Episode 48
Old Wineskins: The Shadow Rebuilt Again
Have you ever wondered why so many Christian traditions look so much like the systems they supposedly replaced? In this episode, the conversation focused on how the early church’s dynamic beginnings gradually drifted back toward old, familiar religious structures, rebuilding what the writer of Hebrews declared finished. By exploring the transformation from house churches to cathedrals, Sabbath to Sunday, and elders to priests, this discussion challenges us to recognize where old “wineskins” still shape modern faith. If you’re curious about the difference between spiritual substance and religious shadow—and want to rethink what really matters—this episode is for you.
"The church has spent 2,000 years trying to pour new wine right back into old wineskins." - Tim Winders
Access all show and episode resources HERE
Episode Resources:
- NT90 Hub – This is the central website for the 90-day New Testament reading plan, with downloadable, printable plans, background information, and links to all episodes and resources.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Finished Work Rebuilt
01:10 Episode Setup Old Wineskins
04:58 Why Drift Happened
07:26 Domino Chain Explained
08:28 Sabbath Shift To Sunday
12:39 Buildings Become Sacred
16:33 Elders Turned Priests
21:32 Tithing Becomes Law
24:59 Tithing Guilt Trap
26:15 Giving Without Requirement
27:17 More Rebuild Dominoes
27:31 Sacred Clothes and Altars
28:18 Calendars Sacraments Confession
31:10 How Traditions Drift
34:21 Why We Prefer Old
38:40 Misreading Through Tradition
40:36 What Still Matters Today
41:35 Four Practical Moves
44:08 New Wine Next Steps
Transcript
Jesus sat down because the work was finished.
Speaker:So the church spent the next 2,000 years trying to make him stand back
Speaker:up, not on purpose, by instinct.
Speaker:The muscle memory of the old system was too strong to leave alone.
Speaker:One piece at a time, we rebuilt the very thing the writer of
Speaker:Hebrews said had vanished.
Speaker:Different vocabulary, same architecture.
Speaker:Sabbath became Sunday.
Speaker:Houses became temples.
Speaker:Elders became priests.
Speaker:Generosity became obligation.
Speaker:The shadow grew back on top of the substance.
Speaker:We were born into the rebuild.
Speaker:The hard question is not whether it happened.
Speaker:The hard question is whether we can still tell the difference
Speaker:hello, everyone.
Speaker:Welcome to Seek Go Create.
Speaker:This is Tim Winders.
Speaker:We are still getting information and just enjoying the spinoff
Speaker:from the recent read that I did of the New Testament in 90 days.
Speaker:And as I've said many times, it's not just that I attempted to do it in context.
Speaker:I have immersed myself in the first century just to attempt to understand
Speaker:the writer and the context and the audience of these New Testament books.
Speaker:But one of the other things we did was we put the New Testament
Speaker:in the order that it was written.
Speaker:And when I say we put it in that, couldn't find a reading plan to
Speaker:read it that way, so I created one.
Speaker:It's not the order that's in your Bible.
Speaker:It's the order that the letters actually went out.
Speaker:And it was surprising all of these topics that we've been doing in this
Speaker:series have spun off or have been generated from the reading of that
Speaker:New Testament in context and in order.
Speaker:So I think it would be awesome if everyone did that, but especially you
Speaker:if you're listening in here, 'cause, uh, we're just sharing discoveries here.
Speaker:And I really do recommend that people do this.
Speaker:At some point, you can get the reading plan.
Speaker:It is free.
Speaker:It's just a download, and it's got details, and it's got, a lot of
Speaker:background information, some context, some historical items that are valuable,
Speaker:I believe, to understand context.
Speaker:That's at k2m.foundation/nt90,
Speaker:Get it, and, go through the plan.
Speaker:I think you'll enjoy it.
Speaker:This is the old wineskins that we're gonna be talking about in this episode.
Speaker:And this is kind of a connecting episode to the, the previous episode, which
Speaker:was New Wine, is the way it was titled.
Speaker:This is Old Wineskins.
Speaker:Last week we started with the words of Jesus, new wine for new wineskins.
Speaker:The old container cannot hold the new thing.
Speaker:Then we walked through Hebrews making the same argument across the
Speaker:13 chapters of the book of Hebrews.
Speaker:The temple, the priesthood, the sacrifices, the covenant,
Speaker:the whole old wineskin.
Speaker:Given by God, it was a shadow pointing forward.
Speaker:The substance came.
Speaker:The shadow did not really step aside as it should have.
Speaker:The light of the substance was so bright, there was really no shadow that was left.
Speaker:It overtook it for those that allowed it to.
Speaker:Jesus sat down because the work was finished.
Speaker:This week It's kind of the hard half.
Speaker:It's the tough one because the church did not actually
Speaker:leave that old wineskin behind.
Speaker:We keep Trying to bring the shadow back.
Speaker:We tried to pour the new wine right back into it, piece by piece, with
Speaker:Christian vocabulary, and we are still living inside the rebuild.
Speaker:It's why we have so much conflict and so much tension within a community of people
Speaker:that all call themselves Christians.
Speaker:Many of them are still living with the shadow, and that is the challenge.
Speaker:We're going to address that and talk about it in this episode.
Speaker:Let's talk about how that came to be.
Speaker:Nobody met in a room.
Speaker:They didn't have a big conference or anything like that in the
Speaker:2nd century and make a decision to rebuild the temple system.
Speaker:That is not-- It doesn't appear to be how it happened.
Speaker:There was no meeting.
Speaker:There was no vote.
Speaker:There was no theological argument that won.
Speaker:There were bits and pieces along the way, but it was really just drift.
Speaker:And I'm not gonna try to explain how or really kinda the underlying reason for it.
Speaker:I mean, it could be human nature.
Speaker:Some might say it was the enemy.
Speaker:Some might say there was just some confusion.
Speaker:Some could say there was deception.
Speaker:I'm not sure.
Speaker:We are going to identify what happened along the way, but it is
Speaker:tough to say exactly why it happened.
Speaker:The first generation in that first century died.
Speaker:Obviously, eventually they passed away.
Speaker:The second generation inherited a faith that no longer had the original Jewish
Speaker:believers asking the original questions.
Speaker:The third generation started looking around for structure.
Speaker:Humans desire structure.
Speaker:By the 3rd century, the structure had hardened.
Speaker:I've done some recent studies of Rome, and, you know, up until that
Speaker:3rd century-ish, Christianity was sort of on the outside looking in.
Speaker:And by the 4th century, Constantine had accepted Christianity and,
Speaker:in fact, had endorsed it, and so Christianity became the in thing.
Speaker:That rebuild became visible at that time.
Speaker:The new church looked, in many ways, exactly like the old system
Speaker:in just different clothing.
Speaker:This is how institutional drift works.
Speaker:Each step looks reasonable in isolation.
Speaker:The cumulative weight is really unrecognizable So let's trace
Speaker:through some of the dominoes.
Speaker:Not all of them, we're gonna look at some of them, but not even really most
Speaker:of them, just a few to see the pattern that has led to where we are today.
Speaker:But, but here, I guess first let me say, here's the chain
Speaker:that pulls them all forward.
Speaker:It's kind of like the first domino if you kind of look at it.
Speaker:If Sunday becomes the Sabbath, then you need a place to keep it, and if you have a
Speaker:place, you need someone to administer it.
Speaker:And if you have a place, you have bills and things like that that need to be paid.
Speaker:If you have an administrator, you need offerings to help
Speaker:pay for all those things.
Speaker:If you have offerings, you need rules about who can give
Speaker:what and who can do what.
Speaker:One step, then the next, then the next.
Speaker:By the time you've walked through that chain or that thread, the temple
Speaker:system has been rebuilt with Christian language painted on the front, and
Speaker:justification from a lot of scriptures and twisting and things like that.
Speaker:The dominoes start with the Sabbath.
Speaker:So let's talk about the Sabbath.
Speaker:First domino.
Speaker:Sabbath in the Old Covenant was a sign of the Mosaic
Speaker:Covenant between God and Israel.
:17, "It is a sign forever between me and the
:people of Israel." A sign.
:For Israel, Saturday, rest, no work.
:It's required.
:It's tied to the temple system, the festival calendar, and the whole
:architecture of what came out of Sinai.
:Paul in Colossians 2:16 says, "Let no one pass judgment on you in questions
:of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath."
:Notice where the Sabbath shows up in that list, right next to the
:festivals, new moons, and food laws.
