Alcohol #2 Drinking Alcohol Is Not Wise! Series

INTRODUCTION

1. Please open your bibles to Proverbs 20:1.

2. Proverbs 20:1 teaches among other important lessons, that the drinking of alcohol is not wise.

3. Here is a question. Can you tell yourself one or more reasons why that the drinking of alcohol is not wise? What reasons do you come up with? Write them down in your mind. Don’t ever lose or erase those reasons. Let them motivate you to never drink.

4. Let’s read Proverbs 20:1, “Wine is a mocker, [that is when one drinks they are going to be mocked and eventually be made fun of.] My Dad experienced what he considered as alcoholic beverage mocking him. Home video pictures were made of my dad during a time that he was drunk. After he looked at himself in that video, he stopped drinking. He saw that alcohol was making him act foolish.

Strong drink is a brawler, [We will explain this statement in a few moments.][that is when one drinks they are going to be “beat up on”. Their brain and their mind is going to take a beating. Alcohol destroys both the physical and mental faculties of the body.]

And whoever is led astray by it is not wise. [Surely, we can think of multitudes of reasons as to why that drinking alcohol is not wise.]

5. In this lesson we will discuss a few reasons why that drinking alcohol is not wise.

DISCUSSION

I. FIRST, DRINKING ALCOHOL IS NOT WISE BECAUSE THE END RESULT, MORE TIMES THAN NOT ENDS IN THE WAY THAT IT ENDED WITH ZACH.

1. What I am about to tell you is a true story. A member of the church of Christ in the Nashville, Tennessee area was working as a patrol officer when this incident happened.

(1) It was the middle of August. It was hot & muggy and the time was around midnight. David, the patrol officer, had been dispatched to check on a single-car accident near the Brentwood area of South Nashville.

(2) A woman passerby had seen an overturned black Jeep Wrangler, about 150’ off the road near a sharp curve.

(3) As patrolman David came to the scene and looked, it appeared as though the driver had taken the curve at a high rate of speed, skidded off the roadway and flipped several times.

(4) As David walked up to the Jeep, he felt nervous. David wrote, “to me, vehicles look so much larger when they are upside down. There is something haunting about peering in the darkness into an overturned vehicle, looking for badly injured or deceased occupants.

(5) As I walked up to the Jeep, I noticed a lot of empty Budweiser beer cans, scattered all around. I knelt down with my flashlight to look under the Jeep. At first glance, I didn’t see anybody.

(6) Then, the beam of my flashlight passed across a pair of shoeless feet. I called for a wrecker (since he was pinned underneath). I told them to “Signal 10” (rush it up).

(7) I pointed my beam of light directly into the young man’s face. His expression appeared to be one of shock and fear. With glazed-over eyes and fixed pupils, he stared at me.

(8) But his stare had that vacant look of death. There is an old saying, “The eyes are the windows to the soul.”

(9) As I looked into his eyes, it was like looking at night into the windows of a vacant house. His body remained on the ground, but his soul had vacated the body and had left the scene!”

(10) David noticed the young man’s billfold lying on the ground. David learned that he lived less than two miles from the accident.

(11) David noticed , we will call him, “Zach’s” blue jeans wet from spilled beer. The smell was obvious. The large number of scattered cans indicated that he had consumed many cans.

(11) David pulled Zach’s black t-shirt down so that it would cover his stomach. David noticed it had in big bold letters, the words ----------- “BEST YEAR EVER!”

(12) A cold chill ran down David’s spine! Then another chill ran all over his body, when the medical examiner came and in rolling Zach’s body over, David saw on the back of the shirt, big bold letters saying, “BUDWEISER!”

(13) Of all the shirts, Zach could have chosen to wear on his last day on earth, why did it have to be that one! His last purchase – Budweiser! His last Drink – Budweiser! His last passenger with him, in his last Jeep ride – Budweiser!

(14) And yet in a mocking way, the words on the front of his shirt said, “BEST YEAR EVER!”

(15) The next thing for David was the hardest part of the whole ordeal. Going and telling Zach’s parents. For parents, receiving news of the sudden and tragic death of their child is like being struck by a bolt of lightning!