Torn Between the Two – Bishop T.D. Jakes
Torn Between the Two – Bishop T.D. Jakes
New wine can’t flow in old wineskins, old fabric cannot create new clothes, and a torn spirit cannot fully know God. Your life ought to be undivided and united as one under God’s new direction for your life. But in walking forward in faith, our thoughts can betray us and have us looking back to what was familiar. It’s the age-old question: “Is it worth it to keep going?” The answer is always, “Yes,” because God will fulfill His promise in your life, but it only works if you work it!
I pray that you will experienced God’s strength and presence in a
whole new way this month. That you will conquer your battles, achieve your goals and find joy in the simplest of things. Amen.
whole new way this month. That you will conquer your battles, achieve your goals and find joy in the simplest of things. Amen.
We’re going to the gospel of Saint Luke chapter number five, verse 36 to 39.
And I’m gonna ask you to stand on your feet for the reading of God’s word.
Luke chapter five verse 36 to 39.
And here we will have Jesus responding to the antagonism of the Pharisees uh in the way that only Jesus can do a man.
Can you say a man again when you have it?
Say a man if you’re looking and say, wait a minute. Amen. Amen. OK.
Well, we’ll put it on the screen if it became family. Some of y’all got hip to that.
You don’t even look no more. Amen. And he also a parable unto them.
No man put a piece of a new garment upon an old, no man.
Put a piece of a new garment upon an old, if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent or tears and the piece that was taken out of the new, agree not with the old glory to God.
Your clothes gotta be in agreement and no man put a new wine into all bottles else.
The new wine will burst the bottle and be spilled and the bottles shall perish.
But new wine must be put into new bottles and both are preserved.
Can you say man, oh, glory to God. No man.
Also having drunk old wine straightway desired new for He say the old is better.
I wanna use a subject tonight. Torn between the two, torn between the two Holy Spirit.
Help me tonight, I’m yours. All of me is yours. Use me however you choose tonight.
I’m grateful for the grace to stand here tonight in the house of the Lord to feed the people of God.
I thank you for what you’re going to do in Jesus. Name. Somebody shout, amen.
You may be seated. Old traditions die hard.
They don’t go easily, they don’t go intellectually.
It is possible to know that something is ok and find it difficult to do it because it is so ingrained in you to think a certain way that even faced with truth.
You find it difficult to walk in truth because tradition has so ensnared you that you find it difficult to be free.
Uh The other day, we were at the, the woman, by the way, we had a um So I don’t even know what to call that we had up there that that woman are loose will go down in the books.
It was just absolutely amazing. Uh Well, they were having a girl talk and they were doing a business session and I had come in and I had a hat on and there was nothing in the world wrong with wearing a hat except if you came out of my generation, it’s hard to do.
So I just did it out of defiance.
I wore a hat in there just to let the devil know that I know that there is no scripture in the Bible prohibiting me wearing a hat in church.
I went up to service and then I kind of, I kind of took it off.
You know, I kind of took it off.
I’m just little by little baby steps, baby steps, baby step two things I have trouble wearing in church for no reason.
Other than old school tradition is hats and sunglasses.
I think I have trouble wearing sunglasses because I think I look cool in them and if I think I would look cool, you know, the old folks say you’re not supposed to be looking cool.
And I don’t know, I, I can’t explain it. I don’t believe it.
I don’t think that way there is no scripture that I know of about sunglasses in the Bible.
In fact, I don’t even think they had sunglasses in Bible days, but it irregardless of the fact that there is no scripture tradition roots down in you and it does not come away easily.
Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees who are bound by tradition and he speaks to them in a profound way that says, if you make something new with something old, whether it is fabric, new fabric mixed with old fabric will cause one to tear because one of the fabrics has relaxed because of its age and the other one is new and it has not been pulled yet.
When it pulls, it will pull them apart because they are not in agreement.
I cannot tell you how many people are pulled apart. Torn between two.
Torn between two loves. Yeah. That’s right. Say Jesus. Yeah. Yeah.
Torn between two loves. Yeah. Y’all got real quiet. I must have struck a nerve.
Maybe I should stay there a little while longer. You, you, you, you, your, your heart is split.
Your thoughts are divided, your emotions are torn apart and you’re wrestling inside of yourself and, and don’t act like you have never been in this situation where you have said I love you to two different people and thought you meant it.
We’re the real things said I need, I need some real things torn between two lives.
Sorry, torn between two lives trying to be faithful to who you used to be while you are aspiring to be who you’re going to be.
And you find yourself torn between two lives not wanting to disappoint the people you came from, who knew you when and at the same time wanting to embrace the people who know you now and either way you turn, you are made to feel guilty because the people who knew you back then say, oh, I knew you win and you, and then you could go back and try to act normal, you know, and because like you used to act, I won’t say normal but like you used to act because they say you acted all new and they make you feel guilty and you end up torn between the two.
There’s nothing like being torn between two job offers and you don’t know which one to take and you don’t wanna make a mistake and you don’t want to regret your decision and you wrestle around trying to decide, should I take it or not?
Torn between two houses is a very difficult, any time you’re torn between two different things.
It is a very difficult uncomfortable place to be in, torn between two churches. Yeah.
Yeah, I go over here because it’s my tradition.
I go over here because I get blessed and you’re torn between two churches emotionally distraught to some degree traumatized, sometimes feeling fraudulent in both places.
Have you ever showed up as an impostor? Because you were torn between the two.
Jesus talks to the Pharisees in parables because he wants them to understand that what he has to offer is a new thing.
And any time God gets ready to offer you a new thing, not everybody has the elasticity to embrace the progression of that, which is new at the expense of giving up that which is old.
We to that, which is old because it’s familiar we cleave to that, which is old because it’s traditional we to that, which is old because in certain circles it is acceptable, the vulnerability of letting go of something old to embrace something new.
It’s a frightening experience. You don’t know what to expect. You don’t know if it will be there for you.
You don’t know if you can really count on it.
You don’t know if it’s really real and so many, many times you will have one hand on yesterday and one hand on today and you are torn between the two.
In our text, Jesus is wrestling with the Pharisees in the time of Jesus Christ.
It was the era of what is called the second temple.
And according to Josephus, a historian, there were roughly about 6000 Pharisees living during that time.
And the Pharisees had both religious power and political influence. They were intimidating.
They were used to being honored and respected, revered and often they were able to show themselves to be so pious because the term pharisee literally means to be set apart and they prided themselves on how different they were.
And when Jesus came along and threatened their orthodoxy with something new, they attacked him on every turn because some people pray for better.
But when better comes, they don’t accept better because worse is familiar, y’all ain’t gonna talk to me.
Y’all ain’t gonna talk to me.
I hope you wore some hard toe shoes because I’m, I’m gonna step on some toes tonight.
Worse is familiar what makes you stay with somebody that’s abusing you and beating you and, and slapping you and leaving you with a black eye and you could get away.
They’re going at work all day.
But you still stay sometimes because worse is familiar, an abusive companion, an abusive boyfriend, an abusive church, an abusive job.
Sometimes we are loyal to a fault. Have you ever been loyal to a fault?
All the loyal people say amen. Yeah, it takes something for you to break away.
Even when you know, you should break away because you are loyal to a false.
The Pharisees were loyal to a tradition and an ideology that was supposed to be expected of a messiah.
And yet when the messiah comes that which they expected they rejected because they were loyal to orthodoxy because when you are orthodox, you are accepted, the word Orthodox is to be, is to fit in with that, which is acceptable.
And any time you fall in love with fitting in, it becomes an idol in your life where the opinions of other people become more powerful to you than the word of God itself.
Jesus is the word of God made flesh. He is the word incarnate. He is the word made physical.
He is the word made tangible. He is God revealed in human form.
He is that which the Pharisees had studied all of their lives.
They were noted for being scholars and theologians and, and studying the word of God and here they are standing in front of the word they studied and won’t accept the word that they studied because he has come in the flesh.
That Samoon is staggering that the religious people actually gave Jesus more trouble than the sinners.
The sinners always embraced him. It was the church people that gave him hell.
Oh, did I say that in church? Yeah, I think I already said it out loud.
So I might as well stick with it since I put it out.
It was the church people that called him. It was the church people that called him.
It was the church people that challenged his theology. It was the church people that attacked him.
It was a church people because he came with new theology that threatened their orthodoxy.
And if they gave up their orthodoxy, who would they be?
Sometimes being somebody important to people becomes more important than being somebody obedient to God.
The idolatry of it all is staggering and Jesus speaks to them in parables because playing out truth did not seem to get through to them.
He called them a generation of hypocrites and vipers and they wouldn’t accept that.
So he started talking to them in parables in the hope that maybe they would see themselves in the text that they would understand that they were all fabric that they had lost the ability to stretch, to grow, to evolve, to move forward, to become.
They were worn and withered and weary and stayed and stubborn and absolute.
And Christ had come to do a new thing, but one cannot take new fabric and sew it into old fabric without there being a tear.
And some of us are so afraid of a tear that we won’t accept anything new because it might make the old uncomfortable.
And if whoever told you that God won’t make you uncomfortable, didn’t know God because the God I know is disruptive.
The God I know will make you uncomfortable.
The God I know will wake you up at two o’clock in the morning.
The God I know will have you pacing the floor. The God I know will challenge your ideas.
The God I know will call you out on the carpet. The God I know will confront you. The God.
I know will reveal you and make you see yourself.
I am sick of prophets that can see everybody but themselves.
If you got that kind of revelation, how come you don’t see you?
I see, I say, I see you say I see, see yourself, see yourself, see yourself.
Get a revelation on yourself. Hallelujah. To God.
And the older I get the quicker I am to tell you don’t run up on me because I embarrass you because I’m not gonna play along with your games.
I’m not gonna be slain. If I’m not slain, I’m not gonna fall out.
If I’m not falling out, I’m not gonna give consent to some I don’t agree with.
I don’t agree with it. And the Bible said that old fabric and new fabric did not agree.
Sometimes you gotta be bold enough to disagree.
The problem today, we have too many coward, Christian.
You’re cowards.
You wanna get along with the culture, you wanna be accepted by your friends, you wanna be accepted by your peers and you’re not willing to stand out and be scandalized and ostracized.
And yet you say though he slay me yet, shall I trust him? Do you really trust him?
Do you trust him when people are talking about you?
Do you trust him when people are scandalizing you? Do you trust him when you’re dealing with uncertainty?
Do you trust him when you have to be vulnerable? Do you trust him when you have to be transparent?
Or are you a little bit new and a little bit old?
And the trauma you deal with every day is that you are torn between the two, the, the you, you are at work and the you, you are a church.
The you, you are when you’re with your boys and the you you are, when you come in the sanctuary, there ought not to be two different.
You hallelujah. The reason you don’t have any peace is because there’s too many of you standing in the same pair of shoes.
One of the definitions of the word peace is to be at one again, to be one within yourself.
The Bible said, if the eye is single, the whole body is full of light, you can’t get revelation until you get single.
You’re talking about getting married and you ain’t single yet. Oh, mess with me. How dare you?
I’ll fight you in here. You’re not single. How can you get married when you’re not single? You’re still fragmented.
You’re still three quarters, you’re still 5 16.
You gotta find wholeness is what the Bible calls, singleness of heart.
Singleness of heart brings peace.
But it is not easy to have singleness of heart because there’s always something pulling at you drawing you a gravitational pull to go backwards rather than forwards.
I often say it, but it makes it no less true. You don’t have to struggle to fall.
All you have to do is let go.
But if you’re gonna climb a tree, it’s gonna take some effort and some energy when you get ready to fall, you don’t need any energy.
Just let go. If you let go, you’re gonna fall.
But if you hold on, you’re gonna go higher but expect to sweat.
If you’re gonna go up, you’re not gonna go up just because you want up.
You’re gonna have to put some work in it, some sweat in it and grind it.
But all you have to do to fall is let go and some of us are torn.
Should I hold on or should I let go?
Should I endure or should I let go?
Should I fight for it or should I just give in and we dress it up with religious?
Say that if the Lord wants me to have it, if the Lord meant for me to be there, he would open up a, you blame God because you lazy.
Oh, I don’t know. I don’t mean to make you mad tonight.
You blame God for your laziness.
You don’t understand that there are some things that you have to put some work in it.
Sometimes you have to stretch forth your rod some at times you have to stretch forth a withered hand.
Sometimes you have to give your two fish and five loaves of bread and you’re praying to feed the 5000, but you’re holding on to your lunch and you’re torn between the two.
How can you say the scriptures don’t work when you don’t work them?
Look at somebody and tell them to work if you’re working.
Yeah, it’ll work.
If you work at every promise of God, it’ll work if you work it, I’ve given you the land to possess it, but you still got to work it.
Hallelujah. Give your houses that you didn’t build but you still gotta move into it.
It’ll work if you were it don’t work if you don’t work it to your steadfast unmovable.
Always a bound me, consistent, consistent, consistent consistency.
Do you hear what I’m saying to you?
You have to understand this, that if your diligent dig agency will get you there.
Oh yeah, you gotta be diligent. You gotta go after it.
It’ll get you there, but consistency will keep you there and gratitude will give you more of what’s there.
So you have to be diligent to get there.
You have to be consistent to stay there and you have to be grateful to get everything out of being there.
Some people get there but they’re not grateful. They get there and they got a bad attitude.
They get, they get there and they got a bad disposition. But gratitude unlocks the fullness of where you’re at.
That’s why the devil that wants you to be grateful. He wants you to be worried.
He wants you to be worried.
He can’t stop you from being in a blessed place, but he wants you to be worried.
So you’re torn between being blessed and being worried.
Oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna get with you tonight and you are torn between the two Jesus as he furthers his moves it away from fabric because obviously they do not respond to the fabric.
And he starts to talk about wine and he says, no man puts new wine in old skins.
Now there’s a lot of discussion about what new wine could be.
New wine often in the scriptures represents the Holy Spirit.
These men are not drunken as you are supposed, singing as it is.
But the third hour of the day didn’t say they weren’t drunk.
But he said, we’re not drunken as you supposed see as it is. But the third hour of the day.
But this is that was the prophet Joel spoke of that in the last days, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and shall prophesy.
So sometimes when you talk about wine, it is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit.
But if the wine here is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit, that means that if God put new wine, the Holy Spirit into old skins, my body, then my body would burst.
And every filled person with the holy ghost in the room know you got filled and didn’t burst.
So when we look at the text, new wine, we are understanding it to be, I believe to be new revelation.
But if you put new revelation into old systems of tradition, you will burst one of the churches I grew up in, I got put out of all the time I ever got put out of the church.
I got put out of the church because we had gone to sing over at a little sanctified church and got filled with the holy ghost.
And we came back, we were trying to be cool about being filled with the holy ghost.
And brother started speaking in tongues and my hands flew up off the keyboard and then uh one other girl got slain in the spirit.
And the had a meeting after the church said, you’re no longer welcome here.
Why, why are you not welcome?
Because you’re trying to put new wine, you’re trying to put new wine in old skins and I had to make a decision.
Do I love the skins or do I love the wine?
Somebody tonight needs to make a decision. Do you love the old skins more than you love the new wine?
I chose the new.
So I walked away from a beautiful church to go to a raggedy church where the roof was leaking because it wasn’t a building that saved me.
Come on, talk to me.
Somebody see, once you get a touch of the new wine, it wasn’t a problem for me to let go of the old skins.
So don’t back me in a corner and make me have to choose because I might not choose.
You don’t ask me a question. You don’t want an answer to.
It’s better to leave me alone because if you back me in a corner, I’m probably not gonna choose old skin when I have a chance at new wine.
Now, the problem with new wine and old skins is that new wine is a moving thing in the process of fermentation.
It emits gasses and the gasses begin to stretch the skins.
And the problem with new wine is that it cannot help but be transformative because it is evolving at any time, it is evolving.
It has to be with something that has the elasticity to be flexible.
And the problem with old skins is that old skins have lost the pliability to be able to move with the new wine.
So when the thing in you is moving and the thing outside of you is not moving, something’s gotta break.
Oh You, do you hear what I’m saying? It, it forces a disruption.
When you get new revelation and new word, a new insight and new power from God, it will threaten what you are accustomed to because it’s lost the elasticity to change, to grow to ebb and flow.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with old skins because at one time, old skins were new skins.
Let’s think about this takes a minute.
The sin is not in the skin because at one time the skin was new, but it has lost its elasticity.
It is easy with time to lose your elasticity.
It is easy when you get older to forget what it was like to be young and criticize young people for some.
Are y’all not gonna talk to me much tonight?
You’re not gonna talk to me. How could you do that?
And just wait a minute, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, think back, old man.
Think back, think back, think back, think back, think back think back, think back, it’s easy for you now to say, how could you do it because you’re 79.
But when you were 19, you wouldn’t ask that question. If you’re not careful time will take away elasticity.
Jesus is standing on the brink between the old covenant and the new covenant and he comes to bring, to fulfill the law and to bring the new covenant.
And the problem is when he starts teaching out of the new, the old has lost its elasticity.
It wasn’t always wrong. It wasn’t wrong on my.
It wasn’t wrong when they were going through the world of this.
It wasn’t wrong when Jesus, when, when God turned bitter water sweet, it wasn’t wrong when they crossed the Jordan, but it has lost its pliability and they are coming to a new covenant.
That’s why you have a New Testament. The word Testament is a like last Will and Testament.
So the New Testament is not enforced until a testator dies.
So Jesus is in the final hours of the Old Testament and he’s talking New Testament truth to Old Testament people and he came on to his own and his own received him not.
And the skins begin to burst.
So they scream crucify him because some people when they are faced with present truth, they’d rather kill the truth and keep the skin.
Oh, talk, talk to me, talk to me. I’m still in this text.
They would rather kill the truth. It was easier for them to kill the truth and keep the tradition.
It’s kind of like Cain and Abel, all Kane had to do was kill a lamb.
But instead he found it easier to kill his brother.
I’m, I’m kind of scared of people who, who, who won’t hurt an animal, but it kill you.
I’m scared of people who will throw paint on your coat because, because they’re protecting an animal, but it shoot you in the head.
It’s the sin of Cain Kane.
Found it easier to kill truth and hold on to tradition.
And God cursed him because the skins burst.
I don’t know who I’m talking to tonight, but whatever, you’re torn between two, it’s time for you to make a decision.
Either you’re going to walk into the light of what God is saying.
Now give us this day our daily bread or you’re gonna try to eat old bread with worms in it.
See, the reason that the manner got full of worms is that God never intended for his people to eat old bread.
He wanted us to depend on him for daily bread because God is not worried about what he used to say.
We are living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
And if you go back and try to eat the manner that fell yesterday, the Bible said it was full of worms because God is not trying to take you back to what he has said.
He’s trying to take you forward to what he is saying.
If He were trying to take you back, then Abraham would have killed Isaac for God said, take down thy son Genesis 22.
Th only son and offer him up as a burnt offering. That’s what God had said.
But then what God is saying by the time He gets there is Abraham, Abraham, stay your hand.
Now, he is torn between what God has said and what God is saying.
If He obeys what God has said, he’s gonna kill His son. You don’t hear what I’m saying.
Oh I wanna shake you out of your tradition. I wanna take you out of your old tradition.
I wanna thank you out of your own thinking because God is pouring new wines.
Can we go deeper in the text?
See, throw your hands up and say, Lord, keep me flexible.
Yeah, I wanna go with you. I wanna grow with you. I wanna flow with you.
I wanna evolve with you. I wanna move with you. I wanna open my heart and open my spirit.
I don’t wanna get stuck on old bread. I don’t wanna eat wormy stuff.
I don’t wanna stay in the hall and eat that which the swine did eat.
I’d rather humble myself and go back to my father’s house and eat fresh bread than to eat old slop.
Somebody’s been eating old slop and God wants to do a new thing in your life.
And the Lord told me to teach this class because you’re torn between the two.
Now, the Bible says, neither do men take new wine and pour it into old skins because I explained to you as the wine begins to ferment, it swells and the old skins will burst because the system you’re in does not have the elasticity to flow with the revelation.
God is pouring in you.
And I know you’re staying saying you’re gonna change it but you can’t change old skin.
The Bible said, if you pour new wine into old skins, not only will the skins burst, but the wine will waste.
So if you try to take something new and pour it into some old, it’s not just that you tear what’s old, you lose what’s new.
So this text leaves you bankrupt.
You neither have the old skins nor the new wine.
It is all depleted and spoiled because you tried to force that, which is into that.
Which was, are you hearing what I’m saying to you?
Am I helping anybody tonight? I’m praying that while I’m teaching that the Holy Spirit will speak to you about certain things in your life that you need to make a decision about.
Either you’re hot or your cold, either you’re in or you’re out.
He said, I just don’t want you to be lukewarm. I don’t want you to be torn between two.
I, if you’re cold. I can deal with it. If you’re hot, I can deal with it.
But if you’re torn between the two, you make me sick and discover.
I don’t want you to be torn between the two.
You don’t take new wine and pour it into old skins and there you are trying to change the skins and you can’t change that which has lost its elasticity.
Some people just don’t want to change.
Some institutions just don’t want to change.
Some organizations just don’t want to change and they would rather say crucify him been changed.
They would rather kill you in the field than to change.
They would rather destroy your name than to change.
And for them, God said come out from among them and be separated for them.
God said, if you speak peace and they don’t receive it, leave quickly and shake the dust off your feet and I will remember them in the day of judgment, don’t try to force them to embrace what they have rejected.
So in the text, here we are, we are dealing with the first warning comes to avoid the temptation to cleave to antiquated ideologies, old concept, historical ideas, institutional because God is doing a new thing in you.
But then the text goes further and says that if you put new wine in new skins, preserve it, what don’t drink it, preserve it.
It is just as dangerous to use what’s new than it is to get stuck in what’s old.
He says, if you put new wine and new skins, he said both will be preserved, not used.
So on one hand, he’s talking to us about the danger of using that, which is antiquated.
And on the other hand, he’s warning us about being quick to use something just because it’s new.
And we’re living in a time and in an age and an era that people are just new to be new.
It’s just gotta be new. It’s just new for the sake of being new.
But the Bible said, lay hands suddenly on no man, commit the work of the gospel into the hands of faithful men.
Watch them and see how long they’re preserved before you start using them because they have, if they don’t stand some tests, if they don’t go through some fire, if they can’t take a liquor and keep on taking, if you can’t rebuke them and them come back, then they are bastards and not sons.
But today we are following new just to be new.
We’re following people who have no message who have no ministry who have no who have no authority.
I’m not saying that God didn’t call them. I’m saying they haven’t been preserved.
So when the gasses come and the changes come, we’re drinking something that has not been fully fermented.
So instead of drinking wine, you’re drinking sour grape juice.
So this text is balanced because it is just as dangerous to chase every new thing than it is to hold on to every whole old thing.
It says when you pour new wine in the new skins, leave it alone and let it expand and move and go through changes before you drink it because it’s not ready yet.
Is process. You hit it dead on the head. It’s process.
It’s not that there’s not a promise there, but it has to go through process.
One of the most dangerous things that the church does today.
As soon as somebody can sing or can preach or can talk, we’re ready to put them up on stage and use them.
No, you gotta go through process.
You’re anointed but sit your little self down, clap your hands. You don’t need no song.
You get in the back and sing out to real low, sing alto real low until you’ve been through some stuff till you withstood some tests till you learn how to praise him.
When your heart was broken. Till you learn how to clap your hand when your rent was past due.
Till you learn how to praise him. When your body was right with pain.
Until you’ve been through a test and a trial. You ain’t enough for us to drink you.
It’s just as dangerous to use.
You’re too new than it is to get stuck in that which is old.
And now people are just being new for the sake of being new.
They just go out of their way to be new, just gotta be new.
It’s gotta be new. It’s gotta be new and they enter into error and heresy because they make revelation out of everything to the point of heresy.
Because whatever you saw on Instagram, you’re ready to go preach it.
You didn’t even study the text to see what context it was.
You just grabbed a phrase and ran off and tried to preach because you heard somebody say one phrase and a text out of context is heresy because you love promise.
