New Cloth & New Wine

Matt 9:16-17. "But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved."

Mark 2:21-22. "No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; otherwise the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear results. No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins."

Luke 5:36-39. And He was also telling them a parable: "No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and puts it on an old garment; otherwise he will both tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, 'The old is good enough.'"

With these two parables, we see three main driven home by Jesus. They are as follows:

First, The old cannot contain the new. New wine cannot be put into old wineskins. The old wineskins represent the Old Testament and the covenants contained therein. The new wine represents the new covenant that Jesus is offering to the world. New wine will ferment, and as it does, it creates gas that forces the wineskin to expand. Old wineskins have already “expanded” all they can. Any new pressure put on them by the new wine will cause them to burst, ruining the wine and destroying the wineskins. I think it is interesting to note that the parables seem to indicate that we do not want to ruin the old wineskins – that they still have value. Indeed, God will still honor the covenants and promises He made in the Old Testament, so they do still have value. However, a lot of the Old Testament promises are specifically for the Jews, and most will not be fulfilled until the tribulation and/or millennial kingdom.

Second, The old cannot just be “patched”. God desired a completely new covenant with His people. A covenant that would be available to all the people of the earth. We can see in Matthew and Mark that the new cloth is referred to as “unshrunk”. The result of sewing an unshrunk cloth onto an old garment would be that the new cloth would pull away (shrink) from the old garment, causing a worse tear than before. In Luke, however, it is viewed from a different perspective. Taking a piece of cloth from a new garment and sewing it onto the old garment does two things. It ruins (tears) the new garment, and the patch does not match the old garment. So not only will the original tear get worse (from shrinkage of the new patch), the new garment has been ruined, and the old garment has a glaring, unmatched, torn patch on it.

Third, man often desires to stay with the old and not embrace the new. The last line in Luke says “And no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, 'The old is good enough’”. The implication here is that the Jewish leadership (ie: Pharisees & Sadducees) was more comfortable with their position and authority under the “old wine” (the old testament covenants and man made laws they had devised) than they were with the “new wine” of salvation that was offered through Jesus Christ. Man is often times more comfortable with what they know, rather than something new that could mean less authority, even if the new is ultimately in their best interest.