New Wineskins

Coming up to the will and renew your mind. There is a sense of eternal continuity between the things that are taught in the Old Testament, and that which comes to us in the moochers but at the same time there are things that pass away the dietary laws of the Old Testament have been set aside the moral law of God has not. But the Pharisees didn't get when Jesus arrived teaching about the kingdom of God. Pharisees and teachers of the law found offensive today on the Lord's day vision of Renewing Your Mind, Dr. RC Sproul helps us understand that the new wine of Jesus words wasn't compatible with the Pharisees and wine skins this morning were going to continue our study of the gospel according to St. Luke. We are in the fifth chapter, and I will be reading from verse 33 through verse 39 and elastic herniation place to stand for the reading of the word of God.

Then they said to him, why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink and he said to them, can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, but the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them.

Then they will fast in those day and then he spoke a parable to them.

No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one. Otherwise, the new makes a tear and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old and no one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled in the wineskins will be ruined. But new wine must be put in the new wineskins, and both are preserved and no one having drunk old wine immediately desires new, for he says the old is better. Just heard the unvarnished word of Almighty God bearing the fullness of his authority and truth.

Please receive it as such be seated spray again.

I Lord we ask that you would visit us this hour with the presence of your Holy Spirit, that he may aid us in our understanding of the things that we have just heard.

For we ask it in Jesus name, amen. Last week we looked at Luke's description of the call of Matthew the tax collector and how that's after that evening he had a feast at his home for Jesus and invited all of his friends. The other tax collectors of the day and the Pharisees were put out by that because Jesus was now associating with known sinners and publican but that was not the end of their distress. That was not the finish point of their critical attitude towards Jesus and so they raised a new issue in the passage that we've seen this morning where told that they come to Jesus asking him this question. Why do the disciples of John.

That's John the Baptist fast often. Likewise, the disciples of the Pharisees do that but your disciples eat and drink. We don't see them fasting, so they were upset about Jesus apparent neglect of their tradition of fasting in the Old Testament God commanded that the people of Israel fast on one occasion on the day of atonement for the rest of the time. Fasting was a matter of voluntary activity and practice and we see 2×1 fasting occurs most frequently in the Old Testament. The first reason or the first time as one people were seeking for a deeper and sharper focus on the things of God so that he would withdraw from the normal activities of this mundane life in which we live and devote themselves exclusively to contemplation and meditation on the things of God. The second reason why we see additional fastings in the Old Testament was as an expression of morning when death came to a loved one, or great defeat to the nation were a time of repentance that was at hand, the people would express their grief and their morning by rending their garments and by entering into a fax, but the Pharisees who were the arch conservatives of Israel created new laws that God never imposed upon the people.

They created their own traditions and their traditions sought to require the Jews to fast twice a week for at least a portion of the day and not only that, in their zeal for righteousness. They began to teach the idea that fasting was such a righteous enterprise that it would bring merit to the person who fasted so this was just one more element of the Pharisees attempt of self righteousness that another occasion Jesus rebuked them for substituting their traditions.

The traditions of men for the law of God. This is the first rule of the legalist. What the legalist does is legislates where God leaves people free they take. You may, and turn it into you must, and that is absolutely fatal to a healthy Christian life in the Pharisees who considered themselves the ultimate standard of righteousness were the fathers of this kind of legalism. The second point of legalism which is the first part is that idea that thinks that you can earn your way into heaven legally by doing good works or by obeying the law, and again the Pharisees were at the forefront of those who taught that fatal error of the things of God. They were as I say arch conservatives. But what they word zealous to conserve was not the law of God.

When John the Baptist came he came in the prophetic image they spent time living in the wilderness, living off of wild honey and locusts. He was an ascetic he was given to self-denial and to this asceticism so that he could focus his mind critically on the things of God, and he taught his disciples to do the same thing so for John the Baptist and his disciples fasting was a frequent experience, but there was this accusation came elsewhere where the Pharisees says John the Baptist and his disciples are involved in self-denial, but Christ is our wine member but any case, they Pharisees were arch conservatives for what they were jealous to conserve was there own traditions and we have to be careful here because in the New Testament there is another tradition that is spoken of Jesus is sharply critical of the trip. Additional some of the Pharisees, but when we come to the apostolic age, the apostle Paul speaks warmly and devout deeply about what he calls.

