Matthew 9:14-17 | "Feasting and Fasting"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Let's allow the Lord to encourage us through His Word.

If you would take your Bible with me this morning and open it to the Gospel of Matthew.

If you are joining us for the first time or just visiting us today, we want to welcome you and thank you for worshiping with us.

We've been working our way through Matthew's gospel, section by section, and this morning we find ourselves in Matthew chapter 9, beginning in verse 14.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

Again, Matthew chapter 9, beginning in verse 14.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

I'll read through that if you would like to follow along in your Bible or your device.

But your disciples do not fast.

And Jesus said to them, Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?

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

No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made.

Neither is new wine put into old wineskins.

If it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed, but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.

Amen.

This summer, strangely, in the midst of all of the coronavirus stuff, has been a summer of weddings for us here at Faith.

We had a wedding end of May, wedding at the end of July, wedding at the beginning of August.

We will have another one in September and another one in October.

It's been good for us, and it's good for us as pastors working with the couples to be able to watch and observe and see how these couples interact with one another.

What do they like about one another?

What makes them irritated about one another?

What are they anticipating?

What are they excited about?

What are they nervous about?

We get to see all of that, and that's an encouraging thing to us.

We love to do that.

But I want you to put yourself in the position of someone getting married?

How are you anticipating the one to whom you're getting married?

What are your feelings?

What are your thoughts?

What are your actions toward that individual?

And I'd like you to take that and ask yourself, do I have those same feelings, those same convictions, those same desires towards the Lord Jesus Christ?

Hold on to that, and we'll come back to it in a little bit.

This section of Scripture is the third consecutive section in which Jesus is confronted or challenged about the appropriateness of something that he has done or said.

So in verses 1 through 8 of chapter 9, he was chastised for forgiving someone's sins of all things.

He forgave a man's sins and was challenged for blasphemy.

But Jesus came back and said, Listen, the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins.

Here's my proof of it.

I'm going to heal this paralyzed man.

They did not believe that Jesus was the Son of Man with the authority to forgive.

Then in verse 9, we saw Jesus call Matthew to himself, call Matthew to faith in the Messiah and to follow him.

Matthew was so excited about coming to faith in Christ that he wanted to throw a party for his friends, and so he gathered all of his friends, the tax collectors and the sinners, and threw a great feast and invited Jesus and the disciples, and they said, Great, let's celebrate faith in Christ.

And then he was challenged for that.

Why in the world would you eat with those people?

Of all people, why those people?

And Jesus said, No, you're missing the point.

Just like you missed the point with the forgiveness of sins, you're missing the point here.

Because I'm fulfilling God's requirement to be merciful.

Now we see a third confrontation or challenge is perhaps the better word.

Feels a little bit more like a classroom where Jesus is correcting a false understanding or a faulty view.

We have here John the Baptizer's disciples coming and asking Jesus a question.

Maybe they're curious, maybe they're concerned, maybe they're misunderstanding.

We don't know.

They thought they were on the same side, they were on the same team.

Yet something appears to be different.

And so they come to Jesus with what it feels like a genuinely honest question.

Why do we and the Pharisees fast twice a week, but you and your disciples aren't fasting at all?

Now notice what's happening here.

Matthew's doing this sort of subtly.

He's putting John the Baptist's disciples in the same camp with the Pharisees.

How would you like that if somebody did that with you, coming up and calling you a Pharisee?

You're just like those Pharisees.

Well, we would react to that, wouldn't we?

But the disciples are doing that themselves.

They're saying, listen, we are more like the Pharisees in this than we are like your disciples.

Why is that?

What's going on?

Can you help us understand this?

So there's some sense of opposition or challenge, or maybe it's only misunderstanding, but Matthew still presents this as Jesus versus everybody else.

It's Jesus and his followers doing this, and everybody else is doing something else.

Why is that?

What's going on?

You see, in the Old Testament, God had only required one time of fasting.

He only required one time of fasting during Yom Kippur, the day of atonement.

You can see that in Leviticus 16.

But as time went on, the Pharisees and the religious leaders began to say that, no, it's most appropriate to fast twice a week.

In fact, in Luke chapter 18, in the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee, the Pharisee lifts his face up to heaven and says, God, you know how much I fast.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

I fast twice a week, and I give tithes of everything that I ate.

God, you know how righteous I am because you see that I fast twice a week.

And John's disciples apparently are following that same procedure.

But they're noticing that Jesus' disciples aren't.

And that brings us to their question, and it's the key question of this text.

Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?

This is the first of four keys that we're going to notice this morning.

And it is the key question.

Jesus, why are we required to do this?

Why do we have to do this, but your disciples don't?

What's going on with that?

Now, did you catch the setting?

Did that ring a bell in your mind?

Jesus and the disciples are feasting with the sinners.

And John the Baptist's disciples are starving themselves.

Now you can understand how that might cause some frustration, right?

If they're in the same proximity, if they're in the same community, you can understand how if John's disciples are thinking that the way to demonstrate their faith and their trust in God is to fast, but Jesus and his disciples are gorging themselves at a celebration.

You can understand how that might cause some confusion, maybe even some frustration.

See, fasting is not enjoyable.

Our bodies require sustenance and nourishment.

They begin to crave food after a while.

If you doubt that, just go without food for a while and you'll see that you begin to crave things, right?

The disciples of John were coming to Jesus wondering, frustrated, challenging Jesus' methods because his way is easier.

There's no fasting.

Because everything that they'd been taught, everything that they'd been following, is that religious duty is filled with denying yourself for God.

Twice a week.

Show your duty and your religious trust and following of God by denying yourself twice a week.

And if that's what it's all about, why aren't your disciples doing this?

So first, Jesus was challenged about whether or not he should eat with tax collectors.

Now he's challenged with whether or not he should eat at all.

And you might have noticed that the disciples weren't the ones asked this question.

Previously they were.

If you look back at verse 11, the Pharisees came to Jesus' disciples about eating with tax collectors and sinners.

So the disciples were faced with the question.

Here they come right to Jesus, saying, Jesus, we've noticed that your disciples aren't fasting.

What's up with that?

Jesus is the one who has to answer.

And the reason for that is the way that disciple rabbi, disciple teacher, student-teacher relationships worked in the ancient world.

You see, a teacher was responsible for his students.

Jesus was the teacher, the disciples are the students.

So if anything is wrong or inappropriate with the students, the teacher is the one that gets questioned.

If a disciple was living and acting in some kind of rude or inappropriate or inconsiderate or brutish kind of way, if they were disregarding religious belief and morality, it reflected on the teacher.

Because the assumption was that the teacher must have been teaching his students to do things improperly.

Makes you kind of wonder sometimes what assumptions do people make about the Lord Jesus Christ because of us?

If we claim to be his disciples and we follow him, but we consistently refuse to listen to his word, if we refuse to walk in his ways, if we regularly neglect to please him, what are we teaching other people about him?

Makes you wonder sometimes.

We reflect the Lord Jesus Christ.

What are we reflecting?

Now John's disciples are making the assumption that Jesus has taught his disciples you don't need to fast.

Don't worry about denying yourself.

But that's an unfair assumption, isn't it?

It's an unfair assumption.

Remember, we've already been taught about fasting by the Lord Jesus.

Back in chapter 6 in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, When you fast, chapter 6, verse 16, when you fast, he's making the assumption that we're going to, don't look gloomy like the hypocrites.

They disfigure their faces so that they may be seen by others.

When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face so that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret.

Jesus made the assumption that his disciples, his followers, would fast.

But he said, listen, the way that it's commonly done is just done out of ritual.

And it's done to bring attention to yourself, not to worship God.

So look normal when you're fasting so that no one will know.

See, a fast is worthless and without meaning.

It's just starving yourself if it's done out of religious ritual or habit.

That's what the Pharisees and even John's disciples apparently were doing.

Maybe you don't have that kind of thing, but maybe you come to church every single Sunday out of ritual.

Maybe you participate in singing and singing loudly, and maybe you you are following along with our prayer on Sunday morning, but you just do it because it's what you're supposed to do.

It's just the thing to do.

You do it week after week, and it becomes a ritual.

It doesn't originate from a heart that wants to glorify and praise God.

See, anything that we do in following our God can become like fasting twice a week, where it's just starving yourself.

Even if you're you're you're reading your daily breadstick, as Pastor Anton likes to call it, the daily bread.

You're not opening your Bible, you just read the little page and gives you your verse, and you read that and you close it up and you put it aside, you're doing that week day after day, week week after week, month after month.

That can just be a ritual that is worthless.

And notice, if Jesus' disciples were learning, if they were following him and learning from his instruction, they may have been fasting all along and nobody would have known it.

Right?

Jesus said, when you fast in chapter 6, don't look like everybody else looks.

Don't make it look like you're experiencing the worst thing in the world.

Don't look like you're about to die, make it look like you're celebrating.

Because then you'll be doing it for right reasons.

You'll be doing it with a heart attitude instead of getting attention.

So they may have been fasting after all, and John's disciples wouldn't have seen it.

But because they can't see it, they're confused.

Strangely, Jesus moves now from a question on fasting to speaking about a wedding.

But if we follow his statements and then the scene, well, it's not really that surprising.

Jesus has been celebrating, right?

Matthew has come to faith in Christ and begun to follow him.

He's thrown a party for him.

They've been celebrating faith in Christ.

So Jesus responds with an answer about celebrating.

And his answer is the key answer that we see here.

He says, listen, mourning is not appropriate when you're having a wedding.

Wedding celebrations were a very important part of the first century life.

A little bit different.

Instead of preparing for months and months and months and having a three-hour event, they prepared for a seven-day event.

And it was just a continual feast and celebration a whole week long.

Generally, what happened is the groom invited his closest friends to be in charge of the wedding celebration.

I don't know that I would entrust my closest friends to do that, but in this story, that's what happened, and that's what was the pattern.

These are the friends of the bridegroom.

Jesus says, Can the wedding guests mourn?

He's speaking specifically there about the friends.

This is the best man.

These are the closest associates and friends of the groom who are helping him throw this celebration.

Of course, there are other invited guests as well.

Everybody's expected to have a good time.

That's the intention.

These were so important.

Celebration was so important that weddings came to the point where they took precedent over religious obligations.

Where you could get away with not doing something like fasting if you were having a wedding.

That's how important it was.

Now we don't know exactly what's going on here.

Maybe there's something else here.

Maybe there's a wedding party that's traveling down the street, and Jesus can point to them and say, Look, you see how they're celebrating?

You see how they're having a good time?

They're doing that because the groom is still with them.

The groom hasn't left yet.

You don't be a part, you can't be a part of that wedding celebration and be mournful.

That doesn't work.

That's not appropriate.

In the same way, Jesus says fasting is not appropriate at a wedding either.

Either in the not eating part or the mourning part.

See, a wedding is full of joy, not grief.

Imagine the best man who's been working hard to throw this party, say to the groom, No man, I can't eat today.

It's my fasting day.

It's not going to happen.

He's going to participate with his friends.

He's going to be joyful with his friends.

So Jesus is answering the question by talking about what's appropriate.

Is fasting appropriate at a wedding?

Is mourning appropriate at a time of celebration?

His purpose for coming.

So he says to these disciples of John, listen, you know that the wedding's for celebration.

You guys know this.

You're happy and you're filled with joy and you're excited at the celebration of the bride and groom.

You know that you don't go to a wedding to mourn.

Grief is not appropriate.

You know this.

You know also that when the bridegroom is gone, then mourning could be appropriate, but not while he's still at the party.

You know that when he's gone, then his friends might fast.

But they're not going to fast while they're throwing the wedding celebration.

So he tells us that fasting is equivalent to mourning in his illustration.

It doesn't matter if you're talking about mourning or fasting, they're not appropriate at a wedding celebration.

You don't fast, you don't mourn if the groom is still at the party.

Who's the bridegroom?

It's Jesus.

It's Jesus.

He's talking about himself.

Therefore, the friends of the bridegroom, his disciples, don't fast while they're celebrating the groom.

They need to understand that in Jewish thought, this idea of a bridegroom was often used as a metaphor for God Himself.

In Jewish culture, they they use that image to refer to God's relationship to his people, and so they anticipated that God would come and bring his people together as a bride and a bridegroom and be together for eternity.

So God is often called Israel's husband.

God refers to his people as his bride.

So Jesus is answering this question about fasting in such a way as to turn it around to say, no, you're missing the point.

The important point is who I am.

Are you really seeing who I am?

And what's fascinating about this is that John's disciples should already know this.

They should.

Look over at the Gospel of John in chapter 3.

