WHAT WAS WRONG WITH A LITTLE FASTING?

Luke 5:33-39

Luk 5:33 Then they said to him, “John’s disciples regularly fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours continue to eat and drink.”
Luk 5:34 So Jesus said to them, “You cannot ask the wedding guests to fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you?
Luk 5:35 But those days are coming, and when the bridegroom is taken from them, at that time they will fast.”
Luk 5:36 He also told them a parable: “No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old garment. If he does, he will have torn the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old.
Luk 5:37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will crack the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.
Luk 5:38 Instead new wine must be poured into new wineskins.
Luk 5:39 No one after drinking old wine wants the new, because he says, ‘The old is good enough.'”

what the new wine is

Jesus was never opposed to fasting. He practiced it Himself—before stepping into His public ministry and during His times of solitude with the Father. His life shows that fasting can be a holy discipline, a way of clearing space for God’s voice and aligning the heart with His purposes. So it would be a mistake to read His teaching about “new wine” as a blanket dismissal of every old practice or tradition. Jesus wasn’t calling His followers to chase novelty for its own sake, nor was He encouraging them to discard the spiritual habits that had shaped generations of God’s people.

What He was doing was exposing the danger of clinging to traditions that no longer serve their intended purpose. Fasting was meant to prepare the heart for God’s movement. But the disciples were not in a season of waiting. They were in a season of presence. The Holy Spirit was not distant or delayed—He was moving in the person of Christ, standing right in front of them, teaching them, calling them, shaping them. To withdraw into ritual preparation while the Bridegroom was physically with them would have been to miss the moment entirely.

This is the heart of Jesus’ warning. Old forms are not wrong, but they can become rigid. They can become containers that no longer stretch to hold the living, expanding work of God. The disciples didn’t need to fast to prepare for God’s arrival; God had already arrived. Their task was not to retreat but to remain with Jesus, to walk with Him, to listen, to learn, to be transformed by His presence. Being with Jesus—that was the new wine.

And this remains true for us. Traditions can be beautiful, but they can also become substitutes for encounter. We can cling to familiar forms long after they have stopped drawing us closer to Christ. We can busy ourselves with spiritual habits while missing the living presence of the One those habits were meant to reveal. Jesus invites us to something deeper: not the comfort of old wineskins, but the vitality of His nearness. Not the safety of routine, but the joy of relationship. Not preparation for His coming, but participation in His presence.

LORD, give us the new wine of Your presence, and may we never forsake that experience for another.