The Death no one has to Die

00:01 Do have an announcement as far as this evening is concerned. I'll make my apologies now. That we will not be here tonight. And we were planning to be here, hear the choir here. And several years ago they asked if I would be a choir pastoral advisor, I guess it was. 00:21 And I'd like to get to the program, but Delora is going to be sharing tonight at Calvary Chapel about her ministry. So you have to kind of make a decision. So we're going with family tonight. And that means that we'll go to the choir program. Next Sunday night at Pleasant Grove and won't be here again. 00:37 So please forgive us and don't take that as an excuse that we're staying home with our feet up on a recliner or roasting wieners over an open fire. But we are busy about the Lord's work even though we won't be here. All right. I'm going to tread this morning where we fear... where angels fear to tread, 00:59 you might say. And we try not to shy away from the controversial here. Believing that the Word of God has answers for life and for life's questions more than just the church says so. And sometimes the church says so and that should be sufficient. But there's a reason why we said so. 01:17 It's just a little bit like parents sometimes. It's not a good answer to say to our children because I said so. There's got to be a reason behind the I said so. But sometimes that's in a hurry that's all we can do. But I want to talk to you this morning and this is going to be a two-part message I've arranged with Brother Dwayne to continue it next Sunday morning. 01:38 And this message is titled "The Death No One Has to Die: The Christian and Alcohol." And we want you to turn in your copies of the Scriptures to Proverbs chapter 23. Be reading verse 29 through 35. But while you're turning that I want to ask you this question. What... and this is not original with me. 01:58 I'm quoting John Drescher in a book called "The Death"... 02:03 in a tract called "The Death No One Has to Die." He wrote, "What would you do if you became aware of a poison being sold publicly in places all through your community that probably would kill 70 times as many Americans as the Vietnam War? What would you do?" By the way, 02:24 Drescher goes on to say in his pamphlet that he and his wife did an extensive study of statistics. And I'll be sharing some of those next Sunday about alcohol. He goes on to write, "If you knew that a local restaurant served an item that in a short time would destroy the life of at least 1 out of 10 persons who purchased the item, would you do or say anything? 02:46 If you knew the second highest case of death among teenagers, would you be eager that people knew the cause and tried to work at its solution?" What would you think about having that information and not sharing it? Participating in the death, in the downfall, and in the destruction of someone else. 03:07 By the way, the Bible does say, "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor to drink." There's a curse on those who serve strong drink. Did you know that? It's found in the book of Habakkuk. And I can't tell you the exact chapter and verse, but do a little search and you'll find it. What would you do? 03:23 Our text this morning is from Proverbs 23 verses 29 and following. "Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaints? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? Those who linger long at the wine. 03:45 Those who go in search of mixed wine. Do not look on the wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it swirls around smoothly. At the last it bites like a serpent and stings like a viper. Your eyes will see strange things and your heart will utter perverse things. 04:03 Yes, you will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea. Or like one who lies at the top of the mast saying, 'They have struck me, but I was not hurt. They have beaten me, but I did not feel it. 04:17 When shall I awake that I may seek another drink?'" What you have here in this passage of Scripture is the crisis in verse 29. Many people experience crisis because of alcohol. Who has woes? Who has sorrow? Contentions? Complaints? Wounds? The wounds that accompany alcohol are a multitude. 04:38 But you have the pursuit then. Those who pursue the party life. Those who pursue... who stay long at the wine in their search for the next party. Their search for the next... the pursuit for the next good time. The next weekend. The next holiday. The next pleasurable experience. The next drunken orgy. 04:58 Verse 31, you have those who are enticed by this. And this could include advertising. You know, you look at the advertising in the magazines and on television or on movies or whatever. And they make it look so cool. They make it look... they make it look so good. They make it look so refreshing. They make it look so... 05:18 you know, so opposite. You know, and so enticing. 05:24 They said, "Don't be fooled by that. Don't linger long and don't go in search of mixed wine. Woe to him who does this." There's a warning here in this passage of Scripture. A warning that accompanies deception. You see, the deception is that it promises something that it can't deliver. It promises something with enticement, 05:44 but behind it is a hook. Behind it is a hook and a bite and a serpent's bite. It bites like a serpent and stings like a viper. And you would do well this morning and any morning to understand the enticement of sin, the appeal that it has to the flesh, 06:05 the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life. But the hook behind it all, the deception that leads to crisis. The humiliation, verse 33. "Your eyes shall see strange things. You hallucinate. You do weird things under the influence of alcohol. You say dumb things. 06:24 You say stupid things. You utter perverse things." That's the humiliation. And may I... may I... may I have a word here, kind of a common word for verse 34 and 35. But you could say this is the stupidity. The stupidity. You've got the crisis, the pursuit, the enticement, the deception, the humiliation. 06:45 Verse 34 is the stupidity of trying to lay out in the middle of the ocean. Nothing stable under you. Nothing solid. You're wishy-washy, blown around. Nothing... nothing to get a hold of. Or you're like the man at the top of the mast who's being swung back and forth trying to hang on for dear life. 07:05 These are word pictures about those who are under the influence of alcohol. Or verse 35, the stupidity continues when they say... when he gets struck and he says, "Oh, it didn't hurt me. It didn't hurt me. Oh yeah, it did. But you're not smart enough to know it. And they have beaten me, but I didn't feel it. Oh yes, you did. You can see the wounds. 07:23 You can see the complaints, the redness of the eyes. But I didn't feel it. When shall I awake that I may have another drink?" And the addiction that goes along with alcohol is nothing to minimize. It's a gamble. It's a gamble. And you know, 07:43 we would say that if a person had a bear chasing him, you would not say, "When can I get back to that bear and have it chase me again?" That'd be stupid. Right? It'd be dumb. Or if you had a snake that was ready to strike you, you would say, "Oh boy, that was a neat experience. Boy, the adrenaline really flowed. 08:03 I'd like to find another snake to strike me." We'd say that's dumb. And so it is in verse 35. "They have struck me, but I was not hurt. They have beaten me, but I didn't feel it. When shall I awake that I may seek another drink?" So this morning and next Sunday morning, we want to see what the Bible says. We want to be true to the Scriptures. 08:25 We want to be true to Christ and following Christ. And we want to exercise true wisdom. The purpose of this message is to examine the Scriptures to sound an alarm and a warning on the use of alcohol in the life of a Christian or in the life of anyone for that matter. 08:44 And so it would be nice if we could just go to the Bible and pick out a verse and say, "That verse does it. That verse says no use of alcohol whatsoever at any time for any reason." The problem is you can't do that. 09:02 There is no verse that you can just go to and unequivocally say that there should be no alcohol use ever. Now that might surprise you. 09:13 The closest we have to that is Ephesians 5:18, "Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess." Now we see here the excessive use of wine reflects a certain stupidity. But the moderate use of wine or alcohol is where the controversy is raging in the church today. 09:34 And not necessarily our church. But in churches today, in the larger evangelical church. And so we need to have an answer. What does the Bible say about the moderate use of alcohol? So we take off the table this morning that there's any place for drunkenness. But the question that many people ask is, is there a place for moderation? 09:56 Moderate non-drunkenness, the occasional imbibing of social drinking or of wine, fermented wine, and alcohol. And so we want to issue a warning. We want to be faithful to the Scriptures. We want to be faithful to discipleship, to true discipleship. And we want to be faithful to true exercise, true wisdom. 10:17 Now the problem is in this subject there is great availability for this product. There's great availability. Some people can... even if you're a minor, you can get it. You can get to it. It's out there. It's available. 10:35 We're no longer in the days of prohibition like back in the 20s where we have moved from prohibition to celebration. We no longer prohibit as a culture. We celebrate the use of alcohol as a culture. And advertising reflects that. That's a problem. 