What Shapes Your Life?
Notes
Transcript
Live life shaped by Messiah’s merciful call
Intro me
Rather than looking at tiny slices of the bible in isolation, reading things in context is always important. Each passage we study fits into the bigger story, slotted together with those around it like puzzle pieces. This week it’s particularly important for us to think about context because our passage is explicitly tied into what goes before by its first word - and next week we’ll see it’s also tied into what follows!
So what’s the wider story? All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus - that’s literally been our theme-song for the last set of weeks. After listening to Jesus setting out the blueprint for his kingdom of transformed hearts - teaching with authority - we’ve been watching Jesus act with this same extraordinary authority. And it’s like he’s ascending a ladder, going up rung by rung (though admittedly some of these are a little tenuous):
We saw authority over defilement - touching and cleansing the leper
We saw authority over sickness - healing at a distance, with a word
We saw authority over his disciples - they are to have a higher allegiance to Jesus than comfort; than relationship, even
We saw authority over the natural - commanding the wind and waves as God alone does
We saw authority over the supernatural - legions of demons far beyond human power dispatched with just a word
We saw authority over sin itself - the sole preserve of God
and then, last week, we saw Jesus declaring his mission: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” If we wanted to frame that around his authority, we might say it shows his authority to call - to call whoever he chooses into his new life and into his service.
That’s a lot of authority - and there’s still more to come. But we shouldn’t be surprised because, as we’ve been reminding ourselves week after week, all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to him.
Hot on the heels of that last declaration, and just moments before he goes up the next rung, we get what looks like a bit of an interlude on this authority thing. Jesus gets another challenge to the way he’s doing things, about the way his disciples behave. By the time we’re done this morning, I’m hoping we’ll see this, too, relates to his authority. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Before we get there, you need to know this is a tricky passage. It really had me and the team scratching our heads as we’ve looked at it and talked it through. We’re going to have to think our way through it carefully, work at it step by step to get our heads around what Jesus is telling us here, to understand him right. Easy to take a wrong turn so we’re going to ask a series of questions and work our way through them to get to a series of answers.
Ready to go? Ok, let’s read. And we’re in Matthew chapter 9 starting at verse 14 - just a few short verses but I think you really will find it helpful to have the passage in front of you today as we work through it. Page 974 in these blue bibles - Matthew chapter 9 - big 9 and we’re starting at verse 14. Page 974 and Nick’s reading for us this morning.
Then John’s disciples came and asked him, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast. “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Thanks Nick. Ok, let’s think this through together - and let’s start at the beginning. Two weeks back, we saw Jesus challenged by the ‘teachers of the law” Mt 9:3
At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming!”
Last week, we saw Jesus challenged by the Pharisees Mt 9:11
When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
This week, another group shows up with their challenge - John’s disciples. Mt 9:14
Then John’s disciples came and asked him, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?”
Who are we dealing with this time? The followers of John - not our Jon (though of course he has followers too!) but followers of John the Baptist, Jesus’ forerunner. We met John earlier in Matthew’s telling of the story of Jesus, calling to everyone Mt 3:2
and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
We heard huge crowds were going out to him in the desert, confessing their wrongs and being baptised by him as a sign of their repentance Mt 3:5-6
People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
Well, John’s in prison now - that’s another story - but these disciples must’ve been so impacted by him and his teaching that they’re still trying to live it out. And they are wondering why Jesus and his disciples seem to be following such a different pattern.
See, John’s disciples “fast often” Mt 9:14 and so do these Pharisees - and from what we read elsewhere about Pharisees and fasting, that seems to mean they fast twice a week. That’s a stark contrast to Jesus’ disciples who’ve just rolled out of a party, a feast. “How come?” is their question - quite reasonably.
Then John’s disciples came and asked him, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?”
But before we tackle the question of why Jesus’ disciples don’t fast, we need to consider why John’s disciples do - and the Pharisees too - why do they fast? Why do they fast often?
We might be tempted to think it’s about point-scoring since there are Pharisees involved, about careful obedience to the Law of Moses: dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s to score top marks - but that’s not obviously the case. There’s only one commanded fast in the Law - once a year around Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. “Fasting often” isn’t simply carefully keeping the law.
Instead, in the picture Jesus paints to explain what’s going on, he equates their fasting with “mourning” Mt 9:15:
Matthew 9:15 (NIV)
Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them?
And when we read about fasting in the Old Testament, although it’s sometimes associated with seeking God’s attention - like when Queen Esther calls the Jewish people to fast before she dares approach the King, it’s primarily associated with mourning - often over wrongdoing - whether that’s corporate, like 1 Sam 7:6, or individually like David in 2 Sam 12:22
When they had assembled at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it out before the Lord. On that day they fasted and there they confessed, “We have sinned against the Lord.” Now Samuel was serving as leader of Israel at Mizpah.
He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’
So why do John’s disciples and the Pharisees “fast often”? If it’s mourning like Jesus says, what are they mourning? What are they mourning multiple times a week - what is it that wouldn’t also apply to Jesus’ disciples?
As I’ve reflected on and studied this, I think we have to see them mourning sin and the judgement which comes with that. Mourning it personally, but also corporately, as a part of God’s wider people.
See, during the Exile, when God drove his people out of their land as a judgement on their sin, that one fast a year was stepped up to four - Zech 8:19 speaks about “the fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months,” each date marking a critical step in their downfall: the siege of Jerusalem; it’s capture; the burning of the city and temple; the killing of their appointed king.
Zechariah 8:19 (NIV)
“The fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months will become joyful and glad occasions and happy festivals for Judah. Therefore love truth and peace.”
And although by the time of Jesus they are back in the land, although the Jerusalem temple has been rebuilt, it’s just a pale shadow of what was, no full restoration. A sketched outline not the real thing. It’s clear to God’s people every day that they still live under judgement because they’re still living under Roman rule and oppression.
So fasting as mourning over God’s judgement would definitely seem appropriate still - but why step it up so much in intensity as to fast twice weekly? In urgent hope that this mourning would finally come to an end. In anticipation that there’d finally be an end to their time of judgement, that restoration might finally come. In hope that what their John had announced was really true: “the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Mt 3:2
Matthew 3:2 (NIV)
and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Their hope for restoration was focused down onto one prophesied individual: a chosen one, an “anointed one” - the Messiah. The Messiah would come and restore the Kingdom - so when John says ‘the Kingdom of God is at hand” that means the Messiah, the promised King is too.
Well if that’s what they are fasting for, it makes great sense that Jesus’ disciples wouldn’t - because they knew the King had already come!
When Jesus uses this picture of a wedding to explain his disciples’ lack of fasting Mt 9:15, it’s tied up with exactly the same thing. That picture of bride and groom is one the Old Testament uses repeatedly to show us how God ultimately plans to restore his people: he’ll come like a bridegroom, remove their shame, marry them, and be with them forever.
Matthew 9:15 (NIV)
Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them?
In our culture we have a special song for ‘here comes the bride’, and that’s the moment everyone stands and we start the celebration. In their culture it was all about ‘here comes the groom’: when the groom arrived, the party started. Jesus says he’s like that groom (a bride-groom so we don’t confuse it with the sort of groom who brushes horses, see?). When he shows up it’s time to get the party started.
The wedding guests can’t mourn - it’d be totally wrong - because the groom is here; the Messiah, this promised King, is here. And, in fact, John himself used similar language to talk about Jesus when the two of them met: the groom has come - and joy rather than mourning is the order of the day. Jn 3:29
John 3:29 (NIV)
The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.
Perhaps these disciples of John missed that special meeting! Perhaps they were off sick, or had been sent out on mission by John that week. Or perhaps they’d just lost hope with their John imprisoned. But their fasting - their mourning and longing - just can’t fit with the promised groom, with Messiah, being right there in front of them.
We spent a whole six months this year working through Jesus’ famous teaching, the Sermon on the Mount. Again and again we saw Jesus was laying out the blueprint for his kingdom of transformed hearts. Do you remember the famous Beatitudes that sermon starts with? “Blessed are the..” Well perhaps you’ll remember that one of them is Mt 5:4
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
We saw that the brokenness of our world would finally be mended; that the longing we have for things to be made right would finally be fulfilled through the coming of Jesus the righteous one - and through his transforming of our hearts. The time for mourning is passed - the hunger for righteousness will be filled. The comforter has come - and he is here.
Jesus is saying that he has come to rescue and transform his people, come to be with them forever. And that calls for celebration, not fasting that is mourning.
Are you with me? Does that make sense? These disciples’ fasting is them longing for restoration. Jesus is what they’re longing for and more: restoration and transformation, the one come to heal sinners and call them into his service, like we heard last week. Mt 9:12-13
On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Now we’ve got our head around that, we’re ready to have a go at this last bit: the new patch old garment / new wine old wineskin stuff.
A wineskin by the way is an animal skin cleaned up and sewn up as a sort of flexible bag - anyone want a sip from that? That’s euuugh no matter what the vintage! See, new skins were kind of stretchy so they could cope with the gas given off by the fermenting grape juice (called ‘new wine’) where old skins would get tough and brittle. Here’s our modern equivalent: my stainless steel fermenter. Considerably less gross - and it normally copes just fine with the pressure from the gas! Normally. But that’s another story...
Anyhoo, what’s the old garment, the old wineskin? What is it that can’t be joined to the new, can’t contain it?
Well, it’d be tempting to say the old is the Mosaic Law - you can’t mix Law and Gospel. Luther would be totally down with that idea. The new Jesus way can’t just be patched into that old and fragile Law. The new Jesus way just doesn’t fit within that old and inflexible Law. It’s going to destroy it.
But then, Jesus himself told us he did not come to abolish the law Mt 5:17
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
His coming didn’t further damage a Law that’s already torn like that older garment in his picture. It didn’t burst a Law that’s become unyielding and hard and now just needs to be left behind. That’s not at all how Jesus speaks about the Law - Mt 5:18
For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
The Law’s not gone anywhere. But if it’s not Law, what is it that Jesus declares to be incompatible with the new?
I think we need to see this old garment, this old wineskin, as the way you lived in that age of mourning we were talking about: living in the incompatibility between God’s holiness and our brokenness - living under judgement. Living in the age of waiting - yes, the age of hope - but only hope unfulfilled.
And what’s the new patch, the new wine that just isn’t compatible with that? It’s Jesus come with mercy for sinners, come to call us into his service - just as last week we saw him call to Matthew, “follow me”. Jesus, the promised one, transforming our hearts and bringing his new Kingdom - just like we saw as we we studied our way through the Sermon on the Mount.
What’s Jesus point with his pictures, his parables? The old -living mourning, hope unfulfilled- is incompatible with Messiah come. It’s impossible to hold the two together; to contain one in the other. Everyone knows you can’t put the fresh and the new into the old and the inflexible. So when God pours out his new wine, he doesn’t do that resulting in the same old shapes and patterns of life. It’s fundamentally incompatible; impossible. Instead it must take a new shape.
And that, I think, answers one final question: what’s the new wineskin? It’s a life shaped by the new wine: the truth of messiah come. Not a life of fasting and mourning, but of feasting and rejoicing that Messiah has come. A life of becoming this Kingdom of transformed hearts breaking into the world all around us. A life of hearing and responding to God’s call.
As God pours out his new wine, that can only result in a new shape of life. Well… so what?
Live life shaped by Messiah’s merciful call
Is your life shaped by Messiah’s merciful call? What would that look like?
The life of the forgiven
Christians, we’re reconciled with God, no longer his enemy. We shouldn’t be living in sorrow under the faults and failures of our past, but living joyfully free of them by God’s grace. Unable to remember our wrongs without remembering God’s greater grace to us, allowing it to swallow them up.
And as we grasp just how greatly we’re recipients of mercy, we should be living mercifully in reflection, just as Jesus taught in his pattern for prayer: forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors; overwhelming mercy received obliges us to overflow with mercy ourselves.
Life shaped by Messiah’s merciful call is the life of the forgiven: a life of freedom, of joy, a life of reflective mercy. But it’s also
The life of the transformed
New wine tells the same story as the picture Jesus uses elsewhere of a little yeast working its way through the whole batch of dough: both picture the unstoppable and transformative power of His kingdom working through us, working among us. Yeast transforms dough, transforms grape juice. It creates something new and expansive - see how the dough grows as it rests; see why you need a new wineskin, not an old one - or at least a good pressure fermenter!
A life shaped by Messiah’s merciful call is a life being transformed. What does that transformation actually look like? Conforming more and more to Jesus’ blueprint for his Kingdom he presented in the Sermon on the Mount that we spent those last months thinking our way through.
If you were with us though that season, remember these [SoM collateral]? Where did you set out to pursue transformation? Have you dropped the ball? time to pick it up again.
If you weren’t here, pick up one of these from the bookcase on your way out - read through Jesus teaching and think about where he is calling you to grow towards his kingdom and his righteousness
Life shaped by Messiah’s merciful call is a life being transformed. And finally, it’s also
The life of the called
As we saw last week, “follow me” was Jesus’ first call to Matthew the tax collector; Jesus’ calls to us all is the very same: “follow me.” We’re never just “saved from” - just forgiven - we’re always also “saved for”. In Ephesians Paul tells us we were saved by grace not by works - but in his very next verse he underlines we were saved for works. Eph 2:8-10
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Jesus calls all of us into his service, into his mission. And that call isn’t just some future thing, for when we’re sorted, fully transformed - it’s a call that begins right now, just as Matthew invited his friends to meet with Jesus hot on the heels of his own call.
And sure we might not get it all right or know how everything fits together or be sorted yet ourselves, but still Jesus begins with the call. And I think there’s a big truth for us there: The life of the transformed is inextricably tied up with the life of the called. Transformation comes through working out the call - it’s not preparation for it, with the call some step 2 we eventually graduate to.
Life shaped by Messiah’s merciful call is the life of the forgiven; is a life being transformed; is the life of the called.
Is your life shaped by Messiah’s merciful call? Let’s pray...
Live life shaped by Messiah’s merciful call
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bridegroom taken => time to fast
“taken from them” - Jesus’ first passion prediction
// ‘taken away’ = Is 53:8 death not ‘taken up’ of ascension
By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished.
even though he’ll be taken from them, he’ll also rise, taking up/back his life again
and Jesus himself tells us is with us always until the very end of the age Mt 28:20