God's Purpose For Our Health (pt 2)

Oct 30, 2024 • John Cole

In this series of teaching on stewardship, John Cole revised and taught from a published course made available without copyright by local church pastors shared for churches like ours. Read the handout notes here...

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INTRODUCTION

OUR HEALTH BELONGS TO GOD.

All our health comes from God. We must trust God and be content with His provisions while we make biblical use of prayer, songs, Christian friendships, and Scripture in our worshipful lament. We are to use our health for God.

THREE PURPOSES FOR HEALTH

1) To Illustrate God’s Kingdom

2) To Serve

Philippians 1:21–26

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith; That your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again.

If we’re not spending our health, we’re hoarding it.

Romans 6:11–13

11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. 13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

Romans 12:1

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

Each of us should maintain our mind and body well because (1) our body belongs to God and (2) our body is an instrument by which we serve God and others.

Philippians 2:29–30

Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness; and hold such in reputation: Because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life, to supply your lack of service toward me.

Luke 22:19

And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.

3) To Rightly Enjoy God’s Creation

1 Timothy 4:4

For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:

Our giving thanks is an act of worship that praises God as the source of what we enjoy.

God’s purpose isn’t just enjoying His creation, but rightly enjoying His creation.

When we rightly use our health to enjoy God’s creation, we enjoy both our health and God’s creation.

CONCLUSION

While we are called to spend our bodies for God’s kingdom, we know that in God’s kingdom we’ll receive new bodies.

Philippians 3:20–21

For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

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INTRODUCTION

Be careful what you ask for! I recently told some of our kids that I need to work on speaking with my lower voice. Well, tonight I have to. And if/when I don’t, I will sound like a young teenage boy with cracks in my voice!

Oh the irony… the weeks I speak about stewarding health are when I have a cold. On top of that, I wore out my already weak voice while coaching high school basketball.

That is a perfect transition into where we began last week:

It’s normal for us to ask “Why” when our health is not good, but have you ever asked, “Why?” when you’re healthy?

Let’s very briefly review the main points from last week and then pick up where we left off.

The big difference between what an unbeliever thinks about health and what a Christian thinks about health is based on what God thinks about health.

OUR HEALTH BELONGS TO GOD.

All our health comes from God.

We must trust God and be content with His provisions while we make biblical use of prayer, songs, Christian friendships, and Scripture in our worshipful lament.

We are to use our health for God.

All the health that God gives us is His to be spent entirely on His purposes.

THREE PURPOSES FOR HEALTH

If God owns our health, then the question we need to ask is, “What does God want us to do with it?”

1) To Illustrate God’s Kingdom

Now God’s kingdom hasn’t been fully realized yet. In fact, it won’t be until Jesus returns, which is why we still groan with all creation for God to remake this world.[3] But He’s started…and the Bible describes the restoration of health as a picture of what God’s doing with the world.

When you’re sick and you recover, let that mini-picture of the redemption of your body remind you of the macro-picture of what God’s doing in your life.

2) To Serve

Philippians 1:21-26 says…

Philippians 1:21–26

If Paul was looking for the most enjoyable option, or the most comfortable, or the least taxing, he’d be in glory with Christ. But for their sake, as best he could discern, he’s going to stick it out on earth.

A significant part of why God gives us health is so that we can spend it on others.

If we’re not spending our health, we’re hoarding it.

This is where we left off last week.

This idea of spending our health isn’t something we think about very often. There’s a book for moms of young kids called Loving the Little Years that talks about spending our health. Here’s what Rachel Jankovic writes:

“Our bodies are tools, not treasures. You should not spend your days trying to preserve your body in its eighteen-year-old form. Let it be used. By the time you die, you want to have a very dinged and dinted body. Motherhood uses your body in the way that God designed it to be used. Those are the right kind of damages . . . We are not to treat our bodies like museum pieces. They were not given to us to preserve, they were given to us to use. So use it cheerfully, and maintain it cheerfully. . . . Your body is a tool. Use it.”[5]

Can you think of people in your life who have used their body for your good?

•Mother in birthing you?

•Father in doing physical labor?

•Solider or police in defending you?

•Jesus Who gave His body to redeem us from our sin and God’s good wrath?

God gave our bodies to us so that we can use them.

Putting our bodies to good use is an act of worship. When we understand how amazing our God is, we love him. And to love him is to love those around us.

In Romans, Paul tells us,

Romans 6:11–13

Have you ever thought of your mind and body as instruments for righteous use in worship of God?

If you are saved, you are to obey God with your body and offer it as an instrument in God’s hand for righteous works in this world!

ILL—Let me illustrate it this way. Have you ever heard the saying, “Guns don’t kill people. People do.”

The point is that a gun is just an instrument that can be used for either good or bad. God tells us in Scripture to think of our minds and bodies that way: as instruments given by God for believers to use for righteous purposes, not for sin.

We cannot just think of our body, mind, and health as ours that we use however we want. No, they are God’s to be used how He tells us!

Further on, Romans instructs us,

Romans 12:1

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

*reasonable service = priestly/spiritual worship

So, we are to present our entire self—which includes our bodies—for service in worship of the Lord!

