Transcript: I think that there’s application here let me put it that way I think you’re right and I think it’s probably just in all transparency it’s a good good day for me to be reminded of that. Does Proverbs 25:28 apply to coffee? A lot of people are addicted to coffee and without drinking coffee they get headaches or other problems. Does that mean it’s sinful? I really wish you wouldn’t ask me about this. 2528. All right, let’s look at this and see if I need to be rebuked. A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. I love this verse actually. So, ancient cities, to give context to it, ancient cities at the time, a wall was not just a decorative thing, right? The wall is the thing that protects you. It makes it so there’s only certain entry points into the city and then you can guard those or even close the gates so that, um, it’s so powerful. Walls themselves are so powerful that many people who would be like, they would want to attack you, steal your stuff, kill people in the city. They see the walls and think, never mind, let’s go to a city without walls. A person without self-control, a person who’s not able to resist his own desires and impulses, that person is like a city with no walls. Every time a temptation comes, he just goes right to it. He just suffers the pain of sin in his life over and over again. Developing self-control, then, is an immensely important quality we have to have in life. And so, does this relate to coffee? Well, let me say it relates to food in general, all food, because food is a self-control issue. Whether you’ll eat too much, whether you will, uh, even anorexia would be a lack of self-control as well, actually. Um, you might think of it as hyper self-control, but I would say, well, no, this is you’re being controlled by the food instead of you controlling the food according to what is healthy. Um, so, so, like, yeah, food definitely matters. Um, it’s, it’s a little bit more difficult to apply it directly to coffee because coffee isn’t controlling you. Now, alcohol controls you. So, when I drink too much alcohol or when I use too much of a drug that has a, a, a mind-altering quality to it, then I lose self-control. So, if you’re doing something where you lose your inhibitions, like, that’s a loss of self-control, that’s a bad thing, we don’t like that. And so, yeah, that, that applies to those things as well. So, some, sometimes people are, when they’re, when they get drunk, when they drink too much, they become the man without self-control, the woman without self-control. The problem is this, even though this doesn’t directly apply to, to, to coffee as far as it’s the caffeine, the effect of caffeine, it can apply in the sense that, um, are you being controlled by coffee or are you controlling the coffee? Put it that way. Let me, let me take you to First Corinthians, okay? Here’s some principles that would perhaps apply: all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. You can drink coffee, Christian, question is, is it helping you? If there’s a point at which your coffee drinking is unhelpful to you, it brings you more harm than good, then there’s something wrong and you want to change your habit. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. This is where it comes into withdrawal symptoms and headaches and all that. I’ve said in the past, and I think it’s still true, that Christians shouldn’t be addicted to anything, and that thing dominating or controlling you is a sign of that. And I have definitely, uh, had times where I was drinking too much coffee, and then I cut back. And I think that there’s application here, let me put it that way. I think you’re right, and I think it’s probably just in all transparency, it’s a good, good day for me to be reminded of that. Um, I’ve been struggling so much with fatigue and everything that I’ve been drinking more coffee, and I should, I should take the wisdom and say, ah, no, all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but I won’t be dominated by anything, and make sure I have that attitude towards coffee. Now, there’s going to be plenty of people out there who are like, Mike, you’re so sweating little things that don’t matter. And I would argue the opposite. I would suggest that when you care about little things, little things like coffee consumption and whether that honors Christ in your life, that that is the best place to be as a Christian, because you should just care about everything, every word that comes out of your mouth, that it honors Christ. Everything that you consume with your vision and your ears, that those things are things you can be unashamed about before Christ. Um, and it’s a really good reminder in our, in our day of overindulgence and lack of self-control, where everything’s pulling at you to, to, you know, when you go to the supermarket, you hit that impulse buy section. There’s a moment where you are like, you are given the, the opportunity to overindulge, to do something unhealthy or unwise or whatever. Not that you can’t ever eat candy, go ahead, just do it in healthy and wise ways. But with our cell phones and with our TVs and our Netflix and our Hulu and our Disney Plus, and, and, and our abundance of food and drink, we are, we are living in a constant impulse buy zone. Like, I just live in that zone. So I have to constantly be reminded, and I have to dial back those things that are not pleasing ultimately to Christ, and not exhibiting that I’m under self-control at all times. Good reminder, thanks for the rebuke, I’ll do that.

4o

See original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bIYND1XedY