Welcome to this Saturday Night Bible Study. This is Johnny Coffey and I'm at Harmony Baptist Church in Dalton, Georgia. We've been in the book of Proverbs for a few weeks now. Proverbs is about wisdom. And wisdom, remember wisdom starts with the fear of the Lord. You will never get wise, biblically wise. You will not have right direction for your life until you learn to fear God. And what I mean by fearing God is realizing that God is sovereign over the entire universe. I think a lot of times we would have a lot more, a lot less anxiety and a lot less stress if we just realized that there is a God in the heavens that cares about us and he's in control of the things that are happening in your life. Make sure that you're under God's wing of protection, that you're in the way. You're traveling in the way. We talk about the Christian life. Proverbs brings up a lot. The way of righteousness. The way of the righteous is a narrow way. It says it in the New Testament. It's a narrow way. The Christian way is a narrow way. Few be that find it. Make sure that you find it. You're only going to find it in the word of God. So we're going to start there. Let's look in Proverbs chapter 23. In verse 17, today we're going to talk, we're going to be discussing being sober. Sober-mindedness. What does it mean to be sober? Let's look at verse 17. It says, Let not thine heart envy sinners, but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long. For surely there is an end, and thine expectation shall not be cut off. Remember, Being sober starts with the fear of the Lord. Fear of the Lord, right? Fear of the Lord. What does it mean to be sober? We're gonna discuss that. We're gonna talk about this today. Now I want you to think about the word sober, what comes to mind when I say the word sober. Because a lot of us have many different views on that. Look in verse nine, it says, hear thou my son and be wise and guide thine heart in the way. This is Solomon talking to his son, trying to give him wisdom. That's the reason he collected the Proverbs, was because he wanted Wisdom that was his great prayer to God was to give me wisdom so that I might lead the people It's a great people so I need wisdom and our leaders today. They need wisdom We're going through some hard times right now. We're scared about disease and and and different things that are going on we're We're scared about the political positions, who's going to be in office this next year, and different things. We need to make sure that we pray for our leaders, pray for the right leaders, and we need to pray that those leaders will have wisdom. Just because the leader that we didn't vote for gets in office does not mean that God is not still in control. Remember, never forget that God can control. Let me give you a little bit of advice, okay? If God, the sovereign God of the universe, can take care of Pharaoh, and he can take care of the King of Babylon, and he can take care of the leaders that crucified Jesus Christ, and he is at work in those situations, do you not think that he can accomplish his will regardless, regardless of who gets in office? If our God is not mighty enough to accomplish His will, regardless of the political party that gets in the office, He's not a very strong God. You're going to see the God of the universe work in the next couple of years like you've never seen. Right now we're worried about the coronavirus, COVID-19. I'm going to tell you something. If there's ever been a time in my life that we can see God do miraculous things, it's right now. Because if God, if holy, scriptural, God-honoring things happen in the next couple of years, it can only be through the Spirit of God. So keep that in mind, keep your prayers going, keep your faith in the true creator of the universe, the one that is sovereign over everything, even this virus. One thing we need to notice is about being sober. Sobriety means to be sober-minded means to be serious. It means to be serious, okay? You're thoughtful. You're being You're being a, having a thoughtful mind. You're being serious about minded. Uh, that's the basic definition of sobriety. Uh, when talking about, uh, alcohol, that's the reason why sober is I get different than being drunk. When you're drunk, you're not sober minded. You're, you're, One of the things about drinking is alcohol is a depressant. So if you're a depressed person, you have a struggle with depression, alcohol is the last thing you need to have in your system. it just makes it worse. For instance, I'm bipolar. I have bipolar disorder and I have bouts of depression medically for periods of time. If I were to drink alcohol, that would just expand that. That's the reason why a lot of people commit suicide because they self-medicate with either doing prescription drugs without a psychiatrist being involved to regulate what they're taking, what they're not taking, or they're doing over-the-counter drugs like alcohol and things of that nature. And it's very dangerous. So I don't touch the stuff. I don't touch anything. I haven't had any drugs or alcohol or any of that. I haven't even smoked a cigarette since 1999. And I praise God for that. I do. But one thing, a lot of times we don't think about in this situation is the passage is not just talking about drink. It's talking about food. Don't be a glutton. It says riotous eaters of flesh, and then it talks about gluttony. One of the things, one of the most hypocritical things about Christianity is We will bash someone for being a drunk and for drinking all the time while we sit and we overeat. We eat more than we're supposed to eat and we get obese. You realize 70% of Americans are obese. And we don't realize a lot of times, normal, a lot of times when we talk about skinny people, people being skinny, they're not skinny. They're just normal weight. but because so many people are overweight that we're just used to seeing people overweight. That violates scripture just as much as drunkenness, okay? Moderation is always self-discipline. What are one of the fruits of this, one of the key fruits of the feeling of the Holy Spirit? is self-control. I think that's one of the number one things in the feeling of the Holy Spirit and how you know if you're in a worship service and you get excited and you get and you and God speaks to you and touches your heart and you cry and you and you weep and you raise your hand and maybe even jump a pew or whatever in some of these churches we do that if you get excited I don't think there's anything with excitement I don't think there's anything wrong about being emotional because you'll get emotional you get joy in the heart you'll get emotional but if the Holy Spirit if you're filled with the Holy Spirit you will bring a righteous self-control you will self-control in the different areas of your life, all the areas, not just certain areas, but all the areas in your life. God will bring sin to your mind and he will cause you, you either obey the scriptures or you don't obey the scriptures. Here brings up drunkenness, then it brings up gluttony. Okay. All right. You know, whether you eat one plate or you eat two. You know if you're eating five Twinkies or whatever. That's between you and God, okay? I'm not gonna sit here and judge everybody, but we know that you should take care of the temple of God so that you can, I don't know how many people cannot go on the mission field, they can't go overseas, they can't witness, they can't do door-to-door witnessing, they can't, you know, do these things because they're physically not able. And it's not because there was some unforeseen problem. It's because they didn't take care of themselves. Okay, we have a biblical command to take care of ourself the best we can. I'm not talking about being you know, crazy about it, and you know, you don't have to be a marathon runner, but you should try to eat properly and exercise. I believe that's totally scriptural moderation. Look in verse 29, we're gonna go down to 29, it says, who hath woe, who hath sorrow, who hath contentions, who hath babbling, who hath wounds without cause, who hath redness of eyes? Obviously somebody who's drunk. It says, look not upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth forth its color in its cup, when it moveth aright. It's talking about the alcohol mesmerizing you, the color of the alcohol. You know, in the cup, it looks nice. It's pretty. And when it moves, when you move the cup, it dazzles you with, it looks appeasing. You know what I'm saying? And it says, they that tarry long. It says, who hath woe, who hath sorrow, who hath contentions. Those who has wounds without cause, who hath redness of eye, they that tarry long at the wine, they go to seek mixed wine. Now mixed wine can be mixed with spices to make it taste better or it can be mixed with drugs. A lot of times mixed wine was you took alcoholic beverage and you put other drugs in it to make you know, to get you high, okay? It's similar to what people do today. They'll take a joint, they'll take some marijuana, they'll put some LSD in it, they put some ecstasy in it, make you better, that sort of thing. Same concept. Look in verse 31, it says, look not down upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth forth its color in its cup, when it moveth itself aright. Obviously, wine is red. So, he's talking about the seductive power of the color and that sort of thing. Look in verse 32, it said that at the last, it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. Okay. They don't talk about that. alcohol commercials, do they? They don't talk about that. A lot of times you can see in movies, if you watch biography, or if you watch a based on true life story, you can see. I remember I was watching a show the other day, it was a comedy with my son, and in the show, the guy does not drink. He's not a drinker. But he goes to hang out with some guys at work because he likes this girl. And someone gives him some iced tea, what he thinks is iced tea, but it turns out to have alcohol in it. And he's really thirsty because he just ate a chili pepper and it burned his face. Well, anyway, he ends up turning down this huge thing. And I make a big comedic thing about the fact that he gets drunk. And I turned to my son and I said, and I think all parents should do this. Anything that happens in a movie, you can, at least, you know, my kids get mad at me. I try to wait till the end of the movie to talk about stuff, but sometimes I pause it if I think it's important. And I told my son, I said, that's very comedic what happened there. But I said, you put that situation in a situation of you're in a car. You put that situation in with your, you're at a party at somebody's house. and you get drunk to the point where you don't know where you're at, you don't know what you're doing, people can tie you up, they can kidnap you, they can molest you, they can rape you. A lot of people have been raped because they got under the influence of a drug or alcohol and they were not in control. In other words, they were not sober minded. So they could not protect themselves. I'm constantly warning my kids about alcohol and drugs because it's, I just can't, I hate it. And so I'm like, I have been in those situations. I have gotten drunk, woke up. And half my clothes were gone. I was in an apartment. I didn't remember being in. And someone wanted to kill me. I literally woke up like that. Someone wanting to kill me. I had no idea who this guy was. I didn't know any, I had no idea what I said to him that made him mad. And the only reason he didn't kill me is because his friends like, dude, you need to go because you don't want to go to prison. And so, God protected me in that situation. I believe God protected me in that situation. But I'm constantly telling people, I'm like, if you're always sober, you never have to worry about being in that situation. You never have to be worried about being taken advantage of. God gives us wisdom in those situations, okay? All right, now let's look in verse 33. It says, Then I shall behold strange women, and on hearts shall utter perverse things. Why? Alcohol does not make you, understand something, our brains are like computers, okay. We can only spit out what goes in them, okay. So you're not going to drink alcohol and say words that you don't know. You know, it'd be like trying to say that a baby can lie because a baby can't lie. Babies can't lie. They can't, a baby doesn't know how to lie. You have to learn how to sin. We have a sin nature which makes us capable of sin. We have to learn how to do specific sins. You have to know not to do something before you do it. Okay. You can't just, you know, When a baby cries, he cries because he wants something, okay? The point I'm trying to make is, is a lot of times we act like alcoholics and drunks and drug addicts are not responsible for the things they do because they were under the influence. Understand something. If you say something, it's because you had that in your head. Okay, if you do something, that's something, what alcohol does is, and drugs do, is it takes the inhibition away. In other words, you do what you naturally would want to do if you didn't have self-control. So it is you doing it. And we need to quit taking the responsibility off of people by saying they didn't know what they were doing. They knew what they were doing, they just didn't care. That's what alcohol and drugs do. Okay? And the thing, that's the reason you utter perverse things, because you have a perverse mind. And the strange woman, think about the self-control situation here. We're talking about being sober-minded. That goes along with your love. Okay? You have, if you're single, you need to keep yourself pure. And if you're married, You need to keep your relationship with your wife pure. Okay? Moderation and having a biblical stand on your marriage comes from you obeying scripture. And you cannot obey scripture if you're not sober. If you're not sober, you're not thinking clearly. So you're not going to obey scripture. That's the reason why guys will find themselves cheating on their wives, wives cheating on their husbands. They get in a situation. purposely went into that situation. You don't accidentally end up at somebody's house drinking wine unless you had a mind to go there and do that. So this whole, well, they didn't know what they were doing. I'm sick of, anybody who used to be an addict, anybody that has that, has been there, done drugs, they know that's a load of garbage. Okay. We all know that that's a load. Okay, because you didn't get there to drink the wine unless you already had it on your mind. Okay, that's why it says you put, you say perverse things. You do not have the control that you have. We all have a sin nature. And that sin nature will run rampant if you're not controlled by the Spirit of God. And you cannot be controlled by the Spirit of God if you're being controlled by alcohol. Okay, all right, so moderation, you moderate in your drink, you moderate in your eating and you'll be moderating in purity of life. your moderation, your soberness, will lead you to a pure life in God. And it says, 34 says, yea, thou shalt be as that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick. They have beaten me, and I felt it not. When shall I awake? I will seek it. Yet again. That's what the addict always says. The addict always says, wow, I made it through that. Let me have another one. I've seen people, I remember distinctly twice, two distinct, one time I had alcohol poisoning, I threw up for three days, three days straight threw up. I was at my mom's house, I was living with her at the time, and