One of the most vexing questions Christians wrestle with is how to relate to the things of this world. Christians are constantly discussing and debating the right way to relate to God’s creation. There are at least a couple reasons for this. Sometimes the Bible is silent on a particular issue. The Bible gives us a broad principle, but it doesn’t give us all the specifics.
So, for example, the Bible teaches us to be good stewards of our bodies and our health. In 1 Timothy 4.8, Paul even says bodily exercise has value. It is profitable. But the Bible doesn’t give us an exercise regimen. Should we be lifting weights or running marathons or doing aerobics? Scripture doesn’t say. For another example, Scripture commands women to dress modestly, but it doesn’t tell us exactly what that means in all the specifics. How high, how low, how loose, how tight is acceptable. It simply doesn’t tell us.
Now, when Scripture is silent on the particulars, the legalist, the person with a legalistic bent, a legalistic mindset, will take that as an invitation to create hard and fast rules that God has not given. And then, of course, they will seek to impose their preferred rules on everyone else. They will compensate for God’s silence by adding their own law to God’s law.
On the other hand, the libertine will see God’s silence on the particulars as a blank check to do whatever he or she wants to do, often disregarding the principle that ought to govern the particulars. But the faithful Christian will see God’s silence in the specifics of a particular area as an invitation to pursue wisdom, to think through how the principles God has spoken in his word apply to the question at hand. And not every Christian may come to exactly the same answer, but that’s what we will do. We will pursue wisdom.
Here is another issue we run into when trying to discern the proper relationship we should have to the things of this world. There’s really a tension in the Bible’s own teaching. Let me give you an illustration of this. Psalm 104 tells us that God gives wine to gladden the hearts of men. So wine is a good gift of God. It is to be enjoyed. But then scripture also gives us fierce warnings about drunkenness and even tells us drunkards will not inherit the kingdom of God. Drunkards are slaves to their appetites who ruin themselves. They ruin their own lives.
So the use of wine is a good gift, but its abuse turns it into a curse. And so clearly there’s some kind of tension there between the enjoyable use of something and the destructive abuse of that same thing. But there’s really even a deeper tension that we find in the scriptures. It is the tension between finding joy in God and finding joy in his gifts.
There are passages that teach us to desire God alone, to find joy in God alone. So in Psalm 73, Asaph says, Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Hear what he says there. Asaph says, There is nothing on earth I desire besides you. Oh God.
Can you say that? Can you say that and mean it? Is God really the only thing you desire? Do you desire anything at all besides God? What does it mean to desire God alone, to seek our joy in God alone? Does it mean you don’t ever desire bacon or money to pay your bills? Or you never desire your spouse? Can desiring God somehow include these other things? What does it mean to desire God alone?
There are a lot of passages in Scripture that speak that way. Listen to another one. In Philippians 3, Paul writes, I count everything as rubbish. That’s actually putting it nicely, given the word he uses there. I count everything as rubbish because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus as my Lord. Paul says, Everything else in my life is like trash compared to Jesus. Everything else in my life is trash because Jesus is my treasure. He is my supreme good. He is my supreme joy. And nothing else in my life can even begin to compare to Jesus.
That’s a clear strand of biblical teaching. We desire God alone. We’re to seek joy in God alone. We’re to desire God above all. But there’s another strand. And so listen to some more passages.
In 1 Timothy 6, 17, Paul is speaking to those who are rich in the present age. He’s speaking to wealthy members of the church. And he says, God richly provides us with everything to enjoy. God has given you this abundance that you might enjoy. Ecclesiastes 2, 24 says, There is nothing better than for a man to eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. And Ecclesiastes 9, 9, Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vaporous life.
It’s very clear from Scripture, if not our own experience, that God has filled his world with joys and pleasures. And indeed, it’s clear too, God has given us all kinds of desires. We desire sex and food and drink. We enjoy certain tastes and sounds and sights. Our lives are filled with all kinds of joy and beauty.
God didn’t have to make the world this way. John Calvin recognized this. Calvin wrote, Calvin’s saying, God has filled this world with beauty and with delight, sensual delight, things that delight our senses. And of course, he uses the example of food, which we’ll come back to in a minute. But in virtually every way, in every area of life, we can see God’s not just a utilitarian God who gives us what we need to function. God is an artistic God. He’s a God who is concerned with beauty and glory and adornment. And so he has created a world full of all different kinds of beauty, all different kinds of pleasures.
And so now we have another tension to resolve, seeking joy in God and desiring God alone. But at the same time, recognizing that we have many other desires. And while certainly, yes, sin has corrupted our desires, many of those desires we know trace back to creation. Many desires in the hearts of men have their beginning, not in evil, not in the fall, but in the creation. They’re part of the good world God made in the beginning.
So there is this tension. And this tension is real because we experience it in our Christian lives all the time. We know it is possible to make an idol out of created things. To seek a joy in them, a satisfaction in them that really can only be found in God. We know it’s possible for our desires to get off track and for us to desire things in the wrong kind of way. To desire things in the way that we should only desire God.
And so that brings us back to this question. How do we enjoy God’s creation without idolizing it? How do we enjoy God in and through his creation? Is it possible for us to enjoy God even as we enjoy his gifts? How do we put together these passages that tell us to desire God alone with those passages that tell us a desire for created things is good? Because God provides them richly for our enjoyment.
I fear there are many Christians who live with a lot of low grade guilt. Just a kind of constant grinding guilt. Because they fear they enjoy the things of this world too much or in the wrong way. And that may be the case. But if so, it’s something we need to address. This is an experience I think many Christians have.
I think 1 Timothy chapter 4 verses 1 through 5, which we read this morning, is a really helpful passage for us in resolving this tension. Let’s look at what Paul says at the beginning of 1 Timothy chapter 4.
Paul begins saying that the Spirit prophesied that in the last days or the latter times, I take this to be the last days of the old covenant order, in those days leading up to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, the Spirit prophesied that in the last days of the old world, some would apostatize from the faith.
Now, Paul does not specify the prophecy he has in view. This might be a reference to Jesus’ words in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew chapter 24, where he gives all the signs leading up to the end of the age, the destruction of the temple, which happened in 70 A.D. One of those signs is that false prophets would arise and they would lead many away. They would lead many to apostatize, to fall away from the faith.
It’s also interesting that Paul’s writing this letter to Timothy, of course, who is in Ephesus. And when Paul left Ephesus in Acts chapter 20, he actually gave a warning, a kind of prophecy that would fit with what he says here. He told the elders of the church that he planted there, after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own number, men will arise teaching twisted things to draw disciples after them.
Paul had prophesied already in Acts chapter 20 that false teachers would arise even in Ephesus, in the church, even from the session, from among the elders. Now, of course, false teachers are a problem for the church in every generation. This is not solely a first century problem, but it’s important for us to understand that’s what Paul is addressing here.
But we’ve probably seen analogous things to what Paul is talking about here happen, sadly, to people that we know and love. We probably all have known someone who was in the church and who then came under the influence of false teaching and got led astray. And maybe they completely renounced the gospel, or maybe it didn’t go that far, but they were still deeply damaged by the teaching, the false teaching that they were influenced by.
That’s why it’s so crucial for us to carefully vet the teachers we allow ourselves to be influenced by, the teachers we listen to and follow. Timothy had people in his congregation being led away by false teachers, and they denied the faith. Paul wants Timothy to be able to fortify his congregation and guard them against such false teaching, just as Adam in the Garden of Eden should have guarded his wife from the lies of the serpent, so Timothy should guard the bride of Christ.
Well, Paul goes on from there to explain where this false teaching is coming from. And we find it is ultimately demonic. Paul speaks of deceiving spirits and the doctrines of demons. These are false angels using false teachers to spread a false message with false standards of holiness.
Now, obviously, when Paul says this is demonic teaching, these are demonic doctrines, he does not mean that every preacher or teacher who makes an error is demonic because all of us who teach or preach make errors. No doubt about that. But there are teachings that are so false, so deceptive and destructive, they can only come from the father of lies, Satan himself.
