The Joyful Collision: New Wine for a New World Text: Matthew 9:14-17
Introduction: The Religion of the Long Face
There is a kind of religion that is perpetually sour. It is the religion of the long face, the sad countenance, the furrowed brow. It measures piety by the metric of misery. It believes that the way to get closer to God is to afflict the body, to cultivate a spirit of gloom, and to treat joy as a spiritual liability. This is the native religion of fallen man. It is the religion of Cain, who was angry that his brother's offering was accepted. It is the religion of the Pharisees, who tithed their mint and dill but neglected justice, mercy, and faith. And it is a religion that is always lurking at the door of the Christian church, trying to smuggle its gray-faced legalism back into the glorious festival of the gospel.
We are told in our day that true seriousness about God requires a certain kind of liturgical glumness. We are encouraged to prepare for our great feasts with seasons of penitential navel-gazing, as though the way to celebrate the arrival of the King is to act for a month like He is still far away. But the apostle Paul commands us to rejoice always, and then, in case we missed it, he says it again. The Christian life is not a funeral procession; it is a wedding march. It is not a dirge; it is a feast. And the central issue in our text today is this collision of two worlds: the old world of religious obligation, represented by the fasting of the Pharisees and John's disciples, and the new world of uncontainable joy, represented by the feasting of Jesus and His disciples.
Jesus did not come to patch up our old, worn-out religious systems. He did not come to pour his explosive new life into the brittle, inflexible structures of the old covenant. He came to do something entirely new. He came to tear the fabric of the old and to burst the wineskins of all man-made piety. The question put to Jesus is a simple one: "Why don't your disciples fast?" But the answer He gives is a declaration of war against every form of religion that would subordinate the Bridegroom to the spiritual discipline. He announces that a new age has dawned, an age of feasting, an age of joy, an age of new wine. And this new wine requires new wineskins.
The Text
Then the disciples of John came to Him, asking, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?”
And Jesus said to them, “Can the attendants of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results.
Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”
(Matthew 9:14-17 LSB)
An Inappropriate Question (v. 14)
The confrontation begins with a question from the disciples of John.
"Then the disciples of John came to Him, asking, 'Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?'" (Matthew 9:14)
Notice who is asking the question. It is not the Pharisees alone, but the disciples of John the Baptist. This is important. John's ministry was the final, intense blast of the Old Testament prophetic trumpet. It was a ministry of austerity, of repentance in the wilderness, symbolized by camel's hair, locusts, and wild honey. It was a preparatory ministry. John was the best man, not the groom. His disciples, quite naturally, adopted the practices of their master. Their fasting was appropriate for their station in redemptive history. They were living in the final moments of anticipation.
But they make a critical error. They lump their fasting in with the fasting of the Pharisees. "Why do we and the Pharisees fast...?" The Pharisees' fasting was of an entirely different character. It was the ostentatious piety of the hypocrite, done with sad countenances to be seen by men. It was the self-righteous drudgery of those who thought they could put God in their debt through their external performances. They were not anticipating the Messiah; they were building their own little kingdoms of religious merit.
So we have two groups, both fasting, but for different reasons. John's disciples fasted in righteous expectation. The Pharisees fasted in self-righteous pretension. But both were part of the old order that was about to be gloriously superseded. Their question reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of who Jesus is. They are looking at the incarnation of Joy Himself and asking why He is not more miserable. They are standing in the presence of the great Feast-Giver and wondering why His table is not bare. They are judging the new by the standards of the old, which is always the first mistake of a dying age.
The Bridegroom is Here (v. 15)
Jesus answers their question not with a defense, but with a reality-shattering announcement.
"And Jesus said to them, 'Can the attendants of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.'" (Matthew 9:15 LSB)
Jesus does not say, "Fasting is bad." He says, "Fasting is inappropriate right now." And the reason is that the Bridegroom is here. This is a claim of staggering significance. In the Old Testament, God Himself is the husband or bridegroom of His people, Israel. Jesus is taking this title for Himself. He is saying, "The God you have been waiting for, the husband who is coming for His bride, is here. The wedding has begun."
To fast in the presence of the Bridegroom would be as absurd as wearing funeral clothes to a wedding reception. It would be an insult to the host. The time for fasting is the time of absence, of longing, of yearning. But Jesus is present. His physical presence with His disciples inaugurated the great messianic feast. This is why He was so often found eating and drinking, to the scandal of the religious establishment. He was enacting the joy of the kingdom.
But He does not abolish fasting altogether. He says, "the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast." This refers to the time between His ascension and His second coming. The church now lives in this "already, not yet" tension. The Bridegroom has come, and He is present with us now by His Spirit. And because He is present, our fundamental posture is one of joy and feasting, especially when we gather on the Lord's Day for the great wedding feast of the Supper. Yet, because we do not yet see Him face to face, because we still groan in this fallen world, awaiting the final consummation, there are appropriate times for fasting. We fast in times of intense prayer, in times of repentance, in times of crying out to God for deliverance. But our fasting is now different. It is not the fasting of those who wait for the Bridegroom's first arrival, but the fasting of a bride who longs for her husband's final return.
Irreparable Garments and Uncontainable Wine (v. 16-17)
Jesus then drives the point home with two powerful, earthy parables that illustrate the radical discontinuity between the old era and the new.
"But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved." (Matthew 9:16-17 LSB)
The first illustration is of the old garment. The old covenant system, with its ceremonial laws and its preparatory rituals, was like an old, worn-out cloak. It had served its purpose beautifully, but its time was over. The gospel of the kingdom, this new life in Christ, is like a piece of new, unshrunk cloth. If you try to simply patch the old system with the new reality, you create a disaster. The first time you wash it, the new patch will shrink and rip away from the old fabric, making the tear even worse. The gospel is not a patch. Jesus did not come to be a footnote to Moses. He came to fulfill and replace the entire system.
The second illustration is even more potent. The new wine is the gospel itself, the effervescent, fermenting, expanding life of the Spirit. It is dynamic, powerful, and alive. The old wineskins are the structures of old covenant Judaism: the temple, the sacrificial system, the purity laws, the entire institutional framework. These structures were designed to hold the "water" of the old covenant, but they were never meant to contain the "wine" of the new. Old wineskins were made of leather that had already stretched as far as it could. If you pour new, fermenting wine into them, the pressure of the fermentation will build until the brittle leather gives way. The wineskin bursts, the wine is lost, and the container is ruined.
This is a prophecy of what would happen. The new wine of the gospel was poured out at Pentecost. The disciples were immediately accused of being drunk on new wine. And what happened? The old wineskins of Judaism could not contain it. The pressure built, the conflict escalated, until in A.D. 70, God rendered His verdict, and the entire old covenant structure, the temple and its system, was torn down, burst open, and utterly ruined. The new wine of the Christian faith required the new wineskin of the Christian church.
Conclusion: A Feasting People
The implications for us are profound. We are the people of the new wine. The church is the new wineskin. Our defining characteristic is not to be the grim, dutiful fasting of the Pharisees, but the overflowing joy of the wedding feast. This does not mean we are frivolous. This joy is a deep, theological reality, rooted in the finished work of Christ. It is a joy that can absorb sorrow, a joy that can endure persecution, a joy that looks at trials and counts them as such.
But it means that our central gatherings, our corporate worship, must be characterized by celebration. We are not trying to get God's attention through our mournful piety. We have His attention. We are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. The Bridegroom is with us. Therefore, we feast.
We must be ruthless in resisting any attempt to pour this new wine back into old wineskins. This happens every time we try to rebuild a system of righteousness based on our performance, our rule-keeping, or our spiritual disciplines. It happens every time we substitute external conformity for the Spirit's internal life. It happens every time we let our traditions become brittle and inflexible, unable to contain a fresh movement of God's Spirit.
The kingdom of God is a feast, and the wine is plentiful. It is the wine of grace, the wine of forgiveness, the wine of resurrection life. God has made us new wineskins, flexible and strong through faith. Our task is to be joyfully full of the new wine, and to invite a thirsty world to come and drink freely.