The Lesson of Wineskins: The Gospel is New and Powerful (Mark Sermon 10)

Take your Bibles and turn to Mark 2.  Today’s text, I think, is all about power, the surging energy to make change, to make things new. That’s what power is. Power in this world is manifested in two ways, constructive and destructive power. The greatest constructive power ever in this physical universe has been at creation, when God said, “Let there be,” and there was. The world that God made was beautiful and orderly and very good, but then came the destructive power of evil. Sin entered the world through one man and death through sin. And in this way, death came to all, because all sinned, and this beautiful world was cursed by the power of death. With this cursed world, lesser power has charted the subsequent course of history, both constructive and destructive power. 

Humanity builds, but then death destroys. Nature destroys. Things rise up, they reach their peak, and then they fall back down to the earth. Empires rise, and then they fall back into the dust from which they came. Trees grow up from acorns, and they get massive and majestic, but eventually, they are toppled and they fall to the ground, and they rot and they’re gone. Everything humanity puts its hand to eventually becomes dust. Constructive power in this world is overtaken by destructive power. This is our life in this cursed world. But God, in His goodness, interjected a power for eternal good, the power to make change, to make things new, to build a kingdom that will last forever and ever. This power to make all things new is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is infinitely powerful. It rises and surges and moves and acts and builds, and what it builds will last for all eternity, the power to make a new world. This new power of the Gospel cannot fit in to the old husks of manmade religion. That’s what this passage really addresses, old and new. Look at verse 21, you’ve got new cloth and an old garment, and then verse 22, you’ve got new wine and old wineskins. You’ve got the dynamic of new and olds, and how they don’t fit together. The new is dynamic, it’s powerful. It’s ready to change every person from the inside out, and make everything new, to transform by the renewing of the mind, and ultimately, to change the entire universe, to bring in a new heaven and a new earth, where everything is new. The old religion, old patterns, indeed, even the Old Covenant itself could not bring this about.

I. Fasting at a Wedding? 

When this all starts, this whole thing starts with a question about fasting.  What is fasting? For the individual that came to Jesus, it’s an effort to address the destructive power of sin by religion, to harness the body of all of its wicked rambunctious ways, to tame it like a wild stallion that needed constantly to be broke to the saddle. Fasting, in this case, was invented by man to make a way to God. Look at verse 18, John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, and some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?” Legalistic religion is here to hunt Jesus down and trap him based on His own behavior. Here we see fundamental, false religion coming, the effort to mortify the deeds of the flesh, yourself, on your own. John Owen, talking about mortification in this sense, said “Mortification, putting sin to death, from self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world.” To put it in simple terms, holding back or harnessing sin from your own strength, in a pattern that you invented yourself, so that you can be self-righteous and feel like you defeated sin by yourself, that’s the essence of all false religion in the world. That’s what came to Jesus that day.

Now Jesus has already exposed this again and again. He’s going keep battling this. In the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6, He exposes three patterns of piety. Conspicuous piety was being done by the religionists of Jesus’ day. Conspicuous giving to the poor and needy, that’s announced with trumpets, so everyone sees it done. And conspicuous praying, that’s done on the street corner, so everybody can see how pious you are. And conspicuous fasting, which is done in this way, Matthew 6:16, “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others that they’re fasting.” I don’t know if I want to make a horrible face right now in front of you, but it’s something like, “Oh.” “How are you doing today?” “It’s a hard day.” “Really? What’s going on?” “Well, I’m not eating today. I’m fasting today, et cetera.” “Don’t do that,” Jesus said. “When you fast, put oil on your head. Wash your face, so it will not be obvious to others you are fasting, but only to your Father who sees what has done unseen, and your Father sees what has done unseen will reward you.” 

Now, fasting was actually established in the law of Moses once a year, connected with the day of atonement, a day to afflict yourself, the text says in Leviticus 16:29. So it was in there, once a year. And, from time to time, the nation would be called on by spiritual leaders to fast, as a time of national mourning over sin, as in Nehemiah 9:1, when the Jews were intermarrying with pagan women again, and there was a time to fast and grieve before God over this wickedness. Or sometimes, an individual would fast over his own sins, like David did, after he sinned with Bathsheba. Sometimes, an individual like Ezra would fast before a dangerous journey, and ask God’s help and protection. So that fasting would be individual to something you would do from time to time.

But the Pharisees, the pictures of legalistic religion of self-effort, went far beyond this. They established a pattern of fasting twice a week.  Jesus talks about it in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee goes up and Jesus says the Pharisee’s praise was about himself,” “I thank you, God, that I’m not like others. I’m not like robbers and evil doers and adulterers, or even like this tax collector over here. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all that I own.” There’s that pattern, that twice a week fast. They establish this rhythm of legalistic fasting in their religion, and then they spread it to burden the conscience of people around them saying, “Effectively, you’re substandard Jews, if you didn’t join us in these fasts.” Substandard Jewish people, and people bought into it. They were afraid of them. They didn’t want to be seen that way, substandard, so they gave in to these twice a week fast. It was a time of mourning, a time of disfiguring your faces to show others that you’re fasting, you’re on board. You’re doing the fast that everyone else is doing. The poison in all of us is thinking that, by these means, you can pay for your sins. God’s going to be pleased with this, and basically, blackmailed into welcoming you and accepting you, because of your harsh treatment of the body. These fasts, therefore, are symbolic of self-styled religion, self-efforts at paying for sins and blackmailing God.  

