David W's Week 2 Sermon Outline

Campaign week two: "Bursting the Wineskins Part 1” (see attached PowerPoint below)

Intro

It sometimes amazes me to what length people will go, to not feel pain. Often the 'solution' is also the problem, with the same old pattern repeating itself over and over. At the heart of this is rigid thinking, which in children creates safety and certainty. However in adults, it continues to our detriment.

PowerPoint 1: Cycle of bad fruit

Here's one example of how we go around in circles – we usually keep trying one approach to our problem – over and over. In other words, it's a very imbalanced approach. We just can't see what we're doing wrong sometimes, often because we have a resistance to new ideas, experiences, and input – there's no elasticity either for self or as a Church… - both become hard and unusable…

PowerPoint 2: Matt. 9:14-17

Background: Animal skins turned inside out and treated – but after a while they became hard and brittle. The new wine needed a structure that was pliable and elastic to contain the pressure that was from the fermenting process. If there was a bad match between the wine and the skins (new wine/old skins), they'd fight against each other (start tearing) and eventually make things worse than what it was originally.

Parable as metaphor: We sometimes harden our hearts as a defense. This kind of woundedness, usually comes out in relational conflict.

Often in three major ways:

- We move toward people (we placate)

- we move against (we attack)

- or we move away (we isolate ourselves).

All are unhelpful responses. Interestingly, hardness usually equates with brittleness. Have you ever noticed that some of the 'hard' people are actually 'brittle' people?

This is an example of where trying the same thing over and over will not help. This message is using interpersonal conflict as an example, but the principles can be applied to any issue that just seems to go around in circles. We need to step out of rigid ways and discover "new wine' or "new skins”. Rigid thinking as a reflection of immaturity and developmental retardation. It might ease anxiety, but it retards growth – personally and corporately.

What we need to do: New wine = vision New skins = structure

PowerPoint 3: Trinitarian compass

Green – tolerance., social justice, science and politics, macro ethics

Red – evangelism, discipleship, Scripture, personal ethics

Blue – Spiritual power, emotional health, worship, spiritual experiences

Dangers:

Green – rationalism (Uniting Church)

Red – activism (Baptist Church)

Blue – emotionalism (AOG)

Heresy = a partial truth…

The Trinitarian compass allows us to:

Allows input from others…

Encourages flexibility in self and structure…

Allows us to soften a hard heart; what softens a hard heart? – oil from the Holy Spirit (blue), information (green) or further application (red).

It encourages us to lead a balanced and therefore productive Christian life…by doing something different, it allows us to get off the merry-go-round that we experience…

Response:

• During the Campaign, we must allow ourselves to be challenged in our thinking…

• As God reveals areas of hardness, we need to make a decision to soften those areas with the help of your small group or other members of the congregation.

• What areas am I imbalanced in? What do I need to do to get balanced?

Go to Bursting the Wineskins (Part 2)