We open the word of God to 1 Timothy chapter 4. Our text will be verses 4 and 5 of this chapter. We read the entire chapter. Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in 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, whereunto 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. These things command and teach. Let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery, Meditate upon these things. Give thyself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this thou shalt save, thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee." Thus far we read the Holy Scriptures. I call your attention to verses four and five. which are our text. 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. Every creature of God is good and is to be received with thanksgiving. That is the main teaching of the Apostle Paul in the first part of 1 Timothy chapter 4. A teaching which the Apostle seeks to drive home to Timothy. And a truth with which the Apostle Paul intends the young minister Timothy to preach faithfully to his congregation. Every creature of God is good and is to be received with thanksgiving. The reason for emphasizing this truth comes out when we look at the context of the first few verses of 1 Timothy chapter 4. Where the apostle warns Timothy about false teachers who would bring false doctrine into his congregation. And the particular false doctrine that he speaks about may seem quite remote to us. That false doctrine is explained in verse 3. It is the teaching that marriage is forbidden and that Christians ought to abstain, keep themselves from certain foods and by extension many material things and goods which are had in this world. That might seem to us to be somewhat mild and yet the Apostle Paul warns that this is a serious, serious false doctrine. You look at verses 1 and 2 and you see how serious the Apostle Paul takes it. He says that these false teachers are seduced. He says that their doctrine is a doctrine of devils. To forbid marriage and to teach that Christians must abstain from certain foods, creatures of God, is to teach doctrine of devils. Striking. The Apostle wants to emphasize to us that what those false teachers taught must be utterly rejected. The idea that God's creation is inherently evil, and that the creatures found in this world are corrupting, and therefore are to be avoided, and that the holy life is a life of withdrawing from the physical creation, and living as a monk in the desert in a cave, withdrawn from God's creation, that that is diametrically opposed to the gospel of Christ, and to the message of God's word in the Bible. Every creature of God is good and is to be received from God with a thankful heart. Thus this text is very fitting for this occasion of Thanksgiving Day in which we celebrate God's provision of the good creature. In which we rejoice in God's liberal hand which has provided so many of the good things of this earth for us. For our earthly life, for the sustaining of our earthly life, for the strengthening of us in the carrying out of our callings here below. This day would not be possible were it not for the truth of this text. If the creation is viewed as something inherently evil, we have nothing to give thanks for on this Thanksgiving day. Because the creatures around us, the food that we eat is something bad. Which is to be avoided as much as possible. The Word of God says no. God is the giver of every good and perfect gift. Foremost the spiritual, but yes also the material. And He is the God that gives all things richly to enjoy. God's creation is a good creation. And the creatures, all of the manifold creatures of that creation are good creatures, given to man to be used and enjoyed in harmony with God's revealed will. And so on this day, We, in a special way, think about all of the creatures God has given us and we give Him thanks for these good gifts. That we may grow in our thankfulness and be strengthened in that thankfulness and be edified by the Word of God, let us give attendance then to this passage. We do so under the theme, Thankfully Receiving God's Good Creatures. Thankfully receiving God's good creatures. Notice in the first place, good creatures. Secondly, thankfully received. Thirdly, prayerfully sanctified. Good creatures, thankfully received, prayerfully sanctified. The text is about the creature of God. Verse 4 says, every creature of God is good. Often when we use the word creature, what comes to our minds is a living thing. Perhaps an animal that God has created. A creature. But we must see that the word here in 1 Timothy 4 verse 4 is very broad in its meaning. It simply means created thing. Something that has been made by the Creator. Every creature of God, and that phrase of God identifies the creator of the created thing. There is one creator, the one only true God, the maker of heaven and earth, who created all things by the word of his power, out of nothing, according to his eternal counsel, and who also upholds and governs the same by his almighty and everywhere present hand of providence. The created thing. And thus this word creature in the text has a very very broad meaning. It refers to the physical creation. Every material thing that God has made. The earth and all the fullness thereof. The creature. The created thing. The physical thing. The material thing. Animate and inanimate. Living and not living. Creation. God's handiwork. But, here in 1 Timothy 4 verse 4, though that broad view of the created thing, all of creation is in view, the Apostle is narrowing in, especially on certain creatures that God has created and given to man. And the particular creature that the Apostle is focusing on is food and drink. Food and drink is one of our closest connections to the creation. God created us as physical creatures who live in this physical creation and our physical life is sustained by the physical means God has created to energize and strengthen and nourish this