Verse by verse teaching - Proverbs 13:2 "A Divine Diet"

The title of the message tonight is "A Divine Diet." "A Divine Diet." This is a fascinating verse of scripture. And before we get into this verse of scripture, exegeting it, when we're talking about a diet here, we understand that food is a blessing from God. Genesis 2-9a says, "And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. Listen to those two adjectives there. Pleasant to the sight and good for food. God designed food. And he designed it to be pleasant for us, and he designed it to be good for us. Not to bring us displeasure and badness, but to bring us pleasure and goodness. That's the purpose of food. And sometimes my wife, she gets busy during the day and she will get so focused on her work, she'll go without food sometimes. Then when she finally gets to have a good meal and she gets refreshed by a good meal, A lot of times my wife will say, "Ooh, food does a body good." And it does. God made food to be good for us. And because God wants to do our bodies good, go look in your text now in Proverbs 13, two, the Bible says, "A man shall eat." Now, notice first the imperative form of this sentence. And imperative means it is imperative. It has to happen. God doesn't say a man can eat. The Bible doesn't say a man may eat. The Bible says a man shall eat. And there's some people who actually believe that people don't have to eat. Did you know that? They come from a Hindu background. And there's people here in America who have adopted this Hindu type of theology and as part of this Hindu belief system, they believe that you don't have to eat. And these people are called breatharians. Breatharians, yes, this is real, they're called breatharians because they believe that we can simply live, just take in the air and by doing so, just absorbing the energy of the world around us. And while studying for this message, I had the pleasure of listening to one of these breatharian gurus explaining how he could even eat through the soles of his feet. He was barefooted standing in the grass and he was letting everybody know, I'm eating right now through my feet on the grass. I'm eating by looking at the sun with my eyes and by breathing in with my nose. And these poor foolish followers of his were seeming encouraged by his video. And one woman even commented and said that his lecture brought her joy and moved her emotionally. You see, they believe that they're gonna try to slowly limit their food intake and then replace the food with the air in absorbing the energy of the world around them. And by doing so, they'll ultimately be able to quit eating altogether, and then just enjoy the energy of the earth and reach a heightened spiritual awareness. Now, I'll tell you what, there's one thing that they say that is true, because if they do successfully quit eating, they will have the greatest spiritual enlightenment of all time when they die. But there's not a single man on earth who doesn't eat. The Bible says a man shall eat. God created the world good. God created man good. And God designed a good man to eat, that which was good for him. So that God created food that was good for him. So Solomon said, "A man shall eat." Look back in your text, "He shall eat good." Now, this is important for you to understand. This word good here is not an adverb. An adverb modifies a verb. So if I say I ate, or I ate quickly, I ate slowly. Those slowly and quickly would be adverbs. And some people say, well, I ate good. Well, you can't eat good, you eat well, okay? Good is more of an adjective, well is an adverb, but this is not used as an adverb here. Now you can have the word good being an adjective. You could say, did that taste good? Yeah, that tasted really good. And that would describe what you were tasting, right? Or that tasted bad. But right here, it's not used as an adjective or an adverb. The word good here is used as a noun, an actual thing. And so man shall eat good. And it happens to be one of my favorite words in the Old Testament, tobe. Tobe, absolutely love that word tobe, and we've had words that is on that in the past. And so man shall eat tobe. If you could think of tobe being a substance, and spiritually speaking in this verse, it is a substance that man is eating. So man shall eat tobe. And Solomon is saying that a man is going to eat tobe. He's not telling us how a man eats. He's telling us what a man eats. He's eating tobe. A man eats good, a man eats tobe, just as a man eats fruit, or as a man eats steak, or as a man eats anything else. And of course, Solomon is not talking about eating in the sense of us chewing with our teeth and our jaws and swallowing down to our bellies. He's talking about eating this tobe, eating this good in a spiritual, in a metaphorical sense. So nobody here or online tonight can go to the grocery store and buy a pound of tobe. You know, they have tobe on sale or they have good on sale tonight, so we're gonna eat some good tonight. Good is not something we eat literally. Good is something we eat spiritually. And since we think of eating in a physical sense, it may be a little difficult for some to envision what God is trying to get across to us about eating good or eating in a spiritual sense at all, but I believe the scripture will become clear to us as we continue. The Bible is clear that God made a variety of things for man to eat, right? Everything that was good for food and pleasant to the eyes. And I tell you what, I don't like coming home and having one thing on the plate. I don't want to come home to a piece of bread. I don't want to come home to a piece of meat. I don't want to come home to a plate of squash out of the garden. I want to come home to a plate that has meat and bread and squash or whatever you want on there. And if you're the St. John's, you may not want the bread on there and that's okay. But you know what? It's good to have a variety because all different foods provide all different types of nutrition, right? So it's important that we have a variety of things. If we wanna rehydrate ourselves on a hot, sunny day, we might eat cold watermelon. You wanna wake up in the morning when you're sleeping, my wife enjoys her coffee and taking that in. To build big muscles like Brother Shepard, you might eat steak. for polyphenols and vitamins and fiber. We eat fruits and vegetables. For carbohydrates, we eat bread. And everything I just mentioned was given to us by God for us to eat that our bodies might benefit thereby. And so as our bodies are nourished by physical food and all different varieties of physical food, so our lives, our souls, our spirits nourished by good, by toad. And we get to eat it. God has nourishment for the child of God. God has nourishment for your soul. He has nourishment for your spirit. He has nourishment spiritually also for your bodies. I tell you what, when you eat good spiritually and you eat the toad that God gives you, it's going to affect you physically as well. Bible says, you know, that laughter is like a medicine. And thank God we can laugh with the joy that God gives us in Jesus Christ, and it can also benefit us physically. And now look what God says here. "A man shall eat good," look back in your text, "how? By the fruit of his mouth." By the fruit of his mouth. Yesterday I came home from work and I picked some fresh squash from my garden. Fresh organic squash. And that squash is the fruit of the plant. It's the fruit of the plant. That squash doesn't begin with the fruit. It begins with the roots. It begins with the seed first, right? Then it begins with the roots. and then the stems, and then eventually as it grows and grows, it then gets some blossoms, and then eventually it gets some fruit, and the fruit is the final outcome of that plant, the final outcome of that plant. And because of it, the fruit is reaped at the end of the season. And as with the fruit of a plant, so it is with the fruit of our mouths, you see. We have fruit from our mouths. It says here, "A man shall eat good, and shall eat toad," how? "By the fruit of his mouth." Now, if you think of the words that come from your mouth, you think of those words, they're not fruit, you think of those words that come from your mouth as seeds. Remember, it all starts with the seed. The seed, then the roots, the stems, and it works all the way, the blossoms and fruit. So you think about the words you speak as being seeds that come out of your mouth. And when you speak words that are tobe, when you speak godly words, when you speak words that affirm and that confirm, conform rather, to God's word, then those are gonna be tobe words. They're gonna be words of tobe. And in time, those seedy, godly words will take root They're going to grow and eventually they're going to bear spiritual fruit that's going to be told for you to eat. Okay? You're going to end up eating the fruit of your mouth. It's quite fascinating. And when we speak, the words of our mouths are being sung like seeds. Now, if you were to think of your words that you're speaking as seeds, I think you'd be a whole lot more careful. number one, with the type of seed you sowed, and number two, make you think, I'm gonna be eating that a little bit further down the road, 'cause we will. We will eat our words further down the road. And as each fruit has its own benefit, each food has its own benefit physically, so the words that we speak, they have their own benefit as well, that we're going to eat and be nourished by those as the children of God. For example, in Proverbs chapter 15, verse one, the Bible says a soft answer turns away wrath. The grievous words stir up anger. So there are some words that come out of your mouth. A soft answer, that's gonna be a seed song, and it can end up turning away wrath. A grievous word or a harsh word can stir up anger. And so giving kind and loving responses in our daily lives to people, that will cause us in the end to eat the fruit of peace. And at the same time, giving grievous words or ungodly words, unbiblical words in our conduct and interaction with people, that will cause us to eat the fruit of anger. We're gonna see violence here when we get a little bit further down in this text. But if we speak words that build people up, words that encourage people, then we're going to eat good because we're gonna eat the fruit of our reward of building those people up down the line. God will reward us. And literally, our words shape our spiritual future. The words that we say, for example, in Matthew chapter 10, verse 32, about Jesus, "And whosoever therefore "shall confess me before men, "then will I confess also before my Father, "which is in heaven." Now, to be saved, we don't go out and find somebody and say, "Jesus is Lord," or, "I believe in Jesus." That's not what it's talking about. What we have to understand is this. When we think of eating, We normally think of eating as getting up, going to work, earning a check, going to the grocery store, buying food. And so we eat the fruit of our hands, right? The fruit of our labor. But what God is saying here is this. He's not saying that we eat good by the fruit of our mouth exclusively. We eat good by the fruit of our hands too, don't we? If I do something that blesses somebody, don't you think I'm gonna reap what I sowed and God end up rewarding me for blessing somebody? Absolutely. But what God is doing here, I believe, is showing us that in the least things that we do, remember what Jesus said, if I die for somebody, that's a great amount of love. No one has love greater than that. If I serve somebody, if I wash somebody's feet, and watch the brethren's feet. I wanna be rewarded for that. But remember what Jesus said, even if you just give a cup of water to someone in Jesus' name, will in no way lose our reward. And so by doing that, he's not telling us, hey, if you want rewards, go get you a cup of water and start giving it out to people. What he's saying is, he says the things that are done in faith by my spirit, based on faith in me, in the gospel message, they are going to be rewarded all the way down to giving a cup of water, all the way down to the words that we speak with our mouths. You see, the simple things, the smallest things will not be overlooked by God, who numbers the very hairs of our heads. Don't be looking for great things to do to receive great blessings. Jesus says, "He that's faithful in little, be faithful in much." You be faithful in a little. Even in the words that you speak, even the things that you administer to somebody. You may not have money to build a school overseas. You may not have money to send a missionary to go tell the gospel, but you know what? You might have a cup of water. You may not have a lot of things you can do for people, but you know what? You can say some words to them. You can give them some words. Some kind words spoken at the right time will be such a blessing. I recall back today to that elderly man at the courthouse. It was so sweet. 81 years old, and he gets screened in and he's getting his stuff x-rayed and he's going through the metal detector and all that. And he's putting on a good front for all the officers up there, like everything's fine. And then he walks down the hall a little bit further out of everybody's way. And I happened to look up and I saw him staring at me. He knows I'm a pastor. And when no one else could see him, he looked at me and he just motioned like this for me to come back. And when I walked back, his lips started quivering, his eyes started watering up with tears. He said, "Would you pray for me?" And it was so sweet. And we just put our arms around each other. And I got to pray for that man. You know, I couldn't fix the problem with his son. I couldn't take care of the surgery that he was supposed to have this week that he misses because he's in this rotten trial. I couldn't fix his problems. But you know what? I got to be able to speak some words in Jesus' name to that man. I got to be able to take his burden up to the throne of God as a believer in Jesus Christ and say, "Father, may your grace be upon this man and help this dear man." And you know what? He was so thankful. He was so, you know what those words were today? They're just a cup of water given to a thirsty soul. The man had a thirst for prayer. He had a thirst for somebody caring for him. And at that point in time, when I put my arm around that man in the name of Jesus Christ, do you know who was putting their arm around that man? The Lord Jesus was. Do you know who was showing concern for that man? The Lord Jesus was. And so we become, we're at the body of Jesus Christ. And so here we are, the representatives of Jesus ministering to people, whether it's a cup of water or a couple of words that we say in sincerity and faith out of love for the love that Christ has given us. The Bible says when we do that, we will eat good. This will be, that seed from those words will grow stems and roots and blossoms and fruit. And later on in life, maybe even the same day, didn't have to be far off, you end up eating that fruit. God will bless you. God will bless you. but feeling good about it, God will bless you. And I thank God we have this promise tonight. But Jesus said, "Whoever confesses me before men, "him will I confess before my father which is in heaven." Listen, there's been many followers of Jesus Christ who've been ridiculed, imprisoned, they've been slain, beheaded for confessing Jesus Christ as their Savior that God sent into the world. But though they are persecuted in this life, They're gonna eat good for the confession that they made. They're gonna eat good at the end of the season. There's gonna be fruit for their confession at the end of the season. Because one day, the Lord Jesus, whom they confess with their mouth, they're gonna hear that Jesus confessed them with his mouth. And what a great remembrance, I believe, is gonna come to