Old and New Wine Skins – Mark 2:18-22
Old and New Wine Skins – Mark 2:18-22
By Pastor Lee Hemen
September 27, 2009 AM
I have found it interesting and sometimes humorous to have conversations with those who claim to have faith in Jesus Christ, but in reality have no idea what it means. A lot of folks will say, “I’m a Christian,” thinking that because they are good people, were born in a religious home, or live in America that they are “Christian.” It is really kind of silly because they would not think that by entering a grocery store that they all of sudden became a loaf of bread! Here is an experiment to try to see if what I am saying is true: Go to the local airport, get on a jet bound for Hawaii, and then insist that you should be allowed to fly the plane because you are now an airline pilot simply because you got on board the aircraft. The TSA would haul you off the plane quicker than you could say, “Wait! I was only kidding! Don’t lock me up!”
Why then do people try to delude themselves and try to fool others into thinking they are Christian, when in fact they are not? Scripture makes it very plain what it means. You cannot get any clearer than when Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life… Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.” (John 3:16, 18) However, this spiritual blindness is nothing new. In fact, we discover right here in Mark’s gospel those who wanted to argue with Jesus about what it meant to be righteous! Can you imagine? They just could not get it into their heads the newness of the gospel message. Jesus equates it with placing a new patch on old clothes or putting new wine in old wine skins. What did He mean when He said that? Well, let’s find out…
READ: Mark 2:18-22
There are those who think that by their pious acts (religious good deeds) they are somehow more loved of God than others. You know what I mean. If they light a candle, pray more often than anyone else, or if they do good things for others then God will have to love them more than you, right? Wrong! All this is, is a modern day Pharisaical transference! (WHAT!?) Simply put: Folks who believe this way are doing the same thing and thinking the same way the religious teachers of Jesus’ day, the Pharisees, did. We get easily confused because we see famous folks doing it, and we hear about being good and God loving everybody, so we begin to think that “If I try hard enough to be good enough then God will love me more.” The folks in Jesus’ day were just as confused and we find out that Jesus sets them straight by telling them…
I. Not so fast with that fasting thing! (Vv. 18-20)
1. Old habits die hard, that is why Jesus demands we die spiritually in order to live eternally! Some people just cannot get over the old way of doing things. We have all heard the excuses: “We’ve never done it that way before!” or “It was good enough for me!” We find John the Baptist’s disciples doing the very same thing. They were more in line, religiously, with the Pharisees of their day than Jesus! When they were fasting, as the Pharisees did, on Mondays and Thursdays every week all of sudden some of the folks realized that “Hey! Jesus never asked His followers to fast like John’s disciples did! How could this be?” (CAUTION: It gets kind of whiney here.) They come and complain, “How is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?” In response to the irritating inquiry, Jesus illustrates the incongruity of fasting for His disciples! Simply put, He gives them an example they will understand. He asks them, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?” You see one of the most important happenings in Jewish life were weddings, and at weddings the families all got together and feasted! Kind of like Baptists at a potluck! It would have been extremely poor manners not to eat and even worse to all of sudden ask your own wedding party, whom you have invited, to not eat either! (Can you imagine the gall of it all?) And, besides, fasting signified mourning! Like being sad over the fate of God’s people Israel. In His response Jesus was not speaking against fasting, He was showing the silliness of fasting for God when God was already right there with them in Him. God had provided for the people! They should rejoice! So, Jesus goes on to say, “They cannot [fast], so long as they have him [the bridegroom] with them.” Kind of dumb, right? Fasting was used by these religious folks to show their piety, or to try and gain God’s pity and not to really honor God at all. Jesus’ presence with them amounted to a situation as joyous as any wedding feast. Why fast? It would not last long however, because Jesus reminds them that “the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.” Jesus would die on the cross. He would be taken from their presence and then they should mourn and fast, but not now! Old habits die hard, that is why Jesus demands we die spiritually in order to live eternally! Jesus was literally saying, “Not so fast with that fasting thing!”
