A Study In Luke - Day 6

September 20th, 2024

Luke 6 - Day 5:33-39

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.”

36 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.”

Last year, we did a whole series on these texts, so I don’t want to go over already well-tilled soil. I think we can lean into the first verse of this text and see where the questions are going. The main thrust of the question is simply this: How come your disciples don’t act pious and do religious things all the time?

Jesus answered this with a series of illustrations that showed that because he was with them and teaching something entirely new and foreign to them, it would be very difficult to syncretize this new belief into their old belief systems.

Trying to fit these new teachings into some old container would also make no sense. The new teaching was so radical that old metaphors and infrastructures could no longer contain this new and amazing truth that Jesus's life and teachings contained.

Have you ever considered how this “new” teaching has become old news in your life? Or have you, at some point in your life, encountered these truths to be so new that the old way of thinking has to pass away.

I once conversed with a great guy who loved Jesus wholeheartedly. His life had been renewed, and his trajectory had changed by the grace of Jesus Christ. However, he could not believe that he was completely forgiven for what had been a “checkered” past. We had a conversation in which he was struggling against the idea of complete forgiveness given to him by Jesus. I could see how he couldn’t get to the point of submitting to the grace of Jesus. I finally said some words that got through to him, and the floodgates opened. Although he was clear on his salvation, the forgiveness he was finally able to submit, and in that submission, all the old containers vanished, and he was truly able to live and experience the new wine and the new wineskin!