Booze Hounds

When I was a much younger man, back in my college days, me and a fraternity brother went out drinking one night and we ended up in a bar shooting tequila. Somehow, we made it back to the fraternity house where I proceeded to pick a fight with a man twice my size. He was a big football player and I began to challenge his masculinity and I ended my discourse to him by picking up a broom and beating him over the head with it.

Well, I guess I got him mad enough because he then punched me so hard I knocked the hinges off the door as I went right through it. As I lay unconscious, he sat on my chest and continued to beat me until others came to my rescue to pull him off of me. Well, when I came to, my shirt was torn and I was badly beaten up.

The next day, I decided right then and there that if drinking alcohol would make me do things, I would later regret that I had no business drinking. I quit drinking booze that day and I haven't touched a drop of liquor since. That was over 40 years ago.

I get a lot of strange looks from waiters when I refuse to see the wine list. I remember what Adrian Rogers used to say to restaurant servers when they offered him alcohol. He would reply, No, thank you.

I'm happy and I want to stay that way. The title of my message today, friends, is Booze Hounds and my text can be found in Ephesians 5.18 and I'm going to read it to you in the amplified version because it tells it like it really is. Do not get drunk with wine, for that is wickedness, corruption, stupidity, but be filled with the Holy Spirit and constantly guided by Him.

I live in a beach community that is party central and on the weekends there is enough booze drunk that could drown the entire city. Everywhere you go is a booze hound sitting on a bar stool watching the sunset with a drink in his hand or her hand. But the question is, should a Christian drink? Well, I respond to that question with a quote by the evangelist Sam Jones.

Sam Jones fought the liquor industry hard and he had been a drunk himself. When Sam Jones was a lawyer, he'd become an alcoholic and it ruined his career. Listen to his words, friends.

How did I become a drunkard? By drinking wine like some of you do. If any man had tasted what I have and been where I have been, he'd be recreant if he did not preach as I do. I'm not only not going to drink, but I'll fight it to perdition.

And when perdition freezes, then I'll fight it on the ice. Nobody but an infernal scoundrel will sell whiskey and nobody but an infernal fool will drink it. There ain't a four-legged hog in the country that'll drink beer, but lots of two-legged hogs will.

Every ballroom is recruiting office for hell. I'll say this, whiskey is a good thing in its place and that place is hell. Well, that was Sam Jones on drinking.

The biblical examples I turn to to see the evils of drinking pretty much ascribe how it can ruin a man's testimony. In Genesis, it shows how alcohol wasn't kind to Noah and before this incident, he had an impeccable record. But Genesis 9.21 states, And he drank of the wine and was drunken and he was uncovered within his tent.

The other instance in Genesis that shows me not to drink is found in the record of Lot's incest with his daughters. Genesis 19.32 and 33 grimly states, And they made their father drink wine that night and the firstborn went in and lay with her father and he perceived not when she lay down nor when she arose. I always look and see what the word of God says on a subject to see how I should arrange my life to it and I believe Proverbs 20, excuse me, verse 1 sums up drinking alcohol when it says, Oh, wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging and whoever is deceived thereby is not wise.

And if that verse of scripture doesn't persuade you, friend, to avoid drinking, then perhaps this story will. I have a friend who is a Christian man and once a month he and his wife get in their car to take a long drive out of town to go visit their only son in a penitentiary. Their son went out and got drunk one night, drove through a red light and killed a woman driver.

Two families' lives are ruined by that one night of drinking. And I'll end this message, friends, with a quote from Vance Havner on drinking and then I'll leave it to your personal conscience before God. Vance Havner would say, I'm awfully tired of hearing temperance in liquor drinking preached instead of abstinence as a concession to the cocktail crowd in the congregation.

Let us pray.