10:54 And so if we're going to take a non-prohibition approach to alcohol and its use, we're going to go against the culture. And I say that's good. That's fine. That's what Christians do. Amen? They go against a godless culture. And then we find it promoted as an acceptable lifestyle. 11:15 You see, gone are the days of temperance societies. Anybody even know what a temperance society was or is? A temperance society was back in the days pre-prohibition, which led to prohibition, which was the outlawing of the sale of alcohol in the 20s. 11:33 Pre-prohibition, there were temperance societies drawing attention to the problem of drunkenness and the problem of debauchery that came out of a culture of unrestrained, unrestricted access to alcohol. And the families that were destroyed and the lives that were destroyed as a result of the use of alcohol. 11:55 And so there were temperance societies, but those have long since faded away. Anybody ever even know of a local temperance society? Temperance societies used to be big in churches. The church had a campaign against the use of alcohol. Those days are long gone, let me tell you. Long gone. Is that a good thing? 12:15 Or is there a new need and a continuing need for temperance societies? Well, the moderate use of alcohol is accepted under the assumption of Christian liberty or under the disguise of Christian liberty. Well, Paul said, "All things are lawful for me." But Paul also said, 12:36 "I will not be brought under the power of any." All things are not expedient. All things are not beneficial. And so they use that all things are lawful for me and the disguise of Christian liberty to say, "Oh, drink here or there is just perfectly fine." That's a problem in our culture. 12:57 That's a problem in our Christian culture. Then there's the problem of naivety in the Christian culture. And that is that Christians just simply are naive many times. They're naive to the potential and the addictions and the life-altering destruction that certain things lead you into. 13:20 I work with those who have been destroyed by drugs and alcohol. Our prisons are full of them. By the way, let me say this. 13:31 The same principles that go for alcohol are probably the same principles or at least similar that go for what we would call recreational drug use. Isn't that a nice way of saying something? Recreational. Recreational drug use. 13:50 But I have been told by a young person, not from our church, but he said, "You would be shocked to know how many Anabaptist, conservative Anabaptist young people are using marijuana." Same principles apply. And so we put that in there too. 14:13 So this is a problem, the naivety of the Christian culture. Sin, generally one of the hooks that accompany sin is the idea that others may be affected, but I'm strong enough, I can handle it. I'm strong enough, I can handle it. It won't affect me. That's what many people believe. 14:34 And then there's a difficulty of Scripture on this subject. People will throw up the idea of 1 Timothy 5:23 where it says, "Use a little wine for your stomach's sake." Oh, there you have it. Use a little wine. That's okay. And then they minimize the word little and just say, "Take some wine for your stomach." Well, 14:56 it says a little. And what exactly was he talking about? And was there nothing else that could be used possibly for his stomach than a little wine? And then we have the account where Jesus actually turned water into wine. What do you do with that? And so people who are looking for loopholes will say, 15:16 "Well, see, Jesus sanctioned it. He actually made it." So we're going to look at that. Luke 7:34, "He was known as a wine bibber." What do we do with that? Well, that means, you know, those looking for loopholes say, "Well, that means that Jesus indulged." No, it doesn't. 15:37 It just means that he hung around some people like that. And that was the lie that was attached to him. And Scripture says it was a lie. He was not a wine abuser. But they accused him of a number of things that weren't true. But people used that as a loophole. And then, 15:55 of course, we have this one, 1 Corinthians 10, which I also referred to. "All things are lawful for me. I can handle it. But I will not be brought under the power of any." What do we do with that? Well, I want to take you on a little word study this morning. And we're laying a foundation for next Sunday. 16:15 And so here we go. Let's do a little Hebrew word study about the use of what wine is. Now it would be nice if we could just go to the words themselves and say, "See, this word means fresh wine or grape juice. And this word means alcoholic wine or fermented wine. 16:35 And this word is praised. And this word is prohibited." That'd really be nice. Problem is, as you'll see in a moment, you can't necessarily do that. Now one of the first words you run across... or one word you run across in the Hebrew word study is the word tyrosh, which is a noun referring to new wine. 16:58 It refers to new wine. This is what God promised them when they went into the land of Canaan, that you would have this blessing of new wine. The best of the new wine went to the priests. And the New American Standard Bible renders and translates this word tyrosh. It refers to it as new wine 33 times, 17:18 fresh wine one time, wine three times, and grapes one time. It was intended to be a joyous blessing to Israel. And Deuteronomy 11:13 and 14 says, "And it shall be that if you earnestly obey my commandments, which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 17:38 then I will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain your new wine and your oil." There you have it, preacher. It says God's going to bless us with wine. Well, that is fresh wine. It is not condemned because it is fresh grape juice. 17:59 It is the fresh squeezings of the grape. Rarely fermented wine. This is rarely referring to fermented wine. It's referred to 46 times in the Old Testament. And it's pretty straightforward as grape juice. Then we come to the other extreme, which is the word kamar, 18:20 which is not a Hebrew word but an Aramaic word, which means to boil up. It means the scum, to glow with redness. It means to make something red or boil. It can even be used of a person's face, which has boils or skin rash, skin disease. Or the troubling of a person's mind because of calamity. 18:41 Your mind can be in a kamar, in a boil, in a fermenting with all kinds of scum going on in your mind. But as far as wine is concerned, it describes the fermenting and foaming of the agitation of wine in the cup. Wine in the cup. 18:59 And it refers to 19:02 wine furnished by the Persian kings to the returned exiles in Ezra. And it was used to excess by the Babylonians under Belshazzar in Daniel 5. Daniel 5 said, "While they fasted or while he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels, 19:21 which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple, which had been in Jerusalem, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them." So they were blaspheming the holy things of God. "Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple of the house of God, which had been in Jerusalem. And the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. 19:41 They drank wine, kamar, scummy, fermented, highly intoxicating wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone." Pretty straightforward. This was highly intoxicating and was not desirable biblically. 20:03 Then you come to another more common word, which is used 130 sometimes, 134 times, which indicates the juice of the grapevine and its fruits, a common drink for refreshment in the Old Testament. This is the kind of wine that Melchizedek brought to Abraham. 20:24 This is the kind of wine that was offered to Isaac by when Esau made him the special meal to solicit the blessing. It was used as a tonic. It was a valuable commercial item. 20:37 And it would make people's hearts glad in some cases or depraved in others, in moderation. It was used in the worship of God. It was a wine offering, a drink offering that was poured out. It was forbidden to Nazarites. Interesting. 20:55 The Nazarites were not to partake of wine or of alcohol, the fruit of the vine. The Rechabites, which were the sons of Rechab, he had commissioned his sons to never touch wine. And 250 years later, they were being faithful to that commitment as a family. Wow. 21:15 Priests were not to use this wine when they were serving in the sanctuary. That's interesting again. Priests were not to use the wine in the sanctuary. But it was employed as a drink offering. Wine is used in metaphors. What does it illustrate? 21:32 It illustrates the married love between a husband and wife in the book of Song of Solomon. The wine creates confusion and wondering in Psalm 60. Babylon is likened to a cup of wine causing the nations to go mad. And it is used as an example of God's judgment. 21:53 God's judgment. It's often used in relation to something negative. There is very little positive said about this any more than it is an observation that this kind of wine was part of their use. 22:08 However, this wine, I understand, was part of any part of the fruit of the vine. So it could be referred to unfermented or it could refer to fermented. Butler commentary says this. It is at first pleasant and nourishing, then exhilarating, and at last intoxicating. 22:31 Then there's one more word in the Old Testament. And that is the word sheikhar, sheikhar, which means beer. It's a noun referring to strong drink or a type of beer. It refers to an intoxicating, usually understood as some kind of of beer. 22:49 And it is never praised in Scripture that I'm aware of. The drinkers of this strong drink were known as drunkards. And kings were to stay away from it, Proverbs 31:4. It may have been a sedative for the dying or bitter. Give strong drink to those who are dying. And it refers to the intoxicating drink. 23:11 Wine is a mocker. Proverbs 21:1 says, "Strong drink, sheikhar, is raging. And whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise." Isaiah 5:22, "Woe to men mighty of drinking wine. 23:28 Woe to men valiant for mixing intoxicating drink." So those are some of the Hebrew words. There are about 10 other words or 9 or 10 other words that have various meanings, various nuances, and are referred to in various ways, various shades of meaning. 23:47 Now we go to the New Testament. You say, "Brother Todd, that's Old Testament. What does the New Testament have to say?" Well, the Greek words in the New Testament. 23:54 Basically, there are two primary Greek words in the New Testament that are translated wine. 24:03 The first one is the word oinos, oinos, which is the counterpart or it's similar to the Hebrew word yayin, which is a wine of any stage from fermented to unfermented. Now some people will look at that. Some Bible scholars will say this always implies fermentation. 24:24 But other Bible scholars will say it does not always mean fermentation. It may be unfermented. It is wine derived from grapes. 24:37 It may be fermented. It may not be fermented. From the intoxicating effects of wine and the idolatrous use of it among heathen, wine signifies communion with idolatry in mystic Babylon. 24:51 It has a picture of the dreadful judgments of God upon sinners in Revelation about drinking the dregs of the wine of God, about treading out the wine press of God's wrath, those types of things. And it may not always be fermented. I quote Abbott Dictionary of Religious Knowledge, 25:12 where it states, "It is tolerably clear that the word wine does not necessarily imply fermented liquor. 25:19 It signifies only a production of the vine." The eminent Hellenist Sir Richard Jebb, former professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge—so this is a guy who knows what he's talking about—declares oinos a general term which might include all kinds of beverages. 25:38 So it may be like we use the word pop or soda. Soda pop includes a lot of different kinds of fruit of the vine. So in other words, when you come to the word oinos in the changing of water into wine by Jesus, 25:57 don't assume that that was fermented wine. Don't assume that. Because the word can also mean a variety of other stages of drink. Glucose, glucose then is what the word translates for sweet wine or fresh juice. 26:16 Some believe that this is the wine that distills on its own accord from grapes, which is the sweetest and smoothest. It may or may not be fermented. It implies some fermentation at times. This is the word in Acts chapter 2 where others mocked and said they are full of new wine. 26:36 This is the word glucose, glucose. Now interestingly enough, Jesus, when he served them communion and the Passover cup, did not use either of these words. He neither used the word oinos or glucos. 26:56 What he used was the word ganima, which means the fruit of the vine to beget or that which is born or produced. Ganima means to give birth to, involving generation, to become. It can be used of people having offspring, children. 27:18 It can be used of a generation of vipers. It means fruit or produce. Interesting that Jesus did not serve them oinos, which could be fermented or unfermented. 27:33 He did not serve them glucose, which would be easily fermented with the high saccharin content of the grape. He served them the fruit of the vine, ganima. So what did he serve them? I believe it was fresh grape juice, fresh grape juice. 27:52 Now why do you say that? Well, one reason is that during the Passover, anything with leaven was forbidden. Leaven is a type of yeast. And yeast is a type of fermentation, creates some sort of fermentation. 28:12 And so by virtue of having the feast of unleavened bread, they were to purge out leaven from their homes. And they were to not take in those things which were fermented. Oinos is not used. I mentioned that already. 28:31 Now another reason why I believe that Jesus had a 28:37 wine-less or a non-fermented wine or grape juice, fruit of the vine, for his communion and Passover was because the amount of wine that they were to use at the Passover was not just to sip. It was cups of wine. 28:57 It was up to possibly three-quarters of a pint per cup. And in the Passover, they would drink up to four cups. I didn't confirm this with Delora, but she's nodding her head. She's studied Jewish things. And they would drink up to four cups of wine, 29:17 three-quarters of a pint for each cup in the Passover. Now you talk about the fact that that much wine was being used. They say that three pints of alcoholic wine is sufficient to make any person except a heavy drinker grossly intoxicated. 