Sermon Tone Analysis

Well, we are halfway through the year.

Let’s check in for a second: how are your New Years Resolutions coming?

I know at the beginning of the year, I had goals for how many times a week I wanted to work out.

I haven’t completely fallen off the wagon, but I haven’t exactly stuck with it like I planned.

How about you?

I am sure a lot of us started off the year with high hopes and goals for our health.

Here’s what is interesting, though.

Getting healthy is actually pretty straight-forward.

We could argue over the specifics, but if you want to improve your health, you have to do two main things: eat right and exercise.

That’s basically all it takes to get healthier to some extent…eat the right things, and move the right ways.

Most of us can get by with a few extra pounds, or not as much strength as we would like, but certain people can’t get away with that.

You know who has to watch their food intake and exercise output religiously?

Professional fighters.

Fighting for a living, whether through MMA, BJJ, boxing, wrestling, or any other combat sport requires intense training and serious discipline to stay healthy to fight.

You know who else fights for a living?

We do.

No, we don’t climb in the octagon or fight it out in the ring, but daily, as believers we are called to fight the good fight.

We are fighting for the truth, defending the honor of the God who loved us enough to take on flesh and die in our place.

We are fighting against those who would deny or distract from those truths.

We are going toe-to-toe with the enemy of our souls, and the enemy of God.

We are even having to fight against our own sinful desires to see God honored in every corner of our lives.

If you and I need are going to make it, then we need to make sure we are healthy enough to fight.

How do we get healthy?

The same way a boxer would…diet and exercise.

We will see from this passage that we need a steady diet, rich in God’s Word, and constant, hard training in godliness to be healthy enough to fight.

You ready?

Let’s learn first, then, how we have to...

1) Feast on God’s Word.

We are going to have to look at this passage in stages, so let’s go through it a piece at a time.

Read verses 1-2 with me.

This reminds us of what we have already seen: there were people in Ephesus teaching things that didn’t line up with the truth of who God is and what he has done, which we covered last week.

Paul calls them out, though, and exposes what is really going on.

These people aren’t just teaching their bad, delusional theories.

They are liars, and the hypocrisy they teach is based off the work of demons.

They have turned aside from the faith, that body of truth we talked about last week, and are instead following all kinds of ideas that have their roots in demonic forces that are trying to undermine the work God is doing in redeeming the world.

Have you ever heard someone speaking about something, and thought, “How in the world could someone believe something so wrong?”

Well, this verse gives a partial explanation—their consciences are seared.

They are so accustomed to the lies they believe that they are calloused and don’t even see the hypocrisy of what they believe.

Paul would tell Timothy in his next letter to him that a pastor must gently rebuke people like this with patience, hoping that God would bring them to repentance:

They are blinded, trapped by Satan, feeding on his lies.

Specifically, they are demanding that people abstain from marriage and from eating certain foods.

This isn’t saying, “You probably shouldn’t have had that donut.”

Instead, they were likely trying to reinstitute the dietary laws of the Old Testament.

They were making your standing with God dependent on what you do or don’t do, not on the grace of God displayed through Jesus’ death on the cross.

Paul then stops to give us a principle of how to think about anything we eat, or anything we do, really.

Look at verses 4-5...

What is Paul saying here?

Well, let’s think about what he isn’t saying, first.

For one, he isn’t saying, “As long as you thank God for it, you can do whatever you want!”

You can’t make unholy actions holy by being grateful.

If I say, “God, thank you for the new car you are about to give me,” and then I go out, murder someone, and steal their car, it isn’t okay!

The same is true about marriage and food, which are specifically being addressed here.

Paul isn’t saying that you can eat chocolate cake all day every day and be okay, or that if you get married for any reason at all, it’s okay as long as you thank God.

He is addressing those who say that marriage or certain foods are inherently bad, not that there aren’t other restraints on what you should and shouldn’t do.

So, then, what is he saying?

He is saying that marriage and food and experiences in our physical bodies are good, and we should thank God as we seek to enjoy them in their God-honoring contexts.

That is one of the reasons why many of us stop and pray before we eat food.

It isn’t because we are hoping that this cheeseburger and fries are suddenly going to have magical healing properties that make them good for us; it is that we are acknowledging that even food itself is a good gift from a loving God who cares for us.

In the Old Testament, God did declare certain foods unclean.

He did that as a picture for his people of how they could live out their faith before a watching world, showing that they were a separate people who were uniquely called by God.

Jesus fulfilled all of those pictures, so we see clearly in Acts that God has declared all foods clean for believers, so now we don’t have to keep those distinctions.

We can enjoy both marriage and food for God’s glory, so long as we are not doing that in ways that hurt ourselves, hurt others, or break God’s commands.

Now, it is 2019, so someone might look at this verse and make a conclusion that isn’t there.

Our state Attorney General just this week came out officially in favor of legalizing marijuana.

So, if marijuana is legalized, is it okay for Christians to smoke weed?

After all, everything created by God is good, right?

Again, you have to put this command in the context of all of Scriptures.

First, notice that he is specifically addressing food here, not intoxicating beverages or substances.

Second, Scripture is clear that we are called to live self-controlled lives and not to live under the control of anything but the Spirit of God, whether that is alcohol, marijuana, food, sex, approval of others, or whatever else drives you.

Many who use marijuana do so as an escape to numb the pain of the struggle they are facing, and biblically, we are called to face those situations head-on instead of checking out.

That doesn’t mean that it is wrong to take medication, even for mental illnesses like depression and anxiety.

It does mean, however, that we reject living lives of escape and numbness, whether that is through busyness, pornography use, substance abuse, excessive exercise, etc.

There is more we could say here, and I would be happy to talk offline with you about it.

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However, let’s bring it back around.

The false teachers in Ephesus were eating up the lies that Satan threw their way, and they were feeding them right out to the people.

They were denying the good things that God created, tying people’s salvation to their diet or marital status instead of to the finished work of Christ on the cross.

So, what are we supposed to do instead?

Instead of eating up Satan’s lies, we are called to feast on God’s word.

Look at verse 6...

As a pastor, Timothy was in a unique place to correct these errors and point out the beauty of what God made.

Instead of eating up the demons’ lies, he was nourished by the word of God.

Do you want to be healthy enough to stay in the fight?

Then you need a steady diet of God’s Word.

You need to gather regularly with other believers to talk about what God has taught us in the Bible.

We do that here on Sunday mornings in the service, but it gets better when you are meeting with a group.

Join a Sunday School class or a small group and dive into God’s word with other believers.

You can’t expect to be healthy, though, if you only eat once a week.

Sunday mornings and your small group are not enough spiritual food for you to stay strong all week long.

You need to be feasting daily on God’s word.

Listen: I get it.

Life is busy, our lives are scattered, the kids are loud, and you have deadlines at work.

In the middle of all of that, though, don’t lose sight of the beauty of what you have in your hands when you hold your Bible.

There is nothing magic about this book.

It is fake leather, glue, and paper.

However, it contains the very words of God, which he has given to us and miraculously preserved for thousands of years so that we could know him and know who we are and where we fit in the grand story of history.

Here’s how John Piper said it:

“Be amazed that you have a Bible.

Get up in the morning, hold this book, and weep for joy.

Open it and expect the same Spirit who inspired the Scriptures will now illumine them for you.”