The New Wine Skins

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. Ephesians 5:25-27

Who knew that Jesus was proving this scripture by His very first miracle of turning the Water of His Word (Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.) into His New Wine. He was doing more than wining and dining at a wedding, but we need to go back to Jesus as the Beginning to get a more full understanding... Jesus as the First.

First comes the Seed - then the Root - then the Tree.

Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, [that] the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. Galatians 3:16-17

There was Jesus Christ at the Beginning with Abram. He revealed Himself at the end of Genesis chapter 14, through Melchizedek, the King and Priest which gave Abram His Bread and Wine (speaking to His future New Covenant) - and then Abram tithed to Him, right? The very next chapter in Genesis 15, our Father is making covenant with Abram reiterating His Promise to Abram's Seed recorded in Genesis 12:7 And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him..

So the Promise and the Covenant that was before of God in Christ takes us up to the Law and the baptism of the Cloud (our Father) and the Red Sea which represented and quite manifested in the natural generational deliverance from the god of this world as the Sea swallowed up Pharaoh, the army of his great house and 400 plus years of the Israelites' bondage. The Law is established along with Deliverance and the Promise of Inheritance. And Jesus was found there with them like He was found with Abram. We know Christ was the Rock in the Wilderness...that Spiritual drink. That's why Moses got in trouble and couldn't get into the Promised Land because He struck Him (so to speak.) It's also possible that the Finger that wrote on Moses's tablets of stone also wrote in sand when confronted with that very Law. But Jesus - in a sense - also manifested as the Fire of God ... Just as Father did - in a sense - in the Cloud. (Not to get off topic but we see our Father referenced with a cloud in several places, one being on the Mount of Transfiguration: Matthew 17:5 While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.)

And then we see Jesus, the Baptizer of Fire, leading the Way through the night as the Holy Fire of God.... remember, the night cometh when no man can work...this end time baptism is a necessity for end time sons of God.

Let's move on to segue from the Law into the New Covenant that the Root will establish.

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:

And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD... Isaiah 11:1-2

Now here we are.... Jesus is at a wedding. His mother ordained the time and the place His Word would begin to change the world it created, "Do whatever He says..." So Jesus sees those pots for purifying and tells them to fill them with water. He was revealing the transitioning out from the Law of the pots - the old wineskin. The pots provided the perfect symbolism. The Purifying Fire was here with His Word - the Water that transforms into the Wine of the New Covenant. So that we can be presented spotless to Him as His Bride.

We are the skins.

People. Humanity. We are filled with the Water of His Word which purifies us and anoints us with the Wine of His New Covenant. It's people - the Redeemed who hold the Wine and pour ourselves out as His drink offering of Grace and Mercy and Love. We are a new Breed of mankind on earth. We are clean. He took our sin away. His very Kingdom lives inside of us. We are skins delivered from the Law and entering into His New Covenant - and as such we both drink and pour out His New Wine - the Promise of His Inheritance.

Look at the meaning of New Wine: go to the Root: yaresh {yaw-raysh'}; a primitive root; to occupy (by driving out previous tenants, and possessing in their place); by implication, to seize, to rob, to inherit...

Wow! And He saved the Best Covenant for Last! John 2:10 ...Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse but thou hast kept the good wine until now.

The Root is becoming the full grown Tree of Eternal Life which was established by the Cross! (A really good book by Karen Lyons will soon be coming out called The Great Exchange and it will give us more insight into this revelation.)

Jesus is truly the First and the Last.... there was no "judaism." It was always Christ. There was the "religion of the jews" with an unclean priesthood that worshiped another god but that god was not our Father....Jesus tells us this plainly in John 8.

I know that ye are Abraham's seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.

They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, [even] God.

Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? [even] because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of [your] father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. John 8:37-44

The Law and its Levitical Priesthood had fallen into the hands of interlopers...men with private agendas....see them in Ezekiel 8 and see the Man of Fire reveal it all to Ezekiel.

And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth [month], in the fifth [day] of the month, [as] I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord GOD fell there upon me. Then I beheld, and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire: from the appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and from his loins even upward, as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber. And he put forth the form of an hand, and took me by a lock of mine head; and the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate that looketh toward the north; where [was] the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy. And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel [was] there, according to the vision that I saw in the plain.

Then said he unto me, Son of man, lift up thine eyes now the way toward the north. So I lifted up mine eyes the way toward the north, and behold northward at the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry. He said furthermore unto me, Son of man, seest thou what they do? [even] the great abominations that the house of Israel committeth here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary?...

And he brought me into the inner court of the LORD'S house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, [were] about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the LORD, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east. Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen [this], O son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? for they have filled the land with violence, and have returned to provoke me to anger: and, lo, they put the branch to their nose. Ezekiel 8:1-6,16-17

What an interesting thing to say - they put the branch to their nose ...our Commentators have struggled to understand this passage but most chalk it up to an ancient pagan ritual which it most likely was. But I see something else too. Remember how the Pharisees and Sadducees were constantly proving Jesus? Smelling with the nose represents perception; discernment... to make of quick understanding. They were putting the Branch to their noses so to speak .... trying to discern this Man to trap this Man to kill this Man. They did not discern that they were being supplanted by another Priesthood - the King and Priest - the Seed.

Jesus showed all of this with His very first supernatural movement in the Earth realm. He didn't just help out at a wedding reception. He supplanted the old wineskins and the putrid malignant men binding His Sheep. He was turning the tables and transitioning a nation, uprooting a foul stench of abusive legalistic perversion that in no way whatsoever represented the truth of our Father. He was confronting the Leopard Beast. He was promising His deliverance from bondage with His inheritance of eternal life... and He was proving He makes us clean. It comes with our inheritance...

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. 

This is the miracle at Cana. Jesus, the First and the Last. The Beginning and the End. Amen.