Luke 5:36-38
He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.’”
Reflection
Earlier in the 5th chapter of Luke, Jesus had called Matthew the tax collector to be one of His disciples and Jesus had been seen eating with sinners, something the Jewish leaders didn’t approve of. The Jewish leaders then complained that Jesus’ disciples were not fasting like they should, at least according to the laws that had been created. Jesus answered His critics with answers that went against the customs of the time. Jesus was clearly doing something new.
Then He tells the parable that is from today’s Bible passage. To summarize, if you want something new, you can’t use the same old methods and structures. You need new methods and structures to do something new.
We want to do something new in trying to reach people who don’t know Jesus. The old methods of saying “build it and they will come” will not work for everybody in today’s culture that needs to meet Jesus. We won’t give up the old but we definitely need to do some new things.
In the ministry that you lead or participate in, do you need a new “wineskin” in order to reach new people for Jesus and “make disciples” in this culture as Jesus calls us to do?
