Feasting or Fasting?

Transcript

Welcome to this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. Following the scripture reading from Pastor Greg Taylor, Pastor Thomas Terry delivers his message entitled, Feasting or Fasting? This message is part of the series called Follow the Sun, which we started at Trinity in September of 2019, and we’re picking back up again today. This series is going through the Gospel of Mark. Thanks for joining us. Here’s Greg. Last week, we finished our series going through the Old Testament prophet Malachi, and so now we return today back to the series we were previously in called Follow the Sun, where Thomas has been preaching through the Gospel of Mark, and today will be part nine of that series, and we’ll be in Mark chapter 2, verses 18 to 22. Hear now the word of the Lord. Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, and people came and said to him,

why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? And Jesus said to them, can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made, and no one puts new wine into old wine skins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins, but new wine is for fresh wine skins. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Good morning. So we’re back in Mark.

Previously on Mark

Okay. Wow. Okay. Yay. Yeah, so we’ll be in Mark for a little while. One of the things you probably don’t know about me is that it’s rare for me to find shows that I actually enjoy. I get all kinds of recommendations from Netflix and Hulu, and some of them are really good, but it’s really hard for me to lock down one that I really enjoy. My favorite show is Forensic Files. Some of you know that already. So everything gets compared to Forensic Files, but when I do actually find a show that I enjoy watching, I become totally immersed and emotionally invested in that show. One of the challenges for me, and probably for most of you, is that after the show, about 12 episodes, it comes to its season finale, and I hate season finales, and I hate them because they’re not really finales. They’re always just cliffhangers that leave you hanging with unresolved issues, and so

I’m left with all these feelings of conflict and unresolved feelings. I mean, it takes me so long to find a show that I actually enjoy, and now you’re going to make me wait for like nine months to help me figure out what’s going on. Now maybe this speaks to a larger issue for me of patience, I get it, but I’m always fascinated about how these shows, when a new season becomes available, how they can, within the span of three minutes, give you this previous preview to catch you up to speed on all the important details from the previous season, so that when you begin the new season, you feel like you’re picking up right where you left off. I love how they do this, and they do this because most people are busy with their lives. In their lives, they forget about the show that they were so drawn into, or they get

fixed on another show and forget about their previous show. Well, given the fact that we’ve just spent about eight weeks or so going through Malachi, which is a whole different show, a whole different type of book, a whole different kind of context, and we just got through Christmas season, many of us might be a little bit foggy as it pertains to where we left off in Mark, so what I’m going to attempt to do this morning is do what these shows do, and give you like this little preview to catch us up to speed on all the things pertaining to Mark, and I’m going to try to do this under three minutes exactly how the shows do, and I practice this to lock it down in less than three minutes. So, are you guys ready? Okay, previously in the gospel of Mark, okay, that’s for dramatic effect.

So, John the Baptist, the rugged publicist who was prophesied in the Old Testament, shows up on the scene in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Thousands of Jews heard this message and respond appropriately to this call of repentance, and come down to the River Jordan to be baptized. John the Baptist’s primary ministry was preaching and pointing people to the long-anticipated Messiah, Jesus, the one who was greater than John the Baptist in every way. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the greater one, Jesus the Messiah, appears and is baptized by John in the Jordan River. Immediately following the baptism of Jesus, the skies crack open. The Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus and empowers him for his earthly ministry, while the Father speaks from heaven these words of affirmation, you are my son, and I’m well pleased with you. Following this empowering and affirmation,

Jesus is pushed into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan. Unlike the temptation of Adam in the Garden of Eden, where he fails, Jesus succeeds. He overcomes the temptation of Satan and begins his ministry of reversing creation’s curse and inaugurating his coming kingdom by preaching repentance and belief. Jesus began his ministry by expanding it one by one by calling first these four fishermen to follow him. Jesus’s public ministry began to take flight in of all places the synagogue, through powerful preaching, casting out demons, and through miraculous signs of healing. The more Jesus ministered, the more people were drawn to him and captivated by his ministry. But the more public his ministry became, the more the Pharisees, which are the religious leaders, became suspicious of him and his message. As Jesus continued his powerful ministry, conflict eventually ensues. Jesus’s message of the coming kingdom was now contrasted with the Pharisees’

oppressive religious system. This conflict came to a head when Jesus healed on the Sabbath, when he touched and cleansed a leper, when he healed and forgave a paralytic man, and when he finally called this socially detested tax collector to follow him in ministry. In response to the tax collector’s encounter with Jesus, he throws this house party, invites all of his sinful friends who are the social outcasts of society, and the arrogant Pharisees, shocked at the sight, show up at the house party to confront Jesus’s scandalous interactions with sinners. But Jesus swiftly rebukes the Pharisees by revealing the very reason he came in the first place, not to save those who think they are righteous, but to save bad people who recognize they need to be saved from their sin. Which brings us to our text here this morning in Mark chapter 2, verse 18 through 22, end scene.

Yeah, three minutes. So, as you’ve just seen in our previous preview, Jesus’s ministry of freedom and hope and his coming kingdom has created controversy and conflict, specifically with the religious leaders. Now, you would think that the religious leaders of the day would have resonated with Jesus’s message and with his ministry about this conflict. You would think they would have resonated with his ministry about this coming kingdom. These folks were the ones who were supposedly the experts of God’s word. These were Jewish theologians and scholars. These are the ones that gave their life to knowing and following God’s law. But instead of resonating with Jesus and his message, these religious leaders found themselves being repulsed by Jesus’s message. There was constant conflict between these Pharisees and Jesus. Jesus was preaching a new message that threatened the Pharisees’ old message of works-based righteousness. And so, this morning we find ourselves in the middle of another conflict

The Pretentious Protest

between Jesus and the Pharisees. In fact, this morning we’ll be looking at the fourth of five conflict narratives between Jesus and the Pharisees. We’ve already looked at the first three and it’s here where we come to the fourth conflict where Jesus and his disciples are confronted by the religious elite for feasting when in their mind, for whatever reason, they should be fasting. So, this morning what I’ve done is I’ve broken up this conflict into four scenes. And so, we’ll begin with the first scene at verse 18 with the pretentious protest. Verse 18. Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting and people came and said to him, why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast but your disciples do not fast? So, let me just set the scene a bit here. Here you get this picture of Jesus and his disciples which

likely by this time has grown a bit. They’re all sitting down together, they’re hanging out, they’re eating, they’re drinking, they’re socializing, they’re even laughing and enjoying each other’s company. And one of the things that I really love about this verse right out of the gate is that you get this picture of Jesus’s discipleship strategy. It’s not at all what most people think discipleship should look like. I mean, there’s joy, there’s laughter, there’s real relationship, there’s eating and spending time together. I mean, this is the perfect context to teach and to discuss what it means to be a Christian. But a lot of people, especially super religious people, think that discipleship should be somber, academic, contemplative and quiet. And while there are those moments, they’re not relegated to those moments only. So, most people don’t typically think about discipleship in the context of eating and laughing together but that’s exactly what Jesus was doing. In fact, Jesus and his disciples were

having such a good time together. They were laughing so loudly and having so much joy that it caught the attention of the disciples of John the Baptist and also with the Pharisees. Now, we don’t know for sure because the text doesn’t tell us, but it’s highly likely that the Pharisees were hanging around observing Jesus and his disciples because this is what they did. This was their style. They always lingered around watching Jesus, looking for Jesus to slip up. They were always looking to scrutinize Jesus and judge Jesus’s motives. And so, it’s likely that this is exactly what was happening. And so, what these Pharisees did is they sent some people go and ask this question of Jesus because they were too cowardly to ask the question. See, this kind of hanging out, eating and drinking together was perplexing to the disciples of John the Baptist and to the Pharisees because their ministry paradigm was largely different than

Jesus’s ministry paradigm. See, the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees were preoccupied with public perception. They were always concerned with how the public perceived them. They were the epitome of pretentious people. Everything they did was for show. And eating together and laughing together, in their opinion, was a bit unbecoming of men who were supposedly marked by ministry. So, they send this person to ask, why is it that the disciples of John and the Pharisees, you know, the spiritual ones, why is it that they’re fasting but you and your disciples who claim to be spiritual are feasting? See, the tone of the question is condescending and accusatory. And even though it might seem on the surface to be a very simple and straightforward question, here is the statement that’s being insinuated by the question. If you, Jesus, really want to be taken seriously about who you are and what you preach, then you better think about

the way that you look. You better start to look and act the part. And most specifically, you need to look and act the part of the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist. You really want to get the attention of people. You got to look like us. You got to be religious. Now, why in the world were John the Baptist, the disciples of John the Baptist, and the followers of the Pharisees fasting in the first place? And more importantly, what does the Bible actually prescribe about fasting? Well, the truth is, the Old Testament really only required one day of fasting on the Day of Atonement. It’s what we know as Yom Kippur, which was only a 24-hour fast from dawn to sunset. We do see other examples about fasting in the Old Testament. Some fasted because they were mourning the loss of a loved one. Some fasted for supplication. Some fasted for praise and

