Are you a Pharisee?

Intro-home basketball-more about made up rules than the actual game.

Background and context

Pray for illumination

Read text:

And 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.” And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” 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. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. 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 wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”

Jesus’ Gospel leads to celebration.

Jesus has called Matthew/Levi to follow him and what follows is a twofold celebration.

One is the rejoicing over what God has done for Matthew.

He was not loved or respected by anyone.

He was despised by almost everyone. He stole from his own people.

Jesus has come to him and said come follow me.

The other is that through this feasting there is a strong witness to others.

People are drawn to authentic joy!

In daily celebration of God’s grace and remembering His great salvation toward His people, will help others see and wonder at His grace.

What were the Pharisees thinking?

The Pharisees watch all of this celebrating and ask a question about fasting. They didn’t like the celebratory and joy that they could see what impacting others.

Luke 5:33 ESV

And 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.”

The Pharisees believed in rules and order and did not like who Jesus was or what he was about. This is why they asked him about fasting.

But what is this fasting that they were wondering about? a brief word...

· The Bible speaks about fasting in the OT and NT.

The pharisees would have been thinking OT since that was all they had.

Jews fasted once a year on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, to "afflict their souls." This was the only fast commanded by the Scriptures.

o They would also fast at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

They would also fast at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

There was a four day long fast (sun up to sundown) that occurred once a year to recall the destruction of Jerusalem.

Times of national calamity and personal bereavement sometimes called for fasting as a means of humbling oneself, mourning, and seeking God's mercy.

The Pharisees also pointed out that they were publicly denying themselves at least twice a week.

Luke 18:11–12 ESV

The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’

Luke 18:11-12

5. But Jesus is pointing out a key difference between his kingdom and what the Pharisees see:

a. You can never be good enough for Jesus’ kingdom but he invites you anyway.

b. The Pharisees believed that they would find favor with God by doing all the right things.

How do you know God loves you? Christians look to the cross. Pharisees look at who they hang around-how socially right they are & they look at both the “good” they do and the bad they don’t-how morally right they believe they are. Jesus will have none of it.

6. The kingdom of Jesus is full of joyful celebration over all that God has done.

1 Peter 1:8–9 ESV

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

““God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life.” -John Piper

When was the last time you rejoiced over the great salvation you have been given? Are you regularly overwhelmed by God’s grace-that you didn’t earn your salvation but were given it freely?

Let me clarify for any of you who are prone to guilt and self condemnation: the Apostle Paul and certainly Jesus knew that all of life was not one big party. But Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him.

Hebrews 12:2 ESV

looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12:

and Paul had a similar posture in his life

2 Corinthians 6:8–10 ESV

through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

2 Corinthians 6

So whether you have had a joyful, incredible week or just muddling your way through fighting for joy in God and His Gospel, I pray that God’s Spirit would awaken us to fresh joy in Him.

-despite our circumstances

So what do you think will happen if we learn to be more joyful in Christ? I believe people will begin to taste and see the goodness of God in and through our lives and words. This is what happened with Matthew after Jesus called him and changed him.

Jesus’ Gospel leads to witness.

Again we look at the preceding passage as the negative of our text for today. Here we have the Pharisees wanting less celebration and sharing of God’s goodness and wanting more dour faced, overt rule keeping.

This party that Matthew has is a celebration of what God has revealed to him but also a sharing of the same revelation: the messiah has come and Jesus is his name!

Matthew couldn’t wait for his friends and enemies to meet Jesus.

He didn’t think that anyone was any worse than he was.

Sometimes we precategorize people and think there is no way I can talk to them or that God can reach them.

We talk about what we love! If we love Jesus we will talk about Him! This is what happened with Levi/Matthew-he couldn’t help himself because

he thought he was unloveable

Jesus had loved and called him anyway

Sometimes our witness will be criticized by religious or secular people.

Religious people, like the pharisees, will believe that your celebrations are to much and for all the wrong people.

Secular people will think you are silly or deluded for being interested let alone excited about the Gospel.

But Jesus coming to you and calling you out of your old ways and into His grace, will change the ways we speak and live.

This again is what Peter writes in his first letter,

1 Peter 2:9 ESV

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Are you intimidated by the thought of sharing what God has done in Christ? Are you excited? Do you have questions?

We see in both Luke’s Gospel and Peter’s first letter that we are not just punching a clock or checking a box, or doing a program: we are celebrating God’s goodness to us by sharing it with others.

Throw a party in your neighborhood (and invite your neighbors)

Strike up a conversation with the construction workers or your co workers

C.S Lewis

“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever’. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”

So what is the point of this section? It is to shame us into door to door evangelism or to lead us to shed all traditions and just let it be me and Jesus? No, not at all. The main point of all this story and parable is that Jesus and his grace are the only way to be a true child of God.

Jesus’ Gospel trumps the old ways.

So now Jesus shifts to a parable to explain what is going on in the hearts and minds of the Pharisees.

Jesus’ Gospel leads to witness.

Matthew’s life has been changed and they are wondering why Jesus’ disciples don’t fast.

Jesus uses a parable that involves two examples of the same thing.

new cloth on old clothes

new wine in old wine skins

Both speak to things that cannot work together. You can’t have old covenant and new covenant. You can’t try to keep all the rules to get God to love you and glorify him because of His grace.

patches tear away if they aren’t pre shrunk

New wine will expand and break the old wineskins.

Jesus covenant and new and living way through him alone will not work with the rule keeping of the Pharisees.

It forgets that underneath it all, we are all sinful. There is only Jesus and the rest of us.

Luke 5:36–39 ESV

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. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. 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 wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’ ”

Pastor and Theologian Sam Storms put it this way

In the new covenant, the will of God is inscribed on our heart, internally, experientially, in the sense that whatever God requires of us in terms of our obedience he provides for us in terms of the Spirit’s internal, enabling power.

What is Jesus trying to teach through these parables?

That you can never be good enough for God on your own.

That you could help others know Jesus

That you could daily remember that God is for His people and delights in His people.

We cannot force the old ways of legalism and rule following into the Gospel of Jesus. It just won’t work. It is about surrender and following Jesus that we meet with Him and adore Him with our words and our lives.

The book of Hebrews is very instructive for people who think that there is anything better than Jesus.

points to Jesus total supremacy as God’s son and representative

3:1-6 Jesus is greater than Moses

in chapter 8 we see Jesus as the better high priest of the new and better covenant

Hebrews 8:6–7 ESV

But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.

We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone!

Hebrews 8:6–13 ESV

But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For he finds fault with them when he says: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone!

Jesus’ Gospel is for all sorts of people.

For Pharisees and tax collectors

For prodigals and older brothers who try to keep all the rules

For people from different ethnicities, backgrounds, and nationalities

So what does this mean for us corporately? A couple of things:

As we think about moving into our new building, we have begun conversations about all the needs we will have. But there will also be incredible opportunities to demonstrate joy in Christ and to share the Gospel.

1. We have begun working with David O’ Dodd elementary and many of you have helped out with that. As other opportunities are put forth, look for ways to use your gifts to serve children and teachers there.

2. Pray for our new neighbors in those neighborhoods surrounding our new building.

3. Begin thinking differently now. If we are going to serve all these new people who will start coming to check out a new church, we need to be rethinking our approach to church now. Pray that God would give you this kind of heart and perspective:

-church is not a consummable good that you gobble up once a week-if it suits you

-

-you are made to serve not to merely be served

we hope you are served well each week

but our approach to church and the Gospel should be in line with what God says: the body only functions rightly when all its parts are working together-we need you and you need us!

remind them of the 3 points: celebrate, mission, only grace!

That’s why we come to the table each week: to celebrate God’s gift of His Son in our place for our sins, to be reminded of what the good news is that we might be stirred up to live and speak differently when we leave church, and to be reminded that it is only through the body and blood of Jesus sacrifice that we are made right by God-not how good or bad we are!

Communion explanation

Song

Benediction

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.