He was a deceiver from the beginning, we are told. And when he questioned God’s word in Genesis chapter 3, he was really questioning God’s goodness. When he questioned the woman and said, has God really said? He wanted her to doubt the goodness of God. He was stacking up lies on top of lies, so Adam and his wife would not trust God’s intentions towards them. And that is always Satan’s strategy, to lie about God’s goodness.
Satan is a deceiver. That’s what we see here and other places in Scripture. Satan is a deceiver, and he can use human instruments to spread his lies. And so in verse 2, Paul describes these false teachers who are under the sway of Satan himself, who are teaching these demonic doctrines. Paul describes these false teachers as hypocrites with seared consciences.
Hypocrisy means the false teachers are not what they seem. They are not what they appear. Just as Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light, so false teachers can appear as wolves in sheep’s clothing. There’s a kind of deceit built into this. They might look and sound attractive, but it is a mask. They are hypocrites, as Paul calls them here.
And as hypocrites, they are liars. But because they have started to believe their own lies, their consciences have been seared. It’s like their consciences have been branded with a hot iron, Paul says. That may mean Satan brands them as his own because they have hardened themselves, they’ve handed themselves over to Satan. Or it could mean that they have numbed their consciences so their consciences no longer register an objection when they sin.
That’s really the function of your conscience, to accuse you when you do wrong. But you can so sear your conscience, you can so numb your conscience, that it no longer functions properly. It no longer sets off the warning alarms, the warning bells when you sin. And that seems to be the case here. Their consciences are calloused from repeated rejection of the truth.
Now, what is their false teaching? This is where it really gets interesting. What are these demonic doctrines? They concern two very mundane, everyday realities. Marriage and food. Paul says they forbid people to marry, and they command them to abstain from certain foods.
Now, understand here, I need to give a little bit of context to this. This is not talking about people who have been called to a life of celibacy. There is such a thing. God does call some people to a life of celibacy. That’s recognized in various places in Scripture.
It’s also not talking about times of voluntary fasting, such as choosing to go through a voluntary fast during Lent, or the kind of fasting, say, that Jesus talks about in Matthew 6, and that is addressed elsewhere in Scripture.
No, this is a form of legalism based on a wrong view of creation. They were making abstaining from marriage and abstaining from certain foods mandatory. Mandatory. They required celibacy, and they required probably something like vegetarianism.
There’s some debate as to exactly what these food prohibitions might have been. Some commentators on this passage think that this has to do with seeking to uphold Old Testament dietary laws after those laws have expired. That was certainly an issue in the Gospels and then in the book of Acts.
And it is important for us to understand those Old Testament dietary laws were not about health. They were actually about establishing and maintaining the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile for a time. And they clearly were intended to fall away once Messiah came and integrated Jew and Gentile into his kingdom.
And so in anticipation of that, Jesus in Mark chapter 7 declared all foods clean. Peter had a vision that all foods had been made clean in Acts chapter 10, and that is right alongside Gentiles coming into the church.
So it’s possible these false teachers are trying to uphold and extend and enforce those Old Testament dietary restrictions, the dietary restrictions of Torah. It may be something else we know from Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians chapter 10, that debates over diet affected a lot of New Testament churches. And that was true in Ephesus as well.
But whatever the particular details, these teachers were calling for some kind of asceticism based on Gnosticism. That’s what’s going on here.
Let me explain what I mean by that. Asceticism, at least in its legalistic form, teaches that extreme self-discipline and self-denial gain salvation. That you have to deny yourself every bodily desire. That’s how you become right with God.
And Gnosticism is the view that matter is evil, that the creation itself is evil. And so Gnostics see salvation as escaping from the body, escaping from the material. And so you can see how a Gnostic worldview would produce an ascetic way of life. And that seems to be what’s happening here.
And as strange as this might sound, it’s important to understand these kinds of views have a long history of impacting the church. You’ve heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, I’m sure. Well, the Essenes who copied those Dead Sea Scrolls were a group of Jews who refused to marry.
The Manichaeans were another group, kind of on the fringe of things, but they were another group that lived in the East from about the 3rd to about the 10th century who also forbid people to marry.
Irenaeus, the church father of the 2nd century, reports that in his day, in the 2nd century, there were false teachers who, quote, preached against marriage, thus setting aside the original creation of God. Some of those reckoned among them also have introduced abstinence from animal food, thus proving themselves ungrateful to God who formed all things.
Irenaeus was wrestling with these same kind of ascetic Gnostics in the 2nd century. And of course, in the Roman Catholic Church, priests are forbidden to marry. And so that fits in here as well.
There are many false teachers in history who have taught a form of libertinism. There’s no question about that, that you can live however you want, you can do whatever you want. But there are also many false teachers in history who have taught a form of legalism, of extra-biblical rigorism.
And it might look wise, because we have a tendency to think the more rigorous a position is, surely that’s the right position. They create these extra-biblical rules, and they say these extra-biblical rules are crucial to your well-being and ultimately to your salvation.
But neither the path of libertinism nor legalism is the way of truth and salvation. I think it’s really important to understand that libertinism and legalism often are found together. In fact, I would say they’re almost always found together.
Certainly this was the case with the Pharisees. We think of the Pharisees as these self-righteous people who are very tedious in how they observe God’s law. But Jesus actually exposes their sin, their hypocrisy, their love of money, their love of the praise of men. They were wretched sinners. They were libertines posing as legalists.
And that seems to be the case with the false teachers that Paul is addressing here at the beginning of 1 Timothy chapter 4. These men are hypocrites with seared consciences. That’s their libertinism. But they are also rigorous, placing extreme demands on other people. That’s their legalism. They’re libertines and legalists at the same time.
And I think the reason they go together is something like this. Because libertines violate the law of God, they become full of shame and guilt. And so then they invent a legalism, a form of law they can keep in order to cover their shame. And so the libertinism produces the legalism. They break God’s law and so they invent their own law as an alternative because they still want to appear righteous.
And really I think we see the same kind of thing going on in our culture today. This is exactly what is happening in our culture all around us. You have people who completely disregard God’s teaching on sex. That’s really the center of the battle in our culture over truth, beauty and goodness. It really centers around sex.
You have people who completely disregard God’s teaching on sex. When it comes to sex, it’s virtually anything goes. And so they have become libertines. But then what do they do? They turn around and insist on recycling to prove that they’re righteous. And if you recycle, you can be righteous too. It doesn’t matter who you sleep with. But if you recycle, you’re a righteous person.
The people at the forefront of so-called cancel culture are this way. They are lawless people. Always. The people at the forefront of cancel culture are always lawless people. They are libertines who then have created a new code of ethics, a new set of rules that they then tyrannically impose on everyone else to signal their own virtue.
Again, they’ll say when it comes to sex, live however you want. But you sure better use the right pronouns for that transgender person. Or you are a bad person. Okay? It’s libertinism and legalism together. They are a lawless people. They are hypocrites. But they are also full of self-righteousness and legalism. It’s both. It’s both.
You see it in our culture. You see that with the Pharisees. You see it here in those false teachers Paul is addressing.
Now, how does Paul counter the false teachers? Well, he counters the false teachers by appealing in verses 3 and 4 to the goodness of God’s creation. And this is why. Creation is God’s gift. Indeed, creation contains a multitude of God’s gifts to humanity, including the gifts of marriage and food.
God’s creation is good. Go back to Genesis chapter 1 again and again and again. Ten times in all, I believe, God declares his creation good. The only thing not good in the opening chapters of Genesis is Adam’s singleness. And so what does God do? God gives him a wife. God marries him. And then he declares it all very good.
That’s God’s own judgment on his world. The goodness of God’s creation is fundamental. It’s foundational. Do not start with the fall. Start with creation. So many theologies go astray by starting with the fall instead of starting with the creation. Don’t start in Genesis 3. Start in Genesis 1.
