We often don’t like change.  Sometimes our old comfortable ways fight to stay alive.  I’m a creature of habit.  On a regular basis I will choose the same option I’ve chosen for the last many years.  The problem that we have with that is that this old world and time are moving forward.  In today’s text we see Jesus explaining that the New has come and the old must be done with. Let’s take a look.

Mark 2:21-22 CSB
[21] No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new patch pulls away from the old cloth, and a worse tear is made. [22] And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the skins. No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins.”

Jesus is responding to the question of why His disciples weren’t fasting like others.  He does so by telling two parables.  The first he contrasts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.  The new cloth sewn on as a patch as soon as it gets wet would shrink and make the hole worse.  If all you have is a new cloth then it’s time for a new garment.  Jesus came to make things new not to add to the old. 

The second parable is about new wine.  Wine that is still being made.  Skins were used as containers.  New skins were strong and elastic which allowed the skin to stretch as the wine fermented.  An old skin wouldn’t have the same ability to accommodate fermentation because it had become brittle.  New wine in an old skin would be lost to the bursting of the skin as it failed to expand and stretch.  Jesus is saying that a new way has come and the old must be discarded.

With Jesus’ arrival, ministry, death on the cross, and His Glorious resurrection.   Judaism and the old covenant are fulfilled by Jesus.  They cannot be integrated together.  The New has come.  The old is done and must be replaced.

John 14:6 CSB
[6] Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Everything has changed and we have to change too.

The question isn’t why the disciples didn’t fast…

It’s, why isn’t everyone else celebrating the New?  Celebrating Jesus the Messiah!

Celebrate Jesus today.  Do away with the old and embrace the New.

Love in Christ,

Colby