New Wine

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.:"No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.”

Jesus loved to eat. So did his disciples. They seemed to be eating all the time, even on days when people traditionally fasted. This confused the people who observed them. “The disciples of the Pharisees fast,” they said to Jesus. “So do John the Baptist’s disciples. How come your disciples don’t?” Fasting was required twice weekly and generally considered to be an indication of holiness. Therefore, the implication was that Jesus’ disciples were not very holy. Consequently, Jesus was not very holy. But the question is: why weren’t the disciples observing the fast? 

Because Scripture didn’t demand it! The law of Moses specifically required fasting for only one occasion—the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29-30; Numbers 29:7). However, the Pharisees decided to make fasting a practice required twice a week. And eventually, the practice became steeped in tradition. Tradition is not a bad thing — it helps us apply God’s laws to our lives in fruitful ways — but it becomes bad when it contradicts Scripture. If we are not careful, we might be guilty of making the same mistake.

Anyway, in typical fashion, Jesus tells them that nobody fasts when it is time to celebrate; his disciples would fast when the time was right. But he wasn’t trying to make a point about fasting; it was about something more important. To illustrate this, Jesus told two parables. In the first, he said that you don’t sew new unshrunk cloth on an old cloak because the patch would shrink and cause an even greater tear. These days with synthetics, cloth shrinking isn’t a problem, but cloth shrunk when washed in those days. And in the second parable, he said you don’t put new wine into old wineskins because as the wine fermented, gasses built up. This build-up of gasses would stretch the wineskin, making them burst. 

What was the point? The point is that there was an old way of doing things, which were the practices of Judaism itself. And there was a new way, which Jesus was bringing in himself. You cannot mix the two without terrible consequences. You cannot mix a legalistic system based on self-righteousness with a gospel of grace where salvation is obtained through unmerited favor. Therefore, when we read the word of God, especially the gospels, let us reflect on them in the context of the new covenant, not the old. 

And, by the way, fasting is a good thing. But don’t do it to gain brownie points in heaven.