Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Welcome to Hope for Today, a weekly Bible teaching program that will bring you hope for every day.
Thank you so much for joining us as we study God's Word together.
One of the things which validates God's work on the earth is, is the lives that are changed by Him. You probably know someone who was not following Christ. They may have been harsh and unkind, or maybe they were only concerned about themselves, making sure they always got what they wanted. But then, after submitting to Jesus as Lord, their lives are transformed, totally revolutionized. This change is not normal, but when we see it, it reminds us of God's amazing grace.
No one, no matter how evil and hard, is beyond God's reach.
Our lesson is taken from Mark, Chapter two. And Jesus is answering a question from the Pharisees. The title is the Gospel Pattern. And J. Mark is here now to share with us.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Tokichi Ishii was a notorious criminal from the country of Japan.
He was born in the 1870s and he was executed in 1918.
He was a man who was cruel beyond measure. He showed no pity to his victims. He had no pricking of conscience. And because of that, he brutally murdered men and women and children in his career of crime.
But eventually the law caught up with him. He was arrested and put in prison.
In that prison, there were two Christian ladies who had a regular ministry. But he only glared at them hatefully as they went by.
So one day they gave him a copy of the Bible to read. They didn't expect him to read it, but lo and behold, he did. And it changed his life forever.
And so, on the day of his execution, the jailer expected to find an angry and bitter man.
But instead he met a smiling, radiant man. Because Ishi the murderer had been born again.
The evidence of his rebirth was his smiling radiance. The proof that a life lived in Christ is a life characterized by joy.
And you know, the characteristic of joy is central to the portion of Scripture that we're going to study on this episode of hope for today.
The text before us is mark chapter two and verses 18 to 22. And I've titled our study the Gospel Pattern. Here is the Word of God from Mark 2.
The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were fasting.
Then they came to him and said to him, why do the disciples of John and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?
And Jesus said to them, can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with him?
As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.
But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. In those days, no one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, or else the new piece pulls away from the old and the tear is made worse.
And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined.
New wine must be put into new wineskins.
Jesus interaction with his critics in this text unveils for us several essential elements in the gospel pattern.
And the first element in that gospel pattern is the presence of the bridegroom.
The first element is introduced in the context of fasting.
The law only required one fast that was on the day of atonement. And that fast was associated with repentance and confession of sin.
It was a way to show humility before God.
However, by the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had designated Monday and Thursday of each week as fast days.
So they and John's disciples were fasting, But Jesus and his disciples were not fasting.
So they asked him, why do the disciples of John and the Pharisees fast but your disciples don't?
Jesus responded with a question of his own. He asked them, do the sons of the bridegroom fast as they rejoice with the bridegroom?
Now, the sons of the bridegroom may be a term we're not familiar with, but it was simply the wedding guests. Jewish customs exempted wedding guests from most religious obligations, and that included the weekly fasting.
For most people in that era, physical life was a struggle. So the wedding week could be the happiest time of a couple's life.
It certainly wasn't an appropriate time for fasting.
In this text, Jesus is the bridegroom, and his followers are the bride. It's no more appropriate for his followers to fast while he's here in person than for wedding guests to fast at an earthly marriage.
Fasting and prayer weren't needed in relation to God because he was physically present in the person of Jesus Christ.
The Old Testament prophets, including Isaiah and Hosea, reveal the concept of God's covenant relationship with Israel as a marriage.
Jesus came to be Israel's bridegroom, their husband, their Messiah.
And so this was to be a time of joy and gladness.
But as we know, Israel rejected him and put him to death.
You know, Jews today still believe there will be a time of feasting when Messiah comes.
And we read about the great marriage supper of the Lamb In Revelation, chapter 19 and verse 9, Jesus knew that his people would reject him and put him to death. So he went on to say, but the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away, and then they will fast in that day.
The words taken away are interesting because they signify a sudden and violent removal.
This seems to be the first reference to Jesus death in the Gospel records.
For the disciples of John and the Pharisees, fasting was a duty. It was a way to impress God, a way to gain his favor and his acceptance in their belief and practice. You had to clean up your life before you came to God. You had to make yourself worthy of his acceptance.
But Jesus corrected that wrong belief. He reached out to sinners right where they were. He transformed them from the inside out.
He showed them that a relationship with him was characterized by joyful obedience.
You see, keeping the law is a duty. But living in the presence of the bridegroom, that's a delight.
I wonder, have you found that delight?
The presence of the bridegroom is the first element of the Gospel pattern. And even though we are waiting for the bridegroom to come, we rejoice in the presence of the Holy Spirit.
There is another element then in the gospel pattern, and it is the new robe of righteousness. In the final verses of our text, Jesus introduces two analogies to illustrate the pattern shift from the old covenant to the new covenant.
These analogies are clothing and wine.
These were essential elements in a Jewish wedding.
Jesus takes ordinary physical objects and he infuses them with spiritual meaning.
Now, thinking about clothing, because it was handmade, it was very expensive in those days, ordinary people had only one, maybe at the most, two sets of clothing. And those sets of clothing had to last a long time.
So everyone listening to Jesus understood the foolishness of trying to patch an old garment with a new piece of cloth.
If someone does that, when the garment is washed, the latest patch shrinks and it tears the threads of the old garment. That makes the tear worse and makes the garment useless.
Jesus didn't come to repair the old cloth of the law. It was like a garment that was wearing out.
Jesus wasn't interested in patching the old system of righteousness that was based on external rule. Following.
Jesus came to fulfill the law. He came to provide internal and external harmony between God and man.
In order to achieve that, one must exchange the old garments of righteousness that were measured by religious practice for the new robes of Christ's righteousness that are measured by the new commandment to love. Others.
Now, there is a certain level of comfort in having a set standard by which to live. I know that.
But the danger is that the guidelines can become the standard of what is acceptable. Rather than the Holy Spirit working in the life of the believer, one can make the mistake of believing that because they meet a set of external guidelines, they are in good standing with God.
So we need a new heart and a new mindset. And when we accept Christ's righteousness, we are given his nature, and we strive to live in a way that pleases him, not ourselves.
If we genuinely love him, the Scripture says, we will obey his commandments.
And then there is another element in the gospel pattern. It is the new wine of the Spirit.
In this second analogy, Jesus refers to the Gospel as new wine. Again, his audience understood his point in the natural sense.
But Jesus wanted to move them beyond the natural to an understanding of the spiritual. And so he said, you can't put the new wine of the Spirit into the old wineskins of the law.
There was no elasticity in the law, no flexibility. It was rigid.
And so trying to incorporate the new wine of the spirit into the aging wineskin of the law would create a disaster.
Most people who have grown accustomed to a particular order of things are content with it. They don't automatically want something new.
When you and I are familiar with something, then we know what to expect, and we also know what's expected of us.
Then when something new comes along, those expectations are unclear. And I don't know about you, but that often makes me feel uncomfortable and even vulnerable.
This is especially true when the status quo has remained the same for a very long time, as it had in our setting here with the Pharisees.
Their daily activities and their religious observance was based on a formula that had been developed over centuries of time.
They had an established expectation of what the kingdom of God would look like because they had developed their own system of righteousness. They did not, at least not as a group, desire the new wine of the Spirit that Jesus was offering.
Don't you find a certain level of comfort and security in what is familiar? I do.
Now. Conversely, we mustn't embrace something simply because it's new.
There are many supposedly new things being introduced into the church, even things that carry the name Christian, that are contrary to divine revelation. And those things we need to be careful to reject.
And so I ask you, are you still trying to put a new piece of cloth on an old garment? Are you trying to live a new life in the power of your flesh?
Have you embraced this new gospel pattern?
Have you been willing to taste the new wine of relationships and discover that it really is better than the old wine of rules and rituals?
Have you accepted the new robe of righteousness that Jesus offers?
That robe isn't based on your worthiness or mine because we are all unworthy.
Instead, it is based on his love and his desire to live in your heart and mine to transform us from the inside out.
In each of the incidents in this chapter, Jesus reaches out to meet the inner needs of the person.
The healing of the paralytic, his invitation to Levi the tax collector and this discussion about fasting were all about entering into a relationship with Jesus.
As a result of their choice to accept Jesus offer, each of these embarked on a new path of life.
The love and the acceptance they received from Jesus changed them profoundly at the core of their being.
And you know something? If you accept Jesus offer, the gospel pattern will change you in the same way.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: Thanks J. Mark for sharing with us Jesus had come and Jesus was sharing a new teaching ushering in his kingdom. This was a big deal. He was calling the Jews to a new way of life and as we know some followed him and some hated Him.
If you have any questions about today's lesson or if you would like to contact us, please do. Our email address is hopeheraldsofhope.org and our website is heraldsofhope.org there. Click on the Contact Us which is on the top right of the page and you can message us directly from there. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
We really appreciate that you joined us for today's lesson and we're glad Jesus came and showed us a better way to live.
So thankful and encouraged for his promise to us. In John 10:10 he said, I am come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly. Go and live his abundant life.
