Part Two - Fasting and the parable of the new wineskin (Luke 5:27-39)

Summary of last week
• We saw how the teachers of the law, Pharisees and disciples of John the Baptist were criticising Jesus and his disciples for eating and drinking with sinners and tax collectors, on a day of fasting.
• Fasting was commanded by God as an act of acknowledging and accepting the rightful true state of man as only dust of the earth… acknowledging the powerlessness and impossibility of our existence and confessing “I am a dead being”.
• This is why the only time that God had ordered fasting was on the day of atonement, to say ““The grace of God is our only hope!”.
• But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law had completely misunderstood God’s heart behind this law, and were using the act of fasting as a way to show how good they are, to show how capable and admirable they are, to boast in front of God, to give value and worth to their being. So they kept increasing the amount of days that they would fast in a year…
• Not only that, we saw how our entire lives are meant to be the act of fasting
o Our life = Wilderness = Fasting
o So we are supposed to live a life characterized by fasting – complete dependence on God. But is that happening? No.
• We saw with evidence from the bible that Jesus lived that life of fasting
o 40 days in the wilderness = 40 years in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8)
<READ Deuteronomy 8:1-3>
“that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” v3.
Jesus is the only one to live the true life of fasting = Jesus is the only one to live the true life of sacrifice, giving up his life (self-denial).
So as the guests of the banquet we are to enjoy the wedding banquet that the groom has prepared for us, thinking “Because of our groom Jesus, we no longer have to starve, no longer have to fast!”. Enjoying grace, being grateful and thankful.

In conclusion - Even the sanctification that God asks of us, is something God gives to us.

In this way the salvation of the believers, from start to finish, is completely the work of God’s grace. The only thing that the believer does in that process is confirming their rightful position, being exposed of who they truly are, through the endless failures and hopelessness in their own abilities. The self-denial that the believers experience through those failures and hopelessness becomes the true fasting.
But not seeing any of this truth, the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist are trying to win points with God through their own pious living and their religious efforts.

New Wine
To them Jesus says “No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one”, and “No one pours new wine into old wineskins”.
Why do you think Jesus says this? Does it make any sense in the context of the story?
New wine and new clothes symbolises the arrival of the gospel of grace, the kingdom of God through the cross of Jesus Christ. The New Testament age needs to be created by the grace of Jesus and experienced by the grace of Jesus Christ. That new wine and new clothes absolutely cannot be One, or cannot be harmonious with the old wineskin and old garments.
Why? Because the New has the power to destroy the old.
• Just as when Jesus came as the new true temple of God, the old temple of God was destroyed,
• Just as when Jesus came, all the sacrifices and the rituals and the laws were scrapped,
… the old cannot co-exist with the new.
The new garment will tear the old clothes and the new wine will burst the old wineskin.

We should not do good works to go to heaven, or do religious activities to go to heaven, but we should do the works that pleases God because we are so moved by the grace of God that has claimed a dead piece of dust like me as His child, and because we love Him.
In order for that to happen we must diligently learn His grace and be moved by it.
GRACE
Now, EVERYTHING must be interpreted by grace. That is why Jesus is destroying the fasting of the Old Testament as he is dining with Tax Collectors and Prostitutes. That was something punishable by stoning to death, according to the law and the customs.
But Jesus is saying “Do not judge the people and the situation by your own standards of Good and Bad”.
This episode is showing the irony of the gospel where the Tax Collectors and the Prostitutes who are eating and drinking with Jesus are much more worthy of the wedding banquet, than the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist who are living strict lives of pious religious zeal and denial.
Think about it… Is what the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist are saying unfair? When everybody in the land is fasting, someone who calls himself a teacher is eating and drinking with prostitutes…. By the stands of good and evil by the world, what they’re saying is rightful.
If were to see a Pastor on a Sunday drinking with prostitutes, would you praise him or criticise him?
But through today’s episode, Jesus is saying be careful not to “judge with your human standards of good or evil”. What is good or evil will only be determined by God. That is why God calls some mass killings in the Old Testament as “good”, a woman sleeping with a father in law as “righteousness”, and some lies as “obedience”.

Time to fast

Interestingly though, Jesus says “but the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast”.
“When the bridegroom will be taken from them”… this signifies when Jesus will be taken from the disciples and the people, and be put to death on the cross.
To put it simply, it means participating in Jesus’ death.
This means when Jesus dies, those who have been blessed by the grace of God, will also follow in the footsteps of Jesus and die with him – that is, live a life of fasting.
Live a life of starving the ego, starving the ambition, dreams, wishes and desires of the self – become selfless and more and more learn to love others at the expense of the “self”.
When you begin to understand what Jesus has done for you, you will rejoice at His grace, like the tax collectors and prostitutes have done, but at the same time, you will see the true state of sin inside of you. That exposure will lead you to a true understand of yourself as nothing but deserving of death. Dead dust.
That’s what it means that these people are eating and drinking (rejoicing) but will also soon fast. 
Rejoicing vs Fasting
Which is the lives of believers are characterised by spurts of joy at Jesus’ grace, but also by bursts of pain when our old self that still lives inside of us are exposed with all the dirt and sin inside.
That’s because of our evil nature of pride, and wanting to be God, wanting to possess and conquer everything.
That’s what Jesus means when he says “everyone likes old wine”. This old wine represents our legalism and humanism, and it represents all the worldly blessings that are gained through our tangible human strength. 
And we don’t like the new wine because the new wine comes to destroy all human possibility and strength, to destroy our pride. Which is why even those who say they believe in Jesus are constantly putting forward their own strength to gain approval. At that time the new wine comes to do what? Burst the old wineskins. 
<Matthew 10:34>
<Hebrews 4:12>

So don’t be discouraged if you’re being ripped apart, it is only through that that God will make us dependent on Him and His grace.