New Wine, New Wineskin | Rev. Paul Lawler's Final CMC Sermon

Welcome to the podcast of Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.

Join us as we dive into this week's sermon that challenges our hearts and minds to grow closer to Christ.

We pray that your heart is inspired and transformed by God's Word.

Out of reverence for the gospel, I invite you to please remain standing.

Our Scripture lesson this morning comes from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 5, beginning with verse 36.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

Hear the word of the Lord.

He also told them a parable.

No one tears a piece from a 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.

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.

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 God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

You may be seated.

Good morning.

I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

My name is Paul Lawler.

I have the honor of serving as a senior pastor of Christ Methodist Church, and I delight in greeting you today, whether you're a member, regular attender, first-time guest.

We're just thankful that you're here.

I also won't have a lot of time for a personal word, so I want to say that I have deeply appreciated serving with this phenomenal staff, these phenomenal leaders at Christ Church during these years.

Missy and I are deeply, deeply blessed and deeply thankful.

You may be getting tired of me saying the word deeply, but it's it is.

It's that.

It's deep.

Thank the Lord.

And I this is not false humility when I say this.

I believe that you're going to get an upgrade in your future senior pastor, and I believe your best days are ahead of you.

But thank you.

It's been a deep honor to serve you.

I want you to know that.

Now, my responsibility when I'm in this pulpit is not to talk about me or even the transition that we're in, but my responsibility is to teach God's Word.

Now, as we teach today, I think it may be relevant to where we are and what is in our future, but honestly, that's the way the Word of God should always be.

And so what I want to do is just pray briefly for a moment, and then we're going to go right to this text that Grant just read.

So if you'll allow me, I want to pray for you with my eyes open.

So, Father, you love this body.

And I'm mindful that when I stand before them, that ultimately I'm standing before you.

And I pray now that as we proclaim your word together, I say that because I'm depending on you to bring revelation.

That Father, you would speak into the hearts of every man and woman, multigenerationally, multi-ethnically, speak to us, O God.

Do something indelible in our lives.

And we pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Now, loved ones, many of you know in Jesus' day it was normal for people to carry their wine in a wineskin.

It was actually most of the time made from a goat skin, and they would sew the edges of the skin to make it watertight.

And again, these were commonly known as wineskins.

Once a wineskin has been stretched, it's then characterized as an old wineskin.

And putting new wine in an old wineskin would cause it to burst.

And the reason it would cause it to burst is because as wine ferments, it releases gases and it expands.

And the wineskin would be elastic and flexible enough to stretch without leaking or harming the wine when it's a new wineskin.

And so Jesus uses this as a metaphor in this passage, and he explains that you cannot put fresh fermenting wine in an old, stiff leather wineskin.

An old wineskin has already been stretched to its limit and it's lost its flexibility, so it will crack and burst, running both the wine and the skin.

New wine must go into fresh wineskins.

Now, in Jesus' day, this carried great meaning, and I will submit to you as we journey together, it also carries great meaning for us now.

But in Jesus' day, the meaning was actually very clear when you read it in its context.

The life of Jesus, his mercy manifested to us through what he's done on the cross, his grace that we haven't earned manifested to us through his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.

The transformation that the gospel of Jesus Christ offers to all of us requires a new framework in comparison with the old, a new wineskin.

Rather than the old wineskins that the Pharisees had created through their religiosity, as well as the Old Testament patterns of regular sacrifices of animals for skins and for sins and outward rituals.

Jesus didn't come and hang on a cross and take our sins merely to stitch a few reforms into a religious system of Pharisaic legalism and animal sacrifice and outward ritualistic works.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is a total transformation, not a minor patch on a garment.

The gospel of Jesus is new wine in a new wineskin.

And the new wineskin is the gospel of what God has done in Christ.

The new one is his grace.

The new one and the new wineskin is the kingdom of God that's at hand, not off in some distant ethereal dimension, but is present in our midst.

The kingdom is actually in operation.

You see this in the patterns of the Sermon on the Mount.

You see this in the manifestation of the person of the Holy Spirit in the church, uniquely expressing the new wine, the new covenant, the gospel of the reality of the kingdom, even the reality of the church that was birthed on the day of Pentecost, and the Spirit of God that empowers his people, the old garment, the old covenant, the law of Judaism, animal sacrifice for sins, no, that's gone.

