SELF-CONTROL
DR. JIM DIXON
2 PETER 1 C 3 19
DECEMBER 5, 1993
It was on this day today, December 5, 1933, that the 21st amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, bringing prohibition to an end. Prohibition had lasted for 14 years, and it had been a dismal failure. Deaths by alcoholism had decreased, but crime had soared because of rumrunners and racketeers and bootleggers. So it was that on this day, December 5, 1933, prohibition came to an end. Herbert Hoover announced to the nation that prohibition had been a grand experiment, noble in intent but tragic in its effect. He said the solution to alcoholism in America is not governmental control. He said the solution to alcoholism in America is self-control.
Now, perhaps the statement of Herbert Hoover was overly simplistic. Alcoholism is extremely complex, both in its causes and in its solutions, but I think on this we would all agree. We are a nation desperately in need of self-control. The Bible tells us that a person without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. A person without self-control is defenseless.
Now, this morning I have three brief teachings, and the first one concerns the relationship between self-control and parental discipline. The Bible tells us as parents that we are to bring up our children in the discipline of the Lord. Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 4: “Bring your children up in the discipline of the Lord.” About three weeks ago I was down in the basement watching television and suddenly the TV went out. There was no picture. There was no sound. So I got the owners’ manual and I turned to the troubleshooter’s section where it said, “No picture, no sound what do you do.” It said, “Check to make sure it’s plugged in to a proper active AC outlet.” I did that and it was no problem. It said, “Check the cable connection.” I did that. I even switched the cable wires just to make sure that wasn’t the problem. It said, “Check the vacation switch on the back of the TV set to make sure it’s not on.” I checked that and it was off. No problem.
Then it said, “Check the memory component.” I didn’t know what that meant. I read up on that. As far as I could tell, it was okay. I really checked everything and couldn’t find anything wrong with the TV set except that it didn’t work. No picture. No sound. So I gave up. Or, I almost gave up. I started to leave the room and I thought, “Well, you know, what if I just kind of hit the TV set.” So I sort of swatted the side of the TV set and suddenly it just. boom! It came back on—picture, sound, everything okay.
Now, it seems to me that a lot of parents, a lot of moms and dads kind of use spanking like that. I mean they use spanking as a last resort. You’ve tried everything else easy, you might as well try a spanking. But, you see, the Bible actually recommends spanking. In Proverbs, chapter 13, the Bible says, “He who spares the rod hates his son. He who loves his son is faithful to discipline him.”
I know there are some people who have tried to reinterpret the meaning of the Hebrew word “rod” so that it doesn’t refer to spanking, but they twist the Hebrew language. The reality is that Jews and Christians through the centuries have understood that to refer to spanking. I know, as well, that we live in a culture and a society where child psychologists tell us that spanking is bad. They tell us that spanking breeds violence. In fact, it was in the 1960’s when the psychiatric community first stated that spanking is the first inch on the yardstick of violence. Yet incredibly, over the last 30 years, because of this prevailing view in the psychological community, in the past 30 years, fewer and fewer parents spank their children. Yet at the same time over these past 30 years, violence among youth has just increased exponentially.
Now, it would not be fair to blame the growth of violence on the lack of spanking, but it is not fair to blame violence on spanking either. The reality is that in the biblical sense, spanking is not rooted in hatred. Spanking is rooted in love. Spanking, in the biblical sense, if it’s proper discipline, is not rooted in wrath but it’s rooted in loving concern. Spanking is not administered with a desire to get even, if it’s proper biblical discipline, but rather it is administered with a concern to mold and shape our children that they might be more the people God wants them to be. Spanking is not used to control our kids but rather to teach them self-control. In the biblical sense, this is true of all discipline. All discipline in the biblical sense is used to impart self-control. If you discipline your kids in order to control them, they’re going to be in a lot of trouble when you’re not around. But if you discipline your children in order to teach them self-control, that’s the purpose of biblical discipline whether it’s spanking or any other mode of discipline.
Now, about a little over a month ago, at the beginning of November, I got a phone call from one of Drew’s teachers at his high school. His Latin teacher. She said that Drew was having a little problem socially in the class. Now, I want you to know I asked Drew if I could tell you this story, and Drew said no. Actually, I asked Drew if I could tell you this story and he said yes. He also told me about a snowboard that he wanted. Just kidding. Actually, Drew said this would be fine if it really illustrates my point. Drew knows I need all the help I can get.
The teacher said the problem is that Drew is clowning around too much in class. She said it’s not that he’s a bad student. In fact, she said he was the best student she has. He has the highest grade in the class and that is part of the problem. He’s so smart that he’s bored. He’s looking for something to do. She said he has a good sense of humor. He likes to make the kids laugh. She said that sometimes Drew makes her laugh. But she said the problem is that it’s disruptive. She said it’s disruptive and he needs to control his social life better during the class hour.
