Dennis Tuuri

Please stand for the sermon text. We’ll be reading from 1 Timothy 4:1-10. Elder Mayar and I do not have lists. It is the sound system. 1 Timothy 4:1-10. And we’ll see reflected in these passages or at least by implication what we’ve sung of. We’ve sung of God’s grace in reaching us. It wasn’t us that chose God. Our choice, so to speak, was simply a response to his sovereign grace. He foreknew us. He foreloved us from before all the world.

And so there is an elect people. God provides for all men through his providence in the earth. We recited that from the Psalms. And our response to all this should be to praise him for every new morning and every moment of our lives. And we’ll see that reflected in 1 Timothy 4:1-10.

Now the spirit speaketh expressly that in the times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, wherein thou hast attained, but refuse profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. For therefore we both labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the living God who is the savior of all men, especially of those that believe.

Let’s pray. Father, we pray that your spirit would illuminate this text through understanding, Lord God, that we might be strengthened by it. That your spirit might write it on our hearts. We thank you, Lord God, that we do not have stony hearts, but we have fleshly hearts now because of your regeneration and new creation and we pray Lord God that we would be built up through this text to the end that we might manifest that new creation in all that we do and say in Christ’s name we ask it and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Subtitle for my talk today. This piece of text can be seen as referring to diet and exercise and there are references to the games, the gymnastic games of the Greeks here. Diet and exercise and perseverance in those games. The agony, not of defeat but the agony of victory. I don’t know if they still do it or not. When I was a boy, I believe it was ABC Sports, McKay perhaps was his name. These things come back from childhood who would speak of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

And for the Christian, we’ll get to the final text, verse 10, where we read of the agony really of our victory. This text has to do with our diet, what we eat, what we shouldn’t eat, what we should eat. It has to do with our exercise. What do we spend our time doing? How do we exercise? And it’s to be like the men who prepared for the gymnastic games and it refers to our perseverance in the faith based upon our hope of God.

That’s the context for the difficult saying we want to address today. This particular text at the top of your outline is verse 10. You’ll note that as we go through this book, I want to look at the faithful sayings. We’ve done that. We actually have referred to this faithful saying that is found in this text before. And we also want to look at the hard sayings. And here we have this saying in verse 10 that God is the savior of all men. What does it mean? And we’ll get to that. And I think that the context for all of this is what’s important to understand—why that is inserted there and what it means.

And so we want to look at the context. We want to look at these whole set of verses. But first, I want to remind us where we’re at in this book. If you’ll take your scriptures and open them up, we have kind of jumped around a bit because of the officer sections in 1 Timothy 3 that we dealt with as we move to the selection and ordination installation of deacons.

But remember that there is a flow to this book. Of course, 1 Timothy has two general sections that have now been completed by the end of chapter 3, and we begin another section in chapter 4. If you look at chapter 1, you remember that the first reason why Paul says that he wrote this epistle to Timothy, was that he might tell men who speak perverse things not according to the gospel of God’s grace and law, to be quiet and to be silenced, to tell them to cease and desist from their false teachings.

And that begins in the very opening verses of this epistle, but particularly in verse three, it’s why I left you there to tell these guys not to do this. And then that’s kind of closed off in a sense in verse 17 where we read this tremendous doxology that flows forth from Paul. He’s considering here the false use of the law as opposed to the proper use of the law. He’s talking about contrasting the pride of men who are arrogantly speaking forth things they don’t know about and pretend to be teachers of the law, but they don’t really know what the purpose of the law is.

The goal of the law is love. And Paul recognizes his own sin as a result of that law and sees the law as a means for understanding how his life is to be lived as well. But Paul recognizes his humility before God and that God has called him, that he was a sinful rebellious creature before God caused his regeneration. And so at the end of all the consideration of that, Paul in verse 17 speaks out this tremendous doxology now unto the King eternal.

You know this the doxology that springs forth there and that sort of wraps off that section. And then there’s a couple of verses after that relate to the same topic. Then chapter two begins a section of exhortations now relative to the household of God. And chapters 2 and 3 are summed off with the credal formulation we found in verse 16 of chapter 3. Without controversy, confessedly, we confess this: great is the mystery of godliness.

God was manifest in the flesh, the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was justified in the spirit, condemned by men is the implication, but justified by his resurrection in the spirit. He was seen of angels prior to his ascension. Remember the 40 days between resurrection and ascension, preached unto the Gentiles, he issued his great commission to the apostles before his ascension, believed on in the world, and then received up into glory.

And the up and down, the up and down, the world versus internally, into glory, the angels and the men, and this correlation back and forth between heaven and earth in this credal formulation to remind us again, and we’ll see it again in this text, that while we walk on this earth, we walk as heavenly beings. And God’s will is being done on earth as it is in heaven. That’s what we do here is take the heavenly image we see in the worship service and the preaching of God’s word and our own personal devotions in God’s word and take that into our lives.

And so we see that reflected in this credal formulation. That credal formulation caps off chapters 2 and 3. And chapters 2 and 3 told us specifically as the whole book does but very specifically how to behave ourselves in the household of God. Remember Paul tells us just before this statement at the end of chapter 3 that he wrote Timothy these things in case he couldn’t get to him, that Timothy might know how to behave himself in the house of God.

And so in terms of that institutional church, chapters 2 and 3 referred to the important requirements of it and really we could sum those up as worship and men to officiate in worship. That’s what goes on here. He refers to worship in the form of prayer. Prayer in the scriptures is worship. They’re correlated in the scriptures. So he says that first of all, in chapter 2, I want this worship. I want this prayer that’s to be conducted in the context of the church to be structured in this way.

Remember, he pits the church against the state, reminding the state that it is submissive to the church by the assertion that Jesus Christ is the Lord, not Caesar. And he says, I want you to pray for civil authorities. So immediately in the context of the formulation of the institutional church that Paul instructs Timothy in—now this is instruction. This church had been going for quite some time, but it is for our use as well to see what we’re supposed to do.

He talks about worship and prayer, but he does so in a way that immediately makes it applicable to the world. You see that you first I want you to worship. He says, I want you to pray in the context of your church. But then he says, I want you to pray particularly for kings so that you might live a quiet life and a godly life here, that all men might be converted eventually through the preaching of the gospel.

So the worship service is a heavenly perspective with prayer drawing close to God in prayer. But it’s to the end that we’d work out the faith in our lives. So worship, and then he gets into a discussion of what the fact that men are to lead in this prayer as opposed to women. And he gives us some instruction about men’s besetting sins of anger and internal conversations and disputations about what God has given us in our world.

And he goes from that to remind us that the role of women is not to be found in the public worship service leading and officiating. Rather, it’s to be adorned with those godly works. Not to think that you can put on good works of your own. It’s not that. But you want to do good works in terms of your adornment before God, recognizing your true adornment is the righteousness of Christ.

And so women are to be submissive and there to fulfill their normal calling. Not that all women do this, but their normal sense of calling is as childbearers. That’s what Eve was. She was a childbearer. And so most women are called to that. Most men are called to a vocation. Some men can’t. Some women can’t bear children. Doesn’t mean they’re any less men or women, but the normal sphere of things is that context.

So Paul then kind of caps that instruction off by looking at then the qualifications of the particular men who are going to be officers, elders, and deacons and capping off this general structure of the institutional church with this confessional statement in verse 16. That’s the foundation: the confessional credal formulations of the church based on the word of God as our only authority.

And then we proceed to this section, and that takes us where we’re at now. And I do that because now we’re going to proceed directly through the book. There’ll be no more jumping about from my sermons. We’ll go directly through the book now. And we’ll go through these next few sections that talk to us about other things that happen in the context of the church of Jesus Christ, how we should behave ourselves.

And this text tells us that we’re to behave ourselves in a wary manner. Because what does this text tell us as this section opens up of practical instructions in terms of the church and behavior in the context of the church? What does it say? Well, the text begins by telling us that problems are going to happen. Problems are inevitable in the church of Jesus Christ. Paul says that the spirit speaks expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith.

