The Wine of God's Wrath

~Revelation 14:10

Then a third angel followed them, shouting, “Anyone who worships the beast and his statue or who accepts his mark on the forehead or on the hand must drink the wine of God’s anger. It has been poured full strength into God’s cup of wrath.

~Revelation 14:19

So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and loaded the grapes into the great winepress of God’s wrath.

~Revelation 16:19

So God remembered all of Babylon’s sins, and he made her drink the cup that was filled with the wine of his fierce wrath.

~Revelation 19:15

He will release the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty, like juice flowing from a winepress

Wine is a powerful image. The Bible uses it to give us a picture of the love of Christ in communion, a symbol of the blood he shed for our salvation. The Bible also uses it, as seen here, as a symbol of the wrath of God against evil and injustice.

Share

~I Peter 4.9

Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay.

Enough said. :-]

~I Peter 4.3

You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols.

The word "feasting" here in the New Living Translation is not the best choice, since clearly God sees feasting as a way to celebrate, even in heaven. See April 11, 2012, entry and Revelation 19.7 & 9. No, I take Peter's meaning here to be gluttonous eating, not just feasting.

Communion

~I Corinthians 11.17-34

This passage is familiar to anyone who was raised in a traditional church. Christ giving his life, his physical body and blood, for the salvation of mankind is the foundation of Christianity. This giving is symbolically remembered to this day. How? By the sacrament of Communion: we are privileged to take in the bread of his body and the wine of his blood. This is how he shows his profound love and sacrifice. The symbolic eating and drinking is how we receive it.

Ron Sider in his 1977 Christian Century article "Sharing the Wealth: The Church as Biblical Model for Public Policy" further expounds these verses:

"In Christ there is one new person, one new body of believers. When the brothers and sisters share the one bread and the common cup in the Lord’s Supper, they symbolize and actualize their participation in the one body of Christ. That is why the class divisions at Corinth so horrified Paul. Wealthy Christians, apparently, were feasting at the eucharistic celebrations while poor believers went hungry. Paul angrily denied that they were eating the Lord’s body and blood because they did not discern his body (vv. 27-29). By this Paul meant that they failed to realize that their membership in the one body of Christ was infinitely more important than the class or ethnic differences which divided them. One brings judgment on oneself if one does not perceive that eucharistic fellowship with Christ is totally incompatible with living a practical denial of that unity of all believers in his body. As long as one Christian anywhere in the world is hungry, the eucharistic celebration of all Christians everywhere is incomplete."

(As I side note, I do wonder why Paul refers to eating the bread and drinking the cup. Why not eating the dish and drinking the cup, or even better, eating the bread and drinking the wine?)

Eat for God's Glory

~I Corinthians 10:3-5, 6-7, 15-22, 25-31

~25-26 So you may eat any meat that is sold in the marketplace without raising questions of conscience. For “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”

~31 So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

In this chapter Paul covers several food-related topics (see labels), but there is nothing specific about a particular food. I print only the key verses 25-26 and 31.

Another interesting point here is the connection between idols and demons. Surely it's possible to make an idol of food. Be careful, Ruthie!

Those who get drunk, get drunk at night.

~I Thessalonians 5.7 . . . those who get drunk, get drunk at night.

Oops. I read right over this a few days ago because it doesn't give any information about what to eat or drink, but it is a reference to same, so I will record it.

Drunkenness

~Matthew 24.48-50 But what if the servant is evil and thinks, ‘My master won’t be back for a while,’ and he begins beating the other servants, partying, and getting drunk? The master will return unannounced and unexpected, and he will cut the servant to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites.

While the Bible sees wine as a good thing, drunkenness certainly is not.