A Question About Fasting

Introduction: The Relevance of Strange Customs

0:02 This sermon was preached on Sunday morning, June 3rd, 1984, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now let us turn again to the Gospel of Mark, this time to the second chapter, as we continue our consecutive expositions through this Gospel record, Mark's Gospel, Chapter 2. And I would ask you to follow as I read verses 18 through 22.

0:35 Mark 2, beginning with verse 18.

0:42 And John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. They come and say unto him, Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? And Jesus said, Why do you not fast? And Jesus said unto them, Can the sons of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?

1:09 As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No man sews a piece of undressed cloth on an old garment, else that which should fill it up. The new takes from it, the new from the old, and a worse rent is made.

1:37 And no man puts new wine into old wineskins, else the wine will burst the skins, and the wine perish, and the skins. But they put new wine into fresh wineskins. Now let us plead once more as we have pleaded in the language of the hymn we have sung that God the Spirit will come and open to us this portion of the word. Let us pray.

2:07 Our Father, we bow in reverent dependence upon you, acknowledging that left to ourselves our minds are full of darkness, our hearts full of unbelief and indisposition to receive your holy oracles. And we therefore pray that there may be a day when we may be able to pray for you. And we pray that there may be a day when we may be able to pray for you. And we pray that there may be a present and powerful and a very inward and personal ministry of the Spirit to each one of us, dispelling the darkness, overcoming the indisposition and unbelief of our hearts, and enabling us with understanding, faith, and submission to receive all that you will say to us from this portion of your word. Help each of us. Help each of us, we pray, that we may know that in this hour together you have spoken to us. Hear us, we plead, for the sake of your dear Son, who died and rose again and sent the Spirit as his great gift to the Church.

3:25 We plead these mercies because of his great work of redemption. Amen. Amen.

3:37 Now, if you listened with any attention to the readings. of this portion of the word of God read in your hearing, you've already been struck with the fact that it represents a collection of strange customs and practices. We read of fasting, of sons of the bride chamber, undressed cloth, and new wine in new wineskins. And furthermore, you've already been struck with the fact that it represents a collection You've been conscious already, I trust, that with such a collection of strange customs, one would think there might be a very profuse collection of irrelevancies. What in the world can all of this, sons of the bride chamber, wine and wineskins, undressed cloth, and tears in garments, what in the world can all of that say to us? Living here in the latter end of the twentieth century, with all of the problems that we face in our own hearts, our own families, in society, and in the world, surely, preacher, you'd have better sense than to attempt to expound such a passage like that and ever

4:59 hope that people will believe the word of God is relevant to our own situation. Well, in a very real sense, the task of the preacher is to answer such questions. Well, in a very real sense, the task of the preacher is to answer such questions. The first set of questions, with respect to the collection of strange customs themselves, what in the world do they mean?

5:19 It's the preacher's task to resolve those questions by responsible exposition, and then with reference to the question, what in the world can all of that say to me in the way of personal relevance, he's to attempt to do that by warranted application, and God helping me, I want to be a responsible exposter. I want to be a responsible exposter. I want to be a responsible exposter. And a helpful applier of the word of God.

5:45 And so on the very threshold of our study of this passage, we must remember that though we may forget Mark's great concern, he never forgets it in the entirety of his composition. We read this morning again, Mark 1 and verse 1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Mark is concerned. Mark is concerned.

6:10 Mark has set before us the good news concerning Jesus Christ, God's Son. And believe it or not, the passage read in your hearing contains some of the best of the good news we have yet to encounter in our expositions of the gospel of Mark. Yes, it was good news to consider the teaching of chapter 1, verses 14 and 15, when we have the record of Jesus preaching that the kingdom of God is the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is at hand, men are to repent and to believe in the gospel.

6:45 But in this very passage read in your hearing, there is a further unfolding of the good news of Jesus Christ. In fact, there is an unfolding of a dimension of that good news, which is indeed some of the best of the good news found anywhere in the gospel of Mark. So please, don't immediately. Immediately, on the threshold of the study, sit back and say, well, I'll tolerate this today, but frankly, I expect little.

The Question Raised: Why Do Your Disciples Not Fast?

7:18 I trust I've whetted your appetite to believe that buried in these ancient and strange customs, there is indeed good news for all of us who sit here this morning. Now, as we think our way through the passage, let us begin as we consider verse 18 under the heading, The Question Raised. A question is raised in verse 18, and John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, and they come and say unto him, Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? So verse 18 gives us the record of a question that is raised. And first of all, we need to ask the question. We need to ascertain who raised the question. The language of Mark is rather general in that the question seems to be raised either by John's disciples and some of the Pharisees, or certain people who were aware of the practice of John's disciples and of the Pharisees, and the contrasting practice of Jesus' disciples.

8:37 But though Mark's language is imprecise in seeking to ascertain precisely who raised the question, Matthew's account of the same incident is more precise, and we read in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 9 and verse 14, Then come to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast? Why do we and the Pharisees fast? Why do we and the Pharisees fast? Why do we and the Pharisees fast?

9:08 Why do we and the Pharisees fast? Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but your disciples do not fast? So according to Matthew's record, which is more precise, and we therefore fit the more precise into the more general, it was especially a question of John's disciples, who in some way or another asked the question in sympathy with, or in concert with, a similar question or a similar concern shared by the Pharisees. Now who the Pharisees were, we know.

9:44 We've already encountered them in our study of Mark's Gospel. They were the official religious leaders of Israel. They were the ones who had added to God's ancient law, their own set of detailed traditions and rules and regulations, which had become an insufferable burden to man. burden to the people in Israel at that time. And we have found already in chapter 2 that they are beginning to set the stage for our Lord's ultimate crucifixion as they begin to oppose him out of envy and of jealousy. But who are these disciples of John? For it is they who raise the question with the greatest concern. Well, perhaps the best thing I can do in answering that question is just to read a paragraph from Alexander's commentary on this passage. The disciples of John are commonly regarded by interpretives and readers

10:50 as worthy representatives of John the Baptist himself, holding his doctrines and his relative position with respect to the Messiah. In other words, most people, when they read the disciples of John, say, well, these were people who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. And they believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. And they believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. And they believed and embraced the message of John, and who in that sense are to be regarded as those who were embracing the revelation made by God through John. But we need to remind ourselves that at this time John is in prison. Chapter 1 in verse 14, Mark tells us of John being delivered up and that Jesus' Galilean ministry at this time was subsequent to the imprisonment of John. Now, prior to his imprisonment, John had already made plain that he was not in the business of attaching disciples to himself. He was in the business of attaching people

11:50 to himself only until the Lord Jesus came. And then he pointed all of his followers to the Lord Jesus. And he said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then you'll remember in the third chapter, John, some of these people who had a wrong attachment to John, came to him and said, Aren't you upset? Everybody's running after Jesus. He said, Of course I'm not upset. He said, Is the best man at the wedding upset when everybody looks at the bridegroom, the groom? Is everyone upset? Is any groom upset? I'm sorry, is any bride, any, I'm sorry, best man upset when people look at the groom? He uses the analogy of the groom and the groom's

12:36 best friend. He uses the analogy of the groom and the groom's best friend. He uses the analogy of the groom and the groom's best friend. He uses the analogy of the groom and the groom's best friend. He uses the analogy of the groom and the groom's best friend. We would say his best man. He said, I must decrease, Christ must increase. Don't come and try to get me jealous because people who once followed me are attaching themselves to Christ. That's what I'm here for, to point men to the one who was coming and now has come. So, we must regard these disciples of John as those who, instead of viewing John as a bridge, out of of the trappings of the old covenant into the wonderful privileges of new covenant blessing brought by Christ, they got stuck on the bridge. John's ministry was a bridge. They got stuck on the bridge. And apparently, in taking to heart the message of John, which was a preparatory message pointing forward to Christ, they had begun to establish around the message of John a whole structure of religious life

13:42 that involved regular fasting that was at least similar to, if not parallel to, the fasting practices of the Pharisees. And later on, there are other indications that there was a distinct group of John's disciples. We encounter them all the way into the book of Acts. But suffice it to say, that those who raise the question are the Pharisees with their continual practice of fasting and these disciples of John who did not really embrace the full message of John.

14:20 If they had, they would no longer have been John's disciples. They would have been Jesus' disciples. Now, so much for who raised the question. Now, what was the precise nature of the question?

14:33 Well, it was this. John's disciples, John's disciples, say we are engaged in the practice of regular religious fasting and so are the Pharisees, but your disciples are not. Now, fasting in the Bible is the total or partial abstinence from food for a fixed period of time in connection with deep spiritual exercises, usually exercises associated with, with grief and with sorrow. When the soul was overwhelmed with grief and sorrow within, often fasting would be associated with it.

15:18 Now, the Pharisees, you'll remember, according to Luke 18, 12, fasted two days every week. And according to Matthew's Gospel, chapter 6, their fasting had become a form of rigid, legalistic, external show. They fasted to be seen of men. Now, the fasting of John's disciples may have been part of a kind of religious practice that grew up out of John's message.

15:49 It was a message that was aimed to produce repentance. And perhaps initially, with that repentance, there was some fasting as an evidence of brokenness of heart. Or it could be that they adapted even the Pharisaic practice. But this much is clear from our text.

16:06 That at the time the question was raised, both John's disciples and the Pharisees were engaged in fasting. And that refers either to their ordinary practice or a specific fast on that particular day. They were engaged in the practice of fasting. And now the thing that disturbs them is that while they are fasting, Jesus' disciples are not engaged in such regular fasts.

16:40 In fact, in the context, Mark connects, though they may not have been connected chronologically in so close a manner, the record of the disciples feasting with Jesus in the home of Levi with the question that is now raised about fasting. So you have the fasting disciples of John and of the Pharisees and the feasting and non-feastinging disciples of Jesus. Now I hope then you get a picture, something of a feel for the question that is raised. Now then notice the answer given by our Lord in verses 19 and 20.

The Answer Given: The Bridegroom's Presence

17:21 The answer given by our Lord comes in the form of a question in verse 19 and in verse 20 in the form of a prediction. So the question is raised in verse 18. Who raises it? John's disciples and the Pharisees' disciples.

17:40 What is it raised about? The contrast between their practice and the practice of the disciples of Jesus. Now verse 19, our Lord's going to give an answer. And he begins his answer to their question with a question.

17:55 Now the question in the original is couched in such a way that it assumes a negative answer. Notice.

18:03 Jesus said unto them, Can the sons of the bridegroom in the bride chamber fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. Now without wearying you with interesting but unnecessary details, this much should be said. Jesus uses imagery that would be very, very relevant to the hearers on that a given occasion.

18:34 He takes an incident from the original of an ordinary wedding practices and uses it to answer their question. Now these sons of the bride chamber are what we would say the close and intimate friends of the bridegroom. And here they are all at the wedding. Let's take it into modern terminology and say they are sitting at the head table with the bride and the groom.

19:00 Now can you imagine what it would be like? Here are several hundred people who've come to a wedding reception. There sits the groom and over to his left are his best man and some of his ushers and his closest friends and his bride and her attendants. And as everyone is feasting, you notice that three of his friends sitting closest to him haven't touched a bit of the food that comes to the table.

19:28 They just sip a little water down there but they don't touch any of the food. And the feast goes on, one course, another course. It's one of those three meals that goes on for two or three hours and they don't touch a bit of food. And we notice upon further observation that they're sitting there with a very sad and almost pained look upon their faces.

19:49 Now if you knew nothing whatsoever of what was going on and came in and beheld such a scene, how would it strike you? You'd say something's out of place here. A wedding reception is to be a time of joyful feasting, not a time for fasting and for mourning. Unless you felt the guy was getting a bum rap in the wife that he took.

20:15 It's a time for rejoicing. And that's precisely what the Lord Jesus is doing in his answer to their question. He says, Do you want to know why my disciples are not now fasting? He said, For my disciples to fast while I am with them would be like the friends, the most intimate friends of the groom, fasting at his wedding reception.

20:43 Now as long as they are together in this intimate, joyful relationship, why it's utterly incongruous. It is utterly unthinkable. It is completely out of harmony with the whole setting for there to be fasting, which is the symbol of mourning and heaviness of heart. And here Jesus perhaps is even taking a thought pattern from some of the last words uttered by John the Baptist.

21:10 When he used the imagery, you remember, of a wedding and the groom and his friends, when his disciples tried to get him upset that others were going after Jesus. And he spoke of himself as the friend of the bride of the groom. And he says, It is my greatest delight when he takes all the attention and people forget me. So Jesus answers by saying, Fasting for his disciples would be totally incongruous while the Lord Jesus was with them.

21:45 And then he makes a prediction in his answer. And the prediction comes in the language of verse 20, the latter of verse 20, But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. What is he saying? What is he saying here?

22:08 He is saying a time of sadness will come. He uses a word for taken away that is found only here and in the parallel passages in the New Testament. And it could well be an allusion, not a direct quote, but an allusion to Isaiah 53 and verse 8. Our Lord quotes from Isaiah quite frequently in his ministry.

22:34 And here in this great chapter of the suffering servant of Jehovah, notice the language of Isaiah 53, verse 8. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And here our Lord answers their question by saying, Though it is utterly unthinkable that while I am with my disciples they should be heavy-hearted and in their heavy-heartedness mourn and fast, the time is coming when I will be taken away. It is a prediction of his own death.

23:10 Taken away by violent hands. Taken away by these very Pharisees who have instigated you, John's disciples, to ask this question. I will be taken away. And when I am taken away, as he said in John 16, verses 16 to 22, there will be sadness.

23:30 There will be an occasion for fasting. And in those days there will be heaviness of heart. And then it will be appropriate for my disciples to fast in their period of heaviness. But even that heaviness, you remember according to John 16, would not last long.

23:49 For he promised to come back to them, not only eventually and ultimately in his own visible presence at his second coming, but he says, I'll send the Comforter and he will come and in his coming I and the Father come. And then he says, your sadness will be turned to joy. So then basically this is the answer of our Lord to their question. It is an answer in which he says, my disciples do not fast because the present circumstances do not warrant fasting, though future circumstances will for a time warrant fasting and the heaviness of heart that is attendant upon it. Now then, having looked at the question raised, the answer given, now we come to verses 21 and 22 which I have given, to which I have given the heading, the deeper issue addressed. Our Lord now gives two parables in which he addresses a deeper issue that lies behind this immediate question. And that these are parables is clearly stated in the parallel passage in Luke 5, 36.

The Deeper Issue Addressed: Parables of the Patch and Wineskins

25:06 It calls these incidents or these references to cloth and wineskins parables. So you have the parable of the patch and the parable of the wineskins. Now in this age of pre-shrunk, no shrink, wash and wear fabrics, a passage like this doesn't make much sense because we could live to be 150 years old and never see it happen. But remember Jesus was talking in the day before pre-shrunk materials, before wash and wear, before synthetic fibers.

25:42 And before you could ever wear any garment or even use the garment, make the garment, you had to take whatever cloth you had, of wool or whatever other natural material, and it had to be pre-shrunked. If you didn't pre-shrink it, then when you made up the garment to fit someone, after the first washing, it wouldn't fit a midget. It would shrink. So your cloth had to be washed, it had to be fullered, as they would use the term then, or fulled, and this way it would be made suitable for making a dress, a coat, whatever one is to use.

26:19 Well obviously then, after it goes through many washings and much usage, there is no further shrinkage. But one day there's so much usage, so much washing, that you get a tear. So try to picture my handkerchief having a little tear right in the middle. I've got so many of them, maybe I...

26:35 No, I won't tear it. But imagine there's a little tear. And I say to myself, well, I've got to fix that. So I go out and get a piece of cloth that's bigger than the tear, considerably bigger, because I don't want the tear to come near the edges of my patch.

26:51 And I lay this patch over the tear, and it extends a good couple of inches around both sides of it, and then it's all sewn on. But I forgot to take that piece of cloth, and wash it first. It's not been shrunken yet. And I put my patch on, and it looks so lovely, and I say, oh, next week my handkerchief will be very serviceful, have no tear in it.

27:13 And so throughout the week it's used, then you put it in the wash, and lo and behold, when it dries, what happens? Well, all along the border, where the patch has been sewn, because that piece of cloth in the patch shrinks, it pulls away from the older cloth, and now I've got a tear here, a tear here, a tear here, and a tear here. Instead of having one little tear, I now have four big tears. Now that's exactly what Jesus is talking about in this passage, and he says no one is stupid enough to do that.

27:46 Notice what the passage says? No one. This was a universally understood and accepted practice in making patches. So when anyone knew anything about making patches in Jesus' day, nobody was stupid enough to do that.

28:02 Listen to this. No man sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old garment, else that which should fill up takes from it the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. So there's the parable of the patch. Alright?

28:21 And then he goes on to give the parable of the wineskins. We'll hold off on the meaning of those parables for a moment. Now here again, we don't use wineskins or skins to store water or wine in. We have plastic bottles, we have glass bottles, and other containers, thermos bottles and the rest.

28:43 But in those days, and even to this day, if you were to go to the Middle East, you could see this very picture before your eyes. They would skin a goat and some other animal very, very careful to cut it only where the four legs were and at the neck and the tail. And the skin, what is it were, would be peeled off that animal and then the skin side, of course, would be kept on the outside and after treating it, that skin, by tying off where the four legs were and the tail, they would use the neck then, or the tail part, turn it upside down for the opening, into which they would put liquids. And they would store their liquids, their water, their wine, in the skin. And as I say, that practice can be observed to this very day in certain parts of the Middle East. Now Jesus said, nobody who knows anything about storing wine in animal skins would ever do this. No one puts new wine into old wine skins.

29:51 Now here's a skin that's been used for a couple of years. It's losing its elasticity. It's beginning to be brittle. And he says, you've got a skin like that.

29:59 You may use it to hold water, but you never put new wine in it. Why? Because the new wine begins to ferment. And as it ferments, there is the expansion, there is the presence of the gases with that expansion and fermentation.

30:13 And what will happen to that old brittle wine skin? After a little while, it's going to go . . .

30:18 And when it does, you've ruined your wine skin and you've lost all your wine. And Jesus said, anyone who knows anything about taking care of new wine in a skin would ever be stupid enough to put new wine into old wine skins. For he knows he would ruin the skins and the wine would perish. Rather, they put new wine into fresh wine skins that are still very stretchable and elastic.

30:46 And as there is the expansion in the process of fermentation, the skin gives with it. And that way you preserve both the wine and the skin. All right? The parable of the patch, the parable of the wine skins.

The Heart of the Gospel: Radical Change of the New Covenant

30:59 Well, you say, Pastor, you've been going for 25 minutes and I still don't see the Gospel and all of that. Well, listen, my friend, hang in there. I have to explain what the text says first. That's my job.

31:12 And that 25 minutes has cost me many painful hours of labor. So don't despise it. Many painful hours of labor. It may all sound so simple to you, but if you'd read all the commentaries and all the various views and try to arrive at precisely what the significance is, I think perhaps you would appreciate that it's our duty and responsibility to hang in there in the exposition so we might catch the thrust of what our Lord is saying.

31:41 Now, what's the point of the parable of the patch? Well, the Lord, you see, has been asked the question, why don't your disciples fast? We, the disciples of John, we who represent those who embrace the message that came, as it were, on the ministry of one who was a bridge out of the old covenant into the new, we don't understand why your disciples don't conduct themselves as we do. And then the Pharisees, of course, they represent not only the old covenant, but the old covenant gone deceived into an externalism and into a legalism and into a burdensome system of all kinds of rules and regulations. And Jesus said it is not enough for you to understand this immediate answer to your question. My disciples cannot fast because fasting is for sadness. And I, the heavenly bridegroom, am in the midst of my friends.

32:43 How can they fast while I'm with them? You must understand that. But furthermore, he said, there's a deeper issue involved. You must understand that with my disciples I am not concerned simply to put new patches on old garments.

33:02 I have not come simply to put patches on old decadent Judaism. I have not come to put patches on John's message. And for those of you who have frozen, as it were, and gotten stalled on the bridge, I have not come to put the patch of the new on the old structures. I have not come to put the new wine of the new covenant and of the full revelation of God's salvation in my person and work.

33:33 I have not come to put it in the old wineskin of Judaism. I have not come to put it in the old wineskin of the Mosaic economy. I have not come to do any such thing. It would be a contradiction of my mission.

33:51 And so the parable of the patch and the parable of the wineskin both point to this tremendous truth and this is indeed the gospel. Here's the heart of the message. This passage announces the radical changes which our Lord as mediator of the new covenant is to bring to His people. He is not going to patch up the old.

34:19 He's going to bring a new garment in its entirety. He is not going to put new wine into old wineskins, but the new wine will be put into new wineskins. Now follow me closely as I qualify this that is the heart of the message of the passage. Now the Bible teaches very clearly that there is a fundamental unity in God's purposes and God's people in the old and the new covenant.

34:50 There is a fundamental unity of God's purposes and God's people in the old and new covenant. This is clearly taught in such passages as Romans 11 and Ephesians 2. There is one olive tree of redemptive purpose. There is one tree of God's elect redeemed people.

35:14 Not two trees, not three, one. There is fundamental unity of God's purposes and people in both economies. Furthermore, the Bible teaches the fundamental similarity of individual spiritual experience in the old covenant and in the new. There is fundamental similarity of individual Christian experience if I may use that term.

35:46 That's why faith can be demonstrated in Hebrews 11 from the Old Testament. And when Paul is proving justification by faith alone in Romans 4, where does he get his illustrations? He gets them from Abraham before the giving of the law and David after the giving of the law. And we must never move from these clear teachings of the word.

36:10 Fundamental unity of God's purposes and people in the old and new covenants. Fundamental similarity of individual religious experience. That's why we can use the Psalms for our devotional book. Their burdens are our burdens.

36:26 Their joys are our joys. There is similarity of religious experience. And furthermore, the Bible teaches a fundamental continuity and similarity of ethical norms in the old and new covenant. When Jesus is dealing with ethical problems, he takes people back to creation.

36:49 In the New Testament, in the epistles, we are taken back to the Decalogue for specific moral and ethical requirements. There is fundamental continuity and similarity in the ethical norms. However, however, the Bible also teaches that as to the forms and ceremonies which will characterize the old covenant community in contrast to the new. And in terms of the identity and constitution of that community, there is a radical change.

37:27 And the Bible makes that abundantly clear. Jesus says in John 4 to the woman's question, where is the right place to worship? Our fathers say here in this mountain. You Jews say Jerusalem.

37:41 Which one? Declare yourself. He said neither. The hour is coming and now is when true worshippers shall not worship in this mountain or at Jerusalem, but will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

37:54 You see, there are to be some radical changes. Hebrews 8 and verse 13 tells us that the old economy as to its external ceremonies and its forms is vanishing away. Here is where the New Testament speaks of the abolition of the old economy. And one of the great problems in the apostolic age lay right at this point.

38:18 The people were slow to understand this. This is why the Judaizers were trying to press upon Gentile converts circumcision and keeping the law of Moses. What were they trying to do? They were trying to take the New Covenant and patch it on to the old threadbare forms and ceremonies of the New Covenant.

38:39 Trying to take the life by grace, the wine of free grace, and put it in the old wineskin of Judaism. And they didn't understand this great principle. And dear people, that's why I said this passage contains the Gospel. Because when Jesus gives out these cryptic parables of the patch and of the wineskins, what He is saying is this.

39:09 You'll forever have a string of questions about the disparity between what I teach my disciples to do and what the Pharisees are doing or anyone who gets frozen on the bridge between the old and the new. You'll have one question after another until you come to grips with this fact that I have come in my saving life and ministry to put the wine of my grace into the new wineskins of New Covenant liberty and New Covenant community. And unless you understand that, you'll be offended at every point in my ongoing ministry. That old covenant community life with all of its rules and regulations, Peter described it in Acts 15.10 as a burden which neither we nor our fathers could bear. It was a yoke, he said, an unbearable yoke which we could not bear.

40:15 The new economy is established and characterized by joy and liberty. Yes, a joy preceded by mourning for sin. Blessed are those who mourn. A liberty preceded by the discovery of our bondage.

The Gospel as a Sumptuous Feast

40:33 But the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, or not eating and drinking, fasting, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Romans 14 and verse 17. And I wonder if this is not why it comes in this precise setting. You remember the previous incident?

40:57 Whether it happened chronologically just before Mark puts them together. Where do we find that wonderful declaration of Jesus' purpose in coming to earth? I came not to call the righteous but sinners. Where did he preach that sermon?

41:16 In a house of mourning or in a house of feasting? It was in a feast in the house of Levi. And there was a blessed congruity, a wonderful sympathy between the external surroundings and the great message he preached. It was at a feast, a sumptuous feast, that he said, I've come to call sinners.

41:42 And it says they came with a question about fasting. You see the whole flavor of what Christ has come to bring is to be likened to a vast and lavish feast. In Matthew 22 Jesus himself uses an extended parable to show that the gospel invitation is an invitation to a sumptuous wedding feast. All things are ready, come to the marriage feast.

42:10 That's the gospel. The gospel is not that miserable message of the Pharisees, a message that said, join our ranks, learn hundreds of rules and regulations, get yourself all straitjacketed with all of the rules and regulations, fast, hasten the wheel. Jesus called that an insufferable burden and called people to himself and said, come to me all you that labor and are heavy laden, particularly you who labor and are heavy laden under that terrible burden of decadent Judaism gone to seed under the influence of the Pharisees. And he even says to these disciples of John who never got beyond John's message, repent, repent, face your sins. John went on to say, behold the Lamb who bears away sin. Behold the Lamb who takes away sin. They never got beyond it.

43:12 That's John's message. Repent, face your sin, mourn over your sin. And they got locked into that. And Jesus is saying, look, look, my grace is dispensed in the context of feasting and not fasting and of mourning.

43:32 Do you see the message? What wonderful news. That as we come to men in our day, what do we call them to? Do we call them to a set of rules, a set of regulations, a set of rituals?

43:46 No. Force obedience to Christ involves the rules of His word and the rules and the government of His house. But essentially the gospel is this, that Christ is come and in the gospel He offers us His own saving life and power. And He tells us that in the reception of that life, we then enter that community that is not Judaism patched up, nor is it Judaism that is split and rent and become even worse than it was by trying to mingle the old with the new.

44:24 We come into the blessed liberty of the sons and daughters of our God. As I have labored to understand the thrust of this passage, I believe that's precisely the heart of what our Lord is saying. You've got a question as to why my disciples don't conform to you people that are halfway across the bridge and you Pharisees who are still locked in to the trappings of the old plus all of your own additions. I've answered your question, but you're going to have more and more questions unless you understand the parable of the patch and the parable of the wineskins.

Abuses and True Nature of the New Wineskin

45:05 And so this passage fundamentally and primarily announces the radical changes which our Lord as mediator of the new covenant will bring to his people. But I must say in the interest of pastoral concern that this passage has been subjected to some of the most terrible abuses by those described by Peter as the ignorant and the unstable. People take the passage out of its context and out of its place in the history of redemption. They say, Aha!

