There are many people who think if they just eat right that it will protect their health. But what does it really mean to eat right? Welcome to The Conquering Truth. I'm Dan Horne. I'm Jonathan Seitz. I'm Charles Churchill. And I'm Joshua Horne. You know, people talk a lot about eating healthy. And one thing that people need to realize is how much healthy eating is actually about power. It's really about manipulation of people. You know, there's a lot of wives that tell their husbands, you have to eat this and you can't eat this. And that's an exercise of power. The government says there's a food pyramid and you have to eat so many grains and so many and just a little bit of meat and that you have to eat on this. And that's about power. You know, doctors who, in some cases, they even know things that would help your health. A lot of times now, they don't even say it because they don't have enough power to get people to actually change their diet, that a lot of them just give up, or they know that certain things would help and they just won't bother. So, and as we get into more and more nationalized medicine, we should expect the government to exercise more and more power. You're seeing that in states like New York that ban certain sized soft drinks and things like that. And so because there's this connection between health and food is what they perceive, so therefore they go, okay, so we need to exercise this power to, we're helping people by exercising this power. But what is the real connection between food and health? I mean, when you wanna start talking about food and health, I think what you need is you need a different food pyramid. You need the thing that is the source of both of those. If you're talking about food and health, and especially, and I think we're sort of doing this where our intention is to do this for people who are in the church. I mean, in my mind, that's who I'm talking to on this podcast is I want Christians to think about food, I want Christians to think about health according to the ways that the Bible says that you should think about them. And if you have long philosophical conversations about food and health, and God is not a part of those conversations, then you're going to get into just power struggles, just manipulation. You're going to have a lot of error introduced. You're going to have a lot of cases where you are being manipulated or manipulating. You are being deceived or deceiving. Because you go back, and we'll talk about some of the details of this, we'll look at a lot of the passages, but throughout Scripture, the source of health is God. Throughout Scripture, the source of food is God. God is the giver of both of these things. He gives both of these things in abundance. To the just and the unjust. I mean, these are the sorts of things that you are supposed to look, because they exist in the world, to say there is a God and He is a good God. And if we don't have that as part of the equation, we're going to get off the rails, and we're going to get off the rails pretty quickly. And we look at it, right? And he is a just God. He is a merciful God. He's merciful to the just and the unjust, like you said. And at the same time, he does remove food from societies and causes famines. He does remove health from people and causes people to suffer with sickness. And these are things that God does, but that doesn't separate him from being merciful God, because the reality is even in his judgments he's merciful. And so when we look, there's a lot of judgments about food in Scripture. And when you look at Scripture, one of the patterns throughout Scripture is food is very connected to worship. And, you know, very connected to idolatry, is that what you eat, what you drink, that these things, people before saw these as things that were sourced in God. I mean, one of the reasons when you think about it being connected to idolatry, when you think about it being connected to worship, there's a fundamental reason, because you started off going health and food. And anytime you talk about health, you're talking about life and death. When you talk about life and death, people understand that you're actually talking about sin. You're talking about something that's fundamentally a moral issue. And so there's this part of it where, I mean, idolatry is about service and worship is about fear and service. And so when you come down to it, I mean, what you have to say, if you're a Christian, you have to go, if you're going to say that doing X causes death, you have to be at some point talking about sin. If doing X causes you to die, you have to be talking about sin. And if you're going to talk about sin, you better be able to bring it under the law of God. And there's just fundamental Christian principles that are related there. And when you think about it in that way, you can understand why these things are related to idolatry. Because people go to idols to say, I want to have this. I want to live in this way. I want to live longer. I want to have a better life. I want these things. And so they look to who they can turn to in service. And so you're either serving God and you're serving him with knowledge, you're serving him in spirit and in truth, or you're not. And that's true for food. And there's so much noise and so much nonsense associated with it. But we label it as other things and idolatry because we really don't want to deal with what scripture actually says. But don't people have this pretty well figured out? Because it's, well, of course it's to do with sin. It's, you know, you're supposed to steward your body. Your body is a temple. You know, obviously if you shouldn't, you know, eat hemlock, you know, and kill yourself, you know, that'd be sinful. So, you know, you shouldn't eat X, Y and Z because it's all about sin. It's all about good stewardship. But didn't they have that with the hemlock shake at McDonald's? Depends on who you ask. Death this season. I mean, right, and so I mean, but there's this part of it where even when they start talking about your body, I mean, even when you start saying those phrases, your body is a temple of God, you've already started people think, people have already started thinking about the issue in a wrong way. I mean, I think, no, the answer is, We don't have this nailed down. We don't have a good handle on this. We understand that fundamentally these things are involved, but we throw in a lot of pseudo and wrong views and wrong definitions of things along the way that really cloud the issue. There's so much talk about as if people know how it works, but the reality is it's a lot more complicated and they don't really know. Like you look at the guy with vitamin C that was pushing vitamin C so hard. I mean, the scientific evidence is pretty bad for that, but yet doctors start pushing it afterwards. even though it was just one man that was so zealous about it that it was a religious crusade. And because of that religious crusade, he caused other people to buy into his religion. I mean, the best example of this is the eight glasses of water, right? The eight glasses of water was from the 19th century that you have to drink eight glasses of water today, a day, and that will be healthy. There's no evidence of that at all. You know when you should drink water? When you're thirsty. Your body tells you. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. The average healthy person can drink when they need to drink. And it doesn't mean that if you drink it's going to kill you, but if you drink too much it's not good for you. But somebody comes up with a religious cult and from that religious cult all of a sudden you have these medical experts pretending like this has some basis in reality when it doesn't. It doesn't have any basis in any scientific measurement whatsoever that it's good for you. It's just somebody that sold a bill of goods. And it's just trying to get people to fear things other than fearing God. And so when you say that, Joshua, I understand what you're saying, that there is an issue of stewardship, but you still have to go back to the Bible to say, what is the sin? And is it bad stewardship to eat a certain amount of red meat instead of white meat? Well, where do you find that in scripture? The scripture's not a diet handbook, the scripture's not a medical textbook, because where does it say that if, you know, your arm's turning black, you need to cut it off? I mean, it doesn't say that either. Right, but the issue is, is on what basis are these other people tying it to sickness, right? Because if you can actually track it tied to sickness, that's one thing. Another example would be the salt, right? The salt, that salt causes high blood pressure? No, it doesn't. They know it doesn't. But yet they did one study with like 16 people in it. And then they changed the diet of everybody in America. This is about power. It has nothing to do with, if you actually had that knowledge to say this is good stewardship, right? You can say, if you go get drunk every night, that's really bad stewardship of your body. A hundred percent, right? If you overeat, that's bad stewardship of your body. If you intentionally starve yourself of a nutrient you need, that's bad stewardship of your body. But we've arbitrarily defined stewardship without knowledge. And then we say that's sin. Well, that's not sin. Because it's only, it requires you to actually know. And most of the things that are the fads, nobody knows. And by fads, I'm talking about things that are pushed by the medical community in major ways. And one of the things that's really important for our audience is those things are pushed by the medical community. They're out there floating around among the medical community and Christians, especially, I want to say, the audience that might listen to a podcast like The Conquering Truth, you know, conservative, leaning conservative, probably higher percentage of homeschoolers, families, go to conservative churches, those sorts of things. These are the sorts of things that are really attractive. Those fads and conversations about those fads, those are the sorts of things that are very attractive to our people. They get this pseudo-religious