that was the time that I woke up, didn't know where I was, didn't have my clothes on. And I threw up for three days straight. I went a month without drinking. I was like, I'm never doing this again. Guess what? Month later, I was getting drunk again. Yep. because you, you, the addiction just keeps going. It keeps, it keeps you going. You keep making excuses. That's the thing. You'll make excuses for everything. Okay. I have, I have to take medication for my bipolar disorder. There are certain medications I don't touch because they're highly addictive and I know me being an addict, I can't say no. Um, But the thing here, and the reason I bring this up is we are adults, okay? And we're hopefully Christians. Hopefully you're born again. Hopefully, if you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ, your personal savior, I pray that you would trust him today. Okay? All right? None of this matters if you're not born again, okay? I don't care if you're sober for the rest of your life, if you go to hell when you die, you might as well have been drunk the whole time, because that was all the joy you ever had, okay? So make sure you have a relationship with the Lord, but the thing is, is we're adults. You either want to do the right thing because you want to please the Lord, or you don't. Okay. So it's up to you. It's your responsibility to, uh, have a relationship with the Lord. If you want to read your Bible every day, if you want to pray, if you want to get close to the Lord, you're going to make those decisions for yourself. Doesn't matter if you work 16 hours or you work 12 hours. I used to work 16 hour shifts and then 12 hour shifts all through the summer. And then I went home and I read my Bible and I went to bed. Sometimes I just read a chapter and I passed out. You know what I'm saying? And then the next day I read a chapter and I went to work. And there were days where I didn't study. I just read the Bible, I read my chapter, and I went off to work. But I did the best I could with it. You know, I'm not telling you you have to be a scholar, but if you want to have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, you have to make an effort, okay? You're not just, you know, It's just like your kids, your wife, or anything else. If you want to have a relationship, you have to make going on a vacation once a year is not going to fix your marriage. And it's not going to fix your time with your kids. You have to have a, you have to be a godly husband and a godly father. When you're working on the pickup truck, you got to spend time with them when you can. You know, I remember getting up on the days that I didn't work over and I would go outside and shoot basketball with my kid, you know, or we would hit the ball or we'd kick the, uh, throw the football around. I hate sports, never liked sports, but guess what? My kids love sports. So I play sports. I have a Bass Pro hat. that my son bought me. We're going to go fishing this year. You know, we're going to go fishing. I hate fishing. Can't stand it. But guess what? My kid loves to fish. You know what that's called? It's called being a father. It's called being sober minded. Let's look at some verses here. It says, I want to show you some things real quickly. It says, let's look at second. Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 12. Now, you might need to write some of these down. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 12, verse 13, it says, for whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God, or whether we be sober, it is for your cause. That's not the verse I was looking for. 1 Thessalonians 5, 6, that's it. Therefore, let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep in the night and they that be drunken are drunken in the night." See how he's talking about sober? He's talking about being sober-minded, but he counters that with being drunk. The drunk is the opposite of being sober-minded, all right? For they that sleep, sleep in the night, they that be drunk and are drunk in the night, but let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet, the hope of salvation, okay? So he's contrasting being sober-minded. You can't be drunk and not be sober-minded, okay? But the goal is to be sober, all right? Look in 1 Timothy 3, this is a bishop, pastor, elder. They must be blameless, the husband of one wife, diligent, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine. Why is it every time he's talking about being sober, and he's mentioning wine, but he's also talking about being sober-minded, okay? Look in 1st Timothy 3, 2. A bishop must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober. And then go down to verse 11. Even so must their wives be grave. You see that grave? That's sober-minded. Okay, sobriety. Not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. And then it goes into the let the deacons be. Obviously, the deacons and the wife, obviously we wouldn't expect the wife of the pastor to have less qualifications than the deacon's wife because she has to help the husband. One thing we need to understand something in Christianity, God has set up leadership, husband's leader, the family, and the elders, the leaders of the church, and