July 25, 2000

• Luke 5:33-39 Questions About Fasting

   

  The Uniqueness of the Gospel

  Luke 5:33-39

  "And they said to Him, 'The disciples of John often fast and offer prayers; the disciples of the Pharisees also do the same; but Yours eat and drink.'  And Jesus said to them, 'You cannot make the attendants of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you?  But the days will come and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.'  And He was also telling them a parable.  No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it in an old garment, otherwise he will both tear the new and the piece from the new will not match the old.  And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out and the skins will be ruined.  But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.  And no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, 'The old is good enough.'"

  As we look at the passage, verses 33 to 39, we have the the inquisition, or the inquiry, the question that's asked, and the interpretation, how Jesus interprets the behavior in light of the question, and then the illustrations, just three simple points.  Let's look at the inquisition, first of all.

  Verse 33, "And they said to Him, 'The disciples of John often fast and offer prayers; the disciples of the Pharisees, or those of the Pharisees, also do the same; but Yours eat and drink.'" Now what they're doing is pointing at a very obvious breach of the religion of Judaism.  They had prescribed prayers and prescribed fastings.  They had a routine, a daily routine of ritual prayers that were prayed at certain hours during the day.  There were certain hours of the day when they stopped everything, went into a public place, and routinely went through their prayer list.  They did that in a fashion to demonstrate their supposed spirituality before men.  These were required, routine, ritual prayers which were either read or recited from memorization.  They were in that sense heartless.  They also had fasts.  In fact, it was part of the Pharisaic system to fast every Monday and every Thursday of every week.  You remember Luke 18, the Pharisee went into the temple to pray and he was saying, "I thank You, O God, that I'm not like this lousy tax collector, I fast twice a week..."  And he was telling God how righteous he was because he fasts twice a week.  Monday was fast day, and Thursday was fast day.  And it may well have been that Matthew's party was on Monday, or on Thursday and they're saying, "What in the world are You doing eating and drinking when all the rest of us are fasting?  Don't You understand the tradition?"  Which they, of course, had deemed to be the true religion of God, as all false religious do.

  Matthew 9:14 says, "Disciples of John came to Him saying..."  Well, you might say, "Who is it?  Is it the scribes and Pharisees, or is it the disciples of John?  Is this a contradiction?"  No, Mark who records the same incident, chapter 2 verse 18, and John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting and they came and said to Him.  That is very typical of what we call synoptic gospel accounts.  Luke emphasizes the Pharisees posing the question.  Matthew emphasizes the disciples of John posing the question.  And Mark says they both posed the question.  Very simply, the disciples of John were associated with the Pharisees and the scribes.  They were hanging out together.  They were committed to the same patterns of prayers and fasting.  And they came together and they asked the question together.  

  Both groups obviously observed these fasts and prayers.  It says, "The disciples of John often fast and offer prayers; the disciples of the Pharisees also do the same."  They have a pattern that they keep and "Your disciples ignore it," they said to Jesus.  I mean, this is an outrage.  Don't You understand?  This is our religion.  This is the true religion of God, they believed, and You're in violation of it.  How are we supposed to accept You as the spokesman of God, as the One who is the prophet of God, as the One who is the Messiah of God, as the One who is God incarnate, the healer of diseases, the forgiver of sins?  How are we supposed to accept You when You don't even observe our religion?

  I need to explain something about the disciples of John because when you think of the disciples of John you probably think of the good guys.  And what are the good guys doing with these bad guys, these legalists?  It's not strange to understand the mingling together.  John the prophet came into the region around the Jordan and he was preaching repentance.  He was saying, "Messiah's coming, the Kingdom's coming,  You better be ready when the King comes to set up His Kingdom and if you don't repent, the wrath of God is going to come upon you."  In Luke 33-15 it says that everybody in the Jordan area was coming out there.  One of the other writer says, "All Judea was going to John." 

  There was a day, you remember in John's ministry, not all of those people would have been there that day, when Jesus showed up.  That was the day that John points to Jesus and says, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."  And John wanted his disciples to then move their allegiance to Jesus.  In John 3:28-30 John said, "He must increase and I must decrease.  I've got to fade away and you need to move toward the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ."  And Jesus, you remember, was baptized by John and the Father said, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, and the Spirit descended upon Him," and it was clearly recognizable to John that this in fact was the Messiah.  John wanted to transition his people to the one who had to increase, Jesus Christ.

  Not all his followers were there that day, were convinced Jesus was the Messiah or followed Jesus, but made a serious commitment down there at the river.  The confessed their sin and asked for forgiveness.  They wanted to be acceptable when the Messiah came and set up His Kingdom so they could get in the Kingdom.  So they cranked up their religious involvement a few notches.  And how would you do that in Judaism?  You would start hanging around with the scribes and the Pharisees.  You would say, "Hey, we had a real dedication over there, we sort of recommitted our lives to religion and to God and where is the highest level of religion, we need to get there?  So let's hang around with the scribes and the Pharisees. Let's do the fasts, the alms giving and the prayers that they ascribe to. Let's really be serious because when the Messiah comes, we want Him to know that our repentance was real."  So they don't make the transition to Jesus, but all of a sudden they start hanging around with the people they perceive in their religious system are at the highest level. 

  Now at this time also, interestingly enough, John the Baptist is in prison.  So he's not around to help his disciples.  He's not around to be preaching everywhere saying, "Here's Christ, here's Christ, follow Him, follow Him."  He's in prison and he's going to lose his head.  So for all intents and purposes, his voice is stilled. 

  These disciples of John wanting to be very, very faithful to their dedication that they made at their baptism with John wind up associating with these religionists.  They blend in to the religion of the day and they do what would be the highest level of religious devotion.  And by the way, long after this in Acts 19:1-7 who were asked if they knew about Christ and they said, "We have never so much as heard of Christ." And they gave them the gospel, do you remember?  And they repented, they believed in Christ, they were baptized, they received the Holy Spirit.

  So there were these people associated with John who in a desire to be fastidious in their religion associated themselves with the Pharisees.  So they come as a mingled group and they ask the question.  The disciples of John here they fast and offer their prayers and the disciples of John say, "Yeah."  And the disciples of the Pharisees, they do the same.  But Yours eat and drink, You're having a party here and this is, maybe, Monday, or Thursday.

  Now just to make sure you understand what we're talking about, this was their own human invention.  Do you know how many fasts in the Bible are commanded by God?  One.  There's only one commanded fast in the entire Old Testament, just one.  It is Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement...that is the only fast commanded by God.  Leviticus 16:29-31 commands people and it uses the phrase, "Humble your souls," or in the New King James, "Afflict your souls," from the Hebrew word anah which is commonly used to refrain from food.  What was the Day of Atonement?  It was a day when you took a hard look at your sin.  When you did a deep inspection of your soul, when sacrifices for the whole nation were made, when the whole nation stopped its normal course of action and everybody did a heart search of their own sin...and that was God's required fast.  You don't eat, you mourn, you grieve over your sin.  There weren't any other required fasts.  There were occasions in the Old Testament when the Jews did fast over grief in the book of Esther, chapter 4; in Isaiah 58 they're referred to; 1 Kings 21 they're referred to; Joel chapter 1 verses 13 and 14. There are fasts in the Old Testament associated, always associated with grief and mourning and the wrenching of the heart over some serious issue.  That is a proper fast.  They're not required, they're just done voluntarily when someone is so overwrought, so sad, so heart sick, so concerned to pray that they have no appetite.

  But there's only one required, but what had happened in Judaism was they decided that fasting looked spiritual, so they invented routine fasts that had nothing to do with their hearts cause their hearts were rotten.  They fasted only to be seen by men.  They determined that every Monday and every Thursday they would fast.  And then every day they went through the ritual prayer.  They had three major religious expressions of the Judaism of the time of Jesus and it still exists today among those that are orthodox.  Prayer, alms and fasting, those were the three religious expressions and they did them publicly and they did them as ostentatiously as they could possibly be done in order to parade their supposed godliness before men.

  Turn to Matthew 6 for just a minute.  This will be a reminder because we've studied this in the past, but Jesus when He preached the Sermon on the Mount really lit a bomb in that message because He spoke to these religious leaders, these religious Jews and He said, "When you give alms, don't sound a trumpet before you."  Can you imagine?  You're going to give and so you have some guy blow a horn...Here, look over here, folks, ta-ta-ta-da, I'm giving.  See, that was the kind of thing they did.  They hypocrites do it in the synagogues and in the streets that they may be honored by men.  Well they have their reward.  What is it?  They're honored by men, that's it. 

  And then in verse 5, "When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites, they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners in order to be seen by men."  There they are out there on the corner going through all of their ritual prayers, saying all their little prayers, appearing spiritual.  I've seen them do that even today among the orthodox.  It's routine.  I've seen it in many places in Israel. 

  And then down to verse 16, there was the third element of their ostentatious religious practice.  "When you fast, don't put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance in order to be seen fasting by men."  Monday, this is what they did, they got up, they put on their worse looking clothes, shabby, torn rag stuff and they didn't comb their hair.  And they threw a few ashes around so they'd look pale and wan, like death warmed over.  And they put a gloomy face and they roamed around, "I'm fasting." That's what they did.  And they have their reward too, it's from men.  In verse 17, "If you're going to fast, anoint your head."  What does that mean?  Put on some Brylcream, you know, comb your hair, or whatever you use. Comb your hair and wash your face so that you may not be seen fasting by men.  In other words, if it's real then it's between you and God.

  The Pharisees and their followers were engaged in really nothing more than hypocrisy.  And the disciples of John the Baptist probably were pretty well intentioned, I would think, and they said, "Well, this is the highest standard of religion so we'll kind of get into this."  And so they're going through all of this and here is Jesus and His disciples at a party with the wretched people that none of these folks would ever associate with, just absolutely the antithesis of their religion.  "Yours eat and drink, why are Yours so happy?" is the underlying thought.

  Well that leads us to the second point, the interpretation.  What's Jesus going to answer?  How's He going to interpret their behavior?  Verse 34, Jesus said to them, "You cannot make the attendants of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you?"  That is absolutely simple.  Attendants are the best friends who plan the wedding and Jesus says, "Look, you don't fast at a wedding, do you?  A wedding is a celebration and when the bridegroom is there, you celebrate."  Weddings often lasted seven days.  Fasting is out of place.  Matthew says, "You don't mourn and fast," linking those two which should be linked.  Fasting was linked to sorrowful prayer and it was on the Day of Atonement, sorrow over sin.  And Mark says, "As long as the bridegroom is with them, they cannot fast." 

  There were ancient rabbinical rules, by the way, forbidding people to fast at a wedding.  Rejoice with those who rejoice.  There's a time, says Ecclesiastes, to weep and a time to laugh.  Fasting has its appropriate time, a time of broken grieved hearts.  But Jesus said, "You don't get it.  The bridegroom's here."  Who's that?  Himself.  There's an old Jewish document called "Migalot Taonit???" called "The Scroll of Fasting."  And it says that fasting is forbidden in all days devoted to happy times of celebration.  The rabbis understood that.  These people, these Pharisees, scribes, disciples of John, they were completely out of touch with what was happening.  The Old Testament never refers to Messiah as a bridegroom, that is a New Testament term and here it's introduced.  Later on Paul builds on that in his epistles and the book of Revelation builds on that, Christ the bridegroom takes His bride into the great bridal city, the New Jerusalem.  So this is the first introduction of the Messiah as the bridegroom.  But the analogy is very clear.  He's saying, "You've been waiting and waiting," as people do, "waiting and waiting for the bridegroom to come and when he comes you inaugurate the celebration.  Well, the bridegroom is here.  You are out of touch with reality."

  It would be completely ridiculous for Jesus' disciples to fast and mourn when the Messiah was there, the long-awaited Messiah.  And again He just shows how completely out of touch they were with reality.  It's particularly disturbing to me, too, that John's disciples had not transferred their faith to Christ to whom John appointed them.  And I guess these guys were thinking, "You know, Jesus is hanging around sinners talking about forgiveness, but He's not doing the ritual stuff."  That is just how far away from reality they were. 

  Jesus, by the way, did agree that His disciples didn't fast.  He didn't, however, agree that they didn't pray.  They didn't pray the daily routine prayers of the scribes and Pharisees and disciples of John and others, but they certainly prayed.  So you don't find in any of the gospel accounts any statement that they didn't pray because prayer is just a way of life for God's people.  But they didn't fast because they couldn't fast while the bridegroom was with them.

  Can you imagine what it was like for them just being with the long-awaited Messiah day after day after day?  What exhilaration, what joy, what fulfillment.  They had been forgiven. They were the poor prisoners, blind and oppressed that had been released.  Joy of all joys, they were in the presence of the Messiah of God. They were seeing His power, hearing His teaching.  Fasting would be ridiculous.

  Then Jesus adds in verse 35, "But the days will come and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days."  What an interesting statement.  The days will come.  There's going to be a time in the future. And in that future time the wedding joy is going to end. Why?  Because the bridegroom is taken from them, apairo, snatched.  Wow!  In the middle of the celebration, in the middle of the big celebration the bridegroom is going to be apairo, snatched.  The word conveys the idea of a sudden violent snatching away.  What does that refer to?  The death of Christ.  This is the first reference we have in Luke, really, by Jesus to His death.  They're celebrating now, let them celebrate. That's appropriate.  They're going to fast later on when the bridegroom's snatched out of the celebration.

  You know, in the wedding imagery you would have thought..."Well, the bridegroom is there, the party's going on. At the end of the party he gets married, the celebration of life goes on."  Oh, there's going to be a terrible interruption, a terrible interruption before the real marriage can take place. Right in the middle of the celebration He's snatched out, taken prisoner, executed on a cross and the disciples lose Him.

  What do you think their attitude was?  You know what it was.  They were afraid, weren't they?  Zachariah said, "Smite the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered."  They panicked.  I mean, that party came to a startling end.  They could never have anticipated it.  I mean, even Peter said, "Lord," when Jesus talked about His death, "don't let it ever be that way, it can't be that way.  This can't end."  But Isaiah prophesied, "By oppression and judgment He was taken away." Same idea, snatched away, cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of My people to whom the stroke was due."  Then Jesus says they will fast.

  I believe that's a prophecy and I believe that between the death of Christ and His reentry into their lives after His resurrection, they fasted.  If ever there was a time of sadness, that would be it, wouldn't it?  Wouldn't that be the saddest of all times?  Look at Luke 24.  I can't be dogmatic about that, it's just something that I feel Jesus prophesied it and I feel that it must have come to pass.  Let me give you a glimpse that may indicate this.  Luke 24:28, Jesus on the road to Emmaus, a couple of disciples going along with Him, and they don't know who He is.  They think He's still dead. They think their dreams are shattered, their hopes are gone.  Three days have passed and they don't have any news about a resurrection.  Some people went to the tomb, verse 23, they didn't find His body.  It's just a bunch of chaos and confusion and they're so sad.  And so, He teaches them about the Messiah, verse 27.  And then 28, "They approach the village where they were going," Emmaus.  And He acted as if He would go farther, just...He's going to keep going, they're going to stop there and He's going to keep going.  And they urged Him, saying, "Stay with us, for it is getting toward evening and the day's now nearly over."  They still didn't know who He was.  "And He went in to stay with them.  And it came about that when He had reclined," it doesn't say at the table, you see it in italics, it just says He reclined, they may have gone in to just go to bed.  "He took bread, blessed it and breaking it began giving it to them."  Could that mean that they were fasting?  He had to take the bread, He had to break it, He had to give it to them.  Very reasonable.  "Their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; He vanished out of their sight.  They said to one another, 'Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scripture to us?'  They arose that very hour, returned to Jerusalem, found gathered together the eleven and those who were with them." 

  Now they're really excited.  The fast has been broken.  They ate.  Jesus gave them bread to eat.  "The Lord has really risen," verse 34, "He's appeared to Simon.  They began to relate their experiences on the road and how He was recognized by them in the breaking of bread."  It seems to be significant, doesn't it?  "And while they were telling these things, He Himself stood in their midst." He came right through the wall.  "And they were startled and frightened and thought that they had seen a spirit.  And He said to them, 'Why are you troubled and why do doubts arise in your hearts?'"  They're somewhere in a house, in a room.  And He says, "See My hands, My feet, it's I Myself, touch Me, see the spirit doesn't have flesh and bones as you see Me have."  And He showed them His hands and feet.  Then verse 41, "While they still couldn't believe it for joy and were marveling, He said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?'"  "And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish."  That's not very much.  They went somewhere in the house I guess that they were using and got a piece of broiled fish.  "And He took it and ate it before them."

  What was He saying to them?  The fast is over.  I'm back.  For us in that sense the fast is over, isn't it?  Christ came out of the grave, didn't He?  He ascended into heaven, He sent the Holy Spirit. And we now can say with the apostle Paul, "Rejoice always and again I say rejoice."  We live in a state of constant joy.  There are times in this temporal life when fast is appropriate for sadness and our sorrow.  But the bridegroom is always with us.  He's taken up residence in our hearts.  The early church did fast on occasion, Acts 13; Acts 14.  But that was because of earthly concerns.  The bridegroom is always with us.  We live in constant celebration, but there was that time when the sadness was crushing.  Three years they had been with Jesus and now He's gone. 

  Here's what the Holy Spirit through Luke wants us to understand.  Judaism at its most devout level, at its highest point is completely out of sync with the gospel totally.  It doesn't recognize the Messiah.  It doesn't recognize the bridegroom is here.  It doesn't understand this is the time of immense joy.  Christianity is unique.  The gospel is unique.  It is incompatible with any other religion, including Judaism.  Whenever I read about the conference on Christians and Jews, I want to say I'd like to have a conference and just tell the Jews that their religion is bankrupt, they need Jesus Christ.  And that's true of anybody in any religion.  The gospel replaces it.

  Jesus closes with the illustrations.  Luke 5:36t-39, this is beautiful, graphic teaching.  The illustrations.  Jesus came to make a complete break with Judaism, complete break with the old.  And here He makes it crystal clear.  He says this, "No one tears a piece from a new garment, puts it in an old garment, otherwise he will both tear the new and the piece from the new will not match the old."  That's a simple point.  If you had a new garment, you wouldn't tear a piece out of it because you would just ruin the new garment.  And then if you took the piece out of the new and sewed it into the old, Matthew and Mark call it an unshrunk piece.  As soon as you wash it, the new piece shrinks then it just rips the threads out and creates the hole all over again, and now you haven't been able to repair the old and you've ruined the new. 

  You can't patch the gospel into Judaism.  Judaism is an old garment, you can't take a piece of the gospel and patch it in.  It can't be done.  You can't put the unshrunk new cloth into the old warn faded cloth. And if you do, Luke says it won't match anyway.  The color's not right, the texture's not right, the pattern's not right, you can't do it.  And again, this is the exclusivity of the gospel.  It can't even be patched into Judaism.  Judaism is a worn-out garment, useless to try to patch it with a piece of the gospel.  Jesus has not come with a message of patching an old system, but replacing it.  The new internal gospel of repentance and forgiveness cannot be mixed with any tradition or self-righteous system of any kind, including Judaism.

  Verse 37, He gives another illustration.  "No one puts new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out and the skins will be ruined.  But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins."  When they made wine, it was a fermenting process.  When they got the new wine out of the grapes and the grapes were crushed and the wine was yielded out in vats, they would pour those in a skin. Typically a goat's skin, they would sew the goat up, they would literally leave the skin intact when they skinned the animal, they would sew up the skin, the feet together, the front feet, the back feet, sew it up so you had this big sack, big pouch.  The neck...cut the head off and the neck would be the spout and they would wrap the neck and tie it with leather thongs. They would fill it up with wine. 

  When something ferments, gas is released and it expands.  So it was critical to use new wineskins, new skins because they were soft and they would expand with that fermentation process.  As the dregs went to the bottom they would be able to expand.  Then the wine would be poured out into another skin and it would still continue some process of fermentation, some process of the dregs falling out.  It could go from skin to skin to skin until it was pure and no dregs, or sour vinegar, left at the bottom.  But particularly the new wine had to be first put in new skin to allow for that expansion. 

  What He's saying here is, if you take this new wine and put it in old, cracked, brittle, stiff wineskins, the expansion process will burst the skins and it will be spilled out and those skins, of course, will be ruined.  That's just another way of saying the very same thing.  You cannot put the gospel into Judaism.  You can't put it into any other religious system.  You can't drop it in a sacramental Romish system.  You can't drop it in the middle of a works/righteousness orthodox system.  You can't drop it into liberalism.  You can't drop it in neo-orthodoxy.  You can't drop it into a cult.  You can't drop it into anything.  There is a dramatic difference in the gospel.  It is new wine.  It cannot be mixed with the old and it cannot be contained in the old by the old.  Any placing of Christianity...you take the gospel and you put it in any work/righteousness system and you make it void.  It's an old skin, it will crack and the gospel is lost.  In fact, Galatians 5:4 Paul put it this way, "You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law.  You're fallen from grace."  It's not compatible, grace is not compatible with any works system. And again I say, the Christian gospel stands alone as the only way of salvation, unique and incompatible with any other religious system.  The gospel of forgiveness by grace through faith alone in Christ alone can't be put into a dry and brittle skin of works/righteousness systems, including Judaism.

  So my dear friend, don't think you can add Jesus to your religion.  You can't.  If you believe the gospel, it is the gospel that replaces your religion.  The Pharisees and the scribes were the old skins, they were the old garment that couldn't contain the gospel. 

  Jesus then gave a third and final illustration, it's really sad.  Verse 39, "And no one after drinking old wine wishes for new, or he says the old is good enough."  That's just a simple little example.  Take somebody whose been drinking the same kind of wine for years and years and years and you come along and say, "Ah, I've got a brand new kind here for you."  "No, no, I'm happy with my old."Jesus looked at those Pharisees and said, "You've been drinking that old wine of Judaism so long, you have absolutely no interest in the gospel." 

  It's really true.  People who have been in religions for a long time are very comfortable.  They cultivate their taste for that tradition and experience.  And Judaism had become mellowed and settled by centuries of experience and mounting, increasing tradition until it was so much a part of the fabric of their life they couldn't even see themselves in any other way.  They were Pharisees and scribes to the death.  They were self-satisfied.  They had grown comfortable with their heresy, like old men who have been drinking a certain wine all their life and were not at all interested in a new one no matter what it may have promised by way of delight and pleasure.

  And I say to you what Jesus was saying is that those who have cultivated deeply the love of their traditional religion have no interest in the gospel.  Haven't you found that to be so?  It's so hard to reach those people.  Give me a poor destitute pagan any time to a settled, comfortable religionist.  The Judaism of Jesus' time was very satisfying old wine and they wanted nothing to do with the new.  And eventually they saw to it that He was executed.  How sad.

  But that's where sinners are today as well.  There's no mixing.  And for those who aren't willing to come out of their false religions to the gospel, there is no hope. They aren't about to sell everything to buy the treasure in the field.  They aren't about to sell everything to buy the pearl of great price.  They certainly aren't going to take the cup of Luke 22:20, the cup of the New Covenant, and drink that when they're content with their damning system of false religion.

  So what do we do?  Do we tell them that's okay and put the gospel in as a patch?  Do we tell them that's okay and dump some of the gospel in their old wineskin?  No.  Beloved, we have to preach that the gospel stands alone.

  

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