Hidden Treasure | Part 2

And so, the reason that it matters is because parables have a very simple definition and a simple explanation that you see on the surface. But our job and our goal this morning is to try to find the deeper understanding of what Jesus was really trying

to talk about. Okay? So we're going to look today at the story. It's called the parable of the new wineskins. And it's found in Luke chapter five. So if you have a bible, turn there.

We're gonna start a little bit before when Jesus actually tells the parable, just to give us some context as to why he gives the illustration,

and then hopefully we'll be able to understand it. So we're gonna kind of reverse engineer it. I'm gonna read through the entire story first. So just buckle in, keep your hands inside the, you know, ride at all times and just hang on and then we'll work our way through the passage and try to understand it. Okay?

Luke chapter five, are you there? I got a couple of you. K? The rest of you, they'll put the scriptures on the big bible behind me. K? Luke chapter five verse 27. It says, later, as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector's booth.

Follow me and be my disciple, Jesus said to him. So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him. Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many of Levi's fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them, but the Pharisees

and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus' disciples. Why do you eat and drink with such scum? Okay. Question number one posed by the religious leaders is why does Jesus hang out with bad

people? Verse 31 says, Jesus answered them, healthy people don't need a doctor, sick people do. I have come not to call those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent. Okay? And then the next verse says that on one

day, some people said to Jesus, John the Baptist's disciples fast and pray regularly and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. Here's the second question, why are your disciples always eating and drinking? We don't get it. They like to party and eat and drink a lot. Okay?

Verse 34, Jesus is gonna respond to them with another weird story. Okay? He says, do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom? Of course not, but someday the groom will be taken away from them and then they will fast. Now here's where he's gonna go into the parable. Then Jesus gave them this illustration.

No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and uses it to patch an old garment. For then the new garment would be ruined and the new patch wouldn't even match the old garment. No one puts new wine into old wine skins for the new wine would burst the wine skins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins.

New wine must be stored in wineskins. He says, but nobody who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. The old is just fine, they will say. Pretty self explanatory, right? So let's close in prayer. Jesus, we thank you.

I'm just kidding, but for real, let's pray real fast and then we'll kind of break this down. So Father, God, we just, Lord, we ask for you to do what you do this morning. God, would you speak powerfully to each of our hearts. God,

step into this place, we know that you're here, we don't have to do some type of magic to get you to show up. Scripture tells us that where two or more are gathered in your name, that you're here with us. And so father, would you would you speak to our hearts? Would you open our minds? Give us your ears to hear what it is we need to hear this morning so we can walk out of here different than we walked in here. Jesus, need you, we trust you, it's in your name that we pray. Everybody said, amen.

Okay, so to kinda talk about where, to talk about what I think Jesus is illustrating in this story, I've gotta kinda tell you a story of my own, okay? So when you get married, two people become one, is what scripture tells us. So when I got married, I knew that I was gonna lose some rights and responsibilities

and privileges that I had as the two of us became one person, k? But as a young married man, I guess I was just naive and I didn't understand to the depth and to the degree that my wife was going to take over all decision making

in my life, k. And it it starts really subtle, right. Like it starts really, like it's with really simple things, because you're the My wife is still like learning how to just tell me that she doesn't like any of my ideas and her ideas are superior to mine. And so, the way that it started for me is there were some shirts that I really liked, k? Like shirts that I just had for a long time and I know they had a couple holes in them but I liked them. They fit well and I thought they were great for all occasions. K? And I would wear them frequently. My wife was like, don't like that shirt. Don't know why you wear that shirt. I'm like, it doesn't matter. It's my shirt. I like it. I pick my shirts. You pick your shirts and let's stay out of each other's shirts. Okay? Well, the hard part is in my household, my wife does all of the laundry for us and all of a sudden, the shirts that I loved the most that she hated started to disappear.

And I was like, man, I can't find this shirt anywhere. And she's like, I have no idea. No clue where it is. Like I've I've been looking everywhere. I've been searching. I just can't find it. And then years later, she finally admitted that she was just throwing them all away.

And it started really simple. And then it, you know, my wife would appease me and we would like, we we bought our first house and started to do some remodeling stuff to it and do some decorating. And she would ask me questions like, hey, what color do you think we should paint this? And I would say this color. And then she would choose the different color. And she would say, hey, what do you think about this? And I'm like, I like that, and she would choose this. And I started to just go, why do you even ask me? Like, this is you don't have to put me through the, like, the ringer, like, just choose what you want. Like, I don't care. Okay? Now luckily, I'm not one of the guys that actually cares and if you are, your wife will probably beat it out of you quick enough anyways that you'll learn to not care.

And I do a lot of like counseling with couples, like I'll do premarital counseling as they're getting ready for their wedding. And literally, they'll show it to premarital counseling and they've had a fight over the last week because he really wants green napkins and she's convinced they have to be red. And I'm like, dude, don't care about the napkins. Trust me, they all wipe your face off equally.

Like this is the least of the decisions that you're going to lose. K? You guys are Christians. It's after the wedding that you should be excited about, not the napkins at the wedding ceremony. K? Like just, you gotta focus here my man. And the the the reason that I tell you all that is it's kinda set up. So when when I was a single guy, I got this gift when I was, I think, 17 or 18. My dad went to this,

auction and came home and bought me,

Phil Mickelson signed US Open golf flag. K? And if you're a golf nerd, it is like the most awesome thing ever. They literally took a flag off of the US Open and Phil Mickelson signed it and it like is framed. And when I was a single guy, it was like the crown jewel of my house. I had like the lights projected on it when you would walk in. We would like stand there and admire it together. And my wife wasn't as much of a fan of it as I am. And so,

when we got married, she kind of somehow pushed it into a closet. And then, I was like, man, how do I get control back of my life? And so, I did what every like red blooded American man does and I'm I I put my foot down and built a man cave. I was like, I'm making a man cave and it's gonna be all manly things and like big screen TVs and my golf flag is gonna hang up in there. And and my wife was cool. She like gave me the man cave for like three months and then we started to have kids and kids just come with all kinds of junk. And soon enough, my man cave became the kids like playroom and and then it literally finally clicked to me and I was like, I understand now why my dad hung out in the garage so much as a kid. It's not because he wanted to, it's because it's all he had left. It was it was the last

it was the last piece that he had. Right? It was like, you can't take me out of the garage. The kids don't need this and, you know, and so I would laugh at my dad like, I'm never like, dude, you got worked by mom. Like, I'm gonna be a man and I'm never

Every day when I go home and open up my garage door, this is this is what I see hanging in my garage. My prized possession, the thing that I go, my house is on fire, I get this and then my kids. Okay? Like this is, like it it matters

to me and it's hanging in my garage as a constant reminder of how far my wife has beaten me down as a man. And the reason that I tell you any of that is to really kinda illustrate a silly point that I think that Jesus is trying to talk about in Luke chapter five.

K, that I hope the visual makes sense of me trying to hold on to this area of my life, this area of my house that was still mine, that I could have the say and that I could be in control of. What I think Jesus is essentially addressing to the Pharisees and to all of the readers of the scriptures, he's going, he's talking about this thing that you and I will have to fight against.

We will have a propensity when we come into a saving faith with God, when our life intersects and we have these moments where we go, man, maybe I should try this God thing. You will have a propensity to want to withhold areas of your life from him.

Here's why I think the church is declining. As much as I laugh about Bill being in Europe, part of what they're doing is they're going and they're studying England because England is where we are headed as a nation. England is a post Christian world. We're one of the least churched areas in the entire world.

And I think part of why we as a country are heading there is because we have sold

a cheap gospel for too long. We of the church have stood up and said, here's what Jesus wants to do to you. He wants to make your life a better version of what it currently is. He wants to come in and he wants to tweak some things, make some minor adjustments, and make you the best version of you that you can be. And a lot of people are like, oh man, that's awesome. That sounds great. Like, wanna be a better version of me. Like, there's some things I don't like. And so we come to church and we're like, Jesus, can you fix this stuff? Can you do these things? And if you've been around church at all, you realize that that is just a complete

lie. And I am a pastor that serves the millennial generation and I'm telling you, part of why God is doing such an incredible work on Thursday nights is because I stand up and I unapologetically

tell people, you can't put your toes in the face. This will be the most expensive and the most difficult thing that you've ever done in your life. But the promise that Jesus gave you and I is that it will always, always, always be worth it. What Jesus is addressing in Luke chapter five is this notion

that God has just come to make your life slightly better but pretty much the same of what you currently are. It's just not true.

Jesus doesn't want to come into your house, come into your heart and just renovate what you currently have. What he wants to do, what the gospels tell us, what scriptures paint is a picture where he wants to come in and destroy the entire foundation and the whole house of everything that you've built because it's broken and it can't be fixed, it cannot be salvaged and if you're willing to let the old die, then, then and only then can the new come to life. The invitation that you and I have been given is not one to be a better version of us, it's to be a brand new version of us. And here's why this matters to you and I. Here's why Jesus is going so hard after this with the religious leaders of the time.

Because here's what will happen, kind of the big idea if you're taking notes is this. If you follow Jesus partially, you will miss Jesus completely. If you think about it, it's kind of crazy to think that the Pharisees completely missed Jesus.

The guys who spent the majority of their life studying the scripture, studying the things that the prophets wrote about this guy that would come one day called the Messiah. They spent their entire lives studying who this person would be and yet when he comes onto the scene, they completely miss him. Jesus was crucified

because the religious leaders at the time fundamentally believed what the Messiah was going to do. Is he was going to come in, take what they already had with Judaism,

make some slight adjustments to it, and then just go, hey, this is like Judaism two point o and it's gonna be awesome. You guys are like 80 there. I'm just gonna push you across the finish line, but you're doing really, really great. And then Jesus steps onto the scene and he completely

blows the box that they had for God out of the water. And if you're not careful, you and I will do the exact same things that the Pharisees did. We will unintentionally miss Jesus because we think all God wants for us is to make us a better version of us. It's not what he wants. And if you look,

the story starts before we even get to the parable where Jesus is going to just blatantly say this.

He starts by setting the tone with who he begins to recruit as his inner core team of people. Okay? Luke five starts with him calling his first disciple, who's a fisherman named Peter. And he goes and he gets this guy that's kind of like a bottom feeder, like catfish kind of guy and he goes and he he gets him and he's like, you're gonna be my guy. And then the rest of Luke five, he just starts walking through the crowds and healing random people and walking up to groups of people like this would be weird. He walks up and he's like, hey man, I know what you're thinking, don't think that. And he tells them what they're thinking, they're what? Like who is this guy? And it's it's it's really when

the gospels begin to transition and it begins to let us know that there's something more to this guy named Jesus than just the fact that he was a carpenter and that he was born. It's not that he was just good at horseshoes, he's actually God in human form. And we pick up and we see him begin to call his second

disciple. This is what it says. Verse 27 says, later as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector's booth. Follow me and be my disciple. Okay? Notice what the invitation from Jesus is to Levi. Follow me,

be my disciple. Disciple just means that you are becoming like the one you're following. The invitation is to become like Jesus, not just become a better version of yourself and the proof is what Levi does. Verse 28 says, Levi got up, he left everything and followed him. The invitation to faith is not a cheap one.

The offer that's on the table for you and I is to leave everything we've ever known. To let the old person that we were die so that he can begin to create a new being in us. But the good news is,

is Levi, I know in our context that the concept of a tax collector isn't that bad of a deal. It's like, it's just something that works for the IRS or something. But these guys were like the worst of the worst. They they were thieves. They were Jews that would actually raise their hand to say, hey, we will represent the Roman government. We will steal from our own people so that we can pay the dictators that are leading us. Like these were people did not like tax collectors at all. Yet Jesus, when he begins to recruit his inner team, takes a fisherman

and a tax collector. And I know often when we read scripture, when I read scripture, I see the Pharisees and I look at what they do and how they miss God and I'm like, man, how could they just be so religious? But you have to understand,

If your entire life was built on the notion that you have to work to gain the approval of God, and you have to check all of the boxes and jump through all of the hoops, and you've been trying as hard as you can to do all of that. Trying to be approved by God through your own ability.

And then some dude walks on the scene and claims to be God and he starts calling the worst of the worst saying, hey, this is who I'm gonna use. These are my guys. You and I would have done the exact same thing the Pharisees did. And we would ask a really logical question and go, God, this doesn't make sense to me. Because I've always understood

that my The way that I get to God, the way that I get God to not be mad at me is I do all of the right things and I do all of the churchy stuff and I've been doing that. Yet you're calling these people that are terrible and I just don't get it and this is what the Pharisees asking.

They they, if you start in verse 30, it says the Pharisees and the teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus' disciples, why do you eat and drink with such bad people? Why are you so comfortable around such bad people? And here's Jesus' answer. He says, healthy people don't need a doctor. Sick people do.

I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners who need to repent. Church, this is our message. This is the thing that we should be shouting from the rooftops.

What Jesus did is he ushered in a brand new kingdom built on the backs of people that religion had said weren't qualified to even be in the building.

Because Jesus did this, because Jesus called a guy like Levi, that meant that when I was 19 years old and I was a knucklehead who was far from God, that I was allowed to walk into the door because Jesus created a new standard. He says, if you wanna know what it means to be used by God, to to be able to have your life mean something,

to actually have a saving faith in God, here's what you have to do. I have not come for those who think they are righteous because they do all of the right things. Here's the only thing, it's why Christianity is the most inclusive religion in the world because there's one thing you have to do to be included in this faith.

You have to admit that you're broken. You have to admit that you don't have it all together. But you have to also do the second thing that Jesus says and be willing to repent. He said, I'm not coming for people who think they are righteous.

I'm coming for those who know they're broken and need a doctor. And what Jesus does is he begins to say, guys, he's talking to the religious leaders. He says, you've seen bad people. You've seen sinners. People who've made mistakes. People who've fallen short. You've seen them as the enemy.

They're not the enemy. They're sick people who need help. They need a doctor that can come and put them back together. And he begins to show us what it means to follow God completely. To leave what we've known and allow the good doctor that Jesus is to put us back together

again. And for some of you who have never experienced that. If you're here this morning and you've never had that moment where you've just asked Jesus to be the good doctor, to be the physician, to put your life back together,

you can pause the tape here. You don't have to continue to the rest of the story. This is enough for you. That I'm telling you, it's a thing that transformed my life when I was 19 years old. Because my whole life I would go to church and all I heard about was all the things that I did that disqualified me from being able to be used by God. And then I walked in the door and I heard the gospel.

And I said, wait Jesus can use me in spite of me. It's not about what I've done, it's about who he is and what he's done. I said, man, think I can do that. And I started to place my faith in God and he began to radically transform my life.

But I thought that it stopped there. I thought that salvation was the goal. Salvation was the ending point and salvation is really just a part of the process. That right after you get saved, Jesus wants to, man he loves you right as you are. He loves you exactly where you are with what you've done and who you are today.

But he loves you enough to not let you stay that way Because he knows that what you and I will settle for every day of the week is second best to what he has for us.

And he loves us enough to push us and challenge us. And what the second half of the story, this parable really is about, it's about those who settle into playing church. Those who just kinda go through the motions and sink back into doing what they've always done. And this is what he says. He's gonna address it through the issue of fasting. Okay?

Verse 33 says, one day some people said to Jesus, this is the second question, John the Baptist's disciples fast and pray regularly

and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. Why are your disciples always eating and drinking? Okay. The issue they bring up is fasting and all fasting is, is withholding from food for a spiritual gain, okay? If you read the Old Testament, you'll see there's one day that the nation of Israel, the Jews were commanded

to fast. One day a year before a big holy day, they were supposed to all fast in preparation for that holy day. Now when Jesus is walking on the scene, the Pharisees that he's addressing who are running the church,

they have done what religion will always do. Okay? Religion is man's attempt to take out the salvation of Jesus and begin to try to work again to gain the approval of God. And so what they do is they take a tool, an incredible tool.

Don't hear what I'm not saying, fasting is awesome. We should fast. It should be a regular part of our routines because it's an incredible tool that God has given us to connect to His heart. That's why He gave it to us. But what they've done is they've taken the tool

and they've made it a rule. Okay? Now they're running schools of disciples and they're telling them, if you wanna be holy and you wanna be like us and you wanna be able to be used by God, you've gotta fast twice a week.

Every Monday and every Thursday, you've gotta fast. And not just privately by yourself and do it in prayer, You're gonna do it publicly so that people can know how awesome and holy you are. And they would actually go for a step further. They would paint their faces white so they look super pale. They would walk around in public and talk about God and how awesome he was. Like, imagine just for a second that you and I literally painted our face white, stopped eating it, walked to like Buffalo Wild Wings and just sat there and looked at people eating chicken wings and you're like, dude, you're you're going to hell. If you were awesome,

if you were awesome like us, you would just not eat twice a week. That's what we do because God God loves you and do a right down the street, Rock Point Church, you should come, you'll love the music and they're like, wait, I have to not eat twice a week? You're like, yeah, yeah, it's part of the deal but trust me, it's cool. Like it's awesome. We also pray for like six hours a day but like no big deal, like God loves you.

And what the Pharisees have done is they've done what religion will always do and I don't think it's done out of a bad heart. I think it's done out of a misaligned heart. It's a heart that says we can save our ourselves, that we can eventually be good enough through our own ability.

