Parable Of The Patch And Wineskins
THE PARABLES OF JESUS The Patch and the Wineskins Scripture: Matthew 9:14-17 (Mark 2:21 f.;Luke 5:36-39)14 Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, 'Why do we and thePharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?' 15 And Jesus said to them,'Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? Thedays will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, andthen they will fast. 16 And no one puts a piece of unsprung cloth on anold garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tearis made. 17 Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; if it is,the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed;but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.' Meditation: Which comes first, fasting or feasting? Thedisciples of John the Baptist were upset with Jesus' disciples becausethey did not fast.
Fasting was one of the three most important religiousduties, along with prayer and almsgiving. Jesus gave a simple explanation.There's a time for fasting and a time for feasting (or celebrating). Towalk as a disciple with Jesus is to experience a whole new joy of relationshipakin to the joy of the wedding party in celebrating with the groom andbride their wedding bliss. But there also comes a time when the Lord'sdisciples must bear the cross of affliction and purification. Forthe disciple there is both a time for rejoicing in the Lord's presenceand celebrating his goodness and a time for seeking the Lord with humilityand fasting and for mourning over sin. Do you take joy in the Lord'spresence with you and do you express sorrow and contrition for your sins?Jesus goes on to warn his disciples about the problem of the 'closed mind'that refuses to learn new things. Jesus used an image familiar tohis audience — new and old wineskins.
In Jesus' times, wine was storedin wineskins, not bottles. New wine poured into skins was still fermenting.The gases exerted gave pressure. New wine skins were elastic enoughto take the pressure, but old wine skins easily burst because they werehard. What did Jesus mean by this comparison? Are we to rejectthe old in place of the new?
Just as there is a right place and aright time for fasting and for feasting, so there is a right place forthe old as well as the new. Jesus says the kingdom of heaven islike a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and whatis old (Matthew 13:52). How impoverished we would be if we onlyhad the Old Testament or the New Testament, rather than both.The Lord gives us wisdom so we can make the best use of both the old andthe new. He doesn't want us to hold rigidly to the past and to be resistentto the new work of his Holy Spirit in our lives. He wants our mindsand hearts to be like the new wine skins — open and ready to receive thenew wine of the Holy Spirit. Are you eager to grow in theknowledge and understanding of God's word and plan for your life?' Lord, fill me with your Holy Spirit, that I may grow in the knowledgeof your great love and truth.
New Wineskins Scripture
Help me to seek you earnestly in prayerand fasting that I may turn away from sin and wilfulness and conform mylife more fully to your will. May I always find joy in knowing, loving,and serving you.' Return to (c) 1998.
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Do you ever read Scripture and move right through something because it doesn't seem to relate to your life in the present day? Perhaps you read the words but don't soak in its meaning. Sometimes I push through a passage that is filled with agrarian details that a city girl like myself can't relate to or quickly glance over a list of unpronounceable names of people from long ago.But one morning, as I was reading to my boys from the book of Luke, my son stopped me and asked 'What is a wineskin?'
I was reading this passage: 'No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.
But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good' (Luke 5:36-39).I stopped my reading to research and explain the passage to my curious son. And as we studied what happens to new wine put into old wine skins, I was struck by how significant this passage is for us today.For those of us who always have a bottle of water in our bag, it's hard to imagine what it would have been like to carry a goat skin filled with water or wine. But since the invention of plastic was still centuries out, people in ancient times used the skin of a goat instead, with its edges sewn to make it watertight.
When new wine was put in these skins, as it fermented, it would expand, stretching the wineskin. A brand new wineskin would be flexible and able to stretch but an old one that had already been stretched, could stretch no further.
To put new wine into an old wineskin would only be asking for it to burst. This talk about wineskins comes right after a discussion about patching garments. Both parables are directed to the Pharisees who were openly criticizing Jesus. They were angry with him for associating with sinners and tax collectors and for breaking all their rules.Jesus was telling them that what he came to bring them was something completely new. He wasn't something they could simply tack on to what they already believed, like a patch on a garment.
He came to turn everything inside out and upside down. All that the Pharisees believed, that they could obey the law through their good works and win God's affection through their upstanding ways, was wrong. Jesus' teaching couldn't be added to their old wineskins. What they needed was to get rid of their legalistic and self-righteous theology and start with a fresh wineskin-to start anew with the gospel of grace.In our own lives, we try to add Jesus to what we already believe. Our culture loves its cafeteria, buffet style religion, where people pick and choose from an array of beliefs and plop them all together on one plate, merging together into one tasteless mass.
Jesus is something completely new that can't be merged together with the old. He has opened a new dining establishment. This one is different from the worldly fare we are used to; it's a feast our taste buds have waited for our entire lives. Because once we take that first bite of grace, we'll never want to go back.The question for us as we consider putting new wine into old wine skins and patching old garments with new patches, is how often do we try to tack Jesus on to our lives? How often do we try to maintain the old ways of this world while still including Jesus on the side? How often do we sing yet still live as though it's all up to us?Jesus didn't come to simply patch up our tattered lives; he came to give us completely new ones.
As it says in Ezekiel, we don't just need band-aids to fix our hearts, we need brand new hearts altogether. 'And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh' (11:19).We can't just add the gospel of grace to our lives, like putting on a jacket. Instead, Jesus has given us a brand new garment, his own righteous robes. Trying to add grace to legalism or self-worship or whatever idols we bow down to will only make the old wine skin burst. As Tullian Tchividjian rightly puts it, we cannot add anything to Jesus; Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Until we realize how we are trying to add Jesus to our lives, we'll be in the same place as the Pharisees, confused and unmoved by the life-altering, upside down and inside out, all transforming grace of Christ Jesus.
He has come not as a patch, but as something brand new, to make all things new, starting with our very selves. 'Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!' (2 Corinthians 5:17).How about you? Are you trying to put new wine into old wineskins?