Joyce Meyer - New Wine and Old Wineskins - Part 2

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, "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.

You know, we may think, "Well, we don't live under the law". But you know what? We make our own laws. You can make a law out of anything. You can make a law of exercise. You can make a law out of reading the Bible. You can make a law out of going to church. You can make a law out of cleaning your house. Every day I used to clean my house. I mean, I guess, I felt so dirty inside me, I thought if I cleaned my house all the time, I'd feel better. But every day, every floor was vacuumed. Everything was dusted every day, every day. And one day some friends of mine called and wanted to know if I wanted to go garage sale-in' with them. And I really wanted to go, but I wouldn't follow my heart because I had my law. And see, when you have your law, the Holy Spirit can't guide you because you don't know how to follow your heart. The law supersedes all that.

And so, God actually wanted me to go ahead and go with them that day because I needed to relax and have some fun. And he just simply said to me, "This dirt will be here tomorrow". And so, I went ahead and went. And you know, we make all these laws for ourself. I, for about five years ago, I spent three years, I walked five miles every day. And I mean, every day. And I was always telling everybody how I walked five miles every day. You know, when we're doing something as a law, we wanna make sure that everybody knows that we're doing it. Well, I can't do that anymore because I got, still dealing with some nerve stuff from what happened to me earlier this year, which is getting better and everything's gonna be fine. But I don't walk five miles a day anymore. You know, I don't go around telling people that. I mean, if you read 12 chapters in the Bible today, more than likely, you're gonna tell a few people. But if you don't read it at all, you won't tell anybody that.

One time, I was trying to read the Bible through in a year. It wasn't really anything God wanted me to do. It was just everybody in the church was doing it. And I didn't want to be the only one that couldn't stand up when the pastor said, "Who's reading the Bible through in a year"? See, we do things for wrong motives. We're supposed to be led by the spirit. Is that what God wants me to do? Maybe he doesn't want me to do what everybody else is doing. Somebody came to the church as a speaker and said, you know, really encouraged us to all read the Bible through in a year. Well, that's not the best way that works for me to study. I study based on what I need, what I'm going through, what I'm dealing with, you know. I always say if I've got a bad temper, I don't need a message on prosperity. I need something to help me control my temper.

So, that, now, a lot of people love to read the Bible through every year, and I think that's wonderful. I'm not saying anything against that, but that doesn't work for me. And see, that's one of the great things about being led by the spirit is everybody doesn't have to do the same thing the same way. Finally, I woke you up. Everybody doesn't have to do everything the same way. You know, I remember when I used to watch Dave pray and I thought, "He ain't praying". You know why? Because he prayed with his eyes open looking out the window. And I didn't think that was very spiritual. I prayed with my eyes closed and I'd yell, walkin' back and forth, I ran into walls, but I thought, you know, come on, aren't we a little judgy? That's all based out of legalism. Why can't we just mind our own business and if we see that we think somebody is doing something they shouldn't be doing, why can't we just pray and leave it to God? Instead of thinking everybody should do what we're doin'. That's not what we need to do.

Now, I've gotten lost. Where am I at? So, the law and discipline are two entirely different things. We need to be disciplined, but we need to make sure that we're not making laws out of things. How many of you can think, right now, of maybe something that you've made a law of? Come on, lemme see, you're not that tired. Okay. See, we do that. Well, I made a law out of this reading the Bible through in a year and you had to read six chapters every day, two in the old, two in the new, one in Proverbs, one in Psalms. I'll never forget it. And we had a calendar with what you're supposed to read every day. And if you read it, you got a checkmark. The flesh loves checkmarks. It's really into checkmarks and stars.

And so, I was doing really good for a while and every day I had my checkmark and I had my calendar on my kitchen refrigerator because usually when people came over to fellowship, we'd sit in the kitchen and drink coffee, and I wanted them to see my calendar. I could walk by that calendar and, "I'm reading the Bible through every year". Well, the problem with the law is you can only keep it up so long because there's no grace in the law to help you do it. And see, we have to have grace to help us do everything that we do or we can't do it and grace is God's power doing for us what we could never do with any amount of struggle and effort. And so, then I started having these gaping holes in my calendar because as long as I was doing it as a legalist, I couldn't keep up with it. Well, now that same calendar that made me feel proud when I'd walk by it, I'd wanna, run and get out of the room because it condemned me. And when my friends would come over, I'd take it down.

Another thing I wanna encourage you to do is stop saying, "I have to do this, and I have to do that". "I have to read my Bible". "I have to pray". No, you don't. Those are privileges. Let's start saying, "I want to read my Bible". "I want to pray". "I want to go to church". "I want to give into the kingdom". Not, "I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to". The devil wants us to have that mentality of, "I have to, I have to, I have to," because any time you think you have to do something, the flesh is automatically not gonna want to do it. If I told you that you had to eat chocolate every day, you'd probably think, "Oh yeah, tell me that". Well, you know what? If I did, it wouldn't be very long, and you would hate chocolate because that's just the way the flesh is. So, you can't be mixing the old with the new.

There are five covenants that are talked about in the Bible. God made a covenant with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and finally, the new covenant that he made with us, sealed in the blood of Jesus. The first covenant, God made a promise to Noah and to all the animals on the earth to never again destroy the earth with a flood. And the sign of the new covenant was the rainbow, and we still see that today. He made a covenant with Abraham and according to that covenant, God would offer protection and land to Abraham and his descendants, but they had to follow the path of God. And the sign of that covenant was circumcision. He asked that they would be circumcised as a sign that they wanted to be part of that covenant. The covenant with Moses was God's promise to deliver the Israelites from slavery and take them to the Promised Land. And he gave the law, the Ten Commandments, and then that ten turned into 2,200 different rules and regulations they were following. They just kept adding things to it, and adding things to it, and adding things to it.