Now, the Gospel of John was written by a different John than John the Baptist, but we're going to be reading about John the Baptist.

So there are people asking John the Baptist about who he is.

Asking him, is he the Messiah?

Verse 26, they came to John and said to him, this is John 3.26, Teacher, the one who is with you across the Jordan, that's Jesus, to whom you bore witness.

Look, he's baptizing, and all are going to him.

John answered, A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given to him from heaven.

You yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.

The one who has the bride is the bridegroom.

The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice.

Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete.

He must increase, but I must decrease.

See, here's the here's the best man.

Best man's gotten everything ready for the wedding day.

He's prepared everything for the celebration.

He's got all the food ready.

He's got all the drinks ready.

He's got all the seating ready.

He's got everything prepared.

He's been looking forward to it.

He's been the guy.

But now they're Groom gets there.

And everything changes.

He says, I've been getting ready, everything ready for when the groom arrives.

Now that the groom arrives, I need to get off the scene because he's the important person.

John's disciples should have known that.

And maybe Jesus is having that in mind and he's drawing them back to what their own teacher has said.

We don't know that.

But Jesus goes on in verse 15 to give even more explanation.

He says that the days are going to come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and they will fast then.

That word taken away is somewhat unique, I guess you could say.

It suggests a violent and unwelcome removal.

So it's not as though somebody came and invited the groom to leave the wedding party.

It's more like the authorities showed up and arrested him in front of everybody else and drug him out.

Pointing, I think, naturally to the crucifixion.

Isaiah 53.8 says, by oppression and judgment he was taken away.

So Jesus is referring subtly to the time when the bridegroom is no longer going to be at the wedding party.

Instead, he's going to be brutally taken away.

And he says, that's the time when the friends of the bridegroom will fast.

Now, John's disciples should have known that.

They should have understood that.

I think they did.

Because their own teacher, John the Baptizer, had already been taken away.

John the Baptist was sitting in prison awaiting his execution by beheading for challenging the local authorities.

It's at that time, Jesus said.

It's at the time when the divine bridegroom is forcibly taken away and hung upon a tree for our transgressions.

Then the disciples may mourn and then they may fast, but not while he's still with them.

While he's still with them, they celebrate.

And that leads us then to the key truth.

This is all about Jesus.

This is all about Jesus.

He is the groom that's been promised.

He's the one that Israel's been looking for.

Just as we saw in the previous section where Israel was failing to fulfill God's requirements to be merciful.

Jesus is the one who came to fulfill that.

He fulfills what God's expectations were.

And he's pointing that out to them.

He's the one who comes to forgive sins.

Matthew is presenting over and over and over again.

Do you see Jesus?

Everything that you've heard from the time you were born and brought to the synagogue for the first time until the time you're an adult and have your own family and are taking your own kids and grandkids, everything that you've heard in your Bibles is pointing to Jesus.

Here he is.

That's why Matthew has thrown the party, right?

Come and see him.

I found him.

Or rather, he found me.

So Jesus goes on in verses 16 and 17 to use two illustrations.

Practical illustrations of everyday life.

First one is repairing a garment with a patch.

I've not patched anything myself except for a fishing rod.

But I remember when I was a kid and I tore holes in my pants and my knees, and my mom would patch them.

Right?

You've probably all been here.

Some of you have done this.

Sometimes the patch didn't hold too well, right?

So pretty soon it was flapping and attached on one end and not on the other, and almost worthless.

Jesus is kind of describing that sort of thing, except we have to understand what they had to go through.

You wouldn't just take a fresh piece of cloth that was just made and come off the loom and attach it to a garment.

Because made out of wool, it would then shrink when it got wet.

So if you attached it before it was shrunk, it would shrink and pull at the seams that you had sewn in.

Begin to tear the rest of the garment.

Jesus says, You don't do that.

That's inappropriate.

First, you go through the process of preparing the patch.

You make sure that it's ready to put on first.

You don't put fresh squeezed grape juice in old wineskins.

That's not appropriate.

Why is that not appropriate?

Well, in ancient times, uh even today in some locations, goat skins were the choice for storing wine.

Especially if you were you were poorer and couldn't uh afford jars to store it in.

So you would crush the grapes, it would gather up the grape juice and put it in a skin that had been all sewn together, and then you would put it in storage to ferment.

