Well, welcome this morning. We are continuing in our study of the book of 1 Timothy. We are in chapter 4 this morning. making our way slowly but surely through the book and what wondrous things that we've already come upon in this letter so far. Now we're kind of finally beginning to get to the meat of the book after a few introductions and some housekeeping that Paul wanted to do in regards to the leadership of the church, what is the gospel, those types of things. Now he's going to start honing in on kind of the heart of what he wants to get to in the letter. I'm looking forward to us beginning this chapter today. Before we get started, I would ask that you would join me in prayer. Gracious Father, we come before you. We thank you for your great mercies to us, that we are serving a risen king, that you as a God of goodness has given good gifts to your people. Let us be a people not only mindful of those gifts, but also of the one who has given them. Holy Spirit, would you take our hearts? Would you take our minds? Would you bend them towards the truth of God and his word? Would you bend them back to yourself that we may be an obedient people and a loving people for the sake of the name of Christ? Thank you for your mercy to us, Christ. Thank you for your interceding on our behalf. Help us this day that we would be able to live out what you are calling us to do by the power of your spirit. In this we ask in Christ's name, amen. Let's read our text beginning in verse one of chapter four of first Timothy. Now the spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it's received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. That's a mouthful, isn't it? And it's something that I think we need to hear in this day and age. There's lots of messages that are being thrown at us as a church and as a people this day. And I think this particular message today will rank really well for some of the things that we need to hear. I was telling my wife this morning, one of the good things about working your way through books of the Bible is that and not skipping over anything. So I guess there's some pastors that do that too. But working with your book is that sometimes there are going to be subjects that come up that would probably never be on my particular radar as a pastor. It's just not one of the things I'm necessarily thinking of that needs to be brought up. And I think today, as I hope you will see, that this is one of those passages where it's good that Paul addresses this, especially at this part of the book. But I want us to get into that. As by way of reminder, in chapter 1, Paul had given instructions on the true understanding of the gospel and the law and grace. He addressed church behavior and church leadership in chapter 2 and most of chapter 3. And at the end of chapter 3, he places all of that instruction in the prior chapters in the context of a Christian hymn, a Christological hymn to Christ that we looked at at the end of chapter 3. Now in chapter four, Paul addresses false teachers in the following way. In the first three verses, he warns of apostasy and against adopting ascetic practices that would prohibit marriage, one, and that what also is against abstinence from certain foods. And then in verse four, he argues that all of God's creation is good. And then in verse five, for the Christian, the expression of gratitude and a prayer of thanksgiving sets apart everything which God has made and gifted to his people. Now in 4, 1 through 5 where we are today, Paul points out the problem of false teachers. And this is something that he really should have, Timothy should have expected was going to happen because the text tells us that the Holy Spirit basically foretold, the Holy Spirit prophesied that the false teachers would be coming. Interesting poll will not deal with this group of false teachers again all the way until chapter 6 So we're gonna get a little snippet here and we'll pick back up in chapter 6 and get a lot more But we do need to address what's being given here now much is revealed about these teachers in these five verses They are hypocritical liars who know what they're teaching is wrong, and yet they continue to teach it. They claim to be Christians, but they wear the brand or the mark of Satan's ownership, for Satan ultimately lies behind their work. They are promoting asceticism. They're forbidding marriage and enforcing dietary restrictions. But in the end, their asceticism is a false asceticism. These examples are only a starting point for the anti-Christian doctrine and the expressions of their twisted morality. If you were to go over to 2 Timothy, you would find more of a litany of some of the moral depravity that made up these false teachers' lives. So let's move into 4.1. Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith. Now again, Timothy should not have been surprised that this was coming his way. It was the Holy Spirit who had prophesied and foretold about this apostasy. Now the expressed emphasis here in this verse is expressing on how clear that prophecy was. That the Holy Spirit had said it's going to happen. Now it's happening. Timothy would not have been led astray by wondering. God's always clear when he gives a message. He's not out there to try to trick you. His goal is to give to you what you can clearly understand. In this case, Timothy would have known that this was coming. The same idea is also presented in 2 Timothy 4, verses 3 through 4, and it too is in an eschatological context. Now, eschatological just means last times or end days context. And so this seems to be a theme within Paul's writing. especially to Timothy, about them being in these last days and what should be expected. Now in our text, the spirit here is the Holy Spirit. If you notice, I think ESV capitalizes that word for you to let you know in context that this is in regards to the Holy Spirit. We have another, a very similar example of the Holy Spirit warning the church about problems and about coming false teachers or heresy, and that is in Acts 11 with Agabus. He's driven and prompted by the Spirit to give this prophecy that would warn the church. Now that's clear, but there's something that's not clear in the text about what the Holy Spirit has done, and that is, through what medium did the Spirit speak about this apostasy? Was it dreams that were given? Was it visions that were given? Was it inspiration that was given? I think that it's really inspiration. Let me kind of share with you why that's the case. There seems to be a connection back to Paul's prophecy that he had given about six years earlier, all right? In Acts 20, 29 through 30, he told the Ephesian church this. Know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among yourselves will rise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them." All right? That's a clear indication of what Paul had said six years earlier, we would say by the power of the Holy Spirit, to warn the church. Now, lest we think that Paul's words are a new message that has been given, the Holy Spirit gave ample warning to God's people via the Old Testament prophets concerning apostasy, that it was always something that they were in danger of. And if you just start reading in different places in the Old Testament, you realize Israel had a really bad problem with this aspect of apostasy. They were constantly, willfully turning their backs on God and leaving his ways. And then what would happen is they would get hung in their muck and mire of their sin, and they would cry out to God, and God in his mercy and his grace would gather them back to himself. He would call them back to himself through his prophets. And then he would forgive them. And then we see this cycle over and over in the Old Testament. So this idea of there being an apostasy of groups of people isn't a foreign concept. It's not a new message that even Paul was giving to the church at Ephesus. We see that because it's not a new message, that it's something that needs to be very clearly reminded that we too could be a type of people who might struggle with this. There seems to be a future reality of apostasy. This is expressed, at least for Paul as he's writing to Timothy, in this concept of last days or latter times. If you have the ESV, if you're reading from there, they use the word latter times. This is from the time of the experience of Pentecost. The church has viewed itself as in the last days. All right, now for some of you that may be, you're thinking, huh, hold it, hang on. Why would the early church be viewing itself in the last days? Aren't we in the last days? And the answer is yes. The answer is yes. They viewed themselves in the last days according to Acts 2 17 through 21 in Hebrews 1 2 and this is the same expectation that Paul shared as he's sharing with Ephesus and the other churches and There's a kind of a schema of the way that the Jewish people and the way the Old Testament lays out kind of this chronology of time that you and I live in right now. And it's a biblical perspective of the way of looking at everything from creation all the way through to the second return and then into the future. But Paul is kind of laying part of that out here. He has what I've referred to for many years now. I didn't come up with it. I just refer to it and give it to you because it's an easy label to handle. Already but not yet. There's some things that are already done and there's some things that are not yet done. And we live in the tension between those two things as Christians. This already but not yet is usually presented in the idea of the word present age. You'll read the scripture and it'll say, in the present age, da, da, da, da, da. That present age is from the beginning where Adam is created all the way up until the time of John the Baptist. And then there's a second phrase that you usually read somewhere around that. It's called the age to come. Now the age to come is when the birth of Christ happens all the way until the time that he's going to return. And then basically he goes into eternity. Now the overlap between the present age and the age to come is this 30 or so year window where Christ is born, he has a ministry on this earth, and then he dies and is resurrected and taken away. The overlap between those two ages is where the apostles lived, where Christ lived, where the early, early church in its inception was taking place. And so we are living in these last days. We are living in that so-called period of that age to come. They saw it take place in their time. We're living it, and we will continue to live through that until Christ returns. Paul states that the final apostasy imagined for the end times is already looming on the horizon. 2 Timothy 3.1, Jude 17 and 18, 1 John 4.1. Paul places the false teachers into this larger context of latter-day apostasy. This idea of apostatizing is not new. Let's continue in verse one. There's a question regarding whether this phrase, from the faith, in verse one, goes with the word some or with those who will depart or those who will apostatize, which would make it read this way. This is what's being asked. Will some of the faith apostatize or will some apostatize from the faith? All right, the language there is not clear. It seems to be one or the other. I think it really is some of the faith will apostatize. I think that's kind of the way it's laid out in the context. seems to be the way that at least I'm going to look at it as I'm presenting it. Some who were to depart from the faith were professing Christ in Ephesus. They would turn from the doctrinal, the apostolic faith, the doctrinal understanding of who Christ was in this person and his work that they had earlier accepted. They're going to leave this. They're going to go off and chase some other gods and some other way of thinking. And it's from this that we see that a mere profession of faith does not guarantee an absolute profession of eternal life. Let me say that again, a mere profession of faith does not guarantee an actual possession of eternal life. There are people who claim that they're Christians, and they are only saying that as an outward pretense, and at some point in their life, they will apostatize, they will walk away. And that's hard for us to think of, right? And yet, it's not in some ways. I probably would dare say that every person sitting in this room probably knows someone, maybe even close to them, that has fit that bill. And my guess is, is that you pray for them on regular occasion because you know that there's no other hope for them outside of the sacrifice of Christ for their eternal soul. See, the emptiness of mere profession would become clear by the departure from Christianity of some of the Ephesians. And this is an idea that's clearly expressed in 1 John 2, 19, which says, they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out that it might become plain that they were not of us. Recent examples of apostasy or departing from the Christian faith include famous YouTubers Rhett and Link. If you listen to their, what they call their deconversion stories that they presented. Uh, it was, those were hard to listen to. I mean, I remember watching some Rhett and Link with my daughter and really liking the guys and listening to both of their deconversion stories were saddening, uh, to my heart on how they'd been pulled away. Also, um, Abraham Piper, John Piper's one of John Piper's sons, uh, is now just a blatant Uh, he, he just hates Christianity. Uh, I think he'll follow a lot of stuff on his, on Instagram. Um, Josh Harris, you remember him? Cause a number of years ago, he kissed dating goodbye. It seems to be also kissed Jesus Christ goodbye now in his life. And then Jen Hatmaker is a common name amongst a lot of the ladies groups. She decided that the best thing that she could do was to follow the Bible for exactly all that it says, beginning in the Old Testament and living life that way. And somehow that was going to kind of super elevate her spirituality because surely if it's written, it's something that we as Christians should do. It was a very naive, Very naive way of looking at the Bible. Matter of fact, it's almost looking down upon the scriptures, the way that she presented that year or so of her life where she was going to follow everything the Bible said she should do as a woman. And so there's many, what I'm trying to say to you is this, there's many ways that people get pulled away from the gospel being promised that if they would look to other things, there's more fulfillment that will come in their lives. And God is telling us as his people, Christ is enough. Christ is sufficient. Christ is all you need. All right. I've been using the word apostatize through this last few minutes. And I let me define that not because I don't think you know what it means, but I want you to see in context here, what's really going on at Ephesus. Apostatize, uh, it, It occurs 14 times in the New Testament, so it's not just like one of these words crammed over in a corner that you never hear about. It means defection or departure or rebellion. It has been described as a willful falling away or rebellion against Christianity. Apostasy is the rejection of Christ by one who claims to have been a Christian, one who has voluntarily and consciously abandoned their faith in the God of the Bible, who has manifested himself most clearly in Jesus Christ. The departing of the faith refers to an active rebellion against God. Now, what this means is that the Ephesians are not being tricked into heresy. This means that they are actively and willfully rebelling against God. We see this in 1 Timothy 1.6. And yet, on the surface, the situation seems quite straightforward. I mean, it's easy, right? I mean, certain teachers of that church have been spreading their false views, and some gullible people in the church listen to them, and then the consequence of listening to these false teachers is that they abandon the apostolic faith. Now that just seems like reading it on the surface, that's what's going on, but Paul does something for us. He takes us behind the scenes of what's really going on in the life of this church. He looks beneath the surface, on the surface appearance, and he explains to Timothy that there's an underlying spiritual dynamic. Look at verses 1b and 2. by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared. Now, the first thing we have here is a cause of this error is that the cause of this error is diabolical, all right? Those who depart from the faith do so because they've been devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. Now notice in this verse, Paul is referring to, in this verses that we're looking at, Paul's referring to two persons, right? He's referred once now to the Holy Spirit, and now he's referring to these evil spirits and these demons. And the reason why this is the case is because behind the false teachers, he sees the activity of demonic forces. Paul, speaking under the influence of the Holy Spirit, declares that the false teachers are under the influence of deceiving spirits. Now, I just said all that. Some of you had a really hard time at some level of what I just said, and I want you to know in some ways it's a little bit natural. I don't know that it's the right response, but I know it's a little natural. Let me tease this out for just a second. As a post-enlightened Western world, that's what you and I live in, right, after the enlightenment of the 1700s, We're in the West, we're not in the East, in the Western world, we tend to not take seriously the supernatural, all right? This is just the water you and I swim in. The world around you thinks it's pretty normal not to think of supernatural things. Everything is through the five senses, that's enough for the Western world. One of the other things that we don't take seriously, even more than just the supernatural, is we don't take seriously the idea of personal supernatural evil. Like the devil and Satan is even further down the line of us thinking that he's real, right? But scripture clearly portrays the devil not only as the tempter enticing people to sin, but also as the deceiver seducing people into error. Now, often he does this together. This is the great example in the Garden of Eden. He enticed Eve and Adam to doubt and disobey God's word. Jesus called the devil a liar and the father of lies in John 8, 44. And the apostles regularly attributed human error to devilish deceit, 2 Corinthians 2, 11, Revelation 13, 14. This is why you have intelligent extremely very educated people swallowing some outlandish speculations within the cult. You even have some of these what we would call these kind of super intelligent people who think that the the the earth was seeded by aliens because they don't want to admit the idea of creation. Even some of the more far-fetched doctrines with the Eastern religions are absorbed by these extremely intelligent folks, much less the barrenness of atheistic philosophies. See, it's because there is not only a spirit of truth, but also a spirit of falsehood who is able to delude and to drug and to blind people, which leads us to our second cause of error. That is humans, verse two, through the insincerity of liars. See, the devil usually doesn't deceive people head on. That's not the way he works. Doctrines inspired by demons gain their entry into the world and the church through human agents. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, or in this case, literally it says, by means of hypocrisy of liars. Now that is a terrible combination of words. Since hypocrisy is a deliberate charade, and a lie is a deliberate falsehood. So then false teachers, seduced by deceiving spirits, are themselves deliberately deceivers. I mean, Paul's not painting a pretty picture of these false teachers. I don't want you to think that he decided, well, I'll come up there, I'll sit down and have a conversation with them, with these guys, and we'll kind of hammer all this out. He's not painting a pretty picture. No matter how misleading, or the masking of their learning and their piety and their religion may be, essentially, they don't believe the message that they're actually telling other people they should embrace. They're claiming that they do, but in reality, they don't. Now we find our third cause of error. And in this case, it's moral. We saw the first cause of error was diabolical or demonic, the second was insincerity, lying humans, and the third is moral. See, for the hypocritical lies of the false teachers are now traced back to the violation of their consciences. This word conscience has come up a few times up into this part of the chapter. We'll see it again too as we move forward. So it's something that's very important to Paul. He's trying to say it's very important to Timothy so he can say to the church, your conscience