The Sin of Drunkenness

I remember sitting in a restaurant and the table next to us were seated four individuals who were officers of the church so they said as we overheard their conversation and they were waiting for their pastor to arrive and while they waited they were drinking wine and talking eventually they got a little loud because the longer they waited on their pastor the more wine they drank and the more intoxicated they became until it was embarrassing to be seated next to them. Nice Christian witness isn't it? The men I've known in ministry who got in trouble with the law did so because of booze because friends when you booze you lose. The Word of God in Proverbs 21 declares wine is a mocker strong drink is raging and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.

We're in our sermon series on sin and our sermon today is the sin of drunkenness. When I was in college me and a fraternity brother went out drinking one night and we were shooting tequila and I was drunk by the time I made it back to the fraternity house and I had a fraternity brother who worked as a server in a fancy steak restaurant called the Jolly Ox and he had to dress up in old English clothes and his uniform he had to wear tights and when he walked into the lodge there at 2 a.m. dog tired from working all night and when I saw him I looked at his tights and I began to question his manhood and I called him a fairy and because I was so intoxicated I grabbed a broom and I began to beat him with the broom while I tongue-lashed his masculinity. The trouble for me was he was a linebacker on the football team and twice my size so he grabbed me like I was a rag doll.

He grabbed me with one hand and he began punching me with the other hand and he knocked me so hard into a door the force of it took the door off the hinges. I don't remember anything more than that but I was later told that it took several fraternity brothers just to pull him off me before he killed me. When I woke up that morning my shirt was torn my face was black and blue and swollen and I decided right then and there if I was going to do something so foolish like drinking alcohol that I didn't even know what I was doing by picking a fight with a giant of a man and then beating him with a broom all the while I'm calling them names.

So I quit drinking that day and I haven't touched booze since and that was 50 years ago. I learned my lesson. All I know is when I look at my Bible friends I see the sad result of drinking.

When I look at Noah lying drunk in his tent and I see a lot in a cave and the sad result of that incest with his daughters and he didn't even know it. Sam Jones the evangelist knew the evils of drink for he was a successful lawyer who became a broken-down alcoholic before he got saved. Sam Jones would say, 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 recreating if he did not preach as I do. I'm not only not gonna drink it but I'll fight it to perdition and when perdition freezes then I'll fight it on the ice and if you can make it any stronger than that put my name to it. Sam Jones also said there ain't a four-legged hog in the country that'll drink beer but lots of two-legged hogs will.

Listen friends when you booze you lose.