(Text: I Corinthians 6:19-20)
By: Barry L. Cameron


There's not a verse in the Bible that says, "Thou Shalt Not Drink." - If there were, we'd just read it and go home.

- But, there's also not a verse that says: "Thou Shalt Not Have An Abortion..." or "Thou Shalt Not Go To Strip Clubs..." or "Thou Shalt Not View Pornography On The Internet..."

- However, there ARE specific principles in the Word of God that cover all of those things and anything else you can think of.

- In this message, our focus is "WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT DRINKING."

ILL. Sign In A Country Store... "Since you cannot refrain from drinking, why not start a saloon in your own home? Be the only customer and you will not have to buy a license. Give your wife $50.00 to buy a case of whiskey. There are 240 drinks in a case. Buy all your drinks from your wife at .60 cents a drink and in 12 days, (when the case is gone), your wife will have $89.00 to put in the bank and $55.00 to buy another case. If you live ten more years and continue to buy all your whiskey from your wife, and then die in your boots, your widow will have $42,239.99 on deposit...enough to bring up your children, pay off the mortgage on the house, marry a decent man and forget she ever knew a drinking bum like you."

Ephesians 5:17-18, "Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit."

Proverbs 20:1, "Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise."

Proverbs 23:20-21, "Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Proverbs 23:29-35, "Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife..."

Isaiah 5:11, "Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night till they are inflamed with wine."

Isaiah 5:20-22, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks."

Ecclesiastes 2:3, 11, "I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly--my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of their lives. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind, nothing was gained under the sun."

Proverbs 31:4-7, "It is not for kings, O Lemuel--not for kings to drink wine, nor for rulers to crave beer, lest they drink and forget what the law decrees, and deprive all the oppressed of the rights. Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more."

ARGUMENTS FOR DRINKING:

(1) Jesus turned water into wine. (John 2:1-11) - Yes, He did. But it wasn't Bud Light, Michelob, or Heineken.

(2) Paul encouraged Timothy to drink wine (I Timothy 5:23) - Yes, He did. But it was for stomach problems not for social partying.

(3) People drank wine in the Bible. - Yes, they did. But what kind of wine were they drinking?

(4) I don't see anything wrong with it. - What if someone says, "I don't see anything wrong with stealing your car" or "having an affair with your mate" or "beating you upside the head with a two by four"?

(5) I know a lot of good Christian people who drink socially. - "I know a lot of good Christian people who...cheat on their taxes, curse, smoke, commit adultery, abuse their children..." - Since when did the actions of others become the standard for our own righteousness? - II Corinthians 10:12 - We don't base our decisions on who does it. Rather, we're to base our decisions on what God says about it.

THE RESULTS OF DRINKING:

When you drink...

1. It can lead to drunkenness, which is clearly condemned in the Bible. (Isaiah 5:22-25; Ephesians 5:18) - John MacArthur: "Both the Old and New Testaments unequivocally condemn drunkenness. Every picture of drunkenness in the Bible is a picture of sin and disaster."

2. You support an industry that is destroying the moral fabric of America. - "Every...drink you buy is a vote to support an industry whose product leads to rape, murder, traffic deaths, poverty, divorce, incest and violence. This industry costs the American people $19 billion annually. In the U.S. alone, the total cost: medical, psychiatric and social to the user of this product is estimated at $43 billion annually." (Source: "Before You Drink"/1989)

3. You can become a statistic. - Drinking causes 150,000 deaths each year. - Over 40 million Americans are alcoholics or problem drinkers. - 10 million of them under the age of 18. - 35% of all drunk drivers are 16-24 years old. - Drinking causes 80% of all home violence and 60% of all child abuse. - 38% of those who take their own lives are alcoholics--a suicide rate 58 times higher than any other group. - The National Council on Alcoholism reveals that alcoholism is a contributor to more than 40,000 birth defects each year.

Quote: David Wilkerson, ("Sipping Saints") "Just two ounces of alcohol per day puts the fetus in a 10-percent-risk category, and all pregnant mothers are being asked to abstain from drinking even a drop of alcoholic beverage during the nine months of pregnancy. The risk of producing an abnormal baby may be as high as 74% for pregnant women who drink more than an equivalent of ten ounces of liquor per day."

4. You can become an alcoholic. (Proverbs 20:1; 23:29-35) - Alcoholism is a sin.

œ I am constantly amazed at the ability of our society to rationalize sin.

