“No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old.” Luke 5:36 ESV1
Read Matthew 9:9-17, Mark 2:13-22 & Luke 5:27:39
The idiom, out with the old, in with the new means to leave old ideas or things behind so that one is free to embrace new views or objects. To move forward, one must get rid of the old to make room for the new. There are a number of possible scenarios for the use of this phrase. And there are a variety of opinions on who came up with the expression. But the idea of setting aside the old to take hold of the new originated with God. God consistently chooses the second over the first and prefers the new over the old.
The following parable of Jesus illustrates this tendency of God.
“‘No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made’” (Matthew 9:16). “‘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’” (Mark 2:22). ‘‘‘And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, “The old is good”’” (Luke 5:39).
Before we discuss the meaning of the old and new in this parable, we must consider why Jesus told it.
“Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting” (Mark 2:18a). “‘The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees’” (Luke 5:33b). “Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the Bridegroom is with them?’” (Matthew 9:14-15a). “‘As long as they have the Bridegroom with them, they cannot fast’” (Mark 2:19b). “‘The days will come when the Bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast’” (Matthew 9:15b).
Before we go any further, we must ask ourselves: “Why might John’s disciples and the Pharisees be fasting?”
John the Baptist was in prison. Perhaps his disciples were fasting and praying for his release. Or maybe they were fasting because John’s ministry was one of repentance. Fasting and repentance often go hand in hand. The Pharisees were known for their fasting (see Matthew 6:16). Many Pharisees disciplined themselves to fast twice a week to show their personal piety. Perhaps it was Monday or Thursday.
But why were John’s disciples and the Pharisees concerned that Jesus and His disciples were not fasting on this particular day?
I don’t know for sure, but perhaps, Jesus and His disciples were feasting on a day that was traditionally reserved for fasting. The Jews collectively observe a 25-hour fast yearly on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). The Day of Atonement is a solemn time of remembering and repenting from one’s own and the sins of one’s nation and hoping for God’s forgiveness.
The LORD had commanded,
“‘It shall be a statute to you forever that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves and shall do no work, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you. For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the Lord from all your sins. It is a Sabbath of solemn rest to you, and you shall afflict yourselves; it is a statute forever. And the priest who is anointed and consecrated as priest in his father’s place shall make atonement, wearing the holy linen garments. He shall make atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly. And this shall be a statute forever for you, that atonement may be made for the people of Israel once in the year because of all their sins’” (Leviticus 16:29-34).
I don’t mean to suggest Jesus, His followers, and those with them that day were deliberately disobeying a direct command of God. The LORD meant it when He commanded, “‘You shall not do any work on … [the] Day of Atonement, to make atonement for you before the LORD your God. For whoever is not afflicted on that very day shall be cut off from his people’” (Leviticus 23:28-29). Perhaps it only appeared to the religious and godly ones who confronted them that Jesus and those with Him were ignoring this statute.
Jesus often interpreted what was acceptable on the Holy Days differently than the religious leaders around Him. The religious leaders repeatedly confronted Jesus with what they saw were Sabbath Day infractions. Notice how the word fast is not actually used in the above passage. It was implied in the phrase afflict yourselves which comes from the Hebrew word ‘anah, but this word is also translated as humble oneself. Jesus is the ultimate example of one humbling Himself (see Philippians 2:5-6). What Jesus was doing when He was condemned for not fasting was actually an example of humility. At least, it was more humble than what the Pharisees would have stooped themselves to do.
What were Jesus and His disciples doing instead of fasting?
Shortly before this confrontation,
“[Jesus] went out and saw a tax collector named Levi” (Luke 5:27a), “a man called Matthew” (Matthew 9:9a) “sitting at the tax booth. And He said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ And leaving everything, he rose and followed Him. And Levi [Matthew] made [Jesus] a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at His disciples, saying, ‘Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ And Jesus answered them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance’” (Luke 5:27-32). “‘Go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice”’’ (Matthew 9:13a).
Not only were Jesus and His disciples not fasting when the disciples of John and the Pharisees expected them to be–they were partying with tax collectors and sinners!
Jesus had a rationale for His behavior and the behavior of His disciples. He shared that reasoning with those who asked in the following ways:
“Jesus answered them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance’” (Luke 5:31-32).
Jesus hadn’t come for those who considered themselves righteous, and He hadn’t come for those who didn’t realize their sin-sickness. Jesus came to call sinners to repentance; He came for those who knew they needed forgiveness, those who knew they were sick in a spiritual sense. With their tummies rumbling, the Pharisees and scribes, sure of their own righteousness, looked down their noses at the tax collectors and the sinners and at Jesus and His disciples for hanging out with them. But those who were scoffed at that day were the ones who ended up satisfied and forgiven. Jesus was partying because Lost people were entering the Kingdom of Heaven that day.
Jesus chastised those who condemned Him, “‘Go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice”’’ (Matthew 9:13a).
The Pharisees might have been fasting but the kind of fast they chose didn’t necessarily please God. They may not have been fasting the way God intended. The Pharisees were going through the religious motions, but their hearts were not right. The Prophet Isaiah recorded the LORD’s words concerning proper fasting.
“‘You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on High. Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood’” (Isaiah 58:5-7)?
Though they were eating, Jesus and His disciples may have, from God’s perspective, been fasting.
“And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the Bridegroom is with them?’” (Matthew 9:14-15a). “‘As long as they have the Bridegroom with them, they cannot fast’” (Mark 2:19b).
Perhaps this comment was made specifically for the disciples of John; John the Baptist had previously declared,
“‘You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, “I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before Him.” The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease’” (John 3:28-30).
Throughout the Old Testament God used the illustration of marriage to describe His relationship with Israel. Here Jesus is calling Himself the Bridegroom.
“There was no more happy time in the ancient world than at a wedding. When we have a wedding, we go to a church or some other meeting place, have a ceremony followed by a short party, and then we send the couple off on a honeymoon. They used to do it differently. In the ancient world, everyone went on the honeymoon. They would have the wedding at the house of the groom, and the couple would stay there with the guests for an entire week of honeymooning. That entire week would be a party time for the people who loved the couple. In a culture where life was hard, and there was not a lot of celebration, the wedding feast was one of the most joyous celebrative times in their lives. It was not a time of fasting. It was a time of rejoicing.
What Jesus is saying is: You know, when the bridegroom is in the middle of the party, you don’t fast. You party! You celebrate. The rabbis told them that all religious rituals were suspended during the wedding feast. You don’t stop on Monday and fast and Thursday and fast. This is a wedding feast; it is a party. So, Jesus told them that He is the bridegroom, and while He is at the wedding feast, it is not the time to fast. To act mournful or morose at a wedding was unheard of in that day. It is the time to celebrate. It is the time to party and celebrate the presence of Jesus.”2
Jesus and His friends were partying because they were celebrating Jesus’ betrothal. In the not too distant future, Jesus would be leaving. “‘The days will come when the Bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast’” (Matthew 9:15b). It would be a sad time for His friends (see John 16:16-20). But Jesus would not be leaving permanently. He would be going to prepare a place for His Bride. Jesus said, “‘If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to Myself, that where I am you may be also’” (John 14:3). In the meantime, Jesus would make sure His Bride had the special gift of the Holy Spirit so that She could always remember His promises (see John 14:16 & 18). When He came back, a much greater celebration would occur. “‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb’” (Revelation 19:9).
All of this was the backdrop and the set-up for Jesus’ parable.
Everyone in Jesus’ audience would have known that if he/she had an old garment with a hole that needed patching, it would be unwise to try to patch it with a piece of new cloth because, when washed, the patch would shrink and cause the garment to rip making an even bigger hole. If one wanted to patch an old garment, he/she would need to patch it with an old piece of cloth.
Similarly, they would have known how wasteful it would be to put new wine into wineskins that were already stretched out by the fermentation process of the old wine. When the new wine fermented, the gas would cause the old wineskins to burst. Both the wine and the wineskins would be destroyed.
But that to which Jesus was illuding was so radical, I doubt anyone immediately grasped it. Here Jesus was making a comparison between the Old Covenant of the Law and the New Covenant of Grace. The Pharisees were faithful in the Law. John the Baptist came to call people to repentance and prepare them for the New Covenant. But the New Covenant was something entirely different than anything anyone had known.
In both illustrations, the new destroyed the old. What Jesus came to offer didn’t fit in the Old Covenant. The New Covenant that Jesus brought tore apart the legalism of the Pharisees. Jesus’ message of internal holiness through the power of the Holy Spirit is the exact opposite of the piety, discipline, and duty that can be carried out by human initiative. Jesus’ message is one of relationship, not religion, one of working from the emotion of love instead of going through the motions of good deeds.
In His parable, Jesus was referring to Himself as the patch. A patch is that which is put on, that which fills up, that which is sewn on the over a rent. We must put on Jesus over the hole that has been rent in our souls by sin (see Romans 13:14). We must be filled up by the Holy Spirit. To do this, we must become completely new creatures, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Attempting to put the new patch of Christ onto someone or something that is of the Old Covenant will only cause greater destruction.
The new can’t be put onto or into the old. It needs a new place of its own. Jesus’ disciples must become new. Another way to translate the word new, as in new wine, is recently born and is equivalent to born again. “‘Truly, truly, [Jesus declared, “] unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God’” (John 3:3). Because those who are new creatures–those who have been born again–are filled with the Holy Spirit, they can’t be stuffed into the old way of doing things through the power of self. They just don’t fit. If they are forced, one of two things will happen: either the potential of one who has been born again will be wasted or the power of the Holy Spirit working through him/her will destroy self and the expectations and attempts to work through the human power.
The new Jesus proclaims doesn’t fit into our old natural way of thinking. That is why Jesus concluded His parable with the warning, ‘‘‘No one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, “The old is good”’” (Luke 5:39). Humans don’t especially like change; we are comfortable with the old. We like to have a way to measure our standing with God, so we run back to the Law. But the Law can never cure our sin nature problem. It is only in being crucified with Christ that our sin nature is made dead (see Galatians 2:20). If it means taking up our crosses and dying to self (see Luke 9:23), many of us don’t want to take the step of complete surrender to Christ that is necessary for us to become new. In the process of this unwillingness, we reject all the blessings of the new because of the fear of what denying ourselves may mean. It is a sad state when one doesn’t want to drink of the sweetness of the new because he/she enjoys the numbing power of the old.
