You Are What You Eat

A few weeks ago I preached a sermon entitled, "Eat the Word." The premise of the message was that God's Word is food for our souls—it is the necessary nourishment without which we will starve and wither. Not because it contains our "marching orders," but because it displays our Lord, Savior, and God. It sets before us a banquet that is infinitely beyond the most lavish feast set before a king in all the history of the world.

This morning I read from Jeremiah 6, where God is lamenting Israel and Judah's persistent apostasy—whoredom He calls it. Although God had acted as an exemplary husband toward them in every manner, they had chased the gods of the nations around them instead, indulging themselves in all manner of lewdness. As I meditated on this, realizing soberly how prone I myself am to wander after the false gods of this world, another Scripture passage came to mind: Psalm 115:4-8. In v. 4 the psalmist says, "Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands." Then in v. 8 he says, "Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them." In other words, we become what we worship.

John Piper (following Jonathan Edwards and C. S. Lewis) has expended no little amount of paper and ink to the thesis that the climax of the worship of God is the satisfaction of our souls in Him. If he is right, and I believe he is, then the inverse is also true: feasting on things other than God equals idol worship, and we become what we eat. That leaves us with the question, On what am I feasting? From where do I derive delight? If I cannot delight in God through x, y, or z, then I must cease partaking of them. If any created thing be not a mirror that shows me a reflection of the Divine, then it is to be abhorred and utterly forsaken. "Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good," the apostle Paul says in Romans 12:9.

May we indulge our souls on God alone, for He alone is the infinite source of pure delight. In so doing, we shall be conformed ever more into His likeness—to the praise of His infinite glory.