That’s the presupposition. That’s the foundation. Understand, creation is God’s good gift. That’s the very truth these false teachers reject. And in rejecting God’s gift, they reject God himself.
John Calvin said it well, in despising the gifts, they insult the giver. If you seek to give me a gift and I reject it and call it evil, I’m not just rejecting your gift. I’m rejecting you and calling you evil. And that’s what these false teachers are doing.
But there’s more here. Look at the specifics. They reject marriage and food. What do marriage and food have in common? Well, these are gifts God gave humanity in the Garden of Eden. And they are the very center and basis of human existence from the beginning.
God gave Adam his wife in Eden and God gave them every tree of the garden for food with one temporary prohibition. The Garden of Eden was a world of yes with one temporary no on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
So you’ve got marriage and food. These gifts God gives to humanity in the Garden of Eden, they’re there from the very beginning. And indeed, without marriage and without food, the human race would perish. Marriage and food are foundational to human life, to human civilization.
They are both means of building and sustaining the human race. They are built into the original mandate God gave to humanity in Genesis chapter 1. That creation mandate to have dominion over the earth, to subdue it, to rule over it, and to multiply and fill the earth.
That creation mandate to have dominion and to multiply. That’s got everything to do with this. Taking dominion over the creation, that would certainly include producing food. Learning how to turn grain into bread and grapes into wine and pigs into bacon.
And to multiply and fill the earth. That is the fruit of marriage, to have children and thus to fill the world with image bearers. Malachi says through marriage, God seeks a holy seed. The human race is multiplied through marriage.
So marriage and food are tools of the creation mandate. And now they are tools of God’s kingdom. And that is precisely why Satan attacks them and twists them and creates evil rules that keep people from fully enjoying them and using them as God intended.
It’s really interesting. One of my favorite books is C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. And if you know about this book, it is letters from a senior demon to a junior demon. Basically about how to tempt and mislead the human race. And it’s just brilliant. It gives you all kinds of insight because it’s written from Satan’s perspective. It gives you all kinds of insight. It’s very illuminating.
But there’s one passage that reads this way. And the senior demon writing to the junior demon says, The enemy, of course that’s God in this case, the enemy is a hedonist at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade or only like foam on the seashore. Out at sea, out in his sea, there is pleasure and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it. At his right hand are pleasures forevermore.
He has filled his world with pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without his minding in the least. Sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working, everything. Listen, this is demon speaking. Everything has to be twisted before it’s of any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantage. Nothing is naturally on our side.
That’s brilliant. Before anything in the creation is of use to Satan, it’s got to be twisted away from its natural purpose. Nothing is naturally on Satan’s side.
Now, in rejecting the goodness of God’s creation, that means these false teachers are rejecting God’s design. God’s design for the world. God’s design for the human race. These false teachers oppose God’s design because they are anti-marriage and anti-feasting. They are anti-body and anti-creation.
Again, quoting C.S. Lewis, this time from a different book. Not screw tape letters, but I think this is mere Christianity. He says it’s no good trying to be more spiritual than God. But that’s what these false teachers are attempting in rejecting marriage and feasting. They are attempting to frustrate God’s design, God’s purpose for humanity.
But think about this. Not only are marriage and food good gifts given to God in the beginning in the Garden of Eden, but marriage and food are also means of communion with God and with others. And so these demonic teachers are trying to destroy fellowship. Fellowship with God. Fellowship within the human race.
Think about marriage. What is marriage for? What is the ultimate purpose of marriage? Marriage was created to symbolize Christ’s union with his church. It’s designed to be an image or a metaphor for the gospel. And so to tamper with marriage by denying people the right to marry or by instituting no-fault divorce or by redefining it to include same-sex couples.
To tamper with marriage is to attack God’s design right at the core. It’s really to tamper with the gospel. It’s an attack on the gospel. This is why marriage is a gospel issue.
Now, not everyone’s called to marriage again. Celibacy is good too, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. Indeed, in some circumstances, as he says there, it’s even preferable to marriage. But marriage is good too.