And now this gospel is very unique.

This new wine is very unique.

It's easy for us to lose sight of that.

The gospel of Jesus Christ, this message of forgiveness of sins, being reconciled to a holy and loving God through the work of Jesus Christ, this gospel that we now recognize as unique and that we believe is the new wine, the new covenant, the new wine skin, that there is one God, and this one God has sent his one and only Son, the scripture says one mediator between the creator of the universe and humanity, and that is Jesus Christ.

This new wineskin is incompatible with any other wineskin.

It is any, it is incompatible with any other religious belief.

It stands alone.

The idea that a Christian gospel, the wineskin that Jesus introduces in the New Testament, can be mixed or blended with some other religious system, is absolutely false.

You cannot mix the gospel of Jesus with the isms of the world.

It does not blend with conservatism or liberalism or progressivism.

You cannot mix the gospel with Mormonism or the Jehovah's Witness or Christian science or any other religion.

You can't mix the gospel even with the religion of Judaism, said respectfully, the gospel is absolutely exclusive.

The new one of the gospel, the new wine skin mingles with no other religion.

It mixes with no other religion.

It accommodates no other religion.

In fact, loved ones, I would lovingly submit to you, it replaces all religion.

The gospel is absolutely exclusive.

New one, new wine skin.

And this needs to be emphatically understood in an era that exalts diversity of belief, particularly in Western culture.

Tolerance of religion, pluralism, inclusivism, and even universalism, which essentially stands for we're all headed together in the same direction, which is not what the Son of God taught.

This is not the new wine that God encapsulated in skin proclaims and is speaking out of this passage.

And if the wineskin of your heart will not flex to the exclusivity of the gospel, this paradigm, this wineskin, and a white hot need for all people to have access to the love of God through this gospel, then that wineskin of one's heart has become dry and brittle and unflexible and unteachable and needs to loosen up in light of the passage that Jesus shares with us this morning.

This is why Jesus says things like he does in Matthew 18, 3 regarding the flexibility of our own heart, our teachability.

Matthew 18, 3, truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of God.

The quality of a child is a son or a daughter, is teachable.

You don't have to teach a child to be teachable.

They just are.

This is why the book of Jude teaches Christians the following: Jude 1, 3.

Beloved, although I was eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write, appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

In every age, church family, every age, including our own, we have a godly tradition to uphold and to guard.

It is the apostolic tradition handed down to us from the apostles themselves, which wrote most of the New Testament, which is to be maintained and guarded in every age of the church.

Now, loved ones, a moment ago when I was going over the isms, it is possible that one of the isms tripped you up when I said that you can't layer a conservatism over the over the scriptures.

What did I mean by that?

Well, I know people who love all things old and have no room for change.

They think if it's new, it can't be good.

That's their attitude.

And then they have a tenacious version of conservatism that is never open to any new thing that God may be doing that is based upon the revelation of his word.

On the other hand, before I go to the other hand, may I say this check the wineskin of your heart.

Because sometimes it's not a conservatism that's rooted in scripture.

Sometimes it's a conservatism that's just not open to what God may be doing.

Check the wineskin of your heart.

On the other hand, you have people who believe it can't be good unless it's new.

The old is always outmoded and outdated, and this is something that we need to be aware of as well because we see the curse on the church all the time, where on social media and in all kinds of expressions, there are persons who believe they have received new insights and new theologies that are coming down the pike that actually challenge Christian orthodoxy that has been true for 2,000 years.

Check the wineskin of your heart.

Now, church, I want to talk to you for a moment.

You're like some of you are going, Well, Paul, you're already talking to me, but what I mean by that, let me have a fireside chat with you in the middle of this teaching.

You and I are living in a very unique window of history.

The unfortunate thing is most people aren't aware of it.

This is what I'm about to say is a part of why I've said I'd rather be alive right now than any time in history.

And the the one of the reasons is because God's on the move all over the world, and there are things God's doing in respective parts of the world, the kind of things that people have prayed for for years in movements in the Christian church.

The kingdom of God really is advancing on our watch in many nations of the earth.

We've still got a lot of work to do.

