![]() We have settled on our lees and refused to learn the ways of God. It may have loads of energy and human hype but it will have less and less of the true fragrance of Christ about it. We may engage in promotional and attractional tactics to draw people to our church event but if we are ‘on the nose’ spiritually we will only succeed in building another church monument to human ingenuity. This is why so much of contemporary church life has no aroma of Christ to the world. This process continued for forty days, the biblical number of testing and God’s dealings. And then at the discretion of the wine-maker the wine would be poured off to another vessel, the process occurring repeatedly until the wine was purified. ![]() Wine would be left for a period in a vessel to rest on its lees, the impurities slowly settling to the bottom. The metaphor of being poured from vessel to vessel is taken from the ancient process of wine-making. We have not given off the flavour or aroma of Christ. Refusing to be poured from vessel to vessel we have – as our text explains – retained our flavour, and therefore our aroma has not changed. All of us who have been nurtured in the lap of Western materialism have taken on, in whatever measure, their condition. This has aided us in our development of church growth methodology, in perfecting better and even more effective ways of doing church.īut we are mistaken to think that we have escaped Moab’s condition. We have continued to enjoy post-war prosperity and the fruit of technological advance. It seems to me this is the state of the contemporary church, particularly in the West. We have heard of the pride of Moab – he is very proud – of his haughtiness, his pride, his arrogance and his self-exaltation. The nation had never been overrun or gone into captivity, and so remained very secure and self-satisfied: Moab had, from his youth, been undisturbed by misfortune. And like wine poured from vessel to vessel we become the fragrance of Christ to others. Our transformation into the image of Christ comes through a history of inner abandonment to the high call of God -to move continually on with him. Our willingness to embrace change, to be poured from one vessel to another, is integral to spiritual development. The call to go on with God is a call to be poured from vessel to vessel. … And he has not been emptied from vessel to vessel … Jeremiah 48:11
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