said, you look tired. And I said,
well, I never get tired of the gospel, but I get tired. And we do. We do. I invite you
this evening to turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter
I'm gonna try to focus, I wanted you to hear the background behind
what I have to say. Brother Mahan used to tell us,
when you read something and you see a therefore, he said, go
back and see what it's there for. And if you're gonna have
a text, you need to enlighten the people as to the context
of what you're gonna preach. And that's, It's so nice to have
someone read your text in its fullness. And I'm truly thankful
to be here tonight. I count this an act of God's
sovereign providence. I wouldn't, if I were looking
at a schedule and trying to work out what I thought was best,
I would not have chosen to go to Montana after the conference.
but God opened that door, and I feel like it's absolutely necessary
for me to go. This is God's providence. I don't count these things. I
don't look at these things casually. I look at these things as a door
that he opens to me. He has preachers, and he sends
preachers. He sent you up there, same as he sent me, and he had
a wonderful message. And I'm just so thankful to be
among the saints of God and to know why they assemble. I assembled
in churches for years and didn't know why. I didn't know why. It's a blessing to sit here with
you tonight and know why we're here. We gather to hear a word
from God. We wrestle in our studies. Anybody can read this book and
find an outline, anybody. But that don't mean you have
a message from God. And I want his message, and I
want his message for the hour, not just a message, I want that
message. He opened the door, he chose
me, he sent me here, He brought you here to hear what I have
to say, and I want to have God's message to you. And we assembled, waiting in
anticipation for God to speak. Maybe He'll speak. And we gathered together, hoping
to sing His praise and worship Him. I don't want this to just
be a habit. I don't want it to be just another
thing that I do. I want this to be real. I wanna come here and worship
Him and sing His praise. And we congregate here in obedience
to His divine command and out of love to Him who gave Himself
for us. And I'm amazed that God has extended
His grace and mercy to this sinner. I'm amazed. I'm like Paul, I see myself the
chief of sinners. And yet God extended His mercy
to me, to me. And I'm absolutely overwhelmed
that he should go beyond even that and give me the high privilege
to carry his words in my mouth. Don't you think those 70, when
the Lord gathered them together, here's these 70, they didn't
even know why he was gathering them up there. And he gathered
them up there and he said, now I want you to go into all these
cities where I myself am gonna go. And I want you to preach
to him. I want you to preach to him. And then he said, he that heareth
you, heareth me. And he that despiseth you, he
despiseth me. And he that despiseth me, despiseth
him that sent me. I'm absolutely amazed that he's
given me the high privilege to speak on his behalf. Lots of folks believe preaching
is just a repetitious recital of the same old things. It's
just another recital of the same old thing. One fellow left our
church and somebody asked him what he thought. He said, two
songs and a sermon. I brought a message the next
week and titled it Two Songs and a Sermon. We gather to hear
from him, don't we, and to sing his praise. And though we do go over the
same basic doctrines of grace, we grow in grace, don't we? We grow in knowledge of him. I'm astounded sometimes in my
study when he opens, I just wanna sit there and weep. I've never saw this. The prophets. Which prophet, Bob, would you
be worthy just to carry his shoes around? Isaiah, Jeremiah. They
didn't see these things that you and I are seeing tonight,
but he privileged us to hear them. They said, who's this for? And he said, well, it's not for
you. It's for them. It's for them. And Peter said,
Those who preach the gospel to you through the Holy Ghost reveal
these things to you. And I tell you, when he does,
I just melt. Don't you, in your study, just
melt? Just look, I can't wait to call somebody, have you ever
seen this? I called his dad the other day,
I said Marvin, you ever seen this? And we just rejoiced about
it. Word of God says, Great is the
mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. The invisible, eternal, omnipresent
God was manifested in the body of a man. Anybody here think
they plumbed the depth of that? Oh, what about his eternal counsels? We haven't commenced to begin.
to talk about those things. Or maybe God's immutability,
he never changes. Never changes. He said, I'm the same. Aren't
you glad he is? I'm the same, yesterday, today,
and forever. When we preach the wisdom of
God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before
the world, now listen, unto our glory. The gospel is the revelation
of this hidden wisdom and no natural man has the ability to
perceive it, believe it, or reap its benefits in and of himself. It's the gift of God. And when
God gives a man this revelation, he gives it to him through a
preacher. Oh, now wait a minute. I thought
the scripture said, whosoever shall call upon the name of the
Lord shall be saved. What's the next verse say? Huh? What's the next verse after that? That's a quote from Romans 10,
13, and in verse 14 he goes on to say, how then shall they call
on him in whom they had not believed? And how shall they believe in
him of whom they had not heard? And how shall they hear without
a preacher? And how's he gonna preach if
God don't send him? If he don't prepare him, if he
don't attend him with his spirit, how's he going to preach? He's
no different than you. Paul said we're not sufficient
of ourselves to even think anything like what he was telling them.
