Fasting, Patches and Wineskins

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We are continuing tonight in our study of the Gospel of Mark, in a sense reacquainting ourselves with the story of Jesus as told by Mark in his gospel, giving us a really, as it were, sort of a 30,000 foot view of Jesus in a kind of a quick move through his life.
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There are times when he's going to dig down deep into certain areas, but so far we have looked at relatively short snapshots of moments in Christ's life.
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And in chapter 1, there was Christ's gaining of popularity, and as I've said several times in chapter 2, we have popularity breeding contempt, and particularly contempt from those who are in positions of power, and even more specifically in positions of religious authority.
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Jesus was a thorn in the side of the Pharisees and the scribes, and we have looked at chapter 2 as having four constituent parts.
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Jesus is encouraging, well not encouraging, that's the wrong word, he's incurring criticism from the scribes of the Pharisees, and he is doing so for four reasons, and I like to point these out.
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I've pointed these out in previous nights, but I want to bring them to your attention again.
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He forgives sin.
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You'll remember the man was brought to him on the bed, lowered down through the roof.
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Jesus said to him, my son your sins are forgiven, and the Pharisees, the scribes of the Pharisees rather, the attitude that they had was, who does this man think he is? Only God can forgive sins, and we talked about that in the first, our first study.
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The second criticism is that he befriended sinners, so he friended sinners, and Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee.
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He saw Levi at a tax booth.
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Levi, of course, as we talked about last week, was a man who was separated from decent Jewish society because of his choice of occupation, that being that of a publican or a tax collector, and he was excommunicated from Jewish society.
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Well, Jesus received him, called him to be his disciple, said follow me, and as one of the gospel writers wrote, he left everything and followed Christ, and he threw him feast in his home for Jesus, and Jesus attended the feast with sinners, and the Pharisees, the scribes said, you know, how can he, how can he do that? How can he have a meal? How can he fellowship with sinners? Well, the third thing that we're going to look at tonight, as I said, these first two criticisms are things Jesus did that the Pharisees did not like, and the second things are things that he did not do, and tonight we're going to see that Jesus did not keep the fast, and then next week, leading into chapter 3, we're going to see that he debates with them over observation of the Sabbath.
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Now, part of me wanted to do both of these together tonight because I don't want to go so slow that we never finish.
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I'd like to make it through the book eventually, but at the same time, what I'm going to do, instead of combining these two, I'm going to combine the fourth section with chapter 3 verses 1 to 6 because it's two instances where the Sabbath are an issue, so this is, tonight we're going to be looking at verses 18 to 22, so that's where we are is verses 18 to 22, and then next week we'll begin in verse 23 and we'll read to Mark 3 verse 6, and that'll take us in two instances where Jesus is accused of breaking God's Sabbath, and we're going to have a whole lesson next week on the different views Christians have held about the Sabbath.
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We're going to talk about Jesus's words.
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We're also going to talk about Sabbath as a principle, and so it's going to be, hopefully next week's lesson will be at least fun in the sense that even if we disagree, we might have a good conversation, talk about some things, and lay out some ways that people have understood these passages, because there are some people who believe Jesus broke the law, and that's one thing that I can't abide, is that I can't abide that Jesus broke the law because Jesus said I didn't come to put the law away, I came to fulfill the law.
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He didn't break the law ever.
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There's a man, a very famous pastor up in the Carolinas who made a big stink when he said Jesus broke the law for love, but Jesus didn't break the law, and I'm going to try to make that argument next week, because that is a big issue.
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But today we're going to be talking about something that really doesn't fall into the category of law as much as it falls into the category of tradition, and that's where I would say these two things really do have a wide distinction, because we're going to see today that the the Pharisees or the scribes are going to challenge Jesus on the subject of fasting, which we're going to see there's only one law regarding fasting in the Old Testament, it was on the Yom Kippur, the rest of fasting was was done voluntarily.
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So this is a much different issue than the Sabbath, because of course the Sabbath is Fourth Commandment, it's in the Decalogue, the bar is different when we talk about these two things.
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So I do think separating these two is wise, and looking at it from two perspectives will be the best way to do it.
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But remember again as we're breaking down this little thing that I have here, these are the things that Jesus that do, that they said he shouldn't, and these are the don'ts that they said he should.
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So that's just one little easy way of breaking down chapter 2, and I like charts and things, it kind of helps me look at the bigger picture of what's what's happening here.
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So that being said, let's read Mark chapter 2 beginning at verse 18, we'll read down to 22, and then we'll pray.
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It says, 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.
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The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.
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No one sews a piece of untrunk cloth on an old garment.
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If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made.
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And no one puts new wine into old wineskins.
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If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins.
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But new wine is for fresh wineskins.
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Father, I pray that you would keep me from error as I teach, and Lord that your word would help us to better understand our Lord Jesus Christ and what he came to teach, and help us to understand tonight in this lesson the newness of the new covenant, the uniqueness of the gospel, this pearl of great price that we have.
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And I pray, Lord, that you would help us to understand that it's unmixable and uncontainable in any other system.
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I pray this in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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So we talk about the subject of fasting.
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Fasting on its own is an interesting subject to discuss because, quite frankly, it is something that is often done, unfortunately, incorrectly.
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Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 6 that when you fast, don't fast as the Pharisees, but wash your face, make yourself look presentable, don't go around looking all miserable and sullen, because that's what they would do.
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They would use fasting as a way to garner attention.
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And we've seen this even in our own day in some places where fasting becomes sort of like a hip and trendy thing, where we're going to have, you know, the whole church is going to fast, but we're going to do it as an advertised thing.
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We're all fasting.
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And yet it's like, wait a minute, that kind of goes against the thing Jesus said in the sixth chapter of Matthew, you know, that we're going to advertise that we're doing this super spiritual thing.
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And I know that there's arguments that, well, you know, we're not advertising it.
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We just want the whole church involved and all that.
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And I get it.
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But ultimately, it is interesting that when we think about fasting from a biblical perspective, as I said before, we read the Scripture, there's not a lot of demand in the sense of, you know, structured commands of fasting.
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Rather, what we see are voluntary fasts that are usually associated with things like mourning or repentance or special days, feasts, obviously not feasts, let me back that up, special calendar times in the calendar.
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Yeah, you don't fast during a feast.
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And we're going to talk about the difference of that in a minute because Jesus uses that example.
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He talks about the bridegroom.
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We'll get there in a moment.
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When we talk about the subject of fasting, it's interesting, though, that when Jesus does discuss fasting in Matthew, he says, when ye fast.
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He doesn't say if ye fast.
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And so I often do encourage people to consider, is fasting a part of your spiritual discipline? Because I think for a lot of us, we sort of don't consider that of great value because we don't often do it.
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I've told this before.
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I don't think it's a big secret.
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Typically, when I baptize someone, I invite them to fast with me.
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And we do that one day before the baptism, if they can.
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Now, some people have a physical limitation.
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Sometimes communication is an issue.
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We can't get together and do it.
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But in general, especially the young people that I have baptized, I take them through a time of study prior to baptism.
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Usually it's six weeks of study.
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And then on the Thursday before, we fast.
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And, you know, I typically choose Thursday as somewhat of a...
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when you have kids, there's usually stuff going on Friday and Saturday.
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So you kind of pick a day that would make it work for everyone.
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And so we will usually fast on the Thursday before a baptism.
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And I actually got that from the Didache.
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The Didache is one of the oldest extra biblical writings that we still possess.
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Didache means the teaching of the Twelve.
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And it's considered to be one of the earliest sort of church manuals that was used.
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I don't claim it to be on par with Scripture.
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I don't claim it to have supernatural authority.
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But it's an interesting study in how the early church operated.
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And the reason why I like it is because as a Baptist, it says that before someone is to be baptized, they are to fast.
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And I'm telling you, if you're baptizing an infant, that don't work.
