Dennis Tuuri

# Hebrews 13:7-17 — Sermon Transcript

Sermon text today is Hebrews 13:9, but we’ll put it in context by reading this section. Hebrews 13:7-17, which has some rather clear bookends to it, making it a section of scripture to consider together. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Hebrews 13, beginning at verse 7.

Remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow considering the outcome of their conduct.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines. For it is good that the heart be established by grace, not with foods, which have not profited those who have been occupied with them. We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin are burned outside the camp.

Therefore Jesus also that he might sanctify the people with his own blood suffered outside the gate. Therefore let us go forth to him outside the camp. bearing his reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come. Therefore, by him, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name. But do not forget to do good and to share.

For with such sacrifices, God is well pleased. Obey those who rule over you and be submissive, for they watch over. They watch out for your souls as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this wondrous gift of the scriptures. And we thank you for the even more wondrous gift of the Holy Spirit given to us to make us understand, to transform us by this word of our savior. Bring our savior’s word to us today as lord and as savior and as Christ. Help us, Father, to be transformed by this word. We give you thanks for it and pray for your blessing upon us as we listen to it. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

You know, I this is just the next place in the text in my series of sermons. I didn’t choose food and idolatry because of the great food we had last week, nor because of Jim’s constant references to donuts.

You know, I’m a little I approached this text with a little bit of fear and trepidation. I actually preached on the same text a number of years ago, and in the providence of God, I think it had something to do with some difficulties—I hope not causing some difficulties, but for making manifest some difficulties in the context of our congregation and we really did end up with some difficulties not too long after this sermon was preached. This same text. So hopefully I got your attention now. What’s he going to say that’s going to make us all upset? Food. You know, it’s such an important part of our lives isn’t it? And it’s a wonderful gift from God. But at the same time it can be quite difficult to treat it correctly. So that’s what I want to talk about.

I’m obviously going to speak about verse 9: “Don’t be carried about with various and strange doctrines. It’s good that the heart be established by grace, not with foods which have not profited those who have been occupied with them.”

Let me read the New English Bible translation of this text. It kind of gives you a sense of the verse. “Do not be swept off your course by all sorts of outlandish teachings. It’s good that our souls should gain their strength and we might add their satisfaction. The word meaning that our souls should gain their strength and satisfaction from the grace of God, not from scruples about what we eat, which have never done any good to those who were governed by them.”

So a nice kind of modern language translation catching well the nuances of some of the Greek terminology here, a little better than King James or New King James might do.

Now, I’ve got the context for this—the overarching structure of the book. It’s interesting when Reverend Jordan was teaching on the arc of books—beginning frequently with the male form of the kingdom moving to the bride form, the king to the bride. I thought about Proverbs. We begin with the king’s instruction we end with the description of the queen bride. And he mentioned several books doing that well. Hebrews is the same way. Revelation starts with the great picture of Jesus and then at the end we’ve got the glorified church.

In Hebrews, the introductory verses—of course, the first four verses—focus on the great shining glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And by the end of the book, we’ll get to the seventh part of the book in a couple of weeks. It’s the benediction that we used to use always after our communion service, after our meal. And that benediction is that we’re equipped to do every good work. So the bride becomes the focus at the end, even as the king is the beginning. And we’re kind of moving that way.

In the second overall section of the book, the name of Jesus is Son of God, Son of Man. So he’s in that second slot connecting—he’s the firmament connecting heaven and earth. And this sixth portion of the book that we’re in now and have been for several weeks is that slot where we, you know, the implications of who Jesus is. We live out heavenly community in the context of earth now. And that’s the overall section that this particular subsection is found in.

And this subsection, I’ve given you a different outline than those of you here a couple weeks ago had. I’m not trying to ultimatize anything here. I’m just saying that as you meditate on a piece of text, it is interesting how different things kind of come to you. And it’s useful to look at text and think about these major patterns.

Again, just like Hebrews seems to be laid out in the seven-day creation pattern, so this text also you can at least meditate on the overall section here, verses 7 to 17. Clearly we got some bookends, right? “Remember those who rule over you” and then at the end “obey those who rule over you.” So it seems like you know there’s our identification of our pericope—big word—our text, that’s a unit.

