Were people of habit. We like to do things the same way. We have our routines. We have our ruts as they are called, but there is a resistance to change. Its just part of our nature. Its how we are wired. There are also those who want to be agents of change and want to see change happen. So, they work against one another. Theres a tension there. I remember one of the funniest vacations we ever had was when we took a little trip to Door County. We went bike riding through Peninsula State Park. When we finished, we went to this little hamburger joint. We wanted to get something to eat. I remember that guy [who worked there] because it was so unique. I dont know if he was the owner or who he was, but he was fighting me on everything I ordered. I said, Id like the pork tenderloin, and I want to have ketchup, pickles, and onions please. He said, Ill put the works on there for you. I dont want the works. I just want it this way. He said, We serve it best with onions, mustard, mayonnaise, and lettuce. Im going to fix you up. I dont want to be fixed up. This is the way I want my sandwich. I would like to try some of your baked fries. Ive never had the baked fries before. I think Im going to try the baked fries. He goes, Ill get you some French fries. I said, I dont want French fries. I want to try something new. I want to try something different. He says, Those arent very good. Let me get you the real thing. I know what the real thing tastes like. I just had this healthy bike ride. I want to be healthy. Im going to try your baked fries. Ill get you the real thing. There was just this tension going on with him trying to impose change upon me and my resisting that change. All around our world, we have churches where theres that dynamic going, where there are those who say, Hey, Ive got this idea. Ive got this thing I think would be really cool. Leadership goes, Thats not the way we do things around here. Were just going to kind of keep it the same. They say, Over here, God is doing this wonderful thing. What do you think if we just do this wonderful thing? What do you think if we just do this and make this change? I dont think so. This is the way we do it here. Change happens. Jesus was an agent of change. One of the things He did is he brought about change and how we interpret Scripture, the meaning of things. He was constantly butting heads with the Pharisees and scribes and teachers of the law because He said things that you normally didnt say. He did things you shouldnt do. He bucked their traditions, but never Gods Word; so there was friction-there was tension-taking place. One such time is what weve been talking about in Luke 5, if you want to turn there. Remember, Hes already criticized for hanging around with tax collectors and sinners. As we go through this Book of Luke together, were going to find that criticism rendered quite a bit. Thats not the way spiritual leaders do things. One thing they noticed about Him was He didnt fast. They didnt pray like they saw other religious groups doing and other religious leaders doing. So they were judgmental of that. In Verse 33 (of Luke 5, page 1020 of pew Bibles), it says, They said to him, Johns disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking. [The Pharisees were thinking], Do you know what? When You think about it, You must not be too spiritual because Youre not doing all the spiritual things. Youre not doing things You should do if Youre going to be a spiritual leader. Even John the Baptist, he fasts and prays. What Jesus is going to say in the next verses here is, basically, John the Baptist was praying and fasting for the coming of the Messiah, and Im here. Im the bridegroom and Im here. Therefore, theres coming a day when Ill be gone. You can fast then, but Im here now. Things have changed. When I was in school, there was always a threat of the new math coming. One of the things I liked about math was that it was always the same. Two plus two is always four. You can count on it, and there are not a lot of things I liked about math, quite frankly. But we were always threatened with the new math. I dont know if the new math ever came. I dont know what the new math ever was, but we were always threatened by that-that and the metric system. When you grow up, youre going to be using the metric system. Wrong! I dont. But I was always threatened with this new math, whatever it was. Im going to give you the new spiritual math today. Im going to give you some equations that are truth, that are always true, some equations that I discerned from this text. The first equation, lets put that up, is that the disciplines minus Jesus equal abuse. The Pharisees thought that if they just did the right things, that was what made them righteous-that fasting, in itself, was righteousness. Studying the Bible in itself was righteousness. Giving and praying were righteousness. Actually, those things are what are designed to lead us to righteousness, to lead us to Jesus-to lead us to a deeper path, a deeper walk. Take Jesus out of the equation; its abuse. These men did the right things, but they did them for the wrong reasons. So, theyre studying lead to arrogance. Their fasting and praying lead to their own self-advancement because they would do those things for all to see and all to hear. Jesus says, You have your reward. When you fast, do it in your closet. Dont put on a sad face. Put on a happy face. Clean and wash up. Shower, comb your hair, put on a smile, and dont let anybody know. When youre praying, go in a room, and shut the door. When youre studying, He said to them one time, you diligently study the Scriptures-Ill give you that-you diligently study; but the Scriptures bear witness of Me, and you refuse to come to Me that you might have life. Misuse, abuse. How many of you know what our horn is for in our car? Our horn is for warning people and protecting ourselves or protecting others. How many of you know that thats not always what the horn is used for on the road? I was driving this week on a service road trying to get on to Milton Avenue, by the Applebees side there. Do you know how it is sometimes you have to go up a few intersections before you can finally break through the traffic and get on Milton Avenue? So, thats what I was doing, going to several stoplights and trying to break in there. I ended up all the way to the mall before I could finally get on. I noticed somebody hitting their horn incessantly, just non stop, Beep, beep, beeeepp. Isnt that awful? Thats just annoying. Thats what it was like. I was really getting mad. Im like, Who is doing that? The next intersection, it would start all over again, and the next intersection it would start all over again. I finally figured out that the car in front of me was honking at the car in front of them-for some reason I dont know about because whatever happened between those two cars happened before I got there. I finally got on Milton Avenue. I was just curious as to who these participants were, the honkee and the honker. So I drove by the first car, the one that was being honked at. Im guessing because I passed that one first, they were being honked at because they were so slow or something. I noticed as I drove by, the car that was being honked at for minutes, non-stop, was a little old man and a little old lady, about 157 years old. They were just little tiny things. He is doing like this (Pastor shows what a little old man behind the wheel would look like), and you can barely see her all shriveled up in the seat next to him. They looked at me with just this saddest puppy dog face like they were just traumatized by what had taken place. So I went by to see who in the world would honk at old people like that; 157 years old, leave them alone! I drove up there, looked, and there was this middle-aged lady just with a frown on her face, still angry, with her teenage boy sitting next to her. I thought, You know what, maybe I should just get behind you and start honking at you. Thats what I wanted to do, but instead I gave her one of those looks like, Whats the matter with you? I heard her shout something back to me. I thought, Well, Im probably next. But she was abusing the horn. Thats not what its intention was. What these people were doing, pun intended, was they were using the disciplines to toot their own horn. They were misusing the disciplines. They were saying, Look at me. Im righteous. Im holy because I fast. Look at me. Im righteous and holy because I pray. Look at me. Look how much I give. Look how much I serve. Look at my clothing. Look how fancy it is. Look how righteous I am. These things are righteous, arent they, and Jesus says, No, theyre not. Those things are designed to lead you to Me, to lead you to righteousness. They are not, in and of themselves, righteous. If you take Jesus out of the equation, its abuse. It leads to arrogance, pride, and self-centeredness. You say, Well, look. You dont even pray. You dont even fast. You must not be spiritual. Its not even a question. Theyre not asking a question here, if you read it. Theyre making a judgmental statement toward Jesus, and Jesus is going to go on to say, in Verse 34, Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken away [from them]; in those days they will fast. Jesus was not saying the tradition was wrong. He was saying eventually the tradition will be resumed, but for right now-for always-I am greater than the tradition. Thats important. The next equation is that when we have the tradition being greater than Jesus, it equals imbalance. Any church that tries to put man-made traditions over Jesus is in trouble. Theyre in trouble. Thats not the way its intended. Jesus is bigger than our traditions. Jesus is greater than our customs. No matter how good our customs are, He is preeminent. Its important that this church makes the primary the primary, the main thing the main thing. Anybody who does this…its out of whack-its not right. Businesses sometimes can do this. You and I have all been to restaurants where they have great advertising campaigns, great atmosphere, slick menus, and you get your food, and its sub-par. Its just not that good. Isnt that the main point of the restaurant? You want good food, good service? No matter how good the advertising is, and how good the menu looks, if the food is not good, and the service isnt good, youre probably not going to go. Id say that restaurant is in trouble. I remember in Rockford when the ad campaign for Wendys was going on-the Wheres the Beef? there was this Marys Kitchen [sign out front that read], Wheres the Bun? They had this poor location, photo-copied menu, greasy spoon diner-no advertising, but the place was packed because they made a good burger. They had generous portions at a reasonable price. They made the main thing-the main thing. Our church, in our early days, we didnt have a very good location. We were way south of town, or we were in between Janesville and Milton. We were in a hotel, or we were in a school, in a gym. These were not the best locations. We often didnt have the best conditions. Our air conditioning would go out in the summer, and our heater would go out in the winter. The room was musty; it was inconvenient. We had to set up our chairs, take down our chairs, set up our sound and lighting every week, and tear it down. We didnt have all the amenities, but one thing we knew we had was we had the Gospel. We could minister and we could have the Gospel. We know we have that; keep the main thing, the main thing. Teenagers, some of the cars just crack me up. Somebody will pull up to you at an intersection, and the muffler is loud. The brakes are squeaking, the body is rusted, and you wonder how the thing ever started; but, boy, that stereo works. When things come out of there, its enough to raise the dead. Youd think if you looked at an average teenagers car, what goes inside the car is the most important thing; but if they put more time and money into the stereo and the interior than they do the mechanics of the car, eventually, thats going to lead to a problem, isnt it? Because the main thing about a car is does it start? Does it drive? Does it get me to where I want to go safely? The main thing has to be the main thing. When it ceases to be the main thing, you have problems. In any church, Jesus must be the main thing. When Jesus is the main thing, when Jesus is greater than our traditions, greater than our structures, it leads to unity within the body. Thats true. One thing I love about our church is we come from all different backgrounds: Catholic, Lutheran, main-line, some from revivalist kinds of backgrounds, Baptist, whatever-you name it; yet, we all get along because the main thing is Jesus and His word. So we focus on what we agree on, rather than what we disagree on. I was bragging on our church just recently to some believers who werent experiencing this. They said, How in the world does your church do that? You guys should write a book or something. I said, You know what? God is so good because [with] such [diverse] backgrounds, and some with no church backgrounds, we get along well. We function well because Jesus is what its about. Now, the remaining verses here-lets take a look at those. He says [Verse 36], No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment… because the old fabric wont bend with it. It wont shape with it. Plus, the new one will not match the old one. …no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. So the wine was put in animal skin because the animal skin was pliable, flexible. What happened is as the wine fermented, gases would be admitted, it would expand, and the new wineskin could adjust to that expansion. If it was an old wineskin that was already stretched out and expanded, it couldnt adjust. It would actually burst, and the wine would come out of the wineskin. The wineskin would be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, The old is better. Manmade structures have to change. The wine doesnt change, but the structures do. We think of the wineskin as the container. Its how the Gospel comes in contact with the world. That changes with every generation, but the wine doesnt. The wine is whats sacred. The wineskins are important; but theyre not sacred-theyre secondary. They have to change. If they dont, theyll burst. Years ago, we watched a movie I really enjoyed called Sister Act. In Sister Act, Whoopi Goldberg comes into a church as a nun and ends up directing a choir, among other things that go on in the movie. The choir sings the same old songs in the same old way, and the church is dead. The priest gets up to speak, and there are just a handful of people every week. The choir is very bad and out of tune. She comes in and she gets them in tune. She gets them to sing and sound right. Then on their debut Sunday, they get up to sing. They sing the normal song, but they sing it a whole lot better than they usually do. Then after theyre done singing it the old way, they start singing it a new way. This new way causes waves because change causes waves. In this clip were going to see, well see the choir already well into the song in the new way. Watch their faces as they sing. What does it communicate? Watch the face of the Reverend Mother as she hears this new way. Watch the face of the priest, watch the congregation, and watch how it affects the outsiders as God wants to bring change in this inner-city Catholic Church. God wants to take the same Gospel and put it in a new wineskin to reach a new generation. Did you see the dynamic there? The choir is singing [and thinking], Are we sure this is okay? Sometimes when you make changes, you think, Is this legal? Boy, we really enjoy this. Its really effective. The Reverend Mother wanted nothing to do with that, but the priest, he saw, that this was something God could use. This is something good. He saw that that was a wineskin. The wineskin wasnt sacred. The Gospel is sacred. This will enable us to communicate more effectively. He saw the impact on the congregation. He said, Gods doing something new. In our church, its okay to do something new. Its okay to think outside the box. One of the things Ive enjoyed about ministering here is when we do make changes, people might [think], Oh, boy, Im not sure, but you know what? We dont hear that excuse and say, Well, thats not the way weve always done it, so we cant do it that way anymore. Theres another formula I want to leave with you. It is [this]: the Gospel plus new wineskins equals a healthy church. When the church says, You know what? The Gospel has to be protected. How we communicate that…its okay that that changes if its effective. It doesnt mean the old is bad. Music is one of the greatest sources of tension in churches. Contemporary churches are churches that are traditionally trying to transition into contemporary and basically kick the old stuff out, or occasionally throw them a bone. Most people were kind of cast aside. At our church, we started off as a contemporary church, but we recognized that those traditions are so important that we started a church just for the tradition, for the old wineskin, because its important. Its not that its wrong or bad, but that God also does new things too, so we use culture in our congregation. We will do dramas, media, or music where we can attach the Gospel to it to communicate effectively to our people. The church doesnt have to be archaic, boring, and dull to be exciting and life-giving. Change, if its done correctly, is a good thing. In organizations and ministries that refuse to adapt, the wineskin bursts, and eventually they die. I did a wedding in Rockford years ago, and a buddy of mine was there. I asked, Do you go to church here? Youre having the wedding here. He said, No, I dont go to church here. Man, its the most boring place in the world. It hasnt ever changed since I was a little kid. There have been some people who have tried to do some new things and tried to do some good things, but its always been turned away. As a result, over the years, the people have left, and new ones arent coming in. I said, Well, thats sad. I started talking to the minister before the wedding, just making small talk. I said, How many people do you have here that visit on a regular basis? He said, Well, you know, I think two. We have two. I said, Two? Thats not bad. We usually get about six, Im going to say, in the average weekend. Sometimes we get more; sometimes we get fewer, but two a week isnt bad. He said, No, no, I didnt mean two a week. I meant two a year. He said, We had two visitors last year. I said, For the entire year? Yeah, we had two. Thats not good. What was happening is that was the congregation where God was doing some new things, but they refused to change. By the way, some of you get nervous and say, Hes going to make some changes. I just know it. No, Im not thinking about making changes. Dont worry; this is not a prepare-you-for-something kind of a talk. What this is saying is that you know what? We are open to new wineskins in this church. The way were doing ministry, over the years, theres going to be some new wineskins. There are going to be some creative ways, some out of the box thinking, and thats okay. Were not going to fight that; were going to embrace that. If it honors God, its effective for the Gospel, we welcome that change. Everything Jesus did and taught was about change. The communion table in front of us, this morning, is about change. It is about looking at life a new way. The bread was no longer going to represent the old, the land that was slain at the Passover. The cup was no longer going to represent the blood of the lamb. It was going to represent the Lord Jesus because He was going to do something unthinkable. He was going to do something man could not even conceive. Every year, theyd come together; theyd commemorate the Passover. Theyd sacrifice the lamb. Theyd have the Passover meal. Theyd remember what God did. Jesus said, Thats going to change. From now on, when you observe this meal, youre going to think of Me because Im going to become the lamb of God. Im going to give of My blood. Im going to give of My body to set man free. The wages of sin is death. Jesus Christ was going to serve that sentence. He was going to die. He was going to become a curse in order that you and I could have forgiveness of sins and eternal life. That was something so radical, something a man could not have conceived in his wildest dreams. It took years for us to figure it all out. It took many explanations of Jesus to His disciples after the Resurrection, explaining from the Scriptures that the Messiah must suffer and die. It was a new way. It was a new covenant. The old covenant was going to go away, and the new covenant had come. This morning, as we receive communion, just prepare your hearts. Just thank God for the new things He is doing. Thank God for the things He wants to do in your life that are new. Be open and receptive to that. Were going to have some music playing in the background as we prepare our hearts to receive, and then after weve all received, just hold on to the elements and well partake together. Father, we thank You for the lesson today from Luke, the importance of the new wineskins. We said that change is difficult for us. We like the old better, and thats true. The same token that we need to have open minds, open hearts to see the new things Youre doing in our lives, the new things You are doing in our church, that You break through our traditions and our structures because You are bigger than them, so we might have a sensitivity to Your voice and to Your leading and always recognize that You are greater than the structure, that we might always keep You at the forefront as our top priority. You are what we are about, what this church is about. We pray that we might preserve unity in the faith. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.