Great singing this morning. Today we have our last of seven D's about little foxes that spoil the vines of relationship. Remember we started off seven, eight weeks ago with that passage in Song of Solomon when the couple was getting together to come together and be married and their wish was that little foxes wouldn't spoil the vine of their relationship. And that was in their marriage, and that's the primary application of that text. But it rolls over into all relationships. Parents to children, children to parents, siblings, co-workers. It rolls over into so many different things. And we've looked at how disdaining somebody will cause a relationship to fall apart. Deceptions, especially in a marriage with past sexual deceptions, but deception of any kind. Differences. We looked at personality differences, gender differences. Discontent. Just, I don't like life. I don't like where I am. I'm unhappy with where God has placed me. Distractions. As we have relationships, it's easy not to focus on those relationships. We focus on all kinds of other things. And difficulties. Sometimes we go through health issues, just like we were talking with Carissa and Spencer. Sometimes we go through job difficulties. We go through all manner of difficulties. And sometimes that can take our eyes off the relationship and put them in focus on the difficulty. Today, we're going to talk about something that 30 years ago, what I'm going to say, wasn't even controversial. It really wasn't. I can show you the journal articles, I can show you what mainstream evangelicalism taught on this 30 and 35 years ago, and it wasn't even controversial. Today, when you speak about what I'm gonna speak about, the vitriol that is used on you, the hatred that is, Mike and Lisa Redick and I were talking about this last night with Christian school grads who are in their ministry, who they've had to ask to go out of their ministry because they would rather have this than have ministry. I'm gonna talk to you about the subject of alcohol, drinking. Because in all of my counseling, over 400 marriages, I have only ever found adultery one time in which there's no alcohol present in the people committing adultery. It just doesn't exist. Today we're gonna talk about what the Bible has to say and what our culture has to say about alcohol. Let's look at the text. I'll read it, then we're going to jump into the text. Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. Father God, I pray that you'll give me the right words to say on what is a controversial subject. It wasn't controversial 35 years ago, but our culture has changed so much and unfortunately the church has changed too. And Spirit of God, I pray that you'll use me Help me be clear. Help me be understandable. Help me explain you to my listeners. In Christ's name I do pray. Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. Wine is a mocker, Proverbs says. Strong drink is raging, and whoever is deceived by it is not wise. October 31st, excuse me, yes, October 31st, at 1240 AM, that would be Friday, at Chandler Boulevard and Pennington Drive. You can go up there and drive by it, it's a mile from our church. Officer David Payne, 37, his picture's on the screen. He was also an Army Guard medic. Two deployments to Afghanistan, flying in Arizona Army Guard helicopters to rescue men shot and wounded by the Taliban and by Al Qaeda. 37 years old, 10-year-old child, wife expecting in two months with her second child. He is sitting at that stoplight at Chandler and Pennington on Halloween day, but in the middle of the night, And a man by the name of Brian Yazzie, age 31, came along, hit him, and killed him. I guarantee you when Brian took his first drink, whenever that was in his life, he never thought at 31 he would be killing a decorated military hero and police officer in Chandler in the middle of the night. This is from the Navajo Indian Reservation. In September, what I'm going to read to you is their fight to get alcohol banned on their reservation at a convenient mart. The gentleman on the right is the mayor of Gallup. He is signing the petition. Interestingly enough, the Navajo college students are petitioning against an alcohol license being given at this convenient mark because of the devastation that alcohol has wreaked on the Navajos in our country. Here is what they said. This is from the Tollakai Alliance. And they said this. In part, the plea from Native Americans is this. We, the citizens of this community, and our neighbors, and people, our families, our children, it is about safety of the thousands of neighbors and visitors who travel the highway. It is well known and documented that the consumption of alcohol in the Gallup region is a major cause of death, illness, disruption of families, and many other detrimental outcomes. These tragedies have come close and affected all of us. This is the third time in our fourth generation that we have fought the owner's efforts to obtain a liquor license at this giant store. We fight this effort because we will not stand for the destruction that most certainly comes if alcohol is popularized and dispensed at this location. Just a moment of your compassionate reflection on the disastrous influence of alcohol in our communities would convince you that this liquor license is totally out of the question. How many accidents and deaths will it take until you realize the consequences? How many lives of distraught, vulnerable souls seeking your potions will you tolerate before you see the addictions you are feeding? How many broken bottles and trashed out flop sites in our rugged hills will you allow to accumulate? How much panhandling and molestation of our young ones will you witness before you understand what you have done? Will you support our community's united and passionate desire for justice and decency in this matter? That's powerful written from a college student. Fortunately for them in October, the Giants, which is a gas station mall area, pulled back their license under intense pressure from the Navajo Tribal Council and the college students in the Navajo Indian Reservation because they're so disgusted with seeing the wrecks of their nation because of the alcohol. Drinking. I know I'm gonna hit a home run today because we're as quiet as, oh no, what is he gonna say? Good. I will almost guarantee you, you will go around the valley for the next year and you'll never hear this sermon preached. But when we're talking, it's almost like talking about somebody who smoked for 30 years and they have lung cancer and the doctor never tells them, you know, you really ought to stop smoking. We want to talk about campus rape, but we don't want to talk about alcohol. We want to talk about little girls being molested, but we don't want to talk about alcohol. We want to talk about deaths on our highways, we're going to get to those statistics today, but we don't want to talk about alcohol. We don't want to talk about the 900-pound gorilla that's in the... We don't want to talk about the hundreds of billions of dollars that we are taxed to compensate the victims of alcohol through welfare programs. I asked Mark Roberts this last week who spent, what did you spend, 25, 30 years at Arizona as a cop, rose to be the second leading police officer at Arizona State. I said, Mark, let's say Arizona State now 80,000 students roughly. I said, what would happen is the big issue that we're seeing in the political world is war on women, and campus sexual assaults, I said, what