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to live our lives in the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the wisdom that's there. And God, I just pray that you would please just bless this sermon to our ears tonight and let it help us be better servants for you and serve you better in Jesus' name I pray, Amen. Now the main verse that I wanted to point out to you in this, and throughout this chapter there are so many things, and it was a great day when I discovered that reading the book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, I used to just think that these are almost just statements that have nothing to do with one another, you know what I mean? When you read through the book of Proverbs or the book of Ecclesiastes, it's like God is just telling you one thing after another. And it seems like each verse is not related to the previous and just he's listening them up. But one day I realized that these are grouped together for a reason, and when you go through and read it all in the context and think about it, he's building a certain thought here. But the main point that I want to make is found in verse number 16. The Bible says, Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning. Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength and not for drunkenness. By much slothfulness the building decayeth, and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through. And then on and on. But the point that I want to make tonight and the sermon that I want to preach tonight is about food. I want to talk to you about food tonight. You say, that's a goofy subject, you know, that's silly. Come to church and hear about food. Well, as with any subject, the Bible has a great deal to say about food. The Bible talks a lot about food and nutrition and diet and health and things like that. And so, if I want to know what I should eat, if I want to know what good food is, well, I'm going to go to the Bible and read what the Bible says about food and what the Bible says about eating, because God knows everything. And God has the answer to any question I put to him. And so something that's so important in our lives as food, surely God has a lot to say about it. Well, the first point that I want to make, and turn, if you would, look at 1 Corinthians chapter 6, and I want to show you this. 1 Corinthians chapter number 6. And look at verse number 12. In 1 Corinthians 6, 12, the Bible reads here, All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. And then what's the next word? Meat. So he's talking about food. You must understand that in the Bible, the word meat does not mean meat, like the modern day word meat. The word meat in the Bible means food. You'll see that a little bit later in the sermon. The word flesh is used in the Bible for meat, and sometimes the word meat in the Bible means our idea of meat, but it's also just a generalized term in the Bible just to talk about food. For example, in the book of Leviticus, the meat offering was flour and oil. It had nothing to do with meat, per se, that we're talking about. Anyway, God is saying here, look, actually the Apostle Paul is saying, look, all things are lawful unto me. Look, there's a lot of things that I'm allowed to do. There's a lot of things that are not necessarily a sin. I can really do anything, and I'm not going to lose my salvation. But on top of that, there's a lot of things that I can do, and it's not even wrong. But he says, is it expedient? Is it getting me to my goal? Is it helping me to excel in the Christian life? And then he says, all things are lawful unto me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. He says, just because I'm allowed to do something, just because something's okay, I don't want anything to control me. I don't want anything to hinder me from what I'm trying to do for God. A little bit later in the book, and I'm not going to have you turn there, but it says, all things are lawful to me, but all things are not expedient. All things are lawful to me, but all things edify not. He said, not everything is helping me and building me up. Even though it may necessarily not be a sin, and it's okay, it's not helping me. It's hurting, it's slowing me down. And so this sermon is not a sermon where I'm saying, this is wrong, and such and such is wrong, and this is a sin, and don't do it, it's wrong. This is a sermon where I'm teaching you information out of the Bible to help you. This is something where I'm teaching you what the Bible says about something to help you be a better Christian, to help you just be a healthier person based on the Word of God. So this is not something where, well, you know, Pastor Anderson is preaching against such and such, some kind of food or beverage. That's not what it's about at all. It's about, this is me teaching you because I want to help you, because I don't want you to be held back by something that may be lawful, but it's something that's going to hurt you, and it's going to slow you down, it's going to make you less effective for God. And so this is very much just a helpful sermon, just an edifying sermon where I'm teaching you what the Bible says. Now we'll go down in the chapter a little lower and look at verse number 19. The Bible says, what? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and you are not your own? For you are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. God's saying here, look, your body belongs to God. God is giving you your body on loan, he's saying. He's saying, this is the temple of the Holy Ghost, he says, I paid for it when I died for you on the cross. When you accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, you became my property, you became my child, and that body of yours became mine, and the spirit of yours became mine. He says, you cannot do, you hear people say, my body, my choice. Isn't that the pro-choice slogan of women who murder their babies and the abortion crowd, and they say, my body, my choice. No, it's God's body, and it's God's choice with our lives. We don't have the right to abuse our body in any way. And so a lot of times we think of something that's more of a classic thing that people preach about, smoking. And does the Bible say anything about smoking, cover to cover? No. Smoking is never mentioned in the Bible one time. Yet, preachers get up and preach against smoking and say that it's a sin to smoke. I believe that it's a sin to smoke also. But it's just as much of a sin to abuse your body. What's the sin of smoking? Abusing God's temple, abusing God's body. And so what I'm going to preach about tonight, really, if you took what I'm preaching on tonight to extremes, and you took the things that I'm telling you are not good to do, and you did these in any kind of excess, then you're probably abusing your body just as much as if you smoked cigarettes, because you're still defiling the temple. You're still abusing your body, and it's wrong. Now, think about smoking, for example. What would you think, I mean, think about a woman who smokes when she's pregnant. Think about a woman who consumes alcohol when she's pregnant. Think about a woman who consumes drugs while she's pregnant. And a lot of women do that. And so do you think that's right for them to subject an unborn child to their vices? Is that right? Absolutely not. It's not right. The child has no choice. It's being born into the world and somebody's cramming cigarette smoke into it, somebody's cramming alcohol into it, somebody's cramming dope into it. It's wrong. Why? Because it's not their body. They don't have the right to do that. Well, look, it's the same thing when you're a Christian. You're cramming something into something that's not your body because it belongs to God. You see what I mean? It's the same type of thing. You say, well, that's not right to do that to that baby because it's not your body. That's what's so stupid about the abortion crowd saying, my body, my choice. It's not your body. It's another human body that's living inside you. Well, the same thing is when you abuse the body that God has given you, which belongs to him. Can you imagine if I rented a house? Now, I own this house, but let's say I was renting this house, and I said, you know what? I think I'm going to take out a wall here and just make this one big room because it'll be a better church auditorium. Can I do that? I mean, if I'm renting the house, absolutely not. Can I paint the house pink and purple on the outside? I like pink and purple. I just think it's a sweet color. Look, I can't do that. This isn't my house. I'm renting the house, you know? And I own this house, but you know what I'm saying? You can't just abuse somebody else's property. Look, I rent cars every week. I mean, every week, 52 weeks a year, I rent a car for my job. Do you think I can just abuse that car and not have any repercussions? Now, my wife's looking at me funny because she thinks that I've abused the wrong car, but I don't do any damage to it that can't be undone. But anyway, the point is you can't damage other people's property and think that it's just, well, this is my choice. No, if you're saved, it's not your choice. Now, look, do you want to have energy to serve God? I mean, good night. What we all couldn't do with more energy. Think about it. If we have more energy, then we can work harder. We can, you know, as a man, I can work harder and make more money and take care of my family, take good care of my family. If I have energy, I can spend more time out soul winning than if I don't have energy. If I'm weak and tired, how am I going to read my Bible? How am I going to stay up praying? How am I going to knock doors? How am I going to push myself if I'm tired and have no energy? The Bible says the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And so it's vitally important that I have the most energy that I can. But not only energy, I want to have the most mental clarity that I can. I want my mind to be sharp. I want to be able to think clearly. I want to have strength and stamina to serve God. Well, all of this is based on what you eat. Now, in the verse that we looked at in Ecclesiastes, it talks about two kinds of people. There's people who eat for strength in due season. That means that their purpose for eating is to put something into their body that's going to strengthen them, that's going to help them, that's going to give them energy, that's going to give them power. And then there are people who eat for drunkenness. It means that they put something into their body just for sheer pleasure only. And they just gorge themselves with food for pleasure. Have you ever heard of comfort food? People talk about comfort food. They get depressed and they get in a bad mood and they just sit down and just eat an entire tub of ice cream. That's what he's talking about. Eating for drunkenness, same thing people do. When they get sad, what do they do? They go out and get drunk. They drown their sorrows. Or they drown it in a tub of ice cream. Well, the point is, food is important and what we eat is important. And obviously God is going to tell us exactly what we should eat and drink in the Bible because he tells us everything else. Well, look at you what a Genesis chapter two and I'm going to show you what God says about food in the Bible. Many different things that I want to show you. And again, this is more of just a helpful kind of sermon where you can take from this and say, boy, I want to learn what God says about food and about nutrition because I want to be as healthy as I can. I want to take the best care of the body that God gave me, that I can. And I want to be as healthy as I can so I can be maximum Bible reading, maximum memorizing the Bible, maximum soul winning, maximum providing for my family. It's something that God wants us to care about. Look at verse number eight of chapter two of Genesis. The Bible says, and the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden. And there he put the man whom he had formed and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the site and good for food. The tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So God, right away, he planted a garden and he put a man in the garden and it said he caused to grow up from the ground things that were good for food. I mean, he said every tree in this garden is good for food. Look, if you would, at verse number 17. But if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. I'm sorry, verse 16, I missed the verse. It says, and the Lord God commanded the man, saying of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. So look, he's saying all these trees that I made, all these plants that I made are producing fruits and vegetables. He said, eat all of it, it's all good, and eat it freely. He said, eat as much as you want. That's what he's saying. He didn't put any kind of a limit on how much he should eat. He said, of all these trees that I show you, eat as much as you want. They're good, they're good food. And he says, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. And so here's the point. The first sin committed in the Bible was somebody eating something that they weren't supposed to eat. I mean, obviously there's a spiritual application here, but if you just break it down to the bare bones, God said, don't eat this food that I'm telling you not to eat. And Adam, you know, first Eve, but Adam was the one that caused mankind to fall. But Eve said, it looks good for food. I'm going to eat something that I want to eat, even though God told me not to eat it. And my lust for food is going to outweigh the commands of God. And so food is a theme throughout the Bible. I mean, here we are in Genesis chapter two, we're talking about food in four different verses. Well, God made food is the first thing I want you to know. God made all this food for us. So it would stand to reason to me that when God makes something, remember he looked at everything that he made and behold, it was very good. It says at the end of Genesis chapter one, everything that God made is good and it's healthy and it's going to be good for food. So it would stand to reason that food that God made is going to be healthier than food that man made. Is that true or not? I mean, if God made a food and then man makes a food synthetically, which one's going to be better for you? The food that God made. I mean, God said, I made food for you. Look if you would at Psalm 104. So we saw in Genesis chapter two that God made fruits and vegetables. He said, eat as many as you want of them, just freely eat to your heart's content of fruits and vegetables. I made them, they're perfect. They're very good and I want you to eat them. I made them for you to eat. Look at Psalm 104 now in verse 13. Bible says in 104, 13 of Psalms, it says, he water the hills from his chambers. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works. He causeth the green grass to grow for the cattle and herb for the service of man, that he may bring forth food out of the earth. See what he's saying here is that he created both herbs, that's like vegetables for you to eat that grow out of the ground. And also it says, he sends water to make grass grow for cows to eat. That's what cattle is so that we can eat the cow. That's what he's saying. He's saying the point here is that he's making the ground produce something for us to eat and also animals for us to eat, the cattle is something that God has given us for food. Now, let me just digress from the Bible for a minute. I'm gonna show you all this in the Bible in a minute, but first I wanna explain to you the premise of the sermon. Food that is made from natural products, I mean, I'm talking about stuff that God made is healthy for you and you can pretty much eat as much as you want of it. Food that's made synthetically is what's unhealthy and what's making us obese in America. You look around America today and you'll see people that are four and 500 pounds frequently. I mean, you'll go to the grocery store, you go anywhere and you see these people that are just huge. Now that is not normal and that's not natural. There are parts of the world where there are no people that size. In Europe until recently, you just did not see people that were obese like that. You just didn't see people that are huge like that. The reason why people get huge like that is because they eat unnatural foods. Now, a lot of things that the world, first, I want you to know I'm not some kind of a health nut. I'm not one of these people that eats all this grass and stuff, the wheat grass and the green tea shots and all this stuff where the, what do they call that stuff? The barley green and I don't drink all that stuff. And I eat a pretty normal, I mean, I go out and eat pizza and whatever. You know, I eat normal stuff. But there are certain things that I don't eat because it's really bad for you. And let me explain to you what it is. This is my rule of thumb. When I go to the grocery store and I want to buy something to eat, and I got some food here, for example, when I go to buy something to eat, let's say I walk up to the grocery store, right? And I see these two things right here, okay? This is nacho cheese Doritos. This is Fritos corn chips. Now, when I look at these two things, the first thing I look at is the ingredients. I want to know what's in there. Well, if I look at the ingredients of Fritos, it says right here, ingredients, whole corn, corn oil, and salt. No preservatives. So what's in this? Corn, oil, and salt. Now, I'm going to show you from the Bible in a minute that all three of those things are totally healthy. They're totally good for you from the Bible. Now, let me read for you nacho cheese Doritos. Now, Fritos are good, right? You like Fritos? I love Fritos. Well, listen to nacho cheese Doritos. Whole corn, same thing. Vegetable oil, same thing. Salt, same thing. Cheddar cheese, that's okay. Maltodextrin, wheat flour, whey, monosodium glutamate, buttermilk solids, romano cheese, whey protein concentrate, onion powder, partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil, corn flour, di-sodium phosphate, lactose, natural and artificial flavor, dextrose, tomato powder, spices, lactic acid, artificial color, yellow six, yellow five, red 40, citric acid, sodium cassinate, di-sodium inosonate, di-sodium guanylate, nonfat milk solids, whey protein isolate, and corn syrup solids. Now, does this sound like something that God made? No, this is something that's totally synthetic. Now, there's something in there in the list called partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Now, this is what they do. They take oils and they chemically alter them. They molecularly alter these oils to make them solidify because butter is solid, but oil is liquid. So in order to make things that are solid, like candy and chips and stuff like that, they have to chemically alter the molecular structure of this oil and hydrogenate it. They're putting in a hydrogen atom and they're molecularly altering the structure of what God made and making this synthetic substance. It causes cancer. It's unhealthy and it makes you fat. It makes you get fat, period, because it's not a natural fat that your body can digest like oil, which your body can digest just fine, butter, which your body can digest fine. I'll show you that in the Bible. But this partially hydrogenated thing is a chemical compound that's literally one molecule away from plastic, something like that. It's chemically very close to being plastic. This is a little bit different. And so what they've done is they've taken something and scientifically altered it and made it unhealthy. Now look, I guarantee you could eat these Fritos all day long and you will not get fat. If you only eat things that are just God made, I mean, if you just limited your diet to just fruits, vegetables, bread, grain, I mean just natural type things and everything was homemade, everything was made from scratch and you eat Fritos, you are not gonna get to be 500 pounds, period. You could eat meat, juice, cheese, water, whatever. If it's something natural that God made, it's not gonna make you obese. But see, this kind of stuff that's like chemically altered, this will make you fat. This right here, okay, this is Little Debbie snacks. Okay, this is probably the most unhealthy thing in the world, literally. I mean, look at the ingredient list right there. You see how long that is? The ingredient list is bigger than the actual food. If you took out the food and put it next to it, the ingredient list is bigger. The ingredient list is huge because here's the thing, when I go to the store and I'm just giving you a tip, I'm just trying to teach you something that's gonna help you. When you go to the grocery store and you're buying food and you're buying something to drink, look at the ingredient list and you don't even have to read it. Just look at the length of the list. You look at Fritos, you got three things. You look at certain things and they have 100 things. Now look, when mama is cooking in the kitchen, does she use 100 things? Does she use 100 different ingredients to make cake? No, she uses about four, she's gonna use flour, oil, baking soda, butter, milk, eggs, and that's it, am I right? So I don't know that much about cooking. But look, a lot of times people think that, oh, chips, I'm gonna stay away from the chips or whatever, I'm just gonna go drink a Diet Pepsi, which has just like a ton of weird ingredients in it, all kinds of chemical compounds made in some laboratory somewhere. And they say, I'm not gonna eat this junk food like a bag of Fritos, I'm gonna go buy a Yoplait non-fat yogurt, you know, sweetened with artificial sweeteners. And it has all this list of chemicals on it and they think that they're healthier by doing that and they're not. Because you cannot get fat eating normal food and eating a normal diet of what God made. The reason that somebody gets to be 500 pounds is from the little Debbie's, it's from the hydrogenated, it's from the synthetic, it's from the Diet Coke, that's what it's from. Now look, I'll even show you this right here. And I'm gonna get back to the Bible, but I'm just laying a foundation here. I've got two tubs of ice cream right here, okay? Two tubs of ice cream, you say ice cream, that's junk food, that's bad for you. Well, okay, this is Breyers All Natural Ice Cream. You can get this at any grocery store. Breyers Ice Cream, these are the ingredients. Milk, it's fine. Cream, it's fine. Sugar, no problem. Cocoa and natural flavor. It's like, what's bad about that? There's nothing bad about that at all. But then look at this, this is a normal brand, this is the off-brand, this is the store brand, or even if you get dryers or any kind of ice cream. And you've got the cellulose gel, guar gum, cellulose gum, locust bean gum, polysorbate 80, carrageenan, partially hydrogenated palm oil, soy lecithin, and on and on and on and on. There's hydrogenated, it's used six times in this list. This is bad for you. This is what makes you fat. This is what will kill you and send you to cancer surgery. This is what will make you unhealthy. This is what will slow you down. There's nothing wrong with this at all. All you have to do is just look at the ingredients and just see, okay, there's just a few things, this is natural ingredients. This is food that God made versus food that was made in a laboratory somewhere. And see, we're living in a day when people pervert nature. Who's ever heard of mad cow disease? Do you know what caused mad cow disease? This is what caused mad cow disease and this is what's going on in the world that we live in. And I think this is sick and perverted. And you say, well, why are you talking about this? I think it's a moral issue, that's why. In England, and they do this in the United States too, but in England, you know what they were feeding cows that they would butcher and make beef out of? They would feed cows cow. Now, do you see something wrong with that? Look, God intended cows to eat grass. Now, if you studied the Old Testament, every animal that God told us to eat that's a clean animal is pretty much an herbivore. It's something that eats plants. That's why we don't eat dogs. That's why we don't eat cats, because dogs and cats eat meat and so that makes them very unhealthy. Here's what they do, they take a cow that's supposed to be eating grass and grain and they grind up other cow byproducts and sheep brains and sheep, everything that you don't use about the sheep, everything you don't use about the cow, they grind it up into little pellets and would feed the cow meat. And because they did that, it caused a disease to break out called mad cow disease and all kinds of people died because it was being caused by animals eating their own animal. I mean, a cow being a cannibal created this disease because it was eating this and it's a complicated disease. I'm not gonna go into it, but the point is that's sick, that's perverted. That's wrong. It's a sin. It's perverting nature. It's ungodly. And so that's what's going on and that's why a lot of the food that's put on the shelf is not right. I mean, it's not safe, it's harmful. You know, you think about chicken breasts. Chicken breasts have 7%, you buy the chicken breasts at the store, they put 7% of the weight is salt water that they inject into the chicken breast to make it weigh more so that you're paying for water. You know, they'll take a chicken breast that weighs a certain amount, they'll inject it with water to make it weigh more just to stretch it out. That's wrong. I mean, it's deceptive. It's ungodly. But that's what we're living in a day of people who want to hurt you. You know, they want to just make money and they don't care that they're feeding you trash. They just want to make money. Now look at this right here. This right here, grape soda, artificially flavored soda. Now it says right here, what's in here? Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, which is basically a really bad form of sugar, citric acid, sodium benzoate, preservatives, modified food starch, artificial flavors, blue one, red 40, on and on. Okay, this is, I mean, this has no nutritional value. There's no juice in this at all. This is just water, sugar, and a bunch of chemicals made out of a laboratory. Now this probably costs 69 cents, you know, for this two liter. Is the price, the price is right? I got it. Bob Barker just told me that I got the right price. Okay, this is the exact same thing that you could do. You could take this right here, carbonated water, also 69 cents. And you can take a bottle of grape juice, okay? And now did God make this? Yeah, God made grapes. You squeeze them and out comes the juice. You take grape juice and carbonated water and you mix them together, it will taste better than that soda right there any day of the week. Anybody will say it's better. I mean a kid, some little kid who's been drinking sweets all day, he will prefer this because this just tastes better. I mean it's sweeter, it tastes better, and yet this is extremely healthy for you. This is very good for you. What's the difference? This costs a little more. This costs a little more than just 69 because you're paying 69 cents and then how much is this for this bottle? 350, you know, for the grape juice. But see, that's what it is. People today, they sell junk because it's cheap. That's why you can't go to the Burger King and get this because it's expensive, it's hard to preserve. So they just give you trash and they get you to drink just the grape soda that's bad for you. And on and on and on, the list goes. But let me tell you some things that the Bible teaches about diet. Now the first thing that I think it teaches is that eating the food that God made is always gonna be better for you. It's always gonna be healthier. It's always gonna be more slimming, keep you in shape and so forth if you don't eat junk that's made in a laboratory. The next thing, number two, I want you to see is that you need to drink water, okay? Drink lots of water. You say, oh, drink fluids. I drink fluids. No, drink water. Oh yeah, drink a lot of juice and tea. Look, drink water. Water is what you need to be drinking. I looked this up in the Bible. There are 683 references to water in the Bible. 683 times God mentions water and I went down looking through the list, constantly people are drinking water. Drinking water, they're drinking water. Jesus is giving people water to drink. People are giving Jesus water to drink. Jesus is drinking water. Jesus is drinking water. Look, there's a reason why God talks about this stuff in the Bible. There's a reason why he stops and tells us what beverage Jesus is drinking and what beverage other people are drinking because you need to drink water. Proverbs 5.15 says, drink water out of thine own cistern and running waters out of thine own well. Revelation 22.1, talking about when we get to heaven. He said, he showed unto me a pure river of water of life and then in verse 17 it says, and the spirit and the bride say come and let him that hearth say come and let him that is athirst come and whosoever will let him take the water of life freely. And I'm not, water is a picture of salvation. Water is a picture of the Bible. Water is a picture of the Holy Spirit and God is saying drink water freely. Drink as much water as you can. I will say this. I have never known anybody that was overweight that did not drink like no water. They drank like almost no water. Everybody you meet that's overweight, what are they drinking? Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi. They never drink water. They never just down glass the water. That's why I'm so skinny because I drink all this water. Drinking water will make you lose weight more than anything. I grew up, okay I grew up, my dad, he ate junk food all the time. Just junk. But he drank like a gallon of water every day and that helped keep him pretty slim the whole time. He never really got real overweight because he's drinking so much water. Look, water takes energy for your body to go through it and it has no calories. And so you drink the water and your body has to process it, it's gotta move it around and it actually burn calories to drink water. Drinking water cleans out. It gets out a lot of the garbage. It gets out the calories and the fat and the garbage. Drinking water will do more to help you lose weight. This would be like a great diet. Eat exactly, I mean, not that anybody here needs to lose weight at all, but like let's say somebody did lose weight, like this would be the diet. Eat exactly what you eat right now and just start drinking a gallon of water a day. I guarantee you that if somebody was grossly overweight and did not change anything else and just added a gallon of water to their diet every day, they would lose weight. I'll guarantee it. I guarantee it they would lose weight because water is the most healthy drink in the world to drink. Only two drinks that Jesus drank while he was on the earth, water and juice, that's all he drank. Never mentioned of him drinking anything else but water and juice. Well, here's a verse on juice. 1 Timothy 5 23. The Bible says, drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine opposite infirmities. Now the liberal crowd, they say, see, you're supposed to drink liquor. You're supposed to drink wine. You're supposed to drink beer. See, it's good for you. Alcohol is good for you. Now that's so ridiculous because alcohol will harm your stomach. I mean, this is a fact. There's a guy that I knew about that literally had to have part of his stomach removed from alcohol consumption. I mean, I can just see Paul just kind of laughing like, hey, your stomach hurts? Drink some booze. That'll help. I mean, people have to have their stomach removed because alcohol gives people upset stomach. I mean, it's a fact. And so notice the parallel. He's not saying don't drink juice. Get a little booze up in there. That'll help you out. Don't just drink water. He says, use a little wine. Now do you say use a lot of wine? No, he says, just drink a little bit of juice and compliment to your main beverage, which is water. Water is gonna be your primary beverage, he's saying to Timothy, because Timothy is a preacher. And he's saying, listen, Tim, drink water primarily, but drink a little bit of juice. It'll help you out. And that's what you see throughout the Bible hundreds of times. I mean, if you wanted me to, I could sit here and just read all the references to drinking water throughout the Bible. And I was just going through, there were hundreds of them, but he's saying, look, don't just drink water, drink a little bit of juice, even though water is your primary beverage. Now, look, there are a lot of misconceptions about what people think is unhealthy. Like I was showing you a minute ago, for example, butter, people think that butter is unhealthy, butter is not unhealthy. The Bible has 11 references to people eating butter and every single one of them is a positive reference, including Jesus Christ himself. In Isaiah chapter seven, butter and honey shall he eat that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. And on and on, 11 times, God mentions butter. And every time it's positive, you say, well, that's a coincidence. Look, nothing in the Bible is a coincidence. This is God's word. God wrote this book to tell us everything we need to know about everything. Then he says, butter is fine. He says, eat butter, it's good for you, it's healthy. What's not healthy, margarine. Margarine is synthetic butter. I mean, it's made in a laboratory somewhere. You can't make margarine. It's made somewhere chemically. It's not real butter. It's not real healthy stuff that God made. Here's another misconception. People think that fried foods are bad. You know, something that's deep fried. Something that's deep fried is not bad for you at all. It's good for you. God tells you to deep fry food. Now look, let me read this for you. Well, actually turn if you would to Leviticus chapter two, third book in the Bible. Remember, this is that boring book. It's just so boring and irrelevant. But see, there's a lot in there. You just have to maybe think a little bit deeper into this. But Leviticus chapter two and verse 13, or no, I'm sorry, verse number seven. Leviticus 2, seven, the Bible says, and if by oblation be a meat offering, bacon in the frying pan it shall be made of fine flour with oil. Now just think for a minute. You got flour, you got oil, you got a frying pan, I mean you're making pancakes is what he's talking about here. Now the meat offering is basically a pancake. Now let me explain to you. The priests in the Old Testament, they did not get paid with money. This is how they got paid. They were taken care of with food. The Levites and the priests, they were in charge of all the sacrifices and the offerings. Well, the children of Israel would bring a lamb, they would bring a bullock, they would bring a ram, they'd bring whatever the case may be. And they would sacrifice that animal on an altar and a certain portion of that meat, the priests and the Levites would eat it. That was their food. They ate the meat from those offerings. Then they had what's called the meat offering. Now the meat offering, as I alluded to earlier, was actually talking about bread. It's talking about this pancake that they're making out of flour and oil. And the meat offering was how they got their carbohydrates. I mean, they're being provided with meat, like as a form of flesh of these animals, and they're being provided with the cakes here that are being baked on a frying pan in oil. And look, do you think that God is giving these priests something that's unhealthy? These people ate this 365 days a year. 365 days a year, they ate beef, they ate the rams that are being sacrificed, they ate sheep, and they ate these fried up cakes of pancakes, of flour and oil fried in a frying pan. That's what they ate every day of their life. You think God's giving them garbage to eat? Absolutely not. And on and on throughout the book of Leviticus, the book of Leviticus will tell you how to slaughter an animal. The book of Leviticus will tell them in detail about how they take a bullock, what they cut out, what they're supposed to burn on the altar, what they're supposed to throw away, which exact part is the part for human consumption, and which part is supposed to be thrown in the trash. Not, you know, fed to another cow, but thrown in the trash, burnt up, and disposed of. Now look, what are these priests living off of? They're living off of a fried food. But here's the difference. If you go to Kentucky Fried Chicken today, if you go to one of these places, Long John Silver's, they're not frying food in oil. They're not frying it in vegetable oil. You know, they're not frying it in a normal oil. They're frying it in one of these hydrogenated, synthetic, altered, chemically altered oils. So if you deep fry something at home in oil, very healthy. Extremely, there's nothing wrong with it at all. Making chicken nuggets, I have what's called a fry daddy. It's a, you know, a little deep fryer. Make french fries. What could be more healthy? It's potatoes and oil. And God says that oil is very healthy. What could be more healthy? There's nothing more healthy than homemade french fries. But see, when you go to get the french fries at, you know, Burger King, then you're getting the synthetic, the hydrogenated, and yeah, those things will make you fat. They'll make you unhealthy. They'll make you sluggish. They'll make you tired. And so on. Here's another misconception. People think that salt is bad for you. Look, the Bible says, and every, look at verse 13, right in the chapter that we're in, Leviticus 2. And every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt. Neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering. With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt. He says, look, don't give him meat without salt on it. He says, look, when you cook this meat up for the priest, put salt on it every time. He's saying, eat salt on all your meat. You see, I thought salt's bad for you. Look, salt is not bad for you. The medical world one day will say that salt's bad and then the next day they say it's not bad. They don't know what they're talking about. You know, they used to say that eggs are bad for you. It's like the most healthy thing that you could be eating. Remember the commercial, give eggs a break? Okay, where all the eggs are getting out of jail? Because they don't know what they're talking about because they're stupid because they don't believe the Bible. They just make up something and then a couple of years later, oh, we found out we were wrong about that. Oh, you know, they'll tell you, they might tell you that butter is bad for you. They might tell you that salt is bad for you. They might tell you that oil is bad for you. No, they don't know what they're talking about. God says that salt is good for you. In the sermon on the mountain, Jesus said, yeah, salt is good. Just one, that's just the sentence. Salt is good. But if the salt had lost his saltiness, wherewith will you season it? Have salt in yourselves and have peace one with another. So God is using salt as a positive illustration of something that's good. And in the Old Testament, he's telling people to eat salt with every meal. People say that red meat is bad for you, that beef is bad for you. Look, the priests are eating red meat all year long. God's giving them constantly red meat to eat. Is he giving them junk to eat? No, red meat is good for you. Beef is good for you if it's lean meat. God also said, don't eat the blood and don't eat the fat. He said, cut off all the fat, burn off all the fat, and lean beef is good for you. And I could read that for you, but for sake of time, I'm not going to. Think about the low-carb diet, the Atkins diet. It's stupidity. It's unhealthy. It's abusing your body. You can't go on that diet for long-term. You destroy yourself. It's hurtful to your body. What does the Bible say about the low-carb diet? Give us this day our daily bread. Look, God says, eat bread every day. Every day you should be eating bread. Every day you should be eating meat. Every day you should be eating fruits and vegetables. Every day you should be eating a balanced diet of these natural foods that God made, bread, meat, vegetables, butter, cheese, milk. I mean, these are things that God said are good for you. Eat them every day. You know, other things, diets that have you only eat just a little bit of things. Look, God says, eat until you're full, and that's fine. He says, in Deuteronomy 8, 10, when thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. He's talking about how they're going to be eating. Deuteronomy 8 talks a lot about food, a lot about eating. But then in Proverbs 25, 16, he says, hast thou found honey? Eat so much as is sufficient for thee. He says, if you find honey, eat as much as fills you up. But, he says, lest thou be filled there with it and vomited. He says, if you eat too much, you're going to throw up, it's bad for you. And so he says, eat till you're full, but don't continue eating after you're full. And so the bottom line of all this that he's teaching is look, I made all this food for you. I made meat, I made the grass so that a cow could eat it so that you could kill the cow and eat the cow. He says, I gave you these sharp teeth right here so that you can chew a piece of meat. These aren't for pudding, these aren't for applesauce. These big fangs that I have in my mouth right now, it's to bite into a piece of meat. I mean, God designed a human being with these sharp incites and everything, it's not for celery, it's for meat. And God has said, eat meat, eat bread. It's where I feed the priest, it's how I take care of it. Eat fruits and vegetables unlimited. Now, when I'm out of town, for example, and see, I'm out of town three days a week, and so I'm faced with the challenge of trying to eat healthy, because most of what's out there, the fast food and everything, it's gonna be garbage, it's gonna... And listen to me, I'm telling you, this stuff will hurt your body big time. If I eat junk food, I can notice. And see, the healthier you eat, your body will begin to violently react to bad food, literally. Like if you eat junk food all the time, it probably doesn't really affect you as much, but if you eat a healthy diet of natural, like home-cooked meals, I mean, food that's prepared from scratch, well, if you go to just eat junk, I mean, you'll get physically ill sometimes. And if I eat junk food, if I just go and eat just the worst junk, I'm telling you, I can't even think straight. And here's the thing, I memorize a lot of Bible. You know, I do a lot of Bible memorizing, just throughout the day I'm quoting my Bible verses and going through my memory verses. And I literally, if I eat the wrong foods, I cannot memorize the Bible that day. And I can't even call back what I know hardly if I eat the wrong food. And I've just discovered from experience that certain foods are like brain foods. Like if I wake up in the morning, and if I eat bananas and nuts, like bananas and pecans and almonds, my mind will just be as sharp as a tack. And I can just memorize the Bible. I mean, it all just comes to my mind. I can learn a whole chapter in one day, a chapter of the Bible in one day. But if I eat junk food, I can't even begin to concentrate and do it. Now, whether you believe that or not, it's true. And this synthetic garbage that you put into your body is not helpful to you. Think about how the Bible is related to food in the Bible, throughout the Word of God. He says that a man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. He says, I've esteemed the words of my mouth more than my necessary food. Well, if the Bible is supposed to be our food, well, think about this. What's the man-made version of the Bible that God made? Well, that's easy, that's the NIV. You know, that's the New American Standard. That's the Living Bible. That's good news for modern men. Well, is it good or bad? I mean, it's harmful to you to ingest this synthetic man-made garbage. Well, look, if it's wrong for me to ingest the NIV, then I don't want to ingest physical food that's man-made either when I can ingest the food that God made. I don't trust somebody in the laboratory making food for me, you know, creating food in a laboratory out of molecules and all this weird freakish against nature stuff. It's gonna hurt you. And so when I'm out of town, here's what I do. A lot of times for breakfast, I go to Jamba Juice, okay, and I get the fresh squeezed orange juice with bananas ground up in it. That's healthy. I mean, that's an orange and a banana, the things that God told you to eat. It gets ground up, it's juiced out, and I drink that, and man alive, it gives you energy. And you say, well, that's expensive, that costs money. Look, you know what costs money? It costs money when you go to the doctor. It costs money when you go to the hospital. It costs money when you have cancer surgery. It costs money when you're getting your gallbladder taken out. It costs money when you get all these surgeries because you abuse your body. It costs money when you have to go to Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers. You know, that costs money because you overate or because you eat junk, you know? But it costs money. And so if you literally, oh, how much does health insurance cost? Health insurance is through the roof. Why? Because people eat trash. Because they save a few bucks and buy the grape Fanta instead of grape juice, and they save a couple dollars, and then what do they do? They end up needing hundreds and hundreds and thousands of dollars. I mean, good night. One minor surgery is gonna cost you $10,000. How much healthy food can you buy with that? How much Jamba Juice can you buy with that? And so I don't even have health insurance right now. But I don't even need to go to the doctor because I don't eat trash because I eat healthy food. Because I eat right. And so that keeps you a lot healthier. And it's like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And so, spending the money that it takes to not eat banquet frozen dinners for 69 cents each, I mean, that is just the worst kind of trash that you could be eating. I mean, TV dinners and stuff. And so spending a little extra money to buy real meat and buy real vegetables made by God, and buy real pasta and real flour and real ingredients and taking the extra time to cook it is gonna pay off when you can work twice as hard at your job, when you can think twice as good, when you can save the money at the doctor, when you can save the money at the hospital because you took care of the body that God gave you. You know, when I go to eat lunchtime, you know what I'm looking for? Panda Express. Okay, why am I looking for Panda Express? Because I walk in the door and in the fridge there, it's just all the vegetables freshly cut that day lined up that they're using. And I can watch them, because they cook the food right in front of you, and you can see exactly what they're using. You can see exactly what's going on. It's all healthy stuff. I mean, it's just lean meat. It's fresh vegetables that they cut that day. And you say, but it's fried. You know, look, that's okay. And I eat that, and it's healthy. You know, it's all good ingredients. You know, I look for round table pizza when I'm in California, because I worked at round table for three years, and it's all freshly cut every day, all natural ingredients, all healthy stuff. And so it's worth it. Now, what are the, on and on, and I could go on and on, but the premise that you need to get is, number one, eat what God made, not what man made. I mean, it's a very simple premise. That's all you need to know. And number two, drink water, and drink more water, and drink like gallons of water. I worked with a guy in Sacramento. His name was Andrew. Every day, the guy had a headache every day. This guy drank no water. He'd get up in the morning. We'd go to the gas station, and he'd get two things at the gas station. He would get an extra-super-sized Diet Coke, and then he would get two aspirants. Oh, I have a headache. I need these two aspirants. Look, you have a headache because you're dehydrated, because you don't drink any water, because you're drinking soda, which actually takes the water out of your body. I mean, literally, for every can of soda that you drink, for every 12 ounces of soda you drink, you must drink 24 ounces of water just to replace what you just depleted from yourself. And so dehydration is the cause of 99% of headaches. I mean, you talk to, I remember in school, they'd give out, you know, they'd give out aspirants, and they'd give out Tylenols all day, but you know what they do? Kids say, oh, I have a headache. They'd say, drink a glass of water. Nine times out of 10, the headache's gone if you drink water, because most headaches are caused by being dehydrated by not drinking water. And I'm thinking to myself, if you didn't drink a Diet Coke, then we'd be out there in like 110 degrees in Sacramento. We'd be working all day. I'm drinking a gallon of water and a gallon of Gatorade side by side. I drink these. He's just sitting there just drinking Diet Coke in the morning, no water all day. Then we'd go to lunch, we went to Arby's, and he ordered a supersized Diet Coke again. And I was just thinking to myself, you're a walking miracle. I mean, the fact that you're even alive right now is an act of God. I mean, you're sweating profusely out of your body without drinking anything. I'm just thinking, where is this moisture even coming from? And of course, overweight. Of course, always trying to lose weight, never able to lose weight. He never drank any water. He's drinking Diet Coke all day, depleting his body in the water, and he's popping aspirin pills all day. He's popping all these drugs because he has a headache that's induced by not drinking water. But you've just got to do what God made. The most closest to what God made it is going to be the healthiest thing you could get. The less processed, the better it's going to be. The less man had a chance to tamper with it, the healthier it's going to be. But then drink a ton of water. If you're buying some of the grocery store, just look at the ingredient list. Just look at the length. You don't have to look at what's in it. It has four things in it. I guarantee you that that's something healthy that's good for you. If it has 100 things in it, I'll guarantee you it's going to be bad for you. But what are the repercussions of unhealthy eating? Well, here's a funny story. You might have heard about this. On November 27, 1978, Dan White, a former San Francisco city supervisor who had recently resigned his position, and this is a true story, 1978, entered San Francisco's city hall by climbing through a basement window and then shot and killed both Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. So here's a disgruntled politician. He goes in the basement. He climbs up the stairs and murdered the mayor of San Francisco and the controller. Now, he went to jail. You know, he got arrested. They put him on trial. And this is his defense. He was temporarily made insane, he said. He said that he was depressed and he was upset. And because of his depression, he started eating junk food. And notably, the two that he mentioned and a psychiatrist named Martin Blinder was on the witness stand saying that he had been eating an excessive amount of Twinkies and Coca-Cola. And so this man, Dan White, had consumed just mass amounts of Twinkies and Coca-Cola. And this psychiatrist claimed that that had augmented his depression that he was going through and that he'd actually had made him incapable of reasoning and making rational thoughts. And it was known as the Twinkie defense. And he got off the hook. He was let off the hook for murder. And he murdered two men in cold blood. They gave him just manslaughter and gave him a much reduced sentence because he was temporarily made insane because he ate too many Twinkies. I mean, isn't that funny? But, I mean, obviously that's ridiculous. And it's known in legal books and everything as the Twinkie defense. And it's a term that's used for just kind of crazy off-the-wall things that people do to get off the hook. But look, it is true though that eating junk food will mess up your mind. It'll mess with your mind and it'll make you tired. Now, a lot of this, obviously I'm basing it on the biblical premise that we want to eat the food that God made and not something that man made. Because the Bible says, when God makes something, he said it's very good. When we make something, it's probably junk. When we try to imitate something that God made. But look, I'm just telling you just from personal experience, from myself, and from people that I've known, eating junk food is the reason why most people are tired. Some people, they hear about my schedule and I'll tell them about some crazy schedule that I have. And they're just like, how do you do that? Look, a lot of the way that I do it is by eating the right food, literally. A lot of the way I do it is by not eating junk food. And I can just feel it. I mean, literally. When I'm on a Sunday nights, when I'm driving to LA after church, if I were to stop and just get a candy bar and a Coca-Cola, I'm not gonna be able to go very far. Because all drink, and you say it's caffeine, it's gonna keep you awake. No, you drink that Coca-Cola, you eat the candy bar, I'm gonna be pulled over within 30, 45 minutes of sleep. Because I can't stay awake with that stuff. Because it doesn't give you lasting energy because it makes you tired, it slows you down, it makes you just have no energy. But if you eat fruit and juice and stuff, natural sugars, I mean, it gives you energy. It makes you be able to think clearly. It gives you a sharp mind. I don't wanna go through life with some dumbed out mind because of some stupid weird chemical foods that I ate. I mean, everybody knows that junk food makes you just tired and just, bleh. But if you eat something that's just healthy and fresh and good, man, it's gonna make you have energy. It's gonna give you strength. And so what's the goal when you eat food? I mean, what is your goal when you pick this up and eat it? Are you eating this for strength? There's no way. Nobody picks up this little Debbie and says, I'm gonna eat this because it's gonna make me have more energy to serve God. This is gonna give me more strength to do what I need to do. This is gonna keep me just sharp so I can read my Bible and so I can understand it, so I can memorize it. People eat this for drunkenness. People eat this for comfort food. People eat this because it makes them feel good, but they're abusing their body and I just don't think that's right. And I think that not as much just, well, the little Debbie's are a sin. I'm not saying the little Debbie's are a sin. I'm not saying the Diet Coke is a sin, but I'm telling you something. I would never drink a Diet Coke as long as I live because it's probably the worst thing you'd possibly be drinking. And I would never even touch this stuff. You say, is it a sin? No, but it's not expedient. It's gonna make me dehydrated. It's gonna put chemicals into my body. I don't know what they're gonna do and it's gonna slow me down. Now, look, I drink an occasional Coca-Cola. I drink a Coca-Cola here and there, but my primary drink is water. My primary drink is juice. But I drink a Coke here and there. I'll eat a fast food. I eat pizza. I eat normal stuff. And I'm not trying to be some kind of an extreme person who just, I will never touch the stuff with the long ingredient list. I'll be honest with you. I'm getting on an airplane tonight. I'm taking some of these bad examples with me on the plane. I mean, look, some of these bad examples, I'm gonna eat these before the day's over. But the point is, I don't just fill my body with that stuff because it's gonna slow me down. It's gonna render me ineffective for the things I got. And I wanna have that sharp mind. I wanna be able to learn God's word. I wanna be able to work 16 hours a day and 18 hours a day while I'm out of town so that I can get back and have the time for my family and have the time to serve God because I got my work done out of town because I had the stamina to do it because I ate the right food. And so yes, it is important to eat food. It's the right choice. And you know, all this goes spiritually too. Get the right food. And get the right mixture of the right food. Get the balanced diet like the whole Bible. God is saying here, eat a balanced diet. Eat all the food groups every day. The priest is eating bread every day. He's eating meat every day. He's eating fruit every day. He's eating vegetables every day. God's saying, look, read the whole book. It's a whole diet. And don't go to some Twinkie church. Don't go to some church that's gonna feed you a bunch of junk food. Don't go to Burger King Baptist Church. Don't go to Del Taco Community Church. Don't go to McDonald's Fellowship. Look, go to Faithful Word Baptist Church because at Faithful Word Baptist Church, it's homemade. It's home cooking. And it's straight out of God's ingredients right here. Everything that I'm holding my hand in this book is made by God. And this is the only place I get my ingredients. I don't go to the hydrogenated international version, also known as the HIV. I don't go to the NIV because I'm gonna go to the King James Bible. I'm gonna get the natural ingredients. And I'm not regurgitating you some sermon that I bought off the internet from one of these people that sells these little, what was it, Lancaster Baptist Church or whatever. They had this little buy eight sermons for $39.95. They said, you're the pastor and the Sunday deadline is always looming. You must come up with something. And so let us, this is what it literally said, let us do the work for you. We'll provide you with the sermon and you can just spend your time like personalizing the sermon to you and kind of freshening it up and really studying it, filling in all the blanks. But you don't have to mess with what to preach. We'll tell you what to preach. It's just $39.95, send your check now. And I'm thinking to myself, what kind of a preacher are you? You don't know what to preach? I have to struggle like preach everything I wanna preach. But do you think the sin of nakedness was on there for $5.99? Do you think that birth control in light of the Bible was in there for $7.95? No, my friend, it's all just this generic sermons so that anybody can use them. Nothing that's just controversial, nothing that's hard preaching, just the love of God series, six parts, $29.95. Look, that's like going to the freezer and getting banquet combos and getting TV dinners. Look, no, make it homemade. This is, all my sermons are homemade. I'm not repreaching somebody else's sermon. I've never done that. These are all homemade sermons where I just went to the shelf and I mix it up and serve it to you. And that's the kind of church that you ought to go to. And if you ever go to a church that's feeding you the NIV or something, you're getting all the hydrogenated stuff you're gonna turn into this fat, lazy, unhealthy Christian. That's just the truth because they're feeding you with garbage. Anyway, let's bow our heads and pray. God, you know, I struggle with whether to preach the sermon but it's not a fun kind of sermon to preach. It's not exciting. It's not really the kind of sermon of screaming and yelling and preaching, thus saith the Lord. But God, I just feel like if we would change our diet, so many of us could maybe just do more for you. And I know that this has helped me immensely. And people that have taught me things like this and sermons that I've heard like this, about what the Bible says about food and beverages, it's helped me tremendously. It's helped me to serve God better. It's helped me to be more effective as a breadwinner for my family. It's helped me in memorizing the Bible. And so, God, I just pray that you would please just help those that are here to just, you know, take what they want from the sermon, what they don't want. That's fine. But I just hope that they learn something that can maybe help them be a little bit healthier, so that they can take a little better care of the body that you gave them and use it for your honor and glory.