“After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And leaving everything, he rose and followed him. And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ And Jesus answered them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.’ And they said to him, ‘The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.’ He also told them a parable: ‘No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, “The old is good.”’”

People so often look at Scripture through a single lens. To some it’s a historical text, describing people and events throughout time and tracing the path of God’s work throughout the existence of creation. For others it’s regarded as a mystical text, deeply layered and symbolic, pointing to and sometimes revealing mysteries that hide behind the veil of our mortal world. We do the Bible a disservice when we imagine it to only be one or the other, as the living, breathing Word of God is both of these things and more. It is extremely literal, deeply symbolic, richly poetic, and wonderfully spiritual, many passages being all these things at the same time. One of the ways in which I’ve come to greatly appreciate Scripture is as a psychological text. In this way I feel that many of its elements overlap beautifully as it allows us to see the very real condition of man in a physical, spiritual, and symbolic sense, and in this appreciate the great depth of just how profoundly broken we are. It’s commonly said, often with cynicism and contempt, that people never change. From a human perspective this can sound like an observation of despair, a declaration of bitterness, or a cold, calloused statement regarding the human condition. From a Biblical standpoint however, the idea that people never change isn’t just a petulant complaint or nihilistic talking point, it’s a thoroughly illustrated and observable fact. From the moment of the fall, we have been sinners, and humanity will remain in the grip of sin until the world itself ends. The Old Testament displays this vividly as the people’s rebellion against God operates in this repetitive cyclical fashion, always striving in their unrighteousness against the One who is holy. The truth of our unchanging, broken condition stuck me from a new angle last week as I taught a lesson centered around divorce and marriage from Matthew 5:31–32. The Jewish teachers had taken the Law that God had given them and twisted its interpretation to suit their own ends. By their instruction the idea that a man could divorce his wife because of “some indecency,” as Moses said in Deuteronomy 24, wasn’t limited to something like adultery violating the covenant of marriage. Depending on which influential rabbi you listened to, “some indecency” could be a matter of uncovered or disheveled hair, a burnt meal, or a husband simply finding another woman that he found prettier than his wife. In short, God gave the covenant of marriage, and rather than cherish and delight in this gift, people sought to manipulate what God had given to suit their own sinful, selfish desires – in the hearts and minds of men, the very definition of marriage was a malleable thing… That was 2,000 years ago, and yet we’re doing the same thing today. Marriage stands as one example, but the application of this idea, of seeing mankind’s stagnation in our sin is essentially endless. Whatever God has given – love, truth, mercy, justice, freedom, life – we try to break, to redefine, to mangle after our own designs. The reality of the human condition, and what is painstakingly displayed throughout Scripture is that people do not change. From the garden where we first conceived the idea that we knew better than God, to the final battle where the armies of the world ally themselves with Satan in a final act of rebellion against God, people do not change. But while this is deeply displayed throughout Scripture, the condition of man is not at all what the overarching story of the Bible is about. The living, breathing Word is not about us, it’s about God, and in this we see our hope. Humanity may not change, however, there are two words that we may look to from the very depths of our hopelessness and find hope – not just for today, but for eternity. Despite our brokenness, our filthy, sin-stained condition, and the impossibility for us to redeem ourselves, Ephesians 2:4 begins by saying,

“But God…”

It goes on to say in verses 4–7,

“… being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

The passage in its entirety beautifully encapsulates the wonderful hope we have in our redemption, but those first two words, “But God,” are the point upon which our eternity pivots from damnation to salvation. People never change – “But God.” God never changes in a much greater way than wicked humanity – constant and eternal in His perfection, He brings forth change, transformation, and new life in ways that sinful humanity can’t fathom. Moving through Luke’s gospel account, we saw in last week’s passage as Jesus cleansed a leper with a touch, and healed a man’s paralyzed body with a word, but we also saw His authority to forgive sins. As we look at today’s passage, we’re given further examples that show how deep the transforming power of Christ goes. Man may not be able to change himself, but God can most certainly change man, and in this we are made new and given an eternal hope and freedom from the condemnation of our sin.

Made New in Christ

1. A New Life

“After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.”

At the beginning of chapter 5 we saw as Jesus called the first disciples. Peter, Andrew (who Luke doesn’t directly mention, but we know was included from the other gospel accounts), James, and John were all fishermen who when called, left behind everything and followed Jesus. These men did not fit the image that people (certainly the religious elite) would have expected to be called as followers of the Messiah. They lacked a formal religious education, they were manual laborers, living in the northern, more Hellenistically influenced region of Galilee. They also had a profession that, to varying degrees, through licensing, taxation, and regulatory procedures, could have placed them within unfavorable proximity to the Roman government. But however disreputable a fisherman might be within the order of Jewish society, it was nothing compared to the low level of a tax collector. A fisherman’s business might lead them to be overly involved or manipulated by Roman officials, but a tax collector was directly employed by Rome. Seen as traitors among their own people, they worked as the individual tools that the empire used to excise their taxes from the people, and it seems that oftentimes, they were extortionists. While they may have been despised by many, there’s clear precedent that simply being a tax collector wasn’t in and of itself sinful, it was the extortion that posed the problem. As we’ve read previously concerning the ministry of John the Baptist, Luke 3:12–14 says,

“Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, ‘Teacher, what shall we do?’ And he said to them, ‘Collect no more than you are authorized to do.’ Soldiers also asked him, ‘And we, what shall we do?’ And he said to them, ‘Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.’”

We see another example, which we’ll address in more detail in the future, in Luke 19:1–2, 8–10,

“He entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich.” … “And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.’”

The situation with Zacchaeus is interesting, because it shows that being a tax collector (or in his case, a chief tax collector), could be lucrative for someone without them being manipulative of their fellow man or extorting money from people. It does however seem to be a profession that, much as with being a soldier, provided great opportunity for the temptation of greed, which it seems that many yielded to. This is why John the Baptist tells them, not to necessarily abandon their professions, but to carry out their work and, obedient to God, not sin. It is Matthew, called Levi in today’s passage, one of these men who is occupied in such a disreputable profession that we now see Jesus call to follow Him as a disciple. When Jesus called Peter and his fellow fisherman we were given a picture of what it looks like for Jesus to call us out of ordinary, sinful lives, to a greater, higher eternal purpose. The calling of Matthew takes the same principle and carries it even further. Matthew wasn’t just an unexpected candidate as a disciple of the Christ, he was actively in a profession where he was despised by his own people, viewed as the lowest of the low by the Jews. But his occupation and the contempt his own people held for him didn’t stop Jesus from offering him a new life. Again, comparing this to the calling of the fishermen, Matthew’s economic position would have been quite different from a man like Peter’s. While it’s not impossible to imagine that fishing could be lucrative, your income was entirely dependent on your catch – no fish meant no money, and this was all while contending with the heavy taxes and strict regulations of Rome. Being a tax collector meant that your income was dependent on taxes – something that everyone was required to pay by law. This isn’t to say that what Peter, Andrew, James, John, or any of the other disciples for that matter, left behind to follow Jesus was insignificant. For the fishermen this meant walking away from untold years dedicated to a trade, leaving equipment, supplies, and an income that could be considered at least somewhat reliable. It’s very difficult to realize just how much we identify with our professions until we leave that work behind. Then there’s a disciple like Simon the zealot, who, not considering any kind of professional pursuits, would have left behind a life of extremism, once belonging to a group of “dagger men” who were essentially Jewish terrorists in opposition to Rome. There were none of the twelve who were not called to an entirely new life in following Jesus, and while their paths may not have been smooth and their actions far from perfect, all but one, Judas Iscariot, whom Jesus calls the son of destruction, accepted this call. We don’t know the extensive background of each of the twelve, but it seems fair to say that it was likely Matthew who left behind the most financially lucrative life to follow Jesus. This is not to say that his sacrifice was necessarily the greatest – we have no way of knowing the exact ways that God worked with the heart of each man He called, or what it meant to leave behind their old lives and take up the new. However we know the trap, the infernal pit that men will fling themselves into out of their love for money, and so what we see Matthew do is extraordinary. All three synoptic gospels – Matthew, writing of his own calling, Mark, and here in Luke all record this the same way. We don’t see questions or qualifiers, we don’t see a conversation at all – Jesus calls and Matthew follows. He abandons his tax booth, walks away from his place of business and the location to which life as a tax collector is grafted, and leaves it all behind. Paul writes in Philippians 3:7–11,

“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

We are all called to follow Jesus, and for a variety of reasons, many do not. I say, “for a variety of reasons,” because there’s a long list, but it ultimately falls under one heading – the self-brought condemnation that Jesus speaks of to Nicodemus when He says in John 3:19,

“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”

People reject Christ, simply put, because they love the darkness of their old lives more than the Light of the new life that is offered in Him – in fact they love this darkness so much that they outright hate the light. Sometimes this is very obvious in what a person says – they boldly parade their sin, they lie and blaspheme, seeking to vilify God, and they proclaim open contempt for His righteousness. But there are many who make grudging, practical excuses as to why the new life is simply not for them. Be it their family, their job, their culture, or something like their habits and desires – things that maybe aren’t shouted of, but are cherished while discreetly practiced, form the thing that they can’t deny to follow Christ. This position, while tragically relatable for many, completely ignores the message and spirit of what Jesus teaches in Matthew 10:37–39, saying,

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

In today’s passage Jesus’ calling to a man who in the eyes of no one would have been “worthy” to follow the Christ gives us another illustration of God’s love, kindness, and power in His willingness and ability to redeem and use anyone. In Matthew’s response we’re given a picture that we should all model, as he faithfully and without reserve follows after Jesus and his new life in Him.

“And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ And Jesus answered them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.’”

In the aftermath of his calling, we see as Matthew hosts Jesus in his home with a feast. Unsurprisingly, Matthew the tax collector’s friends and associates were – more tax collectors, along with people who didn’t mind being in the company of tax collectors. Looking on at this party, we see the commentary of the scribes and Pharisees, grumbling to the disciples about Jesus associating with these sinners. Last week we saw as Jesus declared the sins of the paralytic man forgiven as the scribes and Pharisees questioned His authority, completely blind to His true power and identity. After Jesus heals the paralytic and he walks away with his bed, the passage closed by saying in Luke 5:26,

“And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen extraordinary things today.’”

This statement seems to include everyone, both the watching crowd and the religious teachers, however what we can see from today’s passage and their response as Jesus ministers to the lost is that there has been no change in their hearts or attitudes. They still do not understand the spirit of the work that was entrusted to them, they don’t understand Jesus or who He truly is, and they cherish their power and supposed moral authority, to the alienation of those they could have helped. The interesting thing is that the scribes and Pharisees are just as lost in their sin as the rest of humanity – many of them in far worse spiritual condition than any tax collector. But they are not lacking in their guidance and teaching of the Law, and they have no perception or acknowledgement of their own brokenness. They deny their own condition to the point of death and hold themselves deaf to the message that is so willingly received by the sinners and tax collectors that Jesus ministers to. This is a passage that people will sometimes use to inaccurately suggest that we should support people, or even come alongside and join them in their sin, but this completely misses the point of what Jesus is doing. He doesn’t dine with sinners and tax collectors to join them in their pursuits or to affirm them in their sin. He is there to preach repentance, to offer healing and salvation, to rescue from the old and deliver into the new. In Luke 4 as He taught in the synagogue in Nazareth Jesus quoted Isaiah 61:1,

“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound…”

You cannot heal a man who is well, free a man who is not enslaved, or raise a man who is alive – and in our broken condition these are the things that Jesus offers us – the healing and restoration of our souls, freedom from the shackles of sin, and the gift of new life from the dead flesh we inhabit.

Psalm 34:18 tells us,

“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

In John 8:34–36 Jesus teaches,

“… Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

And in Romans 6:3–6 Paul writes,

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.”

What Jesus brings us is not just an adjusted way of thinking or a self-help approach to how we live our lives – He brings transformation and renewal, and entirely new life to those who were once entirely dead and in desperate need of salvation. He is the Light to those living in darkness, the Truth to those who were consumed with lies, the Life to those who were prisoners in their condemnation, and eternal calling to those who were once cast out.

• 2. A New Celebration

“And they said to him, ‘The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.’”

