Matthew 9:17 – Old and New Wine Skins
by W. Chaz Glass
Part 1
Let’s chart Jesus’ teaching on transitioning and spiritual renewal beginning with Joel 2:28-29
“And it shall come to pass afterward
That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your old men shall dream dreams,
Your young men shall see visions.
And also on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days.
The earth, covered with men full of vain thoughts, walking in their iniquity, were not yet the proper vessels to hold the Spirit of God. Nor were the days of Joel the proper time for the Spirit to descend on man and fill it as it did the temple. A rain had fallen, a wine when drank brought revelation of inadequacy of the spirit and flesh. 10,000 bulls and goats and rams and doves were shadows of a latter rain to come, a new wine to be poured out, those days…
Those days themselves were a type of old wine skin, a time when man became brittle from trying to contain rigid system of the law, inflexible and unreasonable to suffering. So to usher the era of new wine, in those days came John the Baptist. John’s arrival signals a pivotal moment—a transition from the old wine skin of the Law to the new wine skin of God’s redemptive grace in Christ. Timing is everything and Solomon said there is a time for everything under the sun. The Way, The Truth and The Life arrived according to Gods timing to prepare men to receive the outpouring of His Spirit spoken by Joel centuries before.
Jesus encountered many vessels full of old wine, and it is in Matthew where we come to the vineyard where this lesson was pressed out. In addressing the Pharisees on fasting, Jesus teaches us all throughout the generations, that we must empty ourselves and be made new, we must be born again into a new wine skin, cleansed and redeemed, capable of being a sanctified vessel full of the Holy Spirit of promise, a purchased possession.
Because of sin we are incompatible wine skins. Gods sons and daughters, Jew and Gentile alike, menservant and maidservants have all fallen short of the glory of God. We are all worn out wine skins unable to hold the richness of the mystery. Men today have their own mysteries; their own wisdom; their own truth; their own law existing in their minds. This was the Pharisees. The more Jesus poured out, the more they let the wine of renewed life spill on the ground. But God is faithful and the wine is still being poured out to whoever desires to be filled by it.