[0:00] If you have your Bibles, please turn to Luke 5, verses 33. That's Luke 5, verses 33.
[0:12] ! The verses will also be on screen as well. Starting at verse 33, And they said to him, the disciples of John, fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees.
[0:27] But yours eat and drink. And Jesus said to them, can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them.
[0:41] And then they will fast in those days. He also told them a parable. No one tears a piece of a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old.
[0:57] And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.
[1:09] But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one, after drinking old wine, desires new. For he says, the old is good. This is the word of the Lord.
[1:21] Thanks be to God. The verse that we have today is part of our regular series in the Gospel of Luke. And so we're just going to be continuing through, and I found it appropriate to just continue, based upon the content of the passage today, in which we were just going to be cruising through verse by verse in.
[1:44] And so here we are in chapter 5, verse 33, all the way to 39. And it made me think about a couple things, because I remember a while ago, it's been a while since I've been in another church, but walking into church once, where I was, I genuinely wasn't sure if I stumbled into a worship service, or an audition for The Voice.
[2:09] Now, I'm not against lights, music, creativity, or anything. I'm far from that. But they had it all.
[2:21] It was fancy. And the mood of the service was very dependent upon the lighting, very dependent upon the fog, which the millennials call haze.
[2:31] It's not fog machines, it's hazers. That's the proper term. And halfway through the service, I hadn't thought about Jesus once, because I was captivated by everything that was going on.
[2:47] Now, on the other end of the spectrum, I've also visited a church where I wasn't sure if I walked into a church service or a funeral. The organ was groaning.
[2:59] You heard those organs? It's like the organ was repenting. And the congregation looked like they were baptized in lemon juice. You know, no one was smiling.
[3:12] No one was clapping. And certainly no one was laughing. Shame on all of us, right? By the end, I wasn't sure if I needed communion or a therapist.
[3:23] It was bad. But here's the thing. Both churches claimed to be building Christ's kingdom.
[3:35] One felt like a concert, and the other felt like a courtroom. And I want to ask you a question today. What kind of kingdom does Jesus Christ bring?
[3:47] What kind of kingdom does He bring? As you can see, the answers vary wildly, depending on which church you find yourself in. There's the kingdom of self-help and skinny jeans.
[4:00] Those jeans are painted on the pastor. You know those ones. Where Jesus came not just to save sinners, but also boost your confidence and improve your wardrobe.
[4:11] Right? Then there's the kingdom of identity politics, where the king of kings is reduced to a campaign endorsement upon whatever side of the party you want.
[4:23] Or the kingdom of comfort and blessings, where discipleship is optional, suffering is supremely avoidable, and the only persecution that you experience is a buffering live stream from the comfort of your own home sitting in your pajamas watching church.
[4:42] Each of these have a tendency to distort the real kingdom that Jesus Christ came to bring.
[4:55] Now, they may be modern mutations, and in different forms, in different seasons, in different centuries throughout history, but the core problem is ancient, where religious expression becomes essentially central.
[5:14] How we express our religion and our spirituality becomes central, which dilutes the object of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, which was ushered in.
[5:28] This is happening in the passage. We turn to Luke 5. Jesus is at a feast, a table filled with joy of new beginnings.
[5:39] If you were here last week, you would have met Levi of the passage. Not my son. He's great too. But this Levi was bad. He was a tax collector. He was a thief, a robber, and he got people for their money in this time period, and inflated costs and everything.
[6:00] We met him, and he dropped everything last week to follow Jesus. And here, Jesus put together a feast.
[6:12] Levi put together a feast for Jesus Christ. He's the object of this feast. And guess what? The tax collectors, Levi invited all of his friends to join him.
[6:25] And now, not everyone was celebrating. Some were confused. In verse 33, we just read, They said to him, They're almost accusing Levi and all the disciples of Jesus for not taking what's going on in Levi's life seriously.
[6:58] Repentance. This is, in other words, if Levi truly repented, shouldn't this be a time of mourning, looking like a funeral, not a feast?
[7:14] To those familiar with Jewish customs of this day, holiness meant heaviness. Joy was just too casual. It's like you're not taking it serious.
[7:25] Celebration felt too irrelevant. And culturally speaking, this joy and this feast was wrong for this time period in Levi's life.
[7:37] The Pharisees loved to put on a show. They could have got an Academy Award when they were fast and everyone knew it. They would wear tattered clothes. They would have unwashed faces.
[7:50] They would have public displays of sorrow walking around. And to them, spirituality looked like sorrowful seriousness.
