The Wineskin Parable

A message from Luke 5:33-39 by Chris Collison 1/07/07

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At Levi’s house, Jesus told a number of parables in response to the Pharisees’ legalistic questioning. In His presence, things had changed ; their old rules didn’t apply, and in His Gospel of the Kingdom, there was something new.  

Everything has changed now that I have come to fulfill the law.   And change, and how we respond to it, is what these parables are really all about. Firstly, he tells the parable about patching an old garment – by tearing a piece of cloth out of a new garment!   Jesus is pointing out the incompatibility of the old with the new -   they couldn’t co-exist without tearing away from each other.  Then Jesus went on to tell a second parable: “No one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, 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.” These wineskins were made of whole tanned goatskins where the legs and tail were cut off and had been sealed.  Once the wineskins have been emptied and dried out, they lose their ability to stretch again.
However,  they were easily "reconditioned" by soaking them in water for a few days.  Then, when they softened, they were coated with olive oil and were ready to use again.  God is in the business of renewing us - reconditioning us, to make us fit for the change he wants us to be a part of.  However dried out we feel (at any age!), by soaking ourselves in him, his word, his spirit, we can regain that flexibility we once felt as young Christians, and play an active part in church growth.   Finally, Jesus explained how people “prefer the old wine” to point out the tendency that we   have for “staying with what we know” – sticking where we’re comfortable.

What stops us being willing to change?
There’s been lots written about this subject, and most writers would say that when someone says the word the word “change”, they hear the word “loss”.  What do we feel like we’re losing?

Control .  We like to impose structures to give us some certainty, some predictability – we like advance information, and we don’t like surprises! When things change, we feel the loss of control most keenly. 

Comfort – some of us find it hardest to accept change when it affects the smaller things.  Who we sit next to, where we sit, whether we sit!  What we eat, when we eat, when we meet, where we meet… 

Capacity - sometimes we can feel like we’re up to here with change!  It’s not that we lack flexibility - it’s that we need to pour out something that we do, in order to make room for that new wine.

We all experience change in different ways, so it’s important that we find someone we can speak to – someone we trust in our Cell groups to discuss how we feel during times of change – that way we can support and pray each other through the “change curve”.
Pray for our elders too.  Introducing change is difficult – partly because it stirs up some of the emotions and reactions we’ve been thinking about.  So pray that our leaders will hear clearly, weigh up, test what they are hearing, - and then express clearly what God is telling us about the next stop on his “change cruise.”