1/1/2025

Luke 5:38 “But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved.”

2025! … Could this new year be truly “new”?

Here’s a great principle that Jesus taught that we can start the “new” year with, that would make our new year truly new!

This verse is part of Jesus responding to people asking him why his disciples were not fasting.

Fasting is common practice in all the religions of the world, because it is depriving self in conscience to “God” for his pleasing, acceptance and approval. People practice fasting to better themselves spiritually or physically… they’re looking for newness.

You may go through periods in your life where you fast yourself of sinful or carnal practices and indulgences in dedication to God, or just to improve yourself in general, if not for God just for your own sake.

But how has that gone for you so far? How better, newer or more acceptable to God do you think you have managed to make yourself?

Nobody, and without exception, has ever managed to better themselves “evolve” past their own nature, much less gain acceptance with God. That old sinful nature we all are born with and exercise daily cannot be overhauled no matter how we try to mask it, tame it, contain it, channel it, disguise it, feed it, satisfy it, negotiate with it.

Lust, pride, selfishness, envy, greed, lies… it’s all still here “same old” even while the clocked ticked over. And maybe you’re fine with where you are at for now, maybe sin hasn’t got “old” for you yet, or maybe you do seek liberation from the human condition…

… whatever the case… most people are trying to do a bit better. But true newness isn’t found through trying to make the old bottle capable of doing and receiving new and better things… true newness is found in new life in Christ, and if you don’t have him, your 2025 will go the same old path of 2024.

Maybe you will cut down on the junk food, or porn, or foul language, whatever… maybe you’ll refine, mature and grow up a bit, you might truly do better… yet outside of Christ, things are never any different ultimately.

This is not to discourage doing better, because we all should want to, and there is a practical blessedness we all partake in for just doing right. But Jesus here is telling us how to truly have something new in our life.

If you want something new this year, and that from God, his life… well it has to go into something new. God isn’t going to put something new into something old. And our life and body of sin is pretty darn old!

If you want fellowship with God, the blessing of God, his approval, joy and peace and his love… you’ve got to have the “bottle” for it. Otherwise you cannot receive or hold it. The bottle for it is being born again, new life created in you that can receive God where the old life of sin and disobedience could not… no matter how we tried to make it otherwise so.

Maybe where you’ve been going wrong is you want God to pour into an old heart, old life, old rebellious spirit, and new wine is just not going in to that old bottle no matter your efforts. You could add fasting to your life in 2025, on top of everything else you do… but without being born again, your efforts will be futile!

Thing is, we already know and practice this principle Jesus was teaching in this verse …When things we have break down, we may try and fix them, but soon enough they get beyond repair, and we realize we just need to go and get a new one. Most people would admit that they and this society and world is “broken”. So we need a “new one” something not broken.

And that’s what Jesus does for us. He doesn’t overhaul our broken sinful nature, he creates a new nature in us “partakers of the divine nature”. Have you been born again? There is no point attempting and hoping for new without this in place.

God’s plan of salvation was always through changing us from inside out… giving us the bottle for him and the things of him! Look at the proof of God’s old people in the Old Testament. For many hundreds of years God sent his prophets to clean his people up, but it didn’t work because of their stony hearts of sin.

Then God sent his Son, the Prophet, and he came to save us from our sins and regenerates us, fixing the broken generation from Adam through regeneration through the last Adam, and he creates new life in us at salvation… he gave us “the bottle”. From there, God pours into this bottle and the life of a Christian is truly other worldly in this world, because we do belong to a different world now.

You may have heard the saying “he doesn’t have the bottle” and we use that when someone doesn’t have the courage or ability to do something. Apply that to Christianity, you can only have the bottle if you’ve got the bottle.

So many Christians sadly “bottle it” these days because there was no new bottle for new wine, and everything fell apart like Jesus said they would when you try storing new wine in old bottles.

Maybe you’ve been put off by the examples of professing Christians, but if someone claims to be a Christian and all you see is the old life of sin, with no bottle for God and the things of God, it could be that they have no been renewed inside yet either. See, many people get religious, but not redeemed nor regenerated.

So how to have something new in 2025? Well, don’t try mixing old and new by layering religion into the same old life and heart of sin. That would just makes it all worse as Jesus said in Matthew 9. Instead, let God put the “new” in your new year through his Son Jesus Christ “Behold, I make all things new”.

New wine goes in new bottles. When he creates new life in you capable of knowing God, receiving God, living for God, you truly have a new year marker, just like the new year that God started when he delivered Israel out of Egypt… and your deliverance also is no less new. I hope your new bottle overflows with his mercy, goodness and grace in 2025!

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