"New Wineskins"

This is on Solomon and I like to welcome you to our program today. You know it's a tremendous honor to God is stupid awesome to be on stations all around the nation bringing the truth of God's word as it is uncompromising and straightforward and I'm so glad you tuned in to listen and be part of that. Thanks again for your support and your generosity that keeps us on the radio and now let's get to the word of God is not your father's Oldsmobile is what the ad says on television back in the 50s. These cars were great cars.

They were sleek.

They were powerful they were classy, but I definitely would not want it for my everyday driving and the reason is that the 50s Oldsmobile is just not a car for the 90s.

It doesn't have seatbelts. It doesn't have air conditioning and has no cassette or CD player has no Bose speakers. My point is that what was state-of-the-art technology.

40 years ago isn't even acceptable for basic transportation today. This reminds us once again of how fast our world is changing, doesn't it at a rate that is unprecedented in human history, a fact that has enormous implications for us as Christians and for our churches as we grapple with how to keep communicating with the society that is changing as rapidly as our society is changing and Jesus addresses that in our passage for this morning as well as giving us a great personal so what for our lives when he says that new wine needs to be put in what new wineskins and that's what I want to talk about this morning. Verse 33 of chapter 5 of Luke's gospel look there with me. Would you it says they said to him, this is the Pharisees, the religious leaders of Israel, John the Baptist disciples often fast and pray and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking and their complaining about this now. It's important for us to understand that the religious leaders of Israel. The Pharisees had turned the Old Testament. Judaism into a prison they had concocted all kinds of rules which they had superimposed on the true worship of God.

In fact, in the mission they had 613 of these rules laid out that they assiduously observe one of these rules will require them to fast every Monday and every Thursday is their will on where is that in the Bible.

Well, the answer is it isn't in the Bible, the only day that the Bible demands. Fasting is one day a year called the Day of atonement, Yom Kippur. Other than that the Bible doesn't demand fasting at all what they had done is gone way beyond what God required in the Bible and they had made up their own man-made tradition regarding fasting and apparently they asked Jesus about this.

Here in verse 33 on a Monday or Thursday while they were fasting but Jesus and his disciples were eating and drinking and having a ball and they didn't like it they didn't understand how this could be, look at Jesus's response.

Verse 34 Jesus answered, can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he's with them, but the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them and in those days they will fast with Jesus really say what is really saying is that fasting is great, it's appropriate when there is a reason to fast.

But not just when tradition calls for Jesus says look I'm like a bridegroom and I'm here with my bridal party and when the groom is with his groomsmen and the wedding is going on.

Nobody fast. But Jesus said there's coming a day when the bridegroom will be gone, no doubt looking towards the day when he will be crucified and hang on across anything when that day comes, there will be good reason for my disciples to fast and they will fold the issue here between Jesus and these religious leaders was not fasting. The issue was tradition. Tradition for its own sake. The Pharisees were really asking Jesus.

The question that they asked him in Matthew chapter 15 verse two when they said to him very bluntly. Why do you break the tradition that we and the elders have set up and Jesus's answer was just a straightforward, he said to them, look.

Tradition is a good idea when it needs a vital need in people's lives. But when an old tradition becomes irrelevant.

It needs to be scrapped and it needs to be replaced with something new that meets people's needs. The way the old tradition used but doesn't anymore and then he goes on to tell a parable to illustrate his point. In fact, he chose to verse 36 he told them this parable, nobody tears a patch from a new garment and sows it onto an old one.

If he does he'll have torn the new garment and ruined it and the patch from the new will not match the old, in fact, in Matthew's gospel. He goes on to say the new patch will shrink up and tear the old garment workers, and then he tells another parable from the world of winery. He says look with me.

Verse 37 and no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wind will burst the old wineskin and the wind will run out in the wineskins will be ruined because when one ferments it produces gas. It gives off gas and if you put it in a new wineskin that's elastic and flexible. The new wineskin will scratch with the gas that the new wind is making and everything will be fine, but you put it in an old wineskin. That's become brittle and has lost its elasticity as the gas is released from the new wine, it will burst the wineskin, the new wine and flow out onto the ground and be spilled and be lost and be ruined in the wineskin will be any good anybody. Jesus said you don't do that you put new wine in new wineskin, not an old once what Jesus is really trying to say to these religious leaders is this, that the wind that he's talking about is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The message of Jesus Christ about salvation and redemption and the old wineskin is the religious tradition that these people had concocted and what he was trying to make them see is that the new message he was bringing could never be accommodated by the dried up, brittle, inflexible religious tradition that they had created. God had not given them the 613 rules that made them up God and not told them to fast on Monday and Thursday. They had made it up themselves and Jesus was saying what I am bringing will not get into the man-made religion that you've come up with in order to appropriate what I'm offering you. Jesus said you religious leaders are going to have to be willing to let go of those old useless wineskins, and you're going to have to embrace a whole new way of relating to God, you're gonna have to learn some new wineskin that he think they were going to do it. Look at verse 39.

No one.

Jesus says after drinking old lawn once the new Tori says the old Goodenough Jesus was trying to say to these people. Look, I don't expect most of you guys to change. I don't expect most of you guys to be willing to trade in your old wineskin of Judaism.

That's performance-based for what I'm offering in the gospel and the reason is that his people.

Jesus said we tend to become wedded to old wineskins. We get comfortable and used to the way we've always done it.

The fact is, there is a tendency in all of us as people to resist change, and we say things like, well In order to get that new wine. It means I have to change wineskins that I don't want any all lines good enough for me. We don't like new stuff we don't want to change. We don't want to deal with changing wineskin and nowhere is that more obvious than when it comes to religious tradition of the forces that are shaping our world today are very powerful. They created a world that is so different from when your father drove his 50s Oldsmobile and yet is the church. We seem determined not just our church with the church in general.

We seem determined to hold onto traditions and ways of doing things and ways of trying to communicate the message of Jesus Christ that worked well with Wally in beaver but folks, Wally and beaver are dad they are gone forever. So was Donna Reed.

They are never coming back. This is the world of Bart and Homer March and the really important question for our church and every church is have we got the unchanging wine of the gospel package with the right new wineskin to keep communicating it to the world of today that's the question every church has to keep asking itself is book dying for change. Lee Sanderson cites research that says 85% of America's Protestant churches are either stagnating or dying.

I'm trying to reinforce the mindset that I want us as Christians.

I want this church family never to lose a mindset that says if it doesn't violate the clear teaching of the Bible.

We are willing to change any wineskin. No matter how much of a sacred cow. It may be if it will make us more effective in carrying out our mission and what is our mission touching lives with the love of God, a mindset on trying to accomplish in us that says our mission matters more than our tradition. And if we can do our mission better by changing the tradition we will change the tradition will use puppets will use trauma will use contemporary Christian music will use recovery groups will go to three services will go to Saturday night service will giveaway Nintendo's and VCRs, a junior high outreach issues that you really do that we do well at high schoolers shoot each other with paint balance, whatever it takes to reach people understand what I'm trying to say.

Rudyard Kipling, the Pulitzer prize-winning British writer and novelist as a very young man met for the very first time.

General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army and the first time they met even like William Booth very much because he was from a very staid religious British tradition and when first on the ever that William Booth, William Booth was at an evangelistic meeting in the open air in London, playing the tambourine on stage and he didn't like that that offended Kipling after they became friends later on Kipling remark to Booth how much he disliked the tambourine and how much it offended him that he would be playing the tambourine and I love William Booth sent a quote he said young man if I thought I could win one more soul for Christ by standing on my head and beating the tambourine with my feet.

I would learn how to do it like that. I love that quote because this is a man whose letting his mission drive him not tradition and Jesus was a man who let mission drive him, not tradition. These Pharisees were tradition driven.

Jesus was mission driven and I believe that every effective church every effective Christian has got to be a mission driven Christian, a mission driven church not tradition driven and I want to keep saying that to you until I convince you that it's right to say what I'm saying. That's a mission driven mentality and that's what we need to have as a church in his people. That's what Jesus said, well, that's our passage for this morning and now want to ask the question itself.

We just got it no know that was just talk this. So what we already said that the main point here. Let's not forget the main point is that you can't take Jesus Christ and superimpose him all man-made religion. It won't work is like smearing fresh icing on mold dictate just won't work. But the same truth applies to us on a personal level.

Is that what you mean and explain. I find it so many people who've never accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior.

