INTRO:
The first summer we were here (which was 2002) we were driving a 1987 Subaru wagon with about 175,000 miles on it. It started having some problems, and we realized that it needed more money to repair it than the car was worth – so we started to talking to a car dealer friend in Oregon about trading it in – which we ended up doing and getting a car 10 years newer, which we are still driving happily today.
I don’t know much about engines, but I know that with my old Subaru wagon I could put the pedal to the metal and it would slowly gain speed. The 1996 wagon had a whole new type of engine in it, and it immediately surprised me with it’s responsiveness and ability to get moving from a stop or climb a hill and stay at the speed limit!
I COULD have just had the mechanic keep working on that old Subaru wagon, tinkering with the engine to try and get better performance out of it – but the truth is it NEVER would have matched the performance of the new style engine and the improved technology it included.
The same principle holds true in computers. An old computer can do certain things well, but when new technology is available you can’t make it work on the old one – what you need is a new system to take advantage of the new technology.
As we continue interacting with the parables of Jesus, today we’re going to hear him talking about this same principle. He’s going to tell us that what we need from him is not some tinkering with the “technology” of our selves, what we need is a brand new life. And he’ll use a couple of very interesting metaphors – that of cloth and wineskins.
Luke 5:33-39 (NLT)
33 One day some people said to Jesus, “John the Baptist’s disciples fast and pray regularly, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. Why are your disciples always eating and drinking?”
34 Jesus responded, “Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. 35 But someday the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.”
What’s going on here? Jesus was being criticized because his followers were not following the traditional ways of Judaism in the discipline of fasting. The religious Jews thought the followers of Jesus, and Jesus himself, were not paying enough attention to the traditions of Judaism, and decided to find out what he would say.
First he says “fasting is for sad times” – “while I’m here it is not a time for fasting!” But then he moves on from that simple response to teach them (and us) something a bit more profound.
Luke 5:36-39 (NLT)
Then Jesus gave them this illustration: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and uses it to patch an old garment. For then the new garment would be ruined, and the new patch wouldn’t even match the old garment.
37 “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the new wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. 38 New wine must be stored in new wineskins. 39 But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.”
What is Jesus talking about here?
The metaphor about the cloth is not too difficult for us to understand. When Ryan goes around on his knees and he rips holes in the knees of his pants, occasionally we need to put a patch on it so we can avoid buying new jeans so quickly. We usually get an iron on deal – but imagine if we just took a brand new piece of denim and carefully sewed it on around the hole. After a few washings that patch would get all scrunched up as it shrank, causing the jeans to rip even more as Ryan played in them.
The metaphor of the wineskins, is very foreign to us, however, since today we make wine in barrels. So let me give you a quick lesson on wine making in Ancient Palestine, because it will help us understand better what Jesus was talking about.
The image of wineskins that Jesus uses in his parable is foreign to our culture. The only leather wine container we can imagine is the tear-shaped leather bota that Spaniards use to carry wine and squirt it into their mouth. But that is very unlike the wineskin Jesus refers to.
Wine was made by treading barefoot on the grapes in a wine press, a square or circular pit hewn out of the rock, or dug out and lined with rocks and sealed with plaster. The juice then flowed through a channel into a lower vessel, a winevat which functioned as a collecting and fermenting container for the grape juice.
In the warm climate of Palestine, grape juice began to ferment very quickly and there was no easy way to prevent fermentation. After the first state of fermentation had taken place in the winevat, the wine was strained through a sieve or piece of cloth. After four to six days it was poured into clay jars lined with pitch or animal skins for storage and further fermentation.
When animal skins were used, wineskins were made of whole tanned goatskins where the legs and tail were cut off and had been sealed. The new wine would be poured into this skin, sort of like pouring water into a water ballon. In the next 2 to 4 months, as the fermentation process would take place, the carbon dioxide gas created would actually stretch the skin to it’s limit. During this process the skin would lose its elasticity, so that it would never be able to contract and stretch out again. Thus, Jesus comment that new wine needed to be poured into new wineskins, or the wineskins would burst.
OK – so hopefully we’re all getting the picture by now – you can’t take something new and just insert it into something old or you’ll ruin both of them.
But what in the world does this have to do with us?
Imagine if you would that your life is a wineskin. All your experiences, your background, your education, and above all your pre-Christian ways of thinking and relating to God are like “wine” that has filled up the wineskin of your life. All those things develop in you to become a world view – a way of interpreting everything that happens to you and in the world around you.
Then, you hear the gospel. You learn that Jesus is the Son of God. You come to believe he died and rose again. You understand that he died because your sin demanded it – and that his payment for your sin is the only way you can come into a relationship with God. You then decide to become a Christian – to follow this Jesus who died for you, and begin living for him. This is great!
But for too many people, what happens at this point is that they attempt to simply add Jesus into their old life and try to have him work things around so they can keep all the old stuff AND have the new wine of His presence and His power.
Jesus was saying you can’t do it that way! If you try to follow him and be led by the new wine of the Holy Spirit in your life AND keep holding on to all the stuff of your old life without him you can expect things to fall apart. Jesus was saying to his accusers, and to us 2000 years later, that now that he is in town it’s time to get some new wineskins – because he brings NEW LIFE.
When we decide to follow Christ, we need to understand this means that our old life is OVER. As Paul says in Rom. 6:3-4…
Romans 6:3-4 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
And again in 1 Cor 5:17…
2Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Life with Christ is not like getting a new engine in an old car – it’s like getting a whole new car!
Life with Christ is not like putting patches on an old tattered garment – it’s like getting a brand new garment!
Life with Christ is not like adding some new wine into an old wineskin – it’s like getting a brand new wineskin to receive the new wine of His Holy Spirit.
But if this is going to take place, we need to be willing to part with that old car, that old garment, that old wineskin, that old life – and allow his new life to fill us up and empower us.
CONCLUSION:
Are you ready to get rid of the old and receive the new life that Jesus wants to bring? Are you tired of trying to mix Jesus in with your worldly lifestyle, and finding that it really doesn’t work very well?
If so, change starts with your decision to count your old life as DEAD, and to see that spiritually you need the new wine of the Holy Spirit, the new wine of having your life filled with God’s power. I urge you to examine your life, your thinking, your world-view, for areas where you may be trying to just add Jesus in instead of starting fresh with the new life he wants to bring.
