Living Stones – Thursday, January 4, 2018
No patching
Matthew 9:16
“No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse.”
When Jesus was asked the question about fasting, Matthew 9:14-17, He gave a three-part answer. In His answer He talked about the wedding guest eating and drinking in the bridegroom’s presence, He talked about patching torn garments, and He talked about new wine and new wineskins. So far, we have examined the matter of new wine and new wineskins.
Today we are looking at Jesus’ comment about the patching of a torn garment. While this comment is simple enough to be understood, figuring out where Jesus was going with this is a bit more difficult.
Jesus used a very practical problem of day to day life in that time to tackle a fundamental flaw in the way the Jews were thinking about His ministry, and the activity of His disciples. Jesus showed up with a new teaching and fresh approach, but the Jews wanted to immediately impose the old religious methods on Him and His followers.
Old methods and ideas, that once worked, are often a prison for new ideas. Unless new ideas and approaches get themselves free of the shackles and limitations of the old they are doomed. Many a new idea never saw the light of day because the gatekeepers never allowed them space and time to flourish.
Understanding the structure of old ideas and old thinking is usually a challenge for the new thinkers with their fresh ideas. I remember a business problem I faced nearly two decades ago. Our firm was providing secretarial and clerical services to firms that had short-term needs. We were looking at the possibility of providing these services on a long-term basis to clients of ours to reduce their human-resource costs and of course grow our business offerings. One of the lawyers, a partner of the law firm we had as a client, told me that he liked the idea and thought it was a good way to go, however, the other senior partner would not like it because he was from the old school. I quickly observed that the person to whom he referred was actually younger than him. He said, “I didn’t tell you that he was old, I told you that school he’s from is old.” I learned an important life lesson.
The old school has a structure for perpetuating its ideas to preserve itself. This structure boxes in even the young and supposedly radical in their midst. As a result, it is possible for institutions and organisations to go on from generation to generation without change. Churches are a particular place where this occurs. A perennial problem in the church is that of older members telling the young, we never did it like that before, just as they stopped them dead in their tracks and killed off an innovation.
Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?” Matthew 9:14. John the Baptist was a new phenomenon, he was challenging men to repentance and personal piety, however, John did not operate outside of the norms of the establishment. As a result, his disciples thought that Jesus and His disciples were radicals. It wasn’t the old guard that asked this question, it was the young disciples of John the Baptist.
Jesus’ response was that when something is fundamentally broken patching is an inappropriate approach to fixing it. Brand new unshrunk cloth is attractive and valuable but it is of no real value to the worn garment that has faced the rigours of daily activity and the changes in structure caused by repeated washings. New and innovative ideas don’t survive in the old structure. Just like a patch of new cloth will quickly itself make the tear worse, so too new ideas can wreck the old system.
This should have come as no surprise to those who knew the Old Testament scriptures. The Prophet Isaiah had already signalled this. Here is what he recorded in Isaiah 43:18 “Do not remember the former things, Nor consider the things of old.” God was saying, through Isaiah, that the old school needs a new curriculum. He continued in verse 19, “Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it?”
Jesus’ answers can be understood this way, we’re not doing it just because you did it. And this we must do every day too. Not to do it just because others have done it year after year often with the same results. We live in an age of new ideas, new strategies, and new technologies an If we are going to be useful to the Kingdom of God we cannot be like the Luddites.
Instead, we have to be like the men of Issachar who had an understanding of the times (1 Chronicles 12:32) and like David who was useful for his time. “For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep, was buried with his fathers, and saw corruption; Acts 13:36
Think on these things:
- Are you old fashioned in your approach to the church activities and ministry?
- Are you comfortable with the inclusion of new technologies into church activities or do you think that is a distraction from the core message?
- What would you have to do or change to become more relevant to the generation that you are called to serve?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would be ready to embrace new strategies, methods and technologies to serve God in our generation.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex
