Which wineskin are you gonna choose?

There was a young woman, who at the age of 18, decided that it was time for a change. It wasn’t just any old little change, it was life changing, brave and a bit scary. It meant living behind her family, her friends and everything she knew. It meant moving across the world to another country where she knew no-one to fulfil her lifelong dream.  Did she fulfil her dream? Yes she did. How do I know? Because this brave young woman was my nan. 

My nan at 18 years old decided to move to England to study to be a nurse. Not only did she become a nurse and have an over 40 year career, she also worked her way up to senior positions. As a black woman born in the 1930’s, she broke barriers with her academic achievements, which continued as a mature student. 

She embraced doing new things like going to Jerusalem. Looking back now as a Christian, I really wished that I went with her but sadly I wasn't interested at the time. Travelling with her to another country to talk and learn about Jesus didn’t appeal to me at all, which I know is very ironic now! 

My nan was very family oriented, so I like to believe that her legacy of three generations now living around the world, shows that embracing change as a teenager meant that she fulfilled her dream and so much more. She has inspired me to embrace change, in my life, when it comes along.

Wineskins

I recently re-read the parable of the wineskins and it got me thinking about change. Change in my own life because I’m going through a lot of changes at the moment, and just change generally. If you don’t know the parable of the wineskin. Jesus gives this analogy because John the Baptist’s disciples asked Jesus why Jesus’ disciples didn’t fast often like they and the Pharisees did. Jesus answers them by giving them three parables. The first one was about a wedding feast, the second about an old garment and the third, which I’ll focus on, was about the old and new wineskins.

Jesus said: “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the new wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins.  But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.” - Luke 5-37-39

It’s key to understand that the wineskin Jesus was talking about was made from animal skin, usually goat's skin. When the wineskin was new it is soft and stretchy. As it got older it became stiff and brittle. New wine was still fermenting, so when it was stored it expanded. Therefore if new wine was put into old wineskin, then when it expanded through fermentation, it made the brittle old skin split causing the wine to spill out and ruin. New wine needed new stretchy skin to allow room for it to expand. 

Jesus was basically saying that His new teaching of salvation through Him, i.e. new wine, cannot just be slotted into the old wineskins, which represents the old teaching of strict religious sacrifices of animals, and fasting on particular days. The “old wineskin” is too stiff to hold the old and the new covenants. Doing this will just cause Jesus’ new covenant to spoil. For the teachings of salvation, repentance, grace and love to develop, or you could say to expand in peoples’ hearts and spirit, then it needs to be in a totally new format i.e. a “new wineskin”. Jesus is saying to accept the gospel and be saved you need to have a totally different mindset. 

Embracing change

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” - 2 Corinthians 5:17

Through the wineskin parable, Jesus is highlighting the human nature of resisting change when it feels too uncomfortable, even if the change is good for us. Jesus is saying people prefer the old wine and think it’s fine. This is true, when it comes to fully accepting and surrendering to Christ I think that a lot of people can be hesitant. I’m not talking about declaring that you believe in Jesus after crying while listening to a Hillsong song for the first time or saying you believe because you go to church. No, that’s easy. What people find hard is to fully surrender to Christ which means giving up big parts of their old life, which aren’t compatible with the teaching of Jesus. It means saying no to things that they used to say yes to without skipping a beat. So no more getting drunk, no more sleeping around, no more sex outside of marriage, no more gossiping and lying about people, no more envy, no more behaving or saying things to people in an obviously sexual way and no more being arrogant. 

“And then he [Jesus] added, “It is what comes from inside that defiles you. For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you”” - Mark 7:20-23

Some people don’t want to make these changes because quite frankly they think it’s boring and they think their lives will become dull. They don’t want to fully give up their old life and old mindset, so they decide to try and stitch the parts of Jesus’ teachings, that they like, to their old sinful life. These are the parts of Jesus’ teachings people find easy like the Father forgiving their sins because they believe in Jesus and the teaching of Jesus loving them. However they deliberately choose to ignore the teachings of turning away from all sinful and immoral behaviour so the Father can forgive them.

Old vs new

“Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you. Then I will teach your ways to rebels, and they will return to you” - Psalm 51-10-13

Our old lives won’t connect with the new life we now have in Christ and this is something Christians far and wide have to accept, whether they like it or not. Trying to shrink the new evolving you into the old you, like the old wineskin, will cause tears in life. These tears will let the new you spill out and ruin. The tears will let temptation come in, which will inevitability let sinful actions in. 

The pressure to try and straddle both lives, can literally build up pressure within you through the stress of trying to still be like the “old you” with your friends, family, colleagues, your boyfriend or girlfriend, and trying to be the new you in Christ. Like the old wineskin this could lead to you “bursting” under the pressure by letting it affect you mentally or by letting yourself give in to the temptation to sin.

The fence

There is a story where everyone who lived in the area had to decide which side of the fence they would live on. One side is the land was owned by the devil. The devil told them that if they chose to live on his land they could continue with their old lives and he’d give them EVERYTHING they wanted. The other side was the land that God the Father gave to Jesus to own. Jesus told them that if they lived on His land, all they had to do was follow His commandments, don’t sin and if they did slip up and sin, then to stop immediately. Then Jesus said that they were to repent, which means they were to pass a message to God the Father telling Him that they were sorry. They were also to tell God that they would try really hard not to do it again. Jesus said that He would pass their message on to God the Father for them.

Jesus also tells them if they decided that they wanted to be close to God by choosing to live on His land, then if they followed His rules, then God would give them what they ultimately wanted, which was to always be near God. God would do this by allowing them to be with God forever in heaven and the renewed earth. 

The devil explained to them that if they chose his side then because God is a just God, then God would have to give them what they wanted. So God wouldn’t force them to be around God forever when they didn’t want to be. The devil tells them that they would continue to have “fun” with the devil forever, away from God because God would give them what they asked for, to be separated from God.

The side of the land the devil had had all the temptations and normalised sins from their old lives. Jesus’ half of the land had peace, joy, righteousness and some new rules to follow to keep them safe.

So everyone picked a side of the fence, some picked the devil’s land and some picked Jesus’ land. However, there was one woman who couldn’t decide which side of the fence she wanted to be on. She thought “on the devil’s side I can live my old life and I can do what I want and he’ll give me everything I want”. Then she thought, “Jesus loves me and has always been there for me when I needed Him, and I really don’t want to spend forever with the devil; but God asks way too much from me, makes me feel bad when I refuse to do what He asks and He doesn’t give me everything I want like the devil has promised to”. 

The woman had a thought that could give her both her old easy life, everything she wanted AND God’s love, as well as spending eternity with God in heaven and the renewed earth. The woman decided she could have it all by literally sitting on the fence dividing both lands. So she did this. 

Happy with her clever decision, she sat on the fence thinking she could still enjoy aspects of the world that the devil offers, like lewdness, greed, being deceitful, being jealous, gossiping, lying about people, stealing, being arrogant, cheating, sleeping around and having sex when not married; without ever having to let go of Jesus’ love for her. She was going to have the best of both worlds. 

As she sat on the fence pleased with herself, the sky suddenly turned very dark and the devil appeared and said to the woman “Thanks for choosing me”. The woman said “I didn't choose you. I stayed neutral on the fence”. The devil got even closer to the woman and whispered in her in ear “I own the fence” and grabbed her”. 

When it comes to our Christian faith, we need to totally embrace the change that comes with finding the Lord. We need to embrace the new life that has been given to us and let go of the old life God rescued us from. You can still have lots of fun and excitement in your new life with Christ, I know certainly do, it’s just a different type of fun.

Sitting on the fence is what we call being lukewarm in faith. Not like hot water, like the people on fire for their faith who have decided to fully surrender to the Lord, and not like cold water, like the people who have no faith. Lukewarm Christians try to balance both temperatures. The problem with this is that unlike hot water, which kills bacteria and cold water which slows down bacteria, lukewarm water is the perfect breeding ground for bacteria to grow fast.

When people are lukewarm, Jesus said that He will spit you out (Revelation 3:16) and reject you. If Jesus rejects you for being lukewarm, then the devil has you because like the story says he owns the fence. So the moral of the story is don’t be the woman on the fence…

“So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth” - Revelation 3:16