“No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one.
Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will
not match the old.” - Luke 5:36
How well do you handle change?
A middle-aged man went to the
doctor’s office for his annual check-up, and the doctor came into the room with
a concerned look on his face. “Sir, you’re in really bad shape. Your blood
pressure is way too high, your cholesterol is off the charts, and you’re clearly
stressed out about your finances. You won’t survive another month unless your
wife helps you make some major changes. I want you to go home and tell your
wife that she needs to start making you fresh, healthy meals at least twice a
day. She needs to do more work around the house to lighten your load. And she
needs to stick to a budget, so you’re not so stressed about finances.”
The man replied, “Doctor, would you
please call her and tell her?” The doctor said, “Sure. No problem!” About 45
minutes later the man got home, walked through the door and saw his wife crying
at the kitchen table. He said, “Honey, what’s wrong? Did the doctor call you?”
“Yes,” she sobbed. “He told me you’re going to die in a month.”
That woman did NOT like to change.
Neither did the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. That was one of their biggest problems
with Jesus. And in chapter 5 of the Book of Luke, they started voicing their
complaints.
First, the Pharisees didn’t like the
fact that Jesus and his followers went to a big banquet thrown for Jesus by
Levi, who had been a tax collector, and Levi’s friends—more tax collectors and
other people the Pharisees viewed as the scum of the earth. Second, they REALLY
didn’t like the fact that they were dining during a time the Pharisees held as
a time of fasting. Put into modern lingo, their complaint might sound like
this: “Jesus, why are your followers chowing down while the rest of us are
fasting?” (v. 33).
In response to their complaint,
Jesus shared three illustrations from everyday life to help explain why his
disciples didn’t fast and why he didn’t follow all of the Pharisees’
legalistic, man-made traditions. First, he compared his presence with the
disciples to a wedding feast: “Can you make the friends of the
bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come when
the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast” (vs.
34-35). Then, in his next two examples, he talked about what the Pharisees were
fighting against the hardest: change.
Jesus said in verse 36, “No one
tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will
have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.” New
cotton shirts shrink, right? But once they’ve been washed a few times, they
don’t shrink anymore. So if you get a hole in your favorite t-shirt, and you
need to patch that hole, you would never buy a brand new $20 t-shirt and cut a
hole in it to provide a patch for your old shirt. You’d end up with a new shirt
that’s destroyed. And once you put your old shirt in the washing machine, the
patch would shrink and make the rest of your old shirt look terrible.
So, what is Jesus’ point? Jesus and
the Pharisees probably agreed that Judaism wasn’t perfect. But the Pharisees
thought where it had holes, it could be patched up with lots and lots and lots
of extra rules. Jesus said, “No!” Jesus’ illustration of the patch job makes it
clear that he didn’t come to earth to put a patch on Judaism. He came to offer
something radically new.
Next, Jesus drove his point home
with the illustration of wine and wineskins. In those days, they would use
animal skins to store grape juice and wine. Well, in order for grape juice to
become wine, it has to ferment. And during the fermentation process, the juice
gives off a gas and expands. New skins have a nice elasticity that allows them
to expand during the fermentation process without breaking. But old skins
become dry and stiff and lose their elasticity. The same was true of the
Pharisees and teachers of the law. Over time they had become dry and stiff and
had lost their elasticity. They didn’t respond well to change.
Here’s what Jesus was saying to the
Pharisees: “You religious leaders are
comfortable in your tired old religion. You want me to lock arms with you and
just put a few small patches onto Judaism to make it a little better, but
that’s not going to happen. The new life of the Spirit can’t be sown onto old
Judaism, and it can’t be poured into old Judaism. I am giving you something
fresh and new and life-changing. What I am offering you is a brand new life of
forgiveness, healing and joy in the Lord.”
Jesus isn’t into putting a patch on
your tired, stale religion or your old, ineffective priorities. Jesus doesn’t
do makeovers. He does new construction. Out with the old. In with the new. And
praise God for that!
Dane Davis is the Lead
Pastor of First Christian Church in Victorville. For more information,
visit www.YourVictorvilleChurch.com and
join us for church Sundays at 10 a.m.
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