Category
📚
ÉducationTranscription
00:00 (gentle music)
00:02 So I'm going to do part two of the message
00:15 I started last week when we talked about
00:18 what to do with the new,
00:21 how to handle new things in our lives.
00:23 You know, God brings new things our way, each one of us.
00:27 He gives us new things.
00:29 He gives us expressions.
00:31 His mercies are new every day.
00:33 He gives us words of prophecy.
00:35 He gives us an assurance of his word.
00:37 He gives us new relationships.
00:39 God is constantly bringing new things into our lives.
00:44 The challenge is what do we do with them?
00:47 And how do we handle our lives in such a way
00:50 that we don't lose the new things
00:52 that God is bringing our way?
00:53 I believe that in the last month
00:57 and the previous month in June and July,
00:59 God has done great things in our lives
01:02 and new things have poured into our lives
01:04 and we have to learn how to keep them and work with them.
01:07 So that's what we're going to be doing
01:10 as I do part two of my message,
01:14 Working With The New.
01:16 And I'll go back to Luke's gospel, chapter number five,
01:23 and go to verse 37 and verse 38.
01:28 Luke chapter five, verse 37 and 38.
01:34 "And no one puts new wine into old wineskins
01:41 "or else the new wine will bust the wineskins and be spilled
01:48 "and the wineskins will be ruined.
01:53 "But new wine must be put into new wineskins
01:58 "and both are preserved."
02:02 Let me just start right from the onset to say
02:06 that Jesus is not teaching about wines.
02:10 He's not teaching about nice wines and how to drink wine.
02:14 Jesus is using wines and wineskins as analogy,
02:20 as a metaphor to teach about the spiritual life.
02:25 And so he's using what is natural
02:29 to teach what is spiritual.
02:32 It's always important to put the teachings
02:34 of Jesus into context and this is a parable.
02:38 So it's an analogy.
02:40 And if you want to know about wine,
02:42 that would be another time for me to teach on that.
02:45 But this time we're using this
02:47 from a parables point of view in the teaching of the lesson.
02:52 So Jesus is talking about new wine and wineskins,
02:57 old wineskins.
02:59 The first thing he talks about is new wine.
03:04 A new wine there talks about the fresh juice of the grape.
03:09 When the grape plant is harvested,
03:14 is squeezed and the fresh juice,
03:17 that's what the Bible calls the new wine.
03:20 It's unfermented, it's new and it's fresh,
03:24 it's new, it's lively and it is something that is bubbly.
03:29 So it represents a new content, fresh content,
03:35 lively content, something you receive that is new.
03:39 It's like a new word of prophecy, a new word of assurance
03:43 or something new that comes into your life.
03:45 But in this instance, Jesus is using new wine
03:49 to describe his teaching.
03:52 The teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ is new wine.
03:54 It's fresh, it's lively, it's changing lives, it's good.
03:59 Remember the background to the story
04:03 is that the Pharisees had come to ask Jesus
04:05 about why his disciples did not fast.
04:09 And Jesus is answering the question.
04:12 And so he is contrasting his ministry,
04:17 his word, his life with that of the Pharisees
04:21 that he calls his, the new wine.
04:24 It's fresh, it's lively, it's sweet and it's a blessing.
04:29 That is the teaching of Jesus Christ.
04:31 Then he talks about old wine skins, old wine skins.
04:40 Old wine skins are normally stiff and dry containers.
04:45 Wine skins were used to contain wine.
04:49 They are like bottles in our day,
04:51 but they were not bottles, they were just goat skin
04:54 that was used for preservation of wine.
04:57 And Jesus is using this to describe the way of the Pharisees
05:03 and he calls their ministry or their understanding
05:09 old wine skin, in other words, old stiff containers.
05:14 So the old wine skin represents old mindsets
05:20 and old traditions.
05:23 So just from the onset, Jesus is saying,
05:27 my new life, my new way, my new thought
05:32 cannot be contained in your old mindset,
05:36 in your old traditional point of view.
05:38 If you're gonna receive what I have for you,
05:40 then something has to happen to the container,
05:44 the way you receive what I have for you.
05:48 And the reason why Jesus says that is because
05:52 old wine skins do not stretch.
05:57 They do not stretch.
06:00 And the background to this is in the making of wine,
06:04 when the grape is harvested, there's a new wine,
06:08 it is put into a fresh wine skin,
06:11 and then it ferments.
06:14 And in the process of fermentation,
06:16 the sugar is broken down,
06:18 there's the release of a lot of gases,
06:20 and so there is expansion of volume.
06:23 So if the wine skin doesn't expand,
06:26 then it's going to ruin the wine.
06:29 So that's what Jesus is talking about.
06:31 It's similar to being pregnant.
06:34 You have a mother who gets pregnant and she's excited,
06:39 new life has started inside of her.
06:42 But that new life is not going to stay,
06:44 that new life is gonna grow.
06:46 So the womb must grow,
06:48 and the internal organs will be displaced,
06:51 and the abdomen area has to grow.
06:54 If that does not expand to accommodate this new child,
06:59 then the child will not reach full term,
07:03 probably die, and maybe jeopardize the life of the mother.
07:08 So Jesus says that if new wine is put into old wine skin,
07:14 is something new, is forced into an old system,
07:20 he says two things will happen.
07:21 First, there will be wastage.
07:24 He says the new wine will be lost,
07:25 the new will be lost, it will be spilled.
07:29 So something that is started as new is going to be lost
07:33 because we put it in the wrong system.
07:36 And the second thing he says will happen
07:39 is that it will be destroyed,
07:41 the old wine skin itself,
07:43 the old system itself will be ruined.
07:46 Jesus said that the wine skin will be ruined.
07:50 So there are important lessons that Jesus wants us to learn,
07:55 and there are lessons that we can apply to our lives,
07:59 we can apply to different areas of our lives,
08:01 we can apply to our Christian walk with God,
08:04 we can apply to our marriages,
08:06 we can apply even to businesses and how we run them.
08:10 It's always important that when God gives us something new,
08:14 we are able to keep that new thing.
08:17 So two lessons, main lessons that I want to talk about.
08:21 The first is that when God does a new thing in my life,
08:25 I must stretch my life to accommodate it.
08:29 If God does a new thing in my life,
08:33 I must stretch my life to accommodate it.
08:37 It's just like the mother and the baby,
08:39 it's great to be pregnant,
08:41 but if your system cannot stretch,
08:45 then what brought you joy may bring you a lot of sadness.
08:51 That is a practical lesson.
08:55 When God gives me something new,
08:58 when God brings something new into my life,
09:02 it puts responsibility on me
09:05 to be able to have the capacity to hold it together
09:11 so that I don't lose what God has blessed me with.
09:16 It could be the blessing of a new job,
09:19 it could be the blessing of a new relationship,
09:22 it could be a blessing of new information,
09:25 it could be a blessing of an impartation of an anointing.
09:29 Whenever God imparts something new into your life,
09:32 there's going to be adjustment.
09:34 The new thing will not manifest itself to the fullest
09:40 if we don't make adjustments to accommodate it
09:43 so it has full expression in our lives.
09:46 That is the first lesson that we learn from this passage
09:51 that Jesus is teaching.
09:53 The second thing is that if I refuse
09:57 to change the structure of my life,
10:00 I will lose the good things God brings my way.
10:04 If I refuse to change the structure of my life,
10:10 I will lose the good things God brings my way.
10:16 Jesus was God in the flesh with us.
10:21 Jesus was the answer of the prayer of the Jews.
10:28 For a Redeemer, Jesus is the solution
10:35 to the problems of this world.
10:37 But Jesus is not a solution just for the redeemer.
10:44 He's a solution just by himself.
