Starving for God, But Settling for DoorDash | The Seven Deadly Sins | Gluttony | Pastor Levi Lusko

Today we're going to talk about the sin that Jesus was accused of. What do you think that was? The sin that Jesus was accused of. Luke 7, we're told, Jesus speaking, the son of man feasts and drinks. And you say he's a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

Jesus is telling us he was accused in his day of being guilty of one of the seven deadly sins, the sin of gluttony. Gluttony. There's still time to leave if you don't want to hear this message. The sin of gluttony. That's what we're going to be talking about as a guide to our time together.

We're going to try and define gluttony. We're going to try and understand what's under gluttony so that we can uh re reorder our gluttony and then we can learn to actually indulge our gluttony. That's what we're going to do here. That's that's sort of our our outline. Okay.

So, just so you have a sense of where we're going um to frame our thoughts and to better understand how God wants us to think about food, I've had you turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 10. Paul's speaking. He says, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."

Our goal today is to understand how we can move from what is normal in our culture and in our world and in our lives. Our what our flesh is going to point us to, what will take no resistance. Let me tell you something. You don't have to set out to be a glutton.

If you just live in this world following your appetites, that's just automatically like it's like a moving sidewalk. you just stand there and you know it just that's that's where that's that's the default. Okay. But we have to be fish swimming upstream to go against the current that's going to be the norm in this world to eat like Paul says to the glory of God.

So Lord, would you help us to do that? Would you open up our eyes to see the power in your word? Would you give us strength God to to to make the hard yes where we need to? And we pray God that you would you would help us to see that as we follow you, your way is always better and you have our best in mind.

We love you. We thank you for what's going to happen in this time of Bible study. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. >> You know, horses don't know how to throw up. I think that's interesting. They can't vomit. You will never see a horse. that they don't have they don't have the ability to gag.

Did you know that horses can't gag? Horses can't throw up. Uh number of reasons for that that you could look into if you're interested. Uh but this makes a horse particularly uh in danger of overeing and overfeeding. They don't know when to stop. They don't know when to say no.

They if they get into specifically rich food or or a lush green pasture, if they find their way to knocking off the lid where the grain is stored, they can eat so much it damages their feet or of course they can actually continue eating until their intestines and stomach burst open.

They can eat themselves to death. You know what they call that? They call that grain overload. Here, this is the craziest one. They call it the buffet effect. the buffet effect. How seen do we all feel? Turns out horses celebrate Thanksgiving, too. And of course, that picture, eating to excess or eating immodderately, is what we all think of when we think of gluttony.

I can't be a glutton. I I wouldn't eat like that. At least not when anyone's watching, you know, right? But the Bible takes it, of course, deeper. Here's how the Bible defines gluttony. Caring too much about food or drink. Caring too much about food or drink. If you were with us last week, we discovered you don't have to have money to be greedy.

That's we're like, "Darn it. I wanted to think the greedy people are all those evil rich people, right?" And yet the Bible says you might be greedier than you think. You don't have to have it to actually want it or to love it. It's like that way with gluttony.

There are two different ways that we boiling it down throughout church history. There's like a number of them, but you can really boil it down to two categories. Two different ways to be a glutton. All right? You can be a glutton by looking at food and drink excessively or obsessively.

Now, of course, excessively is like the horseom nom. Food coming. Nom nom nom nom nom. food frenzy, right? That's excessive. Think, well, quantity is really what we're talking about here. But the second is is maybe just as convicting. It's not just about portions. It's about eating obsessively. Are you obsessed with food?

To be obsessed to care too much. Caring about food, great. It's amazing. Caring too much about food, it's disordered, right? So, you can be a glutton by eating too much, but you can also be a glutton by eating too little. Then you could be a glutton by being too picky where food just has become too important to you.

So our mental model needs to be challenged because we only look at Brendan Frasier in the movie The Whale, right? My 600 lb life. When I was a kid, show they could never make today. The biggest loser, you know what I'm saying? Like this this this is what we think of.

We think, oh, the movie Wall-E, you know what I mean? these people on these motorized hovercrafts just with their big gulps, you know, just never their legs don't even work anymore because and it's how scary how how telling that picture is. Uh like a preview of what where culture has been heading.

