New Wine in New Wine Skins

There were a number of parables that Jesus, not numbers, some parables that Jesus explained the meaning like the parable of the sower where he explained what exactly it meant but many parables he never explained the meaning because he wanted us to exercise our hearts and minds and understand what the Holy Spirit is trying to say through that So, here is one of those parables Luke 5.37 No one puts new wine into old wineskins Otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out and the skins will be ruined But new wine must be put into new wineskins And no one after drinking old wine wishes for new For he says the old is good enough Now, I am sure we have read this parable many times And I wonder if we have given thought to understand what exactly does it mean Because our

respect for the Lord Jesus is shown by, one way we show it is by taking everything he says seriously and trying to understand what he meant in what he said When people don't try to understand what Jesus said It indicates a disrespectful attitude towards Christ So, I believe we should try and understand everything that Jesus said by comparing scripture with scripture to try and understand what he meant So, let me share with you what I think is the meaning of this passage The new wine is the life of Jesus which is different from the old wine Which is the law It's a comparison of the old covenant with the new covenant And it's completely different, the new covenant from the old covenant And he says here that most people would say verse 39 That the old is good enough Because the life under

the law did not require any inward purity It only required an external life And the Lord never, the old testament law, even though there was one commandment referred to the inner life The last commandment, God knew that nobody could keep it So, whenever the old testament people spoke like Paul said, I have kept the law All of them were only referring to 9 commandments There was not a single human being in Israel who could keep the 10th commandment The 10th commandment was you shall not desire anything that belongs to your neighbors Wife, daughter, house, property, servant, anything It was the only commandment that referred to an inner life And God put it there in order to test how many people would be honest to acknowledge I can keep 9 commandments but I cannot keep the 10th And if

anybody was honest about that, God would lead them to show them how they could keep that 10th commandment But Jesus said here, and those are the only people who go to the new covenant It's almost like the way to move from the old covenant to the new covenant Is when you acknowledge that you cannot keep the 10th commandment And you really long to keep it See, there are many people who will acknowledge they cannot keep it But they do not have any longing to keep it It's almost as though they think that God is not serious about what he says In many things, you know, God is testing us to see whether we fear him or not And the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom So, in many situations, the test God is testing man in is does he fear me or not The very first time that God gave a man a

certificate saying, now I know that you fear me Is in Genesis 22 And the Lord told Abraham when he offered up Isaac on the altar Now I know that you fear God Genesis 22 verse 12 Abraham was going to kill Isaac and God said no, don't do it I just wanted to test you Now I know that you fear God Why did God say that?

In Abraham's life many times God would speak to him at night It's almost as though he would wake him up Once he said go and look at the stars And that's how we know it was night time when he spoke to him And here also it was night because it says Abraham awaked as soon as he got up in the morning So Genesis 22 God spoke to him Can you picture this in your mind?

Here is a tent and in that tent Abraham and Sarah are sleeping in a bed there And in the middle of the night Abraham sort of wakes up And he hears God saying something to him which nobody else can hear Sarah can't hear it, nobody else hears it And God says to him take your son and go to the land of Moriah And offer him as a burnt offering When he got up in the morning he need not have done it And if he had disobeyed God nobody would have known that he was disobedient Sarah would not have known, none of his servants would have known Because nobody else had heard what God said to him He was the only one who knew what God said to him And that is how God tested whether he feared him or not Will you obey me when nobody but you know what I told you to do That's the way God tests you and me

today You know you can sit in a meeting like this or in any meeting where God is really speaking And God may say something to you which the person sitting next to you hasn't heard Just like Abraham and Sarah But it's a very clear word that God spoke to you to do something And you can get up and go away from that meeting and never do it And not a soul will know that you are a disobedient person Except God and you But in that moment he has tested you already Whether you fear him or not And it's when Abraham, it says he rose up early in the morning He didn't even have to think about it He didn't consult Sarah And God tells you something clearly you don't have to consult any human being Paul says that in Galatians I did not consult flesh and blood when God told me something Those are the

people whom God really leads on into his highest purpose It's possible for a Christian to miss God's highest purpose for his life He can come short It's something like if there are twelve standards or classes in a school To finish high school you got to go through the twelfth grade or standard It's possible for a child to drop out earlier It's sort of minimum education Yeah, I've learnt to read and write I know a little bit of addition and multiplication, that's enough Yeah, with that much knowledge you can get through a lot of things on this earth But then there are others who have a passion to go all the way beyond even school, college, etc The Christian life also is something like that You can drop out with a minimum sort of, yeah this is all God wants me to do I really believe as I've

observed Christians in many places For many Christians their whole attitude towards Christ is and heaven is What is the minimum I have to do in order to get to heaven Or if they are part of a local church Their question is what is the minimum I have to do to keep a good testimony in the local church That I don't get thrown out of the church I'm accepted What is the minimum I have to do to maintain a good testimony before others Well, you shouldn't get drunk You shouldn't fool around with the opposite sex You mustn't be caught cheating To have a good testimony before men You don't have to have a good thought life, not at all You can have the filthiest thought life in the world And have a very good testimony in a church So if our attitude is what is the minimum I have to do to maintain a

good testimony before men I will say what's written in the last verse of Luke 5 The old wine is good enough Because the law was relating to our external life The old wine is good enough, I don't need a new wine Because a new wine is referring to inner purity Why do I need inner purity to get a good testimony before men My acceptance and the opinion of men about me will not improve one bit Not even one bit By my keeping my inner life pure It will be exactly the same If people have a certain estimate of me And from that day onwards for the next one year I diligently keep my inner life pure Next year their opinion of me is the same Because they only look at my external life God's opinion of me may shoot up So it's only a person who is really concerned about God's opinion Who is going to

really seek for purity in his inner life Who is going to keep that 10th commandment Who will say the old wine is not good enough I want the new wine I want the life of Jesus in me Where my thoughts, my attitudes and my motives Are more important than my words and my actions So this is something which each of us can examine ourselves and see Can you honestly say before God That you are more careful about your thoughts Your attitudes and your motives Than you are about your words and your actions Then you are a person who is saying The old wine is not good enough I want the new wine But a person who is more concerned about their words and actions And not so concerned about their thoughts, attitudes and motives Is actually saying the old wine is good enough Or let's look at it another way

See the Bible says that when Christ comes again What is he going to judge?

We are told very clearly I say this is the one examination where we have been given the question paper in advance You know in advance all the questions that are coming How easy it is to pass this exam because we already know what questions are coming 1 Corinthians 4 verse 5 It speaks of the final examination when we stand before the Lord And what is he going to examine? Don't go on passing judgement before the time This is a word especially for those who have a tremendous desire To pass judgement on others Are you one of those who has got a constant itch to judge other people?

A lot of believers like that Tremendous itch to judge others Well here is a verse for you There is a time when you will be permitted to satisfy that itch as much as you like To judge others And that is when the Lord comes Because it is only when he comes that you will really see what that person is like So if you want to judge him accurately Just hang on, you can do it But don't do it right now Just wait till he comes Because when the Lord comes there are two things he is going to expose Which you can't see right now Then only you will be able to judge him correctly Right now all of us Even if you know somebody very intimately You know only 10% of his life or less than that I don't think even your wife knows more than 10% of your life Or your husband Even if you are married 50 years Your wife can't read your thoughts Your husband can't read what is going on in your mind That is an area of total privacy Where only God and you know what is going on So nobody can really judge you I mean if a teacher is evaluating an answer sheet that a student has written in an examination And she just corrects the first question The first answer Out of 10 questions she just checks the first answer and gives marks That would be totally unrighteous Even if the first question is wrong And the other 9 may be right Or the first one may be right and the other 9 may be wrong Which teacher would give marks for an examination paper after Checking out the answer only to the first question Nobody But a lot of Christians do that You understand what I mean They see 10% of a person's life and they pass the judgment 90% they don't even know So what the Lord is saying is here just hang on Don't be in a hurry One day I will show you the entire person 90% Then you please form your assessment Whether how many marks you think you should get Wait until the Lord comes and what is he going to expose Two things One he is going to bring to light all the things hidden in the darkness In your life, in my life there are many things hidden in the darkness Most people here may have no idea how you live at home everyday The tone of your voice to your wife or your husband everyday at home Who knows?

Except your wife or your husband Most people may not know anything How you behave, how you conduct yourself And things hidden in darkness like Your financial dealings Whether you are straight forward, whether you are honest Whether you pay your taxes Who knows? It's all hidden in darkness How you relate to people at work I mean darkness is a huge area Darkness means not evil but which is not visible Many areas of our life are not visible to other people And our thoughts come in that area Thoughts is an area where nobody knows What you spend most of your time thinking about For myself I have made it a rule If I want to know what I am really interested in in life It's good for me to ask myself where do my thoughts go When they are not connected to essential work See for example if you are working in an office or somewhere You have to concentrate for 8 hours or more on your work That's unavoidable Or if you are a wife or a mother at home You have to concentrate for number of hours on cooking And maintaining the house, looking after the children Okay, that's all essential But once all that essential work is over Where do my thoughts go?

That is a pretty good indication of what you are really interested in Whether it's God or money or comfort or something earthly And that will show you at least for yourself Whether you are really spiritual or not For myself I have decided that's the way I am going to evaluate myself I mean I will be an absolutely stupid person if I evaluate myself by other people's opinion about me They don't even see 10% of my life And to think that I can understand a person's life by seeing 10% I have got to be really foolish So the Lord is going to reveal everything, all the things hidden in darkness I believe when it says here that the Lord will bring to light the things hidden in the darkness It's like God will press the rewind button in my memory And play the whole tape of my life back from the beginning For everybody to see I don't know whether you believe that I believe it with all my heart He will bring to light the things hidden in darkness You know that everything we did, everything we have done in our life Is stored in our memory Everything And those who have a good memory can recollect it But those who have got a bad memory can't recollect it But it is there Every single thing Memory is like a video camera It is constantly recording I mean we have noticed how Have you noticed how suddenly your conversation becomes a little more guarded When you know somebody is taking a video of you But it is everything, our whole life is being videoed by our memory And people who question the existence of God say How can God judge every human being that ever lived I mean right now there are 7 billion people I mean God knows every single thing that every one of these people Thought and spoke and did right from their birth And he is going to pull it all up I say no, he is just going to rewind the button in the memory And the tape starts and plays it all back He is going to call up each person and rewind the play And it is there And even those people who are dead It is all recorded I thought of that in relation to how nowadays they have These digital records of fantastic quantity of material Recorded digitally in such a small type of recording base It is easy for God to keep every record of everything Because if there is no record, there is no way of The Lord saying, 2nd Corinthians 5.10 says Everything we did whether good or bad is going to be judged And how can God bring the things hidden in the darkness to light The only things that will not be on that videotape Are those sins of ours which we confessed And repented of That will be wiped out So, many people may say, then it doesn't matter All those sections are going to be wiped out Which I have confessed But think of it, when you stand before the Lord and they play your videotape And there is huge blank sections of tape running around What is this guy doing all this time?

I don't want that either It is going to be quite embarrassing There is going to be huge blank sections of tape playing For many years of my life So, the first thing that God is going to reveal Is the things hidden in darkness And the second thing, it says here in verse 5 Is the motives of men's heart Motive is different from Motive is what gives value to an action As far as God is concerned It is not true on earth For example, you help a poor person Or you are a great philanthropist Helping a lot of poor people You get a lot of honor for it On earth, you do things like Mother Teresa did And you get a Nobel Peace Prize You get honor for helping the poor Or doing some type of service freely for others But God is going to see the motive behind it You know, a lot of believers like to get a reputation as a man of prayer Boy!

Woman of prayer I have detested it I have never in my life wanted it What is a man's opinion worth? Somebody thinks you are a man of prayer or woman of prayer There are three things Jesus said you must never seek To get honor for One is giving, it is all in Matthew 6 Praying and fasting Don't let anybody know how much you give Don't let anybody know how much you pray Don't let anybody know how much you fast Now, if people accidentally discover it If you fast for example, people in your home will definitely know about it The question is not whether they know The question is, do you do it in order for people to know That's the question Many things, you may give and people may know about it You may pray and people may know about it But so long as you are not doing it in order for their honor You are okay If people discover it, it is okay But the point is, in all those things that Jesus said in Matthew 6 Giving, praying, fasting He said the motive is more important than the action That if you pray in order to be seen by men, it has no value before God If you give in order to be seen by men, you have no value before God If you fast and you want other people to know about it, it has no value before God No value means what?

But men give you such tremendous honor If they know that you are a person who prays for two hours every day Can you imagine the honor you will get from your fellow believers? Or if they know that you are a person who fasts twice a week or something like that The Pharisees were like that, what honor you can get Or that you give so much for God, what honor you get But people who do that may discover in the final day when they stand before the Lord, there is zero Because the motive is what God sees So a lot of, see for example the Bible says Be careful how you build You can build with wood, hay and straw Or gold, silver and precious stones What is the thing that makes a difference between Because the fire will test everything The wood, hay and straw will be burnt up and the gold, silver and precious stones will remain What is it that makes a difference?

Motive Two people do exactly the same thing Let's say prayer, giving, praying, fasting Let's take just those three areas People do exactly the same outside And in the day of judgment, this guy is all wood, hay and straw And that guy is all gold, silver and precious stones Even though they did exactly the same thing Same amount of time or money or anything Motive made a world of difference The fire tested the motive And one fellow's motive was all to get honor or something like that The other fellow wanted only praise from God The same thing applies in everything, you know You could apply it to preaching There are a lot of preachers in the world and a lot of good preachers Men evaluate according to how good a person, how good a preacher he is But God is going to evaluate why did he preach like that A lot of people preach for money Many others preach for honor Or could be some bad motive like that Or to show people that I am better than that guy I mean people can even pray in a meeting to show I can pray better than somebody else A lot of public prayer Motive is wrong You ask yourself whenever you pray in public If you are not more conscious about people than of God I know for years and years and years I had to battle this Every time I prayed in public I was more conscious of people listening to me than almighty God I used to go home to my house and say Lord I am sorry I did not pray that prayer to you I prayed to impress people And I worked on it and worked on it and I battled it and battled it and worked on it Till the day came when I could pray in public And it did not matter to me whether people were there or not I was praying to God But you have to battle to get there If you are content like everybody is Yeah I went through a formal prayer And you go home and you do not judge yourself You are going to be the same rotten person all through your life The Bible says we have to cleanse ourselves 2nd Corinthians 7 verse 1 From filthiness of the flesh and spirit Filthiness of the flesh is easy You know things that are corrupt But filthiness of the spirit is motive And we know it If you are honest it will come up So this is the difference between old wine and new wine Old covenant and new covenant The new covenant has all got to do with the inner life Do you know that Jesus gave a certificate to the Pharisees?

Two certificates, good certificates that Jesus gave to the Pharisees With all their bad things There were two areas where they were good Do you know what they were? It is in Matthew 23 And this is a certificate given by Jesus himself In Matthew 23 he said In verse 2 and 3 Matthew 23 verse 2 and 3 Jesus said to the disciples The Pharisees are sitting in the chair of Moses Whatever they say to you to do, do Imagine if Jesus were to give a saying That particular group of Christians Whatever they teach you can do Now there are lot of Christian groups today Who call themselves Christian Jesus will not give that certificate Concerning them because they have got some wrong doctrines And he will not say everything they tell you to do, do Because they are not teaching everything according to the New Testament But in the case of the Pharisees he said Everything they tell you to do, do Which means his first certificate was Their doctrines are absolutely correct From first to last That's a great certificate I'd like to get it Another thing he said about them In Matthew 23 and verse 25 He said, what do you scribes and Pharisees You clean the outside of the cup Their external life was good I'd like to get that certificate too That my external life is good Is your external life good?

Is your speech clean? Is your external life good? Is your handling of money? Dealing with people? External life, is it good? Is the outside of the cup clean? Great But they were not accepted before God because of that But it's interesting that they had two good certificates Your doctrine is correct, your external life is good The trouble is you guys are satisfied with that And therefore Verse 33, how will you escape the sentence of hell?

