New Wine

“No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” Matthew 9:16-17

My mom liked the challenge of recycling old clothes. She used to buy from the ukay ukay. Then she would take the used dress apart and make a dress in a new design, but like the verse says, she did not mix old cloth with new. 

Same with putting new wine into old wineskins. In Jesus’ time, wine was put into goat, or ox leather skins. They still use this in Spain and in the East. New wine had to be put into new wine skins, as it would swell with fermentation and burst the wine skins if it was old and stretched already. Like all Jesus' teachings, He meant many things. How about the new wine being the gift of the Holy Spirit to us? If our hearts are like the old wine skins, hard, inflexible, judgmental, the Holy Spirit can't live in us! 

I believe God's Word is always new, ever fresh, eternally alive and exciting. However it does not always appear that way, does it? That is because it is put into OLD WINESKINS! We can't do the same old, same old. I believe that we all need to find fresh new ways of understanding, listening, obeying, teaching, loving. That is the only way we will grow in His Spirit.