No Patch No Old Skin

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

NO PATCH, NO OLD SKIN

Matt 9:16-17

16 "No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. 17 Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved." 

NIV

This is the rest of the story, in that Jesus is still answering the disciples of John about fasting. He makes two illustrations for them and, of course, for us. This is regarding making a comparison between the old and the new covenants. What Jesus is saying when using the garment is that it is not possible to patch the old covenant with the new one. If a seamstress were to put a patch made of new cloth on an old garment everyone knows when that garment gets wet, that patch will shrink up because it has never gone through the process of shrinkage and thus it will pull at the old garment and make the whole worse. This is why we cannot go back and read or use the Old Testament as an example for fasting because those examples are tied to the Law of Moses, the legal system by which God was showing men they could not find righteousness through observing the law, but they were in need of a Savior, the Messiah, whom they were indeed waiting for, however, refused to see Jesus as that Messiah. Nevertheless, Jesus established this completely new covenant and it does not just patch the old covenant. One has to undress himself of that garment and put on a whole new garment. This is the same application for the wine and the wineskin. Although we use commercial methods of fermentation of grapes today, it would have been the custom in the time of Jesus to employ the use of the wineskin as a method of fermenting the grapes. If they put new unfermented wine into an old wineskin, as the wine began to ferment, the gases produced would burst that old worn skin. Again, we cannot put the new covenant into that old one, because the old is not compatible with the new. The new covenant would burst that old covenant, break it up, tear it apart. We could apply this in a way that when a person becomes a believer, we should not fill them up with all the rules and regulations of the Old Testament, the old covenant, but that also can apply to us who have believed for years. We too should not try to fill ourselves up with the rules, the law of the old covenant. Yes, we can learn what happened to the Israelites when they disobeyed God. We can learn many lessons from the Old Testament, but we are not to put ourselves under the law, for we know from experience we cannot fulfill the law, and if we break just one of the smallest rules, we are guilty of breaking the whole law and are therefore doomed. Jesus fulfilled the law, he did not cancel it, but fulfilled it, so that if we are in Christ, we have already fulfilled all the law of the old covenant and now we must live as new wine in new wineskins, or wearing a whole new garment, such as the armor of God, or clothe ourselves with Jesus.