A Time for New Wine

When God disrupts something, it is because He wants to reset something, to make something new that's gotten stale and old. Dr. Tony Evans says that's one way God calls our attention to an important reality we've been ignoring.

It is always to highlight the spiritual over the physical. Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans. Author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. Anyone who's used a computer or smart phone knows that sometimes when a device or app isn't working properly, the best way to get things going again is to start over, turn it off, and then turn it back on. Well today, Dr. Evans explains that God can use divine resets in our lives to point us in the right spiritual direction.

Let's join him as he kicks off this brand new series. Well all of us are familiar with remodeling. Perhaps in your home you've had to remodel a portion of it.

I know many years ago we remodeled our kitchen. Suffice it to say it was a hot mess. I mean stuff was everywhere, broken up, tore up from the floor up. It was a mess.

In fact, because it got so messy we had to move out of our house to stay with one of our kids for a few days because everything had become disrupted. We all know that the goal of remodeling is to remake something better than when you started. You remodel because something has gotten old or worn or torn or broken and you want to give it new life. You want to make it fresh and new. But in order for a remodel to take place, a destruction has to occur first because something new is needed.

We have been going through a remodel. We've been going through a divine destruction, divine discipline, divine disruption. God is seeking to remodel some things. The Bible is clear that when it's time for Christ to come back, there will be this disruption worldwide that will introduce the anti-Christ, which will lead to the ultimate return of Christ to remodel the whole earth. In the meantime, God does some smaller remodeling in our lives and in our world through bringing about disruption.

Now, let me be clear. When God disrupts something, it is because he wants to reset something, remodel. He wants to make something new that's gotten stale and old, broken up and ineffective.

And I can only surmise that the scope of this problem that we have all faced personally and in our homes with multiple pandemics lets us know how bad the remodeling is needed. And so we are beginning a journey today about a reset because your life has been disrupted, whether you like it or not. It's been disrupted. You can't do what you used to do, the way you used to do it, with the folks you used to do it with because it's been interrupted.

Well, I don't know about you, but I'd love for a reset right about now. Now here is the key. When God disrupts something in your life and in our world, it is always, and this is without exception, to highlight the spiritual over the physical. Let me say that again.

I want you to miss that. When God disrupts your life, your world, the physical realm in which we live, He is calling attention to a spiritual reality that we've allowed to get too old. God has become too marginalized. His principles have become too ignored for too long.

So He disrupts things or allows them to be disrupted because He has something to say. In Luke chapter 5, Jesus has called disciples to Himself. And beginning in verse 29, He has a party. Levi, Matthew the tax collector, has a big reception for Jesus at his house, according to verse 29, and a great crowd shows up. I just want you to know by way of introduction, Jesus didn't mind a party. It's a party.

It's a great reception. There's a big crowd and He was the life of the party because the party was thrown for Jesus by Levi, by Matthew. So Jesus doesn't mind a party. So Jesus comes to the party as a crowd, but there's an interesting group at the party. We're told that they were tax collectors and sinners. I mean, this was not the approved crowd at the party by the religious elites of the day. The Pharisees find out that there's this jam going on in Jesus' honor, and so they began complaining to the disciples. Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Verse 30.

That's the problem. I mean, one, you got a party going on. Two, we're not the main ones invited, tax collectors and sinners, the people that we don't have time for, and then you're gonna eat and drink with them. I mean, that has to do with fellowship.

You're gonna hang out with them. So they have a problem with the group that's showing up to the party. Jesus answers and tells them that, is it not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick? It's not well folk who need help.

It's sick folk who need help. And I've not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He says, the reason why I'm having this party is I'm having, watch this, this party, because my party is designed to make a spiritual impact. So I don't have a party just to have a party. I have a party to make a spiritual impact.

I'm not just calling the saints. I'm also after the sinners. So this has a spiritual purpose to it, even though y'all are complaining about it.

So that sets the scene for the reset God is going to take us on a journey on right now. So the religious leaders, the Pharisees, in verse 33, the disciples of John often fast and offer prayers. The disciples of the Pharisees also do the same, but yours eat and drink.

Okay? There's the problem. We fast. Fasting is giving up a craving of the physical for a need in the spiritual.

That's what fasting is. And that's what we do. We do it, the religious leaders, even John's disciples do it. And remember, John the Baptist's disciples were designed to get ready for the coming of Jesus. He says, so we do it.

They do it. We fast. And y'all party. We must be the spiritual ones. So what they are bringing up is our religious commitment is greater than your religious commitment because we fast. We wouldn't be out here partying. We'd be out here praying and bowing our heads and giving up food. Now, in the month of January, every year, our church does a fast.

