Shapeless homes and interchangeable churches lower the drawbridge for Korah to invade. The likes of feminism, socialism, LGBTQ+, and smooth-sounding egalitarianism might tell us how special we all are, even co-opting the imago dei. But the plain instruction given to Christian husbands and wives, fathers and children, kings and citizens, masters and servants, shepherds and individual sheep survives. In Christ, we do not chafe at this. Of all people, we best love just sovereigns, good heads, righteous authorities and their rule. We will not follow Korah’s sweet talk into the earth’s core. If tempted by his rhetoric, hear Christ himself ask us, “Is it too small a thing to you that the living God has loved you, chosen you, redeemed you, and graced you to rule with me in the endless world to come?”

Outrage against God’s men never sounded so heroic.
“You have gone too far!” they shouted at Moses. “For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” (Numbers 16:3).
The hundreds of men at the entrance lobbied for the people. They demanded notice. Far from peeking around avatars and fake names, these men confronted Moses as men — “well-known men,” in fact, chiefs in their communities, shepherds of families and clans (Numbers 16:2). Their charge: Moses and Aaron have exalted themselves; they rule with confiscated authority. Their logic: all of Israel is holy, every last person. Who is this Moses and this Aaron to speak from on high? This was “Power to the People.”
Did they have a point? Moses, after all, wrote that Israel was to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). Did “kingdom of priests” actually mean “sons of Aaron”? Did “holy nation” actually mean “holy prophet”? Had not Moses and Aaron “gone too far” in asserting their authority?
Korah, the people’s champion, thought so. He placed himself at the head of this small army. Shouts swelled, “All in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and Yahweh is among them — come down from your castles!”
Moses, the meekest man on earth, gives us a lesson for today with his reply.
Motives Unmasked
Moses responds with the following steps.
First, he falls on his face. He grew weary of his life as a constant game of thrones. Would Moses have ever chosen this staff for himself? He tried his best to deny it from the start — “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else” (Exodus 4:13). Since then, he has heard the thankless voices repeat, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us?” (Exodus 2:14). He collapses in prayer.
Second, he challenges Korah and his company. He bows before God; he stands before men. He challenges Korah and the other sons of Levi to return tomorrow: “In the morning the Lord will show who is his, and who is holy, and will bring him near to him” (Numbers 16:5).
Third, he unmasks Korah’s motives. Here, Moses gives us our lesson. He diagnoses what Korah’s rebellion is really about — something very different than presented. Korah shouted of equality, of fairness, of removing mountains and lifting valleys. But what did Moses hear?
Hear now, you sons of Levi: is it too small a thing for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to himself, to do service in the tabernacle of the Lord and to stand before the congregation to minister to them, and that he has brought you near him, and all your brothers the sons of Levi with you? And would you seek the priesthood also? (Numbers 16:8–10)
The revolutionists said, “Sameness for all! All of us are holy! The Lord walks among us — why should Moses and Aaron reign?” But Moses heard, “We want the priesthood.”
Korah and his company were Levites (like Moses and Aaron) but not priests. Priesthood belonged to Aaron and his sons. The Levites helped the priests and served in the tabernacle, but they did not possess full access. Discontent festered.
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God expects every truly righteous person to care about the poor and to do what is in his power to help them. But it begs the question to maintain that this concern can only be expressed in an endorsement of coercive and redistributory statism that is so essential to contemporary collectivist approaches to justice. 

Much of the confusion present in evangelical attempts to find a theory of distributive justice in the Bible result from inattention to the classical distinction between a universal and particular sense of justice. Because evangelical social liberals are inattentive to important distinctions within the notion of justice, many of their appeals to biblical uses of “justice” are compromised since they simply assume that biblical endorsements of justice are divine commands to support economic redistribution. This kind of error is illustrated in Robert Johnston’s book, Evangelicals at an Impasse. Johnston writes:

Although it is not the Bible’s purpose to give a careful scientific definition of what our “needs” are, Scripture does repeatedly identify justice with assistance to the poor, the sick, and the powerless. Job states, for example:
“I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame. I was a father to the poor, and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know. I broke the fangs of the unrighteous, and made him drop his prey from his teeth.”

