Jesus Christ came and said, "Religion is over, relationship is here." Even though the religious system was formed by God, it only served a purpose to usher in the life of what the system was talking about. So basically He is telling them He did not come here to breathe life into the old religious system. He came to call people to follow Christ. Period. That is it. The church is the people that Christ has called out to follow Him.
Transcript
Well, today we start the last two sections of Mark chapter 2, we have verses 18 through 22 and 23 through 28 as we finish out this chapter. We are in the first large section of Mark’s gospel where he is presenting the Lord’s ministry in Galilee. In chapter 2 the theme that threads all of these stories and presentations of Mark is the opposition to the Lord’s ministry. In chapter 2 Mark is presenting several incidents, four actually, where the Lord was challenged to His authority to do what He had to do.
In verses 1 through 12, it was the Lord’s authority to forgive sins.
Secondly, we saw last week in verses 13 to 17 the call of Levi, who is also known as Matthew, as he came out from his tax collector’s booth and followed Jesus. And then had a dinner for Jesus, he invited his tax collector friends. In fact, the Scripture calls them tax collectors and sinners were called to this dinner. And we saw last week that sinners is a special word in the Hebrew – that would be people with no regard for God and they were religiously unclean. They had no regard for the things of the Lord. They did not go to synagogue. They did not celebrate the Jewish rituals and they were considered to be unclean, therefore they were called sinners.
But the righteous leaders and the religious leaders said to the disciples of Jesus, “Why does He eat and why does He identify with tax collectors and sinners?” And Jesus said that those who are well or healthy do not need the physician, but those that are sick, and that is why He was there.
A good title for this chapter, the entire chapter, all the incidents is Religion Versus Relation. You see, religion is man’s way of reaching up to God. Let me say that again, religion is man’s way of reaching up to God. God’s way is to reach down to man, that is God’s way, that is spiritual. And so now we have this conflict that has begun, questioning and challenging Jesus and His authority and His identification with sinners. We receive Him by faith but we bring a lot of our religious background, or a lot of our religious persuasions that man has into our relationship with the Lord with us. Over the years it begins to drop off as we see it does not mean much.
But we are to see this incident that is with us this morning in verses 18 through 22 of Mark chapter 2; we are going to see this religion versus relation. Verse 18, let us read it. And the disciples of John and the ones of the Pharisees were fasting. And they come and say to Him, “Why are the disciples of John and the ones of the Pharisees fasting, but Your disciples are not fasting?” This probably took place while He was still at dinner in Levi’s house. Some of the disciples of the Pharisees, which were of the strictest religious group of the Jewish sect, they were fasting. That is, they were holding their religious fast, that is going without eating. That is what fasting is.
Now according to God’s word in the Old Testament, according to the old law and Leviticus chapter 16 verses 29 through 31, the law says that they were required to fast once a year on The Day of Atonement. This was a requirement, the only required fasting by God for the Jews. The Pharisees would fast twice a week; not once a year, but twice a week. That was pretty spiritual according to the people. That is 104 times, 105 counting the one fast that was required on The Day of Atonement.
This is why Jesus said in Matthew chapter 6 verses 16 through 20, that when you fast and when you pray, do not put on the long face. They love to go out in the street corners and pray looking miserable to let everybody know they were fasting. They were going without food that day and they would pray in public while people were noticing them. And Jesus said that you should not pray and should not fast this way, but rather you should wash your face, look normal, pray in secret. Do not let it be something that people see. It is not a performance. And Jesus said it was not anything spiritual about it at all to be seen of men. Fasting was supposed to be to go without food to kill off the bodily appetite, so that a person can be more spiritually sensitive to seeking the things of the Lord. That is what fasting is for – to weaken the physical so that we can be more sensitive to the spiritual.
It was not for health reasons in the Scriptures. Some people practice fasting, and they get it from the Bible, they practice fasting as a health reason. And that is not the reason given in Scripture. People would do it do it in mourning, not the morning, but lamenting. People would mourn and so they would fast, cause their bodies to become weak, that is, physically weak. The Pharisees were fasting. They fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. And the disciples of John the baptizer were also fasting at the same time. They had nothing to do with the Pharisees. In fact, when they fasted they fasted on different days so they would not be associated with the Pharisees. But they are probably fasting because John the baptizer was thrown into prison, so they were fasting for him.
So we have to wait a minute here and see the scene. The religious people are fasting over here on one side and then Jesus and the disciples were over here drinking and eating with the tax collectors and sinners, with His disciples. They say, “Why are Your disciples not fasting like the Pharisees are and the disciples of John?”
And Jesus said – if you notice verse 19 in answer to them. And Jesus said to them, “Are not the sons of the bride chamber able to fast in which time the bridegroom is with them?” He gives the answer, “What time they have the bridegroom with them, they are not able to fast.” So that the sons of the bridegroom are the men who are in charge of helping the groom get ready for the wedding. And so while they have the groom with them there is no need for fasting, and lamenting, and mourning because they have Him with them. He is not gone yet. So it is a time of merriment, a time of rejoicing. So Jesus said, “Well you know, while you have the bridegroom with you,” the friends of the bridegroom (which is literally, the sons of the bride chamber, the groomsman, the men who were of the bridal party) while they are preparing the groom for the wedding you do not fast. It is not a time to mourn.
In fact, when they had weddings during fasting events during the religious calendar, if they were a Pharisee and it was a Monday or a Thursday and there was a wedding they would not fast, even though it was a day of fasting for the Pharisee because of the time of joy and merriment. So even the Pharisees with their rules, fasting when God did not say to fast, they even stopped their rules for the sake of a wedding because it is time of joy and merriment.
So He says, when they have the bridegroom with them, the sons of the bridegroom or the friends of the bridegroom who assist him, they do not fast. They eat, and they drink, and they rejoice, and then they fast; after he has gone, then they fast. So He says the days are coming. Now My disciples have Me with them, He is saying, one day I will be removed from them. Just going without food for the sake of religious reasons means absolutely nothing. Going without food for religious reasons means absolutely nothing. Everything is in response to the Lord. It is supposed to be spiritual. If you go without food, first of all, you do not tell anybody. And second of all, you go without food to kill off the bodily appetites so that the body has no energy. And you go somewhere where it is quiet and you seek the Lord so you can hear His voice, and seek directions, and the flesh is not interfering as much. So it is spiritual. It is physical.
In I Corinthians chapter 7 Paul says that the only reason that a husband and wife should separate is when you have to go away and fast and pray and do it only with each other’s consent. So that you can go someplace alone and pray and seek the Lord. That is what this is all about. So fasting has a spiritual purpose. It does not make you more spiritual, but it helps you to seek the Lord.
So you have religion on the one side – practicing the various religious practices of fasting and prayer and all these different things. And they come to Jesus saying, “Why is the Lord not religious?” They accused the Lord of not following the religious system and the religious processes, not that God had instituted, but that they had started.
Verse 20, “But days will come, whenever the bridegroom should be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” So the Lord says, “If you understand what fasting is all about, why should My disciples fast when I am sitting right here with them? When I am gone, after I am raised up on the cross, and removed from the earth, then they will fast because then they are going to have to seek Me by faith and seek Me spiritually.”
Verse 21, secondly, “And no one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth upon an old garment; but if not (that is, if they do put a piece of un-shrunk cloth upon an old garment) the thing filling it (that would be the patch) takes away the new from the old, and it becomes a worse tear.” You ladies should understand this more than we do. You have a torn garment and you want to patch it, you do not put a new piece of cloth or a new patch on the old garment, because when you wash it the new patch will shrink, and pull and tear at the old garment, because you have a new patch with an old garment.
Verse 22, secondly, “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; but if not (that is, if they do) the new wine bursts the wineskins, and the wine pours out, and the wineskins will be destroyed; but new wine must be put into new wineskins. Now here is the process. When you put wine into the wineskins – and wineskins is the literal translation, it is not wine bottles, it is wineskins. They would put new wine in new wineskins, not old. And as the fermentation process takes place, as the gases are expressed, escaping, and the fermentation process takes place, the wine expands and the new wineskins expand with it. And then when the wine stops its fermenting process they pour the wine out of the old wineskins. But you do not take the old wineskins and put in new wine because the old wineskins have hardened from the last batch of wine, and it does not expand because it has hardened. And so if they put new wine in the old wineskins and the wine expands, the wineskins will burst from the process.
So what He is telling them was that when you get stuck in the old religious rut and along comes something new, the new wine, wine is a symbolic representation of God’s Spirit. New wine comes along and you are stuck in the old religious rut. Not new as far as new truth, but new in the sense of fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures. When the life of what the Scriptures is talking about comes in the person of Messiah, and the giving of His Spirit is poured out, and you are hardened against the new wine, you will break. So He says, You do not put a new piece of cloth on an old garment, it will pull away. You do not put new wine in old wineskins. And so He is saying, “Once you form into that old religious system, and the old religious practices, and you try to pour new wine in it – you try to pour God’s Spirit into that kind of frame of mind, He says, It will break the wineskins.
Jesus Christ came and said, “Religion is over, relationship is here.” Even though the religious system was formed by God, it only served a purpose to usher in the life of what the system was talking about. So basically He is telling them He did not come here to breathe life into the old religious system. He came to call people to follow Christ. Period. That is it. The church is the people that Christ has called out to follow Him.
We read in verses 23 and 24, this is the confrontation over the sabbath. Verse 23, And it happened, as He was going through the grain fields in the sabbaths; and His disciples began to make way picking the heads of grain. (verse 24) And the Pharisees were saying to Him, “Behold, why do they do in the sabbaths what is not lawful to do?” This again is according to their rules and regulations. So it says they were passing through the grain fields on the sabbath and as they were going along the disciples began to pick the heads of grain.
Now the Old Testament law in Deuteronomy chapter 23 verse 25, it says that you are not allowed to reap or harvest on the Sabbath day. That is one of God’s laws. You cannot reap or harvest the crops on the sabbath day, that is considered work. God says you are not to work on the sabbath. But you are allowed, if you are hungry and were traveling and your neighbor has a field next door, to go over and pull off some of the heads of grain in order to eat. If you are traveling along, you are allowed by God’s law to glean some of the food of a person’s field.
So the Pharisees interpreted it as harvesting. He says, “I see Your disciples are going through the grain fields pulling the grains, the head of grains off. We interpret that as being harvesting and breaking God’s law.” Not fitting in the category of God’s law that says if you are traveling and you get hungry you can pull the grains off in order to eat. That would be to help people. God gave that provision. So they were really twisting things by saying the pulling of the heads of grain off and eating them because you are hungry and it is the Sabbath day, so you are harvesting. “It is not lawful,” they say.
Verses 25 and 26, And He was saying to them, “Did you never read what David did, when he had need, and became hungry, he, and the ones with him? (verse 26) How he entered into the house of God during Abiathar the high priest, and he ate the loaves of the presentation, (also known as the presentation bread) which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and he gave also to the ones being with him?” So Jesus said, “Did not you hear what happened as recorded in I Samuel chapter 21 verses 1 through 8?” David was on the move and in the sabbath day he came to Abiathar the high priest and the showbread, the presentation bread was there. This was twelve loaves of bread, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, that were made once a week and put out fresh on the table. They are put out and changed every single week. Now after it was changed the law says the priest could eat the bread, the bread belonged to the priest. Nobody else was allowed. So David came in he said, “I do not have any food and I do not have any weapons. I am on the run. Saul is after me.” So Abiathar says, “Here. Here is the showbread,” the presentation bread, and so he ate it as a provision by God.
So Jesus was telling those who are coming and saying, “Your disciples are breaking the law,” He was saying, “Did not you read that the law was broken before because of the need?” Because David had need and those who were with him were hungry? Even though the law says nobody can eat the bread but the priests, the priest gave his bread to David and to his people so that they can get ministered to. And He says, “Did not you read this?” Verse 26 says, How he entered in the house of God during Abiathar the high priest, and he ate the loaves of the presentation, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests and he gave also to the ones being with him? He was not allowed to have that bread, but Abiathar the high priest had mercy on them. They needed food. They needed help and that is what God’s law was for, was to help people, especially on the sabbath day.