those people's hearts and they remember being persecuted for confessing Jesus. But they see that Jesus Christ was faithful to them, and now they're so thankful, and here he is confessing them before his father. They'll eat good by the fruit of their mouths. Now, fascinatingly, we're looking here at eating tobe, eating good. There's also a comparison between eating good to eating bad, right? Now we're gonna go somewhere with this. Then everything goes back to Genesis, I tell you. So let's go to the bad part now. We have those that eat good by the fruit of their mouths. They look back at your text now, but the soul of transgressors, those that transgress God in his word, Those that say, "No, I'm not going to have God to be my God. I'm not going to follow God's word." And the soul of those transgressors, they sow words that are contrary to God's word. You look there in the book of the Revelation, they're mocking Jesus, they're denying Jesus, they're worshiping the beast, they're confessing the beast, and the man of sin, they're transgressors. You have people today that are God deniers, and they're getting more and more and wickeder and wickeder or more wicked, I think would probably be the grammatical way of saying it. But those people, the Bible says, look under your text, shall eat violence. Shall eat violence. Now, notice that both the godly and the ungodly eat. Okay, now remember back in the Garden of Eden, God said, I'll put enmity between you and the woman, between thy seed and her seed, okay? So we have the godly line and the ungodly line. So what we have here, the first part of this verse, is the godly line eating good as a result of the words of their mouths. The least little thing, right? They're gonna eat good for it. Now you have the ungodly line, and we see them eating violence here, and that's by the words of their mouth as well. and they're going to end up eating the fruit of the words of their mouth. In the fruit of the words of their mouth, which deny their God, in which promote godless things, they're going to end up, the fruit of that is violence versus Tobe. Fascinating. Now, this word violence here is first found in Genesis chapter six in the Bible. Now think about what we've been talking about. You've got the godly line, you've got the ungodly line, to have two different things that are being eaten. And I'm telling you, there's something to this. And I've always marveled when I'm teaching through the Genesis to Jesus class, because there's a lot of people that think, oh, you know, this Garden of Eden thing, it's so fictional, it's so fairytale-like. You know, they're eating an apple and all this stuff, you know, and suddenly this happens. I'm telling you, I've always been amazed how God chose to ratify man's choice for good or evil. Now had they eaten the tree of life, they literally would have been eating toad. You see what's happening? Had they eaten from the tree of life, literally man would have been eating toad. God designed all of us to eat toad. And there's something about eating that God connects with man's appropriation of what he intended for him to have. God didn't put Adam and Eve down there and give them a little check box and say, well, check yes for everlasting life and check no for good and evil, or check your box there and let's go ahead and vote. He didn't do that. for some reason God designed that the ratification, that is the finalization, the official, making it official, of the choice that man made for or against God's leadership would be ratified by eating something. And so we see that that original idea, original concept of eating and gaining either Tob or violence. Okay? You eat the tree of life, you're eating Tob. You eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you eat violence. One fills you with Tob, the other fills you with violence. Okay? And so, and not good and evil, but violence. That's the result. Not You eat good, you eat the tributology of good and evil, you're gonna end up eating violence. And so God used these trees for that, and still to this day, all throughout the Old Testament, into the New Testament, we still ratify our choice by what we eat. That's why in the Old Testament, As they're going through those dietary laws, God put restrictions on what they can eat clean, what they can eat unclean. And so you still see that ratification being dealt with there. Now, fast forward to the New Testament, and what happens? Jesus comes down and he's saying, "I'm the bread of life." Now you see, suddenly what happens, we eat Jesus. He said, "They that eat me shall live forever. "I'm the bread of life. "You eat me, you're gonna live forever. "My blood's drink indeed. "My body is food indeed, or bread indeed." And so what happens is we eat Jesus and we end up eating Tob. We feed on Tob. And so, now you eat the food of this world. And what happens? You end up perishing with the world. Remember what Jesus said, that he gave two different things again. He said, "Labor not for the meat that perishes, "but that which endures." It's just fascinating to me how this whole thought of ingesting in that good or that evil or that violence coming to pass. So, in Genesis chapter six, verse 11, this is the result, because once they ate the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and we went