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Big Jesus wins award for the ‘Best Community Entry’ in the parade.
We had a unique perspective on Jesus, His fame and renown. If the crowds were silenced even the stones would have cried out to Him.
This must be what it was like for Jesus to enter Jerusalem, re-enacted for the benefit of his LGBT people…What does this say for us and for Him?
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All are meeting times are back to normal 6.30pm Wednesday and Sunday
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When David Livingstone volunteered as a missionary with the London Missionary society, they asked him where he wanted to go. He replied, “Anywhere, so long as it is forward.”
Where the English might say ‘It’s the bee’s knees’, the French say ‘C’est le petit Jésus en culotte de velours’ (It’s the baby Jesus in velvet shorts).
God is not looking for your fruit, He’s looking for the fruit of the Spirit.
Sacred relics from the New Testament held at Byzantium included milk from the breast of the Virgin Mary.
The reason religion is so dangerous is because the lies it tells sound so convincing to the moral mind.McVey
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Extract from Jim’s Preach ‘Life In The Spirit’
A parable of Jesus recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke.
Jesus said, “No one puts a new piece of cloth on an old garment; otherwise the new makes a tear, nor takes a piece from an old garment to stitch on to the new the old does not match the new.
“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined.
“But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved.
“And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, ‘The old is better.’”
The two part parable of tonight’s reading is in response to the Pharisees’ criticism.
The Pharisees were the religious elite and they were not happy at the company Jesus was keeping,
the despised tax collectors and other so called sinners.
The symbolic spiritual stories were also in answer to the questions from John the Baptist’s disciples as to why Jesus and His disciples didn’t keep the religious traditions and practices of Judaism (Mt. 9:14; Mk. 2:18).
What does the two part story mean?… Those of us who are old enough can remember in our youth when cloth was first washed it always shrank and the dye always ran. This shrinking of the cloth is what Jesus is referring to.
For example if my Mum was repairing one of my Dad’s old shirts she would have to patch the shirt with a piece of old cloth.
If my mum had used new cloth, the patch would have shrunk in the first wash and torn the repair.
We don’t face the same problem today of shrinking, dye running cloth that my mum had to deal with, its obvious Jesus and His audience were well aware of the problems of old and new cloth. The only solution really for my mum was to throw away the old shirt and get a new one. This was the point of the first story the old and new don’t mix.
You cannot patch up the old it just won’t work, you have to have a new start for what is new. And it would be daft to try and stick the new onto the old, they just cannot compare.
Through this parable Jesus was saying to His critics, I have come to tell folks new news and its rather good. The news that the rules and regulations that you could never fully live up to and always left you with a nagging sense of guilt no matter how hard you tried, they are finished.
Jesus was saying, to please God you don’t need lots of man made rules and standards, throw them away because what I have brought is new and quite different to the old.
The parable says completely throw away the old and don’t try and patch up what is full of holes. The new garment represents the garment of salvation He gives us. Salvation means freedom.
Jesus tells us not to try to stick an old patch onto the new garment, it won’t match, it just won’t work in other words don’t stick some of the old rules onto the new freedom.
So the first part of the parable Jesus is saying ‘I haven’t come to patch up the old religion I have come to replace it with something entirely new and it wont need an old patch.’
The second part of the parable is about how they made wine in those days in new supple animal skins. Today home brewed wine is put in large glass bottles with an air lock to let out the gases that form through the fermentation process. While fermenting the wine is lively, bubbly, effervescent, expanding, contracting, unpredictable, explosive even.
In Jesus’ day wine was kept in wineskins made of the skin of goats. Old wineskins became dry and brittle and couldn’t adapt to anything new, the predictable couldn’t cope with unpredictable liveliness of new fermenting, bubbling wine. The liveliness would cause the old brittle wineskin to burst. New wine had to have a new wineskin that was soft and stretchy.
The old wine though is familiar, safe, dependable, predictable, we like familiar. Jesus heard people say, ‘Old wine is good’ they say, ‘surely new wine cannot be better.’
Man made religion is anything that we do by our own efforts in an attempt to be more pleasing to God. And our own endeavours maybe pleasing to us, but are never enough to please God. The intellect creates religion and we get a great sense of achievement performing our religious acts, we think God will look on us more favourably.
When we do well the achievement puffs us up thinking we are better than others, and when we fail the guilt makes us think we’re worse than others. Whereas the apostle Paul confirms Php 4:19 That God shall supply all our spiritual needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
To me that’s a ‘no brainer,’ I willingly swap my old man made religion with its expectations, traditions, and practices, in exchange for God’s glorious riches in Jesus.
The expectations placed on people were bad news and old news and no one could live up to them, Jesus was bringing new news and it was good news. News that would set people free. Free from trying to change themselves into something they were not. Free to be themselves. Jesus came to do away with the old and establish the new.
As most of you know Jesus spoke to me about starting Liberty Church through the story of the woman at the well in John 4
The story spoke to me in so many different ways, but the main theme of the story is about the Holy Spirit quenching our thirst for God, and the life and freedom found in the Spirit.
Significantly Jesus tells the woman that religion is finished both her religion and His own religion, the worship of God is now going to be totally spiritual, in spirit and in truth. Truth is experiencing what is true.
No longer about externals but about what is going on internally, the deepest part of us, our spirits. When its simply about us having a trusting relationship with God’s Spirit and not about what is expected of us, we suddenly have a level playing field. All are equal.
The highly intelligent person and the person with learning difficulties, the person who is stable emotionally and the person who suffers mental illness. The young child and the mature adult. The outgoing caring person and the person who has difficulty in relating to people. We are all equal, yes all, because its not about how we perform in life.
Its about that relationship of our spirit knowing the Spirit of God, our spirit wanting more of the Spirit of God, our spirit in unison with the Spirit of God is true worship.
And the fruit of what God’s Spirit does in us in and through us in that relationship, is the fruit that tastes so good to God.
Full Notes in Preaching
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