Jesus Changes Everything

Prayer

Father of our Lord,

As we turn now to Your Word

Keep us watching for Christ’s gospel.

Keep us waiting on Christ’s grace.

Keep us worshipping Christ’s glory.

It’s in Christ’s precious name we pray.

AMEN.

Introduction

What would things look like if Satan took over a city? We might imagine mayhem on a massive scale: Widespread violence, gross sexual immorality, a lifestyle of crippling fear, a tyrannous government, and churches closed down. Over 50 years ago, Donald Grey Barnhouse, pastor of Philadelphia's Tenth Presbyterian Church, gave his CBS radio audience a different picture of what it would look like if Satan took control of a city in America. Listen to Barnhouse’s shocking insight. He said that “all of the bars would be closed, pornography would be banished, and pristine streets would be filled with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The children would say, “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am,” and the churches would be full every Sunday… where Christ is not preached.”

Barnhouse was making the point that morality apart from the gospel, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, is worthless. Satan would love nothing more than to see every man, woman, and child in Taylorville have the appearance of godliness, to think that they and their neighbors are good people, and to attend church on Sundays in order to receive advice on how to reform their behavior and adopt healthier habits, just so long as Christ is never preached, never seen, and never received. Satan knows that his best course of action to destroy Christianity in America is to make it Christless. This is because true change will never take place apart from Jesus Christ. Only Jesus can bring true change; not a surface-level change, but a change on the heart level. A tomb can appear to be beautiful on the outside, but on the inside lies an ugly, decaying, stinky corpse! That’s morality without Christ. It might look good, but it’s dead.

The people in Jesus’ day had the same issues going on as the American Church seems to be experiencing. The Jews had all these rituals and practices that were only promoting a defective godliness. The religion of traditionalism ruled. Everyone read their Bibles, said their prayers, tithed their money to the synagogues, gave to the poor, and fasted more than was required by Scripture. People may have looked holy externally, but they remained unchanged internally.

And that is why Christ came. As we will see today in Mark 2:18-22, Jesus has the authority to change everything. That’s both the title and theme of today’s message. Jesus changes everything.

Let’s read about this from God’s Word.

Mark 2:18–20 ESV

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.

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.”

Maybe you’re reading this section for the first time or for the first time in a while and you’re left a little confused. You might be thinking, “This is a little obscure. What is Jesus talking about here?” That’s exactly how I felt this entire week, so don’t feel bad! But there are some clues in the text that will help us grasp the main idea a little better.

If you’re reading out of your own Bible this morning, you might notice, if your Bible has headings, that the heading for this section is titled something like “A Question about Fasting”. And certainly, as we read the first couple of verses it appears that this section is very much about fasting. Jesus is asked about fasting and He answers the question with a question of His own regarding fasting. But then we move into the second half of the text, in verses 21 and 22, and we slowly realize Jesus is no longer addressing fasting! Actually, I would argue, that as a whole verses 18-22 are less about the issue of fasting and more about the ministry of Jesus as it relates to the kingdom of God and those who enter into it.

We will regularly read in the Gospels how Jesus is approached with a question and Jesus will provide an unexpected answer that doesn’t seem to address the initial question. Instead, often Jesus’ answers address the underlying issues beneath the question. That appears to be what Jesus is doing now in this passage.

So, we are going to examine these verses under two main headings. First, we will see the Investigation; some people came with a question about fasting. Then second, we will see Jesus give instruction through Three Illustrations.

May the Lord give us eyes to see that the old has passed away and hearts to believe that the new has come in Christ Jesus.

1. The Investigation (v. 18)

We begin by observing that “some people came” and had a question for Jesus. There are three points I want to make concerning their question in verse 18.

Number one, let’s consider the context before their question. That is, what is the setting, what’s going on? Well, you’ll recall from last week that Jesus had been invited over to Levi the tax collector’s house to share a feast with Levi’s friends. These people were the scoundrels and sinners in society; something that the Pharisees took issue with. The Pharisees challenged what Jesus was doing by asking their own question, which was really more of a statement. With their noses up they asked, “Why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus responded with His mission statement, “I came for such people as these, to call them to repentance.”

So, the context is that of Jesus feasting with sinners. They were all having a good time celebrating how Levi’s life was going to be changed because Jesus had called Him to be His follower. He was getting out of the tax collecting business. And it appears to be this same evening, during the festivities, that a group of people approached Jesus with a question about fasting. Which brings me to another point I want us to consider concerning the question they asked.