- When someone murders little babies they say they are not murderers they are simply pro-choice. - When someone gets involved in homosexuality or lesbianism, instead of calling it sin or admitting that it is an abomination in the eyes of God, they say, "Oh, no, I was born this way." - When someone becomes an alcoholic, we say they have a disease. They're just sick and need medicine and therapy.

- In the U.S., beer and wine companies spend over 1 billion a year to promote that disease.

- Can you imagine the outcry if someone were advertising to promote Parkinsons or cancer?

Quote: Bob Moorehead ("Before You Take A Drink") "There had to be the first drink, and it certainly wasn't consumed with the intent and idea of deliberately becoming an addict. No alcoholic PLANNED and deliberately ACHIEVED his condition of drunkenness. Every alcoholic I know was once able to 'hold' their liquor, and some for extended periods of time. Science and technology, nor psychology can predict who will become addicted when their first drink is swallowed or during the period of 'innocent' social drinking. So, every social drinker is playing a game of 'Drinking Roulette.' The losers suffer. Every social drinker gambles with the odds every time he puts a drink to his lips."

- An alcoholic's life is shortened by 10-12 years at the very least.

5. You are destroying your own body.

- "4 out of every 10 hospital admissions are alcohol related. Alcohol related deaths outnumber drug-related deaths 33 to 1. 'Alcoholism is the nation's number 1 health problem,' states Dr. Carl Menninger. Ethyl alcohol damages every gland and organ in the body. Its users have 8 times as much cancer as do non-users. It adversely affects over 10 million Americans yearly. It destroys brain cells when present in ANY quantity in the body. If our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, does this make social drinking a sin?" (Source: "Before You Drink" by Bob Moorehead)

Quote: "The fact is, alcohol does not pass through the body into the drain. When a person drinks an alcoholic beverage, it flows into the stomach, but it doesn't stay there very long. Some of it is absorbed through the walls of the stomach, into the bloodstream. Once that happens, the drinker begins to feel the effects. Alcohol that has not been absorbed passes into the small intestine. Most of the alcohol is absorbed from the small intestine and is circulated throughout the body in the bloodstream. This is how alcohol reaches the brain and affects motor reflexes of the body.

The body disposes of alcohol in two ways: elimination and oxidation. Only about 10% of the alcohol in the body 'goes out the drain' through elimination by the kidneys. As the alcohol in the bloodstream passes through the lungs, some of it evaporates into the air. The result is usually referred to as 'alcohol breath.'" (David Wilkerson: "Sipping Saints")

"About 90% of the alcohol in the body leaves by oxidation. Oxidation is the union of a substance with oxygen to produce energy and heat. When alcohol is oxidized by the body, it forms carbon dioxide and water. The liver plays an important role in this oxidizing process. Alcohol is carried to the liver through the bloodstream. There it is changed to a chemical called acetaldehyde. Combined with oxygen, it forms another chemical called acetic acid.

The liver can only oxidize a certain amount of alcohol each minute, and the process continues until all the alcohol is out of the body. Alcohol does not leave the body very quickly, and only 10% passes out through the urine. Even if a person's blood alcohol is as low as .03 percent (i.e. after one glass of wine), some of the alcohol will remain in the body for hours. If the blood alcohol reaches .50 percent, the drinker is in a deep coma and in danger of dying. As the alcohol level reaches 1 percent in the blood, the brain is paralyzed and death occurs." (David Wilkerson: "Sipping Saints")

6. Others May Follow Your Example. - Do you really want to influence your family and your friends to take up this kind of lifestyle? - A large percentage of all alcohol-related counseling is for people whose parents were either alcoholics or serious problem drinkers.

Abstainers In The Bible: (There actually were some folks in the Bible who were tee-totalers.) 1. Samuel (I Samuel 1:11) 2. Samson (Judges 13:3-5) 3. John the Baptist (Luke 1:15) 4. The Recabites (Jeremiah 35:1-19)

- There were many others who took the Nazirite vow. (A vow to be "separated or consecrated") - II Corinthians 6:14-18 (We are to be "separate" from the world) - II Corinthians 7:1 (We're to purify ourselves from everything that contaminates...") - I Peter 2:9-12 (Holiness)

EIGHT GUIDELINES FOR CHRISTIANS (Dr. John MacArthur)

1. Is Today's Wine The Same As That In Bible Times?

"Many sincere, Bible-honoring Christians justify their drinking wine on the basis of its being an acceptable practice both in the Old and New Testaments. But if the kind of wine used then was different from that used today, then application of the biblical teaching concerning wine will also be different."

