WWUTT 628 Who Forbid Marriage and Require Abstinence from Foods?

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Paul says that in later times some will depart from the faith and follow the teachings of demons who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods.

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Believe it or not, these are teachings we have to watch out for even today when we understand the text. You are listening to When We Understand The Text, an online

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Bible ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty. Find videos and more at our website www .wwutt

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.com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of 1

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Timothy chapter 4, verses 1 -5, where the Apostle Paul writes to his servant Timothy.

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Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

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For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

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It's interesting to me that we're studying this section of scripture on February 14th of 2018.

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Why is that day significant? What does 1 Timothy 4 have to do with Valentine's Day? No, it's not because it's

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Valentine's Day. It's because it's Ash Wednesday. Today is the beginning of Lent.

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Were you aware of that? We are 46 days away from Easter, which falls on April 1st this year.

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That's right. Easter is on April Fool's Day. So we're at the beginning of the

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Lenten season. And the two things that Paul mentions here as being the teachings of demons are both things that are enforced by the

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Roman Catholic Church, forbidding marriage and requiring abstinence from foods.

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How is it that the Roman Catholic Church enforces those things? Well, we'll talk about that here. So the Spirit, once again, expressly says through the

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Apostle Paul that in later times, that would be the times in which we live, that whole time between the first advent of Christ and his second advent, his incarnation and his second coming.

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We are in those later times now. And in these times, some will depart from the faith.

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Why is it that we see those who supposedly confess the Christian faith for a time, but then leave it?

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They will leave the church or they'll leave the faith altogether, or they will trade biblical

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Christianity for some sort of worldly version of Christianity. Why is it that this will happen with people?

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Because the Bible says it's going to happen. And once again, as I mentioned on Monday, all we're talking about here is what we observe on the outside.

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As we understand doctrine and we read the scriptures, we realize that the change was never genuine in their hearts.

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They never actually confessed Christ. If they turn away from the church and end up walking away from it, well, it's because they were never part of the church to begin with, as it is expressly stated in 1

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John 2, 19. So we are in those times in which some depart from the faith, devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons.

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This is why Paul will say to Timothy in the next letter, 2 Timothy chapter 2, to correct opponents with gentleness, because God may grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.

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So those that have strayed far from God, those that follow with the worldly teachings or pagan teachings or secularism or humanism or any of these other things, the reason why they fall into those false teachings is because they've been ensnared by Satan, the teachings of demons.

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Anything that is contrary to the sound teaching of the word of God is the teaching of Satan. And this is come about through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.

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They have no guilt whatsoever that what they are teaching is contrary to what is said in the word of God.

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And here Paul provides two examples of the kinds of false teachings that originate from demons.

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He says, forbidding marriage and requiring abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

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If anyone forbids marriage or if anyone requires abstinence from that which

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God has declared as good, they're teaching something demonic. It is not from God.

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It's not according to his word. It is according to a deceitful spirit.

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And like I said, the Roman Catholic Church teaches both of these things, forbidding marriage and requiring abstinence from foods.

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How do they do that? Well, we'll address both of these in order. So first of all, the matter of forbidding marriage, according to the code of canon law of the

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Roman Catholic Church, Canon 1087, persons who are in holy orders invalidly attempt marriage.

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So if you are a priest or a bishop or the pope, you know, any of the higher ups in the ministry of the

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Roman Catholic Church, you are forbidden from getting married. It is

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Roman Catholic law. And it is taking something that Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7 and making it a command when that's not the way

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Paul meant for it to be. 1 Corinthians 7, 6, he says the following, now as a concession, not a command,

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I say this, I wish that all were as I myself am. And then going down toward the end of the chapter, he says, concerning the betrothed,

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I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the

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Lord's mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is.

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Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife.

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But if you do marry, you have not sinned. And if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned.

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Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. This is what

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I mean, brothers. The appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none.

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And those who mourn as though they were not mourning. And those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing.

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And those who buy as though they had no goods. And those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it.

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For the present form of this world is passing away. I want you to be free from anxieties.

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The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided.

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And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit.

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But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the

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Lord. So the Roman Catholic Church has taken this chapter, 1 Corinthians 7, and applied it to their priests and their bishops, you know, etc.,

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etc., that they cannot get married. It is forbidden for them to get married. They cannot serve in that order of the church and be married.

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But it's taking something that Paul was passing on as a suggestion, not as a command, that it would be better for them to not be married so that they could devote their undivided attention to the

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Lord. If someone gets called to the mission field, they don't have to think about how they're going to provide for their wife or for their children.

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They can just drop everything and go because they're not bound to a bride or to a family.

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But those who are married, they must consider their families first because their family is their first ministry.

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But then when you get two chapters later in 1 Corinthians 9, Paul says the following.

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Do we not have the right to eat and drink, talking about himself as an apostle and other apostles?

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Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the

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Lord and Cephas? Remember Peter, who is Cephas, was married. So whenever he went and did the

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Lord's work as an apostle of Christ, he took his wife with him and maybe even children if he had children with him.

