New Wine in a old Wineskin

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You can not build a new house with old bricks
The new life and the old

{Matthew 9:16, Mark 2:21, Luke 5:36}

We shall read from Matthew 9:15-17

No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”

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’ reference to the wineskins was His announcement that the present institutions of Judaism could not and would not contain His new wine. He would form a new institution — the church — that would bring Jew and Gentile together into a completely new body (Ephesians 2:16).

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.

ii. Jesus came to introduce something new, not to patch up something old. This is what salvation is all about. In doing this, Jesus doesn’t destroy the old (the law), but He fulfills it, just as an acorn is fulfilled when it grows into an oak tree. There is a sense in which the acorn is gone, but its purpose is fulfilled in greatness