Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging:
and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.
Proverbs 20:1
I was reading the following article by Dr. Shelton Smith and enjoyed his bold stand on a very current topic:
In recent years, there has been a good bit of conversation and controversy over the usage of alcohol. Even in Christian circles, some people are writing essays in which they are asking questions: Should Christians drink alcohol? What about beer? What about the hard stuff?
A better question we could ask is, “Should anybody drink alcohol?”
Well, however you phrase the question, the Bible warns you that you’d better pay attention, and say no to alcohol.
I discovered this verse when I was just a boy in high school, and it has been one of the guiding principles in my life. Even though there are seventy-five or eighty verses in the Bible that in one way or another teach the same thing that this verse teaches, I have never needed another verse to teach what this particular verse teaches. This one verse is enough to assure me that what my dad taught me when I was a boy is true.
He always instilled in his children what that verse teaches. This verse is the verification that what Dad taught me was exactly right. Basically, what he said was, “Hands off of alcohol in every regard. Do not even hang around where it is, and don’t stay within arm’s length of it; then you won’t get into trouble because of it.” Every Bible that I have ever owned has that verse underlined.
(Sword of the Lord, February 18, 2022. p.1,7)
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Sure sounds like Dr. Smith had a great father! How do I know that? His father said things that line up with the Scriptures. Also, his dad warned him about good and evil in a world that is full of evil. He must have thought: “Let me give my son some direction, and I better do that while he is young so he turns out okay.”
“Wine is a mocker” simply means that wine will mock you. It will ensnare you. It will sell you itself. After you have it, and it has your money in its pocket and causes you to have a wreck and kill somebody, or you yourself have been maimed, the old wine bottle will just sit there smiling from ear to ear and saying, “Gotcha! I gotcha!” It will mock you and taunt you and invite you to have some more.
Alcohol will not only mock you, the verse says that “strong drink is raging.” It is like a great flood that ravages the land. It comes charging across the countryside and destroys everything in sight.
(Sword of the Lord, February 18, 2022. p.7)
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Whenever I speak in prisons, I really enjoy a good give-and-take with a prisoner. My guess would be that 75-85 percent of those prisoners are there because they were convicted of something they did that involved alcohol or drugs. They were under the influence, and a DUI or domestic violence charge was the result. Many of them were involved in stealing to get money to support their habit as well. Drugs and alcohol have led to a lot of crimes. It is amazing to think about and wrestle with what their lives would have been like had they never picked up that first beer or drank that first glass of wine. That first joint has led many a person farther down the road of sin than they ever thought they would go.
Wine is a mocker. That is a statement of fact and not a question.
Strong drink is raging. That is also a statement of fact and not a question.
Great advice from God here. He has our best interests at heart. Might be a good time to warn someone who is heading down that dead-end road.
Until the nets are full,
P.S.
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1506231485086507011
P.P.S. Derwin is a Navajo who works at a Trading Post. When someone handed him a One Second After You… booklet, he opened up and began to tell his story. He had racked up 32 DUI’s before coming to the Lord and getting clean. He’s learned to trust God no matter what the circumstance and now has a patient, kind, and gentle spirit.
If you would like to pick up some booklets to hand out to the Derwins of the world, you can do so by clicking the box or the link below:
