You know, if any of you here consider yourself perfectionists, well be perfect at not beating up others, okay? Because when you're a perfectionist, we tend to demand others come up to our standard, and if they don't, they will suffer. Don't be that way. If you're a perfectionist, keep it personal. You know, if you need to have all your T's crossed and I's dotted, do that, don't go jumping down on anybody.
I think some husbands in particular can do this to their wives. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Gospel of Mark.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick concludes his study called Stubborn Inflexibility as he teaches through Mark chapter 2. Romans chapter 2, Paul says, In that day, when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel, Christ is the standard, not you, not somebody else. You can't say, you know, well, I'm not that bad of a person. Look, I'm not in jail. Those people in prison, they're bad. They're going to hell, but I've never done that, or I've never been convicted, caught.
Well, that would work if the inmates were the standard, but not. God is the standard. You have to have righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees and is matched with Jesus Christ, and you can't do it.
So you need Him to help you. As we read in 2 Corinthians 5, His reconciliation, His righteousness, His reconciliation is based on His righteousness becoming our righteousness. He is the one that saves us. We cannot save ourselves. So sinners that He is dining with, that's everybody. We're all sinners, and we can be sinners saved by grace or not. It's up to us. That part is up to us. Mary in chapter 1 of Luke's Gospel, in that beautiful song of hers, she says, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.
That's right. What would be wrong with that? Who would find a fault with that? The only sour note comes from those who are stubborn and inflexible, who refuse to hear what the Bible says so clearly. Instead of receiving the blessings, they look for ways to counter them. Instead of receiving Christ and saying, wow, what He just said is pretty deep. What He just did is amazing.
It's miraculous. Maybe I should start listening to Him and stop trying to find ways to point out that He's wrong. Or maybe I should stop trying to find ways that He agrees with sin, as we see today, all over the Internet. People taking the Word of God and telling you it doesn't mean what it clearly says. And unfortunately, the vulnerable little lambs, they lap up the poison, and the war is on. Verse 18, the disciples of John and the Pharisees were fasting. Then they came and said to Him, why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast?
But Your disciples do not fast. So now He says again, verse 18, the disciples of John and the Pharisees were fasting. And we cringe when we hear that John's disciples and the Pharisees together are challenging Christ. We would like to have read that John's disciples said, well, we'll ask but we're not with you. Because John was raised up to go against the Pharisees and the Sadducees and all the religious element that was crushing their own religion with their man-made rules. Previously, in verse 16, the Pharisees asked Jesus, disciples, to explain Jesus' behavior. Here, they're asking Jesus to explain the disciples' behavior. So what Mark has captured, Mark and Peter, I think without even trying, just telling the story like it is, what they've captured for us is that no matter what Christ did, He and His people were going to be attacked.
Well, that's true to this day. Let's just not make it easy for them. Peter writes that in his second letter. He says, you know, let's not make it easy for them. Let's not use our righteousness as a cloak to do evil.
You want to pull their teeth, take away their charges of hypocrisy that are launched against you and other things like that. So now, again, they ask Christ. John's disciples, we understand why they fasted.
Because they probably ate locusts like John. Any chance to fast, they took it. But really, what business is it of anybody else, whether I fast or not?
I don't fast to you or for you, and you don't fast to me or for me. Why are you even asking me this question? It's none of your business. That should be the act.
I would have said that. Didn't you read Matthew chapter 6? You go in your prayer closet. It's no one's business. Your prayer routine and things like that, it's fine to say to somebody, I've been praying for you.
I pray, but it's not like this being thrown up into your face, being judged by others. You know, the law required the Jewish people to fast only one day out of the year, the Day of Atonement. That was the, everything else was ill-active.
You just, you did or you, it wasn't, you know, compulsory. Verse 19, Jesus said to them, can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. Well, one reason why we fast is to, of course, subdue the flesh so that we can draw closer to God, that distractions will be minimized. Well, they were already as close to God as they get in this world. He was walking with them, his apostles, his disciples. So he could have said, well, we fast to draw close to God.
Well, why, they don't need to fast. I'm right here. You can't get any closer, get any closer to get in my personal space. Six feet. Yeah, joke. A hundred years from now, what is he talking about?
Six feet. Anyway, this was a time of happiness, not heaviness, walking around all solemn and everything like they were doing. Jesus said, you know, don't be like them. Put oil on your head. Oh, look at me, I'm so righteous you're not. Oh, oil on your head, huh?
Again, Edgar, right? Thank you. He says it's not appropriate all the time. Imagine Bacon Fest. Ladies, I know you've not been to Bacon Fest and we're glad because it's a guy thing and there's nothing wrong with that. Feminism has been stealing our women for decades now, trying to dictate to you what a woman should be.
We go to the scripture to find out who we are to be as men and women. Anyway, imagine showing up to Bacon Fest full. We'll beat you up. We'll just take you out back and slap you around.
You'd be too, you know, full with food to fight back. There were just some things are wrong. We can all understand that. He's saying, look, I'm here now. It's not time for fasting, verse 20.
But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them and then they will fast in those days. He knew how this was going to end. He had read the Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 and the other sections in the prophets that spoke of this Messiah's death. He knew what Isaiah had to say because he gave it to Isaiah to write.
He authored it. Rejected by humans but received by God. He knew that he would have a violent death at the hands of religious people and non-religious people alike.
Well, I mean, Pilate was religious too in their own Roman kind of way in paganism. Let's talk a little bit more about this fasting because it has its place in our life. It can put an edge on our prayers. It can help us. But if not handled right, it's a difficult tool to use. When I used to work on bridges and buildings, there was a tool called a power vein and it was used to ream, to make a hole larger.
So if you wanted to put bolts in the hole to hold a building together, if the holes didn't line up, you'd use this tool. And if you did not use this power vein the right way, it could kill you. I mean, it could certainly beat you up.
And I'm smiling because I've got stories and I, you know, I would love to tell, but we're not here to hear my stories. Well, wait a minute. Maybe. Anyway, fasting is that tool. It works in its proper place, but you have to use it the right way. And the consequence of not using it the right way is not good for us.
It's a difficult tool. It can impart a false sense of maturity. I must be mature because I haven't eaten all, you know, in like 80 minutes, which is quite a feat in our society. If you need help fasting, just invite us over. Come eat all your food and then you'll have to fast.
Anyway, it can make the user feel that God is now obligated. Look, I suffered all day. You've got to let me in. This is a serious prayer request I've got before you. How can you say no?
Look at my puppy eyes. It can become habit forming and then degenerate into meaningless routine. You just fast all the time. Yeah, I just fast and now it's just lost its edge. But now you're afraid to let it go because somehow you think if I let it stop fasting, I'll go backwards in my faith.
I won't be mature anymore. They're not just fasting. We could do this with anything in our faith. Of course, fasting could make us feel self-righteous. Oh, you don't fast?
What, you only fasted for what, half a day? I fast for like two days or whatever, making us critical of others. That's self-righteousness. You know, if any of you here consider yourself, you know, a perfectionist, well, be perfect at not beating up others, okay? Because when you're a perfectionist, we tend to demand others come up to our standard and if they don't, they will suffer. Don't be that way. If you're a perfectionist, keep it personal. You know, if you need to have all your T's crossed and I's dotted, do that, but don't go jumping down on everybody.
I think some husbands in particular can do this to their wives and it is not right. Continuing with my list of concerns with fasting, fasting can become a genuine substitute for holiness. And you can't substitute holiness. But you can think you're doing it. Because I'm fasting, I don't have to be loving. I don't have to do the other things that I'm required. I don't have to study the Word. After all, look, I've been fasting.
So it can make us legalists. The evidence is in the Pharisees. This was something they bragged about. Luke's Gospel, chapter 18, verse 12, this is the Pharisee speaking in the parable of Christ. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I possess. Again, it's nobody's business how much you give.
Well, the administrators have to know and keep the records, of course, or else the church won't know how to move its funds around. Pastors should never know what somebody gives. Well, people will try to use that. Do you know what I give? I don't care what you give. You don't give. You give to us. We're just a vehicle in that process. It is a righteous money laundering system.