You can have your doctrine correct Your external life correct and still go to hell Most Christians don't know that And most preachers don't tell Christians that And that's why the blood of those people is on the hands of those preachers But that's what Jesus said There's no partiality with God What he told the Pharisees, he'll tell you Your doctrine is right, your external life is right You'll still go to hell Because what God is testing in us Is not our doctrine What God is testing in us is not our external life I know a lot of Hindus And atheists I met in India Whose external life is Fantastically good, much better than the external life of many so called Christians I've heard it said that about Buddha The founder of Buddhism 3000 years ago, I mean he lived hundreds of years before

Christ That you know he left the palace where he was living and went into the jungles in order to attain what he called enlightenment And he sat there for many years And finally, what he was I think practicing was some type of self control What Hindus call yoga Control of one's passions and all that So the story goes that somebody came to him in the jungles where he was and really irritated him And he said You can't make me angry now Sorry You could have made me angry 10 years ago but not today That guy had conquered anger By self control There's a brother in our church who came from Hinduism I remember his saying once I conquered anger before I became a Christian With yoga But it wasn't a deliverance from anger in the heart No Yoga and Buddhism doesn't deliver you from anger in the heart

Yoga and Buddhism teaches you to keep your mouth shut With determination No matter how much your wife or husband provokes you You grit your teeth and you keep your mouth shut You are not free from anger But you got a good testament I remember one saying in our church I said dear brothers Supposing one day your wife really loses her temper And yells at you at home And you are very quiet You don't open your mouth And inwardly you just think Lord I thank you I am not like this woman I have control over my tongue Isn't that exactly what Jesus said about the Pharisee Lord I thank you I am not like this publican And she may feel bad about it A half an hour later And really repent and ask God to forgive her And ask you to forgive her also But you May never get light on the fact that you are a

Pharisee And you may think you are better than her Actually she is better than you Because the publican recognized he was a sinner Pharisee didn't recognize The only person who really long for the new wine Is the man who says the righteousness of the law It's not good enough God did not give us the ten commandments To make us holy There are Christians who think that No You will never be holy By keeping the commandments You will get a testimony before men But many people don't have light on it The apostle Paul he was more zealous than all of us And he didn't have light on it till one day God hit him with light from heaven His eyes were opened It took me 16 years after I was born again To understand what the new covenant was all about I didn't know that there was something far better That

God had for me Than just an external life But till then I was like those people People who said the old is better And I think if you examine your heart You will find that in your heart That statement the old is good enough Is there Why should I worry too much about my inner life and motives and all that You know the first time the phrase fear of God Now I showed you the first time God gave a certificate to a man That you fear me In fact Let me point out another thing before I come to what I am saying The first book written in the Bible Was not Genesis I don't know whether you know that The first book written in the Bible was the book of Job Because Genesis was written by Moses Only 1500 years before Christ But Job lived long before all that He probably lived even before Abraham Or around

that time And out of all the 66 books in the Bible There is only one book that has no connection with Abraham, Isaac or Jacob That's the book of Job And when you see all the little details of conversation that is written there It could not have been written even one year after it happened You can't remember things that happened one year ago It was written almost immediately So that was definitely the first book of the Bible that God wrote I mean it's put in the middle of our Bibles because they put all the poetic books together Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes They put it in sections, historical books, poetic books The Bible has not been arranged according to the way it was written If the New Testament were written chronologically You would probably find one Corinthians written before

the Gospels But anyway, Job Now when we understand that when God wanted to write a book for the human race And he starts with the book of Job What is the first thing God wants to write to the human race?

The very first thing About a man who fears God Isn't that interesting? That's very challenging to me That when God wants to write a book for the human race The very first thing he says There was a man, Job 1-1 Who was upright, feared God, turned away from evil That shows what God really wanted in man And we also read in that book how such a man was misunderstood Misunderstood by his own wife Criticized by many preachers And man who suffered a lot In terms of children died, property lost God writes about such a man And it doesn't end like that, it's not the end of the story How God finally blessed him abundantly Gave him double of all that he had lost And at the end of the book of Job Made him a humble man That is the greatest accomplishment He was not a humble man when he began He was a God fearing man But a pretty proud God fearing man But at the end of the book of Job he becomes a humble God fearing man So the fear of God means a lot to God He gave a certificate to Abraham, he gave a certificate to Job And now I want to show you the first time In the Bible as we have it beginning of Genesis The phrase, the fear of God comes in the Bible That's also interesting to see And that's in Genesis chapter 20 Before Genesis 22 In Genesis 20 it says Abraham had gone to the land of Gerar Where the king, he was afraid that the king would kill him Because Sarah was a good looking woman And so he told his wife Please say you are my sister He is really very selfish of him He said it doesn't matter Sarah if you get taken into the king's harem My life will be saved at least Imagine allowing his wife to go into the king's harem Just to save his life But God protected Sarah from the king touching her And then the king, God gave him a dream and said This is this man's wife and you have taken her So next morning Abimelek called Abraham, Genesis 20 verse 9 What have you done?