But he said our sufficiency is of God. It's of God. Preaching is the ordained means
which God the Holy Ghost is pleased to use in the conversion of chosen
sinners. And he refers to this in 2 Thessalonians
2.13 and in 1 Peter 1 and 2 as sanctification of the spirit
and belief of the truth, or sanctification of the spirit and the application
of the sprinkling of the blood of Christ. And I have a I'm thankful God
sent me a preacher. And I've got a special place
in my heart for all of these men who go forth in the power
of God's spirit with the gospel of Christ. And I said all that
to say this. Preaching is what our Lord was
doing. That's what he's doing in this
chapter. He's preaching to them. Preaching to the multitude. Preaching
to them. Christ preached Christ. Isn't that something? He was
preaching to them. And he was preaching to those,
for the most part, who didn't understand what preaching was.
I do the same thing. I preach to men and I don't have
a clue what preaching's all about. They think you can understand
these things in your closet at home. They think you can go out
in the boat and peer up into the sky and God'll just pour
it out, you know. They tell me this all the time.
Some of them tell it to you with tears. I found this to be so in our
day, just like it was in his day. And it's become a point
A rebellion in our day. People fight you with this thing
of preaching. One fellow told me, he said,
if what you're saying is so about the necessity of gospel preaching,
how do you justify my profession? I said, God didn't send me here
to justify your profession. He sent me here to preach the
gospel. It's your profession, you justify it. You justify it. I'm telling you what the Holy
Ghost said, not what I think, not my opinion. This is what
God, how you gonna hear without a preacher? And Christ was preaching. And
there was only one in that whole crowd at that lake at Genesaret. on that particular day who fully
understood what was taking place and that was Jesus Christ. I
don't even think his apostles understood the depth of what
was going on that day. He was preaching the gospel.
He who is the word, the eternal word, was speaking. This is not
just a man with some words, this is the word. And he's speaking. He's speaking. He spoke the world
into existence. He's speaking. He told his disciples, he said,
you see them rocks? You been stepping around? Them
stones, I could raise up children to Abraham. But that's not my
counsel. That's not what the will of God. Please God through the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. And that's what he did.
He preached. Is it necessary to preach the
gospel? The Son of God did. He did. He wasn't just there to deliver
a message, he was the message. And as he went about going to
these chosen sinners, given to these chosen sinners
eternal life. Some of the most religious, respected
men of Israel, he calls, he looks at the people and he calls these
Pharisees, they're, did you see that when you read it? They're,
T-H-E-I-R, they're Pharisees, they're doctors. And they were doing their best
to embarrass the Son of God. Oh, they all had degrees. They
all had papers of confirmation. Their names was on file down
at the temple. If you had anything to say, just
go down to the temple. High priest will show them to
you. My name's on file down there. I've been certified. They had their credentials. They
had their special garments to prove it. But papers and signed documents
don't make a preacher an ambassador of God. Don't care how many papers
you got. There's no evidence at all that
God has chosen him for anything. He got papers. These men who were widely identified
as the servants of God and ambassadors of God didn't know God. They
come to see a land to make one proselyte like unto themselves,
and when they'd made him, he was twofold more the child of
hell than they were. He said, you neither know me
nor my father, but you're of your father the devil. But these
men continued to poke fun at him, expose him as a fraud or
try, take away the people's confidence in him. They were sitting back
watching him. And they'd watch him and they'd
do this to each other. Look, look what he's doing. Look
who he's eating with. Look what he's doing. Why do
your disciples eat with publicans and sinners? Why did you tell that sinner,
thy sins be forgiven, only God can forgive sins? What about
the poor sinner the Lord had just healed? What about this
man that God had just told him, all your sins are gone? What
about that? They were right on top of that. That didn't mean anything to
them. They were fussing about how he said it. And here's what
he told them. Is it easier for God to say,
thy sin to be forgiven thee, or to say, rise up and walk?
