The Party Life
2004 : Week 27  |  Website Version  

A life apart from God and given over to sin is a life wasted, since the filth and darkness of sin was not meant to be our home. Unfortunately, many people wander far from God. Turning from Him, they have given their lives over to the endless pursuit of their carnality. Their blindness is a certain path to destruction: destruction during this life and destruction in the eternal life. The lost and carnal have many diversions to keep them from God: gambling, fighting, adultery, homosexuality, heterosexual promiscuity, drugs; the list goes on and on.

Today’s scriptures are warnings from God that only sadness can come from a life given to a non-stop party and alcoholic stupor. Most of us know, have known or will know someone like this; their life is a constant pursuit of a good time. They wake up in the morning and they pour a drink; that’s also the last thing they do at night, before they pass out from being intoxicated. This is the reality of life on many of the college campuses. Students think that their party life is the good life, but that’s not true. There is a better life awaiting them.

Verse 12 from Isaiah 5 teaches us that a life given over to partying cannot be a happy one, since, in their drunken state, ‘they don’t pay attention to the deeds of God, or pay attention to the work of His hands.’ How could they pay attention to God? Their drunkenness removes their ability to think rationally. Further, if they’re not partying, their focus is finding one. For some young people, this is accepted as a time to explore; it’s looked upon as a phase they are going through. Once the partying is out of their systems, they feel they will get on with life.

There are several problems with this kind of thinking. First of all, indulging in this sort of lifestyle can build bad habits that are difficult to break. Secondly, the physical dangers of this lifestyle are many: injuries or death from drunk driving, sexually transmitted disease and physical deterioration due to the abusive lifestyle to name a few. Third, instead of thinking on higher things and meditating on God, they waste their existence thinking about and pursuing sinful things.

These people cannot feel fulfilled, since God is our joy. Their folly in drunkenness cannot match the joy that comes from a heart and soul filled with God. Instead, their fun is fleeting, and their happiness wears off when the alcohol does. When it does, they will find the sadness that filled their soul, that haunting emptiness, the void that can only be filled by God, is still yawning, open and dark. They fail when they try to replace the perfection and beauty of God with cheap substitutes. All else in this life will pass, but a love and knowledge of God will last for ever, and take away every thirst we have. Jesus taught us this when he said:

	14 …whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life."
	John 4:14 (NASB)

What God gives us is eternal and eternally satisfying. There is no joy like the joy of knowing God, and all the alcohol and parties in the universe cannot compare.

Society has helped to lead these people astray; they believe life is a beer commercial. Unfortunately, the commercials don’t tell the whole story: the fights that occur when drunken people converge, the adultery, the fornication, the alcohol poisoning and the broken relationships. The commercials don’t go there, since it’s not as attractive to see people vomiting after a night of indulgence. Instead, we see a beach with beautiful people smiling, singing and dancing. All commercials come to an end, as our lives will one day. What happens then to the one who has put all their faith in a bottle?

Let’s pray that the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of these people, so that they would repent of their sins. All of us have walked away from God. All of us have sinned and fallen short. None of us is spotless, and all of us, every one, needs the grace of God. When we have it, we have fulfillment and joy. Without it, we are empty. Right now, our world has many empty souls. God could fill them all. Tell them that life is more then a party; tell them about Jesus.

May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you today and always…

**Words of Jesus Christ appear in Red