March 3rd, 2026
by John Cole
by John Cole
Read below what John Cole wrote as his manuscript for this sermon. Watch or listen to this sermon on our website, app, and YouTube channel. The sermon post on the website and app includes a brief outline to help you follow along and discuss with others.
SO MUCH PAIN IN THE WORLD
Have you ever wondered if God cares about your health and hurting? The world is full of pain. Why?
We live in a sin-cursed world. And it is our doing.
We have earned God’s just judgment for our sin against Him and for our sin against His very good design for us. We have twisted God’s good creation by our own doing.
We presently live in a world of both immense good and corrupting evil. It will not always be this way. Christ will return and remove the stain of sin in all the world. But it’s here now. It’s here in such forms as illness, childlessness, abandonment, natural disasters, oppressive regimes, and death.
You and I feel the effects of sin all the time. They ache. They make us cry. While they serve to constantly alert us to our need of God’s salvation in Christ, the effects of sin themselves are not good. They are evil. They are reason for much grief, pain, and sorrow.
It is right to hate illness, disease, and all the effects of being in a sin-cursed world—and the effects of our own indwelling sin. We are never to just shrug off the evil effects of sin or to tell others “just suck it up” or “everything works out!”. We also shouldn’t merely say, “God works all things for good.”
True, God works all things for the good of conforming His people to the image of His Son. That’s not what people usually mean. But even the truth that God works all things for this good will must be filled out with other biblical truth that the effects of sin themselves are not good.
So, we are also called to grieve with one another as we persevere in the will of God through these enemies of good. We are to aid one another through them. We are to make good stewardship choices that push back these effects of sin in the world.
Yes, God works these evils for the good of conforming His people into the image of His Son, but these harmful things are not themselves good. We know this because God’s eternal plan for His redeemed people eventually overcomes and casts out all such evil.
God has a better plan for us. It’s the gospel. And we’ll get to that in the end of the sermon today. The gospel is the basis for all our faith and understanding of God and His revealed plan for us.
But for now, let’s learn from one easily-overlooked parenthesis—imperative!—in 1 Timothy. Let’s hear and obey this instruction to help us push back the temporary evil results of sin in the world that affect our health.
While the gospel is the ultimate answer to what comes up in our text, our stewardship of the gospel gives us abundant reason to heed the instruction found here. To take good care of our health. Because Your Health & Hurting Matter to God.
If you think you might ever face a health challenge… or if you want to invest in your health… and you want to do this as a Christian… You’ll want to listen well to today’ sermon.
Our text reads…
1 Timothy 5:23
Drink no longer water,
but use a little wine
for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.
You might ask, how does this square with the qualification of “not being given to much wine” in chapter three? I am going to summarize a little of what I shared when I preached that text and also add some elements that help us understand this instructive command.
It had become common practice in Rome for water to be mixed with wine for normal drinking purposes. The combination had very low alcohol content. You had to be given to much of it to become drunk.
Wine was often diluted to well under under 1% alcoholic content and sometimes up to 3-5%. It was safer to drink than plain water, and it made it taste much better. Ever drunk bad tasting water? Water is a great source of both life and illness in the world—depending on what is contained in it!
They didn’t understand the antimicrobial properties of wine, such as the contained ethanol, organic acids, and pH levels, but the positive effects and taste of the mixture was enough for them.
In that time, what was considered to be strong drink likely ranged from 3% to 11% alcohol—sometimes a little more. A person who drank undiluted wine was often thought of as barbarous and gluttonous—by the Romans! According to the Greek historian of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Athenaeus, they even mixed water with wine at a 1:1 ration for heavy parties!
According to the World History Encyclopedia, The University of Chicago Encyclopedia of Romana, and ancient texts, the Romans and the Ancient Near East people would at dilute their wine to a 3:1, 3:2, or 4:1 ratio for standard drinking. Even “strong drink” was diluted to a 2:1 or 1:1 ratio. The Roman soldiers drank sour wine (or vinegar) at a dilution rate of 10:1 or 20:1. Cheap, soured wine was far cheaper than the fuel necessary for boiling all their water.
And unless they were in the more elite class of society, the people usually referred to the soured wine or vinegar just as wine. Why? Because the cheaper wines had been soured. Once bottles were opened, the souring process began.
One Sumerian proverb warns: “He who drinks wine undiluted will fall like a log.”
And a proverb in scripture says,
Proverbs 23:31
Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, When it giveth his colour in the cup, When it moveth itself aright.
This might help us better understand what it means to not give ourselves much to wine!
So, it would be irresponsible to turn this passage into a justification for “being given to much wine” or drinking highly concentrated alcoholic beverages that accord with modern gluttonous practices of our world. Today, beers often contain 5%, wines 9-20% (higher than their “strong drink”), and hard liquors 40-50% or higher due to the distillation process that did not become known until after the middle ages.
In the first century, you usually would have had to be long with wine in order to get drunk. Not so much today. We live in a day in which some of the poor can be as gluttonous as unwise royal families once were!
