Eating and Fasting, Two Controversies

Introduction

Before spring break we looked at the scene where a paralytic man was lowered through the roof of a house by his friends to be healed. In that we saw that Jesus has the power to forgive sins and to heal. He is still in the business of both to this day too, he is over everything and can forgive you of your sins.

Tonight is another chunk from the life of Jesus and did not necessarily happen in chronological order with the story before it. Tonight we see Jesus call Levi who we will later see called Matthew, like the book of Matthew, and in the excitement he throws a dinner banquet where two controversies arise. Through Chapter 2 and the beginning of Chapter 3 there is 5 controversies, last week was the first where the point of the conflict was Jesus’s ability to forgive sins. Tonight the point of the two conflicts is eating with sinners and fasting.

The central idea running through this passage is that Jesus came for sinners and is the newness we must be ready to receive. Lets begin tonight by reading the text and then we can begin to break this down and see what this means for us.

Mark 2:13–22 ESV

He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And when Jesus heard it, 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 John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And 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 then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk 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.”

Pray

The Call of Levi

This passage begins with calling Levi who’s name will get changed to Matthew. This calling is similar to the others that we saw except instead of a fisherman, Levi was a tax collector. Tax collectors were regarded as the scum of the earth. Nobody liked the tax collectors because they were expert con-men, they were required to get certain amounts of money from certain areas and everything extra was their pay. Jesus calling a tax collector would have been a similar situation to touching a leper.

As we move through this passage this sets the stage for us. How to you look at the social downcast? The people that the world regards as the least? Cordell has every type of person that there is it seems, do you look at all of them with the same love? Jesus does, he cares for everyone. Do you?

The Dinner Banquet Part 1

Upon this call Matthew throws a dinner banquet as a celebration and invites all of his friends, they are referred to as tax collectors and sinners. Jesus is at a dinner with the social downcast and the least of society. The scribes wonder why he would do such a thing. Imagine a church where the people in it did not talk to anyone that was not a Christian, that is what these scribes were a part of. Jesus condemns this way of thought.

Self-righteous

The scribes had a view of self righteousness. They thought that it was through the things that they do that they become righteous. This is what makes it a form of irony that Jesus calls them righteous, because they were just as unrighteous as the sinners and the tax collectors there. They thought that they could be in right standing with God on their own, they were wrong. It is only through the imputed or bestowed righteousness of Christ that we gain this right standing before God. In other words, we can’t do it but he can give it to us.

The Purpose for Jesus Coming

We have been discussing this for weeks and I have said it before but here in this passage it makes it clear, here is the reason that Jesus came.

Mark 2:17 ESV

And when Jesus heard it, 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.”

Jesus came to bring spiritual healing, Jesus came to call the sinners. That is everyone. We are all sinners and Jesus came for us. The downcast of society really is everyone compared to the goodness of God. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost and that is why he preaches the message of faith and repentance, to seek and save you. John 3.16 ““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Because of the love God has for us he sent Jesus to come to us, dirty rotten sinners.

The Dinner Banquet Part 2

After the previous response the topic turns to fasting because everyone fast’s except the disciples of Jesus. Fasting is going for a period of time without food. It is still a beneficial practice for us today and I take part in it from time to time. The point of it is to draw you closer to God, personally how I go about this when I fast is to spend time in prayer and reading scripture when I would normally be eating. The reason that they did not need to fast is that they did not need to draw closer to God because he was right there with them in the flesh. Jesus illustrates thin in a few ways. Lets look at how Jesus explains this to them.

Wedding Guest

Mark 2:19–20 ESV

And 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 then they will fast in that day.

A wedding at this time was a week long event that involved many feast and there were laws against fasting during the wedding. The relationship to Jesus and the church is often described as a marriage and that is what a marriage is supposed to emulate, Christ and the church. Jesus coming to the earth as depicted in the gospels is a time of celebration. There is no need to fast when the groom is present. Only after he is gone.

We see that after Jesus left the people of the church did fast, one instance of this is in Acts 13.2 “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.””

This is also paired with two other illustrations so lets look at them now.

Unshrunk Cloth and New Wineskin

Mark 2:21–22 ESV

No one sews a piece of unshrunk 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.”

What these two illustrations are depicting is that Jesus is the newness that we must change for. We must be new creations, if we use Jesus to try to patch us up it won’t work, if we use Jesus to try to fill us without change then everything will just burst. We must be made new.

The patch is easy enough to understand because the old part is already shrunk so when the new part shrinks it will just tear away. The wineskin when it is new is flexible and as the wine would ferment it would expand but the new flexible skin would stretch as it fermented. If you put new wine in an already stretched skin as it ferments it would be to much for it and it would burst. Jesus is this newness.

To accept Jesus we must be made completely new. We can’t just add him to our old lives but we must have a new life in him. In his coming he came to make all things new. These illustrations can be a bit tough for us to grasp in our day and age but the idea is that in our old lives there is no room for Jesus, we must have a new life, we must be born again, we must be saved.

The disciples did not fast because they were right there with Jesus so there was no need and for the scribes to really grasp this they would need to be made new. Is your life like an old crusty bag that you wouldn’t put anything in or like a nice new one ready for fresh contents?

Conclusion

Jesus came for sinners because they know just how beat down and broken they are, they know more than anyone that they need to be made new.

I like to use fountain pens and I have a decent little collection of them. The thing with a fountain pen is though that if you just let it set for a long time the ink inside will dry out and it will no longer write. When this happens you have to clean out every bit of the old ink that is not good anymore. If there is even a little bit it will still not work. Once you have removed all of the old ink then you can begin to fill it with new fresh ink and the pen that did not work just a little bit ago, even though it had ink, is now like a new pen that writes better than any other pen you have had before.

Jesus didn’t come for the pens that wrote perfectly, he came to restore the old dried out ones. The thing is though that we are all like the pens that don’t write, we all need Jesus to come and bring us newness, we are all sinners in need of a savior. Jesus came for you so that you might be made new. The groom is going to come back some day will you be a part of the bride? In other words Jesus is coming back, will you be a part of those that are saved?

Jesus came so that us sinners might be forgiven through his message of faith and repentance. If you want to be made new and accept Jesus let today be that day. Don’t wait any longer but after I pray respond to his call on your life. Jesus came to seek and save the lost, that is his desire, that is his purpose for coming, that is his message, will you respond?