But I want to talk to you about our own country for just a moment.

I love our nation, and so most of you, I'm sure you feel the same way.

But here's the deal, here's the reality.

Here's the fireside chat.

The church in North America is not growing overall.

And you've seen the statistical data, many of you.

That in fact the church in North America has not been effective in reaching people for Christ over the last new people for Christ over the last several decades.

Now, with that in mind, I don't say that in the lens of negativity or that we're without hope.

But in 2,000 years of Christianity, there is this is a far this is my fireside chat spot.

I declare that.

Here we are.

In 2,000 years of Christian history, we're in a window of time right now where much of the North American church is undergoing and has undergone a reformation.

And a lot of people don't haven't paid attention to this.

The last 50 or so years, that's less than 1% of 2,000 years.

I think it's 0.025.

The point is, is this is a small window, but in this window, churches are reforming.

You see, in North America, about 60 to 70% of people attend some type of denominational church.

20-something percent attend like an independent church.

But let me let me explain what's happening.

In this window of time, the Presbyterian Church USA has gone through a reformation.

And that is, new expressions of the Presbyterian Church have been established, the Presbyterian Church in America, Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

These churches are symptoms of reformation.

The Episcopal Church, many of you know, has also undergone a reformation.

There has been the Anglican Church of North America, and all of these are symptoms of the church reforming, getting back to classical orthodoxy.

Same thing in the Lutheran Church, the Lutheran churches in North America, or the North American establishment of the new North American Lutheran Church, or what I cited a moment ago when I referenced that the establishment of independent churches in North America.

This too is more of a reflection of some type of reform going on.

And then for most of you, but not all of you gathered in the sanctuary, many of you understand that Methodism underwent a major reformation approximately three and a half, four years ago in coming out of the United Methodist Church, thousands of churches around the world, and now forming the Global Methodist Church.

Now, you may or may not remember that I used to say to you when we were getting ready to disaffiliate, I shared with you that disaffiliation is never about disaffiliation.

Disaffiliation from a denomination is about what it's unto.

And I would say that we are in an era of reformation, reforming in North America, but reformation is not just about reformation.

Reformation is about what reformation is unto.

Now I pray your eyes are not glossing over as I share this, but as we're in this reformation, we need to understand that reformation is unto something.

And I want to submit to you that I believe that reformation is unto revival.

Reformation is not revival, but reformation postures the church to come into alignment with the heart of God, the will of God, the word of God, to move with God so that God may breathe life into his church, so that he might breathe new wine into the new wineskin.

And that typically, historically, in the Bible and in church history, happens through the renewal of the primal pulses of Christianity.

This is what Wesley, John Wesley, our founder, also experienced and called the church to in the 17th, 18th century as well.

And that is to renew the pulses of primal Christianity.

So what I want to do for a moment is I want to go to God's word.

I know you're shocked, okay?

We're going to go to God's word for just a moment.

I'm going to read to you five passages.

All five passages are Jesus' words.

And before I read these words to you, I want you to know that the statistical data tells us that in North America, that we're not living in an age where people come to church out of social conformity any longer.

They come because people build relationships with them.

And as they build relationships, they share the love of God through his gospel.

It's not so much just come to church with me, it's deeper than that.

Now, nothing wrong with saying come to church with me, but the people of God learn and embrace being a witness for God.

So here's Jesus' words.

Jesus said, Mark 16, go into all the world, that includes Memphis, and preach the gospel to every creature.

He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned.

Now here's a rhetorical question for you.

Was Jesus speaking to institutional church leaders only when he said that, or was he speaking to the body of Christ?

But wait a minute, Jesus said this again, Luke 24, 27 47, in a different way.

Repentance and forgiveness of sin should be proclaimed in his name to all nations.

That word is ethne, meaning all ethnic groups.

That means God, God has a heart for black people and white people and Hispanic people and Polish people and all the people groups of the earth, right here in Memphis and beyond.

But wait a minute, Jesus said things like this again.

John chapter 20, verse 21.

John 20:21

As the Father has sent me, so I'm sending you.

Now again, is Jesus speaking only to institutional church leaders?

Or is he speaking to his body?

Then there comes Matthew 28, probably the most famous verse.