Um and yes, those things are all for sure examples of gluttony, but what about just being a bougie foodie? What about only eating clean organic paleo uh ca caveman diet, right? Need have the compulsive need to scan every label in everyone's closet where it's checked against some AI database where surely they have no dog in the hunt so you can virtue signal about how you only eat, you know, ethnically sourced, non-toxic, blah blah blah blah blah and you religiously smear beef fat on your face.

We get it. You're better than us. >> I'm out for everybody today. Gluttony, biblically defined though, is not about how much you eat. It's about how much you think you are going to get from the way you eat. >> Your way is the way. And whatever you how you approach food and drink is going to bring something to you that's somehow gonna fulfill you.

So we're not talking today about a body type. We're talking about a heart posture. Gluttony is fundamentally idolatry because it looks to food to give you what only God can give you. Looking to food to bring to you what only God can do for you. It's a disordered love.

So, you know, we we would talk about eating disorders, right? And we would think anorexia, nervosa, bulimia. Yeah, for sure. But so is morbid obesity. That's an eating disorder. And I would say so is, you know, a compulsive, rigid, like almost like neurotic, right? Obsession with with with calorie counting in in whatever regard or whatever way that you would approach eating.

These are disordered loves. So, here's what the Bible says when it comes to food. It says we have two choices. Okay, every time we think about eating, which is like some of you right now, you're already like even right now like multitasking about where you going to eat next, right?

We have two choices when it comes to the subject of eating and drinking. We can either eat ourselves to death or we can eat to the glory of God. And you only get to pick one. All right? So, every time you eat, you're either uh moving towards death or or eating to the glory of God.

Next week, um, if you want to plan an absence, we're talking about lust. Uh, we're going to talk about sex. And I had earmarked one of my favorite, uh, CS Lewis quotes on this subject, but I had to actually move it to this week because there's a little bit of a crossover, right?

Um, CS Lewis has this great line to help open our eyes up to how whack our sexual appetites can become. He he talks about strip clubs. Um, this is where I get the nice letter from someone who should have checked their kids into church. All right. So, he talks about paying money to go to a strip club.

And just just look right right ahead. No one will know I'm talking about you. Okay. Right. So, um, he says, "How crazy is it to pay money for an image bearer to take their clothes off of you that you're not married to?" Right? He's that's what he's saying.

He's like helping us try. He's trying to shock us into seeing that's someone's daughter, someone's mom, it's not your spouse, that's someone's son, that's someone's someone's brother, not your spouse, right? How crazy is it? Surrounded by other image bearsers to desecrate and defile the image of God, the the God within each of us by by by doing that and and obviously treating sex in such a way other than how God intended it to to be treated, right?

And and he says he says, "Imagine you were transported to a culture where people went into clubs and and they they they slowly lifted up the curtain, but instead of a naked body under the curtain, there was just a hamburger, a juicy steak sizzling on a grill." And everyone in the crowd was putting dollar bills up, right?

Like, and he he says this, he says, "You would only have two conclusions you could possibly come to if you encountered a culture like that. You would think, have these people never eaten in their lives? Are they starving to death? Or he he he you would conclude, he said that something has gone very wrong with their appetite for eating.

Now, it's it's a powerful question line of thought, but I don't think it lands in our culture today cuz he's basically describing the food network, right? How weird would it be if you lived in a cult like we're like that's like Guy Fiery, you know? Like, what are you talking about?

This is This is Gordon Ramsay here, guys. This there are 100 Tik Tok accounts dedicated to nothing but the food you can eat at Disney World. You see what I'm saying? Like, like there is so much food porn online that we just like they call they call it a feed. >> And we are consumers. something's gone very wrong with our appetite.

You know, now we're living in a unique moment uh where there's these these drugs you can take, OMIC and and others. Uh one in eight Americans are now taking one of these GLP1s, many probably for valid reasons. Uh and and yet probably some just for like the shortcut.