through kind and able, the Bible quickly fast-forwards to the fruit of their action. Genesis 6, 11 says, "The earth also was corrupt before God, "and the earth was filled with violence." Now that word violence is the same word that is in Proverbs 13, two to nine, where the transgressors, same people we have in Genesis six, same people we had that partook of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and you see they're eating what? They're filled with violence. And so by the earth being filled with violence, that was their eating violence. You see that? That's them eating violence. They chose to go against God. They took their actions, their words, the choices of their hearts, was contrary to God's word, that it was transgressing the will of their creator. And what did they end up eating in Genesis chapter six? Violence. that violence, if you think of something, means shaken. The world was shaken. The whole design God put together for them for good was shaken and corrupt and rotten. And so the ungodly choices they made, the ungodly words they said, the ungodly things they affirmed ended up causing them to have a diet, a belly full of violence. Does that make sense? a belly full of violence versus a belly full of good. I tell you what, God's word is so fascinating to me. Violence here in the scriptures is the tearing down of the good thing that God established. And because of the choice they made, in Genesis six, the whole earth was filled with violence, they had tore down the good thing that God established. And since God created us for good, those who eat of violence, they're torn down by it. Now watch how Jesus ties food to words. Watch this now. Watch how he ties food to words in Matthew 12, 33, 337. Jesus said, "Either make the tree good," there we are with a tree, "and fruit. "Either make the tree good and his fruit good else make the tree corrupt remember the whole earth was corrupt and filled with violence make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt for the tree is known by his fruit Oh generation of vipers how can he being evil speak good things ah so now we've got fruit from a tree in words from the mouth you see now they're all put together? God right here in Matthew is associating the words we speak to the food that we eat. And so, and for that matter, causing other people to eat if they buy into it and take heed to it. He said, "Oh, generation of vipers, how can ye being evil speak good things for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks it cashed forth its seeds a good man a toad man now this is Greek it's not but just to give you a comparison to the Old Testament it's not this is Greek not Hebrew here but a told man out of the told treasure of his heart he he brings forth good things in In other words, he has these seeds in his heart, and he speaks the words from that regenerated heart that has a mind that embraces God's word. And when he speaks, the words are like seeds. Now, the seeds don't save him. They come from the abundance of the heart. That heart believes the gospel, so that heart's already told, right? The heart believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, And Tob was given back. Good was reinstilled. God's plan put back in that person's life. But now when that person speaks those words, it's just like giving a glass of water in Jesus' name. They come out as Tob seeds. But they come out little seeds of Tob. And you end up eating them later on in life. You'll in no wise lose your reward, whether it's a glass of water or a glass of words. "As a good man hath a good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth good things. As an evil man hath an evil treasure of his heart, bringeth forth evil things." There we are. There's those words, the different words that come from a different heart, a heart that at one time ate different food. If I eat Tob, if I eat Jesus, He's my Tob, He's my tree of life. If I eat Tob, guess what? I've got Tob in me. I now have a good heart, okay, regenerated through the gospel. And now what I ate, I can speak in Jesus' name, and now those will bring forth fruit, and I'll get to eat that and be filled with good, rather than filled with violence. In other words, we say there's seeds released from the treasury of our hearts. And this being the case, we will one day be judged, not just by our works, but also by our words. And that's why God takes words so seriously. We'll be judged by our words and we'll eat the fruit of them one day. Transgressors shall be filled with violence. The Bible says, "By your words you'll be justified. By your words you'll be condemned." One day there'll be like evidence brought up before you. And I tell you what, those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, their words confess Jesus as Savior. Confessing Him as Savior doesn't make you saved, but you know what? It comes in as evidence at the throne of God, and we're rewarded by it. We thank God for it. So one day we'll be judged by our words, and he will eat the fruit that comes from, and transgressors shall eat, and they'll be filled with violence, but the meat shall eat and be filled with good. And I thank God for that. And I hope we choose our words wisely and let them reflect the good heart that God has given us through our faith in Jesus.