He also told them a parable: “No one tears a patch from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. Otherwise, not only will he tear the new, but also the piece from the new garment will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, it will spill, and the skins will be ruined. No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins. And no one, after drinking old wine, wants new, because he says, ‘The old is better.’” 5:36-39
Nobody likes change, especially me. Change is painful and sometimes it causes great turmoil in our lives. We tend to be creatures of habit and habits become ruts, and like one person once said, “ruts can become graves.” Jesus made it pretty plain that nobody likes new wine after they are used to drinking the old stuff. We get used to something in our lives, whether it be physical or spiritual, and then something new comes along and we tend to resist it. Jesus is telling these Pharisees, “Guys something new is here and you will have to change to accept it; it won’t fit into your old containers, your old garments, your old ways of doing things.” Jesus’ point was that the gospel and His work as the Messiah was so radical that it couldn’t be adapted to the same old Jewish way of doing things with just a few minor tweaks. No, this was something so radical that required newly transformed people to embrace it.
We have a lot of proverbs related to this same concept. In America we say “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” A good friend of mine once told me, “Kevin if you want to do a new thing you have to get a new person to do it.” He is right, we like what we’re used to and we like what we’re comfortable with and we resist change. To be fair, change for the sake of change is not a good thing. God constantly reminds people in the Bible to “remember the old ways… remember the rock from which you were hewn… remember the ancient boundary lines.” Sometimes older is better. 😊 There are some things, like His nature, His word, and ancient truths that will never change. The trick is to discern whether a particular issue, practice, or method is something that should be chiseled in stone for all generations or whether we are hindering His kingdom by insisting it stay the same.
Regardless, we must be wise enough to know when to dig our heels in and when to change with the times. Are you resisting change because your way is better or is it just that you are too lazy and too comfortable to grow? After all, everyone who has ever been born again has been through a radical change and that change has made all the difference. A mark of spiritual maturity is the willingness to be humble and realize that sometimes others know more than we do and their way could be better. Jesus constantly calls us to change and to grow and to become more like him. He wants us to learn “new tricks” no matter how old a dog we are! We need to be “new people” every day who are mature enough to know what is an ancient boundary line that must never be moved and what is a new frontier that needs to be explored.
