Criticized for Joy

I have your Bibles with you today.

Would you turn with me to Mark chapter 2, and we're going to be looking at verses 18 through 22. As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of untrunk 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. 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. Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, I pray for our world this morning. Russia has declared war on Ukraine.

They are needlessly killing men, women, and children in order that they might increase power in the world. Lord, may you protect the people of Ukraine. There is a church there of people who love Jesus. Hear their prayers, Lord, and bring this wickedness to a stop. There's a time when our nation was a bright shining light to this world. Many in our nation were in love with Christ and were being salt and light.

That number is dwindled. But I pray that you will hear the prayer of the remnant to convict our nation of corruption that you'd once again bring revival to America. Lord, have mercy on Ukraine, and especially protect your people. Father, I pray for our sick this morning. I pray for Scott and Oksana Starcher. I pray for Nancy Lindley. I pray for Tim and Donna Lang, Jason and Beth Crossman. I pray for Doug Colwell. I pray for Cynthia Phillips, Nicole Lohse, and so many others. Father, help me this morning to preach your truth, make it live in our hearts, and may Jesus be exalted. For it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. When Oliver Cromwell ruled over England, there was a crisis that popped up in the nation. The nation had run out of silver.

They didn't have the precious metal that they needed to make coins. So Cromwell decided to send his army out, and he sent them out to the cathedral. He said, go and see if you can find any silver there. They came back with a report, and they said the only silver we can find is the silver statues of the saints.

Cromwell said, that's great. Go and melt down the saints and put them back into circulation. Folks, that's where God wants us. That's where he wants the church. He wants us in circulation. He wants us out there meeting people, sharing our faith. He wants us evangelizing and being the salt and the light. That's a huge message to the church. You know, the Lord hates, just absolutely despises, spiritual elitism. This idea that because I have an ecclesiastical title, or because I have gained a little bit of theological knowledge, because I've been very involved in church activities, that somehow that makes me better or more spiritual than others.

It does not. You remember the last sermon that I preached on Mark a few weeks back now. That last sermon was about God's call to Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. Jesus went to him and said to Matthew, follow me.

Matthew left everything. He turned away from a prestigious job. He turned away from a boatload of money. He gave up all of his earthly security. He went and he followed Jesus with no reservation and no turning back. That very same day, he decided to throw a party and he threw a big festival, a feast for Jesus and for all his friends. Who were his friends?

His friends were tax collectors, prostitutes, thugs, and criminals. Jesus sat down, he ate with them, and then they began to talk. Jesus talked to them about their souls. He talked to them about God in ways that they had never heard about God before. All of a sudden, these friends of Matthew's got excited about God. They got excited about the possibility of a relationship with Christ. The Pharisees decided to spy on Jesus. They went down to the house of Matthew.

They peered into the window. They saw Jesus and what he was doing. He was eating with them. Not only that, he was encouraging them and giving them hope. That enraged the Pharisees. They did not like it.

So they waited until most of the friends had left. Then they went right to the disciples. They got in their faces and they said, Why does your master, Jesus, eat with tax collectors and sinners? Jesus overheard this, so Jesus addressed the question himself.

This is what he said. He said to them, Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous but sinners. Now Jesus is not saying that the Pharisees have no need of him. He is not saying that only the blatant obvious sinners are the ones that really need Christ. No, he's saying that these Pharisees were so spiritually blind that they just didn't realize their need for Christ.

Folks, what are we saying here? Are we saying that Jesus is refuting the Old Testament? Or are we saying that the gospel is diametrically opposed to Old Testament covenant theology?

Absolutely not! True Old Testament covenant theology points us to the Messiah. And it points us to the Messiah, and who is he?

It is Jesus Christ himself. Folks, the spiritually elitist Pharisees are not examples of true Old Testament followers. They represent a religion of man-made tradition. Let me tell you something, that religion was just as damning as Baalism, or Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism. But because they used Old Testament theological language, it just sounded good.

You know what that's like? Oh yeah, they're saying the right words, so that means their heart's in the right condition. Not necessarily. What they said and what they did was two different things. There was conformity to tradition, but there was no change in the heart. I tell you what really irked these Pharisees was this dilemma. If Jesus was right, that meant they were wrong.

And that's true then, it's still true today. Folks, the absolute exclusivity of the gospel runs completely contrary to the pluralistic mindset of contemporary religion. Our world doesn't hate religion. Let me tell you what our world hates. It hates Christianity.

You see, religious diversity, and ecumenism, and relativism are celebrated by our world. They like that. It's Christianity they hate. And why do they hate it?

Because of its exclusivity. Listen carefully, there is one God, there is one Word of God, and there is one way of salvation. Now, many don't want to hear this today, but the Orthodox Jew does not have a ticket to heaven.

Oh, that surprises a lot of us, but I want you to know it is truth. Folks, if a person rejects Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, then his destination is a Christless eternity in hell. And it doesn't matter if he's memorized the psalms.

It doesn't matter if he's been faithful to be at the synagogue every Sabbath for a hundred years. That doesn't matter if he said to God, I don't need a substitutionary atonement. I don't need a Savior. I don't need Christ.

Then he is lost forever. John chapter 14, verse 6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. And in Acts chapter 4, verse 12, it was Peter who said, there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved but the name of Jesus. Folks, when Jesus said to the Pharisees, the sick are the ones who need a physician, he was trying to get the Pharisees to see is that they were the sick. So this encounter between Jesus and the religious leaders gets heated. Now it's interesting that all the synoptic gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all of them record this encounter between the Pharisees and Jesus.

Every single one of them record that encounter. What does that mean? It means that this matters. It means that this is of great importance. The Holy Spirit of God is determined to force us to see the difference between external religion and inward change of the heart through the power of the gospel. Got three points I want to share with you this morning.

Number one is a critical accusation. Look with me at verse 18. Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. People came and said to him, why did John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast but your disciples do not? Now in Matthew's gospel, we're told that not only were the Pharisees asking this question to Jesus about them not fasting but there were some disciples of John the Baptist that were asking the question too. Why is it that the Pharisees fast, the disciples of John the Baptist fast, but Jesus, you and your disciples don't fast?

Let me say something about fasting. In the Old Testament, there was only one day of the year where fasting was mandatory and that was on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. It was the day that the high priest went out and he killed a goat. He took the blood of the goat, he put it into a basin. He took the basin of blood and a branch of hyssop. He went into the tabernacle. He went through the first room called the Holy Place. He went to the veil of the temple. He went back behind the veil into the second room called the Holy of Holies. There was the Ark of the Covenant. On the top of the Ark of the Covenant was a lid called the Mercy Seat. He went over to the Ark of the Covenant.

He took the branch of hyssop. He dipped it down into the basin of blood. He sprinkled it on the Mercy Seat. And when he did, the Shekinah glory of God came and hovered between the wings of the cherubim. And what that did was that it assured the priest and it assured the people of Israel that for that year, God had covered over their sin. And God said, on that day, everybody fast.

Everybody fast on that day. He said, because I don't want you thinking about anything else but that sacrifice. Everybody fast this day because that sacrifice is a picture of what? It is a picture of Jesus dying on the cross.

Tremendously important. And there were times, in the Old Covenant times, where sin had been committed and the sinner that had committed the sin needed to fast. And he realized he did. And so he fasted as a way of saying to God, I repent. I am sorry. I am asking your forgiveness.

I am broken over what I have done. Lord, honor my fast and please forgive me of my sin. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. That's a beautiful thing. That's something that we do today, isn't it?

So don't think there's anything wrong with that. But the Pharisees fasted for another reason. They fasted for show. They fasted twice a week, every Tuesday and every Thursday. They were parading their piety. That doesn't really surprise us, does it? That sounds like the Pharisees.

That's what they did. But there was another group who also fasted a lot. And that was some of the disciples of John the Baptist. John the Baptist is in prison at this time, but John the Baptist is one who always showed great respect to Jesus. He never questioned Jesus. He never denied Jesus. He looked at what Jesus was doing and he always went along with it because he believed that Jesus was God. He believed that Jesus was the Son of God. He is the one who said, I must decrease that Jesus might increase.

He is the one who pointed up the hill to Jesus and said, behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. So there were many of these people who were following John the Baptist. They were his disciples. And John the Baptist was an ascetic, which means that he fasted a lot. And so they took his example and they fasted a lot right along with him.

They did that. And many of these disciples of John actually got frustrated and got jealous when the popularity of Jesus began to grow because they felt like John was now being mistreated. In John chapter 3 verse 26, the scripture says this, And they came to John and said to him, Rabbi, he was with you across the Jordan to whom you bore witness. Look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.

I think there's something else that's interesting. John pointed everybody to Jesus as the Son of God. And yet there were so many of his disciples that when Jesus died and was resurrected, they just didn't get it. They didn't understand that Jesus' death was a substitutionary atonement, that he was dying to redeem his people, that he was dying to pay a ransom for their sin, that he was dying so that he could forgive their sin and impute to them his righteousness.