Therefore, Jesus said, Go and make disciples of all different kinds of people, all nations.

Again, that Greek word there is ethne, meaning all ethnic groups, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, teach them to obey everything I've commanded you.

I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.

I don't even, I'm not even aware when I do that.

I am now.

And then we get to the book of Acts.

And Jesus says to his bride, You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all Judea, Samaria, to the end of the earth.

You ever have a dad or a mom who said something to you more than once because they know they've got to say it more than once so that it gets through to you?

So it gets imprinted on your heart?

My dad was like that, particularly in sports.

Son, if if the guard dribbles right here, move your Body here cut the baseline off.

I can hear his voice.

And when I didn't, it would get more intense.

And it got intense to a point where because he repeated it, it got through to me.

And when I was on defense, I would move my body and cut the bass line off.

Defense is played with your feet, son.

Move.

Jesus is saying this repeatedly to his brother.

As if he wants it imprinted in our heart, our DNA.

Love one, every believer, every believer is an agent of God's mission, not just institutional church leaders.

You realize this word imprint means to fix indelibly or permanently.

It reminds me of a quote from A.

W.

Tozer.

Tozer once said, Natural thought will repeatedly substitute for God's truth, even among Christians, until Scripture is allowed to imprint its own perspective strongly in our minds.

I've got a friend who's an entrepreneur.

He's developed commercial properties from Texas all the way to Alabama, has a private plane, blah, blah, blah.

So he's done real well.

I was talking with him one day and I said, I said, tell me about the business books you've read that have impacted you.

And he he named them off, and then he said this.

He says, You know, Paul, I've read this, I've read this, and they've all been helpful.

But you know the book that's most helpful, that really sums up everything these business leaders are saying about how to build businesses?

He said, My mom used to read me a story when I was five years old.

It was called The Little Train That Could.

And he goes, You know the theme of the story?

I think I can.

I think I can, I think I can.

And he looked at me and said, The only thing that makes me different from other people is that I don't give up.

And I'm willing to learn new things.

I think about the implications for the Christ follower.

I don't give up in light when Jesus gives instructions like what we just read and what he's seeking to imprint upon our hearts that we would take a posture that says, Jesus, don't give up on me, but I'm willing to learn new things.

Years ago, Christ Church Birmingham, I'll name that church a couple of times, not a perfect church, but God did work in that church.

I'm going to tell you a longer story here in a moment.

But in that church, we were training people and equipping people and how to reach people for Christ, how to multiply disciples.

And then I noticed that everybody that was getting trained and equipped was in their 40s and younger.

Until a guy named Dwayne Claver stepped up, a retired Marine, six foot six, huge.

His nickname was Hands.

When he put his hand on your shoulder, you would be like, holy cow, he's just this mammoth of this human being.

And Dwayne said, I want to learn.

And Dwayne began learning.

Duane's in his 70s.

And Duane began learning.

Duane went with our college students back when you could get in China and went on a mission of sharing the gospel and making disciples on college campuses in China.

Just was big, big dub in his 70s.

The college students fell in love with him because he's so teachable and moldable.

But what began happening at Christchurch Birmingham is that suddenly it opened up a can of understanding.

If he can do it, then I can do it.

Sometimes the biggest obstacles we face are not the giants in the land, but the grasshoppers in our minds and our hearts.

Henry Blackaby once said, When you believe that nothing significant can happen through you, you have said more about your belief in God than you've said about yourself.

Every believer, every believer is an agent of God's mission, not just institutional church leaders.

This is why Christ's Methodist Church has a mission statement that's for all of us.

We exist to glorify God and make disciples of Jesus Christ among all peoples.

This is not the mission of church leadership, it's the mission of the body of Christ.

Church family, do you know why Missy and I have been taking teams from North America to Asia for over 20 years?

Well, it's not only to reach unreached people groups, it is that, but it's much more than that.

A part of it aligns with a quote that John Piper once gave.

It reads like this there is a great gulf between the Christianity that wrestles with whether to worship at the cost of imprisonment and death, and the Christianity that wrestles with whether the kids should play soccer on Sunday morning.

There is a revelation of Jesus that the persecuted church knows that the prosperous church desperately needs.

That he is worthy of aligning your life around.

He is worthy of suffering for.