Number two, consider the curiosity behind their question. These people appeared to have a genuine curiosity as they approached the Lord, unlike the Pharisees in verse 16. The Pharisees were not genuinely curious as to why Jesus received sinners. They were indicting Him for dining with such people. But this group in verse 18 were trying to make sense of what Jesus and His disciples weren’t doing in light of what John the Baptist and his disciples along with the Pharisees and their disciples were doing; namely fasting.

The line of thought may have gone something like this for this inquisitive group. “We see that the spiritual leaders and seemingly godly people like John and like the Pharisees are publically practicing godliness by fasting. If this Jesus is who people say He is and is who He claims to be, then we are curious to know why He isn’t doing what the other spiritual gurus are doing and why He isn’t requiring His disciples to do what the others are requiring of their disciples.” That Jesus and His disciples were not fasting was very much out of place and abnormal. And that leads right into the last point concerning their question.

Number three, consider the connotation of their question. Behind their question was a certain expectation. There was a sort of spiritual status quo in the Jewish culture at that time. In regards to fasting, people knew who the “seriously spiritual” people were based on if you fasted and how often you fasted. The people expected those who were spiritual to fast. That was one visible way that people discerned if someone was truly spiritual or godly. And so, you’d often see the Pharisees and other Jews looking disheveled, unshaven, and all somber to show others that they were fasting and that they were to be taken as “seriously spiritual” people.

So, what was wrong with this sort of fasting? Really it wasn’t the fasting itself that was wrong. Nor was it wrong how often a person fasted. After all, in the entire Old Testament, God only prescribed one fast for His people to observe annually and that was on the Day of Atonement. Now there were other fasts that God did not mandate, but that were done by God’s people for various reasons like: to express grief over the loss of a loved one, to express contrition and repentance before God either individually or as an entire nation, or to reinforce the urgency of prayer requests (to name a few). Once the people of God returned from exile, we read in Zechariah that four additional annual fasts were to be observed by all the Jews. But none of these fasts were designed to win God’s favor or be done for the approval of others. God’s people were actually reprimanded in Isaiah and Zechariah for vainly fasting because their hearts were not right and their conduct was not merciful to the needy.

Once the Pharisees popped up, fasting had become quite common. In fact, the Pharisees, and apparently John and his disciples, fasted twice a week. Depending on the commentary you pick up, they fasted every Monday and Thursday or every Tuesday and Thursday. Regardless, the point is that fasting was done often. Which wasn’t necessarily an issue. It became an issue, however, when it turned into an expectation. It was a way for people to gauge how spiritual a person was. If you were to be counted as a “good” person, a “godly” man or woman, you would fast as often as the Pharisees.

The connotation then of this question in verse 18 was that spiritual people fasted so that others would know they were spiritual. It had really become an extra-biblical expectation that if you weren’t fasting often then you weren’t godly or you weren’t in God’s good graces. “Jesus, if you’re so spiritual and godly, why aren’t You and Your followers living up to these religious standards?”

Let me bring this close to home for all of us by asking two heart-probing questions.

First off, is there a spiritual ritual or tradition that you are observing or doing, which might not be necessarily wrong, but is not being done with the right motives, the right heart, or with the proper goal in view, namely glorifying God? Are there rituals and traditions that we do at this church, perhaps, which aren’t wrong in and of themselves, but have ceased to be helpful to us and honoring to God because we just do these things because we’ve always done these things? There’s nothing wrong with traditions. Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians:

2 Thessalonians 2:15 ESV

So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.

But there are other traditions that might distract or subtract from the main focus of the Church and Christian life; loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and might, and loving one another as Christ loves us. So, we should keep the traditions that help us to honor those two commandments and root out those which inhibit us from fulfilling them. And that prompts the second heart-probing question.

Second, are you as an individual, or are we as a church, holding extra-biblical expectations or standards or traditions over the heads of other people causing them to be burdened and beaten down rather than built up in Christ? These things aren’t necessarily wrong, but they are more matters of conscience or preference than they are biblical and divine expectations for all people. Do we view someone else to be less spiritual or less godly because they aren’t living up to our expectations, observing our traditions, or in step with our standards?

It might be good to take time this week to reflect on what those things might be, how we might go about changing what we do, as well as contemplating why we do what we do so that we can love God and our neighbor better.

2. Three Illustrations (v. 19-22)

Moving on. Jesus in the next several verses chose to answer this group’s question with three illustrations or parable-like pictures. This is the first time in Mark that we see Jesus teaching in parables. His answer to the question is revealing. In His typical style, Jesus seems to address the initial question by addressing a deeper issue.

Let’s delve into these illustrations, starting in verses 19 and 20.

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.

Illustration #1= Wedding

So, the first illustration is that of a wedding. Jesus is essentially saying that He and His disciples are not fasting because it would be an inappropriate time to fast. To understand that we need to know a little bit about Jewish wedding customs.

Four Steps in Jewish Marriage Ceremony

First, the father of the groom would make arrangements for the marriage and would pay the bride’s father some sort of payment: money, farm animal(s), or even land.

Second, which could occur up to a year after the first step, came the fetching of the bride. The bridegroom would go to the father of the bride and request to take his betrothed back to his home. If the father agreed, the bride-to-be would go off with the bridegroom.

Closely following that would come third, the wedding ceremony, where a few guests would be in attendance. Prior to the ceremony, the bride would be ritually cleansed through immersion to prepare her for her husband.

Then after the ceremony came the fourth step, the wedding feast, where many more people were invited to attend to honor the newly weds by enjoying some festivities. These festivities would typically last for seven days! It was one of the rare occasions where the Pharisees would fast from fasting to partake in the celebration. It would have been rude and disrespectful, not to mention out of place, if you went to the wedding feast and did not enjoy the food, join in the fun, and so forth. Fasting was viewed as a sad and somber act and had no place at a wedding feast which was a time of celebration, joy, and gladness.

Interestingly, all four of these steps are evident in God’s Redemptive Plan; the Marriage of the Bridegroom and the Bride, Christ and the Church. As the Bride of Christ, the Church has been bought by Christ at a price, sought by Christ, cleansed and washed through the regeneration of the Spirit of Christ at conversion, and will one day celebrate their union to Christ at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Bridegroom

Additionally, you’ll note that Jesus referred to Himself as the bridegroom in this illustration.

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.

This is significant as it would have turned the Jews’ expectations for the Messiah upside down. In the Old Testament, the Messiah was not pictured as a bridegroom or a husband; Yahweh was the One pictured as the bridegroom or husband of His people. Take for instance, Isaiah 54, just a few verses after the passage about the Suffering Servant of the LORD.

Isaiah 54:4–6 ESV

“Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called. For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God.

Jump forward to Hosea, which is almost entirely a book picturing the relationship of Yahweh as a husband and Israel as His wife. In Hosea 2, we read:

Hosea 2:16–17 ESV

“And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more.

Hosea 2:19–20 ESV

And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord.

In the Old Testament, Yahweh is the bridegroom, but in the New Testament the imagery shifts so that Jesus becomes the bridegroom. We can see that clearly in passages like Ephesians 5 and in Revelation 19. So, what Jesus is saying in His parable when He pictures Himself as the bridegroom is similar to what He claimed when He forgave and healed the paralytic. How does the Son of Man have the authority to forgive sins when that authority belongs to God alone? Because Jesus is much more than a man. How can Jesus claim to be the bridegroom, an identity belonging to God alone? Because Jesus is more than a human Messiah.

The reason Jesus’ disciples were not fasting was because they were in the presence of Immanuel. They were in the presence of God Incarnate, God in the flesh. That was cause for feasting, not fasting! In Jesus Christ, God has come as the bridegroom to purchase and fetch His Bride to bring her to the wedding ceremony and to the marriage supper of the Lamb in glory!

“Taken Away”

Of course, Jesus is not saying that fasting is done away with. In fact, in His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expects that we will fast saying, “When you fast...” All He was saying in this section was that while He was present with His people bodily it was a time for feasting. But there would come a day when His disciples will fast.

Mark 2:20 ESV

The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.

Note closely that phrase “taken away”. It’s one word in the original meaning “to be violently removed”. In other words, for the very first time in Mark’s Gospel, we have here Jesus foreshadowing His own death. The same root of this word appears twice in Isaiah 53:8 in the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

Isaiah 53:8 ESV

By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?

There will come a time for fasting, a time to express sorrow and sadness. Jesus was with His disciples, but one day would be ripped away from them. He would be cut off out of the land of the living. The trauma of that moment would keep them from eating. Feasting would be replaced with fasting.

However, this time of mourning would only last for a short while. Jesus promised His disciples concerning His imminent death and coming resurrection:

John 16:20–22 ESV

Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

“Weeping may tarry for the night” for us in this life. Troubles will come. Hardship will come. Persecution will come. Pain, heartache, grief, loss, broken relationships, and sin are still realities for us in this fallen world. For these things we may practice fasting in order to seek God, draw near to Him, ask Him for relief from our grief, or repent from sin and return to Him once again with fervency. Yes, weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning of Christ’s resurrection!

Jesus Christ and His kingdom change our perspective on life. With Him and with the arrival of His kingdom come a new joy that can never be taken from us, can never fade away for us, and can never be extinguished within us. Jesus Christ brings us a new joy that is a reality for us in this life and an eternal certainty in the life to come!

Now, let’s briefly look at the next two illustrations. I want us to consider them together because they basically stress the same point, but in different ways.

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.”

Illustration #2= Wardrobe

Illustration #3= Wine & Wineskins

The second illustration is of a wardrobe, a garment you wear not what you store your garments in! And the third illustration is of wine and wineskins. Both of these illustrations teach that the new is incompatible with the old. Jesus had not come to patch up the old religion of the Pharisees. The old wineskins of the rabbinic ways, the traditions of man are not able to contain the new wine, the new ways of Jesus Christ and His kingdom.

Culturally, these two illustrations may be lost on us. In our age of preshrunk fabrics and glass and plastic water bottles, we may not grasp the meaning of these illustrations readily. In Jesus’ day, if you were going to patch up your old favorite shirt, you had to go out and purchase a piece of cloth that was bigger than the hole you wanted to patch. And then, you would have to wash that piece so that once you sewed it onto the old garment and washed it, it wouldn’t tear away in the wash. Or, if you had expended the wine that was in your wineskin and desired more, you would have to put the new wine into fresh wineskins. You would do that because the wineskin would expand with the new wine as the wine fermented. Over time that wineskin would harden and lose its elasticity, so if you tried filling it with new wine it wouldn’t be able to expand with the fermenting new wine and would burst, thus spilling the wine and destroying the skin.

In both illustrations we see the consequences of adding or mixing the new with the old. In both cases the new is rendered useless and the old is left destroyed. Either the patch tears away and the old garment still has a hole or the wineskin bursts and the new, good wine is spilled.

These illustrations touch on the deeper issue that lies beneath the question about fasting. The expectation was that the Messiah would conform to the religion and traditions of the Pharisees and of Judaism in that day. Jesus is teaching that it is not the Messiah who should conform to their ways, but it is them who must be changed by Him and to His ways. He didn’t come to make you appear to be godly so that you can get the approval of other religious people around you. He came to wholly make you holy, inside and out. Toss out the old garment full of holes that was made by man and be dressed in the new garment of Christ that comes from God. Receive the new heart from God by being born again, which will be a container that can expand with the fermenting Spirit of Christ and His mercy, grace, righteousness, and holiness.

There are two exhortations I wish to give you relating to these two illustrations.

Firstly, Jesus is not an add-on to your life. Christianity, contrary to the popular American belief, is not a Jesus plus something religion. Christianity is an absolutely exclusive religion. It is Jesus plus nothing. The Christian life is a Jesus plus nothing exclusive relationship.

Jesus did not come to patch up your life to fix one little part or parts. He didn’t come to reform you. He came to resurrect, regenerate, and renew you; to change you completely. Stop viewing Jesus as an attachment, an addition, or appendage to your life. Jesus did not come to make your life better. He came to make you new!

Jesus is not a patch you can sew onto your old filthy rags. Jesus is not a bumper sticker you can put on your car or a magnet to slap on your fridge. Jesus isn’t a tattoo or a cross necklace you wear but then attend the late night kegger down the street. Jesus isn’t a stamp of approval for you to live life how you please because His grace is greater than your sin and it’s easier to ask for forgiveness later. Being a Christian isn’t about pulling Jesus out when it’s convenient or for when you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Jesus desires to be your everything. Either Jesus is your all or Jesus is nothing to you at all.

Secondly, Jesus does not mix with and cannot be contained by your old way of life. The gospel of the kingdom of God is this new wine requiring new containers. He came to make you whole, not to patch you up. He came to make you a new creation, not to modify your behavior.

The bottom line is: put off the old and put on the new.

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Don’t be content with who you once were. Don’t live like it’s business as usual. Instead, “I appeal to you by the mercies of God, present yourself as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world (that includes man-made traditions and religious standards that attempt to earn God’s favor or the favor of your fellow man; actions that appear to be spiritual but are empty), ON THE CONTRARY be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2).

Jesus changes everything. Receive new joy and new life by grace through faith in Him alone. Be changed by Him.