My soul longs for Your salvation. I hope in Your word. My eyes long for Your promise. I ask, "When will You comfort me?" For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke, yet I have not forgotten Your statutes. How long must Your servant endure? When will You judge those who persecute me? The insolent have dug pitfalls for me.They do not live according to Your law. All the commandments are sure. They persecute me with falsehood. Help me! They have almost made an end of me on earth, but I have not forsaken Your precepts. In Your steadfast love give me life that I may keep the testimonies of Your mouth. (Verses 81-88)
"And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins--and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins." Mark 2
The disciples and those faithful to Jesus when He was on earth were together in a rented room in Jerusalem, waiting rather unspecifically for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. The promise of Jesus was they would receive the power of the Holy Spirit "not many days from now." Then Christ ascended into heaven while they watched. That was ten days ago. Perhaps their anticipation waned a bit in the ensuing days since they'd last seen Jesus. Waiting sometimes dulls our hopes. But then again, Jesus had, in the fifty days since Passover and His crucifixion and resurrection, appeared suddenly in their midst. He'd spoken to five hundred witnesses at one time. Chatted with two men as they walked together on the road to Emmaus. On this early morning of the day of Pentecost, a harvest festival, were they milling about the room? Had they just knelt down in the prayer that occupied their days of waiting and hoping? Were they swallowing their last bite of breakfast? When a wind whooshed in. Not through any windows. Bigger than that. Power filling a void pressed them to the walls, filled the entire room in mesmerizing, ear-splitting force. Then fire. Unlit. Swirling at first with the gale then settling in glowing brilliance in pillars over those gathered. Did Peter look at John in amazement? I think so. "John! There is a flame of fire above your head!" And the mother of Jesus is jumping up and down! "There is fire above all our heads!" But the words were coming in a different language!
The Holy Spirit didn't arrive quietly into the temples now made of clay. No. Jerusalem heard the sound of a tornado as it whirred inside the upper room. The harvest feast attracted holy men every year, so the temple grounds swarmed with them. Those in the upper room scurried out and spoke as the Holy Spirit told them to. In languages they'd never learned they proclaimed the mighty works of God. And the gathering crowds heard the gospel of Jesus in their own languages. "What is happening? These people are Galileans! They don't speak our language!" And another, "How come we're hearing them talk to us in our own language?" And they couldn't think what it all meant. They stood amazed and perplexed.
The mockers, though, thought it was a stunt. "They're drunk! Too much new wine!"
At nine o'clock in the morning. A seemingly random time for Jesus to decide to finally send the Holy Spirit to us. And if drunk, yes, it was with new wine. In new wine skins. "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it's only nine o'clock in the morning. What is happening is the fulfillment of the prophet Joel: "And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh." Fill us up with new wine. Exchange the smoke-shriveled souls of dried up self-righteousness with a brand new vessel. No longer do we have to cry out from the dried up caverns of our puny piety. "Every man in Christ is a brand new creature. The old has passed away and the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5). We get to start all over.
Peter was in hiding. Ashamed almost beyond bearing that he'd denied three times that he even knew Jesus. New wine. Poured in by grace. Lit by the same fire that Christ brought down to earth to reclaim His own. Now preaching boldly. "Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves know quite well. This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it!" Spilling onto the crowds the overflowing from a new wineskin.
Never do we have to say with the psalmist, "I feel like a wineskin that's been left out in the garage, thrown up into some rafter and forgotten. Soul shriveled and parched. Unworthy of filling once again with the joy of new wine." It's not that we don't find ourselves thinking that way sometimes. The point is, we don't have to. The hallmark of Passover and Pentecost is that we can be indwelt by that same Spirit Who raised Christ from the dead. He is powerful enough to have seen Jesus through His death and to take the body, blow His breath into it as He did with Adam, and cause the eyes of our Messiah to blink in the darkness as He sat up and stretched in the sepulcher that couldn't hold Him. The rock that enclosed and captured Jesus there rolled back at His command and He walked free past two mighty angels and back onto the earth He'd redeemed forever. That Spirit lives in me. And if you know Jesus, in you. So that no matter what it is we face today, and some face dire, dire things, we can be filled with new wine. We have the power to walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil. We can overcome addictions by tasting a better brew than the one concocted for us by the enemy of our souls. And the One Who abides in us will give us power to live here until we drink the wine anew with Jesus in heaven.
