FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
SELF-CONTROL
DR. JIM DIXON
JAMES 3:1
FEBRUARY 7, 1993
Some weeks ago in our nation’s capital of Washington, D.C., a suburban mom was in her car with her little baby. Suddenly she found herself at gunpoint as two boys, two young men, opened the door to her car. They pulled her out. They got into the car, and they began to drive off with her little baby still inside of the car. This mom did not have time to think. She acted out of pure instinct. She did, I think, what many moms would have done. She grabbed hold of the handle of the car door. Her baby was inside, and she did not want to be separated from her baby. When these two boys realized that they were dragging the mom, they tried to run their car along the sides of the buildings and into buildings, into fences to scrape the mother off, but her little baby was inside, and she was ready to die.
There came a point where these young men realized they were not going to get rid of the mom that way so they grabbed the baby and just threw the baby out the window, thinking that surely the mother would let go and surely, she would have except that somehow by that time her dress was caught up in the door. So they continued to drag her for a mile and a half until she was dead. Somehow, miraculously, the little baby lived. Of course, the news of this was carried in newspapers across the country and particularly in the city of Washington, D.C. and people were shocked.
It was discovered that these two young men, 22 years old and 16 years old, had been reared in broken homes and that neither one of them had ever had a dad. They did not have any friends who had dads at home. Recent studies indicate that in the 1990’s in our nation’s capital of Washington, D.C., 61% of the babies born will be born out of wedlock. 61% of the babies born in the nation’s capital in this decade will be born out of wedlock. There are sections of Washington, D.C., where the police no longer go. There are sections of our nation’s capital that the civil authorities have just vacated, they have abandoned, and those sections of the inner city are just out of control.
We live in a nation where there are a lot of people who, in a sense, are just like the city of Washington, D.C., and so many other cities people who have sections of their life that are just out of control people who have portions of their behavior that they cannot police people who have sections of their life and of their personality and of their behavior that they have simply abandoned, they have vacated sections of their lives that are out of control Ralph Waldo Emerson said “There is no weakness except from within.” If that is true of nations, it is also true of individuals. The word “self-control” in the Greek is the word “enkratos” and it literally means “strength within.” You see if you are a Christian and you believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, God wants you to have strength within. This morning I would like us to focus on self-control, and as we do this, I have two teachings.
The first teaching is this: Its goal is holiness. The goal of self-control is holiness. Now this past Thursday and Friday I was at a conference in Colorado Springs, and I saw a film on sex education that is designed for the public-school systems. The film teaches abstinence until marriage. The film interviews famous people in the world of sports, famous people in the world of television, famous people in the world of Hollywood, and all of them advocate abstinence until marriage. It is a powerful film. The film states that safe sex isn’t really safe, that condoms fail and the statistics are alarming that condoms that are used for the prevention of pregnancy, condoms that are used for the prevention of disease, so often fail. The film points out that since we’ve had the safe sex blitz in the United States of America during this period when we have so advocated safe sex pregnancies have actually increased by a significant percentage and abortions have actually increased and sexual diseases have incredibly increased.
Twenty years ago there were only five known sexually transmitted diseases. Today there are twenty. According to the National Center for Disease Control, 23% of America’s population now have incurable sexually transmitted diseases. 23%of the men and women in the United States of America, according to the National Center for Disease Control, have some kind of incurable sexually transmitted disease. Of course, this film, which is targeted for the public schools, is telling teenagers and young people to consider the choice of abstinence until marriage for the sake of their physical health and even for the sake of their emotional health because sexual promiscuity is so damaging emotionally. This film does not mock the use of condoms for those who are having sex. It simply encourages people to choose to consider the choice of abstinence until marriage for the sake of their physical health and their emotional health.
Yet I must say if you are a Christian and you really believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, then the reason you should choose abstinence until marriage, the reason you should exercise self-control should not be primarily because of physical health or even emotional health. Your primary motive in exercising self-control, your primary motive in maintaining abstinence until marriage, should be your desire for holiness, your desire for spiritual health. You see, self-control in the life of the Christian is primarily for the sake of holiness. Now, holiness has to do with conformity to God’s laws. Holiness has to do with obedience to God’s commandments. Now we all know biblically only Jesus Christ is holy. Only Jesus Christ has obeyed the commandments of God perfectly and we are not saved by our holiness. We can only be saved by His holiness. And yet as Christians, as believers in Christ, we are called to the pursuit of holiness.
