"14 Then the disciples of John *came to Him, asking, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?" 15 And Jesus said to them, "The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is
with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken
away from them, and then they will fast. 16 But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. 17 Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the
wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into
fresh wineskins, and both are preserved."
During His ministry, Jesus was asked a lot of questions concerning His authority to teach, forgive sin and even the way He and His disciples followed and worshipped God. In our passage today, Jesus is asked a very important question to which He gives a very important answer.
We ask and pray in Christ's name
Amen
Today's Message: Jesus Changes Everything
Throughout Jesus' ministry, He has been getting questions from Pharisees and religious teachers challenging His authority, identity often designed to trap Jesus. In our last message, we learned that the effectual call of the Gospel to salvation is extended not to the righteous, but to sinners. The purpose of Christ coming into the world. He came into the world to call sinners to repentance and be forgiven. This is a great message for us. Apart from repentance, there is no call into His kingdom. We shouldn't be surprised that He came into the world to save sinners. Everybody mentioned in the genealogy in Matthew chapter 1, up until Christ is a sinner.
As you will recall, Jesus has been healing, teaching with authority, forgiving sins, and of course, He’s been raising a few questions from others. This time the question that is posed to Jesus comes from the disciples of John. This is not just any old John, this is John the Baptizer, the forerunner to the Messiah, who proclaimed the coming of Jesus. John the Baptist appeared in the third chapter, was preaching in the wilderness, saying, "Repent, repent, repent." Those who heard his message, were confessing their sins, and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River.
Jesus taught in His Sermon on the Mount, "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." Theirs was one of
self-righteousness. The only people who will ever enter God’s kingdom are those who acknowledge their own sinfulness and repent of it. Jesus' message never changed, and neither should ours. Repent, because there comes a day when God will judge the world. Sin betrays the fact that your religion is false. Because people choose to refuse to confess their need, they sit in judgment. Heaven is real and so is Hell, a reality that many think it will never come. The Good News is, you get to choose where you will spend eternity.
By the way, the Pharisees would look like they were fasting, with a sad, drawn face, and they would
decorate themselves, standing on the corner, in the middle of the street so everyone would know they were fasting. These external rituals were the very substance of their religion.
That's why in Matthew 23, Jesus prescribed judgement upon them, saying in verses 25-26, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also." Their religion practices were external. They were spiritually dead inside. Unfortunately, not much has changed in the church today, many do not view Christianity as a matter of humility, sinfulness, repentance. They see it as a matter of routine and ritual. It is nearly impossible to have a discussion with them about forgiveness and repentance and genuine conversion, because they have know knowledge of what it means to be convicted of sin, to have a deep, genuine repentance in the heart. It is a very superficial relationship with Christ.
In verse 15, Jesus gives us three illustrations in order for us to understand His teaching in response to this question. Listen as I read the first one, "And Jesus said to them, "The
attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is
with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken
away from them, and then they will fast." Any religious exercise apart from an honest, sincere attitude in the heart, is meaningless, it's absolutely worthless. It the original language, "taken away" is the Greek verb "apairó," which means to be snatch away violently, He's talking of His crucifixion. That's when He says they will fast. You don't mourn at the wedding ceremony, it’s a time to celebrate. I'm still here with you, healing and forgiving sin. Can you imagine a wedding ceremony where everyone sad and gloomy? Mourn at the funeral, when I've been violently taken away. That's when you mourn. In other words, you shouldn’t be fasting unless you’re fasting out of a broken heart. That's what He saying here.
In verse 16, He gives us the second illustration, "But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results." This might appear at a cursory reading to be a rather odd illustration, but what He's teaching is so diametrically opposed to everything they're are doing, there is absolutely no connection. The garments in those days were made from cotton or wool, so they would shrink. So, if you got a hole in it and stitched a piece of brand new cloth to it, to cover the hole, as soon as you washed that garment, then the new cloth shrinks, by the strength of the new cloth the old fibers are going to be ripped away. The result is, you've got an even bigger hole. So, if you’re going to patch an old robe, you have got to use an old piece of material. Anyone with any sewing experience at all would understand that. What He's saying here is there's no way My teaching will fit into the old system, the old way of doing things. It cannot work together.
So, that brings us to verse 17, the third illustration. "Nor do people
put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the
wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into
fresh wineskins, and both are preserved."
In those days, they would take the skin of an animal, stitch all around it and pour in the wine to store it. When the wine was gone, the skin would dry up and it would crack. So, if you refilled it again, it would leak and you'd lose the wine. So, you had to put new wine in new wineskins. John's disciples would have easily understood this. The traditional rabbinical system doesn't need to be reformed, it needs to be done away with. That's why they decided they had to eliminate Christ. To be clear, He wasn't doing away with the Old Testament teaching, in fact, He came to fulfill the Old Testament. He made abundantly clear when in Luke 4, He said "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." The Pharisees' religion was vile and sinful, it denied the very truth of the Old Testament teaching. Jesus didn’t come to patch up their distorted way of religiosity, He brought a new way, and you cannot mix the old with the new.
In Closing..
Scripture teaches the same is true when someone comes to Christ, they have to say goodbye to their old way of life. Jesus isn't patching up your old way of life, He says you are a new creation. II Corinthians 5 says it this way, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come."
I believe that any true Christian desires to live a life of unquestioning obedience. The focus of one's new life shouldn't be trying to figure out how to hold onto old sinful ways, it should now be on Jesus and following His ways! If one has indeed been born -again, then the heart of Christ will exist in you. There has to be deepest desire to obey Him. That's got to be there. That's what constrains me. And it should you too. Some of you are holding onto something old. You need to get rid of that, and grasp hold of the new.
May it be so..
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
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