Drunk or Spirit-Filled?, Part 1

and we're in a study of the book of Ephesians and find ourselves this morning in chapter five and I want to draw your attention to verses 18 and 19. so open your Bible if you will to Ephesians chapter 5 verses 18 and 19. I'm going to read them and and then we're going to talk about these verses for probably a couple of weeks because this is such an important portion of scripture Ephesians 5 18 says and do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation but be filled with the spirit speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making Melody with your heart to the Lord now obviously this is a context of worship whatever the filling of the spirit means whatever it produces based upon the next verse it begins with worship the impact of a Spirit-filled life will show up starting in verse 22 in marriage in chapter 6 at the beginning of that chapter in family life and later in chapter six even in your public and business life with the world around you so being filled with the spirit is a very foundational reality as we all know but what sets this verse apart is the very unusual comparison between being filled with the spirit and being drunk that 18th verse says do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation but be filled with the spirit and then it immediately starts talking about Spirit-filled people worshiping the Lord with particular emphasis in music singing and making melody in their hearts Spirit-filled people sing I know there is a a waning of singing in churches this is being decried by many people today there are churches that have very little if any singing they sit in the dark and watch somebody else sing on the platform or the stage but a Spirit-filled believer gathers with other believers and they express their Worship in Psalms hymns spiritual songs singing and making melody in their heart to the Lord but I want us to focus on the contrast between that and being drunk be not drunk with wine how do these two things connect why is it necessary to compare this with drunkenness on the surface there doesn't seem to be any comparison at all unless you say well there's a reasonable comparison being drunk means you've yielded up control of your faculties to something inside of you namely alcohol whereas being filled with the spirit means you've yielded up control to someone inside of you namely the Holy Spirit drunkenness produces dissipation debauchery degradation and sin whereas the Holy Spirit produces righteousness in worship and in every relationship in life why is this comparison made well on its face it should be obvious and it is this because this is a religious comparison not simply a reasonable one it's not just an analogy don't be controlled by alcohol be controlled by the Holy Spirit there's much much more than that that is reasonable to say of course but this is really a religious contrast and to understand this we have to understand something about the religious history behind it now we are all very much aware what the Bible says about drunkards drunkenness in fact in First Corinthians 6 9 and 10 it says drunkards do not inherit the kingdom of God they're listed with um homosexuals adulterers fornicators and all kinds of other Sinners as those people who do not inherit the kingdom of God so we understand the the sin of drunkenness but why the comparison to Spirit-filled Behavior and the answer comes because drunkenness was essential to the ancient forms of religious expression that's what I want to try to communicate to you this morning it was standard conduct in Pagan religions even far back into the Old Testament among the idol worshipers that surrounded the nation Israel and particularly in the New Testament in the Greek or Roman world it was standard conduct in Pagan religious Expressions to participate in drunkenness along with gluttony along with sexual deviation and orgies and they were accommodated by plenty of alcohol to drink and Temple prostitutes as well drunkenness was not just social it was religious it was not really in that sense even optional you were expected to be a part of the society's worship there was no separation of the religious from the secular at all essential in the ancient world was the religion of their gods and that incorporated into its expression drunkenness and all that followed with drunkenness every imaginable and unimaginable kind of sin now to help you understand that background a little bit let me let me give you a little kind of dust up on Greek mythology okay Greek mythology said that the great God the great God Zeus and this is the the um mythology that dominated the Mediterranean World in New Testament times the great God Zeus gave birth to a son this is uh obviously a satanic counterfeit of the true God who brought his son into the world but God Zeus gave birth to a son it happened in a very unusual way this is what the mythology said the child God started out being conceived in the womb of his mother simile some goddess named simile was pregnant she insisted on seeing Zeus and so she asked for an audience with Zeus