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TITLE: New Wine in Old Skins
TEXT: Mark 2:21-22
PROPOSITION: Christianity is a brand new religion.
QUESTION: What?
KEY WORD: Applications
SCRIPTURE READING: Same
INTRODUCTION:
  1. Some think this passage approves drinking wine.
  2. Some use this text to change the teachings of the NT.
  3. Some see in this scripture a need to restructure the church, worship, etc.

Discuss how this verse is misused today
  1. Change agents - accept the NEW we are preaching
  2. You (religious conservatives) are the old skins and old shirts.
  3. We (religious liberals) are the new skins, new shirts
  4. Social drinkers - try to say Jesus approved drinking wine

What does the passage say?
  1. New cloth (unwashed, not shrunk) on an old (washed and shrunk) garment.
  2. Dye will bleed over, new cloth will shrink, the hole will be bigger than before.
  3. New wine = fresh grape juice in an old skin (dregs inside, cracked, brittle)
  4. Juice was not put in to ferment it, but to prevent fermentation. (Luke 5:38)

Show proper understanding of passage
  1. Psalm 119:83 - I am like a wineskin in the smoke. (Dried out, brittle, burned up)
  2. Matthew Henry on Psalm 119:83 - “He was become like a leathern bottle, which, if hung up in the smoke, is dried and shriveled up.”

Old Garments and New Patches
  1. Baptism - not a new patch on circumcision
  2. Communion - not a new patch on table of showbread
  3. Church - not a new patch on Judaism
  4. New Testament - not a new patch on Law of Moses
  5. Law of Christ - not a new patch on the 10 Commandments
  6. Sunday - not a new patch on Sabbath worship

Applications for today
  1. You do not mourn (fast) at a wedding, but at a funeral.
  2. Jesus did not come to patch up the old, worn out, religion of Judaism.
  3. He did not come to preserve this old system with a new patch.
  4. Jesus is teaching a new religion - laws, faith, doctrine, hope, salvation.
  5. Christianity is not an old patched, fixed, repaired and re-conditioned faith.
  6. The religion of Jesus Christ is BRAND NEW!!
  7. We must avoid being - old, dry, worn out, shriveled up, burned up (or out)


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