New wine... same old skin

February 19, 2009

The life of Jesus. Read Today: Parables at Levi's reception; Matthew 9:10-17; Mark 2:15-22; Luke 5:29-39


Mark 2:21-22 ESV
21 No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made.
22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”


What Jesus was trying to say to them was, 'your old ways of doing things are not going to work with my way of doing things!'

People resist change. It is just a simple fact of life. And it is no more noticeable then in many a church today. 'We never did things that way.' The rallying cry of people not wanting to change.

But following Jesus requires change. I am not saying that times of worship should have no order at all, but lets not regulate God out of it. We need to step back and see what God wants to use today to get people to know who He is. If we stick to our old ways, when Jesus puts the new wine into us old wine skins, we will not be able to understand it at all. Lets make ourselves new wine skins.

Read for tomorrow: Jesus in Jerusalem at the 2nd Passover; John 5:1