and when she entered into the presence of Zeus the all-glorious Zeus his glory incinerated her and she was instantly reduced to ashes however Zeus reached down and rescued the child in her womb and then Zeus sowed that child into his thigh until a time for the child to be born he was born and he was a threat to all other would-be rulers and so after he was born he was kidnapped by the envious Titans the Titans who were known as the sons of the Earth and they kidnapped this child who had been born from the thigh of Zeus and they basically tore the child limb from limb and the Titans cooked the child's parts and ate them however in the process Zeus reached down and once again rescued the heart of this child Zeus then swallowed the heart of this child and it became Reborn through him a second time a kind of Resurrection and his name was dionysius Zeus then paid back the Titans by blasting them with lightning and they were reduced also to ashes and from those ashes according to Greek mythology came the human race so in case you wondered that's the Greek mythological spin dionysius then spawned a religion marked by two things extasia and enthusiasmos from ecstasy and enthusiasm in English and it was a religion that saturated the Greek and Roman world it was the dominant religion in the ancient Greek and Roman world and it was it was base it was ugly the worshipers ate the raw flesh of the Mystic bull which was sacrificed they committed atrocities with human genital parts and they actually worshiped those genital parts scandalous brotherhoods were developed in the name of dionysius the worship was done in temples that were built all over the Greek and Roman world it was sorted sexual perversion and it was accommodated by drunkenness and sorcery in the Greek New Testament there is a word that's translated sorcery it's the word Pharmaca sound familiar Pharmacy it literally meant drugs but drugs were concoctions that Sorcerers used and so far Michaela means a drug or a user of drugs and then there's pharmacoos which means the one who deals in drugs both of those words appear several times in the Book of Revelation as the world comes to its end and people are caught up in sorcery and drugs and will not repent so the ancient Greco-Roman worship of dionysius which was the dominant cult was basically dependent on drunkenness how else could you give yourself over to debauchery consistently all the time over and over and over and over again without a screaming conscience Satan knew that to cause people to behave in that way they needed to have their thinking altered The Cult of dionysius was most recognized for wild dancing for the kind you would see probably in any modern dance club Madness a kind of abandonment music sexual perversion drunkenness and sorcery or drugs the ancient Roman writers write a lot about this euripides is one who wrote of some of the horrifying rituals that I won't salt your mind with dionysius eventually became known as the god of wine and his Roman name that's the Greek name the Roman name was Bacchus have you ever heard of a bacchanalian feast that's a drunken orgy Bacchus is the wine God I remember years ago being in ball back in the Middle East and visiting the ruins of the Temple of Bacchus in balbec where Bacchus was worshiped and among the many things you saw there were carvings of grapes and things like that signing signaling the use of wine but there were great pits in the middle of the floor which were used the guides told us for the people to vomit and regurgitate as they've feasted and expressed themselves in drunken debauchery there were also etched into all of those remaining Stones nymphs and saters it was the height of satanic religion unmasked and really not a lot unlike Baal worship or the worship of any other false gods in the Old Testament age as well so you see in ancient Greek culture if you were in the culture and you were socially active and you participated in the culture you participated in the worship of the culture because that was essentially the heart and soul of the culture and you needed to comply with the worship or the gods would be angry with you and if they were angry with you they would be angry with the city and the city would pay the consequences of an Angry God so they needed you to conform and so the society was debat so drinking wine using drugs was not a way simply to escape your problems it was not about producing a buzz so that you could have a little joy in an otherwise boring life it had to do with elevating you to kinds of behaviors that were essentially done to please the sordid corrupt demonic deities in fact this was so prevailing that when people came to Christ in the ancient Greek and Roman World they had a hard time divesting themselves from it turned to First Corinthians 10. in First Corinthians chapter 10 I'll give you an illustration of it in First Corinthians 10 Paul is writing to the Corinthians about their behavior at the Lord's table the communion and we can pick it up down in verse 14 of First Corinthians 10. and Paul is about to launch into a long section on the Lord's Supper the rest of chapter 10 and into chapter 11. but he begins by saying this in verse 14. therefore my beloved he's talking to believers flee from idolatry now you would say to yourself wait a minute if they are believers they have already fled from idolatry well they may have fled from idolatry in US a saving sense and put their trust in Christ alone but they had not yet been able to completely divest themselves of the behaviors of that idolatry and they therefore needed to flee in the Sanctified sense flee from idolatry can you say that to a Believer sure any time that a Believer one who belongs to Christ is entangled with the corruption of the world you have to remind them to flee fully in a Sanctified sense what they once fled fully in a Salvation since so he goes on to say this and this will show you how this had infected the communion and the church verse 15 Paul says I speak as to wise men you judge what I say now I want you to think this through and be wise and remember now last week we talked about walk in wisdom right the verse immediately preceding don't get drunk with wine which is dissipation but be filled with the spirit the prior command was to be wise walk wisely so here it is again flee idolatry which is an expression of wisdom and then he says in verse 16 is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ and the answer is of course is not the bread which we break as sharing in the body of Christ yes since there is one bread we who are many are one body for we all partake of the one bread look at the nation Israel are not those who eat the sacrifices sharers in the altar what do I mean then that a thing sacrificed to Idols is anything or that an idol is anything no I'm not saying an idol is any why did you bring Idols up what does he start by saying flee it from idolatry what does he then talk about the cup of blessing the blood of Christ the bread the body of Christ and then go back to idols and sacrifices to idols because the people had dragged their behaviors from their idolatrous pagan perversions into the table of the Lord and that becomes very obvious verse 20. the things which the pagans sacrifice they sacrificed to demons and not to God that no part of that can be imported I don't want you to become sharers and demons and then verse 21 explicitly says it you cannot drink the cup of the Lord which was a cup of wine symbolizing his blood and at the same time the cup of demons which was a cup by which you became drunk you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons this is such an outrage you can't verse 22 adds or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy we're not stronger than he are we are you so foolish as to think you can do that and provoke the Lord to jealousy and get away with it because you're stronger than he is clearly what was happening was the forms of their old religion were hard to let go of why they were profoundly habit-forming as is all drunkenness as is all immorality if you had spent years of your life engaged with temple prostitutes in a drunken stupor and concoctions by Sorcerers and you came to Christ could you walk away from that would not the Temptation be fierce and apparently in Corinth the people were doing that and then coming to the Lord's table and he says you can't do both of those things over in Chapter 11 verse 20. still talking about the Lord's table he says therefore when you meet together it is not to eat the Lord's Supper what is going on you're coming together but it's not the Lord's Supper it doesn't qualify why for in your eating each one takes his own supper first and one is hungry and another is drunk what do you not have houses in which to eat and drink or do you despise the Church of God and shame those who have nothing what shall I say to you shall I Praise You In This I will not praise you you can't do this so dionysiac orgies and drunkenness and sorceries and drug use are contrasted with the sweet pure Serene beautiful Fellowship power and joy that comes from The Filling of the spirit you need to be filled with the spirit to commune with God not drunk so he's really contrasting two kinds of worship satanic worship with true Christian worship and they were blending the two they were blending the two so he says in verse 18 back to Ephesians 5. do not get drunk with wine stop getting drunk why in the world are you getting drunk you say well it's probably hard for them because they had imbibed so long in that kind of stuff that it was a tough habit to break you got that right we know that don't we we know how difficult alcoholism is to conquer but he just says stop the verb is methisco to be drunk to become drunk she used three times in the New Testament because drunkenness he says leads to dissipation it doesn't lead to worship it doesn't lead to an elevated consciousness of the deities it leads to asotea in Greek which means debauchery abandonment to degradation we all know that you you know when you're going to go take an interview somewhere for a job that you want deeply and you've prepared for it and you know you're talking to somebody who's very astute and elevated above you you don't get drunk before the interview that is not going the right direction you get undrunk if you have to because you want to be in full use of your faculties don't get drunk with wine we all understand the the Bible forbids drunkenness again in lists of sins and transgressions about the people who are not in the kingdom of God those lists whether it's Romans 13 First Corinthians 6 First Corinthians 5 Galatians 5 those lists that include drunkards say they don't enter the kingdom they're included with adulterers fornicators homosexuals etc etc etc etc so just as a general principle you've got to stop drinking and think about it folks this is not something that some people did this is kind of what life was like for everyone I mean this was basically demanded of people if you unless you wanted to make the deities mad and have the deities come after you and incinerate you with lightning bolts you got into the action so all of that kind of religion was dependent on intoxication and that's got to stop wine is on us in the Greek it's yayin in the Hebrew and in the Hebrew it's a mixed wine as it is in the Greek I'll show you that in a few minutes the 1901 Jewish encyclopedia distinguishes yayin wine from shakar which was the Hebrew word for strong drink unmixed and the difference was unmixed was very strong in alcohol content the wine was weak in alcohol content because of its mixture now people ask a simple question shouldn't Christians be able to drink wine because people in the Bible drank wine and you don't want to have a simplistic answer to that so let me help you with the answer so that you'll know exactly what wisdom would do it was part of life but because it was part of life it was very important to warn people because they were dealing with something that could take over their senses and they were dealing with something that was ubiquitous in the Pagan world and led to all kinds of horrific behaviors so there's no place for drunkenness no place for losing any control we don't do that as believers in First Peter chapter 4 verse 3 we read for the time already passed is sufficient in other words your past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the pagans the the Pagan part of your life is now over that's all past when you pursued a course of and listen to these words sensuality lusts drunkenness carousing drinking parties and abominable idolatries there you have it the idolatries are the mix in which all of these other behaviors take place the pagans worship abominable idols and to do so they pursue a course of sensuality lust drunkenness carousing and drinking parties and it leads as verse 4 says to excesses of dissipation but Peter says they are then surprised that you don't run with them in the same excesses of dissipation and they malign you you know you paid a price if you didn't join the religious party you were you were not just outside the party you were outside the culture you were outside the Society and then you were maligned and you were criticized you were mistreated and you were rejected and you made people angry it would be like going into the CDC without a mask you were vilified and so there was pressure to stay with the family and the extended relatives and the society pressure was really great in Titus 2 3 it talks about taking care of older women and it says you can take care of older women the church can take care of older women who are not to be lingering long beside their wine was a staple drink the water was bad they drank wine but they didn't linger along there because they knew the implications of that and the church is even told you don't have a responsibility to care for a widow who is the Drunken Widow Proverbs 20 verse 1 says wine is a mocker strong drink is Raging and whoever is deceived by them is not wise you want to walk wisely be wise about consuming alcohol now I want you to go to Proverbs chapter 23 for a moment and I'll say a lot more about this next week so if I leave some Stones Unturned we'll cover that next time but in Proverbs 23 verse 19. listen my son and be wise here we are again with this connection between wisdom and uh not being drunk listen my son and be wise and direct your heart in the way do not be with heavy drinkers of wine this went on in the Old Testament time as well or gluttonous Eaters of meat because that's how they express their worship with gluttony and drunkenness for the heavy drinker and the Glutton will come to poverty and drowsiness will clothe one with Rags you'll become a stumbling drunk and it'll lead to poverty we see plenty of that today don't we but notice down in verse 26. give me your heart my son and let your eyes Delight in my ways for a harlot a prostitute is a deep pit and an adulterous woman is a narrow well she lurks like a robber and increases the faithless among men why are we not talking about prostitutes and harlots and adulterous women because you go so easily from drunkenness to debauchery and it immediately comes into verse 29 who has woe who has sorrow you you're more likely to find