Over the last twenty years, alcohol and drug use have risen, with marijuana being legalized in 23 states, and popular breweries and pubs popping up in downtowns across America. LSD use has doubled over this period, and CBD gummies are now available at corner shops everywhere. In the midst of this uptick, a number of popular Reformed pastors and commentators are openly drinking alcohol on their podcasts, extolling the virtues of their favorite whiskey or beer. 

What is the Christian to make of all of this—particularly where alcohol is concerned? In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guest Tom Ford, break down the issues biblically, explaining the lawful use of alcohol, while issuing a sober warning about the life-destroying dangers of drunkenness. Rather than seeking solace in an altered state of mind, Christians must follow the Scriptures: “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18).  

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and we're here today to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture in the use of alcohol. And, Jason, we have one of our dear brothers, Tom Ford, with us. I love it when that happens. Yeah.

Hey, Tom. Hello. Hello. Thanks for having me. Yeah, Tom Ford is a pastor in Alabama, in Montgomery, Alabama, Grace Baptist Church down there.

Love that church. So always so happy to come down and visit you guys. Tom, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. We love having both of y'all come down as well.

You know, we're broadcasting from downtown Wake Forest. Just a few years ago, there were no alcohol outlets. Now there are about six of them, you know, 400 feet from my office. That's a major cultural shift. And this is happening in historic downtowns all over America.

They're just being saturated with alcohol outlets. And I'm fearful that we're gonna become Pottersville, I don't know if you saw It's a Wonderful Life, Pottersville isn't the kind of place you really wanna raise your kids. And So you've got this freight train in the culture on the one hand. At the same time, you've got well-known, particularly reformed pastors, podcasters who are doing something that I've never seen before in my life and that is conducting their podcast, drinking alcohol, explaining the virtues of whatever bourbon or whiskey or beer. In my world, growing up, in a secular company, You'd probably get fired from your job for doing that.

I'm just saying something different is happening there's this is this is there's a wave And what concerns me about waves in the culture, and everybody knows this, you know, the church is usually just a little bit behind the culture. Francis Schaeffer used to say the church usually is about seven years behind the culture. So it matters what the culture is doing. And the culture is doing something really different, even in conservative Christianity. Example, I was watching a trailer of a really popular reform conference, one I wouldn't mind going to, and they had a two minute trailer.

Eight to 10 images were of people either drinking or smoking, and I thought, what has happened to conservative evangelicalism? At the same time, I think it's bigger than that because you have just a growing mood modification movement. People are using mushrooms, psychedelic mushrooms. LSD is now being promoted by doctors and all kinds of people as being the way for enlightenment and getting your head clear. You have the legalization of marijuana, marijuana that's way stronger than it was back when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s because of improvements in cultivation.

You've got people, you know, they're stressed out, so they're getting their CBD gummies to try to feel better. People using alcohol for the same reason, to relax and different things like that. So I'm concerned about a culture, I'm just gonna call it a culture of pharmacia, I'm using the biblical word, where people are seeking means to modify their moods. An altered state. You know, some kind of altered state.

I do think there's a big difference between, say, smoking marijuana and taking LSD, than alcohol. With alcohol, you have a progression. That's not true with LSD. You take LSD and you're stoned. So I think there's some differences, but what it feels like to me is that you have this cultural force that's at work, and I wanna be a speed bump in front of that freight train.

Darrell Bock I think what we've seen over and over again is for the Christian world to have a somewhat tamer version of what's happening out there, And we feel like it's okay because it's somewhat tamer. And so we want to raise our hand and say our calling is not to be somewhat tamer to a world that is sprinting away from biblical ethics. Darrell Bock Yeah. Robert Chisholm The world's not our standard. Never has been.

There will be. And it's clear that we're not to follow the ways of the world, even if we're just a step or two behind. And frankly, I mean, I think most people know this, alcohol in Scripture, choosing pagan religions. If you go back to Greek culture and Roman culture, alcohol use was running pretty high. Anyway, I think what we want to do is, we want to first of all talk about the lawful uses of alcohol.