So all that said,
Paul was advising Timothy to utilize common practices of their day to drink more pure water or low-alcoholic wine that would be better for his health. Paul was not recommending Timothy go get drunk at home or in social events.
Now why would Timothy need to be told to include wine with his drinking, and why did Paul insert this instruction right here?
Well, Paul had just told Timothy to “keep yourself pure.” It must have made him think of this. False teachers were promoting ascetic, legalistic practices of forbidding things God has created. They restricted people from rightly and properly using things God created with thanksgiving.
Timothy might have stopped the common practice of adding wine or vinegar to his water, and as a result, he was frequently sick from less pure water. He probably let their ascetic legalism become a yoke to his liberty.
Paul by the Spirit advised Timothy to utilize this common grace of God and drink treated, more pure water instead of drinking water that kept making him ill. Don’t drink water only. Include some wine in it to purify the water—and health.
Paul’s instruction was not a license for drunkenness. It was liberty to use God’s good creation for good and proper purposes.
Like how you might take NyQuil or some other medication. Or like how chlorine is used to purify water today, but you wouldn’t want to drink a high concentration of chlorine!
Paul instructed Timothy to be a good steward. “Use what God provided to take care of your health. Don’t let ascetic, legalistic false teaching wrongly bind your conscience.”
Today, Paul might say, “Don’t let a false teaching ‘word of faith’ doctrine make you think you can’t talk about illness and treat it medicinally.” As though sickness is something to overcome with your faith. As though you have to deny and rebuke your sickness instead of treating it through the common grace God has given in creation—medicinally.
Paul’s words are consistent with what was given by God a thousand years prior in Proverbs 31…
Proverbs 31:4–7
It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; Nor for princes strong drink: Lest they drink, and forget the law, And pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted. Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, And wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, And remember his misery no more.
Alcohol in one of its proper uses is similar to the way hospitals administer palliative care with drugs today. Rather than dying in extreme pain, the pain is dulled.
So historical good use of alcohol was for things like providing a good diluted drink, purifying water, or dulling pain on your death bed.
With that background and understanding of our text, let’s consider seven applications of this instruction.
1) GOD HAS CREATED MANY COMMON GRACES FOR US TO USE FOR OUR GOOD AND RECEIVE WITH THANKSGIVING .
Ever been frustrated because someone did not properly thank you for something? Think about how many things go unthanked that God has given and does give.
Our text along with the beginning of chapter four highlights this truth. Even in this sin-cursed world, God has sustained within it many common graces that are for all our good.
Whether it be materials to construct buildings, fossils for fuel, electrical energy to be harnessed and used, silicon and math for technology, or chemical substances and compounds for many forms of medicine… God has filled our earth with vast resources to be used for our good and His glory.
The right use of them puts on display the wisdom, power, and provision of our God! As Paul wrote in chapter four…
1 Timothy 4:4
For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:
Receiving with thanksgiving helps us and others worship and honor God.
Revelation 4:11
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure [by your good will] they are and were created.
God is worthy of receiving glory from all His creation. And God’s first commission to humanity was to do this by exercising dominion over the rest of His creation on earth.
Genesis 1:27–28
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
With this trust that God created all things in the natural world for us to receive and exercise dominion over… and that He did this as a sharing and displaying of His glory for our good… we as Christians are to exercise dominion over the world out of faith, not fear. With thanksgiving, not denial.
This involves wise ingenuity. We do not fear every new discovery or development in the world. We are not to be constantly suspicious of new technologies—whether it be wheels, iron, concrete, trains, cars, planes, HVAC, computers, medicines, or robots.
Newer technology is certainly getting more complicated. Ethical and moral implications have to be considered.
But like with weapons, they may be used for good or evil. The fact that unbelievers in the world discover or develop something does not make it bad. If it can be used to make known God’s glory and do us good in the will of God, we have the liberty to use it with thanksgiving. But not to abuse it.
Q: What common grace have you thanked God for lately?
And that leads to our second application.
2) MEDICINE, HEALTHCARE, AND INVENTIONS THAT DO US GOOD AND HELP US OBEY GOD ARE GIFTS FROM GOD THROUGH HIS WORK OF CREATION.
The key is that these things must truly do us godly good and help us obey God. They must neither be a reason to sin nor to become our trust.
Any use of something that makes it a master over us, a god to us, or a device of evil is a sinful misuse.
•Misuse of alcohol neither does us good nor does it help us obey God. Drunkenness is a work of the sinful flesh that is condemned by God.
•Misuse of surgical possibilities to confound genders or to murder either the pre-born or born is an abomination against God’s design of us as His image-bearers.
•Misuse of technology and medical practice to transform and confound what it means to be human is an attempt to change image-bearers of God into an image of our choosing. This is a complex subject and a lot to discern. We need much wisdom, knowledge, and thought to be invested into this topic!
•Misuse of tools or weapons to steel, engage in unjust war, or to oppress society is evil.
I think we all get the idea. Sin does not come inherently from God’s creation, though the effects of sin are seen in creation. Sin itself comes from our hearts. It comes from us giving ourselves over to good and bad desires to be our master to sin and death. See how James says it by the Spirit…
James 1:13–18
13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: 14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. 15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. 16 Do not err, my beloved brethren. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. 18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
God gives good gifts, not bad ones. Good gifts in creation. The greatest good gift God gives is the new birth through the preaching of the gospel message.
So, the good and godly use of God’s creation gives God glory and does good to our neighbor. What makes the difference is our stewardship of what God has given us. We must minister as good stewards of the multifaceted grace of God.
1 Peter 4:10
As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
Q: Have you considered how many prayers have been answered by God through the development of medicines and technologies?
•Have you given much thought to germ therapy and antisepsis? These turned hospitals from being “houses of death” to places of healing.
•Clean water and sanitation? It has saved billions of lives.
•More access to nutrition through railroads and other transportation?
•How about antibiotics? Insulin? Major vaccines? Medical imaging? Blood transfusions and types?
It is mind-blowing the sort of progress that has been made for our health. These things are gifts of God’s common grace. Check out this graphic by “Our World in Data” who partners with Oxford.
Every country in red had a life expectancy of under 40. (Now keep in mind this number is heavily influenced by the high child mortality rate in these nations.)
•1800 looked bad. About 40% of children died before age 5
•1950 became much better for some countries
•2015 it more than doubled globally—though this does not account for the horrific murder of the unborn through abortions! We must pray and work toward the abolishment of this evil practice.
But keeping God’s common grace in view… In 200 years, the average life expectancy from birth has gone from 30 to 72.
That is reason to praise God! God has given us much good in His creation. Because of how God made humans in His image, we can develop resources from God’s common grace and push back some of the effects of the curse of sin!
God deserves the praise for this! And yet we too often think God only deserves the praise when He spontaneously heals someone through answered prayer.
3) WE MUST NOT PRESUME UPON GOD THE PRIORITY OF A SPONTANEOUS HEALING OVER HEALING THROUGH MEANS HE HAS PROVIDED IN CREATION.
Do you remember when Satan tried to tempt Jesus to jump off a building and presume God to rescue Him—as said in the Psalms? Presuming upon God to do something when and how we think it should be done is sin. Let’s follow Jesus’s example and not sin.
Notice in our text that Paul said nothing here about praying for God to take away Timothy’s frequent illnesses. That doesn’t mean Paul didn’t pray for Timothy’s health. But, Paul knew God had already supernaturally created some things in the world that could meet Timothy’s need.
God’s provision of healing through His creation is just as much a gift of God as direct healing. Faith is not a superpower for us to tell God how to do what He does. It is a gift of God’s Spirit to trust and obey God. To believe and live according to the gospel.
Consider as an example the strong instruction from James to people in the church who presumed on God with their business and life plans. They probably did this without thought of accountability to God.
Similarly, there’s false supposed “Christian” teaching that suggests if you have enough faith you can declare things into existence and tell God what to do. They say you should deny health illnesses, rebuke them, and claim good health by faith. That’s pretty similar to what James condemned here…
James 4:13–16
13 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: 14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. 16 But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.
God’s revealed will is in His word. God’s unrevealed will is not revealed—by definition! We cannot presume to know God’s unrevealed will.
God’s Spirit leads us in the truth of God’s word and gives wisdom for right application of scripture. But, God’s Spirit does not give us the right or ability to presume upon God what is His will.
We are to bring our requests to God in prayer and trust Him with His good answers. Our faith is in God’s goodness, power, and readiness to answer… according to His will.
Q: Can you think of times you have presumed upon God and been ungrateful for His common grace?
If you have been reading with us through the Bible in the group in our app, you may remember what Israel did while going through the wilderness. They complained about the miraculous provision of food God gave them!
A miraculous provision from God will not make your grateful. So, pray and thank God for His many provisions—whether through common grace in creation or through the seemingly more miraculous!
4) WE MUST NOT FEAR OPENLY SPEAKING THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR ILLNESSES OR ADDRESSING THEM DIRECTLY .
Not only did Paul interrupt his flow of thought to directly address this health matter with Timothy, but also, he openly recorded it by the Holy Spirit’s inspiration for all to read through the ages in scripture.
1 Timothy 5:23
…for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.
The Bible does not teach us to be superstitious. We should not be afraid to acknowledge and speak the truth about circumstances. To do so reveals a distrust in God’s sovereign rule and presumes that we know the will of God.
Q: Do you directly pray about and steward circumstances God has given you, or do you ignore or deny them?
5) WE MAY PRAY FOR AND STEWARD HEALTH OPTIONS THAT HELP US PUSH BACK THE DEATHLY EFFECTS OF OUR SIN-CURSED WORLD.
God works through means, and He gives us gifts to steward. Wise stewardship of the health God gives us is an exercise of godliness if done with faith in God and gratitude toward Him.
