Daily Devotional for Sunday, January 11

Jesus Used a Wineskins as an Illustration

“And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved,” Luke 5:37, 38.

I get exhausted just thinking about the many times Jesus had to strategically defend himself to the scribes and the Pharisees. As a parent to teenagers, I have to think through my responses carefully. If not, there is a possibility the kids will find loopholes when following directions. It takes extraordinary mental capacity to always have an answer that is irrefutable. Jesus is the ultimate example of getting a point across.

Sometimes the best way to correct people indirectly is to use an analogy. It sort of softens the blow. There was no satisfying the scribes and Pharisees. They had a problem with everything Jesus was doing because they did not know who He was. They could not recognize the long-awaited Messiah because they would not let go of their rituals. Jesus tried to help them understand that the practices of the Law must be let go in order to receive the grace provided by His sacrifice on the cross, just like the bottles or wineskins. The skins of animals were cleaned and used to hold wine as it fermented because the hide would expand with the gases. If more new wine was placed in the same skins, the already-stretched hide would no longer have any give and would split open. Old wine could be kept in the old skins. By using new wineskins for the new wine, the old skins would stay intact, the new wine would be able to ferment and the new wineskins would stretch with the new wine. The Law (the old wineskins) was still necessary to show us why we needed grace and needed to remain intact. The new wine (Christianity) did not fit into the ritualistic practices of the Law because Jesus fulfilled them all with His sacrifice.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

Live in the freedom that your faith has made you whole.

Ashley Ridings