would happen to sexual assaults? In your 25 year history of working that campus and watching it grow, what would happen if no one had an alcoholic beverage for two weeks at Arizona State? Well, first of all, that'd probably be the millennium. But anyway, what would happen to sexual assaults? And Mark's professional opinion was, sexual assault would almost cease to exist at Arizona State. Unwanted pregnancies would almost cease to exist abortions would almost cease to exist See we don't want to talk about the 900-pound gorilla in the room I always got in trouble in school because I said stuff that everybody else was thinking and Wasn't supposed to be said okay, so I Let's talk about that today. I'm going to give you just some principles and you can disagree. You can say, I don't think that's the right application. Okay, but you know what? I'm not going to stand before God one day and have God look at me and say, Mike, why didn't you preach your convictions and why didn't you preach your conscience? I'm not going to do that. And I have cried with families because of alcohol. I've stood over caskets because of alcohol. I have wept with moms who've lost all their children because of alcohol. I'm tired of crying. The tears are gone from my eyes. It is my job to say, I will love you if you drink, and when you have the ramifications of alcohol in your life, I will love on you, I will cry with you, but I don't want to cry with you and your children. I don't want to cry with you when your child was at that frat party and she's now pregnant because she was raped because she was drunk. I do not want to cry with you. And when that happens, and I haven't said this to you, I am responsible. So I want to talk to you about five principles and I want to make some applications to explain to you there is so much not correct historical data about Jews, Romans, Greeks, the ancient Near East, and alcohol. I want to talk to you about that today. Number one, I'm going to give you some principles, so here are your notes. Number one, things that I think generally we're not going to disagree on, okay? Number one, alcohol is addictive. Okay? Doesn't mean that everybody who ever drinks is addicted. Of course not. Of course not. I'm addicted to food. Okay, so pretty much everybody that eats becomes addicted to food, okay? But not everybody that ever has an alcoholic beverage becomes addicted. I get that. But let's look at some verses. Proverbs 21.7. I already quoted Proverbs 20 in verse 1. He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man. He that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich. You'll have to understand that in the Jewish culture and the Jewish context, which is radically different than our culture and our context, which is a key to understanding alcohol today, as it's two different cultures. I'll get to that. Ephesians 5.18, and be not drunk with wine, and we're gonna talk about what is drunk. Because everybody says today, well, I don't get drunk, really? We're gonna talk about what is drunk, and who measures that? Be not drunk with wine, and he's using, Paul's using an analogy, but be filled with the spirit. In other words, don't be distracted, don't be controlled by an outside force that causes you to forget, to do damage to others, that you medicate yourself with it, but rather replace what you stick in your body as alcohol, replace that with the filling of the spirit that can do abundantly above anything that alcohol can ever do for you. So alcohol is addictive. I don't think there's too many people that would ever debate, I mean, the Betty Ford Center isn't there in Palm Springs because Hollywood is 100 miles away. It's not accidental. And anybody that's grown up in an inner city, anybody that's grown up on a Native American reservation, anybody that's grown up in those environments, it's amazing how much more anti-alcohol they are than suburban and ex-urban white people. I've pastored in black churches for five years, and I got news for you. Most saved black people that grew up in inner cities understand the destruction of alcohol just like these college students on the Navajo Indian Reservation understand the destruction of alcohol. They've lived it. They get it. Drunkenness is always forbidden. Okay? I think across evangelicalism we agree with that. I really haven't read too many pro-alcohol writers that say, ah, you can just, you know, just suds it up and just get as drunk as you want. So I'm just going to give you several verses. Romans 13 and that knowing that the time that now it is high time to wake out of sleep for now is our salvation Near in other words be alert be awake the night is far spent the day is at hand Don't don't get distracted by stuff of the world Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light And notice he's going to give us a list. What is darkness? What is light? Let us walk honestly is in the day not in rioting and drunkenness Not in chambering and wantonness. Not in strife and envy. So some people say, well why do you Baptists always preach against drinking? I don't. Maybe to my shame, probably in 18 years of being in this pulpit, this is the first time I've preached a whole message on this topic. I've mentioned it in passing, but probably to my shame, I haven't talked about this. Maybe it's because, I don't know why it's because, but it's certainly fitting in a sermon series about why marriages and relationships break up, because I will just tell you, it is a rare occurrence that a marriage breaks up where there's not alcohol present in the home. It is a, and you're talking to somebody that's been counseling marriages for 25 years, over 400, 500 couples. I can't tell you how many. Tech sergeant walks into my office in Kyrgyzstan. He walks in and he says, I think my marriage is over a year ago, year and a half ago. I said, why's that? He said, well, he said, I'm married to this woman, and he said, my ex is just insane, and she has custody of the kids, and I went over there one time, and she starts throwing alcohol at me, she's very jealous of my wife, she starts throwing alcohol at me, I start drinking with her, she starts drinking, and pretty soon we have sex. And as soon, before I can get out of bed, she's called my wife and said to my wife, guess what I just did with your husband? And he got deployed the very next week. The next week, he's in my office. And for the next four months, over Skype, I attempted to put that woman's marriage in Okinawa back together with her husband, who was in Manas Transit Center in Kadena. By God's grace, I was able to lead both of them to Jesus Christ. Both of them accepted Christ as their Savior. And by God's grace, You can ask Johnny Boltz, after I walked out of his first counseling session for two hours over Skype with the two of them, I was like, this relationship has absolutely no chance. I mean, the yelling, the crying, the cussing, the tears, the anger, I can't go on and on about what that two hours emotionally was like. But he came back the next week and had done everything I'd said, and we started working through it, and week three he accepted Christ as his Savior. Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lusts." Another verse. We agree that drunkenness is wrong. The works of the flesh are manifest. In other words, they're obvious. What are some of the works of the flesh? If you see somebody committing adultery or fornicating or involved in witchcraft, you don't have to say, oh wow, is that inspired by Satan or are they a good Christian? You don't have to. These are manifest. This is what, if I come into your house and there's dirt all over the place, I don't have to wonder, well, are they a clean housekeeper or not? You know, it's manifest. It's obvious, okay? I'm not coming to your house to inspect your house, okay? Don't, don't, don't take that out of the illustration, okay? That's not what I meant. Paul gives a list to these pagans, the church of Galatia, but they lived in a Gentile world with a few scattered Jews. He says, this is how you can tell. This is what the flesh looks like. It looks like adultery, fornication, uncleanness. That would be our idea of pornography. lasciviousness, that would be carry with it our idea of lust, sexual lust. Idolatry, witchcraft, that would be tarot cards, Ouija boards, seances. I won't even have a church left next week. Hatred, Variants, emulations, rastripes, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings. That's a kegger. Revelings is a kegger. Reveling is when I go someplace and plan to get drunk. I am, sister. Amen. Amen. 1 Peter chapter 4. For the time passed of our life, many may suffice us to have wrought the will of Gentiles. He said, before you were saved, you behaved like this. When we walked in lasciviousness, lust, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, abominable things, abominable idolatries, wherein they think it strange, get it? They think it strange that you no longer run with them to the same keggers. That's exactly what it says in modern English, what he's saying. He said, you accepted Christ as your Savior and all your friends don't understand why you don't have a tailgate party that you go into the game drunk. They don't get why you're not coming over on Super Bowl Sunday and all getting smacked. They don't get why you don't run to them, to parties, to the frat party in which the purpose is to get drunk. They don't get it. I'm a military officer. I guarantee you, it's the chaplains that try to get me to be drunk. My very second base I was at at active duty, my boss comes to my door on Christmas Eve. I don't ever say, I mean, I'm in a military environment. If somebody asks me, I'll tell them what I think, but I don't make a big deal of it. I go to the officer's club, I get offered. The best gift that that lost person can give me is they'll say, hey chaps, can I buy you a drink? They're giving me a gift. They don't know any better. I wouldn't expect them to know. They're blind. I expect them to trip. It's not a big deal. That's okay. And they'll say to me, they'll say, well pastor, can I buy you a drink? And I'll say, hey, I got a Diet Coke. Well sure chaps, I'll be happy to get you a Diet Coke. And I sit there with them and we chat and we talk. But when they then say, hey, let's go, I say, I can't. But I remember one Christmas Eve day, Elma was there. She remembers it very vividly. My boss came to the door. So I don't make a big deal out of this. Boss comes to the door. We had never had a conversation. He is an unsaved liberal United Methodist, a very wicked man. And he's a chaplain. He was my boss. And, I mean, it was a dysfunctional two years. I can't even tell you what that was like. Because the wing chaplain and the senior chaplain, senior process chaplain, hated each other. And he didn't like, I mean, it was just a nightmare for two years. And God did great things. The African-American congregation I was pastoring went from 90 to 450 in two years. I led over 250 people to Christ. I baptized over 200 people. Meanwhile, I was opposed at every turn by all the other chaplains. So you don't stop, but Christmas Eve day, he comes to my house with a bottle of wine. And he hands it to me and then he goes, oh, that's right, you don't drink. Habakkuk 2.15, woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink. that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness." In other words, I'll talk about it a little bit later, every guy here knows that the way to get the girl to take her clothes off is to get a couple drinks into her and get her on a dance floor. I like you, sister. I like you. Some of you could learn from her, and she's a visitor, okay? Come on. Amen. Come on. My wife and I were just talking yesterday about being in our African-American congregations and how much we like them better than the white congregations. Absolutely. Isn't that right, Marcellus? Oh yeah. Don't even start with me, Marcellus. We just had this conversation last night. Every guy knows, number one, that he'll drink his beer and he'll get the girl a sweet drink. A sweet alcoholic drink. Why? Because, number one, a girl gets drunker quicker because she has less body weight. Well, most girls. Now I've really lost the whole congregation, right? He knows that if he gets her a sweet drink, that the sugar and the alcohol doubles the potency. So if she can have, he can have two beers at five percent alcohol, and he still knows exactly what he's doing, but he's gotten her two drinks, and it's equivalent to her having four, five, or six beers, and she is much more pliable. Every guy knows this. You don't have to be a genius. A couple of my guys didn't know us and now they're writing down, okay, stop it. Let me tell you something, the guys over at ASU, they know. The guys at U of A, they know. The guys in the military, they know. It's one reason the sexual assaults go so high. What does he say? He said, the purpose of, you understand that the number one rape date drug is alcohol. It's not, oh, he must have put something in my drink. Yeah, what he put in your drink was five. And they were sweet drinks with sugar. Shakar is the Hebrew word for sugar. That's called strong drink. We get our word cider and sugar from that Hebrew word. When you see strong drink translated in the Old King James, it's almost always that word that we get cider and sugar for. You increase the potency. And it was forbidden for the priest to drink that. Drunkenness is always forbidden. Galatians 5.11, but now I have written unto you not to keep company. Now notice the difference. If any man is called a brother, this doesn't say to not keep company with a lost person like this. We expect them to be blind. We expect them to trip. We expect them to sin. We don't expect a brother. In other words, how you call a brother back to truth is if he is a lifestyle fornicator, a lifestyle covetous, a lifestyle idolater, a lifestyle railer, in other words, he's a critic, he's trying to gather a group against God or against God's man, a lifestyle drunkard or a lifestyle extortioner, with such in one, know not to eat. It's church discipline. So what I just say is drunkenness, I just don't know too many, but I wanna go back to it again. Drunkenness, I think that's a pretty much, okay, we all agree on that one. Let me give you another principle. Christians can stumble others. I don't know that that's like, whoa, that's a new one. So let's look at what Christ says about Christians stumbling others. This is Christ's word, not Mike Sproul. Then said he unto the disciples, it is impossible that offenses will come. What's an offense? It's the word, it's the word, Scandalos in the Greek land. We get our word scandal, not the TV show, okay? We get our word scandalos. It's what causes you to stumble into sin. If in its illustration, it's the trigger on a trap. How many of you have ever trapped game or put out a trap for animal or something like that? Some of you guys trapped your wife. At least that's what she