Okay, if you wanna turn, I got, I don't know. Some things just, I hate when somebody says, well, that's not in the Bible. Like they've come up with some dilemma that the Bible just don't cover. Like for instance, they found not necessarily a loophole, but that there's a wormhole in the universe and therefore, This is not addressed, and I've not run into nothing yet that the Lord don't cover in his word. Matter of fact, it's quite amazing when you think about going to the library. I know nobody goes to the library anymore, and the books in the library, a lot of them are out of date. The handbook at a lot of companies anymore is not an actual book, but it's a, It's a document online that they constantly can change. And so that when you think that, wow, this just happened and this is against the handbook, and you log on only to discover that the law of the handbook's been changed. Oh, it's happening a lot. It happens a lot. And it's usually, it doesn't necessarily benefit the employee, but it's there to benefit the employer. I'm thankful that the word of God, though it's, It's on the internet, it's recorded in heaven, right? And with that being said, we heard, I'm not on Facebook because, well, there's a lot of reasons. But one of them reasons is, is that I don't have very many friends and I'd have less friends if I was on Facebook because, well, it's just that, Common sense ain't so common anymore. And people just say the silliest things. And sometimes we want to help people out, but they don't want to be helped out. They want to be conveniently ignorant. But I like to try to present it in a way that they go, huh, and make them think maybe in a different direction. We preached a message a while back, and it's titled, Bill of Divorcement. And the Lord allowed us to preach it in such a way that there's a lot of people that believe that once you're saved, once you're married to Christ, that you can't be divorced from him. Now, I can divorce my wife and marry another, and I can then divorce that one and marry another by the world's standards and by a lot of people at church, but God can't put me away. And that always kinda, that just kinda goes against. It goes against logic. There's a schism there. Others would say that the Lord can put me away, but I can't put my wife away. And once again, there's an inconsistency there. And so we was able to take two ideas that people are very passionate about, and in that message, we smashed them together to where it shows people that their thinking is inconsistent. But we know that except it be for fornication, the Lord won't put us away. But we are his betrothed's bride. And if we are not faithful to him, he will put us away. And so marriage is for life, except it be for fornication. And my wife, she's my wife, no matter what I do or no matter what she does. But unfortunately, there's a lot of people that see it differently. Somebody asked on Facebook. Now, I know you don't get into theological discussions, and that's why I'm not on Facebook. But unfortunately, there's people that I love dearly that are on Facebook. And then so they read me some comment. And then so I tell them, well, what the Bible says, or what makes sense, or that's inconsistent thinking. And for instance, I can remember, Now, this wasn't nothing to do with Facebook, but this was one of the things building up to why we're no longer employed with who we work for. But he was taken, when he said it, he said it like it was a good thing. He said the more conservative, the more conservative have, Amish have longer hair. And I said, well, huh, the Bible tells me that it's a shame for a man to have long hair. And then he spit it out like he was a fellow from the 70s. He says, yeah, but what is long? You know, that's what them old, you remember, now the hippies, they had long hair. But the people in the 70s, they was just ashamed, the boys were ashamed of their ears. Do you remember that? They would have hair. Now, there weren't no ponytail. We got some ponytail farmers. My wife, my sister, I'm sorry, I'll get right. My daughter was even talking about, we not only got ponytail farmers now, we got double earring wearing farmers. There's farmers now. that have holes in their ears as well as other holes in their head probably. But I just thought that that was interesting because that kind of goes against the way I was raised. But I can remember in the 70s, yeah, them hippies, they were terrible. But for whatever reason, there was men that would have their hair and you couldn't see their ears. And I just thought that was atrocious. At least the hippies pulled their hair back and you could see their ears. or whether they, but anyway, I couldn't ever understand that. And there was good men of God that was preaching that it was a shame for men to have long hair. And then, you know, you'd have one of them beetle-looking boys in church and they'd say, yeah, but what's long hair? And it's disgusting. You know why? Because it's just like I told Elam. I took my hat off and I said, I don't need to know what long hair is. my hair shorter. And that's the difference. The difference is, is that there are those that want to do the will of the Lord, and then there's those that want to know where the boundary to hell is so they can build their house hanging over it. I don't understand it and never will. So the question was, is that, that was posed on Facebook, is that, I tell you what, I don't, this is silly. This is utter silliness. I was blessed. There was a group of men, there was a Holy Ghost salvation revival that swept through the land and there was men that had stills up in the mountains. When they got saved, they went and busted them up and they had such a zeal that they busted some up on the way down and on the way up that weren't theirs. but it tells you the difference that the things I once loved, I now hate, and the things that I once hated, I now love. But you know what? Even though they might have overstepped and didn't have the liberty, as the Lord would have allowed, to destroy some other man's property, but they'd seen what that old drunk did, and they were sick and tired. They had been lied to. When the Holy Ghost comes on you and you begin to see all the lies that Satan has shown you, you get a little mad and sometimes you don't act like you ought to. But the question was, could a Christian own a business that serves alcohol? And there was those offering this opinion and that opinion. Because the Bible, after all, don't say that we can't drink. The Bible teaches us we can't be drunk. And so then, who's to determine that? But anyhow, there was one man when it was all said and done. He said, no, you couldn't be a Christian and have a business that sold alcohol. But somebody else very close to me posed the question, could you be a Christian? Should you be a Christian, rather, and go into that place? And this man surmised that it would be a sin to own a business that sold alcohol. But it would be a sin to give that said business your business. And I tell you what, I don't understand why people have to swallow camels and strain at night. What's the Bible teach us? The Bible don't say, thou shalt not break. We're going to go through the scripture. But during all of that, Some woman, of course, now let's just think about this for a minute. If I have the liberty to drink but not get drunk, let's just carry that reasoning out. Listen to me now. If I have the freedom to use a mind-altering drug, and then I'm to take said mind and to determine whether I've had too much or not, do you see the trouble there? Because the more I drink, the more it alters my mind. So how would we determine that? Well, we could say you've had too much, where you would normally say yes to a question, and now you say no. We could say then that's too much. Or if you were posed a question that you normally would say no to, now you say yes. Would that be a good measurement? And how would we measure that? And then a woman said, because who could say? Because one man might be able to have one break, and it would affect him like another man. I could have three or four. So then, what would it matter? And how would we determine that? And a woman said, she interjects, she said, we would just want to make sure that we're not legalistic. And I thought that was funny, legalistic. And what does that mean? Does that mean, dear, in America when, during prohibition, that a Christian could drink because to not drink would have been legalistic because the Bible, whatever, no matter what it said, In America at one time, it was against the law. I looked up the definition, and the definition of legalistic is adhering excessively to law or formula. In theology, concerning adherence to moral law rather to personal religious faith. I got to thinking about that. I thought what matter of freedom Darryl could have as long as he was a Christian. Because then therefore, if I can't be legalistic, the next time I get pulled over for doing 70 and a 35, I can ask the police officer, are you being legalistic? Trying to give me this here ticket? Or maybe, just think of where we could carry this out. We were thinking about that. Would it be legalistic if, for some reason, after marrying my wife, she thinks maybe that I ought not to talk to other women and flirt with them. Because after all, we wouldn't want to be, what was the word now? We wouldn't want to be too adherent to moral law. That we ourselves would want to trust in faith more than the moral law. That's just utter silliness. Matter of fact, we could take that very thing, if we get these thoughts in our mind and see if they apply any other way than when we want to have the liberty to sin maybe, or liberty to feed the flesh, because it won't matter. Just like it is with my, would it be, would I be legalistic if I cheated on my wife? Or would she be legalistic? thinking that I ought to be faithful to her, because that's the way the world is. I'm afraid today, but the Lord, listen, I'm not going to heaven because I've not cheated on the Lord, but he has made me a promise, and that promise is, as we can get our thoughts straight, that promise is, that I am betrothed to him. He is the groom and we of the church are the bride. And he has promised and gave us a promise that he is gonna carry us through. And I don't cheat on my wife, not because I'm afraid of being legalistic. I don't cheat on my wife because I love her. And if you love Christ, you'll be faithful to him too. And if you love the Lord, oh well then you'll be, and if you love your brother or sister in the Lord, you won't want to see to it that any deed that you do would be destructive to them. Because my one drink might encourage somebody else to have two drinks. I might encourage them, a friend, to have three or four. But the problem is, is we're looking at this all wrong. Why is that? Because the Lord has saved us. And because if we would choose to abstain, that's not legalism at all. It's kind of like abstaining from sin and then somebody saying, you're trusting in works. We live in such a lazy society that you can sit on the bench and do nothing and get accused of working your way to heaven. We live in a society where if you would choose to abstain from something, somebody saying that you're being legalistic, but you're not. Be legalistic is to say, for instance, Two drinks are enough. Three is too many. So let's think about that for a minute. If I can have two drinks, but I can't have three, well then how