New Wine and Old Stories?

Nathan Stam
Children/Communications Pastor

I have a few friends who don't like or who won't read fiction. They think it's a waste of time. They spend their time reading real life current events/theology/biographies/etc. I don't get it. I'd rather read a good story than non-fiction any day of the week. Give me Frodo or Theseus or Henry York!

I think it's cool that Jesus taught using stories. In fact, He used the short story to great effect! So they must be useful, right, if Jesus used them? They're called parables and we've been looking at some of them in Living By The Book these past few weeks. John Mark records the purpose of parables in his gospel: "The secret of the Kingdom of God has been granted to you, but to those outside, everything comes in parables so that they may look and look, yet not perceive; they may listen and listen, yet not understand; otherwise, they might turn back--and be forgiven."

Stories are memorable, bold and rich in meaning.

There's one parable that's always been curious to me. It's found in Mark 2:19-22 where Jesus is addressing John's disciples and the Pharisees:

Jesus said to them, "The wedding guests cannot fast while the groom is with them, can they? As long as they have the groom with them, they cannot fast. But the time will come when the groom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. 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. 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. But new wine is for fresh wineskins."

It's appropriate that we're reading through Hebrews in Going Deeper because it has a lot of relevance to this particular story. The basic point is that Christianity has replaced Judaism. The New Wine is Grace or the New Covenant and the Old Wineskin is the Old Covenant, or the Law. The Old Covenant has been replaced. It's shadows and types have been fully realized in Jesus--the New Covenant.

The author of Hebrews puts it like this: But Jesus has now obtained a superior ministry, and to that degree He is the mediator of a better covenant, which has been legally enacted on better promises...By saying, a new covenant, He has declared that the first is old. And what is old and aging is about to disappear. 


So, keep your new wine in those fresh wineskins and keep the stories coming! I need something good to read this summer!