What does Tribe teach about wineskins?
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 question Brian put directly to the room: what is the actual condition of your wineskin right now? Drawing from Matthew 9, Luke 5, and John 3, the series worked through what Jesus meant when he said new wine cannot go into an old wineskin. The wineskin, as Brian put it on the screen, represents a person's capacity to receive and adapt to a new work of the Holy Spirit in their life. An old wineskin is not a moral failure so much as a brittle container, one that has stopped being supple enough to hold what God is pouring out. The story of Nicodemus put flesh on that. Here was a man standing in front of miraculous signs he could not explain from within his existing framework, and Jesus kept offering him the same new wine from several different angles without softening it to fit Nicodemus's categories.
The new wine itself, Brian taught, is specifically the new covenant Jesus came to establish, a way of being made right with God through faith rather than law-keeping. More broadly, it is any new way God is moving. The congregation noticed that the rest of the world, as Brian described it, is drinking old wine, the old wine of tradition, legalism, and work-based religion. The wineskin that tries to hold a relationship with God through keeping the law simply cannot contain what Jesus is offering. One person in the room added that a wineskin is not meant to hoard what it holds anyway. It is meant to pour out, and a new wineskin filled with new wine is meant to be given away.
Brian ran what he called a stretch test to help people feel where their own wineskin might be brittle. He named things like whether church has to happen in a building on Sunday morning, whether the Holy Spirit is allowed to move in power today, and whether there is room for the full picture of Jesus, not only the gentle lamb but the lion of Judah. Each of those, he said, is a place where an old wineskin will crack. He also made clear that becoming a new wineskin is not painless. As Brian said, "A new wineskin will cost you."
Taught from Matthew 9:14-17 · Luke 5:33-39 · John 3:1-21 · Matthew 5:17 · Romans 3:21-23
“If this is a place where a culture is created that we wear masks and that we can't be real and vulnerable, heaven forbid that this place be a museum of exhibits for saints.”
From New Wineskin, New Capacity
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 5:17
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- November 18, 2024 New Wineskin, New Capacity Brian Hunter walks through John 3 and the story of Nicodemus to ask one pointed question: what is the condition of your wineskin, and is there room for what God is pouring out?
- November 11, 2024 New Wine Jesus explains new wine and new wineskins in Matthew 9 and Luke 5. Brian Hunter leads a conversation on what it means to receive the new things God is doing.