Jan 5 2013
New Wine New Wineskins
Mark 2:13-3:6
“No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”
I have firsthand experience of this. I once bought a bottle of wine and forgot it in my car boot (trunk). After a few days of African sun it was ready for action. And what a moment it chose! It was late at night; the streets were silent. I stopped at a traffic light, and BOOOOOM! I went numb. I thought someone had shot at me from close range. I waited for any sense of pain, but there was none. Then the smell of fermented fruit filled my car and I thought, “Oh, my wine!” (OMW) I rushed to open the boot and sure enough there was glass everywhere. A burst wineskin! More
Feb 22 2014
Just a supper, but what a supper!
Luke 22:7-23 The Lord’s Supper was about covenant relationships. Have we lost that?
The last supper has to be the most famous meal of all time, and no doubt the most influential. Painters have tried to capture the scene again and again. But what do they see in it? What’s so special about the last supper? Well Jesus did something that would have been quite shocking for any Jew of his day. He took the traditional Passover meal that was eaten in memory of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and told his disciples to start eating it in memory of him. That’s right. As the leader at the table that night he broke the unleavened bread and gave it out to his disciples saying “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” He also took the traditional Cup of Redemption and passed it around the table saying “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” We might say that he only did it with the bread and wine, but the bread and wine represented the whole meal. And the first Christians understood that because they continued to break bread together as part of a full meal in their homes (Acts 2:46). Does this mean we should be breaking bread as part of a full meal today? More