Strength Through Self-Control
The following message has been summarized from the live recording. You can listen to the entire message by click the image above.
"He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city." -Proverbs 16:32
"He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls." -Proverbs 25:28
Strength is so often measured by what can be accomplished or what can be conquered. We admire visible power. I never once had anybody jealous of the power of my Ford Festiva. Not one time did I get behind the wheel of that little blue car and have somebody say, "Man, I'm really jealous of that power." Now, they were jealous of my style, but not my power.
I was driving yesterday as we headed down to a men and boys' fishing activity, and we had a great time. A lot of fellas there, a lot of fish caught, a lot of hot dogs eaten. I think there were more hot dogs eaten than fish caught. But as we were driving, there was a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1, owned by a man who lives a few blocks from me. I saw him on Highway 2 headed south, and I said, "Man, I love that car." You hear it. You feel the power of that car.
We think about power. In our lives, we look for it. And yet, although we notice external achievement, although we think about physical dominance and prowess and power in business and life, when we look in the Word of God we see that Scripture does not focus on that. It is not against outward power, but that is not the highlight. The focus, especially of our text and of much of Scripture, is on inward control.
When we think of a city, we think of the city of Jerusalem. We think of Nehemiah, who was called to go and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. A city may be fortified with great walls. With armies. With defenses. We are reminded of the city of Jericho, when God's people came to the edge of the promised land and marched around that great walled city. The walls of Jericho were so massive that chariots could race along the top of them. God's people marched around, and around, and we know the story: the walls came tumbling down, because God did that.
But you can have walls, you can have gates, you can have armies, and if the defenses inside collapse, then the rest does not matter. No external force is needed. Spiritually, we need to be very careful, very cautious, about our discipline and our self-control.
We have been working through the book of Proverbs together, not verse by verse, but moving through some truths. This is our sixth lesson this year. And we have seen wisdom always moving inward before it moves outward. We began where the Bible begins, with the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord shapes our heart, and the fear of the Lord shaping our heart determines our direction. It sets our course. We learn to trust the Lord, and we learn to govern our tongue, as we talked about a few weeks ago. Now, as we continue growing inwardly so that God can change us outwardly, we come to a very important internal matter, and that is self-control.
Most of us have vehicles that we drive. If you went out to drive your vehicle today and your engine exploded, that is a real problem.
A friend of mine named Jeff and I were in school together. My buddy Jeremy was one of my best friends in college, and Jeremy had a Reliant K car. How many of you know what a Reliant K car is? Literally every cartoon picture of a car you have ever seen is a Reliant K car. Jeff asked Jeremy, "Hey, can I borrow your car? It isn't very far, just down to the bank." Jeremy said, "Oh, sure, go ahead." And Jeff was gone.
We didn't have cell phones back then. Only doctors, lawyers, and drug dealers had cell phones, and we were none of those three things. Jeff was gone, and we started to worry about him. Eventually he came back, hours later, and he was very emotional. He was crying. I was there when he came into the room, and he said to Jeremy, "I'm sorry, man. I blew it up." We said, "Calm down, Jeff, it's okay." "I blew it up." We were trying to talk him off the cliff, "Man, it's okay."
So we went out to the parking lot and got into my car. Of course, I drove a high-class automobile, a 1977 Ford Granada. We drove to where Jeremy's car was. And as we drove up, I looked, and there was a hole that big through the hood of the car. The piston had come right through the top of the engine. I looked at Jeff and said, "Jeff, you blew it up, buddy."
It was gone. It blew the piston right out of the engine, and that is a problem. That is a real problem. You don't just put a bandage over it. You don't get some duct tape and some baling wire and hold it back together. It is not going to work. You don't just change the oil and hope it fixes itself. Without a new engine, you are not going anywhere.
I am afraid that so often we fail to realize the importance of the internal in our life. We have to have that self-control. Listen to those verses again: "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city" (Proverbs 16:32). And Proverbs 25:28: "He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls."
We have to govern ourselves. We have to oversee ourselves. If wisdom is building us from the inside out, and I believe it is, then it must establish order. Just like any culture, there must be a government. Life must be contained and governed before we have stability. We have to govern our own flesh.
True Strength Is Inward, Not Outward
True strength is inward, not outward. As Proverbs 16:32 says, he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty.
Proverbs contrasts worldly wisdom and godly wisdom. We have the phraseology of the strange woman, who is a metaphor for worldly wisdom, though there are direct teachings about the strange woman as well. But alongside that contrast of worldly and godly wisdom, we also have two kinds of strength. We have mighty strength, the strength to conquer cities, great military strength and power. And we see that strength contrasted and balanced with internal strength, the strength to conquer ourselves, to conquer our flesh, self-discipline.
The world celebrates force, but Scripture celebrates and encourages restraint, strength under control.
How many of you think you are strong enough to put a chicken egg in your hand and crush it? Most of us have that kind of strength. But if you are going to fry an egg, you don't take that egg and crush it. You slowly crack it, and you control that strength. You can crush the egg, but crushing the egg is not helpful to you. You have to be able to delicately pick up the egg in order to use it.
The Bible says of Moses that he was the meekest man who ever lived. That does not mean Moses was weak. It means Moses had learned this matter of inward strength, of controlling that strength, of self-discipline.
The Lesson of Samson
We see the importance of inward strength in Samson. Samson had great power. If you have read the stories of Samson, you know he took a jawbone and started killing people. Now, that is not a great weapon.
Brother Darren and I were once out hunting up in the Heart Lake area, and he found a moose jaw. He took a picture and said, "I think we're in Saskatchewan, this is Moose Jaw, SK." That moose jaw he found was not much of a weapon. If, while he was holding it, a big bear had come and started attacking us, I don't think Darren would have laid his rifle down, picked up the moose jaw, and said, "Come on, buddy, let's go." No, he would have forgotten about that moose jaw and said, "Give me the rifle."
But Samson, with just the jawbone of a donkey, slew hundreds of men. Great strength. Great physical power. By the way, we often have this idea of Samson as a muscle-bound bodybuilder, and I don't think that is true. I think Samson was, if anything, very normal-looking, because it was not his strength, it was God's strength.
Yet although he had great physical strength, when it came time for him to obey the Lord, we find that he did not rule his own flesh or his own spirit. We find that he went after a strange woman. We find that he yielded up the secret of his power to her. He did not control himself. He had power outwardly, but he did not have strength inwardly.
Remember, the book of Proverbs is about wisdom, and wisdom measures strength differently. Godly wisdom values the moment when we can pause, when we can temper ourselves, when we can control the direction of our lives according to God's will, when we can remain steady. We all struggle with that. We all struggle. But God wants us to have that inward strength.
Self-control is not passivity. It is disciplined power, and God wants us to be disciplined. How do we get that discipline? On our knees. In the Word of God. As we yield ourselves to Him, as we yield our spirit to Him, as we yield the decisions of life to Him, we find that inward strength, not outward strength.
Get this statement before we go on. If true strength is inward, and I believe it is, then wisdom must teach us how to rule what rises up within us.
I had a big dog, and as he was growing I realized how big he was going to be. I thought, if he does not obey me, I am going to have a problem, because I have my wife and my girls in the house. If that big beast is not submissive, he could cause some problems. So I was very careful while he was growing to make sure he was submissive to me, that he would listen, because I wanted to make sure that when he got big enough to cause a problem, the problem would not be there. So often we let our flesh get so big that we cannot control it. Wisdom has to teach us.
Self-Control Requires Rule Over the Spirit
Self-control requires rule over the spirit. As Proverbs 16:32 says, he that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city. What does it mean to rule your spirit? To rule your spirit is to govern your impulses, to govern your reactions, to govern your desires. Anger may rise. Temptation may press on you. Fear may surface. How do you deal with it? What do you do when it comes? How do you handle it?
Wisdom, as we find it in the book of Proverbs, refuses to surrender authority over to impulse. Wisdom says, I am not going to give the steering wheel over to my flesh. I am not going to give the steering wheel over to fear. I am not going to give the steering wheel of my life over to anger. I am not going to give the steering wheel of my life over to temptation. Rather, I am going to rule over them.
David in the Cave
David gives us a very revealing example. Saul pursued him. Saul wanted to kill him. Saul was not just angry with him. Saul was not just trying to teach him a lesson. Saul wanted David dead. He threw a javelin at him. He was not trying to scare him; he was trying to kill him. It was not a warning shot, he just missed.
David was being pursued. He had to live like an animal in caves, hiding, while the king hunted him. His life was in danger. His life was turned upside down. And then we find David in the same cave as Saul, and the king is asleep. Saul had no idea David was there. David could very quietly have taken the life of the king, with no one ever knowing, and assured his own safety. Self-preservation. It was in the power of his hand to do it. It was that easy.
And yet David would not. Why? Because God had said, "Touch not mine anointed" (Psalm 105:15). David said, I am going to govern my spirit according to the Word of God, not according to my safety. I am going to govern my life according to what God says, not according to what I feel.
I think David wanted to kill Saul. I think David would have felt very vindicated if he had done it. But David had to rule over his spirit according to the Word of God. He had to refuse to harm God's anointed. In doing so, David not only preserved his own conscience, but also his own calling. God had already anointed him king. He was not king yet, but the calling of God was on his life. If David had taken the life of Saul, I wonder if God would have removed that calling from David. But David ruled himself.
Self-control protects what anger would destroy. We like to get angry. We like to lash out. We like to feel vindicated. But God wants us to have self-control. Without that inward ruling, even the strongest life becomes vulnerable.
Strengthen the Weak Points
I remember Dr. Joe Boyd. Most of you have probably never heard him preach, though some of you have heard the name. He was an evangelist and a preacher, and before he was called to preach, he was a football player, a wrestler, and a boxer for Texas A&M University. He was a big man, a man's man. God called him to preach, and he preached for decades, a soul winner and a great preacher. I loved Brother Boyd. He would come to our college when I was a young student.
He told about a man he was supposed to box. Going past a little restaurant one day, he looked in and saw his opponent sitting at a table drinking a milkshake, and an idea came to him. When the match started, he went after that man's stomach, and sure enough, he won the match. He had found the weak point.
May I say it this way? We need to let the Lord strengthen the weak points in our life, so that our strength does not become our vulnerability.
A Life Without Self-Control Lacks Defense
A life without self-control lacks defense. Proverbs 25:28 says, he that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down and without walls.
By the way, you control your spirit, not the people around you. "Well, you just made me." No. No one makes you do anything. No one's actions make you act. You choose how you act. What we want to do is blame somebody else for our poor actions. But we choose our actions. That does not mean everyone else around us acts correctly, but you and I are responsible, individually and personally, for every word we say and everything we do. It is not someone else's fault. It is not someone else's decision. It is our decision. We have to realize that we must rule our own spirit.
No Walls, No Boundaries
Ancient cities like Jerusalem and Jericho relied on a wall, a protection around the city. Without it, enemies could come in and simply walk right through. A life without self-control has no walls, no boundaries at all. Words just escape unchecked. We say whatever we want to say. We do not control our tongue. Our desires roam unguarded.
If you put a bunch of meat out on the counter in my house and let my dog walk into the kitchen, you know where that meat is going. My dog, who is about as tall as a wolf, can walk up to the counter and lay his chin right on it. Put a bunch of meat there and leave him alone, and it is going into his belly. He will take it. He will watch and he will wait, but as soon as the opportunity comes, when he thinks nobody knows where he is, he is going to grab it.
Can I tell you, if we do not have self-control, our desires are going to roam unguarded, and we are going to fulfill desires outside the will of God. Our anger is going to erupt whenever it wants. There is no boundary. A life without self-control lacks defense. There is no guarding.
My first car had no seatbelts. I am not really that old, but my car was that old. The first car I owned was a 1961, and back then seatbelts were an option. How many of you would choose not to have seatbelts? Probably not today, but it used to be a choice. The man who originally ordered that car said, "I want the special-order, high-compression FE 390 Thunderbird engine, but I don't want seatbelts." He paid for the important part, but there were no seatbelts in it.
