Mark 2:18-22 – Out with the Old and in with the New

Mark 2:18-22 and the Conflict Between Rabbinical Law and the Gospel

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Heavenly Father, as we come to this passage of Mark chapter 2, and we see just the escalation between you and the Pharisees as they continue having a struggle between their rabbinic law and your law. Lord, we look to this and see that you did not shy away from conflict.

In fact, it seems as if sometimes you even instigate this conflict with their false views that they held to, correcting them. But Lord, we see that you definitely had a difference in the way you handled those unbelievers, those people who were the sinners and tax collectors that didn't know the law, didn't study your word.

And those who did, we see that you have harsh words for those who set themselves up as teachers of your word, but do not know you. Lord, may we learn today from your word more about the conflicts that we see between man-made religions and what you call us to.

We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. Well, let's look back and get some context. I know that Pastor Carl was preaching last week, so maybe it's been a little time and you've forgotten everything about Mark chapter two.

But the thing that we end up seeing here is, if you remember back at the beginning of Mark chapter two, it started with Jesus, he comes to town. He had claimed, and a blasphemous claim for a man to make, which he claimed that he had the ability to offer forgiveness of sin.

And that inflamed the Pharisees. And he reads what's in their minds and answers what they were thinking. And in that process, he ends up saying to them that to prove that he has the authority to forgive sins, he turns to a paralytic man and says to the paralytic that he can get up and walk.

Proving not only he had the authority and power to heal the man, but the purpose of it was to prove he was God and had the authority to offer the forgiveness of sin. And so that escalated as they go now.

And we started to see before in verse 14 of chapter two, that he sees Levi, also known as Matthew. He sees him at a tax booth. And we talked about this, that Levi was one who worked in the tax booth. So he wasn't a tax collector.

He was a tax collector. He wasn't a chief tax collector, as Zacchaeus would be. Hope you noticed I got the name right that time. But we see that Zacchaeus would be the chief tax collector. Well, Levi or Matthew was a tax collector in the booth.

He was by the shore. So he was there collecting taxes of the fishermen. So we see that he was in that area. Now, that's going to become important in today's lesson is the fact that Levi was working. I'm going to show you why that becomes an important thing in a moment.

But he is there, Jesus comes to him, and Jesus tells him, follow me. We mentioned that Levi would know who he was, know about him. But there was the Pharisees again, were outraged, because they had a very low view of the tax collectors.

They viewed tax collectors as being traitors, because these are Jewish people who would be taxing their own people for a foreign government. So it's a little different than our IRS agents, you know, who are taxing for our own government.

This is a country that comes in to take taxes for another country. They saw this as an act of being a traitor. And so there's two descriptions of people that we see that Matthew ends up inviting to a meal.

He has dinner at his house and invites other tax collectors and sinners. And we mentioned two weeks ago that the sinners, well, everyone's a sinner. But the term sinner here meant the irreligious, those who don't follow religious practices.

And again, that's going to become important in the lesson here. So as we look into John 18, this is the setting. The setting is that they're Levi's house having this party when John's disciples and the Pharisees, they're fasting in verse 18, and they come to him.

Why do your disciples and the disciples, or why John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? Now picture the scene, because some people take this passage and forget just a few verses before what's happening.

They're having a meal. They're having a celebration. What are they celebrating? Well, they're celebrating the fact that Matthew is now a believer, that he's a follower of Christ, and he's having a celebration for that.

And he's inviting other tax collectors and other sinners. Now, first off, this is one of those cases where people will say, well, there seems to be a contradiction in the Bible. If you happen to look at the parallel passages here, if you look at Matthew, well, actually, first, if you look at Luke, in Luke 5, and you look in the context, specifically in verse 30, it says, the Pharisees and scribes began grumbling at the disciples.

So the context there is that it's the Pharisees and their scribes who are grumbling. And then in verse 33, it just says, and they said to him, the disciples of John often fast and offer prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees also do the same, but yours eat and drink.

Now, in all three of the synoptic gospels, we see the same accounts, by the way. We see the calling of Levi and then this exchange. So it's very clear that this is the same account. Some of the gospel writers do not put things in a chronological order.

They put it in a different order. But the fact that all three of the synoptics have this in that same order says that this is the same event. And so as they're together, you see here, this context in Luke seems to indicate that the people who are questioning are the Pharisees.

Now, the problem we have is that in our text, in Mark, it just says, John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting and they came to him. Well, who are the they? Well, we see Luke seems to indicate that it was the Pharisees.

But if you turn to Matthew chapter nine, Matthew chapter nine in verse 14, it makes it even clearer. It says the disciples of John came to him asking, why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?

So there, it seems very clear that it is the disciples of John that's being spoken of in Mark. So we see in Mark where this is being said, and it says that John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting and they.

Now, which is it? I mean, Luke seems to indicate that it was the Pharisees. Matthew seems to indicate that it was the disciples of John. I think the answer is quite simple. The answer is both. Both came asking this question.

Why? Because they're both hungry. They're both a little bit jealous, maybe that other people are not doing the fast that they are doing. And let me start by saying, what is this fast? There's in all the commentators that I have read, I think, and it's you're always have to be cautious when you say that every commentator you read, you think they're wrong.

But I actually do. I, most of the commentators do not mention what this fast would be. They do talk about fasting and there is fasting that would occur within Judaism. In fact, the Pharisees, we see seems to indicate that they would have a weekly fast on Mondays and Thursdays.

They'd have every week, twice a week, they would have a fast day. Would John's disciples do that? Well, that seems to be more something that we would see that was a rabbinical law that was set up by the Pharisees and something that wasn't so much practiced by people.

So what most of the commentators seem to indicate is that they believe that this fast, because there's actually two fast days, days of fasting in the nation of Israel at this time. Now, most people only know of one and it is the day of Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur, which you could see in Leviticus 16 verses around 29 to 31, you're going to see that it's going to talk about that. But remember, Yom Kippur is a Sabbath day. In other words, Yom Kippur was a day where there's no rest.

It is the day of atonement. And on this day of atonement, it is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. It would be like, for us, what we think of as Christmas or Chinese New Year for the Chinese. It is the day where everything shuts down.

So it's hard to believe that this would be Yom Kippur, because if it was Yom Kippur, why in the world was Matthew working? And why were the fishermen working? There'd be no one to go collect taxes from because the nation would be on holiday.

They would have a day of rest, a day of fasting, where they'd be at home or at synagogue. This is one of the two days in the Jewish calendar known as the High Holy Days, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah is the New Year.

And so you have a day of atonement that is a day that everybody would be at home or at synagogue. So you see, this is why I don't believe it's Yom Kippur, because I don't believe that even Matthew would be working because it would be a day of holiday.

So what is the other day of fasting? And this may not be as known to you, but it is a day known as Tisha B 'Av. Now, Tisha B 'Av is a day of sadness. It is considered to be the saddest day on the Jewish calendar.

It is a day of remembrance, but it is not a Sabbath day. It usually occurs somewhere around July and August, depending on the Jewish calendar, but it'll be July or August. And it was a day at that time, it was a day of remembrance of the destruction of the temple by the Babylonians.

Now later in time, after 70 AD, it became a remembrance of the destruction of the second temple as well. So today, Tisha B 'Av is a day of remembrance of destruction. But at this time, it was a day of fasting, but it was not a day where people would refrain from work.

So I actually believe that this would be a day of sadness that we would have. This would be the day of Tisha B 'Av where the religious would be fasting. Now this may explain why the tax collectors and the irreligious quote-unquote sinners, as they're called, would not be fasting because they're irreligious.

They might take a day off for a holiday. If you think about our day of Christmas, many people don't honor the actual purpose for the birth of Christ as that day, but they'll take the day off. That's sort of what you see.

Here you have the irreligious were working. And I think that this is the day that it is. Now that then puts in context, I think, the contrast that's going on between this talk of a, here they're having a feast over Matthew and what has occurred in his life.

And I'm sure that the gospel is being spread to other tax collectors and sinners. And here are the disciples of John and also the disciples of the Pharisees and the Pharisees themselves. And they're coming to challenge, why are you not fasting?

By the way, if it was Yom Kippur, I don't think that John's disciples and the Pharisees would be out on the streets to be by Matthew's house to be able to speak to Jesus. They would have been in synagogue or at home as required.

