Luke 5: 36 - 39

New wine skin -

Jesus was addresing the Pharisees and Jewish leaders and gave this illustrated image around ‘change’ and ‘transformation’. Using the terms Old wine skin and New wine skin.

Question to the group:

Why does the believer need to change in order to receive new wine?

The relevant of wine skin:

Glass bottles were expensive, so in those time it was normal for people to carry their wine in goat-skins that would be sewn around to edge to make it watertight.

As wine ferments, it expands, and a new wineskin would be elastic and flexible enough to stretch without leaking/harming.

Once a wineskin has been stetched it becomes old wineskin and putting new wine would cause the skin to burst.

Spiritual meaning:

The new represents God’s truth, which is ever new and fresh (growing & expanding).

The old wine repesents the tradition and cultural structure that we have inherited.

Tradition becomes harden and frozen in their way of thinking and living: The religious (like the Pharisees) prayed, fasted, and kept the rules, but they could not receive the Messiah because their hearts and mind couldn’t see beyond their traditions/patterns.

Why does this matter:

He addresses the religious leader and confronts them letting them know that he isn’t coming to conform to their current ways but to introduce a new way.

Jesus was recognised as a Rabbi, so they assumed he was going to be the same, they anticipated Christianity being a new version of the same ‘Cloth’/’Mold’.

Luke 5:36 ESV

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.

When reading this, the simple action doing this sounds a bit bizarre. But that was Jesus’ point, this wasn’t something people would do, because if you did two things would happen:

The new garment would now be damaged

Clothes wouldn’t be aligned, they would look different. When you have a white t-shirt or black trousers that have been washed the colour fades, the size after wash isn’t always the same.

The point here is simple: New doesn’t mix with the old.