But we also take teams to help American Christians, particularly Methodist Christians, understand and experience the reality that the gospel of Jesus Christ still works.

Multiplying disciples is doable.

Multiplying disciples is not complicated.

Multiplying disciples is simple and reproducible.

Church planting is within reach because Jesus Christ has more invested in developing and birthing his church than we do.

This is new wine.

But it won't work if the wineskin of our heart is inflexible.

Now, church, I think you're gleaning the reality now that these verses expose human nature, our deep resistance to change because we find comfort in familiar patterns or patterns that align with what we've traditionally known.

Even when God has given specific commands around our doing something that is fresh and life-giving, around the intentionality of multiplying disciples and trusting God's gospel, God's work requires us to let go of rigid wineskins, wineskins that become inflexible, that are really the wineskins of our heart.

And when God is seeking to birth dynamism from the wineskin of our heart, filling it with the new wine of his presence and his expression and the new wine of the person of the Holy Spirit.

So when Jesus imprints his word into your heart and life, you stop saying things like, I can't do that.

That's for other people.

I can't do that.

And when you have I can't do that thinking, I want to submit to you that you're believing a lie.

God encapsulated in skin would never teach you or command you to do something that you're not, he's not going to empower you to do.

I want to submit to you that if you say I can't do that, you bel you're believing a myth.

A myth is a wrong belief that is driving your behavior and you don't even know it.

So, hey, look, can can can we go over 12 o'clock a little bit?

I'm going to anyway, but I'm trying to be kind.

I'm not going to do it a lot.

Some got people leaving now.

Okay, all right.

I love you.

I love you.

I wasn't saying that to embarrass you.

I I do, I love you.

So in 2007, something very similar happened in mine and Missy's hearts.

That happened when God called us here.

I began having the sense I'm about to shift you.

And we were called to Christ Church Birmingham.

I'd never worshiped there, I'd never been on the campus.

But the leading of God was so clear, I said yes to the district superintendent.

Now, when we moved, my first worship service was the day I preached there.

If I had visited that campus one time, I never would have gone.

It was the deadest church I'd ever been in.

Thank God Christ Methodist Memphis is not like that.

It was dead.

And during my first 24 months, a hundred people left.

Now, the only thing that held the church together is we had two outside consultants, Dr.

Reggie McNeil, Dr.

Ed Smith, who's now president of Williamson Christian College.

These two outside consultants had come in with our leaders and done a churchwide survey and had said to our leadership: in order for this church to go forward, you need to leave, you need to lose people.

If they're willing to go, let them go because the environment is very, very toxic.

And it was.

We had a Sunday school class taught by a guy that I don't even know if he was a Christian.

There's a lot of anecdotes I could share with you about that.

There were classes, Sunday school classes, taught by people who didn't even show up for worship.

Like we were running satellite ministries.

There was a Sunday school class leading the charge and creating division in the church.

And it was hard.

And I began to have a prayer life that went like this.

God, you've obviously made a mistake.

This is not where you want me.

I'm a processor.

I would write these long emails to Missy.

Missy, I know that I'm going to see you this evening, but understand I'm processing.

I think I've made a mistake.

Maybe God didn't lead us here.

Let's go plant a church.

And I thank God for my wife, who is very godly and has always encouraged me and encouraged me to press on.

I shared with you on Ash Wednesday a couple of years ago one of the men in the church that was just at me all the time.

His name was Felix.

His wife had been praying for him to know Jesus for decades.

And he was a thorn in my side.

And I get a phone call one night from the sheriff.

And he says, Paul Felix and Gladys have been in a terrible automobile accident.

Gladys didn't make it.

And Felix is down at UAB.

I said, Okay, I'll be there.

Thank you.

And I went down to UAB.

He's in a coma.

I happened to be at the hospital two weeks later when he woke up.

His daughter, his adult daughter standing right here.

He wakes up from the coma.

First person he sees is his pastor.

First words out of his mouth, you are the problem.

You've got to go.

I mean, this is he just woke up from a coma where you let up a little bit.

His daughter's embarrassed.

I said, Oh, it's the drugs.

Of course, I knew it was his heart, but I was trying to make it easier for her.

And he just lit into me, and I just did my best to love him.

I went back the next day.

And this is when the miracle.

I walk into that hospital room.

And he says, Paul, and he's reaching out to hug me.

He says, Paul, Paul.

I'm like, that's a miracle.

He's got tears on his face.

He says, Paul, Jesus has come to me.

He didn't mean he saw him.

He just, he's come to me.

Paul, I've got a peace I've never had before.

And Paul, I'm so sorry.

Everything, the way I've treated you, I I'm so so will you please forgive me.

I said, yes.

But somehow in that circumstance of losing his wife, awaking from a coma, that circumstances he had come to know Jesus.

Now everybody who visited in and out of that hospital room who's like, we need to get behind our pastor.

And he had the wisdom to say, it's not about Paul.

It's about the word of God and what Jesus is trying to do in our church.

It was a miracle.

Things begin to turn around.

And what began happening over the years is that people begin, as they follow Jesus, they begin to get equipped in how to multiply disciples.

It was not unusual for me at Christ Church Birmingham to walk into a coffee shop and me look up and see a group of people in a discipleship group from our church that I didn't even know was going on.

That happened dozens and dozens of times.

It was not unusual for me to baptize brand new Christians that from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds, including exchange students from China and Africa and some from the Middle East, that people in our church had just started discipleship groups with.

And I baptized them as brand new Christians, not because I led them to Christ, but the priesthood of believers led them for Christ, led them to Christ.

And I began to understand that what that church was suffering from among its other dimensions of toxicity was that they only had faith for discussion.

They would come to Sunday school and they would talk about things, but they didn't live into it.

And they began to live into it.

Dan Browning, Dave Browning once said that the danger in the Western church today is that we have become educated beyond our obedience.

You know, not long after entering 20th century Methodism, the general conference in the Methodist Church voted that a Methodist Christian is no longer required to be in a discipleship group.

And church, that's hurt us.

Because what's happening, or what when Methodism was vibrant, depth fueled breath.

This also was a Western trend.

And what has happened in Methodism is we've had multiple generations of Christians that really haven't had the opportunity, the gift, and the grace to live into the fullness of what it means to be a Methodist Christ followers.

Many Christians in the Western church don't give themselves to developing other people because they've never had anybody in the previous generation pour into them to be developed.

This is why Oswald Chambers reminds us all of heaven is waiting to help those who will discover the will of God and do it.

The early church reach people everywhere because each person reaches somebody somewhere.

And so, loved ones, when Jesus is speaking to us about the wineskin, he's not referring to the wineskin of an institution.

He's referring to the wineskin of our heart.

And when we tell ourselves, I can't do that, or I can't get things can't get better than what I've known, or the old is good enough, we unknowingly are believing a myth.

You know, there are many of you in our church family that are praying for revival.

Sometimes, however, when I read church history, God is willing, but he may be willing.

Well, God is willing, but he may be saying, Hey, will you make a move?

Will you make a move?

Will you commit to the things that I've commanded you to do, that I've instructed you to do?

Will you make a commitment to intentional multiplicative disciple making?

David Foster once wrote, Until I'm committed, there is a hesitancy, a chance to draw back.

But the moment I definitely commit myself, then God moves also, and a whole stream of events erupt.

All manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings, persons, and material assistance, which I never dreamed of would come my way and begin to flow toward me the moment I make a commitment.

Some of you remember a man named Hernan Cortez.

He's famous in some circles because he led a group of men from Spain, spent some time in Cuba, went around to Mexico, and when he landed in Mexico to fulfill a mission, he looked at his men and said, Men, burn the ships.

Burn the ships.

And Cortez has lived, shall we say, he's been famous for that moment because that represented that we're not going back, that we're totally committed, and we're going to remove all options for retreat and we're going to move forward.

Church, I encourage you to burn the ships.

I encourage you in Jesus Christ, in light of the one who is worthy of your time, who is your treasure, to engage in the patterns that he's instructed his people to engage in, to trust his gospel, to make disciples who make disciples burn the ships and don't turn back.

As we pray for revival, I'm mindful that Jesus sums up this passage with these words.

No one after drinking old wine desires the new, for he says the old is good.

Why would Jesus say something that sounds so confusing at the end of that verse?

Here's why.