So I think that what we see here is a day of sadness. And what does Jesus do as he discusses the fasting? And he ends up putting it in light of a day of feasting, a wedding feast. Now fasting, some of us are familiar with it.

Some may not. But a fast is when you give something up, it would be a time where you give something up, typically food, but not always. You'd give up something so that you'd be more focused and devoted to God.

There are times you see throughout scripture of fasting, times where people had to make decisions. And in those times of decisions, they would have a fast. One reason is by putting off food, by putting that off, it is to focus that time on God.

The day of Yom Kippur, the reason for the fasting, would be a day where the Jewish people would sit in a day and mourn over their sin and mourn over the fact that they break God's law and look for the day that the Messiah would redeem.

This day, Tisha B 'Av, is a day where you'd have people that would be mourning over the destruction of the temple. And it is a time of, at that time of Christ, it would be a time of being saddened over what happened to that temple.

But there would be a rejoicing in the fact that there was still a temple. Today there is no temple. And so they don't have that to rejoice in. But this would be a saddened day. And here Jesus responds to them with talking about a wedding, a time of celebration.

That seems quite a contrast. Now, I said in my prayer that Jesus seems to have the tendency to turn up the heat with the Pharisees, the religious leaders, when they give challenges. At the heart of this challenge is really a heart of rabbinical law compared to biblical law.

Many people think of Judaism, and they think that the Judaism that is taught today is the same as the Judaism that we see in the Bible. It is not. Let me take the time to give you a tad bit of a history lesson, because as we go through the book of Mark, this is going to be important for us to know.

Because we're going to see over and over and over again this issue between biblical law and rabbinical law, between the way the Bible had laid things out for the Jewish people, and the way these religious leaders changed things.

As you go through Scripture in the Old Testament, you get a good overview of Jewish history. You have the fact that the Jewish people were ignoring God's law over and over and over again. Let's not be too hard on them.

We do the same thing at times, don't we, if we were going to be honest. We break God's law. But God had certain laws for the nation of Israel. One such law was that they were to, every seventh year, let the land rest.

Now, that is an act of dependence upon God. To allow the land to rest and not plant things in the ground means that for a whole year, you have to depend upon God and trust that God will provide. That's not easy for people to do.

In fact, if we're going to be honest, it's hard for us to do the same. My wife may be able to attest to this very easily, but I'm one very prone to try to solve things myself. I've actually told my wife that going through this whole issue of trying to find a house and moving, typically, I would have great anxiety over that.

Typically, my pattern is usually to panic over it, have anxiety over it, and to be trying to make something happen. I mean, I would be going out and being very diligent to find something to move into, and I'm having less of that, which may show some maturity in my life, but we'll let my wife be the judge of that.

But see, there are times where we want to be the solver of problems. We want to look at things and say, we can solve this, and that is what people would do at that time. They see that they have, they got to have food, so what are they going to do?

They're going to plant that seventh year. They're going to put seed in the ground. Now, we understand nowadays that God had a purpose for that because nowadays that when farmers put crop in, they move the crop around because putting the same food, the same fruit in the same soil over and over again actually doesn't produce good soil for the next crop, and so the seventh year rest was something to let the land rest, which would actually be beneficial for the crops, but for 77-year periods, God's people ignored that Sabbath rest, and God declared to Jeremiah that there would be a judgment, and in that judgment, that for 70 years to represent the 70 missed Sabbaths, that for 70 years they would be in captivity, and he said there was a purpose to this captivity because all through the prophets, when you look at all the period of the kings, you see, starting with Solomon, a desire for Israel to go after and worship other gods, the gods of the other nations, and it was a real problem, such a problem that they ended up ignoring those 70 Sabbath years, and God says to Jeremiah that Israel will be judged for 70 years that Babylon, a foreign nation, will be used as God's judgment on Israel, that they would come in and take Israel captive with a promise that Israel would never again be given over to idolatry, and as a nation, we see they have not.

They were given over to something else. You see, while they were in captivity, while the temple was destroyed on this day that they now would honor as Tisha B 'Av, this is now the temples destroyed by the Babylonians.

They're in captivity, and what they have established in its place was what starts to become known as rabbinical law. This is where they create the synagogues. This is the first that we see synagogues in history, and the synagogues would be these local meeting places for the purpose of studying God's Word, and you see the rise of rabbis, and then there'd be the kind of an over the rabbis, as you see even within the churches, where there becomes this denominational structure.