And it’s interesting that in the first one those who rule over you are those who have spoken the word of God to you and Jesus Christ is explicitly mentioned. So in the first day of creation God speaks “let there be light.” In the beginning was the word. And word and here Jesus Christ is as that word. And on the last of the seven days, we have God coming to evaluate us. We’re to give an account.

So in the seventh section here, we have laid it out today on the outlines: “Obey those who rule over you. Be submissive for they watch out for your souls, those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.” And we know in that eschatological evaluation by God on the creation week, there was difficulties. It was with grief that God saw evaluated what had happened.

Verse nine: “Do not be carried about.” This introduces into this section a division between those that you know are established by grace—their hearts are satisfied and strengthened through grace—and those who think that the natural order of the world unmediated from Christ can give them life. So we have this division. And you know the second day of creation has a firmament. The second feast in Leviticus 23 is Passover, and Jim talked about this last week. Division, you know, between two kinds of people. And that happens here in verse 9.

Verse 10: “We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. And then the bodies of those animals.” Well, on the third day, we have, you know, grain come up and we have the stuff that we’re going to be eating. And so we can kind of meditate on that and think about the flow of this text that way.

And clearly, it seems to me the bookends of this text were quite clear with the reference to rulers. And in the center, we have a rather obvious little structure there. We’ve got “outside the camp, outside the gate, outside the camp” that draws us to—you know—outside the gate. The Lord Jesus’s work at the center of the text.

So the heart of this narrative is the work of Jesus sanctifying the people with his own blood. Not just saving us, but sanctifying us, giving us priestly privileges, suffering outside the gate. Next week, I’ll talk about this center section—outside the camp, camp, outside the gate, outside the camp. But it draws us to that and at the heart, you know, the seventh—seven days of creation—sun, moon, and stars, rulers. Jesus is the son, the mighty bridegroom coming out of his house, etc.

And then on the fifth day, or fifth slot here, verse 13: “Let us go forth to him outside the camp bearing his reproach.” As the animals were taken outside the camp, you know, we’re the ones now who go outside the camp. Trumpets kind of brings out a fullness of what begun on the third day.

And so it seems like maybe we could make some associations. The sixth day of course is the day of man. Here we have “no continuing city, but we seek the one to come. Therefore by him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name. But do not forget to do good and to share. For with such sacrifices, meals, as Jim reminded us of it at camp, God is well pleased.”

And you know, of course, the sixth day is a reminder of man, and this is what man is supposed to live like. I mean, there’s exegetical stuff going on, but when it gets right down to the application, again, it’s the sixth slot of the sixth section. Then it shows how to live out this heavenly community. And it’s talking about giving thanks for to his name. So that seems to work good.

And then finally, as I said at the end, the giving of account, Sabbath day reflections. God comes to evaluate us and to enthrone us.

So, well, I think that’s a useful meditation and maybe you could spend a portion of your Lord’s day or some other time in your day thinking about the flow of this section as we move to its center, the heart of it next week.

Now, today’s text is verse 9. And there’s obviously to me at least a little structure to it. Not a big deal, but you know, at Kings Academy this last a couple of weeks ago as school was wrapping up, the kids wanted me to write something in their yearbook, you know, and I had carefully constructed a sentence that was chiastic.

And then the last day of class, I showed them what it was, and none of them really had figured it out, which was quite sad to me. They didn’t recognize it. One of them said, “Well, I knew you were talking Yoda speech, but I didn’t know it was fully chiastic.” And that’s what it sounds like a lot of times.

I look at this text I’ve given you on the outline today’s text: “Don’t be carried about with various and strange doctrines. It’s good that the heart be established”—how at the center—”by grace not with foods.” There’s the you know the two different things that are going on here, “which have not profited those.” So the heart is established by grace not with food. And if you use food to try to get establishment and satisfaction it’s not profitable. So it seems like that kind of lines up. It doesn’t profit those who have been occupied with them.

So you know it is a strange way to write a sentence. It’s not the sort of sentences we would write. And it seems like it’s written in such a way as again to draw our mind to the center—this opposition of the grace of God as opposed to those who want life and satisfaction through food.

So that’s at the heart. And really matching up the outside corners is pretty interesting too because the occupation—those who are occupied with them, right? What does that mean? It means that’s what all they’re thinking about a lot of the time. They get occupied with food. And if a lot of your life is spent thinking about what you’re eating and the preparation of it and which ones will make you live, what’s your life giving to you, etc., I think that’s a problem with the application of this text. They’re occupied with it.

And in relationship to that, this food stuff is frequently linked to these strange doctrines. And they’re carried about with the strange doctrine. So the word “carried about” means like blowing a ship off course. The ship’s course is determined by what carries it about, like wind. And so really you’re occupied a lot with food. And in connection to those kind of preoccupations, almost always or at least frequently there’s this association with weird speculative theologies, philosophies, worldviews. And that’s kind of what drives you. You may not know it, but what’s pushed your ship off course from the centrality of Jesus Christ and the grace that is affected by his work—what’s pushed you off course—really are alien strange doctrines, alien doctrines. You know, strangers in the land. These are alien in presuppositions brought into the context even of a worshipping community by people who are not submissive and don’t focus on grace.

John Owen in his commentary on Hebrews did a nice little summary of this section. He says that the end is proposed. The end—the purpose, the goal—is the establishment of the heart. And as I said, the word “establishment” there means stiffened or strengthened, but it also means has the implication of satisfaction. So, you know, we have a culture that can’t get no satisfaction because it’s trying to do that by food.

Have you ever done that? You get a craving or you know, you get a craving or something and you start to eat it, but you recognize that no matter how much you eat of that stuff, you’re never really going to be fully satisfied by it. Well, in general, that’s what’s being said here. We want to be satisfied. We want to be established in our heart, the center of our being.

And then there are two ways Owen says of achieving it. Obviously, to achieve this end goal, you can have grace or you’d have a focus on meats for food. The preference is given of course unto grace in the text. And finally a reason is added giving the insufficiency of meats for the purpose. So you’ve got a goal, two ways to get there. We all want life and satisfaction and establishment. How you going to do it? Grace or food. And food isn’t. You know, grace is commended to us and then we’re warned that food really is a bad deal to seek life or help through.

Now, the notes on your outline: who’s the text talking about? This is a big discussion in various commentaries. Who’s it talking about? Who are these people that would somehow end up thinking that a heart could be established through food? You know, and what kind of people do this?

Well, I think the text makes it really clear to us. The only reason why it’s not clear to us is because of the presuppositions we bring to the text about the Jews. We kind of think of them as Nazarenes or they’re not yet Reformed Baptists. They’re just Baptists or something. I mean, maybe not quite that much. But we do tend to give the Jews at this stage in history, I think, way too much grace in our treatment of them.

The text goes right on to say in verse 10: “We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.” He’s telling us who these people are with strange doctrines. And commentators struggle over it just because, you know, in the Jewish system it’s about prohibition, right? If you’re the priestly nation you can’t eat pork and then eat stuff that we can now we couldn’t have. You know, they didn’t get to sing the boar’s head carol and all that stuff or drink hogs head well whatever. So anyway you couldn’t. It was prohibition.

But here it’s not prohibition of food. It’s saying there’s certain food if you eat it will establish you. So, I can’t be the Jews, they say. Well, the text tells us it’s the Jews. It’s those who serve at the tabernacle. And we have an altar, right, that they don’t have a right to eat at. So, it’s the Jews.

And why does that—why is that difficult for us to understand? Well, we forget. And I was so thankful that Jim made this point at camp. I’ve certainly made it over and over again in Kings Academy, the Old Testament survey using Leithart’s book this year—that by now these apostate Jews are really gross idolators. That’s what the text tells us. It sort of shows us, you know, who the Jews were. They were not just those who were too stringent about the laws that God gave them. No, they were actually now had devolved into this idea that the natural order unmediated of food—not mediated through the grace of Jesus—could give us life.

Jim mentioned this text, Joshua 24:14: “Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. Serve the Lord.”

So, as Jim said, we’re not really told until later in the text what was going on with God’s people in Egypt. They were worshipping those gods of the Egyptians that God judged. See, that’s really important for us to understand because as we come to the New Testament and we see all the Exodus Passover motif stuff going on, he expects us to make the association that what the church is being delivered out of is apostate Judaism. That isn’t just kind of moral upstanding guys without Jesus. It’s guys who are now worshipping the gods of Egypt. They’re worshipping the Nile and they’re worshipping the, you know, the grain and the stuff like this.