10:47 He's a solution when we also allow him room in our lives,
10:52 into our hearts, into our ministries, into our society,
10:57 and for the Jews of the days of Jesus.
11:01 Although he's new and he's the new wine,
11:04 they didn't make room for him.
11:06 Pharisees couldn't handle him.
11:08 Scribes couldn't handle him.
11:10 Sadducees couldn't handle him.
11:12 They couldn't.
11:14 The Bible says he came to his own
11:17 and his own did not receive him.
11:20 But as many as received him,
11:23 to them he gave power to become sons of God.
11:25 When it says his own didn't receive him,
11:27 doesn't mean they didn't tolerate him.
11:30 It simply means that they didn't make room for him.
11:33 They didn't expand to accommodate him.
11:36 They didn't change their minds to accommodate him.
11:41 So think about all the good things
11:43 that God has done in your life.
11:45 We think about ourselves as a church.
11:48 God wants to do new things in our lives.
11:51 He's given us a new auditorium.
11:54 He's given us a new place to worship.
11:57 He's given us opportunity to worship him.
11:59 Do we have to make adjustments?
12:02 Yes, we have to make adjustments.
12:04 We have to do things differently.
12:06 If a church wants to reach young people,
12:09 a younger generation,
12:10 it's not going to format its services
12:12 just to appeal to an older generation.
12:15 You know, when I was a younger pastor,
12:18 as you know, I started pastoring this church
12:22 when I was quite young.
12:23 I was barely 25 years old.
12:27 And when you are that young, you have 24, 25,
12:30 you start a church and you're pastoring a church
12:33 and all the people around you are about your age
12:37 or younger, a few older,
12:40 you want to attract older people.
12:42 So you find that pretty soon your church service
12:45 is being done to accommodate an older generation,
12:50 which is good because God has done something to you.
12:53 You have to expand it so it's not a youth church
12:56 because if you're not careful, if you're 24 years old,
12:59 your church will be a youth church.
13:01 It will be like somebody's youth service
13:04 and that's your full church.
13:05 So you have to find out how do we accommodate
13:09 all the people God brings our way.
13:11 So we have to do things differently.
13:12 We have to be more structured
13:14 and we have to start working with time.
13:16 Young people don't care much about time.
13:18 You can waste all their time and they'll be fine in church,
13:21 but older people have better time management.
13:23 So we became more time conscious and all of that.
13:26 And all of that was done to accommodate
13:29 a different kind of people from the people we started with.
13:33 Now we want our church to accommodate
13:38 a younger generation because I'm older.
13:41 So I need to have younger people coming into church.
13:45 And so as you can see in our church,
13:47 so much has been done still to retain the older people,
13:51 but also to get a new generation who feel comfortable
13:55 and feel that this is a place I can belong to.
13:59 That's why they are pristine dressed the way they dress.
14:01 That's why they sing the songs they sing.
14:03 That's why they do what they do.
14:05 Why?
14:05 Because God has given us something new
14:07 and we are stretching, we are making room.
14:10 We are trying to contain it in a new mindset,
14:13 in a new container, in a new way.
14:16 And that would advise the way
14:21 we approach everything in our lives.
14:25 When God brings something new in our lives,
14:28 we have to stretch.
14:29 We have to stretch.
14:32 When God brings new people into our church,
14:34 we have to stretch.
14:36 We cannot say, well, you know, these are new people.
14:39 They are visitors, they don't know our way.
14:41 And so we make it difficult for them
14:43 to assimilate in the church.
14:44 No, if God brings new people in our way,
14:48 we have to stretch, we have to be accommodating.
14:50 We have to open our minds.
14:52 We have to create space so that the new thing
14:56 is preserved by the Lord.
14:59 In essence, that is what Jesus is teaching.
15:02 But I'm going to try to apply this principle
15:05 to some areas of our lives.
15:08 The first area I want to apply it,
15:11 I've said it a bit earlier, is our walk with God.
15:16 When God gives us something new,
15:20 our minds must be renewed to accommodate it.
