Jesus didn't come to simply patch up our tattered lives he came to give us completely new ones. The question for us as we consider putting new wine into old wine skins and patching old garments with new patches, is how often do we try to tack Jesus on to our lives? How often do we try to maintain the old ways of this world while still including Jesus on the side? How often do we sing Amazing Grace yet still live as though it's all up to us? Because once we take that first bite of grace, we'll never want to go back. ![]() This one is different from the worldly fare we are used to it's a feast our taste buds have waited for our entire lives. He has opened a new dining establishment. ![]() Jesus is something completely new that can't be merged together with the old. Our culture loves its cafeteria, buffet style religion, where people pick and choose from an array of beliefs and plop them all together on one plate, merging together into one tasteless mass. In our own lives, we try to add Jesus to what we already believe. To put new wine into an old wineskin would only be asking for it to burst. A brand new wineskin would be flexible and able to stretch but an old one that had already been stretched, could stretch no further. When new wine was put in these skins, as it fermented, it would expand, stretching the wineskin. But since the invention of plastic was still centuries out, people in ancient times used the skin of a goat instead, with its edges sewn to make it watertight. And as we studied what happens to new wine put into old wine skins, I was struck by how significant this passage is for us today.įor those of us who always have a bottle of water in our bag, it's hard to imagine what it would have been like to carry a goat skin filled with water or wine. I stopped my reading to research and explain the passage to my curious son. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good'" (Luke 5:36-39). If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. ![]() I was reading this passage: "No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. Sometimes I push through a passage that is filled with agrarian details that a city girl like myself can't relate to or quickly glance over a list of unpronounceable names of people from long ago.īut one morning, as I was reading to my boys from the book of Luke, my son stopped me and asked "What is a wineskin?" Do you ever read Scripture and move right through something because it doesn't seem to relate to your life in the present day? Perhaps you read the words but don't soak in its meaning.
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