Title: New Wine in New Bottles
Content New wine in new wineskins (Matthew 9:14-17)
As the year goes by, I would like to share how to end the year and start the new year while pondering the verse under the title of ‘new wine in new bottles’.
While Jesus was eating with Matthew and his companions and disciples, John's disciples came to him and said, "We and the Pharisees fast, but why do not your disciples fast?" asked. In response, Jesus said the essence of Christian faith in one word by asking whether the wedding guests could grieve while they were with the groom. Christianity is a religion of joy and joy. No matter how much fun the party house may be and the loud laughter is high, it is not wrong. Christianity is a feast. True faith is necessarily accompanied by spiritual bliss. That joy is the happiness that comes from receiving the forgiveness of sins, the freedom and liberation that comes from being freed from the chains of the devil, the satisfaction that comes from possessing the abundance of life, the thrilling anticipation that comes from the hope of seeing the future heaven, and the peace of letting go of the fear of death. You will have this overflowing joy. “Can the wedding guests mourn while they are with the bridegroom?” is the saying, “There is no need to be servants of the law anymore.”
Specific examples of this are Jesus' parables of the living baby (16) and the new skins (17). First, in the parable of raw fabric, raw fabric shrinks when washed, and the fabric of old clothes is pulled and torn, so do not attach pieces of raw fabric to old clothes. Here, the piece of raw linen refers to Jesus, and the old clothes refer to fasting, old traditions and customs, and the law. In other words, the new law of Jesus and the old law of the past cannot be used interchangeably. We are beings clothed in a new garment made new by Christ. I bless you that no one is foolish to put raw linen on old clothes as the year goes by, and they put on new clothes and run toward the goal for the reward of their calling. (Philippians 3:13-14) In the second parable, new wine Not putting new wine in old wineskins means that new wine must be put into new wineskins because the wines are fermented and the wineskins burst when new wine is put into old, inflexible wineskins.
Jesus gave two parables to teach that the gospel with vitality and scalability cannot be accepted by the old Judaism tradition, and that the Messianic kingdom revealed by Jesus Christ must be followed by a new system of order suitable for it. will be. The Pharisees were rebuked by Jesus not for lack of faith, but because they regarded the fixed law that had been passed down from their ancestors as the highest faith. So, even though Jesus, the Son of God, came to this earth as the Messiah, they could not contain Jesus who came as new wine in their faith. How many people today claim to believe in Jesus, but without knowing they are trapped in their habits and formalities, they cannot throw away the old, legal and traditional ideas! The essence is the Bible. Everything else is non-essential. If we do not liquidate the old, we cannot contain the new blessings that God has prepared. I pray in the name of Jesus that you can throw away the old wineskins and put new wine into the new ones.