kind of layer gets put on top of a lot of them. And in some cases, it's not even pseudo-religious. Right. It's just straight up, right? It's just straight up religious. And you can do this. Just go read the labels on the food that you get and see, does this thing say that it's going to make you more pure? Maybe it's even the brand name of the thing. And if it's saying it's going to make you more pure, that's a religious statement, and you've just got to recognize that this is something that is, it's either true or it's in conflict with the Word of God. In one thing, before you talk about, you know, details of how you sin with food, you have to recognize just how easy it is to be idolatrous towards food, right? I mean, this is, Paul writes about this because it's such a widespread problem in 1 Corinthians 8, 4 through 9. Therefore, concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other god but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father of whom are all things, and we for him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live. However, there is not in everyone that knowledge. For some, with consciousness of the idol, until now eat it as a thing offered to an idol, and their conscience being weak is defiled. But food does not commend us to God, for neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we do not eat are we the worse. But beware, lest somehow this liberty of yours becomes a stumbling block to those who are weak. And so the point that's being made is they're saying that it's all about being made right with God and about how you eat meat and what you eat. And we should just recognize that's been true from the beginning. That's not something new. And we want to think that it's not, that it's just you're being a good temple, you know, you're a big, good steward of your temple, as opposed to going, realize how easy it is to be idolatrous. Well, God says, it doesn't matter if you eat or not eat. And we're really quick to go, but you have to be a good steward. Well, God said, it doesn't matter. I think a little bit of context here is helpful because we don't understand maybe the moral dilemma that somebody's going through that Paul is writing to specifically. I mean, and understanding that will help us to know how to apply it. But he's talking to people who basically there were no supermarkets. There's no Aldi. There's no Walmart. You're not going to go anywhere and be able to just buy meat. the meat that you get is almost guaranteed to have been what was left over from an offering to a pagan idol. Because in these cultures that he's writing to, in most of the ancient Near East, they considered the killing and eating of an animal to be a religious act. And I mean, you can even see how this is dealt with in the law a little bit. When they're in the wilderness, you did not just kill and eat an animal. It was something that you had to offer as a peace offering to God. And it's only when they settle into the land of Israel that he says, okay, you know, once you're there, it's too far for you to go. You can just kill an animal and you can just pour out the blood and eat it. It's not a religious act. But Paul's dealing with a bunch of people for whom the eating of meat is a religious act. And it's a religious act that's fraught with all of this pagan idolatrous baggage. And what Paul's saying is, you know what? You can go to that market and you can buy that meat. Don't ask questions. Just eat it. But there's complexities because some of you have some consciousness of it. Some of you are a little weaker in the faith. So there's weaker brother things to deal with there. But that's what he's talking about is that there's a sense in which it's not religious like you think it is because you're gods. I mean, I should say that more carefully. You are something that belongs to God. And because of that, you know, it gives you a certain freedom. It gives you a certain liberty where you do not have to worry about whether or not this was given as part of a pagan religious ritual. And the problem is I think people think today, we don't have all that. Now all we have is all these material issues that cloud things. And the answer is it was more confusing then because all the material things existed plus all these religions that relate on top of it and so many of the material things we have that people talk about become religious. And so there's this part of it where it's not fundamental. I mean, it's easier today because Jesus Christ has set more things in order. It is simpler today for us in many ways. But at the same time, we still struggle with the exact same issue because people haven't changed. And so, and this is what Jonathan was saying earlier, is when you look at the way you think about food, when you look at the language that you use, when you look at the marketing that you use, when you look at why you buy this versus that, They push you towards ideas of purity, of ideas of, like Paul says, what you eat does not commend you to God, but if you listen to the language that's used. The language is often, eat this, it will commend you towards God. God will be more pleased with you if you eat in this way. And you really need to say, have I brought this under scripture? Or has someone pulled me out there? Has someone pulled me over this way? Because in the end, you talk to some people and so much of their money is tied up. in satisfying these false ideas of what they need to do to please God. And it's not just their money, it's their service, their life. Yeah, exactly. It's their time, it's their attention, it's the things that somebody obsesses about. And God tells you, there are certain things you should obsess about. Is this one of them? Can you look at Scripture and say, I should be obsessing about this? It's, I mean, in Matthew, what is it, six, that it says, do not worry about what you eat, do not worry about what you drink, do not worry about what you whittle. If you want to answer it. What's that? If you want to answer it, I mean. I mean, God's like really explicit. He says, seek first my kingdom and my righteousness. And instead, people want to seek all these other things and say, these are the solutions to the problem. And God has actually said what the solution to the problem is. But we need to recognize in this how much of it is related to idolatry, which is why it goes back to the introduction where I was talking about that so much of it is related to power. The government wants you to look towards them. The scientific community wants you to look towards them. It's all about manipulation and power. And that is a form of idolatry. Instead of saying, how has God created the world? What did God give us to eat? What should we eat? How do you sin with it? Instead we go, these people tell us to do this. These people tell us to do this. Look at this. And it's, it's all about exercising power because they're trying to make themselves into idols. So, so if you go to like Nigeria, you go to a third world country and you, if you don't want to ruin your trip repeatedly, very quickly, You pay close attention to what you're eating and what you're drinking if you're from America. What you pay close attention to is actually whether they are following the laws about human waste. That's what you look towards. You don't drink their water because they will use the bathroom right next to the well. The problem has to do with that they won't go outside the camp to bury their waste. That's the problem with all the food in Nigeria. That's the problem. It's not whether it's good for you or bad for you. It's whether human waste has corrupted it. And that's why there's so much sickness because of food in third world countries. It has to do with not having proper disposal of waste. It's what goes out of a man that defiles a man. That's what the Bible says. And that's, that's how the food's defiled. But then aren't you paying attention to what you're eating and what you're drinking? You should pay attention so that you don't get defiled, sure. And so you go to places where you drink water that's been purified so that you don't get human waste and you cook your food so that you get the human, you cook it long enough so that the bacteria that's in human waste is killed, yes. All those things are true. But that has more to do with dealing with what God said is actually what defiles you. It's not the food that's the problem. But yeah, you care about how it's prepared. Because whether it's defiled by human waste. We say Paul dealt with this. And there's very much a sense in which the food debates that happen within churches are not a new thing. And because they're not a new thing, Paul gives us really good boundaries for how we should handle them pastorally, and you know, these are ways to sin and not sin against one another. He talks about this in Romans 14, starting in verse 1. Receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things. For one believes he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat. And let not him who does not eat judge him who eats, for God has received him. Who are you to judge another servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand. If this doesn't define our conversations about food within the church, if this doesn't define how two wives talk to each other when they're talking about how they feed their children, then we've got to go back to Romans and we've got to say, you know, hey, who's strong in the faith? Who's weak in the faith? What are the doubtful things? You know, what are the things that are sort of on the fringes of concerns, as opposed to what are the really central things, you know? And that should set our bounds for how we receive somebody. I know there was a time where my wife was talking to me and she was having a conversation with somebody and she said that this other lady really was trying to connect with my wife over various food philosophies that we don't hold to. And just, we couldn't go there. But it was a barrier to some kind of a sisterly connection that just wasn't gonna develop because of that, because we need a little more Romans 14. And part of when you read Romans 14 is we have to be careful to not just go, therefore, you never talk about these issues. Right. There's a big difference between judging about these issues. Because Paul does say, in 1 Corinthians, that, hey, there's the weaker brother and the stronger brother. Well, how do you figure out who that is without talking about it and seeing what things really are and what the real truth is? But you do it without going, how dare you do that? You do it and go, these are doubtful things, but you should really consider it. And idolatry in any of it is sin. I mean, you take the beginning and end of this passage, where it's, there are those who are weak in the faith, dot, dot, dot, dot, lots of stuff about food. God can make that man stand. Indeed, he will make him stand. If he really has faith, then what Paul's saying is that that faith is going to mature. Well, how does that faith mature? It matures not by magic. I mean, that's why God gives a church, and that's why God puts people in a church, and you're supposed to spur one another on towards righteousness, including even in these food things. And he's telling you, here's how you do it. Don't despise, don't look down, don't judge, but it doesn't say don't mature. Right. And I mean, we also need to look, when Jesus Christ says, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. When we start to focus on you have to eat this and this and this and this and this, I mean, God is basically saying that physically you can pretty much survive on bread. You can survive a long time on bread and bread alone, as long as it has gluten, right? Because it has to have protein or you can't survive on it. But if it's normal bread, you can survive on it for a long time. And yet we've exalted all these other things to say if you don't have this and if you don't have that and you don't have this, and that's a really dangerous thing because all of a sudden you're saying how God has sustained most people through most of the history of the world was insufficient. When Jesus is saying that, he's saying that to a culture that pretty much lived on bread alone. It would have been the vast majority of their staple was bread. Maybe once a month they might have meat from an animal that was sacrificed to an idol. Yeah. And you can live on bread to the point where there have been soldiers who, when they went in, they would give them a bag of oats. And so you can, as a soldier- So that's Scotland. You had to bring your own oats. They didn't give you oats, Charles. They were poor. I didn't say that it was Scotland. There have been armies where they issued people where that was their primary- That was kind of the standard Scottish thing. I'm just kidding. You could fight on that. And if you can fight on something, this isn't just you can survive on it. I mean, you're expending a ton of energy. You have to be able to thrive on it. And so, I mean, That was something that you could absolutely live off of. If you try that too much and you go out with only your bag of bread, you end up with scurvy. Sure. Absolutely. No question. I'm just saying when you look at what was the amount of nutrition that was provided for you to be able to do things, it was enough to power you for being able to fight for your life. How many months does it take to develop scurvy? It takes a long time. And you do develop it, and you do have shortages. But I think we put a lot of focus on these things that Scripture doesn't put focus on. It doesn't put nearly as much focus as we put on it. I mean, part of what we're talking about here as you deal with idolatry is, a big part of idolatry is fear. And there's this part of it where, I mean, if basically, if you look at your life and you say, and I know men and women who both say, I spend a huge amount of my time being anxious over what I'm going to feed my family, over every meal worrying what they ate today. What did they eat? Did they get the right this? Did they get the right that? And that it consumes their thoughts. It consumes the, I mean, every time I buy something at the store, I'm full of fear. Am I poisoning my children? Am I killing them? If that is your life, you need to seriously think about these things because this is not what God has called us to. This is not what our life is to be as Christians. we've been talking about idolatry and how closely it's related to food. And God, you know, the first story, it is related about food. The first story that's related after the fall is, you know, Abel does an animal sacrifice, Cain does a grain sacrifice. And so from the beginning, worship involved foodstuffs, right? I mean, it did. And then in the end, you see in the end, meaning when Christ fulfills all things, he says in John 6, 53 through 56, it says, my flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him." And so Christ sets all this stuff in the world to make it about worship and food related to worship because he's setting it up for this statement. that all this stuff, all this, the reason that food is so associated with worship is because in the end you have to drink my blood and eat my flesh. And you don't physically do that, obviously, but he's setting up all these pictures throughout all of time so that we understand that that's what's required. But all of a sudden, we're made salvation about not drinking his blood and eating his flesh, but it's about eating this amount of B1 and this, that, and all these other things that we've added to it that we think, this is where salvation is. Because God designed it that way, but it was supposed to end in Christ. And unfortunately, a lot of people in the church, Jonathan was saying before, they go back to that, and they look to that, and they say that this is where you get health, this is where you get safety, this is where you have the absence of fear, is through this food, instead of saying, no, all that in a way was put away in Christ, because if you've partaken of Christ, then you abide in him and he in you. I want to go even back one more story than after the fall. I want to go back to creation in the fall, because you have to think, from the beginning, God made us as eating creatures. He made us as something that was not self-sustaining. And I don't know how to think about that in pre-fall terms, to think, oh, if you didn't eat, you would die, because there's no death without sin. But to not eat would be sin. Right. And so, you know, from the very beginning, God creates Adam and Eve as creatures that eat. And he puts them in a world where he says, every green plant I've given you for food. I mean, he's like, I'm going to put you in a world that you can eat, you can consume it. And if you think about it, the law of God for Adam was basically about what he could eat and not eat. And that's why I want to say that you go downstream from that, and food is so related to idolatry, is because God made men and women Because God made man as a creature that eats, made man as a creature that cannot sustain himself. And so we've got to figure out how this relates to what we worship. And at the very beginning, God said, I want you to honor me in this one thing. Don't eat of this one tree. And the devil comes along and says, has God really said that? And from that, all the rest of it falls out. Their original sin was about food, but notice the nature of the sin with what they ate had nothing to do with the physical nature of the food itself. And I think it's telling that God has intentionally kept it secret from us what that fruit was. We have no idea if it was an apple. We don't know. We know it was a tree fruit, and that was it. We don't know what the vitamins were in it. We don't know the chemical composition. We don't know the tree species. We know nothing except that God said don't, and they did. And that's what we're supposed to take as the lesson from that. Because those things were shadows. I mean, and just like that, and this is why when Dan goes to that verse where Jesus says, you have to eat my flesh, drink my blood, if you go, well, all the food up to that point had to be important in substance. You're just like somebody who returns to the sacrifices of the Old Testament. You're just like somebody who goes and starts worshiping the shadows because they were shadows. They were pointing forward, and we need to understand that. And when you don't get that, you end up believing that the substance, the earthly substance is the thing, and it's not. Yeah, so it's worth talking about that in detail, because we think that the reason that God put the food laws in place—and as Christians, we want to say, well, God must have had reasons for this, and that those reasons were related to physical means. That God put food laws in place because he wanted the health of the Israeli— And bacon's bad for you. Exactly. Because, oh, pork is bad for you, and beef is not, and so forth. Interestingly, nobody ever talks about camels. Nobody ever makes an anti-camel argument. Or elephant. Or elephant. You know, you could make some anti-rabbit arguments, but nobody goes there. They just go to bacon. But we think that that's why God put them there, or we would like to make those arguments and say that God gave them these food laws because of health reasons. because lobster is unhealthy for you, because shrimp is unhealthy for you. Look at what those things do on the bottom of the ocean floor. The cockroach of the sea. Exactly, yeah. Would you eat a cockroach? Why do you eat a lobster? If it tasted like shrimp. But we immediately want to say that those things are physical. And if they were, God could have told us that. But he doesn't. He says there's reasons for those in Leviticus 11 verses 45 to 47. for I am the Lord who brings you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You should therefore be holy for I am holy. This is the law of the animals and the birds and every living creature that moves in the waters and of every creature that creeps on the earth to distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between the animal that may be eaten and the animal that may not be eaten. Now he says that, he gives this law, and then we think, oh, well, this is about health. And that's not what he says. This is about division. This is, not only is it setting Israel apart from the nations, Because that's what happens. I mean, that's how you tell countries apart, is they have different cultural practices. No, and that's how the Jews maintain being the Jews, so many years after losing their homeland. Yep, yep. But anywhere you go, you can identify a culture based on their food practices, because everybody's got to eat. Right. And you pick different ways of doing it, and here God is picking the ways that they're going to eat. But it's about division. And then you go to the New Testament, and you go to that great story about Peter, and Peter sees a cloud coming down. And he says, I mean, at any point, anybody can take this one over. But he sees this sheet coming down. Let me back up. Acts 10 starting in verse 12, In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. And the voice came to him, Rise, Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean. And the voice spoke to him again the second time, What God has cleansed you must not call common. This was done three times, and the object was taken up into heaven again. So this event happens, and then as soon as this is over, Peter says, oh, you know what? The Gentiles are brought in. He just makes this immediate conclusion from this. I get it now. I have these food laws that have been in place that I thought were about what went into my body, making me clean or unclean. I see they were a picture about people. They were a picture about what people were acceptable in communion with God. And because of what I saw in this vision, I'm going to go and I'm going to fellowship with this Roman. What happens in between him realizing it in this vision is there's a knock on the door and there's three people there going, Cornelius sent for you. And then he goes, oh, clearly this is about the Gentiles. But he clearly connected the dots. He understood that this food was not about, oh, this is how I'll be healthy. Because you can be unhealthy with pork and you can be unhealthy with beef. That has to do with how you're using it, whether you're using it in a sinful manner or not. It's not about the nature of the thing, but yet we want to make it about the nature of the thing rather than making it that these things are shadows about a more important thing. And I think we do this, you see this happen in the church all the time, is that we have to have this in it, and you have to have this, you shouldn't eat that, you shouldn't eat this, and we make all these rules that we act like this will produce health, instead of going back to the basic things. God gave those things, he gave those foods, so that we can understand what actually produces health, which is obeying God. And I mean, that was what I just did there was the really quick argument for this, for which we could have done the entire podcast from Leviticus 11 and Acts 10. We could have talked about this for an hour. You know, so there's more to it. But just structurally speaking, you've got to start there. And one of the things that's really important that Peter understood was if it was about the substance of the food. then it would have been about the substance of the Hebrews and the Gentiles. And in the end, the reason why sheep and cows were approved was because God approved them. It's like when God chooses Israel. He says, I didn't pick you because you were the best. I didn't pick you. I did not pick you because of your substance, but I picked you. And there's this part where, yeah, those animals have some characteristics that God used to show us things. But when you go, it's the substance of it. Because if it's the substance, then the Gentiles can't be equals with the Jews. There's some substance of the Hebrews that makes them better. And you can even see the point where Peter comes to Cornelius' house. He even says at one point, I shouldn't even come into your house. That's how much it had pervaded his thinking. Because God didn't make laws that you couldn't go into a Gentile's house. There wasn't a law that says you can't enter their house. But He had so, it had pervaded their thoughts. And this is where people are in the church today. It's so pervaded thoughts, there are people who go, there has to be, and you can hear people preach on it. There is something in pigs that is bad. There is something in these foods that are bad. There is something in these other foods that make them good for you. And God says, nope, I chose them. That wasn't the point. That was not the point at all. Because otherwise, holiness is in you. Otherwise, holiness is your substance, as opposed to entirely the work and approval of Christ. And again, it's important that we continue to see that these things play out, because they play out throughout all of Scripture, and they continue to play out today. I mean, the Roman Catholics do this. You can't eat meat on Friday. That somehow that makes you holy. That doesn't make you holy. That doesn't make you more righteous with God. That doesn't do anything. They just make something up, and then they tell you that this will make you more righteous. It's just twisting it, and it's idolatry, and it's about making man somehow say that the world that God created is bad, that it was created not so that you can sin with it, but it was created so that it was damaging in and of itself, and therefore, you have to overcome it by your own works. It is the heart of workspace religion. With that, all of a sudden, you get this idea. that God created some things good and some things bad, or that we take them and we twist them so that we make them bad, you know, through, through genetic manipulation. In other words, through breeding and things like that, through cross-pollination, we make things bad that God made good. And all of a sudden you start to call things good and some things bad where God didn't call them good or bad. He said green things were made for food, that they're good. But yet all of a sudden people are out there going, Oh, that's bad for you. I've, you know, I've heard people say, McDonald's, that's evil food. No, it's not. Where do you get these things? And, and, and it's an, sometimes it's an oversimplification. It's like, it's sometimes it's just like King James version only ism. There's this part where people go, Hey, There are other translations that aren't great. So we're going to put some walls around it. We're going to say, just use the King James. And the problem is, you can't make that argument. And that argument starts to cause some real problems with the way you think about where the Word of God came from, and how it's protected, and how God has preserved it, and that translation is allowable, and all those different things. And in the same way, because people want to go, well, the issue is that food's not bad. The issue is if you have a fairly sedentary lifestyle, and you eat too much of it, it's going to make you fat. And God says gluttony is a sin. And that's a more complex argument. And it's just easier to go, ooh, bad, and just you shouldn't eat it. And sometimes people, sometimes people, and which is control. I mean, the pastors who do that, it's about control. But with the argument of it's for the good of the person. And a lot of the pastors that do that are pretty substantially overweight. So it's not, that's the problem that I have with is it's not, It's so much more about power than it is about just simplifying gluttony. Because they're lying. At the end of the day, they're lying. They are lying because the other thing isn't bad. It just has its place. Right, and it has its place, and anything that's done outside with excess, that clearly has negative ramifications because you don't have control of your flesh. When I worked landscaping, I could eat McDonald's every day for lunch. I could eat, you know what I mean, and I wasn't going to gain a pound because I was burning off every calorie I went in, and you could, I mean, I would have been fine eating McDonald's. And now if I want to eat McDonald's every day for lunch, well, that's not going to, you know, I would, I would, I would hurt myself long-term because it would be gluttonous and it's sinful. And so there's this part of it where, you know, I mean, these are real issues. But the problem there is, is locating the sin in the thing outside as opposed to locating the sin in the use of the thing. And, you know, there was that Supersize Me movie that they came out where if he ate McDonald's three meals a day and if he walked in and they said supersize that he would supersize. And then he goes at the end, McDonald's is bad for you. Well, he was gluttonous for three meals a day for 30 days, and then he turns around and says that the problems with McDonald's, it had nothing to do with McDonald's. I'm not saying that the McDonald's food, I mean, sure, it's easy to be gluttonous with McDonald's food because it's high sugar content, high fat content. Is it a good way to get calories? Not really, unless you're doing certain work. But in the end, The sin that caused his health problems—well, first of all, you found out later that he was a drunkard. His being a drunkard was also part of the sin problem, so it was causing his health problems. But they're able to take it and make it all about McDonald's, and then everybody's going, oh, look how terrible McDonald's is for you. The whole thing was a lie. It was all distortion. And then people go, McDonald's is bad for you. No, if you eat too much, it's bad for you. If you have it in its proper place, it's not bad for you. If you're a slave to the lust of the flesh, it's bad for you. I mean, it's just putting it in the wrong place but it's done in such a way and our culture does it in such a way that it's trying to get gullible people to go yeah we have the solution to our health instead the church should be saying the solution to your health is obey God so I think we might need to be a little more specific than to say there is no unhealthy food because if we're saying that God gives all the green herbs for food well go out and eat grass, go out and eat pine needles, go out and eat hemlock, well, you're going to run into some trouble. But I think that the thing about it is, is that the standard is, we need to have a high