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In fact, according to the history of the church, every apostle was married except for John. He was the only one.

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There are some scholars who will say that even the apostle Paul was married. But at the time that he was writing this, he was no longer married, probably because his wife had died.

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And the way that he refers to himself in chapter 7, he makes reference to himself as one who was previously married.

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That would be a whole other explanation for another time. We're not going to go into all of that. But anyway, it's just to give you some background on that.

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So the Roman Catholic Church has taken that and applied it to mean that their priests cannot be married, lest they hinder the work of the

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Lord. And that's absurd. It's a demonic teaching that they would forbid marriage among their priests.

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And there actually was a point in the history of the Roman Catholic Church where they discouraged marriage for anybody.

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It was not a holy thing to enter into marriage. In fact, one of the reasons why

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Martin Luther got married was because he wanted to spite the

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Catholic Church. Now, it's not the most romantic reason in the world to get married. And I've read some of Luther's journal writings on on that, how his marriage to Katie really changed his life.

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He may have entered into marriage wanting to spite the Catholic Church, but he truly fell in love with this woman.

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So it was in reading about that from Martin Luther that I came to discover that the

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Catholic Church actually had a period of time in which they were discouraging people from getting married. That's not the case with the

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Catholic Church anymore. But their whole history is like this. I mean, things are just in constant flux in the

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Roman Catholic Church. This rule applied at this period. This rule applied at this period. This pope says this rule is no longer in effect.

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This pope makes up a brand new rule. I mean, this is what happens when you have the Roman Catholic Church that eschews the doctrine of sola scriptura.

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Rather, they believe sola ecclesia, that the church is the authority, that the pope is part of an unbroken line of of apostleship that began with the

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Apostle Peter. And so God is continuing to reveal his word and his commands to the pope.

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And we have to do whatever it is the pope says. And when he speaks from the chair, his authorities are perfect and blameless.

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Well, clearly not, because there are popes that conflict. There have been popes in the history of the

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Catholic Church that have been declared heretics. So the whole concept of this just totally falls apart.

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It totally breaks down, as we have just read in our study of First Timothy, Chapter three. One of the requirements of a person who is a qualified elder or overseer of the church is that he must be the husband of one wife.

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And yet somehow the Roman Catholic Church has come into this idea that their priest should not be married at all.

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They forbid them from getting marriage, which is demonic. So then the second example that Paul provides, they also require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with Thanksgiving.

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This is also the Roman Catholic Church. And this pertains to the present season of Lent, which is a fast that goes from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, a period of 46 days or 40 days if you take out all the

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Sundays, just as our Lord Christ fasted in the desert for 40 days. So we're supposed to fast for 40 days before Easter Sunday, at least according to the

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Roman Catholic Church. Now, the word Lent is taken from an Anglo -Saxon word that simply means spring, because that's usually when

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Lent falls. But the practice itself didn't really come about until the latter part of the fourth century, a good 50 years after the

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Council at Nicaea. Now, there are references to such a fast among the early church fathers like Tertullian and Eusebius.

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They mention a fast that was specifically for those who were to be baptized. Tertullian said that the most solemn day for baptism is

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Easter Sunday, for on that day was fulfilled the passion of the

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Lord into which we are baptized. So that should be a day that we commemorate for baptism.

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Therefore, those who are about to be baptized should enter into a fast until they are baptized, and then they would feast after their baptism, thus ending the fast.

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But it's that period of meditation that you would even commit your body unto giving thanks to the

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Lord for what he has done on your behalf. That's where that whole concept of fasting had come from.

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But then in the latter part of the fourth century that started being applied to all of the priests or all of the church leaders, all the pastors, we'll put it that way, 40 days prior to Holy Week.

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And then Pope Leo in the fifth century, he turned it around as being something for everybody.

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Everyone had to partake in Lent. And according to Pope Leo, it was an apostolic institution.

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So he was the first one that really declared this was something that the apostles did. And so everybody has to do it.

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And again, that wasn't until the mid fifth century when that institution started being enforced.

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And then you fast forward more years. I think it was somewhere around the seventh century you got into the dietary laws and the dietary laws have always been changing throughout the history of the

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Roman Catholic Church. They've always kind of had this abstract or arbitrary relationship with eating meat.

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And there have been times I don't know if this is still the case or not, but it was it was a mortal sin to eat meat on those days that the

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Catholic Church had declared you're not supposed to eat meat on that day. And the rules got very, very particular.

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Like if you ate four ounces or more of meat on a day that was supposed to be a fast, you committed a mortal sin.

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But if you ate two ounces, then it was a venial sin. I mean, it got it got that legalistic.

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This is this is demonic. None of this is biblical. This is the kind of stuff that Satan enforces upon people, thinking that it's your religiosity that makes you holy.

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But it is Christ. It is his sacrifice that has cleansed us from our sins.

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And it is he who is growing us in sanctification, shaping us to be more like himself.

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It has nothing to do with these ridiculous laws that the church just makes up whenever they feel like it and enforce upon people and say, if you truly want to be holy and be sure that you are saved, will you must obey the authority of the

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Roman Catholic Church? And we say that you have to do this. The whole season of Lent is steeped in this kind of demonic teaching.

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It is garbage. No one should participate in it. No one should. And I know the

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Lutheran Church does this, too. Sorry, Lutherans. It's derived from Roman Catholicism.

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It has never been something that has been enforced even by the church fathers. It was only since Roman Catholicism turned baptism from believers baptism into infant baptism that this particular fast that preceded

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Easter was no longer about baptism, but it became about something that all the church leaders were supposed to do.

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And then Pope Leo enforced it upon the entire church. Everybody is supposed to be doing the

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Lenten fast. And it has this hyper spiritual number to it. Forty days because Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days.

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It's only been in modern times, more recent inventions of Lent that you can give up, you know, whatever your cell phone, you can give that up for 40 days.

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You can give up watching TV or give up technology. And it's usually how it goes. It's somebody giving up something about technology.

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That's been some of the more recent adaptations of Lent. But this is the way it's been for the whole history of the church.

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It's just some arbitrary thing. The rules of which keep changing. It's good to fast.

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It is good to fast. The disciples didn't fast when they were with Jesus because they were with the bridegroom, as Jesus explained it to the

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Pharisees when they said, why is it that your disciples don't fast? But he said a time was coming when they would fast. And we read about them fasting in the book of Acts.

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So it is a good practice. It's a good spiritual discipline. But Jesus set the order for fasting in the

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Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter six. He says, when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others.

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That's one of the things that bugs me about Lent is everybody knows you're doing it. And so then it becomes a topic of conversation.

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Well, what are you giving up for Lent? And again, that's I know that's more of a modern invention of Lent.

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What are you what are you giving up for Lent? But nonetheless, it's a period of time in which everybody knows that this fast is going on.

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But you're not supposed to be doing this to be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, Jesus says they've received their reward.

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But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, which has always been hilarious to me.

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When you apply this to Ash Wednesday and you do a little mark of ash on your head,

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Jesus says, no, wash your face. Quit showing everybody else that this is what it is that you're doing.

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It's supposed to be to be between you and the Lord that you're fasting may not be seen by others, but by your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you.

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So don't go by these set times when you're supposed to fast, when the church says you're supposed to do it fast as you see fit to fast, to commit yourself to the

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Lord and desire to yearn for him all the more, be more focused upon his word and deliberate in prayer.

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And if fasting helps you to do that, then do that. Fasting from food, not picking something to fast from.

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If you're going to pick technology to fast from, you probably have a technology problem and you need to give up certain attentions to it anyway.

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That's just something you need to do. It doesn't have anything to do with a fast. But when you fast before the Lord, when you are giving up food for a certain period of time that you may focus upon God and his will, what he is what he's speaking to us through the scriptures, make that between you and God, not during a set period of time, not not even leading up to Easter or any particular holiday, but that you would just desire to know what it means to ache in your body for knowing

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Christ. And I think that's a beautiful thing. A wonderful spiritual practice. Just don't do it during Lent.

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So that's again, that's how this particular passage applies to Roman Catholicism.

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They forbid marriage. They require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with Thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

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It's in Mark, chapter seven, where it says that Jesus declared all foods clean. There's nothing that is off limits.

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God said to Noah once he disembarked the ark. He said to Noah that I give you every animal for food.

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You can eat whatever animal you like. It was only upon Israel, theocratic

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Israel, after they had been led out of Egypt in the Exodus, that God made the rules, the dietary laws.

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You could eat these animals, but not these animals. And it was to signify that they are to be set apart as holy.

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But then Jesus did away with the dietary laws. And we also have in the book of Acts where it was revealed to Peter that he would take and eat whatever and not feel convicted about eating something he shouldn't be eating since he was a

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Jew. But since the gospel was supposed to be going to the Gentiles, there was no food that was unclean to him.

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And no one was disqualified from hearing the gospel that Peter was going to preach because they ate foods that the

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Jews did not eat. But Paul says, don't eat anything that is going to cause your brother to stumble. If somebody is convicted that eating this particular food is wrong, don't you therefore eat it and then cause them to stumble if by eating it they think they would be sinning?

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For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin, as Paul talks about in Romans 14. But you can know with confidence that everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it's received with thanksgiving.

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God gave it to us that we would enjoy it to the praise of his glorious grace, for it is made holy by the word of God, because the word of God tells us it's fine, you're not somehow unclean because you've eaten some sort of forbidden food.

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Jesus said it just goes into the body. It is expelled from the body. That's not what makes a body unclean.

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The heart is what is unclean. It needs to be cleansed and purified by Christ. So whatever we eat has been made holy by the word of God, which declares to us that there's nothing unclean.

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Everything is fine for us to eat and also with prayer and that we would thank

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God for what he has given to us to provide for our daily bread. So let's let's close with that prayer.

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Why don't we let's pray the Lord's Prayer together. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

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Amen. Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

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You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com.

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Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word when we understand the text.