"And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins--and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins." Mark 2
The disciples and those faithful to Jesus when He was on earth were together in a rented room in Jerusalem, waiting rather unspecifically for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. The promise of Jesus was they would receive the power of the Holy Spirit "not many days from now." Then Christ ascended into heaven while they watched. That was ten days ago. Perhaps their anticipation waned a bit in the ensuing days since they'd last seen Jesus. Waiting sometimes dulls our hopes. But then again, Jesus had, in the fifty days since Passover and His crucifixion and resurrection, appeared suddenly in their midst. He'd spoken to five hundred witnesses at one time. Chatted with two men as they walked together on the road to Emmaus. On this early morning of the day of Pentecost, a harvest festival, were they milling about the room? Had they just knelt down in the prayer that occupied their days of waiting and hoping? Were they swallowing their last bite of breakfast? When a wind whooshed in. Not through any windows. Bigger than that. Power filling a void pressed them to the walls, filled the entire room in mesmerizing, ear-splitting force. Then fire. Unlit. Swirling at first with the gale then settling in glowing brilliance in pillars over those gathered. Did Peter look at John in amazement? I think so. "John! There is a flame of fire above your head!" And the mother of Jesus is jumping up and down! "There is fire above all our heads!" But the words were coming in a different language!
The Holy Spirit didn't arrive quietly into the temples now made of clay. No. Jerusalem heard the sound of a tornado as it whirred inside the upper room. The harvest feast attracted holy men every year, so the temple grounds swarmed with them. Those in the upper room scurried out and spoke as the Holy Spirit told them to. In languages they'd never learned they proclaimed the mighty works of God. And the gathering crowds heard the gospel of Jesus in their own languages. "What is happening? These people are Galileans! They don't speak our language!" And another, "How come we're hearing them talk to us in our own language?" And they couldn't think what it all meant. They stood amazed and perplexed.
The mockers, though, thought it was a stunt. "They're drunk! Too much new wine!"
At nine o'clock in the morning. A seemingly random time for Jesus to decide to finally send the Holy Spirit to us. And if drunk, yes, it was with new wine. In new wine skins. "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it's only nine o'clock in the morning. What is happening is the fulfillment of the prophet Joel: "And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh." Fill us up with new wine. Exchange the smoke-shriveled souls of dried up self-righteousness with a brand new vessel. No longer do we have to cry out from the dried up caverns of our puny piety. "Every man in Christ is a brand new creature. The old has passed away and the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5). We get to start all over.
Peter was in hiding. Ashamed almost beyond bearing that he'd denied three times that he even knew Jesus. New wine. Poured in by grace. Lit by the same fire that Christ brought down to earth to reclaim His own. Now preaching boldly. "Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves know quite well. This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it!" Spilling onto the crowds the overflowing from a new wineskin.
Never do we have to say with the psalmist, "I feel like a wineskin that's been left out in the garage, thrown up into some rafter and forgotten. Soul shriveled and parched. Unworthy of filling once again with the joy of new wine." It's not that we don't find ourselves thinking that way sometimes. The point is, we don't have to. The hallmark of Passover and Pentecost is that we can be indwelt by that same Spirit Who raised Christ from the dead. He is powerful enough to have seen Jesus through His death and to take the body, blow His breath into it as He did with Adam, and cause the eyes of our Messiah to blink in the darkness as He sat up and stretched in the sepulcher that couldn't hold Him. The rock that enclosed and captured Jesus there rolled back at His command and He walked free past two mighty angels and back onto the earth He'd redeemed forever. That Spirit lives in me. And if you know Jesus, in you. So that no matter what it is we face today, and some face dire, dire things, we can be filled with new wine. We have the power to walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil. We can overcome addictions by tasting a better brew than the one concocted for us by the enemy of our souls. And the One Who abides in us will give us power to live here until we drink the wine anew with Jesus in heaven.
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