I don't want to have to actually challenge my diet. Is there just a pill I could take? Is there a shot I could Is there is there something I can do just to shortcut uh my way my way to skinny? I I I was talking with a friend and every time I had ever eaten with this friend, they would always order a glass of wine and they didn't.

So I commented on it and they said, "Oh, I'm on I I don't taste good anymore and it doesn't have an effect on me anymore because I'm I'm on this um I'm on this ompic. I just it's awesome. Like I'm" and and he kind of quipped like nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, right?

And and then I Googled it a little bit because I was like interested because I know right now we're in this like moment where alcohol sales are plummeting, right? Like Napa wineries are scrambling. You know, everyone's coming out with their NA beer, Spider-Man's got one, Tom Holland, every everyone like everyone's like rushing to now get in on how Americans are drinking less.

And and there's actually some people saying it actually could just be because of how many people are on are on these uh these these drugs. So, what a crazy moment that that people are being forced to decide between being beautiful and being buzzed. What a crazy thing that two of our gods are actually competing and which one will win.

In Paul's day, uh it was this kind of revalry. The Roman Empire was was was saturated with feasting. Senica writes at the Roman feast, they vomit so they may eat, but then they eat so they can vomit. That's what inspired, by the way, that scene in the Hunger Games where at the capital they drink that pink drink after revalries.

So when their stomach's all full of lobster and filet man, they can go vomit it out just so they can have the pleasure of eating all over again. Turns out the the puke and rally culture of frat life is nothing new under the sun. Here's my question. Why are we so hungry?

Why are we so hungry? And what are we looking for when we turn to fat, salt, sugar, or bringing that number down one click on our fitness age from our wearable and bringing our sleep score up? Like just whatever these compulsive things we we track that that we look to for identity and purpose.

The answer might surprise you, but the title of my message, I might as well give it to you now. Starving for God but settling for Door Dash. starving for God but settling for door dash. Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." And then he added, "For they shall be filled."

But there might need to be an asterisk on they will be filled because he might have might as well have said they will be filled when they hunger and thirst for righteousness unless they shove a handful of chips in unless they mindlessly scroll on Tik Tok. They will be filled unless they have a protein bar from Quest to grab cuz it tastes like cookie dough.

Also, no it doesn't. Another name for the Holy Spirit is the comforter. But how can we ever interact with him if we're looking to food to do his job? And this book presents to us a different theological approach that can lead to a whole different way of thinking about eating.

Okay. So, what I'd like to do is just take a few moments and let's eat our way through the Bible. Starting in the beginning, when the first commandment is ever given, you know, the first commandment is eat. Some of you were going to say, "Don't eat." No, no.

That's the second commandment. First commandment is, "Hey, Adam, Eve, I made this whole beautiful world full of food. Go nuts. Eat it. Enjoy it. It's a gift for you." The second command was, "Hey, one tree, one specific tree. Do not eat from this." And guess which one they wanted to eat from?

They had access to it all, but they wanted the one they couldn't have. And of course, the devil played on this desire and said, "Oh, God's trying to keep you back from what's actually going to be good for you. If you could eat from that tree, your eyes would be open.

If you could eat from that tree, your eyes, you know, you'd be like God, right? It was the first time a happy meal was ever marketed. And he was encouraging them to eat their feelings and they fell for it. And so we have sin that comes into the world.

How? In connection to eating. The first sin was an edible uh choice. Uh then you have the flood. The flood is arguably the most emblematic catastrophic uh moment of of God's wrath poured out against unrighteousness. And we think about the exceeding violence on the flood and the wickedness.

But it was it was characterized according to Jesus by eating and drinking. A way they approached eating and drinking. Similarly, Sodom and Gomorrah, a time when salt, fire and brimstone rain down on a specific location. We we always like, well yeah, because they were exceedingly perverted sexually. True.

But Ezekiel says it was also connected to how they approached food. Esau sold his birthright, missed out on the chance to be in the messianic lineage for a bowl of soup. The children of uh Jacob sat around a pit and they ate a meal while they watched their brother cry out whose robe of many colors they had stripped from him.

The nation uh of Israel ended up in Egypt because of a famine. And Joseph, the brother they sold, having the presence of mind to help Pharaoh stockpile food during good years so they would be there during fa famine years and fulfilling hundreds of years old predictions. Uh they ended up in slaved to a cruel king in Egypt while God gave the Amorites time to repent.

But when time came for Israel to be brought out of Egypt back into the promised land, he did so through a meal. The meal was called Passover, where they ate the flesh of a lamb slain for their sins, while the covering of blood over their homes protected them from the angel of death.

They were kept alive miraculously through 38 years in the wilderness heading towards the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey by bread that fell from the sky. And they only uh one time and it was not a good day got quail. Okay, so the only two two things they ate for 38 years was mana and quail.

It was not a good time to be a vegan uh who was uh gluten-free. So all they got was bread and they got a little bit of meat. But the way they got the the bread was incredible. They just wake up in the morning. It was there. And they were told, "This is all you need."

God fortified the everything they needed in that mana. But they were warned, "Do not try and take enough for tomorrow. Only for don't be gluttonous. Don't don't I'm going to get I'm going to get more because it won't hold. If they tried, it turned to worms in the pot when they went to get it the second day.

God was trying to get them to see what we need to do. Give us this day our daily bread. I'm going to look to you, God, every day. You are You are my supply. I'm not trusting in my stash. Uh the way they got the quail was they complained against the mana.

They got sick of it, right? Cuz you know there's only so many things you can do. Banana pancakes and manicotti, you know, it's like so they they said, "We want onions. We want meat. We they they actually said to Moses, we were free to eat meat in Egypt."

You were free to eat meat as slaves. Can we talk about revisionist history? Right? And and so God gave quail up to their knees and the people ate it till it spilled out of their nostrils. But God reigned judgment down. Many died on that day. And the place where they died was called the grave where you crave in the Hebrew.

The grave where you crave. They were kept alive and brought into the promised land of course. And the mana stopped the day their crops began to grow naturally. God had given them a law to guide their time in the land. A lot of it included ceremony about what was clean, what was unclean, how to eat, how to not eat.

He was trying to get into their heads what Adam and Eve failed to get into their heads. And that is we can eat in a way that honors God or eat in a way that glorifies our appetite. They eventually didn't obey that law. Got cast out of the land in a captivity.

And there the Hebrew children, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, honored God in a cruel king's land by choosing to not eat the delicacies and the wine that were attached to the ceremonial worship of his false gods. And they chose to subsist on veggie straws. And they were healthier and buffer than all the king's horses and all the king's men, even though they obeyed.

Uh fasting forward, fast forward to the the return back to the the land, Malachi, just before John the Baptist shows up eating locusts and wild honey, uh tells the people, "You guys stop giving your tithes, your offerings. Now there's not food in my house." Okay. Now, coming to Jesus's time, of course, food's everywhere because Jesus, the son of man, came eating and drinking.

So much so that he was accused of being a glutton. He wasn't, but he was accused of it. He introduced God's kingdom one meal at a time, would sit with anybody. He kicked off his ministry with 40 days of fasting in the wilderness where the first test was, will you look to earthly food to supply what you need, turning stones into uh bread?

And Jesus of course passed that test, succeeding where the first Adam had failed. His first miracle to kick off the party of three and a half years was turning water into wine, showing the endless supply of what can be looked to as the best you could ever find, better than anything on earth, what he's about to open up.

And then after the wine comes the bread, the largest in scope or scale ministry miracle he ever performed. All four gospels tell us Jesus fed 5,000 out of just a little boy's lunchable. And and what happened there? Moses's mana miracle backwards. Moses said, "You can't keep it." Jesus said, "Bag it up.

Mine's good tomorrow. Mine's good the next day. Mine's good the next day." Religion will only get taste good in the moment. But I'm saying what Jesus does, grace and truth, that's good tomorrow and the next day and the next day. Listen, you can clean your life up for a moment.

You could hold it together. You could put your Spanx on and feel good today, but that religion don't play out. But grace is good on Sunday and Monday and t it's good every day, right? Trusting in Jesus for what only he can do. This is all to illustrate Jesus showing the church as a table for the world to come in.