And it would begin fermenting almost immediately.

And you you can understand then and imagine how as it begins to ferment and it's doing its normal thing, it's bubbling, it's curing, it's processing enzymes and everything.

And as it does that, it begins to put pressure and expand on the skin.

So imagine then that you're in your home, or maybe you're going to a wedding party and you're carrying this goat skin over your shoulder with a bunch of wine in it, and poof, it explodes all over you.

Right?

Jesus says, you know that's what's going to happen if you use an old wineskin.

Because, see, the thing about leather and goat skin is as it as it ages, it dries and it hardens.

It can't expand then.

But a fresh skin has enough give in it to, if you fill it, it will expand and stretch a little bit to contain the process of fermentation.

So Jesus says, you know it's not appropriate to take fresh grape juice and put it in old skins.

You know this.

To preserve the harvest of grapes, you put it in new, fresh skins.

Now notice how Jesus is using these illustrations.

They are pictures of the key question and the key answer.

So he gives the truth he hears the question, he gives the answer, the truth to the answer, and then he says, now let me illustrate it.

So the key question is, why aren't your disciples fasting?

The answer is it's not appropriate.

Let me give you two illustrations of not being appropriate.

There's a sermon right there.

Some would say that Jesus is giving a subtle hint at how things are now different.

That he's bringing change.

It's no longer the Jewish system of the law.

Now it's something completely different.

He's instituting a different time, moving away from the law.

Therefore, the requirements of fasting in the law are no longer appropriate because the king has come.

I understand that argument, but I think it's stretching the point.

Because as we've seen, this is not about fasting.

It's about Jesus.

Are you seeing Jesus?

It begins with fasting, but Jesus quickly answers by pointing John's disciples to do you know who you're talking to?

Do you get that I am the groom that you've been looking for?

It all points to a to a single truth.

Jesus is the anticipated bridegroom.

He's the anticipated one who comes to bring mercy.

He's the anticipated one who comes to bring forgiveness.

Are you seeing that?

Interestingly, in chapter 22 and chapter 25, Jesus brings back this same illustration of a wedding.

He uses the wedding as an illustration of the kingdom of heaven.

He says, You want to be a part of the wedding party in the kingdom of heaven.

And who's the groom?

Jesus.

Isaiah 40, 54, 5.

For your maker is your husband, Yahweh of hosts.

Isaiah 62, 5, for as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you.

And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God shall rejoice over you.

See, Israel had known this idea of a wedding feast, a wedding celebration, and a groom marrying a bride as a picture of God celebrating, gathering his people together and joining them together forever.

They had anticipated that.

They looked forward to that.

And Jesus says, I'm here.

Why are you arguing about fasting?

I'd like to point you to one other passage in Hosea.

We were in Hosea quite a bit last Sunday, so I trust you can find it now.

I had to put my little strip in there so I could get there quickly.

Hosea chapter 2.

Hosea 2 · chapter mention

Remember, Hosea is a book where God just lays it out against Israel.

He says, You've been like a faithless wife to me who's left her husband to go participate in prostitution.

He says, That's how you've treated me.

My wife has left me, God says.

And so he uses Hosea as an illustration of God drawing her back.

I want you to notice what's said at the end of Hosea chapter 2.

Hosea 2 · chapter mention

God says in verse 16, in that day.

That's when your ears should perk up.

Whenever God says, in that day, that's saying, pay attention to this, declares Yahweh, you will call me my husband.

And no longer will you call me my Baal.

Verse 19, I will betroth you to me forever.

I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.

I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know Yahweh.

Jesus says, Know Yahweh, look at me, see me.

I'm the groom.

The time is now.

Time is now.

Let's consider quickly a fourth key, key applications.

Really, the issue with John's disciples is how are you responding in the presence of the groom?

Because fasting isn't appropriate.

Celebrating is.

Jesus says, I'm here.

Celebrate.

My disciples are celebrating.

You ought to be celebrating.

You're not celebrating because you're not properly understanding who I am and what this means.

So what about for us?

As his disciples today, how do we apply this today?

Well, I think there's a primary and a secondary application.

The primary application has everything to do with seeing Jesus.

Matthew caught from Jesus what many missed.

And it's not about fasting, it's about Jesus being the groom.

