A Time to Feast: Mark 2:18-22

The sermon text this morning comes, of course, from the Gospel of Mark.

We're in a sermon series.

We're going to be in the sermon series for a while, taking a break for Advent, but we are still in the early chapters of Mark's Gospel.

This morning we're reading chapter 2, verses 18 to 22.

Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, and people came and said to him, Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast?

But your disciples do not fast.

And Jesus said to them, Can the wedding guest fast while the bridegroom is with them?

As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.

The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.

No one sows a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.

If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear tear is made.

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins.

If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins.

But new wine is for fresh wineskins.

This is the reading of God's holy and infallible and errant word.

May we ask the Spirit's work in us.

Lord, we thank you.

We thank you for this passage.

Lord, we thank you for the power, the power of the gospel demonstrated in this passage.

Holy Spirit, would you take that power, that dunymus, the power of God?

And would you please let that power be at work in each one of us this morning?

Teach us what we need to learn.

Humble us where we're proud.

Lord, give us faith where there's unbelief.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

When was the last time you were at a wedding?

Why don't you take a moment to think about that experience at that wedding?

Good time?

Do you see anybody over in the corner just crying?

Do you see anybody at that wedding, the wedding reception?

Pass on all that delicious food.

No thanks.

I stopped at McDonald's on the way over.

Weddings are festive times.

Weddings are times of joy.

Because there's a lot to celebrate when a man and a woman come together and find one flesh in Christ and in their marriage covenant.

Marriage, marriages are beautiful to behold.

Marriages are beautiful to attend, weddings.

This morning Jesus is using a very common everyday example of weddings.

We know that he went to weddings.

We know one for sure he went to a Cana, but surely he went to other weddings.

And Jesus takes these everyday truths and imports deep spiritual meaning into them.

That's what we see this morning.

He's interacting at this point with his disciples, but he's also now interacting with other disciples.

John the Baptist had his band of disciples, and they were there.

The Pharisees had their disciples and they were there.

And so all these disciples representing all kinds of perspectives on what religion meant are there together.

But you recall, as we were looking at last week, Matthew's conversion when Jesus called Matthew.

Remember an authoritative call.

When Jesus calls, you come.

It was a call that was unexpected.

Nobody expected Matthew to come.

Everybody thought Matthew was a lost cause.

Well, when Jesus calls you, you're not a lost cause.

You come.

And he came with a purpose, and for a purpose in his life.

And we looked at that, and remember Matthew was so full of gratitude that he threw a big party.

He had the money to do it.

And all of his friends, he invites his friends because now he came to know Jesus.

He wants his friends to come to know Jesus.

And what a party it was.

But the Pharisees either saw or heard about that Jesus hanging out with these sinners.

And they had a question for Jesus.

Well, remember last week the question was, Jesus, why do you do this?

And Jesus said, Well, I didn't come.

I'm a spiritual doctor.

I didn't come to see healthy patients all day.

I came to be near people who are sick, who need a spiritual doctor, which by the way is every one of us.

He said, I came for that purpose, but he was still criticized.

The Pharisees never stopped taking a shot at him.

And then this morning they have another question, another shot.

Jesus, we noticed that your disciples don't fast.

John's disciples are fasting.

Our disciples are fasting.

How come your disciples don't fast?

Jesus knew in their hearts what was really lurking.

The Pharisees prided themselves in their fasting.

At this particular time in the history of Israel, these Pharisees were fasting twice a week.

Typically on a Monday and a Thursday, they would fast.

But as we know from other parts of the scripture, they would like to draw attention to themselves when they would fast.

They wanted people to notice how religious they were.

They wanted people to applaud them for how religious they were.

Their motives were wrong, as far as we can tell from what the scriptures say.

Fasting was required in the Old Testament only one day a year on the Day of Atonement.

All other fasting was to be voluntary fasting.

Jesus certainly commenced fasting himself.

Jesus practiced fasting in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.

Jesus assumed that we'd fast because he said, when you fast.

And yet this was not the time in the ministry of Jesus for his disciples to be fasting.

Why?

He says in verse 19, how can the wedding guest fast during the wedding?

Now you have to understand about the weddings of that day and time.

They weren't like our weddings.

It wasn't an hour, an hour wedding, and then two or three hours maybe of a reception.

It was typically a seven-day party.

Okay, seven days.

It was like going on vacation with the bridal party.

You would just have lots of good food and lots of good wine.

You'd have lots of good music.

It was just time to be together and enjoy being with each other, celebrating the wedding.

That's what it would have been like in that day.

Lots of feasting, good food, music.

Can you imagine, again, someone arriving at a wedding today?

I understand there's a wedding coming up soon.

Can you imagine at a wedding coming in with ashes on your head, just wearing black, kind of all sullen, just really in mourning?

Can you imagine when you go to the reception hall when the waiters bring that delicious food and you say, no thanks, I'm on a diet.

You don't go to on a diet at a wedding feast.

You don't say, no thanks, I'm fasting.

It would be an insult to the bridal party, right?

It'd be an insult.

They'd say, Well, why don't you do your fast some other time?

Why don't you start your diet next week?

That would just be natural.

It would be the highest of insults to the groom and bride.

This is not the time to fast.

Weddings are joyful occasions.

If there are tears at a wedding, they are tears of joy.

It's not sadness.

This is what is Jesus really saying here to these disciples, to the Pharisees themselves, what is Jesus saying?

If you only knew who I am, there would be joy in your life.

If you only knew who I am, your life would look so different.

And the joy I can bring you, the joy I came to bring you.

Jesus said in John chapter 17, his high priestly prayer of the night before his death, his prayer to his father, verse 13, that they, my followers, may have the full measure of my joy.

John 17 · chapter mention

Did you know that verse is in the Bible?

I want you to think about that verse this week.

Jesus said, I came that they, my people, may have the full measure of my joy.

That's an incredible statement.

What would your life look like if you had that?

What would my life look like?

I mean, Jesus is saying, do we really understand Christianity?

Where are we in our journey of discipleship?

Is my life marked by joy?

If it's not, I'm on the wrong path.

And it's not disregarding, it's not forgetting about the trials of life, the afflictions of life.

And yet throughout the Bible, particularly in the New Testament, the dominant note is joy for those people who follow Jesus.

What is getting in the way of that?

Jesus was asking them, Jesus would ask us this morning.

Would you pray about that this week?

That we would have the experience of the full measure of his joy.

Jesus is talking about weddings and he points them to another bridegroom.

It's almost like what he's saying is, hey, I'm using a wedding analogy to get this point across.

But by the way, by the way, did you know I came to be the bridegroom?

I'm going to be the bridegroom of some of you listening to me back then.

And he's going to be the bridegroom for some of you listening, for many, I hope all of you listening to me this morning.

He's going to be the bridegroom, and there's going to be another wedding feast.

We're going to talk about that a little bit more.

Didn't the angel say when he announced the birth of Jesus, I bring you good news of great joy.

Why?

Today a Savior has been born to you.

If the Savior had not been born, we would have no joy.

But because he was, we can.

However, the day is coming, he says, where I will be taken from my disciples, and then they will fast.

The day's coming when these disciples around me, in this context, my own disciples around me, the day's coming when they are going to mourn deeply.

Zacharias says they're going to be pierced.

They're going to mourn and they're going to grieve as a mother who's lost her firstborn son.

That's going to come that day.

But not today, Jesus says.

Because today I'm here, and the joy is available.

Jesus is saying, look, take in all that you're witnessing.

The healing of a leper, all the things that we've seen so far in this study of Mark.

These are amazing transformations.

A leper, God healed of his leprosy.

Nobody heard of that.

A paralytic rose up and walked and followed Jesus.

A tax collector, the last person anybody expected to get saved, was converted.

And leaving all of his wealth behind, he followed Jesus.

This is what the gospel can do.

Jesus is saying, What you are witnessing is God in the flesh.

Nobody but God can do these things.

And God has come in the person of Jesus Christ.

John chapter 1, verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.

John 1:14

Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and full of truth.

This is the Jesus in this story.

Since Jesus has ascended to heaven, however, there are times for us in this time in which we live, there are times for us as his disciples to feast, and there are legitimate times to fast.

There's a time for everything, Ecclesiastes says.

A time for everything.

Whichever the Lord leads us to, we must keep our eyes on our groom's return.

On the day we will sit down together at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

John writes about it in Revelation chapter 19.

Revelation 19 · chapter mention

Before we move on, just take a moment to visualize this.

The celebration and the feast that will far exceed and transcend the best wedding party, the best wedding event you've ever been to, will pale by comparison to that wedding feast of Jesus.

Are you going to be there?

Is there a seat for you?

That's only if you know Jesus Christ as your Savior and your Lord.

We keep our eyes waiting until he returns.

We read about that in the Apostles' Creed at the beginning of the worship service.

He will return and he will gather his people together with them.

We are waiting for our bridegroom's return.

We will see and we will know like we've never known before when he comes back.

That it's all true.

Then Jesus goes on to give his Pharisees and the others' listeners two parables to further illustrate his point.

A new patch on an old piece of clothing and new wine and old wineskins.

Two things you don't do, Jesus is saying.

Why not?

Well, the new cloth that's stitched to an old garment will tear when the new cloth shrinks.

It just can't hold it because it it hasn't been shrunk yet.

Also, when new fermenting wine will burst the old wineskins, as the wine would expand, the new wine in an old wineskin would expand the oxygen in it.

He says, you don't do that.

The wineskins back in Jesus' day were goat skins, and they were elastic and soft at first, but they would become brittle over time.

So that's why you don't put the new wine in the old wineskin.

What do the old garment and the old wineskins represent?

I've been studying this all week.

This is not an easy passage.

I'm going to give you two possibilities, and I think they both could be true.

First of all, Jesus exposes the false teaching of the Pharisees that man-made religion.

Like he did in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 through 7.

He would say, you've heard it said from your rabbis, and what Jesus was addressing in the Sermon in the Mount was the proper biblical teaching in the Old Testament, but then they were adding their own interpretation, they were adding their own spin to these teachings.

And Jesus is correcting them, and Jesus is giving us the full meaning of these teachings.

Well, the Pharisees had made a living out of falsifying, adding to the teachings of God's Word.

Jesus didn't come to patch up our old tattered attempts to find God.

No one finds forgiveness or peace or joy outside of Christ.

Christianity is first and foremost a relationship with the living God through the living Savior Jesus Christ.

It's not about the rules, it's not about the regulations.

How many times, how many conversations have I had with people who have just believed that?

Well, I think my hope, my hope for going to heaven is that I'm going to be a good person.

I'm going to live a good life.

I'm going to do the best I can.

I just need the right playbook.

That's not how it works.

You see, you're not saved by finding or getting the right playbook and really mastering the plays in that book.

That's not how you become a Christian.

That's what the Pharisees were doing.

That's what so many people in their day, that's what so many people today are doing.

They don't understand.

Do you understand that in order to become a Christian, you need to be born again.

You need a new heart.

That beautiful passage that we read, that Joan read in Jeremiah 31.

Back then God was pointing to this new covenant.

This new covenant that I will put my law within my people, I will write it on their hearts.

Religion, apart from Christ, is all on the outside.

The things that you're supposed to do to be accepted by God.

That's not Christianity.

Christianity is on the inside, and it starts when God gives you a new heart to believe that you're a sinner.

And to believe that Jesus came to this earth to save you from your sin and to give you a home in heaven one day.

Inside out, Jesus is saying.

So firstly, he exposes the false teaching of his day and our day.

But secondly, and I think this is, the Bible I know teaches this, and I think it's probably hit in this saying of Jesus here.

The kingdom of God is coming.

The kingdom of God is coming.

It's not going to be, the kingdom of God is not new in content in the New Testament, but in power, extent, and freshness.

Jesus said in Matthew chapter 12, verse 28, when he was accused by the demon, by the Pharisees of being a demon, having a demon himself, because he could cast out demons in others.

Matthew 12:28

Go figure that out.

Remember what Jesus said?

That doesn't even make sense.

Why wouldn't the enemy fight against himself?

But he goes on to say this: but if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

Do you know what all the signs and the miracles that we've been reading about in Mark are about?

Not only are they intended to bring healing for the blessing of the people, which is true, but first and foremost, all of these signs that we see are verifying, are authenticating that Jesus is the Son of God.

He's God in the flesh.

That's the point of these miracles.

That's what Jesus is saying in Matthew chapter 12.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

Verse 28.

If by the Spirit of God I cast out these demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

The new covenant refers to the fresh and the new powerful revelation of the same truth that Jeremiah prophesied.

Do you know that the saints in the Old Testament were saved the same way that you're saved?

By grace through faith.

They weren't saved by their obedience, they weren't saved through their sacrifices.

A lot of people today think that, no, that's not what was going on.

They were saved looking forward, as Francis Schaefer said, looking forward to the finished work of Jesus Christ by faith.

Although they didn't have nearly as much revelation as you have, they had enough revelation.

And they were saved, looking forward to the Messiah.

The new covenant is the expansion, the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God's people.

When did that happen?

Pentecost.

It's been happening ever since.

This new covenant that Jesus promised arrived with Jesus.

It was sealed, it was confirmed by his death, his burial, and his resurrection.

The new covenant is the old Abrahamic and Davidic covenant.

It's just renewed, it's enlarged.

You see, this second point is very important to understand.

I took a class this seminary on covenant theology.

The whole semester was just about this.

It's beautiful.

God made this promise to Adam.

It started in the garden, didn't it?

And then he made this promise to Adam's descendants, to Abraham, to Moses, to David and beyond.

You know, God always keeps his promises.

That's why he married us.

He keeps his promises.

He doesn't break them.

Let me illustrate this further by two examples of New Testament books.

And feel free to check this out yourself.

The book of Hebrews and the book of Galatians.

In the book of Hebrews, the contrast between the old and the new is not from bad to good.

In the book of Hebrews, the contrast is from what is good, the old covenant, to the better.

The better is the new covenant.

It's the fulfillment of all God's promises in Christ through Christ.

But not so the book of Galatians.

The book of Galatians looks at the old and the new covenants in the sense of the old being bad.

It's the Judaizers' attempts to find salvation, attempting to be saved through the law and grace.

It doesn't work that way.

Nobody is saved by adding works, good works, to grace.

Then it's no longer grace.

And so the book of Galatians, do you know Paul is at his angriest in the book of Galatians?

Paul wrote a lot of letters.

Why was Paul so riled up in his spirit in writing the book of Galatians?

Because these people who had come to Christ by grace through faith were now trying to add augment to it, works of righteousness.

That's why Paul was so incensed.

In that sense, the old covenant, it's not the real old covenant.

That was good.

It was taking the law of God and trying to use it and twist it.

My goodness somehow patched to Jesus' goodness.

It doesn't work that way.

Nobody's going to be saved that way.

That's the difference we see between Hebrews and Galatians.

Lastly, as we close, therefore, what should we expect of what Jesus is teaching?

At least four things.

First of all, a new power.

Before God was with his people in the Old Testament, he was with his people in the Old Testament, which is a beautiful thing.

But in the New Testament, he's in his people.

The Holy Spirit.

You don't have to go to the top of Mount Sinai.

You don't have to go into the holy place.

You don't go into the Holy of Holies.

The Holy of Holies has come to you, Christian.

The Holy of Holies is within you.

The Holy Spirit indwelling you.

Making us one with Christ.

In the very presence of God.

That's what we're doing this morning in worship.

Secondly, new results.

Lepers get healed, dead people get raised, demoniacs are cast out.

Are you looking for new results in your Christian life?

I fear that many Christians don't.

I fear that the temptation is to think, okay, I'm saved.

I'm good.

Our speaker at the Men's Breakfast said yesterday, there are no part-time Christians.

There are no part-time Christians.

Full on discipleship, followers of Christ.

Are you looking for new results?

Are you learning to come to Jesus in new ways as you studied the gospel of Mark?

Is your faith growing of what Jesus not only did, but what Jesus today can do?

Because he is the Messiah in the flesh.

Thirdly, a new relationship with the Son of God.

Jesus did not come to add new layers to an old system that didn't work.

Jesus didn't come to add just more rules or a system of works.

Jesus came to give us a new life.

We heard a testimony last week from Richard.

He's back in Germany now.

Richard is a new creature in Christ, just came to Christ.

A new relationship.

This is not about moral reformation.

This is not about sin management.

This is about the Spirit of God indwelling you, giving you faith to see Jesus in new ways.

To come to Jesus in new ways.

He wants to meet you.

If you're lost, he knows where you got lost.

He knows how you got lost.

He's not going to lecture you.

You're the lost sheep.

Remember the summer, past summer we looked at the series of the parables in Luke.

The shepherd leaving 99 sheep to go find the one lost one makes no sense.

Unless what?

Unless you're the one.

If you're the lost sheep, it makes all the sense in the world that Jesus would leave the herd to come get you.

Lastly, a new perspective.

Let's come back to that word joy.

That's what this passage is about.

Let me go back to the book of Galatians.

What question did Paul have for these professing Christians?

What has happened to all of your joy?

What happened to it?

What killed your joy?

Here's a guess.

That'll kill your joy, real quick.

You own the results of your life.

That will kill your joy.

You take responsibility for the results of your life.

What you have to be in your own eyes, what you have to accomplish through your life, that'll kill your joy.

If it's all up to you, that'll kill your joy.

Joy is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Only the Holy Spirit can give us joy.

And the way that the Holy Spirit does that is by taking us to Christ in His word, His truth and His grace.

That's how we find our joy.

Do you need joy in your life?

Jesus wants to speak with you.

He wants to give what only He can offer you.

I have to say, over the last several years, as we made a change in worship and began praying after every worship service, we have seen the Spirit of God do some amazing things in this church.

As many of you can testify.

This is not a lecture.

This is a worship service.

And God is present.

And God responds.

What is it that you're asking him to respond to?

Don't stop the conversation that he's having with you in this worship service.

Just because the service is over.

The conversation may not be over.

Oh, he won't if it's joy, if you're lacking joy, pray.

Ask him to show you where the joy is to be found for you.

Jesus, our bridegroom, came to make us his bride.

Jesus, our bridegroom, will come back for the real feast.

Let's pray.

Father, who but you, the only holy God, would make such staggering promises to your people.

From the very beginning in the garden, where even when the garden was ruined by sinners, your promises offered hope.

Throughout the Old Testament, throughout the New Testament, up to today, we just were here this morning to think hard, to think clearly.

Lord, by faith of the work of the Holy Spirit in us to respond, Jesus, to what you are offering to us today.

And we know it's more than just a long set of rules to follow.

We know it's more than just trying to punish ourselves, somehow making thinking that we're going to be better.

We're not into asceticism.

We're not into formalism.

We're not into spiritualism.

We're here, Jesus, for you.

Would you continue speaking into each heart the conversation you've started this morning for your glory and for our good.

Amen.