Luke 5:37 NASB
And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled out and the skins will be ruined.

Wine skins were made out of goat skin. As they aged, they became brittle and hard. The action of fermentation in new wine would crack open old leather that wouldn’t bend and stretch.

This is such a vivid picture. Every new move of God comes in where there is flexibility, a willingness to stretch to new dimensions, to know God in fresh revelation, and even to see His will as ever changing ways. But eventually (and almost inevitably), the revelation becomes a dogma rather than an unveiling of the person of God. It becomes a belief rather than a Person, ‘a principle’—final, unmovable. And when that happens, the container (the Body of Believers) becomes rigid and unstretchable and the “new wine is lost.”

This is literal! The whole real revelation is lost…and can’t be found. When we are rigid, we don’t notice that the REAL is gone and we are preaching the wineskin rather than the wine!

Old Wineskins Aren’t Flexible

Once in my early walk, I was moaning to the Lord about how I wanted to be more organized. He quickly answered me that His value was flexibility, not organization. He wanted me to turn with the Spirit on a moment’s notice. To be able to go another direction, believe a new thing, and see a new facet of Him. God doesn’t mind mess. He minds rigidity.

If you look at a map of Jesus’ journeys, you will see the most erratic and confusing paths. Jesus followed One who was ever changing, whose NEW was daily. Rare is the one who can live holding nothing as solid except the person of Christ.