Bible stories can sometimes sound vague, with some key details missing or left unexplained. One of the reasons for this is that ancient languages like Hebrew are very plain compared to English (Biblical Hebrew only has about 6,000 words while we have over one million today!). So bible stories often sound strange, choppy, or vague to us in the modern day.

Noah and his sons were a perfect example of this from yesterday’s sermon. Ham saw his father Noah lying naked in his tent after too much wine, then told his brothers. The author of Genesis does not give much more detail on the matter. We know the end result of Noah cursing Ham’s lineage.

Did Ham make fun of Noah to his siblings? Should he have helped him out instead of leaving? Did he break some sort of ancient custom with nakedness, drunkenness, or parenthood? Regardless of the backstory and details of this episode, I think it is safe to say that alcohol abuse did not help the situation at all.

Whether it is alcohol, pain medication, hard drugs, or whatever, so many people struggle with addiction issues today. Just like the story of Noah, the bible does speak explicitly about this issue from time to time. Consider what Proverbs 23 has to say:

²⁹ Who has woe? Who has sorrow?
    Who has strife? Who has complaints?
    Who has needless bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes?
³⁰ Those who linger over wine,
    who go to sample bowls of mixed wine.
³¹ Do not gaze at wine when it is red,
    when it sparkles in the cup,
    when it goes down smoothly!
³² In the end it bites like a snake
    and poisons like a viper.
³³ Your eyes will see strange sights,
    and your mind will imagine confusing things.
³⁴ You will be like one sleeping on the high seas,
    lying on top of the rigging.
³⁵ “They hit me,” you will say, “but I’m not hurt!
    They beat me, but I don’t feel it!
When will I wake up
    so I can find another drink?”

In addition to this bible passage, two stories will always stick out to me when I reflect on drug use. Both have to do with ministry in prisons. The first came from when I lived in Houston and volunteered at a youth correctional unit. The young man I mentored there talked about his experience with marijuana. He noted how a life with drugs truly led him to a very dark place. His father had been imprisoned recently and he sought an escape from the poverty he lived with each day. He’d skip out on school and got involved in a street gang. “When I was high,” I remember him telling me, “I just felt apathetic. I didn’t wanna do anything. I just felt hopeless.” That drug became of sort of god to him–an object of worship and dependence.

The second story comes from my work at the Tucker Unit here in Arkansas. Another young man also reflected on his experience with alcohol in his family. His “normal” for childhood consisted dreading when he heard his father’s truck turn into their gravel driveway. The dad would down at least 10 beers while sitting on the front lawn and make his two young boys fist fight each other—that is, until one of them were knocked out or he passed out from too much alcohol. This young man truly understood the evils of alcohol dependence and abuse, and how it is often connected with other sins like violence.

The good news is that even though “post-flood” Noah gave us a bad example, scripture does talk about Noah’s righteous work in the midst of a corrupted world. Genesis 6:9 states that “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.” Despite struggling with drinking too much, Noah does offer us some examples of what it means to be holy in how we live. When we face whatever temptation in life, we must remember to always walk faithfully with God.

As Christians, we profess God to be the perfect judge over all creation. As we saw in Matthew 25, it means that God will judge humanity for how we have treated other people. If we care for the “least of these” then we are welcomed into fellowship with God, for among the poor we find Jesus. But if we lead selfish, closed-off lives–the goats of the passage–then we are cast away because we neglect to care for Christ himself.

This idea of God being a judge has always fascinated me. More often than not, we assume that God is seated up in heaven and will pull out the trapdoor to drop unbelievers into the fires of hell. (Perhaps you’ve see this scene before in a cartoon like Tom & Jerry!)

But I think these cartoonish depictions of the final judgment are always misleading. Let’s think about heaven and hell more seriously… and theologically!

One of the greatest theologians of last century, CS Lewis, had an interesting idea that the doors of hell are actually “locked on the inside.” In his book The Great Divorce, Lewis articulates what he believes about heaven and hell through a fictional account of someone traveling through the afterlife on a cosmic bus. The book is more of an imaginative narrative about what heaven and hell are like.

When the narrator of the book visits hell, he notices many different things. Hell is an isolated place. There are indeed residents, but they keep moving further away from one another, refusing to show neighborliness or friendship. So, hell actually ends up looking like a sparse desert, with people refusing to interact with one another. Lewis authored this illustration because it is quite true that when we reject the love God has granted us, we tend to lead lonely lives. In this sense, hell is the ultimate example of this. In choosing life apart from God, we freely embrace sin and suffering.

As I said above, The Great Divorce also gives a profound picture that hell’s doors or boundaries are locked from the inside. That means that those who live in hell do so by their own free choice. God doesn’t have to condemn them or put up a massive wall to deter escapees. Instead, when we reject Christ, we make the personal, conscious, and intentional decision for hell.

Lewis’ book is an interesting interpretation of what we find in scripture about Jesus’ parable of the sheep and goats. When we care for the poor, we are training ourselves to be around the kinds of folks Jesus loves. If we refuse to share and if we are hateful to one another, chances are we won’t like heaven too much.

A practical example of this would be the sin of racism. Scripture clearly states that people from every tribe, tongue, and nation will be present in heaven. If someone who is so prejudiced in his or her heart witnesses this scene, chances are they would be uncomfortable (or even angry) at God for allowing the object of their hatred in. Heaven would be unbearable for prejudiced hearts with all its wonderful diversity in the body of Christ!

So with all that said, you and I have a clear choice to make.

Are we going to be like sheep, welcoming in all of God’s children and caring for them?

Or will we be like goats, ignoring the cries of the needy?

How we treat others is a sign of whether or not we have God’s love in our hearts. Jesus warned us that these actions are so important, they even connect with our life after death.

The bible itself is often quite accessible to us. Yet one of the tragedies of life is that even though we may be gifted this book for Christmas, see it in church pews, or otherwise have extra copies lying around our house, we often don’t truly dive into it on a deeper level. Think about that for a moment. When was the last time you heard someone complain that they read too much of scripture? More often than not, we realize that we don’t read it enough!

One of my professors in seminary had a lot of relatives in China, many of whom are involved in underground churches. In their case, bibles were not too common in everyday life. A pastor or group leader might have one, but for many decades, importing bibles was heavily restricted. My professor showed us a video from several years ago about Chinese Christians who received a shipment of brand new bibles. Take a look for yourself:

This is such a powerful testimony about how valuable the bible can be. More often than not, however, we take the gift of scripture for granted.

On Sunday we explore how God gives us each unique talents. We shouldn’t hide these or shy away from using them. Instead of burying them in the ground (like the foolish servant did in Jesus’ parable) we must invest in God’s kingdom to bring about a bigger return–lives changed by the love of Jesus Christ.

Of course God gives us various gifts. No two people are alike. But regardless of what you are individually good at, one thing that we all have is the gift of scripture. Jesus’ parable of the talents also applies to this kind of important gift, too. Instead of burying this precious talent or letting it collect dust on a bookshelf, God wants us to make use of it.