Booze
Good Morning,
Please allow me to hit a "sacred cow" this morning. We have a society that loves booze. Period! No debate! Have you ever noticed how much advertising there is against smoking compared to how much is against alcohol? There are almost no anti-liquor advertisements.
Some pastors teach entire lessons on why liquor is okay. Some will teach the benefits of liquor, or they go through the Bible finding verses to twist and teach to promote booze. With all that in mind, let me make some of my own personal observations.
Never has anything good come from strong drink. I know our society tries to make it acceptable, but we all know better. No alcohol has any benefit (unless it is NyQuil)! I have had Christians tell me their glass of wine at the end of the day is beneficial to them; I am not going to say they are wrong, but I will say that the one who said that has a spouse and kids who battle with addictions. Who fights to justify the thing that is ruining their marriage, their spouse, and their children? They are missing the idea that perhaps they are causing their own family to stumble. Look what Paul wrote about our “justified” actions hurting another:
Romans 14:21 “It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.”
Paul referred to the idea earlier in verse 13: “Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother's way.”
If my actions cause another to stumble or to be weak, I am wrong! Unless it is something God commands me to do, my life is supposed to be focused upon the glory of God and the benefit of mankind, NOT ON MY OWN COMFORT, DESIRES, AND PLEASURES!
Liquor ruins our driving skills and corrupts our temper, and erodes our morals. Liquor blurs the eyes, perverts the tongue, deadens the conscience, and fills the heart with folly.
Proverbs 23 deals extensively with liquor:
vs. 29 “Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?”
vs. 30 “They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.”
vs. 31 “Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.”
vs. 32 “At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.”
vs. “Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.”
vs. 34 “Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.”
vs. 35 “They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.”
I do not need to go through those verses; you may read them on your own and see the obvious instruction. Booze makes you immoral, stupid, and causes you to suffer physically. Booze will hurt your marriage, your children, and your testimony for Christ. This is the point at which some carnal Christian says that this is why one should only drink in moderation. For that person, I refer to what was written earlier in Romans 14:13 & 21 – read it again. Those answers are not compatible with what the Bible says!
Drinking liquor makes men daring (stupid) and leads them to moral depravity. We often talk about “First Mention” in Bible interpretation, and the first time wine is mentioned, it refers to Noah getting drunk; illicit, immoral behavior followed. That is the defining moment in the Scripture regarding liquor.
Lot got drunk, and through incest, ruined countless lives.
Genesis 19:32 “Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.”
We know he did not end up in a mountain cave “discovering wine;” he had to have brought it with him.
1 Samuel 1:16 “Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial: for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto.”
This passage in the book of Samuel tells how Hannah defended herself from being accused of being a daughter of Belial (the devil); for she had not been drunk.
2 Samuel 11:13 “And when David had called him, he did eat and drink before him; and he made him drunk…”
In this passage, we read how David thought he could lower the “resolve” of Uriah through drink. Everyone knows booze will lessen our ability to stand true to our ideals. In this case, Uriah was more of a man than David thought (most men are not).
The stories of broken homes, abuse, car accidents, and endless suffering can all be found rooted in liquor. Yes, some seem to be able to drink and not hurt others. Just as some are able to use drugs and not end up in the morgue or conversing with cracks in the sidewalk, but they are simply the false advertisment to draw the vulnerable into a life of ruin.
Someone said Charles Spurgeon smoked cigars until one day his picture was used to promote smoking. He wanted, as the story goes, his life to promote nothing but Christ and he stopped smoking right then.
After a tragic story from a wife about her drunk husband, she continued to explain how she could go out with the family, drink booze, and not over drink; but her husband had this trouble. I was so shocked that she did not have enough hatred for the bottle to stop it herself.
Some years ago, there was a "nature lover" in northern California. He was sure he could live at peace with dangerous things and began collecting rattlesnakes. After not being seen for some days or weeks, someone called the authorities. They looked through he window of his house and found hundreds of rattlers all over; he lay dead in the middle.
Proverbs 23:32 “At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.”
Not at first, but "at the last."
I saw a poster that says it well, "Forecast for tonight: Alcohol, low standards, and poor decisions." (That was on the wall of a secular store!) They know, and they are not ashamed. Another sign I saw in a drinking man's garage: "I don't have a drinking problem; I drink, I fall down, no problem."
I hate liquor; and any decent, loving Christian (or non-Christian) feels the same way.
Pastor