He's the promised husband of God's people because he is God.

Isn't that what Matthew told us in the very beginning?

You shall call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins, and he will be Emmanuel, God with us.

Therefore, he is the husband, the groom that we've been anticipating.

It's just a rich, rich theme in Scripture.

It's a small theme.

It's a small theme.

You don't find this idea of God being a groom all over the place, but it's rich in depth as you trace it through the Bible.

Let me just show you what I mean quickly in Hosea chapter 2.

Hosea 2 · chapter mention

God sort of changes direction.

He said in chapter 1 that he's going to call his people no mercy.

He said, I'm done being merciful to you because you're not fulfilling my mercy.

In fact, he says, I'm going to go so far as to call you not my people.

I'm going to disown you.

I'm going to say, I don't know anything about you because you've left me.

But notice what God does at the end of Hosea chapter 2.

Hosea 2 · chapter mention

He says, I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know, Yahweh.

Verse 23, I will have mercy on no mercy.

I will say to not my people, you are my people.

Listen, Jesus is the one who came to provide forgiveness.

He's the one who comes to fulfill God's expectation of mercy.

And he turns around and displays mercy to his people by saying, You're my people.

You're my bride.

Look at how this happens.

1 Peter chapter 2.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

This in Hosea is spoken specifically to the nation of Israel.

But in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 9, Peter says to the church, do you know what he says?

1 Peter 2:9

You are a chosen people.

A people who will be called after his name.

Peter says, because of faith in the groom, we are now incorporated into his bride.

We get to participate in the celebration.

Do you see Jesus so that you can be a part of the wedding celebration?

Notice how this is carried on in the book of Revelation.

We don't have time to really flesh this out.

But Revelation chapter 19.

Revelation 19 · chapter mention

I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, Hallelujah! For Yahweh, our God, the Almighty, reigns.

Let us rejoice and exult and give him glory.

Why?

For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.

It was granted to her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure.

And the angel said to me, Write this down, John.

Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Do you see Jesus?

The groom came to redeem his bride, to purify for himself a people for his own possession.

What a rich treasure we possess in that.

Secondary application.

What are the appropriate actions for disciples now?

Really, that's what John's disciples were asking, wasn't it?

Jesus, listen, we're fasting and your disciples aren't.

And Jesus says, Well, you're not doing the appropriate thing.

Listen, our groom is away.

He was taken away from us.

And so there's a sense in which now is the time to mourn and fast as we await his return.

He expects us to do it appropriately.

He says in Matthew 6, when you fast, do it this way.

He says, we don't fast ritually but reverentially.

We don't fast for show, we fast for sanctification.

Jesus has been taken away.

He was violently lifted up as a sacrifice for our sin.

And now he resides in glory with the Father in heaven.

He has been taken away into heaven.

He's no longer present with us physically, so it's appropriate for us to fast in his absence.

But it's also appropriate to feast.

It's appropriate to feast.

That is, celebrate, worship in his presence.

Because what did Jesus promise his disciples?

But I will be with you forever.

Even to the end of the age.

He is with us in spirit.

So let's remember that whatever we do, religious requirements, whatever actions or activities we do as part of our faith are not what determines our righteousness.

Just because you're here every single Sunday and you've been here faithfully doesn't mean anything.

Just because you sing with gusto, the Lord is my salvation, doesn't mean that the Lord is your salvation.

Coming to church on Sunday morning, placing money in the offering plate, coming to Bible studies, dare I say it, masks or no masks, those things don't grant you entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

It's only by faith in the groom that we are admitted entrance into the wedding celebration to become a part of the bride.

The truth is that Jesus is that promised groom, and that means that now is the time for feasting and fasting.

He's not present with us physically, but he's present with us in spirit.

He is here, he is in us, and our divine bridegroom has gone away to prepare a place for us, and he has promised that he will return to take us home.

That means there's going to be times of fasting and mourning as we await his return.

There's also reason for hope and for joy and celebration.

May you participate in all of that with us.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, thank you for who you are.

Forgive us for not seeing you clearly.

But we struggle with that because we can't see you physically.

But one day we believe that all of that will be changed and we will see with our own eyes a Redeemer who bought us for Himself.

Thank you for purifying us to make us your own.

Even so come, Lord Jesus.

We're ready for the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.