Paul Lee emailed in and asked, I've been challenged by your series, The Gospel in Your Neighborhood, about evangelism and being a light. I need your advice. Our neighbor next door has invited us over for supper twice. They have provided beer and wine. They know we don't drink, but no one seems offended. I want to have them over to our

place, so do I buy beer and wine for them? Do I ask them to bring their own, as we normally do with

company, or do we abstain from beer and wine altogether? So, how would you answer this question

in light of or applying 1 Corinthians 813? Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat lest I make my brother stumble.

What are your thoughts on having alcohol in any type of social gathering, regardless of whether it's with Christian or non-Christian or maybe mixed?

So let me speak to the larger issue, give some principles here, and then speak to the specific.

It's tempting in our fear of allowing ourselves to be enslaved to something to set boundaries that God didn't set.

And that actually means we add to his law by making our own laws. So that's part of the

function of legalism.

And so I have to say this, that there is no clear biblical prohibition when it comes to alcohol.

You know, sort of humorously, Christ's First Miracle is making barrels of wine that were better than the wine that was served. And contrary to what people try to say, that was fermented.

Why?

It was wine.

What the Bible does prohibit very clearly is drunkenness.

It is clear that God calls us not to be mastered by anything but him and and so we we need to avoid that thing that God says is is wrong now avoiding drunkenness doesn't mean you never touch you alcohol. It means you are

moderate and disciplined in your use of this thing. And that goes back to the larger principle that God in his goodness has placed us in a pleasurable world.

This world is beautiful and it's full of sight and sound and taste and touch pleasures.

And he's given us all these pleasure gates on our bodies so we can enjoy those pleasures.

But it's very, very important to understand that pleasure needs boundaries.

Boundaryless pleasure is going to destroy you.

You can't eat whatever you want to eat and as much as you want to eat or it will destroy your health.

And you can't have sex whenever you want to have sex.

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