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No one puts new wine into old wine skins, or else the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wine skins, and both are preserved. Luke 5:37-38 WEB (Paralleled in: Matthew 9:17, Mark 2:22).

The most radical change recorded in the Bible was the change from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. John the Baptist was the last prophet of the Old Covenant, while Jesus Christ was the beginning of the New Covenant. A graceful transition took place between these two, a changing of the guard.

When the disciples of John the Baptist came to hear Jesus, He told them the parable of the Wineskin. Jesus said that when God has new wine for His people, He pours it into a new, flexible wineskin. He doesn't pour new wine into an old, hardened wineskin, even though some of them may have served as His new wineskin in the past. God loves the last generation as well, and He does not want to destroy them with something radically new, explosive, perhaps beyond their ability to comprehend or contain.

Let's take a deeper look at that. In ancient times, whole animal skins, generally taken from goats, were cleaned by a tanner or leatherworker like the Apostle Paul, then they were sewn into watertight bags. These were used to store wine. New wineskins were stretchable and elastic, but they became more set, hardened, and even brittle as they grew older.

When grapes begin to ripen in the fall, natural yeast gathers on the outside of the grape skin, just waiting to make the fresh grape juice into lunch. The instant the grape skin is broken, the yeast begins to ferment the juice into wine. As the yeast feed on the natural sugar in the grape juice, it produces alcohol and carbon dioxide, which expands in the container. During the first three to five days, the fermentation is extremely volatile and downright explosive, then it gradually becomes less until all the sugar in the juice is consumed.

The New Wine that God brought through Jesus Christ was explosive. Radical change like this always meets resistance from the old, but not from godly anointed leaders. John the Baptist, leader of the Old, blessed the New that was coming and said: Jesus must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30), and 'He who is coming is mightier than I' (Matthew 3:11). Nicodemus is another example of an anointed old-wineskin leader and Gamaliel (Acts 5:34). They recognized and gracefully embraced the change that God was bringing.

On the other hand, God's changes are always resisted by the non-anointed leaders of the old wineskin establishment. For example, the attitude of the chief priests was the exact opposite of John the Baptist's perspective. The last thing they were willing to do was decrease and lose the position of power they were enjoying in the old wineskin establishment. Rather than embrace change, the chief priests were filled with envy and plotted how they might kill Jesus (Matthew 26:1).

After Jesus ascended to heaven, the new church grew in amazing ways. The shadow of Peter passing over people in the streets healed them. Then a few years later, God did unusual miracles through the Apostle Paul. Acts 19:11 tells us that even handkerchiefs sent from Paul to others healed them. That was the beginning of the prayer cloth, and it was something new that God did through the next generation of believers, but not through the original Apostles that had walked with Jesus like Peter, James, and John.

This is important to understand: The Apostle Paul wasn't one of the original twelve Apostles that walked with Jesus on the Earth for three and a half years. Paul wasn't in the upper room on the day of Pentecost. Acts 9:4 tells us that Paul was converted later on the road to Damascus, oddly enough, while on his way to arrest some of Jesus' disciples. Paul had a personal experience with Jesus outside of the new church, and the original Apostles were not involved in his conversion at all. He had never met them.

This means that if Peter, James, John, and all the original Apostles of Jesus had sat down together and written down all they knew God had done so far. Suppose they had compiled all their experience and knowledge and turned it into a denominational belief system. That being healed by a person's shadow would have been included, but prayer cloths wouldn't have, for it happened outside their circle of knowledge. God did something new through someone they didn't yet know. Yet, when they learned about it, they accepted it gracefully. They were anointed leaders.

We are moving into the digital age, and what used to work no longer does. Things are changing, and we are moving into a new era. To stay in tune with what God is doing today, we must remain humble, teachable, flexible, and expandable. If you try to cling to the old, you will become unusable. God is not dead, and He is full of surprises. So let His Kingdom come, and let ours go gracefully.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, please let me see what You are doing today through Your eyes. I choose to believe that You are alive, that You love me, and that You are listening to me today. I want to ally myself with You, be part of what You are doing, and walk hand in hand. Come and be a part of my life today. Help me be stretchable; in the name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen!

Note: For those following the Creation Photography weekly challenges, here is this week's theme from group leader, Dianna Wyles: Psalm 25:7 "Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, Lord, are good." ~ 'Days Gone By' or 'Memory Makers' will be our next fun-tastic theme choices and are wide open for creative interpretation so have fun and get creative. Show us how you spend Memorial day or show us your heroes or just post anything that inspires you! My photos this week acknowledge our service members with a photo of my brother, dad (RIP), grandpa (RIP), uncle, brother, and son-in-law all served our country in some branch of service or another. Have a most memorable week, everyone, reflecting as always, on how good the Lord truly is. God bless! Here is the link: Creation Photographers

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