Jay Grant’s message on Luke 5:33-39
Sermon notes:
Luke 5:33-39
The religious leaders said to Jesus, “John’s disciples practice praying and fasting and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but Your disciples go on eating and drinking.”
Jesus answered, “Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom? One day he will be taken from them and then they will fast.
Jesus then told them two parables: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and uses it to try and patch an old garment. For then the new garment will be torn and the new patch won’t match the old garment.
“And no one pours new wine into old wineskins because the new wine will burst the old skins and they will be ruined. New wine must be put into new wineskins. And no one used to drinking old wine wants to drink the new, certain the old is better than the new.”
What Do The Garments/New Wine Parables Mean
Coming into this world, Jesus was offering something new – loving sinners, a new covenant of grace and forgiveness, redefining spirituality, releasing fresh spiritual life in place of tedious, repetitious religiosity
a. The garment – Jesus did not come to patch up an old system. You cannot fit an old, dead traditions into the fresh, new life Jesus brings. He is going to burst the confines of their rigid, legalistic system of rules and regulations.
b. New wine represents Jesus and the soon coming of the Holy Spirit. Old wine represented the antiquated Old Testament system, bogged down in legalism.
c. New Wine represents the New Covenant/Testament; Old Wine represents the Old Covenant/Testament
d. You cannot put/patch new ideas into the hearts of stubborn, old-mind-sets; it never works; nor can you get new results from old behavior; You need to be open to what might be new
What Can We Learn From This Passage
1. There’s a huge difference between life-giving spirituality and religion, between Christ and rules and regulations
2. We need to be open to change, to what God might want to do new in your life and in the life of the church
a. Does your marriage need to change? Is it stuck?
b. Does your thinking need to change, have you been too negative?
c. Does your worship of God need to change? Have you felt any passion for God lately, any desire to worship with more feeling?
d. Are there areas of sin or compromise that need to end, should change? Today is the day.
e. Do you need a change of heart? Some of you need to return to your first love when Jesus was exciting and your heart overflowed with love.