It doesn’t appear that way. They appear to be stringent about temple worship. But we saw that before, too, in the Old Testament. In Ezekiel, God takes them to the temple in a vision, and he sees the priests going about doing their work. He says, “Now, do you really want to see what they’re doing? They got these external rituals going on that seem like it’s conforming, but let’s dig a hole. Let’s go down underneath and see what’s at the foundational level of what these people are doing.”

And Ezekiel is shown these rooms where these gross drawings and weird, you know, idolatrous drawings and stuff that they’re doing. The 70 leaders of Israel are turned away from God and they’re worshipping the sun. God shows Ezekiel that what’s going on then, you know, as God judged them through Nebuchadnezzar, was that they had fallen into—they were Egypt again. They were in gross idolatry.

And what was Egypt? Egypt worshipped the creative forces inherent in nature. It was nature worship. It was saying that this world, if we understand it correctly, then we can pray that the grain give us life or the sun give us life, the water is going to give us life. It really is Baalism, I think. Baalism is a worshipping of the forces of nature. Think of Dracula, right? He can become, you know, bunch of rats or he can be like a wolf or whatever. He’s he can tune into nature, you see, and draw out all those powers. Well, that’s what the Jews are.

So, what this text tells us is that the Jews are really quite gross idolators. They think they can get strength, establishment, satisfaction, directly from the created order, from the food that they’ve been given. And in fact, they’ve added hypocrisy and pride to it because now it’s their food that’s distinct from Gentile food. This is the only stuff that’s really going to give us life.

So, you know, it’s really important to kind of understand that. It’s different than what we think.

Now, the Puritan divines, the commentators do say frequently that this is a good strong text against the dietary laws, and that’s certainly true. So you know, this is a text that I could talk, you know, for the whole sermon about the dietary laws and the implications here for that, but I don’t think we have that problem in this church. I think we understand that those were priestly prohibitions and with the elimination of the priestly nation, now all those things are gone.

But if you’re struggling with that, this is a great text. Read some of the Puritan commentators on it. This is a good text to show why the dietary laws of the Old Testament are no longer at place.

But beyond that, if we understand the gross idolatry of these Jews, then you see, it’s not too hard to make immediate application to us. If it was some weird sect or if it was just talking about the Jews as Jews who kind of not quite got the scriptures right, well, none of us are tempted to Judaism. But if we understand that apostate Judaism was force worship, then it’s very applicable to our day and age.

This makes the text very relevant for our apostate Christian culture because we moved away from Jesus Christ we become apostate and the culture devolves, you know, into these same kind of gross idolatries.

Fallen man outline point 3a: Fallen man is frequently preoccupied. The word here is in the text is “occupied.” So they’re—this is what they’re kind of thinking about doing all the time—they’re walking about with food. And fallen man is frequently preoccupied, same thing, with food which the Bible says is generally unprofitable.

And now this is where it starts—the shoe gets a little bit tight on some of us, all of us I suppose. You know, there are text after text. I’ve given you a whole bunch here where God says forget the food thing, special diets, all this. Now, okay, the caveat is that I’m not saying you should never think about what you eat and it makes no difference. That I’m not saying that God—food’s a great gift from God. But I am saying that nine times out of 10 pagan man is not just, you know, thinking about health and stuff and the cleaning, being clean. He’s actually thinking he can get life from dead things and the scripture.

So it’s okay to think about what you prepare and try to put a good healthy meal in front of your kids. Nothing wrong with that in moderation. But the problem is what’s healthy. Once you start down that path, if you don’t remember this verse, you it’s very easy to get obsessive about the diet thing. But the corrective to that is given here. It’s grace that establishes and strengthens our heart, our soul, whoever we are.

Philippians 3:17—it says this: “Brethren, join in following my example and note those who so walk as you have us for a pattern imitation. Many walk of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who set their mind on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body, that it may conform to his glorious body according to the work by which he is able even to subdue all things to himself.”