Good health is a proper desire and stewardship. John desired and prayed for it on behalf of another believer.
3 John 2
Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.
Fear of the LORD and wise living is good for our entire person. It doesn’t earn blessing from God. It is a means of blessing from God.
So Proverbs says…
Proverbs 4:20–22
My son, attend to my words; Incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; Keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, And health to all their flesh.
God’s common grace is also a means of good to our entire person, including our health. And when God shines the sun on the evil, those made good in Christ get warm too. When God rains on the wicked, God’s redeemed people drink.
Matthew 5:45
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
So, we can pray for God to gift us with resources, technologies, and medicines that do good for our health—even if God gives them through those who do not do it to make Him known.
And we can wisely steward the resources God has entrusted us to develop resources and make God known to those who do not yet trust in Him.
Q: Do you wisely steward your health with the common grace God has given?
Our health does matter. Christians should eat healthy food. We should exercise and care for our bodies. We should respect the way God designed us and get sleep.
We should exercise dominion over creation and develop new resources to help us do all this. We should do this as a means of pushing back the effects of sin in the world with faith in the gospel to do this ultimately.
6) WE MUST USE WHAT GOD PROVIDES WITH SELF-CONTROL AND IN A WAY THAT GLORIFIES GOD AND HIS GOSPEL .
Our efforts to invest in good health as Christians is about more than good health. It must be about God and His gospel. We must not do it out of a desperate desire to control everything, fear, or out of a licentious desire for self indulgence and gluttony.
Consider what God says about self-control.
Proverbs 25:16
Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, Lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.
Don’t be a glutton of a good thing! It won’t be good in the end. Or as the wisdom of Ecclesiastes says…
Ecclesiastes 10:16–18
Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning! Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness! By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through.
So whether it be the good of food, medicines, or the gift of intimacy, don’t let it control you! Paul wrote to the Corinthians about the use of their bodies and intimacy that is given to for God’s glory and our good within marriage…
1 Corinthians 6:18–20
Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
Q: What is an area in which you need to exercise more self-control for the glory of God and His gospel?
What good gift do you let rule you? Food? Do you need to go to bed earlier? Sugar? Alcohol? Leisure?
God’s Spirit gives God’s people self-control. But He gives more than that too. God’s Spirit gives assurance that all who repent and believe on Christ will be resurrected.
7) GOD’S PROMISE TO BODILY RESURRECT TO LIFE ALL WHO REPENT AND BELIEVE ON CHRIST IS THE GREATEST EVIDENCE THAT GOD CARES ABOUT OUR HEALTH .
We began today by me asking, “Have you ever wondered if God cares about your health and hurting?”
Our greatest source of bad health and hurting is our sin. Jesus came to save His people from their sins. If you repent and believe the gospel, God is saving you from all sin and its effects through the work of Christ
This final application from thinking on our text says, “Your health and hurting matter to God.” God will not let His people hurt forever. He will raise us into the likeness of His risen Son. On that day, God will give us perfect, glorious health.
The pain of sin will be no more. And all creation awaits the day of our bodily resurrection. Paul wrote by the Holy Spirit this way…
Romans 8:22–23
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
Can you imagine a day when we have perfect health in the presence of Jesus? No more illness. No more death. This is the sure hope of all who belong to God through Christ’s sinless life, substitutionary death, and bodily resurrection.
Our lasting hope is not in medicine or pure water. It is not in technologies or inventions. Those can be common graces from God that we steward for God’s glory, the advancement of the gospel, and our present good.
But, being saved by grace with the resurrection as our sure future, that’s our hope. And, that is the greatest evidence that God cares our health and hurting.
Present, temporary health is not the greatest evidence that God cares. But, we should steward it with the common grace God provides and pray for it.
Our future resurrection with Christ the greatest evidence that God cares.
So, don’t doubt God if you must presently endure hurting and poor health. Don’t question God’s love and goodness. God cares about your hurt and health. The resurrection says so.
Q: Do you have assurance that God will raise your body to new life when Christ comes?
You and I deserve to die in eternal separation from God. Were it not for God’s saving grace, we all would.
Have you been saved? Do you agree that you deserve to die for your sin?
Jesus died for the sins of all who repent and believe on Him as the risen Savior and Lord. Do you repent when scripture exposes your sin? Do you believe Jesus died for your sins? Have you been born again?
If not yet, please ask God to save you. Right where you are. Turn and follow Jesus! And let us know so we can baptize you as a believing follower of Jesus and member of His church.
SERMON IN A SENTENCE: FROM CREATION TO REDEMPTION TO RESURRECTION, BELIEVERS SHOULD KNOW YOUR HEALTH AND HURTING MATTER TO GOD .
God in Christ has felt your pain. Jesus has hurt bodily. He got sick. He probably got food poisoning and drank bad water at times.
And then He went to the cross. Why? To save all who repent and believe the gospel from sin, hurting, bad health, death, and God’s just judgment.
So we know our health and hurting matter to God. And we must steward it well to His glory, for the gospel, and for our good.
1 Timothy 5:23
Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.
Your Health & Hurting Matter to God.
SO MUCH PAIN IN THE WORLD
Have you ever wondered if God cares about your health and hurting? The world is full of pain. Why?
We live in a sin-cursed world. And it is our doing.
We have earned God’s just judgment for our sin against Him and for our sin against His very good design for us. We have twisted God’s good creation by our own doing.
We presently live in a world of both immense good and corrupting evil. It will not always be this way. Christ will return and remove the stain of sin in all the world. But it’s here now. It’s here in such forms as illness, childlessness, abandonment, natural disasters, oppressive regimes, and death.
You and I feel the effects of sin all the time. They ache. They make us cry. While they serve to constantly alert us to our need of God’s salvation in Christ, the effects of sin themselves are not good. They are evil. They are reason for much grief, pain, and sorrow.
It is right to hate illness, disease, and all the effects of being in a sin-cursed world—and the effects of our own indwelling sin. We are never to just shrug off the evil effects of sin or to tell others “just suck it up” or “everything works out!”. We also shouldn’t merely say, “God works all things for good.”
True, God works all things for the good of conforming His people to the image of His Son. That’s not what people usually mean. But even the truth that God works all things for this good will must be filled out with other biblical truth that the effects of sin themselves are not good.
So, we are also called to grieve with one another as we persevere in the will of God through these enemies of good. We are to aid one another through them. We are to make good stewardship choices that push back these effects of sin in the world.
Yes, God works these evils for the good of conforming His people into the image of His Son, but these harmful things are not themselves good. We know this because God’s eternal plan for His redeemed people eventually overcomes and casts out all such evil.
God has a better plan for us. It’s the gospel. And we’ll get to that in the end of the sermon today. The gospel is the basis for all our faith and understanding of God and His revealed plan for us.
But for now, let’s learn from one easily-overlooked parenthesis—imperative!—in 1 Timothy. Let’s hear and obey this instruction to help us push back the temporary evil results of sin in the world that affect our health.
While the gospel is the ultimate answer to what comes up in our text, our stewardship of the gospel gives us abundant reason to heed the instruction found here. To take good care of our health. Because Your Health & Hurting Matter to God.
If you think you might ever face a health challenge… or if you want to invest in your health… and you want to do this as a Christian… You’ll want to listen well to today’ sermon.
Our text reads…
1 Timothy 5:23
Drink no longer water,
but use a little wine
for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.
You might ask, how does this square with the qualification of “not being given to much wine” in chapter three? I am going to summarize a little of what I shared when I preached that text and also add some elements that help us understand this instructive command.
It had become common practice in Rome for water to be mixed with wine for normal drinking purposes. The combination had very low alcohol content. You had to be given to much of it to become drunk.
Wine was often diluted to well under under 1% alcoholic content and sometimes up to 3-5%. It was safer to drink than plain water, and it made it taste much better. Ever drunk bad tasting water? Water is a great source of both life and illness in the world—depending on what is contained in it!
They didn’t understand the antimicrobial properties of wine, such as the contained ethanol, organic acids, and pH levels, but the positive effects and taste of the mixture was enough for them.
In that time, what was considered to be strong drink likely ranged from 3% to 11% alcohol—sometimes a little more. A person who drank undiluted wine was often thought of as barbarous and gluttonous—by the Romans! According to the Greek historian of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Athenaeus, they even mixed water with wine at a 1:1 ration for heavy parties!
According to the World History Encyclopedia, The University of Chicago Encyclopedia of Romana, and ancient texts, the Romans and the Ancient Near East people would at dilute their wine to a 3:1, 3:2, or 4:1 ratio for standard drinking. Even “strong drink” was diluted to a 2:1 or 1:1 ratio. The Roman soldiers drank sour wine (or vinegar) at a dilution rate of 10:1 or 20:1. Cheap, soured wine was far cheaper than the fuel necessary for boiling all their water.
And unless they were in the more elite class of society, the people usually referred to the soured wine or vinegar just as wine. Why? Because the cheaper wines had been soured. Once bottles were opened, the souring process began.
One Sumerian proverb warns: “He who drinks wine undiluted will fall like a log.”
And a proverb in scripture says,
Proverbs 23:31
Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, When it giveth his colour in the cup, When it moveth itself aright.
This might help us better understand what it means to not give ourselves much to wine!
So, it would be irresponsible to turn this passage into a justification for “being given to much wine” or drinking highly concentrated alcoholic beverages that accord with modern gluttonous practices of our world. Today, beers often contain 5%, wines 9-20% (higher than their “strong drink”), and hard liquors 40-50% or higher due to the distillation process that did not become known until after the middle ages.
In the first century, you usually would have had to be long with wine in order to get drunk. Not so much today. We live in a day in which some of the poor can be as gluttonous as unwise royal families once were!
So all that said,
Paul was advising Timothy to utilize common practices of their day to drink more pure water or low-alcoholic wine that would be better for his health. Paul was not recommending Timothy go get drunk at home or in social events.
