THE CHRISTIAN’S USE AND ABUSE OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES
(I Tim. 5:23)
Overview of I Tim. 4:1-5:23
4:1-2 How False Teaching Enters the Church
4:3-5 Common Grace
4:6 Word of God in Life of the Believer
4:7a Godliness – Divine / Human Role
4:7b Train Yourself to be Godly
4:7c Spiritual Disciplines (The Word of God)
4:7d Spiritual Disciplines (Devotions, Worship)
4.7e Spiritual Disciplines (Church Attendance, Journaling, Practicing Presence of God)
4:8-9 Why Godliness Has Great Value
4:10 Putting Our Hope in the Living God
4:12 Setting an Example for Believers
4:13 What a Christian Worship Service Looked Like in the First Century
4:14 Neglecting the Spiritual Gift God has Given Us
4:15-16 Getting Home Before Dark
5:1-2 So, How Should We Describe the Church?
5:3-16 God’s Tilt Towards the Disenfranchised
5:3-16 Sorting Out those Worthy of Relief – A Biblical Approach to Social Welfare
5:3-16 The Biblical Rationale for Providing for Relatives
5:5-16 The Tale of Two Widows – A Biblical Approach to Pleasure
5:9-10 The Good Works of a New Testament Woman
5:11-14 The Younger Widows – Breaking Celibacy Vows
5:11-14 The Younger Widows – Gossiping False Teaching
5:15 Satan’s Effort to Keep Jesus from Fulfilling His Mission
5:17-18 Honoring the Work of Elders
5:19-20 How NT Church Discipline Illustrates Cultural Formation
5:21 Partiality – A Christian Problem?
5:23 The Christian’s Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Beverages
17The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. 18For the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.” 19Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses.
20Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning.
21I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism.
22Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure.
23Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.
24The sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. 25In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not cannot be hidden.
INTRODUCTION:
1. Mining truth out of a Bible verse.
a. EXPLICIT Truth (tersurat) – Fully revealed or expressed without vagueness, leaving no question as to meaning or intent. “His request was very explicit.”
b. IMPLICIT Truth (tersirat) – Implied, involved in the nature or essence of something though not revealed. Inferred, understood, unsaid, unspoken, unexpressed. “You may go down to the lake but don’t get wet.” Don’t go swimming is “implicit” in the statement.
2. EXPLICIT TRUTHS IN I TIM 5:23
a. Abstinence and asceticism do not define moral purity.
b. Wine has medicinal qualities
3. IMPLICIT TRUTHS IN I TIM. 5:23
a. Mature Christians can get sick
b. Christians can use medicine for healing
c. God heals through medicine and not prayer alone
d. Healing is not covered in the atonement
4. OMITTED TRUTHS IN I TIM 5:23
a. Social drinking is not encouraged or discouraged in this verse.
b. Drunkenness and alcoholism is not referred to in this verse.
I. ABSTINENCE/ASCETICISM DOES NOT DEFINE MORAL PURITY
In the Ephesian church “pure,” as a description of Christian living had various connotations. To the false teachers it meant asceticism, including abstinence from certain foods. “They … order people to abstain from certain food” (I Tim. 4:3). (Towner, 130)
“There had always been a strain of asceticism in Jewish religion. When a man took the Nazerite vow (Number 6:1-21) he was pledged never to taste any of the product of the vine: “He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink; he shall drink no vinegar made from wine, or strong drink, and shall not drink any juice of grapes or eat grapes, fresh or dried. All the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins” (Numbers 6:3-4). (Barclay, 119)
Timothy may have committed himself to a life of total abstinence from wine. So Paul is saying, “By keeping yourself pure I do not mean living as an abstainer” (Gordon Fee, 132).
In our society a total abstainer can sometimes falsely have the attitude that he is a rung above a social drinker … it is the pride that can (does not have to) but can go along with asceticism.
II. WINE HAS MEDICINAL QUALITIES
In the Talmud, which contains the oral traditions of Judaism from about 200 BC to AD 200, there are several tractates in which the mixture of water and wine is discussed. One tractate (Shabbath 77a) states that wine that does not carry three parts water is not wine. The normal mixture is said to consist of two parts water to one part wine. In a most important reference (Pesahim 108b) it is stated that the four cups every Jew was to drink during the Passover ritual were to be mixed in a ratio of three parts water to one part wine. From this we can conclude with a fair degree of certainty that the fruit of the vine used at the institution of the Lord’s Supper was a mixture of three parts water to one part wine. In another Jewish reference from around 60 BC, we read, “It is harmful to drink wine alone, or again, to drink water alone, while wine mixed with water is sweet and delicious and enhances one’s enjoyment” (II Maccabees 15:39).
The Talmud, Hippocrates, Pliny, and Plutrach all spoke of the value of wine in countering stomach ailments caused by impure water (MacArthur, 225).
The good Samaritan used oil and wine (an antiseptic) to deal with the wounds of the injured traveler. “And went to [him], and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him” (Luke 10:34).
You don’t have to look far on the web to see articles and research that speaks about the positive effects of wine on the lungs, longevity, dementia, cancer, heart disease, bacterial food contamination, herpes, cholesterol, colds, diabetes, healing wounds, prostate cancer, skin cancer, breast cancer, suspends danger of smoking, inhibits HIV etc…
Wine Spectator: Drink to Your Health and Pour Some on the Counter, Too – http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Daily/News/ 0,1145,1881,00.html – Scientists at Oregon State University explore wine’s antiseptic effects on E. coli and salmonella, and speculate on developing a wine-based anti-microbial spray.
III. MATURE CHRISTIANS CAN GET SICK
Timothy had stomach problems, Paul had a thorn in the flesh (an eye problem), Epaphroditus, sick nigh unto death (Phil. 2:26-27).
IV. CHRISTIANS CAN USE MEDICINE FOR HEALING
V. GOD HEALS THROUGH MEDICINE, NOT JUST PRAYER
“Note that Paul does not recommend miraculous healing, but the used of medicinal alcohol for his frequent illnesses.” (Griffiths, pg. 107)
Dr. Albert B. Simpson, founder of the C&MA, summarized the central theme or motto of the C&MA: “God with us” as Christ, our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King. In the early years of the C&MA ministry in Thailand, all the missionaries threw away their quinine and were going to trust God alone for protection and healing against malaria. Many died and the mission finally required all to take quinine.
My brother-in-law had cystic-fibrosis and needed medication to keep his lungs clear. A lady in Hawaii convinced him that he should trust Christ for healing and not use medicine. He threw all his medications away and in a short-time had to have one lung removed by surgery.
VI. HEALING IS NOT COVERED IN THE ATONEMENT
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed (I Peter 2:24).
Just type into Google in quotes “healing in the atonement” and you will get a ton of information, Biblical reasoning, verses etc on this subject. It is the foundation of much of the teaching on healing in the churches today. Most will argue against using a verse like I Tim. 5:23 in challenging the concept that physical healing in the atonement, but such a verse needs to be answered.
VII. I TIM 5:223 DOES NOT ENCOURAGE OR DISCOURAGE SOCIAL DRINKING
You need to go other places to find support for social drinking: The Bible notes that everything God created is good (Gen. 1:31; I Tim. 4:4). The Psalmist wrote that wine is God’s gift and gladdens the heart of man (Ps. 104:15). In Proverbs 31:6-7 we are told that drink helps the poor forget their poverty. Acts tells us not to call unclean what God has called clean. The Gentiles were not told to abstain from wine in order to enter the Kingdom.
There has been a tremendous shift in the evangelical church in its attitude to social drinking.
A good Christian friend of mine and his wife, almost every Sunday evening, go out for a “Margarita.” In most Christian circles today social drinking is not taboo.
“It appears the stigma of alcohol consumption among evangelicals is on the wane. Drunkenness, a vice condemned throughout the Bible, is still universally forbidden. But social drinking is falling further into the grey zone, and more social drinks are falling into Christian cups, according to impressions offered by Gideons, Mennonite Brethren, Salvationists, Pentecostals and Christian Reformed.” (Canadian Christian Community Online).
VIII. I TIM 5:23 DOES NOT ENCOURAGE OR DISCOURAGE DRUNKENNESS
BIBLICAL CONDEMNATION OF ALCOHOLISM
The Bible is loaded with condemnation and restrictions on drunkenness: In Lev. 10:9-11 a priest must not drink anything fermented; In Prov. 31:4-7 a king who drinks will forget to do justice; Isaiah refers to the drunkard as living a dissolute life, giving no attention to God, of priests and prophets who stagger from drunkenness, of the wicked who live for the next drink (Isa 5:11-12, 28:1,7, 56:12); Jesus described a wicked servant as one who eats and drinks with drunkards and associates drunkenness with the anxieties of life (Mt. 24:49, Lk 21:34). In the letter to the Ephesians Paul says that drunkenness leads to debauchery and in I Timothy drunkards may not be elders and deacons (Eph. 5:18; I Tim. 3:3,8).
REASON FOR THE “PROHIBITION”
From the progressive viewpoint, temperance arguments made sense. In a modern society, liquor both reduced men’s efficiency and spawned a multitude of social, political, and economic evils. Such a phenomenon should be reformed or outlawed for the common good. It is wrong, suggests Paul A. Carter, to think of prohibition as “exclusively the work of moralizing Puritans compensating for the repressions of their own harsh code in a spurious indignation at the pleasure of their neighbors.” In his study of progressivism within the Protestant churches, the so-called Social Gospel movement, Carter found “thousands of sincere and not particularly ascetic folk who believed that they fought liquor, not because it has made men happy, but because it has made men unhappy.” He concluded that “the dry crusade spoke the language of social and humanitarian reform-and had the profoundest kinship with the Social Gospel.”‘
Ste1zle, in a 1918 book, Why Prohibition!, held that banishing alcohol was essential for the material advancement of American society. Drinking, he asserted, lowered industrial productivity and therefore reduced wages paid to workers; it shortened life and therefore increased the cost of insurance; it took money from other bills and therefore forced storekeepers to raise their prices in compensation; and it produced half of the business for police courts, jails, hospitals, almshouses, and insane asylums and therefore increased taxes to support these institutions.”
Stelzle held that the burden of these social and economic costs for the whole society outweighed any individual right to use intoxicants and legitimized the restriction of personal liberty. “There is no such thing,” he wrote, “as an absolute individual right to do any particular thing, or to eat or drink any particular thing, or to enjoy the association of one’s own family, or even to live, if that thing is in conflict with the law of public necessity.” Anti-prohibitionists would charge drys with insensitivity to individual rights and liberties, but this was not the case. Prohibitionists simply felt that social betterment outweighed other factors. “The first consideration,” Stelzle argued, “is not the individual, but society. Therefore, whatever injures society is not permitted. “Small sacrifices of personal liberties may significantly enhance the common good. Therefore, he concluded, “You may exercise your personal liberty only in so far as you do not place additional burdens upon your neighbor, or upon the State.” (Repealing National Prohibition, David Kyvig, Copyright 1979 by the University of Chicago)
WE SUPPORT USE OF SEAT BELTS, SPEEDING LAWS, USE OF AIR BAGS ETC. FOR EXACTLY THE SAME REASONS. CLEAN AIR. CLEAN WATER. HEALTH INSURANCE FOR ALL. WEARING OF HELMETS WHEN ON A MOTOR BIKE. NO SALE OF CIGARETTES TO MINORS
CONSEQUENCES OF ALCOHOLISM:
One-quarter of all emergency room admissions, one-third of all suicides, and more than half of all homicides and incidents of domestic violence are alcohol-related.4
Heavy drinking contributes to illness in each of the top three causes of death: heart disease, cancer and stroke.3
Almost half of all traffic fatalities are alcohol-related.5
Between 48% and 64% of people who die in fires have blood alcohol levels indicating intoxication.1
Fetal alcohol syndrome is the leading known cause of mental retardation.6
SOURCES: 1 “Substance Abuse: The Nation’s Number One Health Problem,” Institute for Health Policy, Brandeis University, 1993. 2 “Substance Abuse: The Nation’s Number One Health Problem,” Institute for Health Policy, Brandeis University, 2001. 3 Position Paper on Drug Policy, Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy, Brown University Center for Alcohol & Addiction Studies, 2000. 4 “Sobering Facts on the Dangers of Alcohol,” NY Newsday, April 24, 2002. 5 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Annual Report, 1992. 6 E. Abel, “Incidence of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome & Economic Impact of FAS-Related Anomalies,” Drug & Alcohol Dependence, 1987.
DAVID WILKERSON’S TESTIMONY
A fine Christian lady wrote to me saying:
“We are good church-going Christians. We love the Lord, and we see nothing at all wrong with serving wine in our home. We drink moderately, and our children are learning to drink under our supervision. They do not overindulge. We have never seen anyone drunk in our home.
“You are simply trying to make us feel guilty and are pushing your fundamentalist morals on us. We were not raised under the legalistic taboos like you evidently were. Frankly? sir, our drinking habits are none of your concern.”
God bless that dear lady – but one of these days it will be my business. It starts becoming my business when those teenagers go out with their friends and get stoned.
Just today, one of my students, a converted alcoholic, told me how she became a drunkard. Her parents taught her how to drink moderately. At parties, birthdays, and when company came, everybody took a social drink. It was served at meals. She admired and loved her parents. They despised drunkenness, yet they had a bar in the house.
This young lady started going to teenage parties and began to drink socially with her crowd. That led to drinking in clubs. Soon she was getting stoned in parked vans. Finally, when problems began to pile up, she began to lean on wine heavily. She ended up in a mental institution, a hard-core alcoholic.
That same story is repeated to me over and over again from coast to coast. How many, many times I’ve heard it, “My parents were considered good Christians. They went to church. But we always served wine or beer at our house. My big brother drank moderately and he was my hero. I drank to be like my parents and big brother, but I couldn’t handle it. But they made me think drinking was the thing all good people do.”
Am I prejudiced? Narrow-minded on the subject? You bet I am! And I have reason to be. My own brother, a minister’s son, started drinking beer moderately – just to be sociable with friends. He wound up a heavy drinker, leaving his wife and lovely children to pursue his habit. Thank God he is saved today and back with his family.
I am deeply offended by drinking Christians because of the terrible example it sets for young people! This nation is now facing a plague of drinking among teenagers. The two most popular words in school today are “cruising and boozing.” Drunkenness is spreading in our schools like a wildfire out of control. Kids tell me that as many as 80% of their class not only drink, but get stone drunk. We face the possibility of having over one million young alcoholics next year.
A young lady, a member of a Christian love commune, wrote to me recently and said, “Sure, we all drink. Jesus did; Paul did! The Bible is not down on it. Our leaders drink moderately. They are good Bible teachers and they travel, speaking at youth gatherings.”
And I get very weary and spiritually indignant when drinking Christians come back at me with – “Aw, you’re just a fundamentalist, law bound, moral do-gooder. We modern, liberated Christians are free in Christ. We are not under law. We will not be bound by your attacks on our freedom.”
Pray for our teenagers! The pressures on them to drink with the crowd are getting worse daily. They need to be encouraged to stand up and resist, lest they be drawn into this whirlpool of drunkenness. (David Wilkerson, sermon on the web)
IX. DOES ANYTHING TRUMP OUR PERSONAL FREEDOM IN CHRIST?
1. When we talk about abstaining we are not talking about what is and what is not permitted. Obviously drinking alcoholic beverages is permitted.
“Everything is permissible” – but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible” – but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others” (I Cor. 10:23).
2. Obviously the matter of being a “stumbling block” and “offending a fellow believer” does trump Christian freedom.
“All food is clean, but it is wrong for a Christian to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your Christian brother or sister to stumble” (Rom. 14:20-21).
3. Both John Vawter and Rich Hendrix have made a public statement before the congregation that they do not drink socially.
QUESTION: What is the reason for that?
Of the two options, imbibing or abstaining, which would most benefit our testimony, the edification of other Christians and the extension of the kingdom of God?
SO WHAT????
1. When reading the Scriptures focus on explicit truth but also look for implicit truth.
2. Moral purity is not related to asceticism.
3. The fact that abstinence from alcohol is not demanded of Christians and that wine has medicinal qualities does not justify social drinking.
4. The edification of fellow believers and the extension of the kingdom of God always trumps personal freedom.
“Earnestly prioritize submitting to the reign of God while pursuing a life of Christlikeness” (Mt. 6:33).