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Introduction
I believe God has a new thing that he wants to do in your life.
So many of us are keeping one foot in the world, when God has called us to have both feet and everything in him.
God has a new life, a better life for you, but we are so quick to embrace other things.
Today, I want to encourage you to embrace the new life that God has for you.
If you want to be used by God, you need to embrace what he has for you.
I was remembering the story of the YouVersion Bible app.
Here are these Christians that are passionate about technology.
In 2008, they created an app called the Bible app.
It was one of the first 200 free apps on the Apple ITunes store in 2008.
It saw 83,000 installs on the first 3 days.
It reached 10 million installs by 2010, and has now been installed in more than 330 million devices.
Here is a story of a computer app designer who God used according to his abilities.
God used the app designer to reach millions of people and give them an opportunity to interact with God’s Word.
Christ took someone with abilities, someone willing to surrender his talents to the work of God, and used him for his glory in an amazing way.
But I think sometimes we are reluctant to fully surrender.
There are areas in our life that we hold onto.
How can we learn to surrender and embrace the new life that God has for us?
We are continuing our series in the Gospel of Mark, and are in Mark 2, starting in verse 18.
Scripture Reading
Pray
What do these verses teach us about embracing the new life God has for us.
First,
Embrace your new life over stale religiosity.
A group of people came up to ask Jesus a question about his disciples.
The ask him why his disciples were different.
Look at verse 18:
It appears that John’s disciples had a similar pattern of fasting that the Pharisees did.
We don’t know much about what happened to John’s disciples.
We know that some of his disciples became Christians, while others continued to follow his lead.
But we do know about the fasting practices of the Pharisees.
The Old Testament called for a fast once a year, on the Day of Atonement (Lev.
23:26-32).
But the Pharisees sought strict ways to purify their minds and souls.
They would participate in a fast twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays.
They believed if they could abstain from food and drink, they would demonstrate that they were humble and devoted to God, and that practice would purify their souls of any impurities.
Since the people are grouping the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees, it’s likely they both followed a similar pattern of fasting.
At least for the Pharisees, their religiosity was a source of pride for them.
Their strict adherence to the Law and their practice of fasting showed their devotion to being religious to others.
Jesus described the practice of the Pharisees in Matthew 6:16-18:
The term “hypocrites” is a term that Jesus used for the Pharisees.
It is a term from the Greek culture that referred to an actor.
The actors would play different characters on stage and use masks and costumes to hide their identity.
The actor would pretend to be someone they were not in order to entertain the audience.
When Jesus used the term, it described them as people who wore a mask to hide their true person on the inside.
When he says, “Don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites.
They make their faces unattractive so that their fasting is obvious to people.”
What he is saying is that they are wearing a mask and putting on a show for people.
Their religiosity is not for God.
It is for people.
Jesus spoke about the Pharisees fasting twice a week.
We see that in a story that Jesus spoke about between a Pharisee and a tax collector who were in the temple praying.
Jesus described the Pharisee praying this way in Luke 18:11-12:
From this text, you really get a sense of how much pride the Pharisees took in their religiosity.
This Pharisee is thanking God for how good he is!
He is saying, “God, thank you that I’m not like all of these bad people.
Instead, look at how religious I am!
I fast twice a week, way beyond what the Law says, and I give a tenth of everything I get.”
Remember the original question.
They went to Jesus and asked, “Why is it that John the Baptist’s disciples fast, and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”
What’s wrong with this question?
Sometime, when you ask a question, you miss the point of what’s in front of you.
The question was basically, “Why don’t your disciples behave like all of these other religious people?
They want to be religious, don’t they?
Why don’t they behave like our religious culture?”
The question should be, “Are these religious people missing something?”
Our religion becomes a stale practice when we forget the point of why we are doing what we doing in the first place.
When religion stops being about having an encounter with the living God, religion becomes less about God and more about culture.
We see this today.
There are all kinds of people who don’t know what it is to connect with God, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to seek to know God according to his standard.
Instead, they put on masks and try to be religious by adapting to a culture.
This is a big issue with Jews and Catholics, who have never had an encounter with God.
Instead, they take on religious acts and practices.
They go through the rituals and become culturally Jewish or culturally Catholic.
But if you ask them who God is, you will get a range of answers, most of which end up sounding agnostic.
They’ve picked up a culture, but do not know the living God.
The Christian church also has it’s culture.
You can grow up in church, go through the motions, sing the songs, greet people, go to VBS, do all of the things and feel good about yourself as a religious person.
But all of the while, you’ve never encountered God in prayer, never had a heart transformation by the Holy Spirit, never repented of sin and turned your life to Christ.
The Christian life is not about adapting a culture, but about embracing a new life that comes through a heart transformation from Jesus.
God does not want people who are culturally Christian, but live like the world on a day-to-day basis.
Christianity is not about living in an old culture, or in a stale religion.
Christianity is about embracing a new life.
Embrace a new life over stale religiosity.
Second,
Embrace your new life to understand God’s work in your moment.
In response to the question from the group about fasting, Jesus answers the question this way in verses 19-20:
Now, remember what Jesus is answering.
The question was, “Why don’t your disciples fast like John’s disciples and the Pharisees?”
Jesus’ answer describes that they were constrained and confined to the Old Testament Law, but they didn’t understand that God was doing something new in their moment.
God was doing a new thing, and the Jewish leadership were missing it because they were confined to a stale religion that looked good on the outside, but inside God was not present.
God was not working on the inside.
If God were working on the inside, they would have realized that the bridegroom, the Son of God, the Lord, was with them in their midst!
When you are fasting, you are in a place of repentance or mourning and anticipating that God will do something great.
Fasting would be done during mourning in anticipation of God’s comfort.
Fasting would be done in anticipation of God’s will in a situation, such as David’s fast for his son in 2 Sam 12:16.
Fasting was done to seek God in anticipation of an upcoming battle (Judges 20:26) or a safe journey in Ezra 8:21.
So Jesus’ response to the question is this: “Why would my disciples fast?
What are they anticipating?
Everything that Israel has been anticipating is here, in your midst, in me, the Messiah!” That’s why he says that “the wedding guests cannot fast while the groom is present with them.”
This is another declaration in the Scriptures where Jesus is saying, “I am who you have been waiting for!
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