15:25 When God gives us something new, our minds,
15:29 our minds are the wine skins.
15:32 Our minds must be renewed to accommodate it.
15:36 And so let's say a person is born again, gets born again,
15:40 he receives new life in Christ.
15:42 And the new life in Christ is the life of righteousness,
15:46 of holiness, of faith, of joy, of peace, and all of that.
15:51 But this person traditionally is very fearful,
15:57 so is very doubtful, is always worried, never cheerful,
16:02 and all of that.
16:03 But the life they have received is a life of joy,
16:06 of peace, of faith.
16:07 Now if they're going to live the life of joy,
16:11 peace, and faith, and their natural mindset,
16:14 culture, behavior is worry, and doubt, and self-doubt,
16:19 then there's going to be a conflict between the life
16:22 God has given to them and the way their mind,
16:24 their wine skin works.
16:26 And if their wine skin doesn't change,
16:28 then although God has given them righteousness and peace
16:31 and joy and victory and abundance,
16:35 they're not going to enjoy it.
16:37 The life that Christ gives to us when we get born again
16:41 includes wellbeing, prosperity.
16:45 Doesn't mean you're going to be the richest person
16:48 in the world, but God wants to bless us.
16:50 He wants our lives here on earth
16:52 to be meaningful and worthwhile.
16:55 But if you have a poverty mindset,
16:59 then although God wants to bring abundance to you,
17:02 your mind is going to shut it.
17:04 Your mind is going to be like that new old wine skin.
17:07 Prosperity is coming, but you say,
17:08 oh no, no, I'm poor, our family's poor,
17:11 my father is poor, everybody is poor,
17:13 my nation is poor, I'm a third world country.
17:15 Now that is your wine skin, but God is pouring
17:19 the wine of abundance, of prosperity, of favor,
17:23 of increase, he's pouring it into you,
17:25 but your mind is squashing it.
17:28 Or maybe you are always talking very negative.
17:33 I cannot do it, I'm not able, I don't have what it takes.
17:38 That's your mindset, that's your wine skin.
17:41 And God says, you are well able, I am with you,
17:44 you are more than a conqueror, that is the new wine pouring.
17:47 But if you don't accommodate, if you don't renew your mind,
17:51 then this new thing that God is doing,
17:53 being poured into your life,
17:55 being poured into your life,
17:58 every day, in church, in your Bible study,
18:02 through the work of the Holy Spirit in you,
18:04 all that God is pouring into your life,
18:07 will be wasted, because your wine skin is stiff,
18:12 is stuck, and cannot accommodate
18:18 the new thing that God is doing.
18:23 I believe with all my heart, without any shadow of doubt,
18:26 that a Christian life is the most exciting life to live.
18:31 It's a good life, it's a life of goodness,
18:35 of blessing, of abundance, of joy, of overcoming.
18:40 Even when it's dark, it is light.
18:43 When we are in the valley, it brings us to the mountain.
18:47 That's the Christian life.
18:50 But that mindset, that new thing that God is doing,
18:55 it has to be accommodated in the way we process our minds.
19:00 So, when God brings new things our way,
19:05 new blessing our way, new word our way,
19:11 new instruction our way,
19:13 our minds must be renewed to accommodate it.
19:19 Romans chapter 12, verse two.
19:21 Do not be conformed to this world,
19:26 but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
19:31 so that you can prove, you can taste,
19:37 you can experience what is that good,
19:41 and perfect, and acceptable will of God.
19:45 In other words, if my mind is not renewed,
19:48 if my wine skin doesn't expand,
19:50 I cannot taste, prove, I cannot enjoy the good,
19:54 and the perfect, and the will of God, I can't.
19:58 I can't.
20:00 Although God has given it to me,
20:02 my wine skin is gonna spill it,
20:05 and it's going to destroy.
20:08 That's what Jesus is teaching.