[8:01] And the kingdom, in their eyes, was a funeral. But Jesus is showing the world something far different. The scene is set here. Two kingdoms stand before us.
[8:14] One filled with joy. One filled with judgment. One built on grace. One built on guilt. One built with new wine of new life.
[8:24] And the other is old wineskins, brittle and broken. And so let's listen carefully to Jesus Christ's answer to their challenge. What kind of kingdom does Jesus Christ bring?
[8:39] And what happens to those who enter into that kingdom? For that, let's look at this sermon titled New Wine and New Life.
[8:52] And we have two sections today as we break up this passage. And for any note takers who know how I do things, I will be playing my cards close to the chest with the main points being revealed at the end.
[9:06] So let's pray as we go into this work and know that when we just read the Word of God, this is truly the Word of God. The God who created all things spoke and revealed Himself through this Word.
[9:23] This is no ordinary book today. And as we dive in, let's take that seriously and give it the reverence that it does deserve. And for that, let's pray.
[9:36] Lord, we come to You and we are asking You to speak today through Your Word. Use my frail lips to dictate and to reveal Your authoritative Word that we submit to.
[9:56] And Father, help me to shine a light upon the good news of the gospel and how this connects to the resurrection of Jesus.
[10:08] And Father, we pray for those who are visiting here. I pray that You wake them up right now knowing that it is no mistake that they are here today.
[10:20] We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Just a public service announcement. We are out of coffee. So y'all are on the fuel of the Holy Spirit.
[10:33] All right? I found it out. I got a couple drips left, so there might be some in there. But here we go. I won't be too long today. I'm very straightforward and to the point.
[10:45] And let's dive into new wine, new life. And the first point that we see here is rejoice in the presence of the bridegroom.
[10:58] Rejoice in the presence of the bridegroom. And we see this from verse 33 going all the way to verse 35. We just read 33 and now Jesus responds to their pushback and their question.
[11:11] Jesus said to them, Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? He says, The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast in those days.
[11:28] Now Jesus responds by appealing to something universally understood. You can't throw a wedding without celebrating. Literally, a wedding is a celebration.
[11:40] And here, he's saying that this is no ordinary feast and he's likening his identity as the very bridegroom of this feast.
[11:51] Jesus is identifying himself as that bridegroom and by doing so, he is invoking deep covenantal imagery that's used all through Scripture relating to God's relationship with his people.
[12:07] Jewish feasts were joyful. I mean, our feasts are too. We got the cookie bar. Youngstown's the stars of the cookie bar.
[12:18] Cookie table. Praise the Lord. That's why I live in Youngstown. All right. So, next wedding, that cookie bar better be good. Is it even called a cookie bar? What am I even talking about?
[12:28] Cookie table. Cookie, what you serving? What's on tap? Okay. So, cookies. We got cookies. But they were, Jewish feasts, Jewish weddings were joyful.
[12:43] It was fun, loud, full of celebration. Italian families up in here represent loud, Carmen loud. Now, it wasn't loud unless the wedding means that you're breaking your unhealthy codependency with your adult kids.
[13:01] In that case, Rick will say stop and get some help. But, Jesus knows that at this time with His presence, it is not a time for mourning.
[13:15] There's something that Jesus is doing in the world that is different from what has been all along. Jesus knows. He sees the cross. He sees the tomb.
[13:27] But in this moment, He is present. And His presence brings joy. Joy. Proximity to Jesus always results in joy, friends.
[13:40] Always. And we need to understand that joy is a deep covenantal expression. Joy endures unlike happiness.
[13:51] Happiness is kind of like the weather. Sunny when things go well and then stormy when life is tough. Too many Christians live and walk their Christian walks as if they only have happiness because of what Jesus did for them.
[14:08] Not joy. Joy is like the climate. It's consistent. And yeah, storms roll in. There's sunny days. But it doesn't make a difference because joy is the climate.
[14:22] That's what Jesus Christ has to offer in His presence. C.S. Lewis called joy the serious business of heaven, describing it as an unsatisfied desire, which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.
[14:43] Joy is a high calling and a great gift of God. This is a reason Jesus Christ uses marriage imagery here. Marriage is also a symbol of covenantal joy, isn't it?
[15:00] Right? As marriage is a biblical construct between a man and a woman. A union pointing beyond just the two people at the altar, but representing eternal joy and union between Christ and the church, His bride.
[15:17] And furthermore, the tomb was empty. Celebrate today. Easter is not just about sentiment. It's about resurrection joy, something deeper than just our loudness and everything.
[15:31] It's covenantal. And the bridegroom who was once buried is now alive and present this day. In context of Jesus Christ's analogy here, at this table in the passage, Jesus is alive and He is near.