But you hate process. It takes time to have a great marriage.
It takes time to have a great husband. It takes time to be a great mama.
It takes time to be a great wife.
And so so if, if he ain’t everything today, you want out, if she everything today you want out because you’re looking at somebody been married 30 years and you’ve been married three months and you say how come you’re not treating me like you, you, you still knew baby sit on over there in your new skins and swell up and wait a while.
You’re not ready yet to drink. Oh I gotta hear, I gotta hear.
Am I helping anybody?
Throw your hands up and say I’ll wait on you, Lord.
If you don’t give me the house, I’ll wait on you.
If you don’t give me the job, I’ll wait on you.
If you don’t give me the new car, I’ll wait on you.
If I had to be single, five more years, I’ll wait on you.
If I have to live by myself, I’ll wait on you.
If I have to pray all night, I’ll wait on you.
If I have to call on my knee, I’ll wait on you. Don’t send me anywhere.
I’m not ready to go. Don’t use me anywhere. You’re not ready to use me. Don’t take me any place.
You’re not ready to take me.
I’d rather sit on the back burner and than go too soon and ruin my destiny.
How God, I don’t wanna get torn between the two.
Uh Now let me show you what, what I’m talking about.
I’m gonna show you some, I’m gonna show you something. I have to run through it.
Now I’m gonna get your bible go to John three chapter one through 12 and I’m gonna show you what I mean.
And I want you to take your religious glasses off and read the text like you never heard it because if you read it like you heard it, you gonna miss it right?
Because we’re not, we’re not gonna read it with old skins.
We’re just gonna read it like we never read it.
Now, there was a man of Pharisees of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews that same came to Jesus by night.
He spoke to Jesus by night because he is a ruler of the Pharisees.
The very folk, Jesus got just got too fussing at and said unto him, rabbi, we know that thou or the teacher come from God for no man can do these miracles that thou do us except God be with Him.
And the moment he told Jesus, he had new wine.
Jesus told him very verily I say unto you, you must be born again because if you’re not born again, you cannot see the kingdom.
You cannot have this kind of revelation and go back and play with the Pharisees.
Yeah. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.
See once you see who he is, you can’t go back into blindness and act like you don’t know what you know.
So you can give up on being a secret agent for Jesus and coming by night to him.
He said, I know you must be born again because you just showed me you got new wine.
But where you came from is old skins.
And Nicodemus says unto him, how can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter into the second time? Enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born.
We’re dealing with skin, we’re dealing with skin. And Jesus answered very rarely.
I say unto you except a man, be born of water and of spirit.
He cannot enter into the kingdom of God cannot go in that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit marvel.
Not that I said unto thee, you must be born again. Hold it a minute.
You must be born again. Jesus, wait a minute. He didn’t ask you about being born again.
He just told you that He knew that no man could do these things, save God, be with him and called you rabbi and said, I know that you are the truth.
And Jesus says, you must be born again because you cannot hold revelation in old skins.
Now, Nicodemus is in a dilemma because does he go back to the skins and he is a ruler of the Pharisees or does he follow Jesus?
Which is the Jesus says to him, the wind blow where he and now here is the sound thereof but can not tell when it come and whether it goth.
So is everyone that is born of the spirit you’re looking for physical stuff. I’m talking about spiritual stuff.
Nicodemus answered and said unto him, how can these things be? Wait?
Nicodemus didn’t say yes, Lord, I repent. Yes, Lord, I accept you.
Yes, Lord, I believe yes Lord, I, I follow you. Yes Lord, I commit.
He said, how can these things be Jesus answered and said, are thou a master of Israel?
And no, if not these things, don’t you study the word?
Don’t you know the word when you hear the word? Very rarely.
I say unto thee we speak that we know, we do know, we do know and testify that we have seen and ye receive not our witness.
If I told you earthly things and you believe not, how should you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
So the thing that, that most scholars wrestle with is yes, Jesus told Nicodemus he must be born again but was he?
I ain’t gonna bother you all tonight.
Did you read anything in that text that says Nicodemus was born again?
Did Jesus not say you received? Not what I gave you.
So I’m not judging him. I don’t know.
All I know is that the scriptures leave some ambiguity as if Nicodemus is torn between the two.
He is coming to see Jesus by night, but he’s hanging out with the Pharisees by day and we don’t hear anything else about Nicodemus until the crucifixion.
We don’t see him at the miracles.
We don’t see him at the last supper.
We don’t see him when the woman with the issue of blood touched him of his garment.
We don’t see him when he raised J I daughter from the dead.
We don’t even see him when he’s on his way to the cross.
When blind cried out, have mercy on me thou son of David.
Oh, that I might receive my sight.
The only thing we know for sure is that Nicodemus is torn between the two.
There is one other place that they mention him.
And it is after Jesus, it’s Christopher, can I show you this, John 1938 to 42.
And after this Joseph of Arama being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus.
And Pilate gave him leave. He came there and took the body of Jesus and there came also Nicodemus which at the first sight came to Jesus by night, he brought a mixture of M and Alos and a and £100 weight.
Then took the body, then took the body of Jesus and wounded in linen clothes with the spices and the manner as the manner of the Jews is to bury him.
He buried him. But did he believe him?
He gave money.
I’m not saying he didn’t, I’m just asking, did he believe it?
Now in, in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden and in the garden a new where he had never man yet laid, they laid they Jesus.
Therefore, because of the Jews preparation day for the was not at hand.
And that’s the last we hear about Nicodemus.
And the question tonight, my brothers and sisters is simply this.
Did Nicodemus spend all of his life torn between the two unable to refine?
I don’t know the Bible doesn’t make it clear.
I cannot find any place where he obeyed. What Jesus said.
He owe me heard what Jesus said and I want to know, do you obey what Jesus said?
Or do you only here what Jesus said?
And if you hear it and don’t obey it, then what is your pharisee that keeps you torn between the two?
Was it love that made him give the 100 shackles or guilt?
I cannot find a moment that answers.
They question. Are you here because you love Jesus?
Or do you only come when you’re guilty?
And the worst part of it is CASS said, he knew who Jesus was.
He said, no man can do these things. Save God be with him.
And Jesus says, what you doing with them Pharisees? Who are you?
Who is it that Jesus would ask?
How could you know me like you know me and still stay with them?
Very rarely.
I say unto you, you can’t know this much about me and not be born again.
You can’t take this new wine and put it in the old skin.
You’re watching me right now.
How can you know what you know and still run with who you run with?
Has the seduction of being accepted by the Pharisees raveled the revelation of what you know about Jesus.
And are you just torn between the two?
So let a man examine himself?
Where are your Pharisees?
Who would Jesus be shocked to see that you can’t separate from, to be with him.
How long where you have new wine and old skins?
Because if you really know who Jesus is.
Barely, barely. I say unto you, she must be born again.
No, ifs no ands no babies, no choices. You know too much.
You’ve seen too much. He showed himself too strong in your life for you to go back to the Pharisees and hang out with the sad Edrans who are persecuting Jesus.
I’m always scared of people who come to me and tell me what everybody was saying about me because I always wouldn’t know.
What, what did you say be be?
Because if they felt comfortable to talk about me in front of you, it makes me wonder, are you torn between the two and I better be careful what I say back because the dog that’ll bring them.
Well, wow.
Well, car because if you were really with me, they wouldn’t be comfortable to talk about me around you because you would identify yourself.
But if you are torn between the two, you wanna be friends with the Pharisees and slip over to me by night and you are torn between the two of them.
Now this is a word and it is what it is and I’m gonna leave it just like it is right.
I’m not gonna put no whipped cream on it. No cherries, no bananas.
I’m gonna leave it right like God left it on you. You’re watching online tonight.
You’re watching for a reason because the Holy Spirit wants you to make a decision I’ve heard that you were either hot or cold, but you ain’t neither one.
When you’re around me, you talk, Jesus talk when you around them, you’re torn between the two new fabrics sold to old, torn new wine and old skins, new one, new skins and serve too soon.
Have you really made up your mind or do you just like to keep company in both places as I close tonight?
I’m gonna ask you, it’s about your heads and close your eyes until you see nobody but yourself.
Who are your Pharisees?