thanksgiving. But none of those other examples were required by God. So that if it wasn’t Yom Kippur, and we know it wasn’t Yom Kippur, because if it was, Jesus would have been perfectly obedient and he would have been fasting. But it wasn’t Yom Kippur. So if it wasn’t, then why were these disciples of John the Baptist fasting? And why were they somehow requiring Jesus and his disciples to fast? Well, the disciples of John the Baptist were probably fasting as an outward sign of repentance. Remember, these were the disciples of John the Baptist. And what was his message? To preach a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. So they were just putting extra on John the Baptist’s message, really demonstrating that they had a posture of repentance. So they were fasting. And the Pharisees were fasting because that was their style. They always like to put their righteous works on display for the public to view and see.

See, for a regular everyday Jewish person, other than what was required by Yom Kippur for fasting, all other fasting was optional. You only fasted if you wanted to, if you felt compelled to. And when you did fast, you did it from a heart of sincerity. But for the religious leaders, they took it upon themselves to make fasting, which was optional and should have come from a sincere heart, they made it a religious rule to fast twice a week. Now, they would fast typically on Tuesdays and Thursdays. See, this is precisely what religious self-righteousness does. It takes things that are not required, things that are optional, things that should come from a sincere heart with the right motives, and makes it mandatory. It makes it a religious rule. And the reason why they did this was because they wanted to demonstrate to all the people how righteous and how holy the Pharisees were.

They fasted not from sincere hearts, but because they wanted people to see how spiritual they were. See, Pharisees had a big problem with putting their righteousness on display for other people. See, in Judaism, there are these three main pillars, which are almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. These three things were what separated Jews from secular culture. Now, Pharisees had a tendency of taking all three of these pillars and making them very visible and very public so they might be perceived as righteous. But Jesus, in Matthew’s gospel, in chapter six, addresses all three of these things. Jesus, when talking to his disciples, says, hey, be careful. Be careful when you practice your righteousness before other people. He says, so when you give to the needy, don’t go sounding a trumpet like the Pharisees, who he calls a hypocrite in Matthew 6. He says, don’t go blowing a trumpet like that. So when you give, instead, do it privately and quietly. Don’t

do it to be seen by others. And Jesus says, and when you pray, don’t be like the Pharisees. Again, he calls them hypocrites. He says, don’t be like them who stand on street corners so that everyone can see them. Instead, go to your room, shut the door, and pray in secret. And as it pertains to fasting, Jesus says, when you fast, don’t look all gloomy like the hypocrites with disfigured faces and disheveled hair so that people see you looking grimy and they ask you the question, hey man, what’s your deal? Why do you look so weak and bad? Of course they would do this to warrant this response. Well, you know, it’s really hard for me. You know, I’ve been fasting all morning and it’s just really hard to be faithful. I haven’t had anything to eat. Jesus says, don’t do that. When you’re fasting, clean yourself up, clean up your face, straighten up, look presentable.

The Wedding Week

He says, do these things in secret, not to be noticed by men, but to be seen by God. Do this not to be perceived as religious, but to be known by God as righteous. Jesus says, do it quietly and privately because God sees your heart. He sees everything. See this question, this protest, why are you not fasting was because the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees were pretentious people. Everything was for public perception to be perceived as righteous, to be perceived as religious in the sight of people. But Jesus brilliantly responds to their question in the form of another question. And he asks this question while framing it in an illustration, which brings us to the second scene in verse 19, the wedding week. And Jesus said to them, can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.

Now, first thing we should notice right out of the gate is how Jesus constantly deals with ridiculous questions. Jesus constantly responds to questions concerning his ministry and his motives by asking better questions that tend to reveal the heart of the original question that get to the core of what’s behind the question. See, their question really didn’t have anything to do with fasting. The question was really one of incompatibility. Why do you and your message not look like us in our message? See, Jesus knows it’s not about fasting, so he asks this left field rhetorical question. Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? Now, for a Jewish person in the first century, this would be a no-brainer. It’s rhetorical. Of course not. But why this rhetorical question about a bridegroom and wedding? Why is Jesus getting to this wedding question when they’re asking him about fasting? Well, here Jesus begins

