Are You Ready for the New?

The rejects of society, the outcasts, and now they have another criticism. It’s not that he’s eating with certain people, but now they’re saying, they’re criticizing the fact that he’s eating, the fact that he’s feasting, and he seems to be eating all the time, and they look at his practices, and they’re basically saying, “Jesus, it doesn’t seem like you and your disciples care about fasting.” Now at this time, it’s good to know, it was very common to be a fasting. If you’re a faithful Jewish person, you were fasting frequently, commonly. In fact, it was customary that they would fast twice a week.

It would be Mondays and Thursdays. If you were in the temple area, or you’re a Pharisee, or you’re a religiously devout person, it was just expected. You fast. That’s what you do, because you are pleading with God. Here we are in spiritual and political exile, and you need to fast and pray that God would bring his kingdom.

It was all about, and not only the Pharisees, but they mentioned even John the Baptist and his disciples, they would fast. This was what they did. So in essence, their question was, is Jesus just here to overturn all of our religious practices? Is that what Jesus is about? Did he just come to party it up with sinners, and have a good time, and drink wine, and eat the food, and party, is that what he’s doing?

And meanwhile, here we are, we’re the devout, we are the pious, we’re the religiously committed, God seriously, we’re fasting, why isn’t Jesus and his disciples fasting? And when you read Jesus’ response, it could be a little hard to understand at first, without the necessary background. Remember, Jesus was not your typical rabbi. Over and over, people recognize he doesn’t do things like everybody else does. He’s not your business as usual teacher.

And from the Pharisees perspective, Jesus didn’t seem to care enough about Jewish faith and Jewish heritage. So he responds in verse 34, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?” His statement might seem a little puzzling. A lot of what he says here at first reading can be puzzling. He talks about taking a patch to sew up clothing and putting wine into wineskins, but all that seems to be connected to this theme of a wedding.

And Jesus is not shying away from the fact that he is, in this sense, the bridegroom had a wedding. In your notes, Jesus is the faithful bridegroom who satisfies our deepest longings. Jesus is that faithful bridegroom who satisfies our deepest longings. Weddings have always been times of joy and celebration. It’s a time to, even if you’re just in a guest in attendance, you can see the, they talk about the glow of the bride and the groom is standing there just beaming out, right?

Everybody seems to be in a good mood. Good things are happening. And Jewish people especially knew how to celebrate weddings. And instead of going on a honeymoon, like we typically do here in our modern world, they would stay at home. The bride and groom would stay and they would have a week long of celebrating.

It would be just this time with friends and family. They would feast. They would dance. There would be music. It would be a time of celebration.

And everybody wanted to be in on that. One thing you didn’t do if you were a wedding guest is fast. You don’t show up at a wedding time of celebration and feasting and ignore what’s happening. It would be an insult to the groom and the bride. One rabbinical saying was that if you get invited to a wedding, you are relieved of all your religious observances during that time.

So normally you got a fast and you got to do these things. But you’re off the hook if you’re at a wedding. As the book of Ecclesiastes says, And a wedding was most definitely a time to dance and celebrate and feast. You don’t go to a wedding and sit in the corner with that solemn look on your face, not eating anything. You’re at a wedding, not a funeral.

Just imagine if someone came to your wedding dressed in all black and they come up and say, my condolences. That’s not a good look, right? And Jesus is saying, There is a wedding going on. You are invited to the party. That’s what the kingdom of God is all about.

It’s not a time of solemn, somber, sadness, gloomy faces. No, this is a time to rejoice because look, I, the bridegroom, am here. That’s what he’s saying. But there’s a deeper meaning to what Jesus means by that statement. See, throughout the Old Testament, which was the Bible for these Jewish people, the prophets spoke about God himself as the bridegroom.

And Israel was always the bride. And in places like Isaiah 54 and Hosea 2, there’s this picture of a woman who’s desolate. She’s barren. And sometimes it’s pictured as because she’s been abandoned or because her husband has died, but either way, she’s alone. And God himself comes and seeks out this lonely woman.

