This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

We're looking through Matthew chapter 9 together this week. This is day 3. We're
going to look at verses 14 to 17.

And you might remember from yesterday, we've just heard Jesus talking to the
Pharisees about change. And now, some disciples of John the Baptist come on the
backside of that and they have a question that leads to Jesus teaching some more
about how God changes our lives. In verses 14 and 15, "Then John's disciples
came and asked him, 'How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your
disciples do not fast?

' Jesus answered, 'How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with
them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and then
they will fast. '" The disciples of John the Baptist come and say, "Why don't
your disciples do the religious things that the Pharisees do, and even that we
do?

" And Jesus answers, "They will. It's just not the right time. It's not the
right time.

" And then out of that, he teaches two principles for how change, real change,
happens in my life, happens in your life. And he uses these pictures of cloth
and a patch of wine and a wineskin to help us to understand how God genuinely
changes our lives. If you want to live the exciting life that God has for you to
live, the life of change, the life of him changing your heart, changing your
relationships, changing your circumstances as you look at them in a different
way, then you've got to get ahold of these two truths.

First truth is the old cannot contain the new. Jesus says the old cannot contain
the new. Verses 16 and 17, "No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old
garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse.

Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will
burst, and the wine will run out, and the wineskins will be ruined. " Now,
notice he talks here about this patch sewn on a garment, and when you washed it,
if it was a new patch, it would shrink, so it would tear out, and it would
actually make the tear worse, making the tear worse.

We can put a lot of effort into change and just make things worse. Using the
wrong method for change, Jesus is teaching us here, will make things worse. We
tend to think, "Well, any effort's worthwhile.

At least I'm making some effort, it's going to have some good result. " No,
Jesus says. If you use an old way to try to change to become something new, it's
going to make you worse and not better.

Now, what are we talking about here? Let me share with you from the Old
Testament to the New, three ways that we try to fit the new into the old, things
that will never work for change. One is trying to grow or to change by doing
good.

If I do enough good things, then that will cause me to change. That's a huge
mistake. The picture that Jesus is painting here, it's graphic.

We don't have wine and wineskins in our day, but what would happen is, when you
would take new wine and put it into a wineskin, a new wineskin, the wine would
ferment and so it would expand and in expanding the new wineskin, because it was
new, because it was stretchable, it would expand as well. But an old wineskin,
it had been out in the sun, it had lost its stretch. So if you tried to put new
wine into it, when it tried to expand, it would burst the wineskin.

When I try to grow by doing good, when I try to grow by my own works, the
scripture says very clearly, that's never going to work. That's never going to
cause you to change. You can't do enough good to cause change.

Now, some of the goods you do might indicate the changes that God's working in
your heart, but as we said yesterday, change always starts from the inside out,
never from the outside in. There have been millions, literally billions of
people who have tried to change from the outside in and gotten more and more and
more depressed throughout their lives. It's not the road change.

It's the old way of doing things, trying to grow by and change by doing good. A
second way that doesn't work is trying to change by keeping rules. If you give
your child, those who are parents, only rules, they never make a decision on
their own up until the time they're out of college, are they going to be a
mature adult ready for life?

Not a chance. If you just have rules, if that's all you've got and you just keep
those rules, they either produce unthinking compliance or more often rebellion.
They don't produce growth.

In your mind, I just want you to say this phrase back in your mind, rules cannot
produce growth. Rules cannot produce growth. Now I know there's a lot of rules
in the Bible, there's a lot of rules in the Old Testament, but those rules
weren't put there to produce growth in our lives.

They were there to show us our need for God, to show us our need for change. Now
again, those rules can help us to see the direction that God is growing us, but
they can't produce the growth. Grace produces growth.

Now much of what is in the law can show us the direction that grace is growing
us in, but remember, grace is the jet that powers us. The law gives some insight
into God's flight plan for our lives, but grace is the jet that powers us.
Sometimes I think that we think we're doing it when God's doing it.

We fool ourselves. If you're living in God's grace, he is growing you in ways
that are beyond your imagination. It seems to me sometimes that it's as if we
are out in our little rowboat trying to row our way across the Atlantic Ocean
and God comes by in his great big ocean liner and says, "Hey, let me put your
rowboat on the ocean liner.

" And we say, "Okay, that'd be great. Your grace is going to carry me to where
you want me to be. " He puts the rowboat on the ocean liner, but we stay in the
rowboat.

In fact, not only do we stay in the rowboat, we keep working the oars because we
say, "I want to keep doing my part. " If you're doing that, you're fooling
yourself into thinking that you working the oars is what's making that boat go
across the ocean. God's grace is what's powering it.