They had that there as well, where there became certain rabbis that set themselves up as the Pharisees. They were above. They were the ones that did the study. Then you have eventually, as Israel returns back, as the Jewish nation returns back to Israel, the land of Israel, you end up seeing that they set up the Sadducees.

Now, Sadducees were more the political leaders, so the Sadducees would have been the ones that actually would contain the high priest, because Rome actually at that time, when it under Roman law, the Romans actually picked the high priest, and it wouldn't be for life, as the Jewish law would say.

The Romans, because they didn't want anyone to be too powerful, they would choose one Sadducee for about a year, typically, and so all of this rabbinical law starts happening. Now, this rabbinical law was a man-made law.

This is different than what we see in the Old Testament. We start to see that out of this starts becoming writings that become authoritative. They start to take what they claim is an oral law, something that they say God gave to the Israelites, gave to Moses, back when he gave the written law, and gave the Ten Commandments, and they would say that an oral law was given, and they started to write that down, the Mishnah, and then there starts to be a commentary on the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament.

Jewish people call it Tanakh, and that becomes written down, and there also becomes a commentary on the oral law, which is known as the Talmud, and the Talmud is where we see rabbinic law. This is where, often, when you hear about people talking about the fasting on Monday and Tuesday, that's going to be found in Talmud.

You're going to find it typically in the Talmud or the Mishnah, that oral law or its commentary, but that becomes the emphasis, and this is really what you see Jesus going against over and over and over again.

This is, you know, what we just, by God's providence, the reading this morning in the scripture reading time out of John 5, and what is it that we heard him say? He said to these Pharisees that they studied, he said in verse 39, you search the scriptures because you think in them you'll have eternal life, but these testify of me.

Jesus was saying to them that they search the scriptures and they totally miss it. They miss the point, because in their search of the scriptures, they're looking at it in the lens of rabbinical law, and they don't see what the scriptures actually teach, because as we're going to see here, what Jesus is teaching is that the divine law destroys rabbinical law.

There is no merging of the two, and in his way of dealing with this is to deal with the fact that he's already dealt, as we said, the issues that he claims he can forgive sins. They're enraged that he is saying to a tax collector of all people that you can be a disciple.

Then he has the nerve to have dinner, to have a meal, to break bread with a bunch of other tax collectors and sinners. This is against what the Mishnah would teach, against what the Talmud would teach, and they come and they challenge him now because he's having a meal, a festival, at a time of mourning and sadness, a time that's supposed to be where no one is to eat.

The irreligious didn't keep that holiday. Even today, the irreligious people, the Jews that are not, the Jewish people that don't follow, if you, the Orthodox today would keep Tisha B 'Av, but I never did as a, when we were conservative or reformed Judaism.

It's something that only the very religious would keep, and so it wouldn't be something that the tax collectors or the fishermen or the, you would be keeping, and so I think that sets the scene, and he talks about from a day of sadness into a day of celebration with the bridegroom, and he asks them a question.

Now, this is the thing, note Jesus has a very different way of dealing with the woman at the well or Levi or any person that is an irreligious person than he does with religious leaders. When someone sets themselves up as a religious leader, Jesus is very strong.

He has strong words for them, and he doesn't back down. He doesn't apologize here. He actually turns up the heat. He asks them this question. Now, remember, he's asking this, he's being asked this by John's disciples and the Pharisees, which may, by the way, seem strange.

Those are two groups of people you might not think would be together. Most people think that all of John's disciples started following Jesus. That's not true. Acts chapter 19 makes it clear that after Christ rose from the dead, there were some people who were followers of John that did not know about the baptism of Jesus, and so they get baptized as believers when they learn about Jesus.

So, not all of them knew. In fact, not all of the disciples of Jesus, those followers of Jesus, were true believers, because we see that in John 666. Easy verse to remember, 666, the number that everyone thinks is the number of the beast.

It's the number of man. But John 666, it says that many of the disciples, when Jesus had some hard words, they went away and never returned. So, not all of the disciples were believers, and so you have many of John's disciples that may have been wondering, as well as the Pharisees, why are you having this feast, if you're a religious leader, on this day of fasting?

