YOUR MOVE
EAT AND DRINK WITH GRATITUDE
DR. JIM DIXON
1 CORINTHIANS 10:25-31
OCTOBER 7, 2012
Twenty-nine years ago, I was invited by a lay leader in our church, to go to a funeral service. This lay leader was a friend of mine and an associate at work had died. Her funeral was in a Presbyterian church, a PCUSA church on the west side of town. He wanted me to go. I did not know her, but I went as a friend to this funeral service. I was somewhat curious because earlier in my life I had been ordained in the PCUSA. I had been ordained in the United Presbyterian Church and I had served there for 8-1/2 years. I had left the PCUSA because they were drifting into theological and moral liberalism. Yet, I was curious as to what this funeral would be like and what this pastor would say.
I showed up there with my friend for this funeral service. When it came to the part of the service when the pastor stood up to speak, I have to say it was one of the most bizarre ministry moments I have ever experienced in my life. He began his message this way, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die. This is the message from God in the Bible, or the Holy Scriptures. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” I thought, “Wow, I don’t think that sums up what the Bible says. He doesn’t have that quite right.”
Then he proceeded to describe this woman, who had just died, and he said, “She ate,” and he described the way she ate. He said, “She drank,” and he described the way she drank. He said, “And she was merry,” and he described the way she was merry. Then she said, “She has died, so she has pleased God because she ate, drank, was merry, and now she has died.” I was incredulous. I was absolutely incredulous.
Then he said, “It reminds me of the covenant of the rainbow.” In the Bible there was a covenant of the rainbow, found in Genesis chapter 9. It is the covenant that God makes with mankind—that he will never again destroy the world by flood. He then said, “It reminds me of the covenant of the rainbow where God said, ‘Behold the rainbow, and I want you to enjoy all the colors, the oranges, the blues, the yellows, the pinks, all the vibrant colors of life.’” Then he said, “That is what she did, she enjoyed all the colors and God was pleased.” I left there and I thought, “Man, I wonder what people are thinking. What do they think the message of God is? Are we just supposed to enjoy all the colors of life, eat, drink, be merry, and die? Is that the message of the Bible?” I hope that people were not prone to believe that.
In Isaiah chapter 22, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and Luke chapter 12, you will find a verses similar to “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” In fact, if you combine those three verses, you could come up with “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” But you have to look at them contextually. For instance, 1 Corinthians 15 says, “If Christ did not rise from the dead then we are of all men most to be pitied. You might as well eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” If Christ didn’t rise from the dead, but then it says the glorious truth is he did rise from the dead. Contextually there isn’t a message there of “Eat, drink, and be merry.” It is just saying that if Christ didn’t rise then we are to be pitied so we might as well eat, drink, and be merry.
Then in Luke 12 Jesus is talking about the rich man and his barns. He says, “The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, I have no place to store my grain and my goods. I will tear down my barns. I will build larger barns. There I will store all of my grain and all of my goods, and I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods stored up for many years. Take your ease. Eat, drink, and be merry.’’ God will say to him, ‘You fool. This very day your soul is required of you.'” You understand again that contextually this is not a message of “Eat, drink, and be merry.” In fact, the man that had that philosophy of life was called a fool. This morning, as we look at how to eat and how to drink, I want us to be biblical. I want us to see what the Bible has to say about how we live our lives.
The first message is this: Eat to the glory of God. God wants us to eat to his glory. We see this in our passage of scripture for today, in 1 Corinthians chapter 10. “Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.” Eat to the glory of God. How can we eat to the glory of God? The Bible makes it pretty clear that if we are to do that, a few things must happen. First of all, we have to eat without selfishness. We see this in the passage of scripture we have for today. In this passage Paul says, “When you go to the meat market, feel free to buy anything that is being sold there. You don’t know where it has come from, but you have liberty. So, there might be meat there that came from sacrifices to idols, but the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.”
In the ancient world, in the Greek and Roman world, a lot of community meat markets sold meat that had been offered in sacrifice. They acquired their meat from a variety of sources. In Greek and Roman temples, when people worshiped, they would bring a sacrificial animal. They would offer that sacrificial animal to that particular god, the pagan god or deity. One-third of the carcass of the animal was burned on the altar, one-third of the animal was taken away and given to the temple priests for their livelihood, and then one-third of the animal was given back to the worshiper. The worshiper could do whatever they wanted to do with it. Sometimes they threw a big party and they invited their friends. Other times they took that third of the animal and went into town and sold it to the meat market.