One of the things that we try to break this thing about ministry, understand that a man's ministry is his wife's ministry. Now, she may have other things to do, other things that she does, but her main ministry is to help her husband, okay? It does not mean she's to wash his clothes and wash his dishes and iron his underwear. That's not what it's talking about. Those things may be part of that, but Honestly, guys, if you're a grown man and you don't know how to wash your own clothes and iron your own clothes, there's something seriously wrong. But you should be able to take care of yourself. Otherwise, your parents didn't raise you right. That's the goal of the parent, is for you to be able to take care of yourself. By the time you turn 18, you can take care of yourself, okay? And we understand there are issues, people have issues and stuff, and those things have to be put into, be considered. But the goal of the parent is to raise their children so that when they become legal adults, they can take care of themselves. If they don't know how to do something, they know where to go to get that information, either college or technical school or the army or whatever. They know where to go to get specialized training, but they should be able to take care of themselves by the time they turn 18. So your wife is to help you in your ministry. It doesn't matter what your ministry is. It doesn't matter if you're a Sunday school teacher. It doesn't matter if you work a full-time job. It doesn't matter what you do. Your wife is there to be your co-labor in your ministry. And you're like, well, I'm not a teacher, preacher, blah, blah, blah. I just work at the car lot and whatever. You still have a ministry to be a witness for Christ and your wife is there to help you be a witness for Christ, okay? Don't ever forget that. Everything that she does for you from cleaning and cooking or anything, you know, if you share those responsibilities, You do them as a team. Okay? You do them as a team. Let's look at Titus chapter 2 and verse 6. It says that the aged man be sober. grave, temperance, sound in faith, in charity and patience. The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things, that they may teach the young women to be sober, or sober-minded, to love their husbands, to love their children. You notice that it talks about having to teach. You know, we're not born knowing how to love people. We have this thing where there's this unconditional, you know, people say things like, oh, mothers have an unconditional love. If that was true, why is the number one death rate of children abortion? Because guys can't commit abortion. We can't, we can't do an abortion because we don't have the kids. So if a mother's love is unconditional, why is abortion rate so high? Okay. Why are there mothers that abuse their children? Okay. The aged women, we have too many women. For one thing, we have too many women that don't respect their role in the church. And this goes for the men. You'll have men and women. Oh, I'm not really old. Well, if you're not old and I'm not old, then who's supposed to teach the younger ones how to be godly? If we have no elders in the church because no one's old, then how are we supposed to teach the younger ones? Okay. If we're all young, then we're all immature and none of us have the qualifications to teach the ones that are coming up. We don't have the qualifications to teach those that are new Christians. Okay. We need to take responsibility of our role in the local church. Okay. I'm 46 years old. I'm an old man, okay? And I'm not gonna lie about that and tell people I'm not old, okay? I am a mature man, okay? And I have a responsibility to teach the younger how to be a man of God. That means I have to be a man of God to do that. The younger ones don't know, a lot of the younger ones don't know how to take care of kids, don't know what, you know, because no one taught them. I remember my mother alone, she told me, she said, no one ever told me how to raise kids. I just did the best I could. And she did do the best she could. I mentioned the same thing about fathers. I mentioned boys. We have too many men that do not take their responsibility as elders and as leaders. and roles in the home, much less in the church. We have to be sober-minded, we have to be responsible, and we have to be that role model that kids will look up to, the younger men and women will look up to and want to learn from us. A lot of us don't have the ability to teach, not because we can't teach, but because we're not living close enough to the Lord that someone would want to follow us to learn about Christ. People should look at us and say, I see Christ. That man knows Jesus Christ. He has a relationship with Jesus Christ. And I know that he loves the Lord. And therefore I know he loves me. And I don't mind listening to his wisdom. Okay. That's what this whole passage is about. The whole passage about being sober is not telling you what you can drink, what you can drink, what you can eat, what you can't eat. If you want to eat a Twinkie, eat a Twinkie. But just be responsible about it. Okay. All right. Remember, sobriety. And living for the Lord starts with the fear of God. Good night.