The Wisdom of Christian Company - Words of the Wise

You take your Bible and turn to Proverbs 23.

Proverbs 23, here in a moment, will begin in verse 19.

Let me read to you

a couple of passages in the New Testament.

1 Corinthians 15.33 reads, Do not be deceived.

Bad company corrupts good morals.

James chapter 4 and verse 4 says this, Don't you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?

James 4 · chapter mention

So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God.

Entitled the message, The Wisdom of Christian Company.

God takes it seriously on who it is that you hang out with.

He is concerned about who you keep company with.

And we're going to see that today in our text of Scripture because in the same way that our Heavenly Father is concerned about who we keep company with, so is your pastor concerned about who you keep company with, and so is an earthly father concerned about his children.

And so we want to see the wisdom of Christian company, and we begin reading in verse 19.

Follow along as I read.

Listen, my son, and be wise.

Keep your mind on the right course.

Do not associate with those who drink too much wine or with those who gorge themselves on meat.

For the drunkard and the glutton will become poor, and grogginess will clothe them in rags.

Good night, preacher, you're coming out swinging today, amen?

Let me give you the first thing I want you to take note of from this text, and that is this.

When it comes to keeping company, we need to avoid the indulgent.

We need to avoid the indulgent.

He begins in verse 19 with an introduction, which is the style that Solomon gives.

It's a reminder that you're to listen to words of wisdom.

Listen, my son.

Yes, you, he's saying, be wise.

Keep your mind, keep your heart on the straight and narrow.

And then he says, and here's what I mean by that, don't associate with.

The Hebrew words there are don't be with.

The word be means to be, and it's who you are, but also to become.

The idea is that you are with someone.

You not only are with them physically, but you are with them spiritually and emotionally.

You are identifying with this group of people.

There are some people that you need to associate with, and there are others you need to stay away from.

In this case, he starts by saying, here's a group of people you need to stay away from.

Don't be with them.

And he says specifically, two groups, those who drink too much wine, those who gorge themselves on meat.

These are parallel groups, and what he means by this is where they overlap in meaning.

So let's look at what he means to say.

With those who drink too much wine.

A little bit of background and a little bit of how to study the Bible.

It is not appropriate and fair and accurate...

to use a definition that we have today and to apply today's definition of something to the Bible across the board.

For example, if I use the word wine in our vernacular today, that pretty much means an alcoholic beverage.

If I say wine, you're thinking, that thing has alcohol in it.

However, in both the New Testament and the Old Testament, They would use the word wine to describe alcoholic beverage from the grape and to describe non-alcoholic drink.

We call that grape juice today.

And so they use the same word wine in both contexts.

In fact, the word wine is also used to refer to the juice of the grape while it is still inside the grape.

And so you have this word that we automatically think means an alcoholic beverage, and we then apply that to the biblical text, not worried about the context that's being taught, and we think every time we see the word wine, it means alcoholic beverage.

Y'all follow with me so far?

Now, when we look at the Old Testament and the New Testament, and we look at how that wine was made, let me try to explain a little bit to you about that.

the first thing they would do is they would harvest the grape.

Those grapes would start, and there were a whole bunch of different types of grapes.

There were some that would harvest during just a few weeks.

There were some that would harvest twice in a season.

There were some that would harvest in July.

There were some that would harvest like in December.

There was a wide range of grapes.

You would harvest them, and then you would squeeze them, and you would extract the juice from the grape.

How many of you have seen the I Love Lucy episode where they're stomping out the grapes, right?

That's what comes to mind.

That's legitimately what they would do.

They would stomp on the grapes and the juice would come out.

Now, the juice that came out when they stomped on the grapes was known as wine.

It was sweet wine.

It was the first of the wine, and it was not alcoholic at all.

In fact, it had a very high sugar content, and therefore it had a very sweet taste.

And the Bible calls that wine.

Well, then if you wanted to have fermented wine, if you want to have alcoholic wine, then you would allow it to ferment.

Well, what happened is there's yeast in that juice and there's sugar in that juice and the yeast and the sugar would combine and go back to your chemistry class.

They would combine those elements and then the end result was alcohol and carbon dioxide.

And then the drink became alcoholic.

Well, the sweet wine had a high sugar content.

It was sweet to taste.

But the alcoholic wine was without all the sugar, and it was nasty to taste.

In fact, in order to like that, you had to acquire a taste for it.

In order to make sweet alcoholic wine, they would actually take the new wine, the sweet wine, and would mix it in with the alcoholic wine to do that.

Now...

In Bible times, primarily, they would drink water.

Now, I've been studying on this, and I've learned a few things that, frankly, I had a different understanding on, and I've taught this.

Did you know there is nowhere, I've been taught, that their water sources were bad, and they would use alcoholic wine to purify that water?

There ain't nowhere in the Bible that it says that that's what happens.

Preacher, why do you say that?

Well, I read commentaries like you, and I trust some guy, and some bozo got it wrong, and so now I messed up.

Do you know if you look at a map, most cities have a river running through it?

Did you know that?

Cities do not get populated if they don't have a source of pure, clean drinking water.

Now, we got populated with some drinking water in Lafayette.

I don't know what happened over time, but I ain't drinking the Vermilion.

I'm telling you that right now.

Neither are you, hopefully.

But the point being is that those cities are not going to gather unless they have some source of water.

Those people in ancient days, they knew how to find good water.

They knew how to dig wells.

Do you know what they would do when the water wasn't drinkable?

They would boil that water to purify it so they could drink it.

They knew how to do those things.

So the idea that they used alcohol to purify water to drink it, there's no history behind that.

They would drink water.

That was their primary drink.

They would drink wine.

Non-alcoholic wine at special occasions because most didn't have vineyards and it cost money to do that.

And so they would do that on special occasions.

Now, I have been told that you would have wine and in that climate there was new fresh wine and then very soon thereafter it would begin to ferment and turn alcoholic really quick.

Have y'all heard that too?

And they said, well, until the 1800s with pasteurization and Welch's grape juice, that there was no way to preserve sweet wine.

That is false.

You say, well, why is that a big deal?

Well, if you harvest it in the fall and you drink it at Passover in the spring, it had to have been fermented by then because you can't keep...

Sweet wine.

Well, they could keep sweet wine.

There's nine different ways that they could keep sweet wine.

I'll give you one.

They would take the sweet wine and they would boil it, and when they boiled it, it would turn into a very thick substance.

It would be like a molasses.

Many people call it a wine molasses.

It's very thick.

You can't drink it.

But it was a concentrate, and they would store that concentrate, and that concentrate would not ferment.

It would stay sweet.

And it could last for months and months and months.

And they would travel with that.

They'd go to a new place.

And they would pour a little bit of molasses in a cup.

They'd put water in there and mix it up a little bit.

And guess what they had?

Wine.

But they had non-alcoholic sweet wine.

And so that could last for a long time.

So when they had the Passover, they say we need some wine.

They did not have to go get the alcoholic stuff and pull it out.

What they would do is they would pull out this sweet wine that they had preserved.

There are eight other ways that they would preserve that.

I didn't know about that until just recently.

I just assumed what all the smart people told me, which was that they couldn't do that until 150 years ago, which means everything they drank in the Bible had to have been alcoholic wine.

Did y'all know?

Maybe y'all knew this already.

I don't know.

With alcoholic wine, it goes from sweet wine, it then turns into alcoholic wine, but if you don't preserve that, it turns into a wine vinegar that you can't really drink.

It's nasty, nasty, nasty.

This wine vinegar.

In fact, they tried to give some of that wine vinegar to Jesus when he was on the cross.

Do you remember that?

And he said, oh, I want that.

And so you have to preserve that as well.

If you're going to have an alcoholic beverage, you have to be intentional about that thing.

So let me go back.

My translation here says someone who drinks much wine, which gives us the idea that it's okay to drink a little bit of wine.

That is kind of like me saying you do not need to go swimming with the great white sharks while they're in a feeding frenzy, but it's okay for you to jump in when they're not.

Hello! So that is a decent translation, but here is what this word means.

This word is referring to someone who is drinking wine in order to get drunk.

It is someone drinking wine in order to get drunk.

It becomes something that is indulging in...

This alcohol.

That's what we're talking about here when he says, those who drink too much wine.

It's those who are drinking with the purpose of getting drunk.

Now, you then look at this second group of people.

And as I'm talking about this second group of people, I'm going to go ahead and suck in while we're talking about this.

For those who gorge themselves on meat.

Literally, it says, those who are frivolous eaters of meat.

It means they don't consider it.

There's no self-control here.

They just go at it.

Now, meat was not their primary food.

They did not have the...

access that we have to meat.

Man, we can go to the grocery store, get whatever cut we want, pretty much anything we want, and we've got it.

And if it's not at that store, you can find it somewhere else.

They didn't have that.

It was very expensive to have meat because something had to die in order for you to have meat.

They didn't eat that for every meal.

They had it on special occasions.

And in order for someone to be frivolous with meat, that means that it had to be a priority for them.

They had to spend a lot of money on that and a lot of time on that and go after that.

This idea of being frivolous on meat, this Gluttony means that they are out of control with eating.

They're out of control and it becomes the focus of their life.

I was talking about this sermon with our deacons during prayer time.

And one of them said, well, this talks about wine and meat.

It is not applied to donuts.

The heart

behind both of these is that both of these scenarios is someone else.

who has their main focus in life is indulging on these things.

These people are indulging on alcohol.

They're indulging on meat.

And listen to what this leads to in Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 18 through 21.

Deuteronomy 21:18–21

Listen to what it says.

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son...

He doesn't obey us.

He's a glutton and a drunkard.

That's the two words that we're looking at here.

Goodness.

Goodness.

That just got serious, didn't it?

You must purge the evil from you, and all Israel will hear and be afraid.

What's the evil there to purge?

It's the disobedient son.

It's the glutton.

It's the drunkard.

That's the one that's got to be purged.

Isaiah 56, 10.

Israel's watchmen are blind, all of them.

They know nothing.

All of them are mute dogs.

They cannot bark.

They dream, lie down, and love to sleep.

He's talking about the leaders.

These dogs have fierce appetites.

They never have enough.

And they are shepherds who have no discernment.

All of them turn to their own way, every last one for his own profit.

Here's where these words come in.

Come, let us get some wine.

Let's guzzle some beer.

And tomorrow will be like today, only far better.

You have men that are separated from reality.

They are characterized by laziness and self-control and carelessness and worthlessness.

They are characterized by an idol of worship, which is their alcohol or their appetite.

These are the ones that we are not to associate with.

These are the ones that we are to stay away from.

And why?

What is the danger?

Well, look back in verse 21.

For the drunkard and the glutton will become poor, and grogginess will clothe them in rags.

The idea of becoming poor means that you lose your possessions and your assets.

Well, how is it that we lose those possessions and assets?

Well, when you're an alcoholic, you give them away.

When you're a glutton, you give them away.

You do it to yourself.

It's not taken from you.

You give it away.

You give it away.

You become poor.

You get robbed.

You then become poor.

You say, oh, well, I have seen some men who are very wealthy who engage in alcohol.

I've seen folks who are very wealthy that engage in these type of parties and this revelry.

They are not in rags.

They are not robbed.

You haven't seen the end of the story yet.

Wait until their marriage is in shambles.

Poverty is not necessarily defined by how much money is in the bank account.

I promise you there are poor folks that are happier than some rich folks are.

I will tell you that this alcohol and that this gluttony and that these things will destroy your life when you identify with them.

I'm reminded of Lot in the Bible.

Abraham had a nephew named Lot.

They became wealthy, both of them.

They had so many possessions that the land wasn't big enough for them.

And so they decided to split up.

Do you remember the story?

Lot looked over to the east and he saw the valley of the Jordan River and the valley around the Dead Sea.

And it was very plush and luscious and beautiful.

And he said, I think I'm going to go there.

