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This summer we’re going through the book of Proverbs and talking about wisdom. Tim Keller defines wisdom as “competency with regards to the realities of life.” It’s knowing the right thing to do in the majority of situations where the moral rules do not apply. It’s more than having a lot of knowledge, and it’s more than being a moral or ethical person. Wisdom is crucial in the big and small decisions of life. Today we’ll talk about one aspect of wisdom that is relevant especially in the small, day-to-day decisions, and that is self-control. Listen to Proverbs 25:28:

Proverbs 25:28 - Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.

Let me begin by defining self-control. Self-control is the ability to recognize and choose the important thing over the urgent thing at any given moment.

Many of us know the right thing to do, we know what is most important, but we lack the self-control to choose it consistently. We know what we want, whether it is to love our family, live as a disciple of Jesus, succeed at our job, etc.; but we just can’t seem to order our lives, to discipline ourselves, in order to achieve it. In 2 Peter 1:5-6, Peter writes “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control.” Notice that self-control follows knowledge. It’s not enough to know the right thing to do; you need the self-control in order to consistently choose what you know to be right.

There are many areas of our lives where a lack of self-control can destroy us, so let me give a number of examples. For instance, you know the most important thing is to stay sober and stay in control of your faculties, but you can’t stop yourself from escaping into drinking or doing drugs when you are stressed or out with friends. You know that you want to be faithful to your wife or your future wife, but you give in to the urge to look at pornography, flirt with people to whom you are not married, or get involved physically. You know that if you’re going to be healthy, you need to eat healthy food, but you find yourself going for the Ben & Jerry’s at 2 in the afternoon. You know how important your relationships are, yet you can’t control the damaging words that come out of your mouth. You know how important it is to do a good job at work, but you can not control your time and end up wasting away half your day on the Internet, on the phone, or in meaningless activities. You know how important it is to listen and learn, but you can’t control your attention with anyone. You know how important it is to live at peace, but you can not control your anxious thoughts. You know how important it is to save money, but every time you see something you like, you have to buy it.

And then there are some of you who have no self-control, because you don’t even have an idea of what the important things are in your life. And so every urgent thing, every whim and desire of your heart, becomes the most important thing. You end up wasting your time playing video games, surfing the internet, sleeping ten hours a day, doing nothing of any lasting value, showing no self-control, because you have no idea what the most important things are.

Have I described you yet? Remember that Proverbs 25:28 says “Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.” We don’t have many cities with walls any more, but in Biblical days, walls were essential to the safety and health of a city. A city whose walls are broken down was a disaster waiting to happen. It was open to enemies, to raiders, to chaos. There was no security, there was no safety, there was no protection from the outside world. Think of Nehemiah:

Nehemiah 1:1-4 The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, ² Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem. ³ They said to me, "Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire." ⁴ When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.

Nehemiah knew that as long as the walls of Jerusalem were broken down, the city was ruined. Proverbs says that a person without self-control is like a city whose walls are broken down, a disaster waiting to happen, vulnerable to every attack of the enemy. Peter writes in 1 Peter 5:8 – “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” If you do not have self-control, if you are not able to choose the important over the urgent, then you are defenseless against the enemy. When chaos comes into your life, when temptation rears its head, you will continually be overtaken by the enemy and will fall again and again, because you are like a city without walls.

For many of you, this is what it looks like – your job is stressing you out. It is causing you frustration and anger and you feel like you’re going to burst. And so in order to escape, you turn to a substance like alcohol or nicotine, or to pornography, or you lash out at people in order to escape. Your marriage or your kids are stressing you out, and so to deal with it you turn to TV, or shopping, or to eating. You’ve got difficult decisions to make at work, or difficult people to talk to, and you don’t want to, so you waste time on the Internet instead. Like a city whose walls are broken down, you are defenseless against the enemy, unable to withstand the chaos that is coming in, the temptation that threatens you on all sides.

Does this sound like you? Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.