It’s Party Time - Mark 2:18-22 Series

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?” 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. 20 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast. 21 “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.”

Introduction

Happy or Sad?

Have you ever been to a funeral of a believer and felt a little conflicted about whether to be happy or sad? On the one hand you’ve lost a loved one, and that’s sad. But you think about that loved one being in heaven, and that’s wonderful. That conflicted feeling is really emblematic of our condition all the time. We look around at this broken world, and see all the horrible heartbreak and suffering and evil, and it calls for brokenhearted grieving. But on the other hand we know the Lord, and we trust in his perfect plan that he’s working out at every moment, and we’ve read the end of the book and we know where it’s all going, and all of that is cause for celebration. So we have that tension – should we laugh or cry? You could say the same thing with regard to our spiritual lives. We see all our sin and it calls for grief. But we also have forgiveness and fellowship with God and that calls for joy.

Ecclesiastes 3:4 [There is] a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.

We understand that, but is there one mood or the other that should be most dominant? Yes. And Jesus is not only going to show us which it in this passage, but he’s also go to pull back the veil and reveal some spectacular views of his glory that have never been revealed before.

Review

We are in a section of Mark that gives 5 conflict stories where Jesus collides with the Jewish authorities. Last week, in conflict story #2 (out of the 5) we saw that it was right for Jesus to enjoy a party with repentant tax collectors and sinners. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing, that Jesus was associating with sickos, because he is a doctor. Now, starting in v.18, we see the third conflict. And we don’t know when this event happened – it could have been pretty much any time in Jesus’ Galilean ministry, the Bible gives no clue at all about when it took place. However, I think it was probably on the Thursday … or maybe a Monday. I’ll explain that in a minute.

The Question: Why Don’t They Fast?

In the last event, conflict was over the issue of who Jesus was eating with. But there is another problem. Aside from the issue of who Jesus was eating with was the fact that Jesus was eating. Why is that a problem?

Mark 2:18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.

It’s actually in the present tense – Mark says they are fasting. So Jesus is at this meal, Andrew is trying to muscle down the rest of his massive T-bone and Peter is already headed over to the dessert table, and the Pharisees and John’s disciples haven’t had a bite of food since before sun up that day because it was a fast day.

The Practice of Fasting

Any Jew at that time who was serious about his faith would regularly do three things: prayer, giving to the poor, and fasting. Those three things were baseline minimum things that every pious believer would do regularly.

In the Old Testament, there is only one time God commands a regular fast – the Day of Atonement. Once a year he wanted the people to fast to reflect contrition over their sins. As time went on, the Jews added to that and established four more yearly fasts. Four times a year they would spend the day fasting for to commemorate various tragedies that had happened in their history – like the fall of Jerusalem, or the death of a great leader, Those fast days fell on the 4th, 5th, 7th, and 10th month of the year.

Beyond those corporate fasts, people would fast individually for the purpose of humbling themselves. Throughout the Old Testament, godly people would fast in times of crisis, mainly for one of two reasons: either they were really sad about something (especially over sin, which is why fasting so often goes with repentance), or they were in desperate prayer for something really big. Scripture teaches that fasting is a way to humble your heart, so you can feel your weakness and neediness and creatureliness and desperation for God.