What does it mean? What does it mean? Well, the first thing we want to say that it means is we’re going to have to get ready for what’s happening and what’s coming down the pike. Now, Paul is warning Timothy here. And this warning must be about something different than the problems that had already manifested themselves with these men that he talked about in chapter one, right? I mean, in chapter one, he says, “These guys who are doing this stuff and teaching improper doctrine, tell them not to do it.” But now something else is going to happen.

Paul tells Timothy, that I want you to be wary of, be ready for. And so, congregation of the Lord, I think this has specific application to Timothy and the particular difficulties that he would see, and we’ll get to that in just a minute. This certainly has application to us. The way God works in history is he doesn’t perfect us here and now before he causes our death. We mature in grace, but our lives are marked by sin individually and the life of the church of Jesus Christ will also be marked by problems.

They are inevitable in the church of Jesus Christ. We’re going to sing the church’s one foundation in the communion service and it talks about how false sons shall always be in her pale. The visible church always has members of it who are not members of the invisible church who are not really professors. Now I say always—it doesn’t mean that every church has one person or more that is not—but in terms of the operating principles of the kingdom and the household of God, God sees fit in his providence to cause problems to arise in the context of the church.

Now, in Paul’s particular direction to Timothy, I think we should see that when he refers to the spirit speaking expressly, there’s something specific that he’s referring to here. We can say that the spirit of prophecy found in the Old Testament generally tells us that this will be the case. Why does it tell us that? Because from the very opening chapters of Genesis, what do we see? We see antithesis. We see warfare between two seeds. The seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.

And all of Old Testament history can be summarized in that way. I visited an OCRC church last Sunday, Orthodox Christian Reformed Church, and they use a particular catechism that’s distinctive to them. And over the six years of this catechetical instruction of children, the entire thing is really premised upon the battle between the two seeds. Now, that’s not the only doctrine in scripture and they’re not saying it is, but it is an excellent formulation for our children to teach them about the necessary warfare in the world between the two seeds. Okay?

So, the spirit speaks by way of prophecy from the opening pages of Old Testament revelation that there’ll be battle and warfare in the context of our lives. And the spirit says particularly, we see Israel with all kinds of problems, and we see even in the household of Adam and in the household of Israel and in the household of virtually every family that’s depicted in the Old Testament battles in the context of the household.

Now the big theme there is Adam and Jesus, first son, second son, and understand that, but understand too that the way this works out is in the context of the household of God—problems are inevitable in a general sense and the spirit expresses those things simply by Old Testament prophecy and the warnings of the New Testament.

But I think that Paul particularly here says that the spirit speaks expressly because the spirit was speaking through him to the churches of that particular day and age. Turn to Acts 20:29. Acts 20:29. You see, Paul calls the elders from Ephesus together several years before this epistle is written—that’s what’s going on in Acts 20. Remember this from our sermons going through Acts and he—so this—you know, Timothy is at Ephesus okay when he gets this epistle from Paul, and that correlates back to these Ephesian elders being instructed by Paul what’s going to happen specifically in their lifetimes to that particular church.

For he says in verse 29, now speaking to the Ephesian elders years before this epistle of Timothy at Ephesus: “For I know this that after my departing shall grievous wolves come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves, shall men arise, speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them. Therefore, watch and remember.”

Paul had specifically instructed this church that tough times are coming. So, the spirit was speaking through the prophetic messages that Paul understood directly—he was then writing that which would become canonized in holy writ. Now, I think that Paul is referring also here to the great apostasy that was to happen prior to God’s judgment of Jerusalem and Rome beginning in A.D. 70.

Turn to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and we see what can be seen as a very close parallel passage to what we read of here in the context of the epistle to Timothy. Paul says in the Timothy passage he says the spirit speaks expressly that in the latter times. Now that doesn’t mean the past days. That means the latter times as opposed to the former times. There’s a—the scriptures when they talk about the last days in Old Testament prophecy refer to all the days of the new covenant.

And particularly there’s an emphasis upon the last days of what we might call the old creation, the old world, all of which is going to come crumbling down in A.D. 70 as God institutes the new world of Jesus Christ. And you know that may sound like something weird to you, but our calendar represents that, right? We’re in 1996, anno domini, the year of our Lord Jesus Christ. History has recorded that we had 4,000 years of one sort of world and now we’ve got 2,000 years of another sort of world.

And we know that we’re in the year 1996 in the year of our Lord. And so there’s a sense in which it was the last days of God’s working in a particular way. And now these are the new days fulfilled in Jesus Christ and all the old days spoke of the Lord Jesus in types and now we know the Lord Jesus not by types anymore but by his incarnation. Okay.

But 2 Thessalonians then, and okay so first of all in Timothy Paul says the spirit speaks expressly. Latter times some shall depart from the faith. The word for depart is the Greek word that becomes the root of our English word apostatize. Apostatize, okay? Men will become apostate. Men are not apostate who have never been part of the group. They’re pagan. They’re not good, but they’re not apostates. Apostates are those who are part of the church. Fall away. Okay, that’s what the word means—to fall away from, to stand off from, to separate from, as in a context of schism. Schismatic. So there are going to be men who apostatize from the faith.

2 Thessalonians talks of a great apostasy. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 beginning verse one. “Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of our gathering together unto him, that you be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means. For that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, apostasy, apostatizing first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped. So that he as God sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”

“Remember ye not that when I was yet with you, I told you these things. See, contemporaneously to them something’s going to happen. And now you know what withholdeth, that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work. Only he who now letteth will let until he hath been taken out of the way. He who now hinders or restrains this will be taken out of the way.”

“And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming, even him whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivleness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.”

Now, we’re going to talk about this in a couple minutes, but he’s talking about an event to come shortly, to come to pass to the Thessalonians, of which there’d be this great falling away, the judgment of Jesus Christ on the essentially apostate himself, the wicked one. Okay? And he’s saying here that this one works in the context of Satan with lying wonders and with deceivleness of unrighteousness.

And we’ll see that’s the same expressions that Paul uses to Timothy. These men speak hypocrisy and lies. These men have consciences that are seared with an iron. They’re no longer sensitive to their unrighteousness. So they continue on and it blatently and licentiously, and the same description in other words, “in them that perish because they receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved.”

And this is the application, congregation. I’ll tell you now. We’re to love the truth. We’re to eat the truth. We’re not to eat garbage. We’re not to eat the lies. We’re not to eat false foolish wives’ tales and we’re not to eat the doctrines of demons. Those things are for others. They’re for those that God is going to make sick and die. For us, we’re to eat the truth.

We’re to love the truth. Okay. And, “For this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie. They that all that they all might be damned who believe not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”

See the relationship between the truth—doctrine—and practice, pleasure and righteousness. And we’ll see those two things: diet and exercise. Okay? Diet and exercise, loving the truth and not continuing with seared consciences, but rather being sensitive to the spirit as he convicts us of our sin.

That seared conscience leads us into this deception that God says he gives to those who don’t love the truth and have pleasure in unrighteousness. “We are bound to give thanks always to God. For you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath in beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the truth, where unto he called you by our gospel, by to the attaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which he had been taught whether by word or by our epistle. Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God even our father who has loved us and have given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.”

Talks about the same thing here. He talks about diet, what we’re to eat and what not to eat. He talks about exercise unto righteousness. And he talks about perseverance in those truths. Continue steadfast. Don’t fall away. Don’t be surprised. Be warned. This is going to happen. Okay? And then he says that God might keep them. And that’s what we’ll see how 1 Timothy 4:1-10 ends is with the keeping of God.

And God, the grace of God’s hope toward us is that God saves us. And he saves all men in the sense of deliverance from temporal judgments that should fall upon him. We’ll get to that in a couple of minutes.

So, what I’m saying here is I think that when Paul says the spirit speaks expressly, we can take that generally—that the spirit speaks generally that you’re always going to have problems inevitably in the context of the institutional church as it grows. God plants wood, hay, and stubble in the church and then burns it up. And these bramblemen and their burning provide God’s secondary means whereby your gold and silver, your good works, your love of the faith is refined.

So don’t jump out of the furnace. That’s the point, okay? Don’t jump out. Rather, have a good diet, exercise yourself to godliness, and persevere in that truth. But specifically, Paul is warning Timothy that as A.D. 70 approaches—remember we talked about Paul’s opening sermon to the Jews in Acts, “40 years, 40 years, 40 years”—he knew it was happening.

As the judgment of Jerusalem approaches, the apostasy will happen, the great apostasy. There’ll be tremendous martyrdom, but you stand firm as this approaches. And here’s how you do it.

So, he had specific things he was telling Timothy, the spirit’s witness. Okay? Spirit speaks expressly. Latter times, some shall depart from the faith. By the way, doesn’t say all are going to depart. It says some will depart.

Heresies and apostasies occur first with a few, with a few, some. And what happens is those some that he is describing here pull people away with them. That’s the way it works. And that’s what he warned the Ephesian elders of. And he’s reminding Timothy of that here now. Okay. In the latter times, after these times. Okay. He then—we look—can look at the particular problem that Timothy was to face. Who are these men who fall away, giving heed, they’re men who give heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats.

They have improper food. These apostates are the ones who give heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. They eat wrong. Simply put, they don’t eat the truth. They eat the lie. They give heed to—they have their minds tuned to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils.

Seducing spirits, I believe, are false teachers. John tells us in his epistle to test the spirits by what they assert. Spirits assert things. It’s not that we’re supposed to metaphysically test the spirits and get a vibration, a good vibration or a bad vibration. We’re to test what they teach in terms of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, his actual incarnation, the body is what John talks about in his epistle.

And we could say the whole credal formulation we just read of in 1 Timothy 3:16. We’re to judge the spirits by what is taught by the men. Okay? So these men who are apostates give heed to false teachers is what he’s saying, I believe. And these false teachers seduce men. And these false teachers are expounding the doctrine of devils. Devils or demons would be another word here. It’s not that they’re not teaching about demons. Their instruction comes from demons.

And the demons are in obedience to the father of lies. So their doctrines are built on falsehoods and lies. They’re perversions of the truth. And that’s why they look good enough for people to follow because they pervert the truth. Okay.

These men, their origins, their food is talked about. These are men who eat the wrong food. They take in false teachings which include doctrines by demons. These men’s character is also described. However, it’s not just intellectual problem. It’s not primarily an intellectual problem. Why do they do this? Because they are speaking hypocritical lies and they have consciences that are seared with a hot iron.

They have consciences that are cauterized by continual resistance to the conviction of God’s Holy Spirit until they lose all sensitivity to pain. You cauterize a wound. You make it so it doesn’t feel anything anymore. You put a hot iron on it and you can’t feel it anymore. You kill off the nerve endings, I guess, is what happens. I’m not a doctor, but apparently that’s what happens.

And these men have killed off the nerve endings, so to speak. Their character is ethically flawed. Okay? And as a result of their resistance to the conviction of God’s Holy Spirit in terms of their sin, they end up then believing the lie and they speak hypocrisy and lies. Character counts. That’s what this text tells us. The men you don’t want to follow are men with bad character.

Men with bad character who lie and are hypocritical, who are two-faced, okay? And who do things that they don’t anymore feel pangs of conscience about. Those are the men you don’t want to listen to what they teach you. Just don’t listen to it because it’s going to be—these scriptures correlate that kind of character with men who give heed to false teachers and doctrines of demons. Okay?

And then third, it tells us that what these men put out of their mouths, they take into their mouths the wrong stuff because of their ethical rebellion against God and their desire to sin. And they take into their mouths the wrong stuff and they put out of their mouths the wrong stuff. And what did they put out specifically? They put out men’s laws.

Now he uses two particular things here: abstention from marriage and abstention from certain foods. But see, and people reading this they say well at that time the Essenes were around or the Gnostics or whatever it was are around. But I don’t think that’s the point. The point is he’s warning Timothy about something that Timothy hadn’t seen yet.

He’s saying this is going to happen but it isn’t there yet. And he gives them by way of illustration here what comes out of these guys’ mouths including hypocrisy and lies and the stuff they’ve taken in terms of teaching. But what they will then put out, the distinguishing element of their teaching, is man-made laws.

See, it’s antinomianism. So it’s anti-theism. It’s man’s laws instead of God’s laws. And man’s laws take the very best of God’s gift to us. Some of the best of God’s gifts. The ultimate gift, of course, is the Lord Jesus Christ, of which all these things are a picture. But God says it’s not good for men to be alone. And he gives us wives. And wives are supposed to be primarily—not—some are called to be eunuchs.

I keep saying that. Hope I don’t have to qualify that every time I talk about men and women, but it’s probably good that I remind you of that. I’m not saying that if you’re single, it’s bad. I’m just saying that men are supposed to have wives generally speaking. And wives generally speaking, are given as helpmates to men. Supposed to marry. Marriage is a great thing. And men and women who complain about it, stop it.

Don’t grumble about this great gift. It’s a wonderful thing. Marriage is a great thing. And foods are great things. They taste real good. And we’re going to have great food over in the gymnasium. These are great gifts of God. Food is a picture of Jesus. It’s a picture of joy in the spirit. It’s a picture of the goodness of God’s word.

And we’re not supposed to eat that good food. We’re not supposed to taste good things. You see, these men and their man-made laws contravene the very best of God’s gifts to men. They assert their authority over your conscience and over your Christian liberty to engage in these things. False teachers. These men will be able to be seen by their antinomianism—by their lawlessness as reflected in their assertion of their laws to bind men’s consciences.

Now, it’s no—I don’t know how far to take this—but understand that Arminianism is this kind of thing and understand that the roots of Arminianism, at least as we use the term now, the roots go way back to the fall, but in terms of the modern instruction we receive about Arminianism founded in Jacob Arminius. He was a hypocrite, folks. He was supposed to be in a reformed pulpit and in a reformed seminary adhering to the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, adhering to the secondary standards of his church.

And he didn’t do it. But he didn’t say, “I don’t believe this and I’m going to stop teaching here as a result.” He didn’t do that. He occupied those positions of authority and taught false doctrine to the back door to the students that he had. He feigned to believe the truth, but he believed a lie about the nature of man and God. He was a hypocrite and that’s all you needed to know about it at that time.

Guys, hypocritical. And so, as a result, that whole system produced a sect. I mean, I know this sounds very, you know, strong, but you know, this in point, a lot of Armenians today do not understand Arminianism. They don’t even know what the name means. And if they have heard of it, they’re just going to churches. They believe the pastor, which is what people are supposed to do for the most part—test it by the word.

They don’t understand it. But I’m talking about guys who are self-consciously Arminian, who specifically reject God’s sovereignty and election, and who specifically reject total depravity and original sin and original guilt. These men are these men that are identified for us here. I believe that it’s a correct application of this text to say that the church of Jesus Christ has been drawn out after a lie.

What worse lie could there be than to say that it is our responsibility to save ourselves and it’s not God’s choice ultimately—it’s my choice? What is more in the face of a sovereign God than those sorts of assertions? And the sorts of assertions that take the atonement of Jesus Christ for his elect and make it into no atonement at all by saying it’s just an example of God’s sin, God’s wrath against sin, but has nothing to do with your salvation?

And Armenians who are self-consciously Armenian believe that it’s a doctrine of demons. It’s what it is. And there’s no—you know, it’s not—it’s to be expected that men who pervert the truth of God’s sovereignty then also go on to spew out of their mouths man-made laws and to say, “Forget God’s law. You legalists are always talking about God’s law, but I’ll give you some laws to live by. We don’t smoke and we don’t chew and we don’t go at the girls that do. We don’t dance. We don’t drink beer.

We don’t smoke cigars. A whole bunch of man-made laws that have nothing to do with the scriptures. Well, I understand that there are admonitions against drunkenness. You don’t want to be a slave to anything. You don’t want to have a cigarette exercise dominion over you. Understand all of that. But to make these blanket statements of abstention from the good gifts of God—and you know, I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but the scriptures say that beer is a good gift of God and wine is a good gift of God.

And yes, it can be—you can improperly get yourself drunk. But to command people to abstain from those things comes from the doctrine of demons here in the assertion of man’s will in salvation and then man’s will in terms of sanctification. I know better than God what’s going to sanctify the church of Jesus Christ. These men say total abstinence from drinking. No. No. So see, it’s not so removed from our context.

You take the wrong food in. You listen to the wrong sorts of teachers and instructors of doctrine, and you end up spewing out wrong stuff as well. Now, notice that these men are men who have seared consciences, congregation of the Lord. Please take the admonition here that is implied in this text to yourself. And I pray to God that he will in his grace grant me the same thing—that we do not allow our consciences to be seared relative to our sin.

Do not lose sensitivity to what God—when he convicts you of sin, to that convicting authority of the Holy Spirit—whether that comes through other Christians using the word of God, through the word of God itself. These men get there, can get there through small sins at first, and they reason it out in their heads. Maybe it’s—maybe well I guess maybe it isn’t. I guess I did this for this reason and after all the environment was tough and my wife was bad and I had to say those kind of things.

Begin to reason it through that internal conversation that men have, and you lose sensitivity to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, and then it goes on from there and you do bigger things and that’s okay too, or maybe it’s not okay but maybe it isn’t that bad, and you stop weeping over personal sin, and that’s the road you go down as you move toward apostasy. That’s what’s being said here. These men start off with these bad consciences—seared. I think that’s why they listen to those other teachers, to justify their actions. Men’s minds are inventive. Okay.

God, however—and these men put out then these denials of Christian liberty and even worse than that, the denial of the goodness of God’s gifts by way of example—marriage and food.

Okay, Paul gives a corrective to this kind of problem that’s going to occur. He reads and we read in verses 3b and 4-5: “which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.”

What’s our food supposed to be? See, that’s the belief—the corrective here is that we are supposed to eat the truth. Okay? We’re supposed to be reading the word of God. That’s what sanctifies things or sets them apart to us—is not man’s laws, but God’s word. And we’re supposed to have a love for the truth as opposed to a love for the lie.

We’re supposed to eat the truth of God. The word of God. Okay? And this word of God instructs us that these things are good. Every creature of God is good. You know, you—we usually read this “which God has created be received with thanksgiving” in terms of food. But Lensky points out we could probably also at least make application if not specific interpretation of this section to marriage. God has created marriage to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.

Believe and know the truth. That’s the key. And then we then see that truth is that God gives us these things. And God says his creation is good. By means of its creation, food is good. And by means of its creation or gift from God, marriage is good. And additionally, the text tells us that these things—food and perhaps by implication, marriage—is sanctified or consecrated by the word of God.

Now, our side of that equation is the prayer, but God’s side is his word. His word sanctifies or consecrates food to us. It says, “I’ve given you all this stuff to eat and I’ve given you beer to drink.” By way of its creation, it’s good. By way of its specific consecration by God’s word, it is good, as is marriage. Okay?

And our response to that is prayer. We thank God. Thanksgiving is what is required in response to the goodness of God’s creation, these two great gifts. So, we take in—instead of the false teachings of stuff they take in—we, our food is to be the word of God, the doctrine of truth. And what we put out then is so that the word instructs us of his creation and his consecration of food and marriage and various things.

And what we come out of our mouth then, instead of hypocrisy and lies and man’s laws, what comes out of our mouth is thanksgiving to God and prayer. Okay? Diet, exercise, what do we take in? What do we put out? And what we’re supposed to be putting out is thanksgiving to God and prayer.

Now, this means, you know, prayer and thanksgiving are linked here. They’re supposed to be seen as together. They’re synonyms or really the same kind of thing. Our prayer is to be one of thanksgiving to God for such great gifts, you know, and we have habits. We sit down at meal time and we give thanks to God. And that’s good. But let’s not just make it be a habit.

Let’s remember this is good stuff he gives us. He sustains us day by day. That psalm we just read responsively as a congregation: He sends down this water. He grows up these crops. He has the sun rise up this morning. It didn’t have to come up. Didn’t have to come up, but it comes up at God’s command because he’s providing for you this food.

And so when you sit down to eat those good gifts, give thanks from your heart to God for such great gifts and for the greater things these things picture to us: the Lord Jesus Christ and joy in the spirit and the goodness of his word. Our prayers will be prayers of thanksgiving and our voices are supposed to speak for that and not grumbling and disputing and “oh it’s tough” and “oh my life is hard.” Forget that stuff.

He’s going to recognize that here—we get to the last verse 10. He’s going to say we’ve got to struggle and have agony. But it’s in the context of the God who saves us. You see? So it’s always to be marked with thanksgiving and not grumbling and disputing. We give thanks to God as we exercise our Christian liberty. And the thanksgiving, the prayer of thanksgiving, by the way, here involves consecration.

When you thank God for the food, properly understood, this text tells us that food is consecrated by you. Now God consecrates it and sets it apart to you by his word and by his creation. It’s consecration of it. You set it apart, so to speak, when you give God thanks for it. To give thanks to God for a thing is to consecrate your use of that thing for his purposes.

You thank God for your wife. You thank God for your husband. You thank God for your children. It is a consecration of those relationships to the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what it’s to be. Understand that. Understand that every aspect of your marriage and of your family life is consecrated to your God in the kingdom by your thanksgiving of it.

Understand when you give thanks to God for the food, you’re saying, “I’m going to use that food for your purposes, Lord Jesus Christ. You’re going to give me energy so that I can fulfill your will. I can do what you want me to do here. The very next thing you want me to do.” Consecration on our part is involved in the correct speaking relationships. We give thanks to God. The food becomes consecrated or set apart.

You know, we there’s a big discussion, controversy. Should you consecrate the elements of communion? Should you say set apart these waters or the wine and the bread to sacred, to common to sacred use? And should we consecrate the water in baptism? You know, some baptismal forms we’ve used them before: “Set apart this water from common to sacred use.”

Well, where you see that consecration spoken of in terms of food is right here. But significantly it is common food that’s being spoken of. Isn’t that great? Isn’t that great that kind of consecration from common to sacred use occurs every time we have a meal because we consecrate our energy. We receive from that. We give God thanks for it and consecrate the energy to serve God.

Every meal becomes not common to us but consecrated and so that food becomes part of God’s means of sustaining our bodies that we might do the work he calls us to do.

What’s the responsibility of the minister here in light of these particular difficulties? We’ve seen the bad guys and what food they take in. And we’ve seen the warnings that this stuff is going to happen. And we’ve seen that the answer to that is to eat the right stuff and to put out the right stuff and to exercise yourself to godliness.

And now what’s the responsibility of the minister? The minister, verse six: “If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine wherein thou hast attained, but refuse profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness.”

Minister’s responsibility is first to feed the brethren. Put them in remembrance of these things. What things? The word of God. The minister must feed and nourish up the brethren. The word brethren means those who have a common womb—literally out of the same womb. And so it includes sister. Includes you. You know, brothers and sisters all of us have the same womb: the foreknowledge and the forelove of God and his call of us, and that’s what has he given us in the new creation based on his sovereign election of us.

So we share a common womb and in that common womb we’re to be fed by God’s ministers from his word as we grow up to maturity. That’s what’s required of the minister of God. He’s supposed to feed the brethren, but he’s also himself supposed to eat correctly. Notice here that he is to be nourished up. To eat correctly and mature as a result. What through? Again, the words of faith and of good doctrine, the words that instruct us what proper faith is and what good doctrine is. That is the word of God.

The minister must nourish himself upon the word of God. And then by way of implication, as well as specifically given to us here, he’s not supposed to eat that bad food. Again. You see, the common theme here as we move toward the next couple verses about exercising is diet that we’re talking about. Now, what you take in, what you put out, and the minister—his responsibility is to eat the right food and to feed the congregation but also to eat the right food and not to eat the wrong food.

Now these are different. It says profane and old wives’ fables. Profane means of no sacred use. Old wives’ fables things are only—