Now why would Timothy need to be told to include wine with his drinking, and why did Paul insert this instruction right here?
Well, Paul had just told Timothy to “keep yourself pure.” It must have made him think of this. False teachers were promoting ascetic, legalistic practices of forbidding things God has created. They restricted people from rightly and properly using things God created with thanksgiving.
Timothy might have stopped the common practice of adding wine or vinegar to his water, and as a result, he was frequently sick from less pure water. He probably let their ascetic legalism become a yoke to his liberty.
Paul by the Spirit advised Timothy to utilize this common grace of God and drink treated, more pure water instead of drinking water that kept making him ill. Don’t drink water only. Include some wine in it to purify the water—and health.
Paul’s instruction was not a license for drunkenness. It was liberty to use God’s good creation for good and proper purposes.
Like how you might take NyQuil or some other medication. Or like how chlorine is used to purify water today, but you wouldn’t want to drink a high concentration of chlorine!
Paul instructed Timothy to be a good steward. “Use what God provided to take care of your health. Don’t let ascetic, legalistic false teaching wrongly bind your conscience.”
Today, Paul might say, “Don’t let a false teaching ‘word of faith’ doctrine make you think you can’t talk about illness and treat it medicinally.” As though sickness is something to overcome with your faith. As though you have to deny and rebuke your sickness instead of treating it through the common grace God has given in creation—medicinally.
Paul’s words are consistent with what was given by God a thousand years prior in Proverbs 31…
Proverbs 31:4–7
It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; Nor for princes strong drink: Lest they drink, and forget the law, And pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted. Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, And wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, And remember his misery no more.
Alcohol in one of its proper uses is similar to the way hospitals administer palliative care with drugs today. Rather than dying in extreme pain, the pain is dulled.
So historical good use of alcohol was for things like providing a good diluted drink, purifying water, or dulling pain on your death bed.
With that background and understanding of our text, let’s consider seven applications of this instruction.
1) GOD HAS CREATED MANY COMMON GRACES FOR US TO USE FOR OUR GOOD AND RECEIVE WITH THANKSGIVING .
Ever been frustrated because someone did not properly thank you for something? Think about how many things go unthanked that God has given and does give.
Our text along with the beginning of chapter four highlights this truth. Even in this sin-cursed world, God has sustained within it many common graces that are for all our good.
Whether it be materials to construct buildings, fossils for fuel, electrical energy to be harnessed and used, silicon and math for technology, or chemical substances and compounds for many forms of medicine… God has filled our earth with vast resources to be used for our good and His glory.
The right use of them puts on display the wisdom, power, and provision of our God! As Paul wrote in chapter four…
1 Timothy 4:4
For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:
Receiving with thanksgiving helps us and others worship and honor God.
Revelation 4:11
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure [by your good will] they are and were created.
God is worthy of receiving glory from all His creation. And God’s first commission to humanity was to do this by exercising dominion over the rest of His creation on earth.
Genesis 1:27–28
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
With this trust that God created all things in the natural world for us to receive and exercise dominion over… and that He did this as a sharing and displaying of His glory for our good… we as Christians are to exercise dominion over the world out of faith, not fear. With thanksgiving, not denial.
This involves wise ingenuity. We do not fear every new discovery or development in the world. We are not to be constantly suspicious of new technologies—whether it be wheels, iron, concrete, trains, cars, planes, HVAC, computers, medicines, or robots.
Newer technology is certainly getting more complicated. Ethical and moral implications have to be considered.
But like with weapons, they may be used for good or evil. The fact that unbelievers in the world discover or develop something does not make it bad. If it can be used to make known God’s glory and do us good in the will of God, we have the liberty to use it with thanksgiving. But not to abuse it.
Q: What common grace have you thanked God for lately?
And that leads to our second application.
2) MEDICINE, HEALTHCARE, AND INVENTIONS THAT DO US GOOD AND HELP US OBEY GOD ARE GIFTS FROM GOD THROUGH HIS WORK OF CREATION.
The key is that these things must truly do us godly good and help us obey God. They must neither be a reason to sin nor to become our trust.
Any use of something that makes it a master over us, a god to us, or a device of evil is a sinful misuse.
•Misuse of alcohol neither does us good nor does it help us obey God. Drunkenness is a work of the sinful flesh that is condemned by God.
•Misuse of surgical possibilities to confound genders or to murder either the pre-born or born is an abomination against God’s design of us as His image-bearers.
•Misuse of technology and medical practice to transform and confound what it means to be human is an attempt to change image-bearers of God into an image of our choosing. This is a complex subject and a lot to discern. We need much wisdom, knowledge, and thought to be invested into this topic!
•Misuse of tools or weapons to steel, engage in unjust war, or to oppress society is evil.
