Is Alcohol Sinful? (Part 2)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2 verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Alcohol, Drunkenness, and the Christian Debate

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Today, the hot topic is alcohol. What does the Bible teach about alcohol on No Compromise Radio? My desire is to be biblical, and of course, this is a provocative topic because you have Christians on two sides, basically.

Christians shouldn't drink, and the other side is Christians are allowed to drink. And so it's kind of hard to half drink. And so we're looking at what does the Bible teach about alcohol today? Part two, listen to last week.

I basically said this last week. One, drunkenness is always a sin. I prefaced all this by saying, I don't drink anymore. So as you hear my messages and they start leading up to, at least it has a 50 chance that it's going to lead up to, it's not a sin for Christians to drink.

If that's going to be the position that I begin to talk about, you can know yourself that I'm not trying to justify what I do. So it's like homeschooling. I have private schools. I have now two homeschooled and two public schools.

So I can just bash people and critique people without those people saying, oh, you know what, you don't understand. And if you were one of us and you'd get it, and you know, how can you understand it?

You know, that's about as naive as saying you can't say anything bad about Rob Bell's book on love wins because you haven't read it. If you read a segment of it and read a little portion of it and realized what he's saying, I think you're able to critique it as spiritual cyanide.

So today on No Compromise Radio, number one, drunkenness is always a sin. Number two, alcohol in and of itself is not the problem. It's what the human heart does with it. Guns don't kill people. There's a lot of sex sins that happen, but that doesn't make sex bad.

There's a lot of food sins like gluttony and anorexia and bulimia, those kinds of issues, but that doesn't make food bad. And so you can't just say food is bad because there have been abuses of food. Sex is bad because there's been abuses of sex.

Alcohol is bad because we've abused alcohol. That just doesn't fly. We looked last time, Isaiah 25, God makes a lavish banquet for all of us. For all peoples on this mountain, a banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow and refined aged wine.

So did you know, continuing this second point, so you realize it, the Bible does not say alcohol in and of itself is evil. Psalm 4, you have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and new wine abound.

Or how about love? Love is like choice wine. It's compared to wine. Love is like a good glass of wine in the Song of Solomon. May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth for your love is better than what?

Wine. Solomon says in chapter one, verse four, I mean, it's in Song of Solomon, one, four, draw me after you and let us run together. The king has brought me into his chambers. We will rejoice with you and be glad.

First the lady said that, now the tenants there, we will extol your love more than wine. Song of Solomon four, verse 10, how beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride. How much better is your love than wine?

Song of Solomon seven, nine, and your mouth like the best wine. It goes down smoothly for my beloved, flowing gently through the lips of those who fall asleep. When you call alcohol witches brew, when you call alcohol demon rum, when you say that if it's not Welch's grape juice, it's from the devil, you're not thinking biblically, you're not thinking critically, you're not really reading your Old Testament to see what the Bible teaches.

Actually, I go so far to say, since it's super biblical regarding this whole topic still on point two, that in the Old Testament, if the nation of Israel did not receive wine from God, it was viewed as a judgment.

It was viewed as judgment from God. I think Daniel Wallace has some good stuff to say about this. I don't know if my outline's the same as his, I haven't looked for a long time, but he makes a good point about this particular thing, that's for sure.

And here, if you look at Jeremiah 48, 33, so gladness and joy are taken away from the fruitful field, even from the land of Moab, and I have made the wine to cease from the wine presses. No one will tread them with shouting, the shouting will not be shouts of joy.

Lamentations 2, 11, and they say to their mothers, where is grain and wine? As they faint like a wounded man in the street of the city, and their life is poured out on their mother's bosom. Tired today, maybe that's the problem.

I can't have a glass of wine because I don't drink, but I could have a glass of wine if I wanted to. The question is, would it be biblical? That's what we're talking about today. Drunkenness is always a sin, but the Bible doesn't paint alcohol as having inherent evil.

Like, it's the problem. It can be seen as a gift, it can be seen as something that's good. It can be seen as given from the hand of God. So, today on No Compromise Radio, we're talking about alcohol, and we move to the third point.

We move to the third point. I think we're still okay for either camp to like this point. That second point, I don't know if the camp who's against alcohol for the Christians might like it, although I think they'd have to agree at the end of the day.

Yes, in fact, certainly those verses are true, but the idea is true as well. I think they would say things like, you realize how much damage alcohol has caused, we should just stay away from it. And again, I think there's wisdom to that statement, but I don't think it's exclusive wisdom.

I don't think it includes all the biblical corpus, the data of Scripture, and so that's why we're doing what we're doing today. And if you are a teetotaler, I'm not saying to you, I want you to drink.