So here we have a description. And I tend to you know insert this little phrase—”whose god is their belly”—that’s what it sort of is. And now you can think of that in terms of gluttony where the only thing important is satisfying by hunger but I think that it’s a little broader than that. In the Hebrews text their god is their belly—they’re worshipping and serving the created order, you know, created things, the creature.

They set their mind, the text tells us, on earthly things. And God says our citizenship in heaven. So don’t get, you know, all obsessive about what you eat. And so if your god is your belly, you know, in the in this—I had a friend who used to go to Pago Pago all the time to do research and he said that they always said the Americans’ god was their watch because they look at their watch and then they do something. So your god is what tells you what to do.

Well, an awful lot of people, their belly is their god. You get hungry—oh, got to run off and eat now. They obey the belly. But it’s very important to see here that the end of a preoccupation with food according to Philippians—it’s not just not profitable as our text says—their end is destruction. We, you know, we can we obsess on food. We’re denying the grace of Christ and we’re trying to get life from the created order unmediated through Jesus. And the end of that is destruction. We have the wrong kind of glory. It’s our shame to be obsessive about food. And we think that we’re better, you know, people get into dietary stuff and we’re better than the people that don’t eat this way. And we’re glorying in something which God says is their shame. They’re setting their minds on earthly things.

And most importantly, when you have the god is your belly and you’ve got this kind of unhealthy preoccupation with food which is drifting off into the kind of gross idolatry that says, “I can get life from the created order apart from the grace of God,” this text tells us that they become an enemy of the cross of Jesus Christ.

Now, the text is probably again referring to Jews, but remember at this point, they’re not much different than pagan Americans. They’re gross idolators, and gross idolators are enemies. They’re not just missing it. They’re enemies of the cross of Christ.

John 6:27: “Don’t labor for the meat which perishes, but for that meat which endures unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you, for him hath God the Father sealed.”

1 Timothy 4:8: “Bodily exercise profiteth little, almost nothing. It is hardly profitable at all, but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.”

So, you know, a whole preoccupation with health and physical strength and what we eat, you know, you got to be healthy enough to carry out your vocation under God. That’s about it. You know, beyond that, you may you may enjoy to do certain activities and stuff, but he’s saying, boy, you know, it’s just far too easy. You know, it’s like drugs or like smoking cigarettes.

Shouldn’t smoke cigarettes, I don’t think, because it’s really easy to get addicted to cigarettes. It’s really easy to get into. Nothing wrong with one cigarette. Maybe smoking, I don’t think, is a horrible thing. But you see, it’s dangerous. Because what you’re doing is you’re getting off into an area where it can suck you in. And so here as well, when you get into food stuff and getting into bodily exercise and focusing on your body, understand that is frequently what pagan apostate man does. It’s a devolution—seeking grace from below, seeking strength or satisfaction from below, not from the grace of God over us.

So you know, doing this is generally unprofitable. And in fact, Colossians 2 says, “Let no man therefore judge you in terms of food or drink.” And again, we apply that to dietary laws. But think of it a little broader. We shouldn’t be judging each other as to whether we’re eating healthy or not. You see, that’s what it says.

Verse 19 of Colossians 2 says: “These don’t hold the head from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment, ministered, knit together, increases with the increase of God.”

So, what’s going to establish us is the body of Christ, one to another. That’s what he said. That’s what he’s contrasting with—an emphasis on food. He’s contrasting the real way to satisfaction is body life in the Christian church, which is grace.

Years ago, Doug H. used to work at Tree of Life, which tree of life. So, he made me a big long list of different kinds of foods, vitamin supplements. You go to Fred Meyer now. Used to be have to go to some strange health food store. Now, you can go to Fred Meyer and see a lot of this stuff. Tree of Life has, you know, shelves at least. I don’t know if some came or not, but they have shelves in various here’s the sort of things that are on what you put in your body.

Now, the labels, after the fall, Health Valley, Celestial Seasonings, Mana, Eden, Eden, Soy, Nature’s Choice, Garden of Eden, Eden, Garden of Eden, Earthright, New Life, Rainbow, Life Tree, nature’s gate, inner clean. I mean, the list goes on and on and on and we just sort of—well, that’s interesting marketing ploy. But it’s worse than that because really, it’s representing a lifestyle that says you can achieve life and satisfaction through the stuff you put into your mouth. And God says, “Forget it.”

