God's creation is good, and since God's creation is good, we are free to feast to God's glory. Right? Well, no, not exactly. There's more to proper God-centered thanksgiving than simply acknowledging the goodness of creation. Tomorrow in the States we celebrate Thanksgiving, which makes it a great time to revisit John Piper's sermon on 1 Timothy 4:1-5, which he preached in 2013 at the DG National Conference on C.S.

Lewis. For this clip we're going to jump into the middle of his exposition of 1 Timothy 4 verses 1-5, so let me read the text first before we dive in. Here's what it says. "Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer." Here now is Pastor John. So it seems to me here that the plainest thing so far about Paul's response is that you have three acts that relate to God in what to do with food, and none of them is an act of the stomach or the taste buds.

They're all acts of mind and heart. One, thanking. Two, believing. Three, knowing. So the most obvious thing is to see that at least part of what makes eating worship is acts that are not eating. Right? Thanking, believing, knowing are what make eating worship. And without thanking, believing, and knowing what you need to know in order to thank and believe, you're not worshiping when you eat.

Eating food becomes worship by acts that terminate on God, not food, not merely on food. We'll get back to that in a minute. Thanking is for food to God, right? To God. It's not thanks if it's just a vague sense of thankfulness with no object. Paul is certainly not interested in that kind of thanksgiving.

Like everybody in America has Thanksgiving. They say some thanks, they don't know who they're saying it to. He's not the least interested in that kind of thanksgiving. This is the living creator God being addressed by our souls with joyful dependence. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Believing and knowing.

Believing is believing in God. Believing in his son. Believing in the cross. Believing that you're forgiven and therefore these blessings are not ripening you for hell. Which Romans 2, 4 says they do if you don't believe. And knowing. Knowing terminates on the truth and the ultimate truth is God.

So the things that make food worship, make eating worship, are Godward things. Thanks is towards God. Believing is toward God. Knowing is towards God. This is about God. Food is about God. Satan knows that through and through. Here's the next step in the argument. Verse 4. Everything created by God is good.

It's good. Nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. So it's good. That's part of his argument. It's good. Everything created by God is good. And the teaching of demons implies, not so sure, the physical sex stuff and eating that whole, you know, everything on the table there.

That's defective. That's inferior. That's not the best way to live. It's good. So eat it. It's eating is good because the creation is good. That's not the way he argued. That's not the argument. He did not argue creation is good. Therefore, nothing is to be rejected. He did not argue that way.

He did not argue by saying creation is good. Therefore, eating is good. He didn't argue by saying food is from God and good and enjoyable. Therefore, eating is good and enjoyable and honors God. He didn't argue that way. Here's the way he argued. Everything created by God is good.

Nothing is to be rejected if you try to make the argument just the first two premises and leave out the third premise. You can't get it. Everything created by God is good. Nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. The divine goodness of food doesn't make eating food good.

It may be prostitution, may be fraudulent. What makes eating good, food good, or at least, let's be careful because I'm going somewhere with Lewis in a minute, or at least one essential part of what makes it good, essential part, not optional part, essential part of what makes eating good is the thankfulness of our hearts.

Not words, not words. The devil can say thank you. He can't feel it. He cannot feel it. And you can say thank you. Thank you, grandmama, for my black socks. Say thank you to your grandmama. Thank you, grandmama, for my black socks. That's not gratitude. This is a sense of wonder that can't believe the sunshine is out again for me.

Can't believe I get to live in Minneapolis most of my adult life and have fall. Talk about spring at another time, but fall, that's off the charts in Minneapolis. And he does that for the wicked and for the good. Some are using it to store up wrath and some are using it to overflow with thanksgiving.

So that's what we're supposed to do. The argument here, and this was the most surprising thing for me in working through this text again, is that the good creation must be sanctified. OK, now we're into verse five. Here we go. For in this way, fair to say, I think, everything God made, I base that on the phrase nothing is to be rejected.

Everything God made is made holy, sanctified by the word of God and prayer. So the clearest thing that just leaps off the page to me is it's good and it must be sanctified or you can't worship with it. That's the title of my talk. The good creation must be sanctified in order for God to be honored, loved, treasured.