We don’t necessarily need more evidence to understand the spiritual condition of the religious rulers, however that doesn’t stop them from providing it. They have no response to what Jesus has said concerning his work amongst the lost, they have no rebuttal and they offer no agreement. Instead they move on to another question, already showing a pattern that is consistently displayed later in Jesus’ ministry as they seem to pepper Him with questions – not out of any desire to understand, but seeking to catch Him in an incorrect or controversial answer. It’s interesting, because as they attempt to criticize Jesus’ disciples, they place their own disciples alongside those of John the Baptist, which is a strange comparison to say the least. Remember that John came preaching a message and offering a baptism of repentance, but the entire point of his ministry was to point to Christ. He was also a man lacking any kind of religious pomp or refinement, growing in the wilderness and preaching a message that stood on truth rather than any social hierarchy, Matthew 3:4 describes him saying,

“Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.”

This is also the man who, when his disciples bring him the news of Jesus’ growing ministry, states in John 3:28–30,

“You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.”

John’s ministry was never about himself, but was utterly devoted to God and to the coming Messiah. Bearing this in mind, it is a strange and shortsighted move on the part of the scribes and Pharisees to try to use the conduct of John’s disciples to somehow shame or admonish Jesus or His disciples. Concerning their claims around their own disciples, however, there’s another problem entirely. Jesus teaches during the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:1–4, 16–18,

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” … “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Tying this teaching together with the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus states in Matthew 23:5–12,

“They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

So not only is their presumption to question what Jesus and His disciples are doing and how they’re conducting their worship foolish in the extreme, it’s hypocritical on top of that. In response Jesus tells them something that provides an answer at the present, but also foreshadows far into the future, and the glory that is to come.

“And Jesus said to them, ‘Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.’”

The simplest understanding is that this points to there being a time for everything. Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 3:1–8,

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.”

There is a time to worship through fasting, there is a time to worship through public prayer, but there is also a time when your worship should take other forms – and there’s never a reason to do these acts of worship hypocritically to be seen by others. The time while the Bridegroom is present with the disciples is not the time for them to fast – but what this points to on a grander scale is the fact that Jesus is the Bridegroom. This foreshadows to the future marriage supper between the Lamb and His bride, which we see declared in Revelation 19:6–9,

“Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure’— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ And he said to me, ‘These are the true words of God.’”

So not only do Jesus’ words affirm who He is in the present, and who He will be to the church in the future, but this also calls back to something much older and affirms the unity of the Father and Son as One. The Lord says in Isaiah 54:4–8,

“‘Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called. For the LORD has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,’ says the LORD, your Redeemer.”

What this means is that whether they fully realize it or not, the people have been delivered into a time of new celebration. The insurmountable distance between man and God that the people have worked and failed repeatedly to bridge through the Law has been bridged, God has done the work that man could not, and the Bridegroom has come to set aside and redeem His bride. This again affirms the reality of Jesus’ divinity, as only God can mend the rift we made in our sin, it gives vivid illustration as to the love that God has for us in sending His Son, and it shows us that the condition of God’s relationship with man is not what the religious leaders had twisted it to be in their presumption, which Jesus expands upon as He continues and gives a parable.

• 3. A New Covenant

“He also told them a parable: ‘No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, “The old is good.”’”

There are so many things that can be understood from this one parable that it’s legitimately staggering. In one regard it ties back to the matter of timing and placement, as Jesus addressed on the surface with the subject of fasting. But beyond that layer there is a wealth of information that points back to ancient practices, forward to modern ones, and a clear designation that what God has ordered is not for man to reinvent. First there’s the matter of the new and old cloth – Jesus makes the logical observation that no one rips a section from a new piece of clothing to sew a patch into an old garment, as doing so both destroys the new clothing and creates a mismatched, unsightly patch on the old. When He addressed this matter in Matthew’s gospel, speaking on the same subject but talking to the disciples of John the Baptist, Jesus says in Matthew 9:16,

“No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made.”

Here He makes the point that not only is the patch ill suited, but that it will literally rip itself out of place. In either example, the new patch in old clothing doesn’t belong. Then we arrive at the matter of the wine and the wineskins. As to the wine itself, new wine, still in the stage of fermenting, needs to be stored in a container that can either allow the produced gas to escape or has the flexibility to expand. The wineskins themselves were essentially waterproofed leather bags with a single opening that wine could be stored in. I remember growing up, my grandpa always had at least two pairs of leather gloves. One pair was newer, they were always soft and pliable, and he’d use them for tasks where he needed some protection but also dexterity. The second pair was older – they were stiff, the palms and inside of the fingers hard and sometimes shiny. The gloves were so stiff that they held the shape and curvature of a hand even when they were empty. This is how leather functions, growing harder and less flexible with age. In some ways this can be an advantage, but it can also become brittle with time, and in this we can understand the comparison of the new and old wineskins. New wine, still bubbling with fermentation, placed inside rigid old wineskins would only cause them to burst. Simply put, the two things are not made for one another. This had older applications within the Law where we see things like Leviticus 19:19,

“You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material.”

And Deuteronomy 22:9–11,

“You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited, the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard. You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.”

These are passages that for many believers can seem odd or confusing, and for many non-believers are easy targets to ridicule and mock. Why would God give commands about cattle breeding, the fabric of someone’s clothing, or the seed they sow in their field? There are elements of the Law that carried direct, practical purposes, but everything held a spiritual basis as well. The nation of Israel was a people set apart, and everything about them, from the covenant of circumcision, to their diet, to the rules and laws they lived under, to, most importantly, the God they served, marked them as different. They were not to adopt the practices of the pagans that they interacted with, there was to be no blending of the worship of God with the honoring of pagan idols. This may seem fairly obvious to us now, but we have to remember that monotheism was in no way the common practice in antiquity, and a blending of worship of different gods for different purposes was normal. Elements like these within the Law prohibiting the blending of fabrics, animals, and crops, reemphasized that. There was also some direct application that went beyond the symbolism of it all, as there were pagan practices that used the blending of fabrics, the hybridization of animals, or the mixing of seeds as part of their worship. There’s nothing blended about the worship of God, there’s nothing in our devotion that is only partially devoted to Him, and in all things the Law supports this. All of this can be seen and understood in what Jesus says – His words and how they apply to proper timing and proper worship of the Lord echo the spirit of the children of God as a people set apart and utterly devoted to our Father, but the parable has a future application that is greater than the things of the past. This idea of the new garment, of the new wine, and the new wineskins points us to the new covenant that Christ has come to establish. Matthew 26:27–29 says at the establishment of the Lord’s Supper,

“And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.’”

Addressing the matter of the old covenant and speaking more concerning the new, Hebrews 8:5–7 tells us,

“They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.’ But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.”

Jesus has come to establish a new and greater covenant, one founded upon His own righteous blood, pour out for the sins of many. This meant a deliverance into new life and should have meant a new and joyous celebration. But the religious rulers and likely many of the Jewish people alongside them had no desire for a new covenant, and if they could, would have taken the figure of the Messiah and forced Him into the bounds and scope of the old, keeping things as they were while expanding their own power. They had the Law, they had an entire social institution set up around it, and the religious leaders enjoyed a great degree of sway and power within Jewish culture. As we discussed in the beginning, it is not in the hearts of men to embrace righteous acts of change, but that does not somehow make God powerless to enact it. As Jesus says,

“And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”

The reality is that the old covenant was good – the Law was a gracious and beautiful gift from God, and through it He drew His people closer to Himself. However, the Law also allowed us to glimpse the gargantuan size of the expanse that exists between us, sin-stained and broken, and God, holy and perfect. The old covenant was glorious because it revealed a measure of the glory of God, but it couldn’t save us, and it provided vivid contrast as to just how incapable we are of saving ourselves. The new covenant resolved the problem of sin that was revealed by the old – Christ’s blood atoned for sin as we never could. What we can see in today’s passage, from the calling of Matthew and his abandonment of his profession to follow Jesus, to Jesus’ meal alongside the tax collectors and their companions, to the critiques and grumblings of the scribes and Pharisees, and the ways in which Jesus responds to their blindness – it all comes together to display this wonderful hope of newness, of transformation, of life and salvation in Christ. We’re given a hope for today, tomorrow, and for all eternity through the redemption found in the new covenant of the blood of Jesus Christ.

Pastor Chris’ sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw9LbhKNQwg