Questions & Answers

So, if you're a visitor, or if you're a member, or you're just an adherent, someone that sticks to the church, even though you're not a member, we invite you to come over to our house tonight. Matter of fact, I think, Nancy, that's an old Presbyterian term.

An adherent? Yes. Okay. If you're an adherent, we'd love to have you come to our home. We just live about three miles north. Bring your own snacks or treats, or if you like to cook chicken, bring chicken.

If you'd like to cook marshmallows, you can do that. We'll have a little fire. If you've got some firewood, I could use some wood. We've got some wet wood, but we'll probably need some dry wood. So, please come right after the service, and we'll have some good fellowship, and we'll celebrate Dave Jeffrey's birthday over there, too, so that'll be good.

I think he turned 50 today, so that's been exciting. How old are you, Dave? 48. Happy birthday. We'll have a little celebration over at our house, too. So that's tonight, right after the service, and we'd love to have all of you come.

If you just want to come by for a few minutes, that'd be fine, too. We don't really need the lake for fellowship, anyway. We just need one another, and that'll be tonight, right after the service. All right, well, this week is week number two in questions and answers, and so we usually try to go through a book.

We haven't done that for quite a while here on Sunday nights. We'll get back into Hosea in the fall, but tonight we'll do questions and answers, and I always liked it when my old pastor did questions and answers, because if I didn't like one of the questions, maybe the next one I would.

And so you hit a lot of topics in a short amount of time, and so we'll hit some of those tonight. You will need your Bibles, and that's really the key, is I want to try to help you understand your Bible better, and I want your theology to determine your methodology and your doxology.

In other words, when you learn about God, it should be with the point of understanding Him better, so you can worship Him better. Again, your theology should lead to a better doxology, or praise, a word about praise, and that's really the key.

I get all kinds of weird things in the mail, and I got one this week as well. I almost used this this morning, but I knew we were going to be depressed for time. Dear Pastor, Bethlehem Bible Church, please accept this invitation to become a member of the Prohibition Party of Massachusetts.

I thought of all the weeks to get this letter. I'm teaching on Christian liberty, and for those that weren't here this morning, I'm not trying to say all Christians should drink. I'm just trying to say that if the Bible doesn't say for Christians not to drink, outside of conscience and making other people stumble, and those things that we talked about this morning, that I don't want to give God extra rules.

I don't want to put on extra rules that aren't even in the Scripture. So we'd like you to become a member. Of course, it's $70. That's on the flip side, but it says, if you wish to join or receive our newsletter, simply fill out the application and return it to us.

We do covet your support and participation. Let us hear from you. May the Lord richly bless you and your ministry, yours for civic righteousness, and then it tells the director. And then it's got all the different things that Prohibition Party stands for.

One of the things, as you would guess, it stands against the commercial sale of alcohol and other harmful drugs. Of course, I don't like the effects of alcohol. Of course, harmful drugs are harmful. But I want to address this tonight a little bit and take you to some inside verses that Christians, fundamentalist Christians, don't want you to know about.

And so let's open our Bibles to Proverbs chapter 31. And by the way, I'm going to respond to this gentleman in love, but I'm going to look at these verses and I'm going to say, I want to stand up for Christ in His name and He's to be exalted.

He's the only Savior. He's the only risen Savior. He justifies us by faith alone. But what do you do with these verses? And I don't think I need to spend my time trying to ban alcohol when there are bigger issues.

You can be a teet-holer and go to hell, true? You can. Or you could be a drunk and get saved and go to heaven. I am not, as I said the last three weeks, trying to say our church should drink more alcohol than it does.

I am not saying that. But I am saying that we have liberty in Christ to do whatever we'd like as long as it doesn't go against our conscience, as long as it doesn't make another brother stumble, and as long as we are not in slavery and in bondage to what we do.

So I want to show you a couple inside verses that Christian fundamentalists don't like us to look at. And then we start getting into all this issue about, well, it's not really wine. Again, if you've got kids, my kids aren't allowed to drink.

And when you get out of the house, maybe you can do this and do that. I am not trying to say I want everyone to drink, but I refuse to add commands to the Scripture. And the Scripture never says, don't drink under any circumstances.

It says in Ephesians chapter 5, what? Do not get drunk. Drunkenness is a sin. And to just soothe your conscience for a second, or just to soothe your mind, right after this I am going to take you to some verses to try to convince you that drinking is not very wise.

So hang in there with me. But we at least need to address these verses. Proverbs 31, what do we know this chapter as? A Proverbs 31 what? Woman. And in a sense it is, indirectly, directly it's a Proverbs 31 man.

A Proverbs 31 woman, the king's mom, taught her son these things about how to pick the right kind of girl. And you want to look for a Proverbs 31 girl. So in a sense it could be called a Proverbs 31 man because it's teaching a son how to pick a daughter.

But there's a few things that are taught early on before we get to our regular passage when we think of Proverbs 31. Verse 4, she's teaching him, it is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine or for rulers to desire strong drink.

Now on Sunday nights it's a little different. You can give me some feedback. And if I ask you a question, it's not necessarily rhetorical. Why would it not be a good idea for kings to drink wine? And again, I'm not saying that this is grape juice or something like that.

This is wine. This is the word for wine. Yes, Doug? Okay. And in this particular case there was not the judicial, the executive, the legislative kind of checks and balances. What the king said went. And they don't want to have judgment impaired.

Very good. Any other comments about that? Verse 5 goes on to help us with that very thing. Lest they drink and forget what is decreed. You might be unjust, but you also are going to forget what the decree is and pervert the rights of the afflicted.

But contrary to what the kings are to do, there is a time when wine is actually prescribed in the Old Testament. Verse 6, give strong drink to whom? To him who is perishing, and if I put the words in there, and give wine to him whose life is bitter.

Why would we do that? How could that be in the Bible? It is. She's saying as the king, there are going to be people in your realm that you should give wine to and strong drink to. I mean, if I heard that message when I first got saved, my background is father drank all the time, alcoholic father, drunken father, whatever terminology you'd like.

And then I had the same kind of struggles in my life. I become a Christian and I want to run from alcohol. And that's not a bad thing to do. But what do we do with these verses? What are some comments that you might have about these verses?

Bruce, that is an excellent way to give an excellent reason to give strong drink is if you watch World War Two movies and somebody gets his leg blown off. What's the first thing you'll see? One of those Red Cross guys, not Red Cross guys, but one of the medics come over and jab it right in the leg where there's just shrapnel everywhere.

What are they going to put in there? Morphine. And certainly we did not have morphine back in those days. They did not have morphine. And so this is in contrast to the king. There's a time that people are suffering and they need some kind of relief and that that would be justifiable.

That would not be sin. Jonah. Well, see, and here's what happens. Those are that's a good point. God creates everything for his glory and it's for good. Right. And then what does man do? Satan either influences us or our own unredeemed flesh or if we're Christians, the the flesh that dwells in us takes over.

And all of a sudden we pervert what God does. It's the same thing with sex. God says in marriage, it's great. And I ordained that. I invented it. But then everybody takes it outside of that. And then we have a problem.

Same thing with this. Let him drink. Look at verse seven and forget his poverty, poverty, excuse me, poverty, and remember his trouble no more. There's a time where these people need to forget their condition.

Now, certainly we have all kinds of drugs today and you might say, well, we can get things from the doctor and you don't have to have all the side effects. I understand that. I'm just saying that I don't need to run around and try to stop selling alcohol because that's going to cure all the nation's ills.

Let's go on a little further. And let me try to make my point. Psalm 104. This is the other kind of hidden verse that in your circles, you don't want to tell the kids these verses because they might go wild somehow.

I don't think God made a mistake when he gave us these verses. I think as parents, we need to teach our children. By the way, it's against the law for children to drink. And so why would we break the law?

But Psalm 104 just talks about how God gives good things. And I could take you and I will maybe to John 2 where Jesus actually makes more wine. And think about it. Think about Europe right now. Lewis and Dallas go to Europe and if you ask them questions about Europe, do Christians drink there?

The answer is going to be what? Just as part of everyday life. Did you know for the Jewish people, it was part of their everyday life to drink wine and have wine around? Much more so than here. Passover, guess what they drank?

Why do you think one of the reasons Jesus said, you guys stay here and wait and I'm going to go over here and pray, stay awake and pray, and I'm going to go over here and pray by myself. What was one of the factors for them falling asleep?

They just drank wine. They just celebrated the Lord's Supper and they had drank wine. It was everywhere. And again, I'm not pro alcohol. I'm not trying to say in some insidious way, everybody drink, but I don't want to add to scripture.

I want to force you to say, if you have been justified by faith, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ. If you have a conviction not to drink, I applaud that conviction. But if someone else says, I don't want to make people stumble and I have a glass of wine once in a while at home by myself, who are you to say that's wrong?

Because God has not said that's wrong. I feel strange saying it even. It sounds so weird. Look at Psalm 104 and how God just is a good giver of all kinds of things. Verse 13 of Psalm 104, he waters the mountains from his upper chambers.

Just neat figurative language. He waters the mountains. By the way, if you have to water your front yard, how many places, how many times you have to move the sprinkler around your front yard? God waters the mountains.

The earth is satisfied with the fruit of his works. It's God's working. Some kind of fruits that God gives the earth. He causes the grass to grow for the cattle. I mean, he thinks of it all. And vegetation for the labor of man so that he may bring forth food from the earth.

And he may bring forth wine which makes man's heart glad so that he may make his face glisten with oil and food which sustains man's heart. It's just as easy for God to water the universe as it is for you to irrigate your front yard.

Actually, it's easier for God. God supplies everything directly and indirectly, including oil, bread, food, and wine. But let's go to Proverbs and just give you a quick overview. For those who say, well, I told myself when I got saved, I'm not going to drink.

Now, pastors have been preaching for three weeks on liberty. And I think I just kind of want to now. That has not been my goal, by the way, in the last three weeks. Look at Proverbs chapter 20. And we're going to look at three different sections of the Proverbs.

And I want to remind you that wine is tricky. And wine is something that you don't want to necessarily run to the front of the line to drink. We have to be careful. Now, remember, in the Christian environment, there are two laws of the land.

One is the Bible. Two is the conscience. So here's what the Bible says. Proverbs 20, verse one, you know, these verses, wine is a mocker. I mean, the only thing I can think of right now in baseball season is, what do you say to the batter when you're young?

Hey, batter, batter, batter, batter, you know, just kind of mocking. That's right. What do you say to a pitcher? We want to, you said that in church, belliature in church. It's a mocker. There's mocking going on with wine.

Why is that? Strong drinks are brawler. It's a fighter. It's pugnacious. And whoever is intoxicated by it is what? Not wise. Ephesians says it's sinful to get drunk. And you have to be careful. Go ahead to chapter Proverbs, chapter 21, verse 17.

Now, remember, these were all written in a culture that had alcohol everywhere. I can say the same thing about food. The Bible says honey is good, but don't eat too much honey. Proverbs chapter 21, verse 17.

He who loves pleasure will become a poor man. He who loves wine and oil will not become rich. There are problems built in. And by the way, if you're wondering, I'm just trying to give you a bunch of verses so that I can justify my private drinking.

I don't drink. And you should say, pastor, we're glad that you have your own convictions, but those are my convictions. I can't tell you not to drink. I can tell you not to get drunk. And then go to the one that's the best one is Proverbs chapter 23.

We are to go so far to not even hang out with drunkards. We can't hang out with people who get drunk all the time. That's not right. But it goes farther too. It goes for gluttons. Proverbs 23, verse 20.

Do not be with heavy drinkers of wine or with gluttonous eaters of meat. Why? He didn't have to tell us, but he did. Verse 21, for the heavy drinker and the glutton will come to poverty and drowsiness will clothe a man with rags.

There's a laziness factor built in because when you drink wine, you just become apathetic. You become lethargic. It is a depressant. Then a case study. Look at verse 29. Here's a case study with some interesting questions.

Verse 29, who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Plural. Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? You tell me who without even finishing. People who get drunk.

Those who linger long over wine. They're just around the table where there's wine a long time implying that they drink it. Those who go to taste mixed wine. And you can study mixed wine on your own. Sometimes they put in other spices.

Sometimes they'd mix it maybe with other chemicals that would make your mind to do what it ought not to do. Verse 31, do not look on the wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly.

Isn't this good? Better have another glass. Why? At the last it bites like a serpent and stings like a viper. There's problems with alcohol. Your eyes will see strange things and your mind will utter perverse things.

And don't you know, you just turn on the radio, turn on the TV. Talk to somebody that's done it. Verse 34, and you will be like the one who lies down in the middle of the sea. Or one who lies down on the top of a mass.

Can you imagine? It's like, you know, I talk to the kids about drinking. I tell them it's not sinful, but getting drunk is. In our family, we're just not going to, you know, I don't give the kids a little sip so they can just figure out what it tastes like.

But how do you describe drunkenness to a kid? One of the ways I do it is I spin the kids in a circle all the time and, you know, make them dizzy. And then they stand up. And if you spin the kid that way when you stand them up, they tilt that way when they run.

It's like that game that you have the baseball bat and you have to run down 40 yards, put your head, spin around 14 times. And I guarantee if you spin that way and then you try to run back, you're going to just drive yourself into the ground that way.

Well, imagine being, here's another way you could describe it. Imagine being up on the crow's nest in a boat out in the ocean. And if the boat is going like that on the bottom, what do you think the crow's nest is doing?

It is going back and forth and you are just tipsy. You are just, you feel weird. You can't control yourself. That's why kids, when they want to test somebody who's been driving, and the reason why it's against the law to drive and to be drunk is because you can't drive very well and you're driving this couple ton car and they try to make you walk.

And if your dad spins you around in a circle and you try to walk, what can you do? Well, what you can't do is walk in a straight line. Something else happens too. Look at verse 35. They struck me, but I did not become ill.

Hey, you can hit my face and I don't even feel the pain. They beat me, but I did not know it. Can you imagine drinking something so somebody could knock you just silly and you didn't even know it? Who'd want to do that?

But you know, the insidious thing about alcohol is it snares people and it masters people because they can't say no. And you know what people do? Verse 35. When shall I awake? I will seek another drink.

Drunkenness forever and always is a sin. And when we get to Ephesians chapter five, the Holy Spirit is to control us, not alcohol. But remember in this congregational setting, there are people in this church that drink.

And the first thing that you should do is not judge them why they drink. If they drink in front of you and you are tempted to drink because they're drinking in front of you, you need to pull them to the side and say, you know, I've got a problem with alcohol and so has my dad.

And I don't like to drink, but sometimes if I'm around it, I do. So would you just please not drink around me? And you should probably even be smarter than that and take one more step ahead and say, we're having some friends over tonight.

It'd kind of be nice to have a glass of wine. We can do that in Christ's liberty, but there are other church people and why even bother? It's just the best not to. And so we have to be careful. You know, I said earlier today, legalists like rules because they don't want the congregation to go wild.

And I think it's good to have rules for your kids. All right, and so I have another question for you. If it's okay to drink alcohol, then why do all the churches, and I would like an answer for this, please.

Why do all the churches that you go to, with very few exceptions, serve only grape juice at the Lord's table? Because the real Lord's supper was with wine. The third communion, the third Passover cup.

Why do we do that? Yes, Wesley? You know, I never thought about that. Serving to minors. What if we tell the kids they can't have communion until they get older? No, I'm just kidding. That's a good point.

Okay, besides that point, I think actually in a religious context with half an ounce, I don't think that would be breaking the law if we did do that. Because it would have to be probably with parental consent and they'd be there and I think we'd be okay.

Other reasons, Doug? Grape juice is cheaper. That's true. Okay, and that's probably the biggest reason, is it could cause somebody to stumble. Alcohol smells, it's got a different smell to it. It can linger longer.

I mean, you can describe all the things about alcohol, but the main reason we don't do that here is because we don't want to cause anyone to stumble. I do think it's a lie that a Christian who's got a problem with alcohol is one drink away from becoming an alcoholic.

I do think there's some truth to the fact that if you have some alcohol, then you might be tempted to have some more. But we just do that because we want to take the high road. It's the same thing with communion wafers.

Sometimes we have the bread that the ladies make and that's sweet, but nine times out of 10, we won't have the bread and why is that? Why won't we have regular bread when we serve communion? Because of the leaven in it.

Leaven in the scripture doesn't always mean negative things, although a lot of times it does. Leaven in scripture is a permeating thing and for the Jews, they couldn't have any bread for Passover because they didn't have any leaven for Passover.

