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
Jun 14 2015
A New Wineskin
Jesus said ‘No one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins’ (Mark 2:22).
What is Jesus talking about? Well, new wine has more fermenting to do so it requires a flexible container. In Jesus’ day containers were made of animal skin. Old skins were hard and brittle and would burst as the new wine expanded during fermentation. So new wine had to be put into a new skin that was soft and would expand as the wine fermented.
Spiritually speaking, God is always pouring out his new wine and that new wine always challenges our religious structures. If we are going to keep in step with God we will need to keep changing those structures to accomodate the new wine.
The Vineyard in Mombasa aims to be a new structure, a new wineskin, something more effective for what God is doing in our city at this time.
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