The New Wine of Jesus Mark 2:18-22 Justin Deeter November 20, 2016 Introduction If you ve been a Christian long enough, you know that one of the constant dangers is growing cold in your faith. Over time your zeal and enthusiasm for the Lord can wane as you drift into the comfortable, but stale religious routine. Our religious rituals begin to take the place of a living and earnest love for the Lord. Opening up our Bibles to read them becomes an act of duty and obligation. Time in prayer becomes less and less frequent. Church attendance becomes just another activity to check off our list each week. This can happen in our individual lives, but it can also happen within entire churches. When a new church is starting, everyone is excited about what God will do! People are fervently praying and giving sacrificially to this new work of God. Yet, as the church plant becomes established and new patterns and routines set in, the excitement of the early years dissipates. Over the decades the church becomes a husk of its older self, as cranky members debate about the paint on the walls or the furniture in the parlor. Christians and churches who become cold and dead in their religion provide a bitter witness to Christ in the world. The world peaks their head into the church, and instead of seeing joy, singing, and passion, that looks more like a funeral procession 1
than a church at worship. If you visited one of these cold, dead churches you might wonder who died. The straight laced ties and prestige dresses accentuate the blank stares and white washed faces. You may even think to yourself, Don t they know that Jesus is alive, not dead?! In our passage from the Gospel of Mark that lifeless religion traditions cannot sustain the new life and joy that Jesus brings. Jesus brings expanding joy that bursts through cold, dead religion. My prayer for us is that as we study Mark 2:18-22 that we would examine our own hearts, repent of any coldness or ritualism, and ask the Spirit of God to burst through our religious routines for explosive joy. Jesus vs the Pharisees Before we dive into the specifics of the passage before us, we must take a step back and gain a birds-eye perspective of what is happening in the narrative flow of the Gospel of Mark. From 2:1-3:6, we see five episodes of Jesus confrontation with the Pharisees. We ve examined two of those episodes already as we see Jesus forgive the sins of the paralyzed man and as he dines with tax collectors after he called Levi to be his disciple. There are also two episodes to follow concerning the Sabbath in Mark 2:23-27 and Mark 3:1-6. Jesus conflict with the religious establishment comes to a violent conclusion. In Mark 3:6 we are told The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. By the end of these five scenes, the Pharisees are fed up with Jesus. They begin to conspire against him to kill him. This leads us to our passages today Mark 2:18-22, the third (and center) episode in this section. I think Mark places this passage here intentionally, right in the middle, 2
because it explains to us what s really going on with Jesus and the Pharisees. The new wine of Jesus can t be contained in the old wine skins of cold, dead religion. Over these five episodes the new reality of Jesus coming begins to rupture the dried out wine skin s of the religious establishment. As we dive into the passage we will see our main principle this morning come to bare Jesus brings expanding joy that bursts through cold, dead religion. Debates Over Fasting The start of the conflict in this third episode is over the issue of fasting. John s disciples and the pharisees were fasting. It was a regular part of their religious devotion, a sign of their piety. Jesus and his followers don t appear to be very interested in fasting like these other groups, so what s going on? Rather than fasting they are out eating and drinking with sinners! When it came to fasting, the Old Testament Scripture only required one day of fasting a year for the people of Israel, and that was on the day of Atonement (Ex 20:10). On that day, the entire nation would fast as a sign of repentance of their sin and in expectation of atonement provided for their sin. However, the Pharisees developed the custom of fasting much more frequently. As a sign of their piety and devotion, they would voluntarily fast two days a week, on Monday and Thursday. Fasting is a sorrowful exercise, meant to communicate mourning and grief over sin. It was a expression of repentance. We are told elsewhere that the Pharisees would disfigure themselves, tear up their clothes, and put some dirt on their face to help display their fasting so others could see (Matt 6:16). Here we see what the Pharisees thought to be the nature of true religion: joyless, miserable, serious, and solemn. 3
As a preacher s kid, I grew up in the church. I ve come across some saints filled with expressive joy in Christ, but I ve also met some professed Christians who look absolutely miserable. You look at their faces and they seem about as happy to be at church as you would be to get a colonoscopy. They seem about as excited about the good news of Jesus as you would be to hear that the stock market crash. We ve all come across the old church curmudgeon who never smiles, never laughs, and never sings. We too can make the same mistake as the Pharisees and think that God wants us solemn and serious all the time. So we come into worship, straight-laced and straightlipped with a tie around our necks that only chokes the joy out of the soul! Recently we had a first time visitor at our church who pulled me aside after the worship service. He had some kind remarks about the sermon that day, but then asked me a very pointed question what s your vision for worship in this church? I look around the room and everyone seems lifeless, dry, and unengaged. Those words have stuck with me, because here was someone with an outside perspective who stated his honest opinion that he felt like our corporate worship was cold, rather than burning with red-hot zeal and joy for the Lord. And, you know what, I think he s on to something. It s so easy for us to drift into cold, dead religion and begin acting like the Pharisees. We come to church because that s what is expected of us. We come to do our religious duty, and we aren t happy about it. So we don t smile. We mumble as we sing with our arms crossed. We scowl when a song is sung that we do not like. We surf Facebook during the sermon. We keep a constant eye on the clock just to see how quickly we can get to lunch. In our life together, we can drift into a lifeless, deadening, and joyless routine. You see, this is not the Christian way. God is not honored by obligatory and routine worship. He is not pleased by your begrudging devotion to him. He wants your heart and he wants your joy, and that s exactly what Jesus brings out of us! 4
The Joy of the Bridegroom So Jesus receives this question, Why don t your disciples fast? And Jesus, the master teacher answers their question with a question. Can the wedding guest 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 (19-20). Weddings in Jesus day were a little different than ours. Today, weddings take place in a single day, with the newlyweds hurrying off to their honeymoon at the end of the night. However, in Jesus day weddings were often a week long event filled with eating, drinking, and celebrating! That week was often the most joyous week of your life, as the bridegroom and his bride celebrated their marriage with their family and friends. To fast on such an occasion would be an insult to the bridegroom! So Thanksgiving is coming up this week. It s a time to gather with the family and feast together as we give thanks to God. Just last night we Kaitlyn and I had the young adult Sunday school class over for dinner. It was a joyous time with more food than any of us could eat. There was great laughter and smiles as the children played and the adults feasted. That s what Thanksgiving is supposed to be like! Now, imagine for a second that you arrive to Thanksgiving dinner this week and you tell your mother, Mom, thanks for making all this food, but I m actually fasting right now so I m just going skip Thanksgiving dinner. Now, I m guessing your mom, who has worked all week to prepare you this feast, would be gravely insulted. Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful. It s a party. It s time to celebrate! Fasting, which is an expression of confession and sorrow, would be inappropriate on such an occasion. Jesus says, that s exactly why my disciples don t fast. They are at a wedding. The bridegroom has arrived! I m the Christ. 5
I m the one all of Israel has been waiting for, indeed I m the one the whole world has been waiting for! My arrival is one of celebration, not fasting! A common picture in the Scriptures of our relationship with Jesus is that of a wedding. Jesus used the imagery in many of his parables, but it also describes our own relationship with Jesus. For example, in Ephesians 5:25, Paul gives this command: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. In Revelation 19 we are told of the marriage supper of the Lamb. There is the place where Christ, the bridegroom, celebrate the union with us, his church! So you and I are not just guests to this wedding, we are the bride! What bride fasts on her wedding day? It s a time of celebration and joy! You see, Jesus arrival is something new, a joyous event. The Pharisees, including John s disciples, were looking forward to the arrival of the messiah. Yet, in Jesus the kingdom of God arrives! The King stands before them! The arrival of Jesus is not a time of sorrowful fasting, but exuberant joy and celebration! So Jesus tells 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. So as long as Jesus is present with his disciples in his earthly ministry, there is no need to fast! But the day is coming, and is now here, when Jesus sits at the right hand of his father, no longer bodily here with us. The bridegroom has ascended into heaven, and we long for his return. Therefore, for us, it is more than appropriate to fast as we wait for the bridegroom to return for us. Jesus is not anti-fasting. In fact, he gives us specific commands of how to fast. For example Jesus says, And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. 6
And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:16 18, ESV). In other, words fasting is a means of grace, that we should utilize in our Christian life to grow in our dependence and awareness of our need for Christ. Our hunger accentuates our longing desire for Christ and his return. But, Jesus arrival brings about the kingdom of God. This is a time of celebration and joy that ruptures the religious status quo. The arrival of Jesus brings in a new paradigm of great joy that cannot be added onto the old religion of Israel. This leads Jesus to give two analogies of what he has come to do. First, Jesus says in verse 21, No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new one from the old, and a worse tear is made. If you patch an old garment with a new piece of cloth, when you wash it the new cloth will shrink, thus ripping a bigger hole into the article of clothing. You cannot attach Jesus onto your old traditions. The old garment cannot be combined with the new fabric of the son of God. The second analogy communicates the same message as the first. Jesus says in verse 22, 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. Now I know that I need to do some explaining here because we are Baptists, so we don t know how alcohol works. In Jesus day, after a winepress crushed the grapes, the wine was placed in tanned goatskins. Once the wine was in the skin, it was tied off and stored. As the wine ferments over two to four months, it releases CO2. This gas release would expand and stretch the goat skin. So, if you were to put new wine in an old wine skin, you were guaranteed to lose the wine and your goat skin. The old wine skin is already stretched out to it is maximum limits. So if you use it for new wine, then as the wine ferments it would expand the old wine skin and it would burst. So again, what is Jesus point? The new wine of Jesus cannot be contained in the old 7
wineskins of cold, dead religious tradition. The joy of Jesus ruptures the religious establishment. This is why Jesus is in constant conflict with the Pharisees. They are old wineskins. The could not handle the real thing. The new life of Jesus kingdom stretched them beyond their limits and their capacity. For those of us who have received Christ as savior, we know that the love of Christ stretches us and causes us to expand. As the joy of Christ fills us, it stretches us beyond our limits. We sacrifice in new ways. We repent of sins that we never thought possible. Our desires and priorities shift and expand as the joy of Christ fills us. This new life brings dynamic growth that changes our thinking and our emotions. Such explosive joy cannot be contained by religious structures and traditions. I always laugh a bit when I hear a Christian say they don t like change, because Jesus tells us that the Christian life is one of continual inner change as the Spirit stretches us and grows us! The old wine skin doesn t like change, the new wine skin is eager to flex and expand as needed. The Expanding Power of Divine Joy So, I want to spend the remainder of our time today, addressing a big concern in my own spiritual life, and I think I m not alone. So often we can become like those old wine skins. We grow stiff, rigid, and cold. We stop expanding and growing, relying on old religious structures instead of the swelling and expanding joy of Christ. So are you cold, dead, and spiritually lifeless? Are you one of those Christians who never smiles and is always grumbling? Does your soul feel rigid, legalistic, and miserable? If so, I want to help us think through how the joy of Christ fills us and expands us. 8
Jonathan Edwards was an American preacher and theologian during the first great awakening. Edwards understood the human being not primarily as a thinking being, but an affectional being. Human beings are not just brains on a stick, but feeling and affection beings. Human beings are designed to be moved and motivated by the loves of our hearts. The gravitational pull of our loves forms us into the people we are. Because of sin, worldly loves drag us further away from the God who is love. The problem with human beings is not necessarily a lack of knowledge, but misdirected love. So the problem with your spiritual life is not that you don t know necessarily know the right facts about the Bible. If that was the case, the Pharisees wouldn t be old wine skins. You can have all the knowledge about Jesus and the Bible in the world and yet be an old, stale, and dried up wine skin that will burst and be destroyed in the last day. Our ultimate problem is this: we do not love as we ought. The problem isn t with our heads, but our hearts. The solution to our lifeless worship isn t more facts, but the love of God poured into our hearts. Chances are, what you need is not a bible lecture, but a vision of the beauty of God. It is only when you see Jesus as the most valuable, the most beautiful, and the most desirable that your heart begins to seek after him. As we gaze upon the face of the son of God, the new wine of Christ pours into our hearts, growing and expanding us both in joy and in holiness. What we need more than anything else is a supernatural vision of God that reorients the love of our hearts. We need the gravity of God to pull us out of the orbit of the lesser loves that dominate us. It is only when we see God as our all consuming treasure that our hearts become like the new wine skins. How can we gain this vision of God? Ultimately, this is a work of the Holy Spirit who casts away the scales over our eyes so that we can behold the glory of God. Only the Spirit can unclog our ears to comprehend the mystery of the Gospel, and it is only the Spirit who can knock us out of our sinful orbit in order to redirect our affections around 9
the gravity of God. God uses the means of grace (scripture reading, prayer, preaching, etc.) as conduits to show us more of himself and give us that heavenly vision. In fact, this is what I m trying to do through every sermon on Sunday morning. My aim is not to fill your brain with knowledge, but through the Scripture s I m trying to show you a vision of God s glory that captivates the joys of your heart. I m trying to raise your affections, your love for God, as high I possibly can. I want you to see the majesty of the creator God who loved you so lavishly that he sent his own son to die for you. I want you to be amazed at Christ s redemption of you, that your life begins to revolve around Jesus. I want you to be so filled with joy over Christ, that you continually expand, stretch, and grow further than you ever thought you could! But again, preaching is just a conduit for this sort of grace to flow from God. I can t change your heart, only the Spirit can. I can t change your loves, only the Spirit can. Yet, I preach in confidence knowing that the Spirit uses his Word to help you see and savor Jesus afresh each week. So each week we gather for corporate worship and from singing to sermon we are trying to elevate and stir within each other a love for Jesus that would make him our all consuming treasure! The joy of the Gospel fills our hearts! As we think about the love of Christ for us, as we see the son of God crucified for us, as we see the bridegroom s love for his bride, that vision fills us with joy. When the new wine of Christ pours into our hearts, we expand and grow. Yet, if you try to do this Christian thing within the guise of cold, dead, religious structures, the new wine of Christ will only rupture and spill out onto the dirt. The old, dead religion of the Pharisees could not contain the dynamics of the new life Jesus came to give. And some of you, cannot contain it either because your heart is a shriveled up wine skin. Is your heart best described as an old wine skin? Are you joyless, grumpy, and miserable? Perhaps you are like the Pharisees, religious but lifeless, knowledgeable 10
but joyless, churchgoing but condemned before God. You go through your religious traditions that your parents told you were so important. You do this church thing because that s what good people do. All the while your heart is dried up and cracked like an old wine skin. Perhaps today you need to come to Jesus for the first time. Maybe today you are gaining a vision of God s glory and love that is changing the loves of your heart. Maybe today you are seeing God not as a deity to be feared, but as a king to be loved! The light of the son of God is piercing into the darkness of your cold, dead, and religious heart to bring you the new wine of Christ. If that s you, may you be filled with joy this morning as God expands your joy and your love for him in saving faith. If you do not have joy, remember Jesus words in John 17:13, Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. Ask the Lord to make you a new wine skin, so that you can be filled with the new wine of Christ. The routine religious rituals will not save your soul. Only Jesus can. Rejoice at the Bridegrooms love for you! Stop trying to add Jesus like a patch to your filthy, old garments. Stop trying to pour in the new wine of Christ into your old, shriveled up heart. Look to Christ; gaze upon his beauty and live! Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. 11