"Submit to Celebrate" - Mark 2:18-22

We've got a Bible. We're going to be in Mark chapter 2. If you've noticed,

Mark 2 · chapter mention

we slowed down a little bit in Mark because I think these stories right here

are really setting the tone for Jesus' whole ministry as we see it in Mark.

So we've said that to this point.

Mark has presented Jesus. Jesus is taught. He is healed.

And now he's having these showdowns with the Pharisees. If you remember last

week, we said, we tend to think of the Pharisees as intrinsically negative,

but they would have been the ones with the big YouTube channels.

They would have been the ones on TV.

They would have been the ones that people looked at and thought,

if I have a religious question, these are the people that I need to go ask.

And like anything, we tend to typecast a certain group in a certain way,

and they're all that way. and that's just how they all are.

But you'll see guys like Nicodemus come to Jesus at night, who's a Pharisee,

and he's asking genuine questions, and he really wants to understand what's going on.

And so I always try to say that when I talk about the Pharisees,

because I think in churches, we say the word Pharisee, and we immediately think,

well, they're all the worst.

They're all devils. How can we trust any of them? But like anything, Pharisees are people.

Now, generally speaking, the Pharisees as a general group are not positive, right?

And we're going to see more of that this morning, but we're also going to see

another group of people come in that we would assume, man, these guys were the

good ones and they kind of joined themselves with the Pharisees in a way.

And so, but that's where we're at.

I was reading up, you know, as I'm studying these passages in Mark.

Different books come up as you read different commentaries.

And one of the books that came up was a book by John Stott.

And it's called The Controversalist.

So naturally, I got on Amazon and bought it. And it's one of the many books

that I won't read all of it right now.

And it'll go on my shelf. And someone will be like, oh, you've read that book?

And I'll be like, kind of.

I've read parts of it.

But this is a great quote, I think, at the beginning of that book.

He says, the popular image of Christ as gentle Jesus, meek and mild, simply will not do.

It is a false image. To be sure, he was full of love and compassion and tenderness,

but he was also uninhibited in exposing error and denouncing sin, especially hypocrisy.

Christ was a controversialist and the gospel writers portray him as such.

And so again, for us, when we think about Jesus in the same way we think about

the Pharisees, we have these pictures, these images that come into our mind.

I've told you before, anytime someone says Jesus to me, I think of a blue flannel

graph and a little white Jesus with a beard.

I mean, immediately if someone's like, hey, Jesus, it doesn't matter how many

years of Bible college I went to, seminary training, I know where he's from.

I know what he probably looked like.

You say Jesus, I think blue flannel graph, little white guy,

beard. That's who Jesus is in my head.

If you don't think children's is important, that's what it is.

They will remember everything.

But Jesus to the people at the time, especially at this point in Mark's gospel,

is controversial in every way.

Everything he's doing, people are looking at and going, that's not the way you're supposed to do that.

That's not the way that I think you should be doing that.

Whether again, it's him getting baptized and going to wilderness,

whether it's him calling these disciples that are fishermen and now a tax collector, right?

The way he teaches on the Sabbath with authority and not like other teachers,

him healing people and going to different things.

Like everything he's doing is making people go, not real sure about this Jesus guy.

And that's where we're dropped in in Mark. Yeah, we're going to be in chapter

two. And we're going to start in verse 18.

We've just gotten past him calling Levi or Matthew, the tax collector.

Again, this was incredibly scandalous.

Tax collectors were the lowest of the low. Everyone hated tax collectors.

And I would almost say rightfully so.

They were thieves, right? They would steal from their own people.

They collected taxes from the government and then pocketed any extra for themselves.

The only friends tax collectors had were other tax collectors.

They were literally the government's bullies and could get away with whatever

they wanted. If you didn't pay taxes, they'd have you thrown in prison.

If you didn't pay them long enough, they could have you killed.

That's who tax collectors were. Jesus calls Matthew in.

He finishes by saying, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. If you remember last week,

we said, that's everybody.