 John the Baptist’s disciples, some of them were wrapped up in it. John’s movement was massive.  Tens and tens of thousands of people went out to him and heard him preach, and were baptized by him in the Jordan River. It’s a big movement. They confessed their sins, and they received John’s water baptism, but then what?  What do we do now? John had called them to produce fruit in keeping with repentance. What did that look like? They were a bit adrift. John was just going to keep doing his baptismal ministry there, so a lot of these folks attached themselves to the Pharisees and fit into this pattern of legalistic piety. They’re doing this. Infinitely worse though, these John’s disciples didn’t hear his central message about Jesus, the one who was coming after him whose sandals he was not worthy to stoop down on and tie, who would be the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the worlds, who even greater than that was the Son of God. They hadn’t heard that, so they came with disrespect and judgmentalism to Jesus, questioning Him. 

So what’s the context? The feast at Levi’s house that we studied last week. Levi is Matthew, and Levi was a tax collector. Jesus called on him to follow. Levi left behind that old life and became a disciple, a follower of Jesus, and they had a big feast at Levi’s house, and many of his friends came. They were tax collectors and so-called sinners were all there. It was a big feast, and an amazing work of God had happened. Many of those people repented of their sins and turned away from their wickedness and became followers of Christ. It was an incredible day, a day of feasting and a day of celebration. It was not one of that one day in the year required by the law of Moses in which he would fast. Yes, he would’ve done that. It wasn’t that. So, the Pharisees and John’s disciples come up, and they’re criticizing Jesus. Jesus does not seem at all concerned with their accusations. Do you get that sense? Not worried about it at all. “Oh, they don’t think well of me,” not worried about it. He’s celebrating the work of grace done in the lives of sinners at Matthew’s house, happy with what God had done.  Jesus exposes their ignorance of Him and of the times. Look at verse 19, “Jesus answered, ‘How can the guest to the bride groom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have Him with them. They don’t know who He is, and they don’t know when it is, what’s going on now.'” They’re not aware of what’s happening. What are the signs of the times? What’s going on?  

We have this image of a bridegroom, a marital image, which was common in the Old Testament prophets, a relationship between Yahweh, the God of the Jewish nation, and the people. It was like a marital relationship sometimes, in the prophets. It was foreshadowed also by the apostle Paul, picking up in Ephesians 5, the connection between Jesus and the church being like a marriage, the church seems to be the bride of Christ. Then we get that beautiful picture in Revelation, how the new Jerusalem, the people of God, come down out of heaven prepared as a bride for her husband. This beautiful image of a bridegroom getting together with the bride, a picture of eternal love relationship between God and His people. John the Baptist had used the image actually. John had brought it up. In the Gospel of John, John’s disciples were coming and John was losing market share to Jesus. Remember that? Like, “Lots of people are going after Jesus now, John. We got to do something. We got to prop up the numbers. I mean, we’re losing popularity here.” And said John, “You don’t understand what’s going on.” In the Gospel of John 3:29-30, John said, “The bride belongs to the bride groom. The friend who attends the bride groom waits and listens for him and is full of joy when he hears the bride groom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must increase, and I must decrease.” 

Let’s be honest, who fasts at a wedding?  When a man throws a wedding banquet, his happiest day of his life, he kills the fatted calf and puts out the best foods and the best drink, and he lavishly appoints this feast and invites his friends to come. The he finds one at the banquet who’s not eating anything and looks pretty miserable. His face is disfigured. “What’s up?” “Oh, I’m fasting today.” “Don’t do that. Eat my food. Drink my drink. It’s a time of celebration.”  This is a time of joy. Jesus says, “My people get to hear my voice. They get to see my face. They get to see my miracles. They get to see my love and my kindness and my personality. They get to understand and drink in my wisdom. They get to sit with me and be with me. And do you understand how many people in the past would’ve longed to be here during this time?” But they didn’t get to do it.  He openly said that in Matthew 13, to His own disciples, “Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see and did not see it, and longed to hear what you hear and did not hear.” He’s talking about the times of the Messiah, to be there when Jesus walked the earth. It was a time of joy, a time of celebration, and the Pharisees and John’s disciples come there with their grumbling stomachs. How are you when you fast? Are you happy? Are you good company? I’ve gone to bed early on fast days, just to get away from people. So imagine some irritable men, who haven’t eaten in a while, they are grumpy, hey bring their joyless legalism. They’re condemning the guests at the wedding banquet, condemning them because they’re celebrating when they should be drinking in and feasting like Jesus’ disciples were. They’re so messed up. Legalism messes them up. Jesus came to bring joy, not sorrow, the joy of sitting at the table with God.

Legalism kills joy. One expression is “buzz kill.”  Others, you’ve heard “kill joy,” or “wet blanket.” The legalists are buzz kills. In the book of Galatians, when Paul’s addressing a legalistic Gospel that’s come in under the so-called Judaizers who bring in circumcision as a doorway to an entire legalistic way of life that was not the Gospel, he asked them a simple question. He had led these people to Christ, to the preaching of the Gospel. In Galatians 4:15, he said, “What has happened to all your joy?” Watch out for legalism, First Baptist Church, watch out, it kills joy. Not only that, one chapter later, in Galatians 5:15, he says, “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out, or you’ll be destroyed by each other.” Legalism pits faction against faction of self-righteous people, who are vaunting their own righteousness against others, and it divides people and destroys.  

However, the joy that Jesus came to bring at that point was not complete. It’s still not complete. The journey isn’t over yet. We’re not in heaven, sitting at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. We’re not there yet. Look at verse 20, “‘The time will come,’ He says, ‘when the bride groom will be taken from them. And on that day, they will fast.'” That’s talking about our earthly lives here before we get to heaven. He’s talking, first and foremost, about Jesus’ crucifixion. He would be taken away by arrest, and they could not follow Him. He had to be alone.  Jesus said on John 16:20, “I tell you the truth. You will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices. You will grieve. But, your grief will turn to joy.” So they were going to have a time of grief and sorrow, but then after the resurrection, Jesus will be taken up to heaven and there would be work to be done.

That work we’ve characterized in this church is progress along two journeys, an internal journey of holiness,  and sanctification, an external journey of Gospel advance through evangelism and missions. Fasting will be connected with those two journeys. There’ll be times to fast for those.  Christian people do fast from time to time, to grieve over sin, to show seriousness in repentance, as David did. We’ll do that. Or sometimes, to be focused in prayer for strategy and wisdom, as in Acts 13, when the church of fasting and praying, and then the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart from me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work to which I’ve called them.”  a time of fasting and focus and all that, there’s going to be time for that. But let me tell you something. We’re not going to be fasting in heaven. That’s a time of heavenly celebration, and the bridegroom will not be taken from us then. It’s temporary. 

II. Twin Parables:  Unshrunk Cloth & New Wine  

To illustrate this, Jesus gives us two parables, a twin parables, one parable doubled. Same parable, different aspects, but it’s doubled for emphasis. It’s very important that we understand it. Parable number one, the unshrunk cloth and the old garment. Verse 21, “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse.” You have the image of an old garment, an old shirt, an old tunic, an old robe, an old cloak, something like that. It’s been washed many times. Perhaps it’s even a little faded, just old. It’s an old garment, and it’s got a hole in it. It needs to be repaired. Jesus said, “It would be foolish. No one does this, to take a piece of “unshrunk,” it’s literally unfolded or unwashed, it’s what the Greek is, that hasn’t been through the washing process yet.  It’s never been through that. “Whenever a cloth like that is washed for first time, it shrinks. It pulls in, changes its dimensions, and if you sew that on an old garment, it’s going to tear away from the old garment,” Jesus says, “making the tear worse. It’d be foolish to combine them.” So that’s parable number one. 

Parable number two, the new wine and the old wineskin. Verse 22, “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.” What’s a wineskin? In those days, the actual skin of an animal would be used as a container for wine. They would, I think, generally treat it with certain processes, turn it inside out, sew up certain portions of it, leave another portion open and pour the wine in and then put a stopper in it. That’s a wineskin. The new wine in the new wineskin  would begin to ferment and put off gases, and the gases would cause the wineskin to expand like a balloon. It’s a new wineskin. It’s supple. It’s flexible. It can blow up like a balloon.   

But an old wineskin, it’s been exposed to the sun. It’s been dried out over a long period of time. It’s lost its elasticity, it’s inflexible.  If you pour new wine into the old wineskin, eventually the pressure built up from the gases will cause a rupture. The old wineskin will be destroyed, and the new wine is lost, poured out on the ground. Both are ruined, Jesus says. So people knew to pour new wine into new wineskins and both were preserved. That’s the second parable. Both of them have to do with a new dynamic that’s powerful and moving, and doesn’t line up with an old matrix that cannot move. It’s inflexible and it’s stuck in its ways. That’s the same parable twice. Additional detail from Luke, in Luke 5:39 says, “And no one, after drinking the old wine, wants the new, for he says the old is better.” He doesn’t want the new thing. He’s set in his ways, so it’s basically a person. The new wine tastes weird to them. They don’t want it. 

 III. The Gospel is New 

What do we draw from this twin parable? Lesson number one, the Gospel is new.  A new piece of cloth and the new wine, these represent the newness of the Gospel, the newness of Christ and the work He came to do. Our top priority in life is to understand this new Gospel of Jesus Christ, to wear the new garment made out of these new truths, the whole garment made out of new cloth, and to drink the new wine of this new work Jesus came to do; for us to delight in the newness of Christ and His new work in our lives and in the world. The Gospel is new. I’ve been doing a lot of study recently in the book of Ecclesiastes. Those close to me are kind of weary of hearing that everything is vanity. Vanity of vanities. Vanity of vanities. “Andy, when are you going to memorize the next book? It’s time to move on to a new book.” It says in Ecclesiastes 1, “Is there anything new in the sun? There’s nothing new under the sun.” Yes, there is. The Gospel is new.  The New Covenant is new. This is what new means when it says New Covenant. This is a new thing that Jesus came to do in the world.  

