Gospel of Mark Study #8

“Cheapskate Solutions”

Mark 2:21-28

Study #8 in Mark Series

INTRODUCTION:

I am a frugal person. My wife says I am cheap, “tighter than the paper on the wall,” but I prefer the words, “frugal” or “thrifty.” That means, when something breaks, before going out and buying a brand new one, I am going to do my level best to repair the old one. That sometimes requires a bit of creativity. Fortunately, I have lots of that. I also have some tools and products that I have discovered that make my cheapskate fixes much easier.

·         I use Gorilla Tape.

·         I use plumber’s putty.

·         I use J-B Weld.

TRANSITION:

However, there are some things that cannot be fixed, even with Gorilla Tape or plumber’s putty or J-B Weld. They can only be replaced. In the Bible Jesus talked about the dilemma of fixing things versus replacing them. In our text for today, in Mark 2:21, He teaches about that dilemma. Last week we studied the verses leading up to this about the conversion and call of Matthew, who left his tax collector’s booth to follow Jesus, then, he threw a big reception to introduce Jesus to all his tax collector buddies. However, a bunch of Pharisees crashed the party and showed up to that reception to quiz Jesus about why He and His disciples would dare to eat with “publicans and sinners.” Jesus informed them that He had come to bring healing to those who were sick. In verse 17 Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Then someone asked Him another question: “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but Yours are not?” In verse 19 Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. ²⁰ But the time will come when the Bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.” We looked at the fact that Jesus was giving a prophetic word concerning Himself and His future sacrifice on the cross. He is obviously the Bridegroom in the parable.

Then Jesus went right on talking to the Pharisees in verse 21... 

NOTES on the Text:

Verse 21: “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse.

·         As He often did, here Jesus used the Pharisees’ criticism as the occasion for teaching. The Pharisees and Scribes were always insisting that Jesus conform to their traditions. Here Jesus speaks to them in a parable to explain—especially for his disciples’ benefit—why it is important that He does not try to fit His new teaching into their old mold.

·         First, He uses the metaphor of patched garments: “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse.”

·         Did you notice the deliberate contrast here between the old and the new? That is the point of the parable. Jesus says that to try to attach the new to the old not only results in destruction of the new, but also the old, which will not look right and will eventually tear again. It is a cheapskate solution that simply will not work! He makes the same point with a second parable about wineskins. 

Verse 22: And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.”

·         Here Jesus uses a different word picture to convey the same truth. Instead of a piece of clothing He uses the case of an old wineskin.

·         In that day, wine was the most common household beverage. There are 256 references to wine in the Bible, all of them referring to alcoholic wine. They raised lots of grapes in Israel, although they also made wine from other kinds of fruit as well including figs, dates, and pomegranates. Without refrigeration the only way to conserve the fruit was to make it into something that would keep and not turn into vinegar.

·         However, the image of wineskins that Jesus uses in His parable is foreign to our culture. The only leather wine container we can imagine is the tear-shaped leather “bota” that Spaniards use to carry wine and squirt it into their mouth. But that is very unlike the wineskin Jesus refers to.

·         Wine was made by treading barefoot on the grapes in a wine press, a square or circular pit hewn out of the rock or dug out and lined with rocks and sealed with plaster. The juice then flowed through a channel into a lower vessel, a wine vat, which functioned as a collecting and fermenting container for the grape juice, or “must” as it is called.

·         In the warm climate of Palestine, grape juice began to ferment very quickly and there was no easy way to prevent fermentation. After the first stage of fermentation had taken place in the wine vat, the wine was separated from the “lees” (that is, sediment of dead yeast, tartar crystals, small fragments of grape skins, etc.) and strained through a sieve or piece of cloth. After four to six days, it was poured into clay jars lined with pitch (called amphorae in Greek) or animal skins for storage and further fermentation.

·         Wineskins were made of whole tanned goatskins where the legs and tail were cut off and the holes had been sewn and sealed. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word nebel, meaning “skin-bottle,” is translated by the KJV as “bottle” which gives us images of glass wine bottles. But nothing could be further from reality. These “bottles” were nearly whole goatskins, with nubbins bulging out where the legs once were, the neck tied off where the wine has been poured in, and the whole large skin bulging almost to bursting as the carbon dioxide gas generated by the fermentation process stretched it to its limit.

·         This image is well described in the OT by Job: “For I am full of words, and the spirit within me compels me; inside I am like bottled-up wine, like new wineskins ready to burst” (Job 32:18-19).

·         Fermentation in the wineskin continued for another 2-4 months until the process slowed down and finally stopped. By that time, the skin had been stretched to its limit. The alcohol was about 12%, and the collagen protein that gave the leather its stretching ability had been stretched out, and denatured by the alcohol, destroying its natural resiliency. This means that the skin’s ability to contract and stretch again had been lost.

·         While we are not familiar with the details of wineskins, Jesus’ hearers certainly were. He did not have to explain fermentation and the aging of leather to them. They knew what He meant when He said, “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.”

·         Here is the same contrast of old and new that we saw in the parable of the patched garment. His point is the same: You cannot join the new to the old or you will ruin both the new wine and the old skin. The gas pressure from the fermentation is eventually so great that the inflexible old skin ruptures, and the new wine gushes out onto the ground and is wasted. His hearers all knew not to use old skins with new wine. They understood.

·         But why talk about the contrast between old and new? What is new that would be ruined by being attached to the old? What is He getting at? Here it is... Jesus came with a radical Gospel of Good News to the poor, the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the sick, and the broken-hearted. He spoke with authority, rather than the sophistry of the Scribes of His day. Their manmade rules about who He could eat with, and how He should fast, would just get in the way of Him completing His mission. They are externals; that is all! Jesus, on the other hand, was aiming to expose afresh the heart of their ancient faith. He came to help them return anew to love for God and for one’s neighbor, “to do mercy, and love justice, and walk humbly with their God” (cf. Micah 6:8). These were the core of the Hebrew faith—its life, not the dead Pharisaical external traditions that offered an appearance of piety but did not change the heart (see Colossians 2:23).

·         Now you may think that this is a dead issue, but it is not! This problem has a way of raising its ugly head again and again. Paul, who was trained as a strict Pharisee, grasped the radical nature of the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith, and he went preaching it boldly throughout the Mediterranean. Soon he was called on the carpet to explain why he was not imposing the familiar Jewish regulations on his Gentile converts (cf. Acts 15). Again and again, he had to insist that we are free in Christ, so we must not become entangled again in a legalistic religion trying to pass itself off as Christianity (cf. Galatians 5, for example). We know that the Judaizers tried to infect church after church with their legalism; the recipients of the Letter to the Hebrews were apparently being tempted to turn back again to the regulations of Judaism. Yes, legalism and external faith are problems of every generation, including ours.

·         Why is that so? In Luke’s Gospel, at the close of His parable of the wineskins, Jesus put it this way: “And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘The old is better’” (Luke 5:39). It is much easier to fall back to what is familiar and comfortable, and justify that, rather than launch out into a life guided not by laws and regulations but led by the voice of the Spirit of God. The two are opposites, the old and the new. You cannot combine them without destroying both.

·         No, Jesus insists, the Gospel of the Kingdom must not be hindered by the manmade rules of the Pharisees’ religion. It must be free to work its power unfettered. The New Wine may not be as smooth to the tongue, and finely aged as old wine. It may be a bit sharp and unrefined. But it is alive! You cannot contain it in old structures. You must find new wineskins for it or none at all.

·         That is not to say that Jesus threw out the Old Covenant. He makes it very clear in the Sermon on the Mount that He came to fulfill the Law, not to do away with it: (cf. Matt. 5:17-20) “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until Heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

·         Jesus did not come to set aside the Law, but to strip away the Pharisees’ precious oral tradition so people could see the power and spirit of the Law, and repent of their sins, preparing for the coming of the Kingdom. The Holy Spirit whom Jesus sent now fulfills the Law within us.

Verse 23: One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grain fields, and as His disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain.

·         There is obviously a chronological break between verse 22 and verse 23. This is a different occasion, but the issue is the same—how to reconcile the nit-picky rules of the Pharisees with the fact that Jesus was the Sovereign Lord and Messiah, and not subject to their little pennyante laws and manmade religious restrictions.

·         Picture this... Jesus and the boys were walking along out in the country. Jesus was teaching and they were listening. Passing by a wheat or barley field Jesus and His disciples gleaned a few handfuls of grain. They pulled off a few heads of grain and began crushing them between their two hands. Then, they blew on the crushed heads to blow away the chaff and twigs. Once they had just the clean grains left, they would pop the unroasted grains into their mouths and chew them up. 

Verse 24: The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

·         These Pharisees were totally scandalized by what Jesus’ disciples were doing. And exactly why was that? It was not the gleaning of the grain to which they objected. That was allowed in the Law in Deut. 23:25. No, it was because they were doing it on Saturday, the Sabbath, the day of rest. And according to the rules of the Pharisees, based on their understanding of Exodus 20:10 what these men were doing was defined as “harvesting grain,” which is “work,” and work was strictly forbidden on the Sabbath.

Verse 25: He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need?

·         This was a slap in their faces because, of course, they had read the Scriptures and knew the story very well. Jesus was just tweaking them. He was referring to the account about David and his men in 1 Samuel 21:1-6. Like many other things, they knew the Bible story but failed to grasp the principle or the significance behind it. They had knowledge but they were lacking in understanding.

·         Notice Jesus’ words, “…when they were hungry and in need.” He was saying to the Pharisees that human need trumps all ritual and ceremony. 

Verse 26: In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he [i.e., David] entered the house of God [i.e., the Tabernacle] and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”

·         Jesus, the consummate teacher, and Rabbi tells them the story and then explains its significance, the way He would to a group of children.

Verse 27: Then He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

·         Here Jesus sums up an important principle, and one that was missed by most of the observant Orthodox Jews of His day. Yes, God had told His people to keep the Sabbath as a day of rest and worship, but He did not impose these kinds of nit-picky rules. He gave them a principle. The Sabbath was given for man’s benefit, to meet his need for rest. Instead of accepting and understanding the principle, the Pharisees turned it into a mountain of manmade rules and regulations. They had it all backwards. 

Verse 28: So, the Son of Man is LORD, even of the Sabbath.”

·         This is the bottom line. Jesus is LORD of all! He is Lord of Life and Death. He is the Sovereign Creator and Sustainer of the universe. He is Eternally God. He is greater than any manmade rule of religion.

CONCLUSION:

Having put Jesus’ teaching in perspective, we must pause to grapple personally with the power of His words: “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.” 

What are the “old wineskin” structures of our own age and culture and church life that cannot coexist with the new wine that the Spirit wants to pour out on us? What have we tried to sew our Christianity onto that will cause a greater tear and undermine the faith itself? In Jesus’ day it was the legalistic spirit of Pharisaism. What is it in our day?

“New wine must be poured into new wineskins,” not accommodated to those comfortable things in our lives with which it is basically incompatible. The message for disciples is to be uncompromising about our faith and the work of the Spirit in our lives. If our honored customs and habits, and the structures of our society must adjust to that, then so be it. 

Prayer:

Lord, fill us again with your New Wine. This time, help us to contain it and grow with it, rather than lose it through our stubbornness and our inflexibility. Help me, Lord, to recognize the powerful new ways you want to work in my life and not miss it. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.