When you make provision for something, you provide for it. If someone were going to stay at my house for a couple of weeks, I would stock up on some extra groceries, clear out a room, and maybe move in an extra bed. If this visitor were an old friend, I might clear out my schedule so that we would have time to spend together. In short I would feed him, provide for him, and do all I could to make him comfortable. In this passage Paul says that we shouldn’t do that for the flesh and its lusts.

Introduction

There’s an old adage that goes, "Don’t bite the hand that feeds you." Have you ever used that saying to give someone advice? The idea, of course, is that you shouldn’t mistreat or "bad mouth" those people or things that you depend upon.

My message this morning is a little different. I’ve called it, "Don’t Feed the Hand that Bites You."

Turn with my in your Bibles, please, to Roman chapter 13 and I’ll show you where this idea is found. We’re going to read verses 12-14:

Paul here is giving instruction about how Christians are to live and behave. We are to be people who walk in the light, not in the darkness. "Let us… lay aside the deeds of darkness, he says, "and put on the armor of light." "Let us behave properly…."

What kind of proper behavior did Paul have in mind? He answers in the negative in verse 13:

All of these behaviors, and others like them, are characteristic of those who are still walking in the dark. We are to have no part in them. Instead, we are to do two things:

Paul’s words "put on the Lord Jesus Christ" sound a bit strange to our modern ways of expression. To my knowledge the idea of putting on somebody like a shirt or a pair of pants is not like any expression we use. In first century Roman culture though, it was a common way to verbalize incorporating the principles, example, and spirit of a person. The Greek writers often instructed their readers to "put on" the characteristics of their mentors by saying, "Put on Plato" or "Put on Socrates" or some other philosopher. What they meant was that the followers should completely wrap their lives up in that person and his ways. They should become like him in every way. In this way Paul says, "put on the Lord Jesus Christ."

Have you put on Christ? Are you acting like Christ? Are you thinking like Christ? If you are a Christian, that should be your goal.

All these things are vital, but it is the next words of this passage that I really want to focus on in this message. It says "Make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts."

When you make provision for something, you provide for it. If someone were going to stay at my house for a couple of weeks, I would stock up on some extra groceries, clear out a room, and maybe move in an extra bed. If this visitor were an old friend, I might clear out my schedule so that we would have time to spend together. In short I would feed him, provide for him, and do all I could to make him comfortable.

In this passage Paul says that we shouldn’t do that for the flesh and its lusts. That is because the flesh is what comes back to bite us. "The flesh" is that part of each one of us that still has all kinds of sinful desires that want to be gratified. Yet to allow it to gain control of us is deadly – a fact mentioned numerous times in Romans. For instance,

So when I say, "Don’t feed the hand that bites you," what I mean is, "Don’t feed the flesh!"

That’s the principle and for the remainder of our time I want to ask: How can we avoid feeding the hand that bites us? How can we avoid making provision for the flesh?

First, we avoid feeding the hand that bites us when we:

"Son," ordered a father, "Don’t swim in that canal." "O.K., Dad," he answered. But he came home later carrying a wet bathing suit.

"Where have you been?" demanded the father. "Swimming in the canal," answered the boy. "Why did you do that after I told you not to?" the father asked. "Well, Dad," the boy explained, "I had my bathing suit with me and I couldn’t resist the temptation." "Why did, you take your bathing suit with you?" his father asked. "So I’d be prepared to swim, in case I was tempted," he replied.

If you know you’ll be tempted to swim in the canal, don’t take your swimsuit! If you have trouble with a temptation in a certain area, and you know it ahead of time, don’t take the things that make it easy to sin.

I have a friend who absolutely refuses to have an Internet connection. I’ve tried several times to get him to connect up – at least with inexpensive dialup service – so I can send him emails instead of making expensive phone calls He steadfastly refuses. Why won’t he get connected? He doesn’t want to have to deal with the temptations that are there. "That’s one more temptation I’d have to face and I just don’t want to bring it into my life," He says.

He has a point.

Should you or I refuse to be connected? I guess it depends on how well we are doing with the associated temptations. Some can surf the web and not be tempted to click into things that God says are sin. Others cannot.

If you’re made out of dynamite, don’t stoke blast furnaces.

A serious Christian ought to carefully review his or her life with an eye toward spotting those things that keep facilitating sin. Then he or she should seriously consider whether the activity is worth the struggle with temptation – especially if it is contributing to regular defeats. Paul says, "Make no provision for the flesh with regard to its lusts." Don’t supply those things to your life that make it easy to sin.

If you’re tempted by some person on the job who is not your mate and you’re in danger of being overcome, ask for a transfer or quit your job. Too radical you say? Is it more radical than losing your family?

If you are trying to gain control of your eating habit, don’t stock your cupboards with a lot of high calorie things that you know you love to eat.

Stop providing the means for the flesh to overcome your weak resolve. Quit feeding the hand that bites you.

Secondly, we avoid feeding the hand that bites us when we:

When it comes to sin, it is most often the prior thought that should receive the blame for the act.

What we think about, what we allow our minds to dwell upon, more than anything else, determines how strong our flesh becomes. That uncontrolled thoughts can completely overcome our intentions is clearly seen in the reason God destroyed mankind in the flood in Noah’s day. We read in Genesis 6:5:

Why such a drastic response? Because it is thoughts that fuel acts. Good thoughts fuel good acts. Evil thoughts fuel evil acts.

As the storm of God’s judgment neared Jerusalem in the days of Jeremiah, God pleaded with Judah in Jeremiah 4:14:

The idea that it is OK of us to think evil as long as we don’t actually do it is a lie from the pit. One of the richest sources of food for the hand that bites us is an uncontrolled, unchallenged thought life.

Jesus said in Luke 6:45,

The "heart" Jesus refers to here is the mind.

It is no wonder that the Lord warned us in Matthew 5:27-28, "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; 28 but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart."

The surest way to provide the flesh with a continual supply of nourishment – and to ultimately be overcome - is to never challenge the direction and subject of your thought life.

Thirdly, we can avoid feeding the hand that bites us when we:

Paul mentioned the battle between the flesh and the spirit in our lives in Galatians 5:16-18:

Surely all of us have felt the intensity of this battle at times. We want to do what is right but find opposition, even in our own mind and body.

It’s like two opposing armies locked in mortal combat – the army of the flesh and the army of the spirit. The strongest army will ultimately win. And the army that gets the best food, the best supplies, and the best reinforcement is the army that wins. This is why in every branch of physical military service there are those indispensable troops that make up the support and supply corps. Their job is to supply the front – a job every bit as important to the final outcome as that of the soldier on the front line.

What is true with an army is also true in the spiritual battle between the flesh and the spirit in each of us. If we feed the flesh and starve the spirit, ultimately the flesh will win out. If we feed the spirit and starve the flesh, ultimately the spirit wins.

We cut off the supply lines of the flesh when we don’t give it the sinful things it demands. We refuse to supply it. "Make no provision for the flesh," Paul says. When we do that the flesh gets weaker.

But we also feed and supply our new nature – our spiritual side - with those things that strengthen it. It is what Paul had it mind in this passage when he said, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ." We must constantly be putting on His ways of acting, thinking, and being if the spirit is going to win in our lives. This involves learning and it involves practicing what we have learned. A growing knowledge of Jesus Christ, and a subsequent incorporation of that knowledge into life is coupled with a stubborn refusal to indulge the flesh is the way to victory.

So in this battle to become people who walk in the light and not in the darkness, often the battle is won or lost not in the actual combat stage but rather in the decisions we make ahead of time about which side we are going to feed. Need some specific examples?

We feed our spiritual nature when we:

We feed the flesh when we:

May I pause here and make a quantitative observation? If the only time we feed the spirit is one hour on Sunday morning and the rest of our time is spent taking in those things that defeat us, is it any wonder that we don’t live in victory? God gets one hour of the week and the flesh gets the other 167 hours. Even a simple person can figure that one out.

And what about those folks who don’t even do that? Perhaps we see them here once a month – or even less? Do they have even a slight chance of remaining faithful to God? I don’t see how.

Fourthly, we avoid feeding the hand that bites us when we:

"Vicarious" may not be one of the more often used words in our vocabularies, so let me define it. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the word "vicarious" means "felt or undergone as if one were taking part in the experience or feelings of another." One who sins vicariously is one who goes through the emotions of sinning through the eyes or experience of another person.

I’m sometimes asked by teenagers and their parents if I believe that it is wrong for a Christian to play the very violent video games that are available these days. "After all, when it is all said and done and the machine is switched off, nobody is really hurt. It’s just fantasy."

Are we sure that no one is really hurt? I believe that this is just another way to feed the twisted desires of the flesh. A kid that thinks it is "cool" to blow someone’s brains out in a video game needs to be asked what it is that attracts him to something that he knows would be repulsive and offensive to God in real life. What is the motivation for something like that? I suggest it is the desire to participate in sin vicariously, which supposedly provides the thrill of sinning without the risk. But my friends, the risk is there – don’t doubt it for even a moment - and so is the culpability.

More than once I have seen young people baptized into Christ during a time to sincere conviction by God’s spirit who are later overcome by the things they insisted they could continue without negative effect. Intake of this kind of stuff is like ingesting rat poison a little at a time. There is no sudden, dramatic pain and sickness. But the cumulative effect is kills a little at a time.

Speaking of those on whom God ultimately turned His back in ancient times, Paul wrote in Romans 1:30-32:

30 [They are] slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; 32 and, although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

I have underlined that last phrase so that you and I will realize that giving hearty approval ("Yeah, that’s cool!") to those who practice sin is a characteristic of those on whom God turns his back. God does not love those who love sin.

When we love the things that God hates and participate in them vicariously, we feed the flesh. We feed the hand that will ultimately bite us.

And just in case some of you adults are thinking you are immune to this because you don’t play video games, the same thing is often present in such things as soap operas, trashy novels, supermarket tabloids, and pornography.

If you are a person who just can’t wait to read the latest dirt on what Brad has done to Jen in his latest fling with Angelina (Yeah, I shop at Safeway, too) you’d better give some serious consideration to this matter of giving "hearty approval to those who practice such things." Any time you find yourself gratified or entertained by something that God hates, you are feeding the flesh.

"What right have you to tell of My statutes, and to take My covenant in your mouth?" God says to the wicked in Psalm 50:16-18. "For you hate discipline, and you cast My words behind you. When you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you associate with adulterers."

One who revels in the antics of a thief or loves to hang out vicariously with adulterers in a novel that glorifies sin doesn’t deserve to take the word of God onto his lips.

I know these are strong words. If I’m wrong, you come to me after the service this morning and show me my error from the Bible and I will retract these words and apologize. But I’m trying help you see whether or not the flesh is in charge of your life, because if it is, and you continue without correction, you are headed for spiritual death.

The following words were taken from The Anchorage Daily News, published October 8, 2003…

Further down the article were these words:

The man brushed aside the warnings of those who could see where he was headed. He argued with them or just dismissed their warnings with a joke. The experts suggested that this man was far to cavalier around these bears. I’m suggesting this morning that we dare not be cavalier when it comes to dealing with the flesh.

Don’t feed the hand that bites you. Don’t feed the flesh.

Footnotes: Please use your back button to return to your place.

1. http://www.adn.com/front/story/4110831p-4127072c.html

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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