And have they become idols in your life?
Because they made you a ruler, they make you feel important.
And yet there is something wooing you toward Jesus that while the rest of the Pharisees are in bed, you slip into him by night because deep down in your heart, you know, but he is the mighty God, the everlasting father, the prince of peace.
Now, you can walk out of here tonight torn between the two and I can’t stop you or you could stand up on your feet and say I’m tired of being torn.
I wanna to behold.
And I’m gonna ask you to stand on your feet for the reading of God’s word.
Luke chapter five verse 36 to 39.
And here we will have Jesus responding to the antagonism of the Pharisees uh in the way that only Jesus can do a man.
Can you say a man again when you have it?
Say a man if you’re looking and say, wait a minute. Amen. Amen. OK.
Well, we’ll put it on the screen if it became family. Some of y’all got hip to that.
You don’t even look no more. Amen. And he also a parable unto them.
No man put a piece of a new garment upon an old, no man.
Put a piece of a new garment upon an old, if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent or tears and the piece that was taken out of the new, agree not with the old glory to God.
Your clothes gotta be in agreement and no man put a new wine into all bottles else.
The new wine will burst the bottle and be spilled and the bottles shall perish.
But new wine must be put into new bottles and both are preserved.
Can you say man, oh, glory to God. No man.
Also having drunk old wine straightway desired new for He say the old is better.
I wanna use a subject tonight. Torn between the two, torn between the two Holy Spirit.
Help me tonight, I’m yours. All of me is yours. Use me however you choose tonight.
I’m grateful for the grace to stand here tonight in the house of the Lord to feed the people of God.
I thank you for what you’re going to do in Jesus. Name. Somebody shout, amen.
You may be seated. Old traditions die hard.
They don’t go easily, they don’t go intellectually.
It is possible to know that something is ok and find it difficult to do it because it is so ingrained in you to think a certain way that even faced with truth.
You find it difficult to walk in truth because tradition has so ensnared you that you find it difficult to be free.
Uh The other day, we were at the, the woman, by the way, we had a um So I don’t even know what to call that we had up there that that woman are loose will go down in the books.
It was just absolutely amazing. Uh Well, they were having a girl talk and they were doing a business session and I had come in and I had a hat on and there was nothing in the world wrong with wearing a hat except if you came out of my generation, it’s hard to do.
So I just did it out of defiance.
I wore a hat in there just to let the devil know that I know that there is no scripture in the Bible prohibiting me wearing a hat in church.
I went up to service and then I kind of, I kind of took it off.
You know, I kind of took it off.
I’m just little by little baby steps, baby steps, baby step two things I have trouble wearing in church for no reason.
Other than old school tradition is hats and sunglasses.
I think I have trouble wearing sunglasses because I think I look cool in them and if I think I would look cool, you know, the old folks say you’re not supposed to be looking cool.
And I don’t know, I, I can’t explain it. I don’t believe it.
I don’t think that way there is no scripture that I know of about sunglasses in the Bible.
In fact, I don’t even think they had sunglasses in Bible days, but it irregardless of the fact that there is no scripture tradition roots down in you and it does not come away easily.
Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees who are bound by tradition and he speaks to them in a profound way that says, if you make something new with something old, whether it is fabric, new fabric mixed with old fabric will cause one to tear because one of the fabrics has relaxed because of its age and the other one is new and it has not been pulled yet.
When it pulls, it will pull them apart because they are not in agreement.
I cannot tell you how many people are pulled apart. Torn between two.
Torn between two loves. Yeah. That’s right. Say Jesus. Yeah. Yeah.
Torn between two loves. Yeah. Y’all got real quiet. I must have struck a nerve.
Maybe I should stay there a little while longer. You, you, you, you, your, your heart is split.
Your thoughts are divided, your emotions are torn apart and you’re wrestling inside of yourself and, and don’t act like you have never been in this situation where you have said I love you to two different people and thought you meant it.
We’re the real things said I need, I need some real things torn between two lives.
Sorry, torn between two lives trying to be faithful to who you used to be while you are aspiring to be who you’re going to be.
And you find yourself torn between two lives not wanting to disappoint the people you came from, who knew you when and at the same time wanting to embrace the people who know you now and either way you turn, you are made to feel guilty because the people who knew you back then say, oh, I knew you win and you, and then you could go back and try to act normal, you know, and because like you used to act, I won’t say normal but like you used to act because they say you acted all new and they make you feel guilty and you end up torn between the two.
There’s nothing like being torn between two job offers and you don’t know which one to take and you don’t wanna make a mistake and you don’t want to regret your decision and you wrestle around trying to decide, should I take it or not?
Torn between two houses is a very difficult, any time you’re torn between two different things.
It is a very difficult uncomfortable place to be in, torn between two churches. Yeah.
Yeah, I go over here because it’s my tradition.
I go over here because I get blessed and you’re torn between two churches emotionally distraught to some degree traumatized, sometimes feeling fraudulent in both places.
Have you ever showed up as an impostor? Because you were torn between the two.
Jesus talks to the Pharisees in parables because he wants them to understand that what he has to offer is a new thing.
And any time God gets ready to offer you a new thing, not everybody has the elasticity to embrace the progression of that, which is new at the expense of giving up that which is old.
We to that, which is old because it’s familiar we cleave to that, which is old because it’s traditional we to that, which is old because in certain circles it is acceptable, the vulnerability of letting go of something old to embrace something new.
It’s a frightening experience. You don’t know what to expect. You don’t know if it will be there for you.
You don’t know if you can really count on it.
You don’t know if it’s really real and so many, many times you will have one hand on yesterday and one hand on today and you are torn between the two.
In our text, Jesus is wrestling with the Pharisees in the time of Jesus Christ.
It was the era of what is called the second temple.
And according to Josephus, a historian, there were roughly about 6000 Pharisees living during that time.
And the Pharisees had both religious power and political influence. They were intimidating.
They were used to being honored and respected, revered and often they were able to show themselves to be so pious because the term pharisee literally means to be set apart and they prided themselves on how different they were.
And when Jesus came along and threatened their orthodoxy with something new, they attacked him on every turn because some people pray for better.
But when better comes, they don’t accept better because worse is familiar, y’all ain’t gonna talk to me.
Y’all ain’t gonna talk to me.
I hope you wore some hard toe shoes because I’m, I’m gonna step on some toes tonight.
Worse is familiar what makes you stay with somebody that’s abusing you and beating you and, and slapping you and leaving you with a black eye and you could get away.
They’re going at work all day.
But you still stay sometimes because worse is familiar, an abusive companion, an abusive boyfriend, an abusive church, an abusive job.
Sometimes we are loyal to a fault. Have you ever been loyal to a fault?
All the loyal people say amen. Yeah, it takes something for you to break away.
Even when you know, you should break away because you are loyal to a false.
The Pharisees were loyal to a tradition and an ideology that was supposed to be expected of a messiah.
And yet when the messiah comes that which they expected they rejected because they were loyal to orthodoxy because when you are orthodox, you are accepted, the word Orthodox is to be, is to fit in with that, which is acceptable.
And any time you fall in love with fitting in, it becomes an idol in your life where the opinions of other people become more powerful to you than the word of God itself.
Jesus is the word of God made flesh. He is the word incarnate. He is the word made physical.
He is the word made tangible. He is God revealed in human form.
He is that which the Pharisees had studied all of their lives.
They were noted for being scholars and theologians and, and studying the word of God and here they are standing in front of the word they studied and won’t accept the word that they studied because he has come in the flesh.
That Samoon is staggering that the religious people actually gave Jesus more trouble than the sinners.
The sinners always embraced him. It was the church people that gave him hell.
Oh, did I say that in church? Yeah, I think I already said it out loud.
So I might as well stick with it since I put it out.
It was the church people that called him. It was the church people that called him.
It was the church people that challenged his theology. It was the church people that attacked him.
It was a church people because he came with new theology that threatened their orthodoxy.
And if they gave up their orthodoxy, who would they be?
Sometimes being somebody important to people becomes more important than being somebody obedient to God.
The idolatry of it all is staggering and Jesus speaks to them in parables because playing out truth did not seem to get through to them.