20:10 I brought new life, but you have to adjust to accommodate it,
20:14 otherwise it's of no benefit, no blessing to you.
20:18 So that is the first application of this principle.
20:21 Second application, we can apply to our marriages.
20:25 Isn't it good?
20:27 Whether you're married or not married,
20:29 you can benefit from this.
20:30 When God brings a new partner into our lives,
20:34 we must stretch our lives to accommodate them.
20:38 One of the challenges of marriage
20:46 is that we all start life as single people.
20:48 We were single, and we lived our own life
20:53 on our own terms, in our own time.
20:55 Now, that's fine, if you want to continue doing that,
21:00 don't bring anybody into your space.
21:03 Just enjoy life on your own terms.
21:06 But the day your heartbeat changes,
21:10 and you start having fluttering of heart,
21:13 fluttering, your heart is going, "poo poo poo poo poo poo."
21:17 And you fall in love with somebody,
21:18 and you welcome the person,
21:21 and you decide that you're gonna build a life
21:23 together with that person,
21:25 God has brought somebody new into your life,
21:29 and you can't live a single life again.
21:33 I like how Adam responded when Eve came.
21:37 He says, "This is now bone of my bones,
21:42 flesh of my flesh.
21:44 She shall be called woman,
21:48 because she's taken out of me."
21:50 Eve was the new wine for Adam, the new person.
21:56 The new person that God brought to him,
22:04 he was actually asleep,
22:05 and this woman comes,
22:09 and she says, "I need to accommodate this woman."
22:12 And how do I know she accommodated the woman?
22:17 Because when Eve had a bad experience with the devil,
22:22 and got both of them into trouble,
22:25 Adam says to God, part complaining, part affirming,
22:30 "The woman you gave me."
22:34 In other words, Lord, I truly accommodated this woman
22:38 into my life because you gave her to me.
22:42 So even when our lives have gone bad,
22:47 I still believe you gave her to me,
22:51 and he still stuck with her for many years afterwards.
22:56 When God brings somebody new into your life,
23:01 it's like new wine.
23:02 You remember when you first fell in love,
23:05 and you thought you couldn't live a day without a person?
23:09 So how come now you think you don't want
23:11 to live with a person?
23:12 Because the wineskin is not stretching.
23:16 There are areas that you are keeping away from each other,
23:20 and as a result, there is a spillage taking place.
23:24 The wineskin is a mindset.
23:29 It has to change.
23:33 It has to be adjusted.
23:36 You cannot live, want a Christian marriage,
23:39 and conduct it as an African traditional marriage.
23:44 African traditional marriage, wineskin,
23:47 cannot contain the wine of a Christian marriage.
23:52 The Christian marriage is based on Christ,
23:54 it's based on the word of God,
23:56 it's based on how God wants us to show love.
23:59 Not how Africans show love, how God wants us to do it.
24:06 When God brings somebody new into your life,
24:09 you need to make adjustments.
24:12 I need to, you need to, we need to.
24:16 If you want your marriage to work,
24:18 there's a simple marriage counseling.
24:20 Expand, stretch, accommodate them,
24:25 accommodate the other person, and their worldview,
24:28 and their mindset, and their idiosyncrasies,
24:31 and their habits, and all of that,
24:33 and be able to accommodate them.
24:35 When God brings somebody new into my life,
24:37 I have to stretch to accommodate them.
24:40 Thirdly, our way of life.
24:46 We must live our new life through a new mindset,
24:51 and new ways of doing things.
24:54 And that's what Jesus said in the parable.
24:57 New wine must be poured into new wineskins.
25:02 That's what Jesus said.
25:05 If you want to preserve the wine and the wineskin,
25:08 then both the new thing, the wine,
25:12 and the container of the new thing
25:15 must be on the same wavelength.
25:18 New wine, new wineskins.
25:22 Fresh understanding, fresh thinking,
25:25 fresh cultural understanding, fresh mindset.
25:29 And he says if you do that,
25:32 then both the wine and the wineskin will be preserved.
