Now this is a familiar question
that's asked at the beginning of this passage, even though
it may take different forms. In this instance, it was, why
do your disciples not fast? Why don't they do what good religious
people do? And I say that's a common question
because you may not have ever been asked that question, but
you probably heard something similar to that. Don't y'all
have an invitation? Most of you probably know what
an invitation is, don't you? It's where after the preacher,
in most religious settings, is through with his sermon, there'll
be a 15 or 20 minute, sometimes 45 minute or more, invitation,
which is just him begging people to come make a decision for Jesus. Which is a, it's not, I started
to say it's a waste of time. It's a lot worse than that. Why
don't y'all have an invitation? Why don't you have a choir? Why
don't y'all do this? Why don't you? I've heard it many, many times.
Different, different forms of it. It's just, it's the same
question. You realize that, right? It's why aren't you religious
like we are? Some, most people have grown
up in some kind of religion. Whether Catholic or Baptist or
Pentecostal or Church of Christ or something like that. And whatever
you were taught growing up in religion is difficult to unlearn. Very difficult. Before the Lord Jesus Christ
came preaching, The religion of the day where these disciples
were from was Judaism, and the Pharisees were the teachers.
And this is why fasting was just something that they took for
granted. It was just something that you did if you're religious,
if you're right with God, you know, you just did it. But it
wasn't, as you might imagine, the truth as God had revealed
it concerning what fasting is. Believers fasted even way back
in the Old Testament, hundreds of years before this, thousands
of years. But what God taught and what
was done truly, in true religion and undefiled, in true worship
of God, is not what the Pharisees were doing. It had degenerated
into some kind of a good luck ritual or something. Like, if
something bad happened, let's fast, you know. Let's deprive
ourselves of some things for a while. And nowadays it's things
that you really, not gonna really upset your life that much. You
know, quit eating meat for a couple of days or something. I don't
know what they do. But it never strikes me as something
that would be that difficult to do anymore. It's almost the equivalent of
like a rain dance. Let's do a rain dance, you know.
Let's do something so God will bless us. to make God act favorably toward
us. We'll see our great self-sacrifice
and he'll honor that and he'll, you know, turn the tide. You remember what the Pharisee
said in Luke 18, 12, when our Lord compared him to the publican.
The Pharisee, when all of this was over with, went down to his
house in his sins. And the publican who cried for
mercy, the Lord said he went down to his house justified,
free from sin. Because he cried for mercy. When
sinners cry for mercy, they get mercy. That's how the Lord does
that. But the Pharisee said, I fast
twice in the week. That was part of his, I tithe,
I do this, I do that. I'm not like that publican. I'm
a good religious person. And one of the things he said
was, I fast twice in the week. How can you fast twice even in
a week? I mean, it seems like... You fasted for an hour, twice
in the week, or whatever it was, it was a big deal to him. He
was throwing it up to God. It was a self-righteous matter
with him, and it was with all the religion of that day, and
it is with ours. All the same just rituals that
are performed in the name of religion that aren't in the scripture. Why don't we have an invitation?
Because it's not in the Word of God. Is that a good enough
reason? Why don't you do things the way religion does? Because
it has nothing to do with the worship of God. How about that? Is that alright? But these disciples of our Lord
had taken for granted, likely since they were very young, they
had been taught these same things, that fasting was part of their
religious duty, and so some of John's disciples were involved
in this even. They hadn't been taught yet,
but our Lord is teaching them here, something in our text.
This morning, and again, we've been asked all these same questions,
and may the Lord teach us regarding these things. Worship is when
two or three of God's sheep, God's people, gather together
and the Lord shows up. We can't do anything without
Him. You remember Him saying that, right? Without me you can
do nothing. You can't worship, you can't serve, you can't do
anything without me. He's going to have to come and
he does that where two or three of his people are gathered in
his name. And if he shows up, it's going
to be a good time. It's going to be worship. It
doesn't matter if we don't have a choir. How are we going to
worship? We don't need a choir. We need him. You don't ever have any celebrities,
you know, come, you know. Don't need a celebrity, we need
Him. When our Lord was teaching, if
you want to have a homework assignment, read Matthew 6, 1 through 18.
Our Lord taught concerning these things. When you worship in God,
don't call attention to yourself. It's not about you. He said most
of the things that you do in public, you shouldn't even be
doing it and praying. We have public prayer, but it's
not a show. It's not who can pray the most
eloquently. And he said to his disciples,
when you pray, don't do it out on the streets. Do it in your
closet. When you fast. Make sure nobody
knows it. You remember him saying that?
