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The Good News of Jesus

11/09/2008 - Blueprint for Change, Mark 2:18-28

Change. We've been hearing a lot about change lately. A huge, historic change occurred in our country this past Tuesday night when Barack Obama was elected as the first African-American President of the United States. And regardless of our individual political views and who we may have voted for, his election marked a giant, symbolic step forward for racial reconciliation in this country. It was a dream come true for minorities not only in America but all over the world.

Change. It's been Barack Obama's platform ever since he declared his candidacy 21 months ago. And some people are excited about the change he's promised and others are suspicious and still others are down right scared. And the whole world is already waiting to see what he's going to do to change the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the tension in the Middle East and the healthcare crisis and poverty and global warming and the horrific rate of abortions in this country and a whole host of other things that he's promised in his "Blueprint for Change" campaign. In fact, this week he had to say, "I'm not the President yet!"

The bar has been set very high and there are a lot of expectations being placed on his shoulders. And to hear some people talk you might think that Barack Obama was the next Messiah. But he's not the next Messiah. He's just a person like you and me. He's only one man who will need our prayers as he leads this country through challenging times ahead.

There's only one Messiah and his name is Jesus. He's the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He's the one whose kingdom will last forever. He's the one who came to bring real and lasting change. But as we're going to see today not everybody was excited about the changes that Jesus came to bring. In fact, some people were down right scared to death.

This morning we continue our series through the gospel of Mark by looking at two encounters that Jesus had in Mark 2. If you have a Bible turn with me to Mark 2:18.

Now before we look at this passage remember Jesus is on a roll. He's riding the wave of popular opinion as he tours Galilee. He's become an overnight celebrity and everybody wants to meet Rabbi Jesus. His teaching is refreshing and has a ring of authority to it. He packs out every house and synagogue he enters. He does amazing things like casting out demons and healing the sick and touching lepers and even forgiving sins. He's doing things that are supernatural, things that only God can do. And everybody loves Jesus, right? Wrong!

Now the criticism starts. Sooner or later it always does. The honeymoon is over. And the first attack comes from the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day, who have a problem with the people that Jesus hangs with. They don't think he should be hanging out with tax collectors and sinners. That's not what rabbis do. In fact, they felt that these people were the reason that Messiah hadn't come.

And if they could they would love to take a picture of Jesus eating and drinking with the low life's at Levi's party and splash it all over the front page of the tabloids with the headline "Do You Want This Man to be Your Messiah?" But that wouldn't bother Jesus at all. He says, "Hey, I'm a doctor. And doctors don't hang out with the healthy. They hang out with the sick. I have not come to call the righteous that is the self-righteous, but sinners to repentance."

And Jesus is still that way today. Doctor Jesus is still looking for the sick to hang with. He doesn't have much time for the proud and the self-righteous, the people who think they're okay without him. But he loves to draw close to those who are broken and hurting and messed up and know that they need help. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Always has. Always will.

So that's what's going on with Jesus as we come to Mark 2:18, Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, "How is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?"

John the Baptist, even though he was now in prison, still had disciples and one of their spiritual practices was fasting, abstaining from food on certain days of the week usually on Mondays and on Thursdays. The Pharisees also had disciples and they fasted as well. But Jesus' followers didn't fast and some of them wanted to know why.

And so they come to Jesus and say, "We don't get it. You guys are out partying with tax collectors and sinners and we're on the slim fast diet watching our calorie intake. That's not fair!"

Now before we look at Jesus' response let me just say a few things about fasting. Fasting is a fascinating concept in Scripture. Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights during his temptation in the desert, but he never required his disciples to fast. In fact, no where in the Bible are we personally commanded to fast. You're not going to find one verse that says, "Thou shalt not eat or thou shalt fast." It's not there.

There is one command to the nation of Israel regarding fasting and that's in Leviticus 23:27 where God commands the Israelites to "deny themselves" one day a year on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. On that one day they were to fast from food as an annual expression of grief over their sin as a nation.

So fasting isn't commanded in Scripture. Yet we see tons of examples of those who did fast. And they fasted for a variety of reasons. Some fast because they're sad and grieving like Nehemiah when he heard that the walls of Jerusalem were in ruins or like David when his son was sick and dying. They fasted and prayed so they could focus on God in their grief. That's a good reason to fast even today. There are plenty of biblical examples of fasting during times of grief and repentance.

Some fast because they're about to go on a mission like Jesus did when he began his public ministry or like the church in Antioch did when it sent out Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey. You may choose to fast when you're faced with a big decision or when you're at a crossroads in your life and want to get a clearer vision of what God wants you to do. You may skip a meal or two and use that time to think or pray or get alone with God. There are examples of that in Scripture.

The word fasting simply means "abstaining" and we can fast from anything, not just from food. We can fast from activity and busyness and noise. That's what solitude is. We can fast from television or shopping or the internet or from texting or from our blackberry. We can fast from anything that threatens to control our lives. In fact, that's what fasting does. It's a way of breaking free from the things that control us and eliminating the distractions in our life so that we can focus more clearly on God.

Fasting, like all the spiritual disciplines, is a way of creating space in our lives for greater intimacy with God.

So there are some good reasons to fast which is why these people come to Jesus and say why aren't your disciples doing it? And what does Jesus say? Look at verse 19, Jesus answered, "How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. ²⁰But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast."

Jesus says, "Look. That's a good question. Let me explain it this way. Have you ever been to a wedding? Sure you have. And when you go to a wedding and walk into the reception you expect to eat, right? After all, it's a day of celebration and you expect to see a buffet. Sometimes you even get to pick ahead of time, chicken or beef. How weird would it be to walk into a wedding reception and have the groom stand up and say, 'We decided to change things up a little bit. This is such a sacred day that we just thought it would be best to fast so there's no meal, no drinks, no music, no DJ, no dancing, no expense, but there is a water fountain out in the lobby if you get thirsty. Feel free to help yourselves. And oh if you have to talk, please talk quietly around your tables!'"

What kind of wedding would that be? I'm sorry. I'm taking my gift home. That might be a great way to save money, but it's no way to celebrate. Jesus is saying, "The bride groom is here. I am in the house. Let the reception begin. This is not the time to fast. This is the time to celebrate!" And in that culture wedding receptions would often last up to a week as the bride and groom would greet people in the their home.

In Scripture, the wedding is a powerful image. It's pregnant with meaning. In the Old Testament God is portrayed as the husband and Israel as the wayward, adulterous bride that God is always trying to woo back to himself. And in the New Testament Jesus is the groom and the church is the bride and the wedding is the way the whole story ends with heaven and earth finally becoming one.

And now Jesus is saying, "It's time to celebrate. The time to fast will come when I'm taken away violently on the cross. Then it will be time to grieve and fast, but not now. Not while the groom's here!"

And the groom is going to change everything. Look at verse 21, No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If they do, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. ²²And people do not pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins."

Jesus had a blueprint for change too and it was mind blowing. He's not just another rabbi who does neat little miracles on the side. He's out to completely change the way we think about who God is and how we interact with him and his creation and with one another. "I didn't come to patch up the old Levitical system with all of its rules and regulations and priests and sacrifices and holy days and Temple rituals. I came to start something brand new."

Did you ever put a patch on a piece of clothing? I can remember the day when my mom used to put patches on my blue jeans because of the holes I would wear right through the knees. Does anybody else remember those days? Good because now we don't wear out holes in our jeans we buy our jeans with the holes already in them! But back in the day we put the holes there the old fashioned way.

But if you put a new patch on a shrunken old pair of jeans you know what happens? The first time you throw them in the washer the new patch is going to shrink and pull away from the denim and make the hole even worse. Jesus didn't come to patch up an old, worn out pair of jeans. He came to give us a brand new pair. He didn't come to tweak a religious system a little bit here and a little bit there. He came to make all things new.

If you put new wine into old wineskins, he says, they're going to burst. Now I'm not old enough to remember wineskins. But before glass bottles wine was put into goatskin containers. And over time those skins would dry out and get hard and stiff and brittle. And if you put new wine in them, wine that was still fermenting and expanding and bubbling the skins would explode and everything would be ruined.

What Jesus is doing and what Jesus is teaching is powerful stuff. It's explosive and it's not going fit into anybodies rigid categories and old ways of thinking. His followers are going to need to think in different categories. They're going to need new paradigms to think bigger and more creatively, new wineskins for the new wine that Jesus has to offer. Jesus is out to change everything and that's going to threaten a lot of people, especially the people who don't want anything to change.

And we see an example of what he means in verse 23 and the group that's most threatened, One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. ²⁴The Pharisees said to him, "Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?"

Here we go with the Pharisees again. First they crash Levi's party. Then they question Jesus about fasting. And now they're hiding out in the grainfields on the Sabbath Day. You can almost see them hiding down in the wheat. One author I read this week said that the Pharisees are like the KGB, the secret police who are always out to get Jesus. I think of them as the paparazzi. They're always around badgering Jesus, trying to find some dirt on Jesus and stir up controversy.

So they see Jesus and his disciples walking through the fields picking some heads of grain and eating them. Now that was perfectly legal. In fact, the Old Testament required farmers to leave a certain amount of grain standing in their fields so that if anyone was hungry they could help themselves as long as they didn't bring a sickle and start harvesting. You couldn't bring a combine in while your neighbor was on vacation and steal twenty acres of his wheat, but you could hand pick as many kernels as you wanted and that's what the disciples were doing.

But they were doing it on the Sabbath and the Pharisees had come up with all kinds of rules and regulations of what could and couldn't be done on the Sabbath Day. The Sabbath was to be a day of rest and that was a good thing. It was the seventh day of the week and the people were not to do any work on the Sabbath.

Exodus 20:8 the fourth commandment says, Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest.

In other words, they were not to do on the Sabbath what they did for a living on the other six days of the week. They were to rest and worship God and spend time with their families and get refreshed. Sounds simple and it was.

But the Pharisees couldn't leave it at that. They took that simple command and over the years came up with 39 categories of ways that you could break the Sabbath and for each of those 39 categories they had 39 ways to do them. So 39 times 39 is 1,521 ways to break the Sabbath and picking grain was one of them because that was considered reaping.

You couldn't tie a knot on the Sabbath that was work. You couldn't pick up a quill on the Sabbath that was carrying a load. You couldn't kill a flea on the Sabbath that was hunting. If you were a woman you couldn't look in the mirror on the Sabbath, because is you plucked out a gray hair that was harvesting. You couldn't bathe on the Sabbath. You couldn't spit on the ground on the Sabbath. You could spit on a rock, but not on the ground because your spit would make a little furrow in the dirt and that was considered plowing. This was all part of that old wineskin that needed to be blown up. These weren't God's rules they were man made regulations.

So he answered in verse 25,"Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? ²⁶In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions. ²⁷The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. ²⁸So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."

Jesus is saying, "You've totally missed the point. What these guys are doing isn't wrong. It's not illegal. They may be breaking your rules, but they're not breaking the Sabbath, but even if they were they would be in good company. Don't you know the story of King David and his buddies in 1 Samuel 21? They were so hungry that they ate the consecrated bread that was only lawful to be eaten by the priests. But that was okay because they were starving. And Abiathar made the right call when he gave them that sacred bread because the needs of people are more important than the ceremonial law. That's the danger of religion. Religion puts rules and ritual and ceremonies over the needs of people and you've created a system that's backwards. That system needs to be blown up and it will be!"

Jesus came to change everything. And he's just getting started. Before it's over the Jewish Temple is going to be destroyed. The sacrifices are going to cease. The priesthood will come to an end. Dietary restrictions are going to be lifted. Gentiles are going to be invited into the kingdom. The Messiah is going to die on a cross and rise again three days later. The Holy Spirit is going to come. The day of worship is going to be changed and on and on and on. Mind blowing things are going to happen.

But it's going to ugly first. Next week we'll read that the Pharisees will begin to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. Jesus is a threat to the powers that be. He always has been and always will be. And that's why on this day and throughout the year we need to remember to pray for our brothers and sisters who are persecuted simply for following Jesus.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Valley View Community Church, feel free to contact us at info@valleyviewseek.org or call 610.631.2707.