Filled and Poured Out

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF MARK

FILLED AND POURED OUT

Mark 2:21-22

21 "No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins." 

NIV

A continuation of the response of Jesus to those who were judging him for hanging out with the “publicans” and “sinners” at the house of Levi is what we are seeing here. Jesus is saying that he knows that the people, the “publicans” and “sinners” who are not like the Pharisees, who think they are spiritual, are the new wine skins that he is pouring new wine into. Those Pharisees are the old wine skins, the old garments. People who think they are spiritual, but are simply religious are not capable of containing the new wine, the truth of the gospel message that we are saved through faith and not by works. Way too many religious people are stuck in the rut of the Pharisaical syndrome, thinking they can be a better Christian by following a set of rules and regulations, checking off all the things they do not do and sometimes checking the list of things they think they are doing, but mostly it is the do not list which dominates their thinking. It is the people who know they are sinners who Jesus can pour the new wine into and it holds it without being ruined. We have to make sure we are not like those old garments, or those old wine skins, getting trapped in our religion, our denominational strongholds filled with our rigid ideologies and thinking more of ourselves than we should because we are believers and all the rest are “sinners”. We need to always remember we are sinners saved by grace. We need to constantly be in the condition of being a new garment, a new wine skin, allowing Jesus to pour the truth into our lives. Even if we have been saved for many years, we cannot afford to become an old wineskin, but must remain new, supple capable of being folded, bent, shaped, and filled for the purpose of our Lord. The wine does not benefit the skin, but the skin is only the container of the wine to be poured out and drank by others. And so we must always be that new skin, willing to be filled and poured out.