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So, you know, it kind of gives me a little bit of, you know, a little bit of historical argument for the fast of...
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for infants not being baptized.
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The other thing it says, it says that the person doing the baptism should fast.
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And it says that at that time, now this is something I don't do, but it said everyone in the church who is able should fast on behalf of that person.
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And again, I've never made that a part of it just because it's hard enough just to get two people to fast together and much less get everybody to do it.
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But it is...
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it was interesting if you read that section of the Didache, it also talks about the fact that they actually dipped them three times, not just once, which is an interesting...
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a lot of churches still do that.
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One Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
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It also says that they did it in running water, not in still water, which is interesting.
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It says living water is actually the term that's used.
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So, there's a whole lot about baptism that's historically there in the Didache.
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Gives you just a historic snapshot of what the church looked like at that time in history.
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But the point I'm making is fasting was a part of Christian living.
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And so what I say about fasting tonight, I want to understand, I'm not in any way discouraging fasting.
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And Jesus is not in any way discouraging fasting.
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But what Jesus is dealing with in this section of Mark's Gospel, and as we'll see, in fact I want I want to get it read again as we as we do each week.
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Stephen, would you read for me tonight? Matthew 9, 14 to 17, when we get there.
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And who else would like to read? Lee, would you like to read for me? Would you read Luke 5, 33 to 39, when it's time? If you'll just hold your place.
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And we'll actually read those earlier this time.
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But the point I'm getting to is, this is not a discouragement of fasting.
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What Jesus is dealing with is a tradition that was held among the Pharisees that had become basically the law for all people who were considered themselves to be righteous.
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They followed the religious example of the Pharisees.
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And the religious example of the Pharisees was that you would fast twice a week.
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We see this example actually in Luke 18, 12, when it says the Pharisee went to the temple to pray.
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And remember the tax collector was outside.
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I talked about this story last week.
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And what did the Pharisee say? I give a tithe of all my income.
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I fast twice a week.
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Well, historically they fasted on Mondays and Thursdays.
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So they had a time each week where it was expected that you would fast.
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And so this tradition that had made its way into the people of God, the Jewish people as it were, had become the standard.
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If you don't do this, you're not doing what God wants you to do.
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Isn't that what often is the pharisaical attitude? If you don't do it like me, you're not doing what God wants you to do.
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And that just is.
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And it really doesn't matter.
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I mean, it's everybody's that way.
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You know, they think they're the standard because they do it that way.
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And so the standard was, if you don't do this twice a week, you're not doing it.
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So that is the attitude that Jesus is facing.
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So, oh and I do want to, I'll give you this for those of you who do take notes.
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The one mention of an annual fast is in Leviticus chapter 16 verse 29.
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And it doesn't even use the word for fasting.
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I looked it up in the King James and in the ESV.
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It uses the word afflict.
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Afflict yourself.
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But it doesn't mean to strike yourself, like somebody might think of like a flagellation or something.
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It simply means to deny yourself.
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But denying yourself would include fasting.
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So, so it is a command to deny yourself in preparation for the day of atonement.
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And it makes sense that that would be the day.
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And by the way, this also reminds, should remind us that Jesus did fast.
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Because he kept the law.
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And if the law called for self-denial on the day of atonement, and Jesus lived 30, 33 years, which means he would have went to at least 32 days of atonement.
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Now as an infant probably didn't have to do that.
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But as he came as a youth and had to follow the rules and the standards, he would have done what everyone else had to do.
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And that was keep that fast.
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So certainly Jesus did fast on the day of atonement because he kept the law perfectly on our behalf.
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So, so yes.
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And also he also fasted during the wilderness, right? I mean he fasted 40 days.
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So Jesus is not opposed to fasting.
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But we're going to see that he is opposed to the traditions of the Pharisees becoming the standard of God's people.
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So with that being said, we've already read Mark's account.
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Let's read Matthew's account of this same scenario.
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So Stephen, would you read that for us? Real quick, I just want to make note of something.
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I usually ask at this point, what, what's the difference? But I want to make a mention of something that's not really a difference, but you might have heard it differently, and that is the word bottles.
