He is my Delight

Mark 2:21-22 No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins.”

In the passages leading up to these verses we see Jesus touching a leper, forgiving and healing a paralytic, eating with sinners. The religious people hated Him for it because He just wasn’t…well…religious enough. There wasn’t enough fasting, enough rigid law keeping, enough self righteous separation from sinners. It was in this context that Jesus spoke these verses. He spoke them to people whose religion made them stiff and rigid. It made them harsh and judgmental. It shut up their hearts to those broken in body and broken by sin.

They clung to the old wineskins of their religious tradition, and when Jesus brought the new wine of a Spirit filled life, just like the old wineskins they weren’t able to receive the new thing.

These rigid religionists were mad when His disciples got something to eat on the sabbath (2:23-24), mad when Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath (3:1-2), and accused Him of being devil possessed because He cast demons out of people who were bound.

Jesus just would not be like them and they hated Him for it. I supposed it never crossed their minds that they should become like Him. Rigid and inflexible, they missed the miraculous things that God was doing, and the miracle of God incarnate being in their midst.

Let God bend you, beloved. Don’t miss the glorious things He wants to do in your life by being inflexible.