Either one, can you do either one of them? They told, they
just, they didn't even say that. They just, right over top of
it. How come your disciples don't
fast? John the Baptist had disciples, they fasted. Pharisees got disciples,
how come your disciples don't fast? Pope, pope, pope, pope. That's what they were doing,
poet. Luke 5, 36 through 38, he spake. Now watch this. He spake also. He'd been speaking to the people.
He'd been talking about redemption. Been talking about forgiveness
of sin, been talking about the love of God being manifest to
chosen sinners. Now he turns and he looks at
these rebels, these religious rebels, and listen, he spoke
two parables to them. He said, no man putteth a piece
of a new garment I'd like to know how many times I've read
writers who said you don't take a piece of cloth and patch an
old garment. That's not what that says. Read
that again. No man putteth a piece of a new
garment. What new garment? There's only one new garment,
and it's in here. It's in here. Christ is our righteousness,
isn't he? He's our covering. When God, he slayed a lamb in
the garden and he took that skin from that slain lamb and covered
those two, covered their nakedness. There's just one righteousness,
that's Christ. That's Christ. Now what are these
religious, nuts doing with the, I got the scissors, and they're
gonna go in here and they're gonna cut things out and patch
this old garment. That's what he's telling me. No man does that, he said. No
man does that. You don't, No man putteth a piece
of the new garment upon an old, if otherwise then both the new
maketh the rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new
agreeth not with the old. Can you imagine cutting out a
piece of what makes up the righteousness of Christ and sewing it on your
flesh? Oh, my soul. And no man, no man does that. And he said, no man, verse 37,
put a new wine into old bottles else the new wine will burst
the bottles. It'll all be spilled and the
bottles will perish. New wine must be put into new
bottles and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old
wine straightway desireth new. For he said the old is better.
Now my message is this. Old rags and busted bottles. That's what you and I are. Old
rags, busted bottles. When he talks about those old
bottles, he's talking about goatskin bottles. And they'd been used
and used and used until they wore out. And they cast them
aside. Now, you gonna go out there to
the junkyard, out and kick around out there. Well, here you go,
get that, and you're gonna pour God's new wine into that old
bottle. And he said, the bottle, it's
gonna disintegrate all the wine. You might as well just pour it
out on the ground, because that's where it's headed anyway. There's four things I want us
to see in this and hopefully understand. First of all, who
it is that's giving the parable. And secondly, to whom these parables
are intended. And thirdly, the parables themselves
and what they mean. And I'll try to be brief with
all this. So let's begin here. Who's doing these parables? This
is Jesus of Nazareth. Never a man spake like this man.
You don't doubt anything he says. Everything he says comes to pass.
Everything he says is so. It's so. This is Jesus of Nazareth. This
is by the prophecy of the scripture, the promised redeemer, the Messiah,
the Christ of God. And never a man spake like he
did. A child is born, Isaiah said,
and a son is given. This is him. This is him. The government should be upon
his shoulder. His name should be called Wonderful Counselor.
The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
And he's the fulfillment of every Old Testament type and figure.
The law having a shadow of good things to come, but not that
very image. Christ is the very image. These
things are just pictures. Just pictures. This is the Christ. Thou art the Christ, Peter said,
the son of the living God. God said, this is my beloved
son, hear him. You hear him. God said he spoke in these last
days. You know how that's literally interpreted? God has spoken to
us in these last days in son. What's he talking about? In son
language. I tell you, he talks to us in
son language. God was speaking to them by his
son, but they didn't hear him because he didn't fit into their
concepts of God and their concepts of Christ. They look for a man
like David. Surely one of the prophets is
gonna be like him, like Moses. God's gonna raise up a man, he's
gonna anoint a man, he's gonna raise that man up in power, and
he's gonna conquer their enemies, and he's gonna restore them to
their former state of glory. That's what they thought about
the Christ. And isn't that the problem today?
