Luke 5:33-39 Old Wine and New Wine
Format for Your Devotions
Instructions: Do not read my example devotion until you have completed your own devotional time in the scriptures. Reading my thoughts first may limit your own understanding. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you alone before looking to see what anyone else has to say, whether it is me, a Bible commentary, or a friend. Let God speak to you before you let another person speak to you. I have provided a format, but modify it to fit your needs. For example, I usually combine my application and prayer together talking to God about the application to my own life. You can go through this devotion process mentally, speaking out loud, or in writing as you wish. Don’t worry if you are not following this process exactly. Sometimes, I add extra information and sometimes I emphasize one part more than others. However, you should always think about what you learn about God from this passage.
Step 1: Pray–Ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance first of all and that God may reveal the lessons that He wants you to have that day. Request that God protect you from Satan’s distractions (and the devil will try to distract you whether it is pinching the baby or putting you to sleep). Ask to see God more clearly as you read and think about the passage.
Step 2: Read the passage–Read to get an overview of the information first. Then start looking at specific parts after the first reading. You may read a larger or smaller section than I have here because you do not have to follow my organization at all.
Step 3: Understand the passage–You can summarize, ask and answer your own questions about the passage, visualize the story, analyze the characters, and relate this passage to other scriptures and personal experiences.
Step 4: What does this reveal about God?–What do you learn about the Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit from this passage?
Step 5: Apply this to your own life.
Step 6: Prayer
My Example Devotion: July 12, 2018 Luke 5:33-39
Note: In the devotion examples, I leave my questions and thought processes in the text because I am trying to demonstrate that a devotional time is a dialogue with God about what you are reading from His word. As such, any questions or ideas that you have should be explored by talking it out with God. These example devotions are not my attempts to teach you what the meaning of a particular scripture is. They are an attempt to teach you the process of devotions, which is a combination of prayer and Bible study where you explore ideas with God as you read His word.
And they said to him, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.” And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”
Understanding the Text) Was Jesus telling the Pharisees that John’s ways were the old ways, but that He had come to give new ways? John called to repentance and told the Jews that they were not ready for the Messiah so that they needed to get ready. However, Jesus was the Messiah. Once the Messiah was there, the people should already have been prepared and thus were ready to just be with the Messiah.
Guzik’s comment on the passage before this showed me a relationship between the two passages. “Some people think they will come to Jesus for a little bit of cosmetic surgery. They don’t think they are sick but they think they could use a little improvement. Jesus, the Great Physician, only admits patients who see themselves are truly sick and in need of a doctor.” The Pharisees wanted to do a little cosmetic surgery on the old ways to make them new. Jesus was telling them that their way of receiving heaven would not work. Unless they started out new, heaven would break them. They needed to accept the whole message, not just a part of it to patch their tattered old way of doing things.
I like Guzik’s next comment: “The church is the only group in the world where you have to be unqualified before you can join.”
(Revelation of God) Jesus was the revelation of God’s character in human form. God came to be with us and thus, we should have been rejoicing. Jesus was bringing new ways of doing things and living our lives. He was showing us heaven in ways that had never before been revealed. Previously, His messages had had to go through human minds and eyes before coming to the general population of believers. Now, Jesus could reveal His character without the distortion of sinful humanity. The old worn out ways of viewing God could not handle the reality of who God really is. Thus, the Pharisees needed to modify their old ways of seeing God because they were torn and tattered and inadequate for holding the reality of God. However, they preferred the drunkenness of their own images of God to the fresh taste of God in reality. Their old images were reflections of themselves rather than reflections of God. They were drunk on their own narcissistic deity. Jesus wanted them to leave behind the old and open up to the new.
The irony is that the new was ancient and unchangeable, but our views of Him had been obstructed so that when our eyes were opened to God’s character as revealed through Jesus, we were seeing in a new way.
(Application / Prayer) My application for myself is that God wants joy with us not sorrow. He wants to bring us to greater light and a closer relationship, but we are stuck back in our old ways of seeing and doing. Please give me eye salve to see the new instead of the old. I need to understand that what I see is not the reality, but only a dim view of the reality of heaven. I want to rejoice that You, my Savior. are near to me instead of stressing out that the human ways are failing. Teach me to think in the new way rather than the world’s way.