It changes, too. Gouge, one of the Westminster divines, says, “Well, you know, one of the problems with doing that is you really you’re blown about because it’s never the same foods, you know, century to century. There’s always the latest fad, right? So, you know, low carb, no low carb, low fat, no fat, high fat, cholesterol, some good, some bad. I mean, it just it’s like brushing your teeth, you know? You know, when I was a kid, brush them like this and then a couple years later, brush them like this and then brush them like this. I mean, every couple of years there’s a new way to brush your teeth and every couple of years there’s a new dietary fat.”

And Gouge said that’s why, you know, you can’t. It’s so unsettling a lifestyle to lead because you never really come to rest because the culture never does. You know the old saying: “He who weds himself to the spirit of the age soon finds himself a widower.”

So it is with people that you know link themselves up to food.

Secondly, this is idolatry. And this is kind of the counterbalance. So this is idolatry to get preoccupied with the donuts. This is idolatry precisely because food, like sex, is so good a gift from God. Why is it so easy to get into it? Because it’s great. You know, God made man hungry and he wants to eat the world. Jimmy eat world. Well, that’s who we are, right? That’s what God says we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to eat the world. He makes us hungry. You know, I love these t-shirts for men: “I’m hungry.” We’re always hungry. Guys are. And that’s not a bad thing. Food is great.

You know, it’s just like the warnings against improper sexuality in this section as well. How do you live having on earth? Well, you have proper sexual relationships in the context of marriage. And why is that such a big deal? People say, “Oh, those Christians are always thinking about sex.” Well, you it’s a tremendous attraction to us. It’s a wonderful gift from God. Praise God. You know, but those very the best gifts of God are the ones that we can be prone most to turn into idolatry.

Getting idolatry. You know, God gives us a wonderful picture of who he is. I mean, food, the culmination of it is this wonderful stuff we have here at the Lord’s supper. I mean, why food is so good that when he brings us to the height of our worship service and the spirit brings Jesus to it to us, he does it in the context of a meal. So, but that means it’s very easy. See, we got to be careful because it’s such a draw to us because it is such a good thing.

See, so you know, it’s bad enough that food can become to draw to us because of its tastiness and deliciousness and because it does refresh our eyes when we’re not feeling good. But it’s also bad because food idolatries are frequently linked to pagan philosophies.

1 Timothy 4 says: “Now the spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits, doctrines of demons, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods.”

Sex and foods again, right? Abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe know the truth. Every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it’s received with thanksgiving. You see, to say that a particular food like pork is evil, that’s Gnosticism. Gnosticism posits evil in created matter as opposed to—as opposed to—the ethical relationship of who we are in relationship to God.

So, 1 Timothy says that you’re going to have these food restrictions and it’s going to be accompanied by the doctrines of demons. You know, I was involved. I was never a hippie. Never a hippie, but I was involved in the counterculture. And I have seen, you know, this tree of life stuff and what’s in Fred Meyer shelf. I’ve seen it all. Saw it all when it was getting started in this country. It was the hippie movement, the counterculture movement that raised this concern about health food.

Now, you know, yeah, listen, I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to eat healthy, but the obsession with it came straight out of the counterculture. A lot of our culture did. The sexual revolution began there as outright rebellion against the Christian culture. Well, probably a post-Christian culture was some good critique because America by the 50s had a form of godliness but didn’t hold anymore to the source—Jesus. But having said that, you know, it was that destructive generation that Proverbs 30 talks about in the 60s who were so pure but unwashed from their own sins and they gave us all this stuff.

They gave us long hair. Now, you know, you go to anywhere you long hair. They gave us, you know, a style of dressing and attire. Paisley shirts came straight out of that. Those black ones wearing those tie-dye shirts. What is that? No, you know, you want to avoid the genetic fallacy that stuff since this stuff started improperly, you can’t use it. Well, we know just the reverse. We know that the godless line that made musical instruments and did the forging and all that stuff. And those were incorporated into proper use by the godly line. There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily, but what I’m saying is when you find yourself walking about and now picking up lots of things that Fred Meyer is saying, you know, Eden or the Garden of Eden or lifegiving substance, whatever it is, beware. Because sometimes it’s just raw capitalism, but a lot of times there are these strange philosophies behind this stuff.