[15:51] And in the context of our lives today, He is still alive and He is still near to you, regardless of what your little happiness has to say about it.
[16:02] We know joy that is deep and covenantal because it's promised to us and revealed to us in Scripture and in that we trust. For that, the church can say amen and let's feast.
[16:18] Right? it is okay to go back and grab a plate of food. I wouldn't mind a plate too, but that wouldn't be good. You see, the kingdom is built on covenantal joy.
[16:31] Joy is central even when we grieve amid death in our loved ones. Joy is still central, not to put on a happy face, but joy is the foundation of every tear that we shed.
[16:49] knowing that all will one day be made right. And even though the moment of life sucks really bad, Jesus Christ has the final word.
[17:02] And that we have joy with every tear that we shed. Joy is enduring. Because Jesus Christ conquered the grave, the world lost in sin has a profound reason to rejoice with resurrection joy.
[17:20] That's what the empty tomb does for us. Happiness can only be skin deep. It's always been skin deep. The world plays upon your happiness. Drug dealers around Youngstown will play upon other people's addictions to make them happy and then come crawling back.
[17:37] But Jesus Christ offers something far greater than any drug can offer to anyone in Youngstown. It is joy. Joy seeps into the soul.
[17:50] Happiness is only skin deep. Jesus didn't just come to throw a party though. He came to bring a better covenant of joy. He's ushering something in.
[18:01] He's turning things over right now. He didn't just show up to cheer us up. He came to change us from the inside out.
[18:12] And that's exactly what he begins to show us in the next two vivid parables he presents. In verse 36 all the way to 38, the second point today is to receive the new life of the kingdom.
[18:27] Not just joy in his presence, but there's something that happens within us. Jesus teaches two parables with a shared meaning to illustrate radical newness offered through Jesus Christ alone.
[18:42] and these are the lessons of the new garments and the new wineskins. Let's break up the new garments. He says in verse 36, he told them a parable, no one tears a piece from new garments and puts it on in old garments.
[19:01] If he does, he will tear the new and the piece from the new won't match the old. In other words, a mismatch ruins both, the new garment and the old.
[19:15] It doesn't do anything. It actually ruins both of them. You need a completely new garment. And now, this isn't just fashion advice. I'm sure some churches probably turn that into fashion advice.
[19:27] Nothing surprises me these days from pulpits. But it's covenantal theology here, which is the basis of covenantal joy, something that endures just as Christ's covenant with his people.
[19:39] Jesus isn't here to enhance the old system, to kind of give you a life 2.0 when you come to Jesus Christ. He came to completely replace your life.
[19:50] Completely. Down to the bottom. Down to ground zero. And it would be simply impossible to take bits and pieces of the gospel and to stick them upon something that's broken.
[20:03] That's not the gospel. Doing so completely ruins the whole newness of the gospel and would be incompatible with the old. Many try to syncretize.
[20:17] They blend the gospel with other beliefs and different things that they pick and choose to join together with Christianity. They say, I love Jesus, right? But not his exclusive claims.
[20:29] Or karma makes more sense to me, but sin and judgment are just too severe. And what you have is like a religious buffet of nonsense.
[20:42] There's no authority in that. It's a broken system. And some try to syncretize their own religion and take bits and pieces from the gospel and put them on the old.
[20:56] I've got to hand it to you today. If that's you, salvation is an all or nothing package deal. salvation is not a bag of Chex Mix.
[21:10] It is an all or nothing deal. Spurgeon said, if Christ is not all to you, he is nothing to you. He will never go into partnership as a part savior.
[21:26] And so the gospel doesn't accessorize your life. It crucifies your life. It recreates it. The new covenant cannot modify the old, nor can it modify other religious systems to satisfy personal preference.
[21:44] We're not given the authority to dictate truth, friends. Only God has the authority of which he has outlined according to scripture. Those who have a high view of their salvation have a high view of scripture.
[21:58] scripture. Jesus said, sanctify them, the church, in truth in John 17, 17. What is truth? Well, Jesus said, your word is truth.
[22:11] We have the truth. And the gospel is just too robust. It is in itself complete and can't be added to or taken away from.
[22:22] To transplant gospel truth to falsehoods is to reject the gospel altogether. It doesn't make sense. And this is what Jesus is saying.
[22:34] Jesus didn't come to improve your life. He came to replace it. New garments. But he also goes to wineskins. In verse 37, he puts, and no one puts new wine into old wineskins.
[22:50] If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.
[23:01] And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says the old is good. Wineskins were made from animal hides. And when they were new animal hides that were just cut up, we'll just say that.
[23:20] They were flexible when they were new. They got brittle when they got old. I don't know if there's any winemakers here.
[23:32] I know there's one at least because they share. But new wine, when you're fermenting wine, it expands, doesn't it? Right?
[23:44] It expands. And if it's poured into what they're relating, what Jesus is saying is an old wineskin, when that wine expands and ferments, it's just going to completely explode.
[23:56] It's going to break. And then both are ruined. The great wine and that trustworthy old wineskin. Everything is ruined.
[24:06] And so the logic is kind of there for you. Don't you get the logic? The old ways can't handle the new ways. The new wine of life expands, it fills, and it transforms.
[24:19] And church, you can't pour new wine, this new life, into a stubborn heart. You can't. This is resurrection logic. Jesus didn't rise so you could tweak your old life in a couple ways.
[24:34] He rose to give you a whole new vessel. Romans 6, 4 says, Just as Christ was raised, we too might walk in newness of life.
[24:45] 2 Corinthians 5, chapter 17, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. And while both of those parables are fairly self-explanatory, some cultural context that we need to tease out, which we did, they're both self- explanatory in their expression, but their meaning and their application really do push against the grain of the status quo in a Christian life in the year 2025 today.
[25:19] That the old doesn't need patched or refurbished, it needs completely replaced. The same still stands true today. If you're here today and you do not know Jesus Christ, I want to pause for a moment and I want to speak directly to your heart.
[25:38] God, this is for those who suffer from an irreconcilable misery of their sin being atoned for, being forgiven.
[25:53] What are you still clinging to in your life? What old wine are you sipping in your life, per se, that has convinced you that you're good enough?
[26:09] Maybe that vague belief that you're a good person, good enough. If it's not good enough for God, then whatever, go to hell. And you kind of minimize that.
[26:20] Or maybe that inner voice that you have telling you that you're just too far gone. God has seen all what you've done and there's no way that you can be forgiven.
[26:30] not according to this passage. Jesus didn't rise to make you slightly better, but to make you new.
[26:44] Jesus didn't rise to decorate your life and to perfume a dead corpse, but to bury that so that you would rise new. This is the assurance that we have in the year 2025, according to the gospel, that is bound within this book in 66 books for us.
[27:07] This is good news. The forgiveness Jesus Christ offers to sinners is this. It's for you. It's for me. It's a new life.
[27:18] So give your old life to Jesus Christ. Because there is a better cup to drink from. There is a better covenant to come to.
[27:30] There's a better king to reign over your life. Bury your works, all your striving, and embrace Jesus Christ by your faith today. And begin new.
[27:43] Old wine can't raise the dead. Familiar sin can't set you free. Uncomfortable religion cannot save you. Only faith in Jesus Christ can.
[27:58] We started this morning a little humorous with a couple illustrations. But it's a life-defining question.
[28:09] What kind of kingdom does Jesus bring? We joked about skinny jeans. We joked about self-help. Fog machines. I mean, hazers.
[28:20] Or the opposite, extreme. Joy being outlawed. Reverence looking like a DMV waiting room. But now standing at the end of this passage, you realize it's not funny any longer.
[28:37] It's very personal. And we have to listen. Jesus doesn't invite you to a kingdom of height. He doesn't invite you to a kingdom of heaviness.
[28:50] He invites you into kingdom of joy and of life in his kingdom. Not a concert, not a courtroom, but a covenant.
[29:03] Something deeper than expression. It's a kingdom where sinners feast instead of fast. They celebrate. Where broken people are made new, not just patched up.
[29:18] Where joy flows not from circumstances, but from the presence of the bridegroom himself in your life. And now before you are two cups to drink from.
[29:31] You got the cup of wrath, the cup of the wrath of God of which Jesus Christ drank for us and which was displayed vividly upon the cross, which we just commemorated on Friday.
[29:53] If you're not in Christ, that's the cup you drink from. And it would be the most hateful thing for me to ever fill your ears today with lies that the road ahead is going to be okay.
[30:09] It's not. Those who are apart from faith in Jesus Christ will drink the cup of wrath. It's child's play compared to what happened to Jesus.
[30:21] But there is also a cup of grace offered freely for those who believe in Jesus Christ. Don't drink from the cup of God's wrath.
[30:36] Drink from the cup of grace and believe today in the life, the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
[30:48] Come to the bridegroom. Come to the cross. Come and be made new today. Main point is that Jesus Christ's kingdom is built upon joy and new life found in the crucified and risen King.
[31:10] This is the good news that we have today in Luke 5. Let's pray.