Fasting and Feasting

Mark chapter 2, we're going to pick up exactly where we left off last week.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

Mark chapter 2, oh that's not true because we did Easter last week.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

So we're picking up where we left off two weeks ago.

Mark chapter 2, start in verse 18.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

Now John's disciples, this would be John the Baptist, now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.

And people came and said to him, Jesus, why did 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, and 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 the skins, and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins.

But new wine is for fresh wineskins.

One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain, and the Pharisees were saying to him, Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?

And he said to them, Have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him?

How he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priest to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him.

And he said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.

Now, John the Baptist had disciples, followers, just like Jesus did.

Some of them had stuck with John the Baptist, even though Jesus was now on the scene.

The Pharisees had people that listened to them, that followed their teachings, and they agreed on at least one thing.

You're supposed to fast.

Now here's the very interesting thing.

You study the Old Testament, and it really only prescribed one fast on the Day of Atonement.

Devout Jews would typically fast.

What does it mean to fast?

Essentially, you go without food, maybe for that day, so that you can devote the time that you would have spent going to get food, preparing food, eating the food, devoted more to prayer.

In a sense, I'm going to have more spiritual food today, less physical food.

Now, why would people fast?

Devout Jews, Old Testament times, up until the time of Jesus.

Two main reasons.

One, there could be a sense of humility, a sense of mourning over a loss, something you were sad about, grieving over your sin.

Okay, that could be one reason that you fast.

Another reason might be you feel distant from God.

You want to be closer to God.

You want more of God's presence.

Maybe you feel like you need wisdom from God.

You're fasting to emphasize the prayer.

John Piper, if you really want to study fasting, there's a great book called The Hunger, A Hunger for God.

It's actually pretty short.

It's by John Piper on fasting.

But here's the summary.

Okay, if you're like 185 pages too much, here you go.

John Piper says, this is what fasting means.

It's a way to say to God in your prayer, This much I want you.

I want you so much, God, I'm willing to forego certain good things, not bad things, for a season to seek you more intensely, more focusedly.

Now, Jesus says, you know, basically, they can't fast because I'm here.

It would be like going to a party, going to a bachelor weekend, a bachelorette weekend, or actually going to the wedding and the reception and say, I'm not eating.

No cake for me, no wine for me, whatever, because I'm fasting.

I'm serious.

I'm somber.

It's like, whoa, you you shouldn't be serious and somber and grieving in a time of celebration.

So you don't fast now.

And then he gives these two little explanations that might seem strange to us unless you're really into sewing and patching and washing, okay?

But I think we all understand them.

If you have an old garment that's been washed several times and it's already shrunk a little bit, and then it's so old it gets a tear in it, and you try to put a brand new patch in it that has never been shrunk, and you wash it at some point, it may tear away, and actually it doesn't help, it makes the thing worse.

And my guess is most of us are probably not fermenting our own wine.

Okay, and we but back then they had leather wineskins, and after much use, the old leather wineskin will become kind of brittle, and if you put new wine in it that was still fermenting a little bit, it could actually burst and not only destroy the wineskin, but you lose all the wine itself.

What's Jesus really saying?

He's saying this listen, there are some Old Testament practices that were good for a time and a place and a season, and if you just try to take those Old Testament practices and put them into the New Testament now that I'm here, it's not gonna work.

The principle may carry over, the application has got to be different, or it'll burst, it won't work.

Okay?

That's what he's saying.

And then you have this situation soon after.

Jesus and his disciples are on the Sabbath and they're walking.

Now, this is important.

For the Pharisees, and probably for a lot of Jews, but especially for the Pharisees, there were two things that outwardly, in a sense, made them distinct from every other person on planet earth.

It was the Sabbath and how strictly they practiced the Sabbath, and it was circumcision.

Now, Sabbath obviously was very outward.

Sabbath.

Ten commandments.

And one of them is rest one day in seven.

Observe Sabbath.

Worship me.

Set aside this day.

The Jews took it very seriously.

But here's part of the problem.

Then and now.

Okay, there's a principle, one day in seven we're supposed to rest, we're not supposed to work.

What all does that mean?

What exactly does it mean to rest from all your labors, not work, to rest and worship?

I mean, have you ever wrestled with that personally, what that means for you in the 21st century?

I have.

Lots of people do.

