Why the Old Wineskins are Better
The Gospel of Luke • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Context & Big Idea: We are continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Luke, as we are going verse by verse through Luke’s account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. Today we come to a well know passage where Jesus speaks about new wineskins. I have been truly gripped by this passage this week as I have prepared because the further I studied, the more I saw depth to this passage that I had never seen before. Let us read the text together.
And they said to him, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.” And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. 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.’ ”
Meaning & Application
Meaning & Application
I THE JOY OF THE WEDDING FEAST
The text begins with a question that is posed to Jesus. We are not quite sure who the “they” is from verse 33, but we can perhaps assume that it is the Pharisees or the disciples of the Pharisees. These were the religious leaders of Christ’s day that were increasingly troubled by Jesus’ teaching. These religious leaders pose a comparison between different religious movements within Israel in their day. They are troubled that they disciples of John the Baptist fast often, and that the disciples of the Pharisees fast often, but Jesus’s disciples don’t seem to be fasting. Let’s examine both of those groups, because they’re distinct.
John the Baptist: First is John the Baptist and his disciples. John the Baptist was what we call an ascetic. He denied himself in a personal pursuit of holiness. He lived in the desert, and we are told in that his diet primarily consisted of locusts and wild honey. John and his disciples, as ascetics would have fasted often as part of their overall religious practice. Fasting was a way of denying oneself food in order to spiritually focus oneself upon God. As one felt the hunger pains in the stomach, it was to lead them towards a greater hunger for God.
Pharisees: The Pharisees fasting was similar and yet different. The Pharisees were the sect of religious leadership that was most prominent in Israel at the time of Jesus. While John was known for his asceticism, the Pharisees were known for their stringent rule following. The impulse to obey every one of God’s laws is not wrong. That is a good and godly impulse. Where the Pharisees went wrong is that they added additional rules to the Word of God and then expected others to follow those rules. So when it came to fasting, the Pharisees were known for fasting twice a week. This was well beyond what the law of God stated was necessary. According to God’s law, the only time an Israelite was required to fast was once a year on the Day of Atonement.
Pharisees Legalism: For the Pharisees, what began as a pursuit of holiness soon became an effort in legalism. They not only personally went beyond the law in their own personal pursuit, which John the Baptist also did. But they were known for teaching others that this is what true holiness looks like. They were teaching that if others really wanted to be approved by God, they would do like the Pharisees and fast twice a week. This is called legalism. Legalism has both of these components to it. Legalism elevates personal preference to law. And legalism demands others follow those man-made requirements in order to please God. These rules were overwhelmingly taxing on the average Israelite. Imagine being a man who does physical labor for a living, and being told you had to fast twice a week else God would not be pleased with you. Legalism is overbearing.
Their Question: And so you can imagine where this question is coming from. The two most prominent and well known religious leaders of the day were regularly fasting, but Jesus’ disciples were regularly feasting. It must have been quite the contradiction. And Jesus responds to their question brilliantly:
And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.”
Jesus does not deny their premise. He agrees that his disciples are not fasting as other religious groups did, but explains why. The image he chooses to use is that of the joy of a wedding, an image that will be used by other New Testament authors later in the Bible to refer to Christ and his Church. He says that He is the groom, and the Church is his bride, and that so long as he was physically present with them, it was as if they were living on the wedding day. A wedding day was not a day for fasting, but for feasting. And then he looks forward and cryptically references his death, resurrection, and ascension. He says the day will come when the groom will be taken away, but so long as he is with them, they will feast.
Words of Comfort: Before we move on from this premise, let me have a few words about what Christ is teaching. There are words of comfort in here, well beyond questions of fasting. Christ is the groom, and we are his bride. If the sign of a marriage sounds strange to you when speaking about our relationship to God, I assure you it is far from strange, it is a precious reality of the Christian faith. Jesus is the true groom who knows and loves his bride. Ephesians 5 teaches more about this relationship.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 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.
See what Christ, the great groom is doing for you. He loves you. He has chosen you. And here in this passage Jesus is essentially saying, “If only you knew who I was, and what I have come to do, you would not insist on fasting right now.” Jesus was God in the flesh, come on a rescue mission for his people. He was not just another prophet. He was not just another teacher. He was Emmanuel, God with us. Buid this here for a moment. This is good news! How precious those few years the disciples had with our Lord must have been.
II INTERPRETING THE PARABLES
Jesus next, turns on the Pharisees and he uses their question to teach an important principle. He tells two parables, the first involving a patch on clothing and the second involving wineskins. The idea in both is quite simple. You cannot take new things and just apply them to the old, and believe that a combination of new and old will work fine. With the first illutration of the patch of clothing, the new garment would be torn because you cut a piece out of it, and the old garment would look terrible because the patch would not match. The image of the wineskins is similar. Wineskins were made of leather essentially. As wine sat in a new wineskin, the skin would stretch. But if you poured new wine into a previously stretched out wineskin, the wineskin wouldn’t stretch, but it would burst.
Two Ways To Interpret: There are two fundamentally different ways to interpret what Jesus is teaching here. I confess when I first approached this text in preparation I assumed one interpretation but was convinced of the opposite.
Interpretation A: The first way to interpret this is to assume that the Pharisees represent what is old, and that Jesus represents what is new. Essentially, Jesus is teaching that he is bringing a whole new thing into this world, and does not fit into their old ways of doing things. Under this view, verse 38 is the pinnacle verse that explains what Christ is really teaching here.
But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.
Christ is doing something utterly new, and all of the previously held categories are going to need to be reconsidered. Fasting being just one of those categories. But this could apply to the animal sacrifices in the temple, and the ceremonial laws of what foods were permitted to eat and not to eat. Jesus is doing something new, and the Pharisees need to realize that he doesn’t fit simply into their old boxes. Now this interpretation is fine, and we know that Jesus in a sense did do something new. He ushered the New Covenant by his blood just as the prophet Jeremiah promised in chapter 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,
And the New Covenant is in a sense different. The bridegroom has come, the joy of the fulfilment of all hope through the Messiah has arrived. We are no longer waiting for his arrival, he has come. Certainly, in a sense we can call this new.
My Problem: But in another sense, I don’t think that’s what Jesus is teaching in this passage. I’ve become convinced that is not what Jesus is teaching here, for three reasons.
Here are four reasons why I don’t believe that is the proper interpretation.
Luke’s Thrust: The first reason is that the Luke as a writer of the life of Christ is overwhelmingly intentional in presenting Jesus not as something new, but rather as fulfilling that which is old. Over and over again we are shown that Jesus falls in line with the ancient path of the Israelites. So to suddenly have Jesus teaching that he is doing something fundamentally new and distinct from God’s ancient ways doesn’t quite fit.
Verse 39: Secondly, verse 38 does not seem to be the final point of this section. Rather, it seems to culminate in verse 39. The point of verse 39 is not a celebration of the new, but rather is a celebration of the old. It is the new that is being critiqued by Jesus.
The Initial Question: Third, this whole interpretaion doesn’t seem to fit with the the question about fasting and the context of the Pharisees. If the Pharisees represent what is old, then why does he here celebrate their man-made rules as good when in so many other places he critiques their legalism. In other words, the question about fasting, and the parables don’t seem to be teaching the same thing.
Job: Lastly, this imagery of old wineskins bursting is used elsewhere in Scripture. It’s in the book of Job. The character Elihu who comes into the story in chapter 32 has listened to the three other friends for thirty chapters. And he has been eagerly waiting to speak. Finally he can’t take it anymore and he says in Job 32:19 “Behold, my belly is like wine that has no vent; like new wineskins ready to burst.” The imagery of a bursting wineskin, the emphasis is on the wineskin was familiar language to Jesus, and the meaning of it is far more in line with an alternate interpretation.
Behold, my belly is like wine that has no vent;
like new wineskins ready to burst.
Before you think I’m out in left field somewhere, John Calvin critiques this first interpretation as follows,
“Those who think that he compares worn-out garments and decayed bottles to the Pharisees, and new wine and fresh cloth to the doctrine of the gospel, have no probability on their side."
Interpretation B: I agree with Calvin. I believe there is a better interpretation.
Pharisees are New: Under this interpretation, it is the Pharisees with their man-made rules that are reprsented by the new patch and the new wine. Essentially what Jesus is teaching is that these Pharisees had come along to God’s ancient ways as were written down with clarity in the word of God, and they had added new rules to it. These Pharisees were trying to add new patches to make the old ways even better, but in their efforts they were ruining everything. And so Jesus is critiquing their efforts to implement man made rules of righteousness, and he is hearkening Israel back to the old path, to God’s Word. Under this interpration, verse 38 is scathing rebuke of the Pharisees. He is saying, “You are doing something entirely foreign to God’s Word. Call it what it is, it’s a new religion built on works. You’ve built a new religion based on proving oneself as a holy person. But that was never God’s design for Israel. They were to be a nation that lived by the Word of God and trusted in the mercy of God.”
The Disciples are the Wineskins: And the disciples are the old wineskins, for they are following the old ways of God. They are at risk of bursting and being broken by these additional nonBiblical rules set by the Pharisees, just as Elihu was about to burst from the pressure he was feeling in front of the Job’s three friends. Joel Green, writing in what is considered one of the best Luke commentaries available says,
“In effect, then, Jesus interprets his behaviors, which are questionable and innovative to some onlookers, as manifestations of God’s ancient purpose coming to fruition, while the concerns of the Pharisees are rejected not only as innovative but also as quite inconsistent with God’s program.”
This is About Legalism: This is what Christ is saying to the Pharisees. Your “new” fasting requirements are bearing down on these disciples in an unbearable weight and they are about to burst.
Roots Jesus in the Ancient: This passage accomplishes two very important things. First, this passage roots Jesus in the ancient. Jesus was not a revolutionary coming with a new way of doing things, he was a reformer, bringing God’s people back to their heritage. A common question that people ask me is ‘How was a person saved in the Old Testament?’ The answer is that they were saved by grace through faith just like you and me. The weightiness of the law revealed their need of a Savior, they could not save themselves. And every sacrifice and activity of the priests always pointed forward to a coming messiah, who would fulfill all righteousness. Jesus did not come to change the law, but to fulfill the law. This is in fact precisely what Jesus taught.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
But there is a second major takeaway, and it is here where I want us to linger and truly reflect. This passage is a critique of the Pharisee’s legalistic attitudes towards religion.
FOUR PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES WHEN CONSIDERING LEGALISM
Perhaps the best place to begin is with a definition. What is legalism? Paul Helm defines legalism this way,
An attitude of mind which gives excessive respect to the law and which seeks to enforce conduct of a similar kind in others.”
In order to walk us through how a spirit of legalism, or confusion about legalism, can so easily slip into the church, I would like to provide five practical principles to help our mind navigate this.
#1 We must have a firm understanding of the relationship of law and gospel.
First, we must have a firm undestanding of the relationship of law and gospel. If we confuse these two things as Christians, we will easily fall into legalism.
Law: First, what is the purpose of the law? The moral law of God, as expressly stated in the 10 Commandments, is God’s fixed morality. And there are a few purposes of the law in our lives. On the one hand, they reveal true morality, how we ought to live. But the second purpose of the law is to weigh down on our lives and reveal our sinfulness, and reveal our need of a Savior outside of ourselves. The law condemns. The more we look into the law of God, the more we see how deep the rot of sin goes in ourselves, the more it is to push us to the Gospel. This week, I found myself totally guilty of breaking the 10 Commandment, ‘Do not covet.’ I was envious of an aspect of someone else’s ministry. O how guilty I was. The Lord still is letting the weight of the 10th commandment burn down on me. Where do I turn?
Gospel: Yes, there is somewhere to turn. I turn to the Gospel, over and over again I turn to the Gospel. What good news! I am guilty under the law of God. And my punishment ought to be death. But Christ has paid that penalty for me. He suffered underneath the wrath of God on my behalf. And he has set me free from the curse of the law. Oh what freedom there is in Christ underneath the Gospel. Do you see how lifegiving it is for me, when I spot sin in my life to first let the weight of the law weigh down on me heavily, and then to turn to Christ and see my sin forgiven in full.
The Confusion: Do you see how the legalists confuse these two. The legalist overemphasizes the law in such a way as to say ‘If you do these things, God will be more pleased with you.’ No! That is to confuse law and Gospel. We do not keep the law to be saved. We strive to obey the law because we have been saved freely by Christ.
#2 We must be able to separate godly wisdom from legalism.
Second, we must be able to separate Godly wisdom from legalism. Godly wisdom will often put rules in place in order to protect us from sin. This is not necessarily legalism. Those rules only become legalism if there is an overemphasis on the rules, or a sense that our maturity in Christ is dependent on those rules. Let me give you two examples.
Moody: Christian colleges will often have rules about what young men and women are able to do or wear on the campus. Perhaps there is a rule that there is a curfew when you must be in your room. Or perhaps there is a rule where students of the opposite sex are permitted to spend time together. These rules are extraBiblical. Very often, bible students will see these rules and immediately say how legalistic the bible college is. No, that’s not the case. It may be the case nad perhaps has been at times. But it may just be wise counsel from your Elders.
Billy Graham Rule: Another example might be the famous Billy Graham Rule. Billy Graham was a very well known evangelist who had put in place a few rules for his ministry in order to protect himself and his ministry. These rules instructed Billy to avoid spending time alone with women to whom he was not married. No closed door meetings. No one on one car rides. For Billy, it even meant no elevator rides alone. Was this legalistic? No, not at all. Billy never said, ‘this is how you can get God’s favor.’ He adopted these rules as a display of integrity, to avoid sexual temptation, and to avoid accusations of sexual harassment that could destroy his ministry.
#3 We must be able to separate disciplines from legalism.
Third and similiarly, we must be able to separate the disicplines from legalism. Godly discipline is a wonderful tool in a believer’s life. The Apostle Paul writes,
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
Some of the godly disciplines that many Christians have installed in their life is: a daily time of devotion studying the Scriptures, incorporating a morning noon and night time of prayer with God, having a small group of accountability to confess sins to one another, journaling, giving financially towards the Church at set rhythms, the discipline of the early morning waking before the sun risese to be alone with God. Are these good and wonderful disciplines. Yes! Can we encourage each other towards these disciplines, yes! It only becomes legalism when we judge others according to non Biblical standards.
Be careful of the trap. The disciplines are to foster a wonder and worship of God.
#4 We must determine to not judge a person, or ourselves, simply by externals
Fourth, we must determine to never judge a Christian simply by outward appearances. Notice, this is exactly what the Pharisees were doing. But how is this related to this topic? Here’s how, legalists often pose as the strongest Christians. Because a person with a legalistic mindset in their heart truly believes that God loves them more or less based on their performance, they aspire to outwardly do all the things that Christian wisdom might say we are to do. But they do it all, without any real depth to them in their relationship with God. RC Sproul says
“Legalism obeys the externals while the heart is far removed from any desire to honor God, the intent of his law or Christ.”
The Lord Sees the Heart: Christian, remember the words that the Lord said to the prophet Samuel when discussing Saul,
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
A Warning: Christian, there is also a strong warning in this. Just because you are a part of a Church, well liked by other Christians, and often participating in the life of the Church, does not mean that you truly know the Gospel, and have been changed by Christ. It is possible to do all those things with a legalistic, antigospel attitude. An attitude that doesn’t see yourself as the chief of sinners. An attitude that doesn’t see any spiritual growth that you have achieved in your life simply as an act of undeserved mercy by God on you. And at its core, doesn’t really know and cherish Christ for Christ’s sake, but truly only loves the feeling of being part of a community that sees you as having it put together. Church, check your own heart for a legalistic spirit.
Closing
Closing
O Church, legalism will kill the Church, and it will kill you. It is an antigospel. And the worst part about is that it crushes new believers and weak believers with weights that are impossible to carry. Those old wine skins burst. But in Christ there is a freedom. In Christ, you are loved fully despite your failure to live up to the law. In Christ, there is no ranking or competition among Christians, for the true Christian sees himself as the chief of sinners, and need of forgiveness daily. That is the spirit of a healthy Christian, and the spirit of a healthy Church.