New Wine, Old Skins // Out With The Old, In With The New // Pastor Ken Claytor // Alive Church

In this powerful, life-shifting message from Matthew 9:14–17, where Jesus teaches that new wine must be poured into new wineskins so both can be preserved. In this sermon, we lean in closely to the words of Jesus as He responds to a growing tension: Why don’t Your disciples fast like John’s disciples or live like the Pharisees? Why don’t they look like what we already recognize as “godly”? Jesus reveals a profound spiritual truth—God is always doing something new, but old containers cannot sustain new moves of God. Many people desire miracles, breakthroughs, and increase while continuing to operate with the same mindsets, habits, wounds, and patterns. This message challenges us to confront that reality and ask the hard question: Am I prepared to handle the new thing God wants to do in my life? Throughout this sermon, we discover that God prepares the container before He sends the increase. Before revival, before promotion, before overflow—God works on the heart. Drawing from Ezekiel 36:26, we are reminded that God promises to give us a new heart and a new spirit, removing hearts of stone shaped by trauma, bitterness, rejection, guilt, and shame, and replacing them with tender, pure hearts that can carry His presence. This message calls us to draw a line in the sand—to stop mixing the old with the new, because compromise leads to loss. If we remain stuck in unforgiveness, bitterness, self-hate, or past wounds, we risk losing our anointing and missing what God is doing now. Isaiah 43:18–19 declares that God is doing a new thing—yet He also commands us to forget the former things and stop dwelling in the past. You’ll learn what “new wine” truly represents: new breakthrough, new wisdom, renewed hunger for God, new callings, fresh intimacy with Jesus, and supernatural freedom. But the warning is clear—it’s not the wine that fails, it’s the old wineskins that rupture. This sermon includes three powerful moments of repentance and renunciation, breaking agreement with: