“D ,le y J 4 aue
W im e
“ They have no wine" (John 2:3). “ These men are full of new wine” (Acts 2:13). “Be not druiik with wine, wherein is excess; hut he filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). CL I N THIS discussion I am not concerned with the details of the feast at Cana. I am interested only in the dilemma of the feast, as stated by our Lord’s mother, “ They have no wine.” That was a real emergency. Whatever else they may have had in abundance, the feast was spoiled. They had no wine. There is a spiritual lesson here. Something like this pre dicament exists in the church today. We have run out of wine. There is a feast of good things among Bible Christians today —plenty of preaching and teaching. There are churches and radio ministries and Bible conferences. Our tables are loaded with a superabundance of spiritual food. The gospel is a feast, not a funeral or a frolic. There is the water of life, the bread of life, the milk and honey, the figs and pomegranates, the meat of the Word. The Word and the works abound, hut we have no wine. Three times in the New Testament wine and the Holy Spirit are spoken of in the same connection. John the Baptist was not to drink wine, but to be filled with the Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit-filled Christians were accused of being full of new wine. And we are bidden in Ephesians not to be drunk with wine, but to be filled with the Spirit. Wine changes the face, the walk, the talk. A man drunk on wine creates a stir wherever he goes. In the spiritual realm, these things may be said of a Spirit-filled man. Jesus was thought to be “ beside himself.” So was Paul.. Fenelon speaks of his being “inebriate of the Holy Spirit.” Dr. G. Campbell Morgan asks, “Has anyone ever charged you with being drunk with your Christianity? O God, how seldom men have thought us drunk. We lack-the flashing eye and the pulsating song and the tremendous enthusiasm of an over whelming conviction.” Matthew Mead declared, “ If the preach ing of Christ is to . the world foolishness, then it is no wonder that the disciples of Christ are to the world fools. He is no true Christian who is not the world’s fool.” Dr. A. T. Robertson states that the early Christians at Pentecost were accused of being “ tanked up with new wine.” No such charge could be leveled at most churches today. We are pre-Pentecost in experience. Those early Christians had known Jesus. Calvary and the resurrection were behind them. They had the apostles, they were all of one accord, they were in a prayer meeting—not playing bingo in the basement. But, for all that, they were not ready to face the world. They were behind closed doors. Pentecost made them drunk from heaven and put them out of doors testifying to the wonderful works of God. Our gospel feast today has run out of wine. For all our abundance of good things, the exhilaration of the Spirit is lacking. The Spirit has not been removed, but we are not drunk Christians. We need a heart-warming. That heavenly wine which makes glad the heart of man is not in evidence. The world has its wines, its stimulants, its intoxicants. They start with the “lift” from a cigarette or a cocktail and run the gamut of every excitement for body, mind and spirit that this doped and drugged age can devise. But the devil apes the genuine and the false is but the counterfeit of the true. We see the perversions in the drunkard or the dope- fiend or in a Hitler. These are Satan’s distortions of a true Page Ten
By Vance Havner Greenville North Carolina
principle. No man ever achieved much without being “beside himself.” On the natural plane, we see the constructive side of this law in a Beethoven or a Lincoln or an Edison. The great achievements in the realms of art, literature, statesman ship, invention and science have been made by men drunk with a vision, beside themselves. Peary said,'“ I have long since ceased to think of myself except as an instrument for one purpose, to find the North Pole!” Some of us can remember how, as country boys, we were beside ourselves with the exhilaration of springtime on the farm. Many a May morning, we wandered barefoot through the pasture while the bluebirds warbled and the redbirds splut tered and the yellowhammers and thrushes and vireos and warblers were beside themselves with the ecstasy of the season. We were so fired with the joy of living that our feet barely seemed to touch the ground! Was it not so when we fell in love? You married man, sober enough now maybe, can recall how in the dear days beyond recall, you fared forth on a summer night to call on the lady of your heart you were so filled with the stimulant of love that you loved the moon, the stars, everybody—except that rival who was running you a close race for the hand of your beloved! And I have wondered why we Christians do not so love Jesus, the Lover of our souls, until we love everybody, saint and sinner—everybody except the arch-enemy of our souls. Now, just as the natural man has his stimulants, good and bad, so has the spiritual man. God has provided it for His people. We are not to be drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but we are to be filled with the Spirit. We have not only meat to eat, but wine to drink, of which the world knows nothing. But so much of our religious activity is produced by the stimu lation of the natural man—the. false fire of Nadab and Abihu. When George Fox was going through spiritual travail, he was advised to drink beer! Newman was told to take wine. Their counselors sensed the need of a stimulant but they recommended the wrong kind. Of course, some Christians would have all wine and no food; they make everything of experience and would have us live spiritually by excitement, neglecting the solid food of the Word. Some, lacking the true wine, would stir themselves with artificial substitutes in a jitterbug, juke-box parody on the Acts of the Apostles. Yet we of the major denominations are to blame for the store-front churches and what some have called “the lunatic fringe of religion.” We have lost our “amen” and “hallelujah.” We have argued the filling and the baptism, trying to explain what has never been experienced. We have analyzed the wine, but have not drunk it. We are authorities on the Spirit-filled life but no examples of it! We have no wine. The salt has lost its savor. Ephesus has left her first love. We lack the fervor, the zeal, the flavor, the hilarity, the sparkle, the radiance, the effervescence. We are sound and orthodox and active—but so was Ephesus. We have many meetings but few of them stir the soul. And we are often shamed by simple souls, babes who know the secret, while the wise and prudent miss it in their cold, proud churches. T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
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