What is the old garment, the old wineskin? These certainly in immediate context represent the legalistic religion of the Pharisees and of John’s disciples here. Following that approach to religion, legalism is inflexible, it is not changing. They have traditions they have handed down from one to the other, from generation to generation, that are not changing. This traditionalism is not moving. It is inflexible. Set, like the old garment that’s set in its size. It cannot move. Like that old, weathered, hard, bridled, unyielding wineskin, that’s what legalism does. That’s what traditionalism does. It cannot respond to the newness that Jesus came to bring into this world, and I would just say in general, Jesus will not use them as vehicles to spread the new work He’s doing. He will not use that. 

Christianity therefore is new. It is unique. It’s unlike anything else on earth. It is fresh, it is alive, living and active, beautiful. It’s aromatic and fruitful. That’s Christ. Ultimately, newness is all about Christ, isn’t it? It’s all about Jesus. There’s never been anyone like Him in history. There is no one like Jesus. They could not understand Him. He is the bridegroom, come to seek and to save and to draw in His bride. He is the God man, fully God, fully man. Anyone who has seen Him has seen the glory of God himself in human form. He stands alone, and with His advent into the world, history itself was changed. Everything would be impacted. He was new. His life, new. His miracles, new. His teachings, unlike any words that anyone had ever heard. The enemy sent soldiers to arrest Him, and they came back empty-handed and dumbfounded. “No one has ever spoken like this man,” [John 7:46]. They’d never seen anything like His miracles ever. They said this again and again, “We’ve never seen anything like this.” Never.

Remember when the man born blind was healed by Jesus. You remember how Jesus spit and made mud and put them on the man’s eyes? He said, “Wash,” and he could see.  This man knew enough to say this, in John 9:32, “Never since the world began has anyone ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind?” This has never happened before. This is new, something entirely new. And it’s never been duplicated since. There’s not been lots of Jesuses since. There’s been no one like Him since. He is unique. He is new. He is the new cloth. He is the new wine. And He is the consummation of human history. Jesus. Who else could say, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. I’m everything. I am the story.”? Who else could say, “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father.”? Who else could say, “Before Abraham was born, I am”? This new man, this Jesus, brings a new religion, a whole new way of expressing life and love for God. Christianity could never have fit into the old pattern. The old religion that was established by God in the Old Covenant was now, at the coming of Jesus, obsolete.  It was holy and righteous and good for its time. It had a role, a purpose, to play. But once Jesus came, and especially once He died on the cross, and the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, that symbolized the end of the Old Covenant. Done. Obsolete. Finished. In some sense then, the Old Covenant was the old garment and the old wineskin. I’ve often wondered, what wicked priests sewed up that curtain, so that they could keep doing animal sacrifice for another 30, 40 years? You know in the whole marriage and divorcing, it says what God has joined together, let man not separate? Well, how about the opposite? What God has torn apart, let man not sew back up. 

He made a new and living way for sinners like you and me to come right into the presence of the Holy God. That’s the power of the blood of Jesus, and He means for us to draw near. The Old Covenant could never do that. The Old Covenant could not bring in the new heaven and new earth, could not make a new man or new woman out of us. The Old Covenant was weak and powerless and unable. These are adjectives used by the New Testament writers for them, “And what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear,” [Hebrews 8:13]. The religion that Jesus came to work would be entirely new. Animal sacrificial system would be gone. The temple would be gone. The Levitical priesthood would be gone. Ceremonial laws of circumcision, food restrictions will be gone. The Old Covenant’s wineskins could not hold this new wine. That was the end.

Now, if the holy and God-ordained Old Covenant was obsolete, how much more this legalistic manmade thing, that they had concocted out of their own minds? How much more was that manmade, legalistic religion obsolete and gone? God never ordained this twice a week fast. It was something they made up. So see how new this wine is. Jesus came to make you into a new person, to transform you. The first verse I ever memorized, in The Navigator’s Topical Memory System, 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creature, new creation. The old has gone. Behold, new things have come.” Everything is new when you become a Christian. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again. No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. I can’t pour the new wine of my work, cannot pour the new wine of the indwelling Holy Spirit into an old soul, an old person. I’ve got to make you new. You got to be born again. You got to be made into a new person by the spirit of God, something only God can do.”  He said, “You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell where it comes from and where it is going.” That’s what it’s like, so it is with everyone born of the spirit. You have to be born of the spirit and the new wine of Christ, and His spirit and His work can be poured into you.’” 

When the new wine of the Gospel pours into you, you become changed in every respect. You have a new mind, it’s called the mind of Christ. You now think differently about everything, about God, about humanity, about sin, about your life, your time, your money, your marriage, your parenting, your job. Everything becomes new, and it takes a long time for that newness to set in. But that’s what it means to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That’s the privilege I get week after week to preach, the whole counsel of God, to make you entirely new and get you ready for the new world that’s coming. Me too. And it’s coming, because it says in Revelation 21:5, “He who is seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making everything new.'” 

So, I have a new thought project here, from Ecclesiastes. Maybe there really is nothing new under the sun, if new means eternal. Everything you see with your eyes is temporary, friends, everything, but there are eternal things you cannot see. There are souls that are redeemed by the blood of Christ and by the spirit of God, those are new, and they will last for all eternity. Everything else, there’s nothing new. But the Lord is going to make a new heavens and a new earth. Everything is going to be made new, transformed by the One seated on the throne. So, lesson number one, the Gospel is new.  

IV. The Gospel is Powerful 

Lesson number two, the Gospel is powerful. The image of both the new cloth and the new wine is power. We’re not staying put. The new cloth shrinks powerfully, the new wine expands powerfully. If you can’t follow me in my shrinking and my expanding, then you don’t understand the power of the Gospel. What do you think should shrink? How about me? “He must increase. I must decrease.” How about that? My sin tumor should shrink.   Patterns in my life that are wicked need to be put to death. And what needs to expand? The work of Christ in my soul needs to expand. My obedience to His beautiful moral law, to love Him and to love my neighbors, myself, that needs to expand. My holiness needs to expand,  the Gospel needs to expand. There’s some people in darkness surrounding us that the Gospel needs to move out in to win some of those people. It needs to move out. It needs to expand.  Acts 1:8, “You’ll receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes on. You’ll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.” That’s the power that comes on you, and they could not leave the world the same. They weren’t going to leave the world the same. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead was at work in them spiritually. It was a powerful thing. I love what happens in Acts 17:6, Paul and Silas come to Thessalonica, and it says, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.” Isn’t that awesome? Of course, they had it backwards. You mean they set it back upright again. The world is upside down and they made it right. Wouldn’t that be great to be said of us? “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here.”  

Jesus displayed power everywhere He went. It’s a powerful thing. He never left anything the same. He had absolute power over demons, they fled from Him in terror. He had absolute power over disease, there was nothing He could not cure. He had absolute power over death,  He raised Lazarus with a word, “Lazarus, come forth.” He had absolute power over sin, He could look at you and say, “Take heart, son, daughter, your sins are forgiven.” This is the surging power of Christ and of the Gospel.  He’s given that power to us now. And we have some warfare to do. We have some strongholds to demolish, not people, wicked concepts and demonic strongholds.  2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says, “Though we live in the world, we do not wage wars. The world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary, they are divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments in every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we’re ready to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.” That’s power.  Let’s blow up some satanic arguments and concepts and ideas and false religions, and save the people that are enslaved by them.
 

That’s the power of the Gospel. Have you felt that power? Has that power come into your life? Have you felt the transforming power of the Spirit? Have you been made a new person? Have you been born again by the Spirit? Have you been transformed? Have you seen yourself, finally, properly, as a sinner who needed a savior like Jesus? Have you been convicted by the law of God and had your sins exposed, your lusts and your covetousness and your thieving and your lying? Have you had these things exposed and you know that is true of you, and Jesus’ blood is the answer to all of it? Have you felt that power? Have you felt the complete forgiveness of that blood, that it’s enough for you, you don’t need anything more? The thief on the cross, “Today, you’ll be with me in paradise.” You don’t have to do any good works to receive forgiveness of sins. Since that time that you felt that forgiveness, have you seen the power, the transforming power of God’s word at work in your life, making you progressively holy and doing good works? If so, I have good news for you. You’re going to spend eternity feasting with Jesus. 

Close with me and prayer. Father, thank you for the time that we’ve had to study this twin parable today. Thank you for the newness and the power of the Gospel. Thank you for giving it to us, that we might be made new, and that we might be given the power of the spirit in our lives, both for our own personal holiness, putting sin to death and driving out the darkness in our souls, but also winning lost people around us. Lord, give us opportunities, even this week, to speak this good news to them. In Jesus’ name. Amen. 

Today we will contemplate the incredible power of the gospel… power to make all things NEW!

When the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Day of Pentecost almost two thousand years ago, the small church in Jerusalem numbered only 120 souls… Moved by the invisible spiritual power of the Holy Spirit, they poured out into the streets of the city and began preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to all who were assembled there.

That same day, there were added 3000 new believers to the church. And since that day, the church has only grown and grown and grown. No power on earth has compared to it. The light of the gospel entered this dark world and nothing has been able to extinguish it

What is power but the ability to make a CHANGE?

Certainly nature is powerful… as Sebastian Junger put it in his book A Perfect Storm, “a mature hurricane is by far the most powerful event on earth,” greatly surpassing the combined nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. But like the atomic bomb, a hurricane is only destructive power. It blows things apart… like sin itself.

The scientific revolution is powerful… moving with stunning rapidity from Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first heavier than air vehicle in 1903 to landing a man on the moon a mere 66 years later. The digital age has evolved like lightning… moving from the primitive personal computers of the mid-1980s to our smartphones and other amazing electronic devices today. The power to effect change.

But how can we accurately measure the power of the gospel and its effects on human history? This gospel spiritually conquered the Roman Empire in three short centuries… moving from the empty tomb outside Jerusalem to the throne of Caesar. At present, there are hundreds of millions of people all over this globe who worship Jesus as Lord and who seek to obey him every moment of their lives. And that is just the earthly manifestation of this gospel. The real power is that, when all is said and done, it will have plucked a numberless multitude from every tribe and language and people and nation from an eternity in hell and placed them in heavenly glory forever. And that’s power!! What is greater than the change from an eternity in agony in the dark fires of hell to an eternity in joy in the glories of heaven? Multiplied by hundreds of millions of souls?!

In today’s text, Jesus will speak of this powerful gospel and say it cannot be held by the dry husks of old man-made traditions and the dead hulls of unregenerate souls. Today we will see that the gospel is NEW and POWERFUL.

Amazingly… it all starts with a question about FASTING

I. Fasting at a Wedding?
Mark 2:18  Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?”

A. Legalistic Religion Hunts Jesus Down

1. Fundamental false religion of the world: self-righteousness

John Owen: “Mortification from self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world.”

2. Matthew 6: Jesus exposed three patterns of conspicuous piety

a. Obvious generosity to the poor and needy… announcing giving with trumpets

b. Conspicuous, public, showy prayers… making it obvious to everyone how much and how fervently you pray

c. Conspicuous, public fasting…

Matthew 6:16 “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting.”

3. Fasting only required at one time in the Law of Moses… on the day of atonement… ONCE A YEAR… called in Leviticus 16:29 a day to “afflict your own souls”… a day of self-denial

4. From time to time, the nation would be called on to fast and pray as a display of national mourning over sin, as in Nehemiah 9:1 after the Jews were again intermarrying with pagan women

5. Occasionally individuals would fast and pray over specific matters, like David when he was confessing sin or Ezra what he wanted God’s help and protection in his journey back to Israel

6. BUT the Pharisees, the pictures of the legalistic religion of self-effort, went way beyond that into a regular pattern of fasting twice a week

Luke 18:11-12  The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men– robbers, evildoers, adulterers– or even like this tax collector.  12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

7. They established these legalistic fasts into specific holy days in which they would bind the consciences of the Jews to follow their pattern or they would be seen to be substandard Jews

8. This was a time of mourning, of “disfiguring their faces” so that everyone knew they were fasting

9. The poison in all of this was in thinking that by this, they were earning favor with God… that they could pay for their sins by harsh treatment of the body

10. These fasts were symbols of self-styled religion, self-efforts at paying for sins and blackmailing God into accepting them

B. John’s Disciples Wrapped Up in It

1. John’s movement was massive… huge numbers of Jews came to deal seriously with their sins; perhaps tens of thousands

2. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by John in the waters of the Jordan River

3. But after being baptized by John, now what? How could they “bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance?”

4. Some of them joined the Pharisees and fell into their legalistic patterns of fasting and prayer and giving and spiritual arrogance

5. INFINITELY WORSE: They clearly didn’t seem to know John’s amazing testimony about Jesus Christ, that he was the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, that he was the SON OF GOD!

C. Context: The Feast at Levi’s House

1. Jesus isn’t fasting at all! He and his disciples had just partaken in a big feast at Levi’s house with a bunch of tax collectors and sinners

2. This was incredibly offensive to these legalistic religionists… they thought, “If this man were from God, he would fast as we do!!”

3. But instead of going directly at Jesus, they ask him about his disciples… the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, so are John’s disciples… why aren’t your disciples fasting?

4. Again, note, this is not the one day of the year in which the Law of Moses required a fast! This was a man-made religion, a man-made fast, a legalistic religion’s requirement

5. Jesus was in no way concerned with their artificial demands, and in no way felt ashamed coming out of Levi’s house after the feast in which so many tax-collectors and sinners had been rescued by grace and become his disciples

D. Jesus Exposes Their Ignorance of Him and of the Times

Mark 2:19  Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them.

1. They don’t know who he is!! And they don’t understand the significance of his coming to the earth

2. He is the BRIDEGROOM… and his disciples are like the GUESTS at a wedding!

3. This theme is amazing… picking up on the marriage imagery that God sometimes used in the Old Testament of God and his bride, Israel… and anticipating the later teaching in Ephesians 5 in which Paul likens the Church to the Bride of Christ… so also the Book of Revelation, in which the Bride of Christ, the New Jerusalem is dressed for her wedding day

4. A picture of an eternal love relationship between Christ and his people… the getting together of the two is like a wedding banquet

5. John the Baptist himself had made this same analogy… when some of his disciples were upset that many people were following Jesus

John 3:29-30  The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.  30 He must increase; I must decrease.

6. Now let’s be honest: WHO FASTS AT A WEDDING BANQUET?? If a man is getting married and invites his friends to come to the wedding banquet, if they fast and refuse to eat the delicacies he has sumptuously laid out, that would be bizarre bad manners

7. Jesus: This is a time of JOY because they get to be with me! To sit with me, see my face, hear my wisdom, drink in my love… just being with me is like a banquet for my beloved disciples

8. For centuries, the faithful people of God had been longing for the coming of the Messiah, the Chosen One of God… now that day has come! How much would Isaiah have longed to be there to see the days he prophesied? How much would David have longed to sit at table with the perfect fulfillment of his kingly reign?