I remember driving that car down a two-lane, winding highway one day, faster than any human being should ever drive a car. I was going so fast the front end started feeling floaty, like it was going to go airborne. I do not recommend that. The telephone poles were like a wall. And as I looked down and saw the speed, I thought to myself, the dash is solid steel, and all the knobs and things look like spears coming at me. I realized that if a mouse ran out into the road at the speed I was going, I was probably dead, because I had no seatbelt. There was no protection. So I let off the gas. It took a long time just to get down to 100 miles an hour. I realized I was not protected.
So many of us go through life at over 100 miles an hour with no walls of protection around our spirit. We have no defense. We allow our emotions to run wild. We allow our flesh whatever it wants. We say whatever we want, we act on whatever we want, and we blame other people for our actions, because we have no self-control and no defense.
The Warning of Cain
Remember Cain. Cain illustrates a sobering truth. When Cain got angry, he looked at his brother and thought, God accepted your sacrifice and did not accept mine. Cain got mad, and he killed his brother. Why? Because Cain had no self-control. He had no defense. The Lord warned him, "sin lieth at the door" (Genesis 4:7). But Cain did not control himself, and his lack of inward control led to outward tragedy, to the point where God said, "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground" (Genesis 4:10). Cain, you did not control yourself. You murdered your brother. It took his life.
Walls Before the Danger
A life without self-control lacks defense. Wisdom understands that discipline preserves life. It protects life. It builds walls before danger arrives.
A few years ago, Brother Darren and I were out in a canoe together. That will never happen again. I am smarter than that now. The canoe turned upside down, which is not the direction a canoe is supposed to turn. When it did, Darren had a life jacket on that kept him from going underwater. Otherwise he would be at the bottom of Lake Wabamun right now. But he had that life preserver on, and it kept him afloat even though he was out of the boat. He was prepared.
Whenever we live without any self-control, we have no life preserver. We have no defense. And so often we fall out of the boat. We get to the edge and we fall, and there is trouble, and our life is chaos, and it seems there is no hope, and we are trying to stay above water spiritually and emotionally, because we have no defense.
Wisdom in the book of Proverbs helps us understand the importance of being protected before the danger comes, of having on that life jacket of preservation. When the Word of God establishes those walls and those protections, when I have that self-control, that power under control, that disciplined life that works from the inside out, then my life and your life will be marked by steadiness rather than volatility.
Not that constant up and down, up and down. For many people today, that is their life. Up, down, up, always at one extreme or the other, never consistent. Everything is always an emergency. It is always chaos. Everything is always falling apart. Everyone else seems okay, but my life is falling apart, and I am blaming everybody else, because there is no stability. But that constant chaos, that searching for someone else to blame, is a lack of self-control. It is a lack of ruling ourselves, ruling our tongue, our heart, our emotions. Rather than ruling them, we give them up and blame others for the way we act, when in reality we have no control. But when wisdom gives us those walls and builds that stability in our life, we have that steadiness.
Self-Control Produces Stability Over Time
Self-control produces stability over time.
How many of you remember learning to ride a bicycle? I learned to ride a bicycle in Gillette, Wyoming. That is also where I got saved as a boy. We lived there, and there are many beautiful places in Wyoming. There are the Black Hills, beautiful country. But where I lived was not lush. It was beautiful in a very rugged sense, but there was no grass, there were really no trees, and the only green things were the cactus. There was red rock everywhere and flat-topped mountains called buttes, just rock and rough, rugged country. I enjoy that ruggedness now, but that is where I lived, with tumbleweeds and cactus and red rock.
That is where I learned to ride a bicycle. When you ride a bicycle and you fall, if you fall in the grass it is not too bad, but if you fall on rocks, you are always getting cut up. I probably spent a few months of my boyhood with my legs red from blood and scabs and scars from falling down. I would fall off the bike, and get back on, and fall off, and get back on. I remember the struggle of teaching myself, how hard it was just to keep the bicycle upright.
Now I can get on a bicycle today and have no problem keeping it upright. I have no problem riding. I have learned that balance, that stability. I don't get on a bike and wobble around. I have that stability. But that did not happen immediately.
Christian, we want that stability. You want it in your relationships. You want it in your day-to-day life. There are many who do not have stability even in their jobs, because they have no control in their life, and everything is unstable. But self-control gives us that stability over time.
Self-control is not dramatic. It is not some "wow" moment. It is simply allowing the Lord to govern our heart, our emotions, and our flesh. It is choosing patience over reaction. We like to react. It is choosing obedience over impulse. We don't like that. We just want to impulsively do whatever we please, but we have to choose to obey.
There is a reason most of our culture is in terrible credit card debt right now. Most of our population has staggering debt. Why? Because we cannot control our impulses. "I have to have that. I have to buy that. I need that." We have no stability. We have to choose stability and long-term faithfulness over short-term gratification.
Esau, Joseph, and the Long View
It is amazing how many things we are willing to sacrifice for something so short-term. Think of the twin brothers Jacob and Esau. Esau was willing to sell his birthright, everything in his future, for a bowl of lentils. A bowl of soup. A bowl of chili. That was it. "I have to eat right now. If you give me that food, you can have everything else in the future, but I need it right now." And I am afraid that this morning many of us are right there with Esau. "I'll give up what is important, as long as I can have this pleasure right now. As long as I can be satisfied right now. As long as I get what I want right now. But the future, who cares about that?"
Then think of Joseph, who had a dream, and then another dream, and was sold by his brothers into slavery. He was working in Potiphar's house when Potiphar's wife said to him, "Lie with me." Now hold on. Had Joseph done that, I believe his life would have gotten much easier as a slave. He would have been treated even better. But Joseph said, this is not right, and Joseph fled. Why? Because Joseph was not willing to throw away his integrity to get something he wanted, to get stability for a moment rather than stability over time.
So many times we are willing to do whatever it takes. If I get what I want, sure. If I have to lie, sure. If I have to make up a story, sure. If I have to do someone wrong, well, if it helps me. It is all about me. But we have to have that self-control.
The Cost That Pays for Itself
Self-control may feel costly in the moment, but it preserves life in the long run.
Several years ago I got tired of buying subpar boots every couple of years and wearing them out. Nothing is cheap in our culture, and even ten or twelve years ago things were not that much cheaper than they are now. About every two years I would buy a pair of waterproof boots for hunting and the outdoors, at least $125, maybe $150 a pair, telling myself they would pay for themselves. Then I bought one good pair. Right now the sole on that boot is starting to separate, but I have decided I can put some goop on it and fix it, and that pair is almost eight years old. I am still wearing the same boots. They did not seem cheap when I bought them, but honestly they have been the cheapest boots I have ever owned.
Self-control seems costly, but when we think about it, it preserves our life in the long run. It is God's perfect will for your life and for mine. It is the only place where we can find the joy of the Lord and the happiness of God.
Wisdom does not merely ask, "How do I feel? What do I feel like today?" Wisdom asks, "Is this right? What will this produce? Should I, according to the Word of God, do this?" We have to learn to guard ourselves. We have to learn to be principled and disciplined in our life.
Four Questions
As we close, here are four questions to think about:
Where do I most struggle to rule my own spirit? What is your biggest struggle? What area is the hardest for you?
Are my reactions governed by wisdom or by impulse? Do I act according to the Word of God and the will of God, or do I simply react?
What walls of discipline need to be strengthened in my life? Some of those walls may be falling down. There may be areas where there is no defense, because they are falling flat. What is the most important area you need to focus on today?
Am I choosing short-term relief over long-term stability? What are you trading? What are you trading your future for? What cheap imitation are you hanging on to in place of God's will, telling yourself, "I'm happy today," while it ruins your future, destroys your life, and destroys your relationships?
"He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city." If God's wisdom works in us from the inside out, then He teaches us that true strength is not displayed in domination, but in disciplined obedience. We have to have that self-control. Would you ask the Lord to show you one area of your life that you need to focus on in this matter of self-control?