45:41 See what it says? You can never put new wine in old wineskins. You know what they call the new wine? Any fresh so-called outpouring of the Spirit.

45:50 And they say with that we've got to throw off all old forms, all ceremonies, all sense of connection with history. So if God does a new thing, we've got to create a new wineskin for it. And so all kinds of stupidity in our day are being justified on this basis. A well-known best seller, even been written on the subject of the new wineskins.

46:12 And so people say that all kinds of excesses and much of the charismatic movement justifies its foolishness on the basis of a text like this. But remember, just as Jesus said by implication that the old economy was a worn-out wineskin that was going to be discarded, it is Jesus who by His Word defines the new wineskin. The new community and its form and its life and its privileges and duties. And so we go to the Word of God to have described for us the wineskin that contains new covenant life and privilege. And what is that wineskin? Well, it's the new covenant community with its new covenant ordinances and the simplicity and purity of its new covenant worship and its new covenant responsibilities. And that's the heart of this passage.

47:15 And we're not the first ones to have come, as it were, to the question, what is the new wineskin? God's people have been wrestling with that question for years because they have the same Bible. And so we do not wrench ourselves loose from all that has historical moorings and continuity and go off and do every kind of reckless thing in the name of having such vibrant life of the Spirit that the old wineskins can't contain it. We have no sympathy for such nonsense.

47:45 But we do have sympathy with what our Lord is teaching, that now that God has sent His Son and the Son has sent the Spirit, though there may be a place for fasting that is consistent with the frame of mind which precipitates fasting, a period of intense burden for an individual, for some need in our own hearts, for some need in the world. The Bible teaches that in the new covenant, the new covenant community from time to time fasts as a community. Individuals fast, and all you need to do is take an English concordance and look up the word fast, and you will find it in the book of Acts, you will find it in the epistles. But you see, there is no regulated fast. The old economy had only one, mandated fast on the day of atonement, Leviticus 16. To it they had added their own rules and regulations.

48:43 There is no mandated fast in the new covenant community. Fasting is there as an option, as a liberty to be exercised when the state of the mind and heart demands it. And there will be times when the spirit and mind of a believer will be so pressed down as to warrant his foregoing his normal intake of food and drink, to give himself to prayer and to seeking the face of God. We have no quarrel with that.

49:13 But the great message of this passage is that the dominant characteristic of the new covenant community is not one of mourning and of heaviness, but it's the presence of our bride. And this brings joy to the bride. This brings delight to the hearts of the people of God. And this is the message of this passage of the word.

49:39 Now let me ask you as you sit here this morning, have you come to grasp by the Holy Spirit something of the wonder and the privilege that is yours, living at this point in the world's history? You see, something happened here of historical nature, something that is non-repeatable, that has left the world utterly different since it happened. And when the Lord Jesus cried, it is finished. And the finger of God rent that thick veil from top to bottom and all creation experienced an upheaval as sort of the Amen of God's creation to that mighty act of redemption.

50:18 When our great High Priest ascended into the presence of God and sent the Holy Spirit, God has forever dismantled that old framework. God has brought it to naught and even visibly and demonstratively before human eyes with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D. All of that is vanished, is done and is buried in Christ's tomb.

Rome's Error and New Covenant Liberty

50:45 We now live at this point in time where we can look back upon a completed redemption, a Savior who died and shed His blood, who has risen from the dead, who has fulfilled all the types and shadows of the ceremonial law, who has fulfilled even in Himself all of those things to which that law pointed. And so we do not as Rome, and this is the heart of the error of Rome, Rome is one of the monumental and tragic witnesses to the attempt to put the new cloth onto the old. And so they talk of the consecration of buildings and places and they talk of an altar and a sacrifice and a priest. That's language from that which is past. And what does it produce? It produces something that while it retains the language of the Christian faith is nothing but old Judaism.

51:52 It is the worst of Phariseeism, works righteousness, people trying desperately to do enough somehow to gain enough merit to make it in the end. Do you see the horribleness of that system? I trust you do, because it's a system that has failed to understand that the Lord Jesus has come not to put the new cloth of His own redemptive work upon that old cloth of Judaism or even of the limited transitional message of John, but He's come to give us the full liberty of the sons and daughters of Almighty God. And I trust that we appreciate the position we are in and that by the grace of God we will live and conduct ourselves as those who understand the parable of the patches and the parable of the wineskin. Now there are many other applications that could be drawn from the passage and I'm only going to just mention one in closing. And there's no continuity of thought between that and the main burden of the passage, and I'm breaking all the rules of preaching that I teach the men in the academy, but I'm going to do it anyway. And it's this.

Pastoral Application: Appropriateness and Sensitivity

53:14 Blessed is the man, blessed is the woman, that understands the appropriateness of doing the right thing at the right time. See that was their problem, they didn't understand the inappropriateness of fasting while the bridegroom was with them. And you know there's so many Christians who cause offense in so many situations because they simply have not cultivated a sensitivity of doing the appropriate thing at the appropriate time. A brother or sister is burdened down with a heavy heart and they come up singing away, slapping them on the back, telling them jokes.

53:53 There's no way to grieve a grieving Christian more than for you to manifest total insensitivity to their grief by being a happy-go-lucky good old boy when they've got a broken heart. What does God say? Weep with those who weep, even though you might be in a shouting mood. That takes self-denial.

54:15 That takes sensitivity. That takes discipline of your own spirit. I mean you've come out of your devotions one morning and you're shouting happy and like old Billy Bray said, the Cornish miner who got converted and he had an unusual baptism of holy joy. And when he walked down the street sometimes he would just shout and praise God.

54:34 And people say, Billy, why in the world are you always shouting and praising the Lord? He said, well, I can't help it. When I walk, the one foot says glory and the next foot says hallelujah. And he said, I can't help it.

54:47 And they said, well, what we need to do is put you in a barrel and throw you in the lake. That'll shut you up, he said, if you put me in a barrel and throw me in the lake. He said, I'll shout glory, glory out the bunghole. He said, I'll find the hole in the barrel and I'll shout out of the barrel.

55:02 Now, there may be times when you feel like Billy Bray. You've come from your devotions and your heart is just full of joy and you come and approach a brother. You get on the phone with a sister and you sense their spirit is heavy. What are you going to do?

55:14 God says weep with those who weep. Learn that at such a season it's bitterness to their soul. You need to be sensitive and vice versa. And how desperately we need as the people of God to learn that lesson.

Pastoral Application: Beware of Unwitting Alliances

55:28 It's one of the secondary applications in the passage and then another that's there and I think we need it as well. Beware of being innocently drawn in by the enemies of Christ making common cause with them though you don't intend to. You see these disciples of John had no real sympathy with the Pharisees as far as we can see. Every time Jesus dealt with them in the Gospels he dealt with them kindly.

55:53 Even though they were limited in their understanding the Lord did not call them whitewashed sepulchers and these Pharisees rejected John in his message. Jesus told them that and later on in chapter 3 they joined with their bitter enemies the Herodians to try to plot to kill Jesus. In other words they'll join any crowd that's against Jesus. And I'm sure it would have grieved any of these people who later on came to true faith in Christ to realize that forever in the history of the church they would be found in this close alliance with Pharisees who were the bitter enemies of Jesus.

56:29 They found a common point of question and instigated and pushed and you know there are people like that today. Be careful, be careful about speaking of your reservations about God's people and God's servants. People who innocently say doesn't that trouble you that such and such is going on? It may be a Pharisee who's out to kill the very thing or the very person that you would never want to do.

57:00 Your heart is fundamentally sympathetic you've got an honest question. Others have devious questions. Be very, very careful in your interaction with religious people to make sure you don't join in causes that will one day embarrass you if the truth becomes known. Well, you see the word of God is exceedingly rich.

Conclusion and Prayer: Appreciation for New Covenant Liberty

57:19 I only throw out those two little PS's on the heels of the major thrust of the passage. May the Lord write his word upon our hearts and may we profit from the instruction of it. Let us pray together. Our Father we do thank you that we live at this point in history when coming to you by your grace we need not go to a lengthy book of rules and regulations that touch the clothing we wear and the seed that we would sow in our fields and the foods that we eat classifying them into clean and unclean. We thank you that we have not been brought under the tyranny of Pharisees who would load us down with a hundred fold more burdens. We thank you for the glorious liberty of the gospel of Jesus Christ and we pray that you would bring us to a new appreciation of that liberty. We thank you that by your grace you have placed us in a community of your people where there is some understanding of our liberty in Christ.

58:42 Give us an appreciation of that liberty not a liberty that is unto license but a liberty unto loving servitude to your Son and to his holy word. Write your word upon our hearts and continue to illuminate our minds that knowing your will we may walk in it. Be with those our Father who have never seen in the gospel of your Son a sumptuous feast who may have been even turned off from religion and some false presentation of the gospel because it appeared to them to be nothing but more empty rules and regulations. Oh God show them the freeness and the fullness of your salvation in Christ. May they come to him who offers himself as the bread and the water and the wine of life even our Lord Jesus Christ. Seal then your word to our hearts and may it bring profit to each one of us we plead through our Lord Jesus. Amen.