Matthew 9:16 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
Psalms 125:3 For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous, lest the righteous stretch out their hands to do wrong.
With this illustration of the wineskins, Jesus explained that He did not come to repair or reform the old institutions of Judaism, but to institute a new covenant altogether. The new covenant doesn’t just improve the old; it replaces it and goes beyond it. Jesus came to introduce something new, not to patch up something old.
Jesus reminds us that what is old and stagnant often cannot be renewed or reformed. God will often look for new vessels to contain His new work, until those vessels eventually make themselves unusable. This reminds us that the religious establishment of any age is not necessarily pleasing to Jesus. Sometimes it is in direct opposition to, or at least resisting His work.
Sometimes it is our lack of understanding Scripture that allows us to add our own thoughts to what is right and wrong. These thoughts of ours, being influenced by worldly and fleshly ideals, do nothing to add benefit to the Honor and Glory of Jesus Christ. We take the new wine and pour it into worldly and fleshly bags of thoughts and ideas thinking it will somehow become better tasting and more easily drank by those who hear it. Or, we try to tack on a piece of worldly and fleshly thoughts and ideas to God’s Word, hoping to make it easier to follow and obey God’s Word. We do well to humble ourselves before God and His Word seeking to rightly divide the Word of Truth and apply it in our lives for the honor and glory of Jesus Christ.
