Ancient Boundary Stones vs. Old Wine Skins

Introduction and Scripture Reading

Good Morning! In less than four weeks our All Church Leadership Retreat is taking place at Camp Oak Hills. So this past week I traveled to Minneapolis to City Hill Church and after a brief encounter with wasps, I had lunch with Jim McCracken and spent time planning our retreat. He told me that the general subject of the retreat was going to be “The Difference Between Ancient Boundary Stones and Old Wine Skins. Scriptures referring to both are featured on the front of today’s bulletin. The Old Boundary Stones had to do with the division of the land by tribes under Joshua. Because in that agrarian culture, land was vital to survival, the ancient stones were very important. The life of the people was in the land, and tinkering with God’s commands was to threaten that life. Time and again the Scriptures commanded the people not to remove the old ancient boundary stones, because it was always a temptation for the rich and strong to move them to expand their own territory and thereby threaten the existence of others.

Today we still have boundary markers that divide up real estate, often placed there by surveyors who are measuring out the land. Sometimes they are still rocks. More often they are bench mark disks, metal rods, or topographical or triangulation station disks, or fire towers, among other things. And there are legal penalties for moving them. But Jim, when he speaks of the ancient boundary stones, will be speaking in broader terms of the ancient commands of God that define, limit, and sustain life. When we tamper with these ancient basic ground rules, set by the Creator, we are messing with life itself.
I think instinctively you and I know what some of these ancient boundary stones are. The Ten Commandments have been with us since the days of Moses some three-thousand five hundred years ago. They don’t go out of date. “Do not kill” by which was meant “Do not take human life for private reasons” was compelling then as it is now. It is the Lord who gives life, and therefore only the Lord who has the right to take it away. While most people agree that murder is bad – they have made up words that defend it – words like euphenasia and abortion. But underneath each word is God’s command – “Do not kill” and it still stands.

“Do not steal” also hasn’t gone out of date. It is not progressive to be a thief, whether you come in the night and break into someone’s house and take away their property, or whether you lend others’ money entrusted to you to people whom you know very well cannot and will not pay it back. And when the government bails out institutions from their corrupt decisions to make bad loans with tax-payer money, they are doing what the commandment still defines as stealing.

Another institution you don’t remove is marriage. God ordained it. It is between one man and one woman, and on that institution the family rests, and the generations. When the world goes crazy, the family is the last safe place to which one can retreat. We are not being progressive when we make our own “improvements” on what God ordained, based on the union of two men, or two women, or an old man, a young woman, a little boy, and a dog. A family of course can be broken, separated, blended, or whatever, but the original formula spoken by God still stands. As long as God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so the basic human family will be based on a father and a mother and their progeny.

As believers we also know not to tamper with the rock of the Gospel. Each week we say the Apostle’s Creed. We believe in God the Father, who created the heavens and the earth. We are not an accident, a freak of impersonal nature rising briefly out of the primordial slime without purpose or personhood or destiny only to fall back into it forever. No, we are a person created in the image of our Creator, whose every cell contains enough DNA instructions to fill a twenty-five volume encyclopedia, a testimony to the Creator’s intent. We believe also in Jesus Christ, his only Son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. For our sake and for our salvation he paid our debt, burst open the gates of hell, and on the third day rose again from the dead. Henceforward, we can know God not simply by our awe at His creation, but because He became flesh and dwelt among us. As Jesus said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father!” And as forgiven, adopted children of God, we can glorify Him because in Christ our debt is paid.

Finally we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, the holy universal or catholic church of Jesus Christ, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. There are lots of people today who are turning away from the Gospel, something they define as progress, but the truth is they are turning away from the only light the world has, God’s light, to wander in the darkness of their own conceit and sin.

These commands and truths are like the ancient boundary stones that are to be left alone, for like the Word of God, they stand forever. I think most of us at Cornerstone have a pretty good idea of what these truths, these boundary stones are. But there is a rest of the story. With that in mind, let us read the Scripture of the day from Luke 5:33-39. But first let us bow our heads to seek God’s illumination. Heavenly Father, show us the difference between the boundary stones that do not change and the wineskins which we must make new in every generation so that these new containers have the flexibility to contain the ever fermenting and life-transforming Gospel of Jesus Christ, in whose Name we ask it, Amen.

Hear God’s Word: "They said to him, `John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.'

"Jesus answered, `Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.'

"He told them this parable: `No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. If they do, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And none of you, after drinking old wine, wants the new, for you say, 'The old is better.'" This concludes the reading of Holy Scripture. May God add His blessing to the Word.

