Battle of the Boozer

It is not for kings, O Lemuel - not for kings to drink wine, not for rulers to crave beer lest they drink and forget what the law decrees, and deprive all the oppressed of their rights.
Proverbs 31:4-5 NIV Ryrie Study Bible

Few would argue that it is not good to drink alcohol too much or too often. In fact, most people would agree that over indulgence of alcohol is pretty unwise for anyone not just a king. Interesting though, that chronic drinking seems to be looked over pretty regularly by women when seeking out a mate. Nearly 38 percent of divorced or separated women were married to alcoholics while a small 12 percent were currently married to an alcoholic. It doesn't take a statistician to figure out that alcohol can certainly ruin a marriage.

I don't think that Lemuel's mother was knocking anyone for the occasional glass of wine. What I think she was stressing is the regular consumption that would cause one to start craving. One of the risks one takes in this kind of behavior is just that. A craving or a yearning to continue to indulge, to partake more often and to have more every time. Any recovering alcoholic will tell you that the craving for alcohol drove them to the brink of madness. They felt as though they were unable to resist. This is probably one of the most demoralizing situations one can face. The craving can drive one to miss work, not follow through on committments, lie, cheat and worse. The craver doesn't seem to understand that they don't have to give in to the craving. The craving controls the person. You can sustitute alcohol in this passage for any other thing that controls your thoughts and feelings to the point of being driven to satisfy it. This is the kind of thing that will ruin you, me and yes, a king.

I know this first hand. My craving for food did exactly what is described. The craving or obsession with food and eating not only caused a significant weight gain but along with it came the hidden drive to always want to be alone, so that I could fulfill my need to eat whenever I wanted to and without anyone impeding my insatiable appetite. I never wanted to be without food if at all possible.

I didn't get that way overnight. No one ever does. Isn't that always the way with sin? Sin seems to be that trickling brook in the mountains, bubbling and streaming down. Small enough to step over, hardly making a splash as you pass. But the water gains speed. With speed, more water. Rapidly it gains down the mountain and other streams join it. Now you can't step over and you have to be careful crossing so you don't fall in. The little brook is now a river. Not too much further down the mountain now, you couldn't cross the river if you tried. Not only could you fall in but you could be killed if you got your foot caught on a rock trying. The flow of the water would instantly take you to the bottom and hold you down.

The problem with addiction is that no one wants to be an addict and no one wants to ruin their life with an addiction. It just happens so some and one never knows who that someone is until it is too late. So sad, you have to be in it to know and when you know it's already too late.

The Lord warns us many times in scripture to just not 'go there' with alcohol. In fact, he warns us about participation with those who drink too much as well. Proverbs 23:20-21 says "Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.*

Ladies, if being married or courting a man who overindulges doesn't seem to be too bad a fate let me fill you in on a few more statistics from the National Institute On Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Studies in the general population indicate that fewer women than men drink. It is estimated that of the 15.1 million alcohol-abusing or alcohol-dependent individuals in the United States, approximately 4.6 million (nearly one-third) are women (1). On the whole, women who drink consume less alcohol and have fewer alcohol-related problems and dependence symptoms than men (2,3), yet among the heaviest drinkers, women equal or surpass men in the number of problems that result from their drinking (3). Drinking behavior differs with the age, life role, and marital status of women. In general, a woman's drinking resembles that of her husband, siblings, or close friends (3). Whereas younger women (aged 18-34) report higher rates of drinking-related problems than do older women (3,4), the incidence of alcohol dependence is greater among middle-aged women (aged 35-49) (5).

The data proves that God is not kidding when he speaks out about drunkeness and keeping company with drunkards. If his word were not enough, he has the data that proves it!

Do Not Give Your Strength to Women

Proverbs 31 verse 3 is worded rather interestingly:

"Do not give your strength to women, nor your ways to that which destroys kings."
New King James Version -Nelson Regency Bible

Do not give your strength to women. What on earth does that mean? Immediately I thought of the kind of strength a women can take from a man when he is infatuated with her. The kind of infatuation that leads you to do things you otherwise may not have agreed to. You know the kind of infatuation that is. It is even more so multiplied when sex outside of marriage is added to this powerful mix. I needed some confirmation so I consulted my newly purchased MacArthur Bible Commentary. One word, holiness. Holiness? Any further elaboration Pastor John? The next note tied it all together for me, "Marrying foreign wives destroys a king like it did Solomon." Does one bad example mean that simply marrying out of your religion damns us all to marital ruin?

God does more clearly explain Solomon's plight in Deuteronomy 17:17 "The king must not take many wives for himself, because they will turn his heart away from the Lord." Solomon not only wed women outside his religion he married a whole lot of them. 1Kings 11:1 says "King Solomon loved many foreign women as well as the daughter of Pharaoh" -Both verses taken from the New King James Version, Nelson Regency bible

How many wives did Solomon have you ask? If you include concubines about a thousand! With a thousand women around you might gather what was mostly on his mind. I mean, you'd have to be pretty fixated on the physical realm of marriage to feel the need for 1,000 intimate relationships and I use that term pretty loosely. It also says he loved them. What I gather from this is that not only did he have sex on the brain, he was at least emotionally taken with a lot of them. It doesn't take a molecular biologist to figure out that God was clearly not his number one focus at times but definitely his kingship was compromised as well. In the end if you read on in 1Kings 11 you see that much to my dismay, he does in fact get lured away from the Lord toward other gods. In fact, he even built temples for them. This was no mere phase for him.

So what does a woman have to gather from verse 3? If you tie it into the first two it is pretty clear, God wants us to marry men who's heart is for Him that he might seek out a wife who puts God first as well. Not only is it good for both parties to be focused on Christ for practical reasons but it does avoid a lot of heartache later to be able to rely on God together in the midst of crisis and to be able to pray together is a miraculous blessing. The two really do become one before the Lord in this light.

What about the sex part? This comes back to why God wants us to abstain before marriage. I see this in a very practical way and if you don't know, God is very practical as I have come to see in my own life. If God is first and sex is not an issue at all, we won't be lured away by other ideas by being blinded by lust and infatuation. I have seen this example in my own life. I had relationships that weren't, shall we say, biblically focused. The focus of the relationship was purely emotional and physical. When the focus is on pleasing each other by meeting physical needs first and emotional needs second the emotional piece of the relationship gets neglected. There is no spiritual growth. With a neglected emotional relationship and no spiritual growth what you have is a physical relationship that gets stale after a while. No wonder so many of these relationships end even before marriage is brought up. It is like trying to weld steel girders together with Elmer's glue. It just doesn't work.

So we come to King Lemuel's mom's next point to his son -keep your robe down, your eyes fixated on God and you'll find a Godly woman to marry who will keep you focused on God or as we know today, Christ. King Lemuel's mom wanted her son to find his wife and want to marry her for the right reasons this was also a practical warning to a king in order to be a good monarch. In Solomon's case, he missed the mark a few too many times. While Solomon did great things was richly blessed with earthly possessions and gained great knowledge, his lust and disobeying God's law to marry within his religion ruined him in more ways than one. Single Ladies, keep your hearts and minds first of pleasing God. I promise you will attract a mate that is looking for that treasured trait in a wife. Marrieds, keep your eyes focused first on the Lord and your "domestic king" will have a great example of how to live life in a joyful and meaningful way, saved or not.