I Took a trip to the bar with Dave Matthews

I took a trip to the bar with Dave Matthews. I enjoyed a drink with him and listened while he taught me about something I thought I knew more about than him. I heard this song on my pandora radio station. I had forgotten about it completely. I hadn't listened to the song in years.

Dave Matthews writes some incredible lyrics in Bartender. Check some of them out.

"Bartender please, fill my glass for me with the wine you gave Jesus that set him free after three days in the ground."

'I’m on bended knee I pray… bartender please"

What an awesome line. What is he asking for? Does Dave ask for the Holy Spirit? There is a place I can think of in Scripture where the Holy Spirit is compared to wine, although there wine (and specifically, drunkenness) is the antithesis of the Spirit's power.

What’s with Dave equating this power that rose Jesus from the ground with wine from a bartender? Is he attempting to be provocative? Perhaps. Is he making an obscure allusion to the sacrament of Communion? That may be. Whatever the case, he desires some power that picked Jesus up from the grave, but there is a problem:

“Bartender you see, the wine that’s drinking me came from the vine that hung Judas from the devil’s tree its roots deep, deep in the ground.”

This is the problem that faces every person. Dave Matthews is more perceptive to the depth of his condition than most people. Here, he describes wine of a different' vine’ than the wine that Jesus got from the bartender to get out of the grave. It is interesting that this wine drinks him, he doesn’t drink this wine. The wine that hung Judas is drinking and consuming Dave.

We all have wine ‘drinking us’ from the moment we are born. Because of it, we will do things that seem right to us and seem to give us pleasure, but they will ultimately kill us. The wine, which may seem so delicious, will end up drinking us and hanging us from the devil’s tree.

The only hope is to ask for a different wine. We ask the bartender for the same wine he gave Jesus that caused him to walk out of the grave. This wine is offered to all, and if we drink it, we will become co-laborers with him in redemption, and ultimately walk out of the grave just like he did.