Most people know of "deja vu" but have you ever heard of "jamais vu". Jamais vu describes the feeling you get when something that should be familiar becomes unfamiliar. Try writing the word "button" 25 times and see what happens.
Something similar happens when I read a passage of scripture over and over. Maybe the more you see something your assumptions and the associated inferences fade and the actual thing starts to stand out more starkly?
I've been reading Luke 5:33-39 over and over lately and I can't seem to grasp its meaning.
Then they said to Him, “Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and likewise those of the Pharisees, but Yours eat and drink?”
And He said to them, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days.”
Then He spoke a parable to them: “No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one; otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, ‘The old is better.’”
I've never noticed that last statement before "the old is better" and It's only included in Luke's account.
I always believed this parable meant we must be changed before God's Spirit will be poured into us but now I'm not so sure that's what He's saying.
I started reading the context of that back to verse 27 and then the other two accounts of the same story in Matthew 9 and Mark 2. In the Matthew account Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6
For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
Here are the facts of the three accounts:
- Jesus called a tax collector Matthew to follow Him
- Matthew held a feast with Jesus, His disciples, tax collectors and sinners
- The Pharisees questioned Jesus on why He would eat with tax collectors and sinners
- Jesus said, "But go and learn what this means: 'I desire Mercy and not sacrifice.' For I did not come to call the righteous but the sinners"
- John's disciples questioned Jesus on why His disciples didn't fast
- Jesus replied with 3 analogies: the bridegroom, the cloth and the wine in wineskins
God desires mercy for sinners more than the sacrifice of fasting that the Pharasees and John's disciples were offering. But a question still remains for me... What did He mean when He said "But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, ‘The old is better." - Luke 5:38-39?
"The old is better"... This is the part I never noticed before and has got me scratching my head.
P.S. if you're wondering why there is a picture of coffee beans on this post its to demonstrate that if you looked at it carefully you would've noticed a creepy face lurking in those seemingly random beans.
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