And really the whole Bible is one long love story. It begins with God creating a people to love. They’re the overflow of his heart that he makes these people to bear his image. But there’s a problem in paradise. The people reject him and God is angry.

But his anger lasts only for a moment. And immediately he begins to his body begins to set in motion this plan to redeem his people to purchase back this bride that has turned away and make her his own. The Bible both begins with a wedding in the garden, Adam and Eve. And it ends with a wedding in the new creation. And it’s this grand and glorious picture of how God’s covenantal love for his people overcomes all obstacles, all sin and suffering and death.

He overcomes all of it to make sure that in the end, heaven and earth be united and God will be with his people forever. Amen, right? That is our hope. And here Jesus is saying, I am the bridegroom. I am the one that Israel was looking for.

I am the one that your hearts have been yearning for. I am the fulfillment of all your expectations. And the great tragedy is that here are the Pharisees, the king himself, the bridegroom is right in their midst. They are focused on religious devotion. They are so focused on fasting that they don’t even see the one right in front of them.

They have missed him. Jesus is here speaking not just to the inadequacy of religion. He is speaking to this universal sense of disillusionment. This has been a problem for human beings. It is part of our condition ever since the fall at the beginning that we have this pervasive sense of disillusionment.

This dissatisfaction. This didn’t happen the way we hoped they would. There’s a song from 1969 by Peggy Lee called, “Is That All There Is?” In the song she describes various times in her life, like when her dad took her to the circus. And she loves seeing the acrobats and the animals.

But then when it’s over, she says, “Is that all there is to a circus?” Later she falls deeply in love with this amazing boy. She’s just on cloud nine. It’s this amazing time. And she thinks she’s going to die.

Then she sings, “But when I didn’t, I said to myself, ‘Is that all there is to love?’ And every turn in her life, she has this built up expectation. This is it. This is what I’ve been hoping for. This will make all things right.”

But then she’s left disappointed. Her deepest longings are unsatisfied. And she keeps coming back to that same refrain. “Is that all there is? Is that all there is?”

“Oh, there is, my friends. Then let’s keep dancing. Let’s break out the booze and have a ball if that’s all there is.” Many people recognize this about their life, but it’s hard to admit. They think that it’s just this one more relationship.

This experience or this accomplishment over here that I don’t yet have. When I have that, then I will be satisfied. Then I’ll be full. But every time they’re left disappointed and they wonder if they’re alone or they know they’re not alone and they assume it’s impossible to be fully satisfied. They become cynical and believe there is no happily ever after.

That’s for fairy tales. But Christianity comes along and says there is a happily ever after. And it’s even that dissatisfaction that you sense every time when that one experience, that one more thing doesn’t give you the satisfaction. Therefore, that disillusionment is a clue that you were made for something more, that you’re not going to find it in this world. The things of this world are limited and finite.

They pass away, but you were made for something infinite. Jonathan Edwards said, “The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied.” In other words, your soul has been made for the love of God. And so that’s how deep your soul is. It was made for a relationship with an infinite being.

And so no wonder when we try to grab at all these things of this world, we think maybe that will fill it and it never does. It always leaves us wanting more. Cars were made to run on gasoline. You were made to run on an enjoyment of God. Psalm 1611 says, So think about this, death can take away nearly everything that you love in this world, but because of the resurrection, the one thing it can’t take away is your relationship with God.

So your heart was made to find joy in God. That’s why the gospel is good news of great joy because it says this thing that you’ve been grasping for, you’ve been wanting, you’ve been cut off from because of your sin, it’s possible now to be reconciled to that God. 1 Peter 3.18 gives us the gospel. It says, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous to bring you to God.” Not just heaven, not just everlasting life, but God Himself.

That is the gospel. You get God because of what Jesus did. If we make anything in this world, our ultimate hope, it’ll let us down. And we’ll be singing the same song, is that all there is? The question is, have you met this Jesus who suffered once for your sins to bring you to God?

