Scripture
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. 38New wine must be stored in new wineskins. 39But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.” Luke 5:37-39
Observation
Having never fermented wine myself I needed to find out what the audience listening to this parable would already have known. According to the Hastings Historical Dictionary the wineskins were partially tanned goat skins, sewn at the holes where the leg and tail had been. Sounds pretty gross, but is also quite practical. The skins were filled with partially fermented wine in the opening at the neck and then tied off. If one were to put freshly pressed wine directly into the skin and close it off, the tumultuous stage of fermentation would burst the wineskins, but after this stage, the skins have enough stretchiness to handle the rest of the fermentation process. However, skins that have already been used and stretched out ("old wineskins") cannot be used again since they cannot stretch again. If they are used again for holding wine that is still in the process of fermenting ("new wine"), they will burst. This parable about the new wine and new wine skins is in response to the Pharisees comparison between the way Jesus does ministry and the way they do. Everything Jesus did was stretching them outside of what they knew and loved. Jesus wasn’t condemning the old wine, but He was challenging the Pharisees and even John the Baptist to think outside of the old wineskins of ascetic ritualism and dependency upon the fulfillment of the law. Remember, Jesus wasn’t asking them to throw it all out. In the previous chapter he says “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (5:17). Jesus drives this point home even more so in Matthew 23 when He says, 2“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.” (23:2-3). So, Jesus isn’t dumping the old wine as there is much to learn and cherish there. He is stretching His followers to a new way of living, a new spiritual economy of freedom and grace through Christ.
Application
2020 feels like “the tumultuous stage of fermentation” described above. I can feel myself being stretched as never before and at points I feel like just one more change and I’m going to burst. Everyone remembers mid-March when it felt like the world shut down and we all hunkered down in our homes. When we had Easter in our homes it felt like we had lost a battle we didn’t even know we were fighting. Then, the numbers started coming in from around the world and I could feel God stretching me to see things from His perspective. Maybe losing access to our buildings as church leaders wasn’t as disastrous as we thought. Church growth spiked online by 300% in that month and more people heard the gospel of Jesus Christ preached than any year before. The world has changed dramatically and God has been challenging me to see the difference between being married to the methods and married to the mission. The mission to go into all the world and preach the Gospel making disciples of all has not changed. The methods to achieving this mission must change. Google searches for prayer, church, God, church online and other related terms spiked significantly in those first few months. Similarly, YouVersion has seen a significant spike in installs and usage since the pandemic began. I realized that the people joining us online were not just the people we knew, but also included new people. Curious, unchurched, lapsed Christians, atheists, agnostics and more have been looking for new wine in new wineskins. It’s happening online and it’s happening in homes. I had to repent as a pastor for being so enamored with the weekend services that I hadn’t really prepared our people for leading in their own circles of influence where they wake, work and worship. This is the decentralization of the church program (one of the reasons the Pharisees were so bothered by the teachings of Jesus). God isn’t asking us to throw out the old wine of Sunday services or church programs but is stretching us to consider the new wine has to be in new wineskins such as online and in the home. Even as online numbers begin to level off and church buildings begin to reopen I can see how easy it would be to go back to the vintage I know. After all, it takes a while for new wine to taste good and I’m not very patient. It’s so easy to judge those Pharisees for holding tightly to what they knew instead of embracing the new thing God was about to do. Yet, if I’m not careful, if I don’t submit to this season of stretching, I might end up doing the very same thing.
Prayer
Thank You Jesus for this word from Your Word this morning. I see this passage in a whole new light thanks to You breaking through my old paradigm and my b.c. (before Covid) thinking. I’m so thankful for the old wine that I’ve grown up knowing and have come to know You in. This worked for me. This might not work for those You have called us to reach. Let me stop trying to duplicate the past and start jumping in with the innovating and creating that is going on around me. Forgive me for my impatience. I want the new thing to taste like the old thing right now and that’s just not going to happen. Any good thing is worth working for and waiting for and I don’t want to miss out on what You’re doing just because stretching is uncomfortable to my flesh.
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