:All old covenant signs, all released for new covenant believers.
:9, "There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God." Then in
:verse 10, "Whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God
:did from his." The Sabbath was always pointing to resting in finished work.
:The substance came when Jesus sat down.
:We saw that in the previous episode, and it just means that
:there is a rest or a Sabbath.
:The early church gathered on the first day of the week, Acts 27, and
:then also in 1 Corinthians 16:2, not because Sunday was the Sabbath,
:because they were celebrating the resurrection, which happened on a Sunday.
:They did not call Sunday the Sabbath.
:They did not transfer Sabbath laws to Sunday.
:They just gathered on the first day, then they went to work the rest of the week.
:Then the drift started.
:By the late first century, Sunday started being called the Lord's Day.
:By the fourth century, under Constantine, Sunday was declared
:a day of rest by imperial decree.
:By the medieval period, Sunday had absorbed the legal weight of
:the Sabbath, and then after the Reformation, Puritan Sabbatarianism
:made Sunday into a Saturday-style rest day with rules and penalties.
:Today, many Christians still call Sunday the Christian Sabbath, and a meaningful
:chunk of Christian teaching still applies Sabbath laws to Sunday observance.
:That is the first domino.
:The Sabbath as a covenant sign got transferred to Sunday as a Christian
:obligation, law, rule, whatever.
:Nobody set out to do it.
:It doesn't appear.
:It happened over the centuries, and once it happened, some other dominoes
:started falling because here's the chain.
:If Sunday's the Sabbath, as we said earlier, you need a place.
:Where are you gonna gather?
:The old Sabbath was tied to the temple, so the new Sabbath needs a building, too.
:If you have a building, you need someone to run it.
:So elders became pastors Became priest.
:If you have priests, you need offerings, so free generosity
:becra- became required tithing.
:If you have offerings, you need rules about who gives what and who
:gets what, so clergy and laity.
:If you have clergy, you need vestments, sacred space and a hierarchy.
:The whole old system grew back from one starting domino.
:I'm gonna walk through three more big dominoes, but the
:chain runs further than four.
:By the time you trace it out, the temple has been rebuilt piece by piece.
:Let's go back to the buildings thing.
:The early church met in homes.
:We know that.
:We read that.
:There were reasons that they met in homes.
:That's because they were somewhat smallish.
:They were scattered.
:They were, I guess, you know, defying the Roman Empire.
:They were also defying the temple structure, so there could've been a bit
:of a keep it small because we're sort of hiding, but the early church met in homes.
:Romans 16, Aquila and Priscilla had a church in their house.
:Philemon, Nympha, the pattern across the New Testament is consistent.
:House churches, tables, shared meals, conversational worship, no buildings.
:We do not see buildings anywhere.
:Paul says it directly, 1 Corinthians 3:16, "You are God's temple," plural.
:The community is the temple.
:1 Corinthians 6:19, "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit," individual.
:Each believer is the temple.
:24, Paul, standing in Athens, says, "The God who made the world and
:everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made
:by man." The interesting thing is, is that Paul was surrounded by temples.
:Not the Jewish temples.
:They were there also, but there were temples to many other gods
:at that time in the 1st century.
:In the New Testament, God doesn't have buildings.
:People are the dwelling place and the buildings.
:Then the drift started.
:3rd century, dedicated church buildings appear.
:4th century, Constantine pours imperial money into basilicas.
:Medieval period, cathedrals rise across Europe.
:Reformation, churches everywhere, but still buildings.
:Today, multi-site campuses, mega churches, arena-style auditoriums
:I wanna be careful here.
:Buildings are not bad, okay?
:I'm not, I'm not saying that.
:Meeting in a building is not a sin or a bad thing.
:Many faithful believers gather in good buildings every week, and
:the Spirit is genuinely at work.
:The problem is really not the building.
:The problem is when the building becomes the church.
:When I am going to church means I am going to a building.
:When the holiness migrates from the people to a specific location or
:address, that is what is not in the substance or in the new covenant.
:Watch the language.
:We say, "This is God's house." I've traveled and visited a lot of churches,
:and I've heard it said, "This is where God is," as if the next line should be, "So
:you need to be here because God is here."
:24 says it is not God's house.
:We say the sanctuary about a room.