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Earlier someone posted about this text.
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I saw someone post online about this text and they said, they said, the King James doesn't say it's wineskins, it says it's bottles.
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Well, it's, it's, a wineskin was a bottle.
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They didn't have Coke bottles.
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They didn't have Tupperware.
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They didn't have glass like the way we would have glass bottles.
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So to them, a goatskin, which had been prepared for the use for wine, would have been considered, like we would say, a milk bottle.
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My son has bottles where Jennifer will, will pump into a bottle for Theo to be able to eat, and those bottles are sacks.
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They're not regular bottles.
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They're like little plastic bags, and when the bag fills up, you use that to hook to a nipple and he can, you know, drink out of it.
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It looks like a bag.
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The point is, the use of the King James word bottle, don't let that throw you.
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It's still, it's referring to a goatskin sack, which was treated in such a way that it could hold fluid and not spill out.
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All right, Brother Lee, would you read the other? Then they said to him, and he said to them, can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while, but the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them.
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Then they will fast in those days.
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Then he spoke a parable to them.
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No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one.
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Otherwise, the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old.
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And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined.
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But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved.
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And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new, for he says, the old is better.
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Thank you, Brother.
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Did anyone notice something distinct about Luke's account of this same situation? Got you.
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That's a good record.
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That's a good point.
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I hadn't noticed that.
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That's a good observation.
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Anything else? Anyone else? Huh? That's right.
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That was the part that I noticed, is that there's an entire line in Luke's Gospel that's not contained in Matthew or Mark, and that is this phrase, no one, after drinking old wines, desires the new, for he says, the old is good.
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So, how does that read, verse 39? Old is better.
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Okay.
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And I do think, as we're going to see when we get to studying that part, I do think that Luke is pointing out something interesting that the other two Gospels we don't see.
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Not that it changes the meaning, it just adds another hue of color to the meaning.
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So, with that in mind, let's now go back up and start working our way through the text in Mark.
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It says, 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? Now, again, this is referring to, I believe, the traditional fast of the Pharisees.
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He's not referring to the once-a-year fast of the Yom Kippur fast.
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This is, and as was pointed out by Stephen, they often is related to the fact that this is a weekly thing.
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And what's interesting is we see three groups here.
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Jesus's disciples, the Pharisees, Sadducees, is their own group, but we also, or Pharisees and the scribes, rather, but we also see John's disciples.
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This is something interesting that I think we should consider, at least for a second, is that John's disciples are still out there.
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Now, you would think, at least I would think, I don't want to assume on your thoughts, but I would think that once the Messiah comes, John's been put in prison, then John's disciples would all naturally become Jesus's disciples.
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But it seems as if, based upon this, there are still those who are considering themselves disciples of John who have not decided to follow after Jesus.
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Maybe it's because they don't know about Jesus.
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Maybe it's because they are unaware of who he is.
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Maybe it's because John has been taken into prison at this point, and they're still consider themselves faithful to their teacher.
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We know that if we, when we read through the book of Acts, late in the book of Acts, we run across a group that were still disciples of John.
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Remember in Acts 19? So it's interesting that disciples of John continue on, and that was never really the purpose of John.
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What was John's ultimate responsibility? Point people to Jesus, but he became the focus.
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Not for his own fault.
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John wasn't the problem, but people have a tendency to do that.
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I think about people today who end up becoming so infatuated with their leader that they look at him more than Christ.
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That the pastor becomes more important than the Savior, or the elders become more important than the Savior, or whatever.
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You know I'm saying? It's like, it's like, and again, maybe I'm, maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, but it's just interesting that John's disciples are still there, and they're doing things not the way Jesus is doing them.
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They're doing the way the Pharisees do them.
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Because they're doing this fasting the same way the Pharisees are doing this fasting.
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And again, I don't want to read too much into this.
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I don't want to isogeet into the text, but it's just an interesting, all three of the Gospels mentioned, at least, let me look again.
