Bible study series
Appetite and the Glory of God
A Bible study series on hunger, desire, self-control and the God who provides.
This series works through what Scripture says about food and appetite, and it does so slowly. Each chapter is a full study rather than a summary, with the passages read whole before anything is explained.
The subject is treated the way the Bible treats it. Food appears on the first pages and on the last. It appears in commands, in fasts, in feasts, in miracles, in a wilderness and at a table the night before the cross.
Why it starts where it does
Chapter one is not about food. It is about a question put to a woman concerning what God had said, and then a suggestion about why he had said it.
Genesis 3 spends half of one verse on the eating and the rest of the chapter on what was said about God before it and what happened after it. That proportion sets the order of this series.
Appetite is real and it is not the root. A reader who does not trust God's word or God's goodness will not be helped for long by instruction about eating, so the foundation is laid first.
Chapters
Chapter 1
When Questioning Becomes Distrust: The Serpent, Temptation, and God's Word
Scripture contains people who bring grief, confusion and hard questions to God, and it also contains a question designed to unsettle what God had said. This chapter separates the two, works through Genesis 2 and 3 in order, reads Psalm 13, Psalm 73, Habakkuk, Job and Luke 1 as examples of honest wrestling, and follows the theme into the Gospels, the letters and Revelation.
Still to be written
These chapters are planned and are listed here so the shape of the series is clear. Each will be published as a full study rather than a summary.
Chapter 2
The First Appetite: Food, Freedom and a Boundary in Eden
Genesis 1:29 and Genesis 2:9 and 2:16 read together, on food as gift before food as test.
Chapter 3
Bread from Heaven: Hunger, Manna and Daily Dependence
Exodus 16 and Deuteronomy 8:1-10, and what gathering daily was meant to teach.
Chapter 4
Craving in the Wilderness: When Provision Is Not Enough
Numbers 11 and Psalm 78:17-31, and what the text says the complaint was really about.
Chapter 5
A Bowl of Stew: Esau and the Price of an Immediate Want
Genesis 25:29-34 with Hebrews 12:16-17.
Chapter 6
Fasting in Scripture: What It Is, What It Is Not
Joel 2:12-13, Isaiah 58, Matthew 6:16-18 and Matthew 9:14-15.
Chapter 7
The Wilderness Test: Bread, Sonship and the Word of God
Matthew 4:1-4 and Luke 4:1-4 with Deuteronomy 8:3, taken further than chapter one had room for.
Chapter 8
Self-Control as Fruit, Not Willpower
Galatians 5:16-24, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 and Titus 2:11-14.
Chapter 9
Whose God Is Their Belly: Appetite as Worship
Philippians 3:17-21 and Romans 16:17-18, read in their own contexts.
Chapter 10
Clean, Unclean and the Heart: What Really Defiles
Leviticus 11, Mark 7:14-23 and Acts 10:9-16.
Chapter 11
Eating Together: Tables, Weaker Brothers and Love
Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 8 and 1 Corinthians 10:23-33.
Chapter 12
The Table of the Lord
Luke 22:14-20 and 1 Corinthians 11:23-32.
Chapter 13
Hunger and Thirst Satisfied
Psalm 63, John 6:32-40, Isaiah 55:1-3 and Revelation 22:17.