Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

What's Inside Your Life?

By Dave Wilkinson

Romans 13:13, Ephesians 5:18-20

September 10, 2000

A man frequently came home drunk and was so far gone that he would fall into bed fully clothed, pass out and then snore loudly all night long. His wife was losing so much sleep because of his snoring that she went to the doctor and said, "Doc, I can't take it. If you'll only tell me how to keep him from snoring, I'll pay you anything."

The doctor said there was no problem at all. He could give her the answer and he wouldn't even charge her. He told her that whenever her husband passed out and started to snore she was to take a ribbon and tie it around his nose.

Well, that night her husband came in as he often did, fell across the bed fully dressed and started snoring. The wife got up, pulled a blue hair ribbon from her dresser drawer, and tied it around his nose. Sure enough, the snoring stopped. The next morning the wife, fully refreshed, was preparing breakfast. Her husband staggered into the kitchen with a massive hangover. "Honey, where were you last night? she asked. The husband looked in the mirror and seeing the blue ribbon around his nose replied, "I don't know, but wherever it was, I won first prize."

A drunk in a story may be funny, but a drunk anywhere else, in your family, on the highway, in a position of responsibility, is no laughing matter. Over indulgence in alcohol is a serious problem for many people who are affected by it in one way or another. Statistically I would expect that this sermon will be deeply personal for at least 1/4 of the people here this morning.

When prohibition took effect on January 17, 1920 evangelist Billy Sunday staged a funeral for John Barleycorn in Norfolk, Virginia.

"Good-bye John," the revivalist said. "The reign of tears is over the slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent."

I think Sunday overstated the case just a bit. Sin could still be found in humankind even if liquor disappeared. People sin who have never touched a drop.

But could you imagine what a different place this would be if there were no alcohol abuse?

There is an old joke that goes, "Old school principals never die. They just lose their faculties." Well it is not God's will for us to lose our faculties, through the misuse of alcohol.

Alcohol abuse takes all forms. Alcoholics and alcohol abusers are all types. They aren't just the winos on skid row or the lost souls who spend all their time at bars. They are people just like us. They may even be us. If you are here this morning and you have a problem in this area, lease talk to me. We have loving, sensitive people here who are able to help you.

Here are some important facts. Think of thi part of the sermon as your health class.

I recently read that 45% of alcoholic men are professionals or managers; 30% do manual labor; 22% are white-collar workers; and only about 3 % are skid row bums or transients. We cannot stereotype alcohol problems as belonging to a certain class or group. It hits everywhere.

It certainly isn't a problem just for men. Recent studies indicate an increase of alcohol and substance abuse problems among woman More women are drinking to deal with stress. More young professional women are drinking more after work. Mothers with small children are drinking more frequently at home. A quarter of women questioned in a poll admitted having an alcoholic drink every day, with the same number drinking more heavily on weekends.

Women also appear to be more vulnerable than men to many adverse consequences of alcohol use. Women become more impaired than men after drinking the same amounts of alcohol. Women are also more susceptible to alcohol-related organ damage including brain damage.

While men are much more likely than women to drive drunk, the proportion of female drivers involved in fatal crashes is increasing. In 1996, 16 percent of all drivers involved in alcohol-related fatal crashes were women, compared with 13 percent in 1986 and 12 percent in 1980.

More facts.

Children are especially vulnerable to alcohol. Don't think you are teaching responsibility if you give you child "just a sip." Because of a child’s different metabolism, the leap to alcoholism for a child is much shorter than it is for an adult.

In 1998 the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reported that a large percentage of problem drinkers were introduced to alcohol in late childhood or early adolescence. Subsequent alcohol abuse was twice as common in children who started drinking before age 15, compared to those who started drinking at age 21. Only 2.5 percent of those who had their first drink at age 25 or older showed signs of alcohol abuse.

And it’s not just boys. In the early 1960's, about seven percent of the new users of alcohol were girls between the ages of 10- 14. By the early 1990's, that percentage had increased to 31 percent. On top of this, girls today are 15 times more likely than their mother to begin using illegal drugs by age 15.

You think it’s mot a problem in this area? Think again.

How much alcohol is consumed? I read recently that the use of alcohol is going down. But several years ago 774.1 million gallons of alcoholic beverages were consumed in California alone. That averaged out to 2 1/2 gallons of hard liquor for every man, woman and child in California and 25 1/2 gallons of wine and beer. That is a lot of alcohol.

And it has its effects. According to a recent Gallup Poll, about 56% of our total population drink alcoholic beverages. We can statistically expect one in ten of those people to become alcoholic. Right now, there are between 10 and 17 million alcoholics in the nation including teenagers and even young children. If each of them effects a few people around them, then about 1/4 of our country is greatly effected by alcohol abuse.

Did you know that alcoholics have about one chance in four of coming to a violent death? Alcohol is involved in 23,000 automobile accidents every year. 86% of the murderers have used alcohol prior to the crime and 60% of murder victims. Alcohol is related to 79% of assaults, 69% of drownings, 33% of fire and burn victims. 15,000 alcohol related deaths occur on the job every year. The effect is continuous. The practicing alcoholic can expect to take 12 years off his life expectancy -- 12 years less life and who knows how many years of less creativity and contribution. The cost of alcohol abuse is tremendous.

Okay, enough facts. Those facts represent lives. I suspect that most any one of us here could tell stories about the personal impact of alcohol abuse on human lives.

But the Apostle Paul sums up the experiences we could all relate with one phrase of warning in Ephesians. He writes: "Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation." The word dissipation or wastefulness is literally asoteria — unsalvation throwing away abilities that ought to be ours.

What is God's will concerning alcohol?

Well the biblical teaching is not total abstinence. The Psalmist writes of God that He: "makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants food for man to cultivate bringing forth food from the earth, wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart." Jesus went to the party after the wedding at Cana and changed water into wine because they had run out. Paul advises Timothy in 1 Timothy 5:23: "Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent ailments."

But this teaching does not give us permission for over indulgence. Deuteronomy 21 tells us that in ancient Israel a parent could deliver a wasteful and drunken son to be stoned by the men of the town. Galatians 5 lists drunkenness as among the sins which bar people from the Kingdom of God. Our text, Romans 13:13 lists drunkenness as one of the deeds of darkness which we are to put aside along with orgies and sexual immorality, debauchery, dissension and jealousy.

The core biblical teaching is that we may drink alcohol if we wish, if it is legal for us to do so, teenagers, and if we are not already an alcoholic for whom one drink is poison. But overindulgence, drunkenness, intoxication or being "under the influence" are forbidden.

Paul writes in Ephesians 5: "Do not get drunk with wine." Keep all of your native powers.

But still even that isn't enough. Sobriety by itself doesn’t do it. Just avoiding drunkenness and keeping our natural abilities is not enough for us to become the people God created us to be. So Paul says: "Do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation. But be filled with the Spirit." This is the positive half of the equation, the great alternative. It is the road to the call in Romans 13:12 to put away the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit?

Contrary to what some churches and groups teach, being filled with the Spirit is not a kind of mystical spiritual inebriation in which we lose control of ourselves. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:32-33 that the "Spirit of prophets is subject to prophets for God is not a God of confusion but of peace."

To be filled by the Spirit, means to be controlled by the Spirit and directed by the Spirit, just as the wind that fills the sails of a ship can control the speed and direction of the ship.

Our natural powers are not enough for us to be all that God created us to be. But if we will let the Spirit fill and direct our lives, great things can happen.

Here is the core. Here’s how this teaching works.

By connecting the negative, "Do not get drunk with wine" in Ephesians 5 with the positive, "But be filled with the Spirit", Paul is warning us that we must be controlled by something. We can't be empty. If we will not be filled with God, the filling will be with pride or bitterness or booze --something. What will control us is our choice to make. It’s the key choice of life.

And we make the choice by what we do. A person gets drunk by drinking alcohol. We become filled with the Spirit by drinking of all God has for us in worship, Bible study, prayer, meditating on devotional material, and interacting with other Christians. Paul's teaching in Ephesians about being filled with the Spirit is given in the context of Christian love and relationships in verse 20. This is because it is being filled with the Spirit that gives us the power to love and give thanks for one another.

And we need that power. We can’t do it on our own — at least not for long.

A Christian athlete named Roger Thompson writes: "When people ask me 'How can I ever start to love everyone like I should?' I give the same answer I give all those who ask how they should start jogging: Start slow, and then get slower. For the first week the goal is just to keep moving.

"Too many people buy new shoes and a fancy running suit and sprint out the door eagerly chugging as hard as they can for about three blocks. Then their stomachs begin to ache, their muscles cramp and their lungs burn. They wind up hitch hiking home exhausted and gasp; 'I'll never do that again.’

"That's called anaerobic (without oxygen) running. It's caused by a body using up more oxygen than it takes in."

Thompson writes: "Many people run that way and many people try to love that way. They love with great fervor and self-sacrifice--giving 200%--but only for the distance of three blocks. Down the road they find themselves in pain, gasping and cramped saying, "I'll never do that again."

Thompson concludes, "Our living, like running must be aerobic. Our output must be matched by our intake. Running requires oxygen. And enduring love requires the continuous ministry of God's Word and Spirit. As we take in and give out, we will be more and more filled. We'll build up our capacity to do more and more. And soon, we won't be huffing and puffing for half a block. We'll be loving marathons.

For me, the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives is best characterized by a true story about the famous Polish concert artist and Prime Minister, Paderewski.

A mother had brought her eight-year-old son to a performance by Paderewski in New York. She was hoping to encourage his feeble attempts at the piano. When the night arrived they found seats near the front of the concert hall and eyed the majestic Steinway waiting on the stage.

Soon the mother found a friend to talk to, and the boy slipped away. When eight o'clock arrived, the spotlight came on, the audience quieted and only then did they notice the boy up on the bench innocently picking out "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

The mother gasped. But before she could retrieve her son, the master appeared on the stage and quickly moved to the keyboard.

"Don't quit, keep playing," he whispered to the boy. Reaching over, Paderewski reached down with his left hand and began filling in the bass part. Soon his right arm reached around the other side, encircling the child, to add a running obbligato. Together the old master and the young novice held the crowd mesmerized.

Our lives may often be unpolished. But the Lord surrounds us and whispers in our ear time and time again: "Don't stop, keep playing." And as we do, He augments and supplements until a work of amazing beauty is created. That is the ministry of the Spirit.

We are to be filled with the Spirit. Pray and ask od to fill you with the Holy Spirit who indwelt you and sealed you when you came to faith.

If we are filled, Paul says in Ephesians, we will minister to each other in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. The discordant noise of the drunk will be replaced with the harmony of a purposeful, God-directed community.

You see, the songs of a drunk only sound good to other drunks. Alcohol doesn't raise our performance. It only lowers our standards. So, let our songs be the kind of songs the Spirit gives -- songs that build up our community and one another.