In Matthew 9 (also Mark 2 and Luke 5) Jesus is questioned about fasting.
Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast. Matthew 9:15 NIV
That makes sense. When Jesus is present there is joy and celebration, never fasting and mourning.
Jesus continues, “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Matthew 9:16 NIV
Of course not – why would you?
Then Jesus says, Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” Matthew 9:17 NIV
We understand what Jesus is saying, but what does He mean?
Wineskins were bags made from animal skin. New wineskins were elastic; old ones no longer were. ‘New wine’ was freshly pressed, squeezed, and trodden out. Those grapes had come through the winepress and were beginning fermentation. New wine expands with great pressure and requires new, “stretchy” wineskins. Old, brittle wineskins were certain to burst, ruining both wine and bag. (Remember, the wineskin cost the life of an animal and grapes are a labor-intensive crop. These were significant losses.)
What if the old wineskins represent old religious structures and systems? If we attempt to put expansive and dynamic new wine into the old ways, disaster results from the incompatibility. The new requires change, expansion, and steady improvement, while the old demands rigid conformity.
Jesus was doing something completely new. If anyone tried to understand it through the lens of old expectations and regulations, they’d miss the amazing truth that God was redeeming the whole world to Himself. The “skins” Jesus pours His new wine into aren’t religious structures, but people who are willing to receive it with flexibility, humility and grace.
The prophets understood that obedience to the legalistic old covenant would never be enough. It could never be rejuvenated by patching it up. Only a totally new covenant could bring us to God, a new covenant “written… not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:3; Jer. 31:33).
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