1/24/2012 7:03:10 PM
Gospel of Mark
Jesus Talks About The New as Opposed to The Old
Mark 2:18-22
“18 ¶ John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and they *came and *said to Him, "Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?" 19 And Jesus said to them, "While the bridegroom is with them, the attendants of the bridegroom cannot fast, can they? So long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. 20 "But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. 21 "No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; otherwise the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear results. 22 "No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.’”
In these five verses we will see the distinctiveness of the gospel, for the gospel of Jesus is different than any other “religious” system in the entire world. Is it narrow? You bet it is and in John 14 Jesus spoke of how narrow it is: “4 ¶ "And you know the way where I am going." 5 Thomas *said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?" 6 Jesus *said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” Now we have already spoke earlier about the fact that people in the OT were saved in the same way that people in the NT are. In Genesis 15 we read about this in the life of Abraham, and the words we read from Genesis 15 are used by the apostle Paul when he wrote to the Romans. First let us look at Genesis 15 “2 ¶ Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" 3 And Abram said, "Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir." 4 Then behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, "This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir." 5 And He took him outside and said, "Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendants be." 6 Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.” We see this verse repeated in Romans 4:3; Gal. 3:6; and James 2:23. Why do I bring this up? These words that we read from the OT are not what the apostate Jews were teaching when Jesus walked upon the earth and for that matter they are not what is being taught in Judaism since then either so the problem was not with what is in the OT, but how these apostate Jews interpreted it and Jesus teaches them the truth for He is the truth and they don’t think that He is holy enough which is what we spoke of in the last message from Mark.
Verse 18: “18 John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and they *came and *said to Him, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?’” Do you think that it is odd that the disciples of John are grouped with the Pharisees? We know that some of the disciples of John the Baptist came and were now disciples of Jesus and we can also figure that John the Baptist would not approve of some of his disciples being lined up with the Pharisees, for John did not have a lot of kind words for the Pharisees. “Mt 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
The question that is asked in Mark 18 is a loaded question, and that is the way that the Pharisees always asked questions to Jesus, for they always wanted to trap him. The question has to do with fasting and why Jesus’ disciples were not fasting like John’s disciples and the Pharisees were. I have written about fasting in other messages stating that I have fasted on a couple of occasions and it was done for a purpose. The OT only had one fast that was mandatory and that is on the Day of Atonement and this is talked about in Leviticus 16:29-31: “29 ¶ "This shall be a permanent statute for you: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall humble your souls and not do any work, whether the native, or the alien who sojourns among you; 30 for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD. 31 "It is to be a sabbath of solemn rest for you, that you may humble your souls; it is a permanent statute. John MacArthur says the following on this highlighted portion of verse 29: “you shall humble yours souls, or afflict your soul, and the Hebrew word used there is commonly used of restraining or refraining from eating. Only one fast is prescribed, only one fast is demanded.”
We see in passages like Ester chapter four and Isaiah 58 and other chapters in the OT that people would fast voluntarily. We also see in that Jesus condemned the Pharisees for the way that they fasted, for they were doing it to draw attention to themselves: “16 ¶ "Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 17 "But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face 18 so that your fasting will not be noticed by men, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”
One more word about fasting and that is it is to be a solemn occasion and not to be done when going to a party or a wedding. We know from the last message that Jesus had just come away from a party or a dinner that was at Levies’ house (Matthew) and so this may have been one of the reasons that the Pharisees were asking this question.
Verse 19: “19 And Jesus said to them, "While the bridegroom is with them, the attendants of the bridegroom cannot fast, can they? So long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.”
Jesus is telling them the very thing we were talking about and that is fasting is a serious thing to do and not to be done at a wedding and we know from other Scriptures that Jesus is the Bridegroom and those that the Father will give to Him will be the bride or the Church. The parable from Matthew 25 about the Bridegroom is teaching us that Jesus is the Bridegroom. Jesus is saying that when He is here on earth it is not a time for His disciples to fast. John MacArthur writes: “An old Jewish document called ‘The Megulatte Tahonit (??) is…that means literally the scroll of fasting, gives instruction about fasting. It says fasting is forbidden on all days devoted to happy celebration.”
Verse 20: “20 "But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.”
Jesus is saying that when He is gone then the disciples will fast, but now He is here and they will not fast. I suppose that when the disciples learned of the death of Jesus that they did not feel like eating and therefore they were fasting because He was taken from them.
Verse 21: 21-22: "No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; otherwise the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear results. 22 "No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.’”
Jesus in affect is saying that there is a difference from what the Pharisees were teaching, which is apostate, and what He is teaching and there is no way that the two of them have anything in common, you cannot combine them in anyway and that is what He is saying in these two verses.
In these two verses Jesus is painting a picture of the old and the new and showing that there is a difference between the two. Do you remember that one of the themes of the book of Hebrews was that the writer was telling these NT Jewish believers that they cannot go back into the old system for it was just a shadow and what they had now was the real thing.
John MacArthur writes: “He (Jesus) brought a new internal gospel of repentance and forgiveness by grace that cannot be mixed with the old Judaism of tradition and self-righteous works, or with any other religion. The old garment, by the way, is not God’s Law, God’s holy law, it’s not the Old Testament, it is the religion of Judaism and the pieces of the gospel can’t be stitched into it. Jesus said this essentially in the parables of Matthew 13:44-45, when He said there was a man who found a treasure in a field and sold everything and bought the reassure. And a man found a pearl of great price and sold everything to buy the pearl. Once you discover the gospel which is the treasure and the pearl, you can only purchase it if you sell everything. There’s no hanging on to any other form of religion. Here is the gospels uniqueness; it cannot accommodate itself even to Judaism.” Here we have the uniqueness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
1/24/2012 8:02:11 PM
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