The rest of the chapter talks about how we can serve one another in love. Serving is worshipping God!

So let’s take Paul’s example, and make this practical. What does it look like to use our bodies in service? Here are a few scenarios that might be helpful:

1. For many of us, Rachel Jankovic’s comments in her book hit the nail on the head. We’re using our bodies quite literally to raise up our kids. And the inevitable physical marks of that process are signs that we’re spending ourselves for the good of others. This is also true for those who are caregivers for their parents or other seniors.

2. For some of us, it might be the effects of a lifetime of physical labor—spending our bodies to feed our families. So often in society that old, worn down, spent body is spurned as a waste. But among Christians, it should be celebrated as an act of sacrifice.

3. Sleep, or lack thereof, has a lot to do with spending our bodies. There are times when we can enjoy being well-rested. There are other times when we’ll accept a slightly faster pace of aging in order to serve others with the time we would’ve spent resting.

4. Eventually, many of us have to make decisions about quality of life and quantity of life.

•Should we pursue a particular medical therapy for a terminal illness?

•What kind of living situation should we invest in for an aging parent or as an aging parent?

•When should we shift from curative treatment to palliative[7]treatment?

Our opportunities for service should factor into these decisions.

Very different from saying that life is only worth living if we can serve, of course.

But as we consider more- or less-aggressive forms of treatment, we should consider their near- and long-term impact on service to others.

5. Using our bodies requires maintaining our bodies.[8]

Many of us find that, as we move from our 20s to our 30s to our 40s and beyond that, maintenance needs to be more deliberate than it used to be. Body metabolism slows, injuries take longer to heal, bodies are more worn down.

Remember, you don’t know when Christ will call you home, and you have a responsibility to be faithful with every year he gives you. Caring for the gift of your body is part of being a good steward. But it’s care with a purpose. Not feeding a self-glorifying idolatry of health, but caring for your body so that you can get more out of it in the years to come.

The martyred missionary Jim Elliot once wrote his mother from college saying, “I wrestle solely for the strength and co-ordination of muscle tone that the body receives while working out, with the ultimate end that of presenting a more useful body as a living sacrifice.”[9]

On occasion, church members ask me about the health of my neck. I have a bulging disc that can cause sharp pain to run down my neck, shoulders, and arms. With the aid of doctors and specialists, I have decided to treat it naturally through diet, stretches, and lifestyle.

Praise God, I can say that at this point the pain has gone down considerably. When before there was never a time I did not notice and think about the pain, I now may often forget about it. As many of us can testify, health truly does affect your ability to serve, so maintaining our health is something we should do as stewards of something that belongs to God.

What if you loaned a car to someone for free, requiring only that they maintained it for longer use. But then the engine blew because the person never changed the oil! That would be poor stewardship. The same is true with our taking care of our bodies.

Each of us should maintain our mind and body well because (1) our body belongs to God and (2) our body is an instrument by which we serve God and others.

Can anyone think of other examples of how we use our bodies in service? How might the effectiveness of this service be related to maintenance of health?

[First responders and medical exposure,

defense of loved ones and neighbors,

military assignments as a citizen,

labor job,

stressful job with a lot of decision-making,

weariness of study or counseling,

surgeons,

being engaged in activities and sports with your children and youth of your church and community,

ministry travel, etc.]

A great example of putting our health into service is found in Philippians 2 with Epaphroditus. He was sent by the church in Philippi to care for Paul’s health while in prison. But in doing so, Epaphroditus risked his own life, got sick, and almost died. Yet God spared his life, and Paul writes to the church to “honor such men.”

Philippians 2:29–30

*Because for the work of Christ…

Jesus is the perfect example. Being God, he took on human flesh, bore our sin, was beaten, bruised, and crushed to death. He took our punishment so that we might have eternal life with him and receive new bodies that will never wear out.

Remember his words at the Lord’s Supper, “This is my body, which is given for you” (Lk. 22:19).

Luke 22:19

And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.

So, God gives us health to illustrate God’s kingdom, to serve, and…

3) To Rightly Enjoy God’s Creation

Part of what it means to be a faithful steward is to delight in God, our Master. As we just saw, Jesus willingly obeyed the Father by laying down his life for his people.

God is glorified when we take joy in serving him, and a joyful steward is one who makes the master’s desire his own. He’s not grumbling or complaining, selfishly wanting to do his own thing. No, he’s humble and thankful, trusting the goodness and direction of his master.

Well, when it comes to our health and bodies, God wants us to rightly enjoy his creation with it.

Remember what Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:4

1 Timothy 4:4

For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:

Here Paul’s addressing false teachers who said that to be more spiritual you must abstain from marriage and certain foods. Paul refutes them by saying that these things are part of God’s creation and aren’t to be rejected, if they’re received with thanksgiving.

Well, our bodies were also created, and instead of rejecting God’s creation, he intends for us to rightly enjoy it. And this should lead us to giving thanks to God.

It’s like when you’re given an unexpected raise at work. You’re excited about it, right? Your heart swells with appreciation. But does it end there? No, to complete your joy, you go and thank your employer and work hard for the team.

Well, God’s blessed us with bodies that are intended to experience the sensual, temporal pleasures of His creation. But this pleasure can’t be an end in itself. No, this pleasure should point us to God, giving thanks to him.

Our giving thanks is an act of worship that praises God as the source of what we enjoy.

So how does this look practically?

Well, Jesus thanked the Father before eating a meal and so should we.

Our bodies have needs and we should thank God for not only giving us energy but also for making food tasty and eating such a pleasurable experience.

Did you ever struggle thinking through a problem and then solved it? Well, we can thank God for our mental health and the pleasure—and relief—to come up with the answer.

Have you ever ran a race? We can thank God for our muscular health and for the satisfaction of finishing such a painful event!

Those who are married can thank God for their sexual health, as they enjoy the good pleasure and intimacy[11] with their spouse that God designed.

Enjoy viewing a gorgeous scenery or sunset? Thank God for the eyesight you have today and the eye sight a saved blind person will have with his glorified body.

Friends, we can acknowledge God for our health in so many ways as we enjoy his creation. This can be done in the mountains, a play, on the floor with grandkids, or at a restaurant, or at the doctor’s office. The key is to be thankful for what God’s given us in creating our bodies and as they interact with the rest of creation.

But also remember that our health exists for God, not us. Notice that

God’s purpose isn’t just enjoying His creation, but rightly enjoying His creation.

Just like everything God created, we, as stewards, can use our bodies and health for good or ill. There is a wrong way to enjoy God’s creation.

This can happen when we don’t thank and acknowledge God.

It can also happen when we give our bodies to sinful pleasures and abuse God’s good creation.

Such pleasures will never give us the kind of joy that satisfies. Sinful pleasure can harm our bodies. Case in point is addiction.

•Addiction is idolatry, but it’s more than that. Addiction often delivers a bodily experience that makes us feel good for a while. Such addictions can be to alcohol, drugs, such as heroine or marijuana or any pain killer, sexual sin, or food.

•Addiction gives physical pleasure, relieves physical tension or pain, and soothes physical desires. So instead of just feeding idolatry, the addict becomes a slave to the physical desires of the body and this may jeopardize one’s health.

Sin brings death…

Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And we’re not just talking spiritual death. There’s real physical danger that comes by sinning, as well.[13]

Ever got hurt doing something wrong?

And it’s not just indulging in sinful pleasures that’s harmful. Our bodies can also be harmed by neglect and ignoring our physical needs.

Things such as extreme under eating, or self-infliction, or over eating, or laziness in not doing what’s good for our bodies may also be sinning.

If we don’t use our bodies in the way God intended, we’ll suffer for it.

And, we may not be able to do things we ought to do.

Yet, as we’ve seen, God gives us instruction for how we’re to use our bodies to obtain true enjoyment. When we use our bodies in the way God intended and obey him, we not only acknowledge his goodness, but we find freedom—life—to enjoy things as God intended.[14]

There’s great freedom in righteousness.

When we rightly use our health to enjoy God’s creation, we enjoy both our health and God’s creation .

So a healthy body enables other experiences that teach us about God.

With a healthy body, we can climb a mountain that God built.

Or listen to a beautiful symphony or worship song because God invented music.

Or play a game of basketball with other image bearers of God in a gym made of materials of God’s creation and designed using laws God wrote.

Health has purpose to God because he uses it to show us his creation—and his creation loudly proclaims his praise.[15]

CONCLUSION

So to conclude, one wonderful thing about the Christian faith is that,

While we are called to spend our bodies for God’s kingdom, we know that in God’s kingdom we’ll receive new bodies .

It’s not that we spend ourselves because our bodies are unimportant.

No, we spend ourselves because we know that they’re just version 1.0!

We can lean into heaven because of Paul’s wonderful words in Philippians 3:20-21,

Philippians 3:20–21

That’s our future! 2.0 in the presence of God our Savior.

•[1] Isaiah 38:18

[2] See Ephesians 5:29, 1 Timothy 4:8.

[3] See Romans 8:23-24.

[4] See Matthew 5:27-30, Luke 12:4-5.

[5] Loving the Little Years, pages 58-59

[6] See also Romans 6:13 – “Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.”

[7]Pronounced pal-lee-uh-tiv.

[8] For example, in 1 Timothy 5:23 Paul tells Timothy to take wine to alleviate illness and care for his body.

[9] E. Elliot, Through Gates of Splendor, p. 16.

[10] Another example is the Apostle Paul. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul likens his life as “being poured out as a drink offering” (2 Tim. 4:6).

[11] The fact that God created man and woman to be united together and to become one flesh (Gen. 2:24) shows God’s benevolence in purposing pleasure for those made in His image.

[12] See also 1 Corinthians 11:29-30 where Paul says that eating the Lord’s Supper without recognizing Jesus’ body drinks judgment on himself that has resulted in sickness and death.

[13] For example, a toddler who doesn’t obey his parents to not put his hand on the stove will burn his fingers.

[14] A train is built to run on its tracks and it can go anywhere on them, but if the train is placed on some other foundation, it is stuck and can’t go anywhere.

[15] See Psalm 19 and Psalm 148.