If you would take your Bibles and turn with me to Mark, the gospel of Mark, chapter 2. You can find that on page 837 in your pew Bibles. Mark chapter 2. I want to ask of this passage just three simple questions and then see what we can find about a sincere faith from the verses that we read tonight. So that will be our outline – three simple questions and a sincere faith. And before we read God’s Word, let’s pray and ask His blessing.
Our Father, we ask that You would help us see Jesus from this passage and that You would give us a faith that simply clings and believes in Him, and that You would strengthen our faith, grow our faith, and help us to live a life of honoring You and a life of fruitfulness. We pray for Your Spirit to work in all of our hearts tonight. Speak, Lord, for Your servants listen. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Mark chapter 2, beginning in verse 18:
“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. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece 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. 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.’
One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?’ And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?’ And he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.’”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
First, three simple questions. And the first question is – “What? What’s this about?” It would be easy to think that what this passage is about is fasting and the Sabbath. After all, the two questions that Jesus is asked in these verses are about fasting and the Sabbath. Verse 18. The Pharisees ask Jesus, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And then down in verse 24, they say to Him, “Look, why are they” – Jesus’ disciples – “why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” What’s it about?
Well it’s very likely that we know what fasting and Sabbath are. One good definition of fasting is that it is the practice of abstaining from eating and drinking for a preset period of time. And that, in addition to the fixed fast day of the Day of Atonement in the Old Testament, fasts were undertaken in Biblical times in order to seek God for victory in a battle or for relief in times of drought or famine or pestilence. Fasts, they functioned as both public and private expressions of mourning as well as acts of repentance.
And so, in the Jewish calendar, after the exile, there were established four regular fast days – the fast of the fourth month, the fast of the fifth month, the fast of the seventh month, and the fast of the tenth month. But then, over time, more were added to those four regular fixed days so that you had then the first, tenth and twenty-sixth day of the month of Nisan, the tenth and twenty-ninth of the month of Iyar, the first, ninth and eighteenth of Av, and the third, fifth and seventh of Tishrei, and many more in addition to that. In fact, the Roman history, Tacitus, refers to the frequent fasts of the Jews. There’s some indication that the Pharisees fasted twice a week on Mondays and on Thursdays. It was obviously a common practice in that day.
And even, even the disciples of John the Baptist fasted. Now what about Sabbath? Well one modern, secular historian calls the Sabbath a gift and an innovation of the Jewish people. He says that those who live without it are emptier and less resourceful. There was another modern and not so serious historian who wrote a book some years ago and he spent a year trying to follow the Old Testament laws as literally as possible, as literally as he could. And he did it mostly for laughs. And there was humor mixed all throughout his living according to the Old Testament laws. But on a serious note, at the end of that year, what he said one of the top lessons he learned from that year was keeping the Sabbath. He said it changed his life. You see, the Sabbath is embedded into creation. It’s codified into the law as the fourth commandment. It is six days of working and one day of not working.
But you see, that not working could actually be a lot of work. An early rabbinic text identified thirty-nine major categories of labor that were forbidden on the Sabbath Day. There was carrying, burning and extinguishing, writing and erasing, reaping, knotting and untying, and then there were thirty-one others on top of that. Now here’s a sample. Here’s a sample from the Mishnah, which is the text of the early oral tradition. It said this. This was the question, “In what may one insulate a pot of cooked food on Shabbat eve?” So if you want to keep your food warm the best you could on Shabbat eve without working, here’s the answer – “One may neither insulate it in salt nor lime nor sand nor manure. All of these materials spontaneously generate heat. Therefore, they add heat to a pot insulated in them. However, one may insulate a pot of hot food on Shabbat eve in clothing, in produce, in dove’s wings, in a carpenter’s wood shavings, and in the chaff of fine flax. Rabbi Yehuda prohibits doing so when it is fine flax and permits doing so when it is coarse flax.”
That’s a lot of rules. And it would be natural to ask of this passage, “What did Jesus expect? What did Jesus expect of His disciples with regard to fasting and the Sabbath?” And that’s pretty easy. Jesus expected His disciples to fast and to keep the Sabbath. Now not in the way that was the standard practice of that time. After all, Jesus’ disciples did not fast while He was with them, and Jesus’ disciples did not keep the oral code that prohibited plucking grain on the Sabbath day. But what did He say? He did say that when He was taken away from them, that His disciples would fast in that day, verse 20. He said that His disciples needed the Sabbath just like everyone needs the Sabbath. “The Sabbath was made for man,” after all, verse 27 says.
And in fact, this is what we find in the early days of the church. Acts 13 tells us about, “After fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off in the work of mission.” Acts 14, “When they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord.” So we find fasting in the early days of the church. We also find that they gathered together one day a week. Acts 27 tells us that “the disciples gathered together on the first day of the week.” Paul writes to the church in Corinth about how he is taking up a contribution. He says, “On the first day of every week, each of you is to set something aside and store it up.” And when we get to the last book of the New Testament, the book of Revelation, we find that John was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” – the Lord, who is “the Lord of the Sabbath,” as Jesus says in this chapter.
In other words, if we are to ask simply of this passage, “What application is there here for us as followers of Jesus?” then we could simply say it is to fast and to keep Sabbath. When we are seeking God’s will for something in our lives, when we are going to Him in repentance and turning from sin, when we are seeking the good of the church and the spread of the Gospel, it is good and it is right for us to take intentional time to set apart for prayer and for fasting. And, when we are ordering our lives, when we are ordering our week, when we are setting boundaries on our work and on our obligations, when we are cultivating a heart of worship and gratitude and contentment and rest, then we need to keep Sabbath. That’s what the Sabbath was made for. It was made for us. It was made for man. We need one day every week to stop our regular work and recreations. It’s for our good.
But that’s too easy. And that’s just scratching the surface of what this passage is all about. Because there’s another question. There’s a more important question that we need to ask of this passage. And that is, “Why? Why? Why do we find the practice of fasting and Sabbath in the Bible? Why are they a big deal in the big picture?” Well, the answer that Jesus gives us in Mark chapter 2 is that they are preparatory, they are anticipatory. It’s that they are symbolic. I think I’ve shared this story before about one time when I was in college and I was ordering a dinner from my favorite dinner spot. And they had some lasagna, I’d never ordered the lasagna, and so I wanted to know something about the portion size, how big it was. And so I asked him, “How big is your lasagna?” and he said, “Well, it ain’t not never filled me up!” Now I knew what he was saying, but that’s a lot of negatives, isn’t it!
Well that was the problem in Jesus’ day. It was more about the negatives. Fasting was more about the not eating and Sabbath was all about the not working. And that was missing the point because fasting is really, in the long run, the big picture, about feasting. And Sabbath is all about enjoying rest. You see, the intent of fasting and Sabbath was positive. It was beneficial to the worshiper. That’s what Jesus means when He says, “The Sabbath was made for man.” Why did God give Israel a day of rest? Why is it one of the ten commandments? It’s because they were no longer slaves, you see. They were no longer slaves to their work. They were no longer slaves to their production output, no longer slaves to their Egyptian taskmasters. No, God had set them free. He had set them free to enjoy rest and to enjoy His abundant provision for them in their lives.
And there’s a similar idea at work in fasting as well. For example, the prophet, Joel, he’s announcing to the people the coming day of the Lord. The coming day of the Lord – what did that call for? It called for repentance and fasting. And the prophet, Joel, says, “Consecrate a fast. Call a solemn assembly. Blow the trumpet in Zion. Consecrate a fast.” But what was it to do? What was it to prepare them for? It was to prepare them for feasting. It was to prepare them for a celebration. He says, “The threshing floors shall be full of grain. The vats shall overflow with wine and oil. I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten.” He says, “In that day, the mountains shall drip sweet wine, the hills shall flow with milk, and all the streambeds shall flow with water.” You see, fasting is to abstain for the sake of seeking something much, much better. It’s all ultimately about an abundance.
And you see, Jesus is saying that the time of feasting, the time of abundance had come upon them. The day of the Lord had dawned. It’s like what He said back in chapter 1 verse 15, he says, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” The kingdom of God had drawn near to them and so it would be inappropriate, totally inappropriate to fast at a time like that. It would be like fasting at a wedding reception, he says, fasting when there was a feast of rich foods on display all around them.
I was doing a wedding some years ago, and the photographer was telling me about when she was first getting started with wedding photography. And her mentor was kind of showing her how to organize a wedding photography book, how to lay it all out and put it together, and he pulled out one in particular, one sample, and he said, “In this, in this album, in this wedding, every picture I took of the food at the reception, every picture of the buffet, the preacher was in every one of those pictures!” He was just camped out there! And so he opens up the book to her and she looks at it and she says, “That’s my dad!” But you see, the point is, the preacher was not fasting with all that good food around. That would be inconceivable.
But Jesus says something similar, doesn’t He? In verse 19, He says, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?” No. It would be unthinkable. It would be like pretending that you’re at a funeral when you’re at a wedding. It would be like mourning when it’s time for celebration. And Jesus uses a few other metaphors in there as well. He talks about sewing together old and new cloth. He says you can’t store new wine in old wineskins. The new wine would ferment and it would stretch out the already stretched out wineskins and cause them to burst and ruin the wine. It would ruin everything, He says.
You see, what Jesus is saying, He’s saying that they needed to pay attention to what was going on around them because the sick are being healed, the lepers are cleansed, the lame walk, those who are with unclean spirits are being cleansed and restored. The time of anticipation, the time of fulfillment had come upon them. It had been initiated in His first coming. It was not a time to fast. And as for the Sabbath, Jesus is saying that it is incompatible with causing suffering, with causing pain. It was not given to restrict the taking care of basic needs and provisions, just like He uses the example of David. When he was in need and when he was hungry, he ate the bread of the presence in the tabernacle. And the Pharisees, He’s saying, they miss the point of the Sabbath. They used it to control and to judge and to afflict and to condemn when it was really meant to give rest. It was meant for man’s benefit. And then on top of all of that, they miss the one who had brought about that intended rest. They missed the Lord of the Sabbath.
You see, that really brings us to the most important question. I said there’s three simple questions. Not just “What?” and “Why?” – there’s a more important question to ask of these verses, the most important question with regard to fasting and the Sabbath, and it’s “Who? Who is the true focus of these Biblical practices? Who?” And it’s Jesus. It’s Jesus Himself. The one before them was the fulfillment of all those Old Testament expectations. It’s Jesus who brings in the day of the Lord. It’s Jesus who turns fasting into feasting. He gives beauty for ashes, gladness instead of mourning, praise in place of a fainting spirit. And it’s Jesus who is our Sabbath. “Come to Me, Jesus says. Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you” – what? “I will give you rest.” Jesus, you see, gives true rest. He gives rest to our souls, He says in Matthew 11. Jesus gives us liberty from a guilty conscience. Jesus gives us freedom from the slavery of trying to be good enough, the slavery of trying to be enough on our own. He gives us freedom from the slavery of trying to prove our worth by the quality of our work.
I was listening to a music artist once who was talking about how he had reached the top of his field, the top of his craft, and he talked about the emptiness and the dissatisfaction that it brought to him. And he said, “I wanted to be esteemed by the people better than me in my craft and my field. I wanted to be looked at as good or great. But there was a trap,” he said. “There was a trap, and the trap was the trap of making,” he said, “the quality of your work equal the quality of your worth.” And he said he even found himself falling into that trap with how he viewed his children and how he viewed their schooling, how he viewed their activities, how he viewed their sports. That it was this constant treadmill of trying to prove he was enough, he had enough, that he had done enough.
But Jesus gives rest. You see, it’s not about a set of rules; it’s about a person. It’s not about a religion; it’s about a relationship. It’s not about a bunch of “whats;” it’s about one “who” – it’s about Jesus. Christianity is Christ. Christ is the center. Second Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone and the new has come!” It’s in Christ. Christ is the center and He is the most important one to see in these questions about fasting and the Sabbath. Not the “what” or even the “why,” but the “who.”
Now, in closing, what does that say to us? What does that tell us about living – based on those three simple questions we asked of this passage – what does that tell us about living a sincere faith? I was listening recently to a podcast, and the hosts were talking about watching a movie based off one of Shakespeare’s plays. And they got into this topic about how in Shakespeare’s day, you probably well know, all of the actors were men. And so for a woman character in the play, on stage, was a man wearing a woman’s mask. But in this one play, part of the plot was about a woman pretending to be a man for some purpose. And so you have this scenario where it’s a man pretending to be a woman who’s pretending to be a man! And that’s kind of confusing, and it’s a lot of hypocrisy, actually. Because hypocrisy, that’s the idea behind the word “hypocrisy.” Hypocrisy is an actor wearing a mask. And hypocrisy is the opposite of sincerity.
And don’t we need sincerity in the Christian life? Because with so many things it can be hard to know what’s real. It can be hard for us to know what to believe. And we can fake it too. We can fake it too. We can say the right words, we can know the right people, we can be in the right places – but why? Why are we here? Why do we do what we do? Why do we come to church? Why do we read the Bible and pray? Why do we give our time and our money? Why do we keep Sabbath and fast? That’s the question of a sincere faith?
Let me just point out four things briefly from these verses that we can point to the keys for a sincere faith. And the first one is Jesus Himself. Jesus Himself. The answer to the “Why?” question is the answer to the “Who?” question. Jesus is the bridegroom. Jesus, the Son of Man, is Lord of the Sabbath. And so our focus in a sincere faith must always go back to Jesus. If our spiritual disciplines become the focus, if our own effort becomes the focus, or if someone else’s performance becomes our obsession, then we’ve missed the point. Everything we do must be about knowing Christ better, about loving Him more, about following Him closer. The spiritual disciplines of the Christian life must point us to Jesus. He is always the target and the substance of everything we do.
And likewise, it has to be about grace. It has to be about Jesus and it has to be about what Jesus has done, about His grace. Because we can’t do it all right. I don’t know if you’ve ever read through the Westminster Larger Catechism on the duties and prohibitions of the fourth commandment, the Sabbath commandment. It is thorough and impossible. And the catechism goes on to say that “No man is able perfectly to keep the commandments of God but do daily break them in thought, word and deed.” We all do. But it’s ultimately not about what we do but about what Jesus has done because Jesus did what we cannot do. And it is Jesus and what He has done that brings about all of those anticipated blessings of the feasting and rest. Jesus’ obedience, His death and resurrection, brings about the wedding feast. His death and resurrection brings about true rest by His grace. And so a sincere faith is an open-handed faith. “Not what my hands have done can save this guilty soul. Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God. Not all my prayers and sighs and tears and fasting and Sabbath, none of that can bear my awful load.” It’s only Christ, and only by His grace.
There’s Jesus and His grace, and then there’s also the heart. J.C. Ryle says that the heart is the main thing in religion. That basically outward religious formality and knowledge and moral behavior is useless unless the heart is right with God and unless the heart desires an inner sincerity rather than a mere outward appearance. You see, “Man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart.” And Ryle asks, “Is your heart, is your heart right with God?” You see, Jesus is concerned with a sincere faith. He is concerned with a heart obedience and not the mere outward performance of our duties. Not the trappings of religion like our attire or timing or music style, worship style or any of those things. He’s concerned about the heart.
And then the last thing – Jesus, grace, the heart, and blessing. Blessing must be our focus. A faith that is sincere, a true practice of the spiritual disciplines is a life of blessing. And you see, so much of the problem in this passage is that fasting and Sabbath were dead ends. They became burdensome and oppressive and that should never become the case because Jesus is talking about a wedding celebration; He’s talking about wine and feasting. He’s talking about rest for your souls. It is for your good. There is blessing in store for those who walk humbly with God and seek His face and fan into flame the sincere faith in Jesus Christ. Why do we do it? Why do we read and pray and give and fast and rest? How do we live the Christian life with sincerity? It’s by keeping our focus on Christ and His grace, what He has done on our hearts and on the ultimate blessing of God. That’s a sincere faith. It’s by keeping the focus on the Gospel.
Yesterday I went with a friend to Dr. John Perkins’ funeral here in Jackson. And you know, Dr. Perkins’ legacy was one of working for social justice, of relieving poverty, of seeking reconciliation among people. But he always kept – and this was the note, the theme of his service yesterday – he kept Christ the center. And that was what was so compelling, that was what was so impactful on not just me but so many others. It was a legacy, you see, of sincere faith. And about five or six years ago, someone was writing a book on social justice and they asked Dr. Perkins to write the forward. And in that forward he listed, condensed down, four things from sixty years of ministry, the most important things. And they’re all similar to the things we just looked at in this passage, but here’s what he said. Here’s what Dr. Perkins wrote as one of the most fundamental things – Preach the Gospel. He said, “The Gospel of Jesus’ incarnation, His perfect life, His death as our substitute, and His triumph over sin and death is good news for everyone. Christ alone can break down the barriers of prejudice and hate we all struggle with. There is no power greater than God’s love expressed through Jesus. If we replace the Gospel with this or that manmade agenda, then we ain’t doing Biblical justice.”
I think we could say that if we replace the Gospel with anything manmade, whether it’s social justice or fasting or the Sabbath or any of our spiritual disciplines, then it ain’t a sincere faith. And the focus must remain on Christ and His Gospel in all that we do, to His glory and for our good forever. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we ask that You would confront the habits of our hearts and the practices of our lives, that You would help us to reset, refocus and to do all things motivated by, growing out of the grace that You have shown to us in Christ; that Christ would be the substance and heart of all we do. And that we would enjoy and experience that blessing both now and forever. And I pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.