Sins of the Spirit Series: Part 12 (Drunkenness)

Sins of the Spirit Series: Part 11 (Drunkenness)

Well, this is message number 12 in the series we've been looking at the various sins of the Spirit, and I wanted to emphasize once again, the purpose of this series is to lay emphasis where our Lord and Savior laid emphasis and not to say that He did not speak about the acts of sin, which He certainly did, but He always seemed to emphasize the root problem, which is the sin in the heart of man, the sin in the human Spirit of man, and the Spirit, even before it was expressed in the form of action, words, it was brewing within in the inner man. I believe as Christians, the Lord told his disciples that our righteousness is to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees, and our righteousness is one of faith, is based on our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we've been justified by faith, and we are to walk by faith, not by sight. As we walk by faith, we're not so much concerned about merely the outside of the cup. What do people see? No, we need to be concerned about the inside of the cup. We need to be concerned about what is the Lord's—let the words in my mouth, let the meditation in my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer. That is the heart of true worship before the Lord, and anything in our spirits that, if you're comfortable because people can't see sin in your Spirit, then you have the wrong attitude, you have the wrong spirit. If you say, well, nobody can see it, no, but God sees it. And there's, like David said, Lord search me, try me, see if there be any wicked way in me, not only in my actions, in my words, but in my very thoughts, within my spirit and the inner man.

So tonight I wanted to turn to Luke 21, and I want to speak on the sin of drunkenness. You might say, well, drunkenness is not a sin of the body, isn't it? And there is very true that that is the case, but I believe this passage tonight will show us the internal aspect of that sin and it's found in Luke 21. If you'll turn there with me, Luke 21, verse 33, in this context here our Lord was speaking to His disciples in the passion week leading up to His arrest and His crucifixion. He was preparing them for, answering their questions regarding, you know, when shall these things be, when Jerusalem would be destroyed? When will the coming of the Son of Man be there? Several questions that were asked here regarding the future, regarding what was going to happen, coming ahead, things they could not yet see, things they had not yet experienced, but how would they prepare for these things? When would they know, what would the sign of the time be? What would the sign of these things that were coming be? And the Lord gave them indications. But here in Luke 21, verse 33, he makes this statement, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of life. And so that day come upon you unawares, for as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye, therefore, and pray always that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man.

The Spirit of these words that Jesus gave to his disciples was, be ready, I'm coming back. They did not know—Paul lived with the anticipation that the Lord might come back in his own day. Now, in the case of the apostles, it proved to be true that Jesus called them home before he came back. In other words, he hasn't yet come back, but he chose in their lifetimes that he would call them home to himself. Tradition tells us church tradition says that they were martyred. We know some of them from the scriptures were martyred, but others we learn from tradition were martyred. But in anticipation of the uncertain future and the unknowns of the future, the Lord gave them words about here the signs of the times, but I'm not going to tell you the day in the hour. I'm not going to tell you all the details. You need to watch. You need to pray. You need to be ready because, well, frankly, the Lord may come in an hour when you think not. There's going to be a time when Jerusalem will be destroyed. There are several things going on in this, what he was saying to his disciples in these final hours of preparation for when he would depart, when he would go to the cross, but he was preparing them basically to be ready for anything. Be alert. Be awake. Be watchful. Be prayerful is what he was teaching them to be.

Now, when the disciples followed the Lord, they forsook all and followed him, right? He said, take up your cross, deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow me. In other words, your life's not yours now. It's mine. Your mind is, disciples. Count the costs. The cost is, you must even hate your own life. Not hate your life in the sense that I've made a wreck and ruin of my life. I hate my life kind of hate. No, I hate my life in that I love my Lord and Savior more than life itself. And therefore, I hate my life in the sense that my life doesn't belong to me any longer. It's not mine to do with as I choose. He is my Lord and master and I will follow him. That was the understanding of denying oneself, taking up their cross, hating their own life as our Lord taught.

But here in this passage tonight, in Luke 21 that we just read a moment ago, we notice that Jesus said, heaven and earth shall pass away. Everything that now is as it currently stands will one day not be as it currently is. But my words will never pass away. My words will endure. That's very comforting in light of what we saw this morning, isn't it? For what He has told us will remain true. What He has said will endure the test of time. In fact, He would say that the word I have spoken, that same word will judge you in the last day. It's the very word the Father gave him to speak that will judge men. It is the very word by which He invites men to believe on Him that will also judge those who reject Him. My words are not going to pass away. Heaven and earth will pass away, everything you see. This temple, the walls here of Jerusalem, these will crumble. Everything is going to change except my word.

