What does Tribe teach about wineskin?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At Tribe, the teaching on wineskins starts with a straightforward definition. New wine is any new way God is moving, not something that contradicts his word, but a new method or direction. Old wine is law, tradition, and legalism. A wineskin is a person's capacity to receive and adapt to that new movement of God. The image comes out of Matthew 12, where Jesus walks his disciples through a grain field on the Sabbath and then straight into a synagogue to heal a man with a withered hand while Pharisees watch and plot. Brian has used those two scenes to press one point: the Pharisees and the disciples had the same knowledge of the law, but only the disciples had a wineskin with room left to stretch, because only the disciples were actually with Jesus.
The reason that time with Jesus matters so much, both Brian and Joy Bhatt have argued, is that it produces genuine freedom rather than religious performance. The Pharisees' wineskin had no capacity left to hold what Jesus was pouring out, so their only move was to demand he conform to the container rather than let the container be remade. Brian connects that same spirit to Revelation 12, where the accuser attacks the brothers day and night, telling people who are beginning to walk in freedom that they have no right to it and pulling them back toward guilt and shame. Brian says, "I really don't care how much you know about Jesus. But when I see evidence that you've spent time with Jesus resulting in a transformed life, that gets my attention."
Joy built on that foundation by pointing to 2 Chronicles 20, where Jehoshaphat faces an army he cannot fight and receives a word that reorients everything: send the worship ahead. That, she argued, is what a new wineskin looks like in practice. The capacity to follow an instruction that strange, one that makes no military sense, comes from time already logged with God. Intimacy with Jesus is the only thing that lets you recognize his voice when something unfamiliar comes along, and without it you are left guessing.
Taught from Matthew 12:1-14 · 2 Chronicles 20:1-24 · Revelation 12:10-11 · John 4:24 · Mark 12:41-44
The passage taught · 2 Chronicles 20:1-24
1 After this, the children of Moab, the children of Ammon, and with them some of the Ammonites, came against Jehoshaphat to battle.
2 Then some came who told Jehoshaphat, saying, “A great multitude is coming against you from beyond the sea from Syria. Behold, they are in Hazazon Tamar” (that is, En Gedi).
3 Jehoshaphat was alarmed, and set himself to seek to Yahweh. He proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.
4 Judah gathered themselves together to seek help from Yahweh. They came out of all the cities of Judah to seek Yahweh.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- February 9, 2025 Being With Jesus Joy Bhatt teaches on what it means to spend time with Jesus, how that shapes our capacity to recognize God moving, and why discernment matters more than ever.
- January 20, 2025 Breaking the Law Brian Hunter walks through Matthew 12 to show how time with Jesus stretches our capacity for freedom and breaks the grip of religious rules that have no life in them.
- January 19, 2025 Breaking The Law Brian Hunter walks through Matthew 12 to show how time with Jesus breaks the grip of religious legalism and leads to real, transformed freedom.