Works of the Flesh: Drunkenness (Gal. 5:19-21)

Works of the Flesh: Drunkenness
Galatians 5:21

INTRODUCTION:
Henry Ruggs is 24 years old. He was born in Montgomery, AL and signed with the Alabama Crimson Tide to be a receiver. He played some as a freshman, but he hit his stride as a sophomore, with 741 receiving yards, averaging 16.1 yards per catch and 11 TD. As a junior, he had 746 yards, averaging 18.7 yards per catch with 7 TDs.

After his junior year, Ruggs signed with the LA Raiders with a 4-year contract, with a $9, 684,820 signing bonus and $16,671,626 guaranteed salary. His annual average salary would have been $4,167,907.

I say “would have been” because Henry Ruggs is in jail. He will spend 3-10 years in jail for vehicular manslaughter. Tina Tintor was a 23-year old who was traveling in her car with her dog; they were going home from a dog park when Henry Ruggs with a blood alcohol content of .161 at the time of the crash. Ruggs was driving an estimated 150 mph!

I think we all can agree that God’s definition of drunkenness is not determined by man’s laws and how many drinks it takes to raise your blood alcohol content. We are not interested in Michigan’s laws. We are interested in living a holy and righteous life that honors Jesus Christ.

What does the Bible say? It has often been said that the Bible only condemns drunkenness - such as in Galatians 5:21. While it is true that the Bible condemns drunkenness, that statement comes close to committing a logical fallacy called “oversimplification.” In other words, there is more to consider relative to the use of modern alcoholic drinks than just “the Bible condemns drunkenness.” Let me share with you some things…

BIBLICAL “WINE” IS NOT MODERN “WINE:”
Earlier this year, I was reading a magazine published in 1836, when the author of the article described people in his day as: “disregarding those heaven born principles, have taken their stand with the rich, the proud, the gay, and the great of the earth, arrayed in gorgeous apparel, and still adding treasure to treasure on earth.”

It is almost a certainty that this writer was not using the word “gay” in the sense of homosexual. The word did not take on that meaning until after World War II. You can’t assume that someone who might be described as “gay” before WWII was homosexual; the word meant “happy or carefree.”

The same thing is true with “wine” in Bible times. You can’t read in 1 Timothy 5:23 that Paul tells Timothy to drink a little wine for his stomach sake that a Christian in the 21st century can now go to Meijer and buy a bottle of wine and drink it ostensibly for one’s health.

Distillation of alcohol was invented by the Arabs in the 8th century in order to strengthen the alcoholic content of drinks and to strengthen the impact it would have over the minds of drinkers. Distilled alcohol was not available in Bible times.

According to Biblical scholars, the strongest alcoholic beverage available in biblical times was natural wine with a content of 11-12%, before it was diluted. That is equivalent to about 5 ounces of wine. But that was before it was diluted.

But even at that ancient wine - the 5 ounces of wine - was normally diluted by respectable people. Even pagans believed that drinking such straight wine was barbaric. Usually, people who were cultured would dilute their 5 ounces of natural wine with 3 parts water to 1 part wine.

Here is how ancient writers, outside of the Bible - from a source dated at 228 AD, normally described the wine which they drank:

The natural wine that the Jews drank at the Passover meal, according to their writings, was 3:1. That reduces the alcohol content to roughly 2.75% to 3%. According to Vicks.com, the alcohol content of NyQuil is 10% alcohol. The Jews and Christians in the first century were drinking natural wine with an alcohol content less than NyQuil!

Now let’s see what the voice of the Lord says…

NADAB AND ABIHU - Leviticus 10:1-3:
“Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what the Lord spoke, saying, ‘By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored.’ ” So Aaron, therefore, kept silent” (10:1-3).

In that same context, we read: “The Lord then spoke to Aaron, saying, “Do not drink wine or strong drink, neither you nor your sons with you, when you come into the tent of meeting, so that you will not die—it is a perpetual statute throughout your generations— and so as to make a distinction between the holy and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean, and so as to teach the sons of Israel all the statutes which the Lord has spoken to them through Moses” (10:8-11).

Now, we do not know if Nadab and Abihu’s sin was motivated by “WUI” - worshipping under the influence. But clearly God intended to set a precedent that worship should not be guided by the influence of alcohol.

As Christians, we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice to God (Rom. 12:1-2), which argues that we need to keep our minds under strict control at all times.

If God held Nadab and Abihu responsible for their sin, despite their WUI, then surely God would hold Christians accountable too, for living their lives under the influence as well. In other words, if a man uses coarse language with his wife or children under the influence, and that is sinful as Jared pointed out last week (Eph. 5:4), then the man stands condemned in the eyes of God and he cannot use his intoxication as an excuse!

In Deuteronomy 21, the Law of Moses prescribed the death penalty for a drunken son: “They shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ “Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear of it and fear” (21:20-21).

Under the Law of Moses, Henry Ruggs would not have lived long enough to kill someone driving under the influence. His parents would have had him stoned to death after the first or second bout of intoxication.

Clearly God does not take intoxication lightly. And Christians, if we are to honor God in our bodies and in our spirits, then we need to stay away from intoxication in all its forms- both drugs and alcohol.

THE WARNING OF THE WISE MAN:
It is a fool who does not listen to the warnings of prior generations and King Solomon had some words of wisdom relative to drinking undiluted natural wine - which, again, was about 12% alcohol:

“Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? [Notice that Solomon is not describing “wine” simply in terms of “drunkenness.”] Those who linger long over wine, Those who go to taste mixed wine. Do not look on the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup, When it goes down smoothly; At the last it bites like a serpent And stings like a viper. Your eyes will see strange things And your mind will utter perverse things. And you will be like one who lies down in the middle of the sea, Or like one who lies down on the top of a mast. “They struck me, but I did not become ill; They beat me, but I did not know it. When shall I awake? I will seek another drink” (23:29-35).

Solomon is clearly warning his son about the danger of - not just drunkenness - but of wine itself.

THE NEW TESTAMENT WARNS OF THE SAME IMPACT:
In 2 Timothy 1:7, Paul encourages his young preacher-friend that God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but of power, love, and “discipline.” That word is not used anywhere else, but the word means “to behave in a sensible manner, with the implication of thoughtful awareness of what is best.” People under the influence of alcohol often do not behave in such a manner.

When Paul told Governor Festus that he preached words of “sober” truth, he meant words of good judgment, rational judgment (Acts 26:25). People under the influence often times do not use good judgment or rational judgment. They, in fact, lose control of their own body under the influence and they make a mockery of the God who made them when they behave that way.

When Paul writes in 1 Cor. 15:34 that Christians should “become sober-minded as you ought, and stop sinning,” he is not restricting his words to intoxication certainly, but it surely includes intoxication. Don’t do anything that is going to affect your mind in a negative way. Christians need to have control over their minds, over their thoughts, over their entire thinking process.

In Paul’s letter of 1 Thessalonians, 5:6, 8, Paul writes “let us be alert and sober” and “since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the ope of salvation.” Again, the word “sober” here means “clear thinking” but it came to be used for “non-intoxication” because the influence of alcohol on one’s thinking makes you not “sober.”

The connection between sobriety and “clear thinking” is specifically made in 1 Peter 1:13 where Peter says, “prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit…”

People who are under the influence of alcohol normally do not spend much time in prayer, and that is a problem. Listen again to the words of Peter: “be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer” (1 Peter 4:7). If drinking alcohol hinders our prayers - as alcohol hindered Nadab and Abihu - we need to stay away from it.

When Peter says, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8), he is warning Christians that alcohol lowers your inhibitions and opens your mind and your heart up to the influence of Satan.

I do not know what Henry Ruggs is spiritually, whether he considers himself a Christian or not. But every single person who puts an alcoholic drink to their mouth effectively asks this question: “Is this drink going to make me sin against God? Well, I’m going to take my chances because I like the possibility of what it will do to me.” That shows that our highest desire is not to please God, but to please self.

Two more points I wish to make…

Someone always introduces alcoholic beverages to someone else. Sin does not happen in a vacuum. On average, 10,850 die each year because of drunk driving, according to the NHTSA. All those drunk drivers were influenced by someone else to take up that first drink! Do you think they are going to have to answer to God for their destructive influence?

Jesus raises the level of expectation for His disciples in Luke 17:2 when He says, “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble.” If someone leads another person to sin against God, then that person deserves destruction, Jesus says. That’s harsh and Jesus doesn’t take lightly the influence that we have on other people.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 55% of all domestic abuse cases involved the drinking of alcohol. Women are 15 times more likely to be abused by a drunk man. There is a reason why alcoholic beverages have been called the “Devil’s brew.”

And one more point… in 1 Peter 4:3, Peter writes that Christians no longer live like Gentiles and they have left that lifestyle. Notice Peter mentions: “sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries.” Notice that Peter distinguishes “drunkenness” from “drinking parties.” Peter says that Christians do not participate in “drinking parties.” You don’t go to drinking parties and you don’t sponsor drinking parties!

CONCLUSION:
Early Christian writers better understood the practices of the ancient world and wisely instructed believers to drink wine only in moderation and “to mix the [natural] wine with as much water as possible” (Clement of Alexandria [150-215 AD], “On Drinking,” Instructor II, ii). It is not hard to understand why Christians for the last two millennia have warned others to abstain from the destructive influence of alcoholic drinks and the shepherds of this congregation add our voices to that same warning.

Take home message: Avoid alcoholic drinks and drugs which make you ill-prepared for the second coming of Jesus Christ.