physical life. And that is our food and drink. And so when the apostle says every creature of God is good, he's talking yes about the physical universe, the physical world and all that is in it, but especially the food and drink that God gives us for our life here in this physical world. And so that's the subject of the text before us, the created thing. Especially the food and drink for our life in the created world. But now we come to the center of the apostles argument here in the opening verses of this chapter. Every creature of God is what? Good. Good. Every creature, every created thing, the universe, the world, the fullness thereof, the living animals, the rocks, the trees, all of it is good. The institutions God created. Marriage is good. And the meats, the food and drink, the fruits of the earth, are good. Let's notice the negative first. The apostle here is combating false doctrine and with that statement, every creature of God is good, he is contradicting a growing heresy at this time in ancient church history. And that heresy goes by many names. Sometimes it's called Gnosticism. Other times it has been called Manichaeism. We read about it in Article 12 of the Belgic Confession. And the basic idea of this heresy is that Christians must abstain as much as possible from the physical creation because it's bad. The basic idea of this heresy is that matter, substance, created reality is inherently evil. Matter, substance, is the seat of sin. Evil comes from matter. And therefore, the holy life is the life of withdrawing as much as you can from matter. Now that's impossible for physical creatures. The Gnostic view of salvation is eventually being completely freed from a physical body and living some purely spiritual existence, divorced from all wicked matter. But in this world, the Christian then is to do as much as he can to get away from matter. Retreat from society. Retreat from earthly relationships, especially marriage, because it is so material. It's a one-flesh union. Must be abstained from. Get away from foods, especially those foods that are good to the taste. You must not enjoy creation. Have only the barest essentials and make sure those barest essentials are the blandest possible foods you can have. Because matter contaminates you spiritually. Matter, creation, creature, pulls you down spiritually. Get away from it. That's the heresy. The apostle says, no! Every creature of God is good. In fact, this idea that the creature is evil and inherently bad and will corrupt you if you touch it, that's a doctrine of devils. Strong language. You can't get much stronger than that. Why such a strong condemnation? A few things to note briefly first. To state that the creature is inherently evil and should be avoided and abstained from is to contradict God himself. That's why it's a doctrine of devils. For who is the devil? He is the slanderer, the liar, the contradictor of God. Think of the creation of the material universe. Of all of the matter, the physical stuff of this world. Those six days. God's handiwork. At the end of each he observes, our Lord does. It is good. Especially after the creation of man and woman in their physical bodies. It is very good. God says his creatures are good. It is devilish to say otherwise. But building off of that then, to deny the goodness of the creature and to say it is evil and must be abstained from is to impute evil to God. For if creation is God's creation, if it originates in God, if he is the maker of it, and it is inherently evil, that means God has created an inherently evil creation. To root evil in matter itself, in the physical creation itself, is to impute that evil to God who is the creator of it. Third, this doctrine of devils is rooted in a devilishly wrong view of good and evil. To say that the creature is the root and the seat of evil is to excuse man of his sin and to make righteousness a very easy outward thing to do. Think about it. if the creature out there is the source of evil. Living a holy life is fairly easy. Dress yourself in rags, go live in a cave, abstain from foods. It's going to be a miserable life, but you can do it. And you've escaped evil. You don't have to address this, your heart. And that's where Jesus points us to if we want to find the root of evil. Matthew 15 verse 11, Jesus says, Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. It's not what you put in. It's not what you eat. Now Jesus isn't saying there you can just eat whatever you want, you can be gluttonous and it's not going to have any bad side effects. No. Jesus is making the point. Eating physical creatures, partaking of food, is not going to corrupt you morally. That's not the source of sin. It's not out there in the creature. It's in you. It's what comes out of you that is sinful, that corrupts you. It's the heart. Where as Jesus said earlier in Matthew 12 verse 34, Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. And so this is a doctrine of devils that the apostle is contending with. Because it denies human depravity. It takes the source of sin out of the human heart and the corrupt human nature and puts it out there in God's creation. Puts the blame on God. He created this evil matter and now we have to escape from it. No. No. Every creature of God is good, the apostle says. That's not to deny the effects of the fall. That's not to deny that the creation is fallen and groans under the effects of God's curse. That's not to deny that the whole created universe is held in bondage to corruption on account of man's sin. It is. The whole creation groans and travails. But the creation itself, matter, is not evil, nor is it the source of evil. Evil is in the heart of man, who corrupted himself and all creation. And so we return then to the Apostle's emphatic declaration, every creature of God is good. What does it mean that the creation is good? Well the word good here means especially this, it means useful, profitable, and beneficial. The focus is that every creature God has made is well adapted, suited, made fitting for the purpose God has ordained for it. And that makes sense. The whole physical universe and every creature in it is something God has made. As we read in Belgic Confession, Article 12, God gives to every creature its several offices. That is, it's particular place, it's particular role and function, it has been designed to carry out in the service of mankind, but especially for the glory of God. And every creature is made good, suitable for man's use that he may use it, and use it to bring glory to God. The creature is good. The Son. And all the other lightbearers, God put in the heavens, gave them that office of lightbearer and commanded them to shine. And that's a good creature of God. The rocks, from the mountains to the pebbles, God created and gave them their office to be the land upon which man walks. To be the great peak that points man up to heaven and causes his mind to comprehend the glory of the God who sculpted those mountains. The trees, and the grass, and the herbs, and the plants. God gave the office of clothing the world with living beauty and with feeding the living creatures he made to inhabit that world. marriage, that institution, that one flesh union, that creaturely, physical, intimate relationship. God created good to be the picture of the spiritual covenant relationship between Christ and His church. There is a great refutation of the Gnostics and the Maniches, one of the most physical Fleshly creations of God, marriage, is the most intimate and beautiful picture of the spiritual reality of God's relationship with his people. Food and drink. In all of their varieties. Plants, the herbs, the vegetables, the breads. the meat from sea, air, and land, all of these things, the drink, the water, the wine, and the rest, are God's good creatures given in office for the service of man so that he may serve his God. All of these things are given to us now for our use for our good use. For the good of our earthly life, but also for the good of our spiritual life. For all of these things are as many characters in the book of creation, all of which, when read by faith, point to the Creator and His glory. In all of these things we see the eternal Godhead and almighty power and invisible qualities of our glorious, good Creator. The creation, every facet of it, declares the glory of God. It's good. It's good. Therefore, it is to be thankfully received. Verse 3 emphasizes that. Verse 3 states that God created the creature to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. God created the creature, especially with His covenant elect people in mind. The creation is for us, beloved. Indeed, in Christ, we are the heirs of the whole world. God's people shall inherit the earth. That will be fulfilled, of course, on the day of Christ when the new creation is made and we enter into that creation as kings and queens under Christ. But already now, this creation is given to us by God to use, to enjoy His glory. And so our calling is to thankfully receive it. What does it mean to receive the creature with thanksgiving? It means that we don't refuse it. As the Gnostic and Manichaean heretics did. We don't reject it as something unclean, as something defiling. We see it as a good gift of God. That also means then we don't reject it in this sense, that we abuse it, trash it. It's a good gift of God that we are to be a good steward of. So receiving, thankfully, is not refusing, calling it evil, or looking at it as something worthless that we can use however we want, even if we abuse it and trash it. Not that. But receiving is with open hands, accepting what God gives us in His sovereign good pleasure and providence and thanking Him for it. It is acknowledging God as the giver of every good gift. And it's expressing our heartfelt appreciation to God for everything He gives us and praising Him as the giver and provider. That word receive in the text is notable. everything we have, every creature, every created thing that enters into our possession, that our fingers touch, that our eyes see, every created thing we receive from God. Our food and drink, our money and our possessions, our home and our family, our work and our employment, and all that you could put in this list. None of these things are gotten by my hand. All of these things are given by his hand. Nothing is gotten, all is given, and therefore in everything we receive. We do not obtain, we do not earn, we do not get our just desserts. We receive the gifts of God with open hands and open hearts, which must be thankful hands and thankful hearts. Because we don't deserve anything from God. His creatures aren't the source of evil, we are. We're sinners. What do we deserve from God except to be cast from this good creation and cast into the abyss of hell? And yet with liberal hand, he bestows such rich abundance upon us, the good things of this creation for our good use in this earthly life. It's not deserved. It's a gift. We receive it with thankfulness. appreciation, with joy, with humility. I don't deserve this. I don't see myself in a position to demand more from God than what He gives. Because whatever He gives me is above and beyond what I deserve. It's thankfulness that is connected with trust. When we understand that we receive the creature. We don't get the creature, we receive the creature given to us. We see that all things are in God's hands. It's His hand that brought the harvest forth this year. His fatherly hand. The same fatherly hand that also gave the farmers some struggles this year. Times of little rain. And then times when we had way too much rain. by our earthly estimation. That too is from God's fatherly hand. It's not our hand that supports our earthly life, it's Father's hand. And so we look to His hand, we trust His hand, and we receive from His hand with trust and with thankfulness, with contentment, whatever our good God and provider gives to us. That's receiving with thankfulness the good creature of God. But above all, let's note this. That in receiving the good creature with thanksgiving, we do so on the basis of Christ and His work. Christ is the only reason we have to be thankful. Because without Christ, every single good thing in this creation would serve our destruction. The man who is outside of Christ eats and drinks unto condemnation. The man who is outside of Christ, he may receive many good gifts of God, but those good gifts of God are a curse to him. They do not come accompanied by that Word of God's favor. Instead, they come accompanied with that Word of God's judgment and wrath. And therefore, for the unbeliever, though he will not recognize it, absolutely every created thing is against him. And that is a frightful reality. And that would be you and me, if it were not for Christ. Christ who came to die for us. Who redeemed us from our sins. Who took away our sins. Nailed them to the cross. Who earned for us forgiveness, everlasting righteousness, and salvation. Who has reconciled us with God. And not only reconciled us, but has reconciled the whole creation. As Colossians 1 tells us. Trees, rocks, fish, birds, and beasts. All redeemed by Christ. Put the elect church at the center. And because we are in Christ, God looks on us with nothing but favor. And everything that He sends us, comes to us with His favor. When He lavishes the rich abundance of the creatures of this earth upon us, He does so in favor. When He does not. When He takes away the creatures of this earth, He does that in His favor. So we must be conscious that we don't read too much into the abundance that God gives us. God's favor is not bound up in material things. It's not as if the rich man has God's favor and the poor man does not. We understand, whatever our life circumstances are, because of what Christ has done for us, God favors us in those life circumstances. And He works them for our good, whether we are rich or poor, whether it is a good harvest or a bad harvest. God's favor attends everything he gives us. So in our case today, we experience the richness of God's open liberal hand. We rejoice and are thankful because we know our eating and drinking glorifies him. All of these things come to us with his blessings. and he turns them to our prophet. And that is why the good creature serves our eternal good. It's because of Christ. And it's because of God's blessing upon us in Christ. God's blessing which attends, accompanies every good gift that he gives us. So two brief applications I want to make at the conclusion of the second point. First, that every creature of God is good and to be received with thanksgiving means that it is good and proper to enjoy the creature. 1 Timothy 6 verse 17 says, God giveth us richly all things to enjoy. There is nothing inherently carnal, sinful, or unspiritual about enjoying and taking pleasure in God's good creatures. That applies to the beautiful outdoors, the creation When a man enjoys going out in the woods and listening to the birdsong, watching the sun melt the frost off the grass or the leaves of the trees and listen to all of the noises of the trees creaking in the wind. It's good! And that's God glorifying. God put that creature there to be enjoyed. And as you enjoy it, to lift your soul up to Him. Creator. When we go home this afternoon, sit with our immediate family, our broader family, or by ourselves, we partake of that food. Eat and drink. Our bodies are satisfied. Abundance of good food. That's good. Enjoying it is good. As we do it in the spirit of thankfulness. Consciously acknowledging that we have received these things from God's fatherly hand and we're grateful for them. And that the enjoyment we get from them is a gift of God. It's good. There's nothing carnal, nothing unspiritual about enjoying and partaking of the creature of God. Which is good and given to us by God. And so let us eat and drink today. And let us be merry in the proper biblical sense of the word. Not overindulging, we know that. Not with a worldly mind fixed on earthly things, we know that. but with hearts filled with gratitude for the good creature God has given us. God who gives us all things richly to enjoy. That leads to the second application. Though having and enjoying God's good creatures is lawful and good, we must at the same time keep that proper biblical perspective as we enjoy God's good creatures. And that proper biblical perspective is, I don't set my heart on these things. Even as I enjoy them, I understand that none of these created things have eternal or lasting value in and of themselves. Even as I enjoy these good creatures of God, on the forefront of my mind is the reality that earthly riches, eating and drinking, pleasure in this world, is vanity apart from God. All of these things are only truly good for me if they serve my spiritual life, my walk of faith, and my service to God and His Kingdom. And so it is keeping that proper spiritual perspective in our eating and drinking. We feed our bodies in order to be strengthened to carry out our callings that God has given us in this world. We eat and drink in order to be of use to God. And in order that we may glorify God. Life is not about accumulating as much of the good things of this world as we can. Nor is life about enjoying as many of God's good creatures as we can. Life is about thanking and praising God. For whatever He's given us. And life is about glorifying the God of our salvation with whatever He has given us. Man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth, Jesus says in Luke 12, 15. And the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, 31, Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God. Enjoy the creature. Don't set your heart on the creature. Use the creature, but don't make the creature your treasure. Thank God for the creature. Enjoy the creature. Use the creature for God and His glory. And to do that then, the creature is prayerfully sanctified. Second verse of our text, verse 5, shows us the way or the manner in which we thankfully receive every good creature of God. And the way and manner that we use that good creature for God's greater glory. We receive God's good gifts with thanksgiving, but how? Through the Word of God and through prayer. The Word of God and prayer are as the two hands of thanksgiving that we reach out with to receive the good creature God gives us. Of course, the Word of God is the Bible. God's revelation. It's God's communication to us. In the Word of God, God Himself reveals He's the Creator. God tells us that He has created every creature good, and God instructs us in His Word as to how we are to use and enjoy the creature He has made. And so it's the Word of God that gives us the knowledge of what the creature is, its relationship to us, and how we are to use it. Necessary. That knowledge is for receiving the creature with thanks. But also prayer. Prayer that is rooted in the Word of God. Prayer that is informed by the Word of God. Prayer that arises out of our knowledge of God through His Word. Prayer is our communication now to God. Prayer is our response to His speech to us through the Word. Through prayer, we draw near to God. We open our hearts and our hands to God. And through prayer we enjoy communion with God. Catechism speaks about prayer in Lord's Day 45 as the chief part of thankfulness. Because prayer is the heart speech of the believer. By which the believer expresses his thankfulness and his gratitude and his appreciation to God for all of his goodness in Christ. His goodness in giving so many good gifts. So it's through the word and through prayer that we receive the creature from God. And that we understand this creature and its purpose and know how we are to use it. It's the way, the manner of thankful receiving. But now the interesting part of verse 5. It speaks about how the creature is sanctified through the Word of God and prayer. Sanctified. Now the idea of course is not here that creatures are inherently evil. We've already dispensed with that idea. It's not as though creature has to somehow be purified by reading the Word of God over it and praying over it and that that activity somehow automatically expels an evil substance or an evil spirit from that food and drink. Of course not. The idea of the word sanctify here is to set apart for holy use. It means to separate something common and then consecrate it to an uncommon use. And you see the idea here. As opposed to wicked man and the unbelieving world who grabs the good creature of God and uses it for self. Therefore he uses it in an unclean, sinful way. He grabs God's good creature, says, me, mine, my pleasure. And then uses it as he sees fit. The Christian sanctifies every good gift of God. That is, he sets it apart from common or sinful use and devotes it to God. I thank Thee, Father, for all of Thy good gifts. Now I devote them back to Thee as my grateful return of ardent love to Thee, the Giver of all. When we read the word in connection with the creature, we sit at the table for dinner. When we pray, we ask God's blessing on our food, and we ask that God use this food to strengthen us for service in His kingdom, what are we doing? We are consciously and intentionally sanctifying, setting apart that food, that drink, for God's service and His glory. Here's one of the important biblical roots and foundations for our practice of having family worship at the dinner table. This is one of the reasons why we read the Word. Why we pray before and after our meals. We're sanctifying that creature for service to God. We're gratefully acknowledging it as a gift. And then we say to God in prayer, now Father grant me the grace to desire and to use this gift for Thee. For Thee. Thy glory. in thy service." That's what our eating and drinking is all about. That's what our use of every creature is all about. It's given by God to be sanctified for His service and glory. So we can apply this not only to our dinner tables, but to every good creature of God that we have been given. It's sanctified. by the word of God and prayer. So beloved, this Thanksgiving day, think about all of the creatures God has given you. The food and drink that waits at home. The home in which you will eat and drink. The cars you use to drive here and to drive back home in a moment. So much more. Children. Toys at home that you like best. Things you use every day. Those are good gifts of God. They're good. Enjoy them in harmony with God's Word. But set them apart. They're not for you, ultimately, but they're for God. Sanctify them by the Word and prayer and dedicate them to the service of God and for the glory of His name. Prayerfully, use every good creature for the glory of the Creator and the giver. In that way, let your use of these creatures lift your hearts from this earth to our God in heaven, our God and our Savior. In thanksgiving. Amen. We thank Thee, Heavenly Father, for all of Thy creatures, for all of the good things Thou dost give us, so rich is the abundance Thou hast bestowed upon us. Grant us Thy grace that we might have the proper spiritual perspective, that we might receive with thanksgiving these gifts, that we might enjoy them and take pleasure in them. but that we may ultimately see that they are not for us, but for thee. So that in our use and enjoyment of them, we consecrate them to thy service and that we see everything that thou has given us as a tool to be used to serve thee and to glorify thy name. And so this Thanksgiving day we give thee thanks, we receive the creature with thanksgiving, strengthen us to show thee our thanks in our use of thy good creatures. We thank thee especially for Jesus Christ through whose work we have thy blessing and on account of whom all these things work for our good. Bless us in him and forgive our sins for his sake. Amen.