Be Not Drunk with Wine, Part 2

Ephesians 5:18

This morning we are, as you know if you were here last time, we're going to digress just a little bit from our text of Ephesians 5:18. In our continuing study in the book of Ephesians we found ourselves, last week, in verse 18 and that verse introduces to us the topic of drunkenness and that introduces to us the topic of drinking. And because there have so many, many questions about this very important area, many of you have asked is it right ‑ should a Christian drink alcoholic beverages ‑ what does the bible teach ‑ and so forth and so on that we decided to stop here and share some thoughts on this.

Somebody was telling me that as they came to church this morning they saw a billboard that said ‑ What is Christmas without Jim Beam ‑. Maybe that reflects some of the sickness of the society in which we live. It does introduce to us a problem that is indeed a problem. Ephesians 5:18 says, "And be not drunk with wine, in which is excess but be filled with the Spirit". This is a direct command against drunkenness. The Spirit of God is saying we are not to be drunk. In our society we have up to 20 million drunks, 20 million alcoholics, 6 million of them are young and 3.3 million of them are teenagers. We can safely say that America has a severe drinking problem. I suppose we aren't too surprised about that. We would expect a proud, self‑indulgent, sinful, pleasure mad society which is filled with consequent guilt, anxiety, frustration and depression to try to both live it up and forget it all by drinking. We're not too shocked at that at all. But what may be a little stranger to us is the fact that Christians who by our Lord's definition are meek, selfless, absolutely forgiven, comforted by the Holy Spirit, filled with the joy of the Lord should seek their comfort and their joy from a bottle. Yet the amazing facts of a recent survey show that 81% of all Roman Catholics and 64% of all Protestants drink alcoholic beverages. This is a very important issue. And much discussion and much confusion goes on in the debate. Some people say a Christian should not drink at all, absolutely no, it is forbidden, it is wrong, it is sin. Others say, a Christian can drink, yes, in moderation it's fine, especially since the bible indicates that Gods people drank wine, and if you do it in moderation it's fine.

I've been with Christians in this country, in Europe, Latin America and other places, some who did drink and some who did not. Some go to dinner and they wouldn't think of ordering wine and some others order it first and later think about dinner. I've had people on various mission fields tell me to stay in such and such a place because the wine was best there. And I've had on the other hand people who have been in the mission field society for many, many years and have never consumed any at all. It doesn't seem to be an issue of whether you're here geographically or somewhere else but there is, indeed, a lot of mixed feelings about whether it is right. I've had people come to me and say, when are you going to preach against drinking? And I've had people come to me and say, you're not going to preach against drinking are you? You would have enjoyed being at my house yesterday and hearing the ambivalence on the phone calls I got. Well, we're just calling to ask you're not going to say this tomorrow, are you? I would say come and find out. I know there's a lot of concern and the last thing I want to do is put everybody under a lot of guilt and the last thing that I want to do is make you think that whether you drink or don't drink is a symbol or emblem of your spirituality. Spirituality is what you are. What you do is only a manifestation of that.

Now remember this, in our last study of Ephesians 5:18, we told you that drinking is used in the contrast here with the Holy Spirit filling because it was not so much a social thing that Paul is looking at as it was theological. Sure people in that society just as in this society and in every other society around the world through the history of man, drink to forget their troubles, drink to induce joy, drink to induce some sense of comfort. It is true there is a social element to it but what Paul has in mind goes way beyond that, it is theological.

You see, wine was used for inducing drunkenness in pagan religions. In the worship of pagan gods by the Greeks and the Romans in order to induce what they thought was a higher religious consciousness. They believed that the move drunk they were the higher level of consciousness they attained to commune with their gods. It is exactly what Paul was saying in I Cor. 10, when he said you can't drink the cup of the demons and. the cup of the Lord, you can't go and drink the cup that makes you drunk to commune with the gods and then come and take the cup of communion by which you commune with Jesus Christ. Our communion demands the full use of your faculties, as it is energized by the filling of the Spirit in contrast with their communion which is really the absence of your faculties induced by the alcoholic content in some drink. Remember that I told you that Satan had counterfeited the whole gospel? We talked about the god Zeus who is sort of Satan's false Father. He's sort of like God the Father. And Zeus gave birth to a son who was then torn from limb to limb and was reborn which is the false resurrection. Remember that son was originally conceived without Zeus ever meeting the mother so that it was a virgin kind of conception, and you'll remember that Zeus decided to make that son the Lord of the earth, again indicating the same counterfeit. And so this became the lord of the earth, this son of Zeus who was reborn. His name was Dionysus and he is known as the god of wine. Why? Because pagan religion was induced by drunkenness. That was all a part of the system.

So when Paul is saying, do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation but be filled with the Spirit, he is saying your old kind of religious worship is out and the new is in and it's by the Holy Spirit not by drunkenness. So that's the basis of this contrast. That's the basis of his comparison. It is far more than just a social issue. He's talking religiously. He is saying, if you're going to walk the worthy walk, you're going to walk in humility, unity, and you're going to walk different than the gentiles walk, you're going to walk in love, light and wisdom then you will not induce your communion with God through drunkenness, you will do it by the filling of the Spirit of God. The point is that drunkenness is forbidden because it is a manifestation of an old way of life, incompatible with the new life. OK? Be not drunk with wine is a command.

Drunkenness is forbidden in the scripture. It is a pattern that belongs to the former life. In Romans, chapter 13, this is made abundantly clear in verse 13, "Let us walk honestly as in the day not in drunkenness." In Galatians, chapter 5 and verse 21 we find similarly these words, back in verse 17 it talks about the flesh, in verse 19 the works of the flesh and then in 21 it lists these, envyings, murders, drunkenness. These things are not a part of our new life. I have told you in the past time that they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. I Cor. 6:10 says the same thing, "Drunkards do not inherit the kingdom of God." I Peter chapter 4, verse 3, "For the time past of our life may suffice us when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine." That's the past of our life, that's sufficient for it, it stays there, it belongs there and that's all. That's part of the darkness of the past. We no longer, it says in I Thess. 5:6, 'we no longer sleep as do others but we watch and are sober minded, for they that sleep, sleep in the night and they that are drunk are drunk in the night," The point is, drunkenness is a part of the night from which we have come. We have entered into the day in Jesus Christ and there's no place for drunkenness. So the bible warns us against drunkenness. A believer is not to be drunk. People will always say, "Well, what does drunk mean?" Drunkenness can be defined as, any point in which the alcohol takes over any part of your faculties. That's drunkenness. Now it has all kinds of degrees and I don't know for everybody where that fine line is but whenever you have yield the control of your faculty in any sense to that alcohol, that becomes drunkenness.

Now the bible has a lot to say about this. I'd like to point out a couple of things to you. Proverbs, chapter 20, verse 1, the bible says, "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging and whosoever is deceived whereby, is not wise." The point is a person who takes that and becomes drunk is a fool and he is deceived to think that it makes something out of him that's positive. That's a deception of Satan, it is a mocker. You think it's doing something for you and it mocks you in the very act. Proverbs, I want you to look with me, chapter 23. One of the most interesting descriptions of drunkenness in all the bible. Proverbs 23, verse 19. The book of Proverbs, of course, was a book that fathers taught their sons and so all through the book of Proverbs you hear the father speaking to his son and in chapter 23, verse 19 you hear it again. "Hear thou my son and be wise and guide thy heart in the way." In other words, if you're a son of the kingdom, a son of the King, if you're a part of God's world and. God's domain, if you walk in the light then if you're in the way keep yourself in the way, guide your heart in the way. In verse 20 he says, "Be not among winebibbers." In other words, your life is incompatible with the drunkenness of those who you came from. "Be not among winebibbers" and by the way, "gluttonous eaters of flesh." And we can talk about that some time in the future. "For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty and. drowsiness shall clothe a man in rags." A person who becomes an alcoholic winds up in rags and you can see it if you've been watching the news this week and you've been kind of in on the Skid Row stabbings, you know exactly what It looks like to see those people. I've preached time and time and time again in the Missions. In fact, when I was very young I use to go to one on Third Street night after night and preach in the mission and watch these people clothed in their rags because of their drunkenness. What a deceiver drink was. You know, it was not making men of distinction, it was clothing men in rags and it was very apparent all you need to do is take a short look at that area and you can see for yourselves.

Now go down to verse 29 and he describes here what is a picture of drunkenness. By the way, in the middle he talks about harlotry because drunkenness and sexual immorality are so akin. He talks about the harlot in verse 27 cause that kind of goes with it. But verse 29 he describes the situation' of drunkenness. I want you to see it. "Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contention? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine." Let's just look at that for a minute. Whose got woe, whose got sorrow, heartaches, fights, who has babbling at the mouth, who has wounds without cause, who is it who has for no good reason at all runs into a freeway abutment, runs into a fire hydrant, a telephone pole, runs into a wall, falls into a window, who is it that has redness of eyes, who is it that Just gets himself into trouble, sorrow and fights and babbles at the mouth, it's the drunk. It's they that go with mixed wine. Mixed wine here is not talking about the wine that was mixed with water, it's talking about the mixtures of wines. You know the supposed connoisseur, the one who makes an issue out of winebibbing.

Now in order to avoid falling into this pit, he says, "Look not on the wine when it is red, when it gives its color in the cup, when it goes down smooth." In other words, just don't get involved with looking at it cause it is an enticing thing. You look at it, have you ever seen those people, they hold it up, those ads, and they flash lights through it and they look at it and. they pour it out in slow motion and it's flopping down and you have people who are professional drinkers of wine, and wine tasters. It's playing around with what is an inducement. And he says in verse 32, "It looks so good and it goes down so smooth and at last it bites like a snake and stings like an adder." "And thine eyes shall behold strange things." I'm not going to ask all of those who have had that experience to stand up and give your testimony, we can assume it. "And thine heart will utter perverse things." You see funny things, the pink elephants and all the rest and your heart utters perverse things and you'll be like a person who lies down in the midst of the sea, lying on top of the mast.

The verse means, here's a ship in the midst of the sea and you who are drunk is like the guy who is trying to sleep in the mast. If you know anything about a ship it's obvious that with the motion created at the bottom will be the most extreme at the top and the guy on the mast is going like this ... I talked to a guy this week who told me he had the experience of frequently being drunk and that is the most apt description he heard in his whole life. But you know what the amazing part of it is, it'll say they have stricken me, and I was not sick, they beat me and I felt it not, when shall I awake, I will seek it yet again. Amazing, all that trouble and what do you do when you get up? Go right back after it. One of the great old testament commentators, Dalitz says, "The author passes in this text, from the sin of prostitution and uncleanness to that of drunkenness because they are nearly related, for drunkenness excites the fleshly lusts and to wallow in delight in the mire of sensuality, a man created in the image of God must first brutalize himself by some kind of intoxication."

And so the bible is very clear about drunkenness. In Isaiah chapter 5, verse 11, "Woe unto them who rise up early in the morning that they may follow strong drink and who continues till night till wine inflames them." One of the characteristic marks of an alcoholic is he drinks in the morning. Woe to those who start in the morning and drink till night. And by the way, which we shall see later, you just about have to do that in that day to get drunk because the alcohol content was so low. You'd have to really go at it all day long unless of course, you drank strong drink as indicated here. If you were just drinking wine it would take a long time because of the difference of their kind of wine which we'll see in a minute. But the person who gets up and drinks all day is going to have woe to him. Chapter 28 of Isaiah and, there are many other passages. I'm just going to give you some samples. Chapter 28 of Isaiah, God gives an indictment against Ephraim, the children of the Lord, which is very, very scathing. He says, "They have erred," Isaiah 28:7, "through wine and strong drink are out of the way." In other words drink has driven them out of the proper perspective toward God. Look at this; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink.

Now I'll tell you something, the priest was forbidden to drink at all. We'll see that next time. Why? Because a priest was in a position of representing God, if he became drunk and made a misjudgment or misrepresentation, he could carry a whole group of people with him. And here the priest and the prophet of God were drunk, they had erred, they had made statements that were not true and they were swallowed up with wine. They were out of the way through strong drink, they erred in the vision and they stumbled in judgment. They were saying wrong things, they were leading people astray. And it tells how really rotten they had become in verse 8, "For all the tables were full of vomit and filthiness so that there is no place clean." They were vomiting and excreting right in the place where they were drinking. Incredible debauchery on the part of the priests and the prophets when God had called them to the place He had called them to. No wonder God judged them. In the 56th chapter of Isaiah we find in verses 11 and 12 1 a similar thing, talks about the people who were supposed to be watchmen for Israel, people who were supposed to be caring for the people. And it says, "They were greedy dogs that could never have enough, they're shepherds who can't understand their own way, everyone is for his gain from his quarter and they say, I'll fetch wine and we'll fill ourselves with strong drink and tomorrow shall be as this day and much more abundant." We're just going to stay drunk. And you know, God literally indicts these people. Anytime any person is in the position of spiritual responsibility and they drink and become drunk, they really are indicated by God in fearful ways. In Hosea chapter 4 in verse 11, "Harlotry and wine and new wine take away the heart." And here you have God linking drinking with adultery. Drinking with harlotry and prostitution.

Alright now we'll stop right there for a minute. I think you get the picture of how God feels about drunkenness. You saw the evil wretchedness of the drunkenness in chapter 9 of Genesis, where the result of it was a terrible incest. We know that God forbids drunkenness. It's repeated again and again. At no point in the life of a believer is he or she ever to yield the control of his faculties to alcohol. We are all priests unto God. We are all those with spiritual responsibility. We are all those to speak a fit word and to speak a right represen­tation of God and to do a thing that would rightly represent God at all times and we do not give up our faculties at any time, in any act of drunkenness‑no matter how minimal it would be without violating God's standard for having ourselves in accord with the Spirit of God.

But on the other hand, did you know that wine is also commended in the bible? Some of you are saying, "Oh no, I was so comfortable with the first part." But wine is also commended in the bible. We've got to be fair, it is. Did you know that in Exodus 29 and Leviticus 23 the people were told to bring drink offerings to the temple for God? Those drink offerings were wine. And did you know that according to I Chronicles 29:19 it is very likely that they kept a supply of wine in the temple for those offerings? And in Judges 9:13 and in Psalm 104:15 it says there's a special kind of wine that cheers, that makes you happy. And in Isaiah 24:9 the drinking of wine was accom­panied with singing good songs. And in Isaiah 55: 1 & 2, this is a shock, Isaiah equates wine with salvation. He says, "Come and buy wine" and he's really giving a salvation invitation. In John 13 our Lord Jesus Christ drank wine and ordained the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Table. Paul told Timothy in I Timothy 5:23 to drink a little wine for his stomachs sake. And it's obvious that the Old Testament and the New Testament show the staple drink was wine. And by the way, when the Good Samaritan went down the road and found the man on the side of the road. It says in Luke

10:34 that when he got him all fixed up he poured wine in his wounds.

And in Proverbs 31 it says when somebody gets old and sick and they're about to die, give them some wine to act as a sedative, to ease the pain, as an anesthetic.

So you see in scripture we have wine as a destroyer and wine as a mocker and wine as something that dissipates and wine is something that causes drunkenness which is forbidden by God and on the other hand you have wine as an acceptable thing in many places in scripture so indicated. You say, "Well what are you trying to say?" Well I'm trying to say it's like anything else, that little grape that hangs on the vine with a potential for good and a potential for evil. So many things that are in this world are like that. I believe there was a time when it didn't have that. I believe fermentation is a result of two things, #1 ‑ it's the result of the fall of man. I believe that before there was any decaying process, before the fall, there was no such thing as fermentation. #2 ‑ I believe the flood created some problems too, because prior to the flood there was a canopy over the earth, people lived to be 900‑plus‑years. We found bones of dinosaurs and so forth that were huge things that lived hundreds of years and the process of fermentation wouldn't have even existed pre‑flood because the canopy protected the earth from the rays of the sun that cause decay and the fermentation to exist. So you see the very process of fermentation is a result of the fall of man and the destruction of the vile, evil earth during the flood. Now we have to keep that in perspective. I don't think it's a part of God's original creation that we would have alcoholic drinks. By the way some people think that will be reversed in the kingdom when God brings back paradise lost.

But like so many other things we have to live with It now and it's got a potential for good and a potential for evil. Now you say, "Can we know what to do?" "Do we know whether we can drink or not drink? Does the bible say anything to help us?" Well yes it does and I'm going to give that to you. This is called the "Christian's Wine List". I'm going to give you 8 check points. I don't know what your presuppositions are and I want you to know that I love you all and I'm not trying to wail away on you. I'm going to ask you these 8 questions and you have to think them through with me and we'll cover the first two and a little bit into the third one today. And I really believe, first of all, will help you to make a decision. Now let me tell you this, the bible does not forbid drinking wine. Now don't say ‑Amen‑ you don't want to do that somebody around you might be shocked, you see. The bible does not forbid drinking wine, if it did, I would just read the verse and we'd go home. I'd have to preach another sermon, right? It would be over. The bible does not say wine is forbidden, but it does say some things that help us to know what we should do.

Number 1. This is the first question that came into my mind. Is it the same? What do I mean by that? Is drinking today the same as in bible times? Or is the wine today the same as then? The reason I ask this is because inevitably Christians who rely, Christians who drink rather, rely strongly on their right to drink being based on the bible. They say, "Well, Jesus drank, the apostles drank, the Old Testament drank, the New Testament drank there can't be anything wrong." And I thought about that and thought that's good. They want to use a biblical base, the bible people did it so what's the big deal? They say they didn't have refrigeration then so it really was fermented, they drank it fermented so we're drinking it fermented, what's the big deal? So I immediately began to think, well, I wonder if the wine today is the same as it was then. So for the last three weeks I've been chasing this around, trying to find out if it was the same. And I have found some fabulous Information. Now I'm going to share it with you, so hang on.

I'm going to give you some words to start with, these are the biblical words and then I'm going to integrate those into the thing we discussed. Was the wine they drank the same as ours? If we're going to use their drinking as the basis of our drinking then it's going to have to be the same. If it isn't, then that principle is out, we'll find another one. First of all the most common word in the New Testament is oinos, the Greek word oinos, it's a word that simply refers to the juice of grapes, it is a general, very general word, it is used very commonly and, it is the normal new testament word for wine. By the way, they used it to speak of a grape, they would say there was hanging wine and what they meant was just the wine in the grape. It wasn't fermented or unfermented or in the process of being fermented or never to be fermented, that had nothing to do with it, it just simply meant it had reference to the juice of the grape, any kind.

Now the Old Testament equivalent to oinos is yayin, that's the Hebrew word. It's used 141 times in the Old Testament. And by the way, I was most fascinated to find out that the root for the word yayin is bubble up or boil up. And I thought that was rather fascinating and I'll tell you why in just a few minutes. Just register that somewhere and hang on to it, it's going to come back at you. And the word yayin is referring to wine that is mixed, not with other wine but usually with water. Sometimes with honey, sometimes with herbs and sometimes with myrrh but always mixed, even if it was mixed with honey, myrrh and herbs it could also be mixed with water. So they had some various concoctions.

Now yayin, by the way, means mixed wine. I found that in the 1901 Jewish encyclopedia, that's not a Christian interpretation that's not just something we thought of, the Jews themselves looking at their own Hebrew text and examining their own use of words say yayin means mixed wine. Oinos predominately means that, oinos has to do with a mixed wine, wine mixed with water. There are two more words we have to consider. Glukos, from which we get the word glucose which is a sugar base kind of thing. Glukos means new‑wine. It's used in Acts 2:13 when they said of the apostle on the day of Pentecost, they're filled with new‑wine. It is fresh wine but it is still fermented, it wouldn't take very many days to ferment. And even fresh wine just out of the grape without refrigeration would ferment very rapidly. So though it was comparatively fresh and was not fully aged it was still potentially intoxicating. That is why in Acts 2:13 they said these men are drunk with new wine. The fact that it was new wine did not mean it didn't intoxicate. It would ferment just as fast. Now if you just took it out of the grape obviously it wouldn't necessarily mean it was fermented but what was called glukos or new wine could be just days, weeks or just a few months from absolute freshness and it would still be fermenting. By the way, the Old Testament word for that is tirosh and tirosh also means new wine. I read you earlier Hosea 11 and it says new wine is tirosh and listen to this, it says in the same verse that drunkenness goes with new wine. So new wine, tirosh, new wine, glukos in both cases could create drunkenness. So the fact that it was new wine didn't mean that it wouldn't happen.

Now I want to give you another word. Another word you need to know in the Old Testament is shekar. Shekar means strong drink and that means unmixed. The New Testament word is sikera, it means unmixed. So you've got three things, number one, oinos and yayin are mixed wine, wine mixed with water that's its predominant use and then there is glukos and tirosh that is fresh new wine which was also mixed with water so far as history tells us and thirdly, there was shekar and sikera which was unmixed, straight wine, out of the grape into the glass and into the mouth, nothing in between. Now based on these terms and I want to give you some historical insight and all that stuff is going to come together and I think you'll find it fascinating.

My conclusion is this, I'm giving you the conclusion first so you'll know where I'm going, the wine of the bible times was not necessarily the same as the wine we have today. The wine drunk today is unmixed with water, it is straight wine. That is not true of biblical wine and I'll show you why.

First of all some of the wine of bible times was absolutely unintoxicating, it was not fermented. Professor Samuel Lee of Cambridge University says this, "That yayin, mixed wine, or oinos does not refer only to intoxicating liquor made by fermentation but more often refers to a thick unintoxicating syrup or jam produced by boiling to make it storable."

Now what did we tell you the root word yayin was, the root of that word was to bubble or boil, which indicates it was very common for them to take that which came out of the grape and boil which would cause the evaporation of the liquid, the loss of fermentation capacity when the liquid departs and they would have a storable kind of paste which they would put in jars. This is no different then women canning things today, to preserve them and they would preserve this thick syrupy substance. The grape juice that was left after the boiling process could not ferment in that condition it was then stored in new wine skins.

Do you remember the words of our Lord in Matthew 9:16‑17, "Do not store new wine in old wineskins". Do you know why? The same reason you don't can old jars with old rubber seals, Why? Because the leakage will cause fermentation. The reason our Lord said that was, you store new wine when it's reduced to this concentrate in new wineskins, the last word of verse 17, Matthew 9, "That it may be preserved". The Lord was really accommodating an illustration they understood. This was put in new wineskins that were sealed properly so no fermentation would occur. You ladies who can know that if you use a bad little deal at the top, it will