. Trying to achieve the appropriate level of pleasure in one's life is a topic which has occupied the attention of many great thinkers over the years. Epicurus is one of the most well-known Greek philosophers who had something to say on this topic. Epicurus considered pleasure to be the ultimate goal in life. He wrote, we must therefore pursue the things that make for happiness, seeing that when happiness is present, we have everything. But when it is absent, we do everything to possess it. As you might imagine, Epicurus did not have a difficult time proselytizing in the name of personal pleasure. His message of happiness appeals to the base impulses of fallen man. So he found quite a receptive audience in his day. And the base impulses of man have not changed over the past 2,300 years. Americans are the quintessential Epicureans. We're a nation of people who love to indulge ourselves in pleasure. In fact, I'm not sure that many Americans really even question the role of pleasure in their lives. I think the vast majority of Americans just assume that happiness is in fact the goal of life. And therefore their primary mission in life is to maximize the amount of pleasure they experience. Just like Epicurus, they say, when I'm happy, When everything's fine, the world's a great place to live in. But when I'm not happy, then I'm going to do whatever it takes to make me happy. Brothers and sisters, the world around you is preaching the gospel of Epicurus. It's a false gospel. They tell you that if something makes you happy, then that's what you should do. That's what you should have if it makes you happy. Whatever floats your boat, they say. Whatever makes you feel good. As Christians, we need to have a proper theology of pleasure. That is to say, we need to know what God's word tells us about the role of pleasure in our lives. And once again, let me state that our sermon text is referring to the pleasures of this world. There are other passages of the Bible that identify a different form of pleasure, a spiritual pleasure, we might call it, just to distinguish the two. This spiritual pleasure is what we experience as a result of having received the grace and mercy of our triune God. Psalm 1611 describes this pleasure. In your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. And this is describing the fountain of living water which springs forth joy within the heart of every person who has experienced redemption in Jesus Christ. This is a pleasure of the soul which is not dependent upon the circumstances of life being quote-unquote favorable. Through both good times as well as the challenging times, the pleasure of God's presence persists. And this spiritual pleasure grows. As you mature in your faith and as you progress in your sanctification, you experience the presence of God in greater and greater intensity, which translates into a greater and greater pleasure in knowing Jesus Christ as your Savior. And this, of course, is a pleasure that you can never overindulge in. This is a honey which you can eat to its fullest and never vomit. But this spiritual pleasure is not what Solomon is writing about here in our sermon text. He's writing about the pleasures of the world. He's writing about the types of pleasures that we experience with our five senses. He's writing about activities like entertainment and recreation. He's writing about the pleasure that comes from reading a good novel, or from eating a delicious meal, or from listening to good music. or from hiking in the mountains. Solomon is writing about the same type of pleasures Epicurus wrote about. One of the first things that we must notice from our sermon text is that there is a place for these type of pleasures in your life. There is a place for these type of pleasures in your life. In developing a theology of pleasure, we need to reject the notion that says Christians must live a plain and melancholy life, a life where pleasure is always perceived as the enemy. You see this notion very clearly in certain monastic traditions where any quote-unquote worldly thing that brings pleasure to the five senses is seen as a distraction to a life of devotion to God. And these monks will go out of their way to deprive themselves of all worldly pleasures. They'll wear itchy and scratchy clothes instead of soft and comfortable clothes. They'll eat grass and bitter herbs instead of enjoying delicious and tasty food. They'll use a rock as a pillow instead of something soft. Some will even go so far as to actually inflict physical pain upon themselves, thinking that God is more pleased with them when they suffer than when they experience pleasure. And while this is definitely an extreme position, and it's fairly rare within the Christian church, there are variations of this position within the Christian church. There are those who condemn worldly pleasure simply because it's pleasurable. We're not in a world to experience pleasure, they say. We're here to glorify God, and we can't do that if we're engaging ourselves in the pleasures of this world. Yet our sermon text says nothing about abstaining from honey. Quite the contrary. What it says is that it's perfectly fine for you to eat honey, just do it in moderation. Have you found honey, Solomon asks, then eat only as much as you need. Realize, there is such a thing as wholesome entertainment. There is such a thing as righteous recreation. It's perfectly fine to read a good detective novel, or to play ping pong, or to go to an Oakland A's baseball game. What our sermon text is warning against is the overindulgence of these pleasures. God requires you to exercise self-control and moderation with these pleasures. Don't eat so much honey that you become sick. It's helpful to remember that God experiences pleasure. There are all sorts of passages in the Bible which speak about God taking pleasure in certain things. Psalm 147.11 says, the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him and those who hope in his mercy. Jeremiah 9.24 says the Lord delights in exercising loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. Ephesians 1.5 says that God adopted his elect according to the, quote, good pleasure of his will, end quote. And don't forget how God the Father announced his pleasure with Jesus when he spoke from heaven saying, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. God experienced his pleasure. And because we've been created in the image of God, we've been created to experience pleasure as well. In fact, I could even state this a little stronger. I can say that God's intention is that we experience pleasure in this world. Consider this. When God planted the Garden of Eden, he made fruit trees grow. Genesis 2.9 says, and out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. Note the two separate values that are identified here. The trees were pleasant to the sight and they were good for food. Now pleasant to the sight is an aesthetic value. It means that God made the trees beautiful to behold. Good for food is a utilitarian value. It means that God made trees functional in providing energy, food, for the human body. And if we back up, oh, about a dozen verses or so, back to Genesis 129, God said to Adam, see, I have given you every tree whose fruit yields seed, to you it shall be for food. Now somebody can use this verse and make a very strong argument that the reason God created trees was to provide food for the people of this earth. That's the utilitarian value that we've already acknowledged. And God could have accomplished this utilitarian value by creating a bunch of ugly trees. He didn't need to make them pleasant to the eye, but he did. God added beauty to the trees. And in doing so, he brought pleasure to man. And he didn't stop there. He created the trees so that the fruit is not only nutritious to our bodies, but it's delicious to our taste buds. The flavor, therefore, is designed to bring us pleasure. And the trees blossoms. They're not only functional in the reproduction of fruit, but the fragrance of the blossoms is pleasant to smell. And so their scent is designed to be pleasurable. And God's design for pleasure is not just seen in the trees, it's seen in all of creation. Psalm 19 one reads, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork, his artwork, his beauty. And the point here is that God designed a world so that we will experience pleasure in this world. This is affirmed in 1 Timothy 6.17, which reads, God gives us richly all things to enjoy. You hear that? Why does God give us all things? God gives us all things richly to enjoy or pleasure. Right about now, Some of you might be thinking to yourself, just because it's pleasurable doesn't mean it's permissible. And I totally agree. Certainly there are pleasures in this world that we need to avoid. We can go back to the trees that God caused to grow in the Garden of Eden. We already identified that those trees were designed to bring pleasure to Adam and Eve, yet there was one tree that they could not eat from. And when Satan tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, Genesis 3.6 tells us that part of the attraction for Eve was that she saw the fruit of the tree, that it was pleasant to her eyes. And while there was nothing wrong with Eve looking at the tree and admiring its beauty, she was strictly prohibited from eating of the tree, of experiencing the pleasure of its flavor, the fruit. And so our theology of pleasure certainly has to account for the moral law of God. God's law is what defines for us which pleasures are permissible and which pleasures are not permissible. We can never, never, never try to justify a sinful situation by appealing to the pleasure experienced in that sinful situation. But that's not the focus of today's sermon text. When Solomon writes, eat only as much honey as you need, he's assuming that the quote unquote honey is not a violation of God's law. In other words, our sermon text is not about determining which pleasures are permissible and which pleasures are not permissible. It's assumed from the start that the pleasure being experienced is in fact permissible. The point of our sermon text is that with experiencing those pleasures, we must exercise moderation, making sure that we do not overindulge ourselves to the point of bringing harm to ourselves. So our sermon text, It's identifying a principle for responsible living. It's about constantly and repetitively assessing your life in order to make the necessary adjustments. It's about asking the right questions. I enjoy watching TV, but how much TV should I be watching? I enjoy browsing social media, but how much time should I spend on social media? I enjoy drinking a glass of wine, but how much wine should I drink? I enjoy playing sports, but how much time should I spend playing sports? Some Christians might wish that God had given specific definitions to these items. Some Christians might wish that God would clearly define the exact point where a pleasurable activity goes from being honey to vomit. But God did not do that. Instead, God just says, in essence, be careful not to overindulge. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. And then he leaves it up to us to determine when something becomes too much. Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier if God gave us some concrete definitions? Something like, you can watch up to two hours of TV every week. You can spend 20 minutes a day on social media. You can play sports for three hours a week. What you do after church doesn't count. And you can drink up to eight ounces of wine a day, three times a week, but never on consecutive days, provided that the wine is no greater than 12% alcohol. But that's not how God chose to define these things. Instead, God has given us principles. Principles that we're expected to use to govern the affairs of our life. And to appreciate the blessing that this provides, it's helpful to acknowledge the difference between governing our lives according to principles and governing our lives according to specific instruction. Specific instruction is when an authority provides detailed rules by which you must adhere to. For example, your employer will say, you need to show up at work every Monday through Friday. You begin making widgets at 9 a.m., and you don't stop making widgets until 5 p.m. You have two 10-minute breaks, one at 10.30, the other at 2.30, and you'll begin the 30-minute lunch break at noon. That's specific instruction. You're given detailed rules, and you're expected to follow them. Now consider a different scenario. Consider what it'd be like if your employer said, you need to produce enough widgets to fill our customers orders every week. I don't care what time you begin work. I don't care what time you finish work. I don't care how long of a lunch break you take. I don't even care if you don't show up to work on a given day, just as long as you produce enough widgets to fill our customers orders every week. Under this arrangement, I'll call it the principled arrangement, you would have a lot of liberties, wouldn't you? You can work real hard Monday through Thursday, put in a few extra hours each of those days, and then take Friday off. Whereas in the nine to five arrangement, you would be confined to working a rigid set of hours five days a week, Under the principled arrangement, you have all these freedoms to set your own schedule. But with freedom comes responsibility. That's a huge point right there. With freedom comes responsibility. And if your employer gave you the freedom to set your own hours, then you would have all the responsibilities of managing your time appropriately. You would constantly have to make decisions, decisions that the nine to five employee would never have to make. How many widgets do I need to make this week? How many hours do I need to work in order to produce that many widgets? If I take a three hour lunch today, is that gonna put me behind schedule? What if my widget making machine breaks down? Do I have enough flexibility in my schedule to accommodate an unexpected delay? What will my employer think or do if I go fishing on Monday and then I fail to produce all the necessary widgets by the end of the week? How you answer these questions and how you arrange your work week will be determined by the principles that you use. Most notably, you'll need to maintain principles that prioritize responsibility to your employer above your own personal pleasures. And as the ultimate authority in our lives, God has chosen to deal with us both by specific instruction and according to general principles. We see his specific instruction in many of the commandments. For example, Leviticus 18.22 says, you shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It's an abomination. Now, there's not a whole lot of liberty in that commandment, is there? It's pretty cut and dry. It's like the employer who says, you don't have the freedom to set your own schedule. You're going to work from nine to five, and that's the end of this discussion. But another situation, God uses principled approach. He identifies responsibilities that we have, and then he leaves it up to us to determine how we're going to accomplish those responsibilities. God says, I've told you that you need to honor your parents. That's a principle I expect you to uphold. Now, since your parents have given you chores that need to be done, and you have schoolwork that needs to be completed, I'll leave it up to you to determine how much time you wanna spend flipping half-empty water bottles on the table. Here's another one. God says, I've told you you must love your wife as Christ loved the church. So that's the principle I expect you to uphold. I'll leave it up to you to determine how many NASCAR races you ought to attend this year. What I hope you see is that it's a beautiful and a gracious act of God not to give specific instruction on how many NASCAR races a husband can attend. Because it's not a one size fits all situation. One man might be married to a woman who loves NASCAR races. They go to 12 races every year. And this is one of the ways that he lays down his life for his wife. Another man might be married to a woman who hates NASCAR races, and she feels neglected when her husband leaves her 12 weekends out of the year. God gave us principles by which we need to govern our participation and pleasure. And in doing it this way, God has given us freedom. We have liberty so long as we uphold the biblical principles at the same time. But with freedom comes responsibility, remember, which means each of you have the responsibility to govern how much pleasure you participate in. So you ask yourself, how will the time I spend flipping water bottles impact my ability to honor my parents? How will the time I spend at the car race impact my ability to love my wife? But don't stop there. You have the responsibility to identify all the principles of life that apply to your life. How will my attendance at the race on Saturday impact my ability to worship on Sunday? How will the money I spend at the race affect my ability to pay the mortgage? How will the environment of the race, the other people that I'm there with, impact my ability to live a holy life, to maintain the covenant I made with my eyes, to maintain pure and righteous thoughts? The responsible Christian will study the Bible in order to understand the biblical principles that apply to his life, and then he'll use those biblical principles to prioritize duties over pleasures. And only when the duties are being properly maintained can he allow himself to indulge in the pleasures of this world. And this is why the Christian life is a life of self-denial. It's because duty comes before pleasure. Duty to God, duty to family, duty to church, duty to neighbors. Your base impulses tell you, go ahead, treat yourself to some pleasure, you deserve it. But Jesus tells you to deny yourself, to pick up your cross and to follow him. Now what does this mean? Jesus is identifying a principle. He's saying that the calling he places upon your life is a higher priority than the pleasures that your flesh is telling you to indulge in. So before you sit down and watch TV, you need to make sure that you haven't left your cross lying somewhere in the backyard. You need to make sure that your responsibilities to God, to family, to church, and to neighbors are being properly maintained. And if they're not, then go and do those things first. Then, if time allows, you can watch some TV. The same is true for playing sports. for taking a nap, for playing video games, for browsing through social media. None of these things are inherently sinful, but if you're indulging in those things to the neglect of your greater responsibilities, then you are overindulging. You're eating too much honey. There will be negative consequences to your sins of omission. The areas you have neglected will become the vomit Solomon is warning us about in our sermon text. And don't think that it's only about the way you spend your time. While issues of time tend to be the most obvious ways that people overindulge in pleasure, there are other considerations as well. How you spend your money is just as important. Are you properly implementing the biblical principles that govern financial stewardship? How are you prioritizing your spending? Are you spending your money on your own personal pleasure when you should be using that money for other things? Self-denial is just a shorthand way of saying, make sure the higher priorities in your life are being maintained before you indulge in entertainment and recreation and leisure and other worldly pleasures. Self-denial is not what the aesthetic monks thought it was. It's not depriving yourself of every conceivable earthly comfort, but rather it's about priorities. Duties come before pleasure. Duties come before pleasure. And if you reverse the order of these two, then expect a reversal in your gastrointestinal tract as well. Expect the vomit of neglected responsibilities to spill forth into all areas of your life. When you drill down to the core of this issue, you'll see that your ability to moderate the pleasure you experience is determined by the pleasure you experience. Let me say that again. Your ability to moderate the pleasure you experience is determined by the pleasure you experience. And if that sounds like a logical tautology, then realize that I'm using two definitions of pleasure in that one sentence. I'm including the spiritual pleasure Christians experience in the presence of God. Your ability to moderate the worldly pleasure that you experience is determined by the spiritual pleasure you experience. This is how it works. When you use biblical principles to consider the responsibilities God has given to you, you may very well come to the realization, I can't go to the NASCAR race tomorrow. My wife needs me. My children need me. I don't have the extra money to pay for the gas and the ticket to get there. And I have things I need to do tomorrow in preparation for church on Sunday. Now, if there's an Epicurean living inside of you, then you'll begin pointing your finger at all the people in your life and you'll be saying, it's my wife's fault that I can't go to the race. It's my children's fault that I can't go to the race. Woe is me. I worked all week. Can't I just have a little bit of time to myself? But if the Spirit of God is living inside you, then you've experienced the pleasure that far exceeds any pleasure that this world has to offer. The Christian is able to say, thank you, Lord Jesus, for the fountain of living water, which flows inside my heart. I no longer thirst for the waters that cannot satisfy my soul, for you have given me the living water of eternal life, so that I will never thirst again. Jesus Christ, you are my joy. You are my pleasure. I am your servant, committed to do the work that you have called me to do. And by your grace, you have equipped me with the strength to take up my cross and to follow after you. You see, there is a place for worldly pleasures in your life. Remember what Paul wrote to Timothy. God gives us richly all things to enjoy. but we moderate our enjoyment of worldly pleasures according to the principles God has established in His Bible, our Bible. And we do not even consider this to be a concession. You hear me? We don't even consider this to be a concession when we have to deny ourselves worldly pleasures because we have the spiritual pleasure. We in no way consider ourselves getting gypped because the spiritual pleasures we experience in fellowship with God so far exceed the pleasures of this world. I'll close with the words of Psalm 35, verse nine. And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord. It shall rejoice in his salvation. That's where our joy is. That's where our pleasure is. May this be true for every single one of us. Amen. Let's pray. Our dear Lord and heavenly Father, you are indeed our joy. You are our pleasure. In you do we rejoice. Our heart will rejoice and praise you for all that you have given to us, all that you have done for us. And Father, in your abundance of mercy and grace, you have given us not only a spiritual pleasure that we experience in the presence of our triune God, but you have given to us even earthly pleasures as icing on the cake. And Father, we pray that we would receive these earthly pleasures, the permissible ones, of course, as your good gift to your people, that they would be, in some capacity, a precursor to the wonderful experiences of heaven, as we see the abundance of your grace and your love poured out for us in tangible ways, as well as the intangible. But Father, may we never pursue these things as an end of themselves. May we never be as Epicurus who taught people, who led people to a selfish, idolatrous life of pursuing pleasure. But Father, may we understand the role of pleasure. May we see it in its proper perspective to the responsibilities that you have given us in life. May we be students of the word to comprehend and then to implement the principles of godly living that you have identified for us in your word. And Father, may we glorify you with our lives as we are people who are responsible to the duties you've given to us. who are diligent about pursuing those things, and who are able to rest in the pleasures of this world as we partake in moderation, always guarding ourselves against overindulgence. Father, may we never be those who vomit the good pleasures you have given us into our lives and deal with the mess of that. But Lord, protect us by your grace from such overindulgences. This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. This has been a presentation of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. For more resources and information, please stop by our website at visitredeemer.org. All material herewithin, unless otherwise noted. Copyright Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Elk Grove, California. Music furnished by Nathan Clark George. Available at nathanclarkgeorge.com.