Spiritual Drunkenness --> Spiritual Infancy |
"In that day shall the LORD of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of His people, And for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate. But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean. Whom shall He teach knowledge? and whom shall He make to understand doctrine? Them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear. But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken." (Isaiah 28:5-13)
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Do you remember the passages in Isaiah which did connect spiritual slumber with deception, darkness, and blindness, and how this same experience also was synonymous with spiritual drunkenness, and that all of this was through the instrumentality of false prophets? Just above is a key passage of this number, previously referenced, but here it is posted in its fullness. In this passage, there is a new term which prophetic language undertakes to depict the same spiritual condition as the other terms heretofore covered. Most recently we have studied how false prophets make men spiritually drunk, so that they cannot hear the word of God. Intoxicating them is the incapacitating deception which makes men spiritually irresponsive to the good commandments of God, and then, “the bad commandments” (Ezek. 20:25) of God lay hold upon the people so that they, “go, and fall backward, and [are] broken, and snared, and taken” (Isa. 28:13). Those who are under such a delusion are, rightly called, spiritually drunken men. Hence, the preaching of false prophets is rightly described as “strong drink.” Now look closely in the passage above…do you see how these intoxicated men are described to be baby children (infants or babes)? Don’t look for the exact name “baby” but look for the description matching the word. Infants are those who are not weaned from the breasts. They are only able to drink milk. “Who” and “whom,” the prophet asks, shall be the able recipients of saving “knowledge” and “doctrine”? The prophet answers his own question, saying, “Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts,” the same persons who are not spiritually drunken by the “strong drink” of false prophets.
Does this make sense to you, how spiritual infants are likened as, and are equivalent to, spiritually drunken men? Does it make sense to you how both are descriptive synonyms for the same damning deception? Perhaps you would never think of a baby child’s behavior as a comparable parallel to the spiritual synonyms which we have covered thus far. You may not call babies fools either. Fools, like drunkards, are also called blind men who are in darkness, biblically speaking. Oh reader, deny yourself and listen to God – “Out of His mouth cometh knowledge and understanding” (Prov. 2:6). If God said it, if you read it, then don’t reject it! If this makes no sense to you, then you need to understand the depravity of children. Even the New Testament confirms these spiritual synonyms with explicit reference! See Romans 2:17-20:
Does this make sense to you, how spiritual infants are likened as, and are equivalent to, spiritually drunken men? Does it make sense to you how both are descriptive synonyms for the same damning deception? Perhaps you would never think of a baby child’s behavior as a comparable parallel to the spiritual synonyms which we have covered thus far. You may not call babies fools either. Fools, like drunkards, are also called blind men who are in darkness, biblically speaking. Oh reader, deny yourself and listen to God – “Out of His mouth cometh knowledge and understanding” (Prov. 2:6). If God said it, if you read it, then don’t reject it! If this makes no sense to you, then you need to understand the depravity of children. Even the New Testament confirms these spiritual synonyms with explicit reference! See Romans 2:17-20:
“Behold, thou… art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind; a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes…” (Rom. 2:17-20)
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Drunken men are certainly foolish men, but are not children like the fools and drunkards? Baby children, like drunken men, are forbidden to engage in issues of responsibility. Rightly so! Would you commit matters of responsibility and high cost into the hands of a child? Whatever the arena of the secular work force – labor laws, driving laws, athletic qualifications, and education laws – the bottom line is, children are irresponsible and untrustworthy. They cannot be trusted to respond in a manner to meet the task. A fool would trust a child to drive safely behind the wheel of an automobile. A fool would rest easy while a child runs around with a knife in his little hand, pointing up. A fool trusts in a fool, and there is so much of a fool in you, that, if you are a companion of fools you will become a fool. It is rightly said that, “a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Prov. 13:20).