What does it mean for food to be sanctified or made holy? I stood right here last year. Raise your hand if you were here at last year's conference. I'd just love to see. Wow. Thank you for coming back. So you may remember, I stood right here and I asked the question, what is sanctification?

What is holy? What is God's holiness? What's my holiness? What's the holiness of food? I'm adding that because of this text. Make holy, make the food holy, sanctify the food, the sex. So what is God's holiness? What is my holiness? And what is food holiness? And here's my summary.

I won't give you a 60 minute argument. I give you a 30 second summary. God's holiness is his infinite worth owing to his transcendent self-existent uniqueness. Been about an hour on that last year. His infinite value owing to his transcendent self-existent uniqueness. Like there's a diamond and there's only one of them and therefore their worth is off the charts.

My holiness is thinking and feeling and doing whatever accords with that worth. If I'm acting and I'm feeling and I'm saying things that make that worth look less valuable, I'm not holy. Third, a thing like food or gold becomes holy by being set apart for God as a means of expressing that infinite worth.

Worth of God. And I base that, for example, on the way Jesus talks about sanctifying things. Here's what he said, for example, in Matthew 23, 17. Which is greater, the gold or the temple that has sanctified it or made it holy? So you got a temple, it got gold.

Which is greater, the gold. And he understands the temple is greater and that's how the gold gets sanctified. But the way it works is that gold is not changed by being built into the temple. It looks like gold, it's still gold. But it is given a God-exalting function in the temple.

By the way, it's used in that holy God-exalting place. So it's set apart for God as a means of expressing his worth. That's why gold is holy in the temple. The temple's all about the value of God and presence with us. And when gold goes into the temple and gets used there, it's expressing the value of God and therefore is holy.

So with food. And so with sex. So sanctifying food or making food holy, I think means setting it apart as a means of expressing the infinite worth of God. This is how eating becomes worship. This is how all things become pure to the pure. That's another sermon over in Titus 115.

To the pure, all things are pure. To the sanctified, they know how to sanctify everything. How then, keep going, how then do the word of God and prayer make that happen? Because that's what it says at the end of verse 5. They're sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

That's how food gets holy and becomes worship when we eat it. How does that work? The most obvious thing to me is to notice that the word of God is God speaking to me and prayer is my speaking to God. So food is made holy by God's talking to me and my talking to him.

Prayer is, we talk to him, his word he talks to us. So my general answer, then we'll get specific, my general answer is that food is set apart as an expression of God's worth when we listen to what God has to say about food. And believe him, believe him, believers do this.

We believe him when he talks to us about food. Then we speak back to him, we affirm, yes, that's what food is, that's who you are in relation to food. And I'm thankful, I'm telling you I'm thankful and I'm asking. I think this is what prayer is when you're dealing with food.

I'm affirming what you say about food, how good it is, how you give it to me as a means of thanksgiving. I'm affirming that, I'm feeling gratitude rise up, I'm saying it and I'm asking you. I know my gratitude right now is inadequate and I'm asking you for Jesus' sake because he died for me and loved for me, would you make me more thankful?

All those pieces are in prayer, affirmation, confession of the truth of God that he's revealed about creation and about himself. Gratitude, I thank you, I thank you and God I know how many times I've eaten and not felt thankful and I'm sorry and I ask, oh God, that right now there would rise up within me an appropriate affection for the bounty of this room.

That's what I think prayer does in sanctifying. Beautiful, that clip is from John Piper's 2013 message at the DG National Conference on C.S. Lewis titled, "What God Made is Good and Must Be Sanctified." C.S. Lewis and St. Paul on the Use of Creation. The entire message is available at DesiringGod.org.

Thank you for listening along. Be sure to subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast app or even in YouTube. And for our archive of episodes or to send in a question of your own, go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Thursday is Thanksgiving for us in the States and wherever you are across the globe, we are deeply grateful to God for each and every one of you who listen to the podcast.

Thank you for joining us. Next time we hear from a weary dad, he's done. Life is pure drudgery for him. He cannot get ahead. His family sucks from him. Everything he has to offer, he's thought about leaving. What would John Piper say to a burned out dad? That's next time.

I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you on Friday. . . .