Luke #14: Ministry of Renewal (5:12-39)

Again, welcome to Family Worship with the church body of Eastern Hills Baptist Church this morning! I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor of the church family here: a wonderful group of people helping people live out the unexpected love of Jesus, and I’d like to open by saying thanks to our Associate Pastor to Children and Families, Joe Vivian, for his taking the pulpit last week while I was on vacation. Joe really blessed us with his message about the radical obedience, humility, and commitment exhibited by Peter in the first 11 verses of Luke 5.

It’s been a great morning of praise and worship, and it’s a joy to be able to share in this experience together. If you’re visiting with us this morning, thanks for being here today. We’d really like to be able to connect with you to thank you for joining us for worship. If you could take a second during my message and fill out a communication card, which you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you, we would really appreciate it. You can return that to us one of two ways: First, you can bring it down to me at the end of the service, because I’d like to meet you and give you a small gift as a token of our gratitude for your visit today. If you don’t have time for that this morning, you can drop the Welcome card in the boxes by the doors as you leave after the service ends. If you’d rather fill out something online, you can head to ehbc.org or download our church app (EHBC Albuquerque) and fill out the contact form at the bottom of the “I’m New” link.

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Opening

This morning, we continue our walk through the Gospel of Luke by looking at four short snapshots of Jesus’s early ministry in and around Galilee. In each, we are going to see an aspect of how the ministry of the King of kings brings renewal to the different parts of our experience as human beings. We will end our service this morning with a special act of renewal: the taking of the Lord’s Supper, which is the renewing sign of the covenant that we make with one another in the church family, a covenant that was initiated in our baptism.

So let’s open our Bibles or Bible apps to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 5, and we will read a rather lengthy passage: verses 12-39. So as your are able, please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word:

Luke 5:12–39 CSB

12 While he was in one of the towns, a man was there who had leprosy all over him. He saw Jesus, fell facedown, and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” 13 Reaching out his hand, Jesus touched him, saying, “I am willing; be made clean,” and immediately the leprosy left him. 14 Then he ordered him to tell no one: “But go and show yourself to the priest, and offer what Moses commanded for your cleansing as a testimony to them.” 15 But the news about him spread even more, and large crowds would come together to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. 16 Yet he often withdrew to deserted places and prayed. 17 On one of those days while he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea, and also from Jerusalem. And the Lord’s power to heal was in him. 18 Just then some men came, carrying on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed. They tried to bring him in and set him down before him. 19 Since they could not find a way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on the stretcher through the roof tiles into the middle of the crowd before Jesus. 20 Seeing their faith he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.” 21 Then the scribes and the Pharisees began to think to themselves, “Who is this man who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 22 But perceiving their thoughts, Jesus replied to them, “Why are you thinking this in your hearts? 23 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 24 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he told the paralyzed man, “I tell you: Get up, take your stretcher, and go home.” 25 Immediately he got up before them, picked up what he had been lying on, and went home glorifying God. 26 Then everyone was astounded, and they were giving glory to God. And they were filled with awe and said, “We have seen incredible things today.” 27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow me.” 28 So, leaving everything behind, he got up and began to follow him. 29 Then Levi hosted a grand banquet for him at his house. Now there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others who were reclining at the table with them. 30 But the Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” 31 Jesus replied to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” 33 Then they said to him, “John’s disciples fast often and say prayers, and those of the Pharisees do the same, but yours eat and drink.” 34 Jesus said to them, “You can’t make the wedding guests fast while the groom is with them, can you? 35 But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them—then they will fast in those days.” 36 He also told them a parable: “No one tears a patch from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. Otherwise, not only will he tear the new, but also the piece from the new garment will not match the old. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, it will spill, and the skins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins. 39 And no one, after drinking old wine, wants new, because he says, ‘The old is better.’ ”

PRAYER (Trujillo family)

Human beings are complicated. We are physical beings, with bodies that can do incredible things, but that sometimes refuse to cooperate with the things that we want them to do, and sometimes even rebel completely against our desires through weakness or disease.

We are spiritual beings, with a certain intangible quality that science simply cannot put its finger on—we’re all essentially the same, and yet none of us actually are the same. We know that there is something simply more to us than just the physical part. We are more than our bodies, but the two go together—we aren’t simply a spirit driving around a “flesh machine” that has no bearing on our spiritual reality. What we do with our bodies matters, and God’s design of them is integral to our identity and God’s purpose for our lives.

Another intangible part of our existence is our “why:” our purpose and meaning. Why do we do the things that we do? How are we going to choose to live, and what will drive us? Will it be something temporary, something earthly, something material, or will we be driven by the idea of making an impact in eternity?

And finally, we all would say that we have this other aspect that’s somewhat physical: our hearts. The loves that we cling to, the emotional baggage that we carry, the places that we go for comfort, for pleasure, or for security and peace.

These four things (and others) combine to make us...well, us. And each one impacts the others, so we are whole people. Remove one of these four aspects, and our lives are stunted, or even gone altogether.

And sadly, the Bible tells us that because of sin, each one of these aspects of our existence is broken. Our physical bodies have been subjected to decay. Apart from Christ, our spirits are actually dead because of sin. Our God-given purpose of glorifying Him has been supplanted by a desire to glorify ourselves, and are hearts long for things that are not God, things are not of God, and even things that are hated by God.

We see in our focal passage this morning that Jesus’s ministry was and is a ministry of renewal in at least these four ways: He renews our bodies, our spirits, our purpose, and our hearts. We start by seeing how Jesus brought renewal to the leper’s body.

1: Bodily Renewal (12-16)

Since our focal passage is so long, and our time is a little short this morning, I’m not going to re-read the entirety of our focal passage while I preach through it today. I ordinarily like to do that because it helps us keep the Scripture front and center as we engage it together, but for today, I would refer you to each passage in your copy of the Scriptures as we consider it (there will be exceptions).

Verses 12-16 give us a very brief account of Jesus’s interaction with a man who had leprosy. The condition that we refer to as leprosy today (Hansen’s disease) was just one of the things that fell under the blanket term of “leprosy” in Scripture. In the Jewish culture, there were many rules that had to be followed if one had an affliction in the skin as referenced in Leviticus 13:2:

Leviticus 13:2 CSB

2 “When a person has a swelling, scab, or spot on the skin of his body, and it may be a serious disease on the skin of his body, he is to be brought to the priest Aaron or to one of his sons, the priests.

More than half of Leviticus 13 is dedicated to explaining what the priests were to look for in the case of someone with a skin disorder. Leprosy (in fact, most diseases) at the time was generally considered to be the result of sin in a person’s life, and the disease was God’s judgment against the sinner. Some skin diseases are highly transmittable, so in order to reduce the risk of the disease spreading to others, the person determined to have a serious skin disease had to live away from his people, according to verses 45 and 46:

Leviticus 13:45–46 CSB

45 “The person who has a case of serious skin disease is to have his clothes torn and his hair hanging loose, and he must cover his mouth and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’ 46 He will remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He must live alone in a place outside the camp.

They were literally outcasts. The only people who could live with a leper, the only people who could speak to a leper, were other lepers. The leper here in Luke 5 had a severe case of whatever he was suffering from, because Luke records that he had leprosy “all over him.” This man would have lived apart from other people, including his friends and family, since the disease had started. His physical body was broken, as was his fellowship with the rest of his physical community as a result.

This man takes a great risk in coming to Jesus. The Bible tells us that he came to Jesus while Jesus was “in one of the towns.” In his desperation to see Jesus, he broke the rule about having to remain outside of inhabited areas. But so great was his belief, his faith that Jesus could restore him, that he was willing to risk it. In humility, he came before Jesus and fell facedown as he begged Him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” (v 12) There was no question in his mind of whether Jesus could cure him. The only thing he didn’t know was whether or not Jesus was willing.

There is something really powerful about human touch. There’s no telling how long this leper in Luke 5 went without another person touching him physically. But once Jesus was given the request, that’s what He did. He touched this man who had leprosy all over his body.