It was possible, when you went to a meat market to buy food, that you might be buying food that was actually used in sacrifice at a pagan Greek or Roman temple. Paul is saying it doesn’t matter. Paul is saying that if it is for sale, feel free to buy it. You don’t need to raise any questions on the grounds of conscience. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. Paul then goes on to say, “If you are invited by a non-Christian to their house for dinner and you are inclined to go, that is great, but you should feel free to eat whatever they set before you, again, without raising any questions on the grounds of conscience.”
He adds then, however, that if someone there says, “Hey wait a minute, that meat was offered in sacrifice,” then don’t eat it out of consideration for the person who informed you of this situation. He says, “for the sake of conscience.” He was saying, “I don’t mean your conscience, I mean the conscience of the person who informed you of that.” He said, “Why should my liberty be shaped or restricted by another man’s scruples, as long as I eat with thankfulness?” He is asking for you to withhold eating for the sake of the person who was offended. This is the situation Paul is describing. Obviously, we are to be selfless; we are not to be selfish. We might have the liberty and freedom of conscience to eat that meat, but if someone at that dinner was offended, if someone at the dinner was in some way thinking it was wrong, then out of consideration for them we should withhold.
The idea is that you should be sensitive to people around you when you eat. Certainly, there are situations in our world and in our lives where we are with people at breakfast or lunch and they have certain matters of conscience and it might affect the way you order you meal and the things you eat. If you are eating to the glory of God, you are considerate of the people who are around.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 11 there is an additional explanation of what it means to eat to the glory of God and without selfishness. This is a difficult passage where Paul says,
“When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For each man goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another is drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and do you humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.
“For what I received from the Lord I delivered also to you, that our Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, saying, ‘his is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way after supper the cup saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner is guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.
“Let each one take counsel within himself before taking the bread and the cup. For whoever eat the bread or the cup without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died …So when you come together to eat, wait for one another—if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home—lest you come together in condemnation.”
A tough passage, right? I think we would all have to agree, “Wow, that is a tough passage.” We can understand what is going on, we can understand what Paul was saying. To understand we have to compare our communion with their communion. Our communion is a token meal. I think you understand it is a token meal. There is a loaf of bread up here. I do break that, but I don’t distribute it. You all get a wafer. You all get a cup and, in our tradition, it is grape juice. It is just a token, a symbol of the meal.
In the early church, it was not so. They had a full meal in conjunction with communion and they called it the agape meal. Even the original Lord’s Supper where our Lord instituted the sacrament was a Passover meal. It was a real meal. We are not sure in the early church exactly how they did communion, but we know they did it in the context of what they called the community meal, the agape, or the love meal. It was a meal where Christians came together. As they brought food, they celebrated; they came in love and community and it was in that context they remembered that Christ died for us and his blood was shed for us. It was called the agape. It was kind of like a potluck.
The wealthy people were expected to bring an extra amount of food that would help the poor, and also an extra amount of wine so that there would be some for everybody. Poor people were expected to bring what they could. Some of them couldn’t bring anything; they didn’t bring any food or any wine. So, Paul was saying what was happening in the Corinthian church was that they came together and the rich people sat down in their own area and the poor people were left to their area. The rich people went ahead with their own meal. Some people at the agape were hungry while others were drunk. The poor were hungry, the rich were drunk. Paul says, “What! Don’t you have houses to eat and drink in? Don’t you have houses to be gluttons in? Don’t you have houses to be drunk in? Do you despise the church of Jesus Christ? Do you humiliate those who have nothing?”
Paul is not saying, “Get drunk at home.” He is not saying, “Be a glutton at home.” He is just saying that would be better than doing that at church where you profane the community of Christ and the body of Christ. He is saying, “When you come together, wait for each other and eat together. Share, lest you come together for condemnation.” When they were profaning the Holy Communion, it wasn’t because they were sinful; we are all sinful. They were abusing the agape. They were being selfish and were not sharing. So, if you are eating to the glory of God, you share. I think there is a principal there that reflects the way we treat the poor, and we provide for the poor.
Also, if we eat to the glory of God we have to eat as good stewards. You understand the word steward, what the word steward means and where it comes from – or maybe you don’t. The word steward comes from the Old English. Most of us are not very familiar with the Old English. The word steward etymologically is derived from the Old English stigwearden. The Old English word stig meant enclosure, normally where animals were kept, but it could be an enclosure where crops were kept. Wearden was a word that referred to a guard or to a warden. You can see how the word morphed: stig became sti and ultimately stew, and wearden became warden and eventually ward. Stig wearden. Sti warden. Steward. That is how it morphed.
The steward was a person in charge of the enclosure. The master or the owner would evaluate the way the steward took care of what was in the enclosure. Whatever was in the enclosure belonged to the master. This is the Christian’s view of life. The Bible tells us we are just stewards, we don’t own anything. God is the owner of all things. Christ is the owner of all things. That is why the title Lord means owner. He is the Lord of Lords, the Owner of Owners. He will one day come back and we are going to have to give an account. He has given each of us an enclosure to take care of some things. He has put his stuff in our enclosure and we are to take care of it.
The food you put in your refrigerator and take out of your refrigerator is his. The money that is in your bank account is his. My wife and kids are his. Even my body is his. One day I am going to have to give an account for the way I take care of my body. I am going to have to give an account for the way I take care of my family. I’m going to have to give an account for the way I take care of my bank account. Also, the way I use food and take food out of the refrigerator. I am going to have to give an account for all of it. I am a steward and he is the owner.
That is a Christian worldview. It is a Biblical worldview. It is your move. You can decide what your worldview is, but if you want your worldview to be biblical, that is it. God is the owner of everything and we are stewards and someday we are going to have to give an account. To eat to the glory of God means you are seeking to please the owner. At the end of the day, you want to hear him say, “Well done good and faithful servant. Well done.”
That means as we eat, we seek to take care of our bodies and we seek to eat the right things and in the right amounts, generally speaking. We understand that is why the Bible warns us regarding gluttony. We have seen that there are other Greek words like “phagos” and “gaster” and other Greek words in the Bible for the sin of gluttony. We acknowledge, and I think you all would agree, that God has crafted us all a little differently. Some of you are ectomorphs and you are kind of on the thin side. Some of you are endomorphs and are a little bit bigger. Some of you are in between and are mesomorphs. We have different body types. Even how we eat affects us all differently because of the way God has crafted us. There are skinny people who are gluttons. There are ectomorph gluttons. They just don’t show it. There are people who are endomorphs, but they really don’t eat very much.
We don’t judge people. God does that. He poses the question, “Are you eating right? Are you taking care of yourself?” He doesn’t want you to get carried away with this. He wants you to celebrate. He wants you to enjoy life. He wants you to be responsible, but God is not a party pooper. I have to laugh. We are coming up to Thanksgiving, and after that Christmas. Every Thanksgiving you see articles in the newspaper or commentaries on TV on how to keep your Thanksgiving dinner safe so it doesn’t harm you. Instead of turkey, have some nice tofu, that soy stuff. I needed Barb’s help for that; tofu is a little foreign to me. “For Thanksgiving, have a little extra tofu.” Instead of pumpkin pie, just get some angel food cake and put two strawberries on it.
When I read stuff like that I say, “Oh, come on!” Celebrate a little bit. I recognize that there are some people out there who might have some health conditions where they really have to be careful. In general, there are times of celebration. The Jews understood that. The people of God understood that. That is why there were the feasts and festivals in Jerusalem. There were times of great celebration and they celebrated by the command of God. There was ample food and great enjoyment. We want to be good stewards, but we also want to understand joy.
If we are going to eat to the glory of God, we need to eat with gratitude. The Bible makes it clear again and again that we need to be thankful for what we eat. In fact, the Bible says give thanks in all circumstances. This is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. We need to be a grateful people. Paul says, “If I partake with thankfulness, why should I be condemned because of that for which I give thanks?” We are to be giving thanks.
I have to say it bothers me some. I have had breakfasts with many of you, lunches with many of you, even dinners with many of you. Some of you just don’t pray before eating. If I don’t say something, you just plow right in. As a pastor, and really just as a Christian who wants to be biblical, it is good to give thanks before you eat. Yes, it is true that gratitude is in the heart, but we need to constantly encourage the heart and to think in terms of thanking God. Before Jesus broke the bread, he gave thanks. As we break the bread, we should give thanks. It is a good habit to get into before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner, or whenever you eat to just be grateful to the Lord of the harvest who has put food on our plates and in our homes and on our tables. We might learn to be grateful people if we eat to the glory of God. We have these messages in scripture.
Finally, there is some guidance in the scripture with regard to drinking. Paul says, “Whether you eat or drink do so to the glory of God.” We not only want to eat to the glory of God, we want to drink to the glory of God. When Paul says, “Whether you eat or whether you drink…” There is a lot of scope in “drink.” Within that scope is the use of wine and the use of what the Hebrews called “shekar,” which is strong drink.
This is a matter of great controversy in the community of Christ. I should say right off the bat that there are some folks for whom to drink to the glory of God means you don’t have anything alcoholic. A lot of people struggle with temperance. If you struggle with those things, you are wanting to glorify God so just don’t drink. There are in the Bible examples of heroes of the faith who certainly abused drink. We see that right from the beginning. You start right out with Noah. As you look at Noah in Genesis chapter 9, he has just come out of the great deluge, he has come out of the flood, he has planted a vineyard, he has begun to receive the harvest, and he is enjoying the grapes. He is fermenting some of the grapes, and now he begins to enjoy wine and he likes it. He abuses it. He becomes drunk and then in a drunken state he doesn’t seem to notice he is nude.
He is found passed out and nude in the house, found by his son Ham. Ham thinks it is kind of funny and goes out and tells his brothers Shem and Japheth. Shem and Japheth are embarrassed for their dad. They come in and cover him up, wanting to show him respect. Ultimately Ham and the Canaanites are judged for their lack of respect for their father. There is a blessing on Shem and Japheth. Noah sinned. He abused what, in some passages of the Bible, is called a gift. Noah is called, in Hebrews chapter 11 a hero of the faith. But the heroes of the Bible are all flawed. He is a flawed hero.
Just ten chapters later, in Genesis chapter 19, we read about Lot in the aftermath of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot has fled Sodom and Gomorrah with his daughters after the judgment and they live in a cave, isolated from people. The daughters are thinking, “We are never going to meet a guy, we are never going to get married, we are never going to have kids, and we are never going to produce generations.” They come up with this twisted, crazy idea of getting their dad drunk and having kids with their dad. They get him drunk two nights in a row and produce the Moabites and the Ammonites. They name one son Moab, and the other son Ben-Ami, from “son of the Ammonites.” You have this bizarre scene. Lot is mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11 as a hero of the faith. He is also mentioned in 2 Peter as a righteous man. Whatever righteousness he had was relatively righteous compared to a very debauched world. Again, you have examples from the very beginning in the book of Genesis of the abuse of wine and drink
It is true there are passages of scripture that praise wine, as in Psalms 104, verses 14 and 15. There are four different passages almost identical to this. What these passages say is this: “God gave straw to the ox that he might be strong, so God gave wine to man to gladden his heart.” The idea there is that God gave wine to man to gladden his heart, not to soak his brain but to gladden his heart. There is this concept of a gift.
Now you come to Deuteronomy 14:26, a more difficult passage. In Leviticus 11, you have the Levitical dietary laws. In Deuteronomy 14 are the Levitical dietary laws. We are told we are to tithe even of our crops, we are to tithe even of our fruit, and we are to tithe even of our wine. We have these instructions regarding the tithe as it relates to the harvest. Then we are told that each year the tithe of the harvest was to be brought to Jerusalem. If you lived too far from Jerusalem to bring all of your harvest, then you could sell your harvest right where you live and just bring the cash to Jerusalem. When you got to Jerusalem you were supposed to share part of it with the Levites and you are supposed to share the rest of it with your family, and you were supposed to celebrate with a great festival in gratitude to God.
In the instructions when you look in Deuteronomy 14 starting with verse 26 it says, “For this festival, buy all of the food that you love with this tithe money. If you love sheep, if you love oxen, buy this for food. If you love wine and you love “shekar,” or strong drink, buy that and have a festival before the Lord.” You can understand that this is a controversial passage which could easily be abused by people. But I would say that there is nothing in the passage to indicate that God is condoning drunkenness. He is just inviting them to a festival in Jerusalem and he wants there to be food and drink. There is nothing in there that would be contrary to the rest of Scripture that tells us that drunkenness is a sin and that we are to eat and drink in moderation with temperance. The issue Biblically is, I think, not that tough.
Some of God’s gifts are dangerous. I am sure you have thought of that. Wine is a gift from God. Certainly, the Jews thought of it that way. They purchased the cedars of Lebanon for the temple in exchange for Israeli wine. The wine of Israel was prestigious and sought throughout the ancient world, and they viewed it as a gift from God. It is a dangerous gift.
So is sex a dangerous gift. People abuse the gift of sex and become promiscuous. They destroy their health with all kinds of diseases, and they destroy relationships with the abuse of this gift. They tragically destroy relationships. God gives a lot of dangerous gifts and that is why we are called to stewardship. In the Bible everywhere drunkenness is condemned.
We all know we live in a world where some of the most famous celebrities are photographed in drunken conditions. There is a website that is called Mel Gibson Drunk and there is just picture after picture of Mel Gibson in a drunken condition. He has a huge problem. He also has a huge problem with going into almost racist tirades, particularly in an anti-Semitic sense. He has had times in his life where he has professed faith in Jesus Christ and has confessed that Jesus is his Lord and Savior. His movie Passion of the Christ was beautifully done. He likes to worship Christ in the context of the mass and he wants the mass to be in Latin.
I think it is safe to say he has some problems. We don’t judge him. God alone can do that. It is a sad thing. David Hasselhoff has said he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior but he was too drunk to eat his hamburger. You would have to be pretty drunk to not eat a hamburger. Glenn Campbell has had times in his life where he has talked about asking Jesus to be his Lord and Savior, a tremendously skilled musician and talent.
You have got to feel sad and there needs to be compassion, but this is the world we live in. The issue is if you have got struggles here, it is your move. That is why we have Celebrate Recovery because we are here to help. These are tough, tough issues, but grave issues.
I think most of you have heard of Stephen Collins Foster. Stephen Collins Foster died in 1864 at the age of 37, almost his 38th birthday. He was too young to die. Stephen Collins Foster is called by historians today the father of American music. He was one of the most talented composers of both melody and lyrics that America has ever produced. In the California gold rush, they all sang “Oh Susanna” written by Stephen Collins Foster. It was kind of their theme song. Today, if you go to the Kentucky Derby, the first leg of the Triple Crown, they sing the state song of Kentucky “My Old Kentucky Home.” It is beautiful. Stephen Collins Foster. “Beautiful Dreamer,” “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair,” all kinds of songs, so many songs like that that are famous and still sung today.
Stephen Collins Foster killed himself with alcoholism. He just did himself in. That is why he died at 37, found in an old beat-up hotel in the Bowery, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He had been on a five-day drinking binge and hadn’t sobered up enough to keep his balance. He fell and he was bleeding. They took him to the Bellevue Hospital and he died. It is sad.
We live in a world where a lot of people have destroyed themselves physically; they have lost their health. They have actually prematurely died because of drinking. We have people who have lost their careers and jobs because of drinking. We have people who have destroyed relationships, even their most precious relationships with the people they love most. It is your move. If you feel like God is saying something to you here and he is speaking to you, it is your move. These are difficult issues. We are all flawed. We certainly all need grace, but God is looking to shape us and grow us and transform us.
Now we come to the table. This is the meal; this is the food and drink, for which we are most grateful. We are to eat and drink to the glory of God. We are to be grateful for our food and drink. But this is the meal for which we are most grateful. That is why communion goes by many names, but one of the great names for communion is the Eucharist. The Eucharist comes from the Greek word, which means thanksgiving. So, we come to the table with thanksgiving. We come to the table with gratitude. We are grateful for his grace. What amazing grace, what marvelous grace that we are saved, not by our works, but by his works. We are saved not by our righteousness but by his righteousness. When we accept him as our Savior and Lord, he covers us. He clothes us with his righteousness. What an amazing act of grace.
If he is your Lord and Savior, surely you come with amazing gratitude for that grace. He has forgiven you of all sin—past, present and future. Not only has he forgiven us our sins past, present, and future, but he has given us eternal life. In this room we all have different lives ahead of us and different life spans that we might anticipate. All of this is known only to God. Some of you might live only one more year. Some of you might live 80 more years. God alone knows. But it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we live to his glory, but it doesn’t matter how long we have on this earth because when we have been there 10,000 years, we are still going to be able to gather like this and celebrate like this. Are you grateful for that? He has promised us resurrection bodies that are going to be indestructible and fit for the heavens. Are you grateful for that?
He has brought us into his family, into the community of the church. He has given us a cause to live for and it is called the kingdom of heaven. Are you grateful for that? Are you grateful for his protection? He is Jehovah Jireh. Are you grateful for his provision? He provides for us body, soul, and spirit. We are going to pray for you down front today if you have needs of body, soul, and spirit that we might pray for you, and you might experience once more in your life his provision and protection. There is so much to be grateful for. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.