That is not my point. Save yourself the money, save yourself the brain cells. I don't think you should go out there and whoop it up. Drink too much. But I am saying, I'd like you to think biblically, and this is a fair topic and it's provoking anyway.

Wine in the Bible and the Question of Alcohol Content

Number three, be careful that you don't think that our wine is exactly the same as Bible wine. What is the exact alcohol content, in other words? And is wine, is there a one-to-one correspondence between the word wine then and the word wine now?

And I just want to make sure that we process this properly. And what are the degrees and percentages of alcohol content in modern wines compared to ancient wines? And that's what I'd like to work through.

The Talmud would say the wine used in Passover was three parts water and one part wine. As you know, many times you would have to have wine added to some water because wine is alcoholic and it would kill the bugs.

Now, if wine was an alcoholic, why would you want to have some unfermented wine to grape juice poured into the water? What would that do except make it kind of a purplish, pinkish color? No, the alcohol content in the wine helped kill off the bugs and the amoebas and the parasites, et cetera.

Remember, Paul is not commanding Timothy to sin when he says in 1 Timothy 5 .23, no longer drink wine exclusively, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments. He says you ought to drink some wine.

Now, could it be that Timothy grew up drinking wine but realized in his mind, at least he thought that alcohol's bad and that it's evil and Christians should be teetotalers and they should be part of the temperance movement?

By the way, I have an old Bible and in the front it's got a temperance page that you are all to sign, father, mother, and children, that you won't drink alcohol. That was in the front of the Bible, found that interesting, right by the marriage section, death section, et cetera.

Timothy is not being commanded by Paul to sin, certainly in this book of the Bible, but I think Timothy probably was a teetotaler and Paul said, you know what? Your stomach's getting killed, you need wine.

It's okay to have a little wine, that's the point. It's okay to have a little wine water. Put a little wine, mix it in, that alcohol in the wine will kill the bugs and it's going to be better. I think overall, you are going to find that the alcohol level today is greater than the alcohol level in the Bible days.

Let me read this. Okay, the gods have revealed wine to mortals to be the greatest blessing for those who use it aright, but for those who use it without measure, the reverse. For it gives food to them that take it and strengthen the mind and body.

In medicine, it is the most beneficial. It can be mixed with liquid and drugs and it brings aid to the wounded. In daily intercourse, to those who mix and drink it moderately, it gives good cheer. But if you overstep the bounds, it brings violence.

Mix it half and half and you get madness, unmixed bodily collapse. That is Minitheus of Athens. Back in the day, here's the scoop. The scoop is this. If you drink moderately, it's going to be fine. If you drink in excess, there's trouble.

And here, isn't it interesting, we have some document evidence that if you mix it half and half, you're going to be mad and if you don't mix it, you're going to have bodily collapse in other words, it is a biblical concept, not that it's derived from a Bible verse, but it's a concept that was around in Bible days, that's the better way to put it, that you would mix wine and you would half and half it.

No, more than that, you'd have three parts and one part would probably be the typical mixing. Stein said, in other words, it is possible to become intoxicated from wine mixed with three parts plus water, but one's drinking would probably affect the bladder long before the mind.

Stein in his Wine Drinking in New Testament Times, page 11. So what I'm after is this. If you automatically say they drank wine in the Bible, therefore I drink wine and therefore I'm allowed to drink my family gulp size of my Moga David 2020, my Mad Dog 2020, MD 2020, you are wrong.

That's not the way to go about it. That's too much MD 2020. Why would you drink that nasty stuff anyway? And you're doing it for one reason. Why do people drink malt liquor? Because they want to get drunk.

Why do people drink Everclear? Because 180 grain alcohol, they want to get drunk. And so it's not some social thing. It's not to make a bitter life's man more happy. It's not any kind of the biblical things.

It is strictly to get drunk. Now you might start saying to me, well, back in those days for Timothy, if he had to have a little alcohol put in his water, we have refined water now. So therefore there's no need for us to drink alcohol in any way, shape or form.

Well, it's true that we have fresh water. Matter of fact, you can get fresh tap water bottled and it's called Dasani, I think. At least it used to be. Maybe they have put some special kind of pasteurization now, but you can get water, bottled water.

That's true, but that doesn't help us with the argument. Let's continue our argument as I think about it. This way, did Jesus regularly drink alcohol? Did Jesus drink wine? Or was it really grape juice?

Listen to Daniel Wallace. Some take the words for wine to mean grape juice. If this were so, then why would there be prohibitions against drunkenness? One cannot get drunk from grape juice. Further, Jesus' first miracle was changing the water into wine at the wedding of Cana in Galilee.

He made between 120 and 180 gallons of wine. Even if this had been grape juice, it would soon turn into wine because the fermentation process would immediately begin. But it most certainly was not grape juice.

The head waiter in John 2 .10 said, every man sets out the good wine first and after the guests have drunk freely the poor wine, but you have kept the good wine until now. End quote in John 2 .10. Wallace continues, the verb translated drunk freely is almost always used of getting drunk and is so translated in the NRSV.

In the least, the people at this wedding feast, if not drunk, would certainly be drinking alcohol fairly freely if not this verb means something here that is nowhere else attested. Wallace is not saying Jesus made a bunch of wine so they would get drunk.

The head waiter is saying this anyway. This is a quote from the head waiter and the head waiter says, when it comes to alcohol, usually we give the good stuff. Then when they get drunk, the bad stuff, you can't detect it because you're drunk.

And so same thing back in the old days when I would drink and I'd say, all right, I can afford six really good beers and six not so good beers. Which ones do I drink first? I've got Guinness and Bass Ale and I've got Falstaff and Old Milwaukee.

Which ones will I drink first? I'm gonna drink the really good stuff because it tastes better. It's a higher quality. It's more premium. And then as I start to get drunk and feel the effects of alcohol, I can't taste things as precisely.

And so this isn't Jesus making stuff so they get drunk. This is the head waiter's comment. So before you write me or anything, just make sure you read the passage. I'll also say that Jesus used parables about wine, vineyards, wineskins, God the Father in John 15 is a vine dresser.

There's no indication, no inkling, no iota of some kind of slam against the Father or slam against any of these things that were used regularly back in those days. From the Passover, the four glasses of wine on the Passover celebration, even if mixed, still contained alcohol.

Even if mixed with water, it still had alcohol. And so when we deal with this issue, we should be careful to walk through these passages biblically. Romans 14, 21, it is good not to eat meat or to drink wine or to do anything by which your brother stumbles.

That passage right there implies that it's fine to drink wine. It's okay to drink wine. It's not sinful to drink wine. Unless you're drinking wine, makes your brother stumble. So if it's always a sin to drink wine, if a Christian should never drink wine, then why say it this way?

He wouldn't say it this way. I'll go on to say on No Compromise Radio today talking about alcohol in general, you're not super spiritual if you just abstain from things. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't abstain from things.

I personally don't drink, but my lack of drinking does not mean I'm super spiritual. That doesn't mean it at all. Somehow having a list of Christianity of what I do do or what I don't do, therefore that's right.

It has nothing to do with the gospel, has nothing to do with perfection, has nothing to do with justification. Matter of fact, Romans 14 and 15 follow Romans 3, 4, and 5. And that is to say, if you understand justification by faith alone based on Christ's perfect life, death, and resurrection, alien imputed righteousness from Christ Jesus given through imputation to our spiritual account, our sins and our spiritual bankruptcy imputed to Christ's account.

If you understand that transaction confirmed by the resurrection, whatever you put into your mouth or don't put into your mouth or whatever you put into your gullet or don't put into your gullet, it's not going to change your relationship to God because he sees you with the perfect covering and the righteousness of Christ Jesus.

God could not love you less. God could not love you more. God loves you like he loves his son, Christ Jesus. And so if immediately we say in these gray areas, well, I just don't do them, that makes you super spiritual.

I think you could be super spiritual and not drink, but it doesn't necessarily mean if you don't drink you're super spiritual because pure kind of fleshly asceticism and self-abasement, severe treatment of the body, as Paul says in Colossians 2, that doesn't make us more spiritual.

And so what do we do? We're not talking about liberty and drinking in front of other people yet, but I do want to say Romans 14 .21 makes no sense if you say alcohol can never be drunk, never be drunken, that Christians can't drink alcohol.

It proves the exact opposite because it assumes Christians drink and assumes it's okay for Christians to drink, but if there's somebody who's weak that you shouldn't drink around them. It's not good to eat meat or to drink wine or to do anything by which your brother stumbles.

So see, the language of love, this is a real love language, the doctrine of love, the command of love, because of what Christ has done for us, and he's such a good Savior and a wonderful Savior, we want to honor him and it motivates us to honor him.

And so things that we can't have for the sake of one of Christ's sheep, we don't have to have. That is the point. Christianity is not some kind of rule. And sadly, it's probably easier in Christianity.

As we talk about alcohol today on No Compromise Radio, you can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. It's easier to be a legalist. It's much easier, I think. Now, there's gonna be fewer drunk people if you're legalistic.

Maybe if I send my daughter to college, I'd rather send her to a legalistic school than a licentious school. But legalism isn't any better than licentiousness. It just makes for maybe a healthier society, more moralistically.

But legalism is easier because you just have the rule. The rule is don't drink, that makes it easy. But if the Bible, so far as we've seen, at least in the verses I've quoted, and I've got more verses to quote, it's just not that easy.

It's not that easy to just make up a list. So remember, I don't drink, but that's not my point here today. I know those who do drink. I know Christians who drink. I know Christians who don't drink. But what does the Bible teach us?

And so what does Ephesians say? Let's go to Ephesians. What does Ephesians say about this whole topic of drinking? And Ephesians does say that we are supposed to be filled, but it's gonna be filled by the Spirit of God, not be filled with wine so that it might influence us.

Alcohol influences, wine influences, the Spirit of God influences. And so you are not to operate under the influence of alcohol when you drive. And you are to operate by the influence of the Spirit of God as you live your Christian life.

O 'Brien said in his great commentary on Ephesians, if you want one commentary on Ephesians, you need O 'Brien in the pillar series. If drunkenness leads to desolate behavior, then Spirit-filled Christians whose lives are characterized by singing, then Spirit-filled lives are characterized by singing, thanksgiving, and submission.

These prevent a very different picture. So here we are told again not to get drunk with wine. He didn't say you're not to drink wine. He just says you're not to get drunk with wine because you should rather be a person filled with the Spirit who sings and who makes melody with his heart, who's thanking people.

Christians love to sing and they love to be influenced by the Spirit of God and they're thankful people, they're submitting people. And as you know right now, we are people that just are trying to stall for time on No Compromise Radio because I'm looking at my notes here page after page after page after page of Ephesians 5 stuff and I want to get back to that whole drunkenness stuff, alcohol stuff, where are my notes when I need them?

Justification, Liberty, and Being Filled with the Spirit

Here's what we've done so far when it comes to alcohol. Again, I have to give the caveat, I'm not trying to promote scotch clubs on elder boards, I think that's kind of dumb. I'm not trying to promote I'm super spiritual if I don't drink, I'm not trying to get you if you do have a glass of wine with your wife on your honeymoon to stop it.

I'm not into any of these things, I have no motivation. I'm not out to get you to stop, to start, to do anything else, I'm after this. I'm after you to think biblically when it comes to alcohol. That's what I want because you are commanded to know the scriptures and I want you to not be a weak Christian who just says yes or no based on just a lack of understanding because somebody told you.

What I've tried to do on this show is to set some principles up so that you can work through the issue. Now, drunkenness is always a sin, that's the first point. Number two, sometimes, well the problem is not alcohol in and of itself, sometimes that's seen as a gift of God.

And number three, I think you can make a pretty good case for alcohol not being the same in the Old Testament as in the New, but I think you could always make the case that the wine we see in the Bible is alcoholic.

So kind of both ways, I'm kind of riding the center there. I hate to do that on No Compromise Radio, but some people think, do you know what, it's fine if I want to have some kind of Everclear party because that's not the issue.

And on the other extreme, you have people who say, you know, it's just grape juice. Well, you might want to do a little study on the Methodist pastor Welch to see when he figured out how to pasteurize and actually why he wanted to do that.

Why is there Welch's grape juice? Because the pastor who's Mr. Pastor Welch was a teetotaler and was in the temperance movement theologically and didn't want his parishioners during communion to have wine or have it any other time.

So what do you do? Can you eat or drink for the glory of Christ? Can you have a glass of wine? Can you have a glass of champagne? Can you have a beer? These are all questions that I want you to work through because at least in part two, I'm not gonna give you the answer.

I want you to be a Berean to find out if these things are true. And if you're the kind of person that says, Mike Ebenroth has now just given me liberty to drink. I used to be a drinker and I'm 10 years in the Lord and he's just said it's okay to drink.

You didn't listen to the show. You have not listened to the show. Now at the end of part three or part four, I may give you some principles for what you could do or should do, but I'm not gonna give you those now because I want you to think biblically.

I was influenced by a certain kind of background. I grew up a drunk, therefore I wanted to swing towards legalism. And so the question is, do I wanna be a legalist when it comes to alcohol now or where am I?

I'm not saying to go to the alcohol store. I'm not saying to spend your alcohol money on alcohol. I'm not saying that at all. I'm also trying to tell you that it's not necessarily by nature, well, it's not by inherent nature, innate nature, sin, it's a thing.

So Mike Ebenroth, No Compromise Radio, hang in there. You can write me, can give me a bunch of other verses about the different Greek words for wine. We're gonna get there soon, nocompromiseradio .com.

Got some new messages coming every day, God bless.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebenroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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