In Greek the Puranas is which he has received and which he instructs his readers to pass on to everyone on the Puranas.

This is the Greek word for tradition and it means a giving over from one to the next and so there is a godly tradition, the apostolic tradition the apostolic tradition which is to be maintained and guarded in every age of the church there are those I know beloved who love all things old and have no room for change in their lives will see some of them next Sunday morning here at 830 sharp for the 830 worship service that will be so disappointed that there are people who if it's new, it can't be good. That's their attitude there so tenacious in their conservativism. On the other hand you have people who believe it can't be good unless it's new.

The old is always outmoded and outdated, like the people in the philosophers that gathered together at the Areopagus in Athens on March will and as Paul tells us they were there to discuss what's new. We see this curse on the church all the time where we always are receiving new insights, new theologies to come down the pike to challenge classic Christian orthodoxy and if you don't like the liberal fad of today, wait five years it'll change because people are busy trying to discard the classic, the true, the biblical tradition and replace it with something else. And so it takes great discernment.

It takes great wisdom and knowledge of the things of God to know when to be conservative and when to be open and so I ask you if you are a conservatives assignment conserve, a more conservative than I though we always have to ask ourselves the question what is it that were trying to conserve and why.

I don't care a fake about preserving human traditions just because their traditions but I do care about preserving the biblical and the apostolic tradition and those traditions that have arisen up through 2000 years of church history that have been used of God to serve the apostolic tradition, but in any case, we have this conflict now between Jesus and the Pharisees and how does Jesus respond to the question, what about you and your disciples here so Jesus answers the question in so many words, what he says. The Pharisees is this what time is it times they weren't wearing wristwatches or caring clocks around. But Jesus wasn't asking them what time it was in the day they was asking them what time is it in terms of written attempt of history you know the Bible was written over literally thousands of years, and God's revelation of himself and of his plan of redemption and salvation was revealed gradually and progressively beginning in Genesis and then expanding through the prophets and the whole Old Testament were God was adding new information about the kingdom that was to come, and he established feasts that were to be celebrated the feast of the Passover and the day of atonement, the feast of weeks in the began gathering all of these things were not to be fulfilled, in and of themselves's the New Testament tells us the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin.

And yet there was this elaborate procedure in the Old Testament of the slaying of the animals on the day of atonement, but these things were the shadows of what was to come. They were symbols that pointed beyond themselves to that which would come in the fullness of time that when the final sacrifice would be made and the ultimate atonement be offered. These shadows would then be discarded.

You have people today who want to take all of the Old Testament and bring it over into the new covenant and then you have people who say the Old Testament is totally obsolete. They don't care a bit about it and all they care about is the New Testament.

No no no no no, there is an intimate relationship between Old Testament revelation and that which is given to us in the new covenant.

There is a sense of eternal continuity between the things that are taught in God's revelation in the Old Testament, and that which comes to us in the New Testament, but at the same time there are things that pass away that are abrogated. The ceremonial law. The dietary laws of the Old Testament have been set aside the moral law of God has not. And Jesus understood that the Pharisees didn't get what time is it I answered the question by saying when there's a wedding feast. The friends of the bridegroom don't fast when the bridegroom is there when the bracket group comes the fast is over when the bridegroom comes it's time for a feast.

And of course Jesus was speaking of himself, just as Israel was the bride of God in the Old Testament so the New Testament church is the bride of Christ, and he's the bridegroom who had been promised for centuries before and now he's here in the bridegroom Senior you don't fast you don't more. You don't rend your garments, you rejoice, you throw a party, but the Pharisees did know what time it was Pharisees didn't get and thus their critical spirit. At this point so Jesus says, the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken away and then the bride will and the friends of the bridegroom will fast. Referring to his execution and his removal the end of his incarnation in his earthly ministry. At that time. That's why, in the early church.

After the departure of Jesus. There was a great revival of voluntary fasting among Christian people and during times of persecution when the Christians were being thrown to the lions and suffering their fellow believers would pray and fast for them in such perilous conditions. And then Jesus to explain this further tells these two simple parables about the cloth and the wineskins.

He said no, look, I know you Pharisees aren't Taylor's but you should know something basic about sewing. If you have a pair of pants and you tear have all that pair of pants and he want to patch it. You don't get a new piece of garment from a new pair pants and cut away and without rinsing it and shrinking it. Try to add it to the old pair pants, but if you give him shrunken piece of material and you saw it on the old decent first thing you do when you wash it was that bad piece of action even use the patch up your pants will shrink and wanted strengths.

It'll pull the threads off and the whole that you have in your pants before you patch them will be worse than when you started my going too fast to know how closely the Pharisees were listening to this illustration.

The Jesus gave but I'm sure they paid attention to the next one because not touched upon something important to them and that was their wine that he gives this illustration. He said no one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled in the wineskins will be ruined. But new wine must be put in the new wineskins, and both are preserved and no one having drunk old one immediately desires new free, says the old is better.

Unless you believe, for example, as many Christians in America probably only nation in the world believe it that they did make real wine in the Bible, an idea that was invented not by exegesis but I think by the welshes great juice company and when I hear some of my friends saying that what they call wine in the Bible isn't really wine. I wonder what Bible their reading bears again a clear see one for Noah made a vineyard, and he made wine and drank too much of it.

He got drunk he didn't get drunk on great juice and we see that throughout the history of the Bible, but here in this illustration. Jesus says take new wine you put it, no wineskins, why not because the old wineskins made out of goatskin or sheepskin have been stretched because the wind was in them was continuing to ferment and stretching this leatherette substance to its limit and is out of your port. In the old wineskin and that no one starts to ferment. And in the fermentation process the gases and their expand and stretch the old wineskins will wineskins already been stretched. If you put new wine in there and leave it in there you will lose the wineskin because it's gonna break what else you lose the will sleep with the wind in the wineskin to keep the wind reserve the wind so you cared about, you can enjoy the wine and so in this case the put new wine in your wineskins, you lose both the wineskin and the wine. So Jesus and what you do to get yet Avenue wineskin if with the new one in the wineskin and then wineskin can expand as the one is fermenting and you won't lose you. The wineskin will wine and when you're done, you won't be saying will the old one was good, but interested in the new golf. No one was good because it was ferment. That's what's good and now they love the old one better than the one below. She's the same simple. You can't just take the kingdom of God and the arrival of Jesus.

I just put it on top of the Pharisees tradition. It won't fit something new is happening. There is a new covenant yes it builds upon the old, but it can't be absorbed totally by the old you have to have a new aspect. If you're going to fit into the new covenant, and by extension, you can't have Christ and squeezing into your old life and expect that to work this dreadful teaching is spread throughout evangelical Christianity. The teachers, the carnal Christian idea that you can become converted to Christ and never change impossible letters, blasphemy is so against the teaching of Christ and against the New Testament when you are born again by the Holy Ghost.

You're a changed person. And if you're not a changed person.

Your conversion experience is false. You can't be born of the Holy Spirit and not be a changed person possible the segmentation that follows takes our whole lifetime and then in the glory but change begins immediately and really in one way you can check yourself if you question whether your converted this has been any change in my life where my still living the old way in the old wineskins with the old close that are torn and tattered, but if you are in Christ. Beloved your new creature you need a new set of clothes and a new skin to carry the wind of the Holy Ghost. Let's father, thank you for making all things new, for making us new for giving us a new covenant that is so much richer and so much better and so much fulfilling more fulfilling than the old thank you that you do all things well and you've given us the bridegroom and made us his Brian. We can't just add Jesus to our old life and no conversion means nothing less than complete transformation is what the apostle Paul meant when he said therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creature, old things are passed away behold all things are become new. Dr. RC Sproul has provided us with a helpful explanation of Jesus parable today as we continue our verse by verse sermon series from the gospel of Luke. We return to the series. Each Sunday were glad you joined us today helping you study and understand God's word is one of our priorities here at regular ministries and that's why were eager to get today's resource into your hands. Contact us today and request RC's commentary on the Gospel of Luke. When you give a donation of any amount will be happy to provide you with a digital download of this nearly 600 page commentary orifices are close in the sports day, but you can give your gift and make a request online@renewingyourmind.org. Let me remind you of table talk magazine.

It's another helpful resource. Dr. Spruill like to call it the little magazine that could exist to help establishes in the word to deepen our understanding of God and apply this knowledge to our daily living and every issue you will find theological articles and daily guided Bible studies, written by trusted pastors and teachers learn more and subscribe@tabletalkmagazine.com. Thank you again for joining us today Renewing Your Mind is the listener supported outreach would dinner ministries help you make plans to join us again next Sunday