Day 48 Bible Reading

Exodus 21-22, Mark 2: 18-28, Mark 3: 1-30, Psalm 25: 8-15

Mark 2: 21-22 (ESV)

“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. 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.””

Verses 21-22 from Mark 2 has always been confusing to me. I’m not sure I quite get it, but from reading various commentaries I have come to understand that Jesus was talking about himself and his mission in these statements. His teachings were so different than what was being traditionally taught in the temples. Even though the coming of Jesus was foretold in the Old Testament, what we he was teaching was so radically different that everyone would have to have a new way of looking at things. Did Christ know he was creating a new religion with his teachings? Or did he want Judaism to expand, to change to encompass his teachings? I don’t even know the answer to this question, but history tells us the people in Jesus’ time did not want to change and expand their beliefs to embrace Jesus’ teachings. So a new religion was formed, and one that would overtake and shape all of the Western world. I often wonder what our world would have been like if Jesus’ teachings would have been embraced by the majority of his people after the resurrection. Would our history still have been as violent? Would we have found other people to persecute? I don’t know. But I would have liked to experienced that world.