New Wineskins: Embracing New Ways to Serve

Love covers a multitude of sin. Love is contagious. Love is disruptive. And if you've got evil in your midst, love is destructive. And so Jesus is sharing with them, we're doing a new thing here and we're talking about the love of God and we're talking about how you can receive relationship with God. We're doing an entirely new thing and you're trying to take this new thing that we're doing and you're trying to fit it into this old box and it's never gonna fit. It's never gonna fit into this old way of doing things. [00:35:08] (43 seconds)  #LoveTransforms

Jesus was answering their question about rituals and traditions and he did it in a way that they understood completely and maybe in the twentieth century did not understand. And so I needed to make sure that I backed up and looked at what he was actually saying and what was really going on there. And so I could give you a big long drawn out thing on it. I might anyway. But we're gonna skip the literature lesson, the grammatical lesson this morning. I just wanna put it this way. What Jesus was trying to tell them is that he was doing something different than what they understood, something new. And you couldn't carry the new thing in the old framework. [00:33:46] (44 seconds)  #OldBoxesDontFit

Now, if it's a new thing, then we'll try a new thing because here's here's the great thing. You have freedom to fail here. If you try something and it doesn't work, oh, well. I would rather fail at something important than I would to succeed at something worthless. I can I can succeed in sitting around doing nothing I am good at? But I'd rather fail trying to make something happen than I would to just sit around and be good sitting around. [01:05:34] (28 seconds)  #FailForward

But had bought some of the necessities and wrapped them up for the kids and then the church comes in with a PS four and it's like, hey, look what we got for you. We're awesome. It's gonna make us feel great if you just emasculated today. Because you don't wanna know the truth? There's not a kid in America that needs a Christmas present. I'm sorry. Sorry, kids. No kids need a Christmas present. You know who needs a Christmas present? Adults need to be able to give their kids Christmas presents. Because if you don't, it just tears you up. [00:59:46] (30 seconds)  #GiftsForGivers

That was needed in the life of the church. How silly and stupid would it be for us to try to do that again today? We don't need the calligraphy. We have other tools available to us to do that. And so if I try to teach the kids calligraphy one, some of them might enjoy it. But how would it help them to know Jesus? How would it help them to grow in their faith? You see, sometimes we've gotta learn to make changes about what we're doing. It's not about changing the gospel. It's about changing the delivery vehicle in which something comes to us. It's about developing new ways of taking the same thing to people. [00:45:21] (41 seconds)  #ChangeTheDelivery

They just saw somebody that they thought was an old guy that didn't need to be doing this. So we've gotta help him retire because when you get old, you're supposed to retire and get out of our way and go sit somewhere and be quiet. No. No one ever asked Richard what he wanted. I am sure he wanted the 900 and it might use it. But he wasn't looking to retire. Make sure that we're asking questions. If you're not sure what questions to ask, here's a question to ask of yourself. Does it hurt? Does it hurt? What what do doctors have to promise not to do? Do no harm. Right? [00:55:45] (46 seconds)  #AskDoNoHarm

I I don't know. I'm not that good of a fisherman, but I wonder if you are a fisherman, how many different kinds of line do you have? We're just talking about the line. We ain't even talking about the bait yet. The hook. We're not talking about all how many different poles you have. You've got a different setup for all kinds of things. Right? And you've got all sorts of whole tackle box filled with lures and all sorts of artificial bait because you understand that it's not about the delivery mechanism. It's about catching fish. [00:46:37] (33 seconds)  #FocusOnTheCatch

Now was Jesus doing something completely new? No. The heart of the father is the love for this world, and so he is carrying on that tradition. He is carrying that on, but he's sharing with them a new point of view on it. He's sharing with them something that they hadn't seen before, that they hadn't understood. In the Old Testament, we learned that sin is contagious, that sin is harmful, that sin is disruptive, that sin is destructive. This is what we learned in the Old Testament. What Jesus is coming is not to say any of that's wrong, all of that's right. Every bit of that is correct. Now let me tell you something new. [00:34:29] (38 seconds)  #TraditionAndNewView