36. He told them this parable: “No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.
37. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.
38. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.
39. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says,‘The old is better.’”
For a long time, I never understood what Jesus was trying to say with this parable. Since I have no experience with patching garments or using wineskins, it was hard for me to understand what those two illustrations had to do with what he was trying to say. However, one time, I was reading a Life Application bible, and it had an interesting revelation about this passage.
One aspect about new wine is that it still has some fermenting to do. Fermenting involves yeast processing sugar, in order to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide as a biproduct. The extra carbon dioxide that is produced needs somewhere to go. New wine was usually poured into new wineskins, since they are pliable enough to expand with the increase in carbon dioxide during the fermentation process. Old wineskins are brittle from already being stretched out before, so adding old wine to them would mean that the wineskins would burst from the added pressure of the carbon dioxide.
So, enough of the science lesson, why does Jesus bring up this parable? Because we, like the wineskins, need to be renewed. We need to be renewed so that we can be pliable and change according to his will. If we're still in our old habits and lifestyles, we don't have room for his will, and will pop like the old wineskins when he tries to change us (Pop! =) Just kidding about the popping part, but you know what I mean.
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3 comments:
Tag Austin, you're it.
i've heard of those analogies before, but never thought about them. And now they make a lot of sense.
The old garment is our old sinful nature, and the new patch is Jesus and his salvation. However, the new patch is not compatible with the old garment because it will shrink more than the old garment and rip away, and then both garments will be destroyed and useless.
So we are supposed to shed ourselves of the old garment (our old lives) and cover ourselves with an entirely new garment (Jesus' salvation).
It's almost like a snake after it sheds its skin. Getting rid of the old, and starting new.
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