Acting All Spiritual Without Being Spiritual At All

The Pharisees were beginning to get a little irritated with the fact that Jesus wasn't acting spiritual. He wasn't fitting their profile of piety.

He wasn't playing by their rules. In fact, he's beginning to expose the fact that their spiritual resumes are deceptive, not real. They're adding things to make themselves appear more impressive. You see, they have mastered the art of acting all spiritual without being spiritual at all. How do you view Jesus? Is he like a crutch, a way to supplement and aid you as just a part of your religious experience? Or is he truly the transforming, all-consuming savior that he claims to be? Jesus is the only way to heaven, but there are people who want just bits and pieces of Jesus' teaching, just enough to act spiritual. Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart. Stay with us today as Stephen Davey explores one of Jesus' many earthly encounters with the Pharisees. The truth he offered brings true freedom to all who believe and will encourage you today.

This message is called Acting All Spiritual Without Being Spiritual at All. By the time Jesus entered the scene in the first century, Judaism had become a race to enhance your religious resume. The Pharisees seemed to be winning the race.

It was one world record after another. Well, how long are your prayers? Well, mine are longer. Well, how long is your list of rules?

I got a longer one than you. To the Pharisee, godliness was related to joylessness. You couldn't possibly be happy and holy at the same time. I mean, one of them had to go.

You couldn't be both. Then Jesus comes along. He begins his ministry at a party, a wedding feast, and then creatively supplies what they need and why to keep it going because they had run out.

The average person on the street loved being around them. Even children flocked to them, weren't intimidated by them, were afraid of them. The Pharisees were beginning to get a little irritated with the fact that Jesus wasn't acting spiritual. He wasn't fitting their profile of piety.

He wasn't playing by their rules. In fact, he's beginning to expose the fact that their spiritual resumes are deceptive, not real. They're adding things to make themselves appear more impressive. You see, they had mastered the art of acting all spiritual without being spiritual at all. It's the same act you can play and I can play.

We can be good at it. And because it's a danger and a temptation for us all, let's not just point at the Pharisees. Let's ask God to do a work in our own hearts today.

What does it look like to act all spiritual even when you're not spiritual at all? Well, that's the theme of what happens next. We're going through the Gospel by Luke slowly. We're now in chapter 5 at verse 33. So turn there if you have a copy of the text.

Here's what happens next. They said to him, the disciples of John fast often and offer prayers and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink. Now, keep in mind the disciples of John, the prophet, the baptizer, are sincere. In fact, Old Testament fasting accompanied repentance. And this is the theme of John's preaching, repentance.

And so it was very fitting. It's combined with confession and repentance. Fasting, by the way, is never commanded for the church in any New Testament verse. We see the early church fasting, but not in confession and repentance, but for wisdom and direction. In other words, keep this in mind, fasting took place because they were focused on praying and didn't want to stop to eat. It wasn't some mystical, magical way of self-punishment or self-deprivation or self-discipline, and now we're going to really get God's attention. He's going to pay attention. Now we're skipping lunch. Not at all. For the Pharisees and their disciples, they were just masters at putting on this show.

Let me give you a little background. According to Leviticus 16, which is the only single command in the Old Testament for the nation to fast, it was always related to the Day of Atonement, once a year. But by the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had decided that truly godly people, really spiritual people, didn't fast once a year, but twice a week. Top that one.

Twice a week. And it was always related to gloomy remorse. See, they considered it a sacrifice of their bodies to God.

And you're in trouble when you start thinking like that in those terms. This is a way to get God's attention because I've given up something. It wasn't just a way to get God's attention. It was a way to get everybody else's attention, too. Because the two days they decreed for fasting were Mondays and Thursdays, and Mondays and Thursdays happened to be market days in Israel. So we're going to get the most people possible to see us skipping our meals. Many of them would rub ashes on their cheeks, whitening their faces to make themselves look gaunt, as if they had actually been fasting for days.

You didn't know. They would refuse to wash. They would wear disheveled clothing as if they'd stayed in it for days because they were fasting. And people in the marketplace would go, ooh, and ah, and they'd be given the impression, man, these are the spiritual guys. Trouble is, they're given the impression as well that true spirituality had to be solemn. It had to be serious, if not joyless.

We have our parallels today, don't we? One author wrote on this text one Sunday morning they were sitting in church behind a young family with a little girl. At one point the little girl in front of them turned around and began smiling at all the people behind her. When her mother noticed, she grabbed her arm and said in a loud whisper, stop that smiling. We're in church. Gave her a little swat.

That's better. I'm not suggesting that you let your kids make a racket in church. My mother could reach across four boys lined up on that pew and just by snapping her finger, that was the voice of God.

And judgment was coming. I grew up in a church. If you're my age or older or whatever, it's the way it was. Mine was formal with a touch of starch.

I'm kind of that way, I guess. The pastor spoke without ever getting too excited. Tone really never changed all that much.

He prayed and sincere man of the Lord read scripture. It always sounded kind of like a eulogy. It's the way it was. I'll never forget that moment.

I was a junior in college and had a part-time job in the evenings mopping the floor of a florist shop, large florist shop there in town. When I got there, it would be empty. Nobody's there. It'd be locked. I'd open up. But the radio was always going and they had it tuned to what we would call today elevator music. So I realized one night, a couple nights into this job, I could go over there. So I went over there and I began turning the knob of the radio.

That's when radios had knobs that you could turn. And I came across a guy who was preaching. He was compelling. And I found myself listening.

And then he did something in his sermon that I'd never heard a pastor ever do in the pulpit. He laughed. He laughed. I stopped. I couldn't believe it. Who is this guy?

Laughing. Hey, you've got to remember, I was in college. That was 15, 20 years ago. It was different.

But I made sure from then on I showed up at that flower shop every night in time to turn on that program and listen to what I later learned was a program called Insight for Living with Chuck Swindoll. And I think the Lord's teaching had we heard him would be like that. Sprinkled with wit. He often handled his detractors with sarcastic humor. There are times I can imagine Peter doubled over with laughter at what Jesus had just said.

Yes, he was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, Isaiah 53.5. But he was also filled with joy. And he prayed to the Father in that great high priestly prayer, Lord, Father, the Lord prayed, would you fill them with the joy I have? Let it brim over. Let it spill out. I think joy is a close companion with laughter.

That's many times how it spills out. Listen, from our study thus far in this gospel, I think it would be safe to say that the one thing you would never expect to hear from a Pharisee is laughter. And that happens to be, by the way, a large part of Jesus's answer to them. Would you notice in verse 33, they've said, you know, why don't your disciples fast like ours?

You know, why are they not gloomy like we are? Well, Mondays and Thursdays is how you suppose that. Wipe that smile off your face. That's how I interpret it.

Notice his response. Verse 34. Jesus said to them, can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?

In other words, how do you stop smiling? Jesus is saying to these Pharisees, your disciples are in a funeral march minor at a wedding feast. Yes, there's going to be three days of mourning and sorrow and fasting because there is a funeral coming. The Lord goes on to essentially prophesy. Look at verse 35.

The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from you and you will fast in those days. This isn't a reference to the church age, the last 2000 years following Christ's ascension back to heaven because we know that when Jesus rose again from the dead, the celebration began all over again and it hasn't stopped. Yes, we have days of sorrow and suffering, but we're not waiting to get to heaven to smile.

In fact, you read the letters to the New Testament. Joyful thanksgiving becomes the undergirding attitude of the believer now, Colossians 3.17. Joyful singing, which we experience, becomes the practice of the church in every generation since, from going back to then until now, Ephesians 5.19. Joyful responses alert the world. Something's different about you guys.

Well, what's going on over there? How can you be smiling, happy? You might not be acting spiritual. Paul writes to the Thessalonians that even during great affliction you have this remarkable disposition of joy.

1 Thessalonians 1.6. Why? Why? Because the bridegroom is with us. That's why. He will never leave us nor forsake us.

Hebrews 13.5. How does a bride feel on her wedding day? I don't know.

I've never been one, but how do you think they feel? A little nervous? Probably? Maybe? Does she have all the answers about the next day and beyond?

No. But all of that is eclipsed by the joy of seeing her groomsmen, the one to whom she has given her heart, the one who is about to watch her walk down that aisle. He is our groom. We are his bride. Jesus ties the joy of the disciples to the joy of a wedding.

Now, let me back up for just a moment. In the days of Jesus, couples did not have the ceremony and then whisk away for a honeymoon. They stayed at the father's home.

Why? Because that's where the grooms built onto his dad's house. He's brought her there. They're going to live there on the family compound. After the ceremony, the feasting begins there at the father's house. Sometimes it lasts a week, sometimes more, depending on the wealth of the father.

How wealthy is our father? How long will our celebration last? Forever.

Forever. The bride and groom would dress traditionally as a king and a queen. They would borrow clothing, find clothing from friends and relatives and jewels as well.

They would be given makeshift crowns to wear during that season of festivities as if they had been coronated to royalty. All this is a picture of our future as his bride. The Lord is going to descend at any moment, take us away. Where?

To the father's house. He's been building on. It's already ready, John 14. We're going to be robed as royalty. We're going to be given crowns to wear, and they are not make-believe.

We really are being coronated into royalty, Revelation 20. All that, then, has a way of eclipsing whatever you might be going through today. This is how you give thanks, sometimes through tears.

This is how you sing, sometimes through tears. This is how you go through adversity with joy. You're on your way to the father's house and the marriage, supper of the lamb. Martin Luther, the reformer, once wrote, the Christians should be a cheerful person. If they aren't, the devil is tempting them.

Tempting them to what? To take their eyes off the bridegroom, who maybe even today is going to call us down the aisle, up and away to the father's house. Jesus is essentially saying here to the Pharisees, you know, your disciples are at a funeral, you're at a wedding, yours are fasting, mine are feasting.

It all depends on your groom. Now with that, the Lord's going to take them a little deeper into understanding why they're not happy with the fact that he's happy. Look at verse 36.

He also told them a parable. No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new and the piece from the new will not match the old. Now if I just cut right to the chase, what he's essentially saying is Jesus has not come to patch up Judaism. He's not going to add a little bit of new truth to an old way. The robe of Messiah's redemption isn't to be cut up and patched onto something that is old and on its way out. He has a new robe of righteousness which we wear.

John Phillips wrote it colorfully this way. He said, Jesus isn't going to darn some new religious idea into the threadbare system of a worn and fading Judaism. His teaching cannot be tacked on to rabbinical ramblings. His teaching is new and vital and refreshing. But I want you to know, beloved, that this is religion, isn't it, to this day?

A little patch of this and a little patch of that, and I've come up with a little patchwork. I think I'll take a little bit of Jesus and I'll add him in to my life. Now I know unbelievers who think they have a little bit of Jesus. We like his golden rule. We'll keep that. We like the fact that he's kind of a decent guy. We'll like that. We'll kind of overlook the fact that he thinks he's God in the flesh.

That's a little bit much. But we like the fact that he was a moral man. So I'm going to make him one of my options. I'm going to put him in my backpack just in case I need him. Jesus is not an option. He's the only way, the only truth, the only life.

Everything else fades. Along these same lines, the Lord delivers a second illustration. Look at verse 37. And no one puts new wine into old wine skins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins.

It will be spilled. The skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wine skins. I know this kind of is a little gross, but wine skins back then were made from goat skin, sheep skin.

The neck area would become the neck of the container. The skin would be scraped and cleaned and treated. But over time, the skin would age and become brittle. So you wouldn't put new wine into an old, brittle wine skin. Because that new wine, as it ferments, yeast transforms sugar into alcohol and releases carbon dioxide. And new wine skins can stretch to contain that increased volume.

But an old wine skin is going to split apart, and you lose everything. Again, to cut to the chase, what Jesus is saying is that the gospel message of the new covenant is going to grow, is going to expand. It's going to take everything of the Old Testament that was prophesied, and it's going to be bigger, greater, grander than we can imagine.

David Bock writes it this way. Jesus is essentially revealing that his teaching is new. There's going to be a new period, what we call a new dispensation, an epic of time, a new approach to God, now without sacrifices and priests and temples and ceremonies. All of the old covenant was a shadow that is now fading as the sunrise of the new covenant is dawning. This is the message of Hebrews. It makes it very clear, spells it out in chapter 8.

Listen to this. In speaking of a new covenant, he, Jesus, makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. What does that mean to you today? That means you don't need a priest to enter into the presence of God. That means you don't need to wait until Saturday to confess your sins. You can confess, I mean, as soon as you honk at that guy, you can confess it because it was wrong and you shouldn't have done it.

I don't know why that comes to my mind, but you might try it. You don't have to sacrifice an animal to atone for your sin. You trust the final and complete and sufficient sacrifice of Christ once for all.

Your walk with God isn't restricted to diet or ceremony or circumcision. You are free in Christ. It is his work now. Now why in the world wouldn't his entire audience at this point say, I want that? I'm tired of acting.

I'm tired of keeping the rules I've made up. I want this freedom. Let me have a sip of that wine. I want to look at that garment.

I want the real thing. Jesus tells them now why. This is why they won't take it. In fact, what he does in verse 39 is he quotes a rather blunt proverb. He pulls it out of secular society and he quotes it.

Here it is. No one after drinking old wine desires new for he says the old is good enough. It is a characteristic of the human heart to resist anything new. What I've been doing is good enough for me. I don't want to try something new. I don't want to do something new. I will not eat green eggs and ham.

Not in a house, not with a mouse, not on a train, not in a tree. Let me be. That's good theology.

I just have to slip that in there. I found in my ministry it is rare for older people to accept Christ. It doesn't mean the grace of God is diminished.

It doesn't mean that the Spirit is less powerful. They are more likely to say, as many have said to me, this is the way I am. This is the way I've been. You're telling me my whole life's been wrong. Who do you think you are?

Let me be. People want to cling to their comfortable religious traditions. They have no interest in something new and fresh and vital and certainly something so radically life changing. This is Satan's strategy. The longer he binds, the longer he blinds the heart of an individual to their old ways, the tighter those chains draw around their heart enslaving them and will take them to hell.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, the God of this world is blinded, the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image, the very being, the embodiment of deity. Now you don't want that. Stay here in the dark.

It's comfortable. The light's going to blind your eyes. If you do anything, add something to your resume.

It will make you feel better, make you look better. Maybe turn over a new leaf. You don't want a new life. What Jesus says here, by the way, is our message to this day, the church's goal is not to make unbelievers comfortable with their patchwork system of religion. You know, let's just get them to try Jesus. Christianity is not a new leaf. It's a new life. Jesus is not a little patch to add to your clothing of self-righteousness.

Jesus is an entirely new wardrobe. I'll never forget a few years ago, having the rare experience of giving the gospel to a woman who'd come to see me with some questions. She'd been attending for a few months. She'd been a faithful Roman Catholic all of her life. She didn't miss confession, the mass, the services, the prayers, the festivals, the candles, you name it.

She did it. She had questions. I turned her attention to the scriptures where I showed her this new and living way, Christ, the sufficiency of his atonement, that a relationship with God through Christ is possible because Christ has done everything and now offers independently of any work we might do, lest any of us boast, because if we got in by any of our work, we would boast, look what I did. I'll never forget seeing tears begin running down her cheeks as the Spirit of God opened her eyes, big smile on her face, even though tears were coming down, and she repeated over and over again, I can't believe it's free. I can't believe it's free.

I can't believe it's free. And she prayed to receive the gift of forgiveness and everlasting life through her all-sufficient Lord. And at that moment was clothed with this garment of Christ's righteousness. We come broken and transparent and humble, discover this new wine, this new robe is being offered to us as a bride, absolutely free, because Jesus paid it all.

Thanks for joining us today. You've been listening to Wisdom for the Heart. This is the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey. Stephen is the pastor of the Shepherd's Church in Cary, North Carolina. You can learn more about us if you visit our website, which is wisdomonline.org. Once you go there, you'll be able to access the biblically faithful resources that we offer. The complete archive of Stephen's 35 years of Bible teaching ministry is posted to that site and can be accessed anytime free of charge. We also post each day's broadcast. There may be a day when you can't listen when we're on the air. And when that happens, you can go to our website to keep caught up with our daily Bible teaching ministry. Again, all of that is available at wisdomonline.org. Stephen has one more lesson in this current series and that's tomorrow, here on Wisdom for the Heart.