Matthew 9:17 Commentary and Bible Study

The previous illustration has emphasised the old – taking from the new to patch up the old; here the emphasis is on the new – finding a right container to hold and preserve the new. The bottle represents the constraints put on the spirit of a man by the religious practices which he uses to express and develop his faith. Christ has already taught in his first illustration about the wedding guests, that fasting is associated with grief and sorrow. The disciples will mourn when the bridegroom is taken from them and crucified on Calvary. John the Baptist taught his disciples to fast because they were to afflict their hearts in repentance in preparation for the coming Messiah. Malachi refers to him symbolically as Elijah: ‘Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: ⁶ And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse’ (Malachi 4:5-6). But how could that spirit of mourning continue when the one John looked forward to had now come? To continue to mourn would be to fail to see that he had come. The bottle was made from animal skin, and a new bottle had a certain ability to stretch and absorb the pressure coming from the fermenting wine. An old bottle did not have the same capacity to stretch and had come brittle to some extent. That was acceptable as long as it only held old wine which had largely finished its fermentation, but if new wine was put in it, the pressure was more than it could bear and it would burst. resulting in the loss of the wine and the destruction of the old wineskin. It was not possible for the believer who had entered into the kingdom of heaven and was filled with joy, hope, and zeal for the gospel to force himself to live by fastings and afflictions. That former lifestyle could not survive the spirit of the gospel. Yes, Christian also fast, but they do so on special occasions which call for serious engagement with God in prayer, or repentance over some sin.But the illustration also applied to the disciples of the Pharisees. Their reason for living as they did was far more sinister. They did not fast to afflict their souls or to engage more seriously with God, but to parade their supposed piety before the people. It was a charade which turned devotion to God into a performance before men. All man-made religions have this tendency, because the essential problem of human pride is not dealt with by them. Their adherents cannot let go of the supposed advantage of appearing pious before men, and so religion becomes a means of boasting.. Christianity is not about cleaning up the life here and there, and importing some better features into what is essentially an approach to God based on good works. That old wineskin of token outward religious performance, is entirely unsuitable for expressing the newness of the regenerate heart of the believer. The whole of the old life must go, and a new life must be embraced, for ‘if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new’ (2 Corinthians 5:17).Again Luke includes additional words: ‘No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better’ (Luke 5:39). This is a very gentle rebuke. It notes a common feature of human behaviour which was relevant to the situation. People do not like what is new when they have got used to the old. The disciples of John loved their master, and stuck to his teaching. The Pharisees had an instinctive dislike of change. They were strongly attached to their religious practices. Why did the Pharisees hang on to their way of doing things? Was it really because they loved what God had done before and understood it? No, what they were hanging on to was something entirely of man, and for a less than admirable reasons. Perhaps they had not analysed themselves sufficiently to see this, but Christ could see it clearly. It is hard for the self-righteous to discern the real motivation for what they do. They have spent too long burying the truth about themselves under a heap of excuses. They loved the old because they thought they could gain something from it for themselves. It was a useful means of attracting the praise of men.