He called them a generation of hypocrites and vipers and they wouldn’t accept that.
So he started talking to them in parables in the hope that maybe they would see themselves in the text that they would understand that they were all fabric that they had lost the ability to stretch, to grow, to evolve, to move forward, to become.
They were worn and withered and weary and stayed and stubborn and absolute.
And Christ had come to do a new thing, but one cannot take new fabric and sew it into old fabric without there being a tear.
And some of us are so afraid of a tear that we won’t accept anything new because it might make the old uncomfortable.
And if whoever told you that God won’t make you uncomfortable, didn’t know God because the God I know is disruptive.
The God I know will make you uncomfortable.
The God I know will wake you up at two o’clock in the morning.
The God I know will have you pacing the floor. The God I know will challenge your ideas.
The God I know will call you out on the carpet. The God I know will confront you. The God.
I know will reveal you and make you see yourself.
I am sick of prophets that can see everybody but themselves.
If you got that kind of revelation, how come you don’t see you?
I see, I say, I see you say I see, see yourself, see yourself, see yourself.
Get a revelation on yourself. Hallelujah. To God.
And the older I get the quicker I am to tell you don’t run up on me because I embarrass you because I’m not gonna play along with your games.
I’m not gonna be slain. If I’m not slain, I’m not gonna fall out.
If I’m not falling out, I’m not gonna give consent to some I don’t agree with.
I don’t agree with it. And the Bible said that old fabric and new fabric did not agree.
Sometimes you gotta be bold enough to disagree.
The problem today, we have too many coward, Christian.
You’re cowards.
You wanna get along with the culture, you wanna be accepted by your friends, you wanna be accepted by your peers and you’re not willing to stand out and be scandalized and ostracized.
And yet you say though he slay me yet, shall I trust him? Do you really trust him?
Do you trust him when people are talking about you?
Do you trust him when people are scandalizing you? Do you trust him when you’re dealing with uncertainty?
Do you trust him when you have to be vulnerable? Do you trust him when you have to be transparent?
Or are you a little bit new and a little bit old?
And the trauma you deal with every day is that you are torn between the two, the, the you, you are at work and the you, you are a church.
The you, you are when you’re with your boys and the you you are, when you come in the sanctuary, there ought not to be two different.
You hallelujah. The reason you don’t have any peace is because there’s too many of you standing in the same pair of shoes.
One of the definitions of the word peace is to be at one again, to be one within yourself.
The Bible said, if the eye is single, the whole body is full of light, you can’t get revelation until you get single.
You’re talking about getting married and you ain’t single yet. Oh, mess with me. How dare you?
I’ll fight you in here. You’re not single. How can you get married when you’re not single? You’re still fragmented.
You’re still three quarters, you’re still 5 16.
You gotta find wholeness is what the Bible calls, singleness of heart.
Singleness of heart brings peace.
But it is not easy to have singleness of heart because there’s always something pulling at you drawing you a gravitational pull to go backwards rather than forwards.
I often say it, but it makes it no less true. You don’t have to struggle to fall.
All you have to do is let go.
But if you’re gonna climb a tree, it’s gonna take some effort and some energy when you get ready to fall, you don’t need any energy.
Just let go. If you let go, you’re gonna fall.
But if you hold on, you’re gonna go higher but expect to sweat.
If you’re gonna go up, you’re not gonna go up just because you want up.
You’re gonna have to put some work in it, some sweat in it and grind it.
But all you have to do to fall is let go and some of us are torn.
Should I hold on or should I let go?
Should I endure or should I let go?
Should I fight for it or should I just give in and we dress it up with religious?
Say that if the Lord wants me to have it, if the Lord meant for me to be there, he would open up a, you blame God because you lazy.
Oh, I don’t know. I don’t mean to make you mad tonight.
You blame God for your laziness.
You don’t understand that there are some things that you have to put some work in it.
Sometimes you have to stretch forth your rod some at times you have to stretch forth a withered hand.
Sometimes you have to give your two fish and five loaves of bread and you’re praying to feed the 5000, but you’re holding on to your lunch and you’re torn between the two.
How can you say the scriptures don’t work when you don’t work them?
Look at somebody and tell them to work if you’re working.
Yeah, it’ll work.
If you work at every promise of God, it’ll work if you work it, I’ve given you the land to possess it, but you still got to work it.
Hallelujah. Give your houses that you didn’t build but you still gotta move into it.
It’ll work if you were it don’t work if you don’t work it to your steadfast unmovable.
Always a bound me, consistent, consistent, consistent consistency.
Do you hear what I’m saying to you?
You have to understand this, that if your diligent dig agency will get you there.
Oh yeah, you gotta be diligent. You gotta go after it.
It’ll get you there, but consistency will keep you there and gratitude will give you more of what’s there.
So you have to be diligent to get there.
You have to be consistent to stay there and you have to be grateful to get everything out of being there.
Some people get there but they’re not grateful. They get there and they got a bad attitude.
They get, they get there and they got a bad disposition. But gratitude unlocks the fullness of where you’re at.
That’s why the devil that wants you to be grateful. He wants you to be worried.
He wants you to be worried.
He can’t stop you from being in a blessed place, but he wants you to be worried.
So you’re torn between being blessed and being worried.
Oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna get with you tonight and you are torn between the two Jesus as he furthers his moves it away from fabric because obviously they do not respond to the fabric.
And he starts to talk about wine and he says, no man puts new wine in old skins.
Now there’s a lot of discussion about what new wine could be.
New wine often in the scriptures represents the Holy Spirit.
These men are not drunken as you are supposed, singing as it is.
But the third hour of the day didn’t say they weren’t drunk.
But he said, we’re not drunken as you supposed see as it is. But the third hour of the day.
But this is that was the prophet Joel spoke of that in the last days, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and shall prophesy.
So sometimes when you talk about wine, it is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit.
But if the wine here is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit, that means that if God put new wine, the Holy Spirit into old skins, my body, then my body would burst.
And every filled person with the holy ghost in the room know you got filled and didn’t burst.
So when we look at the text, new wine, we are understanding it to be, I believe to be new revelation.
But if you put new revelation into old systems of tradition, you will burst one of the churches I grew up in, I got put out of all the time I ever got put out of the church.
I got put out of the church because we had gone to sing over at a little sanctified church and got filled with the holy ghost.
And we came back, we were trying to be cool about being filled with the holy ghost.
And brother started speaking in tongues and my hands flew up off the keyboard and then uh one other girl got slain in the spirit.
And the had a meeting after the church said, you’re no longer welcome here.
Why, why are you not welcome?
Because you’re trying to put new wine, you’re trying to put new wine in old skins and I had to make a decision.
Do I love the skins or do I love the wine?
Somebody tonight needs to make a decision. Do you love the old skins more than you love the new wine?
I chose the new.
So I walked away from a beautiful church to go to a raggedy church where the roof was leaking because it wasn’t a building that saved me.
Come on, talk to me.
Somebody see, once you get a touch of the new wine, it wasn’t a problem for me to let go of the old skins.
So don’t back me in a corner and make me have to choose because I might not choose.
You don’t ask me a question. You don’t want an answer to.
It’s better to leave me alone because if you back me in a corner, I’m probably not gonna choose old skin when I have a chance at new wine.
Now, the problem with new wine and old skins is that new wine is a moving thing in the process of fermentation.
It emits gasses and the gasses begin to stretch the skins.
And the problem with new wine is that it cannot help but be transformative because it is evolving at any time, it is evolving.
It has to be with something that has the elasticity to be flexible.
And the problem with old skins is that old skins have lost the pliability to be able to move with the new wine.
So when the thing in you is moving and the thing outside of you is not moving, something’s gotta break.
Oh You, do you hear what I’m saying? It, it forces a disruption.
When you get new revelation and new word, a new insight and new power from God, it will threaten what you are accustomed to because it’s lost the elasticity to change, to grow to ebb and flow.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with old skins because at one time, old skins were new skins.
Let’s think about this takes a minute.
The sin is not in the skin because at one time the skin was new, but it has lost its elasticity.
It is easy with time to lose your elasticity.
It is easy when you get older to forget what it was like to be young and criticize young people for some.
Are y’all not gonna talk to me much tonight?
You’re not gonna talk to me. How could you do that?
And just wait a minute, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, think back, old man.
Think back, think back, think back, think back, think back think back, think back, it’s easy for you now to say, how could you do it because you’re 79.
But when you were 19, you wouldn’t ask that question. If you’re not careful time will take away elasticity.
Jesus is standing on the brink between the old covenant and the new covenant and he comes to bring, to fulfill the law and to bring the new covenant.
And the problem is when he starts teaching out of the new, the old has lost its elasticity.
It wasn’t always wrong. It wasn’t wrong on my.
It wasn’t wrong when they were going through the world of this.
It wasn’t wrong when Jesus, when, when God turned bitter water sweet, it wasn’t wrong when they crossed the Jordan, but it has lost its pliability and they are coming to a new covenant.
That’s why you have a New Testament. The word Testament is a like last Will and Testament.
So the New Testament is not enforced until a testator dies.
So Jesus is in the final hours of the Old Testament and he’s talking New Testament truth to Old Testament people and he came on to his own and his own received him not.
And the skins begin to burst.
So they scream crucify him because some people when they are faced with present truth, they’d rather kill the truth and keep the skin.
Oh, talk, talk to me, talk to me. I’m still in this text.
They would rather kill the truth. It was easier for them to kill the truth and keep the tradition.
It’s kind of like Cain and Abel, all Kane had to do was kill a lamb.
But instead he found it easier to kill his brother.
I’m, I’m kind of scared of people who, who, who won’t hurt an animal, but it kill you.
I’m scared of people who will throw paint on your coat because, because they’re protecting an animal, but it shoot you in the head.
It’s the sin of Cain Kane.
Found it easier to kill truth and hold on to tradition.
And God cursed him because the skins burst.
I don’t know who I’m talking to tonight, but whatever, you’re torn between two, it’s time for you to make a decision.
Either you’re going to walk into the light of what God is saying.
Now give us this day our daily bread or you’re gonna try to eat old bread with worms in it.
See, the reason that the manner got full of worms is that God never intended for his people to eat old bread.
He wanted us to depend on him for daily bread because God is not worried about what he used to say.
We are living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
And if you go back and try to eat the manner that fell yesterday, the Bible said it was full of worms because God is not trying to take you back to what he has said.
He’s trying to take you forward to what he is saying.
If He were trying to take you back, then Abraham would have killed Isaac for God said, take down thy son Genesis 22.
Th only son and offer him up as a burnt offering. That’s what God had said.
But then what God is saying by the time He gets there is Abraham, Abraham, stay your hand.
Now, he is torn between what God has said and what God is saying.
If He obeys what God has said, he’s gonna kill His son. You don’t hear what I’m saying.
Oh I wanna shake you out of your tradition. I wanna take you out of your old tradition.
I wanna thank you out of your own thinking because God is pouring new wines.
Can we go deeper in the text?
See, throw your hands up and say, Lord, keep me flexible.
Yeah, I wanna go with you. I wanna grow with you. I wanna flow with you.
I wanna evolve with you. I wanna move with you. I wanna open my heart and open my spirit.
I don’t wanna get stuck on old bread. I don’t wanna eat wormy stuff.
I don’t wanna stay in the hall and eat that which the swine did eat.
I’d rather humble myself and go back to my father’s house and eat fresh bread than to eat old slop.
Somebody’s been eating old slop and God wants to do a new thing in your life.
And the Lord told me to teach this class because you’re torn between the two.
Now, the Bible says, neither do men take new wine and pour it into old skins because I explained to you as the wine begins to ferment, it swells and the old skins will burst because the system you’re in does not have the elasticity to flow with the revelation.
God is pouring in you.
And I know you’re staying saying you’re gonna change it but you can’t change old skin.
The Bible said, if you pour new wine into old skins, not only will the skins burst, but the wine will waste.
So if you try to take something new and pour it into some old, it’s not just that you tear what’s old, you lose what’s new.
So this text leaves you bankrupt.
You neither have the old skins nor the new wine.
It is all depleted and spoiled because you tried to force that, which is into that.
Which was, are you hearing what I’m saying to you?
Am I helping anybody tonight? I’m praying that while I’m teaching that the Holy Spirit will speak to you about certain things in your life that you need to make a decision about.
Either you’re hot or your cold, either you’re in or you’re out.
He said, I just don’t want you to be lukewarm. I don’t want you to be torn between two.
I, if you’re cold. I can deal with it. If you’re hot, I can deal with it.
But if you’re torn between the two, you make me sick and discover.
I don’t want you to be torn between the two.
You don’t take new wine and pour it into old skins and there you are trying to change the skins and you can’t change that which has lost its elasticity.
Some people just don’t want to change.
Some institutions just don’t want to change.
Some organizations just don’t want to change and they would rather say crucify him been changed.
They would rather kill you in the field than to change.
They would rather destroy your name than to change.
And for them, God said come out from among them and be separated for them.
God said, if you speak peace and they don’t receive it, leave quickly and shake the dust off your feet and I will remember them in the day of judgment, don’t try to force them to embrace what they have rejected.
So in the text, here we are, we are dealing with the first warning comes to avoid the temptation to cleave to antiquated ideologies, old concept, historical ideas, institutional because God is doing a new thing in you.
But then the text goes further and says that if you put new wine in new skins, preserve it, what don’t drink it, preserve it.
It is just as dangerous to use what’s new than it is to get stuck in what’s old.
He says, if you put new wine and new skins, he said both will be preserved, not used.
So on one hand, he’s talking to us about the danger of using that, which is antiquated.
And on the other hand, he’s warning us about being quick to use something just because it’s new.
And we’re living in a time and in an age and an era that people are just new to be new.
It’s just gotta be new. It’s just new for the sake of being new.
But the Bible said, lay hands suddenly on no man, commit the work of the gospel into the hands of faithful men.
Watch them and see how long they’re preserved before you start using them because they have, if they don’t stand some tests, if they don’t go through some fire, if they can’t take a liquor and keep on taking, if you can’t rebuke them and them come back, then they are bastards and not sons.
But today we are following new just to be new.
We’re following people who have no message who have no ministry who have no who have no authority.
I’m not saying that God didn’t call them. I’m saying they haven’t been preserved.
So when the gasses come and the changes come, we’re drinking something that has not been fully fermented.
So instead of drinking wine, you’re drinking sour grape juice.
So this text is balanced because it is just as dangerous to chase every new thing than it is to hold on to every whole old thing.
It says when you pour new wine in the new skins, leave it alone and let it expand and move and go through changes before you drink it because it’s not ready yet.
Is process. You hit it dead on the head. It’s process.
It’s not that there’s not a promise there, but it has to go through process.
One of the most dangerous things that the church does today.
As soon as somebody can sing or can preach or can talk, we’re ready to put them up on stage and use them.
No, you gotta go through process.
You’re anointed but sit your little self down, clap your hands. You don’t need no song.
You get in the back and sing out to real low, sing alto real low until you’ve been through some stuff till you withstood some tests till you learn how to praise him.
When your heart was broken. Till you learn how to clap your hand when your rent was past due.
Till you learn how to praise him. When your body was right with pain.
Until you’ve been through a test and a trial. You ain’t enough for us to drink you.
It’s just as dangerous to use.
You’re too new than it is to get stuck in that which is old.
And now people are just being new for the sake of being new.
They just go out of their way to be new, just gotta be new.
It’s gotta be new. It’s gotta be new and they enter into error and heresy because they make revelation out of everything to the point of heresy.
Because whatever you saw on Instagram, you’re ready to go preach it.
You didn’t even study the text to see what context it was.
You just grabbed a phrase and ran off and tried to preach because you heard somebody say one phrase and a text out of context is heresy because you love promise.
But you hate process. It takes time to have a great marriage.
It takes time to have a great husband. It takes time to be a great mama.
It takes time to be a great wife.
And so so if, if he ain’t everything today, you want out, if she everything today you want out because you’re looking at somebody been married 30 years and you’ve been married three months and you say how come you’re not treating me like you, you, you still knew baby sit on over there in your new skins and swell up and wait a while.
You’re not ready yet to drink. Oh I gotta hear, I gotta hear.
Am I helping anybody?
Throw your hands up and say I’ll wait on you, Lord.
If you don’t give me the house, I’ll wait on you.
If you don’t give me the job, I’ll wait on you.
If you don’t give me the new car, I’ll wait on you.
If I had to be single, five more years, I’ll wait on you.
If I have to live by myself, I’ll wait on you.
If I have to pray all night, I’ll wait on you.
If I have to call on my knee, I’ll wait on you. Don’t send me anywhere.
I’m not ready to go. Don’t use me anywhere. You’re not ready to use me. Don’t take me any place.
You’re not ready to take me.
I’d rather sit on the back burner and than go too soon and ruin my destiny.
How God, I don’t wanna get torn between the two.
Uh Now let me show you what, what I’m talking about.
I’m gonna show you some, I’m gonna show you something. I have to run through it.
Now I’m gonna get your bible go to John three chapter one through 12 and I’m gonna show you what I mean.
And I want you to take your religious glasses off and read the text like you never heard it because if you read it like you heard it, you gonna miss it right?
Because we’re not, we’re not gonna read it with old skins.
We’re just gonna read it like we never read it.
Now, there was a man of Pharisees of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews that same came to Jesus by night.
He spoke to Jesus by night because he is a ruler of the Pharisees.
The very folk, Jesus got just got too fussing at and said unto him, rabbi, we know that thou or the teacher come from God for no man can do these miracles that thou do us except God be with Him.
And the moment he told Jesus, he had new wine.
Jesus told him very verily I say unto you, you must be born again because if you’re not born again, you cannot see the kingdom.
You cannot have this kind of revelation and go back and play with the Pharisees.
Yeah. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.
See once you see who he is, you can’t go back into blindness and act like you don’t know what you know.
So you can give up on being a secret agent for Jesus and coming by night to him.
He said, I know you must be born again because you just showed me you got new wine.
But where you came from is old skins.
And Nicodemus says unto him, how can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter into the second time? Enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born.
We’re dealing with skin, we’re dealing with skin. And Jesus answered very rarely.
I say unto you except a man, be born of water and of spirit.
He cannot enter into the kingdom of God cannot go in that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit marvel.
Not that I said unto thee, you must be born again. Hold it a minute.
You must be born again. Jesus, wait a minute. He didn’t ask you about being born again.
He just told you that He knew that no man could do these things, save God, be with him and called you rabbi and said, I know that you are the truth.
And Jesus says, you must be born again because you cannot hold revelation in old skins.
Now, Nicodemus is in a dilemma because does he go back to the skins and he is a ruler of the Pharisees or does he follow Jesus?
Which is the Jesus says to him, the wind blow where he and now here is the sound thereof but can not tell when it come and whether it goth.
So is everyone that is born of the spirit you’re looking for physical stuff. I’m talking about spiritual stuff.
Nicodemus answered and said unto him, how can these things be? Wait?
Nicodemus didn’t say yes, Lord, I repent. Yes, Lord, I accept you.
Yes, Lord, I believe yes Lord, I, I follow you. Yes Lord, I commit.
He said, how can these things be Jesus answered and said, are thou a master of Israel?
And no, if not these things, don’t you study the word?
Don’t you know the word when you hear the word? Very rarely.
I say unto thee we speak that we know, we do know, we do know and testify that we have seen and ye receive not our witness.
If I told you earthly things and you believe not, how should you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
So the thing that, that most scholars wrestle with is yes, Jesus told Nicodemus he must be born again but was he?
I ain’t gonna bother you all tonight.
Did you read anything in that text that says Nicodemus was born again?
Did Jesus not say you received? Not what I gave you.
So I’m not judging him. I don’t know.
All I know is that the scriptures leave some ambiguity as if Nicodemus is torn between the two.
He is coming to see Jesus by night, but he’s hanging out with the Pharisees by day and we don’t hear anything else about Nicodemus until the crucifixion.
We don’t see him at the miracles.
We don’t see him at the last supper.
We don’t see him when the woman with the issue of blood touched him of his garment.
We don’t see him when he raised J I daughter from the dead.
We don’t even see him when he’s on his way to the cross.
When blind cried out, have mercy on me thou son of David.
Oh, that I might receive my sight.
The only thing we know for sure is that Nicodemus is torn between the two.
There is one other place that they mention him.
And it is after Jesus, it’s Christopher, can I show you this, John 1938 to 42.
And after this Joseph of Arama being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus.
And Pilate gave him leave. He came there and took the body of Jesus and there came also Nicodemus which at the first sight came to Jesus by night, he brought a mixture of M and Alos and a and £100 weight.
Then took the body, then took the body of Jesus and wounded in linen clothes with the spices and the manner as the manner of the Jews is to bury him.
He buried him. But did he believe him?
He gave money.
I’m not saying he didn’t, I’m just asking, did he believe it?
Now in, in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden and in the garden a new where he had never man yet laid, they laid they Jesus.
Therefore, because of the Jews preparation day for the was not at hand.
And that’s the last we hear about Nicodemus.
And the question tonight, my brothers and sisters is simply this.
Did Nicodemus spend all of his life torn between the two unable to refine?
I don’t know the Bible doesn’t make it clear.
I cannot find any place where he obeyed. What Jesus said.
He owe me heard what Jesus said and I want to know, do you obey what Jesus said?
Or do you only here what Jesus said?
And if you hear it and don’t obey it, then what is your pharisee that keeps you torn between the two?
Was it love that made him give the 100 shackles or guilt?
I cannot find a moment that answers.
They question. Are you here because you love Jesus?
Or do you only come when you’re guilty?
And the worst part of it is CASS said, he knew who Jesus was.
He said, no man can do these things. Save God be with him.
And Jesus says, what you doing with them Pharisees? Who are you?
Who is it that Jesus would ask?
How could you know me like you know me and still stay with them?
Very rarely.
I say unto you, you can’t know this much about me and not be born again.
You can’t take this new wine and put it in the old skin.
You’re watching me right now.
How can you know what you know and still run with who you run with?
Has the seduction of being accepted by the Pharisees raveled the revelation of what you know about Jesus.
And are you just torn between the two?
So let a man examine himself?
Where are your Pharisees?
Who would Jesus be shocked to see that you can’t separate from, to be with him.
How long where you have new wine and old skins?
Because if you really know who Jesus is.
Barely, barely. I say unto you, she must be born again.
No, ifs no ands no babies, no choices. You know too much.
You’ve seen too much. He showed himself too strong in your life for you to go back to the Pharisees and hang out with the sad Edrans who are persecuting Jesus.
I’m always scared of people who come to me and tell me what everybody was saying about me because I always wouldn’t know.
What, what did you say be be?
Because if they felt comfortable to talk about me in front of you, it makes me wonder, are you torn between the two and I better be careful what I say back because the dog that’ll bring them.
Well, wow.
Well, car because if you were really with me, they wouldn’t be comfortable to talk about me around you because you would identify yourself.
But if you are torn between the two, you wanna be friends with the Pharisees and slip over to me by night and you are torn between the two of them.
Now this is a word and it is what it is and I’m gonna leave it just like it is right.
I’m not gonna put no whipped cream on it. No cherries, no bananas.
I’m gonna leave it right like God left it on you. You’re watching online tonight.
You’re watching for a reason because the Holy Spirit wants you to make a decision I’ve heard that you were either hot or cold, but you ain’t neither one.
When you’re around me, you talk, Jesus talk when you around them, you’re torn between the two new fabrics sold to old, torn new wine and old skins, new one, new skins and serve too soon.
Have you really made up your mind or do you just like to keep company in both places as I close tonight?
I’m gonna ask you, it’s about your heads and close your eyes until you see nobody but yourself.
Who are your Pharisees?
And have they become idols in your life?
Because they made you a ruler, they make you feel important.
And yet there is something wooing you toward Jesus that while the rest of the Pharisees are in bed, you slip into him by night because deep down in your heart, you know, but he is the mighty God, the everlasting father, the prince of peace.
Now, you can walk out of here tonight torn between the two and I can’t stop you or you could stand up on your feet and say I’m tired of being torn.
I wanna to behold.
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