Day 15, The New Wineskins Take Shape, Luke 6:1-11

The Jews lived under a corrupted application of the Law.  The old system said stay far away from sinners.  It required various fasts and prayers to be right with God.  Jesus likened the old system to old wineskins that would not be able to hold the new wine.  Jesus was not going to patch up the old; instead He was going to make new ones.  In Luke 6 this continues in two Sabbath controversies (6:1-11), choosing apostles (6:12-16) and teaching a new way to think (6:17-49).

On the next Sabbath, after casting out the evil spirit (4:31-37), Jesus created a disturbance when His disciples picked grain and ate it after rubbing it in their hands to get rid of the chaff.  This was considered the work of harvesting and tradition forbid doing it on the Sabbath.

Jesus first reminded them from Scripture of the time David and his men had eaten the bread in the tabernacle that was only for the priests.  No one complained about this because it was David, God’s anointed and the great king.  But then Jesus took the matter further by referring to Himself as the Son of Man, a Messianic title that the Jews would have known from Daniel 7:13-14.  And further, Jesus affirmed His deity by saying that He, the Son of Man, was Lord of the Sabbath.  You may think this is obscure but you can be sure that the Pharisees understood perfectly well what He said and meant.

How well they understood becomes apparent on another Sabbath when Jesus challenged them IN the Synagogue by healing a man.  Jesus set the situation up clearly by asking, Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy?  He, of course, got no answer.  You would think the answer would be obvious.  And yet, when He healed the man in front of the crowd, the leaders were filled with rage.  Jesus had violated their tradition, their application of the command to keep the Sabbath holy, an application that violated the command to love your neighbor as yourself.

As you think about Jesus showing the inadequacies of the corrupted old wineskins, let us not miss that for the fourth time in three chapters we have seen people controlled by something/Someone that has filled them:

·        4:1: Jesus, with the Spirit, who led and empowered Him.

·        4:28: the people at the synagogue in Nazareth, with wrath, who rejected Jesus and tried to kill Him.

·        5:26: the people amazed at Jesus forgiving and healing the paralytic, with fear, who wondered who Jesus was.

·        6:11: the people at the synagogue who saw Him heal the man on the Sabbath, with rage, who went out and began to plan how to stop Jesus.

What fills you as you read the gospels?  Is it ridicule? Denial? Doubt?  Or faith, and thankfulness at God’s great love in sending His Son to earth?