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!
(16) In an instant, their world will be turned upside down and thundering clouds of grief move in, removing the “brightness of life” with the “darkness of death”.
(17) David writes that he always dreads delivering that “bolt of lightning” because of the heart-rending scene that the parents display and the crying that is almost unbearable to hear.
2. Please, please, ‘oh please’ let Zach be a warning to you every time you are tempted to drink alcohol. It is not wise to ever drink, not even to just drink a little bit.
II. SECOND, LOOK AGAIN AT PROVERBS 20:1. THIS TIME NOTICE THAT IT IS NOT WISE TO DRINK BECAUSE ALCOHOL BEATS UPON ONE’S MIND AND ON ONE’S PHYSICAL BODY.
1. Proverbs 20:1b (the second part) says, “Strong drink is a brawler.”
(1) The word “brawler” for one thing in this passage refers to the effects of alcohol leading to one getting into a brawl and a fight.
(2) The word “brawler” can also refer to alcohol leading to the “beating up” that drinking alcohol brings upon the mind and the physical body of the one doing the drinking.
2. Let’s notice a few ways that the “drinking of alcohol” beats up on our mind and our body.
(1) When ethyl alcohol enters the body as a result of drinking beer, wine, whiskey, or the like, it passes very quickly into the bloodstream because it does not have to be digested first.
(2) Within a matter of minutes alcohol is on its way to every part of the body. First and foremost it will begin to have effect upon the brain.
(3) This is significant, especially to the Christian, because alcohol effects the brain's control over one’s thoughts and actions.
1) This is serious because our thoughts and our actions are both accountable before God.
2) Proverbs 23:7 teaches that thoughts produce actions. Proverbs 23:7a says, “For as he (man) thinks in his heart, so is he”.
(4) Drinking alcohol also effects the heart rate, blood circulation, breathing, muscle action, and other body functions.
(5) In the brain, alcohol has the same effect as a narcotic drug. It depresses.
(6) It appears that alcohol is the oldest drug known to man. Many of the same arguments that apply to not taking narcotic drugs can be applied with equal force against alcohol.
(7) Probably none of us would advocate or defend the "social" use of narcotics such as heroin or opium.
1) Yet alcohol is a narcotic. Can we defend alcohol and denounce drugs and narcotics and still be consistent?
2) We can go ahead and be inconsistent in our society, but we can’t be inconsistent without paying high consequences!
3. Let’s look at another way that drinking alcohol becomes a “brawler” or beats up on the brain.
(1) Alcohol in the brain has an effect similar to removing the brakes on an automobile.
(2) Alcohol takes away the controls that normally would restrain improper feelings and improper actions.
1) These improper feelings and actions, like a car with failing brakes, careen or pull to one side more and more as blood alcohol content goes up. Drinking alcohol causes an individual to pull more and more to the ditch and to the bad sad of life.
2) As a bit of humor: the Toyota Prisuses that are having break problems may have a little alcohol in their fuel tank. Don’t jump to any conclusions: Shirley and I are not having any break problems with our Prisuses – there’s no alcohol in our gas tanks.
III. THIRD, TURN TO PROVERBS 23:33-35. THIS PASSAGE TEACHES THAT DRINKING ALCOHOL IS NOT WISE BECAUSE ALCOHOL PROGRESSIVELY PUTS THE BRAIN TO SLEEP.
1.Proverbs 23:33-35 speaks of one “so drugged” that he does stupid things, like going to bed in the middle of the ocean and taking a nap atop the mast of a ship. People who drink do dumb things that they later regret. They utter perverse or foolish things.
(1) To get the picture that the writer of the book of Proverbs is talking about a little clearer in our mind, think about the “mast”. When you’re looking at a sailboat and you see that tall round pole that the sails and all the rigging are attached to, that is the “mast”.
We might compare it to a flag pole rising up from the bottom of the sailboat and sticking up into the air. How ridiculous to try and go to sleep on top of such a pole or on the top of a flag pole.
Well the writer of the book of Proverbs is teaching that someone drinking alcohol may try to do things, just that ridiculous.
(2) Like Proverbs 20:1taught earlier, drinking alcohol causes one do things that will result in them being mocked and others making “fun of them”.
(3) Some people drink to relax and lower their inhibitions. As they consume their drinks they become more loose-tongued and assume they are more witty and charming when, in reality, they often appear foolish to others.
(4) Let’s read Proverbs 23:33-35, “33 Your eyes will see strange things, And your heart will utter perverse things. 34 Yes, you will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, Or like one who lies at the top of the mast, saying: "They have struck me, but I was not hurt; They have beaten me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake, that I may seek another drink?"
2. This again reminds us of the fact that many who drink get into brawls and fights.
IV. FOURTH, DRINKING ALCOHOL IS NOT WISE BECAUSE JUST SMALL AMOUNTS BEGAN TO EFFECT ONE IN BAD WAYS QUICKLY.
1. A lot of people ask such questions as: “but what about just a little alcohol, say a beer or two or a little wine? What about a little social drink?”
2. Listen closely, as we share some experiments that teach us that small amounts of alcohol have very bad effects upon an individual.
(1) One experiment: A professional rifle team that were submitted to experiments that showed that drinking as little as a glass of beer definitely lowered their scores and they were not as good at shooting, as they were when they had not drank one beer.
(2) Another experiment also showed that two cans of beer or the equivalent of some other kind of alcohol lowers a person's driving efficiency by 25%.
(3) 25% may not seem like much until you are on a two-way street going 55 MPH and you zoom past a car going the same speed in the opposite direction. The combined speed is 110 MPH and your door handles pass 2 to 6 feet apart.
(4) On the highway, that can spell the difference between a near miss and a rapid loss of your life and your soul being throw into eternity.
(5) In the mid 1970’s I was riding snowmobiles in Wyoming on a Thanksgiving Day with about 8 other men. Most of them I was meeting for the first time.
1) We were riding in some very dangerous places and jumping them over ridges and etc. One of the men had a crash and got hurt so bad that he had to be carried, by riding double, back out about 20 miles.
2) One of the group, that was a friend, told me that the group had been drinking alcohol during our ride. I had not known that. The friend said, “that he used to also drink a few beers when he would ride snowmobiles.”
3) He said, “that he had stopped doing that”. He said, “that he began to notice that after he would drink just one beer that he would begin to lose his coordination.”
4) He said, “he had never noticed that much impact from one beer in driving his pickup, but with the snowmobile being a smaller vehicle and on the snow and ice he could easily see the loss of self control, from just one beer.”
3. Ephesians 5:18 says, “and do not be drunk with wine”.
(1) Many people read that statement and say, “see, the bible doesn’t condemn drinking; it just condemns drunkenness”.
(2) Surely, after discussing the results from the experiments and examples that we have just looked at, we can understand that one drink makes a person one drink drunk and in the sight of God that is too drunk.
(3) God does not approve of a Christian to be totally drunk, nor does God approve of a Christian being one drink drunk!
CONCLUSION
1. Turn to Proverbs 23:31&32.
2. A certain craftsman took pride in a goblet or large drinking cup that he made by hand and sold. At first glance, there seemed to be nothing unusual about the glass, but a closer examination revealed that there was something in the bottom of the big cup.
(1) The bottom of the large drinking cup had a snake in a coiled position, its mouth wide open and its fangs exposed. It was poised to strike out at its victim.
(2) When the goblet was filled with an alcoholic beverage, the snake couldn't be seen.
(3) But when the contents were drunk down to a certain level, the unsuspecting drinker would be startled by the shocking sight of that serpent's head with its glaring eyes, its gaping mouth, and its deadly fangs.
(4) So it is with the consumption of beverage alcohol.
2. From what is said in Proverbs 23:31&32, it appears that the man who built the goblet had this passage in mind. Let’s again read Proverbs 23:31&32, “31 Do not look on the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup, When it swirls around smoothly; 32 At the last it bites like a serpent, And stings like a viper.”
3. If you need to obey the gospel plan of salvation, please express your faith, repentance, be willing to confess that you believe Jesus is the Son of God and obey the command to be baptized (Acts 8:35-39).
4. If, as a Christian, you need prayers for forgiveness or for strength or for any other reason please come as we stand and sing!
Acknowledgments for thoughts gleaned for this lesson:
(1) David Redick at preacherstudy.com
(2) (1) Bob Winton CD Commentary on Matthew 27:50-54. 464 Ridgewood Drive Manchester, Tennessee 37355. If interested in CD covering many O. T. & N.T. books call (866) 753-8456.
(3) David Carrell in his book Lures of the Liar chapter ten published by Power Source Productions in Nashville, Tennessee
