Luke Chapter 5
Jesus begins calling the 12. Jesus gets into Simon's boat to preach to the crowd that is pressing on him. About to push him into the lake I would say. Jesus preaches, then tells Simon to push out to the deep water and let down the nets. Simon does, and the nets are filled. This is the version in "Chosen". It is based on Luke's account. That makes me feel a lot better about that show. Still don't like Mary traveling with the disciples though. After the big catch of fish, they leave everything and follow Jesus, to become fishers of men.
Luke relates the story of the leper that is healed and told not to spread the word, but does anyway. Word gets out and crowds begin to come to Jesus so that he has to go to desolate places to pray.
Jesus heals the paralytic let down through the hole in the roof. He does this with Pharisees from all over present to see it. They are first hand witnesses. They hear him tell the man his sins are forgiven, and they get upset, because only God can forgive sin. So Jesus contrasts forgiving sins and healing paralytics, and asks which is easier? Obviously, one is a physical observable thing, the other is not. It is a spiritual thing. Jesus tells the paralytic to arise, which he does. This is a miracle, confirming that the sins are forgiven, and so demonstrating for the Pharisees that Jesus IS God, incarnate. First hand.
Then Jesus calls Levi, the tax collector. Matthew puts on a banquet -since he is quite rich - and invites other tax collectors. The scribes and Pharisees are upset by this fraternizing with sinners. Jesus tells them that the whole have no need of physicians. So obvious...
Some people (not specific whether it was the Pharisees or not) ask why Jesus' disciples never fast. He tells them how inappropriate it would be for guests at a wedding celebration to fast. But that someday, they will.
Then he tells a parable. This is the first one we've heard, chronologically. This is about mending new garments with old cloth, and about putting new wine in new wineskins. It ends with "no one would drink new wine" after they've had the old, because they will say "the old is good". Those clinging to the Mosaic law, especially the religious leaders getting wealthy off that law, will be unconvinced that this new wine - this new covenant - is better. They will aggressively cling to the old. Jesus is saying that no part of the old can be incorporated into the new. No sacrifices, no dietary restrictions, no feasts...the old just will not "incorporate" into the new. They are mutually exclusive so to speak. The church age requires a setting aside of the Mosaic Covenant/Sinai covenant. They cannot exist side by side. And they don't, after AD 70.
2022 - But the way it is worded, it says that "no one" would want new wine after drinking the old. That doesn't sound like Jesus is saying they are wrong. Everyone feels the same way about that. Jesus tells this same parable in Mark2:21,22 and Matt 9:16,17. The qualitative assessment that no one would prefer the new does not appear in those other two accounts. Only Luke includes this part. What is common to all three is that if the new is put into the old, then both the wine and the container will be ruined. Both. The only way to read this, it seems, is to say that those "sot in their ways", the old hard shell types, will never prefer what is new. They will always prefer the old ways. And this is a huge problem if we see it as a physical parable. But perhaps Jesus is speaking here of the spiritual. Perhaps this is about "old things are passed away, behold all things are become new". The gospel requires a new man, a regenerate spirit, where the new wine can be deposited without damage, and age as it should into something that gets better and better with time. If there was no renewal of spirit, then the gospel - the new wine - would in fact be destructive. Jesus is saying it is not possible to retain the sacrificial system, the Mosaic Law, and also embrace the gospel. This is the point that Paul continually made to the Judaizers, who kept trying to mix the two, requiring adherence to dietary laws, circumcision and so on. These things were "old wineskins", and trying to hold onto them, rather than moving on to the gospel, would be inevitably destructive to those who tried to combine the two. Which also sends us back to the first part of the parable about patching old garments with new cloth. All that does is bring harm and destruction to the old cloth. You cannot make the gospel "fit in" to the Mosaic system. They are incompatible. And the natural way, the human way, of dealing with "new" things is to hold to the old, because everyone knows that aged wine is better than new wine.