Disciple 3: Hope Made New

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Mark 2:18-3:6

N:

Opening

Good morning, and welcome to our Family Worship service here at Eastern Hills Baptist Church. If you are here in the building, it’s great to see you. If you are watching right now online, it’s great to be seen by you, because it means that you’re joining us to the extent that you can to worship the Lord with the rest of the body.

This week on Monday and Tuesday, the annual New Mexico Evangelism Conference was held at Hoffmantown Church. I went to almost the whole conference, and I have to tell you all that if you didn’t go, you missed a great time of being challenged, convicted, and blessed. I would recommend that everyone plan on attending the conference next year. I know that you won’t regret it. It’s scheduled for February 28 and March 1, if you wanted to get it on your calendars.

Our annual focus on North American missions begins this week. During the months of March and April, we will be receiving the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions, and our goal as a church is $15,000. We’ll start the focus on that offering and what it is used for next Sunday. But I need to let you all know about our planned events for the Week of Prayer for North American Missions, which will be the week of March 7. On Monday, March 8, we will have a prayer service with a little brunch here in the foyer at 9:30 am. Then on Wednesday, we will have our day of focused prayer for North American missionaries from 6:30 am to 6:30 pm, and you can email Donna Treece to sign up for a 30 minute time slot for that day. We will again each do our praying that day wherever we find ourselves, rather than coming to the building. Then on Friday night, March 12, at 7:00 pm in the choir room, we will have an additional time of prayer and learning about our missionaries serving throughout North America. Come and be a part of these events and join in praying for our missionaries serving throughout the US and Canada.

We are in the midst of a series from the book of Mark about being a disciple, a follower of Jesus, and the hope that the Gospel brings to those who follow Christ. This series will take us through Easter Sunday, and I hope that you will plan to engage with this series each week. For this morning, we are going to read our focal passage, Mark 2:18-3:6. Let’s stand together in honor of the Word of God:

Mark 2:18–3:6 CSB

18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. People came and asked him, “Why do John’s disciples and the Pharisees’ disciples fast, but your disciples do not fast?” 19 Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the groom is with them, can they? As long as they have the groom with them, they cannot fast. 20 But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. 21 No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new patch pulls away from the old cloth, and a worse tear is made. 22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the skins. No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins.” 23 On the Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to make their way, picking some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” 25 He said to them, “Have you never read what David and those who were with him did when he was in need and hungry—26 how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest and ate the bread of the Presence—which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests—and also gave some to his companions?” 27 Then he told them, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. 28 So then, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” 1 Jesus entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a shriveled hand. 2 In order to accuse him, they were watching him closely to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath. 3 He told the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand before us.” 4 Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. 5 After looking around at them with anger, he was grieved at the hardness of their hearts and told the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 6 Immediately the Pharisees went out and started plotting with the Herodians against him, how they might kill him.

PRAYER (remember abortion repeal bill)

Last week, we looked at three occurrences in Jesus’ ministry where He connected with broken people, and how those connections brought Him into conflict with the religious elite of the day. But Jesus made it clear that in His arrival on the scene of history, the Kingdom of God had come near: the righteous rule and reign of God on the earth, both in the future, and now… especially in and through the lives of His followers: His disciples.

As I prepared this week’s message, I thought back to my own conversion. I had lived my life for myself, always trying to get what I could to make me happy, to fill the emptiness that I felt deep down, and nothing worked. Nothing filled the gap. I needed Jesus, the forgiveness that only He could give, the friendship with God that could only come through Him. And when I discovered the beauty of the Gospel: that because God loved me, Jesus died for me so that I could be forgiven and have eternal life with God—when I discovered that, and trusted in Jesus’ sacrifice to save me, and surrendered my life to His Lordship, I found something that I hadn’t had before. I found hope. A new hope. Sure, I had previously “hoped” for things, but not really in any sense of certainty. Even those things that I placed my hope in that I thought were certain, weren’t.

And this hope that I found in Jesus was a hope unlike I had ever experienced. Yes, I was and still am a work in progress, but when Jesus took hold of me, I discovered that He had set me on a path of newness in just about every area of my life. This is because as a disciple, I started on a new path, with a new purpose, a new meaning, and a new goal of my life. My life was made new, starting from the inside out.

In our focal passage today, we find that Jesus is having several conflicts with the very religious of His day, just like we saw in last week’s message. This is because they were completely and totally focused on the “old,” and Jesus came to bring the “new.” He didn’t come to destroy the old, though. He came to fulfill it, complete it. And we see in this passage three new things that He brings: A new joy, a new work, and a new law.

1) A new joy.

Weddings were a big deal in ancient Israel. Sometimes the wedding celebration would last for a full week. Maggie and Nathan got married early in 2020 (before COVID, thankfully), and Melanie and I still look at each other and laugh about the fact that we managed to put on a wedding and reception. And we laugh because we’re amazed. We laugh because it was just so much FUN… Family and friends came from all over, and so many of you, our church family, were here to see the ceremony. It was the best celebration I went to in 2020. But I still can’t imagine having done that for a week.

Weddings are meant to be times of celebration, times of rejoicing. We’ll have a wedding here on Saturday, and I expect there will be celebration and rejoicing, even without a reception. Weddings aren’t appropriate places for mourning or sadness. This is why Jesus gives the illustration that He uses in Mark 2:18-20:

Mark 2:18–20 CSB

18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. People came and asked him, “Why do John’s disciples and the Pharisees’ disciples fast, but your disciples do not fast?” 19 Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the groom is with them, can they? As long as they have the groom with them, they cannot fast. 20 But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.

In the Hebrew Law, there was only one required fast day: on the Day of Atonement. One could fast if they wanted to as an act of worship, humility, or petition, but only that one day was a required fast. John’s disciples likely fasted because He had been imprisoned, and they fasted as they petitioned God on John’s behalf in prayer.

The Pharisees, however, were another matter. We normally see them as kind of the “bad guys” of the Gospels, and that’s not too far off because of all of the conflict that they had with Jesus and the fact that they were instrumental in His crucifixion. However, the issue for them is that they took the rules that God had given to His people so that they would be set apart, different from the other nations, laws that God gave to them so that they would realize the seriousness of their sin and their need for His grace, and they decided that if you could keep all of the external rules, then you would be right with God. For them, salvation became a checklist, and anything that didn’t line up with their checklist was sin.

And not surprisingly, they also deduced a kind of “more is more” attitude about these rules and laws, and so they came up with more things to add to the list. One of the things that they added to their list was that there should be more days of fasting. MANY more days of fasting. The Law, or Torah, only required that one day per year, but a righteous Pharisee fasted on Monday and Thursday each week, and they often showed that they were fasting by looking as miserable as they could so people could see just how pious they were, as Jesus addressed in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6:16-18:

Matthew 6:16–18 CSB

16 “Whenever you fast, don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites. For they disfigure their faces so that their fasting is obvious to people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting isn’t obvious to others but to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

So in our focal passage today, Jesus is asked about why His disciples don’t fast. He uses the imagery of a wedding to make a very simple point: fasting wouldn’t make any sense, because the bridegroom, the King of the Kingdom, is present—so it’s a time for celebration, for rejoicing, for fellowship, and for activity, not a time for mourning, grief, and sadness.

He did say to them that there would be a time that was appropriate for mourning and sadness, a time for His disciples to fast: when “the groom will be taken away from them.” This is an allusion to Jesus’ crucifixion: that Jesus would be nailed to a cross as a criminal by the Roman government at the demand of the Jews, even though He had done nothing to deserve death. He did this willingly, dying to take the punishment that we deserve for our sins, so that the price would be paid. And the Bible tells us that that is not the end of the story, because He overcame death by rising again, and He lives forever. So even though there was a time for mourning and sadness, that time is over because Jesus rose from the grave, and He lives, and so we can rejoice! So fasting is a matter of Christian freedom, not obligation.

And there will come a day when He will restore everything to the way it was meant to be: and that day, there will be a great celebration with much rejoicing, because it will be the greatest wedding ever experienced.

Revelation 19:5–9 CSB

5 A voice came from the throne, saying, Praise our God, all his servants, and the ones who fear him, both small and great! 6 Then I heard something like the voice of a vast multitude, like the sound of cascading waters, and like the rumbling of loud thunder, saying, Hallelujah, because our Lord God, the Almighty, reigns! 7 Let us be glad, rejoice, and give him glory, because the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has prepared herself. 8 She was given fine linen to wear, bright and pure. For the fine linen represents the righteous acts of the saints. 9 Then he said to me, “Write: Blessed are those invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb!” He also said to me, “These words of God are true.”

But we need to be clear: the celebration is for the disciples, those who are invited, the guests of the bridegroom. The wedding celebration of the Lamb is only for the saved, who have surrendered their lives to Jesus in faith, trusting in what He has done to save them. If you have never trusted in Christ, hear and believe the Gospel: God loves you and wants to be in a relationship with you. Our sin, those choices that we make that go against God’s holy character, make us rebels and enemies against Him, and we can never be good enough to deserve salvation. That’s why Jesus had to take our place in death. If we belong to Him by faith, then we receive eternal life—that invitation to the wedding—and we also receive a new joy that we have peace with God no matter what our circumstances are. Give up looking for your own kind of joy, because true, eternal joy will only come through faith in Jesus.

This is a joy that is based in hope: a confident assurance of our right relationship with God, and an assurance of what is to come in the future. This joy could only be found in a new work, which Christ had come to do.

2) A new work.

As I mentioned, the Pharisee’s idea of fasting was about earning holiness points. Sadly, those points had less to do with God and more to do with how people saw them. But after speaking about fasting, Jesus goes on to give His disciples two illustrations concerning the old and the new. Both illustrations make the same general point, so they go well together.

Mark 2:21–22 CSB

21 No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new patch pulls away from the old cloth, and a worse tear is made. 22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the skins. No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins.”

First, the patch and the garment: If you were to use brand new, unshrunk wool cloth to patch an older, used, shrunken wool garment, then as the garment was washed, the patch would shrink and pull away from the garment. It’s not that the garment is bad—it’s that its time is done, and it is time for a new garment.

Wine was generally carried in goat skins. As the wine continued to ferment in the skin, the skins would have to expand to hold the wine. Skins that had already gone through that process were as large as they would get, and would become brittle. If you were to take new, still fermenting wine and put it into an older wineskin, as it continued its fermentation and expansion, the skin would not be able to stretch any more, and would burst. It’s not that old wineskins are bad—its that their time is done, because new wine needs new wineskins.

Jesus was ultimately drawing a comparison between the old (Law-focused Judaism) and the new (faith in Christ). It’s not that Judaism was a bad thing. It’s that its time as the way of relating to God was coming to a close, because in Christ, its requirements would be completely fulfilled:

Matthew 5:17–18 CSB

17 “Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass away from the law until all things are accomplished.

Jesus was coming to do a new work, institute a new covenant, and in doing so, provide a new hope, which had been promised by God hundreds of years before through the prophet Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 31:31–34 CSB

31 “Look, the days are coming”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—my covenant that they broke even though I am their master”—the Lord’s declaration. 33 “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the Lord’s declaration. “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “For I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.

Judaism showed people their constant need for forgiveness through the sacrificial system. Jesus fulfilled that system by becoming the perfect sacrifice Himself. Judaism maintained a separation of Jew vs. Gentile. Jesus came to offer salvation through Him to all nations, all peoples. Judaism called for an intermediary, a priesthood between the people and God. Jesus is that priest forever, and those who are in Christ have direct access to Him by faith, and in fact, all who are in Christ are priests of this new covenant. Judaism demanded that people come into God’s presence. Jesus was God in the flesh, present with His disciples, and He has given His Holy Spirit to be present with and in us now.

But the newness of the work that Jesus does is deeper than religious observance or structure. It’s a work of newness from the inside out, like what I said in my opening about how God had started working in my life when I came to faith. He gives us new natures, new hearts, to make us into new creations:

Ezekiel 36:26 CSB

26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

2 Corinthians 5:17 CSB

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!

So if we are in Christ, we have been given a new way to live, and that way is to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, because this is what it means to be a disciple! We both ARE His new work, and we are to JOIN in His new work! As His disciples, we are to follow Him, living out that newness by testifying to the lost world about the hope that we have in Christ. We also are to strive to be a blessing to those around us, spreading the “aroma of Christ” everywhere God leads us, as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 2:14-15. We are, as the church, the Body of Christ and each of us are members of it, and we have been given the message of reconciliation to proclaim to a world separated from God, that they too might be made right with Him. We are to live like we’re new!

We have a new joy, and we are a part of a new work. And finally, because of what Jesus has done, we have a new law to follow:

3) A new law.

Both of the remaining pieces of our focal narrative this morning point to this picture of a new law, and both are about the Sabbath.

We in our modern lives struggle a little with the Jewish concept of the Sabbath. We usually look at it as a “day of rest,” which it is, but it’s more than that. I’m not going to do a whole teaching on the Sabbath this morning (we’ll do that when we study the Ten Commandments this summer), but just give a little background and perspective.

The fourth of the Ten Commandments is about the Sabbath:

Exodus 20:8–10 CSB

8 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: 9 You are to labor six days and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates.

Think about it for a moment: how would you keep this command, if you were a Hebrew person? We get that the Sabbath means no work. But what does that mean, exactly? If you only focused on external compliance, you would have to start evaluating everything you did:

Mark D. Sabbath (2:23–27)

If I do not go to work on the Sabbath, is that enough? But what about working around the house? Okay, no house work. No preparing meals because, as any cook can tell you, preparing a meal is work. Untying a sash is not work because it is relaxing something. Tying something, however, is work and is forbidden. What about walking? That can certainly involve work. So do I not walk at all? Or when does walking become work? How far can I travel and have it not be considered work? The Sabbath laws, and the purity laws, encompassed every moment of life.

The Jews still to this day have more rules about the Sabbath than any of the other Commandments. As they have tried to define what it means to “work,” the fences around the Sabbath get bigger and bigger. But as we see in our focal passage, they could claim to obey the Sabbath externally, while plotting a murder internally.

The more we approach the Word of God from a perspective of legalism: that it’s just a list of “do’s” and “don’ts,” then the more our obedience is no longer about God. And the more it’s about us, the more likely we are to be more concerned with the outside, and the less about the inside. This is why the Pharisees had a problem with the disciples in verses 23-24: they were “harvesting” and “threshing,” by picking a few heads as they walked (which wasn’t considered stealing in that culture) and separating the grain from the chaff. This is also why they watched Jesus so closely in chapter 3, verse 2: because healing someone on the Sabbath was considered “work,” unless it was truly a matter of life and death, and it’s apparent that they were more concerned with what Jesus would do than with what they were supposed to be in the synagogue for: worshiping God.

Being obedient to God isn’t a wrong thing. In fact, it’s a right thing. God has laid down rules, including keeping the Sabbath, that we should obey as His followers, as disciples, and those rules are right and good. However, the problem for the Pharisees, and for us, is when we define ourselves not by how God has rescued us through Christ, not by How God has adopted us as His children and made us co-heirs with Jesus, not by the task that He has given to us as citizens of His Kingdom, not by the presence of His Holy Spirit in our hearts, but by how well we follow the rules. Suddenly, and sinisterly, our salvation is no longer about God’s goodness, but about our own, and we can easily turn an eye of judgment and condemnation upon anyone who doesn’t live up to our standard.

But Jesus turned their ideas about the Sabbath command on their heads when He said in verses 27 and 28 of chapter 2:

Mark 2:27–28 CSB

27 Then he told them, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. 28 So then, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

This is because the Sabbath wasn’t given to mankind in order to constrain us. It was given as a gift to free us, because in observing Sabbath we are called to trust in the provision of God by taking a break from work, and a day specifically set aside to worship the Lord. Sabbath wasn’t given as an end good itself, it was given as a means of experiencing God’s grace.

As soon as we put our hope into following the rules for our salvation, we obscure the beauty of the grace of God as shown in His giving of Jesus Christ for our sins. We can never earn our salvation through following the law, as Paul wrote to the church in Galatia:

Galatians 2:16 CSB

16 and yet because we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus. This was so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no human being will be justified.

We are saved by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, and so our hope isn’t found in how well we obey the law. It’s found in the fact that Jesus fulfilled the law, so we don’t have to. We can experience the freedom that God’s grace offers to us through being forgiven and set free from sin. However, that doesn’t mean that we are set free from walking with Jesus, because if we belong to Jesus, we have given up our rights to live however we see fit:

Galatians 2:20–21 CSB

20 I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

Brothers and sisters, we are to strive to live our lives in order to bring honor and glory to Christ, not to ourselves. We aren’t saved just BY following rules, and we aren’t saved just TO follow rules. We’re saved to point lost people to Jesus, to make His Kingdom known and seen—To be conduits of the grace of God into the lives of people that He loves, so that they would come to understand His love because of our witness. This is what it means to fulfill the law of Christ. This is what Paul understood when he wrote:

1 Corinthians 9:19–23 CSB

19 Although I am free from all and not anyone’s slave, I have made myself a slave to everyone, in order to win more people. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win Jews; to those under the law, like one under the law—though I myself am not under the law—to win those under the law. 21 To those who are without the law, like one without the law—though I am not without God’s law but under the law of Christ—to win those without the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I may by every possible means save some. 23 Now I do all this because of the gospel, so that I may share in the blessings.

Closing

The hope that we find in Jesus gives us a new law to follow: a law of grace. The hope that we find in Jesus gives us a new work to be a part of: a work of rescue and reconciliation. And the hope that we find in Jesus gives us a new joy to find: a joy of peace and relationship.

We are called to spread that joy, to engage in that work, and to extend that grace to each other as fellow followers of Jesus, and to those who are lost and dying in this world without Christ. Church, God has given us a mission: to share the Gospel not so that we can earn salvation, but because we have been given it, and others need it.

And I believe that God is doing a work in this church of reaching out to the lost with the hope that only comes in Christ. Let’s live out this hope made new, and share it with as many as we can. And if you are not a member of Eastern Hills, but believe that this is a church family that you can connect with and serve in, to be on mission with, then I would love to talk with you about church membership. Send me an email at [e-mail] if you’re in the Albuquerque area and online. Or, if you’re here in the building this morning, just stay in your seat as everyone else leaves, and I will come and find you to set a time for us to sit down and talk about the church and answer any questions you might have.

This morning, you have heard the message of the Gospel, and you’ve heard about what God has done in Christ so that we can have hope made new. Surrender your life to Jesus, and trust in His work to save you. If that is you, or if you have questions about salvation, then please let me know. Same thing as for those considering church membership: stay in your seat if you’re here, or send me an email so we can talk about the Gospel together.

During our reflection time, you can also give online, or give in person by using the plates by the doors as we leave this morning. As Donna comes to play our reflection song, let’s pray.

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Prayer Meeting will begin again this coming Wednesday night at 5:45 in the choir room. I’m excited to get together with one another in order to pray and maybe try some new things at Prayer Meeting in the weeks to come. This Wednesday, our focus will be on praying together for the Church: both Eastern Hills and the greater community of faith.

Bible reading. I have posted a new calendar for March on the What’s Happening page on our website. We will finish the Gospel of Mark tomorrow, and then we will spend some time in the Old Testament, reading Esther and then Proverbs, one chapter a day. Download the calendar and get connected with your brothers and sisters in reading Scripture.

Instructions

Benediction:

2 Corinthians 13:11–14 CSB

11 Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice. Become mature, be encouraged, be of the same mind, be at peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. 12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints send you greetings. 13 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.