Drunkenness on SermonAudio

Ephesians 5:18 Do not get drunk but be filled with the Spirit.

The Christian walk is characterized by being filled with the Spirit in song and thanksgiving.

The sermon presents a theological and pastoral challenge to the modern psychological framing of alcoholism as a medical or psychological disorder, arguing instead that Scripture consistently identifies drunkenness as a moral and spiritual matter, not a condition beyond human responsibility. Drawing from Galatians 5, Ephesians 5, and 1 Corinthians 6, it emphasizes that drunkenness is listed among other sins like idolatry and adultery, prohibited by God, and incompatible with inheriting the kingdom of God, thereby affirming personal accountability. The sermon contrasts this biblical view with secular definitions that attribute excessive drinking to genetics, environment, or psychological illness, which it contends remove responsibility and redirect individuals toward therapy rather than repentance and spiritual renewal. It affirms that while alcohol can harm the body and create physical cravings, these effects do not negate moral responsibility, and the true solution lies not in medical treatment but in being filled with the Holy Spirit, producing the fruit of self-control and spiritual transformation. Ultimately, the sermon calls the church to reclaim the biblical language of sin, repentance, and grace as the only adequate response to the struggle with drunkenness.

The Pattern by Which We are Drawn Out of Communion into Actual Sin We are oftentimes because of the first acts of sin, before we are aware, carried into distempered affections, foolish imaginations, pleasing delightfulness in things that are not good nor profitable (pleasures in the idolatry of self), and hardened in unbelief and sin. John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation: The Power and Efficacy of Indwelling Sin, p. 273 The Law and the Gospel are expositions of God's nature. God is a righteous God = he lives for the advantage of others. "Calvin on the Right Use of the Moral Law" The office and use of the moral law shows the righteousness of God, warns, informs, convicts, and condemns us of our own unrighteousness. For, we are blind and drunk with self-love; we must be compelled to know and confess our own feebleness and impurity. if we are not clearly convinced of our own vanity, we are puffed up with insane confidence in our own mental abilities, and can never be compelled to recognize our inadequacies as long as we measure ourselves by the measure of our own choice (Institutes, I1, 7.6. So deep and torturous are the recesses of the evil of our own idolatry of self, if by the moral law, our idol of self is not dragged from its secret hiding place, our idolatry of self destroys us so secretly that we never even feel the fatal stab (Institutes, I1, 7,6.)

Solomon gives wise sayings and a visceral view of the life of a drunk

The next part of this image,—the next way used by them for the propagating of the faith, and the conversion of them they call heretics,—is the Inquisition. So much hath been declared and is known thereof, that it is needless here to give a portraiture of it. It may suffice, that it hath been long since opened, like Cacus's den, and discovered to be the greatest arsenal of cruelty, the most dreadful shambles of blood and slaughter, that ever was in the world. This is that engine which hath supplied the scarlet whore with the blood of saints, and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, until she was drunk with it.