The Wineskin Of Your Mind

Bunbury

Sun am

18/04/10

“The wineskin of your mind”

Intro: The remarkable truth of the Word of God is that nothing in the Bible is meaningless.

Everything ahs value / speaks to our lives / ministers / convicts / directs / encourages & inspires.

As a loving father God is looking to perfect in us His purposes & bring to fruition His plans.

T.B.S. He’s looking forward to a day when he can present us to Himself as a finished work ......

In the parable of the wineskin & the new wine we find some unique thoughts about what God has done in our lives & how He wants to keep / preserve His work.

Our minds are the key to either the success or failure of His work in our lives.

I want to preach t/m on ‘The wineskin of your mind’.

Text: Matthew 9:17 (NKJV) Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”

# 1. The old wineskin of the mind.

A. Our minds are very much like the wineskin in our parable.

a. Jesus was using a pict that everyone in his day u/s – a wineskin.

i. Wineskins were a leather pouch that were used ...... quite obviously .... for holding wine.

*** In Jesus’ days when a goat / animal was killed quite often the flesh would be removed in such a way as to leave the hide in one piece, not laid out like a mat but more like a pouch. The skin would be peeled off the flesh leaving an envelope of animal hide w/ the legs / neck being sewn up. When this was done the wineskin – looking very much like an animal carcase at times – w/ a cork of some kind at the neck, to pour the wine out.

It was easy to carry on a journey & unlike a clay pot it was light / wouldn’t leak & wouldn’t break if it were accidently dropped or bumped against the ground or a rock. Being filled up with wine @ any time anyone needed a drink fresh, sweet wine could be poured out & everyone refreshed.

ii. But there was something that would happen to that wineskin over a period of time – the wine that was put into it would affect the hide.

iii. As the wine aged it would begin permeate the leather & the leather would begin to be affected by the aging / fermenting of the wine.

iv. The flexibility / suppleness / elasticity of the hide the wine was stored in would begin to be lost.

b. The simple thought here is that the wine would affect the wineskin.

i. And that’s a very powerful thought when we think about your mind being like a wineskin.

ii. When we come into the world our minds are very much like an empty wineskin – ready to be filled up.

iii. They are fresh & apart from original sin .... basically unmarred & ready to be written on.

iv. But the problem is that much of what is stored in the wineskin of your mind has a very negative affect on it.

B. When we come to Christ in a very real sense our minds are like a used wineskin.

a. What I’m getting at is that all kinds of things have been put into your mind.

i. Your mind has been filled w/ all kinds of different things from different kinds of sources.

ii. When we come out of a sinful / wicked life we know that there are many things that should never have been put into our minds.

iii. Potent things have had a powerful impact on the ..... ‘skin of your mind’ & w/o even realising it the wineskin of our minds loses something through those things.

b. Who knows what some of the things we’ve seen / heard / been involved w/ have done to the wineskin of our minds???

*** Brandon Centerwall, psychiatrist at the University of Washington, reported in a study of the Journal of the American Medical Association a conclusion that TV may be responsible for doubling the crime rate in the U.S.

Centerwall analysed crime statistics both before and after TV was introduced in several communities. Those comparisons cause him to conclude that prolonged exposure to violence on TV has increased the number of murders in the U.S. by 10,000 each year. He sees TV as a "causal factor" in about 70,000 rapes and 700,000 injurious assaults annually.

i. You’ve heard people make the statement “What have they been filling your head with?” ..... there it is right there – like a wineskin that’s been filled up.