yourself in the arms of a harlot and a prostitute an adulterous woman who will steal you blind if you're drunk than if you're sober minded who has woe verse 29s who has sorrow who has contentions who has complaining who has wounds Without a Cause what happened to you how'd you get all those bruises all over your head who has redness of eyes I'll tell you who those who linger long over wine and those who go to taste mixed wine prostitution to drunkenness connected the abandoned wisdom you fall into drunkenness you end up in sexual debauchery so verse 31 warns you don't even look on the wine when it is red when it sparkles in the cup when it goes down smoothly and you see the guys on television with the big wine glass swirling it around birds are chirping in beautiful scenery in mountains and snow and the guy is a macho man that every woman dreamed of and he's swirling this and the sunlight is bouncing off of it that's exactly what the Bible says not to do yeah verse 32 says at the last in the end it bites like a serpent and stings like a Viper and you you wind up on Wilshire Boulevard in a tent in your eyes verse 33 will see strange things and your mind will let her perverse things and you'll be like one who lies down in the middle of the sea it'll drown you it will drown you or like one who lies down at the top of the Mast if you're a sailor and there's a storm and your boat is in the storm the last place you want to go is to the top of the Mask because that is the most precarious place on the boat get in the bottom where there's the least disturbance if you're trying to sleep at the top of the mess you're going to get catapulted into the sea it's destructive verse 35 they struck me but I didn't become ill this is the alcoholic talking they beat me but I I didn't know it I didn't feel it when shall I awake I'll seek another drink this is the insanity of it all so the author passes from harlotry and prostitution and immorality to drunkenness and shows the Folly of it it's a terrible trap Isaiah 5 11 talks about those who rise up early and start drinking and drink all the way till night the horrors of that the Bible has a lot to say about it I won't take any more time with that but I do want to balance that off for a moment and say this while the Bible forbids drunkenness the Bible also speaks about wine in positive terms in fact in Exodus 29 in Leviticus 23 there are prescribed drink offerings that were part of the worship of Israel to offer a drink offering there was actually some wine kept in the temple according to First Chronicles that could be used for the drink offering in judges and chapter 9 verse 13 there's a comment about wine cheers in Isaiah 55 it's a symbol of Salvation blessing without money without Christ come and buy wine and it's talking about salvation wine was used in the Passover wine was used in the Lord's supper and the Lord himself introduced it took the wine and said this is now going to be the symbol of My Blood and Paul instructed Timothy to stop drinking so much water and take a little wine for your stomach's sake first Timothy 5 23. it was definitely a part of daily life now there were some people in the Old Testament some people in in Israel who didn't drink at all first according to Leviticus 10 the priests were not to drink the priests were not to drink Isaiah indicts the priests and the prophets because they were stupid drunks they were supposed to be the ones who didn't drink that was part of God's command to the sons of Levi back in Leviticus chapter 10. but by the time you get to Isaiah's time the priests and the prophets are drunk and Leading the People astray and then there were rulers who were not to drink proverbs 31 says it's not for Kings to drink because they're in a situation where they have to make very serious judgments in Isaiah also condemns rulers who were drunk and then there were the nazarites that the most extreme vow you could take as a Jew was the Nazarite vow you vowed not to cut your hair you were sort of indifferent to fashion and all of that you were going to be completely devoted to God and as a part of the Nazarite value didn't drink wine or strong drink so there were some people who didn't drink in the New Testament pastors and Elders First Timothy and Titus are those who are not permitted to be in a situation where they drink where they could be drunk we'll see more about that next time so yes there were non-drinkers in the Old Testament I think if you take the strong interpretation of Titus and Timothy it's not wise for one in Ministry leadership to drink if it's not wise for a ruler how much more for one who is in the kingdom of God a sort of contemporary to the priest and a prophet so what about the rest of us how do we approach this whole thing of wine well let me just wrap it up and take you in a kind of final Direction Paul is saying that walking the worthy walk is walking in humility and love and unity and Holiness and wisdom and never seeking an altered state of consciousness by being drunk never assuming that that enhances your religious experience that is the devil's lie you need to be filled with the spirit and even in a non-religious sense this is the forbidding of drunkenness but certainly in the religious sense it is saying absolutely not because the table of demons and the cup of demons cannot be shared with the table of the Lord in the cup of the Lord now all that leads to a series of questions that I want to give you I have eight of them but only one for now here's the question is the alcohol beverage that you drink today the same as in ancient times is it the same is it does it correspond um we can answer that question I think historically alcohol produced today is produced to be intoxicating it is a Multinational Global massive production the distillation process didn't even come until a thousand years after the New Testament era so now today you have production of this and it is ubiquitous and the supply is never ever ever ending and they now have the capacity to take it up to 80 alcohol IC beverages in ancient times were not like that they didn't even know anything about such distillation processes it was designed in ancient times to be safe not to be harmful was designed by God to be safe wine was low in alcohol fermented by the Jews perhaps two or three days maybe two three percent alcohol the Greeks more because they weren't worried about being restrained they were worried about the opposite just to give you an illustration wine first appears in the ministry of Jesus in John Chapter 2 when he went to the wedding of Cana you remember there were six spots with about 30 gallons each and Jesus said fill the pots with what water now could he have created wine yes he could have created one but to create 180 gallons of wine would have either meant that he produced wine that already had fermented or that he produced wine that did not ferment but would eventually ferment in that volume sitting in pots there would have been a confusion on the part of the people if Jesus had created pure wine because they always mixed it with water it might have been an outrage and the fact is this is a large group of people this is a large home and they ran out of wine where you say why didn't they go to the liquor store that's the point there was none this was an agrarian culture you grew the grapes you crushed The Grapes you took the juice this was a very very simple local process they ran out it's a far cry from what you have today they mix it with water and you can find anywhere from three to one to twenty to one mixture which reduces the two to four percent even down lower but there was something else they did they boiled the juice that came out of the grapes there's a lot of interesting discussion of this in ancient Greek literature the boiling of the juice when it was first taken out of the grapes classical writers like Horus in 35 BC here you drink under a shade cups of unattoxicating wine Plutarch 60 A.D that filtered wine neither inflames the brain nor infects the mind and the passions and is much more pleasant to drink Aristotle spoke of sweet wine that didn't intoxicate it was so thick it was necessary to scrape it from the skin containers and dissolve the scrapings in water Virgil in 30 BC talked about sweet wine boiled down and then used in a luscious juice what are you talking about what they did was boil the juice which boiled out the alcohol they reduced it to a paste it would be like jam or like the consistency of Honey or something like that they put it in a skin and they would scrape it or squeeze it like you would squeeze jam out of a tube and they would mix it with water to reconstitute it as grape juice both that boiled paste that became eventually wine and the wine that was mixed with water would have a very low alcohol content there's all kinds of literature there's an interesting book called Grecian Antiquities which talks about how the people boiled their wine how they prepared immediately expressing the juice from The Grapes bottled it boiled it kept it for use this was one writer says the mode of general practice among the ancient people strong drink unmixed and unboiled was barbaric unacceptable so we're establishing that that wine in those days was different there's fortified wine today that's 20 alcohol that was very different they worked very hard to prevent drunkenness the Believers did the people of Israel did so deluding wine is spoken about by Homer Plato Pliny the Elder Jewish midrash or mishnah says four cups of wine were poured out for Passover mixed with water two or three parts they called it matsug commonly wine was boiled so that all the alcohol evaporated the residue paste was then remixed with water alcohol free this was common in Rome in Egypt and in all Jewish life it was called and you have references to mixed wine in the Old Testament particularly in Proverbs 9 maybe we'll look at that next time we don't have time this time so you say well why did God give them something like this that could make people drunk well understand that there was no Refrigeration right so it didn't matter what the juice was it would eventually ferment because this is a fallen world and fermentation is part of it so we could say first of all God wanted them to mix it and to boil it for the sake of conservation because there was not an unlimited Supply secondly she wanted them to mix it with water to increase the flavor so interesting I read an article in New York Times about how water is the flavor enhancer in wine as it is in coffee if you've ever gone to Brazil and asked for a coffee you get a tiny teaspoon full that knocks you back onto the ground it is the worst tasting thing it is it is like a mega dose of caffeine jolting your veins coffee's much more tolerable when mostly it's water right its flavor is enhanced same is true with wine so they use it to enhance the flavor they also use it to extend its usefulness and they mixed it and they boiled it to prevent drunkenness because they had to drink a lot you know there was probably somebody going around in the New Testament era in town saying stay hydrated stay hydrated well if you needed to be hydrated when it was 120 degrees in the in the summer in the Middle East you probably wouldn't want to drink the water because there was no sanitation and there was no sterilization and the water was dangerous so this degree of fermentation was a gift from God as an antiseptic it was as much to sanitize the water as anything the water made it taste better and the wine made the water safe sanitize the water that's why Paul says to Timothy stops drinking water and take a little wine for your stomach's sake fermentation was a gift in a fallen world two microbiologists at Oregon State University have discovered that wine killed they used the technical word inactivated killed is my word killed bugs what bugs pathogens like E coli salmonella staphylococcus and klebsiella within 30 to 60 minutes so God was giving us something like so many things that we have that if used wrongly could ruin your life if you use rightly can protect your life fermented made it lethal to pathogens how good is God how kind is he part of his protection in fact it's so effective that there's some formulas now of wine based spray disinfectant that you can purchase so God knew exactly what he was doing it's a gift when used properly God never intended it to be turned into a disaster for an entire nation America is number four in alcohol consumption in the world Finland Denmark Australia and UK are the ones around us but listen to this drugs America is number one in the world in drug consumption drugs and alcohol disastrous to our society fifty percent of Americans don't drink but 50 do and of the 50 who do 25 percent binge drink a hundred thousand people die every year in America because of alcohol-related death hundred thousand are now dying a year with the drug Fentanyl Millions with the other drugs so for Christians we have nothing to do with that we understand the provision God has made in giving us fruit that we can turn into juice and drink we understand it's antiseptic benefits but we don't ever want to be under the control of the alcohol right that leads to dissipation that leads to doing things saying things and behaving in a way that doesn't demonstrate wisdom and certainly doesn't fulfill the will of God which wisdom always does now the first question was is the alcohol that we have today the same as the ancient times answer no clearly not I have seven more questions for next week let's pray Our Father we thank you again for your word the entrance of which gives light we thank you for its instruction to us we thank you for its truthfulness we thank you for the wisdom that comes from above thank you for this wonderful Church These precious people thank you for their faithfulness thank you for your work in their lives or protect every one of them every single one from the kind of dissipation that can come from alcohol we we thank you Lord that we live in a time when we don't even need it at all we have all the science and all the mechanisms now to drink to our fill a thousand different kinds of thirst quenching drinks without ever having to touch anything that's full of alcohol in a world in which that wasn't possible you gave so much guidance and the people had so much wisdom to mitigate that potential in those days you would have to stay beside your wine so long and drink so much because it was mixed or because there was no alcohol content left in the paste that it would be almost impossible to become drunk unless you purposely intended it but today Lord we are being hammered by those who would cause us to be drunk and in the drunkenness that we would be dependent and that dependency would become alcoholism dependency and that would mean that we keep purchasing the product so Lord I pray that you'll deliver all of us from that and may we know what it is to walk in the joy and peace and love of the Holy Spirit who fills us we pray in Christ's name amen

Channel: Grace to You

Views: 25,777

Keywords: John MacArthur, Bible, Preaching, Christianity, Expository, Exposition, Sermon, Jesus, Christ, Grace to You

Id: -BrVSfbU5DE

Length: 54min 59sec (3299 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2022