to get to the root of their inquiry. See, a wedding is a celebration. It’s a celebration when a man and a woman finally find each other, when they finally find the one that they’ve been waiting for their whole life and decide to give themselves to each other in marriage. On that day, on this most monumental occasion, there is inexpressible joy. Why is there joy? Because the time has finally come. The day is finally here. Finally, the two will become one in the sight of God and in the sight of all of their family and friends. And everyone in attendance of the wedding will be overwhelmed with joy as they celebrate the bride and groom. The wedding is a time for feasting and celebrating. And just for a bit of context, Jewish weddings were over-the-top festive. In fact, they were the biggest social event of a family’s life, which is not too different than our culture today. But

the only difference is that a Jewish wedding back in the day was celebrated for a week. I mean, legit celebrated for a week, not prepped for six days and then celebrated one day. Seven days of partying straight. People took off work and just hung out for seven days. I like that about Jewish people. So the point here is that it would be totally inappropriate to fast the week of a wedding celebration because you’d be too busy feasting and enjoying each other. In fact, Jewish law actually prohibited you from fasting the week of a wedding. This forced you to celebrate, to feast and to share in all the joys that came from the people who you know and love so much getting married. See, the illustration here is that Jesus is comparing himself to the bridegroom who has finally arrived. He is the one we have been waiting for our whole life. The time has

come because he is here with us. You remember Mark chapter 1 verse 14. This was a couple months ago, but Jesus came preaching. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. Jesus was saying the time is now. Now is the time for joy and celebration because the bridegroom is here. See, the fundamental difference between Jesus’ disciples and the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees is that Jesus, the bridegroom, is present and in his presence there is inexpressible joy. And fasting, when the long expected Jesus has finally arrived, is totally unfitting for the situation. He is the one we’ve been waiting for and he’s here. So this is a cause for celebration, not fasting. But while it is inappropriate to fast now, Jesus doesn’t negate the fact that there will be a time to fast. There will be the morning moment,

and we see this in verse 20. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast in that day. Now this is an important verse for us because this clearly shows us that Jesus is not anti-fasting. In fact, Jesus himself fasted in the wilderness when he was being tempted by Satan. So it’s not that Jesus doesn’t want us to fast. He just wants us to fast for the right reasons, with the right motives, and at the right time. He recognizes that there is a time and place for fasting and so here he points to a time that is coming quickly when the disciples will fast. He says there will be a time when the bridegroom is taken away. Now that phrase, taken away, is better translated snatched away. It means to be forcibly removed. Jesus again compares himself to the bridegroom but here he actually predicts his violent removal and death.

Jesus is saying here that there will be a moment when I am snatched away from you and you could almost hear the echo of Isaiah 53 8. By oppression and judgment he is taken away. There’s that word, snatched away. And as for his generation who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. This moment of mourning, this time when it’s appropriate to fast that Jesus makes reference to here, is when Jesus is unjustly condemned before a kangaroo court. When he is wrongly convicted, when he’s treated as he’s guilty even though he’s innocent, when he’s mocked and spit on by people, when he’s nailed to a cross, when his side is pierced with a spear, and when he slowly suffers and dies for the sins of his people. That’s when it’s appropriate to fast. When he’s violently taken away this would

Parallel Parables

be the cease of the celebration and be the cause for mourning. See the death of Jesus was the world’s greatest tragedy. When we think about the death of Jesus it should cause sorrow and grief and mourning because our sin caused the anguish of the cross. But the resurrection of Jesus secures the world’s greatest joy because the payment of our sin was satisfied and his abiding presence is now with us forever. Then Jesus continues to further push in on this topic of incompatibility by continuing with this wedding motif in verse 21 and 22 with the parallel parables. Jesus says, no one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wine skins. If he does the wine will burst the skins and the wine is destroyed and so are the skins. But new wine

is for fresh wine skins. Now this seems a bit strange. This person comes and asks Jesus about fasting. Jesus starts talking about a wedding and he starts talking about the bridegroom getting taken away and now he starts talking about clothes and wine skins. What is going on? Why is he bringing all this stuff up? It seems abrupt and out of place but it’s not. These parables actually carry the same motif of incompatibility and a wedding. In this culture, if you were preparing for a wedding, you would be thinking about what you would wear and what you would be drinking at the wedding. Now that wouldn’t be the only thing that you would be thinking about but you would be thinking about that. You’d want to be looking fresh. It’s a party. It’s a seven-day party, right? So you got to go into your closet and pull out those old formal wedding clothes that have

