Sermon Tone Analysis

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Good morning, everyone!
Today we are continuing our journey through the book of Mark.
We saw in chapter 1 where Jesus’ ministry got off to a booming beginning.
Then we got to chapter 2, and that’s when stuff started getting awkward.
Chapter 2 details for us major conflicts with ramifications that would last throughout the rest of Jesus’ earthly ministry.
In 2:1-12 we saw Jesus prove that He, in fact, does have the authority to forgive sin.
Last week, we saw in 2:13-17 where Jesus called a tax collector, of all people, to be His disciple, and went to eat with him and his friends - a bunch of sinners!
And he declared that those who believed they were perfect were actually sick, and the people they believed were sick, the sinners, they were the ones being saved by believing and trusting in Jesus.
Now we come to our passage today where, guess, what… There’s more conflict.
From the outset, it would almost appear that the subject of this passage is about fasting.
For the sake of confession, For the almost 20 years I have trusted the Lord as my savior, I have never really taken the time to understand this passage we will be looking at today, and always thought it was about fasting.
I managed to get through seminary without having looked at it either, which makes me greatly appreciative of the privilege of bringing the Word today.
After having studied through this for the last couple of weeks, I see now that this is a passage that speaks very clearly to a need we in our culture today: We need to understand that the Gospel of Christ is incompatible with anything we might try to add to it.
It is distinctive, it is exclusive and it is God’s way, not the ways of man.
An equation I like to use is seen here:
The Gospel + anything = not the Gospel.
Read with me in Mark 2:18-22
Before we go any further, let’s take a moment to pray.
Father, thank you for this opportunity today to hear Your Word.
I ask Lord that you would open our hearts and our minds through the Holy Spirit to receive insight into Your precious Word and Your Son, Jesus.
Help me to be bold in proclaiming Your Word.
Father I pray that today You would bring Glory to Christ as we read about Him and dig deeper into what it is that He said and what you are saying to us today through the Book of Mark.
Be blessed today we pray, amen.
As we go through this, my hope and prayer is that we would see two primary principles in the text, that we cannot force our ideas on God and that the gospel of Christ is incompatible with anything that is not the Gospel - we cannot add anything to it and have it be the Gospel He came to proclaim.
If we were to try and outline this passage, we would see a pretty clear division between what is happening in verses 18-20 and Jesus’ parables describing the principle in verses 21 and 22. First, Jesus is confronted, because His disciples aren’t fasting as the Pharisees had prescribed; then He answers in their defense.
Then, He goes on to teach a principle that is of vital importance, that we cannot hold our own ideas of God higher than His own Word.
Let’s jump in, shall we?
My first inclination would be to think that it was the Pharisees who were giving Jesus a hard time, but guess what?
It was actually John’s disciples!
We see in Matthew’s account of the same incident starting in
What is important to look at is the fasting habits of the people questioning Jesus - are they doing what God asked of them?
In the Old Testament, there is only one time a year when the children of Israel were commanded to observe a fast.
It was on Yom Kippur, otherwise known as the “Day of Atonement.”
It was a day to be somber because of the gravity and weight of sin in the face of a Holy God.
However, if you look at all three occurrences of this incident in the synoptic gospels (Matthew 9:9-17, Mark 2:13-22, Luke 5:27-39) they all depict this happening at the same banquet that Matthew-Levi held with the tax collectors and sinners.
There was a celebration occuring.
What was the purpose of a fast?
It was a sign of grief, over sin or over something burdening the heart and it was observed in preparation for prayer, like in the Day of Atonement.
So, why would they be fasting during a celebration feast?
Perhaps this celebration was taking place on a Monday or a Thursday when the Pharisees mandated a fast for piety - that is for the appearance of godliness.
They were following what the Jewish religion had become.
And that brings us to our first point:
We cannot force our ideas on God
They were taking what would be biblically considered to be a voluntary fast and they made it a hard and fast rule - looking down on Jesus and the disciples for not working to show outward piety.
Rather, the disciples were celebrating!
They were celebrating because they were with the Messiah, they were celebrating because they had witnessed a life in shambles rescued by Christ.
This was a time for celebration, not to be somber, and that is what Jesus is pointing out when he explains it to the disciples of John and the Pharisees.
Read with me again, starting in verse 19
Jesus is taking this idea of celebrating when it is appropriate to celebrate and even taking it a step further to say that He, Himself, is the reason they are celebrating.
They have a reason to be joyous and not sad!
Look at Jesus’ wording in Matthew:
Have you ever been around someone at a party who just insisted on being sad?
They are not fun to be around, and in the context of the Jewish culture of the day, it was considered inappropriate to be somber at a celebration - especially a wedding feast, like Jesus uses in His example.