The irony is that he's looking at the Pharisees and saying to them,

you're just as much a sinner as this tax collector.

And that's what the Pharisees hate. And that's what they will ultimately kill him for.

One of the things you see about Jesus in the gospels that I think is really

important is Jesus is about Jesus, right?

You can be a controversial figure and that's one thing, but if you're going

to do that, inevitably, usually something will happen that changes who you are.

We've all met somebody. Maybe they get started in ministry or you knew somebody

younger when you were in churches and they were, man, they were gung-ho Jesus

and they taught faithfully.

They taught fearlessly. They taught the Bible.

And then something happens, right? They get in a relationship.

Somebody gives them a bunch of money, right? They get in certain circles.

And all of a sudden that kind of changes who they are. It changes how they talk.

It changes what they're like.

Well, this is what Jesus isn't. Jesus has come to preach, as he says,

the gospel of God, repentance and belief in the gospel, right?

He's come to preach it to whoever will listen.

He's an equal opportunity preacher, tax collectors, Pharisees,

people at the crowd, people fishing, doesn't matter who it is.

Jesus will preach to anybody. And he's come to go and to do whatever the father

calls him to do. And why is that important?

Well, there's no deviation from Jesus in his message or in his methods. ingredients.

That's important because every other teacher and really every other person,

you and me included, if you put us in the right crowd at the right time with

the right amount of ingredients, you could probably get us to act a little differently.

Now, I imagine as you get older, maybe this gets easier to not do.

I find as I get older, I get a little grouchier and I kind of just don't care

what other people think.

But even that is its own way of me kind of doing what other people are doing, right?

There's a whole subculture of people that go, nobody's gonna tell me what to do.

And so even when someone tells you to do something that's a good thing to do,

you go, listen, I was going to do the good thing, but now I'm not going to do

the good thing because you told me to do the good thing and nobody tells me what to do.

I can't wear a come and take it shirt and then be nice to people on the street,

right? It just doesn't work.

Jesus isn't like that. Jesus does what he does. He knows exactly what he is supposed to do.

It's the message for our own lives, right? We preach the gospel.

We're honest, no matter who it is, whether it's a Pharisee, a tax collector,

someone who's been to prison or an eight-year-old child, we preach the gospel.

I think we'll see clearly today, though, that this isn't true of the Pharisees,

right? The Pharisees can be bought.

They can be sold, right? They can be influenced by the people around them.

Most importantly, when they lose something or when they fear that they will

lose something that's important to them, it changes who they are.

So again, Mark 2, 18 through 22, let me just read the whole passage here. We'll get into it.

So he says, 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 guests 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 sews 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 is made and no one puts new wine into old wineskins.

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

But the new wine is for fresh wineskins.

So again, off the jump, right off the jump, it says, now John's disciples and

the Pharisees. So time out.

I thought John was the good guy, right? We get introduced to John in chapter

one of Mark, and he's the good guy.

He's the messenger that goes before the Messiah to announce Jesus is coming.

John is in prison right now as they write this because he is the good guy.

But why is John's disciples and the Pharisees seem to be on the same team?

I hope you understand that this is the complexities with which we're working

with, right? This is the time in which we live.

John's disciples aren't necessarily

good guys or bad guys. You know what John's disciples are? People.

And the Pharisees, again, generally negative, but they're still people.

And they're trying to work this out. And John's guys are going,

okay, this is the religious people that I know. These are the people that probably

taught me a lot of what I know.

John's gone. And so now I'm going to go to the Pharisees and we're going to

try to figure this out. And one of the things they're doing here is they're fasting.

John's disciples are fasting. The Pharisees are fasting.

And they're looking at Jesus and they're going, why doesn't this guy do the

religious custom of the day?

Why does he seem to be exempt? Not only that, he's not just not fasting. He's kind of partying.

That's literally the story we read last week.

He's not only calling tax collectors in, he's partying with tax collectors in

their house. He's having these big extravagant parties and they're inviting

Jesus over and he's sitting with sinners.

And so you can imagine there's some of these disciples, Pharisees,

John's disciples that are going, that's wrong. That's wrong.

These are the Pharisees that will eventually want to get Jesus killed.

But there's also John's disciples who I think are more looking at that going,

that's not what I thought was going to happen.

That's not how I pictured the Messiah being. I don't know that this guy can

really be the Messiah if that's how he's going to act.

And then you've got the crowd. And so it says the people came and said to him,

Luke will tell us that not only do the people come, the crowd at large,

but John's disciples actually come and ask Jesus this question.

But why do I point this out and why do I belabor this point?

I think it's important that we differentiate for ourselves the difference between

wolves, people who are enticed by wolves, right? And then people who are just curious.

And what I mean by that is We are often in churches quick to make enemies of

people that are not our enemies, but that are ignorant.

Okay, we are quick to make enemies of people that are not necessarily our enemies,

but of people that are ignorant.

I'm not using ignorant in a negative sense here. I'm using ignorant in the way

that says they just don't know.

I think that's really what John's disciples are doing here.

They don't know. They're confused.

They want to be right. They genuinely want to do what God wants them to do,

but they're really unsure.

And we look at this and we go, well, why would you go to the Pharisees? They're the wolves.

They're the ones that are gonna murder Jesus. Don't you know that?

And they would look at us and go, no, we do not know that at this point.

We know that these are the religious guys, that they know the law,

that they know the prophets, they know the Bible really well.

And so we're going to them to say like, hey, help us make sense of this.

And in our own lives, I think it's important that we take James's advice to

heart. Let's be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.

When we talk to someone that disagrees with us, when we talk to someone that

doesn't think theologically the way that we think, our first inclination can't

be, you're an enemy and I can't believe you would think that way.

Our first inclination should be, well, what do you know? Why do you think that way?

Why are you siding with that person? Why are you going to that kind of church?

Why are you doing that kind of thing?

Quick to listen also means quick to ask questions, quick to learn,

quick to discern what's really going on.

By the same token, let's be quick to shoot wolves.

Really who Jesus goes after in the gospels is the Pharisees because they're

the wolves and they're feeding on Jesus's sheep. They're feeding on the people at large.

Often when Jesus comes across someone that is just a person trying to figure

it out, he's pretty gentle.

He's very patient. He's very kind.

Now, does that mean he doesn't deal with sin? Of course not.

Think of the woman at the well, right? That's a story most people know.

He is patient and kind, but does that mean he doesn't confront her? No.

He says, yeah, you've had four husbands. The guy you're living with right now

is not your husband. He has no problem saying that.

What he doesn't say to her is, wow, how could you be so dumb?

How could you think that way? How could you be so stupid?

And so I think what Jesus is doing here when he comes to ask these questions

is he's gonna give an answer that's for everyone.

And what changes is not Jesus's message, what changes is who's hearing the message.

What kind of ears do you have to hear the message of God? What kind of ears

do you have to receive the gospel, to receive Jesus' commandments?

Because he's gonna say the same thing to everyone and yet some people are going

to hear that and respond.

Some people are gonna hear that and be indifferent and some people like the

Pharisees are going to hear that and go, we need to murder this guy.

That hasn't changed. When we preach the gospel, when we're honest about the scriptures,

when we hold to the scriptures and what they say about sexuality and about marriage

and about relationships, all of those things, we will have some enemies, certainly.

But we will also have a lot of people that are going, I don't get it.

That doesn't make sense.

Why would he say that? Why would he do that? Why do I feel this way?

And I simply just wanted to put this note in there to say, let's be patient

and kind. Let's be gracious.

But let's never, let's take Jesus' example. Let's never change the message.

Let's be honest about what we have to say. Okay. That's my rant.

We're going to keep going. So we've got John's disciples. We've got the Pharisees.

Again, we have the crowd. The crowd's intermixed.

Some of them want to listen. Some of them want to learn. again,

I told you last week, some of them just want to watch a fight.

I'm convinced that there's people that are going to Jesus and being like, guess what they said?

And then there's people going to the Pharisees and like, guess what Jesus did?

They're like, he's going to be here on this day. And then they just get a lawn

chair out. And they're like, man, I can't wait to watch the showdown.

They ask him a question. They fast. Why don't you? Why don't you fast?

So there's only one time in the whole Old Testament that requires you to fast.

It requires you to do it. That's the day of atonement, right?

You're fasting, you're mourning over the sins that you've committed.

That's the requirement. The Pharisees actually whiten their faces.

They put ashes on their heads. They wear clothes that are shoddy and disarray.

They don't wash themselves. They look as forlorn as possible and they go about

announcing twice a week, we're fasting.

We're fasting. Why do you look like that? Because we're fasting.

We're so just in front of the Lord today and we're fasting.

Basically, look at me, right? Look at me. See how holy and pious I am.

Can't you see how much I love the Lord?

Can't you see how much we care about God and his law? He requires us to fast

once a year. We fast twice a week.

The Pharisees have an incredible way of turning God's blessings into burdens.

That's what Pharisees do. They turn blessings into burdens.

The day of atonement was called a fast for you to mourn over your sins,

but as a reminder that God has provided a way into forgiveness,

this sacrifice that you're about to have, this atoning for your sins. It's a blessing.

It's meant to be a blessing to God's people. And the Pharisees go,

you know how we can turn that into a curse for people?

Let's do it 104 times a year. Let's ask people to do that.

So as they go to work, they're trying to raise kids, they're trying to live

their lives and do the best that they can do with what God has given them.

You know what would really hurt people?

Make them fast twice a week.

Now, I think a lot of times we use this word legalism or a legalist.

Again, we use that as a negative term, but I don't know that that's necessarily true.

Right? We think of legalism rightly as doing what the Pharisees are doing.

But if we think of legalism in the sense of obeying the law,

well, then Jesus was the greatest legalist that ever lived.

He followed every single law to a T. He never had any problem telling people to obey the law.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes the law and he takes it to its logical conclusions.

He does things like, you have heard it said, right? Don't murder.

And I'm telling you that if you hate someone in your heart, that's the sin you've

committed. Jesus is not against the law.

What Jesus is against is using the law to gain God's favor, using the law to make God love you more.

Listen to how Paul talks about this in Galatians 3.

He says, for all who rely on works of the law, this is Galatians 3,

10 through 13, sorry. Sorry.

He says, for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse.

Now, again, very important you read this right.

He doesn't say, for all who look to the law and try to obey that moral code.

For all who look to the law and say, that's a good way to live,

there's a curse. That's not what he says.

He says, for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse.

For it is written, curse be everyone who does not abide by all things written

in the book of the law and do them.

Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law for the righteous

shall live by faith, but the law is not faith.

Rather, the one who does them shall live by them.

Verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. Now again,

what is the curse of the law?

It's not just obeying it.

It's relying on works of the law to save you.

It says, Christ redeemed us from that curse by becoming a curse for us,

for it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.

The curse of the law is not found in obeying it. It is found in trusting in

it for your salvation. And that's what the Pharisees did.

The Pharisees took the law and they said, okay, if it asks us to fast once a

year, we're gonna do it a hundred times a year.

If it asks us to tie this much, we're going to tie this much.

If it asks us to go this far, we're going to go this far.

Not only did they do it for themselves, they passed that burden on to God's

people and said, if you really want God to love you, if you really want God

to save you, if you really want to come into his kingdom one day,

if you really want Messiah to be pleased with you when he comes,

you have to do these things too. That's the problem with legalism.

I said this last week, we should never as Christians be ashamed to call other

Christians to obey Jesus' commands.

You should never feel bad about that. You should never feel bad about looking

at someone and say, hey, Jesus says this and we need to do that. That's not legalism.

Oftentimes the people that cry legalism, cry legalism because they're simply

being told to do something they don't want to do.

It's like when a parent tears a child to clean their room and the child looks

at them and goes, you're so mean. Why would you do that?

Well, it's not because the parents mean it's because the child doesn't want to do it.

And we need to differentiate between these things because you will run into

people constantly that tell you, when you say, listen, God calls us to live

this way. They're going to go, well, you're just a legalist.

You're just a legalist. Why would you say that? You don't get to tell me what to do. You're not God.

And to that, we say, amen, but God has said, this is how you live.

This is how the Pharisees thought. And lest you think that there's no more Pharisees,

lest you think that, man, I would never be a Pharisee.

Let me tell you, I worded this in such a way that I hope it makes sense.

This is what Pharisees essentially believed. And tell me if this doesn't sound familiar.

The Pharisees essentially believed that a good God will reward nice people for doing their best.

That a good God will reward nice people for doing their best.

Now, your best can change, right? We can define best in different ways.

But you don't think if we run around today and we ask people,

we said, how are you saved?

How do you know that you're saved? The first thing out of people's mouths wouldn't

generally be, well, I did blank.

I'm doing blank. I went here. I did this. I said that.

I was a part of these things. I went to this church. I sing this song.

I signed this certificate. I got baptized here.

What we're saying again is I'm saved because God is good and he's going to reward

me for doing these good things.

That's how the Pharisees thought.

That's exactly what the Pharisees thought. Now they took that to an extreme

level, of course, but that is what they thought,

that God is going to love me more because I fast more than you do,

because I pray more than you do,

because I give more than you do, because I read more than you do,

because I'm smarter than you are,

because I know all the theological words, because I can say all the theological

things, because I watch Christian YouTube videos and I listen to KV&E.

God loves me more. That's how Pharisees thought.

And again, I would challenge you if you want to ask people that question,

how do you think you know that you're saved? I think you would be shocked at

how many people, maybe even yourself in some ways, would start that sentence with, well, because I.

Because if you asked a Pharisee, how do you know that you're saved?

They would start that way. Well, because I fast twice a week.

We have this story, this parable that Jesus tells.

He says a tax collector and a Pharisee go up to the temple to pray.

And what does the Pharisee pray? God, I thank you that I'm not like these other

men, like these tax collectors.

I fast twice a week. I tithe on everything I own. I do all the right things.

And the tax collector prays to God, God, I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner. I know I'm a sinner.

I have nothing to bring to the table. I have nothing to give you.

I have no fasting. I have no praying. I have no giving.

In fact, all I have are sins. I just have a bunch of sin.

And God, I'm just asking, would you be merciful to me? And Jesus says,

the task collector walked away justified and the Pharisee walked away unjustified.

This is the issue between Jesus and the Pharisees.

And this is what Jesus is trying to get these disciples of John and this crowd to see.

Listen, you can't do anything to earn God's favor.

You can't do anything to earn God's favor.

You can't do anything. All you can do is beg God for mercy and grace and know

that he has promised you, if you will ask, if you will receive,

if you will come to me in faith, I will forgive you. That's what you have.

And when someone asks, I pray, when someone asks a member of Trinity Bible Church,

how do you know you're saved?

I pray the first thing out of our mouth is because Jesus saves sinners and I'm a sinner.

That's how I know I'm saved. Well, what did you do to get that?

Does it matter? Does it matter?

Because if you asked a Christian in the third century or the fifth century or

the eighth century, all those answers would look a little different.

Church would look different. Prayers would look different.

Pastors would look different. Everything would be different.

Every Christian in all of time for the last 2000 plus years,

answer to the question is, how do you know that you're saved is because Jesus

saves sinners and I'm a sinner.

That's how I know I'm saved.

And then when they go, well, what about church and praying and fasting and giving? You say, amen.

Amen. God has given us that law. He's given us those commands as a blessing

to his people to say, you know that I love you.

You know that I save sinners. And I'm also going to give you how to live your

life in right standing with God in name.

Jesus, again, he has no problem with obedience. That's not the issue.

We're going to study 1 John soon. I love how 1 John puts this.

He says, if you love his 1 John, or sorry, John 15, 10, Jesus says this to his disciples.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. The Pharisees would say,

if you keep Christ's commandments, it's he will love you.

Those are two categorically different ways of saying things.

In 1 John, he'll say, if you love the Father, you'll do what he commands.

No issue with commandments. No issue with obedience. I want to encourage you, be obedient.

If you're doing something you know is sinful, repent of that and believe in

the gospel. Turn to Christ.

Don't make excuses for it. Don't say, well, you know, Jesus loves me,

so it's going to be fine. That's an evil way of thinking. That's an evil way to think.

The issue is not obedience. But if you think, I'm sinning, if I stop sinning,

if I stop doing this on my own, and I go do this instead, then God will love me.

That's the most evil thing you can think. because what it does is it robs Christ

of his glory, right? That's what Pharisees are doing.

They're trying to rob Christ, rob God of his glory by saying,

I can save myself, thanks.

I don't need the Messiah. I don't need Christ.

God, I don't need you to do anything, right? If you could just help me along

a little bit here and there, I'm going to stumble.

But if you could just help me along, I'll take care of it, right?

That is looking at God and saying to him, I don't need you. I don't need you.

So how does Jesus bring this all together? Well, he gives them an illustration.

He says, can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?

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

So he gives them a wedding story.

Now, a wedding at this point in time would be anywhere from five days to a week

long. It was a celebration.

They would have the wedding and they would stay in town for a week and people

would just come to the house every day. And it was just a party.

It was recognized so much so that even rabbinical law allowed for you not to

fast on those weeks that you had a wedding, right?

Even the rabbis, even the Pharisees are like, oh, it's a wedding. Okay.

God will understand, right? It's a wedding, it's a party, right?

And is there anything worse than a sad wedding?

You've all probably been to a wedding where you're sitting there going,

this is bad. This is bad. This should not be happening.

But is there anything better than a great wedding where you've got two people

up there that you know, man, you know they love the Lord and they love each other.

And they're going to do great things for the Lord. And they're going to bring

kids into the world. They're going to raise them in the admonition of the Lord.

They're going to raise them to know that God is good and gracious and kind.

That's a beautiful thing to be a part of.

Now, personally, I don't want a week-long wedding. I'm just telling you that.

I wouldn't want one of those. I don't imagine many people would.

But that's what Jesus wants them to think is, hey, the bridegroom is here.

Why would they fast?

Why would they do that when the Messiah is with them? Again,

they don't understand this to its full extent.

But the picture that Jesus is painting is, I've come to rescue sinners.

Why would they fast? Why wouldn't they celebrate?

Why wouldn't the sinners celebrate that the Messiah has come?

Why wouldn't they do these things?

So the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away and then they will fast in that day.

Now, I don't think this is a New Testament necessarily a command to fast.

I think there's other places you could go to make a better case for that.

I think what Jesus is saying is for the first time in his gospel,

there's going to be a day soon where I'm going to be snatched away from these people.

I'm going to be taken and tried and beaten and murdered. I'm going to be snatched

away. And on that day, they will fast.

On that day, there will be a sadness that overcomes them that may cause them to fast.

But today, as it stands, I'm here and it's a party.

We're celebrating that God has in his kindness sent his one and only son to

be the propitiation for the sins of his people.

I wonder, do you think that way? Do you think about Jesus that way?

When you think about it, do you think, man, when I'm with him,

when he's with us, we have reason to celebrate no matter what's going on in

my life, no matter what's happening to me.

I have reason to be confident. I have reason to be clear.

I have reason to look at my life and go, things aren't the way that I wish they

were, but things are good enough that I can celebrate because Christ is with me. He is with me.

And the Pharisees, the lawmakers, and maybe some of John's disciples make this mistake.

They think that the Messiah that's coming is looking for a bride that's cleaned

herself up and that has everything going for her.

They think that Messiah is going to come and the Messiah is going to be looking for people like them,

that he's going to be looking for these people that are doing all the right

religious things and doing all the right religious practices,

when in actuality, the Messiah comes and he says out loud, I'm looking for sinners.