I know people today that will say, well, you know what, if my kids want to play soccer in the backyard on the Sabbath, the day of rest, that's fine.

But if they want to play organized sports, I won't let them, because that's like my kids' job.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong.

I'm just saying you don't, I can introduce you to somebody in Birmingham that thinks that way.

I know people that have said, hey, you know, you don't go out to eat on the Sabbath because then you're making other people work.

It's a problem.

So, and it was a bigger problem for them back then.

So here's what the Pharisees did: they developed 39 different laws to explain that commandment.

39 different types of work that you weren't supposed to do.

And one of them was reaping.

So, in their mind, when they didn't see the disciples walking on the Sabbath, going through a grain field, they're hungry, they want a snack, and they're just taking some of the grain, rubbing it between their fingers, having a little snack.

The Pharisees are like, they're breaking Sabbath.

They're breaking the law.

I mean, these guys now, you know, they're getting bolder.

I mean, they're following Jesus around, they're watching him, they're observing him, they're critiquing him, and now they're like, they're ready to finally ask him a question and attack him.

Okay.

Hendrickson says this Christ's enemies were bearing the real law of God, which did not in any sense forbid what the disciples were doing.

So what the disciples were doing wasn't wrong, but they're bearing the real law of God under the mountain of their man-made foolish traditions.

And we can do that today as well.

So, look in verse 25, look at how Jesus is going to respond.

He says, Now listen, the Pharisees prided themselves on being experts on the Old Testament.

There are probably some of them that had massive portions of the Old Testament memorized.

So for Jesus has said, Have you never read?

would have been a little bit of a jab.

A little bit of, you guys think you're experts on the law, you act like you've never read it.

He said, Don't you remember the story of King David?

When he's on the run from Saul, and he and his companions are hungry, they're famished, and they're in need, and people are trying to kill him.

So he goes to the tabernacle and he talks to the high priest and he says, Have you got any food here?

And he says, I've only got the bread of presence, which to us means probably nothing.

Okay, so here's here's a little bit of Old Testament Mosaic law for us.

Part of what they used to do in the tabernacle is every Sabbath they would put out twelve fresh loaves of bread before the Holy of Holies, outside of the Holy of Holies, where God's presence was supposed to dwell.

And it was a sense of these 12 loaves represent the 12 tribes of Israel.

God is with his people and his people are with them.

But then at some point the bread gets old.

What do you do?

You bring in new bread.

What do you do with the old bread?

The priests were supposed to eat it.

It was one way the priests got fed.

And the Mosaic law did say that bread is just for the priest.

Jesus even says it right here.

But what happened in the story is the high priest was like, you know what?

Preserving David's life, physical life, physical health is more important than just checking some ceremonial ritualistic box.

And so the high priest decided, I can give you this bread if you really need it.

And David decided, I can eat it.

And they were not ever judged for that.

And Jesus is saying they did the right thing.

Again, we may say, man, that is way out there, that is abstract.

What in the world does it have to do with me?

Here's where Jesus brings it home for us.

He says, guys, God didn't make the Sabbath up as this big important thing.

And then make people secondarily to serve the Sabbath.

God doesn't like rules and ritual, rituals, and things like that just so you can have boxes to check.

God made people.

And God likes people.

And so God made the Sabbath to be a blessing to people.

The Sabbath is supposed to serve people, not people serve the Sabbath.

Does that make sense?

That's what he's saying.

Now Christianity is a vital relationship.

And yet there are rules.

You can't get totally away from that.

So how do we discern when it's right to have rules in our life spiritually?

All right?

I'm gonna try to give us a couple points that I'll help us.

All right, I'm trying to make this as memorable as I can.

So, right religious rules.

Okay, they're reasonable, they're relational, and they're restful.

And I'll explain what I mean by that, okay?

But but what type of rules should Christians have in their lives?

The first is they should be reasonable.

It's here's what I mean.

It's not bad to take biblical principles and then try to figure out personal and practical ways to apply them in your life.

In fact, I'd go much further.

It's not just that's not bad, that's a good thing, that's a great thing.

In fact, I don't really think you can grow very much as a Christian if you're not doing that.

And guys, most of us understand this intuitively.

And I'll just give you an example.

1 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 19 and 20 says, your body's a temple of the Holy Spirit, bought with the blood of Jesus.

1 Corinthians 6:19

Therefore, honor God with your body.

I think most of us know that.

It's a biblical principle.

God owns your body, God cares about our bodies, so we need to be a good steward of our body.

Therefore, my guess is most of us, if you're over the age 16, I bet at some point in your life you've made some kind of New Year's resolution that goes something like this.

I gotta take better care of my body, I gotta sleep more, I gotta exercise more, I gotta eat less sugar.

Right?

And we listen, when you hear somebody say, Yeah, you know, I'm kind of swearing off sugar this year, you don't say, you legalist.

You say, Yeah, it makes sense.

You look like you need to swear off some sugar.

You know?

There's a right, reasonable, practical way to take biblical principles and then try to personally apply them and download in your life, right?

How much time are you gonna spend reading your Bible in the morning?

How often are you gonna make sure you're in town so you can actually come to church?

These are good things.

We ought to be doing them.

They're reasonable rules that you put on yourself.

Now, let me give you an example of how it can go wrong.

Talk about fasting.

Let's just say, as your pastor, I decide, you know what, once a month I need to fast for the day so I can spend extra time in prayer, trying to draw close to God, trying to pray about wisdom, get decisions.

I'd say that's a good thing.

And then what if even talking to some of y'all and some of you say, I feel distant from God?

And I say, Well, let me give you a suggested application.

Suggested.

Maybe you should try fasting one day a month and see if that doesn't help your personal time along the line.

It's been good for me.

You should try.

I think that's I think that'd be good leadership.

If I show up next Sunday and I stand in this pulpit and I say, Thus saith the Lord, thou shalt fast one day a month.

Listen, y'all need to fire me.

Because the Bible doesn't say that.

Make sense?

Okay.

You take the principles, you reasonably apply them in your life.

Part of the reason, not the only reason, part of the reason the Pharisees got into such trouble is not that they were trying to apply the Bible, that was a good thing.

It's when they became legalistic and tyrannical about it and tried to make their personal application the 11th commandment for every other living person.

Does that make sense?

That's where we get into trouble.

Now, second thing, rules must be set in the context of a relationship.

Biblical rules, spiritual rules, rules for the Christian life, they're supposed to be set in the context of a relationship.

Think about this.

Again, you may not all be a parent, but we all had a parent.

And good parents tend to make rules for their kids, right?

When we were first married, we lived in Florence, Alabama, and we lived on a very busy street close to the campus.

And when our oldest son was born, uh, he got into this thing, I'm not making it up, where he would like to.

We'd walk out, had a little side door that went to the driveway, and the busy street was about from me to the lobby there.

And he figured out it was pretty funny if when we were walking to the car, he just started sprinting towards the road.

And here's the reason it was funny, because his mom and I freaked out, you know?

No, and then we'd chase him and we'd yell and we'd scream, and we'd made a rule.

You're not allowed to sprint to the road.

You're not allowed to play in the road.

And here's my guess.

I don't know all of you, but I I bet there's not one of you right now saying, What a terrible man.

What a legalist.

How dare he put such a rule on his kid?

It's reasonable.

And why did I put that rule on my kid?

Because I was trying to ruin his life?

No, because I loved him.

Because I was trying to protect him.

Right, religious, spiritual rules, they're always setting a relationship.

Now don't forget that.

Okay?

Because listen, sometimes in the moment the rules don't feel fun, they don't feel relational.

You think my two-year-old son always appreciated the rules that I put in his life?

I promise you that he didn't.

And we don't always appreciate the rules that God puts in our life.

But listen, if when God restricted fish to stay in water, was God trying to ruin them?

No, He's not.

I mean, if the fish flops out of the water onto the beach and it's free from the water, it dies.

And to the degree that we try to get our lives out from under God's biblical moral law, we're not blessing ourselves.

Just like John read in Genesis 3, we're cursing ourselves.

We're promoting death in our own life when we intentionally break God's good relational rules for us.

So listen, rules rooted in relationships are right.

Law that flows from love is good.

Okay?

Now, and here'll be the third thing.

The right kind of rules, they lead to rest.

They lead to rest.

Listen, God's rules for his people, the moral law, think Ten Commandments, things like that.

God never intends them to hurt us or to harm us, but to help us.

He's never just trying to burden us, he's trying to bless us.

Now listen, does it always feel that way in the moment?

No.

And I'll give you another practical example.

When I played high school football, our coach had a thing that seemed sadistic in the moment.

During the season, Monday through Wednesday, you'd practice about two and a half hours after school, and then the last thing you would do at the end of practice is you would have to run 10 100-yard win sprints with all your pads on.

And it was terrible.

And people were throwing up, and you know, it would nobody was like, thanks, coach, this is awesome.

We hated it.

But my coach wasn't sadistic.

What was he trying to do?

He wanted us to practice in such a way that when we got to Friday night, Friday night almost felt like rest.

Make sense?

That we could run and run and run and not grow weary.

And there will be rules that God brings in our life that in the moment can feel restrictive and burdensome.

But guys, short-term pain, long-term gain, that's all God always has the wisdom to see.

Trust me in this, obey me in this, and it's gonna bless your socks off in the long run.

It's actually gonna bring more spiritual vitality and rest into your life.

We may not always like it, but it's always good.

Okay.

Guys, just meditate on this with me for just one second.

Israel had been a slave nation for 400 years.

How do those gigantic sphinxes and pyramids and all those other things get built in Egypt?

They had lots of cheap slave labor.

You think the pharaohs were nice about making sure the Israelites got eight hours of sleep a night and had holidays and stuff?

I mean, they were cruel taskmasters that said, more bricks and less straw.

They were evil.

And when God saved the Israelites, one of the first things he did is he said, Hey, I got ten house rules.

I've already adopted you and my family, but now that you live with me, we got ten house rules.

And one of them is you gotta rest one day in seven.

Have you ever thought about what a great God we have?

That one of his rules for us is take a break, take a holiday, take a siesta, take a whole day off to rest.

He's so merciful, he's so kind.

R.

T.

France says this when the negative element overwhelms the positive, as it has done repeatedly in the observance of the Christian Sunday as well as that of the Jewish Sabbath, and I would say in a lot of other areas, something important has been lost.

There's a place in 1 John where 1 John says, his commands are not burdensome.

To the degree that we feel his commands are burdensome, there's nothing wrong with God.

There's nothing wrong with a command.

There's something wrong with me in my heart.

I need to get more aligned with who he is.

Now look at verse 28 again.

Last verse we looked at.

So the Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath.

I tried to think of a great illustration to kind of uh explain this one, but it's just really hard to come up with.

Because essentially Jesus is saying, listen, guys, the Sabbath is made to rest.

You guys don't understand it.

And if you still want to kind of have this debate, let me just tell you something.

God invented the Sabbath to bless man, not vice versa.

And oh, by the way, I am God.

I'm the one who made it.

Don't argue with me.

I'm telling you, this is why I made it.

I invented it.

It was my idea.

I came up with a concept to bless you.

Don't turn it into some kind of legalistic work.

And another commentator said, Jesus' authoritative pronouncement ends all discussion.

Now, two more illustrations, we're gonna be done.

I want you to imagine that uh, and this may not be too hard for some of you, but I want you to imagine there was a kid that was fascinated with dinosaurs and wants to spend all their free time studying paleontology and fossils.

And they got a rich daddy.

And so daddy's like, you know what, I'm gonna send you to school to study fossils.

And they're like traveling around the world going on digs, digging up bones, fascinated with dinosaurs.

And that maybe the T-Rex is their favorite, mainly because that's the only one that I can remember the name of, okay?

And uh then at some point, go to college.

I mean, they're they are an expert in fossils, digging and figuring it out.

And then, because his dad is well connected, he figures out hey, Jurassic Park is real.

It is not just a Michael Crichton novel or movie like there are some wax scientists in another country.

They've actually done it.

There is an island you can travel to and you can see actual living created dinosaurs.

So he takes his kid to this island and they get off the plane, and there's the T-Rex in its cage.

And the kid starts digging in the dirt looking for fossils.

How do you think this dad might respond?

What's wrong with you?

Who cares about a bone?

A bone's not exciting.

The only thing that was ever exciting about a bone was it pointed to the real thing.

Here's the real thing right in front of you.

There's T-Rex.

I hope I haven't lost any of you with this illustration, okay?

Because the point is, in some sense, that's what Jesus was saying is listen, I'm not against fasting.

I'm saying my people will fast one day.

But the whole point of fasting was to be closer to God.

And here I am.

I'm right in front of you.

It's time to celebrate, it's time to worship, not mourn, not grieve.

The whole point of the rules of Christianity, guys, is to get you closer to experiencing God.

And if that's not happening, something's off.

I do a good bit of marriage counseling, premarriage counseling, and oftentimes the engaged couples, they tend to put rules on themselves, which I think is a good rule.

My wife and I did something like this: like, hey, you know, we don't need to be alone after 8 p.m.

in her apartment during an engagement.

Now just imagine you had a couple like that.

They're being serious about holiness, trying to walk with the Lord, physical purity, all that.

And then they get married, they have the great wedding celebration, they're driving to the hotel for the honeymoon, and they get there, and the wife says, Well, we need two different rooms, you know, because we're not allowed to be together after 8 p.m.

The husband might say, No, no, no, that was before the wedding.

That's the whole point after the wedding.

Guys, are there places in our life where God's rules can feel restrictive?

Yes.

It's not arbitrary, it's not random.

He's not just trying to punish us.

What he is doing is he's saying this, guys.

He's saying, it's for intimacy with me.

It's for oneness with me.

Is there a waiting?

Is there a longing?

Is there something?

Yes, but it's all about getting to experience more of me and worship.

A last thought.

Because, guys, I realize that if you're if you're tracking with me, you're walking out of here and you're like, yeah, there's still a hundred practical implications that I still don't get about how to live in this loving relationship with God, but there's these laws and rules, and sometimes.

Did you notice that Jesus said, When I am taken away, my disciples will fast?

Now, when's the last time you've been at a wedding reception, and in the middle of the reception, somebody just snatches the groom away?

I guess maybe that might happen of bad prank from some of the groomsmen.

That's not the way it typically works.

Why does Jesus use this language that almost has the idea of like a violent takeaway?

He's talking about the cross.

He's saying, I'm here for now.

You should be celebrating.

This is a time of joy and rejoicing, feasting, not fasting, but it's going to be short-lived.

I am going to be taken away.

Violently so.

When you read the Bible and you feel the tension between God is a holy God, God is a just God, God is a righteous God who hates sin.

He doesn't wink at it.

It says in Habakkuk, he is of purer eyes than even look on evil.

Yeah, he has rules, and he's serious about us obeying those rules.

But we all fail in myriad of ways.

And the Bible's also, just as much as the Bible emphasizes the holiness, the justice, the righteousness, the wrath of God, it emphasizes his love, his mercy, his kindness, his compassion, his bleeding heart willingness to forgive at a moment's notice.

It seems contradictory at times, does it not?

How do we balance the tension?

We don't.

But he did at the cross.

In some sense, that is the whole point of the cross.

The Lord Jesus, the only perfect human being to ever live, the only one to ever perfectly, sinlessly keep all the rules, keep all the law, got to the end of his life.

He ought to have been acclaimed, he ought to have been proclaimed, commended, celebrated, and yet he was condemned.

He was crucified.

He was tortured, dead, and buried under the wrath of God for my sin.

For all the sins of all the people that have ever trusted in him.

God's love and mercy, God's justice and wrath, they met on the cross in Christ.

So that I can experience that grace.

And then not sit back and celebrate his grace in a way that leads me to be a grace abuser and say, forget it.

Who cares about rules and laws?

But no, to say, because he has loved me so much, now I want to love him.

I want to fumble forward, however imperfectly, and trying to obey in such a way to please him.

Not because I have to.

Because he's worthy.

1 John chapter 5, verse 3 says this.

1 John 5:3

And his commandments are not burdensome.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus.

Thank you that you were willing to do the work that we are unable to do.

The law of the Lord is good, it's it's worthy, it's supposed to be obeyed.

And yet we fail so often.

Thank you for mercy.

Thank you for grace.

Thank you for the covering.

Thank you for your righteousness credited to our account.

Thank you for adoption into the family of God.

God, most of us have grown up hearing these truths our whole life.

And it is easy, it is a temptation, certainly, to become bored with the gospel.

And I pray for myself, I pray for all of us who are listening, even as we celebrate communion this morning, that we will not, there will not be a stale taste in our soul of what you have done for us.

But there would be a fresh, living, and active, wonderful experience of who you are, of your love, of your righteousness, of your kindness, of your mercy.

We pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen.