Have You Not Read - S1:E25

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

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I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham and Andrew Hudson. We have an interesting question that we had sent in to us a while back, but we haven't got to it yet because we've kind of parsed things up on our own interest.

We have a question that is important, and we would like to figure out where we land on it today.

The question reads, is it okay to drink wine? Michael, you wanna take a shot at it? Yeah, as we were previewing this question earlier,

I think, Andrew, you said something about, you know, it depends on how much. Of course. It is a matter of how much.

It is a matter of how much. So when we read the scriptures, we read a lot about wine.

Let's say if you were to do a topical search of the word, you would find wine being discussed all throughout scripture.

Sometimes we read about wine in the context of the religious life of Israel.

Sometimes we read about wine in connection to the Lord's Supper, to communion.

Sometimes we read about wine in the stories that are told to us, stories like involving

Noah and his sons. We also hear about wine in other stories that are told to us, which is parables and analogies and examples and so on.

I think the question, of course, lends itself to the cautionary question. Is it okay?

Are we allowed to? Should we drink wine? And while we don't have any instructions in the scriptures that says to us, you know, everyone must drink wine.

Now we do have the giving of the Lord's Supper with wine being the obvious element of the drink.

Although in a Baptist tradition, we tend to simply have the juice of the grape without it being cultivated and fermented and so on.

We remember Paul tells Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach's sake as a medicinal approach.

There are instructions about pastors and deacons and instructions to kings.

It is not for kings or Lemuel, it's not for kings to drink wine. I don't drink wine.

I have instructions in the scriptures for me to not to as a pastor. As far as I can understand it,

I could be wrong on that, but the deacons are not to be given to much wine. And then the caution, there's a lot of cautionary instructions given in the word that deal with not being drunk.

The fool in Proverbs has trouble controlling all manner of things.

He can't control his lust. He can't control his anger. And he can't hold his drink.

And we see the disaster that unfolds in the life of the fool when it comes to drinking wine and becoming drunk.

So if we were to look at all those instructions, we might come away with, well, don't drink wine at all.

But there's also a lot of prohibitions and cautionary things about a sexual activity, a lot of restrictions there, a lot of cautions about that.

But this is not to say that marriage is wrong. Right? And we also receive a lot of caution about anger.

The wrath of man does not achieve the righteousness of God, but this does not say that anger in and of itself is sinful and wrong.

For we see that Christ himself was angry on more than one occasion in righteousness. So when it comes to wine, should we drink wine?

Maybe the reason is why do you want to drink wine? You know? Right, what's your motivation? What's your motivation and how are you going to glorify

God in that? What do y 'all think? Andrew, would you like to hit it first? Well, I'm going to go directly to Titus chapter one where there was a very important prohibition.

So Titus chapter one, I'm going to go to verse seven. For an elder must be blameless as a steward of God and he must not be self -willed, not quick -tempered, not excessive in the use of wine, not too ready to strike with his hand, not a lover of filthy lucre, but a lover of hospitality, lover of good things, sober, just, pious and temperate of worldly desires, holding fast the doctrine of faith so that he may be able to comfort by his sound doctrine and to rebuke those who are proud.

Do any of you have something different for the translation of the use of wine in verse seven?

Maybe putting it a little bit differently. Yeah, I've just got given to wine. It is a definition that means being near wine.

A wine aficionado. It could be interpreted that way. Right, this is where there's,

I think there's liberty. You know, as I read this text, you have the idea of someone always around wine.

Is that the idea? Or is the idea of being near wine? Which one is it?

You know, that's the question. Surely it's not mere presence. Right, yeah, I wouldn't think that either.

What I have is given to wine or drunken on that one, but I don't know why that would be different than you.

The Greek is paroinos, right? Is that what you have? Yeah, same word.

All right, and this was Tyndale House, Cambridge, definition of that Greek word.

So there is, we see an increasing consideration concerning those who are called to more and more service and leadership.

So whether it is in terms of a overseer or pastor, again, the council, to King Lemuel and so on, the concern is always amplified.

In the greater degree of responsibility that you hold? Yeah, it's even more exponentially a concern.

And then we have to give some sort of consideration to why that is. So I'm also gonna read in chapter two, starting at verse two, teach the older men to be vigilant, sober, pure, sound in faith and love, charity and patience, and teach the older women likewise, to behave as becomes the worship of God, not false accusers, not enslaved to much wine, but to become teachers of good things.

So again, it's a matter of how much. Right, right.

And how much and maybe what's behind how much is maybe how we come to the object itself.

I think in Ecclesiastes where we have, go therefore and eat your bread with joy, drink your wine with a merry heart.

When we're merry, we're joyous in the Lord and we're coming to these things with the blessing of the

Lord. But when we come to them without that orientation, when we are not blessed of the

Lord, when we come to it without joy, we have a greater tendency to probably overdo those types of things in order to maybe cover guilt or cover other things that are bothering us instead of bringing those things to the

Lord first and realizing that whatever fruit of the vine or whatever bread we're coming to, it's a gift.

And we see the image of wine being very important in the scripture from -

Are you talking about new wine and new wineskins? Well, there's a good example in talking about the differences between the old covenant and the new covenant.

And we're not to put new wine to old wineskins, otherwise they burst. And Jesus, His first miracle at the wedding of Cana, in which

He took the water that was reserved for the ceremonial washing of the guests coming into the wedding,

He took away all their ceremonial washing water and turned it into wine. And in a sense,

He's saying, welcome to the new covenant. And when we backtrack, while there's wine, we go back and almost like there's too much.

How are you ever gonna get to all this? You had even more than you ever needed for the guests. But when we go back and we look at Jacob's prophecy concerning Judah's descendant, the promised

Messiah, the seed, Shiloh, the one to whom it all belongs, He has a donkey, a beast of burden, but a beast of peace.

And there's so much wine and so much abundance in His new creation reign.

Clothes are getting washed in wine. There's so much wine. He ties up his donkey with a grape vine because there's so, you wouldn't do that.

That donkey would just totally tear that thing up. But if you have so many grapes and so much vineyard everywhere that you can just use it as a tool to tie up your donkey.

And in this, we see an expression where Jesus Christ as the one who, as Shiloh, as He brings in the new covenant,

He's the only one who handles His wine, right? Noah, think of Adam and Eve didn't handle the fruit from the tree, right?

They didn't handle that. Noah did not handle the grapes from his vineyard. And Noah is in this position in this figure as the leader of all humanity here.

And he's been given the cultural mandate all over again, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and to do it. But he didn't handle his wine.

And we see that this continues, right? How many leaders of God's covenant people didn't handle

His wine, right? We can just kind of - Not rightly. Yeah, didn't do it rightly.

And we go all the way through to even those who were to steward, faithfully steward the old covenant in anticipation of the arrival of Messiah.

And they didn't handle the vineyard right either. And they were cursed for it. Christ is the only one who handles the wine and does so perfectly.

Of course, Christ is the only one who handled His anger perfectly, right?

We just see Him as a man among all men in these examples. So preeminent. Yeah, preeminent, exactly.

And so it is not un -Christ -like to drink wine. It is un -Christ -like to get drunk.

Right. It is not un -Christ -like to get angry. It is un -Christ -like to get angry in a sinful way because of your own personal pride and your own selfishness and so on and so forth.

So these are helpful, I think, categories to think in in terms of when we talk about wine.

Okay, maybe kicking it a little further afield here. The question was specifically about wine. But there are other spirits.

There are other forms of drink, alcoholic drink out there. What do we see in the scriptures about those things?

Well, the Bible tells us that strong drink is for the sorrowful. We're told that some people, the fool is like one who is in the mast of a ship and all he desires is the next strong mixed drink.

