Last night we ended without going into this scripture:
Luke 5:33And they said to him, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.” 34And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? 35The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” 36He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. 37And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. 38But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. 39And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”
Jesus' message was new: salvation for the world by means of grace, and so was his method: salvation for the worst of people who are far away from God.
The pharisees could not get past this. They were looking to the law to save them. Their whole identity was wrapped up in working hard to please God. It didn't make sense to them that the holiest man to ever walk the earth, God of very God in fact, would be seeking out and eating with the worst of sinners.
So what is Jesus saying here?
If you take an old shirt with a hole in it and put a piece of an new shirt and then wash it the new will shrink and tear the old. Your'e left with two shanked shirts.
If you take new wine and put it into old wineskins then the new wine will expand and burst the old skin. Your'e left with a busted skin and no wine.
The new message of Christ cannot be contained in the old method of the law. Grace cannot be mixed with following rules, being better or trying harder. It cannot be about both being better, reading this or that or praying more and at the same time be about trusting in Jesus to be the one who stands before God on your behalf.
We have to choose.
Rest completely on the finished work of Jesus, looking to him to be anything good in you, bending that same grace out to the people who fail around you OR work harder to be better. Read more, fast more, try more and hold everyone around you to that same standard and grow hard and bitter like the pharisees did.
Jesus ends in verse 39 by saying that the "old is good," because its not that the law is bad; we are. The law was good and would have brought us to God if we could in all ways fulfill it. But we can't.
So, I urge you to rest completely on the grace of God, and realize that as Jesus sought Levi, He is actively pursuing you. And as Levi responded by inviting the people closest to him to be around Jesus, so ought we.
- ty
We have to choose.
Rest completely on the finished work of Jesus, looking to him to be anything good in you, bending that same grace out to the people who fail around you OR work harder to be better. Read more, fast more, try more and hold everyone around you to that same standard and grow hard and bitter like the pharisees did.
Jesus ends in verse 39 by saying that the "old is good," because its not that the law is bad; we are. The law was good and would have brought us to God if we could in all ways fulfill it. But we can't.
So, I urge you to rest completely on the grace of God, and realize that as Jesus sought Levi, He is actively pursuing you. And as Levi responded by inviting the people closest to him to be around Jesus, so ought we.
- ty
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