In his sermon, Robert Bosley explores the parable of the wineskins found in Luke 5, positioning it within the context of three parables Jesus used to explain the transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. He emphasizes that Jesus' teachings reveal a shift in religious practices and beliefs, questioning why his disciples did not adhere to traditional Pharisaic customs such as fasting. Bosley explains that the Old Covenant, with its rituals and sacrifices, was incomplete and could not simply be patched with elements of the New Covenant. The parable of the wineskins illustrates that new, transformative teachings of Jesus required a new framework, as the old practices could not contain the new truths. Bosley underscores that while the Old Covenant had its role, the New Covenant, brought by Jesus, is more glorious and internal, transforming believers' lives. He warns against reverting to old traditions or self-righteousness, encouraging believers to embrace the full grace and transformation offered by Christ.

Well, good afternoon. If Luke the Gospel according to St. Luke chapter 5. This afternoon again we're continuing the study through the parables that our Lord taught during His earthly ministry. And today we're coming to another section.

We're finished with the main parable chapter, so to speak, of Matthew 13. We've moved on from that, so we're going to begin looking at the parables in other parts of other gospels. And we're going to look here in Luke chapter 5. There's really a series of three parables that we're going to look at here. The focus is going to be on the last one, the parable of the wineskins.

This will be our main focus, but preceding that parable, Jesus gives two other short parables. First, the parable of fasting at the wedding and the parable of the new cloth on an old garment. So Luke chapter 5 beginning in verse 33, then they said to him, why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers and likewise those of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink." And he said to them, can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them. Then they will fast in those days." And he spoke a parable to them.

No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one. Otherwise the new makes a tear and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new, for he says the old is better let's pray our father we come before you again and we thank you for your word.

We thank you God that you have seen fit to speak to us and to communicate your will to us and Lord we have this great privilege to read and to study these words and these are even the very words that your son spoke while on the earth. And God, as we look at this passage and we seek to understand it, I pray, Lord, that you would open hearts and minds to receive instruction from your word. Lord help us to believe the things that you have said to us and Lord help me to speak as I ought to speak and in all of it may you be glorified in Jesus name Amen. So this parable response that Jesus gives is in response to him being questioned about why his disciples are not doing the same things that the followers of the Pharisees or even the followers of John the Baptist, their disciples do things differently than Jesus' followers. And our Lord is questioned about that.

Why are your religious habits so different from the followers of other leaders? And so that's really what these three parables are getting at. Why Are Jesus' disciples different? What are, excuse me, how are followers of Jesus supposed to live in light of what he has done? If we want to look at this from particularly our perspective, looking back at the change between the old covenant and the new, the question is how do God's people live now after the incarnation, after the kingdom of God has come through the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

How do God's people live now compared to before he came? And so they question him about why his disciples live and act differently. Now we know that the Lord perfectly obeyed the law of God. Not once did he break the commandments of his father. And so when they questioned him, why do you or disciples not, why do they eat and drink?

Why don't they fast and why don't they pray? They're not talking in absolute categories. Obviously Jesus and his disciples prayed. Obviously they fasted. There were required times of fasting and prayer.

And Jesus as the perfect God-man, the one who, the only one who perfectly did the will of his father, we know he kept those commanded times of prayer and fasting. What they're asking him is, why don't you keep the traditional fasts and the traditional prayer times. By this point in history you have the the standard and the requirements of the law of God but over time you had much added many added requirements by the religious leaders. They would often do additional fasts. The Pharisees would fast two or three times a week and they laid that burden on the people.

God never required it, But the Pharisees wanted the people to do it. The Pharisees, as we know, Jesus rebuked them for their long prayers in public so they could be seen by men. They held up this standard of what prayer was to be and the times of prayer, and they expected all of God's people to do what they thought they should do rather than being satisfied with what God had commanded. And so that's the question, why don't you follow the traditions? That's really the question.

Why don't you follow the traditions that we follow regarding prayer and fasts and other obligation? There's no indication that Jesus ever required his followers to keep these extra biblical commands. And in fact, he went out of his way to prod and to press against the Pharisees regarding these extra biblical commands. So now Jesus' response is interesting. He doesn't say that those fasts and prayers were necessarily illegitimate.

He doesn't say that you should never engage in those things. In other places, when a requirement was placed on the people by the Pharisees that was illegitimate, Jesus would push back against it, the Korban rule, for instance. But here he never says that additional prayers and fasts beyond what the law of God required, he does not say that they were inappropriate. But he doesn't force the people to keep them. The problem with the Pharisees wasn't that they had set times of prayer and fasts beyond what God had commanded.

The problem was that they laid that obligation on all people as what they needed to do to please God. That was the problem. So Jesus' response, he doesn't then turn to attack prayer and fasting, but rather he gets to the underlying premise of the question. What is really the foundation of the debate? Why should we engage in these additional fasts?

How should my followers live now that I've come? That's what Jesus gets at when he responds with these parables. So first, the parable of fasting at the wedding. Jesus says, can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them.

Then they will fast in those days. The parallel passage in Matthew nine is phrased slightly differently and a little bit more vividly. Matthew recounts it as how can the guests of the bridegroom, excuse me, the bridegroom mourn while he is with them. He's explicitly tying the concept of fasting with mourning, which we see in other places. You're often mourning because of calamity or mourning over your own sin.

But he presents them a very simple and direct question. Is it appropriate for the friends or the guests of the groom to fast when it's time for the wedding? That's really the question. Is the wedding feast a time to fast? The answer is obviously no.

It's not a time for mourning. It's not a time for withdrawal and withholding these things from yourself. A wedding is a time of feasting and celebration and joy and enjoying the gifts that God has given his people. Christ is the groom. He is the husband of his people.

And this explicitly ties him to Yahweh in the Old Covenant. What does God say about himself? Isaiah 54, 5, For your Maker is your husband, the Lord Yahweh of hosts is his name, and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. He is the God of the whole earth. And Jeremiah 31-32 describes the covenant breaking people of Israel when he says, my covenant which they broke though I was a husband to them, says the Lord.

So when the Lord Jesus presents himself as the groom to the people of God, he is explicitly tying himself to the God of the Old Testament. He is God among us. He is God with us, which is very key to understanding what has happened though That the husband has come the groom has come to his wedding feast the incarnation of the long-awaited Messiah Emmanuel God with us has come It is not a time to mourn and a time to fast. It is a time to celebrate, a time to feast, to enjoy God's gifts because God has come. It would be totally inappropriate to do otherwise.

Yes they kept the the required fasts of the law because Jesus always obeyed his father but it was not a time for other fasts to be added because the the groom was with them. The Savior had come. But this time was going to be short-lived. A time was coming when the groom would no longer be present. And this is not just referring to his death and the days while he was in the tomb.

This is applied to the entire time until his return and we see him face to face. At this time now, while the groom is gone from us, yes God is still with us by his spirit, but we are not physically with our bridegroom. It is appropriate for there to be times of special fasts and special prayers, the times of mourning. We see that throughout the New Testament. The times of fasting did not go away with the Incarnation, but there was a unique time during the ministry of our Lord as he was bringing his kingdom in where where it was not appropriate for the disciples to do the same things that the other disciples of John or the Pharisees were doing.

So he's pointing them to the fact that the husband has come, the husband of God's people, the groom himself, God with us has come and things are now going to be different. And that's explained further in the next two parables. Secondly, he goes on to the parable of the new cloth on the old garment. Verse 36, he spoke a parable to them, no one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one, otherwise the new makes a tear and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old. This question really answers the...or sorry, this parable really answers the question of how should the followers of Jesus, how should the followers of God live now that they are on the other side of the birth of their Messiah?

Something new has come, Something new has been done in the world. How can we, how should we live? Do we live now as if the Messiah has not come? No, obviously the Christ has come. Those who have long awaited and long expected their King to come now need to live in light of the fact that he's finally here.

The new and the old don't mix. There is a change. And he uses this picture of a patching a piece of cloth onto a garment that's had been damaged. A patch made from new cloth, new cloth, fresh off the loom, unwashed, unshrunk. It's freshly woven cloth.

If you sew that onto a garment that's been torn of a shirt or a pair of pants Or what have you that has a hole in it if you sew? Unstretched or sorry unshrunk cloth onto that hole the first time it is washed that patch will shrink and it will create more damage to what you tried to repair. That's what he's trying to get at here when he says that the new makes a tear. It will pull away, the stitching will pull away and cause further damage. It makes the tear even worse.

And what is the point that our Lord is trying to get out here. Jesus is communicating that the forms and the figures and the rituals and the shadows, the types of the old covenant are weak and incomplete. They were glorious on one hand and given by God and expected for God's people to do, but they were incomplete and they cannot be patched and improved simply by tacking on some element of the New Covenant. You cannot hold onto the Old Covenant and make it complete and perfect just by tacking Jesus onto it. Something new has come.

The Old and New Covenant do not mix together. As the book of Acts goes on to explain and Paul's letters, particularly the book of Hebrews, the new covenant is not simply the old with Jesus added on. The new covenant is a better covenant. It is an improvement over the old. Well, Jeremiah 31, my covenant which they broke, he goes on to say, I will, or before that, I will make a new covenant with them, not like the old covenant that they broke, though I was a husband to them.

To try and patch up the ineffectiveness of the old covenant just by adding Jesus to it actually makes it worse Because you're now trying to mix the types with the substance. And so you're denying both what the type pointed to and the effectiveness of the reality. You're saying it's not effective. You have to mix them together for it to actually take effect and Jesus saying no you cannot do that and in fact that was really you read through your New Testament that's the great heresy that the church begins to deal with from the beginning the Judaizers who said yes we believe in Jesus you must believe in Jesus You also must be circumcised and obey all the laws of Moses. Jesus, before the Judaizing heresy even gets off the ground, is saying, no, you do not mix the forms and outward expressions of the Old Covenant with the reality of the new.

They do not go together. This time of feasting, this time of the wedding was also a time of transition. The shadows of the old was passing away and it was giving way to the substance and reality of the new covenant. And he goes on to elaborate that more in the third parable, the parable of the wineskins. Verse 37, and no one puts new wine into old wineskins or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled and the wineskins will be ruined.

But new wine must be put into new wine skins and both are preserved. And no one having drunk old wine immediately desires new, for he says the old is better." Just as with the cloth, the wine and the wine skins are a picture of how the outward expression of worship, the rituals and the forms of the old covenant could not endure the coming of Jesus. They could not be preserved into the new covenant. The wine skins, or if you have the King James version, it says bottles, but the wine skins, these are containers made of the skins of animals. And new wine, wine that has just begun the fermentation process, it's not at its full strength yet.

As it ferments, it releases different gases, which cause pressure. So you would take new wine that's just begun the fermentation process and put it into a new skin that's been freshly made so that the leather is still pliable and it can expand with the wine and with as it ferments with the gases that are released in the fermentation process. The new skin is pliable, it's elastic, and it would allow the wine to continue to to go through the fermentation process and so the the bottle would the the wine skin would conform to what size it needed to be to contain this new wine. That's why you couldn't put new wine in an old wineskin. An old wineskin, the leather has already taken its its shape and it might have even become brittle or hard and it's not it's no longer elastic and so it couldn't contain the pressure of new wine.

You put new wine into an old wineskin it will it will rupture it will break and the wine will be lost and the wine skin destroyed. New wine had to be put in a fresh new skin. And so again the point is the new covenant is different and you cannot mix the two. The old cannot contain the new. The greater, more glorious, more beautiful realities, the greater substance of the new covenant, it's beyond what the old covenant could possibly endure.

It could not contain it. You could no longer have the final sacrifice of the Lord Jesus and his totally sufficient atonement maintained in the rituals of the Old Covenant. His work exploded the whole system And so you cannot mix the two. As the Jameson, Fouset, and Brown commentary says on these parables, they are intended to illustrate the difference between the genius of the old and new economies and the danger of mixing up one with the other. As in the one case, suppose the rent is made worse and in the other the new wine is spilled.

So by a mongrel mixture of the ascetic ritualism of the old covenant with the spiritual freedom of the new economy, both are disfigured and destroyed. You have this system of elaborate ritual and sacrifice of the old covenant. And it was good and appropriate for that time. God instituted it. But it had to give way.

Its purpose was not to last forever. It was a teacher to lead God's people to Christ. And so you cannot mix the two. And so if this is the case that the wine of the new covenant cannot fit into the old covenant forms, then how could the followers of Jesus possibly live as if the old covenant was still the primary motivating force in their life? The rituals and the system had to give way.

Christians could not live as if Jesus had not yet come. We cannot live as if our Messiah has not come. We ought to love the Old Testament. We ought to love the Old Covenant scriptures and go to them for instruction in how we ought to live, how society ought to exist, even how governments ought to behave, I believe. But not everything endures.

We cannot read the Old covenant as if Jesus has not come. We understand the Old Testament through the lens of Christ and what he has done on our behalf. We worship now not in the old way of the letter but in the new way of the Spirit and in truth the new covenant practices we have our rituals it's not that we've done away with rituals we have the ritual of baptism the ritual of the Lord's Supper these are rituals So it's not as if the New Covenant is without ritual, but it's better. It's new. It's greater.

It's beyond what the Old Covenant had. Now that's not to say that there's no continuity, no connection between the old and the new. There is much that has been brought over. There is much that endures, but not everything endures. It would be blasphemy now for someone to sacrifice an animal for atonement because Christ has died for your sins.

But the law of God, we turn to the Ten Commandments and we say that's still the standard. That is God's moral law. This is the duty laid on all people everywhere for all time. So I'm not saying this is necessarily easy to understand what carries over where the level of continuity is. And Jesus' intention here isn't to lay out a systematic of the continuity of the covenants.

But the point is what has come with Christ and bringing his kingdom into the world, that has changed how God's people live and how they worship. It can no longer be contained in the Old Testament forms, the Old Covenant forms. Even things that have been brought over have changed in their external appearance. We keep the Passover. That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians.

But how do we keep the Passover? We keep the Passover by worshiping Christ and putting away the leaven of malice and wickedness out of our hearts. By that we keep the Passover. We still have a high priest. Christ is our high priest.

And he ever lives to make intercession for his people. So the priesthood continues but it's changed. We still have a temple. The people of God gathered together. That's the temple in the new covenant.

So things have continued, endured, but they have changed. Then he ends with this phrase, no one having drunk old wine immediately desires new, for he says the old is better. Jesus' most fierce opposition came from those who are most dedicated to the old system. They were convinced the old was better. They didn't want the new.

They were content to have it the way it had been, even when a greater reality, more substance was given to them. They were content to hold on to what was ineffective and weak because they didn't want Christ to rule over them. So what do we do with this? First, we must see the greater beauty and glory of the new covenant. We must see that it is, as the writer of the Hebrew says, it's a better covenant.

There are often people that get, I've seen people make comments about, is this really all Christianity is? I believe in Jesus and I go to church and That's it. The Old Testament, there were the rituals, there's the temple, there's the ark, there's all these things. And this is all that Christianity is? We believe in Jesus and our sins are forgiven and that's basically it?

Yeah. That's part of the glory of the new covenant. It's more glorious. It's not as external because it has now been made internal by the work of the Spirit in every covenant member. Mankind gets off track when he tries to make it external.

Go to the Roman Catholic Church or to the Eastern Orthodox or even sadly some sects of Protestantism and everything has become external. Everything is on the outside. We have a new temple with all the show and the glitter and the gold and the incense and all these showy things. But so often they lack the reality because they've gone in a sense, they've gone back to the Old Testament forms and have rejected Christ. They've gone back to the shadow and turned away from substance.

So we have to see that this greater beauty and glory of the New Covenant is partly in its simplicity. A greater glory has come than that of the Old Testament and the Old Covenant. The glory of the Old Covenant with its sacrifices, its temples, its priests, the feasts, all of that was good, but a greater glory has come with Christ as our sacrifice, the church as the temple, and Jesus himself being our great high priest and each member of the covenant being a priest to God. It's better. It's more glorious now.

Instead of the blood of countless animal sacrifices, you have the once and for all sacrifice of God's own Son. So if we have this greater and more beautiful and more glorious covenant that the old cannot possibly contain, we have the fulfillment. How can we ever go back to the old ways? And I think you could go back to the old wine in a few different ways. Obviously there's the immediate application of going back to some form of Judaized form of Christianity like the Apostles struggled against in the very beginning of the church.

I doubt that many of us are struggling with that here. It's happened. I think we probably, many of us probably know people who have said no you have to keep the Old Testament feast, you have to do these things if you're really going to be a Christian. So we do resist that, we do not go back to the Old Covenant. But are you trying to mix your own works with Jesus?

Are you trying to patch him onto the old garment of your self-righteousness? Because really that's what the Pharisees were guilty of. By adding so much to God's law and demanding the other people follow it, they were trusting in their own righteousness to earn their standing before God. And that's a temptation all of us can fall into. We examine ourselves and we are like the publican, or sorry, like the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican.

I do all these things. Thank you Lord that I do all this, I'm not like that. Is there the beginning of that springing up in your heart? Of a self-righteousness that you've just merely tacked Jesus onto. Your works cannot save you.

Your good works, however modestly you dress, however good you are to your wife, how well you treat your brothers and sisters, how well you attend the meetings of the church, how honest you are in your business dealings, none of that saves you. None of that earns God's favor. It is only Christ who can save you. It is only through Christ and what he has done that you have any right standing before God. So are you trusting in your own self-righteousness and trying to cover it with a patch, saying that you also are trusting in Jesus.

Do not turn back to the old ways. Do not turn back to your own works, your own self-righteousness. Do not turn to these things that cannot save you. Go and turn and enjoy the new. Enjoy the new garment of Christ's righteousness given to you through faith.

Enjoy the new wine of His blood shed for you on the cross. Only this can satisfy your soul. Nothing else. What are you trusting in? How are you living?

Your King has come and he's called you to follow him and trust in him alone will save you on that final day. Let's pray. Oh Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you for these parables and what they teach us. God help us to never turn back.

God may we always live with our eyes fixed on your Son. May we delight in Him and Him alone. May we never be tempted to go back to either the old ways of the old covenant or to the old ways of our own self-righteousness. My God, may we live in the new way, the new way of trusting in your Son and his full satisfaction on our behalf. God, may you grant us the faith that says we will follow him.

We will leave it all behind and follow him because he and his kingdom are worth abandoning everything for because he alone can save. God may you grant that someone even here today would hear this and they would turn from their old ways, that they would follow your son, that they would love him and seek to follow him and trust him as their Savior and as their King. Be with us the rest of this Lord's day and the rest of this week and help us Lord to be those who live in the newness of the spirit and enjoy the greater glory that you have brought with the kingdom of your son. In his name we pray. Amen.