Johnston goes on to cite several other texts where the notion of justice is conjoined with helping the poor. (Jer. 22:15-16; Deut.10:12-22; Ps. 103:6; Ps. 146:7-8). Such verses prove, in Johnston’s judgement, that biblical justice is closely related to an economic redistribution that will meet the needs of the poor and the helpless.
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While God is sovereign over every aspect of our lives—including the precise number of breaths we will take—He has created our bodies to generally perform better and for longer with a balanced diet and regular exercise.  The better we take care of our bodies through diet and exercise (as well as things like sleep, hygiene, and proper preventative medical care), the longer they will generally last.  We will therefore have more energy and ability to serve the Lord actively for far longer.  

Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.
-1 Timothy 4:7-10, ESV
The new year is fast approaching, so the season for resolutions is upon us.  Some of the most common involve losing weight and starting to exercise.  As a result, what I call the “resolution rabble” overwhelms gyms across the country before dying off as most people lose motivation and quit.  People similarly begin diets with great discipline but likewise lose motivation and go back to old habits.  The shape stays a bit round and the pounds stay on.  On the other side, diet and exercise can become an obsession, leading to faithful devotees to various exercise routines, products, diets, and practices.  How should we look at this biblically?  What does Scripture say about fitness and health that can guide us to actually accomplish those resolutions?
A Greater Purpose for Health and Fitness
Arguably the biggest reason health and fitness resolutions fail is a lack of vision and purpose.  Why “get in shape”? Why lose weight?  Without this, people quit at the first sign of adversity.  As part of the futility resulting from the Fall (Genesis 3:18, Romans 8:20), diet and exercise both require effort for quite a while before seeing any results, which leads to frustration that could cause us to quit.  Only a purpose much larger than ourselves and our pleasure can overcome the frustration of seemingly fruitless pain.  Scripture clearly defines that purpose: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).  As the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism states, our primary purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  That must be the motivation behind everything we do, including our approach to diet and exercise.  We want to get in shape in order to glorify God.  We want to lose the weight in order to glorify God.  That is the purpose that can turn a resolution that is easily cast aside into a strong habit that produces real results.
Two Wrong Approaches
This naturally leads to two extremes that must be avoided.  The first is to over-spiritualize diet and exercise.  We can come to see particular diets, like the “Daniel Diet”, as paths to righteousness and their opposites as defiling the temple of the Holy Spirit.  Scripture clearly teaches that since the Holy Spirit indwells believers, we are His temple, which is a major motivation to glorify God in how we treat our bodies: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).  Yet Jesus made it very clear that we do not desecrate that temple through what we eat or drink: “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him” (Mark 7:15).  He therefore declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19).  Only in sexual immorality does a man sin against his own body (1 Corinthians 6:18) so only sexual immorality desecrates our bodies in which the Holy Spirit dwells.[1]  Junk food, alcohol, and tobacco cannot do that, so diet and exercise are not the path to righteousness.  The same can be said of any attempt to avoid sin through bodily severity:
If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
-Colossians 2:20-23, ESV
No matter how severely we treat our bodies, those habits will not stop the indulgence of the flesh.  Remember, self-control is a fruit given by the Holy Spirit through the vehicle of faith, not by bodily deprivation.  We must not over-spiritualize diet and exercise and therefore overemphasize the importance of our physical bodies.
The opposite error is to disregard diet and exercise entirely.  I have heard people cite Proverbs 28:1 as an excuse for avoiding exercise: “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion”.  They also shun any semblance of dieting by pointing out that in the Mosaic Law the fat was holy to the LORD (Leviticus 3:16). They may not sinfully over-indulge in food, alcohol, and smoking, but they partake of these things enough to negatively affect their bodies.  In rightly avoiding the error of over-spiritualizing the body, they under-spiritualize it.  First, they are clearly committing the cardinal sin of bible study by taking these verses out of context.  They ignore the many proverbs against laziness (Proverbs 6:6-11, 13:4, 19:24, 21:25) and gluttony (Proverbs 23:2,21, 25:16,27) and the ceremonial aspects of laws regarding fat.  This, like the “cultural cop-out”, is an attempt to make the Bible say what we want in order to support our desires rather than subordinating our desires to the Bible.
Stewardship and Self-Control
Instead, the concept of stewardship is prevalent throughout Scripture.  As we saw with tithing, all we have ultimately belongs to God.  He entrusts it to us and then charges us to take care of it for His glory.  That includes our bodies.  In commanding husbands to follow the example of Christ with the Church by nourishing and cherishing their wives as their own bodies (Ephesians 5:28-29), he is assuming that we love our own bodies by nourishing and cherishing them.  We must care for ourselves physically, but taking care of ourselves physically must not supersede our pursuit of godliness.
If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.
-1 Timothy 4:6-10, ESV
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