And that's why he kicked off uh going to the cross by having a meal. Passover looked backwards. Communion looked forwards to his return. He described the church as a feast that the whole world is invited to. And after he rose from the dead, he gave Peter a dream where he said, "You can eat bacon now."

As a way of saying, "Let's go get everybody. Ceremonial laws are no longer how we approach our relationship with God. The first question Jesus asked after he rose to his disciples once he said hi and you can stick your hands in my hole in my side was what?

You guys got anything to eat? I'm starving. I've been dead all weekend. Right? And they gave him both something sweet and something savory. And he liked it. But this is only possible because he hung on the cross and said, "I thirst." He hung on that cross. He hung on a tree deprived to make us whole for what we had emptied out in our own hearts and souls based on what we took off the tree.

What we took off the tree to eat, gluttony, he hung on the tree to pay the price for. In Revelation, the we started in Genesis, but now we're already, can you could believe it? We're already in Revelation. Whole Bible in just one sermon. In Revelation, history's last chapter, we are ushered into a party called the marriage supper of the lamb.

And we're even told what's on the menu. Aged wines and fatty meats the likes of which you've never tasted before as Eden is once again restored. And we have access to the tree of life that has a different flavored fruit for every month of the year. And its leaves are for the healing of the nations.

And we will be with God forever. He will be ours and we will be his. We will once again have access to the throne of almighty God. So the point is eating is never a neutral action. All across our tour of of eating through the Bible, have we not discovered?

Eating is connected to worship. God and the devil both have meal plans for you. Now I know we're all talking about we got to let him cook. Let him cook. Let him cook. I mean, you better be real careful who you let cook for you. If I can control your food, I can control your future.

How you eat, what you look to to put into you, and what that's going to do for you, that is connected to your what your deepest cravings actually are looking for. Whole sermon in a sentence. Groceries are good, but they ain't God. >> Groceries are good, but they're not God.

And neither is getting your body fat to the single digits and keeping it there. That's culture. And culture has an end that's called destruction. The Bible says Philippians 3, living with your God as your belly, flat belly, fat belly, eight pack ab living with your God as your belly, it's destruction, it's shame because you're living with your mind on earthly things.

And news flash, it will never work. The more you eat the bread of this world, Jesus said it in John 6, the hungrier you become. What's the solution? Well, spoiler alert. The alternative to eating yourself to death is eating to the glory and fame and majesty of God. >> But I'm going to approach how and when and why and where and with who I eat based on what God thinks.

I want to do so as worship. Looking at Jesus and I I sort of just went through the meals in the gospels. I identified some particulars that stand out to me about how Jesus approached food, always living for the glory of his father. And here's what I came up with.

He looked at food as fuel. He looked at fuel through the lens of stewardship, taking care of his earthly body. We're it's a temple, right? We're going to look at it in the lens of community. There's not to me this like solitary rushed hurry, grab on the go, just I'll eat at my desk, right?

That's that's missing out on so much that's meant in a meal. the the the communal aspect of breaking bread to the Jews. When I eat some of a loaf of bread and you eat some, that loaf is coming into our body. We're becoming there's a unity to eating together.

There's relational beauty. It's meant to be viewed as outreach. The church is this table. The chance, look, look, look. It's so easy separated by our screens of our phones to be angry. I don't like them. I don't like them. I don't like them. I I don't agree with them.

But who are you bringing into your table who you disagree with on lots of different that's okay but let's eat. Tell me your story. Let me look in your eye. Let me care about you. This beauty of of of dependence on God for for my daily bread. The rich man said, "I can just get if I can just get enough, I'll have so much I'll never have to worry about it again."

No, no, we're not. We're not trying to build higher walls but bigger tables and I'm dependent on God daily. What about the suffering of the of of those in the world who don't have? How is that factored into what you're consuming? James said, "The rich are going to hear on the last day, look, look, look, your gold and silver are corroded and their corrosion are witness against you and are going to eat your flesh like fire.

You heaped up treasure in the last days. We're living in light of the Lord's return." So, there's got to be dependence on God, outreach, mindfulness of others, and then listen, and this is such an important part. Eat the donut later. joyful dependence that as we eat there's a there's sorry joyful celebration.