:The new covenant says the sanctuary is here.
:It is us.
:It is our body.
:We treat the building as sacred space and the parking lot as not.
:Hebrews tore that curtain.
:The substance, it's the people.
:It's us.
:It's the hearts.
:The shadow is the building.
:Somewhere along the way, we stopped being able to tell the difference.
:All right.
:Now let's move to what happened with the leadership and the elders becoming
:priests, preachers, teachers, et cetera.
:The New Testament structure is plural elders.
:5, Paul leaves Titus in Crete to appoint elders in every town.
:It doesn't say to appoint one guy, one dude as a CEO-type pastor.
:That's not Paul's instruction Elders, plural.
:1 Peter 5:1, Peter calls himself a fellow elder, not above others.
:23, Paul and Barnabas appoint elders in every church.
:And then 1 Peter 2:9, "But you are a chosen race, a royal
:priesthood, a holy nation."
:Every believer is a priest, you and I and all the others.
:The priesthood of all believers is a New Testament doctrine,
:not a Reformation invention.
:It is right there in Peter.
:The early church had no clergy class, no ordination process as we
:know it, no seminary, no degrees.
:Elders were recognized by character and fruit.
:The community knew who the leaders were because leaders were
:already doing the work of leaders.
:They were right there amongst them.
:They, they did not put together a committee to go out and find elders
:and search and do interviews.
:Nope, they were there with them.
:They were amongst them.
:Then the drift started.
:By the second century, the office of bishop began consolidating.
:By the third century, a clear distinction between clergy and laity.
:By the fourth century, post-Constantine, clergy became a legal class with imperial
:governmental recognition, vestments, ordination, salaries, hierarchies.
:The Levitical priesthood reassembled in different clothes, fancy clothes,
:really, really, really nice clothes.
:And, uh, that's what emerged.
:By the medieval period, the priest stands between you or the individual and God.
:Confession to a priest, absolution from a priest, communion
:administered by a priest.
:The New Covenant declared every believer a priest.
:The medieval church put a priest back between every believer and God.
:The Reformation tried to dismantle this.
:Solo Christus, priesthood of all believers, no mediator but Christ.
:And for a moment It worked.
:Then the drift happened again.
:Darn human nature.
:You know, we, we broke away from that priest class, thank you, Martin
:Luther, and then the Protestants invented the senior pastor.
:CEO leadership, put the person on stage and let them be the guy.
:Not the lady, of course.
:We've heard that recently from the Southern Baptists.
:It's the guy.
:The guy is up there, and we've got to listen to him.
:He is the leader.
:He's the reason we come here.
:CEO leadership model.
:Celebrity preacher culture.
:Different uniform, same role.
:The priesthood crept back in wearing a suit most of the time, or
:sometimes skinny jeans with a black T-shirt like I'm wearing right now.
:I am not anti-pastor.
:I am not anti-leadership.
:I'm a leadership coach.
:I've worked with leaders.
:Elders are biblical.
:Pastoral care is necessary.
:The issue is not whether the community has leaders.
:The issue is whether those leaders sit in the position of mediator as a go-between.
:The new covenant is very clear.
:It has one mediator.
:1 Timothy 2:5 says, "For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and
:men, the man Christ Jesus." Every priest the old system needed, Jesus replaced.
:Every leader the church appoints stays under that one mediator.
:The moment a leader becomes the mediator The old system, the
:old covenant has been rebuilt.
:Now, here's a
:controversial one.
:Let's talk about giving and the tithe.
:The tithe, boy, you wanna get people upset, there's two
:topics you could bring up.
:Well, the Sabbath is one.
:We talked about that earlier, but bring up the tithe or the rapture, and boy, some
:people, ooh, the claws are gonna come out.
:The religious claws are gonna come out when you bring up those items.
:The tithe in the old covenant was very specific.
:10% of agricultural produce given to support the Levites
:who had no land of their own.
:Plus, a second tithe was used for festival use to make sure that the festivals
:ran and they had what they needed.
:Plus, a third-year tithe for the poor, all tied to the temple system,
:all tied to the Mosaic Covenant.
:The New Testament mentions tithing only a handful of times, and
:never as a command to the church.
:Every mention is in passing.
:Hebrews 7 discusses Abraham tithing to Melchizedek as a historical
:event, not a command for believers.
