The New Wine of the Kingdom
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
It is so good to be able to worship together this morning and even though there are only a few of us gathered here physically, I absolutely believe that this is symbolic start to a new season in our church. It’s clear to me that things will not be the same when we emerge out of this pandemic, this city, the world that we live in, and even our own personal lives will all have been changed dramatically and the church cannot just return back to normal. There is a significant shift in what God is doing and as a church, it’s vital that we remain attuned to his leading. As we are going through the gospel of Mark and looking at the ministry of Christ, it’s important for us to recognize that Jesus came to do something new in our world and that many times, our old religious ways can keep us from experiencing the refreshing work of His Spirit.
He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.
And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”
There are three questions that we want to answer
What is the new wine?
What is the old wineskin?
How can we become new wineskin?
In past messages, I’ve talked in detail about the calling of Levi, better known to us as Matthew along with the subsequent meal that Jesus has with people of the same ilk. There is something significant about Jesus’ relationship with Levi because it is one thing to make disciples of fishermen but a totally different thing to make sinners and tax collectors part of the inner circle. There is nothing morally objectionable about being a fisherman, you might not be the most educated person or have a high position in society but there’s no negative stigma about being a fisherman. But tax collector and sinners like them would have have lost all respectability and would have been considered outcasts of society, traitors to their own people. But we see here that Jesus not only keeps company with such people but he makes them disciples and shares intimate fellowship with them. This group would have included adulterers, prostitutes, thieves, and generally anyone on the fringe of society. And in this act of having dinner with this sordid group of individuals, we see that Jesus is drawing a much bigger picture of what He came to do. When Mark writes the description of the dinner, he uses the Greek word, katakeisthai, which is a far more formal and luxurious term than the word “dinner” might imply in the English. As a tax collector, Matthew would have had the financial means to order the best of foods along with wine and the appropriate decorations and table settings to make this a very luxurious event. There was not much reason for people in this demographic to celebrate but when Jesus stepped into their lives, He became their reason to celebrate. The better translation to describe this meal here would be the word banquet because I believe Mark saw a symbol of the heavenly banquet at the end of age when all sinners will be gathered together with Christ for an everlasting feast.
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the Lord; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
To the question of “What is the new wine?”. The short and simple answer is that it’s a new way of relating to God that invites everyone to the table of fellowship independent of their social, economic, racial, and cultural status. When we think of Christian ideals, all Christians would agree that this is what the church was meant to be, a place where people from all walks of life, with all of their sin, their hurts, and all of their problems can come in order to receive salvation and healing from Christ. You would be hard-pressed to find Christians who disagree with that assessment. Most of us would agree that a Christianity that is no longer able to reach the least of these has lost something that is essential to its nature.
Unfortunately, what happens in our churches without our knowledge is we end up betraying those values and ideals and in our practice, we become more like the Pharisees and the religious crowds that ask, “Why does Jesus eat with tax collectors and sinners? Why do all the other Christian groups fast but the followers of Jesus feast?” And in doing so, we take away the core elements of the new wine that attract people to Christ and we need to ask ourselves again, “Well, what kind of Christianity draws people from vastly different corners of life to worship together as one?
The first element of this new wine is one that invites people into intimate fellowship with Jesus and other believers. We know that in the ancient middle east, the act of having a meal together was incredibly meaningful and that you were identified with the people that you ate with. In fact, this is not just a facet of ancient middle eastern culture, we see it at every high school and middle school lunch period. Whoever you choose to eat with, that is the group that you are identified with. Even as adults, it happens. There is even an old episode of Friends where Ross and Joey are working together at the museum and they face the very same situation in the lunch room where scientists eat at a different table away from the other non PhD staff. In eating with sinners and tax collectors, Jesus disregards these social barriers and He freely offers intimate fellowship with anyone who is willing to follow Him. You’ll notice that the way that Jesus serves this group is primarily through a relationship with himself and through that He builds up a group of followers that are intimately connected to one another. I am going to get back to this point when I talk about the old wineskin that cannot hold the new wine.
A second element of this new wine is that it heals people of their sin which starts with forgiveness but doesn’t end until there is holiness. Jesus came to set people free from the sin that is destroying their lives and their relationship with God. Jesus has no intention of allowing us to remain where we are in our sin. Jesus came to heal and to give us power over the areas of sin that plague us and keep us separated from God.
A third element of the new wine is a faith that is joyfully practiced. Every Christian knows the right things to do. Read your bible, pray, go to church to worship, serve those in need, share the gospel but how many of us do it joyfully? I would venture to guess not many. Honestly, I think this is why we have a hard time doing our devotionals, serving others without getting burned out, and even just living out our faith becomes labor and drudgery. Can you honestly say that you delight in the Lord and believe that in his presence there is fullness of joy? I love what John Piper says about the characteristics of someone who is walking in the fullness of joy.
Your joy outweighs all other competing emotions and overflows into love for others. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have periods of sadness or mourning but you know that your joy will return because God turns our sorrows into gladness and our mourning into laughter. And what you’ll realize is that you are a far more loving person when you are joyful as opposed to sullen.
Your joy comes from the fact that you know that Christ has fulfilled your quest for satisfaction. You know that nothing else will satisfy you like Christ and when you are down and out, you can properly attribute that to a decline in your relationship with Him.
