New Cloth on an Old Garment, New Wine into Old Bottles
KJV Matthew 9:16 No man putteth a piece
of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh
from the garment, and the rent is made worse.
People
scratch their heads over this parable, but the comparison is simpler than it
appears at first. The parables are for the studious, not for the superficial
who guess at and even make up their inventive and creative solutions. This is
made worse by a popular assumption that the Old Testament is all law and condemnation,
the New Testament all grace and forgiveness. True Judaism is also true
Christianity, but many have tried to patch Pharisaic legalism with Christian
words and phrases. Judaism declined into the perfection of the Pharisees in
works. Many modern Christian denominations are inclined to deny the Scriptures,
miracles, and divinity of Christ, replacing the Gospel of the Savior with man
redeeming society with new laws. This Social Gospel, as they called it, only
differs in kind from the old cloth of works righteousness. The National Council
of Churches is an example of the bitter fruit of Christian socialism.
17 Neither do men put new wine into old
bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles
perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.
The
second comparison is clearer because skins were used then and even in modern
times to hold wine or water. As Lenski observed himself, the goat skin was
removed in on piece, with the feet and tail openings sewn shut. The neck
opening was used for filling the skin. Since leather is fragile, new wine in
old wineskins could split the skin and splash the wine onto the ground, both
wine and wineskin ruined.
This
wrongful improvement, causing destruction, is easily found many quasi-Christian
sects today. The Bible is praised, the New Testament is emphasized, but the
effort to pour alien ideas into the container has ruined the Christian Faith mixed with
the cults’ or sects’ dogma.