29:39 So we're not talking about a little wine in a little communion cup. We're talking about indulging in ganima, the fruit of the vine. So likely, unless they were seriously getting drunk—and that was the purpose of the Passover, which it was not—this was unfermented wine. 30:00 And by the way, they did know how in New Testament times, they did know how to preserve grape juice. And so that was a process that you can study into as well. So what are we saying here with all this? Had it been fermented wine, I'll just add this. 30:20 When Jesus said, "Drink from it, all of you," the Old King James Version says, "Drink ye all of it." That's probably a mistranslation. Most other translations, including the New King, says, "Drink from it, all of you." If this were fermented wine, then there would be some people that should not have been drinking from that much of it. 30:42 And so I believe a case can be made that Jesus did not serve fermented wine at the Passover. Now there are a couple of things to keep in mind about the biblical culture. Number one was there were poor conditions with water and refrigeration, poor conditions. 31:03 They did know how to keep wine from fermenting, but that was a process. That was a process that would be a rather lengthy process. But keep in mind that whatever they were drinking, whether it was fermented or unfermented, it was in a different kind of culture where there were poor water conditions, 31:24 poor refrigeration, and not access to pure fresh things like we have access to them today. The second thing to keep in mind is that the wine that they did drink, whether fermented or unfermented, was often diluted with water, which reduced the alcohol content of fermented wine. 31:48 The Gykee's Life of Christ says this: "Wine is little used now in the East from the fact that Mohammedans are not allowed to taste it and very few other creeds to touch it. When it is drunk, water is generally mixed with it. And this was the custom in the days of Christ also. 32:08 The people indeed are everywhere very sober in hot climates. A drunken person, in fact, is never seen." And it is my understanding that Muslims are not allowed to touch fermented wine, much less drink it. So keep that in mind. And it was diluted with water, which reduced the alcohol content. 32:28 Today, people design wine to maximize the alcohol content. Back then, it was reduced. Then the third thing to keep in mind is today we have a multitude of other drinks to enjoy and wine and other refreshing drinks. And today we have other options for treatment of medical problems. 32:51 So we do not have to take wine to accomplish the same results. Now Jesus and wine. 33:01 I'll try to run through this really quickly here. When Jesus turned the water into wine, what was happening there? Was it fermented wine that he made? Now people read that and they make an assumption. 33:20 They make an assumption that the best wine would be the fermented wine. That's an assumption being read into the text, not what the text says. What does the text say? The text says that he made oinos, which could be anything from the grape, 33:41 from unfermented to fermented. So what did he make? Actually, I believe that he made unfermented wine. And I have several reasons for that. One is if you read the text, he had six waterpots. This is well into the wedding. 34:01 They've run out of wine. He had six waterpots, each containing, I believe it says, 20 to 30 gallons apiece. That's 120 to 180 gallons of wine. 34:19 They'd have been under the table drunk with that much wine. Plus, they'd already been drinking. And so the sheer volume would indicate that what he was making was not highly alcoholic or fermented. But again, 34:39 that's an assumption reading into the text. Another reason that I believe he made grape juice was that they could have the old fermented wine anytime. 34:52 While I did say that they had ways of preserving wine from fermenting, most of it was probably fermented as time went on, what people had access to. This is six months after the grape harvest. How do you know that? 35:11 It was because it was right before Passover, right before Passover in John chapter 2. And my thought process goes like this: after six months of drinking old wine, here comes some fresh wine, 35:32 which is a grape juice, wine, fruit of the vine. Here comes some fresh fruit of the vine that you can't get easy access to. And Jesus just served it up. 35:44 So why would you think that the best wine is the old stuff when you can assume that the best wine is the new stuff, one that you can drink and drink and drink and keep on drinking without getting drunk under the table where you can't drink anymore? Something to consider. 36:07 I believe Jesus made fresh wine because it is in the purpose and plan of God and the nature of God to make fresh things, to make new things, to make things that are not addictive, to make things that are not fermented, but things that are refreshing and that are brand new. 36:28 That is the best. And so my personal opinion is that Jesus made fresh grape juice out of the water. But again, you cannot go to the text and just read into it one way or another. 