The taste of New Wine

Mark 2:18-22

As a new believer in Christ, my mentor Jack Archer gave me a book and its title was “A Taste of New Wine” by Keith Miller.  I’ve passed that book on to someone else and yet today as I began to read Mark 2:18-22, the title of that book came to mind.  If I recall correctly, it was about Keith’s pilgrimage of faith, and this is not an endorsement but just a thought that came to mind as I looked over these verses.

Now lets explore the question ask of Jesus in verse 18; “Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”

Never been a time when a group of people has not ask such questions, why can’t Baptist dance or drink, and the answer today is many do.  But in my youth I would ask my mother what is wrong with going to a sock hop at school and her reply was, it leads to other things like drinking and smoking and going to bars, I was twelve.  Now Mom had no clue that my friends Gary, Jimmy and I were already tasting his mom and dad’s brandy and smoking grapevine and then old cigarette butts.  I’m thankful for the brandy, and it made a young man understand that Dr. Pepper was a wonderful thing to drink.

But that question is still asked by many active workers in Church ministry, why are you not doing what we are doing?  It might be helpful if they reread Paul’s teaching on Spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:4-7.

Listen to Jesus fantastic reply; “And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”

All who have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ have entered into Christ, and He has come into them and have received fresh wineskins so to say, in that a new wine or better said, the Holy Spirit of God now indwells us.  The old man is dead, he has been crucified with Christ and no longer lives, but Christ lives in us.  We still have the battle with our flesh, but are not under its control if we allow the Lord to lead us.

So we need to look at the early Church to understand what a body of believers did after Jesus no longer walked this earth, but now He lives in their hearts and minds.  We find significant teaching in Acts 13:1-3; 14:21-23; it is clear that fasting is and should be part of a follower of Christ’s life.  Make sure you do not become a Pharisee in doing so; Jesus said they did it for men to see.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice