55 - Mark 14:25

’Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.’ -Mark 14:25. The disciples ate and drank with our Lord after his resurrection, as we learn incidentally from Acts 10:41. Some suppose that the reference in the text is simply to the intercourse that he had with his disciples after his resurrection and before the ascension, considering the kingdom of God to have been then fairly initiated. Matthew thus reports the words: "Until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom." And it is true that the Church of Christ is often called the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, though these expressions are by no means reserved exclusively for that reign of Christ in the hearts of his people which we now witness; they are often used for that reign of God and of his Christ over the redeemed world, which the whole creation is said to be waiting for with groaning and travail. Taken simply by itself, the expression "the kingdom of God" does not determine whether the reference is to the day of the Gospel or the day of glorious fruition. Perhaps the point of time from which the new dispensation may properly be dated is the day of Pentecost. Nor are we told that Jesus took of the fruit of the vine with his disciples after his resurrection. They drank with him, but whether water or wine we know not. How also should we understand the word "new" in such an application? But may we not understand the words in a spiritual sense? It was the meat of Christ to do the will of his Father, and to finish his work. This he said after the conversation with the woman of Samaria, when his disciples returned from the town, bringing him food: "I have meat to eat that ye know not of." Stronger than his physical appetite for food was his spiritual appetite for the salvation of souls. Where others looked for harvests of mere grain, his grand concern was for the evidence of a coming spiritual harvest. And prophecy speaks of the blessings of the Gospel under the metaphor of a banquet: ’Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and price.’ This is the wine that Christ gives to the sinner; but the prayer of faith is as the best of wine to the lips of Christ. ’If any man hear my voice and open unto me, I will come in and sup with him, and he with me.’ And let us remember that on this same last evening of Jesus with his disciples before his betrayal, he gave them the parable of the Vine and the branches; and had much to say of the fruit of the vine that was to appear after the Holy Spirit should come upon them. And in Isaiah 5:2-4.: "For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel; and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes." On the day of Pentecost and subsequently, when thousands were added to the Church, and all were filled with love and joy, and no man counted anything his own, and all were striving who should best praise and glorify Christ, then the much fruit of the true Vine appeared, and this fruit was new, unlike anything the world had seen before, and there was joy in the presence of the angels of God. Then Christ’s joy began to be fulfilled in his people, according to his prayer. Then too the apostles, emancipated from their former darkness and grossness of apprehension, found their meat in doing the will of God, and the flocking of awakened souls to the banquet of the Gospel was to them incomparably sweeter than any wine had ever been, and their spirits were elevated as no mere fruit of the vine could ever have elevated them. Men that saw them in their exaltation and rapturous joy and holy boldness on the day of Pentecost, knowing not what else to say, exclaimed, These men are full of new wine. The apostle Paul, writing to the Ephesians, says, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be ye filled with the Spirit." That momentary elevation of mind that men seek in inebriety is but a counterfeit and base simulation of that true elevation of the soul which is experienced when God’s love is shed abroad in the heart by the Spirit. This was the holy and blissful elevation experienced by the apostles when they saw the work of God prospering in their hands, and multitudes brought to the feet of Jesus. Surely this conception of the new wine agrees far better with all that fell from the lips of Jesus on that sacred evening, - all that then occupied his mind.

Matthew has it: "I will drink no more of this fruit of the vine." It was a cup of wine that Jesus had in his hands and was giving to his disciples, that they might drink it as the new testament in his blood. Of that cup we shall drink, showing forth the Lord’s death till he come. And perhaps there is something in the expression which directs our minds to a day that is beyond the period in which the Church is celebrating the Lord’s Supper. We know that Jesus shall make all things new. "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth. There shall be a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Behold, I make all things new. The works of the devil shall be destroyed. Sin and all its works and tokens shall be utterly purged away. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Christ shall have carried to successful and absolute completion the work of redemption, and shall vacate the offices which had reference to the progress of that work, and God shall be all in all (l Cor. 15.27,28). Then shall be joy such as till then no heart is able to imagine. Then shall they from the east and the west, the north and the south, who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God, with the apostles, prophets, and martyrs, with Christ himself, in his Father’s kingdom, and the new wine of which they shall drink will have been gathered from the paradise of God.