standard to say that something is an unhealthy food or something that seems like food and is not food. You know, because so much of people's complaints is based off of, well, you know, this, if you eat it, you know, maybe over 50 years, you know, you're going to get X, Y, and Z. And, and it's a very, you know, very, it's not, not, there's not much substance to it. It's based off of things like, oh, well, this food has a lot of chemicals in it. Well, you know, you can go pull up online a poster of all the chemicals that are in an apple. And there's some pretty scary names that are in your apple. And we're not talking about some wacky GMO apple. We're talking about like an apple apple, like the like an apple. because everything is made of chemicals. So like a lot of the arguments end up being very, there's not much behind them because you're scared of something that you don't, you know, you don't know why you're scared of it. And you know, you have people that are upset about, you know, McDonald's is so horrible for you. Well, McDonald's is also affordable food. You're upset about, you know, you know, genetic modification saying, well, Yeah, we can't really prove that GMOs are killing us right now, but we think that the whole population is always eating GMOs. Something bad is going to happen. Well, you know that before they did all this recent GMOs, they said, well, the world is going to be overpopulated and people are going to be dying of starvation because we can't grow enough food. And then they learned how to take dominion and do this. And now we have more food, you know, more excess food than any time in human history. And so we're saying that, well, this is bad. And we're we don't like this food. And it's killing us when people are living, you know, you know, until a very, very recent dip. I mean, the lifespans are just going up and up and up. And so, you know, we're there, you're categorizing that is unhealthy based off of you know, very, very skim evidence. And it's just a way to say that, you know, we're, we're living in an age of great blessing and say, actually it's an age of cursing. And it's, it's, and it does come back to power because people are saying that because they're trying to manipulate people. They're trying to control people. Is organic food better for you than non-organic food? I mean, like grown that way. Oh, there's no evidence of that. That's just all made up. But yet people spend a lot of their time and resources going, Oh, this will solve everything when no, it's just made up. And so there's a real ability to do fear mongering related to food, like a huge ability, which is like the GMOs. Like a lot of Europe doesn't allow. GMO organisms and like you said, or plants, and like you said, that has greatly increased the productivity of a lot of farms so that people can live. And then they say, well, it's unhealthy for you. The arbitrariness is, it's very different than drinking Hemlock. which i think is your your first point but that doesn't mean that there isn't a place even for some dosage of hemlock i don't know what the dosage is but a lot of it is abusing something rather than using something and to start with the assumption that there's no use for it has a real problem too yeah i mean you talk about the You were repeating what I was saying earlier where every green plant's given for food. Well, when he says that, it is pre-fall. And then the fall comes and, you know, now you're having to fight the thorns and thistles and things that can kill you if you consume them, or at least consume them in quantity. So you have to be approaching these things with some level of wisdom. And the problem is that the, like, Dan's been saying is that the way that that has been used is instead of thinking about things with wisdom, we're just being manipulated with power struggles. And we, meaning our people, Reformed-ish, Christian, homeschool, homesteader kind of people, are the ones who are very tempted by these kinds of arguments. We're very tempted to do these things that are bad theological moves by moving the sin out into the thing and by putting the health in the thing instead of putting it in the relationship that God would have us to put it in. I mean, one of the things that's going on here is we're covering, there's a lot of different things that need to be covered, and I don't think we're going to hit all of them in depth in this episode. I would encourage people, we'll put this in the description, but if you have specific questions about food, we may do a follow-up episode. If you want to send in questions to questions at theconqueringtruth.com, we'll look through those and say, are there particular things that we should do a follow-up episode on and try to cover that are specific? But, I mean, there are so many different categories of ways that people have been influenced, that people use things, and there are areas where you need to talk through specific detail. I mean, there is some complexity to this. It's not like, you know, you just go outside, open your mouth, grab something, you know, oh, look, a tree. I'll eat some of this bark. I'll eat some of this. I mean, you do have to – God expects us to think and to understand things because there are things that if you eat in the wrong – you know, when you look at the term toxic, Like you said, toxicity depends on dosage. Too much oxygen, you die. Not enough oxygen, you die. You end up, you know, you drink too much water, you die. You don't get enough water, you die. And so there's all these different things that, you know, like you said, everything's a chemical. It's so easy to put labels on things that aren't useful. And so like I said, we're not going to be able to cover them all, but I do think it would be useful to get a sense of where some of the questions are. I can already see, I know what some of the comments are going to be, but it would be useful to get questions from people who are really wanting to say, how do we think about this from Scripture? I think the primary thing to think about is what God says, right? And, you know, Deuteronomy 32, 39, Now see that I, even I am he, and there is no God beside me. I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, nor is there any who can deliver from my hand. What we have to recognize is sickness does not come from your food. It doesn't. Right, I mean, look at Elisha with the pot of where it's a poisonous plant, right? That's causing them to die. God says, throw some salt in it. Was it salt? And boom, it's fine, right? I mean, it's God that wounds. It's God that makes food good for you. It's God that makes food bad for you. And so the first thing to do about food is actually shift and say, God, what do you want me to do? the person who's going there and going we're starving because we can't afford organic food well the answer problem or even better we don't tithe because we want to afford organic food well the answer is well you should expect to get you should expect to get sick Because God's saying, you've set food above me, and I'm the one who wounds and heals. It's not food that wounds and heals. It's God that does it, and that doesn't mean that you can go eat hemlock, right? But it does mean that way too often we turn around and we pretend like it's the food that does it, and it's not the food. You make the food into a God. So isn't the God is the primary cause of all things, or the first cause of all things, and then there's subsidiary, secondary causes. Absolutely, and my point is that so much of the food stuff people have forgotten that God is the first cause. And so that they go, oh, it's because you didn't do this, it's because you didn't do this, it's because you didn't do this, that you have health. And God says, it is sin that causes it. And they're not assigning sin to the food. They're saying that the food itself will make you well, the food itself will make you sick. Now, if you eat a poisoned thing, yeah, you should get sick, and that's very bad stewardship. But too often of what we're doing is we're ignoring the primary cause and going just to the secondary cause and think that you can manipulate the primary cause through the secondary cause. We just read the verse where it says, God says, I'm the one that heals, I'm the one that kills, I'm the one, you know, no one can escape from my hand. And like Dan said as well, God gives us food, God does give us means by which we can live. And in Deuteronomy 7, 12 through 15, when God's talking about some of the blessings, he says, Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which he swore to your fathers. And He will love you and bless you and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine, and your oil, the increase of your cattle, and the offspring of your flock, and the land of which He swore to your fathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all peoples. There shall not be a male or female barren among you or among your livestock. And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on all those who hate you. And you notice it here that, I mean, God's not saying that the way he's going to lay the diseases on those who hate you is he's going to make them eat bad food. He's not saying, you know what I mean? He's not saying that he'll take all your sickness away by making you eat good food. Right. He's saying that in the end, I mean, and so you see, I mean, God, the focus here is God saying, my blessing will be upon you. And when your answer is, is the blessing will be that I avoid eating soy, that I don't eat any dairy, that I, you know, you're putting the focus on the wrong thing. And it doesn't mean a person can't, there are people who do have conditions. They have to avoid certain things. It doesn't, but the exception is not the rule. And this is the issue is people want to pick and they want to go, I know somebody who, if they do this, it has nothing to do with this. I mean, I just, I'm, this is, this is how confused it's become because we don't want to focus on what God actually says. And what God actually says here is, hey, remember the stuff I did in Egypt that was really clearly 100% miraculous? You know, those diseases that came on the Egyptians, there's not a natural cause to those. There wasn't some... Throw some dust in the air and everybody gets covered with boils. Right. There's no germ theory that they're working with for these diseases that are coming on them. This is something where God's really saying beforehand, you're going to have a conversation with Pharaoh, and you're going to tell Pharaoh either repent or, and then the or happens. And then he looks, after all of that happens, he looks at his own children, the people he's going to call by his name and say, hey, guess what? You need to obey me. And if you obey me, there are blessings for you. And among those blessings are the facts that I'm not going to put these diseases on you. And they are not supposed to think that, oh, well, when we get in there, there's going to be stuff in the dirt that we've got to be careful about. They're supposed to think that the diseases are going to be coming from God because they've displeased God, that it's the consequence of moral failure, not the consequence of some kind of physical problem. And in the end, we need to recognize that the wage of sin is death, and that all these sicknesses that we see, right? I mean, you look at 1 Corinthians 11, where they're being gluttonous, and they're being drunk during the Lord's Supper, and God says, he's made a lot of you sick, and you've died. It's not because of the contents of the food. It's because of the lack of obedience. and we're so quick to blame God, to say the food that we have is bad, or that God gave us, people took dominion and they started to come up with GMOs, so that GMO is bad, right? That things that aren't sin we call sin, so that we can blame God. or the problems that we have. And the Bible consistently is about blaming man for the problems of sin. It's not God's fault. But so much of our food theology in the conservative church is about blaming God for the sin and not man. I mean, it really does go back to judging another man's servant, because honestly, in a lot of ways, so much of what we're judging is the efficiencies of other people. You know what I mean? It's like with the GMOs and things like that, I mean, they found a more efficient way to do this. I mean, when you go back to, like, before Christ's kingdom was established, there was so much more death in the world because of disorder. And as order came, there's this part of it where, like you said, we felt all this benefit. And now what we do is we spend our time making the judgment of other servants who are doing things in different levels of order or different focuses of order. You know what I mean? And there's just, I mean, this really is where a lot of the sin is. It's discontentment, it's covetousness. It's fearing things other than fearing God. That's what really sells so much of it. And so, I mean, it's really interesting when you look at where we're choosing to look at the blessings of God and look at them narrowly. And then we're turning from that to fear and to service of idols. And we should take 1 Timothy 4 really seriously. Because I think you get a lot of I mean, when you hear this and when you think about what God's saying here, because there's a lot of other things that are being said in here, is this really ties to food and what people are doing now, 1 Timothy 4, 1 through 4. Now, the Spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and 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 which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God in prayer." God is saying, this will happen. People start to say, you can't eat gluten. Gluten's bad for you. You need to abstain from it. And God says it's a sign of departing from the faith. We take it too lightly. So we've been talking about ways where people think about food wrongly, categorize food and health wrongly. And there are actually ways that the Bible says you can sin with food. There are absolutely ways that you can sin with food. And I want to say this is the top shelf one. The number one way that you can sin with food is in gratitude. And just think about, open up your Bible and find all the places where somebody is ungrateful for food. And they're always the bad guy. Now, maybe we can talk about Daniel. Esau was pretty happy. He gave his birthright for some food. But every time somebody is ungrateful for food, they're the bad guys. Take a look at what happens with the children of Israel. God takes them out. He does all these miraculous things. He does these miraculous diseases on Egypt. He frees them. Red Sea, pillar by day. Okay, well, we're hungry. Guess what? I'm going to give you angels' food. This is what the Psalms calls manna. Angels' food. You're going to eat angels' food. And even that, it's really clearly a miraculous thing because what other food can you think of where it's good for six days and it's not there for the seventh and it spoils but it doesn't spoil for that one. You know, anyway, it's pretty miraculous stuff. And what do they say? We want meat. We've missed those leeks and onions of Egypt. And those are the kinds of things that God looks at them and God is going to judge them for that. He's going to judge them. And there's sorts of things where Moses is just, I don't know what to do with these people. Why did you give me these people? They complain against you. They complain against me. They're the bad guys. always, they're the ones that Scripture's saying, don't be like that. And then you get here to 1 Timothy 4, and Paul's saying, hey, it's going to keep happening. People are going to say, abstain from good things that should be received with thanksgiving. And what are we as a culture? Like Joshua was saying earlier, we're a culture where there are more people who are eating more food and living longer. And our attitude towards food is, oh, well, this stuff's killing us. I mean, you just look, right? Can you imagine in any point in history where the sign of being poor was that you're overweight? That's where we are. The sign of being poor is that you're overweight. I mean, that's America, the third world. I mean, that's the first world. Yeah. Even if you get to the third world and you're starting to see that it, I mean, you can see the shift is already happening in other countries, even third world countries, the shift is happening already. That being overweight like that is a sign not of starvation. There are still places in the world where there's starvation, but they get every year they get less and less. And the sign of being poor is that you're overweight. more and more. And yet, what do we do? We complain about all our food. We say how terrible the food is. We say how terrible it is for us. We say all these things when the reality is God has fed us more than he's fed any culture at any time in any place in history. And all we want to do is complain about it. We should expect the wrath of God. It's just to complain about the plenty that God has given us. to complain about and say, I can't eat this, I can't eat that, that makes me do this. I mean, grow up, start being thankful. You were talking about gluten and I don't know when, dear listener, you're running across this podcast, I don't know where we're going to be on the gluten fat, because it's kind of fluctuating. But recognize when God comes and said, when God sends his son and his son says, I am the bread of life, And then we have a culture that says, hey, bread's bad. Bread's killing you. You shouldn't eat bread. Something's fundamentally wrong with that. And what's wrong with that is we have a wrong view of Christ. We have a wrong view of God. We have a wrong view of the providence of God. And the antidote for that is to look at the things God's given us and give thanks. And we instead go, you have Ezekiel bread, which is a sign of cursing, the sign of starvation, the sign of famine. And then we go, this is good for you. It's like the people who are doing these things, they're even mocking God. Because it's very clear, you read the passage in Ezekiel about cooking it over man's dung, this is gonna make bread better for you, but yet they go, this is supposed to be healthy. No, we just lie and deceive and kid ourselves and we think we're made holy through food as a general culture. And the reality is we're just ingrates that deserve God's wrath. You know, you talked about the first tier or first level of sin related to food is, you know, ingratitude. Certainly up there at the same level or close to the same level as gluttony. You know, the works of the flesh are evident is what the Bible says. And gluttony is a work of the flesh. It's where you want something. So you eat it, even though you're eating more of it than is the proper amount to eat the proper amount for what you need. Right. The person who's going out and doing hard physical labor for them to eat 6,000 calories in a day, not a big deal for the person who's sitting behind a computer desk to eat, you know, 2000 might be too many. It depends on the person, but yet we don't look and say, this is gluttony that's causing the health problems. Instead what we, or the person who goes, all I'm going to do is eat sugar. I'm going to eat candy bars to live. Well, guess what? That's gluttonous too. And that lust of the flesh and not controlling the lust of the flesh, that's the other sin with food, right? Philippians 3, 18 through 19. For many walk of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their mind on earthly things. And that's gluttony, it's setting your mind on earthly things. I mean, those two are very related. We're not going to cover drunkenness in this episode. And I mean, I don't think I could be accused of drunkenness, but I mean, I can very honestly admit, I mean, gluttony is something I've had to deal with. I had to actually say, am I dealing with it on a daily basis? To go, am I eating more than I should eat? I have a fairly sedentary job. Growing up had a fast metabolism. Metabolism changed when I got older. And as I'm getting older, I have to be like things that I could have eaten five years ago or eight years ago. Now I have to walk two or three times a day if I'm going to eat that. There are real things that you actually have to look at, and it's a thing that you actually have to deal with, like I said, on a daily basis, on a meal-by-meal basis. Am I eating what I should be eating? Am I eating more than I should be eating? And we would say gluttony and drunkenness, they're both species of a lack of self-control. They're both types of that sin. But the nature, and just hitting on things we talked about earlier, the nature of gluttony is not that the sin is in the thing. The sin is not in the food. The sin is in, it's the relationship between the man and the meal. It's not the meal. And when you think about it, right, it's worthwhile considering just in terms of the law, right? It, gluttony and adultery are very related. Both of them are, you cannot control your flesh. You can't control the lust of your flesh. And so when you look at adultery, you don't go, well, it's the woman I slept with. It's her problem. So why, when you look at food, do you say it's the food that I ate that's the problem? It's not the food that you eat. It's, it's that you could not control your lust of the flesh. So you're saying all the, the food wars, which is victim blaming. Yes. Yes. Yeah. We don't want to treat ourselves like we're moral agents. We would like to put the morality in the stuff. This is really clear and really obvious, and we've talked about this when we've talked about alcohol and wine and drunkenness, because that's exactly the structure of that argument, is you want to say that the sin is in the thing. You want to talk about that demon rum. as opposed to saying, no, God tells you drunkenness is a relationship between the person and the thing. It's drinking too much of the thing. It's not the thing itself. Yeah. And it's something where, you know, we were talking before about, you know, first cause and second cause. And I mean, the way that God created the world is that, you know, gluttony has consequences and it has natural punishments, you know, that aren't, it's not God stepping in and saying, you ate too much. So boom, here's a punishment for you. But there's, there's natural consequences. I mean, Aside from the fact that just, I mean, just day-to-day life can end up getting harder depending on the level of gluttony you're indulging in. I mean, you look at the, you know, the numbers, and it's a bad thing for your health, you know, to be overeating, and it's a dangerous thing. And, you know, we could probably point out certain things where, you know, even the, you know, they want to label other things. and take away that kind of people's moral agency as to the choices that they're making in the medical establishment, where they're not saying, no, this is a sin and this sin has consequences in people's lives. And it happened earlier with alcohol, where you stop calling somebody a drunkard and start calling them an alcoholic. But we're seeing exactly the same thing over the last few years about gluttony, where all of a sudden, You talk about somebody being fat and that causing really serious health problems. And their answer is that's body shaming. You're calling the drunkard that you're acting like it's his fault, not that demon rum's fault. And now you're saying it's the person's fault instead of that he eats too much. And the answer is no, he eats too much. But we don't want to assign the sin and the consequences of the sin, which are the lack of health, which that sin produces a lack of health. And that lack of health is God's judgment for the sin. And instead we just say, no, that's the form of the person, which means now all of a sudden it's God's fault. instead of it's our sins fault. We want to shift the sin from man to God. We do it with alcohol and now more and more we're doing it with gluttony. It actually was happening at the same time we were trying things with alcohol in the 19th century. There were food fads that rival our food fads. I mean, just go look at the history of cornflakes. Look up graham crackers. I mean, and- Wonder bread. And there are just wild stories, but the same thing is happening. You have these people who are saying that, oh, the sin is in the food. If we just ate meatless breakfast, we would be able to quell the lusts of the flesh. Well, and Wonder Bread, literally, I mean, that's what it was now. And because it's so arbitrary, it's just what the fad is. Wonder Bread used to be a miracle health bread because it didn't have any bugs in it. And so that's why it's white like it is. And so that you can see bugs so that you knew that there were no bugs. So it's the it was the health food. And now it's supposed to be this horrible thing that's for you. And it's totally just these fads and this fear mongering. The teetotalers just had much better marketing. The marketing for the rest of the food is only now catching up with that. Right. You never heard about Welch's grape juice. You go through a grocery store and a lot of good places, they're selling more cornflakes than they are alcohol. So maybe their marketing was just more subtle. Well, cornflakes aren't a health food anymore, are they? Dr. Graham's graham crackers are very different than the kind you make s'mores with, and I love that irony so much. These sins aren't just, they're not just about health, like in the sense that they go into your body and they cause health problems. There's things like, look at Proverbs 23, 20 to 21. Do not mix with winebibbers or with gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe a man with rags. It's tying together multiple things here. I mean, there's that they're spending their money on wrong things, they're spending their time on wrong things, that these things that they're spending their time and their money on are causing them to become someone who's lazy, that the laziness is bringing them to poverty. And all of these things, they compound together. And you can see this with almost all sin has some detrimental effect on your health in the end. Whether it's anger, whether it's lust, there are all these different things that you can do that causes some problem with a person's health. Not always directly, and it's not always this mechanical thing where you go, God's a God of order. And so there is an orderliness to it, but it's not that it has to enter into your body to cause you to have the harm. And so I think there's this, you know, people just don't think about the connection that God judges sin. And one of the ways he judges sin is that he causes it to affect your health. One other thing to say on gluttony that's important to say, and we kind of touched on it, but I just want to reiterate it is, you know, to go back to what Paul wrote about, don't judge your brother. about food, it's really easy to sit in judgment and go, he shouldn't be eating this, he should be eating this. And the reality is, God makes people's bodies very different. Like I was talking to somebody who's like 55 and he's like, yeah, I need to eat like 5,000 calories a day or I'd lose weight. And it's just, you know, and there's other people at 55 that if they ate 5,000 calories a day and had a sedentary job, they'd get really overweight. Does he give blood transfusions? It's not the book Charles But so it's really easy to judge your neighbor. And that's not the point here. The point is, is that we should be really asking ourselves, in what ways are we in don't have gratitude? In what ways don't we, you know, are we being gluttonous? And are we letting our lust to the flesh? And it can be, I can't eat anything unless it's, you know, a foodie thing, right? Like you said, there's different ways to do the same thing. And so as we, it's just important that don't look at your brother and go, oh yeah, I know what he should be eating. Now, you can look and say, I see some results of sin, which that is a valid thing to say, which is very different than saying, looking at somebody's diet on a short term and going, he shouldn't be eating that, because how do you know? It's far more complicated than we want to make it out to be. And then sometimes it's far more simple, because when you know a person for years, and they're- Well, and he eats a meal, and he unhooks his belt so that he can stuff more food in. You can call him gluttonous right then. Yeah, and it is a big problem. And I mean, I would guess that the American church is significantly heavier than the non-American church. And that's because a lot of times the non-Christians are idolizing health and they have their own problems. But you go to some churches, it's a real problem. I remember going to a church that I hadn't been to for like 10 years. And it used to be that the pews were about a quarter empty. And then I go 10 years later and the pews were full and they had the same number of people there. Wow. It's true. I just stood there in shock. What's the joke? He's not as big of a fool as he used to be. Oh, he's wiser. No, he lost weight. It's a lot better to actually address someone in their gluttony. And because there's a part of it where they can actually – it's either very valid or they – there may be something else going on and you actually talk about it and it's details. But I mean I've – I haven't always – it's not always comfortable, but I've always appreciated people who are actually willing to say something, who are actually – I mean and sometimes – Just look at you and go, hey, you're overweight. What's going on there? What are you doing about that? Are you actually doing something about that? And at the same time, I know a woman that had a thyroid problem. And all of a sudden, she gained weight. And she was doing everything she could to not gain weight. I saw, I see the physical, you look at her and physically you'd say, here's a woman who is committing gluttony, but then you hear what she ate and you go, this isn't gluttony. There's an argument that can be made, but that's where the detail is, and we pretend like Instead, we want to judge another man's servant as opposed to actually dealing with them where their service is. And they can actually answer to you and you go, great, you know, hey, I'll pray for you in that area. And maybe they're lying, which is something you can't solve. But in the end, I mean, you've dealt with them or they're telling you the truth. And that's great. You're not at guilt of not caring for your brother or sister. Which is where most people leave it. Most people leave it as, hey, we're not going to touch those things. We're not going to deal with them. And things like that should be talked about. I mean, another area which has kind of been referenced before and even like where it talks about judging another man's servant and talk about the weaker brother. In Romans 14, Paul talks about some of these things specifically. Therefore, let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way. I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself. But to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died. Therefore, do not let your good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men. Therefore, let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are pure, but it is evil for the man who eats with offense. It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine nor do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak. I mean, there's a lot here, and we've talked about the weaker brother, and a lot of times the problem is people don't want to correctly recognize. They want to both be offended. and claim to be the stronger brother. And there's a real issue there. And there's lots of ways that these offenses can come. And I mean, I think, you know, earlier you talked about control. And I mean, there's a real part of it where one of the ways that people cause others to stumble with food is by trying to control them with what they eat. And so, I mean, and there's a part of it where the person who is the stronger brother sometimes is controlling the weaker brother by what they eat. And they should, you know what I mean, they should, I mean, or there's, I mean, it's really, really, really easy to harm your brother with food. And I think it's easy to mischaracterize where you fall into this group and to not actually think of yourself the way scripture tells you you should think of yourself. And I do think Paul's getting to the heart of gluttony here. Because if you think of the heart of gluttony as not being able to control the lust of the flesh for a specific food, so that you can't control that, what Paul's saying is, how can you love the lust of your flesh such that you won't put aside a food that causes your brother to stumble? And so he's putting it right in front of them, right? Which choice are you gonna make? Are you actually, do you love your brother or do you love the lust of your flesh? And these are choices that we have to make. And these things, I mean, that's what Paul's confronting them with and going, how can you cause your brother to stumble? And so when we think about food, we should also think about, you know, the person who says, oh, I can only eat organic. And they're talking, I mean, I know of a case where they were talking to somebody that was making minimum wage. They could barely feed their family. And they're telling them that they have to eat organic food. Well, that's causing them to stumble. That's causing them so that they wouldn't eat at McDonald's. They called McDonald's evil food. Well, that was causing them to stumble because their lust for their self-righteousness and their belly to only put good things in it to be healthy and all this other stuff. And it was actually really harming people that, you know, found out later they weren't believers, but that Christ could have died for. And to do that is just wrong. And it's putting the lust of the flesh above your love for your brother. And we need to be really careful about how we deal with that with food. In the end, Paul puts the emphasis on that we may edify another. And when you think that it is primarily physical things that build up someone else, that when you think it's what they put into their body that edifies them. I mean, in the end, if the church was full of bodybuilders, we would have, then we would all spend a lot more time thinking about food. Because if all you're trying to do is build muscle, then hey, you can actually spend a lot of time thinking about really detailed aspects of food. But most people don't have that relationship with their bodies. And the edification that's needed in the church is not making sure that they're eating exactly what they need to develop a muscle. I mean, that's not the edification that's needed. I think if you have a church full of bodybuilders, you need a different type of edification. Yes. We're not advocating bodybuilder church. As shocking as that might be to the audio listeners. Right. When you talk about control, there are, like you said at the beginning, there are a lot of wives who control their husband with this. And I think a lot of, I mean, there, if you're a wife and you're listening and you spend a lot of your time regulating what your husband is allowed to eat, You should really think about that. You should ask your husband. I mean, you should, if you've never asked your husband, if you should do it, you should seriously consider just stopping. And then later on, if he complains, tells you he wants you to do it, then consider doing it. I will say this, that, you know, I've done this before where I've gone out to rest to a restaurant with my wife. And for whatever reason, I ordered a salad and she ordered a steak. And the servers will reliably give me the steak and her the salad. Right. Because men and women's metabolism is different. They are. But yet a lot of wives want their husband to eat the way that they eat, which is not how their husband should actually eat. it's actually a power game, but they go, if I ate that, it would be terrible for me. And they could be completely right. And some of them don't even, some of them legitimately don't realize it's a power game. And there are some who, well, I've just found it interesting because it doesn't, let's be honest, it doesn't happen very often that my wife orders a steak and I order a salad, but it has happened. And every time the server will give her this, the salad and me the steak. just the way it works. People are different. And now people are going, oh no, that salad and protein, you know, meat and potatoes versus salad, that's all just cultural, that women have been trained to do. And it's like, no, it's not. But there's just all this lie about differences in food. And wives need to recognize this. Their husband actually needs different You know, the muscle mass is different. The various health issues are different. God made men and women different. And so that manifests itself in how they eat. And maybe because I was just reading Genesis, the part about the fall and about the husband and the wife and her desire shall be fulfilled. for him. I mean, there's just, there's a part of the curse that causes there to be a temptation for women to desire to control their husbands and desire to take that authority from them. And you should just be really aware that this has been a very normalized part of American culture and particularly Christian culture, that there are women who, I mean, women who say I should submit to my husband and all things and manipulate the dinner table. That's not uncommon. And it's not that, you know, there's worse manifestations of sin too, so don't get me wrong, but still people need to recognize that it's still sin in many cases. Not all cases, but in many cases. When somebody in our church was getting married recently, they were asking my wife for what are some advice that they would have. She said, what do you think I should write? And I said, well, I'll tell you what my thing about you would be, is that one of the things I've been most grateful for my wife is she has never nagged me. she's and as much as I she's very organized much as you've deserved it as much as I've deserved it and as much as there are times where it would be because of my failings it would have been it could have been expedient at moments for her to try to control some of those things and I remember there were times where she's looked at me and she goes I'm not your mom I didn't marry you to be your mom I I'm not going to be your mom. You know, and from the time we got married, that that is, and I've, and I've been more grateful for it in every single way that she's refused to do that. And I think, you know, just I'll, so anyway, I'm just saying, you know, it is a, there are things that you think you're doing that are valuable. There are things you're doing that you're saying, if I didn't do it, my husband would make stupid decisions. Guess what? God put him in charge for a reason and maybe he needs to learn to make decisions and he needs to live with them. Maybe he's making those stupid decisions out of spite. He may very well be, but I mean. That's the response that frequently happens. Yes. So don't let sin compound sin. And I'm only mentioning it because I just think it's so common. It's not because women are particularly more evil than men. It is because it's such a normal, it is such a common thing in the church today. And it's normal in the church and in society still, as much as they go 50-50 in terms of household chores and stuff. There's still a lot more women that make dinner than men. And so that's just an area where women have a lot more influence in the home. And so they want to exercise their influence. And they should be careful because it can become idolatrous. It can be a power game. It can be about manipulation. Instead of service. Instead of service. When you think of food, you should start with ingratitude and you should start with gluttony and turn from those sins. Be concerned about what God declares clearly in his word or sins. Instead of the things that people are speculating on, people are saying that they know when they turn around later and they find out something different. We should really start with what God says. God says he, the wages of sin is death, that he judges for sin and that he wounds for sin. The primary sins with food are ingratitude and gluttony. Thanks for joining us. This has been The Conquering Truth, a project of Reformation Baptist Church. If you found this helpful, you can visit us online at theconqueringtruth.com and subscribe here or in your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching.