Wine and Wineskins

Mk 2:18-22

Lk 5:33-39

In the year 1829, the governor of the State of New York wrote the following letter to the President of the United States, Andrew Jackson.

Dear President Jackson,

The canal system of this country is being threatened by the spread of a new form of transportation known as the railroad. The federal government must preserve the canals for the following reasons.

One, if boats are replaced by railroads, serious unemployment will result. Captains, cooks, drivers, hostlers, repairmen, and lock tenders will be left without means of livelihood, not to mention the numerous farmers now employed in growing hay for horses.

Two, boatbuilders would suffer, and towline, whip, and harness makers would be left destitute.

Three, canal boats are absolutely essential to the defense of the United States. In the event of trouble with England, the Erie Canal would be the only means by which we could ever move the supplies so vital to waging modern war.

As you may well know, Mr. President, railroad carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by engines which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring livestock, and frightening women and children. Almighty God certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.

sincerely yours,

Martin Van Buren

Governor of the State of New York

As long as there has been progress and change, there have been people opposed to it. Every inventor and pioneer in history has had to come to grips with the fact that most people don’t want to change. They’re satisfied with things the way they are. The motto of the majority is “Come weal or come woe, our status is quo.” And that is nowhere more true than in spiritual matters. Jesus talked about it in a series of three parables that we’re going to look at today. The Lord thought that this teaching was so important that he put it in the Bible three times - in Matthew, Mark, and Luke - just so we wouldn’t miss it! We’re going to examine it in Luke 5.

It so happened one day that Jesus saw a tax-collector named Levi sitting by his tax collecting table. He called to him and said “Follow me.” Levi got up, left everything and followed him. Now just as IRS agents aren’t the most popular people today, publicans or tax-collectors like Levi didn’t have the greatest reputation in Jesus’ day.

Not only did they collect the people’s taxes, but they did it for the Romans. In other words, they had sold out to the enemy, and were profiting from it. And if that weren’t bad enough, most of them were so corrupt that they were actually extorting tax money from the people and pocketing the excess.

In fact, tax collectors were so despised that they were considered part of the underworld. Respectable people wouldn’t be caught dead in the company of a tax collector. Rabbis would cross the street to avoid even the shadow of a tax-collector falling on them. The only people who would associate with a publican were the riff-raff of society - the prostitutes, and the con-men.

Now when Levi left everything to follow Jesus, he was so excited that he threw a party at his house. He invited Jesus and the other disciples. And he invited all his friends. Now you can imagine who his friends were! So there were Jesus and the disciples, sitting at the banquet table in Levi’s house, eating and drinking and enjoying themselves along with all these other questionable characters.

But there were some onlookers there too, perhaps standing around outside the house, peering through the windows at what was happening inside. And there were two groups among the onlookers who were mightily displeased with the goings on. They were the Pharisees, and the disciples of John the Baptist.

Why were they upset? Well, apart from the fact that the Pharisees couldn’t stand the people who Jesus was hanging around with, they felt that instead of feasting, Jesus and his disciples should have been fasting.

The Pharisees were fasting because they had made a religious tradition of it. The OT only commands that the Jews fast on one day a year, the Day of Atonement. But after the Exile, the Jews were fasting four times a year - in the 4th, 5th, 7th, and 10th months to commemorate the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. We read about that in Zechariah 8:19. But by the time of the New Testament, the Pharisees were fasting twice a week, every Monday and Thursday. They had made fasting a religious tradition; a way of demonstrating their piety and their spirituality.

Remember in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus condemned them for making a big show of it. He said to his disciples, “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting.” In other words, the Pharisees wanted everyone to know they were fasting, so they went out of their way to show it. They wouldn’t comb their hair, they wouldn’t wash their faces, they went around with a real pained expression on their face, and so on. They were trying to impress people with how spiritual they were.

So the Pharisees were mad at Jesus because while they were fasting, he was feasting. But John’s disciples were also fasting. Why were they fasting? Because at that very moment John the Baptist was in prison. He had been put there by Herod. His life and his career were about to end.

John was a remarkable man. He was like a prophet who walked out of the pages of the Old Testament and into the New for the express purpose of announcing that the Messiah was coming. He was the forerunner of Jesus, the one who would prepare the way. He was a powerful preacher and he had a powerful ministry.

But the real measure of his greatness is that when Jesus finally did come along, John was willing to let it all go. He pointed his followers to Jesus. He said about Jesus “He must increase, but I must decrease.” You don’t find too many preachers willing to say that, do you? When Jesus arrived, John the Baptist knew that his ministry was complete.

But some of his followers found it hard to let him go. They wanted to go on following John. And it hurt them when John was imprisoned and Jesus didn’t go to his rescue. In fact, here was Jesus, sitting around with his disciples feasting, while they were fasting and praying for John’s release. You can almost sense their resentment.

Now normally, John the Baptist’s disciples and the Pharisees didn’t have too much in common. But on this occasion, they united in a coalition - a coalition of criticism against Jesus. Criticism often brings together the strangest bedfellows!

So we read in Luke 5:33 that they came to him and said “John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.” In other words, “How could your disciples (and by implication, you) be so unspiritual! You’re not only eating with the wrong people, Jesus, you’re eating at the wrong time. You’re behavior is entirely inappropriate.”

Jesus responded by telling three mini-parables. A parable is a story or an illustration which uses a familiar situation to convey spiritual truth. It’s an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. Jesus gave three mini-parables in answer to the criticism of the Pharisees and John’s disciples.

1. You don’t fast at a wedding feast.

Luke 5:34 Jesus answered, “Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.”

In ancient Israel, a wedding was the biggest occasion in all of life. After the days of betrothal, or engagement, were completed, the bridegroom would come with his attendants and friends, to the house of the bride’s parents. There, he would claim his bride. There would be much feasting and celebration, and that night, the bride and groom would enter the bridal chamber.

But the guests wouldn’t go home. They would stay for a week. There would be feasting and celebration for seven whole days before the festivities ended. People would eat as they had never eaten before. It was a time of great joy. And nothing was allowed to interrupt it. The Jewish Talmud teaches that even a rabbi should set aside his study of the Law to attend a wedding.

So you can see that in the midst of a life that was often hard, and in a time when there was often not enough food on the table, a Jewish wedding feast was a tremendous high point for everyone involved. It was like an oasis in the desert.

This is the point that Jesus is making. Just as it would be absurd to go to a wedding feast and not eat, so it is absurd for the disciples to fast and mourn while Jesus is with them. Jesus is the bridegroom. Now that he has come, the party’s on!

Now he does say, in verse 35 that the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast. Some people assume that means when Jesus went back to heaven after his earthly ministry was completed. But that is wrong. Jesus is talking only about the three days that he would be in the grave. That would be a time of sorrow and mourning for his disciples.

But then the resurrection would come and he would be with them again. And some of his last words to his disciples here on earth before he ascended into heaven were “Lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

So in other words, the feast is still on! Jesus is still with us today! This is one of the remarkable truths of the kingdom of heaven. It is that Jesus is living in us. He is with us.

Jesus said:

Revelation 3:20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

Paul said:

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

Jesus said:

Hebrews 13:5 Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.

So this is not a time for mourning or sorrow or downcast faces. The bridegroom is here! You don’t fast at a wedding feast.

2. You don’t sow a patch of new cloth on an old garment.

Luke 5:36 No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.

Have you noticed that patches have really gone out of style? Young people nowadays like to wear their clothes with rips and tears in them, and the bigger and more obvious, the better!

But in the old days, you would put a patch on a garment that was torn. Now in the days before synthetic fibers, you would have to take into account the fact that cloth would shrink. You wouldn’t put a patch of new, unshrunk cloth on a garment that had already been washed several times. If you did, the first time you washed the patch, it would shrink and tear away from the older fabric, and you would be left with a hole that was bigger than the original!

Apart from all of that, you would have to find a patch that would match. It would have to be the same color, with the same degree of fadedness as the old garment. You certainly weren’t going to take a new garment and cut a piece out of it to serve as a patch on an old garment. You’d end up ruining both pieces of clothing.

Now Jesus told this story for a reason. He was trying to illustrate a very important spiritual truth: The Pharisees were living in the past. They had created an intricate religious tradition based on the Mosaic Law, and in the process, they had sucked the spirit of righteousness right out of the Law. They had taken the Law and elaborated it and built traditions around it to the point where it had become a heavy burden, a crushing yoke of slavery on the people.

When Jesus came, the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law were outraged that he didn’t respect their traditions, their customs, their interpretation of the Law. He offended their religious sensibilities. They saw him as a threat to the old way.

But this is exactly the point: Jesus hadn’t come to mend the old system, he had come to end the old system. The truth of the kingdom of heaven that he taught wasn’t meant to be a patch on the religious traditions of the Pharisees. It was a whole new garment.

He gave one more parable to drive that point home.

3. You don’t put new wine into old wineskins.

Luke 5:37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.

In the ancient world, they would take an animal, usually a goat, and kill it and skin it. After tanning the hide carefully, they would sow it up and seal it, leaving only the opening at the neck, which they would plug with a stopper. Then they would pour freshly pressed wine into the wineskin. The wine would begin to ferment, and as it did so, it would produce gases. The pressure of the gas would stretch the wineskin. But, because it was new, would have enough flexibility to expand with that pressure.

Finally, when the process was complete, the wineskin would gradually dry and harden into its new shape and it would become inflexible; unable to expand and stretch anymore. At that point, it had turned into an old wineskin.

Now what would happen it you put new wine into an old wineskin? Well, the old wineskin wouldn’t be able to stretch as the new wine began to ferment. The pressure would just build up until that brittle old wineskin burst, and you’d lose your wine and your wineskin.

Jesus is saying “Look. I have come into the world, the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of mankind. I have brought new truth - a new way of relating to God that is based on grace, not law. That new truth is like new wine. You can’t pour it into the old wineskins. They just can’t hold it.”

“You guys are getting all bent out of shape because I’m not fasting. Because I’m not observing your religious traditions. I’m spending time here with people who need God; but they are people who your traditions say I shouldn’t be hanging around with.”

“Listen. I am here to tell you that if you are going to cling to those traditions, you are going to miss out completely on the new thing that God is doing in your midst. You’re going to be just like the foolish man who, once he has tasted the old wine, doesn’t want the new, because he says the old is better.” That’s exactly what Jesus is saying in v.39.

God is a God of newness. What he is doing is always new. He isn’t static or stationary - he’s always on the move. He’s unpredictable. Just when you think you’ve got God all figured out, He does something totally different. And the Gospel is that way too. It’s the message of new life; it’s the truth about a new covenant between God and man.

In first century Israel, the most religious people in the world couldn’t let go of their old traditions to follow this new thing God was doing. When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to them with the new truth of the Gospel, the Pharisees responded with a chorus of “Gimme that old time religion, it’s good enough for me.” And the Jews to this day are doing the same thing still. They’re clinging to their traditions, and in the process, rejecting their Messiah.

But before we look down our spiritual noses at them, let’s realize that even as Christians, we have the same tendency. The tendency to resist change.

When Jesus talked about the wineskins, he wasn’t saying that wineskins weren’t important. You have to have something to put the wine into. But it is the wine that is of primary importance. The wineskins, although they are necessary and useful, are really of secondary importance, aren’t they? They derive their importance from the wine.

When we think about the church, let’s understand that the wine represents the Gospel of Jesus and the kingdom of heaven. The Gospel never changes. But the wineskins represent the forms and the structures in which that Gospel truth resides. And those forms can and they should change. Because people are changing, and the world is changing. But here is where we run into problems.

Church history is full of examples of how the church has refused to change its forms and structures in order to more effectively minister to people, in order to help people taste the new wine of the Gospel. Down through the years, Christians have fought battles over the wineskins - over methods of worship, styles of music, which version of the Bible to use, how the order of service should be conducted, what the church building should look like, whether to have pews or chairs, and on and on. And it’s usually the conservatives against the progressives, and usually the conservatives win.

You always have a sizable group of people ready to resist change. They dig in their heels and fight tooth and nail to preserve the old way of doing things. The seven last words of many churches are “We’ve never done it that way before.”

But all these things are wineskins. They are not the main issue. They are peripheral.

Certainly we need to have wineskins - we need form and structure. But if we learn anything from Scripture, surely it must be that form and structure can never be permanent. If we cling to certain forms and structures and traditions, we’re probably going to miss out on the new direction God wants to take us.

The question we really need to ask ourselves is: Are we going to follow God’s command to share the new wine with outsiders? If we’re going to do that, we’re going to have to put that wine into wineskins that they can drink from. And those wineskins are going to be constantly changing. As culture changes, the wineskins are going to have to change. But if we cling to the old wineskins, we’re not going to do a very good job of reaching people in a changing world.

Following Christ is an adventure. It was in the first century, and it is today. As a follower of Christ, you’re going to have to be ready to be stretched. Jesus is going to take you into new territory. You’re going to have to be ready to let go of some of the familiar traditions you’ve always lived with. But the rewards are great. And the process is joyful, because you’re with the bridegroom.

So let’s be ready to follow Christ where he leads, as individuals and as a church.