The Gospel is a fact, therefore tell it simply; it is a joyful fact, therefore tell it cheerfully; it is an entrusted fact, therefore tell it faithfully; it is a fact of infinite moment, therefore tell it earnestly; it is a fact about a Person, therefore preach Christ.
Archibald Brown

The Christian And Alcohol

The Christian And Alcohol

THE CHRISTIAN AND ALCOHOL Part of the sermon “The Hooked Generation” by Jack Van Impe The devil–called “Satan”–has many alluring traps to

enslave victims into a life of misery and heartache. The Lord Jesus Christ has power to liberate and set men free, for He said in John chapter 10, verse 10, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

One of these “traps” the devil uses is alcohol. People say, “I can go into a bar or whatever and take a social drink. I don’t have to become an alcoholic!” You know, that’s the way the devil fools a lot of people. “Come on, take that first drink, take that first LSD trip, take that first drag of marijuana…” and lives are ruined.

We need an old-fashioned evangelist like Billy Sunday today to tell us what to do with liquor. He used to say, “Liquor is all right in its place, but its place is in the bottom of hell, and the church member who takes his liquor in moderation does so because he takes Jesus Christ in moderation, for `no man can serve two masters'” (Matthew 6:24).

But you know, we’re living in a day and age when people say, “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with drinking.” Even clergymen say that the Bible is all in favor of drinking alcoholic beverages. They must be reading from the reversed vision!

Well you say, “Jack, there are times when I study the Bible and I become confused, for there are times when it looks like one can drink and times when it looks like one can’t drink.” Well, friend, there are no contradictions in the Bible, so let me explain why you seem to have a problem when you study some of these Scriptures.

You see, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New in Greek, and you and I have an English version. The Hebrew word was “yayen” and the Greek “oinos.” And we translated from those words into the English the word “wine.” But, you see, when a Hebrew got up and said “yayen” and a Greek said “oinos,” he did not necessarily mean alcoholic “wine.” It’s sad that we always think of the alcoholic beverage when we think of “wine” in the Bible, but “wine” did not always refer to the alcoholic beverage.

Why? “Yayen” and “oinos” could mean many things. It could mean “grapes,” “grape juice,” “grape syrup,” “raisins,” and then, friend, it could even mean “jam” and “jelly,” and finally, if it fermented, an alcoholic beverage. But when a Hebrew said “yayen,” a Greek said “oinos,” he could be talking about jelly. He could be talking about grape juice. He could be talking about raisins. In fact, the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, translated by seventy scholars, when it comes to this word that you have in your English version “wine,” thirty-three times in the Septuagint, a reliable version, it says, “grape juice…grape juice…grape juice!”

Well, you say, “Since I’m not a Hebrew or Greek scholar, how do I know what’s right?” Well, common sense will tell you. Leviticus 10:9: “Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation…that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean.” Yeah, but that’s when man goes into the temple he’s not to mix the holy and the unholy. But in the New Testament, I Corinthians 3:16, the body of the Christian is the temple, and we ought not to mix the holy with the unholy.

Say, Jack, are you sure about this–“yayen” and “oinos” meaning juice or grapes? You be the judge. Isaiah 16:10: “The treaders shall tread out no wine in their presses.” Now notice: They were picking the grapes and smashing them with their feet, and they were calling it wine; but it couldn’t have been a fermented beverage, because it had just been picked and just smashed with the feet. The only way this stuff could have fermented is if their feet hadn’t been washed in weeks, and that automatically performed the miracle instantaneously. Ha! Ha!

Nehemiah 13:15: “In those days saw I in Judea some treading winepresses on the Sabbath,” and they loaded wine on the donkeys. Get the picture? They picked the grapes, crushed them, and then loaded it on the donkeys and called it wine, but it wasn’t wine. It had just been picked and it was fresh juice, but it proves that oftentimes the Bible calls grape juice “wine.”

Let’s go on. Proverbs 20:1: “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.” Proverbs 23:20: “Be not among winebibbers.” What did you say, God? Be not among jelly eaters? Now God couldn’t be talking about jelly there. He says, “Be not among those who use the fermented beverage.”

Goes for some of you preachers and others who say it’s all fine!

In fact in Proverbs 23:31, he says “Look not”–there’s a good negative verse–“look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself.” Moveth itself? Fermentation. God says when it comes to that point, don’t look at it.

Isaiah 5:11: “Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them!” Isaiah 5:22: “Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink.” Hosea 4:11: “Whoredom and wine…take away the heart” from God. Habakkuk 2:15: “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken.” God says, “My judgment’s on the man who makes it, on the man who sells it, on the man or woman who serves it”–even in his own home.

Why? Because there are 8 to 9 million alcoholics now in America alone. Recent reports on television said one out of every four men in France is an alcoholic, and the Bible says, “No alcoholic (drunkard) shall enter the kingdom of heaven” (I Corinthians 6:9). Look at that listing of sins in Galatians 5:19-21, seventeen of them. Number eighteen is drunkenness, and he says, “…of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall NOT inherit the kingdom of God.”

Now some of you folks pick at the young people. And you say, “Isn’t it terrible the way they’re on drugs?” But I have a Miami Herald that says, “Alcohol, Number 1, Heroin, Number 2, in drug abuse.” The United States Government classifies alcohol as a drug, as a narcotic. Most Christians agree that it’s wrong for a believer to take drugs, and yet they think it’s all right–many of them–to use alcohol. Let’s be consistent; it’s a drug, it’s a narcotic, it’s not for the Christian whose body is the temple of God. “Abstain from all appearance of evil” (I Thessalonians 5:22).

But then there are always those who say, “Well, Jesus created wine.” Did He? You be the judge. In John chapter 2, verse 10, at the wedding of Cana, when Jesus performed this miracle, they said to him, “You have kept the good wine until last.” Now circle that word “good,” and I will now go slowly so that you get this. Turn to John chapter 10, verse 11, where Jesus Christ cries out, “I am the good shepherd.” Now circle that word “good.”

“Good” wine? John 2:10. “Good” shepherd? John 10:11. They are both the same word in the Greek New Testament. And, according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, the “good” there means “not spoiled, no corruption, no sin, no wickedness” in Jesus. But that’s the same “good” used for wine–“no corruption, no spoilage, no rottening process, no fermentation”–good juice!

Oh, yes, but Timothy was told to drink wine! In I Timothy 5:23: “Use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.” Number one, it was to Timothy. Number two, it was just a little–not sitting around a table, drinking it up as a social beverage. Number three, it was for a sickness, for your “infirmities.” And number four, this is the greatest verse in the Bible to prove that Christians did not sit around the table drinking, because Timothy was won to Jesus Christ by the apostle Paul. He wouldn’t touch the filthy stuff! But he got sick, and they didn’t have drug stores like we have today, where one can get all kinds of medications. So Paul wrote to his convert and said, “Timothy, don’t be afraid to use it as a medication.” … PERIOD!!

Some of you folks name the name of Jesus Christ and you sit around drinking booze, you need a real experience. You know, there are 500,000,000 Mohammedans in this world who won’t use liquor or tobacco. And they claim Allah does this for them! And then we see Christians who say, “I can do anything!” I’m not saying Allah saves, and I don’t believe Mohammedanism is the answer, but I believe that we ought to be far GREATER as far as holiness is concerned–when Jesus Christ comes in the heart.

And I can’t accept the experience of these people who say they’re Christians, and they do everything and they go everywhere. I believe when Jesus comes into the heart, God comes to live in the body. One begins to act differently, live differently, talk differently, walk differently–even SMELL differently, as the old habits drop out of the life.