Old Wine, New Bottles - Matt 9:14-17; Mark 2:18-22: Luke 5:33-39

The last several weeks have been very complicated. I moved from my job, home, and friends in California to Utah earlier this month. It was a very sudden decision and I really feel like the Lord’s hand was definitely in it, He coached me along the way, helped me realize what He wanted me to do and honestly, everything has just fallen into place and it’s obvious that He prepared this for me and my children, there have been many tender mercies along the way.

While eating with “publicans and sinners” at Matthew’s house the topic comes up about fasting. Matthew says that the disciples of John the Baptist came to ask Jesus why His disciples did not fast. Luke suggests that it was the Pharisees who asked Jesus “Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Phariseees; but thine eat and drink?” Jesus the Christ reminds us that John the Baptist “had been a scrupulous observer of the law; his strict asceticism vied with the rigor of Pharisaic profession. His non-progressive disciples, now left without a leader, naturally fell in with the Pharisees.” This is why both the Pharisees and the disciples of John are included in this conversation, because they were intermingling.

Jesus’s reply to His questioners “must have brought memories of their beloved leader’s word, when he had compared himself to the Bridegroom’s friend, and had plainly told them who was the real Bridegroom.” Jesus answered saying, “Can ye make the children of the bride chamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? But they days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.” This would have pointed the minds of John’s disciples back to the time when John compared himself to Jesus in the analogy of the Bridegroom. But it does make me wonder why Jesus didn’t have his disciples fast while he was with them. I’m going to have to think about that. I wonder if it has anything to do with why His disciples didn’t have the Holy Ghost with them while Jesus was living amongst them.

Jesus goes on to say, “No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteh new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.” JTC explains these parables saying, “In such wise did our Lord proclaim the newness and completeness of His gospel. It was in no sense a patching up of Judaism. He had not come to mend old and torn garments; the cloth He provided was new, and to sew it on the old would be but to tear afresh the threadbare fabric and leave a more unsightly rent than at first. Or to change the figure, new wine could not safely be entrusted to old bottles… The gospel taught by Christ was a new revelation, superseding the past, and marking the fulfillment of the law; it was no mere addendum, nor was it a reenactment of past requirements; it embodied a new and an everlasting covenant.”

So the question is, what did the newness of the gospel have to do with not fasting? I guess their question begs another question, how did the Pharisees know that Jesus’s disciples did not fast? Were they watching each and every one of them individually to see if any of them were actually eating? I’m sure that this kind of intense observation was lacking so what were the signs the Pharisees were looking for to see if they were fasting? Jesus talks denounces wearing sack cloth and ashes at another sermon, so it is implied that the “devout” Jew was disfiguring his face and appearance when fasting to bring attention to himself. If we think about what the new gospel entails, kindness and love for vengeance and exacting justice, then when the Lord later talks about fasting being different, he’s telling the people that the way the fast was observed under the law of Moses is done away with and that there is a new way to observe the law of the fast. His disciple have turned away from old Hebrew way of fasting and embraced the new gospel but they aren’t fasting right now because he hasn’t told them about the new law. Jesus’s disciples are following the new Gospel as it is being taught to them, and the new law of the fast simply hasn’t been taught yet so they aren’t doing it. Interesting way that that tied all together.