Is it Necessary? (Eph. 5:18a)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/2/2019 12:53 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus:  Is it Necessary

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Eph. 5:18

 

            Message of the verse:  “18 And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;”

 

            This is the second question that will help us determine whether or not a believer today should drink wine which is as stated in the “Focus” is, “Is it Necessary?”  We mentioned in Biblical times that the water was not good and so the use of putting a paste like wine in the water made it better for the one drinking it.  Not much alcoholic content in that kind of wine.  However there were several times when Jesus speaks of wine, and even made wine at the wedding at Cana, and also wine was provided in the Lord’s Supper.  MacArthur asks “How could He have made or served that which has even the potential for making a person drunk?  When He made the wine at Cana, He first instructed the servants to fill the jars with water, as if to testify that the wine He was about to create was obviously mixed.  The wedding guests commented on the high quality of the wine (John 2:10), and because they called it oinos, it obviously was like the mild drink they were accustomed to making by adding water to boiled down syrup.

 

            So what we see here is that most of the wine drinking in Biblical times done by the Jews and believers later on did not have much alcohol in it.  I suppose then that we cannot say that drinking of wine can be talked of as Biblical, but I still believe it is a choice, and the idea is not to get drunk.  Some people just like the taste of wine, but it should not be done in the presence of a believer that has a problem with it as Paul spoke of these “grey areas” in his letters to the Romans and the Corinthians.

 

            John MacArthur writes “A Christian’s witness is sometimes resented as costly, but most people are inclined to respect our abstinence when it is done out of the honest conviction and is not flaunted self-righteously or judgmentally.

 

            That is all I have on this difficult subject for today.

 

The Bible verse that goes along with our quotation from J. Hudson Taylor is from Matthew 19:26:  “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

 

7/2/2019 1:12 PM