:In Matthew 23 and Luke 11, Jesus criticizes Pharisees who tithe
:their garden herbs but neglected justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
:That's not a positive command . It is a critique of obsessive law
:keeping that missed the heart.
:And then in Luke 18, the only person who boasts about his tithing is the Pharisee
:that Jesus holds up as a bad example . So the tithing in the New Testament is
:not really shown in a positive light.
:Paul never tells a single church to tithe.
:Not Romans, not Corinthians, not Ephesians, not Galatians, not anywhere.
:He does gather a gift that he takes to Jerusalem, but he doesn't command
:it and doesn't call it a tithe.
:What Paul does say, 2 Corinthians 9:7, "Each one must give as he has decided
:in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful
:giver." That does not sound like a law.
:1 Corinthians 16:2, "On the first day of every week, each of you
:is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper,"
:proportional, voluntary, as you decide.
:Then the drift started.
:Constantine Tithe to the state recognized church.
:The medieval period, mandatory tithes enforced by law.
:Reformation, tithes survive in many traditions.
:And then in American evangelicalism, tithing is presented as a New
:Testament command, often built on Malachi 3:10, which oddly enough
:is in the Old Covenant, but we need to bring it to the New Covenant.
:"Bring the full tithe into the storehouse." That verse was written
:to Old Covenant Israel about Old Covenant temple operations.
:It's lifted out of context.
:And I gotta tell you guys, I'm guilty because I have been in churches where I
:have been asked to speak about the tithe.
:I'm very comfortable talking about money, so I was often asked to do this.
:And I'm guilty.
:I used that verse from Malachi to justify the people in the audience
:to give their tithe at that time.
:So I'm not pointing fingers, I'm pointing at myself.
:I have made this mistake.
:It was lifted out of context, applied to Gentile believers under a new
:covenant to produce guilt or manipulate, which is probably what I was doing
:when I was doing that tithe message.
:"Tim, can you give the tithe message? We know you can look
:people in the eye and ask them for money." Then it produced guilt.
:It funds the buildings, it pays the clergy, it pays the bills.
:It helps us run the institutions.
:The Old Covenant tithe got grafted into the New Covenant Church.
:Same pattern, different vocabulary.
:Religious obligation rebuilt on top of new covenant freedom.
:Listen to me carefully.
:Giving is a good thing.
:Generosity is good.
:Supporting kingdom work and ministries, that's a good thing.
:Tithing as a personal practice is good if you decide in your heart to do it.
:A tenth, it's easy math for us.
:If you make a buck, give 10 cents.
:That's easy math But it's good if you decided in your heart to do it.
:The problem is not giving, the problem is requiring it.
:The problem is you must do it.
:The problem is someone standing up giving a tithe message using Malachi
:and manipulating you to give so that the church can keep the lights on.
:When the new covenant says, "Give as you decide," that is rebuilding
:the old contract inside the new one.
:Now, let's talk about it just keeping on going.
:So we did four dominoes or four stacks so far, Sabbath,
:buildings, priest, and tithing.
:The chain or the thread just runs further.
:quick stack of the rest.
:Let's just keep going, and there's a bunch of them.
:Sacred vestments.
:Levitical priests had prescribed garments.
:The new covenant elders had no clothing requirements.
:Then robes, collars, vestments, sacred clothing for sacred professionals.
:Old system, new labels.
:Altars.
:The old covenant had an altar at the center of the temple.
:The new covenant has no altar in the church.
:10, "We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no
:right to eat." The altar is the cross.
:The altar is not a piece of furniture in your building.
:And then the drift occurs.
:Altars at the front of churches.
:Sacred furniture.
:The temple architecture rebuilt.
:And then there's, of course, festivals and liturgical seasons,
:and old covenant required Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, and more.
:Paul in Galatians 4:10 says, "You observe days and months and seasons
:and years. I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain." New covenant
:believers added Christmas, Easter, Lent, Advent, Ash Wednesday, ordinary time.
:We just added it and added it.
:And again, not saying all that is bad, it's just not required.
:Some of those are beautiful.
:Some of those are great.
:Some serve real purposes.
:None are required.
:All are post-biblical, man-made inventions, and in many ways they're
:man-made mimicking The shadow, the old covenant, the thing that was overcome,
:done away with, the thing that was, done away with by what Christ did.
:The festival calendar reassembled with new names.
:And then the sacraments kind of multiplied, and this is a lot of,
:I guess, Orthodox-type religion.
:But baptism and the Lord's Supper are in the New Testament.
:And then there's this drift.
:By the Middle Ages, there's seven sacraments, each one mediated by a
:priest, each one a moment where the system stands between the believer and God.
:The old covenant access system was rebuilt.
:And then there's this confession that occurs.
:I grew up in the Baptist Church, in and around the Baptist Church,
:so we didn't have this as much.
:But James 5:16 says, "Confess your sins to one another," mutual peer, no hierarchy.
:And then the drift occurs.
:By the seventh century You must confess to a priest.
:By the 13th century, mandatory annual confession for all Catholics.
:The new covenant said one mediator.
:The old structure said a human stands in between.
:The system rebuilt the gatekeeper.
:I'm not meaning to pick on Orthodox or Catholics.
:There's just a lot of things that built up there, and truthfully, they
:started sooner than some of the others.
:Some of the Protestant religions didn't start till the 17 or 1800s.
:The Catholics kind of got started about 200 or 300 years after,
:after all of these things occurred.
:So they had a, they had a good s- good head start to build up a lot more stuff.
:But Protestants have done the same thing in different ways.
:Sinner's prayers, altar calls, membership classes, denominational gatekeeping,
:same pattern, different traditions.
:Now, let me give you one.
:This is kind of funny, and it's gonna seem small, but this is how it happens.
:I attended in the '90s a non-denominational Pentecostal church.
:It was kind of spun off from the Assemblies of God type church, and this
:was during the '90s, and people-- If you've ever been to one of these church,
:people would come to the front for prayer many times at the end of the service, and,
:the pastor would walk down the aisle and lay hands on them or touch their head,
:maybe kind of give them a little bit of push at times, and people would fall out.
:It was not uncommon for someone to fall out under the power of the Holy Spirit,
:whether it was real or manufactured.
:We're not gonna get into that here, but let's just say they would fall
:out and be laying there on the floor, the, the concrete floor of the church.
:they'd end up lying at the front of the congregation.
:At some point, someone noticed that women wearing dresses, some of them
:possibly, you know, at all times this occurs, but during the '90s, those, uh,
:those dresses might have been a little bit short, and they were laid out where
:either the whole room or if they were laying facing the choir, that group could
:see more than they should be seeing.
:Let's just say it that way So a decision was made by someone that there would be
:a person that would be there at the front of the room that would have some large
:cloths, kind of like towels, but maybe larger type cloths, to cover the legs
:of the women who fell so they wouldn't be showing off more than they should.
:I'm trying to be somewhat discreet here, but I think you know what I'm saying.
:That was reasonable.
:It was modest.
:It was sort of pastoral, so someone, if they felt like they were gonna fall out
:under the Spirit, they weren't, you know, conscious about, oh, look, my, my skirt's
:up around my waist or something like that.
:Then I started to notice something.
:Over time, the person that was part of that job, the covering ministry,
:whatever you wanna call it, I don't know, they started covering everyone.
:You know, if a woman had a long dress on that was well covered,
:they would still lay a cloth over their legs and everything.
:If a woman was in pants, they would still lay it over there.
:How about this?
:Then men got covered with the cloth.
:Anyone who fell had the ceremonial covering of the cloth that occurred.
:Now, I'm sort of laughing.
:I mean, it was a real thing.
:I mean, I'm not joking about what happened, but I'm laughing about
:it, and some of y'all are kind of rolling your eyes going, "What?
:What is going on there?" Um, that's the way it happens.
:That's the rebuild in miniature.
:Reasonable step, then drift, then something happens, then a system.
:Then it becomes something like, we've got to have these cloths.
:What do they mean?
:I don't know.
:It started way back when, and now we're doing it 30, 40,
:50, hundreds of years later.
:And then you have a ministry function where nobody thought to question it.
:Multiply that by 2,000 years, now we get another temple.
:We've rebuilt the temple structure.
:Why it keeps happening, Jesus really already named it.
:He told us in Luke 5:39, right after the wineskin parable,
:Luke records one more line.
:"And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says the old is
:good." We convince ourselves that that old furniture is gonna work in our new house.
:That was a reference from the last episode if you haven't listened to that.
:Man, this old furniture's just fine.
:It's comfortable.
:That's the diagnostic in one sentence.
:It's familiar.
:It's tested.
:It's religious.
:It's comfortable We don't have to spend more money.
:We already have it." Or as I heard someone say, this was a family
:member, so I won't call it out, "I just like being told what to do.
:I like going to a church where all these things are set and
:there's not that much freedom."
:People will prefer it.
:Jesus saw it coming before the church even existed.
:Two reasons sit underneath that preference.
:Both of them are spiritual, but both are worth kind of saying
:very slowly and methodically here.
:First
:The new covenant is really too simple.
:It is very, very simple.
:It says, "God's spirit lives in you.
:The curtain is torn.
:Access is open.
:The work is finished.
:Just walk in it." That's uncomfortable for some, like I
:said earlier about a family member.
:They don't like all that freedom.
:They wanna be told what to do.
:There is really nothing to do.
:There is no system to maintain.
:There is no professional to validate it.
:There is no building to enter to be near God.
:new covenant has stripped away every religious lever.
:So we build levers.
:We need them.
:The flesh wants something to do, so we build a system to feed the want.
:Second, religion runs on visible scaffolding.
:The old system was visible.
:You can see it.
:It was there.
:Smoke rose, priests moved, sacrifices burned.
:People could point and say, "There is the religion. God has got to be
:there." The new covenant is invisible.
:The Spirit and the Kingdom of God really moves in the hearts of us, the believers.
:The kingdom is among you.
:It's among me.
:It's among us.
:The temple is in your body.
:None of that registers on the empire's instruments, so we
:build visible scaffolding to feel like the religion is still real.
:Buildings, vestments, programs All of those things.
:Hierarchies, the visible scaffolding becomes the religion.
:The actual kingdom continues to grow underneath, ignored
:by the visible scaffolding it built just to prove it was real.
:Both reasons are spiritual, not logistical, not historical, not
:anyone's fault in particular.
:They are what humans do when they are handed a finished new covenant
:and a spirit that they cannot see.
:We rebuild something so there's something for us to see, something to touch,
:something that's there, something that we can have faith in, a building.
:That's where God is.
:And he may be, but he also may not be.
:Then we often mistake the rebuild for the actual thing, and I
:would say we often do that.
:Therein lies the conflict that occurs in modern Christianity.
:What did it mean then?
:The first century church had no buildings, no clergy class, no liturgical calendar,
:no required tithe, no Sabbath day, no sacred space, no priestly mediator.
:They had the Spirit.
:They had each other.
:They had the gospel
:They had the faith in the resurrection, and the kingdom grew faster in those
:conditions than it has ever grown since.
:Here's where we have misread it and, taken things out of context.
:We read the New Testament through the lens of the rebuild and all the layers
:that have been added over the last few thousand years and assume that the
:rebuild is the way it was always done.
:And with that lens, with those glasses that we put on, that's how we read the
:Bible, and so we take what we believe and what has been built, and we read the
:Bible to justify or to show that that is true instead of the other way around,
:going to the text and seeing how it was written in context and then letting
:the other things spill out from that.
:We read about Paul collecting an offering and assume it was a tithe.
:He calls it a free will gift.
:We read about elders and assume they were priests.
:They were not.
:We read about gathering on the first day and assume it was the Christian Sabbath.
:It was not.
:The rebuild has been so complete that we cannot even see the original anymore.
:The lens has become invisible, and it impacts, how we attempt
:to read the New Testament.
:We read the New Testament trying to prove all the traditions that we have built
:up over the last few thousand years.
:But this is what it still means for us.
:This is not a message to demolish your church building.
:Don't go out and do that.
:That's not what I'm saying.
:Most of what got built has scattered real kingdom benefit alongside
:the religious overhead and all the baggage that's been added with it.
:Buildings do host real ministry.
:Salaried pastors do real shepherding.
:Sunday services produce real worship.
:The point is not to tear it all down.
:The point is to know what is original and what is a rebuild, to know the difference
:between Christ and infrastructure, to know that if your church burned down,
:and your pastor moved, and your tithe stopped, you would still have everything
:the New Testament said you needed.
:Because the new covenant was never about the scaffolding or the building.
:It was about the Spirit, the people, and the gospel.
:Four things, four practical moves that we can learn from this.
:First, how do we treat people?
:The early church had no clergy class telling people who was in and who was out.
:It's one of the big things that bother me today is who's in and who's out.
:That's not what Jesus was about.
:Everyone was a priest.
:Everyone was a temple.
:If your community treats some people as more spiritually weighty or lofty than
:others, you're running the old system.
:Stop.
:How we do gathered life is the next thing.
:Most of what the New Testament describes about gatherings
:happened in homes around tables.
:We can gather in buildings, there's no problem with that, but it needs to be an
:overflow from what is happening in your heart, in individuals, and in individuals
:gathering, and then individuals gathering maybe in larger locations,
:as opposed to the other way around.
:I'm sure all of you have been to churches where they gather in the big
:buildings because that's where quote unquote God is, and then they try to
:create these small group structures.
:It needs to be the other way around.
:you don't have to gather in buildings.
:It's really not required.
:I really do not go to a building that's called a church very often anymore.
:I'm not opposed to it.
:I will, and I, I have, and I will again, I'm sure, but the
:building is not the church.
:The people are the church.
:And if you cannot gather, you have not lost the church.
:And, if during COVID you can't get together, that doesn't
:mean church is shut down.
:It just means the buildings are.
:You just lost the building.
:And then how we give.
:Generously, cheerfully, as you decide, not as an obligation, not as a
:percentage required by a system, as an expression of what God has done in you.
:Paul's words, 2 Corinthians 9:7, that is the standard.
:And then how we approach and have relationship with God.
:It is directly.
:It is through Christ.
:No priest, no special place, no confessional, no going into a building,
:no required moment, no formula.
:It is right here, right now, or wherever you are.
:16 said it, "Draw near with confidence. The throne is open." Last
:week, we walked through what Jesus finished, the temple, the priesthood,
:the sacrifices, the covenant.
:The shadows stepped aside.
:It actually merged because of all that light.
:The substance came.
:Jesus then sat down, rested.
:This week, we walked through what we built back or what kept coming
:back or what didn't go away or what we keep adding on, the layers and
:layers and layers, the Jesus plus all of this other stuff, Sabbath into
:Sunday, homes into temples, elders into priest, generosity into tithing,
:and the dozens of pieces beyond that.
:The whole shadow regrew on top of the substance.
:Mostly without anyone meaning to.
:Some people probably have done it intentionally.
:The muscle memory or the human nature of religion is too strong.
:Jesus said it first, "New wine
:for new wineskins." The church has spent two thousand years trying to pour the
:new wine right back into the old skin.
:We're still doing it.
:Different vocabulary, same instinct, and the wine keeps bursting the skins.
:That's why we have the level of frustration in what is
:called Christianity today.
:We keep pouring that wine into old wineskins.
:The skins keep getting patched, and we keep pretending that
:the patches are the gospel.
:Next week, we're gonna look at one of the big ones that has spun off from this.
:It's kinda like the other half of the same rebuild because while the
:church was reassembling the temple, we were also, especially starting
:with Constantine, reassembling Rome.
:We were rebuilding the political and the government structure with that old
:covenant or that shadow-type mindset.
:The religious face of the rebuild is what we just walked through.
:The political face is where we go next.
:Religion is not God's kingdom, neither
:is Rome.
:Two rebuilds, same instinct.
:The kingdom does not feel like it's enough, so we reach for what
:religion or empire can offer instead.
:We've gotta be able to see it, and we need to be able to see it in our
:laws, in our governments, in our political parties, in our structures.
:Every time we reach, We end up building something the New Testament
:said had already been demolished.
:The honest question is the one Hebrews asked the first generation, "Are
:you going to retreat into the shadow or stay with the substance?" They
:were tempted by a literal temple.
:We are tempted by a metaphorical one.
:Same temptation, same answer.
:Jesus sat down.
:The work is finished.
:Stay with what is real.
:Don't forget the reading plan, k2m.foundation/nt90.
:Go download it.
:Read it.
:I think you'll love what comes out of that type of context and
:that type of order in reading.
:This is Tim Winders.
:Keep seeking.
:This next episode's gonna be fun.
:We'll see you then
