By His grace, what the radical life of Christ should look in an American context!

Mark 2:22 – Jesus ushered in a new era, a new heavens and earth for the descendants of Abraham. This new wine needs fresh, new wineskins so that the expansion of the fermentation (transformation) has the room necessary for change.

We must realize that only God can make men’s hearts into new wineskins. Only God can make people ready for the transforming power of the Gospel.

We must also realize that change is impossible if the foundation and preparation are not in place for change to occur.

Mark 2:27 – Jesus is still trying to pour His new wine into old wineskins. The Sabbath was made for man, to give him a day of rest, to give him a day to honor God. The Sabbath was not made to be the judge of man.

We need rest and God designed the Sabbath to insure mankind the rest we need. We all drag around tired these days because we don’t set aside a day to rest.

It was also designed as a teaching tool to point us to the true Sabbath rest in Christ Jesus. In Christ, we rest from all our works and fully trust in His works.

1 Corinthians 6:7 – We should be ashamed of the state we are in. How often are believers suing believers in a legal system run by unbelievers? We are so unwilling to suffer and be defrauded in this world.

Saints will one day judge the world and even the angels, and yet we are both unwilling and unable to make wise, holy judgments in this life.

Psalm 78:38 – We are remiss if we fail to recount how faithful and compassionate our God is. In His compassion He atoned for our iniquity so that His holiness would not have to destroy us. In Christ, He satisfied His own holy requirement in order to redeem us from our sin.

Joshua 15:63 – Israel allowed the thorn to stay put. The Jebusites should have been driven out of the land.

Joshua 16:10 – Another story of those who should have been driven from the land but were not. Israel allowed these thorns to stick around.

We should allow Christ to conquer everything in us so that no thorn can remain and cause trouble in our walk with Christ.

Joshua 17:13 – The story of Israel is our story. We have so many opportunities to drive out the former life and yet we do not fully drive them out. We act as though we may be able to forever enslave our former self rather than destroy our former self. We cannot enslave our sin nature, we must destroy it.