And we notice also in verse 34 here, He says, in light of this, take heed to yourselves. Pay attention. Give special attention to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overburdened, overcharged, weighed down. In what way? Well, there are several ways. Lest your hearts be weighed down and overburdened with surfeiting. What is it talking about? Surfeiting. This is that headache caused by drinking wine to excess or pursuing pleasures to the excess of taking away the spirit of watchfulness. I think we got a little, you know, you'll get giddy with your families, you know, you get kind of having enjoyment together. But even, even Job prayed for his children that in their enjoyment they wouldn't forget the Lord, that they wouldn't curse the Lord. Brother Peed reminded us earlier tonight as the choir was practicing, even though we laugh and we have enjoyment sometimes, we don't want to forget who we're singing about. Keep our minds on the Lord. Even we can enjoy things, but don't lose your head, so to speak. Don't lose your focus upon the Lord even in that.

Well, there's a lot of things that are going to happen, Jesus says, after I go away. There's a lot of things that are going to come. And I can't tell you all the details of what's going to happen, just don't let your heart, you take heed to yourselves. You know, we're not going to change the world in the sense that we're not going to be able, no, we can be salt and light in this world, but we're not going to change the world in the sense that everybody's just going to say, oh, great idea, I'll follow you. Some people may, some people may hear the gospel and believe, but we can't make people believe the report. But even as we must give the word, we must be taking heed to ourselves because the tendency could be for us in the midst of perilous times and the midst of uncertain times, chaotic and confusing times, the tendency could be to get overburdened and weighed down with this surfeiting that comes through the abundance of either pleasures or even, as it says in this passage here, through the cares of this life.

But it says also here in verse number 34, it says, and drunkenness, take heed to yourselves lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with drunkenness. Now, I know, and I don't want to diminish the fact that yes, this can be talking about literal drunkenness. But it says your hearts be overburdened with drunkenness. I don't think that this only refers to imbibing alcohol. I believe that that is definitely a part of it. But I think here that the fact that He says, don't let your heart be overburdened or overcharged with cares. Anything that would take priority or take control of your thinking so as to distort your thinking from right thinking and clear thinking and clear-mindedness, knowing that my words are what you need to be paying attention to because my words are not going to pass away. Don't let anything distract you. Don't let any power come along. It could be the bottle, yes, but it could be many other things besides the bottle that would take the thoughts of me and my words, take over that in your heart and in your thinking. So maintain your composure in Christ and in His Word and don't lose your head, so to speak. Lose your mind. What do people try to do? They try to drown their discouragement and drown their disposition with the bottle, don't they? They try to drink away the worry. They try to drink away the pain. They try to drink away the anxieties of life with a bottle, with alcohol, and with many other things. We have many other things that we can be drunken with. Our hearts can be overburdened with or overloaded with even the cares of this life, as it says here in verse 34.

We all have cares, don't we? We have cares, things that we have to do, right? And there's some things we might put in our lives that we don't really have to do, but we just load up our plate sometimes. We load our plate up too much. We have more things, more irons in the fire than we need to have. We add things that really didn't have to be there, but as Jesus said, and what was it, Matthew 13, He would say that we got to be careful about thorny ground because those thorns are like those cares of life, the cares or the pleasures of this life have the ability to choke the word in us that it becomes unfruitful, right? Choke the thorns, cares or pleasures of this life may actually compete with that word in our hearts.

When somebody's drunk, I mean, you know, they do that sobriety test, right? When somebody's drunk, they can't think straight. They can't focus. That's why they do that light and they pass it in front of their eyes and they don't follow instructions very well, do they? Look to the left, turn your head, look to the right, and they stop the light to make sure their eyes don't keep moving while the light's staying still. Walk this line. I've had to have a sobriety test done before because the officer that pulled me over thought he said he thought I smelled like alcohol. I said, well sir, I just worked at the Cracker Barrel for six hours. I haven't been drinking any alcohol, but he pulled me over that night and he got me out and did the breathalyzer test, started getting me to walk the line and all of that. Well, that was a nervous feeling, I tell you. I mean, I knew I wasn't drunk, but it was, you know, I was laser-focused more than I've ever been in my life to be sure that I was paying full attention to what I was doing. I did not want him to, he pulled me over because I was coming out of a lighted section of 301 and I realized that I didn't have my lights on and that when I went to the dark section I realized, oh, wow, I didn't have my lights on here. I was tired, but I certainly wasn't drunk and we can hurt ourselves and we can hurt others. In our spirits, if we are overcharged, over-weighed down with this spirit of drunkenness, we cannot be alert.