And there are. The Bible makes it very clear that there are lawful uses. In the Old Testament, Leviticus 23, 13, Deuteronomy 14, Numbers 28, Exodus 29, Numbers 15, and in other places, a legitimate use of alcohol is in the worship of God. Then you also have medicinal uses in the Bible. You have the Good Samaritan using alcohol in the wounds of the wounded there in Luke chapter 10.

In Proverbs 31, you have those who are perishing, give them strong drink. I think that's my understanding of that, that's like the reason we give morphine to someone, we wanna kill their pain. Then you have uses of celebration in the New Testament, John chapter 2, and Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding of Cana. You've got Ecclesiastes 9-7, Isaiah 22-13. You've got Deuteronomy 12-17 through 19.

There are lots of places that we could go to talk about how wine is used in celebration. You have wine that's a symbol, it's a metaphor for material blessing in a number of places for abundance. God's blessing your vineyards and you're having abundant harvest and the wine flows from that. It's also figurative of the blood of Christ. So there are definitely lawful uses and wine in particular is called a blessing in the Bible.

Darrell Bock Right. So we've sort of been at this on both sides today as a warning, a strong warning. We're going to end up just quoting scripture to provide the strong warnings. They don't need to come out of our heads. They're right there in the Bible.

But we've also kind of wrestled with the other side of this saying that there are no lawful, acceptable uses of wine. That's also not what the Bible teaches. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, and Jason, you and I, you know, Quoi, several years ago were just understanding that our confession, the Baptist Confession of 1689, actually calls out wine for the Lord's Supper. Explicitly.

Explicitly. So we had to grapple with that. How confessional are we gonna be? And at the same time, realizing that, I mean, our understanding of scripture is that wine is what's used in the Lord's Supper, and that the Confessions acknowledge that. Even the Baptist Faith and Message acknowledge it up to 1925 in that version.

But as far as unlawful uses, because that's what we really want to focus in on in this broadcast, of course the first is Ephesians 5.18, do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. So that's probably the seminal warning verse in the Bible, so maybe we could just talk about that. I think everybody is familiar with what DUI is, driving under the influence. You get in tremendous trouble if you're pulled over and you're found to be driving while intoxicated or under the influence of something. And this is really what Ephesians 5 18 is about.

What are you under the influence of? Don't be under the influence of alcohol, but be under the influence of the Holy Spirit. So this is really about what you're ceding control to. Yeah, and that's just very clear. That's the comparison, because when you're under the control of wine, you say things that you wouldn't normally say, you do things that you wouldn't normally do, and that's because you've entered into some altered state, either slightly altered or very altered.

Our governments say if you're at .08% alcohol level in your blood, you shouldn't be driving. They'll arrest you and take your license away from you. But there's a ramp. You begin to lose inhibitions about .02 and then it just ramps from there. So that's the problem.

So the question is, you know, what does it mean to be drunk? But what we know for sure is that we're talking about something that alters your consciousness. So here's, just to drive that point home, this is Proverbs 20, verse 1. It says, �Wine is a mocker, and strong drink is a brawler. Whoever is led astray by it is not wise.� So wine is a mocker.

You're not normally a mocker, but when you drink more wine than you should, you become a mocker. The wine turns you into a mocker. It turns you into a brawler. If you hadn't had the wine, you wouldn't be a brawler, but now you've had too much wine and you become a brawler. And it actually says, whoever is led astray by it is not wise.

Well, I think kind of a broad picture, I think what we do in our Christian walk is we study out a topic like alcohol, we come to some conclusions, and then we live according to those convictions and maybe forget our points and our thoughts. And it's always good to revisit, to open the Word of God, to go back to the sufficiency of the scripture. We could argue that it's the sufficiency of the scripture that changed your church's mind on the Lord's Supper, right? But as we go through the lawful uses, we want to understand and know those. But we we want to be careful that we know that the lawful uses are not a justification or an excuse for the abuses.

Right. We can't make that leap. We have to see both sides of it and know where to bring a balance to that. Yeah, so let's just keep talking about the unlawful uses. We talked about Ephesians 5 18, but there are other unlawful uses.

For example, the priests were prohibited from in taking alcohol in Leviticus 10, 9, while they were involved in the service of worship. In Proverbs 31, 4 and 5, kings are prohibited. It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes intoxicating drink, lest they drink and forget the law and pervert the justice of all the afflicted. So it clouds your judgment. I think the message here is you shouldn't be drinking when you're doing important things, like engaging in the worship of God and like serving as a king.

You know, there are lots of questions, you know, that people ask that I think are probably in our minds as well. Should you drink to relieve stress? Should you drink to help you relax? Or if you're stressed out, should you drink to go to sleep easier? You know, those are questions that people have.

I think going back to Ephesians 518 is the most clarifying thing, because it speaks of what drunkenness is, and it's being affected, it's being affected. And I don't know how to sort out all of what being affected is, but for sure he's saying that the Holy Spirit affects you and so does wine. So it has to be thought of in terms of the effect. What is drunkenness? It's effect.

If you just look up the definition of drunkenness, what you get is a loss of control of your faculties or loss of control of your reason. So you're, I mean, you can't even walk in a straight line. You lose control of your faculties. You don't think straight either. Your mind can't walk in a straight line either.

You don't think straight. You lose the ability to do that. So this is ceding control to an influence that changes you. Alcohol actually puts you on an on-ramp, and it's very different from marijuana or dropping acid. When you do that, you're there, you're stoned.

But there's a progression with alcohol that's different. And maybe one problem is it's hard for you to know where you are on the on-ramp. And that's why John Gill explained it like this. He said, he said, wine deceives a man and quote, overcomes him before he is aware. So that's sort of the problem.

There's a progression and a ramp involved in alcohol. Let's walk through some of the passages. Let's do a little biblical theology that really inflects on the warning side of the equation, Genesis 9, the very first mention of drinking in the Bible, drunkenness, Noah's drinking, leads to his inebriation and his son dishonoring him. Right, he's there, he doesn't even know he's naked. Right.

Yeah, we're not off to a good start. And then the next one is in Genesis 19, and this is Lot. His children encourage him to drink, his daughters get him drunk, and you just see the danger of alcohol in a family culture. It's one of the most defiling chapters in the Bible and we're off to a worse start. Can I read one?

Yeah, Go ahead. This is Proverbs 31. Proverbs has so much to say about the consumption of all. A lot of warnings. Yeah.

Proverbs 23, listen to 29 through 31. Proverbs 23, 29 through 31. Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions?

Who has complaints? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? Those who linger long at the wine, those who go in search of mixed wine, do not look on the wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it swirls around smoothly. At the last, it bites like a serpent and stings like a viper." So if I told you that there's something that produces woe, sorrow, contentions, complaints, wounds without cause, You would want to know what that was, and you would steer clear of it.

And it's actually saying, wine fits the bill. And then it describes the people who love wine. I think the Bible tells us that we can enjoy wine carefully, but we're certainly not to love wine. We're not to give ourselves to wine. And it talks about this person who looks on wine when it read, when it sparkles in the cup, when it swirls around smoothly.

Who talks about, who talks like that about a beverage? It's like you would talk that way about a girlfriend or a boyfriend like this, like casting the eyes sort of lovingly on this object, and this is a person who loves wine. Christians aren't supposed to love wine. You know, there are a lot of places in scripture where the use of alcohol created tremendous vulnerability. One was Nabal, very harsh and evil man.

His communication was so impeded with his wife that they just, you know, she wasn't gonna talk to him while he was in that state. It just made him vulnerable and messed with the communication in the family. What are some other examples in scripture? Well, here's Hosea chapter four, verse 11. Hosea 4.11 says, harlotry, wine, and new wine enslave the heart.

Wow. So the Bible is telling us there's something out there that can enslave the heart. Can you think of something you would want less than having your heart enslaved? Well, be very, very careful. Can you imagine the Bible says there's something that will enslave the heart and then you engage it in a careless, thoughtless way.

I mean, how unwise would you have to be to engage it carelessly and thoughtlessly? Isn't that interesting? It's a blessing and it can enslave you. Yeah. And what I would challenge the listeners to do, you know, Google motor vehicle accidents caused by drinking and driving, crime caused by drinking, sexual crimes caused by drinking, child abuse, wife abuse, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that's caused by drunkenness.