We call it a solemn assembly. But let me talk about that in order for you to understand this passage. Did you know that there was only one required fast in the Bible? Leviticus chapter 16 verses 29 and 31, that was the only required fast. There was no other required fast in the Bible but that one, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In order for the people to get right with God, to have their sins addressed, there was this one fast required. Every other fast in the Bible was voluntary, not demanded. And those fasts happened on a voluntary basis because there was a great crisis, great grief, a great need that you needed the additional presence of God to invade. But those were never required. Only one was required. See, some people get the idea that God commanded fast.

Yeah, only one. And that was to deal with the guilt of sin. Everything else was, I need God's involvement in my unique set of circumstances where I need the supernatural to invade because I've got a crisis, because I've got grief, because I've got pain, because I'm in a situation I can't fix.

And that's going to be varying from people to people, circumstances to circumstances, and individuals to individuals. But what the Pharisees had done was make fasting a requirement. They took a command and turned it into a requirement.

Let me tell you how big a requirement they made it. They made it a requirement to do twice a week. When you read Luke chapter 18, verses 10 through 12, the Pharisee is praying in the temple and he says, I thank you, I'm not like this tax collector, this publican. And he says, because I tithe and I fast twice a week. What makes me acceptable, better than this guy over here, is look at my religious activity. I fast twice a week.

There was no command in the Bible to fast twice a week. But what the religious leaders had done is taken a biblical principle and stacked it with human additions. That's religion.

Religion, false religion, is where you pull on man-made additions to God's requirement to make you feel more acceptable to God. Dr. Evans will unpack that concept for us when he comes back in a moment to continue this lesson from his brand new series, Divine Reset. This powerful ten-part collection explores the reason we experience divine disruption, destruction, and discipline from God and how you can use that knowledge to initiate a life-changing reset, breaking loose from habits and hang-ups you thought you'd be stuck with forever. Right now, we're offering all ten full-length messages in the Divine Reset series on CD and digital download as our gift when you support the ministry of the Urban Alternative. Along with the complete audio package, we'll send you Tony's insightful booklet, Winning Your Spiritual Battles. This quick read will offer you hope as it helps you identify areas of spiritual weakness and prepares you to stand firm against the devil's attacks on your life. Visit us today at TonyEvans.org or call us at 1-800-800-3222 to make the arrangements.

I'll repeat that information later on. In the meantime, stay with us. Dr. Evans will come back with more of today's message right after this.

Coming to theaters this November. We're at the Church of the Nativity here in Bethlehem where it is believed that the birth of Jesus Christ occurred. Travel with Dr. Tony Evans as he retraces the life and human journey of the greatest being to ever walk this earth. Well, we're here in Capernaum, a place where Jesus did most of His miracles. And it is in this place that He demonstrated He truly is the Son of God. You'll travel the streets, fields, and synagogues that Jesus walked and visit the locations where some of the most powerful events recorded in the Bible took place. It is highly likely that much of what we read about Jesus' ministry in Galilee happened right here. Journey with Jesus in theaters November 15th, 16th, and 17th with Dr. Tony Evans.

Visit TonyEvans.org for locations, showtimes, and to learn more. What the Pharisees did was create a mountain of requirements. Some of us were raised in churches like that that gave us a mountain of requirements that didn't come from God. Or maybe a principle came from God, but they kept adding stuff to it so that it was no longer of God, it was of man. But because God's name was attached to it, it sounded legitimate. And so they made religion a big deal centered, in this case, in fasting.

You know, you can put on a Superman suit, but that don't mean you can fly. You can put on Jesus' looks and carry your Bible and sing your praise songs, but that does not mean you are in sync with the Lord. And many people think because they carry out the religious performance, praying, fasting, and the like, and what happens is, like the Pharisees, you can be duped into ritual at the expense of a relationship.

Let me say that again. You can be duped, I can be duped into a ritual doing the spiritual-looking thing to get brownie points with God when I have not pursued a relationship with Him and I get so content with the ritual that it actually cancels the relationship. But the ritual looks so real. You know, it looks real when you go to church. It looks real when you're reading your Bible.

It looks real. It's like those apples that you find on the counter of many hotels when you go sign in. I went one time to a hotel and they had the apple sitting out there.

It looked good to me. I picked it up and bit into a wax apple. And it looked like a wax apple. It looked like a real apple. But it looked so real and it was so fake.

Okay? What happens with religion is you can make it feel so real and it not be right because it's been stacked with man-made additions that have nothing to do with spiritual relationship. And that is why there's so much condemnation in the Bible about doing the external when nothing is happening on the internal. In Mark 7, verses 6 to 8, he says, These people do all this external stuff, but they are far from me. They're not even close to me. They go to church. They wave their hands in the air like they just don't care, but they are far from me.