Have you met the one who seeks and saves the lost, the light of the world, the shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep? Have you met the one who promises fullness of life? Have you met that Jesus? Jesus says, “The wedding is ready. I am the bridegroom.

Won’t you come in?” But some people read this section and they wonder if Jesus was down on fasting. But then they skip over that verse 35. It’s very crucial. Jesus says, “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast in those days.”

So here’s what we’ll see. In your notes, fasting reminds us that our hunger for joy will not be fully satisfied until Jesus returns. Fasting reminds us that our hunger for joy will not be fully satisfied until Jesus returns. So Jesus wasn’t opposed to fasting. We need to see this.

He knew there was a good spiritual purpose to fast at times. These days when people fast in our culture, they’re usually for health reasons. They do things like a sugar fast or a juice cleanse and the whole idea is they want to help make their bodies more healthy. And that’s not a bad reason. It’s just not the reason that scripture gives for fasting.

Throughout the Old Testament, there are times when God’s people are called to fast as a sacred assembly. There are times like when Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20 sees this great army amassing against Jerusalem and he’s desperate and he knows it. So he calls all the nation to prayer and fasting. He says, “Seek the Lord together.” And because of their fasting, God rescues them.

He sets an ambush that routes the enemies. And the whole idea with fasting is that you become more attuned to your dependence on God. See, when you’re not fasting, it’s hard to realize you depend on food. All that constant intake of food it causes you to forget. It can cause you to forget how dependent you are on God.

So there’s a purpose and each of those times in scripture where we see people fasting, there’s this acknowledgement that we are dependent on God. We need to repent of our wickedness. We need to seek his face. Get our eyes on the Creator because we’ve been so focused on created things. Many great movements of God are connected to fasting, both in scripture and in church history.

For example, Nuyamaiah, when he learns that the walls of Jerusalem have been smashed down, it says immediately he begins mourning and fasting and praying. And it’s through that time of fasting and prayer that God calls him to be the man, to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls. He says, “I’ve called you to do the work.” Many more examples could be given. There’s something about fasting and praying together that helps people recognize their deep dependence on God.

And so when we read this passage on fasting, we need to understand the larger context of scripture and see what Jesus is saying and what he’s not saying. Because Jesus is certainly not anti-fasting. After all, his ministry began with a 40 day fast in the wilderness. That’s where he begins. That’s where all things start out with his ministry.

We saw that in chapter four. That’s where he encountered and overcame the devil. And back in Luke chapter two, we learn about this widow, elderly widow named Anna, who spent her whole life in the temple waiting for the redemption of Israel, waiting for the Messiah. And it says that she was worshiping through prayer and fasting night and day. And she is given this golden moment where she can see a little baby Jesus.

It’s like a preview of the redemption to come. So at this time, fasting was especially common. Because they knew, as Jewish people, they knew we’re under Roman rule and we want out from under this rule. We want God to save us. And so just like the days of old, when the people would fast, we’re gonna do that on a regular basis.

That’s what they said. So fasting is not inherently misguided. Religion can get some things right. But fasting can be a way of seeking God in a unique way. I would strongly recommend though, thinking of fasting to not jump right into it without considering your own health situation.

That’s always a disclaimer I feel like I should say. But what happens is that religion can take good things and twist them out of their original God-given purpose. And so instead of trying to seek God’s face and grow closer to him, it can turn fasting into this way of earning acceptance with God. And it becomes this self delusion where if I do enough of this, if I put myself through enough suffering and fasting, then God will look at me and will acknowledge me and show how good I am. This is where lifeless religion contrasts with the gospel of grace.

The gospel says God already loves you. You don’t need to earn God’s love. He already sees you. He already has done everything necessary to make you his own. Dead religion assumes that God first needs to be cajoled into accepting you through your performance.

Whether it’s through prayers, through fasting, through doing enough good works, through serving enough at the church, through going to enough Bible studies or whatever it is, religion says you do enough, then God will take note of you. That’s exactly opposite of the gospel. John the Baptist and his followers were likely fasting for the right reasons. But for the Pharisees, fasting has become this religious performance where righteousness was measured by just how much suffering you were willing to put yourself through. What is fasting are you committed to?

That will show how devoted you are to God. That’s how they thought. Jesus even mentioned this in the Sermon on the Mount. He talks about the hypocrites who fast, only they put on this gloomy, sad face and they hope people notice that here they are, they’re fasting. Look at me, what was me?

Look at the trouble I’ve put myself through. This would be like somebody walking into work and comes in and groans and starts rubbing their tummy and says, oh, day three of my fast. Oh man, this is hard. Totally worth it though. And then they get on Instagram and they post this picture of an empty plate and says, hashtag fasting for the Lord.

That’s pretty much what the Pharisees did. And they wanted everyone to know about their fasting habits. Everybody please take note is how righteous I am because look at all the fasting I’m doing. They turned religious performance into an Olympic sport. And Jesus says, if that’s you, if you’re fasting to be seen by others, you already have your reward.

Like congratulations, you got it. But when you fast, which again implies that his followers are going to fast, he says, when you fast, take a shower, get cleaned up, do it cheerfully and in secret. Don’t do it to put yourself on display before others because your father who sees in secret will reward you. That’s the reward you want more of his presence, more of his enjoyment, more of him. See, if we’re not careful, it’s very easy to get on this performance treadmill and turn spiritual practices into this exercise and missing the point.

Religion can become all duty and no delight. All performance and no pleasure. By presenting this wedding imagery, Jesus was upending the way the Pharisees thought of religious devotion. He’s saying, you guys have thought about this all wrong. You’ve put the, not the cart before the horse, you have put everything out of order.

He was taking on their rigid, legalistic and joyless religion. And he says, if you fast, it should be about celebration. It should be about joy in the Lord. That’s the point. But when he was here on earth during those, especially during that three year ministry, that was not a time to fast because he’s physically present.

You just need to be with him. You need to go to him. You need to hear him speak. But while Jesus is in heaven, fasting can be a way of helping us hunger for the joy he will bring in his return. It can help us look forward to that day soon when he’s coming back.

See, when Christians are gloomy, they are essentially lying about who they are in Christ. We have access to the eternal source of joy. Unending joy awaits us. Fullness of joy is in his presence, the Bible says. And so when Christians are living that out and experiencing joy and showing that they have joy in Jesus, it’s like they’re a walking advertisement that Jesus is better than whatever the world is offering.

Jesus is better than whatever you’re going to seek and created things. He is the bridegroom. Third in your notes, the coming of Jesus marked a new era. In salvation history. This is the big turning point.

Jesus didn’t just come and up end the apple cart just to destroy all tradition for the sake of being this renegade. His coming marked the coming of the kingdom. So the old ways of relating to God through temples, animal sacrifices, and fastidious law keeping that all needs to be replaced. Because the bridegroom has come, the wedding is about to begin. And Jesus explains this using a couple different parables.

Parables are one of the ways Jesus teaches us about the reality of the kingdom of God using these everyday very common object lessons. He says in verse 36, 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. You can imagine today buying a brand new Tesla and you’re so used to driving a gas powered vehicle that you out of habit, you pull into a gas station. And you take that gas nozzle and you put it up to the electric port.

It doesn’t fit. And people start to look at you kind of funny. And someone finally says, your vehicle runs on electricity, not gas. And Jesus is saying, I didn’t just come to fuel up your old way of life. I came to remake everything about your life.

I came to make it all new. Some people assume they can keep living the same old life. Same lifestyle, same old habits, doing things as they used to, but just add Jesus. Almost like Jesus is just adding like a spice to your life. He’s just smoothing some things out, making sure your plans are back in order so that you can do whatever you wanna do.

The old religious system of the Pharisees was rule-based, rigid, and joyless. They did not know the joy of the Lord. And this is what people often see. Sadly, sometimes this is how people perceive Christianity. They think it’s rigid, it’s legalistic, it’s law-based, and it’s joyless.

And Jesus says, that is not what I’m about. What I have come to bring is joy that is everlasting. It’s hope for all eternity. Just like it wouldn’t make sense to ruin a new garment, cutting out a piece from a new piece of clothing and then try to patch up an old piece of garment, that wouldn’t make any sense. In the same way, the old idea is of how to relate to God would not fit now that Jesus has come.

And the reason is simple. When you come to Christ, everything in life now orbits around your relationship with Him. You’re not at the center, He’s at the center. Everything else must orbit around Him, and He calls all the shots. Paul will say, anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.

The old life is gone. A new life has begun. See, when you’re united to Jesus by faith, you’re given a new identity. And it’s not based on your past performance. It’s not based on your career accomplishments.

It’s not based on meeting certain number of goals. It’s based entirely on grace. It’s based on what Jesus accomplished for you. And so you can know your identity is secure because it’s received from God. And it’s purchased through what Jesus did for you on the cross.

When He took your sin on Himself and He shed His blood for you, He was making it an eternal covenant, an eternal pact that you are forgiven and you belong to Him. His resurrection means that He has the power to give you new life today. And new hope of eternal life. So that when you get to that final day and you’re at the door of death, you can know with certainty, Jesus will always be with me. I won’t be severed from Jesus.

I’ll be separated for a time from the people I love. I’ll be separated from the things of this world, but I won’t be severed from Jesus because when you are in Jesus, you are secure. You’re made new. We never wanna forget that central fact about Jesus. He is alive.

Friends, the tomb is empty. And because Jesus is alive, your relationship with Jesus can never be static. It can never be stagnant. It keeps moving forward because He’s alive. He’s preparing a place for us right now.

That is what Jesus is doing. And He’s also preparing us for that place. And the question is always gonna be, are you ready for the new thing Jesus wants to do in your life? Are you ready? Are you open to see God more and more as a father, not just a judge?

Are you open to seeing yourself no longer as a victim, but as a victor in Christ? Are you ready for Jesus to take that load that’s been on your heart for so long that thing that you’ve been carrying around, that weight you’ve been bearing? Are you ready for Jesus to take that from you? Because He has something new for you. Jesus offers us a new kind of life.

This is what He gets at in His next parable, verse 37. It’s new wine into old wine skins. If He does, the new wine will burst, the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wine skins. You gotta love Jesus.

The Pharisees have just been questioning His dining habits and here He uses this example that includes wine. In ancient times, they would take goat skins and they would sew them up and then they would store the wine in there. And of course, what you do is you take a new goat skin and it was still elastic so that new wine that goes in there as it begins to ferment and expand, the gas is released, it expands with the wine, the goat skin expands. What you never did is put new wine into old goat skins, old wine skins, because they were brittle and they would break and they would tear open and both would be ruined. And we don’t typically store our beverages in goat skins, but we get the idea.

Painting a picture for us about what it means that He’s arrived, that you can’t keep going in the old way you used to go. He’s bringing this new wine, which means He’s bringing this new, joyful kind of life in the kingdom. And the point is this, you can’t pour Jesus into your old way of life. That old tradition, that old religious mindset, that old secular mindset that you’ve had, that you carried with you for so long, you can’t just pour Jesus into that. You have to let Him reshape everything.

You have to overturn all those categories and put them in line with how Jesus defines them. Let Him tell you who God is. Let Him tell you how this relationship with Him works. Don’t take things that you’ve had from your past and put that on Jesus. Jesus says, “Give it all over to me and I will reshape everything.”

He won’t fit within old systems of religion or old ways of looking at the world. The wine skin means the old life has to completely pass away because He gives you a new identity with new desires, new priorities, new perspectives, all based in a new relationship with God. Jesus says, “And no one after drinking old wine desires new for He says the old is good.” Now this is one where we can sometimes wonder about this because we think of wine that’s very old or vintage, very old. At this point in time, if it’s new wine, it’s better.

It’s better wine at this time. It’s human nature to struggle to let go of old ways of looking at the world. And that’s what Jesus is getting at. People who have tasted the old wine, they get so familiar with it, so used to it. They don’t want the new.

They like how things where they’re comfortable with their old way of thinking, their old categories. Some of you have seen the show “Horters.” without picking too much on those folks. The whole premise of the show is that human nature has a problem with letting go of the old to embrace the new. It’s hard for us to do that.

And it’s not just the people on that show. We are all, in many ways, spiritual hoarders. We start to live in the past. We hold on to things that we should let go of. That’s not part of who we are anymore in Christ.

We just need to let go of it and stop hoarding it and pretending it’s not. They’re filling up our basement, right? Our living room is clean because that’s what people see, but our basement is just full of things that should not be there. We need to give it all over to God. All that bitterness, all that past way of thinking, all the way that all those things that weigh us down and make us feel like we can’t take the next step forward in our relationship with Jesus, we need to get rid of all of that.

Jesus says, I want you to walk in newness of life. I want you to catch a vision for what is still to come. Stop focusing on the past. Think about what I want to do in your life. I want you to start dreaming about what I can do in your life, what’s possible when the Holy Spirit is empowering your life.

Think about those things. Finally in your notes, Jesus is committed to make us new through our union with him. Christianity is not primarily about becoming nice. It’s about becoming new. The real issue in this passage is not fasting.

It’s, are you willing to give up your autonomy and embrace the new life Jesus offers? And his way really is the way of joy. The joy that we’re hungering for and we want so badly, it’s available to you in Jesus. And just like fermenting wine expands, God’s joy is ever expanding. If today you think, man, Jesus is amazing.

I love how how much Jesus loves me. I love the joy he gives me. Just know that you have only scratched the surface. The more you become like Jesus and expand as those wineskins, the more you will grow in understanding how much he loves you, the more you experience his joy. It’s ever expanding and it will continue to expand for all eternity.

A million years from now, you will still have so much to look forward to. That’s what Jesus is saying. C.S. Lewis discovered this truth about new wineskins.

For a while, C.S. Lewis lived as this atheist. He was hardened by the suffering and evil that he had witnessed in his wartime. And he was convinced of this, but then he realized, you know what?

If I’m calling things evil, how can I do that without this reference point of ultimate good? How can I measure if something good is something as good or evil if I don’t understand there has to be something that is supremely good? And so he ended up becoming first a theist, someone who believes there is a God. But he stopped there first because he tried to fit Jesus in his teachings, his moral life into his old life. And he thought, you know, I can just have Jesus be a good teacher.

But as time went on, it dawned on him, you know, you can’t be a good teacher merely and say the kinds of things that Jesus said, like that I am the bridegroom that you’ve all been waiting for. And surprised by joy, his autobiography, he describes the moment he fully surrendered. He says, I gave in and admitted that God was God. Perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. Maybe you can relate to that.

There may be things from your past that you’ve tried to string along and put Jesus into that. Maybe there are old ways of viewing God that you need to let go of. I’ll leave you at this question. Are you ready for the new work God wants to do in your life? Again, because Jesus is alive, because your relationship with him is not static, there are always going to be new things he wants to show you about himself.

And that gives us joy. Let’s pray. Thank you, Father, for being the God of eternal hope and joy. Thank you, Jesus, for bringing new wine and new wineskins. God, help us to break free of those rigid, stale, old, and false ways of thinking.

Help us to adopt the worldview that you have given us centered around you as uppermost in our lives. We thank you for loving us. We thank you that your joy is ever expanding and make us more like you as we experience and taste more of your goodness each day. We pray this in your mighty name, Jesus. Amen.

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 5,590 words.