And it's overwhelming, the wickedness and the evil, just like the Bible starts out to say, that comes from people that have had too much to drink. You know, I was talking to a police officer who went through all the drunk driving training you know, in his academy. And he said that at about .02, you begin, Your inhibitions drop, and pretty quickly after that, you're now flirting with people who aren't your wife. And when you get a little bit further down the line, now you're bouncing a woman who's not your wife on your knee. So there's this progression of the departure of wisdom, and you end up doing things that you wouldn't do.

And Tom and Scott, when we were going through this transition of what we use for the Lord's Supper from grape juice to wine. The people that struggled with it, to a man or to a woman, were people who had seen this and had this in their past, people who had abused wine, and they saw the devastation that it brought in, and it made even the switch to a thimble full of wine seem like a very daunting thing to them. And we understood it because we've heard those stories too. Yeah, and some people had taken vows that they would never put any alcohol in their lips. So that we just had tried to navigate that.

But what we were telling them is, the scriptures should inform your conscience. And let the scriptures, you know, move your conscience. So that's why we took a lot of time for that you've mentioned both of you mentioned the decrease inhibition and Reminds me of Titus 3 where it says the grace of God teaches us to say no To ungodliness and wickedness and when we lose that ability to say no, right? You know, we're in a battle, we're constantly in a battle against the flesh in this world. And we're following the ways of the world in a party culture and we're decreasing our inhibition and impairing our judgment in any way, then we're just making a battle that's difficult already, that much more difficult.

And I think sometimes people that are so caught up in it, they love their wine too much, are deceived and don't know that they have a problem. You know, one of the things that Scripture brings out in more than one place is the fact of drinking and pride are often linked. You find this in Isaiah chapter 28. Woe to the crown of pride to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower. In Jeremiah 13, verse eight, pride and drunkenness are connected as well.

Jeremiah 13, eight, then the word of the Lord came to me saying, thus says the Lord, in this manner I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people who refuse to hear my words follow the dictates of their heart. You know, there's this matter of pride. You know, social acceptability, fitting in, that's one of the great dangers. A lot of people start drinking because everybody else is and they just can't stand to be the one left out.

It's pride. So following the ways of the world, again, I think that's an overall principle. When we do that in any area, we put ourselves in danger. And then you add to it making provision for the flesh. It's so, go together.

Right. So, Proverbs 23, 16, you know, really talks about this trajectory of the heart and the importance of the constraints of a father in this matter. Hear my son and be wise and guide your heart in the way. Do not mix with wine bibbers or with gluttonous eaters of meat." Interesting, gluttony and drunkenness are connected. Then those things have to do with self-control.

He continues, "...for The drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty and drowsiness will clothe the man in rags. In other words, it will affect your financial future and you'll be dressed in rags. Then verse 22, listen to your father who begot you and do not despise your mother when she is old. And the father here is saying don't mix with these people. Don't be hanging out with the winebibbers.

That's what a father and a mother say. It matters what your father and your mother say on this whole thing. Proverbs 28 verse seven, but they have erred through wine and through intoxicating drink are out of the way. In other words, they've been sidelined. You know, opportunity has eclipsed in certain areas.

Isaiah 511 really speaks about the control of your schedule and, you know, being compelled to drink. Woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may follow intoxicating drink who continue until night till wine inflames them. You know, he's talking about addiction. He's talking about needing, Needing it. Starting early, drinking till late.

Yeah. When you think you need it, you're probably in trouble. When you have to have it to be relaxed, if you have to have it to relieve your stress. If your motive is to do that, you're probably in trouble with it. So I know you two know this, but for the sake of the listeners, my grandfather died an alcoholic, and at the end, he would do nothing but drink.

They couldn't get him to eat anything of substance. You have in the New Testament the deeds of the flesh, making provision for the flesh, you know, Romans 13, 12, Galatians 5, 21, the works of the flesh are long long list and drunkenness. You know the whole idea of sobriety, maintaining sobriety, We have a duty to maintain sobriety. Prioritizing sobriety, 1 Thessalonians 5, 6. Therefore, let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch and be sober.