The Bible tells us what we ought to be. We're ought to be in many different ways. In many different places of the New Testament, particularly, we're commanded to be sober, aren't we, to be sober-minded, not to be, even as Paul said that we're not to be brought under the power of anything other than the gospel. We're not to be brought under the power of anything under its control other than the truth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Well, look back in our text here, it says in verse 35, for as a snare, a snare is a trap of some sort that is generally used to catch animals. It's something that's not easily discerned and it can grab a hold of the prey or the animal that you're trying to snare. And once they're in the snare, they can't get out of the snare, right? As a snare, shall it come on all of them? What's this going to come? That day, that day of the coming of the Son of Man, that day is going to come unawares as a snare on all of them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Why? Not simply because all of them keep blowing a 0.08 on a breathalyzer, but because there is a spirit of drunkenness that controls the hearts and minds of men, the devil has many devices by which he controls men's thinking. He controls their minds and keeps them always high on something, under the influence of something.

And certainly in sin, the children of disobedience are literally energized. The scripture tells us, they are the spirit that works in the children of disobedience. It energizes the children of disobedience, constantly keeping them busy with cares and pleasures and things of this life so they don't think about, they don't even get still and think about their eternal soul, they're just caught up. They're caught up in all of this. And what wasn't it in Lot's day that they were marrying, giving in marriage, they were building, they were doing all these things, and in Noah's day, they were busy doing all kinds of things. That was in Noah's day, giving in marriage, but there was all this building and all this focus on the temporal. They were drunken with it, we might say. They were very much controlled in their thinking with all these temporal things and that day came upon them as a snare, and in Noah's day came upon them unawares because they were weighed down with all of these things.

I think about David mentioning to me earlier about notifications. There is a programming of people to just be constantly thinking about some new thing that's coming in on your phone and constantly just tied up with that. You can't get free of it. It's like a snare. I have to say we can't use it as a tool, but don't abuse it, right? Using this world without abusing it, he was even pointing out, mentioning to me that if you have something you want to go watch and learn about, you know, you do that, but don't just let the feed carry you, so to speak, and just keep going and going endlessly and then you wonder, where has the last few hours gone or where has all this time gone. I got caught up in it and we've all done it at times certainly. But we want to be sober, sober-minded, right? That's what the scripture commands us to be. Don't be weighed down with these things. Be ready. Be ready.

In fact, in verse 36, it says, watch ye therefore, Jesus says, and pray. Always be in a spirit of prayer. Be watchful in your spirit. Why? That ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man. We're going to meet the Lord. We're going to meet the Lord. We haven't seen Him yet, but He's revealed Himself to us. How has He revealed Himself to us? We saw it this morning in His Word. John said, we have seen Him. We've handled Him. We've heard Him. And now, even as He declared the Father to us, we're declaring Him to you. Here is His Word. Believe His Word. Meditate on His Word. Follow His Word. Let His Word be the lamp to your feet, the light to your path. Let His Word let your steps be ordered according to His Word, and not according to your own.

But the end of all things is at hand. Be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer. Well, some will mock, Peter would say, some will mock and scoff saying all things continue as they were. He hasn't come back yet. Peter says the end of all things is at hand. It's not. Be ye therefore sober. We don't know when He'll come. It's imminent. It could be any moment. So watch unto prayer. Be sober. Watch unto prayer. And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves while you're waiting for charity. Charity shall cover the multitude of sins. You see if we're drunken and overburdened with cares and pleasures of this life, we're not going to focus on charity one toward another. We're going to think about self-love, aren't we? We're going to be serving our own belly. We're going to be serving our own pleasures. The Bible says that in the perilous last times there will be a distinct obvious presence of men that are lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. There will be an abundance of that. There will be those that are lovers of their own selves. But in contrast to that, we're told here in this passage that above all things we're to have fervent charity among ourselves for charity shall cover the multitude of sins, we're to use hospitality toward one another without grudging. We're to be intentional about serving the Lord and serving one another as we wait for the Lord's coming. We're to watch and pray. Keep our eyes on the skies, so to speak, and also looking on the things of others, right? Not only looking on our own things, looking on the things of one another.

