What does Tribe teach about new 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 new wineskins starts with a simple but demanding definition. Brian Hunter has spent several weeks working through what Jesus meant in Matthew 9 and Luke 5 when he warned against pouring new wine into an old wineskin. The wineskin, Brian settled on, represents a person's capacity to receive and adapt to a new work of the Holy Spirit in their life. New wine represents Jesus himself, the new covenant he came to establish, and any new way God is moving. The problem is not that people are bad, but that an old wineskin, however faithfully it held what it once held, cannot stretch to contain something new without tearing apart.
Brian pressed the cost of this honestly. Wineskins are made from animal hide, and no animal has ever volunteered. Something has to die for a new wineskin to exist, and Brian applied that directly to what God asks of people: death to old mindsets, tightly held traditions, and previously held theological assumptions. He made the consequence of avoiding that cost plain: Brian says, "You cannot add Jesus to your life because if you try to fit him and his ways and following him into just adding it into your life, it will wreck your life." The new patch destroys both itself and the old garment. Trying to keep the old life intact while folding Jesus in around the edges produces, as he put it, someone who ends up a lousy sinner and a lousy Christian at the same time.
Two figures from Mark 10 gave the teaching its sharpest edges. The rich young ruler had kept the law since childhood, and Jesus loved him, then offered him one drop of new wine: sell everything and follow. The man's wineskin could not hold it, and he walked away sorrowful. Bartimaeus, just a few verses later, threw aside his cloak, the thing most likely to represent his material security, and ran toward Jesus without stopping to retrieve anything. Brian said the contrast is deliberate. Brian says, "New wineskins don't come for free, it will cost you something." The sorrow of the rich young ruler and the abandoned cloak of Bartimaeus both tell the same story from opposite directions.
Taught from Luke 5:33-39 · Matthew 9:14-17 · Mark 10:17-28 · Mark 10:46 · John 3:1-21
“You cannot add Jesus to your life because if you try to fit him and his ways and following him into just adding it into your life, it will wreck your life.”
From New Wineskins Will Cost You
The passage taught · 1 John 1:9
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- November 25, 2024 New Wineskins Will Cost You Brian Hunter walks through Mark 10 to show why following Jesus costs more than adding him to your life, and what it takes to receive what God is pouring out.
- November 24, 2024 It's Gonna Cost You A sermon on why following Jesus costs more than adding him to your life, told through the story of a rich young ruler and a blind beggar named Bartimaeus.
- November 17, 2024 New Wine Deeper Explained A Tribe Church sermon on Jesus's teaching about new wine and wineskins, exploring what it means to stay open to the Holy Spirit's work in your life.
Mentioned along the way
- November 3, 2024 Look Beneath the Surface A Wyoming pastor walks through John 7 to challenge Christians to expand their picture of Jesus and stay grounded as national uncertainty grows.
- October 16, 2023 Encounter in the Inconvenience A Wyoming congregation shares stories of how God meets people in life's most inconvenient moments, drawing on Moses, Job, and one another's testimonies.