Well, nobody can do that. And the Bible says the only reason he gave the law was to show them they couldn't keep it, so they'd know that they needed grace. See, we can't do anything without God. That's why, you know, if somebody says, "Let's read the Bible through in a year," well, the first thing I should do is pray about, "God, is that something you want me to do"? Because if he's not gonna help me, do it, I can't do it. I can't do it just because the pastor tells me to do it. I can't do it just because you're doing it. I can only do it if it's something that God wants me to do, because whatever he wants us to do, he will give us the ability to do. But what we do instead of following the Holy Spirit is we follow the crowd. So, we'll be accepted by them, and they'll applaud us because we're doing what they're doing.

One girl told me, she said, "You know, all my friends are going to early morning prayer at like 5 a.m. And I just don't feel led to do that. And they just keep after me and keep after me about why I'm not doing that". Now see, that sounds a little bad to say, "I don't feel led to go pray at 5 a.m". And I said, "Well, what is it that you feel like God wants you to do"? And she said, "Actually, I really feel like he wants me to watch all the kids while they go pray". You see, here's the thing. God has taken care of every single thing that needs to be done if each one of us will just have the courage to do the part that God has given us and not be trying to do what somebody else is doing just because they're doing it.

Now, better be careful, somebody might get free this morning. You know how wonderful it is, how freeing it is, to just follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit and not have to try to do what people want you to do all the time? We're supposed to be God-pleasers, not people-pleasers. And God does not want you to be legalistic. That's not his goal for you. And then finally, thank God, we had the new covenant, the wonderful new covenant. "You can't be perfect. I'm gonna go and be perfect for you," Jesus says. "You can't keep the law, so I'm gonna keep all the law. And I'm gonna get on that cross and I'm gonna bear all of your sin, every sin that ever has been or ever will be committed. I'm gonna shed my blood, not the blood of a bull or a goat or a lamb, but my blood I'm going to shed and seal that covenant. And it'll be good once and for all, for all time".

We have that privilege of living under that covenant. Well, what about the Ten Commandments for today? Well, I wonder how many of you even know what they are. Number one, "You shall have no other Gods before me". Now, Jesus talked about all, he talked nine of the ten in his different sermons, and the one he didn't talk about was this first one, but he covered it by giving us one new commandment, which I'll read you in a minute. There's nothing wrong with the Ten Commandments, because if we keep the commandment that God gave us for today, which I'll read you in just a minute, we'll automatically keep the other ten. And I'm so glad that I only have to focus on one thing. I don't have to focus on ten things. But it was, "You shall have no graven image to bow down to and worship it. Don't take the Lord's name in vain".

And taking his name in vain is not connecting God to a cuss word. It's a lot more than that. It means don't take his name lightly or frivolously or use it in vain and to no purpose. So, even like people who just are constantly saying, "Oh, my God, oh, my God," that's taking the Lord's name in vain, because that really doesn't, you don't mean anything when you say that. We need to not be throwing God's name around unless we purposely are using it, because why? There is power in the name of Jesus. Amen. Now, here's where we get to rest. Matthew 22:36, "Teacher, what kind of commandment is great and important (the principal kind) in the law? [some commandments are light, which are heavy]"? That sounds like a question a pharisee would ask. "Give me something heavy".

I always tell people, "You may not like what I say, but when you leave, you'll know what I said. You'll get something out of it". "Which commandment is great and important, and which one is heavy"? And he said, "Here's the commandments. First, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength". You ought to try at least 20 times a day telling God you love him. That's the first thing I say every morning when I wake up, "I love you, Lord. I love you". A lot of times, that's pretty much all I say all day. "I love you". And that's what he wants us to do. He wants us to love him. He loves us, and he wants us to love him.

"Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself". If you keep these two, you will keep all the original ten, because when you love people, you're not gonna steal from 'em, you're not gonna kill 'em, you're not gonna commit adultery. So, I have spent the last, probably, 20 years of my life focusing on love and loving people rather than on keeping the law and all the rules and regulations. And you know what that makes me? A happy Christian. And the Bible says, "You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself".

So, that means you have to love yourself too. One of the reasons why people are unhappy Christians is because they don't like themselves. Have a little meeting with yourself when you get home and ask yourself how you feel about yourself. Come on, that's the first place to start. "How do I feel about myself"? Well, if you receive everything that Jesus died to give you, you can feel good about yourself because he says that he's made you right with God. You understand that? Right with God. I'm not wrong with God anymore. I am right with God. I am the righteousness of God in Christ because Jesus died for me. My worth with God is not based on what I do. It's based on who I am in him and yours is also.

So, you're free to follow the Holy Spirit. And if you love God and you love people, you're gonna be doing everything that God requires. And guess what? I'll tell you this as a close. God is pleased with you. "Well, how can he be pleased with me? You don't know what I've done". Well, Jesus has paid for that. Oh, this is a hard crowd. He has paid for that and so you don't have to go around with your head hanging down, feeling all miserable today because of everything you've done in the past. You can say, "I'm letting go of what lies behind. Today is a brand-new day. It's a new beginning". Amen? What did Paul say? "One thing I do, it's my one aspiration, forgetting what lies behind and pressing toward the things that are ahead".