What does Tribe teach about new wine?
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 new wine starts with the moment in Luke 5 and Matthew 9 when followers of John the Baptist challenge Jesus about fasting. Brian walked the room through why Jesus answered that challenge with a series of images rather than a direct defense, and what those images are actually pointing to. The specific meaning of new wine, he taught, is the new covenant Jesus came to establish: a way of being made right with God through faith rather than law-keeping. Matthew 5:17, where Jesus says he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and Romans 3, where Paul describes a new way of being made right with God apart from keeping the law's requirements, both anchor that. More broadly, new wine can represent any new way God is moving.
One of the harder questions the congregation sat with was why Jesus says no one who has been drinking old wine wants the new. The answer that surfaced was that without the Holy Spirit, a person simply cannot see clearly enough to recognize or want what God is offering. The old wine Brian named is the pull of tradition, legalism, and trying to earn God's approval. He asked the room to read Paul's words in Romans 3 as someone stuck in that rut, and noted that saying these things plainly is part of what got both Paul and Jesus killed. The image of communion closing the service was intentional: a direct, physical encounter with the very new wine Jesus described.
The second week moved from the wine to the container. Brian put a working definition on the screen: the wineskin represents a person's capacity to receive and adapt to a new work of the Holy Spirit in their life. An old, brittle wineskin will crack under what Jesus is pouring. A new wineskin, people in the room noted, is not meant to hoard what it holds. It is meant to pour out. Brian also made clear that becoming that kind of container costs something. As he put it, "A new wineskin will cost you."
Taught from Luke 5:33-39 · Matthew 9:14-17 · Matthew 5:17 · Romans 3:21-23 · John 3:1-21
“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.