“And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins” (Mark 2:22).
Wineskins have one purpose—to carry wine. Otherwise they are useless. The value is in the wine. The wine is whatever God has given us to carry. Our message about Jesus is what God has given us to share with the world. How we convey that message may change but the message never changes. As the writer of Hebrews said, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”
The people of Jesus’ day experienced the results of three renewals that changed their lives. The Pharisees had begun as a renewal that began in 175 BC to preserve the faith of God’s people during the dark spiritual period after their return from exile.
John the Baptist had come to call the people back to repentance as he prepared the way for Jesus’ ministry. Finally, Jesus had come to bring salvation to all of us but He was resisted by the set-in-concrete religionists of His day. Change came with the same message of salvation that had been promised in Genesis, but the old wineskins couldn’t contain it.
We are to never lose sight of the importance of the wine. We tend to preserve wineskins and lose the wine. We are to never allow the freshness of the gospel to be lost in our attempt to resist the changes God wants to make. The wine is not only our message but it is the continuing presence of God that empowers all we do.
