What does the Bible say about drunkenness?

The Bible passages below can be used in sermons, prayers, or pastoral care addressing drunkenness

Drunkenness as folly

• Proverbs 20:1, wine is a mocker, strong drink leads to brawls
• Proverbs 23:20-23, do not drink a lot of wine
• Proverbs 23:29-35, wine goes down smoothly, and drinking to excess has negative consequences
• Proverbs 31:4-5, rulers should not drink, for if they do they will forget what they have decreed
• Isaiah 28:7, Israel is led by priests and prophets who stagger under the influence of strong drink
• Hosea 4:11, wine takes away people's understanding

Drunkenness in vice lists

• 1 Corinthians 5:11, do not eat with a drunkard, robber, idolater, or reviler
• Galatians 5:19-21, those who partake of the works of the flesh will not inherit the kingdom of God
• 1 Timothy 3:8, deacons must be serious, honest, not indulging in much wine, not greedy 

Honor in avoiding drunkenness

• Romans 13:13, "live decently and honorably as in the daytime, not in drunkenness and sexual immorality and strife and jealousy
• Ephesians 5:18, don't get drunk or use alcohol carelessly
• 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, your body is God's temple
• 1 Peter 5:8, have self-discipline and be alert, so you can resist the devil, who prowls around like a lion looking for someone to devour

Sermon ideas about drunkenness

A prime piece of folly

What can we say in sermons addressing drunkenness and the need for self-discipline? If we run our eye down the list of texts above, it's not hard to see why the Bible condemns the abuse of alcohol. A prime piece of folly, drunkenness lowers inhibitions, resulting in mockery and brawling. Or drunkenness makes people drowsy and disinclined to bestir themselves, so their work suffers and then their income. Drunkenness causes perversions of thought, including hallucinations. And when habitual, drunkenness leads into the addictive trap. Drunken persons with hangovers often ease their pain with another drink. That springs the trap: trying to relieve pain with the same thing that caused it. Drinks go down smoothly but then bite you. Drunken rulers pervert justice. Drunken prophets and priests lose their good judgment. Drunkenness leads to quarrelling. Long-term drunkenness damages or even destroys our bodies, which are temples of the Holy Spirit. 

In family systems and on campus 

Sermons addressing drunkenness can point to the experience of social workers, who can talk for hours about the damage habitual drunkenness causes within family systems. Drunk parents and spouses lie to hide their drunkenness. They deceive even themselves. Parents might drink up the food money or the rent money — and eventually drink themselves out of their job. Drunk parents might beat their kids or their spouse. 

Most college and universities in the United States have tightened restrictions on alcohol on campus because of the appalling things that happen to young persons who drink too much. They brawl. They get sick or die from alcohol poisoning. They fall out of windows and break their bones. They have sex they can't remember the next day. 

In the economy 

Sermons about drunkenness can also point to the experience of countries with high alcohol consumption cultures: They find that drunkenness robs their economy of worker productivity, their discourse of civility, their road traffic of sanity. 

Drunkenness is a vice 

Galatians 5 shows the unlovely company drunkenness keeps. It's a classic form of vice. To understand why, all you have to do is to imagine the myriad sorrows that fill in the blank at the end of a sentence that begins, "But then he got drunk and . . . ." 

Excerpts about drunkenness 

Following are sample excerpts from Zeteosearch sermon resources about drunkenness: 

"Drunkenness is down, down, down to the depths of the brute, and far lower stillfulness with the Spirit is up, up, up, to the very heights of God." Sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon from The Spurgeon Center  

"Have you ever witnessed drunkenness leading to debauchery? Why do you think human beings abuse alcohol? How can we receive God's gifts without misusing them?" Discussion Questions by Mark D. Roberts from Theology of Work

"The irony is ambiguous, however: while the comparison is definitively to Noah's disadvantage, it also partly exonerates him, his worldly drunkenness depicted as a type and shadow of the true and spiritual ecstasy of divine revelation, and thus as corresponding better with his role as an epitome of virtue in a world preceding the divine Incarnation." Artwork by Bernardo Cavallino from Visual Comentary on Scripture