New Wineskins Series

New Wineskins

Series: Parables - Small Stories, Big Truths

Brad Bailey – June 20, 2021

Intro

Well good morning to each of you joining today...and a warm welcome to those connecting at another time. I’m excited to launch us into a NEW series and focus for this summer season. Today we are going to begin a weekly focus on the Parables of Jesus.

The parables are some of the most dynamic teachings of Jesus. And I imagine everyone has some idea what parables are. Parables are short stories... or illustrations...that capture a significant truth. Or as our series title says...they are small stories with big truths.

That’s essentially how Jesus made use of parables. In fact... so potently that it is actually where the word “parable” came into common use.

No one had bigger truths. As Jesus brought the news of a new Kingdom... of God’s Kingdom... he told some parables to capture the truth of this new Kingdom and the nature of the life that it bears. They tell us what God’s kingdom is like... how it comes... who is truly loving their neighbor.... what true righteousness and faithfulness are like.

One of the common qualities about Jesus’ parables is the brilliance in connecting things that were commonly understood...to convey spiritual truth. For example...everybody understood the position of a farmer waiting on a harvest... or what it would be like to discover a treasure on property you were working.

The Parables of Jesus use what is familiar to convey truth that is not familiar.

What Jesus brings... he brings to all... he brings for all to understand...and in the parables we see the power of connecting the most common elements in life to understand the major truths.

But... in the parables there is no sense of over-simplifying truth. Anyone could follow the story... even today we don’t need too much cultural background to have a sense of the illustration or story...but they can leave us with a wow... a whoa...or a “what ?”... and always with a sense that they speak to something significant.

A second thing for us to remember, is that...

The Parables of Jesus capture how to see, understand, and then live life.

They are more than fables that simply convey a new moral rule. We may be use to how fables are known to end stating...”So the moral of the story is...” Each of Jesus’ parables does have a similar sense of a truth to be grasped...but they are not merely “morals” in the strict sense. Jesus is not just adding new moral rules... he is explaining how to see and live life.

And so the Parables of Jesus have captured the minds of all who hear them. We can hear some referred to across all of western civilization. It’s not uncommon to hear people refer to the “good Samaritan” or the “prodigal son.” So there are some that may be familiar...and some less familiar if one hasn’t read the Gospels in full. In total... there are about 40 parables known from Jesus... and this summer...each week we will focus on one of 10.

And today we head right in with one engaging a moment early in the ministry of Jesus in which we see growing confusion and conflict... to which Jesus provides an explanation that involves a parable.

Like all of the Bible... if we want to understand what is being said...it’s important to know what is happening... it’s important to see the larger context of what’s being responded to. And we get a great example here... in the Gospel of Luke... one of the accounts drawn from those directly engaged with Jesus. [1] So lets engage the Gospel of Luke... chapter 5... verses 27-39.

Luke 5:27-39

After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. 29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" 31 Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." 33 They said to him, "John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking." 34 Jesus answered, "Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast." 36 He told them this parable: "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. 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. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.'"