Luke 5:33-39--A Question About Fasting

Luke 5:33-39
English Standard Version
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A Question About Fasting
33 And they said to him, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.” 34 And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? 35 The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” 36 He also told them a parable: “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. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. 38 But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”

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To know who the "they" are in this passage, we'd have to look back at yesterday's blog.  It's likely a reference to the Pharisees who had come all the way to Capernaum to examine and test Jesus (and His disciples).  Last time we saw they tried to ask the disciples why Jesus was eating with "sinners" and tax collectors, but Jesus answered them, so now it sees like they are in a direct back-and-forth with Jesus since they are talking Him about "John's disciples" and "Your disciples."  While the message of repentance that Jesus preached was similar to that of John the Baptist, and we'll see many of the words of confrontation with the Pharisees are the same, Jesus did not instruct His disciples to behave in quite the same way, and of course we don't see anywhere where John went a round performing miracles and signs (healing, casting out demons, etc).

Jesus uses the picture of a wedding banquet, which was a feast and a time to celebrate.  You were never to come to the wedding looking sad or like you were fasting.  The purpose of the fasting and prayer the John taught his disciples was to get them ready for Jesus, but now that Jesus is here, He is the Bridegroom and the disciples are part of the Church, the Bride of Christ, and there is no reason for them to be sad in the midst of the Bridegroom, but Jesus tells them that there will be a day in which He will be taken away and they will be sad (probably speaking both of His death and internment as well as His return to the Father and the time we are in right now awaiting His return).  During these times where we feel like we are separated from Him, it is appropriate to fast and pray and long for our reunion, yet we also need to be careful that we don't send the wrong message to the world as Christ is ever-present with us right now through the Holy Spirit, even though we may not be able to see Him and touch Him at this moment in time like the disciples could.

Jesus then goes to the heart of the Pharisee's question (what He knew they meant to ask about) which is if Jesus was teaching come kind of altogether new religion or if this is just some dressed-up form of Judaism (which they'd probably have been okay with).  Jesus told them that this was indeed "new wine" (a new covenant) and that the old wineskin of Judaism as they knew it could not contain the new wine...for if you put new wine in old wineskins that have already stretched and worn, the new wine will try to make the wineskins expand and grow even more and they cannot, so they will break and burst and the wineskins and wine will both be ruined (this is the problem with the Judaizers that we see in Galatians and other epistles we've studied already).  This is not just Judaism plus Jesus.

So Jesus says that there needs to be both new wine (a new Spirit) and new wineskins (a new heart to hold that new Spirit) because the old man and the old religious system cannot hold or contain the Spirit that Jesus wants to put within us.  He is going to make all things new, and we see this from the promises of the new covenant in the book of Jeremiah and the book of Ezekiel.  God will put His Spirit in His people and write His Law on their hearts, but He is also going to take away their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

The Pharisees would not be very happy with this analogy if they understood it.  Jesus is telling them their system is old and worn out and that it is also going to keep them from accepting the gospel that He is proclaiming to them because those who drink old wine know that it improves with age and tastes better than new wine, and these Pharisees will like their "old wine" better than the "new wine" of the New Covenant that Jesus is offering.  He already knows that they will reject Him and His message and is telling them so right now.  They came there not to try to believe, but to find errors and poke holes in Jesus' teaching and to try to turn people away from believing in Him.  Jesus is not fooled one bit and while He will redeem a select few from among the Pharisees (Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and Saul of Tarsus who we know as the Apostle Paul), as far as we know none of the rest of the Pharisees or Sanhedrin at large came to faith in Jesus.​