You cannot bring the old kingdom with you (Mark 2:21-22, Matthew 9:16-17)

You cannot bring the old kingdom with you (The new cloth and the old garment Mark 2:21-22, Matthew 9:16-17)
If you have ever traveled out of the country, then you have experienced the joy of having to go through customs when you arrive at your destination and before you leave to return home. They want to make sure that nothing is coming into their nation that they do not want and that nothing leaves their country that is not supposed to leave. They normally check for things like fruits and vegetables, invasive species, drugs, and other contraband that they do not want to enter or leaving their nation. The kingdom of God works a lot like this as well, when you become a citizen of the kingdom of heaven there are things from you past citizenship you must leave behind. It cannot come with you. In this parable of the mixing of the new cloth with an old garment we see that these two fabrics may work together for a while but eventually it will only make things worse. The same is true when you try to put new wine in old bottles it will seem to work for a while but eventually the new wind will burst the old bottles as it expands.
The modern church seems to have strayed from this concept in that they want to bring their temporary past into their eternal future, and it just does not work that way. They want to keep the same friends, hold on to the same habits, watch the same old TV shows and movies, and visit the same old websites and they do not understand that the two cannot mix. The customs department of heaven is checking your baggage and when they see that you are carrying things that do not belong, you are going to be denied entry. Being a part of God’s kingdom means that we must leave everything from the past behind and start over, we cannot mix the old with the new. Luke 14:33 says that to become a disciple of Jesus Christ we must renounce ties to everything we know and put God first. Matthew 22:37 says that we must love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind and this means God is first all the time, every time. We cannot bring the stained past into an eternal future; we must forsake it all for the kingdom of God.