The Lord Prepares the Heart

Luke 5: 34-39 (ESV)

34 And Jesus said to them, "Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? 35 The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days." 36 He also told them a parable: "No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. 38 But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’"

This passage, and all New Testament passages referring to wine have forever been polluted in my mind by the ravings of the ridiculous Rodney. That is Rodney Howard Browne - he of the Word/Faith, New Apostolic stripe who exhorts people to get "drunk in the spirit" on the "new" wine. A more abysmal misrepresentation of Holy Scripture could no one invent. He bases his blasphemies partially on the passage that tells us "not to get drunk on wine, but to be filled with the Spirit." (Ephesians 5:18-19) "Belly up to the bar," we are advised, "And get drunk on the Holy Spirit." People lap it up.

More misuse of scripture is displayed by the New Apostolic Reformationists of which C. Peter Wagner is the often unseen head. The "new wine" has become symbolic of a supposed new movement of the Holy Spirit - the sort that started in the Toronto Vineyard and Brownsville and is manifested in the Kansas City Prophets. This whole amorphous agglomeration of apostasy is growing and spreading its tentacles into thousands of churches via deceived congregants and undiscerning pastors. It is "riding the wave" on phrases like the "new wine." If you don’t have it as they define it, then you are effectively a second-class Christian - or not a Christian at all.

So when I come to the actual phrase in the Word of God, like all people, I come with my baggage. My particular baggage happens to be anger at the way some people have distorted the Truth in the name of Christ. And I need to pause to let my own axe-grinding presuppositions flutter to a halt so that I can be broken upon the Rock of Truth myself. Coming to scripture in a rage or rant or with judgment and resentment in the heart is neither helpful nor scriptural and it can drown out the still small voice.

Jesus and the Holy Spirit are indeed "new wine". They are in a sense the wine of the New Covenant. They are Life given and Life communicated to the saints by the grace of God. One has only to look at the disciples to understand what Jesus is saying here. For whatever reason, God has chosen to work in these men over time, and not all at once. Christ spent three intimate years with them, explaining His teaching of the kingdom. They were incredibly dense about it all, as you would expect from natural men.

Apart from the power of the indwelling Spirit communicating the Life of the risen Christ it matters little how much men know. Knowing and seeing are two different things. Christ sowed the powerful word into them, but it had to fall to the ground and die. That word lay dormant in their hearts because, though they believed in Him, they did not truly believe Him. The word that Christ gave them made them clean - but that cleanliness was manifested in power at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit communicated to them the Life of the risen Christ.

Suddenly they saw as never before. They saw even more clearly than at those post-resurrection times with the Lord before the ascension. At Pentecost, what had been largely external apprehension, a taking in by the mind of Truth before their eyes, suddenly became internalized. Christ came to dwell in their hearts by the Spirit and everything was somehow seen in a brighter and more powerful light. They jumped from two to three dimensional understanding because the Truth was in them and He recalled to them all the Words that had been poured into their darkened minds by Christ incarnate. Light shone upon it all. They were empowered by the Truth made part of them, joined to their very being through renewed hearts.

In this present argument with the leaders, Jesus is explaining to them, to the disciples and to us for all who had (or would have) ears to hear, that those who are being drawn to Him are not always ripe to receive mind-blowing truth. It would tear them apart to see all at once and without proper preparation the stunning reality of the full light of the gospel of grace. They were steeped in old tradition themselves. They had old ideas, prejudices, misunderstandings and misconceptions. They were fruit of the covenant of works, improperly guided by misappropriators of that covenant - to whom Christ was speaking in this incident. The disciples needed time for the Truth to take root in them so that they would have a proper basis for amending their behaviour.

Like all of us at one time, they had no power to obey the law. The law could only condemn them. They needed to hear the word and for faith to come through that hearing until they were finally sealed by the Spirit of the risen Christ. This ought to give pause to many in the church today. In this age of instant everything from tea to stardom, religion has not escaped the syndrome. Crusade (originally revival crusade) theology has invaded the whole church. People must hear the word and be instantly converted.

In truth, some are. Some are always ready, by the grace of God. That is why we always give the call. Now is always the hour of salvation. So long as we don’t ever confuse the general call (which goes out to all who hear) with the effectual call (which God alone makes heard in the sinner’s heart). But most aren’t ready. They need to be steeped in the Word more before they are ready. When the Christian community starts to see revivalism and crusadism as the means by which people are made ready, rather than the means of ingathering those whom God has already prepared, then the teaching of the word in home churches gradually begins to flag, in favour of the revivalist concept of instant decisions. It is at these times that the church needs to take a good look at the time the Lord of All Creation took to set the proper foundation in His Own Apostles.

There is a great personal care shown here. The Lord is tender towards his lambs. There is a recognition of their fragility. This shows God to be more than just a simple autocrat or an unempathetic omnipotence. That is what we might be like if we were God. But God is gentle and patient and kind and tender and full of lovingkindness towards His Own. With 20/20 hindsight we can see that there does come a time when the lambs are asked to suffer many things for His Name’s sake. But He never asks of any of His children that for which He has not prepared them beforehand. This passage shows that. We ought to take heart, for our own time of trial is coming.