A
New Agenda robert smith When
we're full of grace, we will be bursting at the seams, overflowing with grace
in a lifestyle of worship toward fellow believers as well as toward
unbelievers. Grace; Works; WorshipText: Luke 5:2739
Topic: The new wine of grace
cannot be contained in the old wineskins of merit.
Introduction:
In Luke's gospel, the theme of food is significant in meaning.
Jesus
gives a parable to get people's attention and hopefully to change them.
- He notes the incompatibility
between new wine and old wineskins.
Unfermented wine expands, bursting brittle
wineskins, and ruining both.
- New cloth on an old
garment will shrink and pull away from old garment.
Instead of doing it this
way, we need to make a brand new garment.
- Jesus is saying that we
have to change it and make it brand new.
Grace
is too powerful for the old wineskin of merit.
- Jews hated tax
collectors, and yet Jesus tells one of them, "Follow me."
Levi goes from being a hated tax man to being
Matthew, recipient of grace.
- God takes ordinary
sinners and makes them new — Peter, Mary Magdalene, others.
Levi's
banquet is an "evangelistic campaign for Jesus."
- Jesus is comfortable
with all the sinners at this event, and they're attracted to him.
- We can't be so "holy"
we don't attract sinners. Churches should attract sinners.
- Jesus didn't come for
the healthy, but for people who know they're sick.
God
invites sinners to bring their problems to him.
- "Come to me. If you are
heavy laden, I will give you rest."
- In the church, we're
all "Humpty Dumpties," because we've all had a great fall.
- Christianity is not a
funeral. Christianity is a wedding.
- We detach our "cranial
Christianity" from our "cardiological Christianity."
- We need to turn our
"thinking theology" into "theology of the feet" via action.
Conclusion:
We need to give God glory for what he has done.
- Worship's a noun, but
"if I get my together, my will follow."
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