To Eat or Not to Eat (part 2)
Why has God said that everything in His creation is good? When we look on the things that are made according to the written word, we find that He has created food for our consumption and scavengers to keep our planet clean. Both are good. But why? Is there a greater purpose for His children in His Divine Plan? Yes, clean and unclean food is not the end of the story, it’s only the beginning. God, being a wise Father, has given us fundamental instruction. When we learn and put into practice these instructions willingly, our role in His purpose will proceed to the next level. It is the same as when we were in 1st grade, and proceeded onto the 2nd grade. If humans know that this is the proper way of learning, why do we think that God would not have the same common-sense approach? But God has a complaint against those who should know His law.
Ezekiel 22:26, “Her priests have violated My law, and have profaned My Holy things: and have put no difference between the Holy and the profane, neither have they showed the difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from My Sabbaths, and I am profane among them.”
According to the Word of God, all who are believers and have been rescued from Egypt, a type of sin, or the world, are His priests. Exodus 19:6; 1st Peter 2:9. Jesus was accused of never to have learned the letters or the scriptures, by the religious leaders of His day.
John 7:15, And the Jews marveled, saying, “Howeth know this man letters, having never learned?”
His disciples were thought to be unlearned also;
Acts 4:13, Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they they were unlearned men, they marveled, and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.
The question then becomes, who is it that does the teaching?
Acts 1:1, the former treastise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and to teach.
How did Jesus teach?
Verse 2, until the day He was taken up, after that He, through the Holy Spirit, have given commandments unto the Apostles whom He hath chosen.
All are taught through God’s Holy Spirit, the Comforter;
John 14:26, “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and brings all things into remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”
We saw in part 1, that one of the things that God taught us is about food which is clean and food which is unclean. But what about the Holy and the unholy?
Man Created with Three Parts
1 Thessalonians 5:23, ” And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The Apostle Paul is addressing the three functions of every man and woman. We need to learn what they are and how we are to use them. We can know of the body easily enough. This is our outward appearance, what we look like, male or female. Our soul is ourself, what makes us tick. Webster’s dictionary says of the soul: a part of a person having no physical or material reality, is credited with the functions of thinking and willing, and hence, determining all behavior. And of the spirit; either the Spirit of God or the spirit that is in the world.
Fortunately, the apostle Paul addresses the body even further than we ever knew because he says that we have two bodies.
1st Corinthians 15:39, “All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh for men, and another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds. 40, there are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another.”
Paul is saying that there is an earthy body and that there is a heavenly body.
Verse 38, But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed His own body.
When I first started driving, my Dad bought me a car. This was my first car and I was thrilled. I took care of it and I don’t believe that I ever abused it or mishandled the laws of the road. I’d like to set this first car I received from my Dad as an example of my physical body. When I was younger, I did eat unclean food and I wasn’t too concerned with what I ate. But when I started reading the Bible, I came upon a scripture which said our bodies are the temple of God.
1st Corinthians 3:16, Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 17, if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.
From then on, I continually wanted to eat what God said was clean food as best I could. I was learning to take care of my earthly body as well as I took care of my first car.
It wasn’t long after my first car that my Dad bought me a second car. This car was much nicer than my first car. If I had neglected to take care of my first car, I don’t think my Father would have bought me a second car, which I will equate with my heavenly body.
I am a soul owned by right of creation by God, Ezekiel 18:4. Whether I am either in an earthy body or a spiritual body, I am a soul. God has created the eyes to see, the nose to smell, the tongue to speak, and so on. He has also placed a spirit in man, Job 32:8; Zechariah 12:1; 1st Corinthians 2:11. Because God is a Spirit, it is through our spirit through which we contact God, John 4:24.
Webster’s Dictionary says of the spirit: to blow or to breathe, as infused by a deity, thinking, motivating, feeling part of a man.
The spirit in man was created to have contact with God. It is through the spirit that the soul is fed. It is also through the spirit that we learn and become Holy as Jesus Christ and His Father are Holy. Immediately after His death and resurrection Jesus went to His disciples for we read:
John 20:22, And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said unto them, “Receive thee the Holy Spirit.”
If we neglect to take within us Jesus as our food, because His name is called the Word of God, Revelation 19:13, we will stay unholy through the spirit that is in the world.
1st Corinthians 2:12, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.”
From the days of the Exodus, Jesus was always presented as a type of food, Exodus 12. When we come to John’s gospel, we read that Jesus is our food, John 6:53-55. He was the Lamb of God in type, who the children of Israel were feasting on in the Book of the Exodus. Then He became the true drink, John 4:14, He then was the manna, the unleavened bread from heaven, John 6:48-51. He said that we need to eat His flesh and drink His blood, John 6:53. Jesus became our food. This is the food we take within us to become Holy. The Scribes and Pharisee’s had food also, leavened bread.
Matthew 16:6, Then Jesus said unto them, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisee’s and the Sadducee’s.”
Religion and it’s worship, filling our souls with the teachings of men is of a wrong spirit and it is vanity. We will not secure ourselves with our own righteousness. We need the righteousness of Christ.
1st John 4:1, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”
Conclusion
God is our Father and He loves us. He doesn’t want anyone of His children to fail. The Apostle Paul says that the Spiritual is not first but the natural, like my first car. The care of our natural body is important to us and it should be in a healthy condition. God’s health laws, when applied, are given for our wellness, which help curtail doctor and hospital cost as well. Our natural clay body is a temporary clay shell, when upon death, will go back to the earth, but the spirit within us will return to God who gave it, Ecclesiastes 12:7. This Spirit, if it is of God, fills our new man with God’s righteousness and this is what makes us Holy, Ephesians 4:22-24.
We are created for His pleasure, Revelation 4:11.