Which leads us to verses 27 and 28. And He was saying to them, “The sabbath was created on account of man, and not man on account of the sabbath.” Two things He said in verses 27 and 28. But in verse 27, He said to them, “The sabbath was created on account of man, and not man on account of the sabbath.” Now that is very important. Do you realize that God created the sabbath day as a gift to us? He created the Sabbath day as a gift to His people. God’s law was for our benefit.
Do you realize that He has to command us to stop working? And even then, though He commands us sometimes we do not do it? God says, “Take one day, stop working, stop your physical work. And that day you seek Me, go for fellowship, get rejuvenated, get ministered to.” You have been out in the world all week, come back in contact with God and His word and God’s people. He did that for our benefit. He did not create man in order to keep the sabbath day; He created the sabbath day for our benefit. It is a gift. It is not supposed to create hardship, but for our benefit.
Verse 28 He says, “So then the Son of Man is also Lord of the sabbath.” That was the main beef with Jesus is that He kept doing good for people on the Sabbath day. And they were saying, “You cannot do that.”
In John chapter 5, which is kind of the icing on the cake. In John chapter 5 He healed the man at the pool of Bethesda, and they came up to Him and said, “Do You realize that You healed that man and made him carry his bed (his little couch) all the way to his house and it is the sabbath day?” The only thing they could harp on was the fact that he was carrying his couch on the sabbath day. Not that he got healed, not that he got helped. They could care less that the man was healed. And Jesus said, “God works on the sabbath day and I work.” He said this in John chapter 5. He said, “God works today and I work.”
Now have you ever stopped to think that God does not rest like we know rest to be? God does not take sabbath off. God is still working. But God wanted man to stop or else he would run himself into the ground. If God did not say, “Take a day and get rejuvenated and refreshed with the spiritual things of God.” But God does not take the day off.
In John chapter 5 when Jesus said, “God works today and I work,” they understood Him as saying that he was equal to God. And, of course, He is making statements here in verse 28 that the Son of Man is also Lord of the sabbath. If God takes a day off we have had it. The sabbath day rest in the Bible in creation was that God finished His creative works and He ceased or finished His work on the sabbath day. It meant He stopped His finished works. He did not stop working. He stopped His finished works.
If you will notice in creation after each day in creation it says, And God saw that what He was created was good and it was evening and morning and day one. Same thing, evening and morning day two. Same thing, evening and morning day three… evening and morning day four… evening and morning day five… evening and morning day six… And God ceased His works on the sabbath day.
Well, the book of Hebrews in Hebrews chapter 4 verses 7 through 10 it says the seventh day never stopped. It never ended. We are in the sabbath day. And so everybody that receives Christ enters into the sabbath rest of God spiritually. You cease fighting against God. You cease from your own works according to Hebrews chapter 4 verse 10. We enter into His rest. That is what salvation is – to enter into His rest and to no longer be fighting against God. So by faith you receive that Jesus died for you and did everything for you. You cannot improve upon it. You just enter into His rest.
So basically there is a beatitude that you can put over this section in verses 18 to 28. Someone once said it like this, a beatitude: Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be broken. Very apropos. The religious people were not flexible to the coming of God’s Spirit and God’s life into people and for people. It is not about a religious system.
Do you realize that we are leaving this place? This place called earth is not our home. We are passing through. We are being changed and transformed. We are following the person of Jesus Christ, not a religious system; and He is changing us to be people that He would have us to be, into the image of His Son. So in the meantime He says, Come and follow Me. Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be broken, those who are open to the new wine. [Those who] have the old religious system and the old days of personal physical human performance get in the way, but they are not open to the new wine that is in Christ as He calls for a personal relationship and a personal walk every day. That is why it is called a walk. All the steps we take Jesus wants us to follow Him. It is religion versus relationship. Jesus came to combat religion.
Interesting there are many religious people today that are Christian in religion. That is, their beliefs and their practices are in a religious system. We have it all through our country, all through the world, people joining and following religious systems. But Jesus did not come to pour new life into the old religious system. He called people to follow Him, not religiously, but as relationship, a personal response, and a personal following of Christ.
Let’s close with prayer.
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