36:50 So this leaves us with a dilemma. This leaves us with a dilemma. Does scripture forbid the moderate use of alcohol? We'll answer that next week. 37:06 But we will have to look more at the intention of scripture and more at the practical application of scripture and look at it from a wisdom perspective every bit as much as a word-based argument, 37:28 word meaning the specific definitions of the words. It's difficult to make a case for either permission of alcohol, moderate alcohol use, or prohibition of moderate alcohol use from what we've covered this morning. It's difficult to do that. Some will see different words meaning different things. Some will view the scholarship of the biblical culture differently. 37:50 And they come up with different conclusions. We will have to take a deeper look at the intention of scripture rather than just the definition of words. Now having said that, here's some things for you to chew on as we leave. What do we know? I think I misspelled that. 38:10 What do we know of? Yeah, that sense doesn't make a lot of sense. Anyway, what do we know about alcohol use? It's what happens when you don't know what you're doing on a computer. Number one, alcohol use is not encouraged in scripture. 38:30 It is not encouraged. It may be allowed. It may be seen as a time of celebration in the ancient culture. But overall, if you look at the whole intention of scripture, it's not encouraged. Second thing, we know that the use of alcohol is not wise. So really, what we'll be looking at is a wisdom issue. 38:52 And interesting, what Proverbs here 23:29 as our text is in wisdom literature. It is the way of the wise. It's also the way of the holy. We'll talk more about that. It is not necessary. 39:14 It isn't necessary to have alcohol, to drink alcohol. It really isn't. Now maybe if that's all you had in ancient culture, it may be otherwise. But it's not necessary today. 39:25 It's not necessary to destroy one's testimony, lead others astray, or to risk the inordinate use of it. It's just simply not necessary. Number four, it can lead others astray. Paul said, "If it leads someone else astray, 39:45 I will neither drink wine nor eat meat for the rest of my life because of my commitment to my Christian brother." Let me just say this about this one. 39:59 We had a family, a couple that was at our years ago, had visited our church. They were from another community, another BMA church at that time. And they visited our home. After church, we invited them for a meal. 40:15 And we began just it came up about churches that serve wine, fermented wine for communion. And he said very emphatically, and I didn't know this man well, but he said very emphatically, "I would never go to a church that serves wine for communion, fermented wine." Oh, okay. 40:34 I mean, I wouldn't either necessarily, but I'm not sure I'd feel that strongly about it. Only to find out the man had been an alcoholic in his youth. He said, "One sip of wine in a communion service would send me over the edge." Think about it. Number five, 40:55 alcohol use leads to drunkenness, not with everybody. But you won't be a drunk if you don't use alcohol. And so where's the start? It starts with the moderate use, the occasional use, the recreational use, and goes from there. 41:14 Number six, it often leads to addiction. I have letters from men whose lives have been destroyed. They're in prison because of addictions, families that have been destroyed because of addictions. And the end result of the downward spiral is death. 41:35 We know that from scripture. We know that from scripture. So we'll begin to put principles in place, wisdom in place as we flesh out some of these ideas in the message next Sunday. Stand open to your counsel. 41:52 Stand open to your words of 41:57 thoughtful critique. And we want to be biblical. We want to be faithful disciples. And we want to be wise. And can you agree with that? Amen? Let's pray. 42:13 Father in heaven, 42:16 thank you for this world that you have made for us to enjoy. There's so many things that you have given to us richly to enjoy. 42:27 Lord, we also know that the flesh desires to make an idol and a god out of those blessings and gifts. We also know that the flesh will take us places that we never envisioned going. We also know that the abuse of any of your gifts leads to bondage. 42:47 And we also know that even the best gifts of God in this world around us have been touched by sin in some way. And so, Lord, would you give us wisdom? Would you give us understanding on this very pertinent subject? And we'll give you the glory. 43:09 Make us wise, keep us faithful, keep us true as disciples. In Jesus' name, amen. Shall we stand together for a closing psalm?