And so he moved there and he moved near a couple of cities named Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Bible says that he pitched his tent, that he moved his compound outside the city of Sodom and Gomorrah.

We read a few chapters and we forget about Lot.

And then we come back to Lot and now he is not living outside the city.

He is now living in a house inside the city.

We read on and we find that he is sitting at the city gate, which is where the city leaders would sit.

Later, when the men come to abuse the angels, he goes out to defend them and says, My brothers! He went from living outside to living inside to being one of their leader and then identifying them as brothers.

And what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah?

They were full of sin and debauchery and the fire from heaven fell and the sulfur fell and those cities were destroyed.

And what happened to Lot?

Lot lost his house.

He lost his possessions.

He lost his wife.

And when we finish the story of Lot, Lot is hiding in a cave in the mountains with two incestuous daughters.

Why?

because he associated with the wrong people.

My friends, who you associate will determine who you are, what you do, and what results in your life.

You associate with these indulgent, my friends, you will get the end result that the indulgent have, and it will be misery.

How many a family has been ripped apart by these things?

How many a life has been destroyed by these things?

I cannot count how many graves are full of people who have been destroyed by these things, yet we dabble in them.

Let me ask you a few questions.

Are you ready?

Are you ready?

If I am a Christian...

who is walking in wisdom and wants to please the Lord, can I go to a drinking party?

No?

If

I am a Christian who wants to follow Jesus and live in wisdom, can I host a drinking party?

Y'all don't have to answer this out loud because it's going to get a little tighter here shortly.

I'm building to something.

If I am a Christian and I want to walk in wisdom and honor the Lord, can I serve alcohol at my wedding reception?

Should I even go to that wedding reception?

If I am a Christian that wants to walk in wisdom and I don't want to associate with this stuff, can I go to the Mardi Gras ball?

Can I be a member of a Mardi Gras crew?

Oh, son.

Did I just blow up my microphone?

Did I just hear that happen?

We're getting in it now, aren't we?

My friends, Jesus says, stay away from them.

You ought to do it.

You ought to do it.

Well, Preacher, you've done enough.

Can we move on?

Okay, okay.

Number two.

Well, that's number one.

What's number two?

Well, here we go.

Look down at verse 26.

My son, give me your

heart.

Let your eyes observe my ways.

Another introduction similar to what he said before.

For a prostitute is a deep pit and a wayward woman is a narrow well.

Indeed, she sets an ambush like a robber and increases the number of unfaithful people.

We are to avoid the indulgent.

Secondly, we are to avoid the immoral.

Avoid the immoral.

He gives a warning against associating with the sexually immoral.

He uses these two women as a description for that immorality.

And he says, don't associate with them.

Think about the world and the culture in which we live.

You cannot watch five minutes of a TV show without coming across immorality.

In fact, I try to watch things that are amoral.

They're not going to have a lot of immorality.

I try to watch those things like a ballgame.

I've got to close my eyes during the commercials on a ballgame.

Can I get a witness on that?

Our world is totally full of it.

It is full of it on TV.

It is full of it in our music.

Goodness.

They cannot write a song anymore that doesn't have to do with drinking and womanizing.

That's about all they can do.

And country music today, all it's about is driving around with a girl on the back of the pickup truck.

Is that all we got to do in country music these days?

You say, well, you sound like an old curmudgeon.

Maybe I am.

But look at the music.

Look at the music videos.

Mamas, try to go shopping for your teenage daughter and tell me that this world is not trying to sexualize your children.

It's hard to find clothes that's modest today.

Look at the fads.

They're getting worse and worse, not better and better.

Look at the peer pressure that we're under.

You're made fun of if you're not loose.

Well, what we find also in our policies, even in our government, abortion, reproductive services, all of those things.

Do you know what they are?

They are all a backstop to allow all types of perversion and immorality so that you don't have to have any of the ramifications of what you do.

That's what that's all about.

And our government is supporting those things.

That's the world in which we live.

He says, don't associate with them.

Well, why not?

Well, look at the danger.

Look back there in the passage.

It says that she is a deep pit.