And so you have to beware because an undue preoccupation with food will take you into the same path with doctrines of demons. People that are putting out this stuff and believe it because they’re just idolators.

You see, my example no longer works is I don’t think the juice man has commercials anymore. But this is the example I’ve always used through the years and a lot of you have heard it. But you know 10 or 15 years ago the juice man right on TV with those advertisements and you got to you want to have your own fruit tree in your backyard, you know, and you want to pick that fruit and throw that thing into that juicer, zing it up, and drink it immediately because if you don’t, he said, the life forces will go away. The life forces will go away. That’s idolatry.

You know, and God said in at least at a period in redemptive history in the Old Testament, well, if you’re going to shoot that deer out in the woods, you got to drain the life out of it. You got to make it dead. Dead. Totally dead. I want that deer dead. I want no life in it. And then you eat it. Why? You know, life of the flesh is in the blood. Blood’s drained away. You need to have it dead. Why? Because God was training his people: Don’t think that you can get the life force, the life principle out of something, you know, unmediated from me.

Alexander Schmemann, you know, “for the life of the world”—which Eli now stocks in Exodus—great book. And, you know, he points out that God makes us eat dead things. We’re going to. We had great food at camp. We’re gonna have great food at the agape. And I don’t want you to think about this too much while you’re eating it, but if that meat wasn’t refrigerated, it would become so rotten and so dead it would stink to high heaven and make you sick. It’s dead. Everything down there that you’re going to eat or there may be some yogurt on the table, but almost. Or there may be some things that have gone into various states of afterlife. I don’t know. Anyway.

Most of it’s dead and we eat it thinking it’s going to make us healthy. And praise God, it does. The grace of God ministers to us life through things that are rotting, stinking dead by his calling. So, you know, beware of an overoccupation with food because it’s frequently linked with strange demonic doctrines.

God grace takes dead food ministers life graciously to us through it.

So grace. This is you remember Owen’s setting up the text here. There’s two ways to get life and establishment and the way we should seek is grace. And no one says that grace here is the free grace of God in Christ Jesus. Clearly here is sort of the sovereignty of God. You see, if we could take whatever there was around us and get life from eating it apart from the grace of God, that would make us sovereign in the world, wouldn’t it? Well, not because he still made it all. But it would lend us to think in terms of Arminianism and our choice is determinative. But God says we’re our heart is established by grace and even life from food is by the grace of God. He’s sovereign.

Grace comes from a sovereign to someone who needs it. So Owen says here that grace is the free grace of God in Christ Jesus. Justification, sanctification of the church as it is revealed in the gospel. The revelation of it in the gospel is included. But it is the grace of God himself that is principally intended.

In brief, grace is here to be taken comprehensively for the grace, good will, and love of God towards man as it came by Christ Jesus as it is revealed in the gospel as the cause of our justification and acceptance with God in opposition unto the works of the law and the observance of Mosaic ritual.

So he’s right. We can think of it in terms of, you know, life, eternal life, grace in terms of justifying grace, but the heart is established by grace in its comprehensive sense. So it’s perfectly proper to make application of that verse to the grace of God ministering to us life through dead food. So the heart is established satisfied by grace—this comprehensive benefits of a sovereign God to a needy people.

And so that is how our lives are to be established is by that.

Now this then—the fact that God takes dead food and gives us life from it—focuses us on the grace of outline point 3e. This focuses us on the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Clearly I did this outline yesterday because I’m beginning to think through what Jim taught us at camp about those terms and how they’re used.

Earlier, just before verse 9 comes verse 8: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever.” So we’ve got an emphasis on food and being wed to the spirit of the age and being tossed about and demonic forces involved and you’re getting all into that stuff never coming to harbor as it were opposed to Jesus Christ the same yesterday today forever—the grace of God through Jesus Christ. So we’re established by Jesus and by the grace of God through him.

And okay, so an overoccupation with food, you know, is generally unprofitable. It doesn’t do you any good. The Bible says worse than that—it puts you on the way of those who are spinning various Baalism force-like views toward how we’re supposed to get life and satisfaction. And additionally, very bad, even worse maybe, is that an overoccupation with food diverts us from grace. It puts us back in the principle of works of the law, works that we do. It diverts us from the grace of God.

