People will sometimes say "oh, Jesus didn't drink alcohol, Jesus didn't drink wine." Wrong!
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Hey, everyone. I'm Rachel and today on Crack Your Bible we are going to be talking about
alcohol. Is it sin for Christians to drink? Because
well, there's a lot of people who are like,
Ugh! "Drinking is a sin if you do it. That's so frowned upon in the Bible and
Christians shouldn't even have any sort of alcohol." A lot of people love to create
"fence laws." It happened with Adam with Eve where he said, " don't even touch the fruit,"
Because they want to kind of protect people from themselves. "I don't trust you enough to
do things in moderation or listen to what I'm going to say, so I'm going to say 'you can't touch it.
You can't do anything.'" You see it in Judaism where you can't even mix fish and
dairy, or chicken and dairy, when God says "don't cook a goat in its mother's milk."
You have people creating fence laws where it says don't do this and then man
takes it ten steps further.
(Matthew 23:1-4 on screen) They tie up heavy burdens on people, where even they themselves
can't manage these restrictions that they create.
There have always been people who are
very against alcohol,
and they will try to twist the Scriptures to make you believe that not even Jesus drank alcohol.
And this couldn't be further from the truth,
because we see
Jesus compare and contrast
Himself with His cousin John the Baptist. Now John the Baptist took a Nazarite Vow and a Nazarite vow was
(Numbers 6:2-4 on screen) something where you couldn't cut your hair,
you couldn't touch the dead, and you also couldn't have anything to do with alcohol.
You couldn't even eat raisin or grapes,
and this was a specific vow for Nazarites. It comes from the word "nazar" which means
"consecrated." And a lot of people get this confused
because Jesus is known as "Jesus of
Nazareth," and Nazareth is a town, it is not a
signifier saying that Jesus himself also took a Nazarite vow - because we see
Jesus did drink alcohol. And He even says that He did. He
compares Himself with John and He says
(Luke 7:33-34 on screen) "John came to you
not drinking, not eating bread, and you say he's full of demons.
I'm here drinking and eating and you say that I'm a drunkard and a glutton because I hang out with
tax collectors and prostitutes,
while we're feasting and drinking.
Both of us, you have said that we have demons so which is it clearly it's not because
one eats or drinks or one abstains from food and drinks, so Jesus drank.
So a lot of people, they will again twist the scriptures or they don't understand the scriptures
and say," Jesus didn't drink alcohol
so you shouldn't either." Jesus did drink alcohol.
Everybody drank alcohol pretty much up until we had the
ability to filter water to make it safe from things like Giardia or Cholera. And
throughout human history, if we didn't have beer, you would have died. Because the fermentation process
and the boiling process with beer kills a lot of parasites, so
everybody drank beer. Children drank beer, pregnant women drank beer,
Adults, old people, everybody drank beer in ancient times.
Now was it super strong where you were just getting wasted?
No, it was it was lighter, but it was still fermented. It was still alcohol.
Everybody drank it, because if you didn't drink it
there wasn't clean water around for you to just drink. So thank God
we live in a time where we have a choice. If we want to refrain from alcohol, we can. If
we decide we want to drink, that's okay too. And I don't want people to think that, "Oh
alcohol is of the Devil. You can't!" No! Jesus,
God, the Holy Spirit. They are okay with you having a drink. What they're not okay with is you
becoming a drunkard, where you're not
sober anymore. Because it says
(1 Peter 5:8 on screen) that we should be of sober mind, because our enemy, the Devil, goes around
like a roaring lion looking for somebody to devour.
It says that we need to be sober minded so that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit. And
it also talks about how it's important not to be
alcoholics because people who like to drink
(Ephesians 5:18 on screen) where they're being drunk,
they kind of fall into a wild living, and that is not what Christians are supposed to do.
Now I grew up in a family where alcohol was
shunned. Oh my gosh!
People drinking beer!? How dare they! Like my parents are super
strange when it comes to beer. Like it's okay for them to drink margaritas and have
Manischewitz wine, but somehow if you have beer,
Oh my gosh!
not even once! Meth, not even once.
You would have thought that this was the equivalent of meth in my household. My
parents will talk about people, "Oh! Can you believe those people? They offered us beer!" Like, "Oh,
what alcoholics." And this is erroneous teaching that you see throughout Christianity. I'm not trying to
like, "rag" on my parents or whatever, but that's something that I grew up with which isn't scriptural, And
I don't like seeing that
perpetuated in Christian culture, especially in the South where my family's from.
I was born in a "dry" county - Denton County, Texas
you can't buy alcohol in the county.
When I went to Oklahoma State, you couldn't even buy alcohol on Sundays because
you have a culture of people who believe that the Bible says that
Christians can't drink. Now I'm not saying that my parents are bad people, or anything like that,
but they grow up with a teachings if not Scriptural.
And you see a lot of Christians like that today, so I want to dispel the myth that
Christians can't drink alcohol here on Crack Your Bible.
(Proverbs 31:6 on screen) If Christians aren't supposed to have alcohol
why would it say in the Bible to go have a drink if you're sad, or
go out and enjoy your alcohol because
(Ecclesiastes 9:7 on screen) God has already approved your actions? Now
Jesus's very first miracle ever
was turning water into wine at the wedding of Cana. And
we know that it was wine because the host came up to Him and said,
"This wine is better than what was served at the beginning. You saved the very best
wine for last." If it was just grape juice, number one,
it would have just said grape juice
and number two, Jesus would not have been complimented on how good this wine was that He provided.
So is there anything wrong with alcohol?
No! Go out have drinks. Have two drinks. If you can handle three drinks, have three drinks,
but don't get drunk, because you need to be on guard. And if you see other people drinking, that's ok!
People, we need
(John 7:24 on screen) to stop judging on the things that are outside and judge rightly.
And we don't need to be like the people who were spoken about in first Timothy
in chapter 4 where
(1 Timothy 4:1-5 on screen) they tell you to abstain from things that God has said are okay.
Marriage, abstaining from certain types of foods. Alcohol is underneath that
category. So if you want to have a drink have a drink.
But don't get drunk,
(1 Corinthians 10:23-24, 31-32 on screen) obviously just like the Bible says,
"Everything is permissible for us", but that doesn't mean everything's great for us
and we also don't want to lead our brothers into sin
so we are with somebody who is struggling with maybe their sobriety, or
maybe they are on medication where they can't take alcohol or something,
obviously don't start throwing back drinks, where it's going to lead them into sin and
they're going to go off the deep end.
Obviously common sense, it's in the Bible
You know we don't want our brother to stumble, but that doesn't mean that you,
once you are not with that person
can't have a drink.
So I want people to kind of stop acting like everyone's a child and
and they can't create
boundaries for themselves,
where you need to police them and say," It's all or nothing, if you have one drink you're an alcoholic."
So you need to have no drinks ever."
That's not right either. The Bible doesn't say it, and you're teaching a different Gospel.
And you're saying things that God has ordained, that God has allowed
aren't okay. That's not okay. So tell me what you think below. Do you drink? Do you not drink?
Are you okay with other people when they drink? Did you grow up in a culture or in a Christian
sect where you thought drinking was bad? Let me know in the comments below,
I'd love for you to like, subscribe, and share, and I'll talk to you later. Bye!
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