And so they come and they ask this of him, and Jesus says to them in verse 19, while the bridegroom is with them, the attendants of the bridegroom cannot fast, can they? So long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast, but the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and they will fast in that day.

So, he asks a very simple question. At a wedding feast, you have the bridegroom. Would it be appropriate during a wedding for someone to be fasting? Now, weddings are typically a day where you put out the best food.

I know that when my daughter got married, my wife's side of the family knew what to expect, but most of my son-in-law's family had no idea. They heard from my daughter what to expect, because we had a Chinese wedding, and Chinese weddings are not about dancing.

It is all about the food, and you get the very best of the Chinese food on that day, and it's the reason I love going to Chinese weddings, but it is the thing you end up getting. You get the best of the food at a feast like this.

So, here you have a picture, the scene. He's talking about a wedding, and in that day, a wedding would be a seven-day feast. The whole town was in on it, and it was a major production, and so he's saying, could the bridegroom be going to a wedding, and at the wedding, here's the attendance of the bridegroom, and they're going to be fasting during the wedding.

That would be out of place. That would be just seen as something not to be done when you have this great celebration, and you're having either a time of mourning, or you're having a time of saying, I want to be devoted to something.

I mean, it would kind of ruin the purpose of a fast, to be saying, well, here I am at a celebration, and I'm celebrating this wedding, but I really have someone else I should be devoting myself to. Well, then you shouldn't be at the wedding.

You should devote yourself to that, or to be saying that I need to devote myself to a time of mourning. You don't mourn at weddings. That's the thing that Jesus is presenting before them, is that this is not the time for mourning.

Now, do you see why I think that it becomes different? This is not the day of atonement, as people think, but I think it's more fitting for a day of sadness, because he's basically implying from the context, this is a day of celebration because the bridegroom is here.

Here's Christ. Here is Christ in their midst, and they're missing it. I mean, just like we read in John 5 this morning. They're missing God in flesh. They're mourning over a temple, and here's God in the flesh before them, and they're missing it.

He's saying to them, it's inappropriate to be fasting during a celebration, but he does say in verse 20, the day will come when they will fast. When the bridegroom, when Christ is taken away, there will be a time of mourning.

We do see that throughout the New Testament that the disciples will have times of fasting, but now is not that time. Now is the time where they have God in their midst, and as he's there, he is doing everything that is socially not acceptable.

He is eating in the house of tax collector with other tax collectors and sinners. This is like an unpardonable sin almost in Judaism at that time. They're puzzled by that, and they come, and now they bring the religious aspect.

So first, the challenge we saw two weeks ago was the challenge of how could you even be in this household? That's against our laws. Now they're bringing about a fast. Now Yom Kippur is a fast that's commanded in Scripture.

If Jesus was having a feast on Yom Kippur, one could have a legitimate argument that he's breaking God's law, but if this is, as I believe, Tisha B 'Av, then he is only breaking a man-made commandment that has no command or no authority from God.

So there's a difference I see there. So as they're at this feast, he's challenging them with this because he's basically trying to say to them as he's going through this, he is pointing out that while the Messiah is there, there should be celebration.

There should be rejoicing. It is not a time for mourning, and it is something that the Pharisees and their scribes, they have set up a man-made, man-centered doctrine. Here you have God in their midst, and what are they worried about?

A fast. You're not fasting like us. They're always focused on the outward laws of what they can keep, those things they could check off. Did this, did this, did this, and they say they're searching the Scriptures, but as we saw in John chapter five, as they search the Scriptures, they miss the point.

I don't know if any of you have heard Dr. MacArthur talk about his time preaching in a preaching class with Dr. Feinberg, and he was very nervous because he wanted to make a good impression with Dr. Feinberg.

He went to that school just because of Dr. Feinberg, and he's preaching, and he said he preached his heart out. At the end, he got a little piece of paper folded in half, and he said he knew that wasn't good, and basically the only thing it said was, you missed the whole point.

He did a whole bunch of preaching, but he missed the point. Now granted, if you know the rest of that story, he ended up being given Dr. Feinberg's, some commentary set that's very valuable, and actually preached, did the funeral for Dr. Feinberg.

So he said that he figured Dr. Feinberg figured at some point he got the point. But the Pharisees are missing the point. Their legalism is actually blinding them. Their legalism of keeping a fast day, of making sure you don't go into a sinner's home, all these different rules, is blinding them to the forgiveness of sin that is offered to them.

It's the fact that they are standing there with God in their midst, and they don't see it. They cannot see it, because their focus is on the outward. Their focus wasn't on the heart. Their focus is on the outward.

Maybe that's why when Jesus offered someone a forgiveness of sin, a heart issue, they're upset, and what does he do? He shows an outward sign, because that's all they see. Here, the same thing. All they see is a fast, when it should be a time of celebration.

And so, to turn up the heat a little more, and by the way, Jesus is going to keep turning up the heat. We're going to see, not next week, because, you know, we'll have, I won't be preaching next week, but the week after, we're going to have, we'll look at the rest of Mark chapter 2, and we're going to see this question of the Sabbath is going to come up.

Then, after that, in chapter 3, Jesus keeps escalating it, escalating it, escalating it, until chapter 3, we're going to see he escalated it so high that the Pharisees go, that's it, we need to kill him.

So, Jesus doesn't back down and apologize to them. He turns up the heat, and one of the ways he does it is with two or three illustrations. Why do I say two or three? When we look at a harmony of the Gospels here, there's actually, it seems, three parables that Jesus gives.

In Luke 36, if you end up looking there, you're going to see in Luke 36, he says, it says in Luke 36, and he was telling them a parable, no one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and puts it on an old garment.

Otherwise, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old, and also, and no one puts new wine into old wine skins. The new wine will burst the skins and will spill out, and the skins will be ruined.

Now, that is the same as what we have in both the Gospel of Mark, and we have, if you ended up turning to Matthew, chapter 9. Both of those are there, but in Luke, we have another, because Luke goes on, in verse 38, he says, but new wine skins must be put into fresh wine skins.

Okay, that's actually part of it, what we see in all three. So, you have an illustration of the garment, the illustration of the wine skins, but in Luke 5 .39, it says, and no one after drinking old wine wishes for new, for he says the old is good enough.

So, he has a third illustration that we see here that we don't see in Matthew or Mark, which is the idea of this old wine. I'll touch on that a bit, even though it's not in our text here, but it is, when we look at a Harmony of the Gospels, it is part of the historical account that occurred.

Now, what Jesus does by these illustrations is he is trying to provide an illustration of an old and new, and what he's basically saying is the old being represented here, and the new that he's going to talk about, is what you see in all three of the illustrations.

So, the old, this old garment, this old wine skin, or the old wine, is referring to rabbinical law. This is going to refer to this system that the rabbis have set up that is to make a man-made gospel message that man can achieve rightness with God, merit salvation, merit eternal life, by doing Torah, doing the law, obedience.

That is what they would teach. Jesus is teaching something far different. He is teaching the forgiveness of sin in what he will do at the cross. That is what the Old Testament taught as well. So, really, the new is much older.

If you are familiar with C .S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, he illustrates this picture by talking about a queen who is owed something by a human, and here is Aslan, represented by a lion, who offers, the punishment for the human is death, and the queen is going to meed that out, but Aslan, this lion, decides he will take the place of the human, and he will die, and the queen thinks this is great.

The queen, being representative of Satan, thinks this is great, because in Aslan's death, who is supposed to represent Christ, in Aslan's death, then she will rule by the law, because Aslan was the only one greater than her, and therefore, she would then be able to rule, but what she does not know in the story is that Aslan goes to his death by an older law, and that older law in Chronicles of Narnia is a law of love, but it would be biblically a law of forgiveness, the law of God, that God can offer the forgiveness of sin, and so, in the account of Chronicles of Narnia, the debt is paid by Aslan, but because of the older law, he raises from the dead, and therefore, the queen does not rule, but is defeated, and that is really what Jesus is saying here in picturing what will be in the future, is he will go to a cross, and he will tear apart or burst open the wineskins.

Now, there's some words here that are interesting. We see the idea of the patching of a cloth. Basically, what you have with a cloth, as it would get washed, you have a new cloth, and what would happen with a cloth would be that as it gets washed, it will shrink, and so, if you were to take a new cloth, and you sew that in to cover a patch to some piece of garment that's older and already shrunken, the older garment's not going to shrink.