Joyce Meyer - New Wine and Old Wineskins - Part 1

You know, I was thinking during worship, the Word of God works and if it's not working for you, then it's because you're not working it. When we do what the Bible tells us to do, our lives will change. They don't change all at once, they change gradually little by little. But if you stick with God, your life will be completely and totally transformed. I'm gonna talk to you this morning about the difference in law and grace and how even as new covenant Christians, many times we mixed a lot of the old covenant stuff in with it and how it weakens it. You know, the devil wants us to be legalistic.

I think one of the biggest challenges that we will ever have in our life is to live a holy life without becoming legalistic. We are called to holiness, but so many people that try to live a holy life then make so many rules and regulations for themselves that they become legalistic. And one of the things that happens the moment you become a legalist is you start judging other people that aren't doing what you're doing or as much as what you're doing or the way you're doing it. I've been a legalistic Christian, I would have made a wonderful pharisee. And I would imagine that I have some friends here, today, that could say the same thing. Jesus has done so much for us, but we really cannot enjoy it until we learn to let go of the old and take hold of the new.

I wanna start in Matthew chapter 9. A lot happens in one chapter of the Bible, it's pretty amazing, but Jesus starts out here and he gets in a boat, crossed over to the other side, to Capernaum, and verse 2 says, "They brought to him a man that was paralyzed, prostrated by illness, and he said to him, 'your sins are forgiven you'". Well, the scribes and pharisees didn't like that because religious people never like anything. You've never seen a sourpuss until you run into a religious, I mean, just a real, I'm not talking about a new covenant, happy, blessed, living by the grace of God Christian, I'm talking about an old legalist who just follows a bunch of rules and regulations and is mad at everybody else who doesn't. And so, even when you do something good, they find something wrong with what you're doing even though they're doing nothing.

I know I've had that judgment, "Well, who does she think she is"? Well, at least I'm helping some people, what are you doing? And so, there was so much that Jesus did that was good, but the pharisees never liked it. No matter what he did, they didn't like it. So, they brought to him this man that was paralyzed and he didn't right away say, "Be healed". He said, "Your sins are forgiven you". And the scribes said, "Who does he think he is"? Verse 4, "Jesus knowing their thoughts said, 'why do you think evil in your heart'"? It's kind of interesting to remember at this point that Jesus knows our thoughts. Amen. Psalm 139 says that he knows every thought we're gonna think and every word we're going to speak. But he said, "Okay, you don't like the fact that I forgave his sins, so let me ask you, which is easier for me to say, 'rise up and walk' or to say, 'your sins are forgiven you'".

So, just to prove to them that he had the power to forgive sins, he also healed the man. You know, somebody, we have a funny idea about miracles. Like when we think of miracles, it seems like we always think of healing, about a healing miracle. And somebody said to me, recently, we gave people an opportunity to ask some questions in a group that I was at, and they said, "What was the last miracle that you saw"? And I thought, "The last miracle I saw was the last time I looked at myself in the mirror". Because you see, if you're a born-again believer, you are a miracle. Amen. And I don't think we should always look at miracles as just somebody being healed, you know, they say that a miracle is something that nobody can explain.

Well, I cannot explain to you why I've ended up in my life where I'm at, because I certainly, by all natural standards, shouldn't have been. I mean, I didn't do that good in English when I was in school. I got a "D" in English. And now I'm talking to people all over the world every day in 110 different languages. Barely passed English. Now, of course, I really don't speak all those languages. The program is translated into those languages. But, you know, just to keep it short, I mean, what God has done in my life, the healing that I've had, what he's allowed me to do. Yeah, every time I look at myself in the mirror, I have to say, "You're a miracle," because I know what a mess I was. Man, I was so messed up. I was abused in my childhood by my dad, sexually. And I mean, my soul was wounded and bruised, and my personality was messed up and none of my thinking was right.

And I've been walking with God now 45 years. And I can tell you in that time, my husband has probably had 20 different wives. I guess it keeps it interesting. He don't have to go get a new woman because God will change me and then I'm a little different than I was before. And then a couple of more years later and I'm a little different again. How many of you found that that God just keep? If you stick with God, he just keeps changing you. And I'll tell you what, it never stops as long as you're here on this earth. Praise God. But you know what? You don't even really have to worry too terribly much about the stuff that's wrong with you because as long as you just keep with God, you'll keep changing a little bit, a little bit. But even when he comes back to get us, there's still gonna be stuff wrong with us. But the Bible says that he's not only coming back a second time. Isn't that good news?

But we will be changed in the twinkling of an eye. It says he's not coming back to bring salvation, but to bring us because he's already done that, but to bring us to completed salvation. And what that means is that everything that we still do wrong or everything that's still wrong with us, in the twinkling of an eye, we will be changed. And that's like one bat of your eyes. Everything that is wrong with you will be completely fixed. Won't that be a wonderful day? Amen. And so, Jesus went ahead and healed the man so they could be satisfied, but they still weren't satisfied because people like that never are. And then, in verse 9, he called Matthew, who was a tax collector, and they didn't like that because they didn't like tax collectors.

