Beverage Drinking Woes

Introduction: The Bible doesn’t mention coffee, tea, soft drinks, or other beverages such as what we have these days but there’s still a verse that comes to mind when I think about it. Here’s the verse, and I’ll share some thoughts in a moment:

Text: Revelation 3:16, KJV: 16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

Thoughts: To be honest, I thought about titling this illustration “Breakfast Beverage Woes” but this new title gives me a bit more flexibility. This first item deals with a very popular beverage, coffee! I first began drinking the stuff at age 16 at a church breakfast: the sausage links were delicious, and the water was nice and cold, but there was one small problem.

The pancakes. The syrup in the kitchen was the clear stuff—not one drop of maple anything anywhere in sight.

And it was thick. Water just wasn’t going to cut it so I tried some coffee with cream and sugar, and stayed with it for quite a few years.

I can truly say there were only a few cups of just plain awful coffee over my coffee-drinking years but the “woe” here had nothing to do with bad coffee. One day I had a refillable plastic mug and, as you might guess, the inside was stained a brownish color that looked like, well, coffee, and that stuff refused to be scrubbed away. Now, I was out of coffee, and I wanted a refill, but there was no coffee to be found! Our office had kind of an honor system, that if you got the last cup, you made another pot. Easy to do, we might say, but that policy was honorably ignored more than once.

Some folks in another office nearby had a pot of hot water. No problem, I was told, help yourself to some hot water and enjoy your instant coffee. I got the water, went back to my desk, and promptly became busy on another project. Needless to say, I forgot to add the instant coffee and when I took a sip, it was some of the weakest stuff I ever drank! Coffee-flavored water just isn’t the same as real coffee, and I learned that (accidentally) the hard way.

Kind of the same thing happened with a certain cup of tea. Now, I have been drinking tea for most of my life and love a cup or two in the morning. Has to have sugar, or nowadays sweetener of some kind, as unsweet hot tea is not something pleasant, IMO! Ice tea—no problem, sweet or unsweet is fine—but for breakfast, if it ain’t sweet, it ain’t tea,

Sure enough, there was one cup that I still remember. I got the water hot, the teabag ready and the sweetener close by. Plop went the bag into the water, I swirled the bag around to let it “steep” for a while, then added the sweet stuff. No problem, right?

I took one sip and thought, my goodness, this isn’t very sweet but kept drinking it. Hey, I was thirsty and didn’t want to waste the stuff (have you priced teabags lately?)! As I got closer to the bottom of the cup, incredibly, the tea became sweeter and sweeter.

You guessed it: I forgot to stir the sweetener into the tea. Ughhh—never want to do that again!

And this brings me to one of the worst, if not the worst, experience I had with drinking any kind of beverage (sorry, no alcohol—I’m a tee-totaller).Those of us who have gone through boot camp, basic military training, or whatever your branch of the military calls it, no that a good cold drink of water is sometimes worth everything! My basic training was in San Antonio, Texas during the last two weeks of July and most of August and it was HOT for most of the time I was there. We learned to march, and march, and “drill” some more (the term has nothing to do with oil or carpentry) and believe you me, our canteens were welcome during our breaks.

During one of these sessions, our instructor gave us a couple of minutes to get some water. Guessing we would be doing some more “training”, I didn’t drain my canteen but left a little water in it for the next break. I figured it would be at least wet, if not cold, while staying outside in that hotter-than-a-barbeque Texas summer heat.

I was wrong. Sure enough, at the next break, we all ran for our canteens. I have no idea how much water the other men had in their canteens but mine had only a little bit left. I loosened the lid, and took a drink.

Oh, was that water nasty! It was just a shade or two above lukewarm and it was not fit to drink, I took a drink, not knowing what it would taste like, but found out FAST that it was awful. Yes, I was careful, but I carefully found a place to spit it out.

That’s what the Lord was referring to in Revelation 3. The water in Laodicea, as many Bible teachers say, came from a long distance and was “lukewarm”. They were used to it, apparently, and that may be one reason why the Church in that city received such a rebuke from the Lord. For the Lord to say, in so many words, “you’re making Me sick”, is strong language indeed.

Jesus wants us to be either hot or cold, but not lukewarm. Sure, it’s okay to chuckle about beverage drinking woes, like mine, and you may have some similar stories too.

But it’s never okay to be lukewarm when it comes to our relationship with the Lord.

Scripture quotations taken from the King James Version of the Bible (KJV).