Comb your hair and brush your teeth and wear nice clothes so
that nobody knows you're fasting. Don't go around looking all down
and you know like a bum so that people all look he's fasting,
he's religious. Make sure nobody knows about it. That would cure
most people of the need to fast right there if they couldn't,
if nobody could see him doing it. What's the point, you know, if
we can't put on a show? You know, that's why most people
pray in restaurants. They'll hold hands and they'll
pray out loud so everybody can see how religious we are. I'm
not saying everybody does it for that reason. You may just
be doing it because you weren't taught from the Word of God that
you don't do that in public. You don't do that in the world.
It's not the end of the world when that happens, but you know
what I'm saying. He taught us deliberately, don't do that.
So you know what? Let's not do that. How about
that? Let's do it discreetly, if at all, in public and make
sure nobody knows about it. Is that what he said or am I
making that up? So we won't teach everything
the scripture says about fasting, but it wasn't what they were
doing. That's pretty clear. Outward displays of religion.
They glorify man and they dishonor God. Galatians 6 12 Paul said as many
as desire to make a fair show in the flesh They constrain you
to be circumcised. They want to chalk you up. How
many circumcisions did you have? You know, that's the same thing
as what we would call baptism. That was the outward sign of
the covenant then Oh, how many decisions did you get for Jesus?
Let's count them and put them on a board up here. No, let's
don't let's don't do that Because the Lord said don't You're making
a show in the flesh. They constrain you to make a
decision or do something for the Lord. Only less they should
suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. Nobody wants to be
different from the established religion because they don't want
people to think bad of them. But God forbid, this is the context
of this great verse that I'm sure you'll remember. God forbid,
they do that that they might glory in your flesh. They count
things and tally things and declare victories and, you know, look
what we're doing for God. But Paul said, God forbid that
I should glory save in what he did, the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Let's don't ever glory in anything
that we do. And our Lord's answer to them
is very simple. You don't fast at a wedding.
You have feasts at weddings, not fastings, and they're with
the bridegroom. The Lord told them that the time
would come when the bridegroom wouldn't be with them anymore,
and then they'd fast, and I'm sure they did. Their whole world
had fallen apart when the Lord, they saw him die, especially
until they understood What our Lord had said of necessity, this
behooves you and me. Unless I go to my father, you
can't have any comfort at all. And then he gives them this parable
in the same context. To teach them what he's teaching
them. That religion, outward religion
is not just worthless, it's destructive. It's destructive. The old bottle
will be destroyed, he said. If you're just an old bottle
trying to patch up a hole, or an old garment trying to patch
a rend in that garment with something new. I got religion. I found
Jesus, you know, on your bumper sticker. Yeah, but has he found you? Has he found you? Well, wait
a minute, Chris. Nobody's lost to him. Oh yeah,
he came to seek and to save that which is lost. Has he found you? He came to find his sheep. Not because he didn't know where
they are. You know what he means by that. So the answer is simple. And
then this parable. Now get in your mind now that
in this teaching, it's very simple. You're thinking, with the old
garment and the new patch, what is all that? Well, there's old
and there's new. That's pretty simple. There's
nothing complicated about that. There's an old garment and there's
an old bottle. And there's new cloth and new
wine. And this is throughout the gospel,
old and new. We see it all throughout the
Word of God. There's an old covenant and there's a new covenant. There's an old man and a new
man. There's an old creation, there's a new creation. So our Lord here speaks of old
and new. And there are some do's and don'ts
concerning these things. He said to put into, if the new
is put into the old, that's not gonna work, that's not a good
thing, that's a don't. You don't do that. There can't
be any combination of old and new. It's not going to fit. And what is the old and the new?
The old covenant was what? Works. This do and live. Here's my commandments. Keep
them perfectly. Be holy in my sight and live
and be blessed and I'll give you eternal life. That's the
old covenant. The new is the Lord Jesus Christ
held out the cup of wine to them and said, this cup is the new
covenant in my blood. The new covenant is because of
the Lord Jesus Christ shed blood, all of the blessings of God are
ours without us doing anything. Works, grace. Read the book of Galatians, you
can't mix them. You can't mix them. The only thing you can do is
put new into new. And that's what God does. God
puts new wine into new bottles and both are preserved. And that's
all teaching us the simple spiritual truth that relates to what these
disciples were concerned with. Fasting. This outward religious
thing that was necessary in the eyes of the scribes and Pharisees.
Why aren't they doing that, they said. They couldn't let it go,
it was so important to them, to be religious. The outward
form of the ceremony, what they thought was the keeping of the
old law, was so necessary to them. They couldn't let it go. And man tries to do both of these
don'ts. You don't put new cloth into
an old garment. Let's look at that one first.
To patch an old garment with new cloth. All through the scriptures a
garment represents what? Think, go all the way back to
the beginning. Why do you wear a garment? Why
am I wearing a suit this morning? Because of sin, isn't it? Adam
and Eve didn't wear anything before there was sin. But now
they realize that they're naked before God because they're sinful.