And then on top of that, he went home with Matthew for a dinner party where Matthew called all kinds of especially wicked sinners, I would have been in that group, and a bunch of other tax collectors. And now, the pharisees really got upset. They just seem like they lived upset all the time. When Jesus heard that they were upset, he said, "I didn't come for those who have no need of a physician, but I came for those who are weak and sick". So, he's basically saying to them, "You know, you think you've got it all together. Well, if that's the case, I didn't come for you anyway. I came from these people who need me". And then verse 13 says, "Go and learn what this means: 'i desire mercy and not sacrifice'". Well, God wants to give us mercy. He doesn't want us to try to give him sacrifices when we sin, because the only sacrifice that will ever be needed has already been made.

And so, God wants us to look to the cross when we do something wrong. And it's challenging to get to the point where you can do something wrong that you know is sin, admit it to God, tell him you wanna turn away from it. You're ready to turn away from it, receive his forgiveness, and then literally just go on and not feel guilty. How many of you, after you do something wrong, even after you ask for forgiveness, you'll have a tendency to still feel guilty for a while? I think sometimes we break our sins up in categories, small, medium, and large. You know, a small sin, you might only have to feel guilty for a few hours, and a medium one takes a few days, and then a biggie takes a long, long time. I carried that sack of guilt with me for a long time. And I was learning about faith back in the '70s in, "The word and faith movement".

Man, I was using my faith for everything. I was believing in God for all kinds of stuff, I didn't need at all. What I needed was to mature and grow up, but I never prayed about that. Do you know that in all the prayers that Paul prayed, he never prayed for one thing for the believers? He never even prayed for their problems to go away. He only prayed things that would help them grow spiritually. Instead of praying for their problems to go away, he prayed that they would have the power to endure whatever came and keep a good temper while they were at it. I think we pray wrong a lot. We don't need our problems to go away. We need to be stronger. Did you hear me? We need to be stronger in spirit because the strong spirit of a man sustains him in bodily pain and trouble.

Earlier this year, I had an accident. Well, actually, I went for a very minor back surgery. I had some stenosis in my spine, a little one-inch incision, less than an hour surgery, be fine in a week or two. But something happened and I got a blood clot at the surgery site and had to go back for a second surgery and that caused nerve damage to this leg. So, I was in rehab for two weeks at the rehab hospital and they finally got to where I could go home on a walker and I got home and fell and broke the other leg. So, I ended up being in a wheelchair for two and a half months and I won't go into what all that took. But in the very beginning, the very first thing that I said to God is, "God, I wanna do this right. I wanna act like I tell other people they should act when they have problems".

Do you know how easy it is to give advice? And sometimes when you're having a problem, if you wanna know what you should do, just do what you would tell somebody else to do if they came to you and had the same problem. So, God really helped me during that time, and I actually stayed nice and sweet and didn't complain or grumble and had to be careful not to be proud of myself because then I would have been in trouble that way. Well, we start trying to figure everything out, don't we? "Why did this happen to me? Why, why, why, why, when, when"? And God just wants us to trust him. And so, during that period of time I just said, you know, I didn't know why that happened. It didn't make any sense because I had to cancel conferences. It just, you know, I couldn't find anything good in it, but God knows things that we don't know. And if it was just nothing but a test, it's still good for me because we have to practice on something to stay strong.

When you have a mess in your life, you can still be blessed in the middle of that mess if, if, if, if, if you handle it God's way. See, sometimes, we're so Christian till we have a problem, and then we become a different sort of person. And that's not the way God wants us to be. He wants us to be stable all the way through things. Amen? So anyway, getting back to Matthew chapter 9, Jesus went to just eat with all these tax collectors. And of course, they didn't like that either. And so, then he said, "Go and learn what this means: 'i desire mercy, not sacrifice'". Well, I had a really hard time understanding that scripture. And I just thought, "You desire mercy, not sacrifice". Well, what he's wanting us to do is to receive his mercy when we make mistakes and not try to give him sacrifices because the only sacrifice ever needed has already been made.

And so, back in the '70s, when I was learning all about faith and using my faith for everything I didn't need, God said, "If you wanna use your faith for something really big, use your faith to stay completely free from guilt". Hmm. "Well, aren't I supposed to feel guilty when I do somethin' wrong"? Well, the Bible does say in James that you should "Weep and mourn over your sin," but it doesn't say you have to keep doing it for a long time after you receive God's forgiveness. You see, when he forgives the sin, he removes it, as far as the east is from the west, remembers it no more. So, if you go back talking to God about something you've already asked forgiveness for, he doesn't even know what you're talking about.