Barb and I thought, “Well, what are we going to do about this,” because the teacher had called us twice. We know that Drew has self-control. It’s just a question of how do we encourage him to use it? Drew was going to turn 16. His birthday was just a few days away and he had really been looking forward to getting his license. We told Drew he couldn’t have his license until December. That was really hard, and it was a major bummer for Drew. We told him if this was to continue to happen that we would have to take the license away again.
Well, last week Drew’s Latin teacher called me. She said that it was just incredible how well-behaved Drew has been. She said that he was such a gentleman. She said he’s just a great kid and of course he is a great kid but, like all of us, sometimes we need a little encouragement with respect to self-control and that really, honestly is what parental discipline is all about It’s about imparting self-control because without self-control the Bible says, “We are like a city broken into and left without walls.”
Now, there’s a second teaching this morning and relates to the subject of the relationship of self-control and human effort. I think this teaching is more appropriate to most of you. Most of us in here are adults. We no longer receive the benefits of discipline. Self-control in our lives is so tied to human effort. In our passage of scripture for today, the Apostle Peter says, “Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control.” Make every effort for self-control. The word is “budazo” in the Greek and that word means “to strain.” This is not a real fun teaching but the reality is that self-control requires effort. The Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians, chapter 8, said, “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 obtain an imperishable one. Do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air, but I pummel my body. I discipline my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”
Now, in that passage, Paul describes the effort involved in self-control He uses three Greek words that are incredibly revealing. He uses the word “agonizomi,” from which we get the word “agony.” There’s a certain agony involved in self-control. There’s a certain agony involved in the effort that is required for self-control. He uses the word ” hupopiazo,” and ” hupopiazo” was a boxing term. It literally meant to beat somebody up. It literally meant “to strike under the eye,” to give someone a black eye. But Paul applies it to himself. He’s saying that self-control, the effort involved, is like beating yourself up.
Then he uses another strange word, “doulagogo,” which sounds really strange. That word means “to force into slavery.” He says, “I pummel my body and I force it into slavery.” That’s strong language. Now, this teaching regarding self-control and human effort was well received in the Greek world because the Greeks highly esteemed this virtue of self-control. They considered it one of the cardinal virtues. But in our culture, in our society, is not so highly valued. There are a lot of people who live whereby they say, “If it feels good, do it.”
Strangely enough, even in the Christian community, self-control is not always highly valued, I think for a variety of reasons. Some Christians seem to think that self-control is improper because we’re supposed to be under God’s control. That, of course, I understand theologically, but biblically we can’t be under God’s control without self-control The purpose of self-control is not for you to reign over yourself. Biblically, the purpose of self-control is that the Lord might reign effectively over you. We cannot be obedient to what the Lord tells us to do or not do unless we learn self-control.
There are also some Christians who really don’t buy the idea that we have to make an effort because they think self-control is kind of a gift. They quote Galatians 5, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. They say, “If it’s the fruit of the Spirit, then the Holy Spirit gives us self-control. It’s not a question of my effort.” But, you see, this is a misunderstanding of the fruit of the Spirit. It’s a misunderstanding of sanctification, of our transformation in the likeness of Christ. We cannot experience sanctification without some effort. His power must be mingled with your effort. In that passage in Galatians, chapter 5, the fruit of the Spirit is actually contrasted with something else called “the works of the flesh.” You see, the Spirit and the flesh within you, as a Christian, are at war. They’re at war. When you first became a Christian, when you asked Jesus Christ to come into your heart and be the Lord of your life, when you invited Him to be your Savior from sin, He came within you. By His Holy Spirit, He took up residence within you. The Spirit of God came to dwell within you and you received what the Bible calls a “new nature.” You received a new nature within you and that new nature is the nature of Christ. It is characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control It’s characterized by those things, but you also have the old nature. It’s not gone. Biblically, you still have the flesh that you struggle with, and the flesh and the Spirit are at war. The only way the Spirit is going to have victory in your life is if you’re willing to make some effort. Of course, sometimes putting forth effort in the moment of temptation or the moment of testing is not enough.
Self-control is something that you practice daily in order that we might be strong when the moment of test or trial comes. I’ll tell you a little story about a man named Lord Joseph Duveen. Lord Joseph Duveen lived in the early part of the 20th century. He was a very wealthy man. He owned a corporation called Duveen Incorporated. He dealt in archeological rarities. He dealt in products that had been discovered in archeological digs. He sold them. He acquired them from all over the world.
Now, in the year 1915, Lord Joseph Duveen sent one of his employees to England. He decided to send one his employees to acquire some pottery that had been unearthed in an archeological dig. He wanted it. The employee he sent had frequently before to Europe to acquire various artifacts. Of course, 1915 was a dangerous time because the world was at war. The United States had not yet entered the war, but the world was at war. It was not always safe to travel across the Atlantic. Lord Joseph Duveen called the employee in. He said, “You don’t have to go. I’d like you to go, but you don’t have to.” He had booked passage for him on the Lusitania. The employee said, “Well, I’m happy to go. Every time you send me overseas, I know it’s dangerous. I know the world is at war but it’s a strange think what I’ve been doing. Just in case we take a torpedo hit, I’ve been spending time treading ice water.” He said, “I started out just treading ice water in this tank for 5 minutes and now I can tread ice water for two hours.” Lord Joseph Duveen just laughed. He thought it had to be the flakiest thing he’d ever heard. This guy is wacko. He said, “Well, great then. You can go.”
So you know what happened. May 7, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed the Lusitania. The Lusitania was the largest… I mean when it was built, it was the largest ship in the world. The ship went down in 20 minutes. 1,198 people lost their lives. Only a few survived, but one of them was this employee of Lord Joseph Duveen. He treaded water for five hours until they picked him up and he was in excellent condition.
Now, that is a true story—a strange one but it does illustrate a truth. When you come to the moment of testing, it’s not enough to be able to put forth an effort there. You need to put forth an effort even in preparation day by day. It takes effort to be faithful in God’s Word.
I know many of you love to be in the scriptures. I do too, but there are times when it is discipline. There are times when it take self-control. There are times when it takes effort. It takes effort to be faithful in prayer. It takes effort to be faithful in taking the time to come together with other brothers and sisters in Christ. It all takes effort. Without that, we are not going to be strong in the moment of trial or testing.
So we have this teaching from God’s Word. Make every effort. Make every effort. God is looking for a special people. In a fallen world, He is looking for people who hear His voice and follow Him.
There is a third and final teaching this morning that relates to the relationship of self-control with God’s discipline. You see, the purpose of parental discipline is to impart self-control. In the Christian family, the purpose of imparting self-control is that our children might grow up to live lives pleasing to God. But if we are not willing, as adults, to make every effort in the matters of self-control, we should expect that we are going to begin to experience divine discipline. We are going to experience God’s discipline.
Now, Jonathan Edwards was born on September 5th, 1703. He was a brilliant man. He entered Yale University at the age of 13 and graduated a few years later. He was one of the leading intellectuals of colonial American. Jonathan Edwards was, along with George Whitfield, a leader in the great awakenings of the 1730’s and the 1740’s of colonial America. In the year 1741, Jonathan Edwards became the senior paster of the Northampton Church in Massachusetts, one of the greatest churches in colonial America. He served faithfully; I mean, Jonathan Edwards loved Jesus Christ. He loved people and he had a servant’s heart.
In 1750, after nine years of service, his congregation fired him. They fired him because of his view of communion. He had a controversial view of communion. Jonathan Edwards believed that you should only take communion if you were born anew, if you were born from above, if you truly received Christ as your Lord and Savior. But at that time, in the churches with which he was affiliated, communion was considered open, and Jonathan Edwards did not want it to be completely open. He wanted it to be only open for Christians and they actually fired him. That was hard for him, because he was married and had ten children. But he received it graciously and he became a missionary to the Indians.
After a few years, the church at Northampton asked him to come back, but just for a brief time. They said they wanted him to come and be an interim pastor until they could find the person they really wanted. And yet he accepted that graciously. He came back and he just served with a servant’s heart until 1756 when he became the President of Harvard University.
Now, I know many of you have heard of Jonathan Edwards and my assumption is that when you think of him, you think of one sermon he gave, because Jonathan Edwards is famous above all else for one sermon called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Some of you have heard that sermon or heard that sermon title. I feel like that was kind of unfortunate, because some people began to think of God primarily in terms of His wrath and I don’t think that’s the primary sense in which God wants us to view Him. Now, God is holy, and He is just. He will not forebear sin forever. The Bible does tell us that, indeed, at the consummation, the wrath of God will come. But God, the Bible tells us, is not willing or wishing that any should perish but that that all should reach for penitence. God is love. If you are a Christian, if you received Christ as your Lord and Savior, God wants you to understand that none of His actions towards you today are based on His wrath.
There are two words in the Bible that I think a lot of Christians kind of overlook or just ignore: The words “expiation” and “propitiation.” I think many of us, when we read the Bible and we see the word expiation or propitiation we just go right over them. It sounds like a difficult word. The Bible tells us that Jesus is the expiation for our sins and the Bible says that Jesus is the propitiation. “Hilasmos” is the Greek word for propitiation.
Now, there is a difference between expiation and propitiation. It is very important. Imagine you were a factory worker and working at that factory you had a horrible tragic accident on one of the machines and you cut your hand off. You later found out that it was because the machine was faulty, and it was faulty because the company did not take property care of its machinery. You would probably go to court and would seek a settlement. The court would probably award you a generous amount of money. The award from the court would be the expiation for the company’s sin. That award from the court would be the expiation for the company’s crime. It would be payment for what the company had done. It would be an effort to satisfy the demand for justice.
But you see, you might still feel angry toward the company. Even though their sin was expiated, you might still feel angry toward the company every time you look at your arm and see that the hand is missing. How does the anger get propitiated? How is your anger removed?
Well, here is the beauty of the gospel. This is theologically complex. The Bible indicates that when Jesus died on the cross, He not only expiated our sins. He died in our place. He not only expiated our sins, He not only took our penalty upon Himself, but he propitiated the wrath of God, the just and the holy wrath of God. He propitiated that wrath.
If you have come under the umbrella of Christ, if you have embraced Him as Lord and Savior, this is so important. God does not have wrath towards you now. He is not trying to get even with you. In a sense, he got even on the cross, you understand. It is true that God disciplines us, but it is always out of love, because we have become His children through Christ, and he loves us as His very own children. His discipline is designed to bring us back when we are out of control.
When you were a child, did you ever float a boat on a lake or a pond? I know I did as a kid. You get right by the lake or pond and you just kind of hold the boat at the water’s edge and try to run it along the water. Maybe you would take your hand off every once in a while, just to see if it floats. Did you ever lose the boat, where it got away from your hand and kind of went out of control, out into the pond or lake? How do you get the boat back? You could go into the water, but that is kind of dangerous. Most kids throw rocks, but you have got to be good at it. You can’t hit the boat. You can’t have the rock land in front of the boat because the wake would push it further out. You have to land the rock just perfectly. You have to land the rock just beyond the boat so that the wake will push the boat back towards the shore.
You see, that’s what discipline is like, God’s discipline in the life of the Christian. We feel the wake. Sometimes you feel the storm and wonder what’s happening. If it’s God’s discipline, it is merely His effort to bring you back to shore, back under control. That is the purpose of God’s discipline when we lack self-control.
I know our time is up. I want to share a little passage that I think is one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible. It is in Hebrews chapter 12. In Hebrews, chapter 12, the author writes these words: “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us set aside every weight and every sin which clings so closely and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God. Consider Him who endured for sinners such hostility against Himself that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. For in your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood, Have you forgotten the exhortation which addresses you as children, saying, ‘My children, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are punished by Him. For the Lord disciplines those whom He loves and chastises every child that He receives.’ It is for discipline that you may endure.
“God is treating you like His very own children. For what Child is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you would be illegitimate children and not God’s children. Besides this, we have earthly parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not much more be subject to the Father of Spirits and live? Our earthly parents disciplined us for a short time at their pleasure, but God disciplines us always for our good that we might share His holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to all who have been trained by it. Therefore gird up, lift up, your drooping hands. Strengthen your week knees. Make straight paths for your feet that what is lame may not be out of joint but may rather be healed.”
You see, when God disciplines us, it is an expression of His love. When He disciplines us, He is treating up as His very own children, and not in order to wound us but always to heal us. That is why He disciplines us. So, we have self-control. The purpose of parental discipline is to impart self-control, that we may live lives pleasing to God. If we do not make every effort, then we should expect God’s discipline in our life, but it is always a manifestation of God’s love. He is treating us as His own children.
I think most of you know my wife’s name is Barbara. Sometimes we buy cups or some other gift for each other and it has Barbara’s name on it, and it will give the meaning of her name. I am sure you have seen things like that. It is always kind of humorous to me that whenever you see the meaning of the name Barbara, they try to make it sound kind of exotic. It says Barbara means “mysterious,” or it says Barbara means “a stranger in our midst.” But you see the truth is that the name Barbara has exactly the same root and derivation as the word barbarian. That is the truth. Both Barbara and barbarian come from the Greek word “barbarous,” which was adopted by the Romans. “Barbarous” simply means “alien.” It was referred to anyone who was a non-Roman who lived outside the Roman Empire. In fact, the word barbarous is built on the word “Barba” which means “beard,” because most of the people who lived outside the Roman Empire were regarded as bearded. But the word “barbarous” simply means “alien.”
Now, you know in the Bible oftentimes Christians are called “aliens.” Have you noticed that? Christians, if you really believe in Jesus Christ, it is said that you are an alien and a stranger on the earth. We are all Barbara if we are Christians. We are all aliens because this world is not our home. The Bible says we are just passing through. Our true homeland is in heaven.
The challenge for us as Christians is to live in this world where we are aliens and where we are strangers. It is not easy because oftentimes we feel like we are going against the grain when we honor Christ. We can not honor Christ and honor the world, and yet when we see Christ face to face, we want to hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” That is not possible apart of self-control.
I think God challenges us today to prayerfully seek more self-control in our lives. Let us close with a word of prayer.