I once really struggled with this. How could Jesus choose to do something that made Him unclean? It’s simple: He didn’t. In His absolute holiness as God, He was completely immune to becoming ceremonially unclean through such things. He could reach out and touch those who were diseased without worry. And so He does with this man, telling him that He is, in fact, willing, and commanding the man, “be made clean.” Instantly, he was healed of his leprosy. Instead of Jesus being somehow stained by the man’s uncleanness, the man is cleansed because of the touch of the Holy One.

Jesus tells him not to tell anyone, but instead to go directly to the priests so that his cleansing would be confirmed, and he would be allowed back into public life after giving the prescribed offering: a pair of birds—one as a sacrifice, and one to be released to symbolically carry the disease away. (Lev 14) His physical misery had been taken care of, which would then allow him to resolve his social issues as well.

This man had his body miraculously, instantaneously, completely renewed by Jesus. His life was radically altered by this encounter with the king. Jesus still brings bodily renewal today, so we can, like the leper, go to Him and beg that our infirmities be cured.

Now, I’m not going to stand up here and declare that God will always physically heal our physical maladies. We know that’s not the case, because we experience it. I know that we live in a broken world, and that our physical bodies are broken, and so the brokenness of disease is going to take its toll on us. The truth is that I don’t know why the Lord doesn’t heal us or others every time we ask. I know that God might have other purposes for our illness or infirmity that He can use in our lives or in the lives of others for His purposes and glory. I think of Job and his sores, or Paul and his thorn in the flesh:

2 Corinthians 12:7–10 CSB

7b Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to torment me so that I would not exalt myself. 8 Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. 10 So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

And I can also say one other thing with absolute certainty: for the Christian, we will be completely and totally healed of every sickness, every disease, every injury in the future when we receive our glorified bodies. We will be healed, just perhaps not in the timing we might have wanted. So our perspective needs to be an eternal perspective, because we know what the end will bring:

Revelation 21:4 CSB

4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.

We can trust Christ to do what He must to bring the maximum amount of glory to Himself through healing our physical bodies. And when He does bring renewal to our physical selves, we should point to Him and His greatness with all that we are, humbly confessing that it is Jesus who has brought about our restoration.

Now, verse 15 tells us that the news of this man’s cleansing spread (he “began to proclaim it widely and to spread the news,” according to Mark 1:45), and so Jesus’s popularity continued to skyrocket. Large crowds came together to hear His teaching and to receive His healing. As a result, the only time that Jesus was able to get alone was when He would go off by Himself to pray (v 16), just as we saw back in chapter 4. Jesus was consistent in the priority of His relationship with His Father, because He knew that the physical is not all there is. We also are spiritual, which is why His ministry includes spiritual renewal.

2: Spiritual Renewal (17-26)

We often consider our physical issues to be of greatest importance. Just look at our PrayerLine, and notice how many physical things are listed there. And there’s nothing wrong with asking others to pray for our physical well-being, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with praying for ours’ and others’ physical health and safety. James 5:14 tells us:

James 5:14 CSB

14 Is anyone among you sick? He should call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

But the interesting thing is how James continues this passage. He says:

James 5:15–16 CSB

15 The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up; if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect.

What if our prayer list had—right next to our physical requests—a confession of our sins that we needed prayer for? “Whoa now, Bill…” I’m not going to do that, don’t worry.

I’m just painting a picture: we’re often willing to share our physical concerns with others, and the truth is that they are the most visible anyway. However, it is our spiritual needs that are the more important of the two. When was the last time you actually confessed your sins to a fellow brother or sister so that they could pray for your spiritual renewal? Do we avoid it because we are trying to create the impression that we’re doing better than we actually are?

The second of the stories that we find in this passage is when four friends brought their paralyzed friend to see Jesus while He was teaching in a house. The house was so crowded that the friends climb up onto the roof and open it up so that they can lower their friend on his mat right to Jesus’s feet.

The house was crowded with people in part because the Pharisees and scribes had come from throughout Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem (not super close) to hear Jesus. They were, according to verse 17 “sitting there” listening to Jesus. The word Pharisees means “separated ones,” and they were the hyper-religious of their day, with a passion for maintaining the purity of Judaism against pagan influences. They were very strict about adherence to the Law of Moses, as well as to the oral traditions that interpreted the Law, which was meant to make it easier for the common Jewish folk to keep the Law correctly. They almost certainly were not there because they thought Jesus was awesome. Given their response to what Jesus said to the paralytic, they were there assuming Jesus was a false prophet or teacher due to His popularity. This is the first time they are mentioned in Luke, and they would continue to be antagonistic of Jesus’s ministry from this point forward.

I find it ironic that the reason the place was so crowded was because the very religious had filled the room, and by so doing had prevented needy people from reaching the King. Jesus would later call them on the fact that they did this in practice as well:

Matthew 23:13 CSB

13 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you don’t go in, and you don’t allow those entering to go in.

So back in Luke, there they were, sitting around Jesus, and the Scripture tells us that “the Lord’s power to heal was in Him.” (v 17). Over and over we have been reminded of Jesus’s anointing with the Holy Spirit, ever since His baptism by John the Baptist. This moment was no different.

When the paralyzed man was lowered down by his friends, Jesus responded in a way that none of them expected.

Luke 5:20 CSB

20 Seeing their faith he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

The man had a physical problem, but that wasn’t his biggest problem. His biggest problem was the fact that he was spiritually broken. He wasn’t just paralyzed—spiritually speaking, he was dead because of sin. And because of his absolute trust in Jesus, Jesus says that his sins are forgiven.

This doesn’t go over well with the Pharisees in the room. They believed (rightly) that only God can forgive sins, and following from that, they held that forgiving someone of their sins was taking a God-only responsibility on yourself, which means that we mentally see ourselves as or equal to God, which is blasphemy. They don’t believe that Jesus is who He tells them He is.

Jesus, being God, knows exactly what they were thinking, and questions them about it. We might expect an argument, but instead, Jesus just proves who He is in what I would call an incredible flex:

Luke 5:23–24 CSB

23 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 24 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he told the paralyzed man, “I tell you: Get up, take your stretcher, and go home.”

We might think it’s not easy to forgive sins. That’s not what Jesus said. He said, “Which is easier: to SAY.” It’s MUCH easier to just SAY that someone’s sins are forgiven, because there is no proof that the statement is actually true. But to tell a paralyzed man to get up, pick up his stretcher, and go home demands PROOF. And so Jesus (using His favorite term for Himself—Son of Man—for the first time in Luke) says that since He can do the more difficult thing—telling the paralyzed man to get up—then that means that He can also do the easier thing: declaring the man’s sins forgiven. In this, Jesus fulfills the role of God in Psalm 103:3:

Psalm 103:3 CSB

3 He forgives all your iniquity; he heals all your diseases.

The man immediately got up, picked up the mat, and walked out in full view of everyone. He wasn’t just healed. He was completely renewed. He went from unable to walk to able to walk all the way home, glorifying God along the way.

Everyone (including the Pharisees) were blown away by this. They couldn’t deny what had just happened. And though they acknowledge that they had witnessed “incredible things” (v 26), this is not a statement of faith in Jesus. It’s a statement of amazement, nothing more.

Apart from Jesus, all of us are in the same spiritual position as the paralyzed man: we all have sins in need of forgiveness. And the renewal that Jesus had brought to the man’s spiritual life He then reflected in the man’s physical life: he rose up and walked.

But spiritually speaking, we’re like the paralytic’s legs: lifeless and dead because of our sins. We’re separated from God because of them. Jesus came and died to pay the penalty that our sins deserve, purchasing our forgiveness as our Savior. And He overcame death so that we can live forever with Him if we surrender to Him as our Lord.

We each need this same kind of spiritual renewal. In fact, this is our greatest need. We need to experience God’s spiritual healing so we can walk. And once we have been renewed, we can walk with others so that they might experience it as well. So coming to Jesus also gives us a new purpose.

3: Purpose Renewal (27-32)

Those of us who have been around church and the Bible for a long time hear the name Matthew, and we immediately think of the apostle, the writer of the first Gospel. But Matthew was his Greek name. We see his Hebrew name in the next vignette that we see in this morning’s focal passage: Levi.

The Levites were the priestly tribe of Israel, and the Hebrew people took names really seriously: certain namesakes (such as the name of the patriarch of a tribe) stayed in those tribal lines. So Levi/Matthew was almost certainly a Levite (like Zechariah back in chapter 1), and should have been sitting at the feet of a rabbi, or been a rabbi himself by this time. But instead, we find him sitting in his tax collecting booth, probably in Capernaum, levying Roman tax against the Jews, perhaps on the fish that they caught.

His Hebrew parents certainly had high hopes for their son to have named him Levi. But he was as far from those hopes as he could have been. He was on the lowest rung of Hebrew society. He was a tax collector. It doesn’t appear that he was a chief tax collector, the one who would have bid for the right to collect the taxes in an area (I spoke about this in the 8th message of the series). He was likely just an employee tasked with collecting the taxes at a particular booth. He was just working to make money.

Then along comes Jesus, and He instantly renews Levi’s purpose in life with two simple words:

Luke 5:27–28 CSB

27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow me.” 28 So, leaving everything behind, he got up and began to follow him.

Just as with Peter, James, and John, Levi is called to follow Jesus, and he responds. Particularly for Levi, this decision was permanent. Tax collecting was lucrative because of the fact that collectors could extort or defraud people out of extra taxes and pocket it. If you left a tax collector position, it would be filled almost instantly. As soon as Matthew walked away from his booth, his job was gone.

He had a new purpose: to follow Jesus. The way Luke recorded it is interesting: he says that Levi “began to follow Him.” The way it’s written, it means that at that moment Matthew started following Jesus, and that his following of Jesus continued afterwards. This is the simplest definition of discipleship: Begin following Jesus, and keep on following Him. Jesus would later define it in this same kind of ongoing way:

Luke 9:23 CSB

23 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.

Matthew packed all of his old life in, and decided to throw a “going away party,” so to speak, and called together all of his tax collector and other sinful friends to come and meet this rabbi that he was going to follow.

The Pharisees (the “separated ones”) either looked in on this party or brought up the question afterwards: “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” (v 30). To eat with someone was to accept them in fellowship. The Pharisees were so strict about their traditions that eating with someone that they thought was unclean made you unclean.

Jesus answered so well:

Luke 5:31–32 CSB

31 Jesus replied to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Jesus tells them that He came to call sinners to repentance, not the righteous. But the reality of our condition is that none of us is righteous, not even one:

Romans 3:10 CSB

10 as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one.

You don’t need Jesus if, and ONLY if, you are, have always been, and will always remain, morally perfect in thought, word, and deed. Everyone else needs Him (that’s everyone!).

What are we living for? What drives us? We could call this our purpose. The question that we need to ask ourselves is whether or not that purpose is a worthy purpose. Is it worth giving your life for? If not, then it’s not a worthy purpose to guide your life, either. Jesus wants to, like He did with Matthew, renew our purpose by giving us His purpose.

Those who follow Jesus are to join Him in His mission of calling sinners to repentance. We have a renewed purpose—the same purpose that Joe shared with us last week:

Luke 5:10 CSB

10b “From now on you will be catching people.”

Are we willing to follow Jesus into His purpose? Doing so might make us kind of uncomfortable, which is what Jesus addresses with the Pharisees in the last part of our passage.

4: Heart Renewal (33-39)

This last story of Jesus’s conflict with the Pharisees shows what was going on in their hearts, and why their hearts needed to be renewed. The quickest way to become like the Pharisees is to take the rules that you have created for yourself, and to make them rules that everyone else has to follow. In this case, the rules they use are rules about fasting:

Luke 5:33 CSB

33 Then they said to him, “John’s disciples fast often and say prayers, and those of the Pharisees do the same, but yours eat and drink.”

The Pharisees followed a fixed schedule of fasting: If you include all of the fasts that their tradition required (WAY more than the OT prescribed), they fasted nearly a third of the year (twice a week at least, plus 5 prescribed other days, along with any other time that they thought fasting would be useful). Jesus wasn’t opposed to fasting. He was opposed to fasting just so you could say you were fasting (and show it by your sadness) in order to display how righteous you were.

Matthew 6:16 CSB

16 “Whenever you fast, don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites. For they make their faces unattractive so that their fasting is obvious to people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward.

Jesus actually says that His presence is a call for joy, not mourning! He is the groom, who has come to receive His bride and begin the wedding feast! Christianity is about rejoicing in Jesus!

Sure, He tells them that there would be a time to come when they would fast in sadness: the time between His arrest and resurrection. But until then and afterwards, those who follow Jesus are to be the most joyful people in the world! This calls for a renewal of our hearts!

And it is that which Jesus turns to in the last paragraph of our focal passage. Throughout this last paragraph, He contrasts the new: new patch from a new garment, new wine and new wineskins; against the old: old garment, old wine, old wineskins.

Luke 5:36–38 CSB

36 He also told them a parable: “No one tears a patch from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. Otherwise, not only will he tear the new, but also the piece from the new garment will not match the old. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, it will spill, and the skins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins.

Jesus is contrasting Judaism and Christianity here. Christianity is the new, and Judaism is the old. Christianity isn’t a patch to fix Judaism. It’s the realization and fulfillment of it—it’s what Judaism always pointed to and anticipated. Even the Jews are called to believe in Christ, and I believe that as the end approaches, a revival will occur in the hearts of the Jews so that they will be grafted back in as Paul wrote in Romans 11. The Jews who believe in Messiah will be a part of the new covenant that God has already inaugurated in Christ, and which He promised in the prophet Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 31:31–33 CSB

31 “Look, the days are coming”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—my covenant that they broke even though I am their master”—the Lord’s declaration. 33 “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the Lord’s declaration. “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

The last verse is the difficult one.

Luke 5:39 CSB

39 And no one, after drinking old wine, wants new, because he says, ‘The old is better.’ ”

What He’s referring to here is that we struggle with change. The Jews are comfortable in their Judaism. We can see in the book of Acts that even those Jews who became believers struggled to let go of the ceremonial aspects of Judaism in order to walk in freedom. They needed (and still need) their hearts renewed in order to break free of those aspects of the Law.

We do the same thing. One of the greatest objections that people have to coming to faith is that their lives might change. They’re right: If your life doesn’t change, have you really come to faith? The old is comfortable. It’s easy. It’s simple. Giving over control to Jesus can be scary. It can be hard. But the renewal we experience in Him is SO worth it!

Closing

Call to renewal through surrender.

Baptism

Church membership

Prayer

Giving

PRAYER

Lord’s Supper Observance

Call down the deacons to serve.

As they come, I’d like to share both a welcome and a warning. The welcome is that we’re here together, and it’s such a joy to be able to take the Supper together. The Lord’s Supper isn’t simply an activity that we do together: it is a memorial of what Christ has done for us, so it is an act of worship and praise. But for the church body, it is also us jointly identifying both with the sacrifice of Christ and with each other as believers. It is in this way its own form of renewal: the renewal of the covenant of fellowship and love that we have committed to in the name of Lord through becoming members of His church. This is a time for us to remind ourselves that as the church, we are members of a body, a family, and together are the bride of Christ.

Look around you for just a moment and welcome each other to the family table with joy.

The warning is that if you do not belong to God through believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, please do not take the Supper. Since this is a time of memorial of and identification with the Gospel, if you do not believe, you should not participate. This is to safeguard the sanctity of the ordinance and for your protection as well, according to Scripture. We love you, and we’re glad that you’re here. We pray that witnessing this ordinance will be a blessing to you and open your heart to ask questions or to want to find out more about following Christ.

Distribute the bread to the deacons.

Luke 22 records that Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to His disciples.

Have someone give thanks for the bread.

Luke 22:19 then says that Jesus said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.”

Distribute the cup to the deacons.

Luke records that Jesus also treated the cup in the same way after supper.

Have someone give thanks for the cup.

The Scripture records that Jesus said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

Send the deacons back. Thank Donna for playing.

Closing Remarks

Bible reading (Hosea 1-2, Psalm 89)

Pastor’s Study tonight: Starting new series on apologetics

Prayer Meeting Wednesday: Starting focus on Nehemiah’s prayer in Nehemiah 1

Instructions for guests

Benediction

Colossians 2:6–10 CSB

6 So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him, 7 being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude. 8 Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elements of the world, rather than Christ. 9 For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ, 10 and you have been filled by him, who is the head over every ruler and authority.

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