just been sitting there waiting for a wedding invitation. You would get it taken out of the closet. You’d get them sent to the cleaners. I don’t know how they did that, how they pressed clothes back in the day but that’s what you did. And it’s at this point when you would try on the clothes to see if they still fit that you would recognize if there was a hole in your formal wedding attire. And if there was, now would be the right time to patch up that hole before the wedding party and celebration begins. And so Jesus says, who takes a new piece of cloth to patch up old clothes? And it’s a rhetorical question. No one. No one does that. See, when you take a new patch and put it on old clothes, the new patch will shrink. If the new patch shrinks, it will tear

apart at the seams. It would make it tear even worse than it originally was, rendering your formal attire completely useless and ruined. So you don’t do that. It’s just, it’s not wise. And given the fact that most people associated wine with weddings, Jesus uses the second parable. He says, who puts new wine in old wineskins? Again, it’s a rhetorical question. No one does that. And this would be common knowledge to people in that culture. See, wineskins were animal skin pouches. You can imagine like these leather pouches. And back in the day, the way that you would prepare wine is that you would first get your grapes prepared, and then you would place them into these animal skins. And as the wine began to ferment, the animal skins would begin to stretch out. Okay. They would expand and they’d start to weather and tear. And so then what you’d have to do is you’d have to take that wine

and put it into a new animal skin. You would have to keep this process going as long as you wanted to ferment the wine. Okay. And then about four or five times after doing that, you would get this amazing wine. But if for some reason in the middle of the fermenting process, you were to transfer or to pour out this wine into an old wineskin, maybe the one that you used last year, right? You pour it into this. As the wine began to ferment, there would be no room for the wineskin to expand. And because it was sitting around, it was an old wineskin, it became very brittle. And so what would happen is the wine would crack the old wineskin, and you would lose all of your wine. You would destroy the wineskin, and you would lose all of the time that you waited to ferment the wine. So no one did that.

You want to keep the process going, you take wine, you put it into new wineskins. And so Jesus says, who does that? All that work would be for naught. Now, Jesus uses these two parables, these two parables to make this one point. There is incompatibility between the new and the old. You can’t mix, you can’t blend, you can’t integrate the new with the old. The new message of Jesus cannot be sewn on to the old message of the Pharisees. Christianity is not a patch that sits perfectly over Judaism. The new wine of Jesus’s kingdom cannot be poured into the old wineskins of Judaism. You attempt to synthesize the two, it will tear, it’ll break, it’ll burst, because the new and the old are totally and completely incompatible. These parables are about the differences and distinctions between the message of Jesus and the message of the Pharisees. Jesus’s message of grace through faith and the Pharisees’ message

of works righteousness are mutually exclusive. You cannot take the new message of Jesus and push it into this old religious works-based system of the Pharisees. It will burst, it will contradict. Jesus offers salvation by grace through faith. The Pharisees offer religious work to earn God’s favor. The new and the old message don’t work together. They can’t. Jesus makes this statement, and the context here is specifically concerning the religious system of the Pharisees, but this can easily be transferable. It’s also true of any other religious system. Jesus Christ cannot simply be integrated into any other religion or philosophy of life. I mean, this is exactly what we face today in our culture, especially in Portland. More and more, I’ve come to realize that it’s not that people aren’t open to talking about Jesus. It’s that they’re not open to making Jesus exclusive. The people of Portland are very

comfortable with the idea of integration. They’re cool with integrating Jesus into their pluralistic, inclusive, and universalist religion. They’re okay to add Jesus to Buddhism, to add Jesus to Islam. They’re comfortable with it, but Jesus cannot simply be in addition to an existing religion or philosophic worldview. Jesus is exclusive. He demands your all. In fact, the moment you mix Christianity with anything else, it ceases to be Christianity.

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New Life, Old Life

And this is more than just religious systems. This is in every area of your life. Jesus Christ must be preeminent. You come to Jesus, you are made new. The old has passed away. You are never to return to the old. But the problem is a lot of people believe that they can have the new and still have a grip on the old, but you can’t. You can’t have Jesus, the new Jesus, and keep your previous drug and party culture. You can’t have Jesus and keep your previous sexual ethic. You can’t have Jesus and keep your love for money, your lust for power, or your hatred for people. It won’t work. Jesus Christ saves you, and you are made a new creation. The old is passed away. In Luke’s account of this same story, in chapter 5, verse 39, he adds this little bit after talking

about new wine in old wineskins. He says, and no one, no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says the old is good. Basically, Luke is saying here, people are so accustomed to their old lives that it’s very difficult to orient their thinking and desires around their new life. You try to follow Jesus while holding tightly to your old life, the incompatibility between the two will force a submitting to one. And more often than not, I see this all the time. The people who hold tightly to their old life, they begin to miss it. They begin to flirt with it. They begin to believe that their old life was fine, and in many ways they believe that maybe their old life was better. They ultimately have to let go of the new to enjoy the old. But the truth is, the old never satisfies. The new life that Jesus offers is the only thing

that will satisfy your soul. It’s the only thing that truly liberates you. All other paths to try and find peace with God, all other attempts to find true and lasting joy will inevitably fail you. This is true. The saddest people in the world are those who follow religious laws to earn God’s acceptance. The saddest people in the world are those who try to balance the scale of their good and bad behavior in hopes that they will be made right with God. But imagine the stress of feeling like you’re never quite sure if your religious or good deeds have outweighed your bad deeds. If you are good enough, if you are religious enough, this ultimately leaves you in a state of constant fear, constant scrutiny, and constant work.

It’s just a burden that is far too great to carry, so you’re left feeling depressed. You can’t live up to it. And the truth is, no matter how hard you work, you will never be good enough to earn God’s acceptance. No matter how moral you think you might be, you’re not moral enough. See, this here is what brings Christians such joy. We no longer have to work to earn God’s acceptance. Jesus came and lived a perfect and sinless life. He was perfectly obedient to God in every possible way. He came to live the life that we failed to live, and he died the death that we deserve to die every day for our sin so that we might be made right with God. This is what causes Christians to experience inexpressible joy. Those of us who have taken him by faith can rest in the righteousness of Jesus and be saved from our sin.

And this invitation he makes available to everyone. If you are here this morning and you are one of those people who is working and working and working to try to earn God’s approval and acceptance, it’s not going to work. You need Jesus. He is the only one that can save you from your sin, and he offers himself freely to you. All he requires of you is that you take him at his word, that you believe that he is who he says he is, that you turn from your sin and embrace him by faith. That’s all that he requires of you. See, Jesus’s disciples experienced this inexpressible joy. They were so filled with joy that fasting wasn’t even an option for them. And this is precisely what we just celebrated last week during Christmas. Joy to the world. The Lord has come. That’s not just a cute Christmas song.

This is a profound gospel truth. The Lord has come to us. Jesus himself has entered human history, and our joy is inexpressible because he has relieved us of our religious burdens. He has relieved us of the impossible work of living up to a standard of perfection that we could never live up to. He has relieved us of the judgment that comes from a perfect and righteous judge. We who rightly deserved God’s judgment and wrath because of our sin have been made new by the work of Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, through Jesus, we’ve been made new. The old is passed away, and there is total and complete incompatibility between the old and the new.

This morning, I want to ask you, are you holding on to your old life? Are you flirting with the old life? Are you trying to synthesize the two, the new and the old? The new and the old, it won’t work. It will only cause you grief and pain.

It won’t bring you what you think it will. My encouragement to you this morning is to ask Jesus to help you to prize and to prioritize the new and be done with the old. Prioritize the new that is yours by virtue of the gospel of Jesus Christ and run from the old. That’s my encouragement for you this morning. There is incompatibility between the new and the old. Find rest for your soul in the new message of Jesus Christ. Let’s pray. Let’s pray. Father, we rejoice that you did not leave us in our sin. We rejoice that you sent Jesus, the bridegroom, to pay for the sins of your people. And Father, it’s only when we think about the weight of that sin and what that sin deserves and what we were freed from and what you paid for when we experience inexpressible joy. God, we thank you that in your love and in your kindness to the people that you’ve created,

that you saved us, that your son was snatched away so that we might be snatched away from the grip of hell. We thank you for this new message that is a message that liberates us, that brings us true freedom, that brings us complete joy. We pray, Father, that you would help us to orient our thinking on that, that you would fill our hearts with joy because of it. And we pray, Father, for those of us who are entangled in our old lives, that you would free us from it, that we would cling to the cross, that we would repent of chasing after the things of our old life, and that we would find rest in the new. Help us to grow, Father, more and more with hearts of gratitude and hearts of joy because of all that you’ve accomplished for us. And we pray all of

these things in Christ’s name. Amen. Thanks for joining us for this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can visit our website at www.trinityportland.com.