We poorly interpret and apply the metaphoric sense of old wine and new wine, old wine containers, and new wine containers. We end up exaggerating the metaphor to the point of negating the revelation in part or the whole. The point of a metaphor is the point we should get, not our subsequent extension of the metaphor to flavor our favorite candy stick issues.
Jesus says, “Are you starting to catch on to what I’m saying about Heaven’s kingdom?”
The disciples answered, “Yes.”
Jesus says, “Every expert in previous revelations of kingdom culture who starts learning at some level of expertise and experience in Heaven’s kingdom thinking is like a person with an inherited storehouse filled with things both old and new from which he appropriately provides what is needed when it is needed.”
Now, the old wine and wineskin is not a problem, something to be despised or dishonored. Jesus makes it clear that losing old wine and wineskins is part of the reason He uses new wineskins for new wine. “Both would be wasted.” The idea that we have to move from old wineskins in order to experience new wine, casting aside something that Jesus wishes to preserve displays our lack of appreciation for the Law and Prophets.
As an apostolic and prophetic people, with maturity in both aspects of kingdom leadership function, we reveal immaturity in this spurious perspective. We jump to a conclusion much different from the presuppositions of Jesus. We take prophetic license to apply this idea in a way that reveals we are immature, and we limit Heaven’s kingdom is like to our present condition and understanding.
- Old wine and old wineskins are not worthless. The metaphor includes patching an old garment with new cloth so that we do not miss the significance of the metaphor. We have become notoriously wrong with respect to this metaphor.
- The old tastes better. The old is worth more than the new. The point is that new wine is not the desired wine, and the new wine put into old wineskins cannot be disguised as old wine. It is something new. The clear differentiation between old and new must remain in place for us to value each properly. “Having drunk old, no man wants new.”
- The reluctance to turn to new wine in new bottles is explained so that the present generation recognizes the nature of the change coming to kingdom culture. Jesus will take kingdom culture where Law and Prophets would have taken it had people allowed them to teach them of Messiah. “The Law is a schoolmaster bringing us to Christ.”
- The old should prepare us to receive the new, overcoming our reluctance for the new, honoring the old but not attempting to limit the new by blending or forcing it into a previous structure.
- We are as guilty of doing this as the generation of Jesus! We have lost kingdom culture, and we do not realize we have lost it. When someone points to kingdom culture, it looks like something new when it is not. It is the proper conclusion of old wine that leads to a new vintage from the same roots.
That is as far as the metaphor goes. Old wine. Old garments. New wine. New wineskins. Storing wine. Affixing patches.
When an expert in the old becomes a disciple of the new, he fills a storehouse of both and supplies what is appropriate here and now.
