PROFITING FROM PROVERBS

“Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as 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” (Proverbs 23:29-35 KJV).

Today’s devotional look at Proverbs will be a bit longer than usual, but the subject certainly deserves it.

TODAY’S VERSE:

“Who hath woe? who hath sorrow?” For some of these men, just everything goes wrong. They lose their jobs, they can’t keep a job, they have trouble with the family, with the relatives, they have physical problems, diseases. “Who hath woe? who hath sorrow?” “. . . who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause?” I’ve known them to fall out of cars, fall in front of cars, fall in the gutter, fall asleep in a snowbank. Well, they say, he probably won’t freeze. No, he won’t freeze, he’s got so much alcohol in him that he can’t freeze, but he’ll just get into so much other trouble that a sober man won’t get into, “wounds without cause,” I mean, there isn’t any cause to it—just foolishness. “. . . who hath redness of eyes?” Yea, they get like that. Who? “They that tarry long at the wine,” and some say well, it’s okay if you just drink moderately, but the problem is that once you start drinking moderately you will do excessively eventually. You see, the moderate drinker is okay as long as circumstances in life aren’t too bad. Once things get heavy, and he runs into big problems, like losing a loved one, his wife gets sick, or he loses his job—then he’s likely to spend a long time at it to wash it out of his mind and cover it up. And if he is already used to drinking, he’ll get sucked into it really quick. There are people in missions that used to be colonels in the military, lawyers, people that had station in life and a good living. But somewhere in life their social drinking took a turn because something bad happened in their life and lost something dear to them; job, promotion, loved one, whatever—and their drinking increased to the point where it took everything away from them. It gets to the point where it gets a hold of them and they can’t do without it. It becomes their master.

You take the average fellow that’s drinking out here—he can drink and still go to work; he can drink and still pay bills and meet responsibilities—he is still functioning somewhat normally. But, every time there is a problem, or a battle of some sort, it becomes easier to drown it with liquor, to the point where they can no longer win any battles and the alcohol has taken over. Then they become what is known as a “lush,” or a person that can’t win any battles. Every time there is a problem, they now turn to liquor. They can no longer handle stress—it handles them.

“They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.” There’re your mixed drinks. “Look not,” there’s the lust of the eyes, “Look not thou upon the wine,” you see, it doesn’t say “don’t drink wine,” it says, “don’t even look at it.” Some of that stuff looks pretty enticing. You ever walk down the liquor aisle in your grocery store? I have yet to see liquor in an ugly, unattractive bottle. They are all made to look fancy and enticing. And it seems like whenever they want to sell liquor, they put some French guy’s name on it. I wonder why that is? I guess that’s supposed to add style and class when all it really does is add $20 to the price of the bottle (nothing to the quality). Well, that’s how they sell stuff.

“. . . when it giveth his colour in the cup,” that’s how they get you to look at it. That’s the problem with TV. Back when it was radio, they could talk about it, but you couldn’t see it. Now you can see all those bubbles and all that refreshing-looking scenery behind it. All kinds of pictures in order to present that thing to you in a good light. The message is you need it, you must have it, and you can’t do without it. It’s hard to do that with radio. “. . . when it moveth itself aright,” that’s fermentation.

“At the last,” or at the end of the fermentation process. At the first it is called “new wine” or pure grape juice (when speaking of wine), but after it ferments (in essence, spoils) it is an intoxicating beverage. “Thus saith the LORD, As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it: so will I do for my servants' sakes, that I may not destroy them all” (Isaiah 65:8 KJV). New wine is fresh out of the cluster. “At the last,” it is fermented. There’s a difference between old wine and new wine.

“At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder,” we see its connection with the Devil. That is why they call it “spirits.” Some call it “devil juice,” in the old days some called it “coffin varnish.” They would ask, “Do you smoke coffin nails and drink coffin varnish?”

“Thine eyes shall behold strange women,” that’s the Old Testament term for the modern term, “street walker.” A slang term some use today is “strange.” That is what they call illicit sex. “. . . thine heart shall utter perverse things,” you get deep enough into it and you’ll experience the dry tremors (D.T.’s) and see all sorts of things. Everything and anything. What is fun about a room spinning around and around, and getting sick, and suffering through a headache?

“Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea,” that’s where you get so drunk you are afraid to go to sleep afraid that you’ll vomit all over yourself and perhaps even drown in it, just “three sheets to the wind.” “Or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast,” it’s one thing when you are down in the boat, but when you are up in the mast—everything is swinging.

When Solomon wrote this, he knew what a drunken man goes through—probably from personal experience. He experimented, he says, with everything “under the sun.” That would certainly include drunkenness. “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.”

“Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise” (Proverbs 20:1 KJV).

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