Drinking Alcohol Weekly Wrap Up | Striving for Eternity

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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May 5, 2018

00:04: Welcome to The Wrap Report, Daily Edition, where we provide a quick biblical interpretations and applications.
00:12: This is a ministry of striving for eternity. What we'd like to do is give you a wrap -up of the
00:18: Daily Wrap Reports in one podcast so you can get all of them back -to -back and listen to the full session on Christians and alcohol.
00:28: This week we'll deal with the question of Christians and drinking of alcohol. Now first, any time we have to deal with this, we have to first start with the fact that there are some people who believe that in the first century,
00:42: Jesus did not drink alcohol and did not make water into wine.
00:49: There are some people who try to argue that no one that's a
00:55: Christian should ever drink alcohol nor ever did drink alcohol. That wouldn't be true.
01:01: In the first century, alcohol had a very specific benefit.
01:07: It was to kill dysentery in the water. And the majority of people would drink wine.
01:15: The wine was water with a little bit of alcohol. Now it is not the same alcohol content we have today, however, as we see in such as Proverbs 20 verse 1, it says wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray is not wise.
01:34: What you see there is two different distinctions, wine and strong drink. Wine was what would be watered down wine to the wine we have today.
01:43: But there was alcohol that people drank and they did it to get drunk. That would be your strong drink.
01:50: As opposed to the water they would have which would have some alcohol content in it.
01:56: Now later in the week we're going to address the question of can a Christian drink alcohol?
02:04: So stay tuned as we had a question that was emailed to us, can Christians drink alcohol?
02:09: This week we want to address that question. Yesterday we saw that there is a distinction in the first century between wine and strong drink and that people did drink wine commonly for the fact that they wanted to kill dysentery in the water.
02:24: Now we know that Jesus created water into wine and we know that that wine did contain alcohol because we see that even at the wedding feast the person in charge was surprised by the good tasting wine saying that people bring the bad stuff later after people have drunk.
02:45: And so this clearly shows that they had this wine and knew that it had some alcohol content to it.
02:54: The question is, is alcohol itself a sin? No. You do not see that in scripture.
03:00: You see drunkenness as sin. In fact, Paul encourages Timothy in 1
03:06: Timothy 5 .23 he says no longer drink only water but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.
03:17: In other words, he's telling him to drink wine to prevent the dysentery because to try to keep his testimony
03:24: Timothy was having only water and he was getting sick. Paul is encouraging him to have wine for his stomach sake.
03:33: In other words, drink a little bit to kill the dysentery. Wine served that purpose.
03:39: And so it is not always a sin. As we discuss the issue of alcohol use, one thing that some people believe is that Jesus Christ could never have drank alcohol.
03:51: Some will try to argue he did not make water into wine, actual wine that contained alcohol.
03:57: We've dealt with that already. However, let's look at Luke 7 .33
04:02: -34. It says, for John the Baptist came eating no bread and drinking no wine and you say he is a demon.
04:10: The Son of Man has come eating and drinking and you say look at him a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.
04:20: In the context that makes it clear the contrast between John the Baptist and Jesus, John the
04:26: Baptist who ate no bread and drank no wine, Jesus Christ who ate and drank, the context would lead us to believe that Jesus Christ did in fact drink wine.
04:38: That the contrast of John not drinking any wine means that the drink in Luke 7 .33
04:47: -34, the drink is alcohol. This would lead us to believe that Jesus in fact did drink alcohol, which means if Jesus did so and he can never sin, then drinking of alcohol in and of itself is not a sin.
05:02: However, drunkenness is always condemned as a sin. On tomorrow's podcast we're going to ask the question, can
05:10: Christians drink alcohol in today's day and age with so many other options?
05:19: While trying to answer a question that came in to us via email, the question was, can a
05:25: Christian drink alcohol? This week so far we've been trying to lay a foundation for this question.
05:32: We have seen that they did drink alcohol in the first century. We did see that Jesus did in fact drink alcohol, and alcohol did serve a purpose in the first century.
05:42: But in America or in the modernized world where we have water filtration, is there a need to drink alcohol?
05:50: Well, no. No, there isn't. There's no more need to drink alcohol. But that leads to a second question and the question that was asked, can a
05:59: Christian drink alcohol? The answer to that is one that sometimes comes into question because in our day and age where we have sodas and juice drinks and filtered water and all kinds of things, what's the purpose of drinking alcohol?
06:15: Now I would say that anyone that says they need to have a glass of alcohol in any form to take the edge off, then they would be in sin.
06:24: Because they are looking for the alcohol to do something it's not supposed to be doing. It is not there to help take the edge off.
06:32: It actually was there for dysentery initially. However, can a Christian drink? Well, if they can drink without getting drunk, then it might be acceptable.
06:42: However, if they cannot control themselves, then they should avoid it at all costs.
06:48: Now, if someone feels that they have the liberty to drink alcohol, the question has to be asked, should they?
06:54: And we will deal with that in tomorrow's podcast. All week we have been trying to answer a listener's question on whether a
07:01: Christian can drink alcohol. We've seen already that in the first century they did drink alcohol to kill dysentery.
07:06: We've seen that Christians can drink without it being a sin and the proof of it is that Jesus Christ himself drank alcohol.
07:15: And it couldn't have been a sin because Jesus cannot sin. The question we want to address today is, should a
07:23: Christian drink alcohol? And I think that there's two things to view with this.
07:29: One, the context. If a person is drinking alcohol in their own home and they feel they have that liberty and they are not given over to drunkenness, that might be fine.
07:40: However, we do see precautions in scripture that if someone is around you that would be struggling with alcohol use, then you should refrain.
07:52: This is one of the reasons I think it is in bad taste for Christians online to be posting of their alcohol drinking.
08:00: Even if they believe it is a liberty, I believe that it could cause others to stumble and we should have such love for our fellow brothers and sisters that we wouldn't want to do anything that would cause them to struggle.
08:12: My pastor once had someone that left a bottle of champagne in his refrigerator when he moved in the house and just having it there caused someone to stumble.
08:21: He poured that out, put it into a brown paper bag, took it all the way to the dump and threw it out there so he would never cause someone to stumble again.
08:30: We should take such precautions when it comes to our brothers. This podcast is part of the
08:35: Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org