EXAMPLE: Fasting was often done by the people of God in the Old Testament in order to gain a clearer understanding of what God desired or to show mourning over sin. During the time of Jesus it was done twice weekly or during the annual Day of Atonement, as an act of repentance. In our day and age, however, we do not need to fast. Why? For several reasons: 1) We now have the bridegroom with us always, and He has promised to never leave us nor forsake us, 2) we are already forgiven of our sin and only need to confess it, and 3) the only time we find the church fasting was when the leadership sought a greater understanding to what God desired. Now do not make the mistake in thinking I said, “DO NOT EVER FAST!” Because I did not. What I said, is that we as Christians do not need to fast to gain God’s attention. We have the Holy Spirit to guide us daily. If we begin to use fasting as a means to gain a greater empathy with God, then we can become like John the Baptist’s disciples or the Pharisees and think we have a better spiritual understanding because “we fast.” If we do, I believe Jesus would say, “Not so fast with that fasting thing!”
I learned early on in life that if your mother makes the mistake of putting red socks in with your white underwear, you get pink underwear. Which, by the way, is not good for a seventh grade boy in gym class who has to shower afterward. Teenage teasing can be relentless, even if it is your mother’s fault. And just as you cannot put red things in with your white laundry and expect it to stay white, you cannot expect to be holy and righteous before God by continuing to do things the old way. There is a new covenant, a new testament, a new way of God relating to mankind through Jesus Christ His Son. We discover that Jesus sets us straight by teaching us about…
II. Unshrunk patches on old clothes and new wine in rotten old wine skins! (Vv. 21-22)
1. The stink of sin can only be disguised so long by the smell of false spiritual perfume! Here’s what I mean: Notice that Jesus continued His teaching to the folks who came to Him. I bet He could tell they just did not get what He was relating to them. Their eyes probably kind of glazed over, so Jesus tries another way of explaining what He meant. Old habits and the old way of thinking about things spiritually die hard, as I stated before. Paul would say, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) We find that Jesus uses an old Jewish parable to get the attention of His listeners. No Jewish housewife worth her salt would risk sewing “a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.” Why? Because she knew that “the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse!” Trying to fast, or do good things to gain Godliness is like that. When people try it, it is like trying to pour “new wine into old wineskins.” The result is disastrous because “the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined!” New wine will continue to ferment and as it does it expands. If you placed new wine in old wine skins, it would burst them from the expansion. Wine was expensive during Jesus’ day and used only for special occasions, so you would not waste it. And for the Hebrew wine also signified the blessings of God, so to spill it or allow it to be spoiled was awful in their way of thinking. However, Jesus was also referring to the trying to put the gospel into the restriction of the old law. In effect that was what Johns’ disciples were wanting His followers to do by fasting. Newness in Jesus cannot exist under the limitations of legalism. Why? It is sin to try to make it do so. And the stink of sin can only be disguised so long by the smell of false spiritual perfume. This is why Jesus spoke about unshrunk patches on old clothes and new wine in rotten old wine skins.
EXAMPLE: I will never forget how I learned that fermentation causes swelling. A few of us boys were down in the lower field and we came across an old dead cow. The carcass was bloated and full of, well, gases from the fermentation of decay. One of us, I forget exactly which one, wanted to poke at it with a stick. The rest of us yelled, “Leave it alone!” Too late. It blew up like a overfilled balloon with kind of a sickening whoosh that engulfed us all with a horrendous stink. We ran as fast as we could to the river and jumped in, clothes and all, and then tried for the rest of the day to wash the smell away. Shall we say that we stunk-eth! Jesus was trying to make the same kind of comparison. If you try to pour new wine into old wine skins, they will burst. As hard as you try it will only end in disaster. If you try to force the gospel, new wine, into the old wineskin of Old Testament legalism you get the same results spiritually. The same holds true if you are trying to be “good” instead of coming to God through Jesus. Some folks still try, and they still stink. The stink of sin can only be disguised so long by the smell of false spiritual perfume! This is why Jesus spoke about unshrunk patches on old clothes and new wine in rotten old wine skins.
Conclusion:
We learned about trying to fast for the wrong reasons, and putting unshrunk patches on old clothes and new wine in rotten old wine skins. What will you do with what you have learned today?
---
This article is copyrighted © 2009 by Lee Hemen and is the sole property of Lee Hemen, and may not be used unless you quote the entire article and have my permission. You now have my permission to use the entire article.
By Pastor Lee Hemen
September 27, 2009 AM
I have found it interesting and sometimes humorous to have conversations with those who claim to have faith in Jesus Christ, but in reality have no idea what it means. A lot of folks will say, “I’m a Christian,” thinking that because they are good people, were born in a religious home, or live in America that they are “Christian.” It is really kind of silly because they would not think that by entering a grocery store that they all of sudden became a loaf of bread! Here is an experiment to try to see if what I am saying is true: Go to the local airport, get on a jet bound for Hawaii, and then insist that you should be allowed to fly the plane because you are now an airline pilot simply because you got on board the aircraft. The TSA would haul you off the plane quicker than you could say, “Wait! I was only kidding! Don’t lock me up!”
Why then do people try to delude themselves and try to fool others into thinking they are Christian, when in fact they are not? Scripture makes it very plain what it means. You cannot get any clearer than when Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life… Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.” (John 3:16, 18) However, this spiritual blindness is nothing new. In fact, we discover right here in Mark’s gospel those who wanted to argue with Jesus about what it meant to be righteous! Can you imagine? They just could not get it into their heads the newness of the gospel message. Jesus equates it with placing a new patch on old clothes or putting new wine in old wine skins. What did He mean when He said that? Well, let’s find out…
READ: Mark 2:18-22
There are those who think that by their pious acts (religious good deeds) they are somehow more loved of God than others. You know what I mean. If they light a candle, pray more often than anyone else, or if they do good things for others then God will have to love them more than you, right? Wrong! All this is, is a modern day Pharisaical transference! (WHAT!?) Simply put: Folks who believe this way are doing the same thing and thinking the same way the religious teachers of Jesus’ day, the Pharisees, did. We get easily confused because we see famous folks doing it, and we hear about being good and God loving everybody, so we begin to think that “If I try hard enough to be good enough then God will love me more.” The folks in Jesus’ day were just as confused and we find out that Jesus sets them straight by telling them…
I. Not so fast with that fasting thing! (Vv. 18-20)
1. Old habits die hard, that is why Jesus demands we die spiritually in order to live eternally! Some people just cannot get over the old way of doing things. We have all heard the excuses: “We’ve never done it that way before!” or “It was good enough for me!” We find John the Baptist’s disciples doing the very same thing. They were more in line, religiously, with the Pharisees of their day than Jesus! When they were fasting, as the Pharisees did, on Mondays and Thursdays every week all of sudden some of the folks realized that “Hey! Jesus never asked His followers to fast like John’s disciples did! How could this be?” (CAUTION: It gets kind of whiney here.) They come and complain, “How is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?” In response to the irritating inquiry, Jesus illustrates the incongruity of fasting for His disciples! Simply put, He gives them an example they will understand. He asks them, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?” You see one of the most important happenings in Jewish life were weddings, and at weddings the families all got together and feasted! Kind of like Baptists at a potluck! It would have been extremely poor manners not to eat and even worse to all of sudden ask your own wedding party, whom you have invited, to not eat either! (Can you imagine the gall of it all?) And, besides, fasting signified mourning! Like being sad over the fate of God’s people Israel. In His response Jesus was not speaking against fasting, He was showing the silliness of fasting for God when God was already right there with them in Him. God had provided for the people! They should rejoice! So, Jesus goes on to say, “They cannot [fast], so long as they have him [the bridegroom] with them.” Kind of dumb, right? Fasting was used by these religious folks to show their piety, or to try and gain God’s pity and not to really honor God at all. Jesus’ presence with them amounted to a situation as joyous as any wedding feast. Why fast? It would not last long however, because Jesus reminds them that “the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.” Jesus would die on the cross. He would be taken from their presence and then they should mourn and fast, but not now! Old habits die hard, that is why Jesus demands we die spiritually in order to live eternally! Jesus was literally saying, “Not so fast with that fasting thing!”
EXAMPLE: Fasting was often done by the people of God in the Old Testament in order to gain a clearer understanding of what God desired or to show mourning over sin. During the time of Jesus it was done twice weekly or during the annual Day of Atonement, as an act of repentance. In our day and age, however, we do not need to fast. Why? For several reasons: 1) We now have the bridegroom with us always, and He has promised to never leave us nor forsake us, 2) we are already forgiven of our sin and only need to confess it, and 3) the only time we find the church fasting was when the leadership sought a greater understanding to what God desired. Now do not make the mistake in thinking I said, “DO NOT EVER FAST!” Because I did not. What I said, is that we as Christians do not need to fast to gain God’s attention. We have the Holy Spirit to guide us daily. If we begin to use fasting as a means to gain a greater empathy with God, then we can become like John the Baptist’s disciples or the Pharisees and think we have a better spiritual understanding because “we fast.” If we do, I believe Jesus would say, “Not so fast with that fasting thing!”
I learned early on in life that if your mother makes the mistake of putting red socks in with your white underwear, you get pink underwear. Which, by the way, is not good for a seventh grade boy in gym class who has to shower afterward. Teenage teasing can be relentless, even if it is your mother’s fault. And just as you cannot put red things in with your white laundry and expect it to stay white, you cannot expect to be holy and righteous before God by continuing to do things the old way. There is a new covenant, a new testament, a new way of God relating to mankind through Jesus Christ His Son. We discover that Jesus sets us straight by teaching us about…
II. Unshrunk patches on old clothes and new wine in rotten old wine skins! (Vv. 21-22)
1. The stink of sin can only be disguised so long by the smell of false spiritual perfume! Here’s what I mean: Notice that Jesus continued His teaching to the folks who came to Him. I bet He could tell they just did not get what He was relating to them. Their eyes probably kind of glazed over, so Jesus tries another way of explaining what He meant. Old habits and the old way of thinking about things spiritually die hard, as I stated before. Paul would say, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) We find that Jesus uses an old Jewish parable to get the attention of His listeners. No Jewish housewife worth her salt would risk sewing “a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.” Why? Because she knew that “the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse!” Trying to fast, or do good things to gain Godliness is like that. When people try it, it is like trying to pour “new wine into old wineskins.” The result is disastrous because “the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined!” New wine will continue to ferment and as it does it expands. If you placed new wine in old wine skins, it would burst them from the expansion. Wine was expensive during Jesus’ day and used only for special occasions, so you would not waste it. And for the Hebrew wine also signified the blessings of God, so to spill it or allow it to be spoiled was awful in their way of thinking. However, Jesus was also referring to the trying to put the gospel into the restriction of the old law. In effect that was what Johns’ disciples were wanting His followers to do by fasting. Newness in Jesus cannot exist under the limitations of legalism. Why? It is sin to try to make it do so. And the stink of sin can only be disguised so long by the smell of false spiritual perfume. This is why Jesus spoke about unshrunk patches on old clothes and new wine in rotten old wine skins.
EXAMPLE: I will never forget how I learned that fermentation causes swelling. A few of us boys were down in the lower field and we came across an old dead cow. The carcass was bloated and full of, well, gases from the fermentation of decay. One of us, I forget exactly which one, wanted to poke at it with a stick. The rest of us yelled, “Leave it alone!” Too late. It blew up like a overfilled balloon with kind of a sickening whoosh that engulfed us all with a horrendous stink. We ran as fast as we could to the river and jumped in, clothes and all, and then tried for the rest of the day to wash the smell away. Shall we say that we stunk-eth! Jesus was trying to make the same kind of comparison. If you try to pour new wine into old wine skins, they will burst. As hard as you try it will only end in disaster. If you try to force the gospel, new wine, into the old wineskin of Old Testament legalism you get the same results spiritually. The same holds true if you are trying to be “good” instead of coming to God through Jesus. Some folks still try, and they still stink. The stink of sin can only be disguised so long by the smell of false spiritual perfume! This is why Jesus spoke about unshrunk patches on old clothes and new wine in rotten old wine skins.
Conclusion:
We learned about trying to fast for the wrong reasons, and putting unshrunk patches on old clothes and new wine in rotten old wine skins. What will you do with what you have learned today?
---
This article is copyrighted © 2009 by Lee Hemen and is the sole property of Lee Hemen, and may not be used unless you quote the entire article and have my permission. You now have my permission to use the entire article.
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