And in a culture that is attacking marriage, that is degrading marriage, that has so discouraged marriage that our marriage rates today are at an all-time low, low, we need to remember God celebrates marriage in his word.
Again, there are times in church history where if marriage was not outright forbidden, it was at least strongly discouraged because it was seen as an unspiritual state, perhaps the second best. That’s simply not the case. God calls marriage good.
And in marriage, a man and a woman have communion with each other. And in some way, their union, their one-flesh union participates and represents Christ’s union with his church. Marriage is a living icon of Christ’s marriage to his church.
In the Christian view, the sexual union of a husband and wife is gloriously celebrated. Without shame, without embarrassment. It’s so strange to me. Some people have the idea that the Christian faith is anti-sex or anti-body. And really, there’s nothing that could be further from the truth.
Just go read Proverbs 5 or read Song of Solomon. God created the marriage bed. God could have made it so the human race reproduced in a way entirely devoid of pleasure and beauty and mystery. But he did not do that. He gave us something amazing.
D.H. Lawrence said, Plato wounded the body and the Apostle Paul finished it off. That is absolutely wrong. And to see that, all you have to do is look at this passage and numerous other passages.
Again, C.S. Lewis, he’s so good on these kinds of topics. Lewis was much closer to the truth when he said this. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why he uses material things like bread and wine to put new life into us. We may think this is rather crude and unspiritual. God does not. He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.
I know some muddle-headed Christians have talked as if Christianity taught that sex or the body or pleasure were bad in themselves, but they were wrong. Christianity, get this, Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body, which believes that matter is good, that God himself once took on a human body, and that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in heaven, and it’s going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty, and our energy.
That is exactly right. One of the most important events in all of history was Martin Luther’s marriage to Katie, because it broke down an anti-marriage bias that had greatly harmed the medieval world.
Martin Luther was a monk, and when he was a monk, he thought he was holier than others because he was committed to a life of celibacy. But when he came to realize that he had been deceived by demonic doctrines, he realized he really should marry. And so he did, and he took great joy in how his marriage as a former monk to a former nun scandalized the false teachers.
Luther said when he married Katie, it was like he delivered a roundhouse kick to the devil’s snout. He said, whoever is ashamed of marriage is ashamed of being human. And rejects what God has made. He said, it is the devil who slanders marriage and made it shameful.
And so for Luther, getting married was not just a good and enjoyable thing to do. It was an act of spiritual warfare. Fighting back against demonic doctrines. Anytime a godly man and woman marry, it is an act of spiritual warfare.
And of course, Luther came to see his wife Katie as the greatest of God’s earthly gifts to him. Marriage is good and is not to be rejected.
And it’s the same with food. God has made the whole world our banqueting table. God made man hungry. And our hunger is not a flaw, but a feature. It is a continual reminder that we are dependent creatures and we must get life from outside of ourselves. We don’t have life in ourselves. Life has to be given to us.
And because everything we eat is dead. Have you thought about that? Everything you eat is dead. Your life really doesn’t even come through food. It is the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who uses the food to grant you life. To sustain you. To energize you.
Through food, we commune with one another. And through food, we even commune with God. When it comes to food, we have total freedom. But there are people today who are very self-righteous and legalistic about their dietary choices. They have created new food laws.
There are no food laws for the Christian. But people have created new food laws. Maybe you’ve heard the slogan, meat is murder. Some people think it’s righteous to avoid meat. Other people chase after food fads.
And of course, the science of health is anything but stable. And it’s often not really pure science anyway. And this can breed a great deal of division and turn people against each other. Because I’m following today’s food fad and you’re following yesterday’s food fad. So why don’t we have a food fight over this?
I can remember when white bread was going to be the healthiest thing ever. Think how much religious language gets used to describe how people eat. Oh, don’t eat that chocolate. You’re going to be guilty if you eat that chocolate. We associate certain foods with guilt.
On the other hand, eating healthy is sometimes called clean eating. As though there was such a thing as unclean eating. I don’t think categories like guilt or cleanness belong in our discussion of what we eat.
Our choices are, strictly speaking, not moral choices. No food you eat can make you guilty or unclean. Jesus said that. No food you choose to eat can make you righteous or clean.
Food can be a very divisive thing even in the church. It certainly is in the culture. But it should not be that way. Make the best decisions about diet you can. But then leave it at that.
I’ve got a friend who is something of a health freak. And he eats really, really healthy. He exercises and lifts weights all the time. But a while back, he put out a tweet. And I thought this was really interesting. This is what he said in his tweet.
I had a cheeseburger and fries with dad last night. Not something I’d ordinarily eat for a meal. But I love my dad. And that takes precedence over my preference for healthy eating. Food is love. Be wary of fitness people who model perfect behavior at the cost of relationships.
And that is exactly right. Food is love. Love. God meant for food to bring us together.
I love in Lord of the Rings the last words of Thorin Oakenshield to Bilbo Baggins the Hobbit. Thorin has been greedy for gold. Whereas Bilbo just wants fellowship with others. And these are Thorin Oakenshield’s last words. He said, If more of us valued food and cheer and song above 40 gold, it would be a merrier world.
And that’s true. And we can add to that. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above our dietary and health preferences, it would be a merrier world.
I’m not knocking healthy eating. But I am going to say that’s not the most important thing about your meals. When it comes to choosing what you eat, base it on your preferences, your budget, your idea of what’s healthy. But don’t judge one another in this area.
How you love and serve the other people at the table with you is far more important than what’s on your plate. Don’t ever let food become a divisive thing. That is demonic.
The fact is, food is central to community. You can’t build community without eating together. Think about Old Covenant Israel. God gave to the Old Covenant Israelites 80 feast days a year in the Torah. 80 times a year where they would come together, like we read in Deuteronomy 14.
They would have a great celebration with food and wine and beer. And they would celebrate together to the glory of God.
Or think of the prophets of Old Covenant Israel who continually describe the coming kingdom of God in terms of a great feast with wine and meat.
Or think of the ministry of Jesus. You know, the ministry of Jesus is kind of like a roving dinner party. Everywhere Jesus goes, there’s eating and drinking. There’s a feast, he just takes the feast with him. And if they run out of wine, well, he’ll just make some more.
The ministry of Jesus is like meals on wheels for sinners. This is what they accused him of. This man is a drunkard and a glutton. He wasn’t. But it was at least a plausible accusation because he feasted everywhere he went.
Or think of the Lord’s Supper where food becomes a means of communion, not just with one another, but with God. And indeed, feasting becomes a weapon for extending the kingdom and a way of renewing our covenant with God.
And flowing out of all of these meals, think of your own family table. Where you come together as a family and share food as you share your lives and you share your stories.
One of the most powerful apologetic tools we have today is family dinner. The kind of family feast that’s celebrated in Psalm 128. It’s a glorious thing and yet it’s so uncommon today.
So what do we have here? What do we see in 1 Timothy chapter 4? Marriage and food were under attack by the false teachers. Take marriage away and you take away a key picture of the gospel and a key to the fulfillment of the creation mandate.
Take food away, make new food laws, and we lose communion with one another and ultimately with God. These were the gifts under attack in Paul’s day. They’re still very much under attack in our day.
God made the world good. Creation is good. Nature is good. Yes, man’s fall into sin created the possibility of abusing and misusing God’s gifts. Of turning God’s gifts into idols.
But we need to understand grace restores nature. Redemption restores creation. And so we can be restored to the right and God-glorifying use of his created gifts.
So go back to the question we started with. How can we be sure that our use and enjoyment of created things is not idolatrous? Well, Paul in this very passage gives us the key test. In fact, he gives it to us twice. He gives us the key test.
Verse 3, he says, God’s created gifts are to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. There’s the test. Thanksgiving.
And it’s so important he repeats it in the next verse. For every creation of God is good and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
See, the good gifts of God are made the holy gifts of God as we thank God for them in prayer according to his word. We go from goodness to holiness through thanksgiving. Grace restores nature. Thanksgiving sanctifies nature. Thanksgiving makes God’s good creation holy.