“The Old Covenant was a shadow of things to come. The New Covenant is the substance. Under the Old Covenant, the payment for sin was anticipated; under the New Covenant, it is realized! Under the Old Covenant, the sacrifices were provisional and recurring. Under the New Covenant, the sacrifice of Jesus is eternal and totally sufficient. Under the Old Covenant, men’s lambs could only cover sin, but under the New Covenant, the lamb of God takes away sin!
The gospel is too weighty to fit into that Old Covenant kind of framework. The gospel is not about what we do; it is about what Christ has done for us. It is not about how righteous we are, but about the righteousness of Christ for us. The Pharisees listened to the words of Christ through ears that could only think through their rigid forms. The gospel did not fit, because it is centered in Christ and His work, so they rejected it.”2
Everything is just too connected to be a coincidence.
There is a reason I think the events surrounding the banquet at Matthew’s may have taken place on or around the Day of Atonement. There are some significant parallels between the comments Jesus made, including the teaching He gave in the form of the parable, and the Day of Atonement.
The Trumpet and the Bridegroom
First, like with all of the Jewish Holidays, Jesus was or will be the ultimate fulfillment. The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) is a picture of Jesus’ Second Coming. The celebrating of Yom Kippur involves the blowing of a shofar—a trumpet made out of a ram’s horn—to signal the end of the fast. Concerning the Second Coming, Matthew recorded, “[The Son of Man] will send out His angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of Heaven to the other” (Matthew 24:31). The Lamb of God will sound His trumpet signaling His return for His Bride, the Church. It will be the end of Her fasting and waiting. Remember, it was Jesus who called Himself the Bridegroom and turned a discussion about fasting into a conversation about His future marriage.
The High Priest and the Sacrifice
Second, on Yom Kippur, atonement was made for the previous year’s sins. This atonement consisted of blood sacrifices performed by the high priest. The writer of Hebrews goes to great lengths to explain the Jesus is our High Priest and it is by His blood that our sins are once for all atoned.
“The priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people … But when Christ appeared as a High Priest, … He entered once for all into the Holy Places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls … sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God … Therefore, He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant” (Hebrews 9:6-7, 11a, 12-15). “The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but He holds His priesthood permanently, because He continues forever. Consequently, He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a High Priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the Heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices …, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since He did this once for all when He offered up Himself” (Hebrews 7:23-27).
The Holy Days and the Covenants
Third, the timing of the other Holy Days surrounding The Day of Atonement exemplifies the contrast between the old and the new in Jesus’ parable. Ten days before Yom Kippur is Rosh Hashanah. On this day, the Jews believe God opens the Books of Life and Death. The names of the righteous are entered into the Book of Life; the names of the evil are entered into the Book of Death. Everyone else who is not definitively righteous or evil has ten days until Yom Kippur to repent in hopes that his/her name will be written in the Book of Life. Still to this day, during this season, Jews greet one another with, “May your name be written in the Book of Life for another year.” Also, the Jews believe that Yom Kippur is the only day of the year that Satan is rendered powerless and cannot accuse Israel. And just five days after Yom Kippur is Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, a week-long Feast celebrating God’s presence with His people.
The contrast between the Old and New Covenants about which Jesus illuded in His parable speak to every aspect of these Holy Days.
In the Old Covenant, one could only hope that his/her name was found in the Book of Life. Through repenting and fasting, one could try one’s best to convince God of his/her worthiness to be written in the Book of Life. But in the New Covenant, one can know for sure that his/her name is found in the Book of Life and will remain there.
With the Old Covenant, Satan was only rendered powerless for one day per year. Only 24 hours out of 8,760 was the devil silent before the Throne of God. With the New Covenant of Grace, Satan is impotent for an eternity. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of Life has set [us] free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2).
Under the Old Covenant, God’s people only joyously celebrated His provision and His presence for one week each year. Under the New Covenant, Believers “are God’s temple and … God’s Spirit dwells in [them]” (1 Corinthians 3:16). These ones can know God’s provision and His presence every day for eternity.
Obviously, the New Covenant is exceedingly better than the Old Covenant. To draw our attention to this fact, again and again, God chose the second over the first and the younger over the older. For example, He chose Abel over Cain, Jacob over Esau, and David over Saul. What we gain in Christ is so much greater than what we received through the Law. The inheritance we get from Jesus is far superior to one we got from Adam.
“‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam [Jesus] became a Life-giving Spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the Second Man is from Heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the Man of Heaven, so also are those who are of Heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the Man of Heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:45-49).
“Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, … ‘Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert … to give drink to My chosen people, the people whom I formed for Myself that they might declare My praise’” (Isaiah 43:16, 18, 20b-21).
Rejoice in the new thing God has done!
1 Scripture quotations marked with ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All Scriptures are taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted. To aid in understanding, I have capitalized references to God.
2 https://www.bereanbiblechurch.org/transcripts/mark/2_18-22.htm