Drunken men are touchy and intemperate, huggy and hateful. They are unpredictable and entertained by the most simplistic or cruel things… and when grown men are drunk, they become like little children that are carried away in unrestrained foolishness to follow “the lord of the flies.” Drunken men need a chaperone, a caring hand, a stable person, a watchful eye, a coherent thinker, a designated driver, or else they will fall in a ditch, crash a car, disrespect and rebel, transgress and deny, wander and get lost. They are robbed of wit and a mature mind! They do therefore need a babysitter! This reveals the shame of it all! They have altogether become like chaotic, unruly, ignorant, foolish children. They (both drunken men and baby children) cannot be trusted to care for themselves, to keep their possessions, or even their clothes – how shameful! They cannot cross the road without a guiding hand, nor can they cross the letter T so as to write, or make an organized and calculated plan. Drunkards are in the ungodly bliss of mindless pleasure in sin. It is the depraved lusts in grown men that they, in this way, become like children again, and so they loose themselves from the confinements of “real life.” Sinners tarry long at the drink to loose themselves of the confinements of conscience! Certain sins which they would have otherwise been embarrassed to do, they are rather emboldened to do, for their raging depravity longs to be numb to the pricking of a guilty conscience. Have you ever seen a shameless child, a child who just doesn’t know better? So are the shameless drunks! Drunkenness renders men shameless to commit shameful desires, and society excuses it as “ok”, because the man is drunk. “He is just having a good time,” saith the mockers. Drunken men are excused from their behavior, and at sundry times, they are applauded and held in honor on the morrow, so naturally, men would rather be drunk silly so they can be extremely sinful.
Drunken men, furthermore, are a druggie’s friend; they both revel together and make themselves insane in sin. They are sin-brothers in shackles and bonds, addicted to the devil’s board games where everyone who plays wins. My reader, can you look reality in the face?! Men long to eat the sprouting magic rising from a cow’s dung! What a horror! Can you imagine it? Men have been reduced to such a darkened mind that they look after, meditate upon, and earnestly long for a cow to excrete his waste, making a “cow patty,” and they, as it were, are huddling around it, gazing upon it, hoping, just for one rising mushroom, and, alas, they may fulfill their lusts! God created bacteria-infested, poisonous dung to stink for a reason, but these men have become animal-like hungry, heathen. While they digest these unhallowed “shrooms”, they hallucinate, if haply that they might see devils, or at least the fantastic tales of devils. And oh, the horror! How men admire cow dung as precious, and the invaluable pearls of God’s everlasting word as profane. They refuse the godly and sober meditation of God’s word. They deny the hopeful wonder therein, that they might see God! This wicked and sinful depravity is a near kin to what is called “vile affections,” “against nature,” profaning “the natural” use of creation, and doing that which is “unseemly,” and their God-hating love for the world has led them to this awful rejection point where “God also gave them up to uncleanness” and “dishonour” (Rom. 1:24-26). “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isa. 5:20)! Take heed that, you too, do not get to the Judgment seat having won for yourself the reputation of “dogs” and “swine!” These are hell’s worthies! Thus God, not a man, calls them filthy animals, and He saith again, lo! “Give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine” (Matt. 7:6)!
From another angle, drunken men seek another release – like from the anxiety and pressure of providing for their necessities, from incurred debt because of living in luxury, from melting emotions staggering with the swinging economy, and the frightening potential of life savings suddenly lost – and so, the sanity of the world stands or falls with these things. This is as God said, “all these things do the Gentiles seek” (Matt. 6:32), and when they ought to humble themselves and become children before God, the Father, the God of heaven and earth, they rather intoxicate themselves so as to act out their nature as children of the devil, caught up in the fairy tale of a drunken conscience. What they think, feel, say, and do, is not in memory or mind; they are blown with the wind of vanity and gladness without a conscience. They do not know the heavenly Father, so they would rather know nothing at all but the unhindered pleasures of sin – drunken-foolish like a shameless baby, they are utterly incapable of the ability to blush. Drunken men are numbed tasteless like swine, and they cannot even feel their face! Thus they can lie down and sleep in putrid messes of stinking filth, in life-threatening climates of the cold, and, when hungry, they can eat trash, rotten food, poison, and slime. Their faces are numb, their mind like a wild child made dumb, they riot in the dark and live for nightlife - they are the devil’s harlot-lover and adulterous wife.
Drunken men are touchy and intemperate, huggy and hateful. They are unpredictable and entertained by the most simplistic or cruel things… and when grown men are drunk, they become like little children that are carried away in unrestrained foolishness to follow “the lord of the flies.” Drunken men need a chaperone, a caring hand, a stable person, a watchful eye, a coherent thinker, a designated driver, or else they will fall in a ditch, crash a car, disrespect and rebel, transgress and deny, wander and get lost. They are robbed of wit and a mature mind! They do therefore need a babysitter! This reveals the shame of it all! They have altogether become like chaotic, unruly, ignorant, foolish children. They (both drunken men and baby children) cannot be trusted to care for themselves, to keep their possessions, or even their clothes – how shameful! They cannot cross the road without a guiding hand, nor can they cross the letter T so as to write, or make an organized and calculated plan. Drunkards are in the ungodly bliss of mindless pleasure in sin. It is the depraved lusts in grown men that they, in this way, become like children again, and so they loose themselves from the confinements of “real life.” Sinners tarry long at the drink to loose themselves of the confinements of conscience! Certain sins which they would have otherwise been embarrassed to do, they are rather emboldened to do, for their raging depravity longs to be numb to the pricking of a guilty conscience. Have you ever seen a shameless child, a child who just doesn’t know better? So are the shameless drunks! Drunkenness renders men shameless to commit shameful desires, and society excuses it as “ok”, because the man is drunk. “He is just having a good time,” saith the mockers. Drunken men are excused from their behavior, and at sundry times, they are applauded and held in honor on the morrow, so naturally, men would rather be drunk silly so they can be extremely sinful.
Drunken men, furthermore, are a druggie’s friend; they both revel together and make themselves insane in sin. They are sin-brothers in shackles and bonds, addicted to the devil’s board games where everyone who plays wins. My reader, can you look reality in the face?! Men long to eat the sprouting magic rising from a cow’s dung! What a horror! Can you imagine it? Men have been reduced to such a darkened mind that they look after, meditate upon, and earnestly long for a cow to excrete his waste, making a “cow patty,” and they, as it were, are huddling around it, gazing upon it, hoping, just for one rising mushroom, and, alas, they may fulfill their lusts! God created bacteria-infested, poisonous dung to stink for a reason, but these men have become animal-like hungry, heathen. While they digest these unhallowed “shrooms”, they hallucinate, if haply that they might see devils, or at least the fantastic tales of devils. And oh, the horror! How men admire cow dung as precious, and the invaluable pearls of God’s everlasting word as profane. They refuse the godly and sober meditation of God’s word. They deny the hopeful wonder therein, that they might see God! This wicked and sinful depravity is a near kin to what is called “vile affections,” “against nature,” profaning “the natural” use of creation, and doing that which is “unseemly,” and their God-hating love for the world has led them to this awful rejection point where “God also gave them up to uncleanness” and “dishonour” (Rom. 1:24-26). “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isa. 5:20)! Take heed that, you too, do not get to the Judgment seat having won for yourself the reputation of “dogs” and “swine!” These are hell’s worthies! Thus God, not a man, calls them filthy animals, and He saith again, lo! “Give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine” (Matt. 7:6)!
From another angle, drunken men seek another release – like from the anxiety and pressure of providing for their necessities, from incurred debt because of living in luxury, from melting emotions staggering with the swinging economy, and the frightening potential of life savings suddenly lost – and so, the sanity of the world stands or falls with these things. This is as God said, “all these things do the Gentiles seek” (Matt. 6:32), and when they ought to humble themselves and become children before God, the Father, the God of heaven and earth, they rather intoxicate themselves so as to act out their nature as children of the devil, caught up in the fairy tale of a drunken conscience. What they think, feel, say, and do, is not in memory or mind; they are blown with the wind of vanity and gladness without a conscience. They do not know the heavenly Father, so they would rather know nothing at all but the unhindered pleasures of sin – drunken-foolish like a shameless baby, they are utterly incapable of the ability to blush. Drunken men are numbed tasteless like swine, and they cannot even feel their face! Thus they can lie down and sleep in putrid messes of stinking filth, in life-threatening climates of the cold, and, when hungry, they can eat trash, rotten food, poison, and slime. Their faces are numb, their mind like a wild child made dumb, they riot in the dark and live for nightlife - they are the devil’s harlot-lover and adulterous wife.
“Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them! And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider the operation of His hands…Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it” (Isa. 5:11-12, 14).
“For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation” (1 Thess. 5:7-8). “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying” (Rom 13:11-13). |
Children are not the innocent, adorable creatures men make-believe them to be. They are embodiments of Adamic rebellion that invent evil, live to lust, and foolishness is so bound up in their heart! Nevertheless, how sweet they are when foolishness is driven from them. They are so bound up in foolishness that there is but one hope for their eternal and temporary souls to be saved – their foolishness must be driven from them by the rod. “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him” (Prov. 22:15). This is a matter of heaven or hell! “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell” (Prov. 23:13-14).
