Drunkenness Is Prohibited

Ephesians 5:18

And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;

All people like to be happy - to be exhilarated with joy, to feel good and to be on top of everything. There is nothing wrong with that. The Bible says there is a time to laugh. Scripture talks about shouting for joy and good tidings of great joy. It refers to joy unspeakable and full of glory. God wants joyous, excited, happy and uplifted people. The problem lies in how our happiness is generated. Some people seek artificially-induced bliss. You might expect in our modern world (where so much is artificial) that someone would get the idea of brewing up joy and placing it in a bottle. That is exactly what has been done!

 

Today, we have billions around the world who frantically seeking artificial joy at the bottom of a bottle. Drunkenness, of course, occurs in all countries and cultures. The whole world faces a major epidemic of alcoholism. All over the world, people unable to find real happiness look for it in a drunken stupor. But all they find is a cheap, false, damning, artificial substitute for real joy. In first-century times water was usually impure, so people mixed their drinking water with a little wine, which killed the dangerous amoebas. The resulting beverage was hardly intoxicating. The alcohol content was so low, one would have to drink gallons of the stuff to get drunk.

Undiluted, unmixed wine, which was called "strong drink" in the Scriptures was imbibed by people who wanted to get high. Naturally, a Christian who drank wine as a daily part of his life would easily feel tempted towards drunkenness. The Bible repeatedly calls drunkenness a sin and warns against it. For example, Paul excluded those who were given to much wine from being elders or deacons in the church (1 Timothy 3:3, 8). Proverbs is filled with prohibitions against drunkenness.