But there thinking about it there thinking about it. Man these people can get excited about the new wine. Jesus is offering them he's offering them the new wine of forgiveness of sin. He's offering them the new wine of eternal life. He's offering them the new wine of unconditional love. He's offering them the new wine of a personal walk with God and so many other things and I get excited about that, but so often what you find these people wanting to do is to, smear all of this right on top of the moldy lifestyle with the presently living they want to take Jesus's new wine and they want to put it in the old wineskin of their ungodly lifestyle and God says this is not one of the above selections. This is not work is not acceptable. Jesus is not looking for people who want to take new wine from him and put it in their old wineskin.

That's not what he's after Jesus is after people who are prepared to make a radical change in their lives.

People who are prepared to choke the role wineskins drunk their old sinful habits junk their old dried up brittle lifestyle and let him make their lifestyle into a brand-new wineskin. That's what he wants is it will are you saying that for me to accept Jesus Christ for him to save me and redeem me that I have to go change all my life to become Pat Robertson know. You couldn't change your own flesh by your own power. Anyway, no that's not what God is looking for Jesus Christ to do the changing but you and I have to be willing to present him with a willing heart, a heart that's willing to be change of heart that's willing to submit to his reshaping of our lifestyle is reshaping of our habits is reshaping of our values and our attitude. The Bible says, Romans chapter 10 if we confess that Jesus is Lord and we believe that God raised him from the dead in our heart we will be redeem. We will be saved. But did you notice what we have to confess with our mouth that Jesus is what more Jesus is not offering to be your fire escape from hell. Jesus is offering to be your Savior and your Lord and as Lord is go change your wineskin and it's a good deal if you've never done that in your here. I hope you will 22 years ago I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and my Lord and I said Jesus I need you to change my wineskin. My wineskin stinks.

If the wineskin of my lifestyle was so great, I wouldn't want you and I would need you, but my wineskin is in terrible shape and I understand that's part of the deal and that's great and I'll tell you I'm not the same human being I was 22 years ago because Jesus Christ came into my life is Lord, and he made some sweeping changes and every change Jesus Christ made in my life has been for my benefit everyone up that first.

I don't know that I altogether got this I mean it took me a while to figure out that this is the way it really was on everything at one time I was sitting in my fraternity house smoking dope with my friends but I become a Christian about to three weeks before this I was trying to share Christ with a strong and I was very serious and I was very committed to this and finally one of my fraternity brothers distorted left and I got so angry and I said to him so upset and just like that. He sat up and he pointed his finger at me.

I'll never forget it. He said Solomon suggests such a hypocrite.

You sit here smoking dope and get high just like all the rest of us and talking to us about sin and about righteousness and about holiness, but your city or get a high just like all the rest of us don't hear about your just a hypocrite, like the rest we save is not much to say because he was right. I'll never forget.

I got up never said a word, just walked out the room with for a long walk in on that walk. I said you know Jesus is my life truly can account for you there's really some changes will have to make changes in the way I'm living changes in my habits and one of the first is going to do with this distal I said you Lord for all these years I can say I quit whatever I want, but whatever I want. I quit whatever I want, but you know what, honestly, Lord. I'm not so sure I can quit. But if you give me the power to quit all to this is just one of the sweeping changes.

Jesus Christ made my life and you know once we become Christians. The process doesn't stop there. Many of us here who are Christians, who somehow look at the process is something that we did the first year we were Christians we got rid of smoking and we got rid of drinking and we got rid of dope and we got rid of carousing and we did well at and we save autism I trade all night long wineskins and for new wineskins, and now it's just the coast right after more than 20 years, you know, God is still asking me to submit more and more my old wineskins to him for transforming because you see as Christians. God's goal is not just to redeem us, but God's goal was to transform us into his likeness into godly men and women and Ephesians chapter 4 says that God's goal is to have us put off the old self, the old person with all of its corrupt habits and desires and actions and speech and to put on a new person that Jesus Christ wants to create in us that follows holiness and righteousness, and that is a life long process is just the God digs deeper as the years goes he digs deeper over the last year. As you know, with my daughter being so sick. God has really used all that zero in on a whole bunch of old wineskins in my life. Old wineskins like arrogance and self-sufficiency. Old wineskins like insensitivity to the needs and the hurts of people around me, old wineskins, like valuing things more than people, old wineskins like materialism and love of material things more than having a heavenly focus and there's a whole bunch of