Mark's Gospel Part 4 - Mercy and Joy with Jesus

Gospel, chapter 2.

In a minute, I will read from verse 18.

But before then, it is uh God's words, and we need his help, so I'm gonna pray for us.

Our Father God, uh, as we uh run into Jesus again uh in your word, I ask that you would help us to see him clearly, to know him, to love him, to trust him.

Please help me speak rightly of your word and give us your spirit's help as we listen.

Amen.

We're going to read from verse 18.

This is all coming out of the context of uh the Pharisees being crossed that Jesus is at a party with Levi, who has just started following him.

Now, John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.

And people came and said to him, to Jesus, Why do John's disciples and the Pharisees of 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 sows a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.

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

At one Sabbath he was going through the cornfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to clu uh pluck ears of corn.

And the Pharisees were saying to him, Look, what are they doing?

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 is which is not lawful for any but the priests 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.

Again, he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand.

And they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.

And he said to the man with a withered hand, Come here.

And he said to them, Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?

But they were silent.

And he looked round at them with anger, grieved at the hardness of heart, and said to the man, Stretched out stretch out your hand.

He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

We thank God for his good words to us this morning.

Why are you acting differently to everyone else?

When a small group of people is acting in a way that goes against the crowd, why are they doing that?

What do they know that you don't?

It's like the few folks who gave up the chance to see the Foo Fighters on the main stage at Glastonbury because they heard that Bob Dylan was going to be playing a secret set on the tiny acoustic stage.

Or the small group of investors in 1980 who went against the crowd and bought shares in Apple.

What did they know that we don't know?

Well, they knew that something others didn't know, they knew better.

In today's passage, why are you acting differently?

It is because Jesus and the disciples know something better.

And the Pharisees just don't get it.

There's lots of stuff that this passage brings up about fasting and the Sabbath that we can talk about.

We'll talk about some of it.

But we mustn't let those details drown out the main thing that we're supposed to be seeing here, the thing that we're supposed to be getting, the thing the Pharisees missed, which is the Lord Jesus, the King of God's kingdom.

And Jesus, we're going to see brings blessing.

Jesus brings joy.

Jesus brings rest.

And if you miss that, then you miss out on all of the goodness of the kingdom of God.

We're going to look through those three episodes, but in two big points.

I'm really sorry, the points are not behind me.

If you listen very carefully, you may hear them.

Here's the first.

When Jesus is with you, it is time to feast.

When Jesus is with you, it is time to feast.

So if you've got your Bibles open and you look down at verse 18, you'll see that the topic of fasting is brought up.

John the Baptist's disciples are doing it, the Pharisees and their disciples are doing it, and Jesus and his friends are not doing it.

And the folks looking on want to know why.

Why are they doing something different?

And it's not because fasting is bad.

Okay, you want to be really clear about that.

In fact, the Bible would say that fasting is good.

Jesus fasted for 40 days.

Matthew chapter 6, just as Jesus expects his followers to pray, there's a sort of expectation that his followers will fast, and that includes us.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

The early church in Acts it always fasts, always with prayer, fasting and prayer.

Fasting was required in the Bible in the Old Testament, at least on one day of the year, on the Day of Atonement.

It was fasting, and it was fasting that expressed deep sorrow.

It expressed mourning and sorrow and regret over sin.

And it happened too lots of fasting when God's people were in exile and they longed to be back in the lands.

They longed to be able to worship as they ought.

You know, fasting, certainly up until this point, certainly isn't a happy thing.

It is linked with lament and sorrow over sin.

It's linked with restoration, the longing for restoration amidst suffering.

It's linked with a desire for fulfillment when in need.

And the Pharisees, as they so often did, they took this principle and they added some extra rules to it.

And at this point in history, if you were really serious about knowing God, you would be fasting twice a week.

And when they fasted, they whitened their faces and they left their hair disheveled and their clothes untidy.

They made their lives as uncomfortable as possible because the message was that the mark of real godliness was severity.

It was sad faces and heaviness and a solemn, somber spirit.

That's how God's people, longing for the Messiah, so looking for comfort, so wishing for freedom from oppression, ought to feel, folks were told.

That is what it really looks like to be godly.

But where is Jesus to be found in all of this?

Well, he is where we left him last week, with Levi and his friends in the middle of a party.

It doesn't seem right at all.

Sort of get where the Pharisees are coming from.

What is going on?

You claim to take God seriously, but you're not doing it right.

And Jesus uses uh three small pictures in this first bit to explain what is going on.

And the main one, I think, is verse 19 and 20, and it's this picture of a wedding reception, this wedding party.

Now, uh many of us, if you've been at Emmanuel, will remember the Wade family who were with us uh for a few years before they moved back to America.

Well, uh, we have the real privilege tomorrow morning of flying out to America in order that we can be at Clayton's wedding next Saturday.

He's that old.

And we're really looking forward to it.

After the service, there's going to be a party.

It's going to be in the Henry Ford Museum.

Food and drink and music and games and old friends and joy.

Now, if Clayton decided not to turn up next Saturday, or if there was an accident and he couldn't make it, it would be a whole lot less fun, uh, particularly for Honoria, his bride to be.

There would, I imagine, be tears and sorrow.

Food would go uneaten and drinks left undrunk.

There would be a right sadness.

But if he comes for his bride, you expect to celebrate.

You expect dancing and feasting.

Who fasts at a wedding?

No one.

It would be ridiculous.

Which is exactly Jesus' point in answer to the question why don't you and your disciples fast?

Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?

Verse 19.

Of course not.

And this is the point, isn't it?

The bridegroom is with them.

Jesus is saying he is the bridegroom, and that is a striking thing to imply, especially given who is there listening.

In the Old Testament, God is described as the bridegroom, and Israel as his wayward, unfaithful, and yet deeply loved bride.

In the New Testament, the church continues to be described as the bride.

And beginning here, Jesus makes this extraordinary claim that he is the bridegroom.

He is the Lord God, the bride of Israel.

And if you have ears to hear, then you'll understand then that this is no time for mourning.

You don't need to fast, it is a time for feasting.

Now Jesus does say in verse 20 that shortly this will change for a season for those who follow him.

The days will come when the bridegroom is, notice the language, taken away from them.

And then they will fast in that day.

So the prospect of Jesus' betrayal and his arrest and torture and death is in the background throughout the wedding celebration.

Something terrible is going to interrupt the party.

Jesus knows that he is on a collision course with the religious powers that will end at Calvary.

There will be a time for fasting again, but not now.

Because Jesus is with them.

They are blessed with the presence of God.

And it is a time for right joy.

And we get in this another glimpse of the kingdom of God, don't we, that we've been talking about so far in Mark's Gospel.

It is a kingdom of joy.

And when we as God's people look forward to the eternal kingdom of God, forward to our eternal home, we look forward to feasting in the presence of God, it is described.

But that's in the future.

What are those of us in the kingdom of God now?

And we live in this sort of strange time, don't we?

A now and not yet time.

It is true in some ways, actually, that we have even more reason for joy and celebration than those disciples with Jesus.

We know sins forgiven at the cross and victory over death in the resurrection.

We know that he rules in glory right now.

And we have the Spirit of Christ in us until he takes us home.

But it is also true that we will, as Peter puts it in 1 Peter chapter 1, that we will be grieved by various kinds of trials.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

We still sin, we still suffer, we still long to go home and be with him finally and forever.

In light of those things, it is right that a Christian today would fast.

But even so, Peter goes on to say that we rejoice because even though we do not see Jesus, we love him.

Though we do not see him, we believe in him and rejoice with a joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls.

The bridegroom, friends, has come.

He will never leave us or forsake us, and he will return that we might fully and finally feast with him.

To know Jesus, the King of the kingdom, is to know a joy that sorrow can't eclipse, that tears cannot erase.

To know Jesus is to have endless reasons for gladness, perhaps even in sadness.

Because to know Jesus is to have a new heart.

It is to have sins forgiven.

It is to have God for a Father.

It is to have the Spirit help you in your weakness.

It is to have all things work together for your good and a thousand more promises.

To have access with boldness to the throne of glory, to have the ear of the Father, the intercession of Christ, the riches of God's inheritance among the saints, the hope of glory, to be called sons and daughters of God.

Sin cannot condemn you.

Satan cannot destroy you.

Death has been defeated for you, and glory waits.

It is understating it to say that we have reasons for joy if we trust in Christ this morning.

The bridegroom has come.

The Pharisees, they don't get it.

That's actually what Jesus is describing in verses 21 and 22.

We're not going to go deep into these pictures, the unshrunken patch on the old clothes, the new wine into old wineskins.

But I think actually the big principle of what Jesus is saying is very clear there.

It is not that Jesus has brought something new and the old ways aren't good enough.

It's not that the Old Testament is bad and Jesus is good, Jesus is better.

It is that, Pharisees, your ideas about the kingdom of God are incompatible with Jesus.

You can't fit him into your mould.

You can't bend him to your will.

And these guys, your mournful, self-righteous religiosity isn't compatible with the joy that Jesus brings.

These guys impose a burden of fasting when he brings feasting.

These guys mourn when he brings joy.

These guys added rules on top of the law that made life harder and sadder when Jesus came to bless and to give us rest.

Which is what we're going to see illustrated in the second half of today's passage.

Here's our second and final big point.

When Jesus is with you, it is time to be blessed.

When Jesus is with you, it is time to be blessed.

Fast forward 1,400 years or so, there are 600 years, 1,600 years.

There are records of the session, that's like a fancy name for an elders' meeting, of the pres of a Presbyterian church of a little Scottish town in the Kingdom of Fife in 1660.

I couldn't pronounce it, so I'm not going to tell you what the name of the town was.

But if you lived in this little town, you wouldn't dare bunk church on Sundays or even arrive half an hour late because they appointed two elders, it's minuted, to prowl the streets of the town on a Sunday morning in order to catch anyone who failed to attend.

And in those days, actually, the elders were given some civil power to enforce local law.

And so if you were found breaking the Sabbath, Mark Smithers could sentence you to be fined.

Will Trump could even inflict corporal punishment on you.

He'd put you in the stocks in the town square.

Those were the days.

It is funny, but it's also not funny.

Two elders are authorized to skip church in order to catch people skipping church.

It is ridiculous.

And it's obviously hypocritical.

It is Pharisaic in the sort of Mark II and III sense of the words.

It helps us see that the spirit of the Pharisees isn't just something that happened in 30 AD.

Verses 23 and 24, what happens?

It's like the Pharisees are stalking Jesus and his disciples.

Look at those verses.

As they made their way through the cornfields, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain, ears of corn.

And the Pharisees were saying to him, Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?

So they're there, sort of following Jesus and his disciples.

And they're not there because they genuinely want to learn more about Jesus or his message.

They are there like the elders of that little Scottish town, prowling, watching, looking for an opportunity to accuse him, to catch him out.

They do the same thing in chapter 3 as well.

The Pharisees are prowling.

They're looking to see if he will do something out of line so that they can pounce.

And so we get this collision, don't we, between Jesus and the Pharisees.

It's not an issue of stealing, by the way, the law of Moses allows you to go into your neighbor's field if you were hungry, as long as you didn't bring a combine harvester with you.

The issue is that the Pharisees thought that plucking ears of grain was too much like work.

And work wasn't allowed on the Sabbath.

Aha! You see, it's a sort of gotcha moment.

You see what kind of man this is.

He's a Sabbath breaker.

We've got him.

Now, if you want to be generous with the Pharisees, if you really think that you can be right with God by perfect keeping of the law, then it makes sense that you would do absolutely anything to stay within its bounds, right?

Even if it is going way overboard.

They don't want to get anywhere near breaking any of God's commandments, hence all the extra rules.

But the problem with this sort of spirit of legal obedience was that keeping the rules had become more important than the state of your heart before God.

And it isn't only something that happened then, it happened in 1660 in Scotland, and it is just as likely to surface now.

Maybe worth thinking about your own heart.

If you find yourself offended, scandalized by everyone else's apparent behaviour, misbehaviour, it is probably worth searching your own heart for the Pharisee spirit.

It may be like this group, you've actually begun to trust in your own goodness, your own religious doings more than you have anything else.

Be careful, friends, that keeping the rules doesn't take over from a concern for your heart.

Well, going back to the Pharisees, Jesus answers them by taking them to Scripture.

He actually says to them, doesn't he, have you never read, in other words, you've seen the Bible before, right?

You want to pick it up?

See what's going on?

Jesus is going to let the scriptures dictate their attitude to the Sabbath, which counters, by the way, the thought that Jesus was saying, forget the old rules, I've got something new and better.

No, Jesus is saying, this has always been the case.

But you misunderstand.

Let me interpret God's word for you.

Jesus isn't rejecting the Sabbath, he actually helps us understand how we can keep it well, how we can keep it holy.

And in verse 25, he points us to David in 1 Samuel chapter 21.

1 Samuel 21 · chapter mention

Now, you may or may not know that story.

David was on the run from King Saul, and he and his men entered the tabernacle, and they ate this thing called the bread of the presence.

It's the bread that the priests would deposit on the altar every Sabbath as a sort of symbol and reminder to the worshippers of the covenant promise of God and the faithful provision for his people, for the needs of his people.

And only the priests then were allowed to eat that bread.

But on this day, David and his men were starving.

They're on the run, and so they go in and they take the bread and they eat and they are satisfied.

And in that instance, the ceremonial law that prohibited David from eating, it sort of gives way to necessity.

That's something we talked about before when we looked at the Sabbath and the Ten Commandments.

Actually, it would have been weird, right?

If David in deep need was stopped from taking the bread that is the picture of God's provision for people's deep needs.

So what is it there for?

And the Sabbath isn't about being miserable, it is about blessing.

So verse 27, we read, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is for us, it is a gift of God's grace for our restoration, for our care.

Is it really God's plan that his people should remain hungry on a day that speaks about his provision, his grace?

And so there is a principle of necessity of our needs that is key to the Sabbath.

And there is also a principle of mercy.

In chapter 3, verse 1, another Sabbath day, and Jesus actually goes on the offensive on this occasion.

He has this man with a withered hand stand up in the middle of the congregation.

The Pharisees waiting again, verse 2, to accuse him, to get him.

At verse 4, Jesus actually sort of goes on the offensive and he asks them the question Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm?

To save life or to kill?

No one would answer him, and we know why.

They hate him.

They sort of want it to be true that it is lawful to kill on the Sabbath, because verse 6, that's precisely what they're making plans to do.

But they know the real answer ought to be to save life, to do good, to heal.

So no one says anything.

And Jesus is grieved and angry at their hearts, which he can see, which he knows.

But he continues to do what is good, to heal the man.

Stretch out your hand, he said.

And the man stretched out his hand and was restored.

It is clear what Jesus is saying.

The Sabbath is a time for mercy.

Of course, it is a time to save life, to do good.

Friends, Sabbath is a big deal for us, I think.

Sundays are a big deal.

The worship of God as we gather is a big deal.

And Jesus isn't really saying, ah, the Sabbath doesn't really matter.

You can do what you want.

Rather, he is helping us keep it well.

And part of what it means to keep the Sabbath well means it is a day to show mercy and to receive mercy.

These principles of necessity and mercy actually help us fulfill the heart and the meaning and the purpose for which the Sabbath was given to us.

It is for our good, for our blessing.

Just as we finish, I want to go back to what Jesus called himself in verse 28.

He says that he is the Lord of the Sabbath.

Now he's not beating around the bush.

To anyone listening, to Jewish ears, he could only be saying, I am Yahweh, the Lord God who instituted the Sabbath at the end of that creation week.

It is my day, and I will dictate the terms by which you should observe it.

I will tell you how it works.

But I think there's another layer to it.

Jesus isn't just Lord of the Sabbath in that he made the day.

He is Lord of the Sabbath in that he is the one who makes true rest, true Sabbath rest possible.

He is the Lord of the Sabbath, and he has come, and he has brought joy and blessing and peace.

And we see it breaking through right here in the middle of this broken world.

We're told in verse 5 that the man's hand was restored.

That word restored, it is used three times in Mark's gospel, two healings, and then in chapter 9, when he talks about the restoration of all things at the end of the age.

And when Jesus heals this man on the Sabbath, he is giving us another window into the kingdom of God, into the real meaning of the Sabbath, where Sabbath rest can be found, of Sabbath wholeness, of renewal, of new creation.

Where does it come from?

Where can you taste it and see it and know it from yourself?

It comes from the Lord of the Sabbath.

It comes from Jesus.

Jesus has come and he has triumphed over sin and death and hell, and he's gathering a people for himself from every tribe and tongue and nation, as we just sang.

He is building his kingdom in the midst of this dark world, and his kingdom, in his kingdom, there is even today hope and rest and peace.

Not perfect rest, not the full realization of our hope, not final peace as we live in this now, but not yet.

But still real rest in the Lord Jesus, real hope and real peace.

And we know that the Lord of the Sabbath will return.

And what we taste and know truly and deeply, although incompletely and imperfectly, that will one day dawn in all of its fullness.

The Sabbath preaches good news to us.

It says, as Jesus said, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

There is rest for you in the Lord of the Sabbath.

There is restoration for you in the Lord of the Sabbath.

In a minute we're going to come to the Lord's table.

And as we do so, friends, find in the bread and the wine, the body and the blood of the Lord Jesus, satisfaction for your deepest need.

Find rest for your weary hearts.

Find joy, the joy of the blessing of Jesus, who gives grace to the undeserving.

As we eat and as we drink, give thanks for the bridegroom who came for his people.

Give thanks for the Lord of the Sabbath, who through his death made true rest possible for us.

It is a blessing to be in his kingdom.

I pray that we would know that this morning.

Father, thank you that he is gathering his people to himself, that he is uh gathering his kingdom together.

I thank you that you invite every person who trusts in the Lord Jesus to be in that kingdom, that we can know the joy and the rest and the blessing and the hope that is in Christ.

I ask that you would help us to know that this morning and to know it more deeply.

Help us to know and to trust the Lord of the Sabbath.

Amen.