I think we all get the idea. Sin does not come inherently from God’s creation, though the effects of sin are seen in creation. Sin itself comes from our hearts. It comes from us giving ourselves over to good and bad desires to be our master to sin and death. See how James says it by the Spirit…
James 1:13–18
13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: 14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. 15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. 16 Do not err, my beloved brethren. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. 18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
God gives good gifts, not bad ones. Good gifts in creation. The greatest good gift God gives is the new birth through the preaching of the gospel message.
So, the good and godly use of God’s creation gives God glory and does good to our neighbor. What makes the difference is our stewardship of what God has given us. We must minister as good stewards of the multifaceted grace of God.
1 Peter 4:10
As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
Q: Have you considered how many prayers have been answered by God through the development of medicines and technologies?
•Have you given much thought to germ therapy and antisepsis? These turned hospitals from being “houses of death” to places of healing.
•Clean water and sanitation? It has saved billions of lives.
•More access to nutrition through railroads and other transportation?
•How about antibiotics? Insulin? Major vaccines? Medical imaging? Blood transfusions and types?
It is mind-blowing the sort of progress that has been made for our health. These things are gifts of God’s common grace. Check out this graphic by “Our World in Data” who partners with Oxford.
Every country in red had a life expectancy of under 40. (Now keep in mind this number is heavily influenced by the high child mortality rate in these nations.)
•1800 looked bad. About 40% of children died before age 5
•1950 became much better for some countries
•2015 it more than doubled globally—though this does not account for the horrific murder of the unborn through abortions! We must pray and work toward the abolishment of this evil practice.
But keeping God’s common grace in view… In 200 years, the average life expectancy from birth has gone from 30 to 72.
That is reason to praise God! God has given us much good in His creation. Because of how God made humans in His image, we can develop resources from God’s common grace and push back some of the effects of the curse of sin!
God deserves the praise for this! And yet we too often think God only deserves the praise when He spontaneously heals someone through answered prayer.
3) WE MUST NOT PRESUME UPON GOD THE PRIORITY OF A SPONTANEOUS HEALING OVER HEALING THROUGH MEANS HE HAS PROVIDED IN CREATION.
Do you remember when Satan tried to tempt Jesus to jump off a building and presume God to rescue Him—as said in the Psalms? Presuming upon God to do something when and how we think it should be done is sin. Let’s follow Jesus’s example and not sin.
Notice in our text that Paul said nothing here about praying for God to take away Timothy’s frequent illnesses. That doesn’t mean Paul didn’t pray for Timothy’s health. But, Paul knew God had already supernaturally created some things in the world that could meet Timothy’s need.
God’s provision of healing through His creation is just as much a gift of God as direct healing. Faith is not a superpower for us to tell God how to do what He does. It is a gift of God’s Spirit to trust and obey God. To believe and live according to the gospel.
Consider as an example the strong instruction from James to people in the church who presumed on God with their business and life plans. They probably did this without thought of accountability to God.
Similarly, there’s false supposed “Christian” teaching that suggests if you have enough faith you can declare things into existence and tell God what to do. They say you should deny health illnesses, rebuke them, and claim good health by faith. That’s pretty similar to what James condemned here…
James 4:13–16
13 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: 14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. 16 But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.
God’s revealed will is in His word. God’s unrevealed will is not revealed—by definition! We cannot presume to know God’s unrevealed will.
God’s Spirit leads us in the truth of God’s word and gives wisdom for right application of scripture. But, God’s Spirit does not give us the right or ability to presume upon God what is His will.
We are to bring our requests to God in prayer and trust Him with His good answers. Our faith is in God’s goodness, power, and readiness to answer… according to His will.
Q: Can you think of times you have presumed upon God and been ungrateful for His common grace?
If you have been reading with us through the Bible in the group in our app, you may remember what Israel did while going through the wilderness. They complained about the miraculous provision of food God gave them!
A miraculous provision from God will not make your grateful. So, pray and thank God for His many provisions—whether through common grace in creation or through the seemingly more miraculous!
4) WE MUST NOT FEAR OPENLY SPEAKING THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR ILLNESSES OR ADDRESSING THEM DIRECTLY .
Not only did Paul interrupt his flow of thought to directly address this health matter with Timothy, but also, he openly recorded it by the Holy Spirit’s inspiration for all to read through the ages in scripture.
1 Timothy 5:23
…for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.
The Bible does not teach us to be superstitious. We should not be afraid to acknowledge and speak the truth about circumstances. To do so reveals a distrust in God’s sovereign rule and presumes that we know the will of God.
Q: Do you directly pray about and steward circumstances God has given you, or do you ignore or deny them?
5) WE MAY PRAY FOR AND STEWARD HEALTH OPTIONS THAT HELP US PUSH BACK THE DEATHLY EFFECTS OF OUR SIN-CURSED WORLD.
God works through means, and He gives us gifts to steward. Wise stewardship of the health God gives us is an exercise of godliness if done with faith in God and gratitude toward Him.
Good health is a proper desire and stewardship. John desired and prayed for it on behalf of another believer.
3 John 2
Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.
Fear of the LORD and wise living is good for our entire person. It doesn’t earn blessing from God. It is a means of blessing from God.
So Proverbs says…
Proverbs 4:20–22
My son, attend to my words; Incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; Keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, And health to all their flesh.
God’s common grace is also a means of good to our entire person, including our health. And when God shines the sun on the evil, those made good in Christ get warm too. When God rains on the wicked, God’s redeemed people drink.
Matthew 5:45
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
So, we can pray for God to gift us with resources, technologies, and medicines that do good for our health—even if God gives them through those who do not do it to make Him known.
And we can wisely steward the resources God has entrusted us to develop resources and make God known to those who do not yet trust in Him.
Q: Do you wisely steward your health with the common grace God has given?
Our health does matter. Christians should eat healthy food. We should exercise and care for our bodies. We should respect the way God designed us and get sleep.
We should exercise dominion over creation and develop new resources to help us do all this. We should do this as a means of pushing back the effects of sin in the world with faith in the gospel to do this ultimately.
6) WE MUST USE WHAT GOD PROVIDES WITH SELF-CONTROL AND IN A WAY THAT GLORIFIES GOD AND HIS GOSPEL .
Our efforts to invest in good health as Christians is about more than good health. It must be about God and His gospel. We must not do it out of a desperate desire to control everything, fear, or out of a licentious desire for self indulgence and gluttony.
Consider what God says about self-control.
Proverbs 25:16
Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, Lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.
Don’t be a glutton of a good thing! It won’t be good in the end. Or as the wisdom of Ecclesiastes says…
Ecclesiastes 10:16–18
Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning! Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness! By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through.
So whether it be the good of food, medicines, or the gift of intimacy, don’t let it control you! Paul wrote to the Corinthians about the use of their bodies and intimacy that is given to for God’s glory and our good within marriage…
1 Corinthians 6:18–20
Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
Q: What is an area in which you need to exercise more self-control for the glory of God and His gospel?
What good gift do you let rule you? Food? Do you need to go to bed earlier? Sugar? Alcohol? Leisure?
God’s Spirit gives God’s people self-control. But He gives more than that too. God’s Spirit gives assurance that all who repent and believe on Christ will be resurrected.
7) GOD’S PROMISE TO BODILY RESURRECT TO LIFE ALL WHO REPENT AND BELIEVE ON CHRIST IS THE GREATEST EVIDENCE THAT GOD CARES ABOUT OUR HEALTH .
We began today by me asking, “Have you ever wondered if God cares about your health and hurting?”
Our greatest source of bad health and hurting is our sin. Jesus came to save His people from their sins. If you repent and believe the gospel, God is saving you from all sin and its effects through the work of Christ
This final application from thinking on our text says, “Your health and hurting matter to God.” God will not let His people hurt forever. He will raise us into the likeness of His risen Son. On that day, God will give us perfect, glorious health.
The pain of sin will be no more. And all creation awaits the day of our bodily resurrection. Paul wrote by the Holy Spirit this way…
Romans 8:22–23
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
Can you imagine a day when we have perfect health in the presence of Jesus? No more illness. No more death. This is the sure hope of all who belong to God through Christ’s sinless life, substitutionary death, and bodily resurrection.
Our lasting hope is not in medicine or pure water. It is not in technologies or inventions. Those can be common graces from God that we steward for God’s glory, the advancement of the gospel, and our present good.
But, being saved by grace with the resurrection as our sure future, that’s our hope. And, that is the greatest evidence that God cares our health and hurting.
Present, temporary health is not the greatest evidence that God cares. But, we should steward it with the common grace God provides and pray for it.
Our future resurrection with Christ the greatest evidence that God cares.
So, don’t doubt God if you must presently endure hurting and poor health. Don’t question God’s love and goodness. God cares about your hurt and health. The resurrection says so.
Q: Do you have assurance that God will raise your body to new life when Christ comes?
You and I deserve to die in eternal separation from God. Were it not for God’s saving grace, we all would.
Have you been saved? Do you agree that you deserve to die for your sin?
Jesus died for the sins of all who repent and believe on Him as the risen Savior and Lord. Do you repent when scripture exposes your sin? Do you believe Jesus died for your sins? Have you been born again?
If not yet, please ask God to save you. Right where you are. Turn and follow Jesus! And let us know so we can baptize you as a believing follower of Jesus and member of His church.
SERMON IN A SENTENCE: FROM CREATION TO REDEMPTION TO RESURRECTION, BELIEVERS SHOULD KNOW YOUR HEALTH AND HURTING MATTER TO GOD .
God in Christ has felt your pain. Jesus has hurt bodily. He got sick. He probably got food poisoning and drank bad water at times.
And then He went to the cross. Why? To save all who repent and believe the gospel from sin, hurting, bad health, death, and God’s just judgment.
So we know our health and hurting matter to God. And we must steward it well to His glory, for the gospel, and for our good.
1 Timothy 5:23
Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.
Your Health & Hurting Matter to God.
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