Church covenant & Wine

[boB]

The common Baptist covenant states "to abstain from the sale of and use of intoxicating drinks as a beverage"

 I Tim 3:3 states a pastor should "not be given to wine"
 I Tim 3:8 states a deacon should "not be given to much wine"

Question: Are Baptist churches making a higher standard than the Bible, if so, should we

[enoch]

The only problem with our observation of the Lord's Supper is that in most of our Baptist Churches since we observe this sacrament so rarely, (some  churches observe it once every 3 months and some as rare as once a year) by the time we get to the last of the Welch's Grape Juice, we are breaking our covenant not to drink alcohol.  It has fermented.   ;D ;D
At our church, we observe the Lord's Supper on the first Sunday Evening, and we buy the smallest bottle of Welch's we can find.
We practice open Communion and I always open the sacrament with the injunction from I Corinthians 11.  After all this is the Lord's Table, not the individual congregations.

[ABC_Ron]

Yes, You are right. We have applied a new standard. There are about a dozen good natured but equally wrong reason for the raised standard. So, folks accept it or hide what they drink, until "they really need it."

I was once in a grocery store when I saw a Deacon candidate shopping with his wife. I noticed a six pack of really cheap, really bad "Brew 102" beer in his shopping cart. He saw me observe the beer. He started to make excuses. I stopped him saying If God haden't spoke to him about what he drank I had no place telling him, but if I was going to drink beer I sure would't waist my money on that rut gut. Get a good one! Later at the check out stand I noticed there was no beer. As he walked past he said "thanks, you know its funny but I just has a quick conversation with God and I think I lost all taste for beer." I said you are indeed "a new creature in Christ" He'll let you know what needs you'll have.

But,  Paul said something like; Freedom is just that, freedom and not a license to sin. A free people will make the right choices.

God Bless, Ron

[Rev_C]

The alcohol issue is hot one indeed.  I don't think we Baptists are setting a higher mark.  I really do believe that we need to look at the Scripture.  Paul wrote about eating meats sacrificed to idols.  Some would and some would not.  He went on to say that if it offended a weaker brother, then it should not be done.

I do believe that we need to take a similiar stance on alcohol.  Preachers you know that you cannot do it as according to I Timothy 3.  Deacons should look and see how it would affect their testimonies.  We are being watched all the time.  Therefore, I guess we all need to ask ourselves WWJD.

Also, we should not judge if we see someone else doing it unless it is becoming hurtful to the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I reckon that we really need to be harder on ourselves.

Just my .02.

Rev_C

[enoch]

Please dinnae take this wrong! Nowhere in God's word does it forbid drinking of alcohol.  We are changing God's word to fit our own convictions when we take passages like 1 Tim. 3:3 out of context.
The passage not given to wine is literally translated "not addicted to wine."
We Baptists have strong convictions against alcohol for very valid reasons.  When misused, it is a destroyer of individual lives, families, can imperil people in the workplace, and costs us millions of dollars in taxes to combat the devastation left by alcoholism.
Let us condemn rightfully the effects of alcoholism and the terrible waste of moneys by the very people who can afford the cost of alcohol the very least.
As Baptist Pastors we are to set a pattern for our families, our flocks and our communities.  If they see us imbibing, they will.  If they hear us denounce alcohol because of the destruction which they can witness for themselves in the lives of people around them, they will understand why we are against it.  But if we tell them from the pulpit that God forbids it and they read for themselves that God only requires moderation, they will be angered that we have overstepped our authority and lied to them.  Shame on us then.
Let us speak out against alcohol, and stand by our convictions against its usage, but let's not misuse God's word in doing so.
If someone out there knows of scripture which does prohibit any intake of alcohol, please inform me and I will study it and be enlightened by it.  There are literally hundreds of injunctions against alcoholism in God's Word, especially in Proverbs, but I am not aware of any verses of prohibition.