She's deceptive.

Deep pit is referring to a trap.

It's the idea that it looks like a big old piece of Swiss cheese or some peanut butter and you want to get a bite of that.

But when you get a bite of it, what do you get?

You are ensnared.

You're entrapped.

Then we see it's disappointing.

It says that she's a narrow well.

A well has the promise of water.

A well has the promise of sustenance.

A well has the promise of quenching your thirst.

But what we find is that she is disappointing that you will never have your thirst quenched.

It is depriving.

Look at what it says.

She sets an ambush like a robber.

You willingly give up your things when you go to her.

She is depriving, and then she is destructive.

Notice it says, increases the number of unfaithful people.

When we see sexual immorality, it will spread like gangrene across our culture.

What starts in San Francisco will be in St.

Martinville before long.

What we see in New York City will end up in New Iberia.

What we see all over this world will end up here because sexual immorality starts and it spreads and it brings destruction.

What does the Bible say?

It says, flee.

Flee.

Sexual immorality.

Don't mess with it.

Don't fool with it.

Don't have it around.

Don't laugh at it when it's on a sitcom.

Stay away from it.

I was so proud of my boys this last week.

We were at home and had a YouTube video going.

Have y'all ever done this?

It's got music videos and it's like finish the lyrics.

Have y'all done that before?

I don't know if you know this or not.

I can remember a whole lot of things.

I cannot remember the lyrics to a song.

I desperately need the screens.

And when they somehow have an issue and get behind on the lyrics of the screen, I just sing whatever word I want to sing.

And it ain't ever right.

And they make fun of me.

Can I get a witness?

Anybody else like that in here?

Okay.

So I'm terrible at this show.

They're playing these songs.

I know the songs.

I just don't know the words to them when they get through there.

Well, they're playing these songs and they have the music videos playing behind it.

And it's okay when it's like 1958 songs, you know.

How much is that dog in the window?

That's a great music video.

I don't even know if they have that music video.

I don't know.

That's like the 50s, whatever.

But those were great.

And the closer it got to today, the more risque, the more risque, the more risque.

And so up came a music video, and they start playing it, and they start having, you know, whatever on there.

And my 16-year-old says,

everybody look

at the ceiling.

And the music video would end and the next would come on.

Oh, look at the floor.

The floor is so good.

Well, I've got four boys at the house.

So they all were looking up at the ceiling and at the floor.

The 43-year-old knew what was happening.

The 16-year-old knew what was happening.

I think the 12-year-old knew what was happening.

The 10-year-old had very little idea, and the 8-year-old had no idea.

But they knew this, that when that showed up, you look away.

My friends, when you see that happening, you get away from it.

Because it will grab you, it will entrap you, and it will ruin your life.

How many a life has been ruined because somebody played with immorality and got caught, entrapped, burnt, and destroyed?

Stay away from it.

Well, you've given us a bunch of negative, preacher.

Can you give us some positive?

Yeah, I'll be glad to do that.

How about it?

We skip the passage because this passage is in a chiastic structure and we dealt with the outside don'ts before we deal with the inside do.

So look back in verse

22.

Listen to your father who

gave you life.

And don't despise your mother when she is old.

Buy and do not sell truth, wisdom, instruction, and understanding.

The father of a righteous son will rejoice greatly, and one who fathers a wise son will delight in him.

Let your father and mother have joy, and let her who gave birth to you rejoice.

We are to accept the

invested.

Accept the invested.

There are those

who have invested in you lovingly.

They care for you.

They want what's best for you.

And you are to accept them and hold on to them and follow them.

The example that we hear are of loving parents, a father and a mother.

and they are giving you truth, and it says, hold on to that truth.

Don't sell it.

Don't get rid of it.

It is more valuable than anything else.

Hold on to that, and when you do that, it will lead to the rejoicing of your parents.

There is an idea that there are those who love you and are investing in you, and you need to listen to them.

Now, this presupposes that that father

and mother are not the previous two groups of people.

It presupposes that that

father is not indulgent.

It presupposes that that mother is not immoral.

And there are other people that are influencers in your life that are invested in you.

Your pastor is invested in you.

You trust what the preacher says when he's preaching God's Word.

But I tell you what, That preacher does not need to

be immoral.

You ought to trust your

Sunday school teacher, shouldn't you?

Your Sunday school teacher cares for you, and your Sunday school teacher wants what's best for you, and your Sunday school teacher is teaching God's Word to you, and you ought to listen to that Sunday school teacher, but that presupposes that that teacher is not indulging and immoral.

There's a

TV show back in the day called Father's No Best.

Have you watched that and seen that?

I tell my kids, always trust Dad.

Because Dad always loves you and cares for you.

We should always trust Dad.

That's what he's saying.

Listen to your parents.

They are the ones that truly care for you.

Cling to them.

They will keep you from these other folks.

In the book of Revelation, the Bible describes a society without God.

And do you know how it describes it?

It describes this

society as indulgent and immoral.

They are full of alcohol and

drugs and those things, and it's full of immorality.

The further a society gets away from God, the more they identify with indulgence, and immorality.

The closer they get to God's judgment the more indulgence and immorality they have.

Tell

me about America today.

I read recently an article It said that the drunkest city in America is Lafayette, Louisiana.

When I was in the process

of being called to pastor this church, a long-time retired Louisiana pastor found out about it.

And he came to my office there in the Dallas area.

And he visited with me for a little bit and he said, I've heard about your conversation with Lafayette.

And I want to give you some words of encouragement and advice.

Whatever you do, do not

preach against alcohol.

I said, watch me.

I have confessed and repented before God my sorrow and burden over the fact that it has taken me five years to do so appropriately.

The longer that I've served as your pastor,

the more I have realized that alcohol and sexual immorality are issues that members of our church deal with on a regular basis.

I have been shocked to find that those things are reality in people's lives.

I have been shocked to find a non-biblical perspective on those issues among the membership of our church.

And the reality is this.

that if I, James Pritchard, followed the advice of Proverbs 23, I cannot be

friends with many of the members of this church.

And I am sorry that I have not preached on that before now.

1 John 2.15 says this, Do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

In other words, if you love the things of the world, you cannot love God at the same time.

Everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride in one's possessions is not from the Father, but is from the world.

And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does the will of God remains.

cannot love the world and love God at the same time.

My heart's desire and prayer for you is that as God's Holy Spirit is speaking to your heart

that His Spirit will overwhelm your heart in such a way that it will lead to your humility to your confession and to your repentance

in these areas of life.

My harsh desire is that you might be in the world

but not of the world.

My harsh desire is that you would abandon and avoid these things and you would cling to the

Word of God.

Because if you don't, I know what will happen to you.

Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it will happen.

And I

must tell you these things because one day I will stand before

God and He will say, James, what did you say?

to my people.

What did you tell them about these things?

I feel like if y'all were going to fire me, you would have done it already.

So we're going to deal with some of these

issues.

And if you don't like it, you need to ask yourself a question.

Why don't I like this?

Why is it bothering me?

Why am I rejecting what he's saying?

Because friends, all I have told you today is what the Bible says about

these issues.

Would you bow your heads and hearts with me?

I know that the Holy Spirit of God is using the preached Word of God to work in your life.

That uneasiness and burden that you're feeling is the conviction of God pointing out sin in your life.

And the only proper response is to confess and repent of that sin.

You do not have to come forward to confess and repent.

You don't have to come meet the preacher in some room somewhere to do that.

You confess before Almighty God, and He can hear the prayers of your heart.

So even now, spend a moment and say, Lord, forgive me.

Help me overcome this.

I turn from it, and I give it to you.

It may be you realize as I've been talking that, man, the reason I got these things in my life is because I ain't never been saved.

Maybe I need to give my life to Jesus.

It may be that you need somebody to pray for you and pray over you.

We're going to enter to a time of response.

That response is you and me responding to God's Word.

And I invite you to do so.

Father, we surrender this time to you.

Be honored as we respond to you and to what you're doing in our hearts.

In Jesus' name.