What you have to understand with the gospel is all of us are equally disqualified from being used by God, but because of what he's done, we can be saved. But you will never be able to save yourself unless you're perfect. The standard to get into heaven without Jesus is absolute perfection. Not just in your actions,

but also in your motivation, in your thoughts. And if you've ever had a bad thought or had a bad motivation, you are disqualified from heaven on your own. But religion will always do what it does. It will try to legislate

a way to get there on your own. You know Christianity is the only faith in the world that says God has come to you. It's not about your ability to work towards God because you'll never be good enough. You'll never get there. It's about God coming to us.

And here's what God is concerned about in your life and in my life and I have to constantly remind myself of this. God's primary concern that he's looking at in your life, that he's looking at in my life is the fruit that our life produces.

Says that I will know them by their fruit. So we have to ask the question, what is our life producing? What fruit is our life producing? But I think what most of us do, oftentimes the way that we try to determine if we're actually fulfilling what God has asked us to do is we don't look at the fruit of our life,

we look at the watering schedule that we're keeping to produce the fruit. Here's what I mean. What we do is we go, man, I read my Bible five times this week. Dude, God is pumped with me. Like I went to church, I prayed, I even like told my kids, dude, God loves you and I like gave, I gave the church $20 instead of just a normal 10. Like God, God, man, I'm crushing it. You know, like, and and I think we subtly slip into doing what the Pharisees

did. We unintentionally believe that we do all of these things so that God will be approved of us and it's a really slight adjustment.

We do these things because we get to, because they're an incredible tool, not because it's a rule that we have to to be approved of by God. Are you tracking with me? Okay. So here's how here's how it continues.

They said, why do you guys always eat and drink? And Jesus responds, he says, do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom? Of course not, but someday the groom will be taken away from them and then they will fast. Okay, he is the groom. He's saying that when I'm here, you can celebrate with me and have a party. He's essentially saying, we should be partying while I'm here, but there will be a day when I'm not here and then you can fast, but right now, let's just party. Okay? Verse 36, then Jesus gave them this illustration. This is where it gets good.

No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and uses it to patch an old garment.

For then the new garment would be ruined and the new patch wouldn't even match the old garment. Here's what he's saying, k. If my ripped jeans offend you, this is why I don't fix them. K. Because I can't because Jesus says you don't patch them. I'm just kidding. And if you're wondering how I get these holes in my jeans, it's because I pray so much on my knees and

that's why I have them. Okay?

He he here's what Jesus says. Okay? He he he paints a picture that would have made complete sense to them. I know in our context not many us are seamstress and you know, fixing clothes but he says, oftentimes what's going to happen is you're gonna look at your life and you'll you'll see these gaps, these holes that you have. And oftentimes, the thing, the motivating factor that gets people into the doors of church is something that they see is not working in their life.

And here's the really funny part about watching

America as a nation. I think a lot of people look at people who live a life of faith and they see the fruit that their life produces and they go, man, I would love to have a better marriage. I would love to have kids who are somewhat obedient and I would love to have hope and I would love to have some of these fringe benefits that seem to come with this life and so what people often do is they come in the doors

and they go, okay God, here's my life and here's these gaping holes that I have. Give me a little bit of this and a little bit of that. It's kind of like the the Oprah Winfrey faith. Where it's like, hey, I I want a little bit of this, a little bit of this, a little bit of these and there's some Christianity tied in there. We're like, we like the parts of like loving God and like loving other people and doing to others unto yourself and I like that stuff and we give to charity and we do, it's all good stuff.

But what Jesus says is if you approach your faith journey as a garment to be patched together just by piecemeal, what will happen when you do that is it's like taking an old fabric and trying to patch it with a new piece of fabric.

The old fabric has gone through a process. The old fabric has been washed and recycled and shrunk and exposed to the elements and it has gone through a process of changing. Now, if you take a piece of new cloth and you try to cut a piece out of that and you patch the old with the new, the moment you wash this,

the new will shrink but the old will stay the same. What will happen is you will unintentionally just make the whole worse. You will create a bigger whole than what was already there and in the process of trying to patch your life, you will end up just destroying both piece of fabric.

What he's saying is that you and I cannot piecemeal our faith. We don't get to just take the parts and pieces that we like from here and there and try to patchwork our life back together. He says, you just have to get rid of the old fabric.

You have to completely get rid of the old thing and give birth to the new thing. And again, remember who he's speaking to. He's speaking to religious leaders that are looking for the Messiah, that are looking for the savior to come, that are hoping to have this savior come and just slightly patch together

what they already have. They know it's not perfect, but they think it's pretty good. And then he gives the final part of the parable that is where the money is. He says put no, he said and no one puts new wine into old wine skins. For the new wine would burst the wine skins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins.