I'm looking for people who know that they're lost, who know that they're broken,

who know that they bring nothing to the table, but the sin that requires salvation.

Not only that, don't miss the fact that.

The groom, right? Christ, the head of the church has come to get his bride.

Jesus didn't come down from the heavens and plant himself in a synagogue somewhere

and go, if you want to come know about Christ, if you want to come be saved, you come to me.

Come to me. I'll be here. Make the trip, right? Like go to Mecca, go to Jerusalem.

You come to me and I'll see if you pass the test. That's not how Jesus comes

to get his bride. Jesus comes into the world.

He goes where his bride is into all these layers of sinners,

all these layers of different problems and issues and things that they bring

to the table, like John's disciples going, what are you doing?

Why are you acting this way? Again, like Nicodemus coming to Jesus and going, how am I born again?

What do you mean born again? it. I love Nicodemus' honesty there.

Am I supposed to go back into my mom? I'm not real sure. How does this work?

I don't think my mom's going to be cool with this.

He's got a lot of things going on in his head, but Jesus is working through

these things to say, listen, I'm a groom.

I'm like a groom that's come to get my bride and I know she's dirty.

I know. Listen, this is the message of Hosea. I'm going to try to say this as

delicate as I can with little ears.

I know she's found other people to love her, even though I love her better.

I know that my bride has cheated on me a lot.

That doesn't stop Jesus as the groom to come and to say, it's still my bride.

It's still mine. I don't care what she's done. I don't care where she's gone.

I don't care who she's given herself away to.

I don't care what she's gotten into. That's my bride.

And I've come to get her and I'll clean her up and I'll put her in robes of

white and I'll bring her into the house and I'll throw a party for her because she's mine.

She belongs to me and I don't care what she's done.

God has called these people to me and I will not cast them out.

And this is, again, the most controversial thing Jesus can say.

In a world caught up in religion and trying to relate to God by what they do

and not what God has done for them, for him to say, I'm the groom, come to get my bride.

They're going, well, who's your bride? It's got to be the Pharisees,

right? He goes, no, it's tax collectors and sinners and fishermen.

And people like Saul and Paul who persecute the church.

People like Peter who will deny me three times once to a slave girl on the night

of my crucifixion. man, that's my bride.

Why would you choose them? Because I love them. Why do you love them? Because I'm God.

Because I love who I love. I call who I call.

Who are you to look at God and say, I've deserved this? Or who do you look at

God and say, they don't deserve this?

Close here. He gives one final example of a cloth being sewn onto a new garment or some wineskins.

He says in verse 22, no one puts new wine into old wineskins.

The idea being when you put new wine into an old wineskin, an old wineskin can't

handle a new wine, right?

The wine is fermenting and the gases get created and there's no pliability. It can't stretch.

And so what ends up happening is you put new wine in an old wineskin and it

bursts, right? You lose the wineskin and the wine.

And what Jesus is simply trying to say is, you don't get to sew me on to anything that you know.

You don't get to put me in anything that you already have.

We began the gospel of Mark by saying the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This beginning word is trying to get our brains to think back to the way that he talked in Genesis.

This new thing, this new creation that God is doing, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And Jesus is clear. You can't put me into anything.

Any religion that you try and put Christianity into, what I mean by religion

is any work that you try and do to say, well, I'm going to do this over here and add Jesus to it.

He says, listen, you'll lose the wine and the wineskin. You'll lose it all.

Paul says of the people in Galatians that are trying to get the Galatian church to do that.

They're trying to get them to be kind of half Jews and half Christians.

They're doing what everyone does. They're bartering. Hey, we don't want to lose

you, right? We don't want to lose you as Jews, so how about we do this?

How about we're cool with Jesus?

I know we murdered him, but we're cool with Jesus now as long as you agree to

continue to be circumcised.

Have you ever been in churches like that where it's like, hey,

we don't want you to move?

We're cool with this if you'll just do this and you barter.