You know we used to live for the lust of the mind and the lust of the body, the lust of the flesh. But because of what, once I lived for self alone, now my Lord is on the throne. Not I have or I have not. I call my own. I belong to Jesus. Let the world do as it may. I have found a better way and at His feet, my all I lay, I belong to Jesus. That's sober-minded thinking. That's servant thinking. That's the thinking of a true disciple of the Lord. I know that the end of all things is at hand. I don't know how far out it is but I can discern the seasons. You know I can discern the fig tree and know that the summer is nigh. I can see those indicators. You can look at the fig tree when its branches are tender and puts forth leaves. I know the summer is coming and even so I can see the signs of the times and know that my Lord is coming.

Titus, Paul told Titus that the aged men are to be sober. Titus chapter 2 verses 3 and 4, the aged women are to be sober. He said the younger women, verses 4 and 5, are to be sober. The younger men, verses 6 through 8, are to be sober. It's a command. So if we're all, as everybody, he's covering the gamut. If we're all to be sober then the opposite is true. The flip side of that coin is also true. Don't be drunk and don't be inebriated. Don't be, whether it be by bottle or by some other controlling influence in your life. Don't be brought into a state of impairment of mind so you can't be sober. Don't be brought into a state in your mind and your spirit and your thinking in your inner man that is going to lead you into a path of doing things that are just like the world. The world's drunken, the world's caught up in all of this. Don't you be caught up in it is the idea. Don't you think that way? You think with sobriety to watch. We saw that back in the text, we saw that we are to watch therefore.

Watch is in contrast to an alertness, instead of being asleep. Watch. Be sober. Clarity of mind instead of a fuzziness of mind. Mental clarity, not just brain clarity, but clarity in our thinking. Yes, we think with our brain, but a mindedness is kind of like the spirit of how we're thinking, right? Not just the neurons firing, but there's will involved in what we think on, right? In our inner man, in our very spirit, we've got to purposely think on those things that are above. Be sober. Don't be, this is more than psychology. It's more than the brain. It's the inner, the inner man. Don't live for your own pleasure. Don't live like the world does to satisfy merely the belly. Paul said that in 1 Corinthians 6 verse 12, he said, all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Meats for the belly. They were saying, meats for the belly and belly for meats. That was a common saying among the Corinthians, but God shall destroy both it and them. They're temporal. They will pass away. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. It's very clear that our body and our spirit belong to the Lord.

Well, we must be, we're commanded to be sober. Sober in our thinking. Peter talks about this in chapter 5. First Peter chapter 5, he says in verse number 8, be sober. He says, be vigilant. Well, that's watchfulness, isn't it? Vigilant. Because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour. Well, we need to be sober. We need to be vigilant because we have an adversary. He wants to destroy us. He wants to destroy our homes. He wants to destroy a Christian testimony. He would love nothing more than to see us caught up in self-serving drunkenness, weighed down with care and weighed down with drunkenness.

But in contrast to that, we read in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. First Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 7, He says, therefore, they that sleep sleep in the night. And they that be drunken are drunken in the night. Well, that's typical, right? Some places you just don't go at night, right? Maybe be best to stay at home as much as possible. There's a lot of drunkenness and a lot of mischief that happens because of the drunkenness that is characteristic of the night. But let us who are of the day. This is talking about a spiritual reality, not just merely at nighttime and daytime. There's a natural yes, a nighttime and a daytime, we are of the day spiritually speaking. We are of the daylight, not merely that we go outside during the daytime, but spiritually we've passed from darkness to light. We've passed from death to life. We who are of the day, let us be putting on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet, the hope, the expectation of salvation. Remember folks, remember brethren, for God, verse 9, hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.

We're of the day. We're not of the night. So we of all people, we should not be drunken. We should not be sleeping. This sleeping, none of you would argue that this is talking about literal sleep. Nobody go to sleep tonight. You all stay up all night. Now that's not what it's talking about. It's talking about spiritually in your spirit being asleep, being asleep to the adversary who's walking around, being asleep to the times in what you're living in, being asleep regarding the coming of the Lord. No, we've got to sleep physically, just as like we've got to be sober physically, but we've also got to be awake spiritually and sober in our spirits before the Lord. Well, let us not sleep. Let us be sober. Let us not be drunken. Let us be sober and let us be putting on. Well, put on the Lord Jesus Christ that you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh because otherwise you will. You'll follow the crowd to do evil.

But thank the Lord. We're not of that nighttime crowd anymore. In fact, it was very clear. I think it was Peter that said they think it's strange that you don't run to the same excess of riot with them that you used to. Why don't you, why don't you party? Why don't you do all the things? Why don't you think the way we think anymore? Why don't you just loosen up a little bit? Why don't you enjoy life? Why don't you have fun anymore? They don't understand. The Lord has translated us from the night to the day, from disobedience to obedience. Now we put on spiritual armor. Now we fight a spiritual battle and we're on the winning side. But we've got to be awake and keep our eyes on the Lord and keep hearing. What is He saying to us? Not what the world's saying. If you listen to what the world's saying, like I said this morning, hearing all these voices and getting your attention to all the things that are happening in the world, you're going to be overwhelmed with all of this and you're not going to be able to serve the Lord like you ought to. You're going to be just so weighed down with all of this. But instead, put on that helmet of the expectation of salvation, every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as He is pure.

His coming will be as a snare. It will be. No, this world's not looking for Jesus to come back any more than those in Noah's day were looking for a flood, they laughed at the ark. There will be mocking and scoffing about the thought that a Savior is coming back. Because frankly, even some of this I believe the devil is behind a lot of these people making predictions, prophecy so-called. We've seen a whole slew of these even in the last year, last few months, there have been a number of predictions being made. I don't know if you've kept up with anything about it, but a number of predictions being made, Jesus is going to come back on this day. He's going to come back on that day. And it's just a mockery. It's just increasing the mocking of people. These nuts, these religious nuts, and they really are. These nuts that are saying that, they don't believe what God's Word says. They're making up their own religion. They're making up their own ideas. But that shouldn't keep us from watching. It shouldn't discourage us because the Lord is coming back. And His word has not changed. He says, get ready. I'm coming back. It could be in your day.

When we trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, our spirit, mind, body is no longer ours to do whatever we want with it any longer. Do whatever we feel like, follow a multitude to do evil, no it's not. We belong to the Lord now. My will is His. My spirit is His. My body is His. My thoughts are His to do with what He wants to do with them. And so the purpose of my life clearly is to glorify the Lord. I'm bought with a price. I am to glorify Him in my body and my spirit which belong to Him. I'm not to join this body to a harlot. My body is not for fornication. My body is for the Lord. I'm not to take my spirit and say, well, I can be just as drunken as I want with my spirit. No. You're now on a different path. If you're a believer, your trajectory, you're no longer you. When you put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, your life took a 180-degree turn. Now you're going the opposite way of where you were going. You're of the day.

And so as the Lord said in our text tonight, He said, watch therefore, pray. What did He say there back in Luke 21 verse 36? He said watch ye therefore and pray always, pray always that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass. Think about this. We're going to stand before the Son of Man. We're going to stand and see Him face to face one day. Maybe live like it. Maybe live as those who are going to stand before Him. We're going to give an account one day of how we have walked this pilgrim pathway. We have many things the Lord gives us to enjoy in this life, but any legitimate enjoyment and in the end the legitimate pleasures of this life will never force us, will never snare us into competition with keeping our eyes on the Lord. The legitimate joys and pleasures that the Lord brings in our way will only point us more to Him. They will not draw our attention away from the Lord, but even in those things we'll ever be looking to Jesus, looking to Christ Jesus, our Savior.

So I encourage you tonight as our Lord has commanded us. Be sober. Be sober. Be watchful. I encourage you tonight to be watchful for any, take heed to yourselves. Let's take heed to ourselves, lest there be any drunkenness in our spirit that we put some sort of selfish sinful pleasure in our hearts ahead of the Lord and distracting our hearts from what the Lord wants us to have our attention on so that we can't hear His word, or we hear His word, but it's not fruitful. It's choking the word in us and it's not being fruitful. That's what the devil would like to see, isn't it? He'd like to see us just have a knowledge of what God's Word says, but just sort of be doing what we want to do with our lives. If we receive Jesus Christ as Savior, He's also Lord of our lives and He deserves our full attention as we go each and every day. So may the Lord help us in these things.

Let's pray. Gracious Father, we pray that just as much as we think about a sobriety test, as I mentioned that one tonight of how that test will determine whether our full attention is available or if we are under the power of some substance so that we cannot think, see, walk, process information clearly. Lord, we also want to be present in mind and spirit in a spiritual way. We want to be able to know what your word says and we want to hear your voice as we saw this morning in the message. We want to hear clearly what is it that you're saying to us? We don't want to be so caught up and in control of anything in our lives that we cannot discern what it is that your will is for us and what you'd have to say to us. Lord, help us in that, help us to be very present in our minds and our hearts to know what is your direction and your will in our daily walk. And we pray these things, Lord, asking that you bless us as we go this week, bless now as we sing this final hymn. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.