many drinks can I have and not sin? Anybody here? What? No. Listen, follow me out. If I can have two drinks and not sin, but if I have the third drink I'm sinning, how many can I have? Well, I can have two and seven eighths. And that's how the heart of man works. But the Lord's got a better way than that. If you want to turn there, you can turn to Ephesians. in the fifth chapter, in the 17th verse. It says, wherefore, be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is, and be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves, and songs and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody, in your heart to the Lord. Give him thanks always for all things unto God. And the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, do you see it here, so it says, be not drunk with wine or in his excess, but be filled with the Spirit. And there's a lot of people when they read that, so see, Christians aren't to be drunk. That ain't what it's saying. What it's doing is, it is showing two opposing opinions here. And if I am filled with the Holy Ghost, I can't be filled with anything else. Do you see what I'm saying? Look at the word. We know what drunk means. I'm the Greek word for that. It means drunkenness or drunk. But the word feel means to be filled to the uttermost. Like a fisherman's net, bulging and can't hold anymore. And if you're filled with the Holy Ghost, you won't be filled with anything else. There was a show years ago, I wanna go where everyone is. I didn't watch the show. That's not to say I've never seen it, but I didn't regularly watch that show. But I don't think in all of the years that it was on, that there was probably a knock-down drag-out fight where somebody pulled a knife out and somebody else broke a beer bottle and carved up a man. Why? Because they wanted to make it a place of camaraderie, that this bar was where you could go and everybody and knows your name. And this is why we're preaching this message just this week. They were having a hissy fit and a conniption because they turned the food pyramid upside down. Did you see any of that? And we're at one time. They said you could have two alcoholic drinks. I don't remember what it was and it don't matter. If that was a day or if that was a week or what. But they come out with a new recommendation. And it said that you should limit your alcohol intake. And people, a lot of them there on the Today Show, what we seen a little bit of it, these were people that had talked about their excess of drinking throughout the years. And they were having a conniption because this new thing that they didn't give no limit. Well, if the limit was two, and then they come out and said, you need a limit on your alcohol consumption, I would think that would mean less. They weren't concerned about somebody drinking less or more. They were just simply wanting to find fault with this new recommendation. But the point being is, the scripture here says to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Instead, I don't know about you, but I went to other states, and I walked into church, and it wasn't a place that I could go where everybody knew my name. Matter of fact, nobody knew my name at all. But we come into the house of God, and I was somewhere that everybody knew his name. of the name of Jesus Christ. And listen, they weren't gathered around with beer glasses in their hands singing, but they were singing the praises of God. And you felt like you was at home. You felt like you was a part of a family. Not because. What'd they say this week? They said they would rather nobody drank, but they were very well aware. That alcohol, I think the words they used, that alcohol was a social lubricant. But do you see here, what Paul's telling the Ephesians is, look, you don't need a social lubricant. You've got the Holy Ghost. And if you're filled with it, you're part of a brotherhood that's richer and deeper than going to any of these hell holes where they serve alcohol. And you can say what's wrong, cuz I don't have too much. But the problem is the more you drink, the more it alters your mind. The problem is if you're filled with the Holy Spirit, you'd be wanting to sing the praises of God instead of go to the places of this world. Let's read a little bit further. The Bible says if you want to turn there, you can turn. to the sixth chapter in 1 Corinthians. In the eighth verse it says, nay, ye do wrong and defraud, and that your brethren. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God, as such as were some of you. But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Meats for the belly, and belly for the meats, but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. But might I also say that the body is not for drunkenness. Did you listen to all of these? He weren't just talking about fornication. Although he was addressing this directly. when he was telling us who is not going to be in heaven. The body ain't not only for not for fornication, it's not for covetousness, for adultery, for idolatry, for drunkenness. And listen, Though all things might be lawful for me, and I ain't talking about out and out sin, but we've got certain liberties as Christians, but we better not be brought underneath the power of any of them. So many times I've heard people, the last verse of this. Same chapter, or maybe it's not, it's the 19th, where it says what? Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God, and you are not your own? I've heard them. all of these sins. And then so, they'll even say smoking. If your body is the holy temple of God, would you want to smoke? Well, back then, there was a lot of smoke in the temple of God. I would say that the most powerful argument against anything that's addictive is that as Christians, for us, and they're not expedient, and though they are lawful for us, that we are commanded that we should not be brought under the power of any. And so then, what is it in your life that you gotta have? I'll have to encourage you to think for a little bit. There's a lot that we have that we don't need. And alcohol is one of them things. We'll read a little further. It says in Romans, in the 14th chapter, in the 15th verse. But if my brother be grieved with thy mead, now walkest thou not charitably? Destroy not him with thy mead, for whom Christ died. Let not then your good be evil spoken of, for the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that in these things serve Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men. Let us therefore follow after The things which make for peace, and things wherewith, one may edify another, for meats destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure, but it is evil for that man that eateth with offense. It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine. or anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself, and the thing which he alloweth. And he that doubteth is damned if he eats, because he eateth not of faith. For whatsoever is not of faith is sin. But if we understand what he's saying here. He weren't saying, if you were all right with drinking, and you can drink, but if you're not, if you can't drink with faith, then you ought not to, because he said it would be good. It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak, but to the world that wants to do what the world wants to do. Think of these things. Why? Because they are carnal. And the carnal flesh wants what it wants. That's why the Bible don't say that I can't beat my wife. But guess what? You say, yes it does, Darrell. It says that we're to love our wives like Christ loved the church. Did he not? I beat those out of the temple. He didn't fly off in a rage. The Bible says that he plied at a whip and he beat them. Listen to me now. But if I love my wife, will I be... Listen. We can have the liberty to think what we want, but we better think according to the scripture. And if the scripture says you can't, the scripture don't say that you can't do it, doesn't necessarily mean that we ought to do it. And if we have the love of God, then we'll see to it that we don't obey the flesh. Let's read a little further, because after all, Jesus turned water into wine. He didn't turn it into Jack Daniels. He didn't turn it into Budweiser. Oh, but what if the Lord would have said, thou shalt not drink Budweiser and Michelob? I'll tell you what, people would be drinking Heineken. Why? Because people do what they wanna do. But if you love the Lord, you're not gonna do what you wanna do. You're gonna do what he wants you to do. And he said, all the way back there in Genesis, when he looked at Cain, and he says, where is your brother? Cain said, am I my brother's keeper? Well, he wasn't his brother's keeper. He was his brother's murderer. But he oughta been his keeper. He oughta cared about his brother. And his brother oughta cared about him. And every one of us need to be careful because if our liberty causes another man to sin, you will not be held guiltless. The Bible tells me such. when we read that if a man sins against his own faith, or if he goes contrary to it, so then what shall we do? We should shore up our brother's faith, and if we do, well then we'll not. be doing those things that others would find fault in. We've got a godly heritage. You can say what you want to. You can say ought not to. But there was a revival that swept America. There was God-fearing women and men. But it was mostly in that drive, it was mostly women that had seen what alcohol did. And they pressed their representatives. And we had prohibition. Now listen to me. When our country passed laws that said you can't drink alcohol, it did not prevent people from drinking alcohol. But it was that, a culture much more moral than our own, seeing the troubles of it. And we're seeing it yet even today, where we have all of this legalization of gambling. Guess what? The Bible don't say nowhere, thou shalt not gamble. So I guess as long as we don't do any excess, utter foolishness, Ill-gotten gain is ill-gotten gain. And you're not trusting in God if you're trusting in dice. You're not trusting in God if you're counting cards. You're not trusting in God if you're taking the money that God has blessed you with and paid your tenth. I knew a man when I was a kid. I can remember this. And I didn't hardly know right from wrong. I can remember somebody telling us of a Catholic priest that went to Pimlico and bet on the horses. And every time he won, he gave it to the church. And I guess that made it all right. It self, he encouraged by his own deeds. He encouraged the gambler to go down there, bet on the horse, maybe even watch. what the good priest was laying his money down. Because if I could bet like the priest bet, well then God would be for me. Because after all, everything the priest wins, he gives to the church. Yeah, I'll give some to the church too. And instead of encouraging people to live holy lives, we encourage people to live godless lives when we disobey the word of God. Rightly divide the word of truth. Use wisdom. Look to the Lord. We know that the Lord did. The Lord did turn water into wine. But I'm gonna tell you something here. You can turn there if you want to. It says in Luke, in the seventh chapter, in the 31st verse, it says, and the Lord said unto them, then shall I liken the men of this generation to what they are like. They are like all children, or I'm sorry, they are like unto children sitting in the marketplace and calling one to another and saying, we have piped unto you and ye have not danced. We have mourned to you and ye have not wept. For John the Baptist came neither eating bread, what was he eating? The Bible tells me he ate locusts. But he didn't, he wasn't eating bread, nor drinking wine. And you said he hath a devil. The son of man has come eating and drinking, and you say, behold, a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of all her children. Wisdom is justified of all her children. Listen to me, I don't know, you might be offended by this, but I don't care, because I'm gonna let you in on a little bit of something. What Jesus Christ did here, Daryl can't do. Because the more Daryl does what Jesus does, what Jesus did, the less Daryl is Christ-like. I think we would do better off with wisdom being justified of all of our children. That in this particular instance, that we would be as John the Baptist was. I'm not saying that we gotta start eating grasshoppers or crickets. like the UN wants us to. But what I'm telling you is, is that do you think for one minute, one minute, that Jesus Christ was ever a glutton? No. Do you ever think for one minute he was a winebibber? No, he wasn't. And yet, he drank and he ate with publicans and with sinners, and they accused him of what? Do you think that they'll not also accuse you We can read a little bit further. The Bible says that Paul, after what Paul said, when he said that I'll not eat meat or drink wine is to offend my brother. He told Timothy here in the fifth chapter of 1 Timothy in the 20th verse. We want to read this and get it in the context that it's in. Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear. I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality. Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partakers of other men's sins. Keep thyself pure. Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine own infirmities. Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment. And some men, they follow after. Likewise also, the good works of some are manifest beforehand, and they that are otherwise cannot behead. So I don't know the culture that it was in. I've heard some say, well, he didn't say that this was fermented wine, so therefore it could have been new wine. Well, to be honest with you, this was before refrigeration, and new wine wasn't new very long. It fermented, and I understand that the wine they had back in those days, we cannot compare it. to the wine that we have today. And yet we find Paul and what Paul said here, don't fully comprehend it all because if he's telling him not to drink any water at all anymore, but a little wine, well, you'll be dehydrated and it won't solve your problem if you quit drinking water altogether. and replace that with just a little bit of wine. There's others that saying that what he was trying to do was to say, add a little wine to his water. I'm just taking the scripture for what it says. And the scriptures, in its proper context is, is to say that you need to use a little wine for medicine. And we can think about that very thing for a minute. I went over to India, and I was told by the doctor, they gave me all manners of vaccinations, but they told me that when I went to India, that I was not to drink any drink with ice in it. that just the ice itself, if it had bacteria in it that this body wasn't used to, that I'd be sickened by it, that I couldn't have tea, that I couldn't have anything that had wine in it. They said if you're going to drink something and I didn't tell me to drink wine But I could have had the liberty I guess how to say well, I'm gonna follow The suggestion of Paul and when I'm in India I I'm not gonna drink water, I'm gonna drink wine. But my doctor told me to drink soda. Well, he said soda, but here's my chance. I ain't never been drunk. Unfortunately, when I was in sin, I tasted some alcohol, but I never was drunk because as a kid, I don't know how many stories anybody hears. I was raised in a Christian home, but we weren't far removed, were we, from the wicked ways. I remember how many stories started out. I would have never done it, but I'd been drinking. I don't know how many relatives I had. They got drunk and they killed somebody. I've heard stories of where he was a good man, except when he'd been drinking. And I always remember, I thought about, I could hear my grandfather talking about what he was and the next morning, and hearing a siren, and being afraid because he couldn't remember what he'd done the night before. You say, Darryl, all of this has to do with being drunk. The Bible don't forbid us from drinking a little. Do you not hear what the scripture says here? How is it then, if you are an alcoholic, and you've been saved from your sin. I've been told, and I don't know if this is true or not, but praise the Lord, I don't know, that once you're an alcoholic, you're always alcoholic, and you're just one drink away from becoming an alcoholic. How is it that Daryl has the liberty of a cause? I'm not subjected. The sin that so easily besets me is not alcoholism. How is it then that me and you can get away and we can each have a drink of whatever, right? Of some alcoholic drink. But I can't have this one over here to go drink with me. Do you hear what he said? I charge thee before the Lord. I hear that not to show. I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Have me elect angels that thou'll observe these things without preferring one before another. Doing nothing by partiality. How can me and you have a drink? and me not show you partiality, and I can't drink with this gentleman, cause he can't hold his booze, or he's weak, he don't have to drink with me, to hear that the preacher had a little wine for his belly. Oh, Paul, I don't know what he knew. He weren't no doctor. But apparently Timothy had some kind of digestive problem. There's a lot of people that have weak stomachs. And when they go from town to town, I can remember as a kid here in America, it wasn't necessarily because the water was polluted. It was just different, and you'd go somewhere, and you'd have you some water, and it upset your stomach. Well, the Lord's blessed me that I've got the answer now. I was over there in India, and I was so careful. I didn't drink no drink with ice in it. All I drank was soda or bottled water, and I was so careful not to drink this, and I went out. with the pastor there in India, and his daughter, but actually that one particular time, I went just with his daughter, because I'd never had a mango, and I don't know why they make over it so. It's not that great. But she said, more or less, I don't know what they, I can't remember, it's been so long. But she said, I think it was what we call a smoothie. She said, You gotta have a mango smoothie. She said they're just so good. And so we went to this store out there in India. There were very few places you went into. It was in southern India and it's hot all year round. and you just had a storefront there. And we walked up to it, and I can remember she specifically told the man, now I want you to make this drink with bottled water, because he's not, to have tap water. And he followed it right down to the greatest detail, except he washed that mango off underneath the spigot. And I thought, it's all right, but I'd rather have an orange, or I'd rather have a peach or an apple. But I got to experience the culture there in India, and it was all right. I mean, when it's over 110 degrees, a smoothie of any kind, it's kind of nice. And so we went, and we went with the other daughter. And we was staying with her uncle at that point in time. And she made me some chicken. And Darryl's been, Darryl was taught when he's little that you cleaned your plate. She cooked that chicken in what looked like a little toaster oven. And it looked like it was done. But when we got it out, I started eating it, it wasn't done down there at the bone. But Darryl, Darryl weren't thinking about what was about to happen. And I don't know, it was either because I tangled with a mango or I was sickened by a chicken. But Darryl was sick for three days. And I tell you what, there aren't no way I was gonna preach over there. David rented out a hall, and all I was doing was laying in the floor, praying to Jesus, hoping I didn't die all the way over there in India. We got the next day, it was on the weekend. The next day, gave me some big old horse pills. But guess what? I've learned since then that what Darryl needed weren't wine. He needed charcoal. And you know the power of charcoal. You can take a water, I would rather drink water with some charcoal in it and let it do its work. I didn't drink water or anything else. But if Darryl would have decided No, he was going to take the advice of Paul even. Those people would have had no confidence in me. Because there's a lot of Hindus that won't touch alcohol. They won't touch the stuff. And so Daryl was going to go over as a missionary and preach to the Christian and the Hindu and the Muslim and sip a little wine that Daryl was concerned for his brother. If Daryl was concerned for the unsaved, do you see what they said about Jesus? What are they gonna say about me and you? Once again, that is the one thing, and I've thought about this a lot. It's the one thing Jesus did that if I do, I become less Christ-like, and so will you. You ain't no different. We see how the world is, right? We've just seen this, I don't understand it, but I realized, right, that was before I had children. Tears was what that was called, but they glorified the bar life, right? And what they called them, barmaids, or I don't know what, that might be a derogatory term for all I know, but anyhow, the bartender women, and oh, they so pretty, and they was so smart, and so witty, It's just like when I was a kid. I can remember watching football games on the television. And then they would have them beer commercials. And they'd always have these women. I've never seen one woman yet trying to sell a can of beer with a beer belly. You know what? I've seen a lot of women with beer bellies, but never in a beer commercial. I've seen a lot of big burly men, but none of them with vomit in their beard. Why? Because they were trying to portray the product they were selling, which is the devil's drink, because it is a social lubricant. It will make you do things that you otherwise wouldn't do. It'll keep you from doing things you ought to do. And you'll find yourself, as some of you have, and some of you known about, in a situation you'd never be in. Why? Because of the devil. It didn't come from the devil. We know that. But look, let's just look in the Bible. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, but his son found him naked, passed out drunk. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, but his son found him naked. Why was it? because of the fruit of the vine. You say, well, that's different. That's being drunk. I'm telling you, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and Noah was a much better man than you are. He was a much better woman than you are. We can go a little bit further, can we not? Oh, Samson. Samson was a Nazarite, but he kept not his vow. He didn't keep his vow. Why? Because he liked to drink. You say, the Bible don't say drink. He did not worry about his vow. And it alludes to that the man made decisions that only a man inebriated would do. He not only was quite content to drink a pagan's drink, but he was quite content to drink it with the pagan. And I'm telling you, you can do what you want to, but it'll come with a cost. The Bible says, be filled. What, with wine? No. It says, be not drunk with wine wherein there is excess. It says, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. I ain't never seen nobody filled with the power of God that had any room for alcohol and many other things. I'm afraid today. Old Paul said, Timothy, drink no more water, but drink a little wine. I'm afraid today there's a lot of people. Today we got Pepto-Bismol. We got Co-Pectate. We got what's the pill called? Ammonia, AD. We got many things that'll settle your stomach. But I'm gonna tell you something. Not only should you be careful about taking alcohol for a medicine, There's a lot of people. It is a painkiller. For years, before there ever was a painkiller. Men had pain. They worked hard manual labor. They'd come home and they'd open up the old whiskey bottle and they used it for a painkiller. Today there's a lot of Christians that would look at me or you or anybody else and say they drink alcohol, but they'll pop the pill for their pain. Why? I want to tell you something. You can drink wine. That'll settle your stomach. But I would encourage you to be filled with the Holy Ghost. And if you are, Darryl, I've had surgery on both my knees. And all I ever took was Tylenol. All I ever took, it didn't really help me much, was ibuprofen. But Darryl can't take that very long or he starts having kidney stones. What do you do when pain meds give you kidney stones and you're hurting? Listen, just think for a minute, if only people would realize. If you can't handle kidney stones, you can't handle what is it? You feel a knee pain. How you gonna handle the fires of hell? And we'll run to the doctor because we got scabies or anything else and say, Lord, it's driving me out of my mind. I need a painkiller. And just like old Timothy, he could have took a little wine for his stomach. But he also, like I've been filled with the Holy Ghost and realized there's a better way. Now listen to me. I'm not wagging my finger at nobody. What I am telling you is that medicine of any kind comes with a side effect, including alcohol. I laughed, I can't remember what it was. There was somebody that was suffering from something and they had one of them drugs on television. Oh, I wish I could think of what it was. Have you listened to these drugs? It's on television. And the side effects are 10 times worse than the problem you got. I don't know about you, but for instance, if I'm taking some med, it makes me have to run to the bathroom back and forth. and I'm taking the med because I can't walk on my knees. I can't walk cause my bad knees and now I'm having to run. Come on, fellas. Don't take a rocket scientist. Right? Sometimes we just need to give it to Jesus. And once we give it to Jesus, the side effects of that is heaven. But, if you wanna live your lukewarm life, as long as you don't spew, right? As long as I, I mean, really, who determines what's too much? So a good Christian walks around with a breathalyzer in his pocket, and we go by legally drunk. If you're filled with the Holy Ghost, there won't be room to be filled with anything else. Now, Darryl has to be filled with food from time to time. And I don't know, I've never been drunk on alcohol, but I've drank a lot of gravy. I love the stuff. There's even some that think that I'm disgusting because gravy is meant to be put on something. And it is, but you know what? When you have a family as large as mine and they get all around the table, sometimes the only thing that's left is the gravy. And I know that here's my chance. If I don't get any gravy at all, I'm gonna have to drink it with nothing. Because if I wait for somebody to fix something to pour it on, somebody else will have thought about something else to put it on before I get to it. But you know, it don't matter. With everything that we do, there comes a side effect. And I'm afraid that every Christian can't handle the side effects of drinking a little wine. Because ultimately, if you're filled, I didn't say drunk, but if you're filled with wine, can you be filled with the Holy Ghost? We don't have to even look at it in the negative context that it is. Thanksgiving, my wife was gonna make me a pecan pie and she didn't because she forgot, I guess. Or maybe I mentioned it. Christmas, I'm sorry, it wasn't Thanksgiving, it's Christmas. We had such a spread out there and I always look at the dessert. Bro, I like pies. So I have to look and see all the pies and how many I'm gonna eat and make sure. that I leave myself some room for them. Wouldn't want to have too much ham and gravy and turkey and gravy and stuffing and gravy and mashed potatoes and gravy. I want to limit that a little bit. So, not that I was gluttonous, but I was full. And then my sister said, oh my goodness, we forgot to put out the deviled eggs. Now, I've been told by my daddy that a good Christian don't eat deviled eggs. They eat angel food cake, but deviled eggs are of the devil, because he don't like eggs. But I, myself, think that when you sprinkle, when you sprinkle the greenery on it, that takes the devil out of it. And then it becomes good. If there's a whole, they're holy. because when you cut them open before you put, well, I don't know, that kind of defeats my argument about before you put the deviled on it, they're holy. But anyway, I love them things. My wife sometimes gives them to me for lunch and I'll have three or four of them in my lunch and I'll just eat them and nothing else. You don't need gravy on deviled eggs. You can eat them by themselves. And my sister said, we forgot the deviled eggs. Oh, I love them things. Guess how many I ate? None, because I was filled. I mean filled, right? There's full, and then there's filled. And I was filled, right? I thought there's no way I wouldn't have ate so much gravy. And what was on it? or what was it on, if I'd have known. And this, my friend, is what it means to be filled. And if you're filled with the Holy Spirit, you can't be filled with spirits. You can't drink spirit. Do you see the parallel there? The world even calls it spirits. The world even says, oh, let's get together, we'll sing, we'll be friends, we'll have the camaraderie that only God can provide in its proper context. In the house of God, where the spirit, the house is filled, not with strong drink, not with alcoholic beverages, but with the spirit of God. But we're not concerned about her, brother. All we want is what we want. All we want is to be entertained. All we want is to get what I think that I need. But I came to the Lord because Daryl, at a young age, had already determined, Daryl didn't have no idea what he needed. Every time Daryl tried to get something that he thought he needed, It left him empty. How many of us have seen those? That's all. Daddy made mention of it. He'd work and be in church all weekend. And his co-workers would be out drinking. And come Monday, they'd drunk all their money gone, sucking on their arm as they sweat out the alcohol. And Daddy said, why on earth? He said, now once again, you're talking about somebody that's drunk. But we're talking about a principle here. You can either be filled with the world Are you going to be filled with God? And daddy said, why on earth do you work out in the sun? Just as hard as I do. And come after the weekend, you have nothing to show for it. And the man said, yeah, but when I'm drunk. I can look out over the hill and everything I see belongs to me. Why would any of us want to take part in something that will lie to us and leave us hungover in the morning? filled with the Holy Ghost, and we can know what truth is, and the truth will set you free, and the truth will provide you the very thing that you need, and the very thing that you need is not of this world. I know you knew all of this. We felt like we needed to preach it anyway. As you children growing up, we I can't remember when it was wrote, way back yonder, but it took place about the same time that Prohibition was taking place here in America, over there in England, and he's a veterinarian. But the part of England that he was in is kind of like Ireland. Everybody went to the pub, went to the bar, whatever you want to call it, the common house, or the community house, or whatever and however they called it. Every day, at the end of work. But once again, they can't have fun, as it seems, without alcohol in their hand. And still yet, I have not seen anybody get smashed in the face. Because they're all happy drunks. My friend, that's not how life is. I know, right? I know because I know I'm not hung out in the world. You don't have to. You can live to be 55 and choose to abstain from that. And you'll still come across angry drunks, crying drunks, fighting drunks, killing drunks, happy drunks. There is such a thing. And I can remember even as a little kid, I don't know how many kids watched Andy Griffith and seen all Otis. Boy, he was funny. Mlutney, do you think his wife and children laughed at him? Do you think they thought he was funny? When he'd come and go and he was so familiar with the jail that he let himself in and let himself out. Do you think they was laughing when they woke up and his wife, the marriage bed was empty? when the children gathered around the table to eat breakfast and Otis wasn't there because he was sleeping off the drunk. Oh, but he was hilarious the way he'd stagger around. And even as a kid, I can remember laughing. But I also had a measurement of knowing what it was like for my grandfather to have a father who was a drunk. who never remembered getting a whippin' that he didn't have the blood cut out of him. And he didn't do that because he was drunk all the time. He did that because he was mean. The truth will set us free if we hear it, right? And it set me free. I heard enough of the truth to realize that Darryl didn't want no part of it. Darryl was afraid. His life story would start something like this. He was on the right track, and then he started drinking. He would have never killed old so-and-so, but he was drunk. There was people I wanted to kill sober. I couldn't imagine drinking. I can remember one time in a particular hunt for somebody, what would I have done if I'd have been drunk? I say it a little different. What would I have done if I'd just been drinking, right? Because before your yeses are turned to nos, and before your nos are turned into yeses, they're turned into maybe, right? How many men got a good girl by the world standards to drink some alcohol? to keep on asking the question over and over. And no turned into maybe, turned into yes, and turned into a life-changing experience, and not for the better. Let's get some song to sing. For all I know, and I know this ain't the case, But old Paul might have wanted Timothy to rub that wine on his belly, not put it in his belly. But still yet the Bible says, not drink no more water. And I think Paul was on to something. I think that no doubt Timothy was made sick by the water that he was drinking. But with everything, there is a side effect. Are you ready to experience the side effect of sin? Go ahead. I was once told that while we have drive-thru alcohol liquor stores, why there's back doors on the liquor stores here in Lebanon. because of all the good Baptists. Well, guess what? They might be good Baptists, but they're not wise. They're not filled with the Holy Ghost, and they prefer one over the other.