New: Wineskins and the Simple Words of Christ - Introduction

Hi. My name is Phil Baker, and I can be a bit of a jerk. My wife, Stephanie, on the other hand, is an amazing woman. I knew she was a wonderful woman of God before we were married, but it’s been over the roughly eight years we’ve been married that I’ve realized how truly amazing she is. Interestingly for me, this increasing awareness of the blessing I have in Stephanie has coincided with an increasing awareness of how much of a jerk I can be.

It started on our honeymoon. About five days into our adventure in Costa Rica, we came to the city of Arenal, where one can view a breathtakingly beautiful volcano and go on a zip-line through the rainforest. Being that Arenal is in a rainforest, there are several different types of primates wandering around that one would usually only be able to see firsthand at the zoo.

Now, you must know that we were married in the winter, and basketball season takes place during the thick of wintertime. I possess a slight addiction for all things NBA and especially the Houston Rockets, so being away from Internet access and American television for a few days during the season was sending me into the beginning stages of withdrawal. I know. I have a problem. You should pray for me.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. The first morning after breakfast, we were made aware that there were two computers in the main lobby that would be able to connect to the Internet. I was ecstatic! My prayers had been answered! Stephanie, not possessing the same perspective of God’s benevolence, went outside with a few other travelers to look at the scenery.

After about fifteen minutes she hurried back inside, telling me there were howler monkeys in a tree a few yards away. She implored me to come outside and share that special moment with her. I assured her I would only be a few more minutes with Yao Ming and the Rockets, so she went back outside without me.

An additional fifteen minutes later, after the howler monkeys had disappeared into the forest, she dejectedly walked back in the lobby and found me still immersed in the nba.com website. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make your brand-new bride cry on your honeymoon. I thought I messed up because I chose basketball over howler monkeys; she had to explain to me that I chose basketball over her.

I’ve found that marriage is often like having to take a prolonged, hard look in the mirror when you’ve just gotten up one morning hung-over, bloated, with bloodshot eyes and have nothing to fix yourself up with. Though some singles have done the hard work to develop remarkable self-awareness, being married forces us to confront dark, ugly truths about our character that, as single folks, we often spend a lot of time, money, and energy covering up and avoiding.

In the honeymoon phase of marriage we put our best foot forward and see each other through rose-colored glasses. However, suddenly the reality phase bursts on the scene, many expectations are proven fantasies, spouses’ true natures are revealed, and conflicts ensue. The reality phase is the stage in marriage when the majority of affairs and divorces occur.¹ I believe one of the foundational reasons behind this heartbreaking fact is that during these years we come to see ourselves in an unfamiliar light that is at times overwhelming. Then, instead of doing the hard work of self-examination and repentance, we cast the spotlight onto our spouse, make him or her the villain, and look for a way out.

This same pattern began to rear its ugly head in me during the beginning of the reality phase of my relationship with Stephanie. I never considered having an affair or getting a divorce, but if my Savior had not mercifully intervened, I don’t want to think what could have happened. In this window of time, Stephanie saw my inner-ugliness in ways no one else probably ever will. I’m so glad she loves Jesus more than she loves me, because it’s her love for Jesus that caused her to continue loving this jerk.

One excruciatingly painful, but good thing, that Jesus began to show me during the reality phase was that I had entered marriage with a single-Phil mindset in many respects. I wanted to eat what I wanted to eat, when I wanted to eat it, without being questioned. I wanted to spend money how I wanted to spend money, when I wanted to spend money, without being questioned. I wanted to go wherever I wanted to go whenever I wanted to go there. I wanted to drive how I wanted to drive, watch what I wanted to watch, and listen to what I wanted to listen to at the volume I so desired (which, by the way, may be the reason my hearing has worsened over the last decade).

Without realizing it, I was trying to be married and single at the same time. I know that may sound like an awesome concept to some of you out there, but allow me to fill you in on a little secret: It doesn’t work. Never will. What it produces is chaos. Mass-marital chaos. God began to show me again and again that if I wanted my marriage to be everything it is designed to be, single-Phil had to die.

Single-Phil didn’t like hearing that at all. He put up quite a fight. In fact, I’ve realized that I’ve got to kill him every day for this to work, so that’s something I’d love for you to pray for me about. And pray for Stephanie too, so that she will continue abiding in the Vine of Christ and manifest much fruit of patience toward the jerk she’s married to.

This lesson about marriage is quite similar to an analogy Jesus told concerning how we are to receive Him and His teaching. He said in Matthew 9:16-17, “But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

This is a book about Jesus and how His new wine systematically burst many of my old wineskins that I entered Christianity with, and also how He graciously helped me find new wineskins to receive Him correctly and live victoriously. Part one will cover the person and teaching of Jesus. Part two will pertain to the Holy Spirit and spiritual warfare. Part three will deal with how Jesus helps us to better understand the Old Testament. So, as you read this book, may you receive the new wine of Jesus Christ with new wineskins. And as you do, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe in Him so that you will overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Clement of Rome on What Jesus Looked Like in 95CE

For Christ is of those who are humble-minded, and not of those who exalt themselves over His flock. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Sceptre of the majesty of God, did not come in the pomp of pride or arrogance, although He might have done so, but in a lowly condition, as the Holy Spirit had declared regarding Him. For He says, “Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? We have declared [our message] in His presence:

He is, as it were, a child, and like a root in thirsty ground; He has no form nor glory, yes, we saw Him, and He had no form nor attractiveness; but His form was without prominence, yes, deficient in comparison with the [ordinary] form of men. He is a man exposed to stripes and suffering, and acquainted with the endurance of grief: for His countenance was turned away; He was despised, and not esteemed.”

