What Does Alcohol Do?

1. What Does Alcohol Do?

2. Alcohol Upsets • The mind • Isaiah 28:7 “These also reel with wine and stagger with strong drink; the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, they are swallowed by wine, they stagger with strong drink, they reel in vision, they stumble in giving judgment.” • The stomach • Isaiah 28:8 “For all tables are full of filthy vomit, with no space left.” • Isaiah 19:14 “…and they will make Egypt stagger in all its deeds, as a drunken man staggers in his vomit.”

3. Alcohol Destroys • Judgment • Proverbs 31:4-5 “It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted. • Life • Proverbs 31:6 “Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress.” (It is for those who wish to die.)

4. Alcohol Destroys • Memory • Proverbs 31:7 “let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more.” • Influence • How persuasive could one be in urging another to change his behavior while holding a drink in his hand? • Sense of values • Joel 3:3 “…and have cast lots for my people, and have traded a boy for a prostitute, and have sold a girl for wine and have drunk it.”

5. Alcohol Leads to Sacrilege (profaning the holy) • Leviticus 10:8-10 “And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying, ‘Drink no wine or strong drink, you or your sons with you, when you go into the tent of meeting, lest you die. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations.  You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean.’”

6. Alcohol Leads to Sacrilege (profaning the holy) • Daniel 5:2-4 “Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and of silver that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them.  Then they brought in the golden vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them.  They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.”

7. Alcohol Leads to Sacrilege (profaning the holy) • Daniel 5:5-6 “Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace, opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it wrote.  Then the king's color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together.”

8. Alcohol Leads to Sacrilege (profaning the holy) • Daniel 5:24-28 “Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed.  And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin.  This is the interpreta-tion of the matter: Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

9. Alcohol Takes the Heart (devotion) Away from God • Isaiah 5:11-12 “Woe to those who rise early in the morning, that they may run after strong drink, who tarry late into the evening as wine inflames them!  They have lyre and harp, tambourine and flute and wine at their feasts, but they do not regard the deeds of the Lord, or see the work of his hands.”

10. Alcohol Takes the Heart (devotion) Away from God • Hosea 4:11 “whoredom, wine, and new wine, which take away the understanding.” • Isaiah 5:22-23 “Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!”

11. Alcohol Makes One Lose Control • Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. • Habakkuk 2:15-17 ““Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink—you pour out your wrath and make them drunk, in order to gaze at their nakedness!  You will have your fill of shame instead of glory. Drink, yourself, and show your uncircumcision! The cup in the Lord's right hand will come around to you, and utter shame will come upon your glory! The violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you, as will the destruction of the beasts that terrified them, for the blood of man and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell in them.”

12. Alcohol Makes One Lose Control • Genesis 9:20-25 “Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard.  He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.  And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.  Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness.  When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.’”

13. Alcohol Makes One Lose Control • Genesis 19:30-36 “Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. So he lived in a cave with his two daughters. And the firstborn said to the younger, ‘Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.  Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.’  So they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father. He did not know when she lay down or when she arose. The next day, the firstborn said to the younger, ‘Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine tonight also. Then you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.’  So they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.  Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.”

14. Alcohol Makes One Lose Control • 2 Peter 1:3-6a, 10 “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness…. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.”

15. Alcohol Can Keep One Out of Heaven • 1 Thessalonians 5:2-7 “For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.  While people are saying, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.  But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.  For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.  So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.  For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night.”

16. Alcohol Can Keep One Out of Heaven • Ephesians 5:18 “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.” • Galatians 5:19-21 “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

17. Alcohol Can Keep One Out of Heaven • Thayer defines: • Lasciviousness—unbridled lust, excess • Revellings—a nocturnal and riotous procession of half-drunken and frolicsome fellows…hence used generally, of feasts and drinking parties that are protracted till late at night and indulge in revelry