[Shiloh]

I got into trouble with this shortly after I was saved cuz I didn't know no covenants no how. Someone asked me to do a little talk and then pray for the cup at the upcoming Lord's Supper. I took the word wine literally and did some research.  So, here I am telling Baptists how wonderful a picture fermented wine was of Christ's blood and sacrifice.  Grape juice is nutritional and all that but the fermentation process is a type of transformation through "death" of the grape juice and yet it is ressurrected into wine which only gets better as time passes.  Since it red like blood it fits that the Lord shed blood for us but then through death it became that which is beneficial for our spiritual health forever and becomes more precious each year just as does  fine wine.  WELL, that did not go over well, but they wrote it off to being a novice.  For years, I stuck to the party line, but have come to realize that we only do this because we went through Prohibition and the Temperance movement, which was really the Abstinence movement as temperance really means self-control duuring something not control of abstaining from something.  Red wine is good for cholesterol in moderation or temperance.  German Baptists do not abstain from any alcohol (unless they were influenced by Americans). However, get drunk and you are trown out of the church.

We say as a beverage, but we hold to it for medicinal purposes so since the Lord's blood brought health to our soul it would be fine at communion.  We believe in soul liberty yet we demand abstinence and wrest the Word to prove it.  Not good exegesis nor very much liberty.  I can teach the dangers of it and moderation, but I cannot teach abstaining.  I'm a BAD Baptist, but it is biblical.

[boB]

Saw an interesting article in the paper the other day.  The newspaper referenced the April edition of "Bible Review".  Two Theology proffessors, Michael Homan and Mark Gstohl of Savier Univ, stated that "the idea of Jesus as a tetotaler surfaced in the late 19th century ... Dr Thomas Bramwell applied the new pasteurizatio process to grace juice.  A reference used was "the burned over district: the social and intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in western New York, 1800-1850".  
Interesting huh

[saltcitybaptist]

Is it wrong to have one glass of wine at supper every now and then?

[DrJ]

Since I always like to wander into conversations late--after everyone else has gone home (makes for less argument), I thought I'd wander into this one and drop a small bomb.
(First of all, just to run along after a different rabbit, I would go WAY back and mention to enoch that "sacrament" is not a typical usage in Baptist circles. Sacrament is defined as a "means of grace" and in normally sacramental churches it is seen as exactly that--through baptism or communion there is salvation and the maintaining of salvation--not a real Baptist type position. Just thought I'd throw that out.)
Now back to the bomb. Someone back in the conversation tossed in the ol' WWJD thing as an answer to the question about drinking wine. This is something we don't have to speculate much about. The New Testament is clear that Jesus did drink wine (one of the reasons it was at the last supper). So the issue is "WDJD" (what did Jesus do). The answer is that He drank wine. His first miracle was to make some wine out of water--the very best wine (the only kind Jesus could make). Now, I know that the Greek for grapejuice and wine is exactly the same. So a lot of Baptist hang on to the far out concept that Jesus only drank grapejuice. Of course the refrigs in ancient Israel weren't real good, and they hadn't gotten the hang of pasturization quite yet, so it's real difficult to understand where Jesus got all that grapejuice. Fact is that the water supply that mostly came out of cisterns bordered on dangerous, so almost no one drank it without a large chunk of the "hard stuff" mixed in to kill the bugs (that would otherwise kill them). All in all, any objective reading of the New Testament clearly proclaims that Jesus drank wine. Here's the bomb: SINCE JESUS DRANK WINE, IF DRINKING WINE IS A SIN, WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US?
You see, to proclaim something that Jesus did to be a sin, means that He sinned. If He sinned, then He was not qualified to die for our sins AND THERE IS NO SALVATION. Then, to proclaim the sinfulness of drinking wine amounts to proclaiming that we're all lost in our sins and bound for hell.
We can't really have it both ways. Either it is or is not a sin. If it is, we're all in trouble, whether or not we've ever drunk a drop, 'cause Jesus did.