Because folks will feel self-righteous, you know. Money can give a person a sense of a lot of power. And if you've had a lot, I mean, you could have, if you've never had five dollars, all of a sudden you have five dollars, you really think you're the boss now. I'm going by when I first had five dollars if I felt that I could buy Washington.
And I should have made it move, but I was only like six. Anyway, fasting, be careful. It's part of our faith, but don't misuse that tool. Verse 21, no one sows a piece of untrunk cloth on an old garment or else the new piece pulls away from the old and the tear is made worse. When he says no one, he says this is a known fact. He brings them into a part of everyday life.
He says, look, nobody does this. And they all would know that. The new piece of cloth was what Christ was doing, what we now call Christianity. It wasn't Christianity yet, but it was in the transition period. He was phasing out Judaism, not the moral law, not the theology of God, but the ceremonies and the rites. Those things were being done away with because he was going to fulfill them.
There would never be again a need to bring a bull to the house of God and slaughter it and present its blood for propitiation of sins because he is the lamb of God and he covers it all and it is a continuous flow. The old garment here, patched and worn out, is the Judaism. And so he's saying, I'm not here to patch this up.
I'm here to bring you a new garment. Hebrews chapter 8 verse 13. In that day he says, and Paul, let me pause there, if it is likely Paul writing this, I believe. So he says in this Hebrew letter, he's telling the Hebrews stop, stop it with the Judaism. You're Christians now. You're no longer to practice the laws of Moses with the ceremonies and rites. In fact, if you still bring these sacrifices to the temple, Christ is not benefiting you.
You're lost in your sins. So he's telling the Jews to stop being Jews. Ethnically they'll be Jews according to the flesh, but spiritually it's a new covenant. This is what Jeremiah said right out. So Hebrews 8 13. In that day he says a New Testament. He has made the first obsolete. That's the Old Testament.
Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. And that is that system of salvation. That's what the gospel, the gospel comes along as it's okay. God has fulfilled the types and the symbols and the prophecies have been fulfilled in Christ.
And they're not hard to find. He was fulfilling them even as they were listening to him speak now. Judaism wanted to preserve these things.
They had no problems with themselves incidentally because they conformed to themselves. They had become self-correcting because the scripture wasn't doing it anymore. Their ideas about what other rabbis said, that became their system and their standard of correction, not God's word. Because when God says in the Old Testament, I desire mercy, they didn't show any unless it was a family member.
Nepotism. Verse 22. We've got to finish this up. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins or else the new wine bursts the wineskins. The wine is spilled and the wineskins are ruined, but new wine must be put into new wineskins. There's another fundamental built within this before I get to the immediate point. If you change churches, which nobody here would ever have a reason to do. If you change churches, though, in all seriousness, you have to be flexible. Not with the essential truths, but with how the church has their policies.
You know, maybe they have pink carp. Well, no, that's a bit much. That's not forgivable. But maybe, you know, they have communion on the last day of the month and you want to go there and say, how come you don't do it like my other church? Well, we're not the other church. That's why.
It's okay. Lighten up a little bit. Be a new wineskin.
Be flexible with things that you can be flexible with. Here, he's making a clear declaration that the old dispensation is now being replaced with the new. The wine, the Holy Spirit. The wineskin represents the believer. You can't pour the Holy Spirit into the old nature or else it's going to destroy it. You have to be a new creation. We all know that verse in 2 Corinthians because we love it so much. If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things have passed away.
All things become new. And that's part of the lesson. It is a rookie mistake here to not be flexible as Christians in the minor things of life as rookie because it is posted early in the synoptic gospels. Verse 23, now it happened that he went through the grain fields on the Sabbath and as they went, his disciples began to pluck the heads of grain.
Verse 24, and the Pharisees said to him, look, why do they do what is not lawful on the Sabbath? They found a reason to peck at any passerby. That's how they were. Again, they were never loving. They were nasty customers almost all the time. And here it is, they see the men walking through the grain field on a Sabbath day, a Saturday, and they take a handful of the grain and they rub it together and they blow off the husk and they chew it.
It's delicious. They had a problem with this because in their heads this was work. Well, I mean, there's more work involved in putting your clothes on in the morning than doing what these men were doing. No, it doesn't stop there.
I'll get more into that in a moment. Verse 25, and he said to them, have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those with him? This irritated Christ.
It irritated him because they felt a man could be sick through the Sabbath if there was a means to heal him on the Sabbath, he had to wait until the next day. No matter how much, imagine having an abscessed tooth with these guys around. He's like, no, you're going to have to wait. No, I'm not going to wait. I'm going what we call postal.
Okay, sorry to our postal workers. All right, well, here again, trivia had got hold of them, not truth. He wasn't going to tolerate it. If they were going to try to interrogate them, he's going to stand up to them and they thought he was supposed to submit. These men were breaking no rule of the Sabbath from God. They were breaking the rules of the rabbis. Verse 26, how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar, the high priest, and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priest, and also gave some to those who were with him.
So he cites precedence here, and essentially, since we're running low on time, he's saying this, when humans have a need, there are lesser laws that must yield to higher laws of the scripture. As a matter of fact, the priests worked on the Sabbath. They doubled their offerings on the Sabbath. When we went through Leviticus, remember all the work the priests had to do in slaying the animal, presenting the parts, I mean, hauling the water, bringing the wood, getting the fire stoked.
There's a lot of work that was involved in bringing a blood sacrifice. They wore those hats because they were out in the sun all day. There was no shade at the temple in Moses' day, or Solomon's.
You were out there working in the sun. And so they were just, but they excused that kind of stuff. In fact, the scripture even suggests that they baked the bread, the showbread, on the Sabbath day.
But it wasn't convenient for them to remember these things. So Christ says, I'm going to give you some precedence. David was in need. He was hungry.
These men, they're hungry. David did not break the law. They did not give him the fresh bread, they gave him the old bread that was for, he broke it in a lesser sense, that was for the priests to eat, but the priests gave it to David.
We'll be getting this in Samuel soon. That priest, Himelech, actually the father, he was between a rock and a hard place when David showed up, and it cost him his life. But anyway, back to this, verse 27, and he said to them, the Sabbath was made for the man, the man not for the Sabbath.
It is a sort of a parting shot. He said, oh, by the way, by the way, the Sabbath was made for the man. What did they say when they heard that? Now there are some scholars that challenge that. Well, it's not in the original manuscripts.
I don't agree with them, but it's right either way you look at it. The Sabbath was not made for the sake of the Sabbath. It was made for God's people and to keep them centered with the Lord. And so here he is again confronting their babble with the Bible, ignoring their supposed authorities. Verse 28, therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.
That's a pretty big saying. He's saying, I rule the Sabbath and everything else. Why didn't they protest that? What if one of the Pharisees said, I'm Lord of the Sabbath? He would not have been a Pharisee anymore. He would have been dead. Why did they not come after Christ? They were afraid of him. You couldn't just throw those miracles. They would get so used to the miracles, eventually they'd get the Romans to do it.
I mean, when they came to arrest him, they brought a small army with them. Of course, he saw them come and he could see the lights as they descended from Jerusalem to their Gethsemane where he was. Anyway, this Sabbath day, we're close with this.
It's an important point. He's Lord of the Sabbath and he was intending at this point to abolish the Sabbath. The Sabbath was always on the seventh day, the last day of the week. That's how the Jewish week ended. We now begin with the first day of the week as our day of worship. Calvary, of course, is brought to us the resurrection of Christ which happened on a Sunday. And because of the resurrection of Christ, well, the day of Pentecost fell on a Sunday and then the giving of the Holy Spirit, the church met, the early church to this day, the church meets on the first day of the week. And we are, our rest is in a person and not in a day. Christ has replaced us. Hebrews chapter 4 gets into that.
So just a quick review. They complained why he ate with sinners. He wasn't separated enough for them. They complained why he didn't fast. They challenged his devotion and they complained that he ate on the Sabbath day. They challenged his obedience. Problem was all of those challenges were set in their rules and not in God's word.
And this is just, the confrontation just getting warmed up. This confrontation is going to last into the days of the apostles. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-12-04 02:05:15 / 2023-12-04 02:15:11 / 10