David Wilkerson: "As far as I am concerned, Scripture and historical facts prove there were two kinds of wine. One was intoxicating, the other was not...God by His direct act, does not make alcohol. The laws of nature, if left to themselves, do not produce it. By these laws, the grapes ripen; if not eaten, they rot and are decomposed. The manufacture of alcohol is wholly man's device."

- In other words, man has to mess with the fruit of the vine in order to produce a drink that becomes alcoholic.

THREE KINDS OF WINE:

1. Sikera (Luke 1:15) and Shekar (Proverbs 20:1; Isaiah 5:11) "Alcoholic Wine" - This refers to strong drink. Led to rapid intoxication of those who drank it.

2. Gleukos (Acts 2:13) "New Wine" (Non-alcoholic) - Freshly squeezed juice...could ferment rapidly and was generally mixed with water before drinking. (John 2. Six jars full of water)

3. Oinos (Matthew 9:17) and Yayin (Proverbs 23:30) - The most common N.T. Greek word for wine and in its most general sense simply refers to the juice of the grapes. - They would boil the fresh grape juice into a thick paste or syrup, which they could store for long periods of time in wineskins (Matthew 9:17)

MacArthur: "Because boiling removes most of the water and kills all the bacteria, the concentrated state of the juice does not ferment. Even when the reconstituted mixture was allowed to ferment, its alcohol content was quite low." "Since the strongest wine normally drunk was mixed at least with three parts water to one part wine, its alcohol content would have been...well below the 3.2 percent that today is generally considered necessary to classify a beverage as alcoholic."

"It is clear, therefore, that whether the yayin or oinos mentioned in Scripture refers to the thick syrup itself, to a mixture of water and syrup, or to a mixture of water and pure wine, the wine was either nonalcoholic or only slightly alcoholic. To get drunk with mixed wine (oinos) would have required consuming a large quantity--as is suggested in other New Testament passage. 'Addicted to wine' (I Timothy 3:3; Titus 1:7) translates one Greek word (paroinos) and literally means 'at, or beside wine,' and carries the idea of sitting beside the wine cup for an extended period of time."

"The answer to the first question is clearly no. The wine of Bible times was not the same as the unmixed wine of our own day. Even the more civilized pagans of Bible times would have considered the drinking of modern wines to be barbaric and irresponsible."

2. Is It Necessary?

MacArthur: "In Bible times, good drinking water either did not exist or was scarce. The safest drink was wine, and wine that had alcoholic content was especially safe because of the antiseptic effect of the alcohol. It actually purified the water." "Modern believers therefore cannot appeal to the biblical practice to justify their own drinking, because so many alternatives are now readily and cheaply available."

3. Is It The Best Choice?

- Not for leaders (Proverbs 31:4-5) - There's a stricter judgment for teachers (James 3:1)

MacArthur: "In both the Old and New Testaments drinking wine or strong drink disqualified a person from the leadership of God's people."

- The fact that Paul had to tell Timothy to "stop drinking only water and use a little wine" for his stomach ailments testifies to the fact that Timothy was an abstainer. (I Timothy 5:23) - Romans 12:1-2. Present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

- Our bodies are to be in total consecration to God.

4. Is It Habit Forming?

- I Corinthians 6:12. "I will not be mastered by anything." - A Christian not only must avoid sin, but avoid the potential for sin.

- Alcohol is universally acknowledged to be highly addictive.

5. Is It Potentially Destructive?

- We've already covered a number of the problems that can and do result from drinking alcohol. - We have to ask ourselves, is it really wise for us to have any part of something that has such great potential for destruction and sin?

6. Will It Offend Other Christians?

- Romans 14:15-21

7. Will It Harm My Christian Testimony?

- I Corinthians 10:31-33 - You normally won't know how bad you blew your testimony until you get to Heaven.

8. Is It Right?

- Is it right for a Christian to drink at all?

MacArthur: "We have seen that the answer to the first question is clearly no--the wine drunk in Bible times is not the same as contemporary wine. The answers to the second and third questions are also no for the majority of believers today--it is generally unnecessary to drink wine and is seldom the best choice. The answer to the next four questions is yes in at least some degree. Drinking is clearly habit forming and potentially destructive, and it is likely to offend other Christians and could harm our testimony before unbelievers."

"As we ask ourselves questions about drinking, the final one is the most important: Can I do it before others and before God in total faith and confidence that it is right?"

- After examining the evidence we've covered, and there's a whole lot more we could've covered...I'd have to say, "No."