There's a a joyful that go how good is God that he gave us honey. How good is God that he gave us sweets? They're unnecessary. They're extra. There's a there's a beauty to to something that's that that's that's savory, right? So everything in moderation, including moderation, the the fasts ended and there's feasting that began to the glory of God also.

So a few closing thoughts. Don't eat to be alive. Eat because you are. >> Don't eat to be alive. If your go-to thought is eating, eating cuz I'm low. Eating. Eating. I'm I'm just feel angry. I feel lonely. Right? If you find yourself, I didn't get invited. I'm looking, you know, I'm in the scroll.

Everyone's doing something without me. I'm just going to just mindlessly eat. I'm feeling sad. Just automatically pull through the drive-thru. Again, we're not we're not we're not eating our feelings. There's no we're not looking at happy meals. No, no, listen. We're we're looking to be fully alive. People eating because we are.

GK Chester said it was specifically about alcohol, but I think it applies to a larger way. Never drink when you're sad. only drink because you're happy. We're not looking to take an edge off. We're not looking to get through the weak. We're we're only, he said, turning to these things as the gift of life because we've done deeper work and actually look to things that can actually connect some dots and bring some healing.

And then and only then we're looking to these things not as numbing agents, not as not as medicine, right? Right? Not so we can be enough, but once we are, then we can Yeah. We can enjoy the gifts of God freely, richly to enjoy. Here's to the king.

Here's to our coming king. Here's to here's to what he did. This this is the basis for joyful celebration. And then we fast. We don't just feast. We fast. We we fast because the Bible says we will never experience some breakthrough without it. Jesus don't don't make Jesus a liar.

He said when you fast. He didn't say if you fast, did he? He said when you fast. So he presupposed if you don't ever deprive yourself of physical food for a season, for a time for prayer, you've made Jesus a liar in your life. You're not doing what he said would bring intimacy and closeness to your bridegroom in the season of separation before he comes back, before the wedding supper.

Fasting reveals attachment and enhances intimacy to Jesus. Richard Foster, he said, "Fasting will show you what you're under the control of." You don't know what you got till it's gone, right? And and then you find out like it's it's like um Paul said, "Look, I I I can have I can I cannot have I I just don't want to be under anything's power."

And if I remove it for my life or for us this season between now and Easter, we're going to say, "Hey, let's give ourselves over to fasting. Let's pull food out of our diet." And again, there's lots of different ways to approach. You can pull food out sun up to sundown.

Some some people say the best one is to to eat lunch and then don't eat again till the next lunch. That'll give you 24 hours, but half of them you're sleeping. That's the training wheel. So, you know what I'm saying? Or or you could choose to say, "I'm not eating anything at all Wednesdays and and Fridays."

Or you could you could just pull all meat, sweets, and alcohol out of your diet. There's lots of ways to approach it. But again, if you're not actually getting hungry and pulling some things out, you don't ever get to explore what you're under the power of. And and and when we have attachment revealed, we get to go, "Oh, I'm actually more dependent on this than I thought.

Wow, I'm going to re-examine that carefully and prayerfully in community moving forward. But whatever you find, listen, here's the caution. Once you get excited, the next temptation is to become the Pharisee. Okay? The Pharisee started out good. Always remember that? So, whatever you discover that's now your new passion moving forward, just don't turn your personal conviction into heavy-handed legislation cuz God's going to give you some personal revelation.

And then the next thing is it's it's good because it starts out evangelistically, but then it can end up like, oh well, guess you're not as spiritual as some of us. I think quite frankly microlastics, non-GMO, I think Red 40, it's the new food sacrifice to idols. We're we're we think we're better cuz we we give our kids, you know, whatever you give your kids that taste nasty.

And I'll give my kids a Capri on. You know what I mean? G don't come at me. It is what it is. I don't like paper straws, you know. I'm just I'm just saying don't turn your personal conviction now into how everybody should see. Is that Are you hearing my heart?

