Mark 2:18-22

I've been thinking about that phrase this week, "more about Jesus," found out there's an old hymn, one I wasn't really familiar with. I swear I'm not going to sing it to you this morning, but there's a hymn over 100 years old, "More About Jesus", just listen in to these words, as we consider going back into the Gospel of Mark this morning. "More about Jesus would I know, more of His grace to others show, more of his saving fullness see, more of his love who died for me.

More about Jesus let me learn, more of his holy will discern, Spirit of God my teacher be, showing the things of Christ to me." Oh, heavenly Father, that is my prayer. I think it's the prayer of many of us this morning, that as we open to your word and particularly this glimpse of Jesus in Mark chapter 2, Lord, that your Spirit would be our teacher. You would work through your inspired word. You would show the things of Christ to us, and you would change us. We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen. We are, if you're visiting, we are in Mark chapter 2. We've worked our way up through verse 17, so we pick it up in verse 18 today. We're picking up in an ongoing story here, so some of the context is set by things that have happened in the last few verses, but I'm going to begin reading out of the English Standard Version with Mark chapter 2, verse 18, if you're still thumbing there, if you're new to the Bible, it's the second book of the New Testament.

All right, Mark chapter 2, and then down to verse 18. "Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, and people came and said to him (and the him is Jesus, all right? We know that from the the verses just preceeding that) people came and they said to Jesus, 'Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but Jesus, your disciples do not fast. Why is that?'" And what's going on here?

First of all, John's disciples, John is John the Baptist, and we've met John the Baptist back in chapter 1. John was ministering, baptizing people as Jesus came on the scene, and what happened as John and his followers, his disciples encountered Jesus. Some we read back in chapter 1, some of John the Baptist's disciples left John the Baptist and began to follow Jesus. Simon Peter is one of those. But some did not. Some stayed with John the Baptist, for whatever reason, we don't know.

So these remaining people who still consider John the Baptist to be their master, the one they are following. That's who is referenced here. By this point, by the way, it's probable that John the Baptist is already in prison. But for whatever reason, his followers that are mentioned here had not shifted yet their loyalty to Jesus Christ. Now the Pharisees, we met them two weeks ago, the Pharisees.

They get a bad reputation, I know, as we throw that term around in church, but the Pharisees were Jews who loved God, who wanted to be close to God. They just made the wrong conclusions, and their conclusions were the way that you get close to God is by keeping, or at least attempting to keep, the meticulous system not only of the laws of the Old Testament, but all the rules and all the regulations that traditional Judaism had built around the laws of the Old Testament.

And somehow, if you could keep all those laws, if you could do the things you're supposed to do and avoid the things that you're not supposed to do, not even get close to the things that you're not supposed to, that somehow the hope was this pleased God. And if you have been in that like I have been in that, you know how defeating that is. But that's these men. There are, by the way, there are many people, many religious people, who have that same-- I think it's our natural default.

It is the way to make ourselves right with God is to keep some system, to learn the system and keep the system. This is really, in essence, what Islam is all about. You need to keep the pillars of Islam and all the laws and rules that surround that. This is what Mormonism is about. This is what, really, any major world religion is basically about: your way to be right with God is to follow the system, learn the system, keep the system, and you can make yourself right with God.

Some of us, even within Christianity, grew up like that. Whether it was intentional or not, that is a message that we got. We didn't hear, even if it was preached, the Gospel of God loves us and saves us by grace through faith in Christ alone. Somehow, we heard all the laws. Somehow, we heard all the extra things that were built on top of the laws. So we have this natural tendency, all of us, to be Pharisees. Fasting: I think you basically know what fasting is.

You may know it in a different context, but fasting is abstaining from food and any other kind of nourishment for a period of time. In Judaism at that time, fasting was one of the three main pillars of Judaism. If you were a good Jew, you fasted and you prayed and you gave alms. All right? Those are the three pillars that you had to keep. What do we know about fasting that's particularly relevant to what's going on here in this challenge? And that's what it is in verse 18.

Well, here's one thing that we know. Only the Old Testament existed at that time, and only one place in the Old Testament is there an actual command to fast, and that is in Leviticus 16. In the midst of what's known as Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, there is the command that, on a day within that celebration of the day of Yom Kippur, the people are to fast. That is the only command: to fast. There's other examples of fasting, but that is the only command to fast.

But in spite of the fact that that is the only Old Testament command to fast, once a year, during Yom Kippur, the Pharisaic tradition, the Pharisees develop the traditions, again, building on top of scripture, what scripture says, the practice of fasting twice a week, not once a year, not twice a year, not twice a month, twice a week. We see an example of this.

You may know this account, in Luke 18, verse 12, when Jesus is giving the example of a Pharisee who is praying out of his pride, "Lord, I am not like that tax gatherer, like that sinner. I do all these good things," and in the midst of that list of all the good things that he pridefully presents to God as why he's worthy before God. What does he say? "I fast twice a week." So we see the evidence of that tradition even there.

Incidentally, really doesn't make any difference to the story, but the twice-a-week was Mondays and Thursdays. I have no idea why. If you were a good Jew during that time, if you wanted to be seen as devoted, you fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. And these fasts, they weren't like, you know, many fasts today. They weren't for health purposes. These fasts were to be expressions of mourning, of grieving. What were they mourning?

Well, they were looking forward to the Messiah coming, and the Messiah as far as they knew, hadn't come. They did not recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah, and there was this belief that developed that the reason the Messiah hasn't come is we haven't made ourselves good enough yet. We are in sin, and we need to repent, and until we grieve and mourn and repent, the Messiah won't come, that we bring in our own salvation.

We bring the Messiah in by, again, adhering to the system, keeping all the laws and all the rules. So, the last conclusion up on the slide there: you were expected to fast. If you really presented yourself as somebody who was religious, as somebody who is devoted to Judaism, that was the cultural expectation, and that's what lies behind this conversation. And verse 18, this is not an innocent question. This is people challenging Jesus.

"If you're what you say you are, Jesus, why aren't you fasting twice a week? Why aren't you instructing your disciples to fast twice a week?" So again, let's just get what's going on here.

Even though there is no Biblical command to fast more than one day a year, on the Day of Atonement, this tradition of fasting every Monday and Thursday had become such a commonly known practice for people who claim to be religious that they looked judgmentally down upon others who didn't adhere to that same tradition. You probably, if you're tracking with me, can see the problem with that thinking. People are judging other people based not upon the Bible, but upon traditions.

They may be good traditions. They may be helpful traditions, but they're extra-Biblical traditions. And as a person, the Pharisees, the disciples of John the Baptist, are practicing these things, they may be benefiting from them, and they look, and they see people who aren't, they judge them, even though it is not a command in scripture. Traditions can grow out of Biblical principles. Traditions aren't bad. Traditions can be good. Traditions might be great practices for seeking after God.

Traditions might be something that our individual conscience propels us to do, and God may bless that. But whenever we elevate human traditions to the same level as scripture and impose them on other people and judge other people by them, we commit the same error as the Pharisees. Now I'm going to step on toes this morning, but I want to give you one that just stands out to me the most about Central. We are a church of different generations.

Is it reasonable to you that, as we come together to worship on a Sunday, that coming from different generations, we may have different musical tastes and different preferences? I think that's a fair assumption, and you may even know, if you've been attending here for awhile, there are different styles between the two worship services. And I want to tell you those are two traditions. It's not like the 11:00 service has got it right and the 9:30 service does not have it right or vice versa.

They are two different traditions in terms of musical style. And guess what? They're not the only two musical traditions, are they? I, actually, you know-- people ask me, "Where do you stand musically?" You know, well, I was saved in the 1970s, and so the music that most significantly impacted me came out of what was known at that time as the praise and worship movement. That is not the 9:30 service music, and it is not the 11:00 service music. So I have my own tradition.

What do I mean by traditions? The music you are drawn to, especially when you think of the music that you choose to worship by, probably comes out of when you are most significantly impacted spiritually. And so, people who grew up where their spiritual growth, their spiritual-- just the significant spiritual things happened when they were in a church that sang hymns. Can you understand why hymns are so treasured by them?

And you understand why that is something that God has used significantly in their lives? And then, maybe you've come to Christ within, I don't know, the last 10, 20 years, and you listen to some of the modern contemporary music radio stations, and it encourages you, and it lifts you up. And can you understand why that tradition has become so special to you?

Can you understand why I, growing up having my significant spiritual growth in the 1970s, why that kind of music has been so significant to me? But the problem is, when we take our traditions, good traditions, and we judge other people by them, we look down on people who like hymns, or we look down on people who like contemporary music, we commit the same error as the Pharisees. Do you know, you can challenge me on this.

Maybe you can find another biblical command, but in the New Testament, I really find only one relevant scriptural command, Colossians 3:16: "Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." What are psalms? Psalms are scripture set to music. And I've got friends in a particular church denomination that that is all they will sing. If it is not a psalm that is set to music, they don't do it, all right? I certainly know of churches, you may know of churches that they will only sing traditional hymns.

Even then, you have to ask, "What tradition? From the 19th century? From the 18th century? From the 17th century" And then, of course, there are our churches that only sing spiritual songs, what I would consider to be more modern worship there. But do you notice what the verse says? It doesn't say just sing psalms, scripture set to music. It doesn't say just sing hymns. It doesn't say just sing spiritual songs. It says, "Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs."

So let's be careful to distinguish between what is a biblical command and what is a tradition. And let's be gracious and forbearing with those who don't share the same traditions that are so dear to us, and let's respect each other's traditions and not judge each other by our traditions. Back to the text. Verse 19. So how does Jesus respond? This is a challenge in verse 18.

How does Jesus respond to their judging of his disciples and really, implicitly, him for failing to follow their traditions of fasting twice a week. Look at verse 19: "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." That might just-- it makes me want to pull out my hair sometimes. Jesus, talk plainly. What are you saying here? What are you saying? How are you responding?

What is this picture of a wedding here? But let's think about that, this picture of a wedding. Think about what you know about weddings. A lot of what you know about weddings has not changed since weddings in Jesus' day. First of all, you probably know that weddings are occasions to rejoice. They are not times for mourning. I guess, if you have one of those proverbial shotgun weddings, you know, where somebody is getting forced to marry someone else, that's probably not an occasion of rejoicing.

But every wedding I've been to, probably every wedding you've been to, there is some degree of rejoicing. There is some degree of celebrating. It's not an occasion-- it's not a funeral. It's not occasion of mourning. Weddings at that time, they differed in this respect.

Today, if you get married, you may have a reception right after the wedding ceremony, but the bride and groom, even if that reception goes late into the night, they leave the reception after that evening, and they go off on their honeymoon. But in this time, the time of Jesus that he is referencing here, a bride and groom, when they got married, they stayed for a full week, and guests stayed and there was a week-long celebration. There was feasting throughout the day. There was dancing.

There was great celebration all through the week, and here's the thing. These were happening in small villages, and so even the devoted Jews, the Pharisees, the rabbis, who normally fasted on Mondays and Thursdays, guess what? They suspended all fasting for the week of the wedding celebration. They joined in. Fasting was put on hold, like it says there, fasting was temporarily suspended.

So with that background and that context, how is Jesus' statement about weddings relevant to the criticism of failing to observe the tradition of twice-a-week fasting? Think back to the first chapter, Mark 1:15, about the very first thing that Jesus began to preach as he began his public ministry. "The Kingdom of God has come near." The arrival of the Kingdom of God and the coming of Jesus, it's like a wedding. It is not a funeral. It is not a time for mourning. It is not a time for fasting.

It is a time for rejoicing. For everyone who recognizes Jesus as the Messiah, as the Savior, it is a time of celebrating. So he's saying that fasting as a sign of mourning was inappropriate. Now, let me ask you a question, see how awake you are this morning. This image of a wedding: who do you think is the bridegroom? Jesus. Jesus is the bridegroom.

I'll tell you how we know that: John's disciples are there, his remaining disciples, and Jesus is speaking this image of a wedding and of the bridegroom. And I bet their memories went back to that incident that the other John recorded in his Gospel, John Chapter 3. Let me set this up a little bit.

This is when John the Baptist is still baptizing and ministering, and Jesus has come on the scene, and his disciples are baptizing, and many people who were following John are now going and they're following Jesus instead. And John's disciples come to him, and they're bent out of shape and they're like, you know, "Master, your disciples, the people, they're going over to Jesus." And is John bent out of shape?

No. Look at his response in John 3:29: "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. And so the joy of mine has been made full." What is he saying there? John the Baptist, he is the friend of the bridegroom. He's one of the groomsmen. Have you ever seen a gloomy, crying groomsman? I hope not. They are usually rejoicing. They're rejoicing for their friend, their brother, the bridegroom.

But who is John pointing to as the bride groom? It's the one to whom all the people are going. Jesus is the bridegroom, and John says, "That's exactly as it should be, and my response to all the people beginning to follow Jesus as the bridegroom is rejoicing. The joy of mine has been made full." John the Baptist knew that he was only the friend of the bridegroom, that Jesus was the bridegroom.

So do you think that John's disciples who are part of this group and, in Mark 2:18, caught this reference to what John the Baptist had said of Jesus? I think so. And I can't prove it, but I bet those who had not yet shifted their loyalty, as they hear this, and their teacher's words are brought back to them, I bet many of them began to follow Jesus, began to shift their alliances that day.

Then Jesus seems to introduce an alien thought in verse 20: "The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day." That expression, "when the bridegroom is taken away from them," that is not a picture of the bride leaving with his groom for the honeymoon in the car with streamers and cans tied to it at the end of the wedding celebration.

This would be more a situation of terrorists coming into a wedding reception and forcibly, by gunpoint, removing the groom, removing the new husband. That's the image here. Jesus, the groom, the bridegroom, being forcibly removed from the wedding celebration. What is he alluding to? I think, first of all, already Jesus is beginning to reveal that he knows the malice, the hatred of the religious and the governmental authorities towards him, is growing, and he knows where it's going to lead.

It's going to lead to a cross where they crucify him, where they execute him. Already he's hinting at that. I believe it also reveals that he knows that in order to overcome the sin that curses all of us, not just them, but you and me, that the bridegroom must be forcibly taken away to a cross, where he would die for all our sins and be our substitutionary sacrifice. He goes on: "Then they will fast in that day."

In other words, between the crucifixion and the resurrection, his followers, they're going to be totally in despair. They're not going to understand what was happening. And we can look back now from our perspective of having the New Testament and see that was exactly the case. They had lost all hope between the crucifixion and the resurrection. They were fasting. They were mourning in that day, but then he rose from the grave. He rose from the grave to live with us forever.

I love how Ray Stedman puts it, one of my favorite preachers: "We know that there will be times of mourning and sorrow in our lives, but Jesus, the bridegroom, is alive with us forever. The living presence of Christ in all situations of our lives turns everyday into a celebration." Is that your experience this morning? Do you experience the living presence of Christ bringing joy, bringing life, even in the midst of the trials and the difficulties of your daily lives?

Are you trapped or burdened down by all the "do"s and all the "don't"s, the laws, the traditions, the regulations? Christ wants to set you free. Christ wants you to know that indwelling presence. Well, in the very next verse, Jesus seems to go in another direction, but he's not. Remember, this is the very same conversation. This is the very same people that he's talking to. Look at verse 21: "No one sews a piece or a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.

If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made." Can you relate to the image of patching an old garment by sewing on a patch? I mean, I think current styles are you actually don't want the patches. You want the holes. You know, jeans are worth more, it seems, the more creative the tears are and holes in them.

But, you know, growing up I had a mother who would actually patch my jeans and my pants, and she would take a piece of cloth, usually the same material as the pants and she would sew it on there, but she knew this. She knew the lesson behind this, that there's just a basic principle of physics that, you know, jeans or pants or whatever material that had been washed, all the shrinkage has probably happened.

But if you take a patch, even if it's the same material, and you haven't washed it yet, and you sew it on there, what's going to happen when that patch gets wet or those pants with the patch go through the wash? That unshrunk patch is now going to shrink, and because it's sewn to the those pants, it's going to pull, and it's going to tear the pants and probably wreck the pants. That's the physics behind the illustration here, but what is Jesus really illustrating with this image here?

First of all, what is the old garment? The old garment is the old religious structure. The old garment here is the structure of Judaism, with its rules of traditionalism. You know, the foundation of Judaism is the Old Testament Mosaic Law, with its Old Covenant of keeping the law, and that old structure is the pharisaic tradition, heaped up on top of that, even more rules and more regulations, more traditions.

And a lot of us, even though we haven't grown up as Jews, a lot of us have grown up under a similar structure. Even in a Christian church, we've grown up thinking that the only way to be right with God is to keep all of his laws. And then, many of us have grown up in churches that go beyond what's clear in scripture and add these other laws. When I was saved, I was in a church where there were church leaders who said it is sinful to play cards.

That was one of those extra-Biblical traditions, extra-Biblical laws that somehow, for at least a while, was imposed upon me. And I know that sounds ridiculous today, but you can think of probably many others that have influenced you. And when we grow up with that kind of thinking, that the only way I make myself right with God is by keeping all these laws and keeping, in addition, the traditions and the rules that these people tell me that I should keep, what happens?

We soon find it's crushing. We soon find that not only can we not do it, but like Peter the Apostle said at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15, "This puts on our necks a yoke that no one is able to bear." We're crushed by it. We can't save ourselves by a rigid adherence to laws and rules and traditions. So what's the unshrunk cloth in this illustration? The unshrunk cloth is what Jesus is preaching. It is the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. Jesus, in his coming, he inaugurated the Kingdom of God.

He brings the reign of God to this earth. That brings joy and celebration, and joy and celebration of the Kingdom of God, it cannot coexist with the fasting and mourning of the Pharisees and all of their legalistic rule-keeping. So let me just say it this way: Jesus didn't come simply to just patch an old religious system, whether that's Judaism or some form of legalism that you grew up in or anything else.

You can't simply patch Jesus onto something that looks for another direction, for the way that somehow we can try to save ourselves. Jesus comes to bring the good news that God accepts us by grace when we repent and believe in the Gospel, when we turn to him away from anything else, away from any effort to save ourselves, and we turn to him as are only hope of salvation. Now I want to give you a personal application. This goes maybe just a little bit beyond the image, but I read this this week.

A 19th-century Presbyterian minister named Theodore Collier said, you know, there's a way to take this image and even look at our own hearts. Obviously this speaks to religious structures, but it speaks to our own individual lives. He says, "The fabric of our hearts is badly rotted by sin. Apart from Christ, our hearts are like a garment that has mold and mildew and is rotted." And what is our natural tendency? Our natural tendency is "I can patch that. I can patch that.

I can adopt this new habit. I can try harder doing this. I can do these things that these people tell me to do, and that'll patch my heart. And maybe you, like I, have tried that earlier in your life, and you found that it doesn't work. As Collier says, we cannot attempt to patch a new habit on an old, unregenerate heart. There is not enough strength in the rotten fabric to hold the new patch. Jesus didn't come just to patch up your heart. Jesus didn't come just to clean up your bad habits.

Christ's plan, instead, is to make an entirely new garment. He doesn't want to patch your old rotten heart. He wants to give you a new heart, a new character. He wants to transform you and me. That's why, when Jesus was speaking with the Pharisee Nicodemus in John Chapter 3, he didn't tell him to clean up his bad habits. He didn't tell him, "Nicodemus, here's the things you're doing wrong. Here's the things that you need to do to correct them." No. What did he tell Nicodemus?

"You must be born again. You need a new heart. You need to be born again. You need a whole new garment." And it's the same for me, and it's the same for you. Christ's call to us is not to patch ourselves up; Christ's call to you and me is, "You must be born again." And if you're here this morning, and that's not your experience, you don't know if that's happened, you're not even sure if you know what that means. You need to talk to somebody today.

There'll be people in the back, there'll be people in the front, who would love to show you what that means and how, through that, you can know the living, powerful presence of Christ in you. Well, again, in verse 22, Jesus introduces us to a new image, but it's the same conversation with the same people. Verse 22: "And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins."

You know, if you wanted to go get some wine today, you know, you'd go to a store. You'd buy it in a glass bottle or maybe in a cardboard box. Obviously, they had neither of those at that time. So what did they use to contain wine? They used wineskins, and you see a picture on the screen of a contemporary version. That fits, really, what they did at that time. They would take a goatskin, and they would tan that goatskin, and usually, it might take more than one goatskin.

They would sew those together. And why would they use goatskins for containers for wine? Because goatskin had this certain, at least when it was newly tan, this elastic ability. It would stretch some, which was needed, because new wine, when you pour it into a container, is still fermenting, and fermentation produces a gas or gasses. And that expands the space that the new wine is in.

And so, if you pour new wine into a newly tanned skin, you know, there was enough elasticity in the wineskins to stretch as the gases from fermentation expanded that space. But the wineskins, as they aged, they would lose, after several cycles of fermentation and stretching, they would lose their natural elasticity, and they'd tend to split.

And so, what would happen if you put more new wine in a wineskin that had kind of seen its better days and had stretched several times and lost its elasticity? The fermentation process still happens. The gases are still activated. The space still experiences that pressure, but this time, the space can't hold the pressure. The seems split, and the wine pours out. And that's the image that he's referencing. What does he mean by the image? It's the same truths. It's the same truths of the wedding.

It's the same truths as the garment and the patch. The old wineskin is the old religious structure. It is the old systems of traditionalism, of Judaism. And I don't mean by any of this to say that Old Testament Judaism was bad or evil. It is not. The Old Covenant that Judaism represents was to prepare them, and to prepare us, for the New Covenant, that what Jesus has done for us at the cross and the resurrection.

Everything from the Old Testament system of Judaism was designed to point forward to what Christ would do when he came, so it was good. It just wasn't complete. But if that's what they hang onto, not being complete, not seeing it was intended to point forward to the New Covenant that Christ inaugurated. It's like saying, "No, I'm going to hang onto this old wineskin. I'm going to keep using this old wineskin. I'm going to keep insisting on my rules and my traditions and my regulations."

And as they do that, he says, "What you're going to be left with is a burst wineskin. You're going to be left with a system with a structure that can't hold the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and it'll ruin it, because it can't contain it." The new wine, just like the new patch, is the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, the life, the power, the transformation that Christ offers, and the fermentation is the new life and power of Christ's Gospel that can't be mixed with the old systems.

Again, Ray Stedman: "If you pour the joy and celebration of a new, living relationship with Jesus Christ into an old, rigid religious structure, it will burst out. Religious structures must be flexible in order to contain the exciting new relationship that Jesus brings." Another reason to be really careful with our traditions.

Do you realize, those of you who love the music of the 11:00 service, that your kids or your grandkids, they're going to look back and say, you know, "Oh, that's an old, outdated tradition." They're going to have their own new traditions. So are we going to hold onto the wineskins of what my musical preferences or your musical preferences are? This sermon isn't just about music, but you get the point.

Several examples of putting new wine into old wineskins: I love what Jaroslav Pelikan, a famous church history professor, says: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." What is he saying there? He's saying traditions aren't bad. Traditions are good. Like I say, traditions come out of when we've been significantly impacted spiritually. Traditions can actually move us toward devotion to Christ.

Traditions, in many cases, can at least come out of principles in scripture. But traditionalism is when I take my traditions that are special and meaningful to me, and I make an idol out of them, and I say, "I have to have it this way. I have to have the music this way. I have to have the preaching this way. I have to have, I don't know, whatever it is this way, and it's got to be that way, because that's what what impacts me."

Traditionalism is when I make an idol out of my traditions by saying, "If you like some other kind of music, or some other kind of preaching, or some other kind of Bible study, or whatever it may be, there's something inferior, there's something wrong about you, and I judge you by those." Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith, the burst wineskins, of the living. Secondly, some of us go in another direction.

Some of us look at what's happening in the world around us. We're in environments where culturally, it is really difficult to speak the truth of the Gospel, the truth of scripture. We feel the pressures of the world. We see the current issues. We feel those weighing down on us.

We don't want to be judged by people and thought, you know, not well of, because of our biblical positions, and so what we do is we try and water down the new wine of the Gospel by mixing it by, by mixing it with the culture's popular opinions to make it more acceptable. But the Gospel, the new wine of Christ's Gospel, cannot be watered down to make it more culturally sensitive. I wish it could, but it cannot. That puts us in, often, very difficult situations and conversations.

But to try and water it down and make it somehow mixed with what culture finds acceptable, which is a constant moving target, our culture's popular opinions, they are brittle and flexible wineskins, and the Gospel is always going to burst them. Third example of putting new wine into old skins, old wineskins, and that is it comes out of, I think, the pull that we all feel, I know I feel. The pull of the world. Maybe that's materially. There's things I want. There's things I want to buy or have.

Or maybe it's sensually. There's things that I desire to experience. And those are pulls that we all feel, but when we chase after those and we let those, you know, what I want to accomplish financially, what I want to own, what I want to experience, what I want to do. When we let those drive us, that puts us directly contrary, many, many times to following Christ. So the third way of putting new wine in old wineskins is trying to love and serve Christ while loving the world and its pleasures.

The new wine of the Gospel cannot be contained in our lives if we're trying to hang onto pleasures and loves of the world that the Holy Spirit is saying, "You've got to let go of those." We can't do both. We can't keep both. Let me ask you, as we close here, a couple of application questions. First of all, are you experiencing the joy of the living presence of Christ? Do you know that today? Or are you here this morning, and really, what you feel is the burden of obligation and guilt.

Jesus wants you to come to the wedding. Jesus wants you to leave the funeral, the mourning of the legalism that you had been living under. Jesus wants you to come to the wedding of joy and celebration, of knowing him as your bridegroom. Secondly, is your spiritual confidence, is who you think of yourself as a Christian, is your spiritual confidence built upon a structure of rules and knowing the system and traditions?

Do you think better or worse of yourself by whether you're keeping a set of rules, or have you been freed by the power of the Gospel, the Gospel that frees you to become more like Christ, the Gospel that frees you to embrace change, the gospel that frees you to not have not such a tight hold on your traditions, your old wineskins? I want to close this morning with this image of Jesus that he's given to us here.

You know, two weeks ago, Mark presented Jesus, showing himself to us as the Great Physician. What a wonderful image. Jesus is the Great Physician, but this morning, Jesus presents himself to us with a different image, as the bridegroom.

And I don't know if you've thought about Jesus that way, but if you know Jesus as savior and Lord, if you want to know Jesus as savior and Lord, here's the promise: you become part of his bride, and one day, you will experience the marriage, the wedding feast of the lamb. Revelation 19:7: this is the scene in heaven. "Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to him for the marriage of the lamb." The lamb is Jesus. The lamb is the bridegroom.

The marriage of the lamb has come, and his bride, that's you, that's me, if we know Jesus as savior and Lord, has made herself ready. You will one day go and be joined with him forever. We, the bride, to him, the bridegroom. Let's pray. Jesus, we adore you. We adore you as the Great Physician. We come to you with all our hurts, with all our needs. We adore you as the bridegroom, as the one who, like a loving husband, cares for his wife, protects his wife, shepherds his wife.

Lord, we long for the day when we will be joined with you forever, when will we be removed from all the things we even see in the news this week, all of the anger, all of the hatred, all of the effects of sin. We long for that. Lord. I pray for any person here today who has not experienced your living presence. I pray, even today, you would draw them to yourself as the Great Physician, as the savior, as the bridegroom. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.