Everybody's been brainwashed into believing that God won't
save everybody. He loves everybody. One preacher said in a sermon
he was preaching, he said, can you imagine that little bumper
sticker, smile, God loves you, on the ark? And those floods
and the ground and the springs bringing up from the ground a
wrath of God coming down and you look at that ark and it rises
up and all the doors are shut and there's no way in and you're
standing there and here's that little smiley face. Smile, God
loves you. He don't love everybody. Jacob
have I loved. Who's Jacob? That's the one man
over in Romans that God uses as a representative to look at
concerning election. That's right. I loved him. I love him. They believe Christ died for
everybody, that salvation is by your free will. Without your
help, God can't accomplish his will. Everything he did is gonna
be for naught. They believe righteousness is
something you can achieve. And these Pharisees believed
that Christ would just be a man anointed of God. And here comes
an ambassador of God preaching the gospel and they look at him
like he's from another planet. That's the way people look at
us. And look at those to whom the
parable, these parables are spoken. These men are directed by the
spirit of Antichrist. They walk before their quickening. That's what Paul said of all
of us. Before God quickened you from the dead, you walked. How
did you walk? According to the course of this
world. Huh? According to the prince
of the power of the air, the spirit, which now worketh in
the children of disobedience. That's how you walk. That's how
we all walk. But God. We all walk by these rudiments
of the world, worldly philosophy, in vain deceit, antichrist, according
to the prince of the power of the air. That's who he's talking
to. He turns and he speaks these
parables to them. To them. Now everybody's listening. And those God loves are learning
from what they're hearing. But he's speaking these parables
directly at those rebels. And before I run out of time,
let's look at the parables and see what their meaning is. These
parables are directed at false teachers. What did they teach? They taught that your old garment's
got some holes in it and needs mending. I've sat in the pew and listened
to men tell me that. Not in those exact words, but
that's what they're telling me. You need a little help. Need
a little help. That garment you got on, got
some holes in it. Now there's a little bit of good
in all men. Is there? I want God to see it. He said
there's none good. None good but God. You got this old garment, it's
full of holes and it needs some mending. And here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna take this garment, And we're gonna go into the scriptures
and we're gonna cut it up, this new garment, and cut up some
pieces for you so you can patch those old rags. We're gonna take
things like tithing. We'll put a little tithing on
there. We're gonna put a little prayer on there, a little patch
of that, and some dedication and circumcision and church membership
and whatever else they could come up with. And we're gonna
patch that old garment. We're gonna demonstrate to you
a little sewing skills and we're gonna sew them on there. Why
would anybody cut up the new garment? He don't tell you to
get yourself, get that old garment, get it cleaned up, wash it as
best you can, and then just go into the scriptures and start
cutting things out and patching it. God didn't tell us that.
He said, put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision
for the flesh. And that was it. No provision. And every time we try to make
provision for the flesh, that's when we suffer. That's, we start
huntin' evidence. Start huntin' this and huntin'
that. Boy, you get to lookin' within
that, oh. Here's what Paul said, oh, wretched
man that I am. Huh? Well, he said that before
he saved. Oh, no he didn't. Lord had converted
him a long time back. He'd been preaching for years. Why would anybody want to cut
up the new garment? Just put it on. Put ye on the
Lord Jesus Christ. Why would anybody want to patch
that old garment? Because they're comfortable in
it. They're comfortable in it. I won't take it off. They believe
it's still okay. Just needs a little fixing. Can I tell you something as simply
as I know how to say it? Salvation's not a patch job. It's not a patch job. It's a
new creation. Salvation's a new garment. Paul
said to the Galatians, I do not frustrate the grace of God. If
righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. Salvation's in a person. He's
the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes. None
other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved. Thou shalt call his name Jesus,
Joshua. He'll save his people from the
sin. And then watch this. He said, no man putteth new wine
into old bottles. Worn out, rotted, decayed old
bottles. Bottles no longer good for anything
but the trash. Paul said, they're all gone out
of the way. They're together become unprofitable. That means
you can't use them. God's not gonna pour his new
wine in your old bottle. And where's he gonna put it?
In the new bottle. What new bottle? Christ. Huh? He not talking about fixing
you up and supercharging you through something that goes on,
some experience, and then he's gonna pour that wine and he made
you fit so he can pour it. Oh no, that ain't what he talking,
he talking to rebels. And he said, no man takes that
new wine and puts it in an old bottle. God's gonna put his wine
in the one who is standing in front of him. This is where God's
wine is. Well then what does God do when
a man's born again? He makes him fit to put his son
in it. When it pleased God, Paul said,
who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by his grace
to reveal his son in me. And you know what? When he does,
you got the wine and the bottle. You got the wine and the bottle.
And it's never going to bust. And it's never going to run out
on the ground. And you can drink from it and drink from it and
drink from it, and you can't empty the bottle. You can't empty
the bottle. You can't exhaust its contents. Why don't he put that new wine
in that old bottle? Because the bottle can't hold
it. Bottle would burst. It'd all be wasted. Wine of his glory and grace he
pours into a new vessel. John said, the word was made
flesh and dwelled among us and we beheld his glory. The glory
is of the only begotten of the father. That's what wine is. He received the spirit without
measure. Listen to this. He said, I'm
the true vine. He's the vine, and the wine,
and the bottle. God planted one vine in his garden,
Christ. Everything else he's gonna grow
in that garden, he's gonna craft into that vine. Why I'm not convinced, well then
listen to this. Paul said, in him dwelleth all
the fullness, of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in
him. If you have him, it don't matter
about your old bottle. It don't matter about your old
garment. Christ in you, the hope of glory. The new birth not to
make us fit to hold his wine, but to receive Christ Jesus our
Lord who bowed wine and bottle. as many as received him. And
that what scripture said, to them gave he power to become
the sons of God, even to them which believe on his name. And then finally, see what effect
this parable had on those enemies. He says in verse 39, no man also
having drunk old wine, He's not gonna desire the new. You know what, I don't, you may
and I wouldn't be upset with you if you did. I don't look
for anybody to run up here after the service and hug my neck and
said, I believe it. I'll tell you what I look for,
an appetite, a desire. We had a fellow that was going
to Cowboy Church. most ridiculous thing I've heard.
He'd been going there for years. And a friend of his is a member
of our church, and he invited him to come up. And he come up,
and he heard me. Boy, that bass was solemn. He
was even mad. He went back home, and Gene Stevens
told him, he said, well, before you get too mad, he said, we
ain't charging admission or anything. He said, why don't you come back
and listen to him a time or two? So he did. You know what he does
now? He sits right on the second pew
back, and when I'm preaching, the tears are rolling down his
back. No man who drunk this old wine,
he ain't gonna desire this no. God has given him a desire, and
he will. He will, and when he does, he
gonna know the truth. God gonna reveal it to him. But no matter how clearly the
truth is set before the natural man, it said the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. You can't make
him, you can't one-on-one talk him into it. Go back, sit down, drink
that old wine. I love the garden. I'll say this
and I'll quit. Love lots of flowers around my
house. I just love it. Like to fool with them. But in the winter, all the flowers
die. And so I take the pots, because,
boy, they're so drab and ugly sitting out there, old vines
hanging out of them. I dump them all out, take the
pots out to the shed and put them in the shed for spring.
Rain comes, I get that pot back out. Spray it off a little bit.
Put some good topsoil in there. And go down and get me about
half a dozen wade petunias and put them in there. Water them. Boy, in a week or two, them blooms
start to cascade out over the side of that pot. That's the
most beautiful pot you've ever seen. Listen to what Paul said. We have this treasure in earthen
vessels with just a pot. Just a pot. But boy, when he
pours his glory in the pot, what a thing it is to behold. I sit
and listen to this man preach, and my heart was just rejoicing. Listen to David stand up and
preach, and my heart would just rejoice. I'd stand there and
look, look at this. This is an earthen vessel. But
God's put his glory in it. He's put his message in it. He
put Christ in it. And it's a thing to behold. It's
a thing to behold. And you could say the same thing
as every believer. Every believer. God put his treasure in earthen
vessels, and he did it that the excellence of the power might
be of him, not of us. Not of us. Oh, my soul. Take Christ out of the pot. You
know what you got left? The pot. That's all she got. Just got the pot. Take Christ
out of the work and all you have left, now listen to me, old rags
and busted bottles. Oh, may the Lord give us some
understanding of His Word. I take His Word. I told Gabe the other night,
I said, I'm getting to the place where I used to just desire to
be blessed of God in a way that I could feel it. You know what? I'm more interested in knowing
His Word now. If He gives me a blessing and
I can feel it, great, great. I praise Him for it, thank Him
for it. But what I really want is that Word, that Word, that
Word. Let me rest in that Word. Thank you.