I just don't want you to turn into a jerk. And lastly, we close here. Don't try to suppress your appetite. Indulge it. You know, the intensity almost always leads to like binging anyway. You know, I'm never doing that again. It's like 12 minutes later, you know, but but when it comes to these appetites that were that's why I said we're trying to move from defining it to to indulging it.

The question is what what's under it? Lennox, my sevenyear-old, he's eight now. When he was seven, we were at a restaurant. I could not get the server to bring the check. And I was doing all the things hand up every time he came by, you know, f knife and fork across the plate, folded my napkin into a swan, you know, everything.

I couldn't get him to come over and L goes, "Dad, sit back in your chair, puff out your stomach." Then he said this like a bloated buffalo. I didn't I didn't have to try hard. Um he said, "And then rub it and make like a pained expression and just rub your stomach."

And he goes, "Just trust me." So I was like, "Weird, but I'll try it." So I did it. I'm not joking. I opened my eyes. The server was there with the check. I didn't even ask for it. He's like, "Are you done?" And Linux just sits up in his chair and goes, "Works every time."

I'm like, "Works every time. You have no life experience. What do you mean? You've never paid a check in your entire life." He was using his stomach as a signal. Like, you say, "Hey, listen, listen. Your stomach, which wants to be your ruler, it's speaking to you. It's telling you deep because what you're craving for is not another slice of pizza.

What you're craving for is not one more dress size down. what you're what you're actually you my my my friend Lisa Turkus likes to say you actually were made to crave but not food on earth you're deep down craving I could just get the perfect meal the perfect diet is not anything on earth cuz man was not meant to live by bread alone but by every word from the mouth of God what you're actually craving is him what you're actually what you actually need to sink your teeth into is his presence it's his glory it's his holiness he is the bread of life and And if you feast on him, you'll never hunger again.

What you're actually hungry. What you should be looking for is to seek him in his sanctuary. His loving kindness is better than life, better than marrow, better than fatness, better than filt minion. There is a sweetness. His pleasure, his fullness of joy ever more. So the next time you're thinking of turning to Door Dash when you're feeling low, ask these three questions.

What am I trying to fill myself with? Why doesn't it ever satisfy me? And what am I really hungry for? I think you'll be surprised that it's actually God's presence. It's actually God's presence you're craving. But not just his presence, also his work. We close with wild horses.

Why don't they die at the buffet? Why isn't that island on Flathead Lake called Dead Horse Island? Because they're just running around without no one to go, don't don't don't. Why aren't they eating themselves to death? Here's the answer. I Googled it. The answer is movement. Wild horses don't overload on things.

They don't they don't got time for that. They're always moving. Come on. You were meant to move. You were meant to serve. You were meant to give. We've got a world to read. We can't just sit around being Jabba the Hut or Skinny the Hut. We got a world to reach.

And so, Father, I pray you'd help us to delight ourselves in you, what we're truly starving for and not be settled for any counterfeit pleasure. Settled by any counterfeit pleasure. If you needed this message, could you just raise up a hand? Just let me know I'm not alone in my gluttony.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you. I pray for those who got their hands raised like me, who are just realizing we we look more to this world and to the things in it than we do to you. And I pray God, repenting of my gluttony, caring too much about what I eat, how much I eat, how I feel when I eat, how much better I feel when I've been able to be sticking to a eating plan.

What all of that, God, I just I surrender it at the foot of your cross. And I just say, "You're enough for me, God. You're enough for me. Thank you, Jesus. Open our eyes. We don't need to eat to have. We have, God. And so once we have, we can eat.

Bless your people. Now bless. I bless your people in Jesus' name. You can put your hands down. I want to invite anybody who's never said yes to Christ, you've never given your life to him to make the most important decision of your life. I'm going to pray a prayer.

And if you're ready to give your life to Jesus, if you don't want to keep heading on the way to death, on the the grave where you crave, heading to hell, that's where sin's taking you. If you want to go to heaven, which Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, the life.

All you have to do is ask. He'll give it to you. Give your heart to him. Pray this prayer. Say, "Dear God, I know that I'm a sinner. I can't fix myself, but I know you can because of Jesus. So, I ask you to do it now in Jesus' name.