After Sunday School, a few people were asking for the notes I had gathered after our biblical search for the answer to the long discussed alcohol question. To be honest, I know these are long notes but you'll have to read all of them to get the final conclusion. So, in case you are interested: (Just so you know most of the facts came from Johnny Hunt's Sermon "Total Abstinence")
Why is it not acceptable to drink alcohol but being a glutton is? Is taking a single drink of alcohol a sin? If not, how many drinks does it take before you sin? Where’s the line?
1. Let’s tackle the alcohol issue first by asking some questions:
· Would you go to a church where the pastor openly consumes alcohol?
· If you had young children, would you keep alcohol in the house?
· What do John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Saint Gall all have in common? They all Drank...
· Would you ever drink in front of someone who struggled with alcoholism?
· How do those who do drink, talk to their children about teenage drinking?
· Are you strong enough to only drink in moderation?
2. Now let’s tackle some facts:
· Alcohol was commonly used in the church for fellowships and communion until 1869 when the Methodist Pastor Dr. Thomas Welch invented the very Christian Welch’s Grape Juice.
· Advertisers will spend over $500,000,000. to tell us to drink this year.
· Seventy-five percent of all high schoolers drink, and 50% of all junior highers.
· Four hundred and fifty thousand teenagers are alcoholics in the U.S.A.
· One half of all ordained ministers drink, and 1/3 of all active church-goers drink.
· Forty-eight percent of Southern Baptists drink, and an estimated 16% of those who do drink become alcoholics (a higher % than virtually any other religious group in the nation).
· One-fourth of all active Southern Baptist church teenagers have used alcohol in the past 12 months.
· Proverbs 20:1- Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.
· Billy Sunday called liquor “the Devil in liquid form”
· Many people believe, for whatever reason, that the answer to drinking alcoholic beverages is moderation. I personally believe that moderation is not the solution but the cause of alcohol abuse. – Johnny Hunt
· All Bible believing Christians believe drunkenness is a sin. (Romans 13:13, Ephesians 5:18, 1 Peter4:3)
· There are many sins that are associated with drunkenness. (incest (Genesis 19:32-35), violence (Proverbs 4:17); adultery (Revelation 17:2); mockery and brawling (Proverbs 20:1); poverty (Proverbs 21:17); murder (2 Samuel 11:13), vomiting (Jeremiah 25:27, 48:26; Isaiah 19:14); staggering (Jeremiah 25:27; Psalm 107:27; Job 12:25); madness (Jeremiah 51:7), depression (Luke 21:34)
4. The major argument: It is not wrong to drink wine, a beer, or a mixed drink.
· The Bible does not condemn it, and by the way, did not Jesus turn water into wine?
· One “minister” a few years ago applied for license for beer/wine for their church. His argument: “Jesus was the first bartender.”
5. Let’s look at the words for wine and strong drink
· Strong drink - (Shay-kahr) pronounced she-care; refers to a drink that has been distilled from fermented dates, grain, apples, and honeycomb. Universally condemned everywhere it is used. Only time it is recommended is a sort of narcotic in Prov. 31:6, “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that are of heavy hearts.” (time of extreme sorrow)
· In Prov. 31:4-5, tells us that kings and national leaders are to leave wine and strong drink alone.
Prov. 31:4-5, “It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes strong drink, lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the justice of any of the afflicted.”
· Again, in Isaiah 28:7-8, leaders are rebuked.
“But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way. The priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink; they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.”
· Wine- Hebrew word Yayin (Ya-yin) - may be intoxicating; may not be; generic word.
· So we see there is a different word used in the bible for intoxicating drinks and wine.
6. Here is the good stuff
· Yale University’s Study on alcoholism - it was revealed that the normal process of fermentation of “fruit of the vine” does not produce a drink with sufficient alcohol content to bring on drunkenness. There must be a mechanical interference with the normal process, such as the addition of pure alcohol or other mechanical processes of distillation or it will not produce the kind of wine that is common today.
· The Hebrews would have referred to our wine and beer as “strong drink”.
· The wine of biblical times was not like the wine that exists today. Stein’s research uncovered the fact that wine in the days of Jesus, for example, was actually wine mixed with water. On average, it would be three or four parts of water mixed with one part of wine. In other words, what the Bible calls wine was basically purified water.
· He points out that water in the ancient world was unsafe to drink. It could be made safe by boiling it, filtering it, or the safest way was to put wine into the water to kill the germs.
· Dr. Norman Geisler concluded, “Therefore, Christians ought not drink wine, beer, or other alcoholic beverages, for they are actually ‘strong drink,’ and are forbidden in Scripture. Even ancient pagans did not drink what some Christians drink today.”
7. Conclusion
· As God allows me to personally be Salt and Light, I commit to never drink alcohol. Your children will not be encouraged where I pastor. Moderation or Recreation is not my testimony, but TOTAL ABSTINENCE.
· I am hard-pressed to think of any way that casual, social drinking can enhance your witness, much less bring people to Christ.
· Romans 14:21, “It is good neither to eat meat, nor to drink wine, nor anything by which thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.”
· Alcohol is just one of the many substitutes for the joy of Christ.
· Eph. 5:18, “And be not drunk with wine, in which is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.”
· You say, “I will never abuse alcohol. I will never become an alcoholic.
· One out of every ten that start to drink will become an alcoholic.
- We drank for happiness and became unhappy
- We drank for joy and became miserable
- We drank for sociability and became argumentative
- We drank for sophistication and became obnoxious
- We drank for friendship and became enemies
- We drank for sleep and became awakened without rest
- We drank for strength and felt weak
- We drank for relaxation and got the shakes
- We drank for bravery and became afraid
- We drank for confidence and became doubtful
- We drank to make conversation easier and slurred our speech
- We drank to feel heavenly and ended up feeling like we had been to hell
- We drank to forget and were forever haunted
- We drank for freedom and became a slave
- We drank to erase problems and saw them multiply
- We drank to cope with life and invited death.
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