I. Review - Avoiding Lies and Doctrines of Devils Vs. 1-4 Three surreptitious ways people engage in autonomy and lies. A. Making the normative the exception. When celibacy is made the norm in the church. B. Riding some hobby horse, till we have made a major out of a minor and ignored the weightier matters of the law -- like justice and mercy. C. Setting Boundaries. Being stricter than God. a. Regulative law found in churches and civil government. b. Forbidding certain foods. vs. 3b-5 II. How do we get godliness? Vs. 4 - Thanksgiving
III. How to keep the church from swerving into detours and heresies. A. We are sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. Vs. 5 B. We are nourished by the Word of God. Vs. 6 How are your families nourished?
IV. Refuse profane and old wives’ fables. Vs. 7 A few examples: - Slow and Steady wins the race. Where does the Bible say that? - What made America great was Reason and Democracy. - Organic food is better than the pesticide stuff. - Timed feedings will produce children with the strongest faith and character. If our primary influence is Dale Carnegie, Emily Post, Tom Peters, Robert Atkins, then we’re living by Dale Carnegie, Emily Post, Tom Peters, and Robert Atkins, not by God’s Word. After awhile, we begin to understand the world by way of a different grid.
V. Two Forms of Exercise: A. Exercising the Somati (Flesh) in the Gumnasion 1. Gumnazo (exercise) derived from “Naked.” Gumnasion was a Public School, combining the development of the ideal body with the development of the ideal mind. “Since the Renaissance and its rediscovery of Greek art, there has been a long tradition of taking the ideal of the male body from Greek sculpture.”
2. Paul introduces a different agenda. The body will die anyway, and empires full of ideal bodies and minds will fade away.
B. Exercising Yourself to Godliness. Godward Obedience. Vs. 8 1. This text encourages a proper focus on the body. - An ungodly focus on the body encourages ungodly expectations of the body. - Compare Vermeer’s Milk Maid to Cosmo models. What’s the standard? - Women today are especially subject to the tyranny of the model standard, via clothing designers. - The Bible plainly tells us that a woman’s body belongs to her husband, and his body belongs to her. It is not for the world. 1 Cor. 7:4
2. The Bible sees physical strength as a virtue, but not the only virtue. But the strength is not for a carefully chiseled form for everybody in the world to admire? It is for work. Prov. 31
3. The priority is set. The body is not central. Godliness is central. - A certain amount of physical exercise is good for godliness. - Generally, you will be more godly if you exercise.
4. It’s not the forming of the body and the mind that matters so much. Godliness is essential. He who does the will of God comes to the light.
5. Bodily exercise doesn’t profit ZERO. It profit’s a little bit. - The Bible doesn’t commend us sitting around, getting fat, dumb and lazy. Christians should be among the most industrious, most well-studied, and the healthiest… BUT WHY? - Because we want to be fit and ready to serve God tomorrow. -Because we want to raise our children for God’s Kingdom. -Because we want to take dominion of God’s green earth, in obedience to God… and
6. The Reward: -- vs. 8b “having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.”
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