31/08/2023
WIND OF DELIVERANCE GLOBAL
DATE: 31st AUGUST, 2023
MESSAGE: THE JESUS DIET
Quote from an Australian newspaper (Sydney Morning Herald, slightly edited..):
"American Dr Don Colbert, who is a Christian GP and whose wife Mary is a minister, has published a diet in a book called What Would Jesus Eat? It advocates basically healthy food like lentils, salmon, brown rice, tuna, beans, fish and chicken with not much red meat and a few other items that taste like sweepings from a carpenter's floor. It is supposedly a diet that Jesus would have followed when he was living in the Middle East. ...It is also, experts say, almost a duplicate of the commercially successful Mediterranean Diet. Critics also say Dr Colbert's diet includes balsamic vinegar, which is not mentioned historically until 1046, which leaves a sour taste in your mouth. So does Dr Colbert, retailing a range of 50 Divine Health vitamins and minerals at close to $80 a time."
The commercial exploitation of Jesus and the Holy Land (and examples like this abound) is clearly "taking the Lord's name in vain". It is the crass use of the Jesus label as a marketing tool. The diet may well be healthy but it contradicts New Testament teaching and has little basis in historical fact. Jesus actually AVOIDED teaching any dietary laws and declared all foods to be clean:
Mark 7:14-23 Summoning the crowd again, He told them, "Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: (15) Nothing that goes into a person from outside can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him. (16) If anyone has ears to hear, he should listen!" (17) When He went into the house away from the crowd, the disciples asked Him about the parable. (18) And He said to them, "Are you also as lacking in understanding? Don't you realize that nothing going into a man from the outside can defile him? (19) For it doesn't go into his heart but into the stomach and is eliminated." (As a result, He made all foods clean.) (20) Then He said, "What comes out of a person--that defiles him. (21) For from within, out of people's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, (22) adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, lewdness, stinginess, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness. (23) All these evil things come from within and defile a person."
Furthermore apostolic teaching clarified that what a person eats and drinks is up to that person and is not be dictated by anyone else. This was among the first exercises of Christian religious freedom and was vigorously defended. In fact the whole of Romans 14 and large chunks 1 Corinthians chapters 8 and 10 are dedicated to this very issue, along with the first major church conference in Acts 15. Here is the Romans passage:
Romans 14:1-23 Accept anyone who is weak in faith, but don't argue about doubtful issues. (2) One person believes he may eat anything, but one who is weak eats only vegetables. (3) One who eats must not look down on one who does not eat; and one who does not eat must not criticize one who does, because God has accepted him. (4) Who are you to criticize another's household slave? Before his own Lord he stands or falls. And stand he will! For the Lord is able to make him stand.....Whoever eats, eats to the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; and whoever does not eat, it is to the Lord that he does not eat, yet he thanks God. .. But you, why do you criticize your brother? Or you, why do you look down on your brother? ....Therefore, let us no longer criticize one another, but instead decide not to put a stumbling block or pitfall in your brother's way. (14) (I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself. Still, to someone who considers a thing to be unclean, to that one it is unclean.) (15) For if your brother is hurt by what you eat, you are no longer walking according to love. By what you eat, do not destroy that one for whom Christ died. (16) Therefore, do not let your good be slandered, (17) for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. ...Do you have faith? Keep it to yourself before God. Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. (23) But whoever doubts stands condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith, and everything that is not from faith is sin.
It is spiritual manipulation to say that "Jesus ate this diet and so should you". Perhaps well intended spiritual manipulation - but wrong nonetheless. And at $80 for the vitamin supplements quite a profitable one!
We have little evidence about Jesus following any diet, except that common to Jews of His day. In contrast to John the Baptist Jesus was not an ascetic "ate and drank with sinners" and was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard:
Luke 7:33-34 For John the Baptist did not come eating bread or drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon!' (34) The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'
Whatever else this indicates it shows that Jesus enjoyed a party and at normal food. His first miracle was turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana (John 2). Jesus is recorded as eating bread, fish, lamb (Passover), honeycomb (after the resurrection in some manuscripts), and drank wine and also water (the woman at the well) and at one point asked for figs. This is simply the normal diet of an average man of the day.
Jesus never tells us what to eat or drink or wear, He leaves us free to enjoy our culture. There is no Christian culture and commercial attempts to invent one (Christian music, Christian books, Christian food and drink and bumper stickers) are missing the point. Christ incarnates into our dusty world, He does not ask us to adopt some foreign heavenly way of living - except internally, in the heart.
Do not give in to such Christian humbug out of a misplaced desire for godliness. Godliness does not come from Jesus vitamins or balsamic vinegar but from a pure heart that is full of love.
Blessings In Christ,
