Matthew 9:14-17
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We drove down to Knoxville last Friday. Sarah moved into her new apartment last month. She had plenty of help moving furniture so we didn’t need to help with that, but she still needed help getting stuff out of boxes and organized in closets and on shelves. What he needs to realize is even after you get stuff put away you may find a better place to put it later so you just need to find some place to put it.
But moving into a new apartment is exciting. She’s always had roommates and she’s always been the last one to move in so she’s never gotten to use her stuff. But now she’s in her own apartment which she’ll soon be sharing with what’s his name, so she’s getting to use her own dishes, and pans, and coffee maker that’s been a box for the last few years. New can be exciting. And everything will get more exciting as her wedding gets closer. Then her new apartment will be new again as he moves all his stuff in.
Driving down to Knoxville it nice to see the mountain sides starting to turn green. It’s early enough that the tops of the mountains are still brown while the trees in the valleys are getting their new leaves. Spring is an exciting time as you watch the green move up the side of the mountain.
Of course new isn’t always fun. Sarah’s fiance told us about a new pair of shoes he bought for work. He loves the old pair, but realizes they’re getting old and in disrepair so they need to be replaced. However, the old pair are worn in and comfortable while the new pair are still stiff.
Sometimes new is exciting, but new can also be uncomfortable and even intimidating.
When Jesus began his ministry in Galilee and Jerusalem it was definitely something new and unexpected. Some welcomed it like a warm spring day, but others flatly rejected it. It wasn’t what they were used to. It’s not the way they’d done it before.
Last week we saw the story of Jesus calling Matthew to be a disciple. Then, to make matters worse, he went over to Matthew’s house for dinner and his friends who are described as “tax collectors and sinners.” The Pharisees don’t like this and ask the disciples about it. Why would Jesus fellowship with such sinful people? And Jesus told them that he had come to help people like this. In our passage tonight Jesus will be confronted by some disciples of John the Baptist. They are questioning the way Jesus is doing things as well.
The good thing about God is that he’s always doing something new. God rarely does things the same way twice. God does new things. God said to Isaiah:
See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:19)
We look forward to the day when will make everything new. There will be a new heaven and a new earth. God told John in the book of Revelation:
“I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Revelation 21:5)
Aren’t you glad that God does new things? It’s exciting.
However, it can also be a little uncomfortable. It certainly was for those watching Jesus as he did new things. Are we ready for God to do new things in our lives?
I will be gone Sunday. I’m going out to the camp for a men’s retreat. Looking at the forecast it looks like it would be a good idea to take an umbrella. I rarely use an umbrella, but I also rarely walk outside in the rain. When it’s raining all I need to do is walk a few feet to my car and get in. It takes longer to get the umbrella out and then have to put it away. If it’s raining hard I get wetter playing with the umbrella than I would have just walking in the rain. So I don’t use one very often.
However, there are parts of the world where umbrellas are quite common. London, for example is known for its rainy weather and also for its umbrellas.
Today you find umbrellas all over the world. You find them everywhere except in side. You don’t find umbrellas inside because first, you don’t need them inside. Second, they’re a little big to be opened inside. And third, it’s considered bad luck to open an umbrella inside. That’s because back when they were used only to block the sun it was considered an insult to the sun god to open an umbrella indoors.
Umbrellas are common today, but as with everything there was a beginning to the umbrella. Umbrellas were a takeoff of the parasol which had been used for years by women to block the sun. In fact, the word umbrella comes from the Latin word “umbre” which means shadow. Umbrella means “little shadow.”
In the mid 1700s Jonas Hanway adopted the parasol and used it to shield himself from the rain. Also, as with new ideas, Hanway’s umbrella was roundly ridiculed and shunned. People were outraged. It’s said that some bystanders hooted and jeered at Hanway as he passed while others simply stared in shock.
The men wouldn’t use it because it was seen as too feminine. It resembled a parasol and men didn’t use parasols. And weighing it at ten pounds it was too heavy for women. But particularly abusive were the coach drivers. They had more riders and so made more money when it was raining. An umbrella made the coach ride unnecessary. In addition to calling him names, some coach drivers even tried to run him over. They understood Hanway’s umbrella represented a threat to business. But Hanway didn’t care what people thought and continued to use his umbrella. Three months after Hanway died the first advertisement for umbrellas appeared in the London Gazette.
It tool almost thirty years for the umbrella to catch on, but now London is known as the city of umbrellas. In fact, I’ve heard that there are places in London where you can take you umbrellas to be cleaned. They’ll clean and press them for you so they look brand new.
That’s the way it usually is for things that are new and different. They aren’t understood or appreciated.
It’s even true in the church. Most churches resisted the use of pianos because at that time they were mainly known for their use in bars. And most people didn’t like the organs because they thought they were too loud.
Jesus also faced criticism because the things he did were new and different. Let’s watch the video.
Matthew 9:14-17 VIDEO
In our passage the disciples of John the Baptist come to Jesus wondering why he and his disciples aren’t fasting. There’s a good chance that John has already been arrested. If so, this was a time of mourning for his followers. Why wasn’t his cousin mourning with them? Even the Pharisees fasted at least once a week and some twice a week. Why weren’t Jesus fasting and his disciples fasting?
Jesus answers with three short stories or parables.
The first illustration comes from a wedding party. No one throws a wedding party and then expects the quests to go without any food or drink. Even if you don’t serve a full meal you at least have cake and punch at the reception when you celebrate with the bride and groom. There’s no fasting at a wedding.
Jesus was declaring that he was the bridegroom. He had come to call his bride – the church. The church would become the bride of Christ. The ministry of Jesus was the preparation for the wedding and a celebration of this new marriage. When Jesus would die and depart from his bride the church, then the church would fast and mourn and grieve until he returned. There would be a time for fasting, but this was a time for rejoicing and that’s exactly what Jesus and his disciples did.
The second illustration came from the closet. When you have an old piece of clothing with hole in it, it’s not a good idea to patch it up with a new piece of cloth. New cloth, especially natural fibers, tend to shrink the first few times they’re washed. If you put a new piece of cloth on an old garment you’re going to have problems. The old garment has already been through a lot of washings and has shrunk as far as it is going to shrink. But as soon as you wash the garment with the new piece of cloth sewn on it the new piece of cloth will shrink and tear away from the old garment. The hole you repaired will now be that much the bigger. Therefore, don’t sew a new piece of cloth on an old garment.
The third illustration came from the common practice of fermenting of wine. Wine was a staple drink in Palestine. Most wine was not kept in bottles, but in animal skins that had been dried and treated. The new juice would be poured into a new wineskin and sown shut. As the juice began to ferment the gases from the fermentation process would put pressure on the skin. It would stretch with the new pliable wineskin. However, if you put this new wine into an old, dry and hardened skin, when it would begin to ferment and expand inside the skin it would literally tear the skin apart and both the wineskin and the wine would be lost forever.
Jesus is here to bring something new.
In the Greek there are two words for new: “neos” and “kainos”. Neos has to do with chronological newness while kainos describes qualitative newness. I’ll explain.
About a year-and-a-half ago Sarah and I each got a new car. I was driving a 2006 Chevy Caviler. Sarah had a 2005 Nissan Sentra. I traded Sarah my Caviler for her Sentra. I got a new car in that the Sentra came later than the Caviler. The Sentra was older than the Caviler in years, but it was new to me. That’s neos. Sarah then took the Caviler and traded it for a 2015 Toyota Camry. No one had ever owned it before. Except for perhaps a couple of other test drives it had never been driven before. It was brand spanking new. That’s kainos.
It is this second idea of newness that Jesus speaks about in Matthew 9. Jesus isn’t just bringing something that’s new to them, he’s bringing something totally new and never seen before. I think one of the Old Testament prophecies that describes this well is in Jeremiah 31. This is one of my favorite Old Testament passage. In this lengthy passage God says:
31 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 31:31-32)
Then God describes what this new (kainos) covenant will be like.
33 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)
God says he is going to do something new and that new thing comes through Jesus. There is a new covenant. So what does this mean to us?
First, we are now live under grace instead of law.
It’s not that there wasn’t grace in the Old Testament. We God’s grace throughout the New and Old Testaments. While God’s grace was demonstrated in the Old Testament, it was primarily a time of law. In the New Testament, we live under a new covenant. (Understand that the words covenant and testament mean the same thing. It’s like saying the good news of the gospel. They both mean the same thing since gospel means good news.) We now live under grace not law.
What we need to know is you can’t live under law and grace at the same time. This is true of both people, and of churches. Throughout the centuries there has been a tendency among well meaning people and well meaning congregations to try and mix grace with law and the result has been legalism. You cannot live under both at the same time.
The law served a very important roll in the life of God’s people. Paul says the law acted as our teacher showing us the impossibility of living a life of holiness. In our own strength it cannot be done. So what we see it our desperate need for a Savior who would forgive us of our sins.
Paul knew all there was to know about legalism. He had lived as a Pharisee, a keeper and defender of the law. He had lived so zealously for God that he even saw it as his responsibility to kill anyone who opposed God – and that included Christians because he thought they were going against God. But then God grabbed a hold of Paul and showed him grace. Paul, the chief of sinners, came to know the love and forgiveness of the Lord, and it revolutionized his life. Then, as a fully devoted follower of Christ, Paul sought to set the Gentiles free. He urged the early church to not add the requirements of the law to their new grace-filled faith.
Under the new covenant holiness is not to be driven by a series of external requirements and regulations, but by an internal dwelling of the living God in the person of the Holy Spirit. Remember, that’s what God was saying in Jeremiah. The Holy Spirit would write his will on the hearts and minds of his people. Believers would long to please the Lord and live lives of holiness and consecration not out of duty, but out of love.
As believers we know that we can fluctuate in our own walk with Christ between law and grace. There are times when we love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and living a holy life of service to God seems a total joy to us. But there are other times that we feel far and distant from God, we don’t sense the presence of His indwelling Spirit, and our service becomes one of duty and drudgery and religious ritual.
Are you living under law or under grace right now? The question goes to the heart of our relationship with the Lord, and the motive behind what we do.
The disciples of John mentioned fasting. While Jesus told them that this wasn’t the time for his followers to fast, he indicated that the time for fasting would come. Fasting is a good thing. If led by the spirit of God to fast then fasting can be a moving and meaningful practice. But, fasting can also become a ritual. If we fast simply out of religious habit, without our hearts and souls committed to seeking God and His kingdom, then it can become a legalistic and lifeless practice.
Coming to church can be a joy-filled experience of gathering with God’s people to worship the King and to encourage our fellow-believers. But, if we come because we feel we “have to come,” then attending worship slips into ritual and legalism and it steals the joy out of our lives. What is our motive? Where is our heart?
Even churches can slip out of grace and into legalism. The seven last words of the church have been written as this: “We have always done it this way!” Churches can be steeped in tradition and ritual and lose the life-giving direction of the spirit of God. We can do the same old thing the same old way and get the same old results.
But God is in the business of creating and doing new things. God creates life. God takes dead things and resurrects them. God can and will take a church that is willing to move from legalistic boundaries to grace-filled fields of harvest. Are we a church that is willing to go in new directions, to try something new, and willing to trust the Lord for things we’ve never seen happen before? Or do we keep doing the same things, expecting the same results, with no sense of faith or joy?
Do you want God to do something new in your life? Do you want him to do something new in this church? Or are you satisfied with the law of the past? It’s time to move into grace.
Remember, Jesus doesn’t do extreme makeovers. He totally recreates! You cannot live under both law and grace.
Second, we don’t live with patches.
Don’t just patch up your life and hope for the best.
If you’ve had children – especially boys – you know how hard it is to keep them in clothes. They grow so fast and wear out so much. It’s expensive to keep buying new clothes, but it can get tiring trying to patch the old ones. Plus, no matter how much you try and patch up an old pair of paints, the patch never lasts very long.
How many of us go through our lives trying to cover up the dead and decaying parts of our lives with a patch? We have a problem with sin – perhaps it’s our outbursts of anger, or our impatience with people, or maybe it’s our tendency to open our mouths and stick our foot in. We think all we really need is a little patch job. If we could just get a little bit of control over this area, then we would feel better, or do better, or be happier. But God isn’t interested in our patch jobs. He doesn’t just want to cover over those glaring sins, he wants to redo all of us so there is no sin.
When Jesus came to Palestine, he wasn’t interested in taking Judaism and patching it up so that it could last a little longer. He wanted to create an entirely new way for people. The old had served its purpose and now it was worn out and ready to be discarded. God wasn’t going to write his law on scrolls of paper, but on the hearts of people. God wasn’t going to continue to accept animal sacrifices for a covering of sin, but his Son was going to be the final sacrifice taking away the sins of the world. God wasn’t going to speak through his prophets and those who were occasionally filled with the Spirit, he was going to fill all people with His Holy Spirit – men, women and children alike were going to be able to prophesy of the Lord. God isn’t interested in patch jobs and he isn’t interested in your attempts to patch up your life either.
Our “if only’s” just don’t cut it in the new covenant:
If only I could try just a little harder
If only I could have victory over that one besetting sin
If only I could compensate for my sin, but doing good over here
God doesn’t want a patched up Greg, he was a new creation. God doesn’t call me to get better, he calls me to die, and to be born again in Jesus. God doesn’t ask me to try harder, he challenges me to consider myself crucified with Christ so that it isn’t me who lives, but Christ who lives in me.
So much of our frustration as Christians is that we try to live lives with patches on them, instead of throwing out the old garment, and becoming clothed with the new garment of Christ. It is Christ living his life in us. It is the Holy Spirit filling and controlling us.
Are you still trying to live a patched up religious life or have you died to trying and are now letting Christ live his life in you? This is the challenge that many people have struggled with understanding.
It is what led A.B. Simpson to a new beginning in his ministry and Christian life. He came to a crises moment as a preacher and a Christian when he realized that despite all of his trying, he could not live a life pleasing to the Lord. He would fall time and time again. Like Paul, he did the very things he didn’t want to do, and the things he wanted to do, he did not do. It wasn’t until he understood the crucified life, the Christ-life that he was set free to live in the power of the Holy Spirit and not in the struggle of the flesh. It was Christ in him, not a new patch on an old garment.
Have you died to self, that he might make you new? You cannot live under both law and grace. You cannot patch up your life and hope for the best.
And third, we are made new.
In order for God to do something new in you, you must be made new.
In the Bible a comparison is made between the Holy Spirit and wine. Paul urged the Ephesians:
Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. (Ephesians 5:18)
Do you wonder why your Christian life seems so ineffective? Do you struggle with the sense that you are not growing or changing at all? Does the presence of the Lord seem far away? Is your prayer life dry and lifeless? Do you find it hard to understand God’s Word and how it relates to your life? Do you find it hard to even remember the last time the Lord spoke to you?
God will not pour his new wine into old wineskins. God must do an entirely new thing in your life. You must be willing to die. Without death, there is no life. You can’t bring out the same old patterns of religious activity and lifeless ritual and believe that now God is going to do something new in your life. You can’t continue to live a life of self-centered pampering and believe that now God is going to turn your life around. God doesn’t work that way.
Before God can re-create, he must destroy. Before God can bring forth a new crop, the seed must be buried and die. Before God can change you, you must be born again. And as a born-again believer, a new creation in Christ, before you can see Christ transform your life – you must die to self. Jesus said:
Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. (John 12:24)
Jesus told Nicodemus:
Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. (John 3:3)
The Pharisees and the disciples of John questioned Jesus because they didn’t understand the new thing he was doing. God doesn’t come to redo the old, he comes to do something new.
Remember, Jesus doesn’t do extreme makeovers. he totally recreates! You cannot live under both law and grace. You cannot patch up your life and hope for the best. In order for God to do something new in you, you must be made new.