Origen on Christians Living in Lawless Cultures Around 250CE

Tell us whether the laws of the Scythians, which permit the murder of parents, are right laws; or those of the Persians, which do not forbid the marriages of sons with their mothers, or of daughters with their own fathers. But what need is there for me to make selections from those who have been engaged in the business of enacting laws among the different nations, and to inquire how the laws are rightly enacted among each, according as they please the superintending powers? …

Tell us how it would be an act of impiety to get rid of those ancestral laws which permit the marriages of mothers and daughters; or which pronounce a man happy who puts an end to his life by hanging, or declare that they undergo entire purification who deliver themselves over to the fire, and who terminate their existence by fire; and how it is an act of impiety to do away with those laws which, for example, prevail in the Tauric Chersonese, regarding the offering up of strangers in sacrifice to Diana, or among certain of the Libyan tribes regarding the sacrifice of children to Saturn. …

Each one of us, then, is come “in the last days,” when one Jesus has visited us, to the “visible mountain of the Lord,” the Word that is above every word, and to the “house of God,” which is “the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” … And this house is exalted above the hills, i.e., those individuals among men who make a profession of superior attainments in wisdom and truth; and all the nations come to it, and the “many nations” go forth, and say to one another, turning to the religion which in the last days has shone forth through Jesus Christ: “Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in them.”…

Moreover, the word of the Lord came forth from that very Jerusalem, that it might be disseminated through all places, and might judge in the midst of the heathen, selecting those whom it sees to be submissive, and rejecting the disobedient, who are many in number. And to those who inquire of us from where we come, or who is our founder, we reply that we have come agreeably to the counsels of Jesus to “cut down our hostile and insolent ‘wordy’ swords into ploughshares, and to convert into pruning-hooks the spears formerly employed in war.” For we no longer take up “sword against nation,” nor do we “learn war any more,” having become children of peace, for the sake of Jesus, who is our leader, instead of those whom our fathers followed, among whom we were “strangers to the covenant,” and having received a law, for which we give thanks to Him that rescued us from the error of our ways.

Clement of Rome on Heavenly Rewards in 95CE

Let us cleave then to His blessing, and consider what are the means of possessing it. Let us think over the things which have taken place from the beginning. For what reason was our father Abraham blessed? Was it not because he wrought righteousness and truth through faith? Isaac, with perfect confidence, as if knowing what was to happen, cheerfully yielded himself as a sacrifice. Jacob, through reason of his brother, went forth with humility from his own land, and came to Laban and served him; and there was given to him the scepter of the twelve tribes of Israel. …

All these, therefore, were highly honored, and made great, not for their own sake, or for their own works, or for the righteousness which they wrought, but through the operation of His will. And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

What shall we do, then, brethren? Shall we become slothful in well-doing, and cease from the practice of love? God forbid that any such course should be followed by us! But rather let us hasten with all energy and readiness of mind to perform every good work. For the Creator and Lord of all Himself rejoices in His works. … We see, then, how all righteous men have been adorned with good works, and how the Lord Himself, adorning Himself with His works, rejoiced. Having therefore such an example, let us without delay consent to His will, and let us work the work of righteousness with our whole strength.

The good servant receives the bread of his labor with confidence; the lazy and slothful cannot look his employer in the face. It is requisite, therefore, that we be prompt in the practice of well-doing; for of Him are all things. And thus He forewarns us: “Behold, the Lord [comes], and His reward is before His face, to render to every man according to his work.” He exhorts us, therefore, with our whole heart to attend to this, that we not be lazy or slothful in any good work. Let our boasting and our confidence be in Him. Let us submit ourselves to His will.

Let us consider the whole multitude of His angels, how they stand ever ready to minister to His will. For the Scripture says, “Ten thousand times ten thousand stood around Him, and thousands of thousands ministered unto Him, and cried, Holy, holy, holy, [is] the Lord of Sabaoth; the whole creation is full of His glory.” And let us therefore, conscientiously gathering together in harmony, cry to Him earnestly, as with one mouth, that we may be made partakers of His great and glorious promises. For [the Scripture] says, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which He has prepared for them that wait for Him.”

How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of God! Life in immortality, splendor in righteousness, truth in perfect confidence, faith in assurance, self-control in holiness! And all these fall under the cognizance of our understandings [now]; what then shall those things be which are prepared for such as wait for Him? The Creator and Father of all worlds, the Most Holy, alone knows their amount and their beauty.

Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number of those that wait for Him, in order that we may share in His promised gifts. But how, beloved, shall this be done? If our understanding is fixed by faith towards God; if we earnestly seek the things which are pleasing and acceptable to Him; if we do the things which are in harmony with His blameless will; and if we follow the way of truth, casting away from us all unrighteousness and iniquity, along with all covetousness, strife, evil practices, deceit, whispering, and evil-speaking, all hatred of God, pride and haughtiness, vainglory and ambition.