Whose God is their belly

Luk 21:34 And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.

Rom 16:17 Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.
Rom 16:18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.

Php 3:18 (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:
Php 3:19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)

Mat 24:36 But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only.
Mat 24:37 And as were the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of man.
Mat 24:38 For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark,
Mat 24:39 and they knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall be the coming of the Son of man.

Rom 14:16 Let not then your good be evil spoken of:
Rom 14:17 for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
Rom 14:18 For he that herein serveth Christ is well–pleasing to God, and approved of men.
Rom 14:19 So then let us follow after things which make for peace, and things whereby we may edify one another.
Rom 14:20 Overthrow not for meat’s sake the work of God. All things indeed are clean; howbeit it is evil for that man who eateth with offence.
Rom 14:21 It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth.
Rom 14:22 The faith which thou hast, have thou to thyself before God. Happy is he that judgeth not himself in that which he approveth.
Rom 14:23 But he that doubteth is condemned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith; and whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

1Co 3:16 Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
1Co 3:17 If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

Luk 12:27 Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Luk 12:28 If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the field, and to morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith?
Luk 12:29 And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind.

Pro 23:19 Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way.
Pro 23:20 Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh:
Pro 23:21 For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.

Php 4:5 Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.

Pro 23:1 When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee:
Pro 23:2 And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.
Pro 23:3 Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.

Psa 141:3 Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.
Psa 141:4 Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practise wicked works with men that work iniquity: and let me not eat of their dainties.

Luk 9:23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

*******

We talk often about sinning, and there are so many incredibly obvious sins that we don't take time to look at the supposed lesser sins. We like to push those sins aside and focus on the big ones. Recently people I know have been discussing a lot of health issues and then various Biblical verses began to pop up in my Bible reading and I knew I had to study it now.


Ever since I was about ten years old I became overweight. I've easily been on many, many diets and a few of them had good results- that gave me temporary weight loss. I've spent many years focused on my weight and several of them were under the impression that my being overweight is an outward sign of sin. There are outward signs of sinning, this can't be denied. But A LOT of sins aren't seen by others, they aren't OBVIOUS sins. I could walk by a hundred people and not be able to say definitively that they are committing certain sins. I can say definitively that ALL are sinners, but only because my Bible tells me that all people are sinners.


Rom 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God

Rom 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned


I cannot say definitively that any one of those hundred people are sinners forgiven by Christ because I don't know if they've given their lives to Christ and have asked for forgiveness from Him. So while I know every single person is a sinner, I don't necessarily know what sins they are guilty of. I could look at an overweight person and automatically reason that they have sinned the sin of gluttony, of defiling the temple (their body), of thinking of themselves more than God, and yes, I could go on and on. So it's rather easy to *pick* on overweight people because they wear the results of their sins upon their excess flesh, something they cannot hide.

Of course a very skinny person could also be a glutton, they could also over eat and defile their bodies, we all know those bulimics who binge and then throw up are guilty of gluttony etc. Yet, those people aren't always overweight, some are in fact quite skinny. We can't see their sin of gluttony but it exists.

Now I'm not trying to make excuses, I'm really not. There is another side of the coin of course- that there are medical reasons some people are overweight - real legitimate medical reasons not made up stories to give overweight people an excuse to be overweight.

Now some will easily say that a smoker is defiling their body, and they'd be correct. So passing by a 100 people and seeing 8 smokers- that would be an outward sign of a sin in the act from those 8 smokers.
Catching people in the act of sinning whatever sin that might be- including lying, boasting, heated temper, selfishness, adultery, murder, gossiping, deceiving, etcetera- can make us aware of that single sin, or even of multiple sins they commit, yet WE CANNOT JUDGE THEIR ETERNAL LIFE, not ever! However, we must look upon our own lives, our OWN sins.

1Co 11:31 For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.

1Co 4:3 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self.
1Co 4:4 For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord.

Two conflicting statements? Not really, the Lord's judgment is true, our judgment even of ourselves is not in any way perfect. We must however be able to judge between right and wrong, between what is sin and what isn't sin. If we don't know what sin is, how can we keep from sinning?

We must determine when we sin and when we don't sin, only then can we even ask for forgiveness. Sure we could ask for forgiveness of the sins of ignorance and this is something very real and true, but the sins we KNOW we commit we must not ignore the need to ask for forgiveness for those sins.

Back to the over eating that jumped out at me…

This particular verse-


Php 3:18 (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:
Php 3:19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)

Whose God is their belly.

We really, really have to think about this statement.
Do we idolize our bellies? Do we?
How many of us are caught up in the food we eat to the point of it being obsessive? Think about it, really think about it. Does a single day go by without us thinking of our bellies? Sure, God made us to eat daily- right in the Lord's prayer when He was instructing His disciples on the form they should pray He states 'give us this day our daily bread'. Daily bread, daily food. Our bodies are made with signals that tell us when we are hungry and thirsty, and these signals are going off every day. So yes, we are MADE, we were CREATED to feel hunger- our Savior hungered. We were made to desire food daily and so of course we think about food daily. HOWEVER and this is a HUGE however. How we satisfy that desire is the important question. How we eat, not that we do eat is the issue.

I can't help but wonder if our vast menus with our wide, very extensive lists of foods isn't something more detrimental than good for us.

Simple food.
Natural food.
Food that is prepared simply.
Food that requires simple ingredients.
Food that is cooked without any fancy equipment.

You get what I'm saying, I know you do. We in our society have been brought up on a wide variety of foods and we are exposed to 'new' recipes all the time. We are RAISED this way and because of that, we expect to continue this way endlessly. To DEPRIVE ourselves isn't something we want to do. Many will say that you don't HAVE to deprive to yourself when you are eating naturally and simply, but you do if you are USED to eating anything but simply and naturally. You are changing years of habits, years of eating anything you desire- good or bad for you. Seriously, it's such a HUGE change that to try and say otherwise is ridiculous. You can say it, but it's not really true. Changes like that are NOT easy at all.

Our bellies.

People DO allow their bellies to have control over their minds, we just need to decide whether we are among those who do worship our bellies as god.


More tomorrow…by the grace of God.


In His amazing LOVE now and forever!!!


Amen.