How Food and Sex Are Made Holy
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Pastor John, we have two related questions on prayer,
00:00:07.480 | possibly two podcasts.
00:00:08.720 | The first question is, should we pray before eating?
00:00:11.080 | Why or why not?
00:00:11.920 | And the second question is,
00:00:13.160 | how is food made holy by the word in prayer?
00:00:15.880 | 1 Timothy 4, three through five.
00:00:18.920 | - Right, Tony, I think it will probably be better
00:00:21.660 | to break these up.
00:00:22.500 | I don't know, you can decide.
00:00:24.800 | I'm gonna talk about the second half of the question
00:00:29.420 | about 1 Timothy 4.
00:00:31.000 | I think that is so fundamental, really fundamental,
00:00:34.860 | to the way we live in this world
00:00:36.440 | that it might fill up a podcast on its own.
00:00:39.480 | And then we shift over to, should we pray before meals?
00:00:44.320 | So here's the verse, I'll read it.
00:00:47.040 | 1 Timothy 4, three through five.
00:00:49.800 | In the last times, people will forbid marriage,
00:00:54.800 | which probably means sex is viewed
00:00:57.680 | as something of a problem here,
00:00:59.800 | or maybe too dirty or too fleshy
00:01:02.300 | or too something, too unspiritual.
00:01:04.220 | So people are gonna forbid marriage,
00:01:06.500 | they're gonna require abstinence from foods.
00:01:09.080 | So eating and sex are the two issues here,
00:01:13.400 | that God created to be received with thanksgiving
00:01:16.720 | by those who believe and know the truth,
00:01:21.800 | for everything created by God is good
00:01:24.720 | and nothing is to be rejected
00:01:26.360 | if it is received with thanksgiving,
00:01:28.840 | for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.
00:01:33.840 | So behind this verse, evidently, is a false teaching,
00:01:39.200 | a false spirituality that solves the problem
00:01:44.200 | of sex and food with asceticism, strict asceticism.
00:01:51.480 | No marriage, no eating certain foods.
00:01:54.800 | That's the way they're solving the problem
00:01:57.360 | of the temptations of sex to be controlling
00:02:01.440 | and to be overpowering and the temptations of food
00:02:04.360 | to take control of us.
00:02:07.240 | And I find it, Tony, amazing that 2,000 years ago,
00:02:12.240 | Paul would be dealing with the two massive temptations
00:02:18.040 | of our own day.
00:02:19.440 | Several years ago, I was speaking to a group
00:02:23.360 | of about 800 missionaries at a conference,
00:02:28.360 | and I spoke, I was told that they're gonna fire
00:02:32.120 | that afternoon five missionaries for pornography.
00:02:37.120 | And I said, really?
00:02:39.320 | The mission board was gonna fire them?
00:02:41.720 | And I said, okay, I need to address this.
00:02:43.480 | So I changed my plan, addressed sexuality issues,
00:02:47.200 | and when I was done, a woman came up to me.
00:02:50.200 | So I'm talking mainly to the men, right?
00:02:52.280 | And a woman came up to me and she said,
00:02:54.880 | if you had replaced the word sex everywhere in your talk
00:02:59.880 | and put the word food in, it would have landed
00:03:05.480 | on almost every woman in this room the way it would have.
00:03:10.480 | And I thought, really?
00:03:12.720 | Now, I don't know whether she's right or not,
00:03:14.120 | but that she said it is really significant.
00:03:18.480 | So here's Paul addressing those two things.
00:03:22.160 | In fact, if you go to 1 Corinthians 6,
00:03:26.400 | where Paul says, all things are lawful for me,
00:03:28.880 | but I will not be dominated or enslaved by anything,
00:03:33.880 | the two things that he chooses to address
00:03:37.240 | in the next verses are the stomach, food,
00:03:40.520 | and prostitution, sex.
00:03:43.240 | So clearly, these two huge appetites
00:03:47.120 | that human beings have, created by God,
00:03:49.840 | the sex appetite and the hunger appetite,
00:03:53.360 | can become idolatrous.
00:03:56.040 | They can become enslaving,
00:03:58.680 | and that's why false teachings arise.
00:04:01.760 | We gotta get this under control, right?
00:04:03.380 | We gotta figure this out.
00:04:04.640 | And so let's just not, let's let our best people not marry,
00:04:08.640 | and let's have everybody figure out foods
00:04:11.740 | that they should abstain from,
00:04:13.200 | and we'll conquer this thing
00:04:15.000 | with the asceticism pea shooter.
