Wednesday Night, May 27, 2020 PM

Heavenly Father, we thank you for gathering us tonight. We thank you for the opportunity to consider the truths of your word and to be blessed by what you have to say to us and to pray together for the needs and concerns that we have and Father, we pray that our prayers would be in agreement with your word and that you would have your way in our lives and that your will would certainly be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We pray all these things for the sake of Jesus Christ, the one with whom you are well pleased, amen. I just thought we'd start off tonight by reading a psalm, Psalm 12. And until we once again gain use of our hymnals and a comfiness and of course I think June will be, everything will be working a lot more full-fledged but until then I thought we would read a psalm in lieu of that.

So Psalm 12 and says, help Lord, it's a good way to start some of our prayers, isn't it? Help Lord, for the godly man ceases to be. For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men. They speak falsehood to one another with flattering lips and with a double heart they speak.

May the Lord cut off all flattering lips the tongue that speaks great things who have said with our tongue we will prevail. Our lips are our own. Who is Lord over us? Because of the devastation of the afflicted, because of the groaning of the needy, now I will arise says the Lord.

I will set him in the safety for which he longs. The words of the Lord are pure words. As silver tried in a furnace on the earth for a fine seven times. You, oh Lord, will keep them. You will preserve him from this generation forever.

Isaiah 43:10 and Capitalization of “God”

The wicked strut about on every side when vileness is exalted among the sons of men. All right, well, before we have a devotional from Luke chapter five, it will be Luke five verses 33 through 39. But before we get to our devotional tonight and then a time of prayer afterwards, I did have a question that came in about Isaiah chapter 43 and verse 10.

So we are just a little bit past our Q &A from Sunday night, but that's okay. Take late entries. Isaiah chapter 43 and verse 10. So the question about this verse is that there is a word in here, it's the word God, which you'll find a lot in the Bible.

And whereas you would always think that having that word capitalized as a foregone conclusion, what about a verse talking about a false God or a hypothetical God and so on? So when we read Isaiah 43, let me see here.

Let's go, verse 10, verse 10. You are my witnesses declares the Lord and my servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me, there was no God formed and there will be none after me.

So the word God there where he says, or prophet Isaiah is speaking the words of the Lord. And of course, we know from the scriptures that it is the spirit of Christ speaking through the prophets. So thus saith our Lord and savior Christ, he says, before me, there was no God formed and there will be none after me.

Okay, so this is the word of God and obviously it's the word of the triune God. What the father wants to be said, the son says and he says it through the spirit. So there's no disagreement with God. Now the question is, should this word God be capitalized?

After all, we're talking about the reality that there is no other God other than the one true God. And so there's no God formed sometime before eternity passed where there was only God. No, that's not true.

And there's no God formed after God. This is a very important verse. It's a very important verse to share with Jehovah's Witnesses. It's a very important verse to share with Mormons. It is a very important verse because it says that God has always been and he always will be and there's only one God and no other gods were ever formed.

But the question is, should we capitalize it or not? In different translations, we'll have it capitalized or not and what's the point of that? I don't know exactly, but if it is capitalized, here's the value in it.

Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons are sure to capitalize God when referring to Jesus Christ, although they would be thinking in their heads, this is a creation, a creature, that this God formed another God whom we'll give a capital G to and we'll call Jesus Christ God even though he's a creature made by the other God.

Okay, well, that's what they believe and they'll try to say, well, we give as much reverence to Jesus Christ as you do and of course, they're lying even if they don't understand they are. But here's a great verse that says, there is no God formed before God or after God, there is only God.

So this is a verse that very clearly states the truth of the matter. And if it's not capitalized, that's okay too because this is just clarifying that once again, there's only one God. So I hope that helps.

It's a very important verse for evangelizing Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. Okay, now let's turn our attention to Luke chapter five and we're going to be reading verses 33 through 39 in a moment. And as you're going to hear, our passage tonight is one of conflict.

It is another Christ-centered confrontation. And so it's helpful for us to think about what kinds of confrontations Jesus has been involved with as of late. Luke has dutifully recorded that Jesus' hometown crowd, they didn't mind him teaching from the scriptures so long as he did not apply the judgment portions to them.

And the scribes and Pharisees don't mind Jesus healing the lame just so long as he does not forgive their sins. And the same scribes and Pharisees don't mind him addressing tax collectors as the sinners that they are just so long as he does not eat and drink with them.

So these are the points of conflict that we've seen thus far in the recent material in Luke. And Jesus has answered the most recent objection perfectly. He has pointed out the obvious. It is not those who are well who need a physician but those who are sick.

I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. And so once again in our passage, he is going to resort to the obvious. So let me read for us Luke chapter five verses 33 through 39. And they said to him, the disciples of John often fast and offer prayers.

The disciples of the Pharisees also do the same but yours eat and drink. And Jesus said to them, you cannot make the attendance of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? But the days will come and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.

And he was also telling them a parable. No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. Otherwise he will both tear the new and the piece from the new will not match the old.

And no one puts new wine into old wine skins. Otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wine skins. And no one after drinking old wine wishes for the new for he says the old is good enough.

All right, so I have a question for you tonight. Why don't geriatric prosthodontists and neonatologists ever amalgamate at the same symposiums? The answer is simple. Infants don't need dentures. Infants don't need dentures, which is a very obvious statement to make, isn't it?

I understand that that kind of categorical statement is bound to cause an allergic reaction. And such obvious arrogance will undoubtedly sound like hate speech to some critical theorists somewhere. And they're gonna be scrambling even now to posit a new class of victim and create a new advocacy group, JIPDIP, Justice for Infants Preemptively Denied Intraoral Prosthetics.

And every pediatrician not discussing with new parents the possibility of dentures for the little guy. And every, and every, all the parents failing to ask for their infants to be considered for this surgery will be participating in this systemic injustice as oppressors.

And anyone wishing to investigate the rotting corpse of common sense left lying out in the street will be dubbed a conspiracy theorist. Well, that's not really going on today, but things very similar to that are going on today.

And the murder of the obvious is a crime that is common to those who oppose the truth. And Jesus has such a group protesting against him right now. They have opposed, now let's trace this. They have opposed God's savior for forgiving a man's sin.

They've opposed that. They have also opposed a physician spending time with the sick. And now they oppose folks in a wedding party enjoying themselves. These are the folks that Jesus is speaking with.

And I believe that if they had the opportunity, they would have been card-carrying members of JIPDIP. But I wanna work through Christ's resurrection of the obvious by the life-giving power of his words and consider the cautions and corrections and doctrines and directions that are here in this passage that will help us in our prayers.

By rejoicing in Christ our savior, we sanctify the obvious. By rejoicing in Christ our savior, we will sanctify the obvious. Verses 33 through 35 remind us that austerity is a party pooper. The Pharisees and the scribes think that something suspicious is going on because these folks are gathered around Christ and they're having a good time.

Now I've been guilty of this in my own home. I can arrive back at my own house with many different concerns stretching me like a trampoline and the house that has been made warm and joyful by my wife and children, all of that just bounces off refracted as my annoyance.

And I can confess that the happy riot can grind to a halt when the chief of the fun police comes in and starts shutting everything down. And that's just selfishness and austerity is always a party pooper.

But this is happening with the Pharisees and their scribes as they make an insidious observation in verse 33. And here's their observation. The disciples of John often fast and offer prayers. The disciples of the Pharisees also do the same, but yours eat and drink.

So they see no reason for this eating and drinking. They see no reason for this celebration to be going on, especially concerning this lot, these tax collectors and these sinners. They did not see Christ for who he really is.

And so they can't see what this feasting is since they don't really believe in Christ and they don't understand the obvious. Their problem, as John Calvin put it, it was that they were excessively devoted to themselves.

And if you're excessively devoted to yourself, well, then you can't see Christ at all. Opposed to Christ, they shoot obvious in the back and leave him in the street. They plow, muddled, sow confusion and harvest obfuscation.

Notice their protest continues. They have already made their protest saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? That's the beginning of their protest. Jesus answers them wonderfully, but they continue their protest.

It was obvious the physician has to go to the sick. The Savior King must go to the unrighteous to call them to repentance. It's so obvious and yet they continue their protest. They make it less about tax collectors and sinners and make it more about the fact that they don't see a lot of fasting going on.

Here they are feasting, but what about fasting? Shouldn't your disciples be fasting and praying just like our disciples fast and pray? And oh, just like the disciples of John the Baptist? So we see that these religious leaders are gelatinous.

They shrug off the initial answer with a differently nuanced protest of the same sort. Something like, yes, yes, of course, Jesus, we think you must have misunderstood our meaning. We'll try to make it simple for you.

It's not so much the tax collectors and sinners, it's the fact that you're eating and drinking. It's the problem with the feasting. That's what we have a problem with. We don't think that this is right because you're not fasting like we do.

They maintain that Christ has somehow failed in regards to his teaching. He has failed to lead his disciples in true holiness. There's something perhaps lacking in Christ's character because his disciples do not follow the same austerity measures as theirs and those of John the Baptist.

All this eating and drinking and enjoyment, it's just not right. And so their slander is very serpentine. The Pharisees and their scribes do not directly accuse Christ of anything, but they insinuate that there might possibly be a horrible problem because of the disciples for whom Jesus is responsible.

They don't accuse the disciples specifically of anything, notice. This is the way it works. They don't accuse the disciples of anything specifically. They don't say, look, your disciples are drunk. That could have been proven or disproven.

They don't point at the disciples and say, look, they are being gluttonous. That would be an objective thing that you could look at. They don't say they're being licentious, they're engaging in all sorts of sin.

They had no grounds for that kind of an accusation. They just make an observation and just let it hang out there and hoping everyone else will fill in the rest of the details. And in this, they show that they are the spawn of slewfoot.

Their approach is crafty. They are like a pitcher on the mound. They have received their sign, they hide their hand, they cloud their delivery, and then they send a wicked slider toward the plate, hoping that Christ will whiff in his response.

Remember that the word for devil is diabolos, literally the through thrower. And he's their pitching coach and they're doing their old man proud. Serpentine slander sneaks around, it strikes from behind.

It lets the poison do the work over time. It depends on hiddenness and craftiness and camouflage, anything but the obvious truth. It's an insidious observation. And it's a devious division because they're trying, you see, to make a division between John the Baptist and Jesus Christ.

Now, John the Baptist is the forerunner of the Messiah, but they would see here a division, an opposition that really does not exist. They are stirring up the disciples of John the Baptist. And we can see this from Matthew's account.

Matthew records that the disciples of John were actually present and wondering the very same thing. I don't think with the very same intentions as the Pharisees, but the Pharisees have stirred them up to wonder if there might not be possibly something wrong with Christ and his disciples.

It's helpful to remember that by this time, John the Baptist has been arrested by Herod. They are without their leader. And so the Pharisees are co-opting them to this matter. And by bringing them in on their side, they're trying to drive a wedge in between the followers of Christ and the followers of the forerunner, John the Baptist.

Well, that's just devilry, it's sowing discord. Now, the question for Christ is this. Should he now defend his own disciples and what they're doing and thereby condemn John's disciples or must Christ admit his own error in discipling his own disciples and he must now correct his disciples and side with the established religious way of doing things?

As usual, the Pharisees and the scribes think that they've got Jesus caught in an impossible conundrum and whichever way he answers, he's going to be in trouble. They were always trying to come up with those kinds of impossible questions to answer.

But we'll see his insightful refutation in a moment. But I think in terms of making application to prayer, that it is a concern, it should be a concern of ours, that our testimonies be clear and good.

We don't want to negatively cast light upon Christ. So, I mean, in this story, they're pointing at Jesus' disciples and saying, they must be doing something wrong and that's supposed to cast negative light upon Christ.

Well, that is a genuine concern if indeed we are doing something wrong. I think we must be concerned how our names reflect the name of Christ, but we ought not to be burdened with slanders and divisions which are untrue and unnecessary.

That's why we need wisdom and we need clarity and for these things, we need to pray. We need to pray and Christ can resurrect the obvious in these situations. And also in our prayer lives, we have need of confession and repentance from judging others wrongly as we've been talking about on Sunday mornings.

If we are looking at somebody who is, if for instance, like the Pharisees, not for the same reasons, but let's say we had a good motive to honor Christ and we fasted twice a week and we became aware that someone else who's a follower of Christ was good to fast twice in a decade and we had a big problem with that.

Well, we could wrongly judge them. We could wrongly judge them and make them feel like they were the old gum on the bottom of our shoe because they were not fasting as much as we were. Okay, well, this is kind of what's happening in our passage and so it should be reminding, it should remind us to confess our sins if we've engaged in those kinds of matters.

And pray, we have to pray through all these convictional matters we've been talking about on Sunday morning, whatever they may be, because we need to actively, actively entrust them to our Heavenly Father and confess them as the business of Christ, not our business.

Now, the insightful refutation in verse 34. Jesus is not fooled by the goofy gyrations of the pitcher on the mound. He sees and he swings true and his answer concerning the eating and drinking is natural.

Jesus said to them, you cannot make the attendants at the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? This makes so much sense. He says, well, why else would my disciples be eating and drinking and feasting with great joy?

They're the attendants of the bridegroom. Oh, we're enjoying a wedding celebration. How can you ask them to mourn with fastings and lament with prayers? There's no cause for these matters right now, quite the opposite.

See, Jesus is talking about himself as the Messiah. And one of the images in the scriptures about the Messiah is that of a bridegroom coming for his bride. That's Old Testament and New Testament. And he's been talking about himself and revealing himself as the Messiah.

He's coming and he's preaching the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God. And so he has all that context. And so they wanna know why his disciples are eating and drinking rather than fasting and praying.

And the idea is in lament. Like you would, if you were concerned about the oppression of your people under the government of the Romans and you're seeking the deliverance, the consolation of Israel, well, of course you'd be fasting twice a week and you'd be in lament and sorrow.

But he says, no, hey, the bridegroom is here. The answers to all the prayers are here. So why fast? Why lament in prayer? Well, this answer functions on a number of levels. First of all, as he kind of alluded to, there's the scriptural sense.

What Jesus says to the Pharisees is biblically based. Can we think of any example in scripture about a wedding where the attendants of the bridegroom were lousy with the pouts? Can we think of any wedding in the scripture where the people there were depriving themselves of food and in dire concern?

Well, there was of course Samson's attempt to marry a Philistine looker and she and her pals proved pretty poor wedding company, but that's no example. They were feasting plenty and they were plenty drunk.

So that's not a good example. I can't really find anything like that. Jesus is saying something that's very common sense. The attendants of the bridegroom rejoice with the bridegroom during his week, during the wedding week.

Song of Solomon, consider Solomon's wedding party. Song of Solomon chapter three, verses six through 11. You probably haven't read this a lot. What is this coming up from the wilderness like columns of smoke perfumed with myrrh and frankincense with all scented powders of the merchant?

Behold, that is the traveling couch of Solomon, 60 mighty men around it, of the mighty men of Israel. All of them are wielders of the sword, expert in war. Each man has his sword at his side, guarding against the terrors of the night.

King Solomon has made for himself a sedan chair from the timber of Lebanon. He has made its post of silver, its back of gold and its seat of purple fabric with its interior lovingly fitted out by the daughters of Jerusalem.

Go forth, O daughters of Zion, and gaze on King Solomon with the crown with which his mother has crowned him on the day of his wedding and on the day of his gladness of heart. Now the question for you, do you think that those 60 men who surrounded this and made up this great procession of Solomon, do you think that they were fasting and mourning?

I don't think so. This was a glorious day, and they were a part of the glory of King Solomon on the day when his heart is most glad on the day of his wedding. And someone greater than Solomon is here.

So shouldn't the attendance of that bridegroom, Christ himself, should they not also rejoice? Should they not also feast with gladness of heart? And after all, in the days of Messiah, it was prophesied as Zechariah 8, 19, thus says the Lord of hosts, the fast of the fourth, the fast of the fifth, the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the 10th month will become joy, gladness, and cheerful feasts for the house of Judah.

So love, truth, and peace. I mean, the Messianic prophecy said, fasts are gonna be turned into feasts when Messiah arrives. So there's plenty of biblical reason why Jesus' disciples weren't fasting, but rather feasting.

And this is loving kind of logic in the way that Jesus answers. He's obviously sided with scripture, using some good imagery of the bridegroom. But why does he pick the bridegroom? He could have used a different analogy that would have been just as effective.

Why does he talk about the bridegroom? He does this because he is healing a breach he did not make. Consider that Jesus here is using language that John the Baptist was apt to use of Messiah as well. In John chapter three, in verse 28, John the Baptist said this to his own disciples, his own followers.

He said, you yourselves are my witnesses that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent ahead of him. Now here's the key part. He who has the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice.

So this joy of mine has been made full. He must increase, but I must decrease. See, that's the way John the Baptist had talked about the Messiah. And so Jesus, he knows that John's disciples are troubled.

They're being led astray by these Pharisees. And so he brings up the language that their own master brought up about Messiah. He talks about the bridegroom. And so he shows that John's followers and his followers, that he and John are in agreement.

And as John the Baptist rejoiced in the bridegroom, so also may his followers. So you see that that's a loving way to approach this problem. These disciples of John, they weren't malicious, but they had been brought into error by those who were being devious.

And so Jesus was very loving in inviting them back to understanding what their own master had taught them. And thirdly, Jesus is trapping the trappers. Jesus in his infinite wisdom, and it picks an image here about the bridegroom and about feasting that not only has biblical precedent, that not only invites the disciples of John to come back to a better understanding of him, but he also uses a term that is effective in refuting these Pharisees and scribes so committed to their own traditions.

There are many, many writings among the rabbis that made clear concessions for feasting and drinking when it came to weddings. And they wrote and they shared amongst themselves in all their traditions, how recommended fastings were suspended and various austerity measures involved with certain festivals, like the Festival of Booths, where you went and basically camped out in roughly made huts, made out of sticks, that all those kinds of things.

They said, well, if you're having a wedding, don't do any of that. Rejoice and feast with the wedding. Don't worry about all these spiritual disciplines during that time. The rabbis said things like, the bridegroom, his friends, and all the children of the bride chamber are free from prayer and the phylacteries.

You know, the little things you put on your head and your hands, all that, you can just suspend that when you're having a wedding. So this was their tradition. It's interesting, is it not, that where the Pharisees had tried to get Christ to go against his forerunner, John, and they had accused him of breaching Jewish tradition with this one picturesque question that Jesus asks, Jesus shows himself actually allied with John and consistent with the traditions.

It's a very stunning way in which Jesus answers. Always perfect. Apples of gold and settings of silver. And that's a good reminder that we would want to be ready, would we not? We would want to be ready in season and out of season with a word from Christ, a word from the word, so as to answer those who are outside and those who are inside with grace and with effectiveness.

Is this not what Paul asked for in his prayer request to those in Colossae? In Colossians four, verses two through six, listen to the way that Paul gives a prayer request to this church at Colossae. He says, devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving, praying at the same time for us as well.

So Paul says, here's my prayer request. That God will open up to us a door for the word so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned, that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak.

Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace as though seasoned with salt so that you will know how you should respond to each person.

And that's something we should pray about. As very often, I think that part of our reluctance or reticence or fear about speaking to others who are opposed to Christ, and we know it, or that they need to repent of their sins and come to Christ, and we know it, part of our reluctance to do that is not that we haven't been praying about their needs, perhaps, or praying for their salvation, perhaps, but we have not been praying for God to give us specifically the wisdom that we need, the winsomeness, the grace that we need, in the tips of our tongues, to talk with this individual, to talk with that person, and we need to ask God for that grace to do so.

Also, we should pray for a real awareness of Christ's presence with us by his Holy Spirit. He has not left his orphans. He has called us to abide with him and trust in his promise, I will never leave you nor forsake you, and it's Matthew Henry's observation that it is either merry or melancholy with the children of the bridegroom, according as they have more or less of the bridegroom's presence.

When he is with them, the candle of God shines upon their head and all is well, but when he is withdrawn, though for a small moment, they are troubled and walk heavily. The presence and the nearness of the sun makes day and summer his absence and distance night and winter.

Now, this is interesting. Christ is all in all to the church's joy, and as we look at these disciples and how they are rejoicing and feasting because they are with Christ, the bridegroom, should we not also ask in our prayers that we would have an awareness of the nearness of Christ to us by his Spirit so that we too would walk in that joy?

All right, now let's close with a word of prayer, then we'll share some prayer requests. Father, I thank you for the time that you have given us in your word. I pray that it's been a blessing to us, and now I ask that as we continue in prayer for the needs of our loved ones, the needs of the church, that we would consider rightly how to pray, that we consider how to pray in accordance with your word, and we ask all these things for the sake of Christ, amen.