Why did you do this? And Abraham says in verse 11 I thought there is no fear of God in this place That's the first time in the Bible the phrase the fear of God comes And it's very interesting That the very first time the phrase the fear of God comes Is in relation to sexual sin That's what Abraham was afraid of He is the king with his lust Will grab my wife Because he wants to have sexual sin with her In that connection he says there is no fear of God I meditated on that And I saw that it's sexual sin very often In the thought life That proves to God that a man doesn't fear him So I decided I am going to prove to God that I fear him in this area Do you prove that to God in your life?

By purity in that area? That is the number one area The first time the phrase the fear of God comes in the Bible I asked the Lord this question many years ago Lord why have you made sexual desire so strong That it's so difficult to control it Even for born again believers The answer I got was this It's through this temptation That I differentiate between those who fear me and those who don't fear me So God is drawing a line Those who are very careful in the hidden areas of darkness And in their thought life And those who are careless And say so long as I keep the ten commandments I don't commit physical adultery I don't divorce my wife I am alright And they don't realize that as far as God is concerned They are on the same side of the line As those who commit adultery And those who don't divorce their wives I mean don't you think most people who don't divorce their wives Think that they are better than those who have divorced their wives I think so God doesn't think so Don't you think a lot of people who don't fall into adultery Think they are better than those who have fallen into adultery God doesn't think so The line is drawn Between those who fear God and those who don't fear God And the fear of God is not tested By merely external sin Because the Pharisees kept themselves from external sin It's the inner life You shall not desire the tenth commandment Your neighbor's daughter, neighbor's wife or any You shall not desire what God has not told you to have What was the sin of Eve and Adam really?

Think of it Something that was very attractive Which God did not want them to have They grabbed it That is the sin When you find someone very attractive whom God has not given to you And you long for it That's the sin of Adam and Eve Same thing You shall not desire Money that God has not given to you A woman whom God has not given as your wife You can make a list of things The sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was that And the devil told them that is not serious If you grab what God has told you not to grab It's not serious Small thing That's exactly what the devil is telling multitudes of Christians today And that's why you find many Christians are not very much better than the Pharisees But they think they are Because they don't have light on the new covenant Most Christians are living under the old covenant They are living by the Ten Commandments They don't have a clue They don't realize that the Sermon on the Mount has replaced the Ten Commandments The Sermon on the Mount is what Jesus gave The Ten Commandments is what Moses gave Israel The Sermon on the Mount is what Jesus gave to Christians But how many people have light on that?

I have hardly met anybody Very few And yet at the end of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said if you listen to these words of mine And do them You'll be unshakable Your life will be unshakable, your home will be unshakable, your church will be unshakable Show me a church anywhere in the world That's preaching the Ten Commandments regularly every year after year I'll show you a church that cannot be shaken Show me a home where husband and wife are obeying the Ten Commandments day after day after day I'll show you a home that cannot be shaken Show me a believer who lives by the principles of the Sermon on the Mount I'll show you a life that can be unshakable That's what Jesus himself said The wise man, he does everything I say in the Sermon on the Mount His house never shakes, storm, flood, wind, anything He will not shake So, and everything in the Sermon on the Mount is an inner light Blessed are the poor in spirit Who knows?

You know whether you are poor in spirit or not Hunger and thirst for righteousness Those who are pure in heart Those who are merciful means, merciful means who forgive others Everything is inward You know, you're angry in your heart or lust in your heart Seeking honour by praying, fasting, giving Love of money he speaks in Matthew 6, 24 Everything is inward Judging others, it's an inward thing We can say the whole Sermon on the Mount Be not anxious is inward The whole Sermon on the Mount from beginning to end Is talking about the inner life, the new wine And most people read it and say, no, we don't need that The old Ten Commandments is over Actually, they are like Israelites It's almost as if Jesus never came It's almost as if the Holy Spirit never came As if there is no new covenant Do you know the number of Christians who live like that?

The old is good enough But Jesus said there is a new wine Okay, I want to say a little bit about the new wineskin This is even more difficult The new wineskin You see, in the olden days, they didn't put wine in bottles Glass was not invented There was no glass, no plastic in those days So, they used to put wine in the skin of a cow Leather, skins And skin has the ability to stretch Because when the wine ferments, it must stretch So, once it is already stretched You know, skin can't stretch beyond a certain extent So, once it is already stretched, now if you pour wine into it When the wine stretches, it is going to burst the skin And the wine will be spelt So, Jesus said, if you got new wine, you must get a new wineskin And put it into that The meaning of that was, this old system that you got from Moses Was okay for the old wine For the new wine, the life of Jesus, you need a completely new system Which is different from that And that's why Jesus established what he called the church Which is very different from an Old Testament congregation Moses had a congregation, he built a congregation Today's mega churches are congregations Jesus built a church The difference between a congregation and a church is A congregation is like a group of people sitting in a cinema theater No connection between them, it could be 30,000 or 30 Just because it is a small group Say in a house church, 20 people Doesn't mean it is necessarily a church Could be a congregation there too The point is not the size, it could be 20 or 30,000 Are they linked to each other Like a body You know these fingers are linked to the rest of my body That's a church Otherwise it is a congregation The Bible also pictures the church like a building So in India we build with bricks All houses are built with bricks, no wood And the way they build it is A truck will bring say 10,000, 50,000 bricks And dump it on the side of the road And then the mason takes the bricks and the cement and builds the house Now 50,000 bricks is not a house You can't live inside 50,000 bricks It's when the bricks are built into a house That it becomes a house Otherwise it is not a house, it is just a pile of bricks That's the difference between a congregation and a church A congregation is a pile of 50,000 bricks A church is those 50,000 bricks cemented together and made into a place you can live And the danger of If you keep 50,000 bricks on the road in India Every day it will become less And after a few weeks there will be nothing left there There are many people who want to build their own house somewhere Who will conveniently walk by and pick up This is the danger of being in a congregation You can get lost, the devil just picks you up one by one You know people talk about somebody has stolen my sheep from my church How did they steal it?

I never say somebody came to my house and stole one brick from inside one wall How can they steal one brick from inside a wall? I said that means yours was not a church, say that first of all It was a pile of bricks, you kept it like a pile of bricks Don't blame mothers if they took it off and walked off with it I have never complained in my life Many of our churches that somebody stole a brick from our church It cannot happen I mean when constructing a house we throw some rotten bricks away Somebody might pick up and go, I say let them go, take it, we are not interested in that But many people haven't understood the difference between a congregation and a church What it means to be built together You see they like a little independence And these bricks are all lying loose by themselves, they are a little independent But to have in a wall, to have one brick on top of you, one brick this side, one brick that side, one brick underneath You sort of get a bit restricted But that's the place of safety The devil can't pick you out from there That's a body I don't want to be part of a congregation I want to be part of a church The body of Christ that Jesus is building, that's a new wineskin Jesus said this new wine must be put into a new wineskin Just like many people say the old is better When it comes to wineskin also they say the old is better What were some of the characteristics of the old?

The old was, the most important thing about the old testament system was the temple What a fantastic temple Solomon built And people who live in that spirit They want to build churches that are very, church buildings that are very impressive And they have dedication of this fantastic building Look at the design and the architecture and the steeple and this and that and the other You know that these things mean nothing to God And a person who glories in what a fantastic building our church building is The guy is living in the old testament And in the old testament system there was one man, high priest Who did all the religious work and the other people did all the secular work That's how it is in old testament congregation today also One pastor who does all the religious work All the other secular fellows, they give their money to support the pastor That's how it was in the old testament They gave money and supported the Levites What's the difference?

We call them by different names but it's the same old system And Jesus found it so difficult to get people out of their traditions They were rooted in their traditions They couldn't get out of it Jesus said new wine has to be put in new wineskins And in the new wineskins you find it so different When we studied the acts of the apostles we discovered That the apostles never in one case appointed a pastor in any church Have you noticed that? Acts 14 it says they appointed elders Why is it Christians don't follow that?

Because they say the old is good enough There is a high priest there, he does all the religious work So today we won't call him a high priest, we'll call him a pastor He was supported by the tithes of others We'll support our pastors with the tithes of the people We'll just change the name, it's the same old system So I find that in many many cases People are taken up with that old system Because it's sort of convenient in many ways You have a whole lot of people in the congregation Who don't have to bother about studying the bible or sharing the word Just come there and say Amen and pay your money and go It's exactly how it was in the Old Testament There was no direct connection with God There was no need to be exercised Let me give you one example of how a New Testament church meeting is 1 Corinthians chapter 14 Paul says, this is the Holy Spirit Here is a picture of a new wineskin So brethren, what is the outcome?

Verse 23, 1 Corinthians 14 The whole church is assembled together It's talking about a situation, a church meeting And what is the outcome? When you assemble, verse 26 Everyone who comes, not just one pastor Everyone who comes has got something to offer Somebody brings a psalm, somebody brings a teaching Somebody brings a revelation, somebody speaks in a tongue Somebody gives an interpretation It's like, supposing we have what's called a potluck dinner That means everybody brings whatever they have And then we share together It's not just one master cook cooking every Sunday for people Here somebody may speak in a tongue, somebody may interpret Two or three prophets, verse 29 speak And verse one by one, verse 31, you can all prophesy And what is the result?

Verse 24, when all prophesy An unbeliever, an ungifted man enters The secrets of his heart, 25, are disclosed And he falls on his face and says, God is here Many years I sought God and said, what is the mark of a New Testament church? I sought, sought, sought the New Testament And I'll tell you the conclusion I came to 1 Corinthians 14, 25 The mark of a New Testament church is that the word of God is so powerful Whether they meet in a home or a building or in the rocks or in a garden or anywhere, it doesn't matter The word shared is so powerful That the secrets of people's hearts get exposed They get light on themselves, they get light on where they are disobeying God And if you sat in a meeting and God spoke to you and showed you where you are disobeying Him That's a New Testament meeting And at the end of it you say, boy, God was there, He spoke to me And that's how every meeting of ours should be That's a New Testament church And imagine a church where different brothers are growing up to maturity That the time comes when it's not just one person It's different people are sharing the word And they are building one another up And all men know they are disciples Not because they have one great preacher there, but because they love one another They care for one another One member suffers, they all suffer together They are here to help one another, care for one another And they are joined together I remember when we started meeting in our home 35 years ago We were just 3 or 4 families We had some people who before they came to join us They wanted to know, do you have a marriage license to conduct marriages?

Do you have a cemetery where people can be buried? I said no, we don't have all that I mean if your main purpose of joining a church is to get married and get buried There are plenty of other churches, please go and join them We are building the body of Christ here, sorry You came to the wrong place You know like sometimes you go to the wrong address They tell you no, this is not the place So we had to tell many of them, this is not the place This is building the body of Christ Marriage and funeral and all, there are hundreds of other churches Please go there And I used to tell them about the story of the rich man and Lazarus Have you read the story of Jesus said about the rich man and Lazarus?

Poor Lazarus is sitting at the gate Have you noticed one difference? What happened when they both died? I don't mean that one went to heaven, another went to hell What happened on the earth? It says the rich man died and he was buried He had a grand funeral Where the bishop would have got up and said he was a good man The guy was already in hell watching what was going on in his funeral And it says Lazarus died No mention of funeral, who was going to conduct his funeral? The angels took his soul to heaven, but his body I don't know, maybe the city corporation took it and dumped it in some trash can or something That was his funeral What do we live for?

Is there something earthly that we want? People want to get honor even after they are dead They want a grand funeral I have often said I say Lord how many people came for your funeral? You were just hanging on a cross, they pulled you down Few people put you in a grave What do all people look for? God is testing us through so many circumstances To see what is in your heart To see whether you really want his best or not To see what is in your heart Whether you would look for his best or not So, I hope we will respond to what we have heard Let's pray Heavenly father we pray that you will apply the truths we have heard To our personal life and our daily walk with you We know you are coming as soon and we want to be ready We want to live for the things that are eternal Things that bring the approval of God and not the approval of men Help us each one, in Jesus name, Amen