ARTICLES

New Wine Into Fresh Wineskins

by Mari Anne Andersen

God is a God of new things - He is always pouring out new wine that He desires us to taste, to see and to behold. God does not want to repair us but He wants to slay us so that WE can resurrect NEW in Him. "No one sews a patch of un-shrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse." (Mathew 9:16) He is the God of all NEW things:

••• a new covenant
••• a new life
••• a new song
••• a new creation
••• a new name
••• a new heart
••• a new way
••• a new Heaven
••• the new thing
••• new strength
••• the new self

Mathew 9:17 - Neither is new wine put in old wineskins, for if it is, the skins burst and are torn in pieces, and the wine is spilled and the skins are ruined; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.

For many of us we like our traditions, habits, certain ways of doing things, and we begin to collect clutter; we begin to sound like a clacking, resounding din of rigidity and legalism. We wear the cloak of religiosity and piety that make us run into our false refuges. A false refuge is a hiding place created by our sinful nature where we determine and control where we will find comfort and protection, which is any place but in God. It makes us become comfortable or complacent like the religious leaders of Jesus' day who didn't want anything to disrupt their comfort.  They claimed, "The old is good." The old stuff in our lives can be our assumptions, judgments, practices, fear,s as well as our denials that keep us locked in and thus produce bitter fruit, harming ourselves and defiling others.

We know Jesus come to bring newness, forgiveness, acceptance, grace, peace, freedom, and unspeakable joy. He didn't come to just fix what was broken; He came to replace it with something NEW. He came to give us fresh, new wine - overflowing and good tasting wine, BUT we need to have a fresh wineskin to receive and collect it in order for it to expand into something sweeter and greater. Because of our Pharisee ways, we begin to feel threatened and fearful, and we nurse the hurts and wounds which could lead us into attack mode as well as pride and arrogance. Jesus told His disciples in Luke, to first take the log out of their own eye, that bad fruit comes from bad roots, that what a person expresses comes from the treasure in his heart, and how then can we call Him, "Lord, Lord" and do not do what He asks. He is calling us to dig deep and to lay our foundations upon Him, the Rock of our salvation, for us to be transformed and made anew.

Wineskins were actually the skins of sheep and goats sewn together. The skins were filled and fermentation would take place and cause the new skins to expand. Old skins would not work, since they were already used, stretched out, and no longer elastic. If the new wine was put into the old wineskins, it would rupture them due to the expanding carbon dioxide, thus the wine would run out and be lost, making a mess, and ruining the wineskins. As we know, carbon dioxide is colorless, odorless, incombustible gas that can actually cause death by suffocation IF inhaled in large amounts.

Christ's work is complete, BUT God is still at work in our lives. Our sins are washed away, we are redeemed, and we are bought back and justified in Him. Salvation means wholeness or healing - it is the ongoing process of healing that began when we received Jesus. "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasures" (Phil. 2:12). He has given us all that we need in Him, but if we do not allow the Father to continually dig deep into painful areas or fears, we can, over time, become harmful to ourselves and those around us causing defilement through our bitter roots and keeping us from truly knowing the love of the Father.  Our judgments will often give rise to determinations of the mind and heart which will harden and shut out the voice of God and His truth. We are called to lay aside and put off the practices of our old nature.

We can't have newness in life with limited, hardened, or restricted attitudes and judgments.  Hurt people hurt people. We need to make room for the new wineskins, a fresh heart, mind, and spirit because healed people heal people.  A healed and transformed heart brings change, maturity, sensitivity and love. Change is necessary for our growth in Him. What used to work doesn't work now, and what was good for yesterday is not good for the new season. Newness is always coming from God - a life that grows from glory to glory, faith to faith, blessing to blessing, strength to strength.

In Luke 5 from beginning to end we see what Jesus had in mind - new wineskins that are filled with anticipation and faith for the future. Jesus came to radically shift, disrupt, and break the mind set of the religious. He announced to a paralyzed man that his sins were forgiven; He invited Mathew, a corrupt tax collector, to be His disciple and to follow Him. He reclined at the table with tax collectors and sinners and was called out, along with the disciples, for not fasting as the pious, religious people did as a ritual practice. His virtue came to touch and heal the unclean woman who bled for 12 years. He raised a ruler's dead little girl and proceeded to heal two blind men according to their faith and trust upon Him. Jesus drove out a demon and a man who had been mute spoke.  NOTHING like this had ever been seen in Israel and yet the religious Pharisees said, "It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons." Critics and skeptics, fearful, faultfinding, and censuring came, and they could not believe to receive the NEW wine of the NEW covenant that would lead to the NEW life and NEW nature in which Jesus was walking full of  God's favor, grace, and mercy.

This is the hour and the day to behold the new wine of the new covenant and to receive abundant life on this side of eternity. May we be flexible, teachable, accountable and adaptable in the power of His Spirit and  continue to receive the new outpouring of new things.