DEVOTION
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING
TO LUKE
NEW AND OLD
Luke 5:27-39
27 After this, Jesus went out
and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi
got up, left everything and followed him. 29 Then Levi held a great banquet for
Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating
with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to
their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax
collectors and 'sinners'?" 31 Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not
come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." 33 They said to him, "John's disciples
often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on
eating and drinking." 34 Jesus answered, "Can
you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the
time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they
will fast." 36 He told them
this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new
garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new
garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one pours
new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the
wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be
poured into new wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new,
for he says, 'The old is better.'"
NIV
It is time to ponder on this wineskin and cloth parable Jesus
told the Pharisees and teachers of the law because they were being self-righteous
accusing Jesus of eating and drinking with the cursed tax collectors. we think the
best application is about the fact the disciples were Jews and thus lived most
of their lives under the law taught by the teachers of the Law, Rabbis, who
belong to the sect of the Pharisees. But now they have the light of Christ, a new
law, a new way of life. Once someone has this new life, it would not be right
to try to take this new way of life and sew it into the old way of life. Once one
has experienced salvation in Christ Jesus, to try to combine that with living
as the world does, would tear the new way of life and add it to the old way
of life, the new way of life in Christ would be torn, or be ruined in some
sense, by trying to live under some other law, or rule and regulation. It is the
same with wine and the wineskin. The idea here is that old wine is the wine
that has been aged and is thus mellow with a great aroma and smooth to the
palate, while the new wine is tart, sour as new grapes would be, and unpalatable.
This life in Christ is smooth and good to the taste, as we read the scriptures
and see we are told to taste and see the goodness of the Lord. Why would we take
our smooth and great taste in life because we are in Christ and try to put our new
life back into the old wineskin, the old life of our past? If we try to live
according to Christ but also try to live according to the ways of the world,
we will be torn apart, ripped, or burst open, so to speak. We can never try to
combine living in the kingdom of God with living in the kingdom of this world,
it simply will not work, and if we do, it will take all the joy we can experience
in Christ and tear it away from us. All our joy will be stolen from us because we
are trying to live in two kingdoms. We are pouring our new lives into the old
ways, or trying to sow our new lives onto that old life of the past. No, we are
new wine living in new wineskins, and we have new clothes washed in the blood of
the Lamb and have thrown out all our old clothes. We know the new is better because
we have tasted it, and we would never say the old is better.
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