Why is that? Any leaven bread for Passover? They had to make it quick. It wasn't because there was something bad in it, but leaven has a connotation in Christian circles of something bad. And so I know people, not any longer at this church, some guy was just here for a short time, moved back down to Florida, and he said, you guys serve bread with leaven in it and that goes against my conscience because it reminds me of sin.

Jesus, did he ever sin? Thought, word or deed ever succumb to temptation? No. So when I take the bread and think of the Lord's body and him dying for me, when it's got leaven in it, I'm thinking kind of like a Jew and I'm thinking, I don't want that and so I would prefer not to.

So was it wrong for us to say, you know, most of the time besides the family times every other month when the ladies bake some bread, let's just have unleavened bread. Is that a wrong thing to do? Can you guys all live without leaven in your bread a few times a year for communion?

Yes, it's just a matter of trying to build up the weaker person. We could inform that person's conscience, that has nothing to do with it, it's no big deal, or we could just say, you know, for the sake of the many or the sake of the one, we don't have to do that.

Now if someone said, I'm offended when this church passes the offering plate around because everybody's in it for money and you just want to, you know, spend it on new carpet and new this and new that and I don't mean church carpet, I mean like the pastor's house carpet and it's like that church that I went to in Los Angeles that there was a special offering for the pastor and you had to walk down the middle of the aisle to come up to put the money in the plate for the pastor, special offering and the pastor stood there and held the bucket.

I kid you not. Can you imagine? So if I would have known that, I could have just got a bunch of pennies and thrown them in and it would have sounded like a lot of money. That, I thought, that is bad. So when it comes to alcohol in the church, we're not going to have any pot providences here that have alcohol.

Why? We don't want to make anyone stumble. We don't even need to cause the distress. But if you go to someone's house and you open up the refrigerator and you see, you know, an ale in there or you see a bottle of wine, please don't have a conniption fit.

Don't have a heart attack. Don't, you know, if you do, quick run home and throw away your Tylenol PM and your codeine, Tylenol codeine and everything else. Just get rid of it all. But we have liberty in Christ.

And if somebody says, I just do it at home, I have a drink with my husband once in a while, then we need to get over it and get on to other issues of building up the body of Christ, don't we? I don't want alcohol served.

And if you tell me I'm going to serve alcohol at my wedding and Marissa says, I'd like to get married and pastor, would you do the wedding? We're going to have an open bar. We don't have any policy. Steve's looking at like, yeah, right, that'll be the day.

Then I'm probably, I'm not asked to do this one because Marissa's close, Marissa's fiance is close to his pastor. But I'm probably going to say, you know, I probably just won't. Show me a Bible verse pastor that you won't do it.

I'm going to say, I can't show you, but you can't make me go against my conscience either to go do that wedding. And then you're going to have an open bar. And I know some of my church folks are going to come and maybe some of them have a problem with it.

So how about this? If you want to have a glass of champagne with your wife on your wedding night, then just, I'll go buy the champagne for you. I'll put it in the limo. You go in your hotel room and pray.

Say, God, thank you for grapes and for the champagne. And you're so good. And we won't drink enough to get drunk. And then knock yourself out. What do I care? But we don't need to have other Christians.

We don't need to have other Christians somehow around wine and making it an issue. But I've tried to push the envelope the last three weeks because our society here in this church is not, well, we don't obey any rules.

My own bent and your bent I know is going to be legalistic because we like rules. And so Satan pushes and to give us extra rules. There should be no rules about that. But can the elders say, we probably shouldn't have an open bar at a wedding reception.

And then, you know, here's the question I always get. Yes, but my future in-laws are paying for the wedding and they want an open bar. And I usually have to tell them I'm nicer than this in person. Believe me, I'm usually nicer in person all the time versus in the pulpit.

But I usually say, well, today's a good day to grow up and to tell your future in-laws it's my wedding. And the second I say, I do that daughter's mine, dad, and not yours anymore. But nicer than that, of course.

We just need to be what with Christians. The main thing in Romans 14 and 15 is to we are to receive them to our face. Up close. In the Greek word, it's not just to receive, but to cross receive, to intensely receive them close, whether they drink or they don't.

And if you think drinking is wrong, don't worry about convincing your Christian brother or sister that it's wrong. As they grow in Christ, they'll figure it out. They'll figure out the wisdom of when they should and when they shouldn't.

I know people that will go buy alcohol, but they'll go to another county or someplace else because they don't want anybody else to see it. I don't drink. But if I did, I wouldn't go down here to Price Chopper because what if I ran into one of you?

Schlitz is on sale. Pass is down at Price Chopper. I mean, it's just... Oh, Falstaff today. You know, it's just not right. So if you, you know, you say, all right, I'm not living my Christian life for myself.

That's the idea of the body of Christ. We're to love other people. And if you've got a husband that's not saved, or a wife that's not saved, or a grandpa and grandma who's not saved, the issue is not their alcohol drinking and the result of drinking too much their drunkenness.

The issue is they need to get saved from that sin and every other sin. And if they're going to have a party at their house and you know alcohol is going to be served, then how could you say, dad, I'm not coming over because you're having alcohol.

What you do is something different. You say, family, we're going to get there early and we're going to love on our parents and we're going to honor them. And there's going to be the party. And then as people start getting drunk, then it's time for us to go.

You just have to be smart about it. You have to be wise about it, but we don't have to run around saying, oh, I can't do that. We're to love people just like Jesus loved us. He loved us when we were sinners.

He loved us when we were enemies. He loved us when we were helpless. He loved us when we were alienated from him and had no hope. Can't we love other Christians who are our brothers and sisters in Christ?

And the answer is yes. Boy, I can see the letters are going to come fast and furious this week. All right. Let's keep going. Any comments about that or clarifying questions? How did I know, Doug, you'd be raising your hand?

No, just kidding. It's a great point. And I'm not trying to compare this church to your last church, but isn't it nice to be free from those legalistic shackles? I mean, it is great to have freedom in Christ.

And of course, I'm not saying that you can disobey God. Every time the New Testament says, do something, the law of Christ, we are bound to obey. We have to obey. We're not running around libertines, acting like libertines.

But here's how I would answer that. There are people in churches, in every church, who try to control what goes on, and they try to manipulate and control in different ways. So in this particular case, that woman was trying to do that.

What if we walk around so much and we kowtow to the weak so we can never rise and mature as a congregation because we never get past the level of the weak? That's what would be happening there. And I think the answer is found when we looked at Romans 14 last week, 13 to 23, where making another brother stumble is not their bug that I'm doing it.

Their bug that I wore a pink shirt and they think pastors should wear white shirts and the same tie every week. I have a friend, he's a pastor, and he has four suits that are the same, all the white shirts and the same tie.

So nobody says, oh, I kind of like his tie this time. Oh, I don't like his tie. And I can't believe he wore a pink shirt. I can't believe he wore a purple shirt. And you're always checking out what the pastor wears.

I mean, and I get these comments. You think I just, you know, between you and I, I don't dress for you. I dress for Kim. So talk to her next time you don't like my tie. So they ask all these questions.

And so let's say we did something different. And I said, I'm going to wear a pink shirt anyway. That person says, you're making me stumble. I'd say you don't understand Christian liberties. Stumbling is they, because I wore a pink shirt, they think wearing pink shirts is sin.

They go there for and wear a pink shirt the next Sunday. They think that's sin. So their conscience feels bad. Then it'd be better for me not to wear it. That's how the church gets beyond at the level of the week.

And we can grow. I personally, if this was a Mikesville here and everything that I thought was right, we would do. I would probably have on the inner circle of the communion plate where we'd have the cups.

I'd probably have the inner circle, real alcohol and the outer circle grape juice. And you could just pick and choose. Then the thing is, you know, it goes down the road when you're checking it out. When they take, when they pick real alcohol, when they pick the grape juice and all that kind of stuff.

And we could probably divvy it up. I would probably pick real alcohol. I just said I don't drink alcohol, but in communion setting, I would. If I've got a bad cold and I need to be knocked out with NyQuil, I'll drink some NyQuil.

I mean, it's all right. I mean, I'll actually use Listerine and gargle. I don't swallow it, but I'll gargle with it. I can see the newsletter at the church right now. And so I think alcohol would stay with your taste buds a little longer.

I think I could smell it better than grape juice. And I think it's just going to linger longer and I'm going to remember what I've done for a longer time period. But it's not worth the hassle of somehow doing that.

You know, you get in enough trouble at a church with carpet and carpet color, let alone do you start putting alcohol around the middle ring of the server.