Come on, this will help you, but you're all just like, and I know because it's like we have a real problem with this and it's wasting God's time. The Lord told me one time when I was carrying my little sack of guilt around, I'd done something wrong and I don't know, I was feeling guilty. And he said, "If you don't mind, would you just accept my forgiveness and go on because I have a lot for you to do and you're no good to me in this condition". And see, God can't use us for anything if we're gonna not even like ourselves. So, he wants us to receive his mercy instead of trying to give him a sacrifice, receive his mercy and thank him for the sacrifice that's already been made. And it says many times in the Bible, I'm gonna deal with this in the next service that he did it once and for all. Wow. That is such a statement. And it's in Hebrews over, and over, and over.

So, he did it one time under the old covenant, the priests had to keep going back year after year, after year, after year, and their sin was never forgiven. It was only covered. Ours gets completely washed away. He remembers it no more. Amen? And he only had to do it once. Do you know every sin you will ever commit has already been taken care of? He doesn't have to go pay every time you sin. He did it once, and he did it for alllll. That means there's nobody in here, nobody in any of the other campuses, nobody watching by television, nobody watching on your computer, nobody is excluded from God's forgiveness. Every single person, no matter what you've done, can have the same forgiveness as anybody else. And I hope and pray when I said that, that about, let's just believe big, a half a million people, watching by television thought, "Oh, praise God, there's hope for me". Amen?

So, when I was trying to understand what this scripture meant, God gave me an example and I just, I saw something in my mind. Our son, who's now 44, was pretty young and he played outside a lot and maybe he was, let's say he was five years old. And so, there was a bully in our neighborhood. And you know, the devil is a bully and he's always in our neighborhood. And this bully would take Danny's ball away from him and throw it down the sewer. And Danny would come, we always kept the garage door open, they'd come in, and come through the kitchen. Many times, Dave would be sitting right around the corner and the family room, and he'd come in, "Daddy! So-and-so took my ball and threw it down the sewer".

And I'm telling you what, Dave would shoot out of that chair and take off out that back door, deal with whatever needed to be dealt with. Now, our son also was a little bit undisciplined. Well, he was a lot undisciplined. And so, we had this list of rules, if you will, things that he was supposed to do every day: make your bed, take the trash out, feed the dog, you know, whatever it was. And what the Lord showed me was when he... I mean, we were teaching him and training him. So, the things that he was doing wrong, he would learn to do right. But when he had a need, we didn't go check his list first to see if he'd done everything before we went to help him. You didn't get it. I guess, I have to say it again.

See, if you're God's child, when you have a need, no matter how many things are not checked off on your list. I'll talk to you. You sound like you're get, "Oh, I didn't read my Bible for three days. I didn't even pray yesterday at all. I just totally forgot about it. I didn't even think about God once". And then all of a sudden you have a need, and the devil will try to make you think that you don't deserve for God to help you. So, you don't even bother asking, but you just need to cry, "Daaaaddy"! And when you do, he'll come runnin'. And then whatever he needs to deal with, he'll deal with later on. Amen? You're kinda, I don't know, you guys are, you're kinda looking like, am I in the right place with the right word? All right. Then he takes off into something that seems a little strange. He says, verse 16, "And nobody puts a piece of cloth that has not been shrunk on an old garment, for such a patch tears away from the garment and a worse rent is made".

So, if you don't quite understand that it's like, back in these days, people patched stuff. We don't do that now, we throw it away and get a new one. But they patched things when they ripped. And so, he said, "Don't take a piece of new cloth and put it on an old garment because that garment's already been washed, and it's shrunk. But if you put a new patch on it, when you wash it, it's gonna shrink and pull away from the rip and it's gonna make it worse". And then he says, "Neither is new wine put into old wineskins: for if it is, the skin will burst and it'll be torn in pieces, and the wine will be spilled". Now, this is so important because that wine represents, it's symbolic of the Holy Spirit. It's symbolic of the power of the Holy Spirit. It's symbolic of the power that God wants his children to walk in. It's symbolic of grace and it's symbolic of God's love. So, he said, "We don't want the new wine to be spilled out. So, you can't put it in old wineskins".

What's he saying? You can never get the new thing that Christ has done for us to fit into old thinking. That's why the Bible says that in order to receive what Jesus has done for us, we must have our minds renewed in Romans 12:2. So, I kind of feel like that that's what's happening to a lot of you this morning. I've been teaching a long time and, you know, a lot of times when people are quiet, they're actually learning something, which is good. You know, preachers, like a noisy crowd, 'cause that makes them think that, you know, everybody likes 'em. But Dave's told me over and over when they're clapping and agreeing, they already know what you're saying. When they're quiet, they're learnin' somethin'. And so, I mean, this is a huge thing because so many new covenant believers are not even remotely beginning to tap into the privileges that they have as a child of God. And it's because they're still mixing the old with the new.