Wednesday,
January 18, 2023
One day the disciples of John the Baptist came to Jesus
and asked him, “Why don’t your disciples fast like we do and the Pharisees
do?” Jesus replied, “Do
wedding guests mourn while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. But someday the groom will be taken away from
them, and then they will fast. “Besides,
who would patch old clothing with new cloth? For the new patch would shrink and rip away
from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before. “And no one puts new wine into old
wineskins. For the old skins would burst
from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine is stored in new wineskins so that
both are preserved.” Matthew 9:14-17
The older one gets, the more one
looks back on the chapters that were, instead of looking ahead to the chapters
yet to be written. Perhaps too much! It’s difficult to look ahead when your mind
is full of the past. Yet, there is
something to be said for meditating on what has happened, if the future is
going to make any sense. For instance, a
pastor’s unquestioned task is always to preach God’s Word, in God’s timing, so
that the true wisdom of God can bless and direct God’s people. So a pastor must face what’s ahead while keeping
the past in mind. To let the future have
sovereign reign is to fall prey to some of yesterday’s mistakes, spilling the
new wine of tomorrow before it has time to mature. To let the past reign (especially in an old
mind) is to turn your back on the promise of all things new.
We make choices, many without
thinking; we are conditioned so, and life demands choices and changes. And, in the wisdom that unfolds with time, we
know everything of the past was not entirely evil or entirely good, as well as
we know everything new will one day be in the past. We live, we choose, we learn.
If our minds are the wineskins
of which Jesus taught, then the possibilities of the wine of yesterday or
tomorrow are what goes in. Jesus said
you can’t put the new wine (of tomorrow’s experience) into old skins (an old
man’s mind, perhaps). The common
reasoning is that the fermenting of the new wine creates growth action that
will expand (and burst) the old, stretched-to-the-limit skins.
As it is with old minds and new
wines, so it is with the church and her ebb and flow of serving Christ’s Kingdom. The more churches dwell on the past, lamenting
the loss of those good ol’ days, the less fit we become for the
new wine of Christ’s promise…behold, I make all things new.[1] And when God is moving in the hearts of young people to stretch and accept
his growth to expand the Kingdom, we do well to make room for that which is
coming, or risk the judgment of Pharasee-like hardened skins, ready for
bursting.
I know of only one remedy for
that, and Apostle Paul made it simple:
I beseech you therefore,
brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living
sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but
be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that
good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Romans 12:1-2
Renewed minds…new wineskins for
what’s coming, made possible by the kind of faith that presents body, mind, and
soul to Christ…the surrendered life.
For You Today
There are about 2,000 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper on
today’s topic, explore some of these:
The Tear in the Fabric
and Drinking the Pastor's New Wine
Images: Title Pixabay.com Images without citation are either personal
property of the author, or in public domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted
from The New Living Translation©
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