New Wine for New Wineskins

Recap

We’ve been witnessing Jesus revealing and establishing His kingdom and authority, bringing Heaven on Earth, since before Christmas. Last week we looked at the core, over arching, reason Jesus came. To forgive sins of those who would believe. Jesus challenged the religious rulers of the day that He didn’t come to save those who were healthy, but those who were stricken with a terminal diagnosis....That’s why He came! There was something that Jesus had to institute first before that was possible. We will look deep into that tonight as we cover the next 4 verses of Matthew 9. So much is said by Jesus in these 4 short verses.

Jesus Confronted about Fasting

Matthew 9:14–17 ESV

14 Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” 15 And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. 16 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. 17 Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”

First off the John that is being discussed is John the baptizer. These are his disciples and they ask Jesus, “why aren’t you guys doing what we all do?” It’s as if they are questioning the holiness or devotion of Jesus’ disciples because “they don’t fast just like the Pharisees do.” Both groups had made fasting a big part of their weekly routine. It wasn’t required of them to do it at the frequency they did, not even by the standard of the written law. This was more of a verbal law.

Jesus’ response paints quite a picture. He describes his followers, his disciples, as “wedding guests”. In addition, you can’t have a wedding with out a bride and a groom right. He then equates himself to be the bridegroom. All throughout scripture, both Old Testament and New Testament, Israel is referred to as the bride of the Lord and the Lord is even referred to as Israel’s husband.

Jeremiah 2:2 ESV

2 “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord, “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.

Isaiah 54:5 ESV

5 For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.

This statement by Jesus that he is the Bridegroom draws the line in the sand that He’s been building up to since the beginning. It’s a statement that every good Hebrew boy should have known and picked up on. He’s establishing Himself as Guest of Honor, the bridegroom, the husband of the nation of Israel.

Jesus then goes on to tell two short mini-parables. Each one is meant to lead the listeners, those willing to hear at least, to realize that the Old Covenant can’t have the New Covenant placed into it. It has to complete it. To finish what was missing, or to do what could not be accomplished by the old.

An old garment has been worn, stretched, washed and shrunk over time. To patch an old garment with a new piece of cloth that hasn’t shrunk yet, makes no sense. Just like with the wine skins. Wine skins are made of leather. When wine was poured into them the wine would cause the leather to stretch because of both the moisture and some of the acidic chemicals in the wine. Old wine skins have already been stretched out. If you put new wine into them they would eventually burst, so, you only put new wine in new wine skins so that “both are preserved”.

Jesus was bringing something new. It wasn’t there yet. It was new and wasn’t going to work with the old system with the old teachers and followers. It was available to them for sure, but here Jesus is coming up against the Pharisees and their rigid “religious” system that had no room for a Bridegroom Messiah. Jesus came to institute a new covenant. Why? Because the first one had been broken by Israel.

A covenant - An agreement, pact, or alliance made between two parties, who may be equals or unequals, with each consenting to certain conditions.

Fred Wood and Ross McLaten, Jeremiah, Lamentations, ed. Max Anders, vol. 16, Holman Old Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN.: Holman Reference, 2006), 377.

A New Covenant

Hebrews 8:6–7 ESV

6 But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. 7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.

Here the Author of Hebrews points his wavering listeners to realize and remember what Jeremiah prophesied about in Jeremiah 31. He reminded them that the New Covenant that Jesus brought was “much more excellent” than the original. The new covenant is mediated by Jesus himself, on better promises and found faultless. The author of Hebrews then goes on to quote Jeremiah 31:31-34. Here Jeremiah is describing the covenant that Jesus came to institute.

Jesus’ new covenant predicted by Jeremiah

Jeremiah 31:31–34 ESV

31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

The new covenant does not do away with or renounce the law. It makes the law closer and more important by setting it in the mind and heart instead of on a stone tablet or page. “It would no longer be like the external one made with the fathers, but spiritual and internal, and based on an intimate knowledge of Jehovah. (Morgan)

Things that are required by the Old Covenant are made possible by the New Covenant.

God demands obedience under the OC: God works obedience under the NC.

Holiness is asked of us by the OC: holiness is wrought in us by the NC.

Paul’s comparison of the old covenant to the new covenant

2 Corinthians 3:7–11 ESV

7 Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, 8 will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? 9 For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. 10 Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. 11 For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.

This new covenant is the final covenant, a permanent covenant that can’t be broken because it’s Jesus doing it for us.

This is what Jesus had come to bring about. Here in Matthew 9 he hints at it. All along the way as Jesus is establishing his kingdom on this earth he’s inviting us to leave all our religion and legalism behind. Any idea that we “have to be good enough” or “should be doing this or doing that” in order to earn. All that’s external. All that is us trying to achieve. Remember, he is the one who did for us what we could not do for our selves.

He’s the one who became sin, who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God. Sealed by the Holy Spirit who is writing his law on our hearts, being the fear of Him that He places inside of us so that we will not turn away form Him, Jeremiah 32:40

Jeremiah 32:40 ESV

40 I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.

Isaiah 61:10–11 ESV

10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.

Isaiah 62:1–5 ESV

1 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. 2 The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. 3 You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. 4 You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. 5 For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

Jesus came so that our sins would be forgiven, to establish a new covenant that would transform our lives form the inside out and make us into a people who recognize who they are and who’s they are. “they will be my people and I will be their God.”

God’s goal and purpose

Philippians 2:13 ESV

13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Ephesians 5:27 ESV

27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

He has done this for us. We are to live lives of worship compelled by the love of Jesus shown for us on the cross and made possible by the New Covenant in His blood.

Let’s pray.