They're not in relationship with me. Many Christians today are being duped by religion in the name of God without experiencing the reality of God. And God has to dismantle us.

And isn't that what he's done? He's messed with our religion. You know, you say, y'all ain't going to church for a while. You know, I'm closing the doors for a while. I'm changing the paradigm.

I'm not going to let you do it like you used to do it because I got too much religion and I don't have near enough relationship. See, this disruption is designed for us to relook at some things, to reanalyze things personally and collectively so that we don't just have a form of godliness. Some years ago across my lawn, there were folks walking across the lawn when there was no path. There was no path, but they wanted a path, so they were walking along. And when you walk on the same path long enough, you'll create a path where there is no path so other folk will follow you thinking it's now a path. It was never meant to be a path, but you've been used to it so long that you've worn out the grass and it looks like you got a little road through there. So we had to stop that because they were creating something that the lawn was never meant to facilitate. You know what we have done in American Christianity? We've created something that God never had in mind. He never had in mind that our religious order would replace our spiritual intimacy and our spiritual relationship.

So that's the problem. So Jesus now has to help a brother out. He got to help him out. Now he's going to get deep on him.

Watch this now. He says in verse 34, Jesus said to them, You cannot make the attendants of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? So he asked a question. But the days will come and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days. He says when the bridegroom is there, you don't fast. Jesus is the bridegroom.

Why? Because his church is the bride. So he's preparing the disciples to start the church. The church is called the bride of Christ. So Jesus is the bridegroom.

So he says you don't fast. The attendants don't fast when the bridegroom is there. Because the bridegroom is getting ready for what? For a wedding.

So let's talk about this. I have done hundreds of weddings, literally hundreds of weddings in almost 50 years of preaching. Hundreds of weddings. I have never, ever, never, never, ever, ever, never been to a foodless wedding. I have never been to a wedding without something to eat, without something to drink.

Okay? I've never done that. Because a wedding is a party. A wedding is a celebration.

When the groomsmen are with the bridegroom, I go and I pray with them. They're laughing and joking and high-fiving and slapping each other on the back. It's a party because it's a wedding. And the attendants, the groomsmen, they are partying.

Why? Because they're excited about the bridegroom. They're excited about the bridegroom. There is only one time you wouldn't party at a wedding. You wouldn't party at a wedding if you disagree with the person the man was marrying. You know, you would have to say, I'm so miserable at this wedding, I ain't gonna buy no food because he marrying this woman.

You ain't gonna do that. You probably wouldn't show up, right? No, you gonna party at a wedding. He says, at a celebration, you do not fast. You do not fast at a celebration. That makes no sense to go to a wedding and not have a wedding cake.

I can't vouch for how all the food tasted at all the weddings I went to, but I sure can vouch it was there. Because it's a party. He says the bridegroom is here, so there's no need to fast. In other words, you don't fast when you're celebrating.

That's what he's saying. We're celebrating, and we're celebrating with these publicans and with these sinners. We're celebrating because Jesus is right in their midst. So we gonna have a party. Dr. Tony Evans, proclaiming that Jesus had come to do something new, not merely to patch up the old. If you're ready to experience the freedom of having your past wiped clean and your future made new, Tony's back right now with some encouragement for you. He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Guess what? God is gonna let you go to heaven on credit. He will credit to your account the righteousness of Christ, because God has credited to Jesus Christ your sin. So, your credit score can be 100 if you go to Jesus Christ for salvation right now.

And how do you do that? Tony would be happy to explain it to you. Just visit tonyevans.org and follow the link that says Jesus. He has a short powerful video that explains what real Christianity is about, along with some free follow-up resources. Check it out today and discover the amazing difference it can make in your life. Well, today's lesson is the first in a powerful new series called Divine Reset. It contains 10 messages focusing on how God can use seemingly chaotic conditions in order to help us turn our hearts and minds toward what really matters. As I mentioned earlier, this collection is yours when you make a contribution to help us keep Tony's teaching on this station. Along with it, you'll get the Winning Your Spiritual Battles booklet I told you about.

So don't put it off. Visit us today at tonyevans.org to get all the details. You can make your contribution and your request online. Again, that's tonyevans.org. Or call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members help you. That's 1-800-800-3222. Potholes in a roadway can be concealed for a season or two with a temporary patch, or they can be eliminated altogether with a full-depth roadway replacement. Well, tomorrow Dr. Evans will explain that when it comes to failures and imperfections in our spiritual path, God wants us to choose His lasting, full replacement method rather than a quick but short-lived repair job. I hope you'll join us. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative and is celebrating 40 years of faithfulness thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.