The “I love you” of a child is often as insanely simplistic as drunken men, and they too do repeatedly say that phrase to their drunken comrades or their designated babysitters. They love in word, but their heart and deeds are far from reflecting their words. They are as those feigning Israelites in the wilderness, of whom it was said: “They did flatter Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues” (Ps. 78:36). Baby children will not love you, they will even hate you, unless the rod does drive from them the blinding, darkening, intoxicating foolishness they do love, or else they may literally forsake you when the time is opportune. They are unruly, relentless to disobey, grudgingly loving, loud and uncontrollable, whose luxury is chaos. The child cannot rest from sin...therefore if you don’t correct him, then you will have no honor, obedience, or rest from him. Therefore it is written, “Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest” (Prov. 29:17). If you let their sinful nature go on unrestrained from chastening, the nature will take its course in the most violent direction God’s sovereignty will allow. Thus it is written, “Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying” (Prov. 19:18). You don’t spare for his crying, and, Lord willing, God will spare him when he cries out to Him. If you don’t spare now, then God may spare his soul later – lest he end up in hell where sinners endlessly cry without the hope of God’s pitiful eye. The nature of the child is enslaved to foolishness, and it is a faithful saying: fools perish in hell! “A child left to himself” will never have saving “wisdom” (Prov. 29:15). When an adult parent understands the eternal and temporary vitality in discipline, then he or she understands the course that depravity will take a child into; therefore the parent feels the responsibility to interrupt this course set on hell! Parents, I adjure thee! See that your children are on a runway of inevitable destruction, from birth, that you may be emboldened to ignore the child’s tear-stained face that begs from you unrighteous pity. Crocodile tears will fool you, parents, as your children dramatize false pains and great fears. I say again, you will be able to endure the wearisome cries they howl, howling until their energy dies, if indeed, by grace, you remember – what is the trouble of 77 nights of wrestling against their Adamic nature, next to the eternal night of hell that awaits them? Will you trouble yourself, now, that you might keep their souls from trouble? It is HATE to allow a child to happily run the broad way to hell – you must make him cry! And spare not for his crying! Therefore it is written, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes” (Prov. 13:24). Amen.
The “I love you” of a child is often as insanely simplistic as drunken men, and they too do repeatedly say that phrase to their drunken comrades or their designated babysitters. They love in word, but their heart and deeds are far from reflecting their words. They are as those feigning Israelites in the wilderness, of whom it was said: “They did flatter Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues” (Ps. 78:36). Baby children will not love you, they will even hate you, unless the rod does drive from them the blinding, darkening, intoxicating foolishness they do love, or else they may literally forsake you when the time is opportune. They are unruly, relentless to disobey, grudgingly loving, loud and uncontrollable, whose luxury is chaos. The child cannot rest from sin...therefore if you don’t correct him, then you will have no honor, obedience, or rest from him. Therefore it is written, “Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest” (Prov. 29:17). If you let their sinful nature go on unrestrained from chastening, the nature will take its course in the most violent direction God’s sovereignty will allow. Thus it is written, “Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying” (Prov. 19:18). You don’t spare for his crying, and, Lord willing, God will spare him when he cries out to Him. If you don’t spare now, then God may spare his soul later – lest he end up in hell where sinners endlessly cry without the hope of God’s pitiful eye. The nature of the child is enslaved to foolishness, and it is a faithful saying: fools perish in hell! “A child left to himself” will never have saving “wisdom” (Prov. 29:15). When an adult parent understands the eternal and temporary vitality in discipline, then he or she understands the course that depravity will take a child into; therefore the parent feels the responsibility to interrupt this course set on hell! Parents, I adjure thee! See that your children are on a runway of inevitable destruction, from birth, that you may be emboldened to ignore the child’s tear-stained face that begs from you unrighteous pity. Crocodile tears will fool you, parents, as your children dramatize false pains and great fears. I say again, you will be able to endure the wearisome cries they howl, howling until their energy dies, if indeed, by grace, you remember – what is the trouble of 77 nights of wrestling against their Adamic nature, next to the eternal night of hell that awaits them? Will you trouble yourself, now, that you might keep their souls from trouble? It is HATE to allow a child to happily run the broad way to hell – you must make him cry! And spare not for his crying! Therefore it is written, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes” (Prov. 13:24). Amen.