So the disciples of John and the Pharisees, along with those who followed them insisted on being somber to show outward godliness when they really should have been celebrating - but the didn’t recognize Jesus for who He was because they themselves were lost: Lost in their tradition, lost in their cultural identity above their kingdom citizenship, lost in their religion over their relationship with God.
Perhaps had they been more focused on God than their religious duties - that didn’t come from the Bible but were the laws of men - they would have recognized Jesus and understood why then was not a time to fast.
Notice the bombshell that Jesus drops - He is the bridegroom - the one for whom wedding guests experience this joy.
What is he really doing here?
This is Jesus claiming to be deity.
People fast to get closer to God and by Jesus placing Himself as the bridegroom and saying that they didn’t need to fast, He is saying, God is here!
I AM in your midst, come talk to me!
So how can they fast and be somber, getting ready to pray when the Lord Himself was with them?
It didn’t make sense.
Something that would be wise for us to consider - is there anything we put between us and God that isn’t necessary?
Something that is more a matter of opinion or cultural identity than scriptural fact that we allow to be obstacles between us and God?
What are some of these self-made obstacles?
(Open it up for comment)
I thought of three:
Politics - do we allow ourselves to sin because of what is happening in the political landscape all around us? Anger?
Insubordination to the government God put in place?
Family - I have a friend who now denies the authority Scripture because it condemns homosexuality and his brother is gay and he is doing what he feels is his duty to love his brother.
I am not saying that he should not love his brother, but it is important to understand that if we are ever in conflict with what the Word teaches, we need to be humble enough to admit and understand that God’s Word is right and we need God’s perspective and grace to help us understand how to live.
Christian culture - Do we adopt the bad theology of a lot of Contemporary Christian Music because we don’t want to be the “sinners” listening to secular music?
The Pharisees and the disciples of John were so involved in their own self-prescribed religious duties that they missed God in the flesh standing in their midst.
Notice what else he does: in verse 20, he says:
He, for the first time in the Gospel of Mark is predicting His death.
He is telling His disciples and anyone listening in a very albeit, discrete way, that a time is coming when He will be taken away.
At most, this would have given them reason to pause for a second and ponder what He meant, but it would not be until after the death of Christ that they would understand retrospectively what He meant.
And while the focus of the passage gives it no more mention, it is important to understand the point that He was trying to make: When Jesus would be, from the way it is worded in Greek, taken away, or “snatched away”, they would then have reason to be somber and fast.
This validates the idea that they were free from the need to fast as long as they were with Jesus because there was literally no need.
If Peter had a burden on his heart, he could go talk to Jesus about it.
Not in prayer, but literally walk over to Him and engage in conversation like you and I would do with one another today.
Jesus defended His disciples against the judgement of those who expected them to jump through a bunch of man-made religious hoops, and goes on to explain the religion they are practicing is incompatible with what God was doing in bringing about the Gospel.
Our second point is:
The Gospel of Christ is incompatible with anything that is not the Gospel
What Judaism had become, was and still is, no longer what God had put in place with the Nation of Israel.
They no longer looked to the covenant promise they had with God, but rather sought to have the appearance of righteousness on the outside devoid of the condition of their spirit on the inside.
What Jesus would go on to preach would be radically different than what the Jews were used to and what their tradition dictated.
The Jews held more tightly to their traditions, like fasting on Mondays and Thursdays than they did showing mercy and compassion to those around them.
Their religion was void because their hearts were hardened against Christ Himself.
Read with me again starting in verse 21
Jesus gives two parables here that talk about the same thing: you cannot take something new and incorporate it in with something old - they are incompatible.
In todays day and age, we don’t really understand this idea of patching an old garment because for the most part, we don’t really patch our clothes.
In fact, a lot of people my age and younger buy jeans with the holes already in them and pay a premium price for it!
Fabric naturally shrinks as it is washed and dried.
An old garment is going to remain the same size because it has already shrank over the course of being used.
What Jesus is saying is that a new piece of cloth being used as a patch - something new being added to something old - wont work because the new fabric will shrink and could make the tear in the garment worse.
Going into this too much further, I think we could start to miss the point of what Jesus is getting at, so we wont go into fabric choices anymore but we would benefit greatly by understanding this principle - the new and the old of what God is doing compared to the Jewish religion they had made for themselves do not work together - You cannot be a Jew depending on adherence to the Torah and the Rabbinical Law and expect to be saved.
You cannot be the old garment expecting to adopt Jesus’ teachings while remaining unchanged, you will only be destroying yourself!
Imagine trying to install brand new software on a 15 year old computer - It will not work!
Likewise, try installing really old software on a new computer - It will not work!
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