thinks. That's what she was telling me last week. Okay. You feel trapped, okay, but trap is the stick. My wife corrects me, it's little bunny foo-foo. I say little bonnie foo-foo. So it's bunny foo-foo is hopping through the forest and he sees underneath the stick is holding up the trap and he gets the food and that pulls the stick. and he's trapped. The stick is scandalon. The stick is that which springs the trap. In other words, if you cause somebody to sin, if you lead them into sin, if you become the stick that causes them to be trapped by sin, here is what Christ says. Christ says it's better than a millstone. A millstone was an 800 pound to 2,000 pound stone. And it was used to grind grain. They would usually put an ox or a donkey and it would walk around in a circle. Remember when Samson's eyes were put out? He ground the grain for the, he pushed this 800 to 2,000 pound stone. Now you want to talk about cement galoshes if you're from Chicago and the daily era. This is a cement necklace. I mean this is a great warning for Christian school teachers. You understand that when I as a pastor, you as a Christian school teacher, respond harshly or inappropriately to one of our young people and we cause them to get angry, we cause them to sin, that Jesus says it would be better if we were thrown into an ocean with a two-ton stone around our neck than to cause them to fall into sin. This is a great warning to parents. To understand your kids. To understand whether they're being childish, which means they're being immature. Whether they're being foolish, which means they're planning deception. Or whether they're being a scoffer, which means they're trying to get a bunch of kids to do wrong. And your actions to each child in those three areas, you have to respond differently. If you respond to the childish child as if he was a foolish child. In other words, he's simply immature, and you respond as if he's willfully sinning, you'll frustrate him. Meanwhile, if you respond to a foolish child simply as he was immature, you'll embolden him to sin more. And you can cause a child to sin by not understanding how to respond to them, whether they're being a childish immature, if they're planning to sin, or they're actually cultivating other people to join with them in sin. When I respond improperly to them because I'm not filled with the Spirit and I'm not leaning on the Spirit and I'm not discerning the Spirit's direction in my life as a parent, Christ says I should have a millstone hung around my neck and I should be cast into a sea. Wow. So, the Bible clearly teaches that I can offend others. I can cause them to sin. What does Christ say? He says, therefore take heed to yourselves. If your brother trespass against you, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he trespass again seven times, continue to forgive him. Okay? We can cause people to stumble. Let us not therefore judge one another anymore, but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way. We all know if you've ever had teenagers. Our grandmothers told us birds of a feather flock together, right? I could go to camp with 20 churches and in an hour I can tell the other youth pastors which one of their kids are spiritual and which one of their kids aren't. You say, how can you do that pastor? Because I see which one of my kids are spiritual and which one of my kids aren't and it's like they can sniff each other out. The unspiritual kids, the spiritual kids, the kids that are neutral. We know influence. Righteousness exalts the nation, but sin has reproached any people. We understand that kings and presidents and Congress members and senators and lay state, they influence, they're influencers. If you're a parent, you're a grandparent, you're an influencer. he know that the grace of Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, for your sakes he became poor, that through his poverty you might be rich." He influenced us in the right direction. So Christians can stumble others. I've got to hurry because I want to get to my points. Leaders ought to avoid alcohol. I'm not going to go through all of these, but this passage in Proverbs 31, if you want to write it down, Lemuel, most Bible scholars believe, is another name for Solomon, King Solomon. And he goes on to talk about this strong drink, that it's not for princes. Generally, that strong drink is what's forbidden for priests when they're in the temple. It is a potent, more potent wine that is adding sugar to it and spices. We'll talk about what their wine was. But it's a more potent wine, and it was forbidden for the priests. And what Solomon is saying, it's not good for leaders to have this, because it clouds their mind. It hurts them. And then what does he say? He says, you give that wine to those that are perishing. We're going to talk about Timothy here in a second. You give that wine, because it's palliative. It's palliative. They used alcohol as a palliative substance. They used it for morphine. He says, you give. wine to those that need morphine. The pain of death is horrible. We don't see that today because we use palliative care. We have hospice. But death can be a very, very, very excruciating experience, especially in the ancient world. And we know that they gave Jesus this similar kind of vinegar. We're gonna talk about the percentage of alcohol in the ancient Near East. But they gave Jesus on the cross a palliative, in essence, vinegar. Because the alcohol content was so high, it was palliative. It was like their version of morphine. And then he says, and forget, and to be of heavy hearts. This would be their version of, we might call this person someone clinically depressed. We might call this somebody bipolar. We might have different terminologies. In other words, the heavy heart, because alcohol is a depressant, but the heavy heart is it's medicinal. It's for that person that may have a mental issue. They may be a depressant. They may have, and he says, okay, it's okay for medicinal purposes. It's okay for those kinds of purposes, but be very careful as a leader not to drink wine or strong drink. Thou nor thy sons with thee, when ye go up into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die." In other words, he says to the priests and the pastors, when you minister to the Lord, you need to have your head clear, you need to be sober, you need to know what you're doing. Now, in the New Testament, we're all priests. The book of Hebrews says we're a royal priesthood. Here was the command to the priest. So ministry was in the temple, but every member of this congregation is a minister. You are all a royal priesthood. You are all supposed to have your head clear. You're all supposed to be aware of your adversary, the devil. You're supposed to be aware of all of those things. Leaders are to avoid alcohol in 1 Corinthians 6, 19, tells us that our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. So the priests ministered in a building, but today we are priests and our body is the temple. And then lastly, of these things we probably agree on, pastors cannot be given to alcohol. Pastors cannot be given to it. 1 Timothy chapter 3, a pastor can't be given to wine. So some people say, well that means that a pastor can drink to the point of intoxication, but as long as he's not given to wine, the given means intoxicated. The actual Greek phraseology there carries with it the idea of standing beside or being involved with. In other words, we're going to see with Timothy, Timothy, who this was written to, was a complete abstainer. Even though medicinally, he could have been taking wine as Nyquil. He wasn't because of his testimony, most likely. He and all the elders of Ephesus were abstaining. Because of the debauchery of Ephesus and the sexual immorality associated with the god Bacchus, the god of wine, they were completely abstaining because of their culture. We'll get to that in a second. But he says, likewise, the deacons must be grave, not double-tongued, not given too much wine. Again, it's the phraseology of standing beside, being next to, being a part of, not greedy of filthy lucre. And then in Titus, he gives another example of a pastor, and he says a bishop must be blameless, not self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine. Same phraseology, not given, not standing beside, not involved with. Now, Let me give you some objections. The alcoholic content. So, I've heard them all, okay? 20 years, 23 years of chaplain, I've heard them all, okay? So I'm not even gonna touch on all of them. I can't, I'm not gonna give you all the scripture. If you wanna sit down and come and talk to me and we'll go through texts, I'm happy to do that. I don't think you'll be convinced or I'll be convinced. In fact, I know I won't be convinced, but you're welcome to come and talk to me. So, I cried too many tears. I've cried too many tears. And a little bit like Elisha, who when he crowned the next Syrian king, who was the general, And he started to weep and the general said, why are you weeping? He said, because I know you're going to go take your master's place. And he said, I know what's going to happen. You are going to kill Israelite women. You're going to rip their bellies open. You're going to cause famine in Israel. You're going to destroy my people. And he said, I'm weeping for what I see in the future. And why I preach a message like this is because I weep because I see your future, some of you. I do. I see the illegitimate pregnancies. I see the divorce. I see the pornography. I see the dead. I see the drunk driver. I see it. And I weep. I was, first year out of seminary, I traveled to a church in Illinois. And I went to the church in Illinois and was in the parsonage there, in their little prophet's chamber. And I was there in the prophet's chamber and I noticed the first Sunday that the pastor's wife was very, very, very aloof. And then she just wasn't, I had met her once before, about two years before, and she wasn't herself. So I pulled the pastor aside and I said, is everything okay? And he said, no, let me tell you the story. He said, my oldest daughter was a junior at Pensacola Christian College. My younger daughter was a sophomore. Spring break was starting at Pensacola. We flew my 15-year-old daughter to Pensacola so she could see the college. And then she would drive home with her junior sister. They were coming up out of Alabama on a clear day, absolutely perfect, no clouds, no nothing, four-lane divided highway. And they were zipping down the freeway 55, 60 miles an hour in a little teeny import. and said, unbeknownst to them, there was a man who got, was completely drunk, got on the freeway going the wrong way. The cops said that he drove on the freeway for over three miles. When he got on the freeway going the wrong direction at 90 miles an hour, there was a cop sitting underneath the overpass. Immediately the cops spun out and started chasing him. He was a mile down the road. Spun out, started chasing him. Lights going, sirens screaming. He was driving along and cars were diving out of the fast lane into the slow lane because he was going the wrong way. And they were honking at him for three miles. He ran his car at 90 miles an hour with a cop behind him. The cop hit speeds of over 100 miles an hour trying to catch up with him, to chap his car, to get him out of the way. And as he crested a hill, he hits this pastor's daughters head-on and killed them. The son was 17 years old. As far as I know, that son never recovered. That had been six months. They had a huge funeral. The mother, I went over to their house one day and had a meal. We sat for three hours. She cried for three hours over her daughters. I've just cried too many times. Didn't Jesus make So, let me talk really quickly. The ancients didn't know the distillation process. So when you see wine today, and you see wine in the Bible, they aren't, aren't, aren't, aren't, aren't the same thing. The distillation process wasn't discovered to the Middle Ages. So, natural fermentation can only get you to about 14% if, if, if you can seal the container completely allowing no alcohol. Almost impossible for the ancients to do. The common alcoholic content of an ancient would have been 4-5%. In other words, a beer or a little bit less would have been their alcoholic content before they would cut it with water. So in essence, if they could get it to 14%, if they could seal the container to allow no oxygen in, if they could do that, which was fairly rare, they would, in essence, have vinegar. They would substitute taste for potency. So the vinegar, nobody drank that. Most of the ancients ever drank was 4 to 6% alcoholic content. Their culture wasn't like ours. They didn't have the abundance of alcohol, neither did they have brandies, 40, 50, 60, 80, 120 proof. They didn't have that. It was impossible for them to get to that. So when you're talking about strong drink, or wine in the Old Testament, you are not talking about a sherry, you're not talking about vodka, you're not talking about gin, you're not talking about any of those. They were unheard of in the ancient world. So if your rationalization is, I can have a vodka because Jesus made wine at the marriage supper in Canaan, you're in two different worlds completely. In fact, the Romans and the Greeks thought that if you drank cut wine. In other words, wine that's six, seven percent, five percent. They thought you were a barbarian. In other words, the average guy today that drinks a beer, the ancient Romans would have thought you were an absolute barbarian for doing that. In fact, Homer, in his book, The Odyssey, he talks about the Greeks cutting their wine, now remember it would have been five or six percent, no more than seven, because after about seven percent, first of all, he couldn't get it that way because they couldn't hermetically seal containers that well, but if they did get it to that percent, Homer talks about the Greeks cutting the wine 20 parts water to one part alcohol. So it's at 6 or 7% and Homer talks about 20 to 1. What's your alcohol content when you cut 6% alcohol 20 to 1? Not much. So, the issue with alcoholic content was that the normal composition of alcohol in the Jewish or Roman world at the time of Christ in the Old Testament was 2-6%, 4-6% and they considered you a barbarian if you didn't cut it. The Goths, the Visigoths didn't cut their wine. The Romans, the Jews, the Greeks always cut their wine. So a beer is 4-7% today, wine is 18-14%, a sherry 15%, brandy, whiskey, rum, vodka 40% and up. The ancients would have never been able on a regular basis to have had table wine. When you read wine in the Old Testament, you're not talking about table wine in America. That's not the same thing. It's like comparing apples to grapes. Some of you didn't even get that. So let me go one step farther, a different culture. A completely different culture. So let me give you an example. Paul in the New Testament forbids a Christian to go into a pagan temple. He forbids you to go into a pagan temple. He says, if you find meat that's been offered to idols and you eat it at home, it's okay. If you go to a friend's house and he doesn't tell you whether it's been offered to idols, you can eat it, you don't have to ask any questions. However, if the friend tells you, oh, by the way, I was down at the temple and we offered this to Zeus and it's all good to go, you have to say for his conscience, For the impression you leave with him, you have to say, I'm sorry. I know it's a social faux pas. I can't eat the food you're giving to me for free. That's tough. But the fourth way is he says, and he says you can never eat that meat in a temple because of the paganism, the ritual prostitution, the drunkenness, the debauchery, the idol worship. You can never go into a temple. Never go into a pagan temple. Paul would have stood on Mars Hill, looked at the Acropolis in Athens. He preaches that famous sermon out of Acts. He would have never gone on to the Acropolis. You know what? Shh. Don't tell any of my Baptist friends. But I went into the Acropolis when I was nine years old. I went into a pagan temple. And my dad took me. Well, you say, well, you know, we're all laughing at it because it's ridiculous. I just went, what, two years ago and went to Saturn's temple in Rome. Well, what's changed? Well, in those days, culturally, the impression would be, well, they believed in Saturn, they believed in Zeus, they believed in Hermes. If you went there, they would assume, well, you believe. Today, nobody believes well. who believes in Zeus other than on cartoons or something like that. I mean, the culture has changed. What I'm going to suggest to you is that a culture that allowed 1% alcohol under certain situations is radically different in the association and the view of culture today than a culture that has a multi-billion dollar industry encouraging people to get drunk, encouraging people to lose inhibitions, encouraging people to be involved in all manner of debauchery. Those are radically different cultures than the Jewish culture in the Old Testament and the modern American culture and worldwide culture of alcohol. Massively different. So let me just talk about that really quick. So, Let me follow my notes. So let me talk about the words. Let me go back. A different culture. One other thing. Whenever you see the word wine in the New Testament, the word is oinos. It doesn't mean alcohol. The Greeks had one word for all grape juice, fermented or unfermented. To pull my point, this young man that used to attend our church, very early 20s, on his Facebook page several weeks ago, he went off on a screed about how alcohol was okay and everything was okay with alcohol and all that kind of stuff. And he said, and Jesus turned water into wine and it was alcoholic. Well, First of all, he's 21. I just don't think he's had a whole lot of Greek classes. And you can't prove that from the text. Jesus could have turned it into grape juice, really, really good grape juice, by the word. He could have turned it into a grape juice paste. Because how the ancients kept their alcohol or non-alcoholic fruit of the vine is they burned off most of the alcohol by boiling it and they made it into a paste. How many of you have ever had, you know, you ripped open and you took out and you poured these sprinkly things into water and it became lemonade? You know what I'm talking about? The ancients knew that. They knew how to do that. So you could have paste. In fact, the Roman soldiers used their alcoholic paste. And when they marched, if they didn't find running water, they found a well. It was their version of iodine. Military guys know all about iodine. We purify water with it. When we get to Timothy in a second, you're going to see that. We purify water with it. The Roman army would march with their paste in their bag so they could always purify water. An army that's invading a nation really doesn't need to be going to war and they all have diarrhea, right? I mean, I don't mean to be crude, but I mean, that's just, it is what it is, right? So they carried an alcoholic paste, but you could also have a non-alcoholic paste. So Christ could have turned water into grape juice. He could have created the paste, or he could have turned it into a very, very low yield alcohol, which they would have then cut, minimum, two to four times with water. So in other words, the alcohol that, if Christ, these are the only options. But if Christ turned water into alcohol, he wouldn't have turned it into anything more than 5%, which is way less than modern table wine. And the Jews would immediately cut it two to three parts water. So you're having something way less than Nyquil. way less than Nyquil. It was a different culture. In the same way, you have, Old Testament have multiple words, Yayan, Shakar. Shakar is strong drink, generally translated that way. That's where you get our word sugar, cider, all those. And some are absolutely forbidden. There are a couple of times where it's wine is part of the celebration for temple worship. There are a few times where it's used that way, but what I'm going to tell you is it's a completely different culture because it wasn't a culture in which you stood around and you got drunk. We're going to talk about that in a second. But they didn't have the alcohol. It was a cottage industry. That moves me on to my next point. If the ancient Jews had alcohol, then we can do whatever we want. It was a cottage industry. What do I mean by that? Since we're talking about Jesus, I'll go back to that. In other words, it wasn't a multi-billion corporation that was advertising to push an alcoholic environment on a culture with all the destructive properties of high-potency alcohol that destroys families, destroys people, destroys homes, destroys lives. That's not the way it was. It was a cottage industry. And it wasn't distilled. By a cottage I mean it was made in small amounts. Let me give you an example. So we know that Jesus goes to Cana. Now a wedding, Cana would have had four to five hundred people come to that wedding. It was the highlight of the four hundred people village. It was the highlight of their season. Somebody getting married. They lived very poor, pauper lives. Very agrarian. This was the highlight of their season. They are having the wedding 8 months into the grape season. So the wedding is happening 4 months before grape harvest. A wedding would last about a week. So the bride's dad, talk about expensive, was required to feed and drink everybody that showed up. And Jesus comes as a wedding crasher, right? With 12 hungry and thirsty guys. Some of you brides and brides-to-be want everybody to RSVP. How many meals are we gonna have? How many plates? We don't want... Everybody came and you were expected to... And that's the social faux pas was catastrophic. Halfway through the week they ran out of juice. Be it alcoholic, be it paste, be it grape juice, they ran out. And Mary comes to Jesus, this is a relative, it's a social faux pas. It'll be talked about in our small village for years to come. Jesus, do something. Let me just tell you something. Here's the cottage industry. I guarantee you that father would have scoured the region for any more wine. Because his reputation for the rest of his life was on the line as to what this wedding was like. It was the social event of his lifetime. He would have been all over, everywhere around Canaan looking for extra, there was none available. And they got four more months to harvest. That tells you they didn't have a lot of it. It was a cottage industry. I was laughing with Mike Reddick. We went into a Walgreens or someplace, wherever it was last night, or a Walmart. I forget where it was. And the alcohol, it's everywhere. I said, you realize that there's enough percentage of alcohol in this store that would all of Northern Israel, when Jesus was alive, there's more alcohol here than they would have had. because there just wasn't a lot and it was very low proof. They didn't have now the wealthy, the uber wealthy. They could afford it. The Roman world was ruled by about a hundred families. The whole Roman world from modern day Iraq, to modern day Sudan, to modern day Spain, to modern day Scotland, to modern day Germany. That was the extent of the Roman Empire under Hadrian in 180. And that whole part of the world, a hundred families owned it all. So they could afford to drink and drink and drink to debauchery and drink to drunkenness. As the empire declined, those really super uber wealthy families bought off the more middle classes who didn't work anymore with food and games in the Colosseum and the gladiator things and they bought them all off with free bread and free wine. That was as the empire declined. The ancients and the Jews didn't understand. didn't have access, but a very, very limited supply. Andrew Bustaboy, who is very pro-alcohol for a Christian, in his book, The Wrath of Grapes, says this, the most common wine for the modern Jew in Christ's day was very low alcoholic content and very poor quality, so it never even actually became alcohol. Now, this is a guy that's pro-Christian drinking alcohol. He says in his book, The Wrath of Grapes, that the average Jew never even had real alcohol in his wine. He describes it as aerobically fermented must. The anaerobic fermentation process to get the grapes above the must stage, as I've already explained, was almost impossible because they had to seal the container from all oxygen, and that was a very difficult process for the ancients to ever achieve. So the average Jew that lived around Jesus, around the Sea of Galilee, if they had wine, and it was alcoholic, and not just grape juice, and it's the same Greek word, according to this scholar, who is pro-alcohol, says they never really had alcohol at all. It was a must because they couldn't get the alcohol content high enough. They couldn't afford to get it high enough. They were too poor. It's nothing like our alcohol today. So why did Paul tell Timothy to drink wine? First of all, it's obvious that Timothy wasn't drinking any wine. The water systems of those ancient days were very, very poor. The Romans greatly upgraded them, but they were still very poor. It's clear that Timothy was abstaining from even the lowest levels of alcohol. I think the common reason is because of the perception and the association in a very violent, vulgar, sexually promiscuous city like Ephesus. And Paul comes along and says, take a little wine for your stomach's sake. It's medicinal. Anybody ever had NyQuil? My hand is up, I'm a wine bibbler. It was medicinal. They didn't have medicinal. Also, as I mentioned before, alcohol was used at death and as a sedative. Those I've already mentioned we might describe as people with mental disorders. They would give it to them as a drug. So Paul says to Timothy, he says, take a little medicine. You don't have to worry about the association to such an extreme that you're incapacitated in your ministry. But it's interesting, isn't it, that Timothy was completely abstaining even from medicine that contained alcohol. That would be like I said to you, boy, I'm so, I mean, could you imagine if I went up on Facebook and said, I'm so opposed to alcohol, I don't even drink NyQuil when I'm sick. I'll drink nothing with alcohol in it. I'll never, because I'm so concerned about the perception of it. Oh my goodness, people would laugh me to shame. That's exactly what Timothy was doing, and Paul gives him leniency to say, look, you can have that one or two or three percent, cut it with water, and you can have a little of that, it will help your stomach. Paul knew that they had very poor water systems. The alcohol was used much like we would use Chlorine or all the modern it was used to make water more pure Okay, let's deal with this one. I never get drunk. I know the Bible says I never go past oh a point oh eight I Never do that. I I drink, but I never go past point. Oh wait, okay first question Are you reading it? I mean, seriously, how do you know? Well, Pastor, I know. Do you know? I'll ask Mark Roberts. I've got other cops in here. Mark, how many guys have you ever pulled over or stopped or at ASU and you said, hey, I think you've been drinking too much. And they said, yeah, you know, I'm drunk. As opposed to how many guys say, I don't know, I haven't been drinking at all. I just want a itsy bitsy little titty. Right? Am I right? The last person that knows whether you're drunk is you when you're drunk. That's the last person that knows. Well, I can tell because I feel the buzz. I've had people tell me that. Remember, I'm a military officer who gets people sent to him by commanders who, as my one chaplain buddy who was passing through Kyrgyzstan, and we were having lunch together one day, and he said to me, he's a captain, he's a lot younger than I am, and he'd been in for seven years, and we were talking at lunch, and he said, Chaplain Sproul, he said, you know, he said, I could, I could, He said, I could cut to the chase on almost all my counseling. 98%, he said, if they just started with, I had one too many and I did, said, went, was. He said, that's 98% of my counseling. But number two, what is drunk? Do you notice that I said .08? Do you know which country in the world says that you're legally intoxicated? Your blood alcohol content, your back, your blood alcohol content. Do you know which nation in the world says it's .08? You're living there, right? United States. Do you realize that the United States is the most liberal on defining drunk as .08? So, You understand that Estonia says that if you're .02, you're drunk. Do you know what .02 is for a woman? 120 pound woman has five ounces of wine, she's drunk in Estonia. In an hour. In Australia, it's .05. That's two glasses of wine for a woman that weighs 120 pounds, she's drunk. In Japan, it's 0.03. In Norway, it's 0.02. This is one that shocked me. In alcoholic-rich Poland, 0.02. In Sweden, 0.02. In Uruguay, 0.03. France, wine capital of the world, right? 0.05, you're drunk. Estonia, 0.02. I think it's interesting that these secular nations that often are run, I would say, by not Christians, have a higher level of defining what drunk is and impaired is than the modern evangelical church. Yeah, I know, half of you are never going to come back again. Okay. So let me just say this. That's okay. I have to stand before God, not you. In our culture, in our society, we have to decide as believers if we can pass the biblical test that Paul lays down for us. Is it good? Is it expedient? Is it profitable? Is it beneficial? As 1 Corinthians 6, 12, and 10, 23 teaches. Aren't we to abstain from all appearance of evil? As in 1 Thessalonians 5, 21, and 22. The cultural associations do change. Most evangelical churches in the 60s would have said, don't have a beard. Because the cultural association with communism, Fidel Castro. Good grief, half my wicked, vile pastors are now all communists if that's the association day because they all have, it's not the same association, not at all. Associations and culture with some things do change. That's absolutely true. One American dies every 51 minutes in a car accident related to alcohol. It costs us in tax dollars 59 billion a year. 30% of all sexual assaults happen while under the influence of alcohol. Alcohol is the number one date-rape drug, so says Mike Little, the regional supervisor for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Nashville Crime Lab. Drinkers are 23 times more likely to have a gambling addiction. 10% of all alcohol drinkers are alcoholic. One family in three is affected in some way by alcoholism. The Institute of the National Academy of Sciences says that in 1996, alcohol cost America $100 billion in lost work. In 2006, it was up to $223 billion in lost work. 88,000 Americans die every year from alcohol related deaths. It is the third highest preventable death in our country. 31% or 10,322 of all highway fatalities are alcohol related. Worldwide, alcohol is the number one reason for premature death of people between 15 and 49. More than 10% of children in the United States grow up with an alcoholic parent. 696,000 students in college between the ages of 18 and 24 experienced a sexual assault every year by somebody who had been drinking. That wasn't Jesus's culture. That wasn't Moses's world. It was a cottage industry of alcohol at one and two percent at most. Heavier drinking causes anemia, cancer, and the cancer is much higher if the person smokes an occasional cigar or cigarette. Cardiovascular disease, cirrhosis, dementia, depression. I can't think of one suicide I've worked, not one, and I've worked a lot in the military, that alcohol wasn't significantly present. I'm counseling one guy right now with PTSD, a military guy, and his alcoholic intake terrifies me. I'm expecting any day to have a call that he's taken his life. Seizures, gout, high blood pressure, infectious disease, nerve damage, pancreatitis. Abraham Lincoln said, drink is a cancer in human society, eating out its vitals and threatening its destruction. Max Lucado, a famous evangelical author, says, one thing for sure, I've never heard anyone say, a beer makes me feel more like Christ. He goes on to say, fact of the matter is, people don't associate beer with Christian behavior. More than once I would drink a Diet Coke with a guy who was drinking a beer in a deployed location and have him tell me a story about a chaplain who drank with him. I would just say nothing. I would just listen. Because most chaplains drink. Some to quite excess. I would say probably half the Catholic priests are alcoholics. Almost all your Episcopalian priests are alcoholics. More than once after just listening, that person would come back to me, this has happened to me three times, and tell me how even though they drank with that chaplain, they didn't really respect him, but they respected me. I just got off a six month deployment in Kyrgyzstan with a really great Presbyterian chaplain. And this chaplain was a dear friend of mine, is a dear friend of mine. His last name is still. you can imagine what his family's history was in Alabama. And you'd be right. He told me about, well, we were there only a couple of weeks together and one day we were just chatting and he just went off on all these legalists that, and I'm his commanding officer, I'm his senior officer. And he went off on all these legalists that tell you you can't drink and how great drinking is and all these things that Jesus drank. And by the way, can I just remind you we're in the political season? I hope that you're smart enough to not believe everything Duval says about Ducey, or Ducey says about Duval. Are you smart enough to know that? Do you get that when you're in political season, not everything that's said about the other guy is 100% true? So, when you read about the Pharisees saying Jesus was a winebibbler, that doesn't mean he was. They also crucified him. You know, I'd sure hate to hope that you wouldn't think every one of Mike Sproul's enemies, because of Jesus Christ, that everything they would say about me, you would just believe hook, line, and sinker. And I've heard that said, oh, Jesus drank, because the Pharisees called him a wine bibbler. Yeah. And Ducey also says X about Duval, and Duval says X about Ducey. And I hope you don't always believe everything you read, or hear, or see. Because they were trying to rile the people up against Jesus. More than once I've sat and listened to that. 1 Corinthians 10.31, and I close with this. Whether therefore you eat, or drink, or whatsoever you do, to all the glory of God. In our culture, with the rapes, the incest, the murders, The murder suicides, you see a murder suicide on television, I will guarantee you alcohol's in the middle of it. I will guarantee you there was fornication or adultery. I will guarantee you there was cheating. I will guarantee you there's a problem. And then there's a murder suicide. And I will guarantee you alcohol was a part of the adultery. It was a part of the murder. It was a part of the suicide. I will just almost always guarantee that's true. Am I responsible when I stumble a brother? Yeah, well, I can handle my alcohol, but you don't know somebody that watches you can't. If anybody can't handle alcohol, I'm making that assumption. 1 Corinthians 10 31 says, whatever you do, I tell you what, I would rather put three poisonous rattlesnakes in my kid's crib when they were two years old than to drink alcohol in front of them. Because the likelihood of the death and destruction and the consequences of my example in front of them are breathtaking. I've watched it, I've lived it, I've cried through it, I've seen it. Go up to the Navajo Indian Reservation and ask those community college kids. Many of them have been raped by uncles who are imbibed with alcohol. That's why they're so anti-alcohol. I don't think in our present culture A Christian can bring glory to God with the knowledge that they have about the levels of alcohol and modern alcohol, the destructive influence of alcohol that it has on people in today's society, the drunkenness and vulgar behavior exhibited with alcohol in today's world, and the distance alcohol regularly places between a creature and his creator and still drink. I just don't. And you can disagree with me. But what I've done today is I've done my due diligence. I'll cry with you when you reap the consequences of alcohol. I will cry with you when your kids reap the consequences. You say, pastor, why do you take such an unpopular position? Why do you take such a politically incorrect position? Two commands, love God, love your neighbor. I love you. I love you. I love your kids. I love your grandkids that aren't born yet. I love your great grandkids that aren't born yet. I don't want to see you go through what I've gone through. And some of you have been raped by somebody inebriated, I guarantee it, or somebody under the influence. Some of you have lost a parent to alcohol. Some of you have people you love in jail because of alcohol. You know what I'm saying is true. Our society is not wanting to talk about the 900 pound gorilla in the middle of the room. And we are paying extreme tax dollars to mitigate the influence of alcohol in our society. And it's not working. Lives are destroyed, families are ruined, relationships are destroyed. I think it's the most potent D in the list. Father God, thank you so much for your word.