“THE BEER PRODUCING PREACHER”
According to The Atlanta Journal Constitution, February 28, 2016, “Spencer Nix is an evangelical pastor who really, really likes a good beer. He likes it so much, in fact, that he brews it for a living. As a business….As the CEO of Woodstock-based craft beer maker Reformation Brewery, Nix makes sales visits to owners and managers of local stores, restaurants and bars. He usually does this on Thursdays, after spending part of the morning fine-tuning his Sunday sermons, including a recent one on the severity of God.” The article said that one of his brewery mottoes is “Set beer free.” My thought was, what about setting man free from sin (Rom. 6:16-17)? I have a question for the beer producing “pastor”?
One of your members goes out on Saturday and buys several cans of your beer, drives drunk, has an accident and kills someone as a result. When you visit him in jail because of his incarceration on vehicular homicide, what are you going to say? “Oh, that was your choice.” According to the article the answer for him is moderation. Jesus had something to say about causing one to fall into sin. In referencing little children Jesus said, “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Mt. 18:6). Do you think that is just for children?
What would the Apostle Paul have to say about this? We’re not left in the dark because Paul wrote, “Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way” (Rom. 14:13). Would a beer selling preacher be putting a stumbling block in a brother’s way? Paul’s words are clear when he recorded, “Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend” (1 Cor. 8:13).
The Bible teaches that a drunkard cannot inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:21). Drink-ing alcoholic beverages causes one to sin and those who produce them are guilty of the same. Here are a couple of statistics: “A standard drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits, which contain the same amount of alcohol.” “In fatal crashes in 2014, the highest percentage of drunk drivers was for drivers ages 21 to 24 (30 percent), followed by ages 25 to 34 (29 percent) and 35 to 44 (24 percent).” I wonder if one of these was the preacher’s beer.
This preacher should be ashamed of himself. Our world is dying in sin. Folks become alcoholics daily, people are killed because of alcohol, families are broken because of alcohol and this man can go around and sell his alcohol and get up on a Sunday and preach on the severity of God. In time he may be the one experiencing that severity. Quit being a hypocrite!
Thank God the name of “his church” does not bear the precious name of Jesus.
Larry