is a very important thing. Their consciences which have been seared or branded with a red hot iron. This is really what's behind that word on seared, branding with a red hot iron. It was used of the branding of cattles and of slaves to say, well, who owns this animal or who owns this slave? We get our word cauterized from this word. That's when skin or tissue is cauterized. It is destroyed by burning and makes the tissue insensitive. Cauterized tissue and cauterized consciences have been deadened. They've been deadened. They're numb. by consistently arguing with one's conscience, by muffling its warnings, its voice is smothered and eventually silent. And this brings the person into a state of moral apathy. And this is where the false teachers were, that allowed them to easily fall prey to this demonic influence. We see the same thing over in Ephesians 4.19. Paul already had mentioned Hymenaeus and Alexander, as examples by rejecting their conscience they had shipwrecked their faith, 1 Timothy 1.19. And so we see a sequence of events that's been presented to us in what Paul has shared in these causes of error in the making of false teachers. First, they turn a deaf ear to their conscience until it becomes cauterized. Next, they felt no uneasiness or they did not give a second thought to becoming hypocritical liars. And third, in turn, they exposed themselves to the influences of deceiving spirits. And finally, they led their listeners to abandon the faith. Now, it's a dangerous thing the way that this takes place. It's incrementally, they're kind of sliding and slowly stepping away from what they had been. There's an incremental downturn or a spiral from the deaf ears to the cauterized conscience, the deliberate lying to the deception of demons, and now the ruination of others. They're taking others with them as they go down to the pit. It begins when we tamper with our conscience. Instead, we need to say with Paul, Paul said in Acts 24, 16, I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and men. And we too would do well to do that in our own lives. Now we get to the heart of the false teacher's ethical constraints. Verse three, they forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created. the Ephesians asceticism. Now asceticism is an extreme self-denial with rigidity, and it typically has behind it kind of an attitude of grimness, all right? That's the way it seems to perceive itself outside for those people who are doing this. This asceticism focused on the denial of two great gifts that God has given to humanity and God has given for sure to his people, and that is marriage and food. Marriage and food. Ascetic teaching fell on fertile ground in the apostolic church, even though the Jews themselves were not the type of people who generally were receptive to ascetic teaching. The Essenes over in the Qumran community outside the main Jewish city, they were reported by Josephus to have taught this. They rejected pleasure as evil, but esteemed celibacy as virtue, and they neglected marriage. Now these are the same groups where we found the Dead Sea Scrolls, right? The Essene community is the one that gave us the Dead Sea Scrolls. While we have so much background in the Bible that verifies the scriptures are good, but this community had removed itself from the broader Jewish context. And they were the ones who felt like that they were kind of the people who were living right. And they were the ones who God was going to come back and get. And he was going to kind of leave everybody else alone because they were the true and faithful, right? So we're very thankful for their scrupulous taking of notes and recording the scriptures, but it seems like their theology in this regard fit a little too well with what may have been going on in some of the churches in that area. Also, the Greek culture of Ephesus had kind of the seeds of what's called a second century Gnostic dualism. Gnostic dualism regarded things of this world, material and the body, as evil, and things of the spiritual world, and the soul and the spirit, as good. And so if you are going to gain ground and be a better worshiper of God, then what you needed to do is restrict the things that are material and of the body, and you need to focus on the things that are of the spirit and of the immaterial world. Therefore, They taught that the godly must live above the physical. Simply stated, the body and the flesh is evil and the spirit and the soul and material, immaterial world is good. Now these ideas led both converted Jews and Gentiles to be open to this whole asceticism, right? A denial of the things of the body or the things of this world. Now, why would the false teachers teach this? It just doesn't seem like if someone came up and presented to me, hey, I want you to deny everything of this world so that you can have a better life later. Don't get married and don't eat these foods and you'll have a great life. It just doesn't seem like I'm going to buy it, right? I mean, I just don't know of too many people around me that would buy it either. But they seem to have been able to promote this in a way that the people, or at least some people, felt like it's something they should embrace. And there are, I think, two possible reasons why the false teachers in Ephesus evidently favored asceticism of marriage and food. I think when I share this with you, then all of a sudden you may think, oh wow, I just didn't put it in that context. First, it's possible that both marriage and the eating of certain foods were considered part of the old order of things. They believed that these things had passed away because with the resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, these things were to be avoided. And that seems like, okay, I don't know if I'd do that. The second possibility is this behavior reflected the attempt to enact the life the resurrected paradise by following the models given in Genesis 1 and 2 before the fall into sin. That is, what's going on before the world fell into sin? Shouldn't we replicate that in our lives? Wouldn't that be a better way to live were we to do so? After all, Jesus taught that there would be no marriage in the resurrection in Matthew 22 30. and that vegetarianism seems to have been the rule in the Garden of Eden. That's a little more plausible, isn't it? All of a sudden it moved from I can't believe that to oh, okay. So whether these false teachers were teaching what they were teaching to cope with the evil material world or to implement an over-realized eschatology, and we'll say that again, because this came up earlier in chapter one, over-realized eschatology, right? We talked about that already, but not yet. The things that God promises are going to be made complete in heaven, in the new heaven and new earth, the belief that somehow we can bring those to this present age of sin and curse and fall and have them here. Like we can have the best of both worlds, right? The things we like here and the things that we're gonna have in heaven. That's over-realized eschatology. It's all around us right now in our evangelical world. We're typically just not aware that that's what's going on. A lot of times it happens in many of the churches that are very socially involved. So what they want to do is they want to overturn the present injustices of society and usher in a Christian way of looking at and acting in this world. If you think about it, it doesn't necessarily seem to be a bad thing. If you've got injustices in the world, would you not want those corrected? And would you not want those to be seen from a Christian perspective because we believe they're true and that God's given them? The problem is, has God called his church to do that? You see, we need to ask ourselves what is our purpose as a church? There seems to be a foolishness that lies behind the asceticism as a spiritual discipline to gain favor with God. And this asceticism, this spiritual asceticism, creates a compensating righteousness. Now, this has happened to thousands who have succumbed to the sirens of legalism or mysticism or asceticism, legalism not being the fact that you live an orderly life or things are done in an orderly way, legalism is to add something to what God has said he requires of you for salvation or for living life. This is legalism, what the Pharisees were really good at, right? God said, here's the boundaries. We're just gonna take a couple of steps back and draw another set of boundaries. That way we won't transgress God's boundaries. But if you transgress our boundaries, you're actually transgressing God's boundaries. Like they're adding to what God has said. That's legalism. See, for the ascetic person, When you find you cannot abstain from selfishness and greed and cruelty or gossip, you attempt to acquire righteousness by abstaining from those things that God has left you free to do. It's kind of a compensating righteousness. You realize I can't do what I'm called to do so I find out the things I can do and I hone in on those and then I do those and then I hold them up to God as good works and I say, look God, look what I did. Asceticism says if you'll renounce these things of this world and further open yourself up to the spiritual, and the holy that you'll gain more favor with God. I need you to know that this is a false claim. This is ultimately foolishness. Lest Paul be misunderstood in what he's saying here, let's let him speak for himself. Paul never opposed spiritual discipline for the purpose of godliness. There's your key, right? He never opposed spiritual discipline for the purpose of godliness. Matter of fact, in verses seven and eight, we'll be looking at next time we come back, we have Paul's famous mandate. Train yourselves for godliness, and godliness is of great value for everyone in this life and even in the next. Now we know that sometimes spiritual disciplines involves restraint. Christianity has some actual don'ts. Don't do these things, right? But asceticism is altogether different because it involves the intentional denial of the things that God has declared to be good. the intentional denial of the things that God declared to be good. It declares that abstinence from these things is essential for you to be more spiritual. Whatever these teachers have given you that said you have to do, it's essential that you do these so that you will be more good or you will be accepted by God. And ultimately, going this way lays an ax to the root of the gospel itself. Paul considered asceticism a heinous doctrine and emphasized its terribleness in the context of 1 Timothy as Paul set forth Christ as the mystery of godliness. What Paul is saying in that phrase, the mystery of godliness, is that Christ is the source and the origin of godliness. Your denial of things in this world are not your source of godliness. You're acting against the good things of God in this world are not your source of godliness. Christ is your source of godliness. Asceticism not only lambast the creator, but also the sufficiency of the son's work. What fools Christians must be who trade in their standing in Christ for ascetic pursuits. Instead of looking to Christ's perfect life, sacrificial death, resurrection, and ascension, all performed on their behalf as their only hope of salvation and godliness, they now set their sights on ascetic denial of fleshly appetites through rules, which Paul says elsewhere are categorized as do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. Colossians 2.21, Paul said that. Now, there are, of course, those, according to Paul and Jesus, who are called to follow Christ and to follow him. And in these two regards of marriage and food, there may be some who are called to remain single. We also know that fasting is sometimes appropriate. And with that said, the scriptures are clear that avoiding marriage and buying into progressive vegan lifestyle are not God's general will for his people. Those who forbid marriage and certain foods are guilty of grievous error. So why would anyone embrace an ascetic lifestyle? What makes it attractive? One possible reason is to assuage one's conscience. It's a matter of all hypocrites and false prophets to create a guilty conscience in matters where there is no offense. Let me say that again. It's the nature of all hypocrites and false prophets to create a guilty conscience in matters where there is no offense, in matters where God says, this is not a law. The hypocrite and the false teacher says, this is a law, God says so. And that's not the case. The creation of a ascetic conscience that you can soothe by fleshly avoidance, can numb you to the inner demands of the Holy Spirit. The trick of asceticism is to hide your inner wickedness by outward observances of denial, which make you look more spiritual. That's the trick. That's what's going on with the ascetics. They know inside that they're wicked and they're trying to hide that. And the way they do it is they try to deny the things outside of them to prove to everyone else that they're better. So what's Paul's answer to this ascetic folly? The goodness of creation. The goodness of creation is Paul's answer to this false teaching. 3B and 4A, let's look at that. The things God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth for everything created by God is good. See, Paul's answer rests on understanding and affirming the intrinsic goodness of everything created by God. We must embrace God's own verdict at the end of Genesis chapter one, when he said, looking out over all of his creation, he said, and God saw that all he had made was good. And behold, it was very good. In reference to food, Jesus himself declared, it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles the person, but what comes out of the mouth that defiles the person. Matthew 15, 11. He also said that not all foods, I'm sorry, that all foods are clean. Mark 7, 19 and 20. And this is the fact that we see in Acts 10 with Peter, what's being hammered into Peter's mind and his understanding. through a vision that was given to him, a sheet containing animals and reptiles and birds, three times, came down out of heaven before him. And each time that that sheet came down with all those so-called unclean creatures inside of it, the voice said, what God has made clean, do not call unclean. That happened three times. And he was spoken to three times, right? And Peter kind of has an epiphany, doesn't he? Oh my goodness, these Gentiles that we're seeking to avoid, they're part of our people and we're part of them. See, we are to celebrate God's creation and his goodness in heaven and earth, the stars and the flowers, vegetables and animals, seas and rivers, fish and forest, gender as male and female, marriage and sex, friends, family, and food. God is never properly worshiped by denial of his gifts. Write that somewhere. Write that on the inside of your hand. God is never properly worshiped by the denial of his gifts and self-denying asceticism, especially in the public display, moves one away from worshiping God in spirit and in truth. John 4, 24. Wow, this is tied into a lot, isn't it? A lot of our lives rotate around this or engulfed by a lot of this, is it not? So having understood creation's goodness, we are to receive it with thanksgiving. Verses four B through five says, nothing is to be rejected if it's received with thanksgiving for it's made holy by the word of God in prayer. Foods are to be received with a prayer of thanksgiving. The answer to asceticism is not merely receiving these gifts, but receiving them with a thankful prayer to God as the giver of good gifts. Jesus consistently blessed the Father before his meals. He offered thanks afterwards, Mark 6, 41, Luke 24, 30. Paul also offers thanks even for a meal on a ship amid a storm in Acts 27, 35. And here in the southern part of the United States, We too have a response before our meals. We say, Grace, you've been out in public, haven't you? Restaurants. You look over the table and there's a family that sometimes are holding hands before they take on a meal. We bless the Lord. We thank him for the food that he's provided. We thank him for the hands that prepared the food, for the money that was earned to purchase the food, that the food would be used to nourish our bodies, that our bodies would be used in his service and love of him and love of others, and we ask that all that would be done for his glory. Some people snicker at that. Why would somebody do that? They know it doesn't change anything. You're right in one way, it doesn't change anything, but what it does, We know that just because you say grace before a meal doesn't make your food holy, but what it does is it sets our food in a proper perspective as God's good creation. It reminds us that this is not of our own making. It reminds us that this is not of our own sustaining. It reminds us that one who cares for us and loves us is actually giving to us what we need in our daily life. Here in verse 5, the phrase word of God and prayer expresses a single idea. The word for prayer here is actually references other portions of scripture that were customarily used in giving thanks for food. And the giving of thanks to God for his good gifts and not just at meals, but for all of life is really the key to the life of the Christian. We speak of that as a life of worship. We come here to worship corporately, but there's a worship that you take with you as you leave here going throughout the week. Let's close. Thankfulness to God is a way that we should approach all of life. Certainly there are times of self-denial and discipline for the sake of godliness. There are things that we do not do because we're Christians, easily summed up in the Ten Commandments. Those are the things that we do not do. But asceticism is neither freedom nor friend for the Christian. Put that in a little note somewhere. Asceticism is neither freedom nor friend for you as a Christian. To regard what God created as good and say it's unclean is a sin. Its origin is found in the demonic. Isn't that exactly what Satan did back in the garden? You may eat all the trees that you want to eat, but not this one. Satan comes in and says, did God say? She saw it. It looked good. Tasted good. To teach the avoidance of marriage and certain foods is the high road to closest with God is blasphemous. To require such abstinence from those who want to be good Christians and tell them this is the way that they become better Christians is treacherous. Asceticism can begin by this kind of imperceptible, this incremental drift from pure belief that Jesus is all I need to a belief that is ultimately no belief at all. The Christian life is not meant to be lived primarily in the negative, but in the positive, as Jesus gave example to us by his life. That's probably the harder one for some of us in the room who've come out of a little more of a fundamentalistic background. Because for us, there were lots of things that you don't do. You've heard me say it. You don't drink, smoke, and chew, and swim with girls who do, right? But that's the way life was lived in that group, right? And all of a sudden, when you look at Christ, you look at the Scriptures, you realize, oh, there's this whole world that's opened up to us. It's good. Now listen, there are places we can fall off the horse in one direction or the other, right? The Pharisee or the Libertine. But the Holy Spirit's with us and He guides us. We are to be saying grace every minute of our lives. That should be what's on our tongue as the people of God, thanking God for what he's given to us. It's G.K. Chesterton who reminds us, you say grace before your meals and that's a good thing. But I say grace before the play and the opera and grace before I open a book. and grace before sketching, and painting, and swimming, and boxing, and walking, and playing, and dancing, and grace before I dip my pen in the ink to start to write. And I think Paul would totally agree with G.K. Chesterton. And Paul would remind us. So whether you eat or you drink, Whatever and all that you do, do to the glory of God. And what is it that gives glory to God? Not rejecting the good gift of his son for your salvation, and not rejecting in creation what God has called good. Join me in prayer. Father, thank you for your grace to us, your mercy, the reminder that all that you've given us is good as we look across the room at each other, as we look at spouses and children, and we look at this body of Christians with all of our struggles. Lord, you have called us good, you've redeemed us, you've set us apart and sanctified us. Help us to be a people, Lord. Father, to you we lift our souls and our souls on you depend. We know that every perfect and good gift comes from you above. Make us mindful of your grace that we may not reject the good gifts you have freely given to us. Amen.