Enjoy Life, Enjoy God
OLD-NEW
April 20, 2011
I've learned that you have to be careful when you mix old and new together. Keep pouring leftover milk from one container into the new milk, and sooner or later the whole batch will be spoiled.
"And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, 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 TNIV
We don't use wineskins today. Putting freshly-smashed grape juice into an animal skin, and it ferments, turning into a wine of sorts, and releases gas/carbon-dioxide. But it makes the skins brittle, and not capable of storing the wine, and going through the pressure of the gas again. People understood that, and when Jesus spoke of OLD-NEW and wineskins, they got it!
Yet like those people, we struggle by forcing the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ to fit into the wineskins of our lives--our ways, our expectations, our needs and desires. Jesus says, it will not work. Perhaps this is a bit of what it means to die to self, and come alive to Jesus Christ! The old must die, and the new comes alive.
Joyfully,
Dale Patterson