It also diverts us from the person of Jesus, right? That’s the center of this. We’re taking one verse out of this little flow of verses, but the center of that section is Jesus outside the outside the gate sanctifying his people. So, you know, the text is reminding us that it diverts us from grace, but it also diverts us from Jesus Christ who’s the same yesterday and forever. And who accomplished that comprehensive grace as Owen talked about it at by suffering outside the gate and sanctifying us.

So an overoccupation with food is bad on many counts—diverting us now from the person and work of Jesus Christ. And what could be worse? What could be worse than to have our lives increasingly occupied with a topic of a perversion of a great gift from God that then leads us away from focusing on Jesus Christ?

So if you go to the dinner table for instance or you go to the agape downstairs or you go to eat tomorrow and if your focus is on how this is great healthy food and this will minister life to me because it’s so good and healthy as opposed to the prayer of God. That’s what sanctifies our food. Giving God thanks for it and saying please God give us life from this dead stuff. No matter how healthy you tried to make it, it’s dead. And the grace of God ministers that to us and that should be our focus, right? That’s our focus here at this table.

We have a table to eat of that they can’t partake of. Altar is a table and this table, you know, informs our tables, our dining rooms. And this is the great picture that our life is established and we’re satisfied. Our heart is satisfied. Our mouth is satisfied with good things being focused on grace. And that should flow over into how we eat in the context of our world as well.

Jesus is our Lord and he is commanding us here, right? We are commanded. Don’t do this. He says, it’s a specific command we’re given here from Jesus: Do not be carried away with these strange doctrines and food. So, we’re commanded, the Lord commands us and he says, don’t do it. Stay away from an unhealthy preoccupation with food. Jesus is the savior. The name for, you know, he’s going to save us from our sins and we are saved and satisfied by his grace and steadfastness.

So, and we’re diverted from grace. We’re diverted from the person of Jesus by an overoccupation with food. And we’re also diverted from Christ. Worse than that, unhealthy preoccupations with foods break apart Christ. And now I’m taking Jim’s stuff from camp that he taught us. Christ is the anointed one. When we see it, we can think of it in terms of the body of Christ, right? Corpus Christi. And Christians. And so, not only does food take us away from Jesus and away from grace, it is actually usually accompanied with an attack on community, an attack on Christ.

Food separates people when we get overly preoccupied with it. This came up years ago at our church because at the agape, you know, we were having families who wanted to bring their food and they would only eat from their dish. Now, you know, you have some dietary some real health conditions that could go on that could cause that kind of thing. And I’m not saying that’s bad. But unless there’s something seriously medically requiring that, it is very bad.

The agape is a sharing together. What does he say here at the end of this section? To do good and communicate, right? Don’t forget these things that is linked textually to this altar we have to eat at. The altar we have to eat at is an altar of communication. And with an emphasis on health foods and this food and that food and it’s all the thing is all you’re thinking about is how you eat healthy through food and all this stuff. That is a—in the old classic words of Strother Martin—that is a failure to communicate. Cool Hand Luke.

So that failure to communicate breaks apart the body of Jesus Christ. And so an overoccupation with food is generally unprofitable. It puts us in the path of false speculative teaching and Baalism essentially gross idolatry. It diverts us from the grace of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It diverts us from the person and work of Jesus. And then finally, it diverts us and worse than that, it attacks the very nature of the corporate body of Christ in the context of the church Corpus Christi.

God says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they shall be filled.” We’re filled by the grace of God in the context of community. That brings establishment that brings satisfaction. That is the source of our life. The grace of God through Jesus bringing us together in the body.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for today and we thank you for food and what a wonderful gift it is. Forgive us, Father, for so often sinning by means of this very thing. We know that we’re so much like Adam and Eve who wanted to eat stuff and get life directly unmediated through you. Forgive us, Father. Grant us, Lord God, minds and hearts that self-consciously this week at our tables, remind ourselves that wonderful good food is a picture of the goodness of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ and of your word and of doing the will of our Father in heaven. And that you remind us of your grace, establishment, and satisfaction every time we eat this food. Thank you, Father, for these things. For the work of our savior, transform us in Jesus name. Amen.