The Bible says, “Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who has called you be holy. Be holy yourselves in all your conduct, for it is written, ‘you shall be holy for I am holy.’” God is looking for a generation of men and women who would pursue holiness, sanctification in their life, people who love Him, people who long to please Him. Now with respect to holiness and with respect to self-control, and with respect to the commandments of God, there are really two extremes in our society.
One extreme we might call fundamentalism. The word fundamentalism is variously applied. It used to refer simply to people who believed in the fundamentals of the faith but today, normally, fundamentalism is used to refer to extreme right-wing religion. Today, usually fundamentalism refers to the modern equivalent of biblical Phariseeism, and you know what the Pharisees did. The Pharisees took the commandments of God, and they took the laws of God, and they multiplied them. They created all kind of petty laws and they shackled the people with these burdensome laws. Now there is a sense in which modern day fundamentalism does that too.
There is a great controversy brewing right now in the United Pentecostal Church. You might have read about it in the newspaper. In this denomination, the United Pentecostal Church, a fundamentalistic denomination, there are certain requirements of all members. The United Pentecostal Church requires of their members that they do not smoke, that they do not drink, that they do not go to any movies ever, that they do not dance any kind of dancing ever, that they do not swim with members of the other sex, that the women do not cut their hair, that they do not wear makeup, that they do not participate in secular sports. I do not know what religious sports are but they are not supposed to participate in or even watch secular sports, and they are not allowed to have television in their homes. This is fundamentalism. Understandably, a lot of people are upset in the United Pentecostal Church, but the church has just issued a mandate requiring that of all 7,500 ministers within the denomination and all 500,000 members. Fundamentalism.
I must say, though, biblically some of those laws are simply bizarre They’re not rooted in the Bible. They have a concept in fundamentalism of self-control, but it is almost always self-control in the sense of abstinence. Abstain from this. Abstain from that. Abstain from everything. Certainly, as Christians, there are times when we need self-control for abstinence, but we also understand biblically that self-control oftentimes has not to do with abstinence but moderation. You see, in the true Christian life, we need self-control for moderation. Fundamentalism does not understand that. That is why fundamentalism can never understand true holiness.
You see, biblically, it is not a sin to drink. It is a sin, however, to get drunk. Christians need self-control. If you cannot exercise self-control, then abstinence would be the proper behavior. The Bible obviously does not mention television or movie theaters, but I think the biblical view would be moderation. There are some things that are good to watch. There are some things that are not good to watch. We need self-control so that we can watch the things that are good but not watch the things we should not. We need self-control This is true in so many areas of the Christian life but, you see, fundamentalists are still in bondage to sin. They live in such fear of sin that they have denied themselves proper Christian freedoms and they no longer have the joy of the true Christian life and walk.
There is another extreme in the world today and, of course, it is the extreme of libertinism. This is the extreme our society and culture has embraced. I must say fundamentalism is not really popular today, but libertinism is. In libertinism, the laws of God and the commandments of God are simply denied. Very little is viewed as wrong. People in libertinism do not want to deny themselves anything. The highest virtue in libertinism is the virtue of tolerance. You tolerate virtually anything and everything in the behavior of others and even in your own behavior as well. Tolerance. But, of course, this society cannot long endure when there’s unrestricted tolerance.
Even our society establishes laws. We understand we need some boundaries. We understand some things are wrong. In our culture and in our society, we say you should not kill because that obviously hurts another person. You should not steal because that obviously hurts another person too. Drugs are illegal because they hurt people. It is very clear to see that. You cannot take cocaine even personally because you hurt yourself. So we have established laws that are designed to prevent people from hurting either themselves or others, but the problem is in our society and culture we only look at the outside. So if it is very obvious that a certain behavior is hurtful, we rule it out of bounds.
But, you see, God looks at the inside. God looks at our soul God looks at your spirit and God’s commandments are designed to protect you not only externally but internally. The world says, you know, safe sex is okay. Extramarital or premarital sex is okay because, you know, it does not seem to hurt anybody. That is an illusion, of course, that it does not seem to hurt anybody. You can wake up the next morning and you can look in the mirror and you still look fine. The person with whom you had that sex, they can wake up the next morning, look in the mirror and they look fine too. Everything is fine. But, you see, God looks at the soul. God looks at the spirit. God’s commandments and God’s laws are designed to protect us body, soul, and spirit. The Bible speaks of purifying our souls by our obedience to the truth. Libertinism, of course, just requires no self-control because almost anything is accepted. There can be no purity. There can be no holiness.
You know, I want to tell you a little story about a man named Martin Dalton. Martin Dalton was a man who, in the year 1899, was imprisoned because he committed murder. He murdered a New York man in the State of Rhode Island. Dalton was sent to prison. Dalton stayed in prison for 66 years. He died there in 1962. Actually he was there for 63 years. He died there in 1962 at the age of 91. The incredible thing about Martin Dalton was he did not need to be in prison all that time. He was actually released after 33 years. He was released in 1932. He went into New York City. He saw all the automobiles where there had been horse drawn carriages. He saw the tall buildings. He saw the fashions. He saw airplanes and he was absolutely stunned. He could not believe the cultural change and he experienced culture shock. He said, “Take me back to the prison.” He went back to the prison, and he remained there the last 30 years of his life working the prison farms by the prison walls. He never left, by his own choice.
The Bible tells us the world is in bondage; it is imprisoned by sin. The Bible also says that when you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior there was a sense in which we were set free from sin, set free from the power of sin, set free from the bondage of sin. Now of course, we still are sinful, but sin does not have the same control and there is a new freedom in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit has come within us. If we yield our will to His will, that power is released in a pursuit of holiness. We are meant to have a freedom that the world does not have to walk away from sin. But, you see, so often so many Christians seem to just choose to remain by that prison, to remain there by sin. Some people do it through fundamentalism, which really keeps you in bondage to sin. Some people do it through libertinism, which is simply a life of no self-control and promiscuity and bondage to sin. We need to realize that God has called us, each one, as men and women of Christ to holiness. God is looking right now, in this generation. God is looking for men and women who long to please Him, are willing to honor Him, no matter what the cost, will pay the price and will yield their will to His will, that His power, that inner strength might be released for self-control.
Now there is a second teaching this morning I wanted to share with you, and it is this: The absence of self-control leads to destruction. The purpose of self-control is holiness, but the absence of self-control leads to destruction. This is true not only of us individually. It does not simply lead to our own destruction, but the absence of self-control can destroy other people as well.
I want to take a moment and just share with you briefly on the subject of slander and gossip, how we need self-control in the area of gossip and slander. Some of you have heard of Mason Locke Weems. It was Mason Locke Weems who in the year 1800 wrote that great biography of George Washington. It became a national best seller. Mason Locke Weems’ biography of George Washington did more than any other book to shape this nation’s view of its first president.
In that book, Weems described how George Washington chopped down the cherry tree and how George Washington said, “Father, I cannot tell a lie,” and how George Washington skipped the silver dollar across the Potomac. Of course many of you heard those stories in your classrooms but the problem is they are not true. They are just not true. Actually, Mason Locke Weems later admitted that he made them up. He admitted that he just made them up, but he said “You know, I lied. I lied but I did it because I so respect George Washington. I did it because I want other people to respect him more. I told those lies because I wanted to exalt him in the eyes of the nation.”
Now, we all tell lies. I think some of us would say we never tell lies but God knows we do. I think most of us would have to admit generally when we tell a lie about another person, it is not in order to exalt them. Generally, when we tell a lie about another person, it is designed to degrade them. It is designed to pull them down. Of course, that is the problem, you see, with slander and gossip. It is so destructive. You have all seen a starfish. Some starfishes, these are animals that live in the sea… some starfishes have five armlike extensions. Other starfish have forty armlike extensions. But the amazing thing about a starfish is it does not matter how many armlike extensions they have. If you cut them off, they will grow back. If you cut off one of the arms of a starfish, it will grow another arm. You can cut off all the arms of a starfish and it will grow new arms. In fact, you can take a starfish and you can just cut it right in two, and both halves will grow into whole starfishes. An amazing reality. Of course, the important truth here is that human beings are not like starfish. I mean, when we are chopped up, we do not do so well. When we are chopped up verbally, when you slice another human being up with your mouth, they do not always heal so well, do not always come back together. That is the tragedy of slander and gossip.
The Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey are just north of the ancient biblical city of Tarsus where the Apostle Paul was born. In those Taurus Mountains, there are high jagged rocky cliffs but there’s also very fertile valleys. In those valleys cranes live, beautiful birds. They fly around those valleys in the Taurus Mountains from one side to the other. Zoologists and ornithologists tell us that these cranes, whenever they fly, make a noise because when a crane flies in the mouth cavity, which is so hollow, the tongue unavoidably begins to just flap, and it makes a noise. That is bad news for the crane because there are eagles high up the Taurus Mountains. Whenever a crane flies and it makes that noise in its mouth cavity, it alerts the eagles and the eagles sometimes just swoop down, birds of prey, and they devour the crane.
But ornithologists have found that in the Taurus Mountains there are some cranes that have survived. They have grown to old age. When they fly, they are silent. When they fly, they do not make any noise at all because somehow these cranes have learned to put rocks in their mouth cavity before they fly. They put rocks in there so the tongue cannot move and they fly in silence, and they are safe
You know, I think as human beings, sometimes, we need to put rocks in our mouth cavity. We really do, because we do such damage to people. You know this is not only true of us individually in our lives, but it is really true of us as a church because slander and gossip is also a problem in the church, and we need self-control. I cannot believe some of the rumors that fly around here. I mean I really cannot. People come up to me and say, “We hear this and is it true?” “We heard that, and did it really happen?” I am just amazed.
I mean, I have had people come to me and they say, “You know, we’ve heard… and my whole Koinonia has decided to no longer give to the building program because we’ve heard that this church has taken building dollars, monies that were designated for the building, and used those dollars for other things, used those dollars irresponsibly, immorally, used them in the general operating budget, used them in some other way…” I am thinking, “Where did that come from?” We have never taken building dollars and used them for other things. We have, with great purity of conscience, tried to keep these funds separate and we have. We do not take money that is given to the building fund and use it for anything else. We preserve it in the building fund. We have tried to, in all things, be fiscally responsible, to have financial morality. So how do these rumors spread? I mean where do they come from?
I have actually had three different people make appointments with me and tell me they hear this rumor that is going around the church that the whole decision to move came from a group of flaky prophets in Kansas City and that they are friends of Bob and that Bob has influenced me and that is why we are moving. Now Bob would be the first to admit he does know flaky people… but I mean, there is no substance to that rumor, and where does something like that come from and how does it get started? It is just amazing to me. And, you know, it really damages the church.
We have had people say, “We’ve heard that this has actually been discussed by the Session that this church wants to low-key discipleship and only focus on evangelism. We have heard that this church has actually discussed in its leadership core a philosophy of ministry that only cares about non-believers, that only wants to reach non-believers and only cares about evangelism,” and that we have decided to use music and teaching that is only designed to meet the needs of non-believers and we do not care about growing the saints. I want to know, “Where did that come from?” Since our church’s inception, we have just longed to see men and women grow in Jesus Christ. Yes, we want to lead people to faith in Jesus Christ, but our longing is to see people discipled. We want to see men and women grow into the fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ. All of our ministries are designed to facilitate that growth and that is our primary purpose. Sure, we want to see people come to Christ, but having seen them come to Christ, we want to bond them in Christ, build them up in Christ and send them out in Christ. Where do rumors like that come from and they are so damaging? So damaging.
Some of you have seen Leonardo de Vinci’s masterpiece of The Last Supper. You can go to Milan, and you can go to the monastery at Santa Maria del Grazie, and you can see The Last Supper. It is still there. A great work of art. If you look at it, you will notice the face of Christ is horribly disfigured. It is horribly disfigured because, during the Napoleonic Wars, soldiers actually went in there and used the painting of the Last Supper for target practice.
Now I think most of you would be shocked at that. You would consider that a kind of sacrilege, but I want you to know it is a greater sacrilege to slander the church of Christ. You take a shot at Jesus Christ when you slander his church. Jesus Christ said, “I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” If you are going to share information about this church or any church, you’d better make sure you have your facts straight and you’d better move through proper channels because it is a serious thing to slander the church of Jesus Christ. God has called us to exercise self-control in all things, not just the tongue. He has called us to exercise self-control in all things. It destroys people when we do not have self-control It destroys ministry too. It is damaging to ourselves. It is damaging to others. God has given us self-control for the purpose of holiness that we might walk in obedience to His commandments and God has given us self-control with the reminder that if we do not exercise it, destruction follows. Let us close with a word of prayer.