Day 30 | Else the Bottles Break
August 31, 2015 - WEEK FIVE
James Tissot, The Woman with an Issue of Blood, Brooklyn Museum, Purchased by public subscription.
DAILY READING
Matthew 9:1-17
Mark 2:1-22
Luke 5:27-39
CONSIDER AS YOU READ
- Are you a true disciple of Christ? What evidence is there to prove it?
- How can the gospel message sometimes be divisive, even though Jesus teaches us to be united?
SUPPLEMENTAL READING
[Matthew] 9:16 This verse could have been translated more literally “‘Nobody sews a patch of unshrunk cloth upon an old outer garment: for its full strength would pull the outer garment and the tear would become worse.” The Revised Standard Version gives this verse as follows: “And no one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made.”
[Matthew] 9:17 “Bottles,” which appears four times in this one verse, is a translation of a Greek term meaning “wineskins” (skin bags). Virtually all modern translations use the word skins or wineskins for this Greek term.
The bottles here referred to were really bags, made of the skins of animals, and of course they deteriorated with age. Just as old leather splits or tears under even slight strain, so the old bottle-skins would burst from the pressure of fermenting juice, and the good wine would be lost. The gospel taught by Christ was a new revelation, superseding the past, and marking the fulfilment of the law; it was no mere addendum, nor was it a reenactment of past requirements; it embodied a new and an everlasting covenant. Attempts to patch the Judaistic robe of traditionalism with the new fabric of the covenant could result in nothing more sightly than a rending of the fabric. The new wine of the gospel could not be held in the old time-worn containers of Mosaic liberations. Judaism would be belittled and Christianity perverted by any such incongruous association…. (See Talmage, Jesus the Christ, p. 197) (Daniel H. Ludlow, Companion to Your Study of the New Testament: The Four Gospels, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1982, 749).
ADDITIONAL MEDIA
FOR YOUNGER DISCIPLES
QUESTIONS FOR YOUNGER DISCIPLES
- What is an evil spirit?
- Why were the people afraid of Jesus when he cast the evil spirits out of the man?