Substance Abuse

Hot topics – Substance Abuse

Introduction:

This is a different sermon to the ones I normally preach but for two weeks of the year I like to approach hot topics that I normally would not preach on. Hence this week I am preaching on ‘drugs’ and next week I am preaching on ‘sexuality’. This is different to my normal style of preaching; normally I start with a text, ‘like the book of John’ and preach from there. But every so often you need to address certain issues that are relevant for Perth, Western Australia in the year 2010.

I know some of you heard the sermon topic ‘Drugs’ and thought, can we leave early because we have heard this before. But I would like you stay awake because it is something that affects people in this church and family members of people in this church. If it does not affect you personally, it probably affects someone sitting around you.

So I would like to start with a joke:

An evangelist was preaching against the evils of alcohol.

He demonstrated the destructive force of the demon drink by dropping a worm into a bottle of whiskey.

By the time the worm hit the bottom of the bottle, the worm was dead.

The evangelist asked the audience, so what does this little demonstration teach us about drinking?

A man who was obviously a little inebriated called out, “If you drink a lot of whiskey, you will never have worms.”

That’s not exactly the lesson the evangelist wanted them to learn.

In some respects, maybe I’m not the best person to talk about this subject.

I have never had a problem with alcohol or any other kind of drug - legal or illegal.

In my younger years there was a lot of alcohol in our house and a lot of abuse of it by my relatives and my friends.

So, perhaps a more compelling speaker would be one who has battled these demons and who continues to battle them with success.

But just because the lure of drugs and alcohol hasn’t been a problem for me, doesn’t mean that I can’t relate to and have compassion for those for whom it is. So the opening position a Christian takes, when talking about drugs, is that we are all sinners. We do not do so from a “holier than thou” position but we do it as fellow sinners.

Read Ephesians 5:15-5:18

There are two things that I hope will come from today’s lesson.

First, I hope this lesson will serve as a warning to the many who have not yet allowed drugs and alcohol to become a problem in their lives. And I’m speaking especially to the younger ones.

Second, I hope that this lesson will encourage those who are having a problem with drugs to see the damage it is doing to their lives, and to seek the help they need.

I hope that all of us will avoid the mistake of alcohol and drugs.

I. Real life drug stories from the bible

II. Our Lessons about substance abuse

III Substance abuse and our Christian faith

I. Real life drug stories from the bible

• Noah

• Lot

• David

• Jesus

• Other People

The Bible doesn’t have any single long and developed story of someone who allowed inebriation to destroy their life over the course of a lifetime.. What we do see are a number of short stories that show people being harmed by drunkenness.

At first I did not want to share some of these stories because they are a bit confronting. But I realised a sermon that simply said ‘Don’t take drugs!’ doesn’t really cut it.

Noah

The first story is found in Genesis 9 and Noah is the primary character.

If you remember, Noah is the guy who built the ark and saved his family and all the animals from the flood.

After coming off the ark into God’s renewed earth, Noah, a man of the soil, planted a vineyard.

The Bible says, “20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father