And that really is the pattern for our use and enjoyment of created things. You don’t have to go behind God’s back, as it were, to enjoy the things of this world. You don’t have to hide that from God.
No, God wants you to enjoy them, provided your enjoyment is grounded in and immersed in thanksgiving. That is the key.
In fact, the word for thanksgiving in the Greek is eucharistius, which obviously is related to the word eucharist. The reason we use the word eucharist to describe the Lord’s Supper is because there are two prayers of thanksgiving at the table. One before the bread, one before the wine. The thanksgiving gets doubled up.
Adam and Eve did not thank God before they ate from that tree in the Garden of Eden. So what do we do when we eat a meal in God’s presence? We double up the thanksgiving.
We could say, really, the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, is the pattern. It is the pattern. The gift with the giver.
So we no longer idolize the gift. We can see the gift for what it is. And while the created gift is good, we know that the giver must be infinitely better. Thanksgiving reminds us of that.
And so as we give thanks, we come to see the gift as an extension of the giver and a revelation of the heart of the giver. The gift points us to the giver.
Indeed, this is what God does in all of his gifts to us. Psalm 34, the psalmist says, taste and see that the Lord is good. When you eat good tasting food, that’s supposed to point you to God and remind you that you serve a good God.
And so we can enjoy God’s gifts as gifts. And when we do so, when we enjoy God’s gifts as gifts, we really are enjoying the giver in the gift. We’re enjoying the giver as we enjoy the gift. We enjoy the giver in and through his gifts.
And that really brings together Psalm 73. You’re the only thing I desire, O Lord. With 1 Timothy 6, God gives us all things richly for our enjoyment. Because in desiring God, we desire his gifts as well.
But something else happens too. When we give thanks, gratitude leads to generosity. Giving thanks for your food leads you to share your table with others. You realize the food on the table isn’t really mine. I’m thanking God for it. It doesn’t really belong to me. So therefore, I’d be willing to share it. God is sharing with me. I should share with others.
Giving God thanks for your marriage leads you to share the blessings of a strong home life with others. Through hospitality and mercy ministry.
And when we give God thanks, we are continually reminded. Our God is a God full of joy and love. A God of abundance. A God who gives to the excess. So our cups run over. He is a God of extravagant love and beauty.
Again, when we give thanks, we are reminded God could have made a bland, colorless, tasteless world. Instead, he has supercharged this world with beauty and colors and tastes and sounds and goodness. This is the God we thank. The God who gives us all these things.
Giving thanks for the Christian isn’t just something to do at mealtimes. Or when we gather together as the church. It’s to become a way of life.
And indeed, when we give thanks regularly, giving thanks creates a culture of celebration and joy.
This is how G.K. Chesterton puts it. He said, you say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the play and the opera. And grace before the concert. And grace before I open a book. And grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing. And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
See, it is Thanksgiving that resolves any tension we might feel between our joy in God and our joy in his gifts.
The pastor Charles Simeon said, enjoy God in everything and everything in God.
God wants you to enjoy his gifts. To love his gifts for his sake. He is a good God. He made a good creation. And he wants you to enjoy the good life.
But that means living in accord with his design. And that means living a life of thanksgiving. It means you realize every good thing you have and experience is given by another and is received by you. And you don’t receive rightly if you don’t give thanks.
You can enjoy God’s gifts. Indeed, you can enjoy everything God’s world has to offer provided you give God thanks.
Augustine once said, love God and do what you want. Love God and do what you want.
We can just as easily say, thank God and do what you want. Salvation does not take us out of the world. It trains us to live for God’s glory in this world. To glorify God even as we eat and drink. As we marry and are given in marriage. To glorify God in all we do.
Romans 1 says, man’s idolatry is seen that he failed to thank and glorify God. And so he exchanged the worship of God for the worship of idols.
The answer to that idolatry then is to glorify God by giving him thanks. God gives abundantly to us. And all he asks for in return is that we give him thanks.
Thank God and do what you please.
TPC Pastor's Page 