Monday, September 30, 2024

The Conflict of Ritual


This morning, we continue to see conflicts in Jesus’s ministry, as the kingdom of God runs up against the powers of this fallen world. Last week, we saw that Jesus was met with resistance from the Pharisees, who objected to his gracious acceptance of sinners. Today, we find a similar conflict in Mark 2:18-22, as Jesus meets with objections based on his neglect of widely accepted religious rituals. Let’s read that text together as we begin. In this passage I want you to see that the kingdom of God is not defined by its form, but by the Spirit. We see this truth through three analogies that Jesus gives in verses 19-22. Those analogies give us three points about the Spirit of the Kingdom: The kingdom is a new covenant, covering, and container.

First, understand that the kingdom of God is a new covenant. In verse 18, we are introduced to another objection to Jesus’s ministry. Jesus was failing to uphold the basic traditions of the Jewish faith. Jews of Jesus’ day were divided into at least five different factions with varying beliefs. The Pharisees were a conservative separatist group. The Herodians were the political class, primarily concerned with maintaining power. The Sadducees made up the priestly class, and they were more of the liberal faction. The Zealots were radical nationalists bent on rebellion. And, the Essenes were mystical ascetics who, like monks, separated into remote communities. For all of their differences, though, these groups agreed on some common practices. They agreed on temple worship, sacrifices, the Sabbath, and fasting. We see that in our text, as Jesus is asked, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but you don’t?” John the Baptist and the Pharisees had little in common (in fact, John had even called them a brood of vipers), but they did share the practice of fasting. For the Jew, fasting was not just an occasional practice when one was deeply concerned about a need. The Jews reserved Mondays and Thursdays for fasting from sunrise to sunset. They also fasted during the Day of Atonement and Passover. This practice was universally accepted and impacted everything about Jewish life, much like eating fish on Friday impacts much of American life because of the influence of Catholicism. So, you can imagine the irritation of the crowds that followed Jesus, when they saw that Jesus and his disciples caught some fish on a Monday, built a fire, grilled them up, and scarfed them down while the hungry, fasting crowd looked on. It would seem, at first blush, that Jesus was not as devout as other Jews, even as he calls everyone to repent and believe the Gospel. So, at some point, someone got up the guts to ask.

Jesus responds to this question with three analogies that help us understand the roll of the OT rituals and practices within the kingdom of God. Jesus starts to answer by giving the analogy of a wedding feast. He asks, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?” There are two components to this analogy that we can’t miss. First of all, Jesus compares himself to a bridegroom, which is a direct claim to be God. You see, in the OT, God calls himself the bridegroom of Israel. In Isaiah 62:5, he says, “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” The Song of Solomon can be understood as an analogy of the loving covenant between God and Israel. Now, Jesus calls himself the bridegroom.

Second, Jesus says that his disciples don’t fast because they are busy enjoying a wedding feast. In ancient Israel, weddings lasted a week and were full of revelry and food and celebration. The whole town was invited, and special tents were erected to accommodate all of the festivities. An abundance of food and drink were central to this celebration. This is why the host of the wedding in John 2 was so distraught when he heard that they had run out of wine. To be without wine at your wedding was a sign of God’s curse, but to have wine and food in abundance was a sign of his blessing. For this reason, it would be a strange thing to fast at a wedding. I’ve known people like that. In fact, I’ve been that guy who started a diet right before a big celebration. You’ve seen it. You have everyone over for Thanksgiving or Christmas or for a wedding, and there is that one relative who shares that he’s on a juice cleanse, so he can’t have anything on the menu. No one wants to be around that guy! In the same way, it makes no sense for the disciples of Jesus to fast, because they are experiencing the wedding of the Messiah to his people. You see, Jesus came to usher in a new covenant. That covenant is not based on ritual or law, but on the fruits of the Spirit. His people are not led by rules and regulations, but by Word and Spirit. This new covenant brings joy and celebration because of the grace that God has showered on his people.

This new covenant brings with it a new covering, which we find in verse 21. Jesus gives another analogy – you wouldn’t sew a new piece of cloth on an old garment because, once you wash the garment, that new cloth will shrink and cause more damage to the garment. In this analogy, the OT laws and rituals are the old garment, and the tear in that garment is the inability of the law to make us righteous. In Romans 7, Paul explains that the law could not make us righteous because of our sinful hearts. All it did was expose sin, and in exposing sin, caused us to pursue even more. So, Law and ritual cannot make you righteous. Only the Spirit of God can do that. So Paul concludes, in Rom. 8:3 – “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” What is needed to cover sin and make us righteous is not a patch. We need a whole new garment. We do not need a new law on top of the old one, we need a totally different way. We need the garment of Christ’s righteousness.

Finally, Jesus gives the analogy of a new container. He explains, in verse 22, that everyone knows better than to put new wine in an old wineskin. In Jesus’ day, most liquids were kept in goatskin bags. Over time, and with repeated use, these leather bags would shrink and lose their flexibility. So, everyone knew that, when you were first making wine, you would not put it in an old wineskin, because, as the wine fermented and released carbon dioxide, the bag would expand and burst. So, you would put new wine in a new, flexible wineskin. In this analogy, the old wineskin represents the OT laws and rituals. The new wine represents the kingdom of God revealed in the Gospel. Jesus’ point is that you cannot try to fit the Gospel into the systems of the OT. You can’t say, as the Judaizers of Acts 15 did, that you can accept Jesus, but you still need to be circumcised. You cannot say, you need to walk by the Spirit, but you also need to keep kosher. The Gospel is something new. God is no longer dealing with his people through signs and shadows. He is no longer speaking to them through priests and prophets. God is now dealing with his people through his Word and Spirit. Each believer has the power of the Spirit in them so that they can discern truth and resist Satan. So John writes, in 1 John 2:20, “You have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.”

So, what does this all mean for the question at hand – should we fast or shouldn’t we? We do have guidance for fasting in the NT. Jesus, in Matt. 6:16, instructs us not to fast like the Pharisees, who moaned and groaned in their fasting so that others would appreciate their righteousness. Rather, Jesus directs us to fast in such a way that no one would know it. So, we do have guidelines for fasting. We also have examples of fasting. Paul and Barnabas fast and pray in Acts 13. So, it’s clear that fasting is something Christians can do in times of deep concern. Certainly, we should devote ourselves to prayer and fasting when we have a need or when our church is seeking the face of God over some issue. But, what we should not do is establish fasting as a regular ritualized practice for spiritual growth.

This principle isn’t just for fasting, though. As Christians, we should be careful about putting our faith in rituals over the Spirit of God. There are so many traditions and practices that we accumulate in the church which, at one point were good for the health and growth of the church, but now have become an old garment or wineskin. Yet, when the call is raised to change those old garments so that the Gospel can more clearly be seen in this day and time, that call is met with resistance. Let me give you a couple of examples. For one, consider the King James Version of the Bible. The KJV has been a real blessing to the church. It was the first widely accepted English translation. The intention of that translation was to put the Word of God into the language of the common man so that everyone could read and understand Scripture. In other words, the intent was to make the Word of God readable to the least educated of the day. Yet, over time, people began to reverence it, not just as a helpful translation of the Word of God, but as the authoritative version. So now, there are many churches who will accept no other translation. But, the old English used in the KJV is difficult to follow for a modern reader. Ironically, this defeats the very purpose for which the KJV was made in the first place. The KJV has become an old wineskin that does not effectively carry the Word of God to new generations.

Second, consider the revival meeting. Revivals have been a blessing to our churches in times past. Many of you may have come to faith at a revival meeting. Revivals became so important to Christian life in the South, that many churches wrote them into their bylaws. Yet, over the years, with new generations, they have become less and less effective. Many in the younger generations don’t understand revivals, nor do they have the time to come. Now, we could bemoan that fact, or we could recognize that revival services were just a vessel, like a wineskin or a garment. They were useful in their time, but they are not the heart of the Gospel, nor do they define the nature of the church. Beyond that, revival isn’t something you can plan. It is a work of God’s Spirit – something only he can do.

I bring up these two examples, but there are many more. There is so much conflict that is caused in a church because of traditions and rituals that we believe are central to the Gospel, when in reality they are just wineskins we’ve used to carry it. We should be careful that we do not create barriers to the Gospel in our efforts to preserve them. And, we should be willing to change when the time calls for it, so that the Gospel might go forth to a new generation.

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