They just didn't get that. And then way over in the book of Acts, chapter 19 verses 1 through 5 says the following. And remember, this took place way, many years after Pentecost.

It says this, And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. And he said to them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?

They said, No. We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. He said, And to what end were you baptized? He said, Into John's baptism. Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who came after him, that is Jesus. On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. You see, they just did not get what Christ had done on the cross. So the Pharisees were fasting often, the disciples of John the Baptist were fasting often, but Jesus and his disciples at this point weren't fasting at all.

And so they said, We must be much more spiritual than you. Last month, I did a funeral service for a lady named Faye Evans. Faye was the organist at Olive Grove Baptist Church in Creedmoor, North Carolina, and she was the organist when I went there. She had, when I pastored there, but she had been an organist for a long time.

I'll share with you in a minute how long. But she had requested that I preach her funeral service, and I was very honored to do so. Back in 1970, ten years before I went into the ministry, Scott Harkey, who was the chairman of Deacons at Olive Grove Baptist, bought an organ for the church, and he bought it, brought it in, had it placed in the church, still there today, and started asking around, Who can play the organ?

Nobody in the church could. And so there was a man that stood up and went over to Faye, who was 18 years old at the time, and said, Faye, I will pay for organ lessons for you if you will be the church organist. She agreed, and she was the church organist for 50 years. Olive Grove was the first church I pastored. I was in my late 20s, and let me tell you, I made a bunch of mistakes in that church.

I remember the first wedding that I officiated at that church. I looked down at the bride, and we were getting ready to go through the vows. I said, Now repeat after me, I Bob. And she looked at me, and she said, No, I'm not Bob, I Sarah. Boy, I felt like a dummy. There was another time, one of the first Lord's suppers that I was ministering, I all of a sudden started giving out the grape juice before I gave out the bread. And I thought, Oh my goodness, I could have just gone through the floor.

I felt like such a dummy. After the service, I was just beating myself up over it and Faye came up to me, she put her arm around my shoulder, and she said, Doug, do you think Jesus is really concerned about whether or not you got the order right? She said, Let me tell you what he's concerned about. He's concerned about your heart. That's what matters, your heart.

And I can remember just feeling uplifted with her encouragement. I can remember how it just hit me that I needed to remember that it's not the external activities that bring me close to Christ. It is the motivation of my heart and the question that I need to ask myself and the question you need to ask yourself today is this. Do you love Jesus?

That's the question. Do you love Jesus enough to obey him? Do you love Jesus enough to trust him?

Do you love Jesus enough to die for him? Cindy read an article to me Friday. It was an article that was written by two missionaries, a missionary couple that's over in the Ukraine. And they were asked, Are you going back to the United States, where you're from? Or are you going back now so that you can protect yourself?

It's too dangerous over here. And they said, No, no, we're staying here because our church has never needed us this much. And if we die over here, then that's okay because if we die, we're going to be with Jesus. Brothers and sisters, ask yourself that question today. It's more important than if you were baptized. It's more important as if you're a faithful member in attendance.

It's this. Do you love Jesus? I think the question that the Pharisees and the disciples of John ask about fasting was not so much a question about fasting as it was a question about joy. They were criticizing the joy that Jesus and His disciples had.

Kent Hughes had a great statement on this. He said the following. Irma Baumbach tells, she was sitting in church one Sunday when a small child turned around and began to smile at the people behind her. She was just smiling, not making a sound. When her mother noticed, she said in a stage whisper, stop that grinning, you're in church, and gave her a swat and said, that's better. Irma concluded that some people come to church looking like they had just read the will of their rich aunt and learned that she had given everything to her pet hamster. I once knew a man who believed that Christians should be solemn. He was a young believer, full of zeal, but without the ability to keep things in perspective.

So he would go off on self-righteous tants. On one particular occasion, he concluded that never once in the scripture does it say that Jesus smiled or laughed. Therefore, good Christians do not smile.

Never mind the arguments from silence are patently dangerous. Never mind the repeated smiling wit of Christ. Good Christians do not smile. I can still see him sitting with his wife and a few like-minded friends through church, righteous but sober, holy but unsmiling, absolutely absurd. Some of us have met clergy like this, formal speaking in sepulchre tones with their neck ties twisted around their souls. The Pharisees were like this too. They actually whitened their faces, put ashes on their heads, wore their clothes in shoddy disarray, refused to wash, and looked as forlorn as possible. You could not be spiritual unless you were uncomfortable.

They thought spirituality makes you do things you do not want to do and keeps you from doing the things you want to do. Takes us to point two, and point two is Christ's answer. Look at verse 19 through 20. 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 they will fast in that day. The Pharisees had asked a very scathing question and they were expecting an apology from Jesus. Boy, they did not get an apology.

What they got was an answer that hit them right between the eyes. Jesus starts talking about a wedding. He said, In a wedding, you've got the groom, you've got the bride, you've got the best man, you've got the maid of honor.

He said, That's not the time to fast. Now, we call a wedding situation the day. We call that the wedding day, don't we? Because you go to the wedding and the celebration starts, the service itself, and it might last 20 to 30 minutes, and then they take pictures and everybody goes to the reception.

It usually lasts two to three hours. And then after that's over, the couple goes out, they get in their car, they head off for the honeymoon destination. Everybody else kind of looks at each other and says, Well, we better clean up and leave. That's a wedding day. Well, in Jesus' time, it wasn't a wedding day, it was a wedding week. And when they had a wedding week, it was one huge meal after another, after another, after another. Let me tell you something, it was not a time to fast. There was no time to fast. To fast at a wedding would be inappropriate, and it would actually be an insult. In fact, they finally put in a rabbinic tradition that said you cannot fast during the wedding week. Now, the disciples of John and the cocky Pharisees, they looked at each other and said, We asked Jesus a question about fasting, and all of a sudden he starts talking about a wedding. Where's the wedding? What's he talking about here?

R.C. Sproul said it well. The Old Testament never refers to the Messiah as the bridegroom. The bridegroom in the Old Testament is God, and the bride is Israel. But in the New Testament, the bridegroom is the Son of God, and the bride is his church. Given the Old Testament context of the metaphor, it is clear Jesus was claiming even more than messiahship when he referred to himself as the bridegroom.

So Jesus uses this question on fasting to force these people to see who he really is, and he was saying to them, Listen, I'm not just a teacher. I'm not just a healer. I'm not just the messiah. I am God. I am the Son of God. I am the second person of the Trinity. I am the bridegroom.

I am God. Jesus doesn't stop there. He also points them to the cross. He says this, The day will come when the bridegroom will be taken away, then will be the time of fasting. The Greek word for taken away is a Greek word aparo, and it means a violent, sudden removal.

It's very interesting. There's a prophecy of this over in Isaiah 53, verse 8, and if you read that in the Septuagint, which is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, you'll see that same word that Jesus uses in Mark chapter 2, verse 20. It's that Greek word aparo, taken away, a violent, sudden removal. It says this, By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and as for his generation who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken with the transgression of his people. Jesus was without a doubt there referring to his crucifixion. Let me ask you something. Anybody grieve at his crucifixion?

Man, goodness. All the people that knew Jesus and loved Jesus were just absolutely overcome with sorrow and with grief. For it looked to them like Satan must have apparently won the day. For all these people who hated Jesus have gotten exactly what they wanted.

They have taken him and they've nailed him to a cross. I love what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 8. He said, If the princes of this world had known what they were doing, they would never have crucified the Son of Glory. But what happened three days later? Three days after that crucifixion, there was a resurrection. Jesus came out of that tomb, and when Jesus walked out of that tomb, alive, perfectly well in his new, glorified, resurrected body, it proved that everything that he had said and everything that he did was absolute truth. And the demon shuddered. And the people who nailed him to a cross shuddered.

But the people who loved him rejoiced. After Jesus' ascension into heaven, his disciples did fast. They didn't do it for show, but only as a voluntary act of humble, humble dependence on God. Folks, fasting for the Pharisees was nothing but a show.

John MacArthur said some great stuff here, and I want to take just a second to share this with you. He said Jesus' point to the questions was simply this. Judaism, at its most devout level, as exemplified by the scribes and Pharisees, was completely out of touch with God's plan of salvation. They were mourning when they should have been rejoicing because they had rejected Jesus the Savior and clung to their own rules and regulations to earn salvation.

Consequently, they had nothing in common with him. They were consumed with self-righteousness. He preached divine grace.

They denied they were sinners. He preached repentance from sin. They were proud of their religiosity. He preached humility. They embraced external ceremony and tradition. He preached a transformed heart. They loved the applause of men. He offered the approval of God. They had dead ritual. He offered a dynamic relationship.

They promoted a system. He provided salvation. All right, that takes us to point three, the terrifying analogies, verse 41 through 22. Jesus said, No one sews a piece of untrunk 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. So Jesus makes his point by sharing two parables or two analogies that have the same purpose or the same meaning.

He is sharing with us here the uniqueness of the gospel, and he is telling us that you cannot mix the gospel with legalistic Judaism. Jesus said this, No one sews a patch of untrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, and a worse tear results. So if you've got an old garment, not only is it faded, but it's been washed over and over again, and it's shrunk, and when it shrinks, it loses its elasticity and flexibility. So if there's a tear in that garment, and you place a piece of fresh new cloth on it and sew it up in it, then when you wash it, that new piece of cloth shrinks up, and it causes a bigger tear in the old cloth than you had to begin with. Folks, apostate Judaism's rituals were burdensome, and they were unnecessary, and they were like filthy rags.

They were beyond repair. So what does Jesus do? Jesus goes right back to the Word of God. And what is the Word of God implying here? What is Jesus implying by going back to the Old Testament? He goes back in His mind, I believe, to the truth from Isaiah chapter 64, verse 6, that says this. But we are all like an unclean thing, and all of our righteousness are like filthy rags.

We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. Notice here, He does not say all of our intentional sins are like filthy rags. He said our attempts at being good, our attempts at pleasing God are like filthy rags. You know what the word filthy rags means in the Hebrew? It means menstrual cloths. That's what it means. Those filthy rags cannot be patched up and made cleaner.

They have to be thrown away, and they have to be replaced. Jesus did not come with a message to patch up the old legalistic system. He did not come for that purpose.

He came to replace it. Now, when I talk about the old legalistic system, I'm not talking about the Mosaic law. I'm not talking about the true Old Testament. Jesus did not come to replace it. He came to fulfill the Mosaic law and the Old Testament truths.

He came to fulfill that, and He did, and He did. Folks, the old garment is the man-made rabbinic tradition. It is all the rules and the regulations that blurred out the truth of the gospel. The good news of salvation by grace is the new cloth.

Jesus said it cannot be combined with the work's righteousness of Judaism. Then He used another illustration. He used the illustration of the wine in old wine skins. The wine skins they used were really goat skin, and they take a fresh goat skin, they cut it up, and then they would sew it together and make a wine bottle out of it. Then they take the grape juice, they pour it into that wine bottle. After a few days, the grape juice would begin to ferment, and then gas would be produced, and it would begin to expand. If it was a new wine skin, it would expand right along with it. No wine would be lost.

If it was an old wine skin, it had no elasticity, and it would just burst, and all that wine would be lost. Folks, different illustration, but the very same meaning. The gospel of grace and Judaism legalism do not mix. You go over to the Sermon on the Mount, and this is one of the primary teachings of Jesus. He is telling us in the Sermon on the Mount, He is saying this to us.

Don't go and follow man-made traditions. Go back to the true Word of God. Go back and study through the Sermon on the Mount. What does Jesus say over and over and over again? He said, you've heard it said by them of old, but I say unto you.

You've heard it said by them of old, but I say unto you. He's letting us know, letting us know, you cannot merit salvation. We are saved by grace through faith plus nothing. So who does that give hope to?

That gives hope to every single one of us. That gives hope to the very vilest of sinners. Once again, we are dealing with the exclusivity of the gospel. The difference between true Christianity and every other religion is simply this.

Every other religion is built on the foundation of what we do for God, but Christianity is built on the foundation of what God has done for us in the work of Jesus on the cross. True Christianity or a true Christian says this, I am a hopeless, helpless, condemned sinner. I am not trusting in my goodness.

I am trusting in the work of Jesus on the cross of Calvary and the power of his resurrection. If anything is added to that, folks, it ceases to be the true gospel. This is why the friends of Matthew were so happy, because they weren't trusting in their righteousness. They weren't trusting in what they could do for God.

They were trusting in what Jesus was going to do for them. The world criticized the joy of the followers of Christ. The world criticizes our joy today. You know what I've got to say about that? I've got to say this.

Take the whole world and give me Jesus. Amen? Amen.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, today we saw a group of people who actually criticized the joy of true people of God. The believer's true joy flew right in the face of the sadness and the solemnity of the religious charlatans. Please help us to see that it's all about Jesus. May we humble ourselves, acknowledge our sin, rejoice in the crucifixion and resurrection, and run to Christ in repentance and faith. May we be serious but joyful, convicted and passionate. May we spend the rest of our days making much of Jesus. For it's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.