FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
SELF-CONTROL
DR. JIM DIXON
AUGUST 24, 1986
GALATIANS 5:22-25, 1 CORINTHIANS 9:24-10:13
A few years ago, in the city of New York at the Metropolitan Hospital, doctors were performing surgery on a 38-year-old man. This man was very big. He was extremely obese, and the doctors believed that he had some sort of abdominal tumor. They knew that there was a very large abdominal mass. When they opened this man up, they were amazed because, inside this man, they found 300 pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and subway tokens. They found knives, forks, and spoons. They found can openers. They found nuts and bolts and pieces of chains, and they even found car keys. This man had more than 500 pieces of metal inside of him in a mass. When the surgery was completed and he had sufficiently recovered, they asked him why in the world he would have consumed such things. He responded by saying that he had a voracious appetite and that when no food was available, he would simply devour anything in sight. Incredibly, the doctors said that there was no damage to his intestines, no damage to his stomach, and no damage to his esophagus. Apparently, all of this guy’s damage was a little bit higher up. He had a damaged control center. This man was literally out of control.
The Bible says that “a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” It is a dangerous thing in any area of your life to have no self-control. Now the Greek word, the biblical word or self-control, is the word “inkratos.” It’s a compound word meaning “inner strength” or “inner power.” The early Christians in the first century used the word “inkratos” to describe a believer who had the inner resolve to follow faithfully the dictates of Christ. They used it of a Christian who had the internal fortitude to live a life faithful to Christ in this fallen world—self-control. And the Bible says that for us as Christians, self-control is our greatest weapon against sin In the Bible, the word “inkratos” is associated with three specific sins, most frequently, three sins where we particularly need self-control. And these comprise our three teachings this morning.
First of all, self-control for the Christian is a weapon against slander, the abuse of the tongue. How desperately we need self-control, and the Bible acknowledges that it’s not easy to control the tongue. In the book of James, it has said, “We all make many mistakes. And if anyone makes no mistakes in what he says, he is a perfect man able to bridle the whole body as well. For if we put bits into the mouths of horses, they may obey us. We control their whole bodies. And look also at the ships. Though they are so great and driven by strong winds, they’re guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a little member which boasts of great things, how great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire and the tongue is a fire, an unrighteous world among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire, the cycle of nature and set on fire by hell for every kind of beast and bird of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by humankind but no human being contained the top, A restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it, we bless our God and Father and with it we curse man who’s made in his image from the same mouth, come blessing and cursing my brethren, it ought not to be so can it spring pour forth from the same opening both freshwater and brackish. Can a fig tree my brethren yield grapes or a grapevine? Figs, no more saltwater yield fresh who is wise and understanding among you by his good life. Let him show forth his works. The meekness of wisdom.” God knows it’s hard to control the top and we all need help.
Zoologists tell us that in the Taras Mountains of Southern Turkey cranes live, these are birds that habitat there. They multiply there, they live there, and these cranes are a particular type of crane that whenever they fly, make a kind of crackling noise with their tongue. They move their tongue whenever they fly, and their tongue flaps inside of their large mouth cavity, and this crackling noise made by the crane when it flies can be heard a mile away. That’s unfortunate for the crane because the crane is not the only bird living in the Taras Mountains of Southern Turkey. There are hundreds of eagles there and they live high up in the mountains making their nests on the jagged cliffs. These eagles, whenever they hear the sound, the crackling sound, they know that a crane is airborne, and they descend, and they make the crane pay for its waggling tongue with its life. But zoologists tell us that there are some cranes there in the Taras Mountains that make no noise, no noise when they fly, they’ve never been attacked by eagles, and they’ve lived a long life. Incredibly, who all just tell us these cranes before they fly, they pick up a stone or a rock and they literally put it inside their mouth, and it fills up their mouth cavity. It keeps their tongue from moving so that they are forced to fly in silence and thereby their lives are saved.
There are a lot of people in this world, perhaps some people in this congregation that could afford to pick up a stone or a rock every morning before we leave the house. The tongue is dangerous not only to ourselves, but it is dangerous to those about us. Sometimes I think it’s hard for us to imagine how much we can damage another person by the things we say when we attack their personality or when we attack their character.
I read a few years ago about an accident which took place in an English dike, a canal, and an embankment in Great Britain. Two workers were standing on the embankment of this canal, and they saw a little rat burrow through the embankment and where the rat came out, water from the canal began to leak through the embankment. One man went for help. The other man stayed. It was too late. Within 10 minutes, the opening had become forty feet wide, and a torrent of water began to pour through. Ultimately, more than 3 million gallons of water were drained from that canal and the canal was emptied for seven miles, more than 1 million fish were found dead. It created a gorge nearly twenty feet deep. It took 60 men with bulldozers three weeks moving 30,000 tons of earth to repair what that one little rat had done. And you see the tongue is like that. Slander is like that. We all need to be very careful.
You know, life is sometimes frustrating. I think it’s normal to be frustrated with people. Sometimes you just want to share that frustration with somebody, and of course, it’s always good to begin with God. I think God understands that we need sometimes to share our frustrations with other people. I think it’s appropriate to have someone who is a confidant. That’s when you’re frustrated with somebody or frustrated with a number of people, you can kind of “unload” with that person. Perhaps your husband, perhaps your wife, maybe a friend of the same sex—somebody who’s a confidant—but you better be careful because confidentiality is easily breached, and it is so dangerous when you spread rumors about another person. The Bible says, “a good name is better to be had than riches.” From God’s perspective, when you destroy another person’s name, you are doing them greater damage than when you take their money. Before God, it is critical how we use the tongue. The Bible says, “He that would love life and see good days. Let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking God. For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, His ears are open to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those that speak evil.” Self-control is desperately needed with respect to the tongue.
Secondly, the Bible uses the word “inkratos” to describe the relationship between self-control, to temper. Uncontrolled anger—that’s the second area where we as Christians need self-control. When Barb and I were in Ireland some years ago, we heard a story, and it tells of a man who was driving his car down a country road in Ireland. Most all the roads are country roads. This man was known for his temper. As he drove along the road in his rearview mirror, he saw a car approaching rapidly behind him and he didn’t like that. He could just feel the anger kind of welling up because he was kind of ‘king of the road.’ He saw a woman was driving the car and he didn’t like that. The woman just roared up behind him and began to pass him and pulled up on the left side, and suddenly she rolled down her window and she shouted “pig” and the guy couldn’t handle that; He just exploded. The veins came out in his neck, and he began to roll down his window to tell her off and suddenly he ran over a 350-pound pig!
Now that’s kind of a, a dumb story, but it is true that when you are quick to anger, we misunderstand a lot of things. When we’re quick to anger, we get in a lot of trouble. The Bible says, “anger rests in the bosom of a fool.” The Bible says that “God is slow to anger, and he is quick to pardon.” That’s what God wants us to be like. Biblically, anger is not sin. The Bible says, “Be angry, but sin not.” Anger. Biblically is simply a red flag meant to warn us that something is wrong. Something is wrong either in our surroundings or within us. When God is angry, what is wrong is never within Him because He is holy and He is righteous and when God is angry, His anger is righteous indignation and what is wrong is always in his surroundings. but when we are angry, most of the time, at least partly the thing that is wrong is within us.
There’s a story that I’ve only told once, years ago. I don’t tell this story many times because it’s kind of humiliating for me. It took place in 1964 when I first went to college—my first year at Westmont College. I didn’t know many people at Westmont College. I hardly knew anybody and I wanted to make friends. I think that’s kind of natural for a person in their first year at college. I went out for the basketball team, and I became friends more or less with seven other guys who were also playing basketball. Most of them were better athletes than I was, and I kind of looked up to them and I respected them, and I very much wanted them to accept me. I wanted to feel like I was kind of “in,” but I didn’t feel that way. After two or three months, we were sitting in one of the dormitories in one of the rooms and we were playing cards. It was about one o’clock in the morning. We were all sitting around the bed, all eight of us, and we were playing “Hearts.” Now if you’ve played “Hearts,” you know that you really don’t wanna get the queen of spades and you don’t want to get the hearts unless you’re trying to run.
There was a guy on the other side of the bed whose name was Ron, and Ron was losing. He’d been losing for a couple of hours, and he kept getting the queen of hearts kind of dumped on him, and I was winning. It is one of those kinds of nights, and I could tell Ron was kind of angry and he was directing his anger toward me. You could see the veins kind of sticking out in his neck. Finally, I threw Ron the queen of spades, getting rid of it, and that was the final straw, and Ron just blew up. He took his cards, and he just slammed them into my face. Everybody in the room was silent and they all turned and looked at me. Obviously, I was supposed to do something. You weren’t supposed to catch cards with your face. But you see Ron was very, very big. Ron weighed about 240 pounds and I was your basic ectomorph. And I didn’t wanna fight Ron. On the other hand, you know, I didn’t wanna look bad in front of these guys because I really wanted their respect, and I wanted them to accept me and I didn’t wanna back down. I just somehow wanted to disarm the situation. I tried to think of what I could say that would kind of be neutral. I said to Ron, “Ron you better watch what you’re doing.”
You know, I didn’t work at all. Ron was just, Ron was just enraged, and he looked at me with just fire in his eyes and he said, “I WAS watching what I was doing.” Everyone turned and looked at me again. I could tell it wasn’t over. I needed to do something. My heart was just pounding. You know, I was REALLY afraid. Finally,” I thought I knew exactly what I needed to say, and I said, “Ron, you just better not do it again.” Well, it didn’t work. Ron jumped up on the bed and he reached over and he grabbed me by the shirt and he literally lifted me up and he said, “Who’s going to stop me?” There was just silence in the room. I knew I either had to fight this guy or I had to totally back down and I didn’t want to back down because I so desperately wanted these people to like me.
So I went ahead and I fought Ron and that was one of the biggest mistakes in my life. Ron literally beat me to a pulp. I mean, he just trashed me, and he pounded me all around the room and I was totally a mess, and I remember when he was done with me, he had me by the hair on the back of the head and he had jammed my face into the floor. And this is unbelievable what he actually made me say, “Uncle!” I mean, that’s something that—you know—only little kids have to do. I remember saying ‘Uncle” and I was right near the door, so I thought I might as well crawl out. I, and I did, and you know, when that door closed, I didn’t ever wanna see any of those guys again. I felt so embarrassed. I just thought that was it. I began to walk around the campus, and I decided to go see my brother Greg. Greg went to the same college. This might sound real strange, but I’d hardly seen Greg in two and a half years.
We were kids, we played together like all kids do growing up, but you know, he kind of had his life and I had my life and in the last two and a half years, we just hadn’t talked. I didn’t really know him, but I was desperate, so I went to the dorm where Greg was, and I went up to his room and knocked on the door. When he saw me, I was kind of surprised because the first thing I noticed was that he cared. I could see he really cared, and that was neat because that was the beginning of a really great friendship with my brothers. The next day when I began to run into some of the guys that were in the room, I was amazed, because suddenly, I felt acceptable, and it was obvious that they kinda liked me. That was a whole new change, but for Ron it was different. They didn’t like Ron so much anymore because people don’t really like being around people that can’t control their temper. It was like that for Ron for the next few years. He just had a hard time making friends because his temper always got in the way.
The Bible says, “Make no friendship with an angry man.” Most people don’t really need to hear that counsel because they don’t want to make a friendship with an angry person. Why was Ron so mad? I really don’t think it had anything to do with a card game. I don’t think it had anything to do with me. Psychologists tell us that most of us when we’re angry most of the time, it’s because our self-esteem is somehow threatened. Somehow, Ron’s self-esteem was threatened by that card game. Losing was threatening to his worth, and we’ve all experienced events like that. But it’s a tragic thing if our self-esteem is based on winning at cards or playing a good game of golf or being successful in business, because, you see, biblically, our self-esteem is meant to be tied to our relationship with the living God through faith, Jesus Christ and His love for us and our status as His very own children.
Anger is a very dangerous thing, and the Bible tells us that when we are angry, the first thing we should do is take an inward look. Take a look within yourself and see if the red flag doesn’t relate to something wrong inside of you. The Bible says, “When you are angry, take counsel with your own thoughts as you sit in your room upon your bed.” That’s in the book of Proverbs and that’s wise counsel. Self-control the gift with an inward look.
Thirdly and finally, biblically self-control, “inkratos” is a weapon against lust. The Bible says, “Abstain from the lust of the flesh, which wage war against the soul.” The Greek word for lust is the word “epithumia.” This word referred to excessive desires or “improper desires.” This word was used for many different types of lust. Sometimes it was used of a lust for food, what the Bible calls gluttony. Sometimes it was used of a lust for power and a lot of people in the world have that problem today. Sometimes it was used of lust for material things. Most of the time, the word “epithumia,” was used of sexual lust, the lust of the flesh, excessive or improper sexual desires. If any generation needed self-control with respect to sexual desires, it is the generation in which we now live.
Thirty-six thousand years ago the Bible says, there lived a man whose name was Joseph. He was betrayed by his brothers. He was bartered for merchandise by the Midianites, and he was stalled into slavery in the land of Egypt. And he was bought by a man named Potiphar. Potiphar was an Egyptian officer, and he was the captain of the Royal Guard, a very high and lofty position in the Egyptian Empire. In fact, we know that as captain of the Royal Guard, Potiphar was given an estate, and that estate was massive and it included horse stables and it included his own bakery, his own winery. He had servants’ quarters, and of course, he had the royal palace that he lived in, and this is where Joseph lived as a slave.
Joseph was given more and more responsibility in Potiphar’s household because Joseph was a faithful man, and ultimately Joseph was placed in charge of Potiphar’s entire estate. He was second in authority only to Potiphar himself. The Bible says that Joseph was a handsome man. The Bible says Potiphar’s wife was very beautiful. One day, as Joseph was alone in the house, the servants were out, Potiphar’s wife came up to Joseph and she said, “Lie with me.” She was kind of a shy woman. Joseph said that he could not violate the trust of his earthly master. Joseph said even more importantly, he would not violate the trust of his heavenly master. He said, “I cannot sin against the laws of God.” Well, the days passed, and the weeks passed, and whenever Joseph was alone in the house, Potiphar’s wife would come up to him and say, “Lie with me” One day in a moment of extreme passion, she ripped off his clothes and Joseph did a beautiful thing in the sight of the Lord. In an act of great self-control, Joseph ran out of the house, and he ran away from that woman.
You see, that’s the kind of person that God can use. That’s the kind of person God looking for—a person who runs from sin. God wants us to literally run from pornography. He wants us to run from adultery. He wants us to run from fornication, and people who have that kind of self-control are the kind of people that God ultimately exalts. God exalted Joseph, and he became the second-highest power in all of Egypt, second only to the Pharoah himself. And he became the spiritual leader of all Israel as God really called you, if you learn to run from sin, self-control is based on a longing to please God. If you don’t long to please Christ, you’ll never have self-control. Self-control isn’t simply exercised in the moment of temptation; it is expressed in daily discipline. Self-control is expressed in that daily discipline whereby we spend time as Christians in the word of God and we spend time every day, every day in prayer and in the Bible, and then when the moment of temptation comes, we’ll have God’s power, power to overcome.
Some people think that perhaps it’s more difficult in our day than it was in Joseph today because this is a particularly promiscuous time, but history doesn’t really bear that out. Throughout history, there have been many periods just as promiscuous as the world today. Certainly, this generation is more sexually permissive than the generation in which many of us grew up. The 1980s are more sexually permissive than the 1950s, but historically, the 1950s were relatively puritan and history is a never-ending flow cycle between puritanism and licentiousness, but the laws of God never change and Christians living in every generation are called to faithfulness, and God has given sex as a beautiful gift meant to be opened only within the context of marriage. It is the highest physical expression of the spiritual and emotional union that is called marriage and any other use of sex cheapens it—it taints it. The Bible says, “Sex prior to marriage is wrong.” That is his standard for all generations.
The Greek word in the Bible for sex prior to marriage is the word “pornea.” It is the word from which we get the word pornography, and its broadest context refers to any kind of sexual impurity. In its narrowest sense, it referred simply to sex prior to marriage. The Bible says it is a sin. The biblical word for adultery is the words “moicheia,” and of course, the Bible says this is sin and it is gross sin. God calls us as Christians to faithfulness.
I feel sorry for single people, not in the sense that they are in any sense inferior because they’re not. but it’s awfully hard being single in a world where there are so many temptations. And yet God calls us the faithful. He calls us to self-control. The Bible says, “Gird up your loins and be sober.” Set your hopes fully on the grace which is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children do not be conformed to the passions, to the lust of your former ignorance, but as he was called you as holy, be holy yourself.
Self-control for the sake of combating temper the abuse of the tongue and excess is called lust. We are saved by grace through faith. That’s what the Bible tells us, but the Bible also tells us that if you have no self-control in your life, there’s reason to question whether you really have faith in Jesus Christ. We are saved by grace through faith. It’s the only means of entering the kingdom of Christ and receiving eternal life. But when we get to heaven, the Bible makes it clear our rewards are going to vary according to our faithfulness now. That’s why the apostle Paul says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize, so run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do this to obtain a perishable crown, but we, are imperishable.” Paul says, “I do not run aimlessly. I do not box like one beating the air, but I discipline my body and subdue, lest after preaching to others, I, myself, should be disqualified.” Let’s pray.