Text

Today we put wine into casks of wood or into bottles of glass, but not so in the ancient world. In those days wine was placed in whole animal skins, whose inners had been removed, and whose legs and head had been cut off. The skins were cleaned and dried, and sewed into nubs, and the wine was poured into them, and it was sealed. The process of fermentation let off gases that stretched the skin to the limit by the time the fermentation was over. If, once you emptied the wine skin of its original wine, you put new wine in an old wine skin, as the wine fermented, it would burst the skin open, so that the wine was lost, and the skin was ruined. Everyone recognized instantly the literal meaning of what Jesus was saying. You had to have new wine skins for new wine. And we all know that aged wine is better tasting than freshly fermented wine, so Jesus adds, “And none of you, who are used to drinking old wine, want the new, for you say, `The old is better than the new.’”

Now clearly Jesus wasn’t just talking about wine. All of Jesus parables have a literal meaning, but they point to something else. The Pharisees were attacking him, because unlike John the Baptist and unlike many in their own sect, Jesus did not require his disciples to fast. They saw fasting as a sign of virtue and piety, and they implicitly criticized him that his disciples did not fast. In other words, how can you call yourself a holy man when you do not even fast like we do. We know that wasn’t the only criticism they aimed at him. They hit at him for healing on the Sabbath, and breaking other Sabbath rules about washing; they hit on him for eating with tax-collectors and sinners, and allowing sinful women to touch him. They hit on him for forgiving sins and what they viewed as outrageous and blasphemous statements about his relationship and sonship to God. In their eyes, this Nazarene did not fit into their preconceived notions of goodness according to their religion.

In this parable Jesus answers them. He compares their “religion” to an old wine skin that has no more “stretch” to it. The wineskin is neither God Himself nor God’s Word. Rather it is the container or tradition that embodies it. For more than a millennium God had allowed this wineskin to contain God’s Word in law and prophets, but it had foreshadowed and not fulfilled God’s full revelation. And it had become so stretched and corrupted that it no longer was working God’s purpose.

Even in its early and best days the people had transgressed the law on every level, by disobeying the first commandment to have no other gods and chasing after the pagan gods of the land, along with their immoral rites, refusing the warnings of the prophets and practicing ritual rather than righteousness, substituting artificial acts of piety instead of showing mercy and doing justice in the land. Jesus never once challenged the Word of God; in fact He was God’s living Word enfleshed. What he challenged was the the man-made traditions and rules, the religious system that had become the rule of the land. The new wine that Jesus Himself embodied was the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, not its abolishment. He had come to perform the very act of redemption of which the law and the prophets spoke, but could only point toward as a dim picture, a shadow which was to come.

Judaism had become the container for the Hebrew faith. While the original tabernacle had been commanded by God as a container for the sacrifices that would point to Christ, the huge Temple that Herod built with all of its pomp and splendor was mostly a human invention, though it still contained the rudiments of sacrifice. Jesus prophesied that not one stone would be left upon another, a prophecy fulfilled when Titus conquered Jerusalem in 68 AD, some thirty or so years from the time Jesus predicted it.

In Moses’ day, God had set up the priesthood, but not its corrupt practices such as the money-changers Jesus drove out of the temple. In order to offer sacrifice, you had to have a lamb that was without spot or blemish, but tradition made the determination of this by the priests who would only accept those they sold at exorbitant prices, and though Jews came from other lands, the only currency which they would accept was their own, so that you had to pay through the nose twice – to offer your sacrifice.

In short, in a host of ways, the maze of traditional laws and customs favored the rich, the elite clergy, and the established folk of Jerusalem and penalized the poor, the pilgrim, the folk of the land who had come to the Temple to seek God. Jesus summarized their wineskins in many ways: “You tithe mint and cumin and neglect the weightier matters of justice and righteous-ness.” “You hold the keys to God’s presence, but you neither go in yourselves nor let anyone else in.” “You proselytize on land and sea to gain souls, and then make them twice as much children of hell as yourselves.” “You are whitewashed sepulchers – outside clean and shiny, but inside full of death and corruption.” “By your tradition,” Christ declared, “you have made the Word of God of no effect.” Yet I believe we must confess that these ancient Jews were doing little more than what all fallen human beings do – exchange the worship of God for the worship of created things, and then do what is right in their own eyes.

Finally, Jesus statement that they preferred the old wine to the new spoke to the fact that his critics had comfortable positions in the religious establishment. They were accustomed to and accepting of traditions that gave them wealth and privilege and expected little sacrifice in return. The old wine tasted good to them. So they were naturally hostile to the Living Word, Jesus Christ, whose very being called them to repentance to serve the Living God.

Application

I have spent some time exegeting the text and to define the religious `wineskins’ of the Bible. And I’m sure you understand and no doubt agree with most of what I’ve said. We are sufficiently removed from the evils of the wineskin of Judaism that we are free to see the error of it. It is likewise easy for us to see the evils of the medieval Church – popes with concubines, nobles awarded the tithes of parish churches they never visited, but sold for a price; torture and burning at the stake of those deemed “heretic” by a wedded church and state, indulgences which built cathedrals by offering early release from purgatory, worship conducted in language that the common people could not understand, and on it goes. We know the story.

Perhaps we are even unbiased enough to see some of the wineskins of our parents and grandparents. I can remember when guitars were forbidden in the sanctuary, when the only acceptable translation of the Bible was the “Authorized Version”; that is, authorized by King James of England, when each Sunday was polished shoes, suit, and tie, and ladies in stockings and high-heels and resplendent hats. I can remember the scandal when Avery and Marsh scandalized the congregation by teaching Scripture choruses and having people lift their hands in worship, when sacred was defined as music played on an organ that was at least a hundred years old. I can remember when the services of worship were formal without any conversation in the pews and when a holy countenance was a face with a frown and when a divorced woman was an object either of scorn or of pity even when her husband had divorced her.

Now were these practices the Word of God. I think not. They were the old wineskins, the container in which the Word of God was housed, and many of them got in the way of people seeking the fermentation of the life-transforming presence of God. I remember talking as a youth to one of the ministers of music of that day who believed that only classical music and hymns should be in church, asking him, “What is wrong with a Scripture chorus if it helps a person to experience the presence of God – and the power of God’s Word?” Yet the question for you, the question of the day is this: What are the old wineskins today that keep the church from impacting the society and culture around it? Even though nearly 70% percent of Americans claim some church affiliation, it could not be more clear that the church, not the buildings but the believers in the building are not impacting the the world around it. Some of this – at least in the mainline church – is that they have removed the old boundary stones, they have compromised the true Word of God. But I am speaking more specifically of the evangelical church and I would like to ask you to reflect upon this and listen to God asking Him to show you what old wineskins each of us cherishes.

First, I don’t think the denominations are are helping us to bring people to Christ. Often denominational distinctions say more about cultural, class, and ethnic heritage than they do about Christ, and people identify more with being Lutheran or Episcopalean than being Christian. Jesus said, when you are one with me (speaking to his followers) as I am one with the father, then will the world know that He has sent me. Having individual congregations whose accountability is to a headquarters in another city and even another state does not promote a united church in Bemidji, and yet the power to transform and reform Bemidji will only come from a united church.

Second, False Division between clergy and laity so that laity performs largely what is deemed secular jobs – like bringing food or cleaning or repairing the church, while the professional clergy does the preaching, the praying, the evangelizing, and all the so-called spiritual tasks. If the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches have taught us anything is that the Holy Spirit came to fill all believers with gifts and all gifts are needed for power to witness and for the upbuilding of the church. In the same way that a body cannot function without all of its organs and members, so the church of Jesus Christ requires the sacrifice and spiritual gifts of all of its members, not just professionals.

Institutionalism and consumer religion: today the vast majority of congregations are organized around the care of a building, a program that meets the congregation’s members perceived needs, and that expects little except to show up on Sunday and to keep the pledges coming. The true Church of Jesus is not a human institution that services its members but a divine community called by God to Himself to be a part of His divine plan for reconciling the world. Finally, in our culture the popular notion exists that a Christian is Someone respectable who practices morality, which is far from an adequate description. Many moral people are not Christians. It could better be said that an immoral Christian is something of an oxymoron, a self-contradiction. A Christian is one in a right relationship with God by virtue of trusting Christ and hence in whom Christ dwells. That is something far in excess of morality: he or she is a living sacrifice, a witness or martyr, an ambassador, something far more than being moral. A Christian will not always be recognized as respectable because the Gospel is a scandal to the world.

None of these popular notions are the wine of God’s Word itself, but they are the wineskin – the way we practice religion which often gets in the way of the Word. The result is that while people practice religion as they did in Jesus’ day, most lack the unity, anointing, self-discipline, and outward witness to be an instrument of God in transforming the world. And why we do not repent and change, Jesus tells us, is because we prefer the old wine, we are comfortable with the way things are and resist God’s call to change.

Fortunately, the change that is needed does not rest with us – but with God who is faithful. And the winds of change are blowing. God promises never to leave us or forsake us; and it would seem that promise may be fulfilled as he makes us less and less comfortable until we hear and respond with repentance.

Let us pray: Almighty God our Father, we know that You are faithful even when we are not, and so we ask that You have mercy on us and make our hearts pliable to Your least impulse, that we should be moved to respond to Your call and repent before the discomfort meant to move us undoes us, and that in our turning toward You we might become righteous instruments of Your reconciling grace and love, for Jesus’ sake, Amen.

This Sermon was published on 08/20/2009 and filed in