Wineskins & Patches
Scripture; Luke 5:17-39
Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in business we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Say things like, "This is the way we have always ridden this horse."
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horses in todays environment.
10. Change the requirements declaring that "This horse is not dead."
11. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Do a Cost Analysis study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
20. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
1. The Problems That The Pharisees Had With Jesus
One of the things that I have learned in my own spiritual journey that has been an encouragement to me is that everyone including Jesus Christ himself had his detractors. Christ came into this world to save his critics and accusers. It would have been so much easier to just turn around an go back home. We are particularly vulnerable to criticism when we are misjudged, when people assume that we have motives that are not there. Also when we receive criticism from people who are supposed to be on our side – betrayal, the wasted casualties of friendly fire. We are just not guarded when we are among people that we trust. But even Jesus had this experience and to a greater degree than most anyone of us will ever know in the here and now.
Hebrews 12:2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. 4 ¶ In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
q He was challenged regarding the orthodoxy of his theology.
Luke 5:20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven." 21 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, "Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?" 22 Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, "Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? 23 Which is easier: to say, `Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, `Get up and walk'? 24 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...." He said to the paralysed man, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." 25 Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. 26 Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, "We have seen remarkable things today."
These folks missed a miracle and got hung up on semantics. That is so many times the essence of the theological discrepancy that exists between denominations – the thing that separates one Christian from another – arguments over words.
1 Timothy 1:2 To Timothy my true son in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer 4 nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God's work--which is by faith. 5 ¶ The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. 7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm. 8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly.
1 Timothy 6:3 If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, 4 he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions
Titus 3:8 This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone. 9 ¶ But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. 10 Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him.
11 You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.
q He was checked regarding his choice of associates.
5:27 ¶ After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. 29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and `sinners'?" 31 Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
There are probably not many among us who have not had this experience when we were children. We have had these concerns for our children. There is legitimate truth here to be create concern and yet it must be held in balance.
q He was questioned regarding his lack of spiritual discipline.
5:33 They said to him, "John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking." 34 Jesus answered, "Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast."
2. The Parable of The Patches & Wineskins
5:36 He told them this parable: "No-one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And no-one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39 And no-one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, `The old is better.'"
q The Parts Of The Equation.
New wine – If we want something from God this year that makes our experience of living different and better than he will give us something that will work in combination with our own lives.
q The Process Of Fermentation
According to legend when Noah entered the ark he took along a vine. He had been a gardener before he built the ark, and when he settled again on the land after the deluge, he planted the vine once more and returned to his old occupation.
As he worked in the garden, Satan came to him and said:
"If you will let me help you, I can show you how to make grapes grow on the vine tomorrow."
"That," said Noah, "is something worth seeing."
Satan helped Noah plant the vine. Then Satan took a lamb, a lion, a monkey and a pig and watered the plant with their blood.
That is why, after the first glass of wine, one becomes gentle as a lamb; after the second glass of wine, as daring as a lion; after the third glass one is apt to make a monkey of himself; and after the fourth glass of wine, a man becomes drunk and behaves like a pig.
-- Lore of the Old Testament
q The Preferrable Product.
Old wine is better than new wine. Something that has undergone due process over the period of time is better than something that has not known the same process. A flexible trustworthy container is absolutely necessary for the end product and the end product is different from what was there in the beginning.
3. The Personal Issues That Keep Us From Experiencing Something New From God
Our areas of inflexibility
q Our hard and fast beliefs can become a limiting factor in seeing God work in our lives. I have yet to find an instance in the scripture where God works the same way twice. He has always a new way of doing things
q It is easy to become removed from people who need the Lord because of an overwhelming involvement in things that the unsaved are not involved in.
q There are times when we substitute purposeless discipline for spirituality.
