"POURED OUR LIKE WINE"

“POURED OUT LIKE WINE”

Hugo McCord

The phrase “Poured Out Like Wine” is the name of a song exhorting all people to “commit your way to the Lord” (Psalm 37:5). A literal pouring out of water
or oil or wine has long been symbolic of a person’s pouring out all of himself,
with no reservation, even his blood, in devotion to his Maker.

At a time of deep penitence, when “all the house of Israel
lamented after the LORD,” Samuel asked “all Israel” to assemble “at Mizpah, and
I will pray to the LORD for you” (1 Samuel 7:2, 5, RSV):

So they gathered at Mizpah, and drew water and poured it out before the
LORD. They fasted that day, and said, “We have sinned against the LORD”
(1 Samuel 7:6, RSV).

On one occasion, David expressed a longing for a drink of water from “the well of Bethlehem that is by the gate,” which at the time was in the control of the Philistines (2 Samuel 23:15-16). Three of his loyal warriors “broke through,” obtained the
water, and brought it to David, but he refused to drink it. Instead,
“he poured it out to the LORD,” and said:

The LORD forbid that I should do this. Can I drink the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives? Therefore he would not drink it (2 Samuel
23:16-17, NRV).

Thus David, as well as Samuel, poured out water “to the LORD” in an act of

religious devotion. The same feeling in their hearts of a pouring out to the

Lord is also expressed in passages where no water was poured out:

Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord (Lamentations 2:19).

Trust in him at all times, O people! Pour out your hearts before him. God
is a refuge for us (Psalm 62:8).

I am a woman deeply troubled. ... I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord (1 Samuel 1:15).

Not only was water occasionally poured out in approaching the Lord, but also
oil. Lonely and frightened Jacob, probably on his first night away
from home, was shocked to learn that God is everywhere, and he was shocked to
hear God speaking to him from heaven (Genesis 28:11-17). Then “Jacob
took the stone that had been under his head, and set it up as a memorial (massebhah)” of the place where God had appeared to him and “poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel, “the House of God” (Genesis
28:18-19). Then he made a vow to the Lord:

If God will be with me, and protect me on this journey, and will give me bread to eat and clothes to wear, and will bring me again to my father’s house in peace, then Yahweh will be my God, and this stone which I have erected for a memorial will be the house of God, and of all that you give me I will certainly give a tenth to you (Genesis 28:20-22).

Many years later, when Jacob was about 100 years old, as he was returning from Paddanaram with a large family and with many possessions, he said to his family:

Let us go to Bethel and I will build an altar to God who answered me in the day of my distress, and he was with me in my travels (Genesis 35:3).

On their arrival, “he built an altar and named the place el Bethel, the “God
of Bethel” (Genesis 35:7). Again “God appeared to Jacob” and “blessed him” (Genesis 35:9). Then “God ascended” and “Jacob set up a memorial stone at the place where God had spoken to him, and” he poured both “oil and a drink-offering (nesek) upon it” (Genesis 35:13-14).

Jacob poured his drink-offering on a stone, but his descendants under the law of Moses poured their drink-offerings on animals being sacrificed on the altar, a quart of wine on a lamb or kid, a third of a gallon on a ram, and a half-gallon on a bull (Exodus 29:40; Numbers 15:1-10). The flaming wine of these drink-offerings was “an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the LORD” (Numbers 15:10, NIV).

In the New Testament, each person at his baptism lays, not the dead body of an animal, but his own body upon the altar of human service, “a living sacrifice, dedicated and acceptable to God,” a “spiritual service” for the rest of his life, 24 hours a day (Romans 12:1).

In the Old Testament the sacrifice was not complete without the pouring out of wine on the burning animal (Numbers 15:1-10). That becomes a type of a
Christian’s pouring out of himself, even his life, to make his sacrifice
complete. Paul used the word spendomai, “I am poured out or offered as a libation (in the shedding of my life-blood),” (Abbott-Smith, p. 413).

To the Philippians Paul wrote:

Yes, and if I am poured out as a drink-offering [spendomai] on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad, and I rejoice with all of you (Philippians 2:17).

Though Paul was willing to have his blood “poured out in a violent death” (Grimm-Thayer, p. 583) to make the sacrifice of the Philippian Christians complete, he did not think it would be necessary, for in 62 A.D., when he wrote of his willingness, he thought he would soon be released from his imprisonment at Rome, thus avoiding the pouring out of his blood (Philippians 2:24).

But, five years later (67 A. D.), in his second imprisonment at Rome, he knew that his blood would be poured out in a “violent death.” In his first imprisonment, though he was chained, he was merely under “house arrest,” living “in his own rented dwelling for two whole years [61-62 A. D.]” (Acts 28:20, 30, FHV).

In his second imprisonment he was in Mamertine Prison on death row, chained in a cellar cell, with one small window overlooking a cemetery, with execution set for the spring of 68 A. D. The emperor Nero had a personal grievance against Paul, for, as reported by “Saint” John Chrysostom (345-407 A.D.):

Paul had encountered a beautiful concubine of the dissolute Emperor and had won her for Christ; and when she refused to resume the unhallowed alliance, the incensed tyrant wreaked his vengeance on the Apostle and had him sentenced to death (quoted by David Smith, LIFE AND LETTERS OF ST. PAUL, p. 639).

As Paul foresaw his impending death, again he used the word spendomai, but this time not simply to express a willingness for his blood to be poured out “if” it became necessary (Philippians 2:17, FHV). This time there
was no “if,” but certainty:

I am already being poured out as a drink-offering {spendomai, and the time of my death is near (2 Timothy 4:6, FHV).

On execution day, Paul was taken two miles south of the Ostian Gate. There
his eyes were bound and his head was laid on a block and severed with an
axe. A tradition grew that his head bounced three times, and that at
each place, where it hit the ground, a living, healing fountain gushed
forth. The place is still called Aquae Salviae, the “Healing Waters” (Smith, p. 640).

A Roman Christian lady, named Lucinda, retrieved the headless body from the criminals’ “charnel house” [a vault for dead bodies] and buried it in her own garden (Smith, p. 641).

Thus, as the wine of the drink-offering of the Old Testament was poured out, so Paul’s blood was poured out. This history inspired a nameless poet to write a heart-touching song, “Poured Out Like Wine”:

Would you be poured out like wine upon the altar for Me?

Would you be broken like bread to feed the hungry?

Would you be so one with Me that you would do just as I will?

Would you be light and life and love My Word fulfilled?

Yes, I’ll be poured out like wine upon the altar for You.

Yes, I’ll be broken like bread to feed the hungry.

Yes, I’ll be so one with You that I would do just as You will.

Yes, I’ll be light and life and love Your Word fulfilled.

~ taken frm: www.christianarticles.org/Articles/McCord/Poured%20Out%20Like%20Win...