Your joy overflows into times of spontaneous praise and singing and your heart can hardly contain this sense of overwhelming gladness. I know that this type of joy seems so far from us in this year of so much pain but when God brings us out and He undoubtedly will, do you have the type of faith that will celebrate all that He has done?
When Jesus used this analogy of wine it almost perfectly describes the new thing that He is doing in the Spirit. Wine brings people together in joyful celebration but it also has healing properties to it. Even the apostle Paul recognized this when he recommended that Timothy take a little wine for his ailing stomach. What wine does in the natural, the new wine of Christ does in the spiritual but unless we have the right container, we cannot hold this new wine.
And this brings us to our second point: what is this old wineskin that is unable to hold the new wine of Christ? To understand this metaphor, we know that historically wine was aged in pouches made of animal skin usually that of goats. But over time, this skin would become brittle and it couldn’t be used in the fermentation process of new wine because the build up of pressure produced by the gases would destroy the wine and the pouch. In order to avoid this problem, new wine always had to placed into new wineskin. In using this analogy, Jesus was telling the Pharisees and crowds that their own man-made religious constructs could not hold what He came to do. That warning is still valid for us today and whatever Christianity has become, it’s fair to say that we are like this old wineskin that is now unable to hold the new wine. I want to point out 3 old wineskins that will keep us from experiencing the genuine move of God.
Christian conservatism- What we know to be the Christian right here in America has evolved from a grass roots movement whose main emphasis in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s was to maintain the doctrinal purity of Christianity as many of our core beliefs were being challenged by secular thought. Christian fundamentalism as it was known then produced some of the greatest theologians, pastors, and spiritual leaders in American history.
D.L. Moody and even Billy Graham have their roots in this movement but over the years Christian fundamentalists became more and more entwined with the political structures of our country and it became better known for its defense of the Christian way of life as opposed to defending the Christian faith. It’s a nuanced but very important difference because Christians, along with all other people, should be free to believe as their conscience dictates, but trying to legislate our moral beliefs and our way of life by political means was always going to cause trouble. I believe this is where Christian fundamentalists lost their way. Starting with the founding of the Moral Majority by Jerry Falwell in 1979 and it’s alliance with the Republican party, the Christian right has become too powerful, too populous, and too political to be a viable example of Christ and how He came to establish His Kingdom. We do not measure greatness nor strive for power as the rulers of this age are prone to do. I’ll speak more about how Christians can be involved and think through the politics of this age in the next couple of weeks but its safe to say that some of our social problems are directly related to Christian fundamentalism that has become too politicized and too angry. The religious historian George Marsden in his book on the impact of Christian fundamentalism in America describes present day fundamentalists simply as angry evangelicals. That is a pretty apt description of what the Christian right has become but the problem that the book of James points out is that the anger of man does not lead to the righteousness of God. It cannot hold this new wine of Christ.
Christian liberalism - Not surprising is the rise of Christian liberalism in reaction to the Christian right. During the pandemic and the social inequalities that have become apparent, it’s become trendy to blend Christianity with a variety of secular constructs like socialism, critical race theory, and other liberal viewpoints on social justice. This has all been promoted as something new and something progressive but those who don’t know the history of the church in America are prone to make the same mistakes again. This is why seminaries teach a year of church history so that we learn from our past. All of these theories under different names have been tried in the American church and all that is left are thousands of empty buildings in the mainline denominations that took the bait. The battles that we are fighting now have already been waged and churches that have clouded the gospel with all of these secular theories end up losing not only their people, but their very soul. The idea that if we compromise our beliefs so that it better fits the ideologies of the world, then we will get more people to come to Christ is an outright lie.
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,
Christian consumerism - But I’ve realized that most Christians sitting in our churches are not hard left or hard right. Conservatives and liberals may be the loudest voices but they are not the majority. The main issue that churches in America face is the consumer mentality towards faith. Religion has simply become another product to consume for our own personal benefit with no regards to a life of sacrifice, commitment, and counting the cost to follow Christ. My fear is that sitting behind the computer and watching religious services like a TV show is adding to this consumer mentality. It certainly isn’t helping. As Christians get more and more comfortable with on-line services and perhaps toy with the idea of not coming back, a Christianity with no cost becomes normalized. Right before the pandemic hit, a pastor from the Bay Area wrote a pretty timely book entitled the Analog Church and the main thesis of the book was that even though churches are trying to enter into the digital age, everything seems to point to the fact that people still experience spiritual growth the old fashioned way, regularly attending a church, serving others, studying the Bible together, praying with each other, eating meals together in fellowship. And perhaps these are not big sacrifices but there was at least represent a base level of demand that Christians could set as a goal to attain but in the digital realm, those demands no longer exist. Sherry Turkle, in her book Alone Together, summarizes these thoughts well. She writes, “Digital connections may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other.” And it’s no wonder why most of us are not growing and if we are honest we have become stagnant in our faith. Without the demands of true relationships coupled with the ability to hide from one another in isolation, we can’t help but get stagnant.
How can we become the new wineskin?
The notion of giving up our comfort, denying ourselves, picking up our cross to follow Christ has become a foreign concept in our modern churches. The essence of Christianity is a life of joyful sacrifice and those who find this type of faith find something incredibly fulfilling. Jesus puts it in these words:
For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Talk about the believers in the upper room who prayed.