TRY SOME NEW WINE

Eltham Baptist Church 1st July 2012

No. 381

Then John's disciples came and asked him, "How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" Jesus answered, "How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast. "No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved." Matthew 9:14-17 One fear I have as I grow older is to be stuck in my ways, not wanting to change , just like the old wine skins mentioned in the above verses. When you are stuck in yours ways anything that is new that comes along is regarded as a threat rather than a blessing. If something new is brought by someone younger than us we are inclined to think, Who do you think you are? Some reasons for this is that we may feel that there is only one way to do things or we just dont want to know because we are st6ubborn or lazy. There is also the added problem of being irritable and grumpy with all those who dont fall into our little world or box. As a minister I pray that God will help me to constantly change so that I will remain on the edge of the wave and not be left behind as God moves forward. The statistics are that this will not be the case. It will take a miracle for me to constantly be morphed, stretched and moulded so that I remain a new wine skin until my dying day. Lord please help me to adapt so that I can always receive those new things that you want to bring my way and in the Church. The truth is God is constantly on the move. What we have now is not what He wants to set in stone forever. Of course God will always feel the same way about sin. God doesnt want us to just settle down and retire, for there is so much more that He wants to show us and so much more to be done for Him while we are on this earth. He doesnt want to be put in a rut or a box either and doesnt want us in there too. The hardest people Jesus had to deal with during His ministry were not the Heathen or the Gentiles, but the religious leaders of His day who had become stuck in a rut. They too were old wineskins that didnt want anything new poured into them. For them there was no other way to do things than their way for they thought they had a monopoly on the mind of God. Who did this young man Jesus think He was anyway, telling them what to do? It is really hard to change our ways isn't it? If you have a pet theory about the End Times and someone comes along and proves you wrong, do you find it easy to admit you were wrong? I have been through some major changes in my short life time. It was hard for so many in the country of Rhodesia to now have to call it Zimbabwe when Mugabe came to power and many still refuse to do so. Even today there are those who dont want to call the capitol of Zimbabwe, Harare and still call it by its old name of Salisbury. We struggle to call Mt Egmont by its Maori name 'Taranaki' or put an 'h' in Whanganui instead of calling in Wanganui. In Rhodesia all the names were changed to African names which was hard for the Europeans. If that happened here we would have to call New Plymouth, 'Ngamotu'. I was reading Mark Chapter 14:3-6 and thought about the verses on Jesus going to Bethany into the House of Simon the leper. It tells us of a woman coming in and anointing Him with perfume and crying all over Him. Jesus was not a 'people pleaser' and constantly went in the face of religion. He never did things the old way all the time but stretched the peoples thinking. His critics would have said, If he was such a Great Prophet then what was He doing going to a small out of the way place to minister like Bethany? Big Preachers today only go to the capitols of the world; there is no money in the small towns, but not so with Jesus. He went into the House of a leper as well. The Pharisees would have nothing to do with lepers but Jesus broke the old wine skin and did things different. Religious men also separated themselves from women and during their services the men sat of one side of the room and the women on the other. Here was Jesus allowing a woman to touch Him and even stuck up for her when challenged. On top of all this He allowed her to anoint Him with perfume which wasnt the normal thing to do, especially for a living person and He did all this in the shadow of the leaders wanting to arrest Him. Most of us would be in hiding and not allowing ourselves to be too public under those circumstances. Jesus was constantly putting a new slant on things and stretching the wineskins of mediocrity and always warned His followers of the leaven of the Pharisees, which He said that He hated. The Bible is full of verses on how God wants to do NEW THINGS. He wants to give us NEW HEARTS, NEW MINDS, NEW SPIRIT, NEW WINE and NEW WAYS which always requires a throwing away the old. This concept was prophesied over 2000 years ago and the Church and the world have come a long way

since these prophetic words were first uttered. Many have resisted the changes and been left behind. Many left Jesus when He said that they were to drink His blood and eat His Body. John 6:53-66 Many of these new things have happened in our life time as well, with great strides being made in the areas of Racism and Human Rights. Look at some of the old adverts and how we portrayed women 40 years ago. There have been some great changes in the Church in my life time with the embracing of the Holy Spirit, especially in the Baptist Church. One Pastor was telling me that when he was young many Christians would walk on the other side of the road from those who were known to have spoken in tongues. Many Baptist Churches now have the gifts of the Spirit in operation in their meetings. The whole experience of speaking in tongues and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on ordinary folk like you and I was a brand new thing that required new wine skins to embrace it and you needed to get rid of all your old thinking. Through the ages there have been men and women who have dared to get out of their comfort zones and explore new ways and new territory for God. They stopped just following the crowd that was going nowhere and dared to be different, with amazing results. If what we are doing now isnt working then we need to explore new avenues of possibility and change our ways. A Biologist experimented with some caterpillars by placing them on the rim of a vase head to foot and they just followed each other around and around for days. Right next to them were lovely plants that they could eat but they just kept following the leader until they all died of hunger and exhaustion. So often we can just be following the old school of thought in old wineskins and never get out of our deathly rut and just end up dying. There are many Churches that have done just that over the last 50 years and could not see the new wine when it came along. Or they saw it but didn't want to rock the boat. As a child in New Zealand I had the privilege to have plenty of places to explore as I grew up. There were rivers, farms and mountains and endless coastline around Taranaki. There was so much new territory out there to discover beyond my backyard. Later when I left home I began to explore the big wide world as well. Even though I have done quite a lot of travelling I have hardly been anywhere in the big picture and there is so many more things out there yet to be discovered. God said to Joshua that there was still much more land to be possessed and told him to go out and get it. We too can get stuck in a rut and need to get out of our comfort zones and do some changing. There were new things to be discovered and new places to go way back then and there still is today. Dont be like Charles H. Duell, Director of the U.S Patent Office in 1899 who said; Everything that can be invented has been invented. What about Lord Kelvin, the president of the Royal Society in 1895 who said Heavier than air flying machines are impossible. These men were old wine skins that couldnt take the new wine when it came along. We need to allow our ever fresh God to change our dying stinking thinking so as to embrace the abundance of new wine that He has for us today. If we are old wineskins then anything new will be a threat to us. If Revival came to our Church there will be many people coming in with their belly buttons showing, bad language, tattoos, strange clothing and unusual ways. If we are old wins skins then we will not be able to handle it and burst our boilers or blow our tops. New Wine skin Christians will be patient with the new people, listening to them and only saying what the Holy Spirit tells them to say, other wise we could kill the revival or end up being removed by God. Proverbs 14:4 Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty, but from the strength of an ox comes an abundant harvest. When there are not many people in Church everything is nice and clean and in order, but when revival comes it will be a lot messier.