And then he makes a comparison about sleeping and getting drunk. Those who sleep, sleep at night. Those who get drunk, get drunk at night. We should be sensitive and not careless with people in our lives. We're always navigating relationships with people And we should always be walking in love.

And so, you know, that means, I think that means don't drink around those who think it's wrong. Don't drink if you're causing someone to stumble. Don't drink around somebody who's struggling with alcohol, and you might tempt them to go to a place that they know they shouldn't go. And don't drink when you're playing a serious role and you have important decisions to make and don't drink because you're anxious and and don't drink because you must have it and you're just so looking forward to it you're addicted So there's seven questions that I have written down here that have been helpful for me in my life with other areas, not just alcohol, but you know the first one is will it be will it benefit me spiritually? All things are lawful but not all things are helpful.

Will it bring bondage? All things are lawful for me but not all things are helpful. Will it bring bondage? All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be nominated by anything.

Will it defile God's temple? We're the temple of God. We're to treat our bodies as so. Will it cause anyone to stumble? You know, the mature Christian is the one who looks out for the immature Christian and works to help them not violate their conscience or to cause them to stumble.

So that's a good question to ask. Will it further cause, be a further cause for evangelism? We're to be lights of the gospel. If what we're doing is not doing that, we need to be careful and stay away from it. Will it violate my own conscience?

If I feel like something is wrong and continue to do it because of whatever reasons, then that is considered sin as well. Then number seven, will it bring glory to God? That's why we're here. You know, we want to walk full of the Spirit. We want to speak and say the things the Spirit would have us to say and do the things the Spirit would have us to do, and to walk in obedience to God, bringing glory to him.

And that's what we're trying to do. May God help us. Yeah, and I think we want to say, pay attention to responsibility, and the other side, carelessness. Is it liberty or is it abuse? You know, if the alcohol has a tendency to decrease our inhibitions, the Holy Spirit gives us power to walk in the obedience to Christ and be free from the flesh and from the following the things of this world to see the difference.

If it makes us say things we don't normally say and do things normally do, The Holy Spirit helps us say things we wouldn't normally say, and it gives us the ability to do things we wouldn't normally be able to do. But what a contrast. Studying this makes me more excited about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and what He does, And we need to focus on God and his word and his truth and cling, cry out to him, wherever we are on this issue, and be warned, but let's be filled with the Spirit. It's interesting, in Ephesians 5, 18, what do you do when you're filled with the Spirit? You start speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

So it does something to the way you talk, you know, and what you're talking about. And you're thankful, you're thankful to the Lord in every circumstance, and then you submit to authority and bring glory to God in relationships and how that all works. Okay, so what are we saying? We're saying that there are lawful uses of alcohol. We're saying that there are very severe warnings.

We're saying that the use of alcohol is an on-ramp and it can become a very rocky path. So be very, very careful. The warnings are so stern, you cannot just dismiss them. I also want parents to consider the impact of creating a culture of drinking in your homes. For example, I would consider it harmful and even a tragedy if you had children that grew up in a home where they would say, we know dad was so stressed out at work, he just needed a drink at the end of the day to settle down or you know mom you know mom just needed to relax so she she you know she turned to a drink at at night you know is that the kind of culture of dependence that you want to create in your home And I would just caution parents not to create that kind of culture of alcohol use in your home.

You know, as we were working through trying to figure out how to talk about this subject, which was not easy, you know, One of the things we struggled with was what language do we use? In terms of understanding when you've gone too far, when you are drunk. And we used words like affected by or influenced by. We used the word control. And it was difficult to try to grasp the right language but I was telling my wife about this and she said Scott you don't need to nuance it because people know people know when they've gone too far I thought that was I thought that was pretty helpful so there you have it the speed bump We wanted to bring a warning to a culture that's changing pretty dramatically, and that culture, that external secular culture, is actually having an effect even on conservative churches and leaders.

So, we've sounded the warning. Thank you so much for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast, and we hope to see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us.

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