Tuesday Devo
Scripture Reading:
Luke 5:36-39
36 Then Jesus gave them this illustration: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and uses it to patch an old garment. For then the new garment would be ruined, and the new patch wouldn’t even match the old garment. 37 “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the new wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. 38 New wine must be stored in new wineskins. 39 But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.”
36 Then Jesus gave them this illustration: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and uses it to patch an old garment. For then the new garment would be ruined, and the new patch wouldn’t even match the old garment. 37 “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the new wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. 38 New wine must be stored in new wineskins. 39 But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.”
Commentary from the ESV Study Bible:
5:36–39 Jesus concludes his response to the question about fasting (v. 33) with a parable consisting of two main metaphors: (1) A new patch cannot be put on an old garment, for upon washing it will shrink and, pulling on the already shrunken, old garment, will tear it. (2) One does not put new wine into old wineskins. New, fermenting wine would stretch the old, inelastic wineskins and cause them to burst. New wine needs newer, more elastic skins. No one is best understood as an ironical condemnation of the Pharisees, who favored the past and rejected the arrival of the kingdom and the “new covenant” (22:20) it brought. The point of these two metaphors is that one cannot mix the old and the new covenant, and that the new covenant era inaugurated by Jesus’ coming will require repentance (Matt. 4:17), regeneration (cf. John 3:3), and new forms of worship (cf. John 4:24).
Study Questions:
- Jesus makes the point that no one puts new wine into old wineskins. The metaphor here is about the Old Covenant verses the New Covenant. The old wine is the Old Covenant, the sacrificial system and the Law. When someone sinned under this covenant, a bull or goat would be killed in order to make that person ceremonially clean. But this could never actually take away the sin. The new wine is the New Covenant. This is what Jesus came to do... to fulfill the Old Covenant and start something brand new. This wasn't about religious duty and penance, not about sacrificing animals to be made "clean", but about having our sins wiped out for good, getting a new heart, receiving God's Spirit that lives within us. It was about his Law being written on our hearts, not on tablets of stone. The problem is that we default to, "The old is just fine with us." Jesus is saying our tendency is to turn to the law. We want to try to earn our standing with God, while the NEW is that, through faith, the righteousness of Jesus is credited to us. Do you ever get stuck in the religious routine instead of having a love relationship with Jesus? What does this look like when it happens in your life? What are the ways you opt for the "old wine" instead of the "new wine" Jesus died to give us?
- Jesus is telling us here to not mix up the old and the new. The old served its purpose... it led us to the new. Paul writes about it in 2 Corinthians when he says that the old has been REPLACED with the new. The new wine is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The new wineskin is God's New Covenant with his church. The new garment is the righteousness of Jesus that now covers us as we stand before God. This is our new reality... we are now fully justified in our relationship with God because of Jesus' atoning work on the cross. This is where we tend to mess this up and begin to cling once again to the old. When we forget that we are "holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault" (Colossians 1:22). When we see our standing with God any other way, we are tempted to compensate by striving to do better and try harder. Then we are just like the Pharisees. Does any of this strike a chord with you? Do you tend to default to striving in your relationship with him? How do you live out of the reality of your righteous standing? What does that look like?
Pray:
- That your life would be about a relationship with Jesus, not religious routine.
- That you would remember daily that you stand before God holy and blameless, without a single fault.
No Comments