That's what the Jews were trying to do to the church in Galatia.

You know what Paul says to those men? I wish they would emasculate themselves.

Paul shoots wolves. And for Paul, a wolf is anyone who would try and take Jesus

and make it Jesus and anything.

Jesus doesn't negotiate with you. Jesus does not barter with you.

If you come to Jesus and you say, Jesus, I'll give you this.

Okay, I'll give you this, but I get to keep this.

You know what Jesus says? That's not how this works.

This sounds harsh. It's a weird way to end this, but I think it's a good illustration.

But kings don't negotiate with their servants.

Kings don't negotiate with their servants. Another way to think about this is

the creator doesn't negotiate with his creation.

He calls his creation to do what they're asked to do.

And the good news of Jesus Christ is that what he calls you to is just repent and believe.

He says, that law that I gave you, that's a good law. Those are good commands.

And you should follow those things, but I know you won't.

I know you can't. You can't do it. So I'm going to send my son,

the Messiah into the world. He will follow the law.

He will cross every I and dot, or sorry, he will dot every I and cross every

T. He will do everything the law requires.

You come to him for forgiveness and he will give you a righteousness that is

not yours. But do not barter with Jesus.

Do not play games with him because it will cost you both the wine and the wineskin.

The most miserable people I know in my life are not atheists.

They're not. They're Christians who are trying to barter with God.

No one is more miserable. An atheist can do whatever he wants.

He didn't care. He didn't believe in God. At least he's having fun.

Someone that tries to barter with God.

Not having any fun and not receiving any joy. It's the worst of both worlds.

And if you find that in your relationship with Christ, it's just a burden,

it's just every week feels like a weight, like, oh, I got to do this Jesus thing

again, or God's going to be mad at me, man. Let me tell you, you're bartering.

You're bartering. You're trying to negotiate with the God of the universe, and he will not have it.

Surrender. Submit yourself to the Lord. Submit yourself to his decrees.

Submit yourself to His command.

Come under the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

I'm not saying it won't hurt. I'm not saying it won't cost you something.

It certainly will. More than anything, it'll cost you the love of the world that you want so much.

What I am saying is, it will be far better for you if you will do that.

It will be far better for you if you will do that.

Whatever it costs you, whatever friendship it costs you, whatever relationship

it costs you, whatever family relationship it costs you, come to Jesus. Don't barter.

Don't trade. Don't be a Pharisee and think that God rewards nice people for

trying their best. He does not.

God rewards sinners for surrendering themselves to his son.

That's what God rewards on the basis of his son, not on the basis of anything

that those sinners do. Let's pray.

Father, again, thank you for this time. Thank you for Trinity Bible Church.

Thank you for the people in this room.

I pray that this morning that we don't leave here thinking that we're going

to barter our way into anything.

God, that we're in awe of and we celebrate like your disciples are able to celebrate

being with you, being joined with you.

God, I can imagine Matthew, the tax collector, standing next to Jesus as Jesus

stares down the Pharisees and says to them, no, no, this one's mine.

The man that everyone hated, the man that deservedly so was a social outcast.

Because of him making money off stealing from people he knew.

Jesus stands in front of Matthew and says to the religious elites of the day, this one belongs to me.

And when they say, how in the world, Jesus, can you say that tax collector belongs

to you? How in the world can you say he's righteous?

Jesus can look them right in the eye and say, because I'm the king and I make

the rules, then this one's mine.

God, will we celebrate that way? Will we celebrate this morning like we're forgiven sinners?

That know that we didn't bring anything to the table. We were called and we

were justified because of your goodness and grace in our lives.

And as we go throughout the world, as we leave here,

would our evangelism be such, not only that when people ask us how we're saved,

that we answer with because Jesus saved sinners, but that when people ask us

about how they can be saved, we can give them the same message,

man, Jesus saved sinners.

Will we be kind and gracious to them as they ask questions. We'll be patient

with them as they work through the religious baggage that they carry living in East Texas.

God, when so-called, will we shoot the wolf to protect the flock? Amen.