00:04:19.240 | And Paul said, he said in Colossians,
00:04:23.080 | that's not gonna get anywhere.
00:04:24.860 | So what's Paul's solution?
00:04:26.800 | And the question actually dealt with his solution.
00:04:30.760 | His solution was food and sex are made holy
00:04:35.760 | by the word of God and prayer.
00:04:40.320 | And so if we ask what word?
00:04:43.560 | You have a word in mind, Paul, a word of God?
00:04:46.840 | What kind of prayer do you mean and when?
00:04:49.360 | And we're not left without any pointers.
00:04:52.180 | I mean, the very context, verse four,
00:04:54.680 | says God created them to be received with thanksgiving.
00:04:59.180 | So that's the prayer.
00:05:00.640 | The prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving.
00:05:03.000 | Thanksgiving is the dethroning of a God
00:05:07.880 | and turning it into a gift, right?
00:05:09.680 | We've said this before.
00:05:11.560 | Sex is starting to get this power over us,
00:05:15.640 | starting to exert an enslaving God-like force on our life,
00:05:20.640 | and thanksgiving humbly says, you are not a God,
00:05:24.520 | you are a gift from God,
00:05:26.480 | and I will let him determine how this gift is to be used,
00:05:29.420 | and I will be filled with humble thanksgiving.
00:05:31.680 | I will not worship you, I will receive you,
00:05:34.200 | or not as a gift by God's design,
00:05:39.760 | and I will thank you.
00:05:41.180 | So thanksgiving, I think, is what is meant by the word,
00:05:45.640 | it is sanctified by prayer, prayer in the sense of,
00:05:50.200 | I am thanking God for you,
00:05:53.640 | and therefore you are not gonna compete with God,
00:05:56.800 | you're gonna be a means of my worship
00:05:58.580 | rather than a competition with my worship.
00:06:03.280 | And that leaves me with the question,
00:06:04.560 | well then, what's the word of God?
00:06:06.440 | It is made holy by the word of God and prayer,
00:06:11.440 | and he had just said earlier in the previous verse
00:06:16.320 | that these things were made to be enjoyed
00:06:18.400 | by those who know and believe the truth.
00:06:21.800 | So evidently there's truth here in the word of God
00:06:25.280 | that will help us not mistreat these gifts,
00:06:30.280 | and I sat down and I thought about this,
00:06:36.000 | I thought, where has Paul dealt with this?
00:06:41.000 | And here's the one I thought of.
00:06:44.860 | Back in 1 Corinthians 10,
00:06:48.840 | eat whatever is sold in the meat market
00:06:51.760 | without raising any question on the ground of conscience,
00:06:55.320 | for the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
00:07:00.320 | Now what's he doing there?
00:07:02.920 | He's saying this food is clean,
00:07:07.920 | you may eat this food,
00:07:10.080 | and how is he sanctifying it for them?
00:07:13.080 | He reaches to a word of God, Psalm 24.
00:07:16.760 | The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
00:07:21.040 | So my general answer to the question,
00:07:23.920 | what does that mean, is if we're dealing with sex,
00:07:28.480 | if we're dealing with food,
00:07:31.360 | we prevent them from having undue control
00:07:35.080 | or an undue place in our lives
00:07:37.480 | by bringing them both under the word of God,
00:07:41.720 | like the earth is the Lord's,
00:07:44.680 | and so you don't need to worry
00:07:46.880 | that you are eating this meat that was offered to an idol,
00:07:50.600 | it belongs to God, he's offering it to you as a gift,
00:07:53.600 | and if we're saying thank you to him,
00:07:57.140 | we are dethroning God and making it a gift.
00:08:01.120 | So I would just have everybody put all the gifts of God,
00:08:05.720 | not just sex and food, but all the gifts of God
00:08:09.120 | in the context of his word,
00:08:11.960 | let his word define their place,
00:08:14.560 | and then be filled with thanksgiving
00:08:18.200 | and let it overflow in prayers of gratitude.
00:08:21.280 | - Yes, thank you, Pastor John,
00:08:23.400 | and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:08:24.840 | Please email your questions to us
00:08:26.040 | at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:08:28.080 | At desiringgod.org, you'll find thousands
00:08:29.720 | of other free books, articles, and sermons,
00:08:31.880 | and other resources from John Piper.
00:08:33.600 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.
00:08:35.920 | (upbeat music)
00:08:38.500 | (upbeat music)
00:08:41.080 | [BLANK_AUDIO]