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Yeah, the disciples of John are mentioned in Matthew 9, and the disciples of John are mentioned in Luke 5.
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So we see this, they still are out there.
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The disciples of John are still out there.
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Now we're going to see in the next chapter, I think it is in chapter 3, where Jesus actually officially calls the twelve.
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We know that he's already called Simon, Andrew, John, and James, and Levi.
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So right now he's, we know of five named apostles, but in the next chapter he calls all twelve, and so maybe that's it.
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Maybe it's just not, the structure isn't there yet, but there's enough structure for Jesus to make the next point.
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There's enough structure for Jesus to say this, and Jesus said to them, verse 19, can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? Notice how Jesus identifies himself.
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He identifies himself as the bridegroom.
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This is a very important designation of Christ for himself.
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There are many titles that Christ uses for himself.
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Son of man, son of God, but in this sense he calls himself the groom.
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He calls himself the bridegroom, and he compares his disciples to the friends of a bridegroom, who are, in one sense, he compares them to being during the time of a wedding feast.
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Now Jewish wedding feast is not like the wedding feast that brother Mike and sister Deborah are planning for their daughter Rosie in a couple of weeks.
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They are planning a one-day event, and praise the Lord for that.
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I can imagine you're excited that it's not going to be a seven-day Jewish feast, but that would have been, the tradition would have been a week-long feast.
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You remember Jesus at the wedding in Canaan, and yeah, the first miracle Jesus ever did was at a wedding, and it was the providing of water into wine so that the wedding feast could continue.
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So Jesus, in that sense, he puts his stamp of approval on this idea that weddings are feasts, not fasts.
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Yeah, but that's a point he's making.
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Weddings are not times of fasting.
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So even with the Jesus's point to the Pharisees, the Sadducees here, is that even in your very rigid system, where you fast on Mondays and Thursdays, when your daughters are being married, you don't fast that week.
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You feast that week, right? That time is not a time for fasting.
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That time is a time for feasting.
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And so, okay, I just, I saw the big grin.
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I was like, he's gonna say something.
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Okay, all right.
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So we have this social structure that the Jewish people understood, and Jesus is making this point.
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He's saying the bridegroom is with them, therefore they're not going to fast.
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Jesus is saying this isn't a time of self-reflection and mourning.
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This isn't a time of repentance.
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This is a time of festivities.
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A time of a time of feast.
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And he goes on to say, as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.
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But, verse 20, the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.
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What's interesting about this word taken away, is it does carry the idea of being snatched away.
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And I do think that this could very well be a reference to Christ pointing to the time of his crucifixion, that he was taken from them by force.
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And so, Jesus says, while I'm here with them, it's a celebration.
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But there's coming a time when I will be taken away.
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I'll be put on the cross.
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I'll die.
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I'll spend three days in the tomb.
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I'll come out of the tomb.
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Again, he didn't say this, but this is this is inferred.
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And then I'm gonna ascend into heaven, into glory, and I'm gonna sit at the right hand of the Father.
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And after that, my people will fast.
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And that goes back to what I was talking about earlier.
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Maybe you were wondering about why I gave the introduction I did about Christian fasting.
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Jesus is in no way here telling us we shouldn't fast, because we are now in a new dispensation of his, there's that word, dispensation, a new administration of his relationship.
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Christ is in us by the power of the Spirit.
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I preached on that Sunday.
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But he is at the right hand of the Father, and therefore, there are times when we do need to fast.
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There are times of mourning.
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There are times of repentance.
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There are times of grief.
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There are times of reflection.
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There are times of fasting that we should endure.
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But Jesus said, not while I'm here.
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Not while I'm here.
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So there is a messianic identification in this.
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By identifying himself as the bridegroom, he's also identifying himself as God's son, because this is God's marriage ceremony that he has provided for a son.
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And how many times has Jesus used that analogy when he gives parables about the feast? He talks about the the Father setting up the feast for the Son, and nobody comes, so they go out and compel people to come in so the feast can be filled, right? Jesus is the bridegroom, God's the Father, and he's providing the feast, right? We see this in several other of Jesus's parables, like the virgins.
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And the bridegroom comes, and the virgin's oil is not prepared, right? So Jesus uses this messianic picture of himself as a bridegroom prepared for the bride.
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And here he says, this is my entourage.
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I know, what do they call it at the wedding? The women have the court.
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The bridesmaids are the groomsmen, right? These are the groomsmen.
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And here we are to celebrate.
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I'm here.
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One day I'll be taken away, and then they'll fast.
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But not while I'm here.
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So that's the point.
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But then he gives us two parables to go along with this, and these two parables seemingly come out of nowhere.
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And what's interesting is these are the first two parables that we find in the Gospel of Mark.
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This is the first time we hear Jesus giving parables, and they're not the typical type that we're used to hearing, like a story.
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These are more, you might not even say these are parables, you might call these illustrations, but they're still the same idea.
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It's meant to use an earthly illustration to make a point about something in the spiritual realm.
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And Jesus gives two illustrations.
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He says, no one sews a piece of untrunk cloth on an old garment.
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If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and the worst tear is made.
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So we have the patch is the first, and the second one, he says, and no one puts new wine into old wineskins.
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If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins.
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New wine is for fresh wineskins.
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So we have the patch and the wineskins.
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So very quickly, I think you all can understand this fairly well, but just in case, I want to make sure we understand what Jesus is saying on just a purely illustrative level.
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If you have an old piece of cloth, like an old pair of jeans, I have my favorite pair of jeans that I own, have a giant bleach stain on them, because I was walking out of Big Lots on Linturner Road, or not Linturner, Dunn Avenue, and I had three bottles of bleach in my hand, which is one too many.
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And as I pass by the door that opens when you walk up to it, the middle bottle slipped, and when it fell, it hit the ground so hard that it burst, and bleach went all over my pants and my shoes, all the way up to my knees.
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Now, I kept those pants for ten more years.
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I mean, Big Lots has been gone for five, so we know this is an old story, right? Big Lots hadn't been there for five years.
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But I kept those pants because they were the most comfortable jeans I had.
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But they had giant white stains on the bottom of them, and holes had to began to develop over time, because bleach not only causes the color to go away, but also causes the integrity of the fabric to break down, and it begins to tear.
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And I never once tried to patch those holes.
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I knew it was a lost cause.
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I wore them because they were comfortable.
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But you understand, if I would have taken a brand new piece of cloth and sewed it to those jeans, those jeans having been several years old, that if you take a brand new piece of cloth and you sew it to that hole, that the first time you wash it, and that cloth does what all cloth does when it's washed, it begins to shrink.
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It's going to make the hole worse, because it's going to become smaller than the hole, and it's going to not only tear away from the hole, but it's going to make the hole itself worse.
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And so, the point that's being made is if you have an old piece of cloth, and you sew a new piece of cloth to it, and you wash it, you're going to make the tear bigger.
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All right, so that's the physical illustration.
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What in the world does that mean on a spiritual level? Well, here it is as best as I understand it.
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Jesus has come as the bridegroom, and he has come to usher in and institute the new covenant, which is instituted in his gospel, and it will not be contained in the old system of Judaism.
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And we're going to see this in the illustration of the wineskins in a moment, but just understand, he's saying you can't take the gospel and put it under the old system of the Jewish people, particularly the Pharisees who had added to the Jewish law, and expect that the two are going to be able to coexist.
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It doesn't work that way.
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The gospel is exclusive, and the gospel cannot be forced into another system.
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This is why it's always dangerous when you hear someone say, and I've heard this, I don't know if you've ever heard this, but I've heard people say, well, I became a Christian, but I'm still going to remain a Muslim, too.
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There are people who say that.
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There are people who are Muslims, who will grow up Muslims, they don't want to give up their Islamic identity, but they say, I became a Christian, so now I'm a Christian Muslim, right? Well, here's the thing.
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Christ doesn't have...
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Christ doesn't do halvesies.
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It doesn't work that way.
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It's all or nothing.
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The same thing is true with Jewish people.
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Jewish people often want to force Christ into their already established Jewish principles and systems, and have it both ways.
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This is why I, and please, please understand what I'm about to say, I'm not saying this is all Messianic Jews.
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I know that many Messianic Jews are great brothers in Christ, but there are those who try to force Christianity into the system that is not Christian, this Jewish system, and what they've done is they perverted both Judaism and Christianity, and you can't have it both ways.
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Christ says, I'm the way, the truth, and life.
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No one comes to the Father except by me, and he says it's exclusive.
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It is a narrow gate and a narrow road, and so trying to take the the New Covenant and force it in the...
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I'll say, again, not trying to be overly critical.
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This is one of the biggest problems I have with the Seventh-day Adventists.
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The Seventh-day Adventists have many things that I think they have issues with, particularly teachings of Ellen White and things like that.
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We'll get into that tonight, but one of the biggest issues I have with them is the forcing of the Old Covenant structure on the New Covenant Church, because that is often what you see, and it is a burdensome structure because it's often related to extra commands.
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They add to the law of God.
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They, just like I've talked about on the Sabbath, how the Pharisees made a certain amount of steps.
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You can only take a certain amount of steps, because if you took too many steps you were working, and that violated the Sabbath.
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Yes, ma'am? An identity, yeah.
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Sure, and I'm not saying a person can't be a Christian Jew in the sense of being a Christian who has a Jewish heritage any more than a person can be a Christian Arab and have an Arabian heritage.
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I guess what I'm pointing to is the religious traditions, to say I can hold my Christian faith, but I also hold these other traditions, and I hold these traditions because I believe that this is how I make my way to God.
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Oh yeah, I'm not saying they can't, I mean, have the feast.
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Yeah, do the feast.
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Yeah, that's fine.
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I don't have a problem with anybody having a feast or fast, but the point Jesus is making is when it's imposed, because they're saying, why don't you do this? They're trying to force, they're demanding this.
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Why aren't you doing this? This is demanded of you.
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Jesus said, first of all, it's not demanded of me.
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I'm the bridegroom.
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I'm here.
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It's not demanded, and if you try to force the gospel into that mold, it doesn't fit.
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The gospel is greater than that, and that's where we get the wineskins scenario, because the wineskin is about the bursting of the wineskin.
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Can't contain it.
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That system can't contain it.
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So, I don't have a problem with a Christian who wants to, and I don't even like to use the phrase Christian Jew.
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I just say Christian.
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Some people say completed Jew, and I'm not being offensive.
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I'm just saying, for me, we're all, you know, in Christ there's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, right? So, in that sense, they're Christians, but if a Christian with a Jewish heritage wants to celebrate Passover, I mean, we've done it here.
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We've had the Seder.
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I don't have a problem with that, and I hope I didn't sound like I was.
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What I'm saying is to demand it or require it, I think, is where the issue becomes, because those things find their ultimate fulfillment in Christ, and even when we did our Passover Seder, we pointed to the fact that these things point to Christ, and if that is not recognized, I think that's a big issue.
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Absolutely.
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So, getting back to the other illustration, this wineskin illustration is actually twofold of value, because one, it's valuable in the sense that it further makes Christ's point that you can't take the gospel and force it into another system, but it also has another point in that it disproves a very commonly held Baptist myth that wine in the first century wasn't fermented, and that just ain't so, because Jesus uses fermentation as his example here.
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He says, when wine is put into wineskins, if you put new wine into old wineskins, it bursts, and the reason why is this, is because a new wineskin was flexible, but an old wineskin had already been stretched to capacity and was no longer flexible, like I feel sometimes I get up in the morning.
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If you pour new wine into new wineskins, as the fermentation process begins and it expands, and if you've ever seen wine expand, I've actually seen pictures of what it looks like, and it does it blows it up like a balloon, because of that gas that's escaping as the fermentation happens, and so the new wineskin has the ability to stretch with the fermenting grapes, but if you put that new wine into an old wineskin that's already stretched to its limit, and it begins to stretch, what's gonna happen? It's gonna burst, and then you got no wine, and you got no bottle, you're just out of luck, you ain't got either one, and so again Jesus is making the point, you can't take the new, and this is why I can't help but see a new covenant, old covenant connection here, because Jesus is making the point that he's come, what is he? He's the bridegroom, but he's also the initiator of the new covenant, he is the one that promised in Jeremiah and Ezekiel that the one the new covenant is gonna come through, and he says you can't take this and put it in the old, go to Hebrews chapter 8 real quick, I always like to point this out when we're talking about the difference between the old and new covenant, in Hebrews chapter 8 the writer of Hebrews is talking about the distinction between the old and new covenant, and he quotes the promise of the new covenant in verse 8, or he begins the quote in verse 8, when he says that the first covenant was not faultless, he says 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 the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on that day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, he's talking about the covenant made with Moses there, that's the old covenant, 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 I will write them on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people, this is a picture of what happens when we are converted and regenerated, God's law comes into our heart by the power of the person of the Holy Spirit living within us and we now have the desires and the drive to do God's will, that's the promise of the new covenant and he goes on to say and they shall not all teach each one his neighbor and each his brother saying know the Lord for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, by the way that's also again not here to make Baptist arguments tonight but the argument of who is in the covenant, the people that are in the covenant are the people who know the Lord, that's what it says, it says that you don't have to tell them know the Lord because they all know me, so who are members of the new covenant, those who know the Lord, finally verse 12 for I will be merciful to their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more, in speaking of a new covenant, this is the verse that I was trying to get to, verse 13, 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, this is the key, by the new covenant coming the old covenant has been made obsolete, doesn't mean it didn't have a purpose for a time, it did just like Betamax had a purpose for a time but when VHS came out Betamax was obsolete and when DVDs came out VHS was obsolete and when streaming came out DVDs became obsolete because something can have value for a time but when something better comes along that time that it was had value has been made obsolete, the old covenant had value and has been replaced by the new covenant, I'm not a member of the old covenant, that's an important thing to point out, I'm not a Jew by birth or by descendant, I told you about my my thing they did the DNA thing, 99% British, 1% a mixture of all the different Scandinavians, I'm the whitest dude you know, I don't have any Jewish descent that I know of but I'm a member of the new covenant because the new covenant is in Christ, now does that mean the old covenant doesn't matter, no the old covenant matters but it matters within its context and so Christ makes this point, he says you can't put the old, I'm sorry you can't put the new in the old and I want to end with what Luke says because Luke does add a line that's not added in Mark or Matthew so we'll we'll jump over there real quick, Luke's gospel it says this and no one after drinking old wine desires new for he says the old is better, now I believe I know what this means but I could be wrong because there's different ways of understanding it but here's what I think it means, I think what Jesus is saying when someone is when someone is under the old system and they're satisfied with the old system they think it's good enough and they don't want the new and that's what we see with the Pharisees and the scribes they did not want what Jesus had to offer because they felt self-satisfied in what they had, they said the old is good enough, so that is my understanding of it if you if you'd like to talk to me about that later and you feel like you have a better understanding I'd be willing to listen because I think there's little interpretive that we could do there but but but I think it makes sense within the context, the context is we got the old and the new and some people are satisfied with the old, I mean how many people do you know that when you share them share share Christ with them they're satisfied with where they are, I don't need Jesus, I'm happy, I've got I've got money, I've got wife, kids, I'm good, I'm good, I don't need Jesus, now again that's a little bit of a maybe a wider divergent application but that's what's being said here those who are satisfied with the old don't want the new and that's what the fair and that's we're gonna see the Pharisees really are, they do not want what Christ has brought, may it never be that it be said of us that we are satisfied outside of Christ.
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All right let's pray.
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Father I thank you for your word I pray that your word would continue to enlighten us about the person and work of our Savior Jesus and it's in his name we pray, amen.