25:37 Isn't that amazing?
25:40 If I look at it at a wider level,
25:44 you can apply it to national development,
25:46 you can apply it to so many areas of our lives
25:51 where new things are coming.
25:52 We attend seminars, we attend workshops.
25:55 You know, Ghana is one of those countries
25:57 where people like workshops.
25:59 I don't know why we do,
26:00 whether it's because of the files we collect
26:02 or the TNT and the per diems or whatever,
26:06 but we like workshops and seminars.
26:09 And we do that always.
26:11 And government officials are going somewhere.
26:13 They're going to Prague and they're going to Helsinki
26:16 and they're going to some place to get new wines,
26:20 so to speak, to learn new things.
26:23 And then they come and we don't see the new thing.
26:27 So there's a missing link somewhere.
26:29 Missing link probably is,
26:31 yes, we're taking all the new thing,
26:33 but it doesn't change anything about the wineskin.
26:37 We still want to do things the way we've been doing it.
26:39 We're still rigid.
26:40 We're still stuck.
26:42 We're still committed to an old way of doing things,
26:44 although we are learning new things.
26:46 And this knowledge is in abundance.
26:48 You can read it.
26:49 You don't even need to travel to get it.
26:51 But having something new
26:54 does not mean you're going to be new.
26:57 Learning something new doesn't mean
26:59 you're going to be different.
27:01 Because what makes you different
27:04 is your ability to allow the new
27:08 to be contained in a new system.
27:11 So this morning, I just want each one of us to commit,
27:16 not just to receive new things into our lives,
27:19 but to make the necessary adjustments
27:21 so that the new thing God has brought our way
27:25 stays and benefits us and becomes a blessing to us.
27:30 Let us pray.
27:31 Just want everybody to just bow down your heads
27:36 with me for a moment.
27:37 And if you are here and you say,
27:39 "Pastor, I want new life."
27:42 And the real new life starts with the life of Christ.
27:45 When Christ comes into our lives and He changes our lives.
27:49 But He doesn't just want to come into our lives.
27:51 He wants us to also make room for Him in our minds.
27:56 Renewal of mind.
27:58 And if you are here and you want to be born again,
28:01 and you want Jesus Christ to come into your heart,
28:04 you want to have a new life in Christ Jesus,
28:07 I just want you to do something very simple this morning.
28:11 I want you to lift up your right hand
28:12 wherever you are seated.
28:14 With every head bowed, every eye closed,
28:16 just lift up your right hand.
28:19 Lift it up, lift it up.
28:21 The ushers are going to give you something very soon
28:24 with your hand lifted up, so lift it up so they can see you.
28:27 And those of you who lifted up your hands,
28:34 I want you to put your hand on your heart, on your chest.
28:38 And I want us to pray this prayer together.
28:40 The whole church is going to pray together.
28:42 Say with me, "Heavenly Father, I come to you today
28:46 just as I am.
28:50 I am a sinner.
28:51 I cannot save myself.
28:53 I ask you, Father, save me from my sins.
28:59 Make me a child of God.
29:00 From today, I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and my Savior.
29:06 I give my spirit to him, my mind to him,
29:13 and my body to him.
29:15 Lord Jesus, take over my life and use it for your glory.
29:20 In your name I pray, amen and amen."
29:25 If you truly pray that prayer,
29:27 and then I believe that God has touched your life,
29:30 and from this day, you begin a new journey as a Christian.
29:34 And the ushers are going to help you with the new forms.
29:38 And if you receive them,
29:39 please write down your name, fill in the forms.
29:42 Let us have it right after service
29:44 so we can follow you up
29:46 and help you to live the Christian life.
29:48 You are about to experience
29:50 the most exciting life ever possible.
29:54 Let's celebrate the Lord, everybody.
29:56 (gentle music)
29:58 (gentle music)
30:01 (gentle music)
30:03 (gentle music)
30:06 [Music]