Because the old wine is good, not only in the natural, but in the supernatural.

The old wine is the ancient of days, Jesus himself, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The same Holy Spirit that brooded over the waters in creation is available to you to empower you.

But it highlights the reality that the church moves forward in the power of the palpitations of the Holy Spirit, wed with God's pattern of making disciples.

All revivals are the result of an individual or a group of people going after God.

Somewhere, somebody has to go after God.

It's the fellowship of the willing.

If there is no revival in the heart, it's just talk that goes nowhere.

Start asking for those of you who are willing, start asking God for Holy Spirit coming upon you power.

Historically, every advancement of the church has come when the patterns of God are wed with the power of God.

Patterns of God making disciples, power of God, because there's prayer and sustaining of the power of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

Charles Finney once said, at every step in your progress, you need a supernatural concentration of power in order to progress.

Now, loved ones, you live and have your being in a church family that equips people in intentional disciple making.

Grant Caldwell, Hannah Hutchinson, even Amber McMachin, our young adult pastor.

These persons all equip, and they've been equipped to equip.

We also have 10 men in the Christchurch family that I began meeting with last January and have had the honor of journeying with them over the last 10 months.

In January of 2026, they made the commitment that in January 2027, they would reach out and start new groups and multiply disciples within our church family.

I'm going to call their names, and what I'm going to do, I'm going to end this sermon a little uniquely.

Some of you are going so already pretty unique, Pastor Paul.

But I'm going to end this uniquely because I'm going to ask them to join me right here.

Some of them are traveling with their family, but these 10 men, Jim Dorman, Russ Phillips, Thomas Marino, Greg Spilliards, Byron Fisher, David Carter, Ben Moore, Daniel Vandersteeg, Daryl Smith, and Kyle Muncie.

So I'm going to, I'm still here, church family, even though you can't see me.

All right, but if you guys would come up and I'm going to ask, as these guys come up, would you put your hands together and encourage them as they journey forward?

All right.

Praise God.

We got more coming.

All right, loved ones.

Thomas Marino and I actually have shared in leadership of these men.

And I'm going to submit to you that these men, along with some others that are being trained, are the first wave in pioneering multiplicative discipleship.

Multiplying disciples is normal for a church.

Normal.

This is not like something new.

This is normal.

But what we're trying to reclaim in Methodist Christianity is normalcy.

I would remind you that discipleship is designed to be multiplicative.

When God says to Abraham, I'm going to develop this great nation through you, that's like sand on a seashore.

Paul describes in the book of Galatians that he is referencing the numerous, the multiplicative effect of the Messiah coming through Abraham and birthing many people groups into the kingdom.

You can read the book of Galatians, see if what I'm saying is true.

Discipleship is designed to be multiplicative.

Jesus, when he shared the parable of the sower, he shared in Matthew 13, as the word of God is sown into the heart of people, it yields 30, 60, 90 fold.

Multiplicative discipling is normal.

So what I want to do this morning is not only honor these men for their commitment this last year, and they're going to continue to journey with Thomas and some others that are providing leadership as we go forward.

But I want to ask you, church family, to pray for them.

Because in January, they may invite some of you to be a part of a multiplicative disciple group.

I already know they're going to invite some people, some of them in neighborhoods where they have friends that don't know Christ, and they're going to invite them into groups.

But I'm going to ask you, church, that we would pray for this first wave.

And if you would put your hand out toward them and let's pray for them this morning.

So, Father, the Scripture teaches us to never despise a small beginning.

And I thank you for these men and the flexible wineskins of their heart, and the fact that you've poured in new wine into their lives.

And we pray that you continue to develop flexible wineskins in this entire church family.

And Lord, pour out the new wine of the power of the Holy Spirit through the ancient of days in all of our lives.

And we pray, O God, for great fruitfulness in and through their lives.

We thank you for these men and bless them and pray this in the name and power of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Again, put your hands together.

Thank you all.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the podcast for Christ Methodist Church in Methodist, Tennessee.

We pray that today's message has inspired and encouraged you in your walk with Christ.

To stay connected with our church community, visit us online at Christchurch Methodist.org.

We hope to see you this upcoming Sunday for worship as we seek to glorify God and make disciples of Jesus Christ among all peoples.