New wine must be stored in new wine skins.

Here's how he concludes the story.

He says, you can't put new wine into old wine skins. Okay? And I know in our context, unless you're like a wino or something, like you don't, we don't have any context for what he's saying. But in this culture, water wasn't readily available because of all of the issues with bacteria. And so what they would all carry around with them was wine. Because in the fermenting process, it would actually clean out the bacteria. It was safer for them to drink wine instead of water. And some of you are too excited about that, k? So

what they would do, is they would obviously take grapes and there's a process to make wine, you'd have to crush the grapes, you would go through a process with the grapes and then when you had it into a liquid, you would take that and you would mix it with a bunch of other stuff and you pour it into a container, but they didn't have bottles, okay? They didn't have Tupperware that they could put their stuff in. And so what they would use is they would use wine skins. They would literally take an animal, they would skin it, and they would stitch it together to make it a sack to be able to hold wine. But it was really important when you were pouring new wine that you would use in a brand new wineskin because the new wineskin, the new animal would still be pliable and flexible and bendable

and be able to be adapted because in the fermenting process, wine would expand and contract. And if you put it into an old wineskin, the old wineskin wouldn't contract the way that the new one would and it would essentially just crack and it would spill the wine everywhere and it would completely waste

the new wine and it would damage the wine skin in the process. And so the question is is why the heck is Jesus using this illustration? Okay. Well, if you remember, need your help. This is where you can talk in church. What was the first miracle Jesus ever did? First miracle he ever did? Turn

water into wine, okay? That throws the Baptists for a whole tailspin because they're like, we can't drink alcohol, but it's like, but he turned water into wine, first miracle. And what did the guys at the table, what did they say about the wine when they drank the wine? Do you remember? It was the best wine.

The part that shocked everybody about the story of Jesus turning the water into the wine is he took the water basins that the the servants were cleaning themselves in and at the party, they run out of wine and so Jesus goes, man, give me the barrels

of water and he turns it into not like $2 Chuck, but he turns it into like the best wine. And the guy running the party goes, man, everybody knows that once people have been drinking all night, you can just serve them whatever and they'll never know the difference. But this guy has served the best wine. He saved the best

for the end. Jesus was not just doing a party favor. Okay? It's not like, you're at a party and you run out of booze, make sure you have Jesus because he'll make the party keep going. Like that's that's part of what Jesus was doing but

the majority of what Jesus was doing in that scene is he was foreshadowing what he was going to teach in Luke chapter five. Because he's saying that you don't put new wine into old wineskins, k? Jesus was illustrating at the the the miracle that he does at the wedding that he himself,

Jesus is the new wine. He's the new wine that's coming that's better than the old. K? There is this old wine but he's the new wine and it's this, it's essentially a covenant that he's talking about. He's saying that the covenant that you've lived under, the old testament, the law, the rules that you have tried to use to be holy enough and to be good enough. They have gotten us this far,

but old wine will not carry us into the new and so I have to set a new covenant and a new standard and you and I are all here sitting today under the new covenant that is called grace. We are the recipients of the new wine that he started

that's called grace and it is good news because we don't have to jump through the hoops. It's why I'm allowed to be up here with tattoos and you're allowed to sit there and shave your face because the law has been fulfilled by Jesus. The standard for us now is grace.

So the question that we have to ask is man, why? Why don't we as people run towards this new wine? Why don't we embrace this new wine? Why don't we just go right after and go, Jesus, we want this. Pour your new wine into us. Use us because in this story, we are both individually and collectively as the church. We are the wineskins.

And he's telling the church, he's telling the leaders of the church where he's going to pour himself into. He's gonna pour himself into new wineskins. And the question that you and I have to ask is why do we reject it?

Why do we run from the thing that we know is better? And if you read all four gospel accounts, this parable, Jesus tells this exact story in three of the four of them. It's recorded in three of the four accounts, but only the gospel of Luke records the last verse.

And the last verse gives you and I, I think, the keys to why we run from this. Look at verse 39.

He says, here's gonna be the problem of why you run from new wine. Because no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. The old is just fine. That's what they'll say. You know the hardest part for me as a pastor,

is understanding that the greatest obstacle to you experiencing the greatness that God wants to do in your life, is you letting go of what you have that's just fine. It's not terrible, it's just good enough.

I have so many conversations with these girls that are in my young adult ministry and I look at these guys that they're spending time with and who they're hanging out with and I'm like, you met on Tinder, I don't think he's a Christian, he doesn't have a job, he literally can't pay for anything,

but you're like, I think he's the one and I'm like, I don't even think he's saved, like, this is a bad deal and if he wasn't sitting there and I asked the question, why? Why are you holding so tightly onto this thing that you know you would tell any of your friends to let go of? Why are you holding onto it?

I know that they would say because I'm scared of what's on the other side if I let go of just good enough. I'm scared of what I won't have if I let go of what I do have. And I know it's not incredible. I know it's not God's best but it's just, it's pretty good.

And I'm telling you right now, the greatest obstacle to you and I truly experiencing the life that God has for us is learning to let go of what is in our life that's just okay. That's just good enough. Most Christians, I think, living in America today,

live with a lot of things in their life that are just good enough. They're not terrible, they're not horrible, but they're not God's best. They're just good enough and there's this thing. I think what Jesus was trying to get them to understand is there's this thing that is in us as humans that we just don't like change.

We don't like change just because it's different. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad, it's just different and we don't like it.

There's something in us that just has this massive aversion to change. We just go, I'll just stick to what I know. I'll just stick to what I've always done and and I'll prove it to you. There's there's so many examples that I could show you of how

much we hate change but I think the best one to illustrate the point happened in 1985. Okay, some of you in this room, raise your hand if you know what New Coke is. New Coke, raise your hand. Okay, you're officially old, but it's okay. I got a picture for the rest of us. Okay?

I'm gonna show you. Some of you are like, what the heck is this, okay. I didn't know anything about it until a couple days ago. But in 1985,

Coca Cola was the dominant drink company on the face of the planet. They were just crushing it. But they started to lose some market share to Pepsi and they started to become afraid that if didn't they iterate and come up with something different, that eventually they would be surpassed and just kind of rest on their laurels and get beaten by Pepsi. And so in 1985, did something completely unprecedented.

They hired a bunch of people to come in and reformulate the original Coke formula. And they released to these sample markets a thing that was called New Coke. They literally changed the formula of Coca Cola and they called it New Coke and they had 250,000 blind taste tests done and overwhelmingly

people chose New Coke over Old Coke. Overwhelmingly the data supported New Coke being superior and better than Old Coke. So in 1985, they went to market and they said, hey, we're gonna introduce new Coke and it has gone down. It's why the majority of you in this room have never even heard about it because

it lasted on the market seventy four days. People freaked out when they released Coke. I I have some of the things that people said. It's it's incredible what people responded and said. One guy said that it was releasing new Coke is like spitting on the American flag. One guy said,

at first I was numb and then I was shocked and then I started to scream and run up and down. One guy said, changing the formula of Coke is like God making the grass purple.

One one lady said that the only thing that matters in my life is God and Coca Cola. You just took away Coca Cola from me. And then this other guy said, what's next? Are they gonna be chiseling Teddy Teddy Roosevelt off the side of Mount Rushmore next week?

Literally, they released new Coke onto the market and pandemonium broke out. Maybe you're part of the chaos of the people that drove and started to stockpile all of the old Coke in their garage. People spent thousands of dollars buying up the old supply of Coke. Why? Because they were so afraid of the new.

Lasted 74 days on the market, don't miss this. Seventy four days on the market after releasing a better product than what they had before. Overwhelmingly, the data supported that this was superior than the old.

And company after company has done research to study what happened with New Coke to understand how it failed so epically and what pretty much all of them have come to the same conclusion of, is the reason that New Coke failed to penetrate the market wasn't because it was a bad product. It was because they underestimated

people's aversion to change. And the very name was New. And because it was new, people just didn't want to do it. I only bring that up to illustrate the same thing that Jesus was trying to teach the Pharisees two thousand years ago. You will have a propensity to just settle into what you've always done.

You will fall into routines and rituals and you have to understand you serve a God that is doing a new thing. Go read the Old Testament, all of the prophets that are prophesying about the coming Messiah, they say, look, I see him coming and he's doing a new thing.

John in the book of Revelation says when he sees heaven coming down, he sees God and he's doing, he's bringing a new thing. Constantly, the old and the future all talk about the new thing that God wants to do in your and I's life. And so here's what it tells me.

You and I will have to fight this tendency that we have to allow God in certain parts of our life and to hold back certain parts of our heart because we're afraid of what the change means. God wants to do something new in your life. If the last time you can remember God speaking to you was in 1985, maybe,

maybe, just maybe, you're holding onto some things that you need to begin to let go of. You need to begin to change some things. You know the thing that I know as a pastor at Rock Point Church is we are only a couple decisions away from you leaving the church because what we're doing is different than what you like.

You know when stringed instruments started getting introduced to church, people freaked out. At one point, people freaked out over the organ. Like the organ was something that people Like at what point was the organ ever like not awesome. Right? Like the

But the thing is is we just do what we've always done and that's what we like. But we have to understand,

if we think we can just follow Jesus partially, we'll end up missing him completely. And I don't know what it is for you in your life. I don't know where it is that you've just settled into allowing this to be enough in your faith,

But the thing that I know about God is he's gonna be relentless in coming after the areas of your heart that you're trying to protect. The things that you're trying to hold onto.

And I'm telling you, I remember when I hit a spot where God was pressing me, And I'm bringing this up not because I want to talk to you about money, but because one of the easiest ways that I can illustrate is when I hit a spot where God was saying, Daniel, well you've trusted me with your life. You've trusted me with your eternity.

Will you trust me with your money, will you trust that I will provide for you? And he started to hound me to start to give to God.

And I was like, I'm not doing it. I was on staff at a church, I wasn't a pastor but I said, I'm not doing it. I had all of these theological explanations about grace and the old testament and how I don't have to anymore.

But I'm telling you, the moment I said no to what I knew God was asking me to do, the new revelation from God stopped. For six months, I'm not kidding you, every sermon I heard,

every podcast I listened to, every worship song I sung, the application point for me always, every time, Old Testament, New Testament, some dude praying in tongues, it was always Daniel will you trust me with your money?

And I would sit in my quiet time and say, pray, God, give me revelation, show me something new. I want you to speak to me. God, I'm here and I'm open. And he's like, just trust me with your money. And I was like, no, let's not talk about that. Let's do this thing. Like, I can't give to you like that would just mean that I would have less and I'm already broken. I'm a young dad and a young husband

and I don't know if I can provide like, we're not going there, God. Let's stay here bro, like stick to the plan. And for six months, God was relentless to me. And I hit this crossroads that I think a lot of us will come to at certain parts of our life where God was completely blowing up the box that I had built for him.

And I wanted him to fit in his box, but he was not fitting in it. And I had to do one of two things. I had to begin to say yes to do what I knew he was asking me to do, or I had to throw God out.

So many people walk away from God because they're scared of saying yes to what they know He's asking them to do. What He was trying to say in Luke five, what He did at the miracle at the wedding, is He was trying to convince you and I to understand He's better.

On the other side of change is not bad, it's good. He has good things for you, but you will settle for just fine. I will settle for just okay when what he wants for us is greatness.

And I don't know where it is in your life. I don't know where it is in your hearts, in your family, in your job that you have just settled into being comfortable and you've allowed God to go into certain places but you've refused to let them to go into others.

And I'm telling you right now, I would venture to say that if I asked you right now, what was the one thing you know God is asking you to do? What is the one thing you know God is, maybe for you, it's for you to stop doing something? What is that one thing? I don't think we have to pray about it. I think most of us right now would know what it is off the top of our heads.

So the question that I have for you is, are you willing to actually trust God to be willing to change the thing that you know he's asking you to do. Because if not, he said it very clearly, he's not going to pour new wine into our old wineskins.

We have to become willing to be new wineskins so that we can be who God has called us to be. Jesus, I thank you for every single person here. God, I thank you that you are so patient with us.

That God, even even I I I brought up the scenario of trusting you with my money, God, but there's been so many other areas of my life that you've just pursued me in. And you've asked me to turn them over to you and to trust you with them.

And God, I thank you that I I've begun to understand that this life will be a perpetual process of turning over parts of our heart to you. It's not until we get to heaven that I think we'll fully arrive here.

But God, would you give every person in this room just the the boldness and the courage to just admit where they are. To just admit that they've been following you with parts of their hearts guarded and hidden from you.

And God, funny part is we think you don't see it. We think we do a good job of hiding it and keeping it away from you. But father, you see it all, you know it all. And the reason you are relentless in trying to get us to turn it over to you is because you know that what we always settle for is just okay.

Father, we have been called to live lives that are abundant and exceedingly better than anything that we could hope or imagine. So Father, would you show us the places in our life that we need to allow you to have control of. We trust you, Jesus.

Let us walk out of here today different than we came in here. We love you. It's in your mighty name that everybody said, amen and amen.