The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 1301-C, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 5." A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. ©1976. All Rights Reserved.
Question
What is our relation to the food laws of the Old Testament? What is Christian liberty with regard to food?
Answer
Now, this has become, apparently, in recent days a very interesting topic of conversation. There has been a tape circulating around—and I’ve listened to it and some of you may have listened to it—where this gentleman, bouncing off of a book that has recently been published about Old Testament dietary laws being the key to one aspect of the Christian life. So, folks are asking, “What is our relation to the food laws of the Old Testament?”
The answer to that comes in the New Testament, because that’s what we relate to. The Old Testament has very sophisticated rules for Israel. But let’s look, first of all, at I Timothy 4. I Timothy 4:1: “Now the Spirit speaks expressly,” or pointedly, directly, “that in the last times”—and I believe this is the end of the church age; Paul is writing to Timothy in reference to the church—“some shall depart from the faith”—apostasy—“giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils.” There will be a decay in theology; there will be a waning of orthodoxy. And we’re seeing that today. “Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having consciences seared with a hot iron.” In other words, there will be lying teachers and there will be people whose conscience has been so often scarred that it’s become scar tissue and they don’t sense the truth any longer.
Some of the things that they’re going to teach, these false teachers, these doctrines of demons, are these: forbidding to marry—and that has a lot of ramifications. That marriage is wrong or that marriage is, in our day, unnecessary. You can just live together, whatever—and commanding to abstain from foods which God has created to be received with thanksgiving by them who believe and know the truth.
Now, some people are going to come in the last time, saying that you shouldn’t eat certain things. But verse 4, I think, answers the question: “For every creature of God is good and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving.” It isn’t nearly so important what you eat as the attitude you have in eating it. Now, this isn’t to say that you’re to eat garbage. It isn’t to say that you’re to eat something that obviously is diseased. But every creature designed by God is good. God looked at everything He made and said, what? It’s good! And “nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving.” God is concerned with your attitude! You say, “But John, what about all those Old Testament dietary laws? Have they been set aside?” Look at Acts 10. Now, by the time we get to chapter 10, the church is pretty well Jewish; there hasn’t been a great movement at all toward gentiles. In fact, that’s beginning in chapter 10. So the Jews have come to Christ. And, they haven’t really left their Judaism, frankly. And at this point, it is somewhat of a barrier to gentile evangelism.
It’s very difficult, you see, for a Jew to be in a situation to evangelize a gentile and the reason is because they just didn’t have any possible way of connecting up. A Jew, in the first place, wouldn’t go in a gentile house. A Jew wouldn’t normally have a gentile into his house. They would never sit down and eat the same foods. So, there was very little opportunity for real confrontation. There was a built-in separation. The very dust, for example, of a gentile country, was unclean and when you came into Israel you always shook the dust off your clothes because you didn’t want to drag gentile dirt into Israel. This maintained a tremendous separatism.
For example, milk drawn from a cow by gentile hands was forbidden. Jewish hands had to, you know…? You don’t know. What do you know about that in Panorama City?
Bread and oil that had been prepared by a gentile was not to be used by a Jew.
No Jew would ever eat with a gentile.
If a gentile was invited to a Jewish house—and that did happen on some occasions—he would never be left alone in a room because if he was left alone in a room, every article in the room would be unclean.
If cooking utensils were bought from a gentile, they had to be purified by fire.
Any article, however distantly connected with gentiles, was to be destroyed.
One other interesting thing I found was if a weaving shuttle had been made of wood grown in a grove devoted to gentile idols, every piece of cloth made in it was to be destroyed. If the weaving shuttle grew in a gentile grove with idols, you couldn’t wear the clothes that the weaving shuttle wove! Incredible.
And the gentiles answered back, believe me. They answered back.
Now, the strict Jew, then, believed that there was no way there could be any connection. Well, all this had to die, folks. If there was going to be any way that the Jew was going to reach the gentile with the message of Christ, this was going to have to die. It begins to die in chapter 10 and watch what happens, beginning in verse 9: “On the next day, as they went on their journey and drew near the city, Peter went on a housetop to pray, about the sixth hour”—he went up to pray—“and he became very hungry and would have eaten but while they made ready, he fell into a trance.” This is another one of those divine anesthetics where God just puts him to sleep because He’s got a message for him. “And all of a sudden in his trance,” or his sleep, “he saw heaven opened and a certain vessel”—it’s a big sheet, actually—“descends on him,” or to him, “like a big sheet, knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth.”
Somehow there’s this great, big sheet in the four corners, connected to some guidewires coming out of heaven. And down comes this sheet. You say, “Well, what’s in it?” Verse 12: “In which were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air.” Now, the law of Israel forbid the eating of any of those things. That’s what he’s trying to get at. There were certain kinds of things they couldn’t eat.
“And all of a sudden,” verse 13 says, “there came a voice to him, ‘Rise, Peter, kill and eat!’” It’s a new day, Peter! Jewish dietary laws are set aside; why? Because Jewish dietary laws had particularly as their purpose, to separate and isolate Israel from the Canaanites. If God could organize their diet so they had to eat such distinct food that they couldn’t mingle with the people they were with, that was one way He could keep them from idolatry.
You see, when Israel went into the Promised Land, what were they supposed to do with the Canaanites? They were supposed to kill them! Wipe them out, as God’s judgment instrument. They were to wipe out the Canaanites. In order to help them to get at that business, God didn’t want them making great friends and relationships. And so He designed a separate kind of existence. This made them unique, it made them peculiar, it made them stick out, it made people say, “There’s something different about them,” and when they examined it, they found it wasn’t just their diet; it was their theology.
But all of a sudden He says, “Rise, Peter, kill and eat!” and Peter says, “Not so, Lord! No deal. I’m not doing it… For I have never eaten anything common or unclean! I’ve never eaten anything like that; I can’t handle it. I’m kosher!” And he was. “And the voice spoke the second time, ‘What God hath’”—what? “‘Cleansed that call not thou common.’” You think he was easily convinced? This was done three times. He was stubborn! But that’s not easy for him. And the vessel was pulled back up into heaven.
What in the world is going on here? Well, God was preparing Simon to go to the house of whom? Cornelius. And all that old dietary stuff that was keeping Israel distinct was wiped out.
You say, “What is it proper for a Christian to eat nowadays?” Anything that’s healthy, reasonably healthy. It isn’t nearly so important what you eat as your—what? Your attitude towards it. Are you thankful for it? You know, I’ll tell you something. There are places in the world where Christians are serving in missions where they don’t have a lot of choice. I mean, if you would go—and I’ve been there—if you would go to Ecuador, out in the boondocks, and, you know, we have those hot dogs on a stick here? Are you ready for this? They have guinea pig on a stick with the stick going up through the end of the guinea pig and out the teeth! And they cook it just like that: hair, eyeballs—everything. A businessman’s lunch—and no mustard! Somebody’s going to say in that society, “Now wait a minute! I’m not eating that.” Little choice. And if you don’t in some cases, you would be offensive to the folks.
I have been in countries in the world where I don’t even know what I’m eating, and I don’t ask. But I’ll tell you what I do: I thank God that He is going to preserve me! That’s the issue. The Holy Spirit is saying to Peter, “The barriers are down! Let’s cut the stuff out that isolates and let’s mix.” Wherever you are in the world, the standards are simply to be thankful because God is not trying to have a separate nation anymore.
Now the only prohibition I would say that comes along that line would be if your brother is offended (as we’ve learned in I Corinthians) by “meats offered to idols” then what should you do? Not eat those. But other than that, I don’t really think it matters a whole lot what you eat.
Now, obviously, it’s good to feel good. So if you go out and eat a whole bunch of junky food, super greasy food, and you eat down at The Greasy Spoon all the time, you’re not going to feel too good. There’s no sense in going through life feeling lousy. It’s good to eat healthy food; God expects you to use your mind about it. But there is nothing that is forbidden if it is properly prepared and cooked and reasonably healthy—and anything can be prepared reasonably if you burn it enough.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and
Answers" by:
Tony Capoccia
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