"The Gospel Makes You New" Matthew 9:14-17 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Well good morning.

I invite you to open your Bibles to the Book of Matthew, chapter nine.

Book of Matthew, chapter nine, is where we'll be this morning.

As you're making your way there, uh quick word about tonight.

Uh tonight we'll be back in Psalm 137, which is a psalm that I will almost guarantee none of you have ever heard preached before.

Uh it is I because I looked the last few weeks I've been looking for sermons on it to hear how other people have handled it and have basically come up empty-handed.

Uh it is a psalm that has fast become one of my uh one of my favorites, though, just for the raw emotion that's in it.

It's a psalm that ends with the blessed are those who bash your babies under ro into rocks.

That that psalm.

Uh so you can tell why people don't often preach it.

In fact, my wife asked me this morning, why again?

Um but it captures a truth about the Christian life and uh the nature of exile that I think is just very critical for us to understand.

And so I want to look at that tonight, and it'll prepare us for when we start Ezra in the next few weeks on Sunday evening.

Um I'm excited for this morning's passage, though, uh, Matthew 9.

Let me read it for us.

Um, Matthew 9, verses 14 through 17.

Matthew 9:14–17

Then the disciples of John came to Jesus, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast, 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, then they will fast.

No one piece 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, the wine is spilled, the skins are destroyed, but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, so that both are preserved.

There is a long-running debate about whether or not Jesus was ever sarcastic.

And if Jesus was sarcastic, is it okay for us to then also be sarcastic?

And this is one of the passages that people turn to as evidence of the sarcasm of Jesus.

And I think those that point to this as evidence of the sarcasm of Jesus have the truth on their side.

Because what you see Jesus saying here is borrowing illustrations that were common in the lives of the Jews and twisting them in a kind of an absurd way to make the point that nobody would ever do what you're saying would happen.

The context here is Jesus inside of a room at a feast with sinners and tax collectors who have recently come to faith in Christ.

And outside of the room are fastidious Jews.

When you take all three gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke together, you get the picture of a full crowd of people outside of the room.

Those that are out there are clamoring for an explanation from Jesus about what exactly he's doing in the room.

What exactly would he, as a religious teacher, what would he be doing inside of a room with sinners and tax collectors at a feast and at a party?

Now we have seen this conflict coming ever since the beginning of chapter 9.

At the beginning of chapter 9, Jesus shows up and heals the paralytic who's lowered through the roof.

And he, in so doing, claims that he has the ability to forgive sins.

And this sets people on fire, really.

They accuse him of blasphemy, they say only God can forgive sins, and then they storm out of the room.

Well, now Jesus goes from there to the point where he does indeed heal.

Inside, heals the sins of Levi, one of the worst of the worst, a deplorable sinner, a tax collector.

This kind of authority, this kind of leverage that Jesus says that he is the authority to forgive sins, is bound to stumble, even the most religious Jew, even the most godly Jew, would be bothered by Jesus' declaration that he can forgive sins.

And here, in this passage this morning, we find the picture of the most charitable Jew, the picture of the most religious Jew, the picture of really the best Jew you can find who's not yet a Christian.

Here we have the disciples of John the Baptist.

These people are not hypocrites like the Pharisees.

They're not worldly like the zealots.

They are what we would refer to, they would be our friends in the faith, so to speak.

They have actual faith in Yahweh.

They're waiting for the Savior.

They have responded to John the Baptist who made straight paths for the Savior.

John the Baptist prepared people's hearts to receive Jesus Christ, and these people believed John the Baptist.

They were baptized for the repentance of their sins, and they were eagerly waiting for the Savior.

So this is your best case scenario.

It is the opposite of Levi.

Levi was worldly.

Matthew, the author of this gospel, was worldly.

He was a sinner.

He was a tax collector.

He did love money and hate people.

Not this crowd, the John the Baptist disciples, they loved God and were waiting for the Savior.

And now, ostensibly, they have found the Savior inside of this room with people like Levi.

This was not what the Savior Search Committee was expecting to find.

Inside at a at a party, you look through the window, it's not even a Bible study going on in there.

I mean, let's be honest.

It's a party, it's a feast.

There's celebration.

And this is a problem for them.

It's a problem for them.

And you can imagine them outside the house looking through the window, wondering what's going on.

What's going on?

The three main pillars of Judaism, by the way, at the life of Christ, were prayer, fasting, and giving.

To be a religious Jew, you would pray regularly, you would fast two days a week, and you would give alms to the poor.

And they loved pronouncing how they would do this.

Remember the Pharisees, who were the most religious, they would stand on the corner, they would pray in loud voices, long prayers so that everybody would know how godly they were.

Or when they gave their money, they would sound trumpets.

Look how godly that guy must be.

And when they fasted twice a week, they're fasting for a day.

Okay?

So let's not go overboard.

From sundown, what we would call sundown Monday night, all the way through.

I mean sorry, sundown Sunday night, all the way through sundown Monday night.

So basically they'd have dinner on Sunday night before the sunset.

They would skip breakfast, skip lunch, and have a late dinner on Monday.

So let's not exaggerate their suffering.

But by Monday afternoon, oh, they figured out a way to look horrible.

So pale, oh, so hungry, so thirsty.

That's their Mondays.

That's their Thursdays.

And then on this Monday, or this Thursday, while they're moping about, the disciples of John the Baptist don't know what to make of this.

The Pharisees are moping and pouting and blowing trumpets.

The disciples of John the Baptist are looking for the Savior.

And you see the Pharisees praying, fasting, and giving alms, and then you see Jesus inside with tax collectors at a party.

Do you feel the tension in these disciples' hearts?

Which crowd is their crowd?

Who are their people?

Where do they fit in?

And they're confused.

The confusion spreads.

Matthew says in verse 14, the disciples of John the Baptist ask the question.

Luke says the Pharisees asked the question.

Mark says the crowd asked the question.

So taken together, everybody is asking what's going on in there.

Don't see that as a contradiction.

It's not one person that was wrongly identified by two of the gospel writers.

Everybody is saying, What in the world is happening?

Now, Jesus, this gets his attention.

And he comes and answers.

Fasting was associated with the expectancy of the Savior.

That's why the disciples of John the Baptist did it.

That's why the Pharisees ostensibly did it.

And they want answers about why Jesus isn't doing it.

Now, it's interesting to me to think about how I would answer this question were I asked, why didn't Jesus and the disciples of John, Jesus and his own disciples fast like the disciples of John the Baptist did?

Why didn't they fast?

And I know how I would answer the question.

I would say that the Old Testament does not mandate fasting.

There is one fast described in the Old Testament that is one day a year in preparation for the Day of Atonement.

That is the only fast described in the Old Testament.

By the end of the Old Testament, the Pharisees, or the Jews, like they had done with many restrictions, missed the point of the fast and substituted an external conformity to the law.

And by the time of Christ, that had morphed its way into this totally arbitrary fast on Mondays and Thursdays thing.

That's how I would answer the question, that what you're doing is not mandated by the Old Testament.

I would have answered with a Bible study from the Torah.

But that's because I'm a pastor and like the Bible.

I am confronted by the fact that Jesus doesn't answer the way I would have answered.

He goes down a different road.

He's going to give three illustrations.

I'm going to take these three illustrations and make them into one sentence.

So let me give you your sentence one phrase at a time.

The first phrase in your sentence here is that Jesus brings new joy.

And then we're going to build this out to a whole sentence.

But it starts with Jesus brings new joy.

This is a fascinating word picture for Jesus to paint here.

He begins his answer to the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist and the crowd at large, he's speaking to all three, with this question.

Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?

That's the question.

Can the wedding guests mourn?

Different translations render wedding guests differently.

The word is actually the word for the attendance.

It's the word that we would use in English for the groomsman.

Can the groomsmen mourn when the groom is with them?

And to even make it more commonplace for us, because this is really where the analogy goes, in American weddings, the analogy is almost a better fit with bridesmaids.

Can the bridesmaids mourn when the bride is with them?

And of course there's little tears of joy and happiness, right?

But you've been at a wedding, you've seen how the bridesmaids are around the bride.

I mean, she is in charge.

It is her day.

If she were to say something like, Oh, I'm feeling a little faint, I'm feeling a little hungry.

Does anybody have a little snack?

Bridesmaids scatter.

They return with a cornucopia of food.

I mean, she could ask for anything and it would appear in manifold fashions.

That's the normal way a wedding happens in our culture.

At the wedding party after the wedding, I guess it becomes more of a groomsman thing, you know, the the best man makes the speech.

How absurd would it be if you ask the best man, it's time for your speech, your turn for the speech, your turn for the toast, or whatever.

And he says, No, I can't give a toast.

Because I am I'm fasting for this wedding.

Like, this is a big deal.

I I'm I'm kind of nervous about this.

So I'm fasting, this wedding is gonna work out okay.

Well, at the wedding reception is not the time for the fast, okay?

Maybe leading up to the wedding, that could be appropriate.

Maybe when they're having problems in their marriage, that could be appropriate.

But at the specific toast time at the wedding party is not the time for you to say, oh no, thanks.

I don't give speeches.

You should have thought of that earlier.

What if the bride's father shows up at the wedding party?

Just saying, angry at the groom.

I don't trust you, I don't like you.

I'm gonna pray that you get saved, man.

Well, maybe that should have happened, I don't know, yesterday.

But not at the wedding.

This is the analogy Jesus is using here.

What should an attitude be at a wedding?

What should the emotion be at the wedding?

Happy, joyful, right?

You should be happy.

If you're not happy, don't go.

That's Jesus' illustration here.

If you want to go to the wedding, you should be stoked about this.

You should be happy.

It is a time of celebration.

Don't go there and say, I'm I don't approve of this.

That's me holding my breath.

Jesus says, that's what fasting when he is inside the door is like.

What I love about this answer is do you see how Jesus recalibrates the whole question from a he changes it from a question about fasting to a question about how glorious Jesus Christ is.

They thought they were asking about fasting why Jesus could be eating and drinking with sinners and tax collectors.

That's what they meant to be asking.

What Jesus heard and answered is exactly how great is the Son of God?

What should your attitude be when Jesus is in the room?

How dare you fast for the Savior to come, and then the Savior is there with people who are celebrating how forgiving he is, and you say, I can't go in there because I need to be outside fasting.

I can't go to the feast because I would be tempted to eat.

I can't go to the feast because I'd be tempted to drink.

I better stay outside and fast for the Savior to come.

That's it's absurd.

So why would you want people to fast when Jesus is in the room next to you?

Jesus takes that analogy, applies it to himself, and makes the moral.

You better be happy that Jesus is here.

The disciples of John the Baptist, their non-attendance at the party shows their non-acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah so far.

Now they will, of course, be won over.

They will become his followers in different stages.

You see, some of them in the book of Acts haven't even heard that Jesus has come.

John the Baptist was very successful in sending his disciples everywhere announcing the Savior, and it takes a while for the news of the Savior to catch up to them.

But this is the first crew that it catches up with.

And Jesus says to them, Come inside and join the party.

And this has got to rock their world because John the Baptist did not drink wine.

John the Baptist did not eat the kind of food they're eating inside.

John the Baptist ate locusts and wouldn't drink wine and wore camel hair and hung out in a river.

And that's remember why the Pharisees said they wouldn't follow him.

That guy's nuts.

And they look at Jesus and say, but we can't follow him because he's eating and drinking with sinners and tax collectors.

And they're stuck in the middle as John the Baptist's disciples, and Jesus just says, Listen, John was right to call everybody to repent.

I'm right to have a party with those that have repented.

Join the party.

In the analogy, John the Baptist is the best man, Jesus says that.

John the Baptist is the best man.

John the Baptist has given the speech.

Jesus is the groom, and he's giving an invitation for you to join the party.

Jesus doesn't rebuke fasting here.

He doesn't rebuke the existence of fasting.

Rather, he recalibrates it to himself.

When he's here, don't fast.

Instead, have joy.

Be excited that you're with Jesus Christ.

Jesus is not inside the party in sackcloth moping about.

Rather, he's inside, having fun, forgiving sin, and enjoying the forgiven life with these converts.

You should ask yourself, before we go to the rest of the sentence, just pause for a second, ask yourself, which of those dispositions are you?

In your Christian life right now?

Do you have a joy in your Christian life?

Which group of this would you be more at home with?

Are you more at home with those outside?

Are you more at home with those who are wondering why people aren't more religious like yourself?

Are you at home with those that mope about and show want to advertise how hard, how hard the God-fearing life is?

Oh, it's so hard, and I want people to know how hard it is and how much I strive to do it.

Are you inside with the forgiven sinners?

Having fun and joyful?

Or do you feel torn and in the middle?

Looking both ways.

Oh.

It is hard to follow God and it's supposed to be fun.

I don't know which group.

And be honest about where you are in your own life.

And see in this passage, Jesus is saying, come inside and enjoy the Christian life.

It is fun to be forgiven of sins.

It's fun to know Christ.

It's fun to sing happy songs.

Not that everything in the Christian life is fun.

He's talking about a joyful attitude.

He's comparing the Christian life to a wedding feast.

He's not saying there's no trials in life.

He's not saying cancer doesn't exist or difficult marriages don't exist or suffering doesn't exist.

He's not saying any of those things.

He's just saying that when you're around Jesus, you should have joy.

Have fellowship with the Savior.

That's his first illustration.

The second goes further in our sentence: Jesus brings new joy through a new covenant.

Through a new covenant.

Verse 16.

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

Because the patch will tear away from the garment and a worse tear is made.

This analogy might seem in a different world than you because you might not be in the business of patching clothes.

But maybe you are.

Maybe your wife might be.

You know, many clothes, like I think this jacket probably, comes with extra fabric on the inside of the jacket.

So if I get a tear in this jacket, I can take the fabric that it's in the jacket and I can sew it up, and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

For all I know, it's already happened on this jacket.

You wouldn't be able to tell the difference because, and this is the ingenuity of you know fabric these days, every time I get this jacket dry cleansed, the fabric that's inside of it also is cleaned.

So whatever distortion happens, this fabric, the fabric on the inside also happens to it.

In theory, it would fade the same way, in theory, it would stretch the same way, shrink the same way.

Whatever happens to it would be happy in that fabric too.

It's a perfect match.

This is why I learned when I bought my first suit in college.

I got my very first suit.

And I thought, why I wear the jacket way more than the pants?

Why wouldn't I just dry clean the jacket?

Because I was just dry cleaning the jacket, and the person at the dry cleaner store said, No, you need to do in both.

And I thought, are you suckering me?

You want six extra dollars?

And they said, No, they have to be washed the same amount of times, otherwise they'll fade differently and they won't match.

Is that true or is I being suckered?

No, it is true, okay.

Albuquerque, who knows this den of thieves in the dry cleaning industry there?

So you understand that principle.

In Luke, Jesus makes the story even funnier in Luke's version, and you can flip to it and read it yourself sometime in Luke 5 at the very end of it there.

Jesus there says, if you get a hole in your suit, do you, and he uses the word for suit there, a robe.

It's the formal word for like a fancy robe.

You would call the suit in English.

If you get a hole in your suit, do you go to the store and buy a new suit?

And so far in the story, many of you are like, yeah, that's exactly what I would do.

Get a hole in my suit.

I'd go buy a new one.

Isn't that what you're supposed to do?

Jesus says, no, no.

Do you go buy a new suit, bring your new suit home, and cut off a piece of fabric from the new suit and sew it onto the old one?

Of course not.

Because now you have ruined not one but two suits, because when you wash the old suit with the new patch, the new fabric shrinks.

The old fabric has already done that.

And now you have one new suit with a big squash missing from it, and an old suit that is now a bigger hole in it.

You've made both worse somehow.

That's the story he gives.

That's the picture he gives.

It's meant to be funny.

Don't do that.

Don't quote Luke 5 when you go buy a new suit and cut a piece of fabric out of it and sew it to the old suit and say, hey, Jesus said this.

No, he said nobody does that.

That is the illustration, if you're following it, that's the connection to somebody saying that a new covenant person, somebody who's forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ and has their sins taken away, should then conduct themselves through the old covenant, should then strive to keep the law of Moses, should then act in the Christian life as if they're under the law of Moses.

It would be like buying a new suit and cutting a piece of fabric out of it and sewing it onto the old suit.

And so it's worth asking why.

Why this illustration?

And first of all, there is obviously a party going on aside.

People are wearing nice clothes to it.

They dressed up for this party.

So it's an illustration that is at hand, so to speak.

Meanwhile, the Pharisees in the outside, who have their ornate religious garbs, are looking, you know, down because of their fasts.

So it's just a remarkable contrast that Jesus has right in front of him that he uses.

But there's a spiritual truth behind it.

The new covenant really is new.

The new covenant that Jesus brings is the new suit in the illustration.

Are you following?

What Jesus offers through forgiveness of Christ is a brand new suit.

Don't cut a piece of it off and try to sew it onto the old covenant.

The old covenant could not give you forgiveness of sins.

Nobody was forgiven in the Old Testament from their sins through keeping the old covenant.

Forgiveness has always come through faith in Jesus Christ.

That's the way forgiveness has always been received by repentance of sins and faith in God, faith in the future Savior.

Ever since the fall in the garden, Adam and Eve had their sins forgiven, not through obeying God's commands, but rather through believing by faith that one of their descendants would be the Savior who would come to the world.

Abraham had his sins forgiven, not through being obedient to God and praise God for that in Abraham's life because he hardly ever was.

But Abraham had his sins forgiven by believing in the future Savior that would come through him.

This is the message of the old covenant.

The old covenant was a guardian, it was a tutor who looked over the children until the children came of age.

In other words, watched over the Jewish people until they got old enough to meet Jesus Christ.

That's the point of the old covenant, to convict you of your sins, to show you that you need a savior, and to point you to the Savior.

So it would be silly, really, for you to then meet the Savior and then try to keep the old covenant.

What are you doing?

It doesn't make sense.

The point of the covenant was to point you to Jesus.

Why were the disciples of John the Baptist fasting?

Because they're waiting for Jesus.

Jesus is saying, Here I am.

So get a new robe and come on inside.

But don't say, I believe in Jesus, and I'm going to try to live through the old covenant.

You're going to end up breaking both.

You will tear the new covenant to try to fit it into the old, and you will tear the old covenant because it can't hold the new.

Jesus doesn't offer a new patch for your broken life.

He offers you a brand new suit.

He says, Come to faith in him.

He's not going to fix what's wrong in your life.

He's not going to put your life back together again.

He's going to discard the old you and make you a new creation.

That's what he's saying here.

It's really so much is packed in that little humorous illustration.

But Jesus keeps going.

Jesus brings new joy through a new covenant to new people.

New joy through a new covenant to new people.

And here's this third illustration.

Neither is new wine put into old wineskins.

If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed.

This again is a funny illustration.

He's not saying here, like you probably tried three or four times in your life to do this and you realize it didn't work.

You know, back when you first started making wine, you learned this lesson.

No, the analogy is so absurd.

His point is that nobody would ever think of doing this.

Now we don't live in a world, you're not making your own wine in your house.

And if you are, you're definitely not using animal skins.

So you probably need a little help on this.

They would make if you this is expensive wine, not the normal wine that they would often drink, which would be pressed usually twice, uh, and the then the grape juice soup could be put into barrels, very similar to how we make it today.

And the fermenting process would uh make it alcoholic, distill it, make it safer to drink, and taste good, and that was the normal wine that people would often have.

But there's a different category of wine that was made in animal skins.

And the animal skins had advantages to them, they were portable, it was hard to carry a barrel of wine around, but you could carry an animal skin of wine around.

So if you went on a journey, you would get the animal skin version of wine.

Even some wedding feasts would have this kind of wine at it.

It's more expensive, it takes longer to make.

First of all, you gotta get your animal.

What you do is you don't skin the whole animal like you might imagine, because this this only works if the animal skin is contiguous here.

So you would cut off the head, usually, not the neck, but the head.

You could do this with a goat or a sheep or something, and you would then gut the animal from that entrance.

So you would hollow out the animal.

You would remove the bones, you'd remove the guts, you'd hollow it out, and there's your animal skin.

You want as little animal in there as possible, just the skin.

That's what you're going for.

Then you take that pressed juice from the grapes and you put it in the animal skin.

You guys are thinking, that's not no.

Sorry, I'm out.

I'm a teetotaler at this point.

Then you tie it up, you can even stitch it up if you want, and this is why the neck is critical because it's you know longer and narrower for you to tie up, and then you hang it and you want it heated.

Sometimes you would even heat it, you could even heat it with fire.

You don't want it to cook, of course, but you'd you'd want it heated, you could put it in the sun, and over time, what's happening to the grape juice on the inside is that it is oxygen, oxygenating, however, you say that word, and it's bubbling and it's fermenting, and it is, of course, releasing gas from this process, and that is stretching out the animal skin, which is fine because the brilliance of using animal skin is that it can stretch.

And over time, the wine has matured and it is now fit for drinking.

You can tie the legs of the animal together, and that makes like a shoulder strap from this thing, and then you can open up the neck and pour the wine, and it's like an old school camelback.

You know, like you can drink out of it and seal it back up again.

It's pretty remarkable.

That's how even in Genesis, when you see them going on journeys, they say they're bringing skins of wine.

That's what that means, a skin of wine.

It's from this concept.

Now, the hard part of this is the time it takes to make the wine.

That's the hard part.

The hard part of this is not the animal skin.

So I know for the American, you're like, the animal skin is the hard part.

No, the animal skin is not the hard part.

The time it takes to make it is the hard part.

So imagine doing all that.

You have your wine, you drink your wine, and now you want to do it again.

Can you reuse that animal skin?

You cannot.

Because now the animal skin is dried, it's brittle, it's shrunk, it's dried on the outside.

I mean, it would not work.

It would be comical.

So I'm trying to think of an American analogy.

And in the winemaking world, you nobody would buy a bottle of wine and drink it and then try to make their own wine again and reuse the old cork.

That would be the point.

You don't reuse the old cork.

The cork cost, I looked on Amazon 25 cents, free shipping, too.

If you have Amazon Prime, you get a wine cork.

The wine cork is not the hard part of winemaking.

You wouldn't try to reuse a wine cork, right?

But we don't even make wine, so it doesn't work.

But I thought of this.

You're on a flight and you ask for Coke Zero, because that's what I drink on airplanes, is cook and at all times, Coke Zero.

And the flight attendant, you know, pours the Coke Zero in your cup.

But sometimes, if you like win the lottery and you were nice to her, she then gives you the whole can.

Right?

Incredible.

Incredible.

I have the can and the cup.

It makes flying fun.

And then she comes by and she might even top off your Coke Zero.

Thank you.

But when she tops off the Coke Zero, does she pour your new Coke Zero into the old can?

Of course not.

I mean, it is a silly illustration.

You wouldn't put new Coke Zero in an old Coke Zero can as if finding the can was the hard part.

Finding the can is not the hard part.

Getting it in that little tiny hole would be the hard part.

This is the illustration that Jesus uses, again, for why his disciples are inside at a party, and John the Baptist's disciples are outside looking in, and the Pharisees are outside looking in, complaining.

Is the absurdity of putting new Coke Zero in an old Coke Zero can.

In fact, in Luke, again, the Luke's version of this is even funnier than Matthew's.

In Luke, Jesus ends it by saying, Some people are so happy with the old wine that they wouldn't even try the new wine.

And that gets confusing again because in our world, the older wine is the better wine, but not necessarily.

In their world, Jesus is saying, you know, some people wouldn't even, they're so happy with the wine they got out of the wineskin, they would say, I don't need to ever drink any more wine ever again because that one wine I had from the one wineskin.

It's a very silly illustration.

And it's saying, I'm so happy with the old covenant, why would I ever look for the savior?

That's what they're saying.

I'm so happy with the law of Moses, I'm so happy with fasting on Mondays and Thursdays, and wearing these robes, and giving to the poor, and the Day of Atonement, and all of the Levitical instructions, I'm so happy with them, why would I ever even look for the Savior?

And the answer is because they're pointing to the Savior.

That's what they're doing there, is they're saying, look for Jesus.

Now, with the wineskin analogy, before you get to the way the Luke version ends, with the nobody would say, I had that one glass of wine, so I don't need to ever have another one.

Back in Matthew, Jesus just ends it with this.

If you tried to put new wine in new wineskins, you keep both of them.

But if you put new wine in old wineskins, you lose both of them.

Do you follow the example?

What would happen if new wine went into old wineskins?

You would lose the new wine because it would spill on the floor, and you'd lose the old wineskins because they would be broken.

You have ruined everything, like the suit illustration.

You managed to break both.

That's what would happen if you expected new converts to Christ to act as if they were under the old covenant.

With the clothes illustration, he's talking about the absurdity of trying to use the old covenant for that purpose.

But now he's talking about what's going on inside of the person's heart.

If the old covenant is the suit you're wearing, Jesus is saying that in Christ, he fills it up differently.

If the old covenant is the wineskin, Jesus is saying, I have new wine.

The new wine is better than the old wine.

It's better.

It goes into a new wineskin.

The purpose of this illustration is to express to you how new you are in Christ.

That when you come to Christ, you are a new creation through a new covenant with a new Savior.

Think of a person who says, having a hard time in my life.

I have a drinking problem, I have a problem in my marriage, I have a problem at work, my life is falling apart.

And you tell that person, let me give you some advice.

Go to church, give to church, stop drinking, set an alarm in your morning, get up on time, go to the gym, work out, be honest at work, go on a short-term mission trip with church.

Come on, let's go.

Mission trip to Cuba, let's roll.

And you do all of those things.

Join a small group.

7 a.m., 6 a.m.

core strength.

Go to the men's retreat advance.

And you do all of those things.

What is the worst case scenario in that person?

And I'll tell you what the worst case scenario is, because I don't want you guessing wrong in your mind.

The worst case scenario is that those things all work and clean up the person's life.

That he becomes an honest person, he becomes a hardworking person, his problems in his marriage go away, and he starts enjoying life again.

That's the worst case scenario.

The reason I call it the worst case scenario is because his problems are fixed, but there is no Christ.

The more likely way that that scenario will play out is the person will do all those things for a few weeks and then give up because it's not, quote, working.

Of course it's not working.

You cannot put new wine into old wineskins.

It's not going to work.

What that person needs is a new heart.

They need to be born again.

They need to come to faith in Christ.

They need Jesus.

That's what they need.

And when Jesus comes into your life, he doesn't just patch the holes in your life and try to make things better.

Rather, he gives you a new heart.

Legalism is the act of putting new wine into old wineskins.

Moralism is putting old skins around new wine.

Neither are effective.

God doesn't just mend our heart, he gives us a new one.

He gives new skins to new people.

And he shows you what kind of change forgiveness brings the person who gives their life to Jesus Christ.

This is his invitation to the Pharisees.

This is his invitation to the John the Baptist disciples.

This is his invitation to the people outside.

The old record of your sins can be wiped away.

You will be declared by God to be a new creation.

He will take the new person and fill him with his Holy Spirit.

He will take the old person and nail him to the cross.

He doesn't just leave you to fend for yourself.

He doesn't just admonish you to do better.

He changes your behavior by changing your heart.

The two are not disconnected, but the order is important.

New heart equals new behavior, not the other way around.

Levi became Matthew because Levi was converted to Christ.

He stopped collecting taxes and he started following Jesus.

He went from his tax booth to the party inside with Jesus because, not because he decided to give up fasting, but because he decided to follow Jesus Christ.

There's a folly of pursuing a changed life apart from Christ.

So the challenge is for the reader of this to want to love Christ, to be sold out to Christ because he is the groom.

To be filled with joy because the groom is here.

The new covenant is better than the old.

And to be conformed to godliness because our heart is conformed to Christ.

Now we skipped a little part of verse 15, the end of verse 15, which is really a horrible twist in the story because I think it works better as the conclusion of a sermon.

Jesus says, the time is coming when the groom will be taken away.

And the way it's recorded in Matthew makes it sound that it is a neural part of the wedding.

The groom is going to leave at the end of the wedding.

He doesn't stay at the wedding party all day long.

But Mark and Luke make it, well, use the word that could even be translated rapture.

Snatched away.

The groom is going to be kidnapped.

And that's when you can start fasting.

It's really a shocking twist to the wedding story, isn't it?

You don't go to the wedding and fast.

Rather, when people break into the wedding and kidnap the groom, then you can start fasting.

This is the first hint about the horrible end of Jesus' life that's dropped here.

He's had this roller coaster, this increasing snowballing effect of the crowds joining him ever since the Sermon on the Mount.

His popularity has been growing, his miracles have been growing, his statements have been growing in their boldness.

He's claiming the authority to forgive sins, and he's using it on the worst sinners you can find.

And here he lets you know it's not going to end well.

If he is the groom, the best man at this point is already in jail.

John the Baptist at this point has already been arrested, not beheaded yet, but he's in jail.

His beheading is coming in a few months.

And the groom himself will be kidnapped.

And he will be killed as well.

And this is the nature of the gospel message.

That we have joy in Christ because he brings new hope through a new covenant to new people.

But we recognize that that hope and that joy and that new life comes through the death of the one who brings it.

This is the first hint of the brutality of his death.

I don't think anybody understood what he was saying at this point.

I think he just rolled right into the wedding suit illustration.

So you just tracking with him.

But it's fascinating to look back and wonder what's going through Jesus' mind when he drops that hint.

The groom will be stolen.

He will be put to death for our sins.

Lord, we're thankful that you die to death for our sins.

This is how you can justify putting new wine in new skins.

This is how you can justify taking the sin away from us.

Because you bore it yourself on the cross.

You died so that we might live.

Lord, we're thankful that you've given us eternal life.

We know, of course, that you resurrected from the dead.

We began our service this morning by singing of it.

We close our service today by remembering it.

Though the groom was kidnapped, though the groom was murdered, he was not defeated.

He returns to earth.

He rises from the grave to build his bride.

We are his bride.

We are the bride at the wedding.

We are the church.

We belong to Jesus Christ.

He leads us.

He nourishes us.

He forgives us.

He does it all through the washing of the water of his word.

It's our desire to be a spotless bride.

It's our desire to be obedient to Christ, to be submissive to Christ, to be in love with Christ, to be joyful in Christ.

We're thankful for these promises in his name.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuel Bible.church.

If you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.