“Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose
glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys
of them that are overcome with wine!” Isaiah 28:1
“The crown of
pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet.” Isaiah
28:3
“But they also have erred through wine, and through strong
drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through
strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way
through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all
tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.”
Isaiah 28:7,8
“Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that
puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest
look on their nakedness! Thou art filled with shame for glory: drink thou
also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered: the cup of the LORD'S right hand
shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory.”
Hab. 2:15,16
Author: John R. Rice
Notice the woe to the
crown of pride, the
drunkards of Ephraim. Woe to the drunkard! A curse is on the drunkard,
says the Word of God. There is a curse on the man who drinks, on the
woman who drinks.
There is another curse: “Woe unto him that
giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him
drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!” There is a curse
on the person who serves, who sells, who gives liquor.
By way of
introduction, let me say this: in Bible times they did not have distilled
whisky as we have it now. However, they did have several kinds of wine.
But wine in the New Testament very often means simply grapejuice. In
fact, there was not in Bible times a different word for wine and for
grapejuice as we have. When the juice was first squeezed out of the
grapes, it was called wine, as you see from Proverbs 3:10: “So shall thy
barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.”
So grapejuice is wine, in the Bible sense. Later when the grapejuice
ferments, it is still wine in the Bible sense.
There is no reason to
suppose that the wine which Jesus made at the wedding in John, chapter 2,
was intoxicating wine. There is no reason to supposed that the which was
used a t the last supper and which New Testament churches used for the
Lord’s Supper was intoxicating wine. In fact, the Scripture takes particular
pains not to call it wine, but instead calls it “the cup,” and “the fruit of the
vine.” Sot he Lord seems to have specially guarded against being
misunderstood on this point. However, if He had used the word wine it
might have meant unfermented wine, that is, simply grapejuice.
I
call your attention to the double curse of God on booze.
First,
there is a curse on the drunkard. Who is a drunkard? When is a man a
drunk? Many a man, after he has been arrested for killing somebody with
his car, or after a fatal accident, says to the judge, “Why, Judge, I only had
two or three beers. I wasn’t drunk.” He couldn’t drive well, couldn’t see
well. He couldn’t get his foot on the brake as quickly as he ought to; he
was not as reliable a driver under the influence of liquor. But he said he
wasn’t drunk. Because he wasn’t unconscious or wasn’t in a stupor, he
thinks he wasn’t drunk.
When is a man drunk? When a man has
drunk, he is drunk. Anybody who drinks beverage alcohol in any degree is
somewhat affected by it, and so he is drunk to that degree. A man can get
more drunk than he already is. He can drink until he is unconscious and
can’t drink any more. A man can drink until a certain percentage of
alcohol gets into the blood and stops the motor responses so that he quits
breathing and dies. Now, that is a little more drunk than he was while he
was breathing. Yet he is still drunk.
You know that the word
drunk is part of the word drink, drank, drunk; or, drink, drank, drunken. A
drunkard is a man who drinks. Anybody who drinks any alcoholic liquor
is under the influence of it, is affected by it, and to that degree is drunk.
If it takes eight glasses of beer to make a man drunk (it takes less
than that for some people) then the man who has one glass is one-eighth
drunk. The man who has two glasses is one-fourth drunk. And no man
on-fourth drunk is safe as an engineer of a passenger train, safe to drive an
automobile down the road, or safe to handle a steam shovel or a drill press,
or a welding torch. No girl who is one-fourth drunk is safe in the presence
of sex temptation. The man who would not gamble without drinking, will
gamble when he is one-fourth drunk. And the man who never intended to
take more than two glasses of beer can be tempted to take more when he is
already one-fourth drunk!
Now what are some of the curses of
God on the drunkard? Listen to Proverbs 23:21: “For the drunkard and
the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with
rags.”
What is the curse on the drunkard? Poverty. I need not
prove that. How many of you ever knew somebody who was poor
because of liquor?
In the second grade at school I had my first
love affair! I fell in love with Miss Mabel Blossom, my second grade
teacher! One day Miss Mabel said to the class, “All you children but
Sammy will have to stay in today. Sammy, you have been a good boy.
You may go home on time. Get your lunch bucket, your cap and coat,
and go on home. Good-by, Sammy. I am going to keep the rest of the
class in.”
Sammy left. When the door was closed, Miss Mabel
got off her rostrum, walked down near us, stood there with tears in her
eyes as she said, “Children, some of you haven’t been very nice to
Sammy. You don’t like to play with him. You have nice lunch baskets,
while he brings his lunch--if he has anything at all--in a lard pail. Your
Mother fixes your hair nice. You little girls have nice starched dresses;
you little boys have white blouses and clean pants, but little Sammy only
wears dirty old patched overalls.” She said, “Children, I want to tell you
something. Sammy is not to blame. His father is a drunkard, and
Sammy’s mother does the best she can. They don’t have money a lot of
the time. Sammy can’t bring any lunch some days. So don’t you be
mean to Sammy. He can’t help it if his father drinks.”
I have
never gotten away from that. Here is a little boy who didn’t have lunches
like the rest of us. Our family was very poor, but we always had clothes
enough, and they were always clean. We came with our hair combed and
looked nice. We were well cared for. But Sammy, with a drinking father,
couldn’t have nice clothes; he didn’t have enough to eat, and he went
barefoot in the winter-tine. I was impressed then with the thing I have wept
over I guess a thousand times since-the poverty of wives and little children
who suffer because of a husband or daddy who is a
drunkard.
Some of you are against the liquor business, yet you will
eat where it is
served or trade where it is sold, even if there is a good restaurant close
by that does not serve it, and a grocery store not far away that does
not sell it. You say you don't drink it--no; but you patronize the one
who does, because you can save a few cents on a can of coffee or a
pound of sugar or a gallon of milk. Shame on you! God is displeased
when you have a choice and choose to trade with the liquor
crowd.
Now there
are some occasions in this day and age when we have no choice. I fly on
airlines that serve the stuff. If there were airlines that
didn't, I would make my choice to fly with those lines. Would you? Or
does it not matter to you? God help us!
Don't you see that when
you go into
places where beer or liquor is served, you are backing up those who are in
the dirty business of
damning souls. Your presence there says to your children, "It doesn't
matter. Such places are all right for decent people." But that is not
true, and you know it. To do so puts your money and influence back of
those who are breaking down morals, who are turning our girls into
drunkards and prostitutes, and making our boys into profligates and
drunkards.
When you patronize these places, you are putting your
money into
the kind of thing, and your friendship and your good name behind the kind
of thing, that has God's curse on it. Don't do it! give your testimony
by where you trade and where you eat.
I remind you again that the
curse of God
is on anyone who gives his neighbor drink, or helps others give their
neighbor drink, or puts his
influence behind people who give their neighbor drink.
Return to Solving The Bible Puzzle.