Now he's got some things for you to do on the boat. He's got some work for you
to do, but thinking that somehow you keeping rules or you being good is what's
causing your growth, it's the Holy Spirit. It's God's power.

It's God's grace that causes growth. Now there's a third old way of doing things
that never produces growth in our lives or change, and that is trying to change
by feeling bad. If I just feel bad enough about myself, then I'll do good
things.

Guilt cannot produce growth. Grace produces growth. Guilt can never produce
growth.

We think if I feel bad enough about myself, I'll be better. That just makes you
feel worse about yourself further from God. It doesn't make sense if you really
think about it.

It's like saying if I'll get sicker, then that'll make me better. Guilt is an
indication. It's a warning light in your life that something is wrong, but never
confuse the warning light with the action that you need to take to make it
right.

You need to get something fixed in your life, and that means you get back to
God. You get back to who he is. You don't spend the rest of your life staring at
the warning light thinking that's going to motivate you to growth.

No, you do something about it. You get closer to him. Those are the old ways of
growth that will never work.

Now, what's the new way? What's the different way we need to think? The second
major truth in this passage is only the new can contain the new.

The old can't contain the new. Only the new can contain the new. Very simple.

So, 17, the last part of that verse says, "No, they pour new wine into new
wineskins, and both are preserved. " There's something powerful here about the
new life that Christ wants to give us. You don't become new gradually.

You are made new miraculously. Now, I know, then you grow gradually to show what
God has made you to be. You grow gradually to live out that newness that God has
put into your life, but God pours this newness into your life, into the new
person he's made you to be in Christ.

Think of it like a butterfly. If you've got a caterpillar, you cannot strap
wings on that caterpillar and somehow make it into a being that could fly, or
you can't give the caterpillar flying lessons and gradually get the caterpillar
into a place where it's convinced, it understands that it can fly. By nature, it
can't fly, it can only crawl.

Its nature has to change, and God has changed our nature in Jesus. He's made us
new in Jesus. Just like the caterpillar has to be transformed in order to be a
butterfly, you and I have to be transformed in order to live out the life of
Christ.

Now, make no mistake, we do have a part in our growth. And our growth, as we see
it from our side, it does happen gradually. But never let that cause you to take
credit for your growth, or never let that cause you to forget the fact that it
began instantaneously.

And every bit of growth that happens in your life, it comes out of the miracle
of what Jesus did for you when he saved you, the miracle of what Jesus did for
you when he put his spirit into your life. You see, before I can act in a new
way, I've got to see myself in a new way. And before legitimately being able to
see myself in a new way without lying to myself, I've got to know that I'm a new
person.

And Jesus says, "I promise you, you are a new creation in me. I have made you a
new person. " Just think through this in your mind.

The truth of our nature and how we change is being comes before seeing. First
I've got to be it before I can see it, or else I'm just lying to myself. For
instance, if I try to like see myself as a great singer, as an opera singer, I
could try to see myself as an opera singer all day long.

I'm never going to sing like an opera singer because that's not what I am. I
don't have the vocal cords for it. I'm not going to prove that to you right now
by singing a few bars.

You would hate that. But you understand what I'm saying. You have to know that
there's truth behind what you're trying to see, that you're not just trying to
fool yourself by some fake positive thinking.

So being comes before seeing. And God says, "I've made you a new creation so I
can now see myself as a new creation in Christ. " And seeing comes before
acting.

When I start to see myself that way, then I start to live out who God's made me
to be. And by the way, acting almost always comes before feeling. You act your
way into a new way of feeling.

There's many times when you're going to feel like, "I'm not much of a Christian.
I'm not a new person. I'm not.

. . " So you go back to the beginning.

Who's God made me to be? Help me to see that with eyes of faith. And help me to
act on that.

And then watch the feelings that grow out of that, out of that kind of faith,
out of that kind of trust in you. Let's take a minute right now together and
trust God in prayer for the change that he wants to work in our lives today. Our
Father, as we pray together, we know that you're working in our hearts and
lives.

You're working to change us from the inside out, to change us to be more like
Jesus. Forgive us for those times when we ignore that process and go off on our
own. Forgive us for those times when we take too much credit for that process
and think that somehow we're doing it.

Lord, you're at work in us. So help us to see, to have faith in you today, to
see us ourselves for who we are in you, Jesus. But then out of that, to trust
you, to follow you, to take the steps of faith in our lives.

Lord, how do you want to change us today? In the way that we talk, in the way
that we think, in the way that we act, Lord, direct us, guide us. Help us to put
faith in you, we pray.

In Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look together at how you break
the grip of suffering in a person's life.