He's just pursuing the next drunken state after the next drunken state. And we see, again, the caution when it comes to brewing and working on creating stronger drinks for the sake of getting drunk.

This becomes kind of someone's religious experience. Right. Interesting that wine is part of communion and it has nothing to do with becoming drunk.

It has nothing to do with that as the satisfaction is being found in the one who has offered himself for us rather than in the elements themselves.

But as far as other strong drink, I believe it is mentioned from time to time. But it is, again, handled the same way.

With warning. It's permitted in that whatever you have left over you may buy wine, strong drink or other things with but as a warning to not be slave to or addicted to or given over to rather than being filled with the spirit rather than wine.

Yeah, because I mean, as you can see in the world around us, you can see visible examples when you're driving in your vehicles, when you're going through neighborhoods in downtown in cities all over our country and other places, you can see people who are given over to either strong drink or other intoxicating substances and their lives are a complete wreck.

Pick through the trash in the alleyways. Yes. I'm Mo for a Living and the trash you see usually, there's a very high rate of broken bottles for this specific thing.

What I always find interesting is the quality of beverage always decreases.

The worse you get in being enslaved to this thing, it's not about the beauty of the thing itself that God has created, that he created the process by which it can be broken down into this other thing or stored as this other caloric value and it's lower quality every time and it's always handled terribly, right?

The trash is thrown into the churchyard. The further you are from the truth, the standard of why

God has given us wine, the farther you are from the good use of it and thus the further you are away from the beauty.

And the less you care. It is there. The less you care about whether it's beautiful or not. If a man wants to destroy his life very quickly, he must only give himself over to one of these addictions, one of these overindulgences, one of these gluttonous acts.

Strong drink, anger, immorality. How many men have been destroyed because of drunkenness, because of anger and because of lust?

Now again, these things, time and again, the reaction and we feel it,

I mean, but the reaction that we have when we see these examples in the scripture where we see the fall of Solomon because of lust and we see the fall of Samson, we see the fall of Noah, we see the fall of David, we see the fall of all these different examples, anger and lust and drunkenness.

Then the response tends towards what? They, oh, get rid of all that entirely, right?

Let's be monks, but the monks weren't all that sober. So get rid of all the alcohol, but then you can't achieve holiness by the removal of the things that God gave to us for good.

So marriage is good. The marriage bed is undefiled and to be honored. Wine is a gift from God and anger.

I like this little scene at the beginning of one of the Andy Griffith shows episodes. Barney's all concerned because the new mayor's mad at Andy because Andy had been out fishing that morning before he came into work and he missed the meeting.

And Barney's all concerned the mayor's angry and Andy says, oh, it's good for a man to get riled up in the morning.

Getting riled up and having some anger is good for work. I mean, it can be used for good, a good impetus to move us along.

It's good for the defense of our loved ones. Anger is good for courage to face up against the things that need to be faced down.

There are good righteous uses of anger and it's a gift from God. It's not in and of itself a sin, right?

And so these are the things we need to consider when we think about wine. I don't drink wine simply out of my preference and I have no less of a blessed life than anybody else who does drink wine, right?

You know, it's, so anyway. You're missing out on some tasty things, just FYI, but I mean,

I agree with you. You are no less blessed. So beyond mere consumption, going into serving alcohol, we see in Habakkuk a prohibition or a woe against those who are forcing their neighbors to get drunk to see, well, in this case, their nakedness, but also not putting stumbling blocks in front of brothers and sisters or others to do them good and not evil.

Does that go into what line of work you're in? Serving of alcohol for pay as a wage if you were to work at a restaurant?

I think that Christian should be able to work in a situation where they feel, where they have the liberty to act in accordance with their biblical convictions, okay?

So if you're in a situation where you're at a supermarket, if you are in a situation where you're working at a restaurant, if you're in a situation where you're selling something that you yourself have made, okay, what is the consistent biblical approach?

In this case, an excellent example out of Habakkuk, what were they doing? They were causing others to sin.

They were doing something to take advantage of others. And I wonder if all alcohol production and sales were under the control of principled

Christian men, how different would things be? It tastes better. Well, there's that, but when you have a man who is a drunk, like, meh,

I'm not gonna sell it to you. Are you talking about Otis? Yeah, I'm not gonna sell it to you. I've seen pagans do that, right?

Like there's stores, I know I lived with a guy in Norman for a while and he was a clerk at a liquor store.

They had a list of people that they knew would come in. They were not to be served. Interesting. And those are, and I'm telling you, complete pagans, but they were not gonna do it because they weren't gonna watch them be responsible for that guy's demise.

How much more so should a Christian be? Amen. Right? Yes. And knowing if it's a brother who struggles with that thing as well, even to the nth degree in that situation.

Yeah, imagine, I mean, the issue of Paul's example in Corinthians about coming over and sitting down somewhere to have a meal.

And he says, I don't ask questions where the meat came from. I'm just gonna enjoy this meat. But if somebody says, hey, we got this on the cheap from the

Jupiter market down here. They offered it up to the state god, but we got a pretty good deal on it.

He says, well, I ain't gonna eat it because of the brother next to me who'd be completely mortified that I would do that.

In that regards, that's the other consideration as well. Yeah, it's like discernment with your brothers.

And the key to that is you have to know your brothers well enough as well. You have to know the background. You have to converse with them on that.

And maybe the first time, if you hold that liberty, maybe the first time you eat dinner with them, you might ask them that question, like, how do you feel about that?

And if they're like, no go, then that's where you are. That's where you're gonna land. So you - Because you love them.

Yeah, because you love them. And they would, because they do the same for you too. Like you're held to the same standard in scripture.

So you're just going to love them in that way. And if you can't handle an hour and a half dinner without one, like maybe we need to think about some things.

Right? Yeah, and I think something that's good about this question in and of itself is that it's one of many other types of conversations that brothers and sisters in Christ should be having as part of the life of the body of Christ.

And this only strengthens our love for one another. Amen to that. Well, I think we've wrapped it up today for our discussion on wine and the liberties therein.

Michael, what are we thankful for today? I'm thankful. I'm thankful that God gave to us a dog for about 15 years.

And we had to put her down this last week. But, you know, animals are a gift from the

Lord. Part of our being fruitful and multiplying, you know, and having a presence. And this dog, you know, protected my son from snakes and barked and kept thieves away and was a good, loyal dog for a long, long, long time.

Her name's Karis, and we were very thankful for that. You know, of course, my kids wanted to know if the dog went to heaven.

Like, no, you know, animals and all these things that we appreciate these gifts from God are, as Herman Bavinck put it, the vestigia dei, the vestiges of God.

They point to God's goodness and beauty, but we're the ones made in the image of God. You know, and there's a distinct difference between the two.

But nonetheless, I'm very thankful. Amen. Andrew? I'm thankful to God that I didn't get what

I deserved about 20 years ago when I first joined the military. I was involved with some people who were drunks and participating with them.

But he called me out of that darkness. And it has ramifications that I will never know because he kept me from those things.

Hmm. Amen to that. Well, I'm thankful for slow, hard work toward wealth.

I listened to a sermon on the way over, and it was talking about slow work toward wealth, and this is how

Christians should view wealth. And he who decides or tries to get rich quickly is a fool.

He's looking for a get -rich -quick scheme. And I'm thankful for that conviction because in myself,

I find that tendency all the time not to cut corners and work, but man, get there quicker. Let's accelerate this.

And I don't think accelerating that process is a bad thing if it's done through work, hard work.

So I'm thankful for the convictions that I keep getting day in and day out from the things that I'm consuming.

And I realize that I need to push further in on those things as well and lean into that. And that wraps it up for today.

We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read?