Matthew 13:16-17  blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.  17 For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

9. The blessedness of this time made it a time of JOY

10. That the Pharisees and John’s disciples are coming with their empty grumbling stomachs and their joyless legalism and condemning the friends of the bridegroom for feasting on his wisdom and drinking deeply in his perfect goodness shows how MESSED UP they were

E. Jesus Brings Joy… Not Sorrow; the Joy of Sitting at Table with God Himself; Legalism Kills Joy

1. A modern expression is a BUZZKILL… or killjoy, wet blanket

2. These legalists were all BUZZKILLS; they should have been friends of the Bridegroom and sat at table with him and feasted along with everyone else

3. In Galatians, as Paul is addressing the bitter legalism that the Judaizers had brought, he asks a simple question to the Galatian converts he led to Christ:

Galatians 4:15  What has happened to all your joy?

4. Legalism makes people devour each other viciously

Galatians 5:15  If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

F. YET… the Joy that Jesus Came to Bring is Not Yet Fully Come

Mark 2:20  But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.

1. Jesus is here alluding first and foremost to his arrest and crucifixion

2. On that day, there would be no feasting… only deep sorrow

John 16:20  I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.

3. Furthermore, even after Christ is raised from the dead and ascended to heaven, the heavenly feast has not yet fully come

4. So Christian people do need to fast from time to time… to grieve over sin, or to focus in prayer, as they do in Acts 13 before they sent Paul out on his first missionary journey with Barnabas

5. BUT when all is said and done, we will sit at table with Jesus in heaven, and enjoy his perfect glory and infinite love and measuredly beauty… we will drink deeply of him forever

II. The Twin Parables: Unshrunk Cloth and New Wine
A. These Two Parables Are Teaching the Same Lessons in Slightly Different Ways

B. They Are Doubled for Emphasis… these lessons are VITAL

C. Parable #1: The Unshrunk Cloth and the Old Garment

Mark 2:21  “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse.

1. The image is one of an old garment… an old shirt or cloak or robe or coat; it has been washed many times, and is perhaps faded

2. This old garment has to be repaired… it has a hole in it

3. It would be FOOLISH to use a brand-new piece of cloth to patch that garment? Jesus calls it “unshrunk”… its never been subjected to the washing process; whenever a piece of new cloth is washed for the first time, it shrinks, it pulls in

4. And if it is sown on an old garment, when that shrinkage occurs, the tear is now much worse

D. Parable #2: The New Wine and the Old Wineskin

Mark 2:22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.

1. In those days, wine was kept in containers made of animal skins

2. The animal’s hide would be uncut except at the legs and neck; perhaps it was turned inside out after being treated and prepared

3. The openings, like at the neck, were used to pour the wine in, and a stopper was put in

4. As new wine would begin to ferment, it would put off gases… the wineskin would begin to expand, like a balloon

5. An old wineskin, exposed to the sun and the air over a long period of time would dry out and lose its elasticity; it would become stiff and inflexible

6. And if you pour new wine into an old wineskin, eventually the pressure build-up from the gases will cause a rupture… the old wineskin will burst and both the wine and the wineskin will be ruined… lost

7. So, people know to pour new wine into new wineskins, so that both are preserved

E. Additional Lesson from Luke

Luke 5:39  And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘The old is better.’

1. The people who are used to the old patterns will hate the new

2. They want to stick with what they’ve know, what they’ve become accustomed to

3. The new wine tastes weird to them

III. Lesson #1: The Gospel is New
A. The New Piece of Cloth and the New Wine

1. These both represent the newness of the gospel, the newness of Christ and the work he has come to do in the world

2. Our TOP PRIORITY IN LIFE is to understand this gospel of Jesus Christ… to wear the new garment and to drink the new wine

3. For us to delight in the newness of Christ and of his new work in our lives and in the world

B. The Old Garment and the Old Wineskin

1. These represent the legalistic Pharisees and in this case John’s disciples who are following their approach to religion

2. Legalism is inflexible… they have traditions they are following that were passed down from rabbis two hundred years before that

3. The legalists of Jesus’ day were INFLEXIBLE… like the old garment that is set in its size, it cannot move, it is inflexible; so also the old wineskin… weathered, hard, brittle, unyielding

4. That’s what legalism and traditionalism do

5. They cannot respond to the NEWNESS that Jesus came to bring to the world

C. Christianity is NEW… it is UNIQUE… it is unlike anything else on earth

1. The New Cloth and the New Wine represent the newness of Christ, the New Covenant, the new life he came to bring

2. It fresh, alive, living, active, beautiful, aromatic, fruitful

D. Focused on the New Person that Jesus Christ is… utterly unique in all the world

1. He stands alone; there is no other religious leader like him, no political leader either; unique in all history

2. He is the new cloth; he is the new wine; it centers on him

3. They could not understand who he was, what he came to do!

4. He is the Bridegroom, come to seek and save his Bride

5. He is the GOD-MAN, fully God, fully man; anyone who has seen him has seen the glory of God himself in human form

6. He stands alone, and with his advent into the world, history itself was changed… everything would be impacted

7. He was new… his life was new… his miracles were new… his teachings were unlike any words that anyone had ever heard before

8. Even his enemies said this:

John 7:46  “No one ever spoke the way this man does,”

9. When Jesus healed the man born blind, he testified plainly:

John 9:32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind.

10. This was something entirely new… and he has never been duplicated since then; no one else has come along to supplant him or supersede him

11. Jesus is the New Cloth, Jesus is the New Wine

12. Jesus is the consummation of human history… who else could say this:

Revelation 22:13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

13. Who else could say this:

John 14:9 Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.

14. Or this:

John 8:58 “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

E. This New Person Brings a New Religion… a Whole New Way of Expressing Life and Love for God

1. Christianity could never have fit into the old patterns

2. The Old Religion of the Old Covenant was now obsolete

a. It was holy and righteous and good for its time

b. But once Jesus came, once Jesus died on the cross, the Old Covenant was FULFILLED and OBSOLETE

c. In some sense, the Old Covenant was the Old Garment and the Old Wineskin

d. Jeremiah predicted the day when God would make a New Covenant

Jeremiah 31:31  “The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

The essence of this new covenant is to work inside the souls of the people a holiness and a true forgiveness of sins the old covenant could never work… it wrote God’s pure moral code in our hearts and minds from within, and it worked a genuine atonement for sins that the blood of animals could never have worked

e. The author to the Hebrews saw what these words meant

Hebrews 8:13  By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear

F. The religion Jesus came to work would be entirely new

1. The animal sacrificial system would be gone

2. The temple would be gone

3. The Levitical priesthood would be gone

4. The ceremonial laws of circumcision and food restrictions would be gone

5. The Old Covenant’s wineskins could never hold the New Covenant’s truth in Christ

6. So the moment Jesus died

Mark 15:38   The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

7. That signified the END of the Old Covenant religious system forever

8. That was a system God himself had set up… but now it was OLD and OBSOLETE and God himself would remove it by the Roman Army in AD 70 destroying the temple

G. If the Holy and God-Ordained Old Covenant was Obsolete… How Much More the Man-Made Legalism of the Pharisees???

1. The system of conspicuous piety, of fasting twice a week and making it obvious to everyone how miserable your religion is making you??

2. That is surely like a tattered old garment that could never coexist with the New Religion and the New Life Jesus came to bring

3. That is absolutely like some old hard brittle wineskin that would rupture at the new wine of Jesus’ gospel

H. See How NEW this Wine IS

1. Jesus cannot pour his new wine into an old wineskin… neither concerning the religion of the nation or indeed the heart of the individual!!

2. Jesus has to make the person new from within by the Spirit

3. He starts by transforming us completely

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, BEHOLD… new things have come!

4. That is what the NEW BIRTH means

John 3:3  Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

John 3:7-8  You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’  8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

I. When the Gospel Comes into a person’s life… everything becomes NEW

1. They have a new mind… the mind of Christ

2. They have a new way of thinking about everything of significance… God, life, death, our bodies, the Bible, other Christians, time, money, work, friendships… there is not a significant topic in all of life that is not radically transformed and made NEW by Christ

J. And in the End:

Revelation 21:5  He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”

Revelation 21:1  Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away

IV. Lesson #2: The Gospel is Powerful
A. The Image of Both the New Cloth and the New Wine is POWER

1. There is great force in both

2. The new cloth pulls hard at the old garment… it MUST change, it MUST shrink… nothing can stop it

3. So also the new wine is energetic, surging, powerful… it must expand, and it will explode anything that does not yield to its surging power

B. Do You Not See the ENERGY? The POWER of this Gospel of Christ?

1. Christ and his Gospel Message are POWERFUL

Romans 1:16  I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes

Acts 1:8  you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

2. They could not leave the world the same!!

3. The gospel comes into your life with amazing POWER and raises you from the dead spiritually

4. The same power that raised Christ from the dead raised you up as well spiritually

5. And these changed lives result in a powerfully surging changing world…

6. It was said of Paul and Silas by their enemies in Thessalonica:

Acts 17:6 “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also!

C. Jesus Displayed Power Everywhere He Went

1. He never left anything the same

2. He had absolute power over demons… they fled from him in terror

3. He had absolute power over disease… there was nothing he could not cure

4. He had absolute power over death… he effortlessly raised dead people with a word

5. He had absolute power over sin… he could declare a man completely forgiven simply based on his faith

6. This is the surging power of Christ in the gospel… the Kingdom advanced powerfully and nothing could stop it

D. This Powerful Gospel Was Utterly Destructive of Every Obstacle

2 Corinthians 10:4-5  The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.  5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

1. Christianity demolished human philosophies… it exposed them as foolish

2. Christianity demolished all legalistic efforts at self-righteousness

Paul considered his legalistic self-righteousness RUBBISH compared to the glory of Christ

3. Christianity destroys all false religions… it exposes all of them as demonic frauds

4. Christianity levels our false foundations… it blows them all up

5. It exposes the worthlessness of worldly wealth and power and success… none of it survives an encounter with Christ

6. It basically smashes US with conviction

Acts 2:37  When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

It bursts all our old wineskins… it makes us spiritual beggars who know that we have no answer

THEN… it builds us up again in Christ; makes us new people, filled with life and joy and power

New thoughts, new desires, new power, new purpose

E. Have You Felt the POWER of the Gospel Surging Through Your Life?