They're guilty before God. So what has to happen? They've
got to cover their nakedness, which is a picture of our sin
being covered. It's a picture of us coming into
the presence of you can't come naked. You can't come guilty.
You can't come with sin before God. God's got to put something
on you. God clothed them. Adam tried
to clothe himself, didn't he? He made an apron of fig leaves
and sewed them together. He was a pretty smart guy. I
doubt if it was just a couple of leaves, you know, roughly
stitched together. It was probably something pretty
elaborate. But it wouldn't do. Because the work of man will
not reconcile man to God. There's got to be bloodshed.
And so the Lord killed animals and covered them with the skins
of animals. You can't cover somebody with
the skin of an animal without shedding some blood. And that's
how sinners are reconciled to God, by the precious blood of
God's Son, pictured by every animal ever slain. Paul said
in Hebrews, the blood of bulls and goats can't put away sin,
but Christ can. He said a body hast thou prepared
for me that he might have somewhat to offer unto God in that holy
place not made with hands. For his people that he might
sanctify those that he shed that precious blood for. So that's
what's pictured there in all those animal sacrifices that
were ever made. And so here a garment is always
our standing before God. It's a covering for our sin.
It's always what it is. And so, to patch the old garment, the apron of fig leaves, if you
will, or whatever it is you've stitched together to try to please
God, you can't just get religion and patch up the holes. You can't patch it. You need
a new garment. The flesh never improves. You
can't improve the flesh. You've got to die. You've got
to be born again, not turn over a new leaf. You see the correlation
here. You can't just do better. You
can't just patch it. You've got to be born all over again. You've
got to be remade. You need a whole new garment. When man became a sinner before
God, he saw that he had no garment. At the wedding feast, as recorded
in Matthew chapter 22, a certain garment was necessary in order
to be welcome at the wedding feast. You don't have that garment. You're cast out into outer darkness
and there's weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. It represents our righteousness
before God or lack thereof. When the prodigal returned to
the father, what did the father say? Bring the best robe and
put it on him. Look at him. He's wearing rags. He's filthy. And that's a symbol
of his rejection of the father. The way he looks is a representation
of the fact that he said, I'll do what I want to do. It's a
representation of the so-called free will of man. But the father said, it's not
that way now. He's mine and he's home. And
he's going to wear the best robe that I have. You know what that
is? The righteousness of Christ. That's what that is. The old religious man. Or the
old man as he stands under the old covenant of works. The new
is true righteousness. The new covenant. What man does
here is try to keep the old garment of works righteousness and just
patch it in what it lacks, he thinks, by adding some gospel
truth, maybe. Oh, I know Christ died for everybody,
but you have to, that's the old garment, throw it away. It's not going to get patched.
It won't work. Oh, I know I can't work my way
to God on my own, but I've got this new patch to add. That's
what the new patch is for. That's not gonna get it. I agree with what you teach,
Chris. I believe salvation is by Christ. I'm a Christian, but
there's no need to throw the whole garment away, you know.
I'll just patch up my works with what he did. Not gonna work. You need a whole new garment,
like Bartimaeus. What did he do when he heard
the voice of the Savior? He took off his old rags and
cast them aside and followed Christ. Why do you think it said that?
A blind man being made able to see? What does that have to do
with him throwing his clothes away? If you see the spiritual
picture of it, it has everything to do with it. Everything. You must cast off your old rags.
The old cannot be fixed, cannot be patched. The patch will just
make it worse. It's just more sin is all it
is. It's still you doing something. And righteousness is what he
did, not what you do. We read a while ago, or I quoted
some from Galatians chapter six. Listen to Galatians 6.14. God
forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.
Let me read a little further this time. For in Christ Jesus
neither circumcision availeth anything. That's the first law
keeping that ever happened to you. It was at eight years old,
eight days old they were circumcised. That's the law, that represents
the keeping of the law. That doesn't avail anything with
God, nor uncircumcision. If you say, well I know better
than that, I know that my work, you knowing that's not going
to avail anything before God. You know what does? A new creation. Galatians 6.15. God's got to
make you all over again, a new. What does our text say? New wine,
new bottle. That's the only way it's going
to work. A new creation and you can't
create. Can the Ethiopian change his
skin? Can the leopard change his spots? When they do, then
you who are accustomed to doing evil can do good. That's what
this book says. You can't make yourself new,
only he can do that. You can't sew what Christ did,
the cross, onto your law-keeping circumcision. There must be a
new creation. And notice they don't put on
the new garment, just take a piece out of it. Just the part that
they like. Does that sound familiar? You
can go in most churches and hear something good. They've taken
a piece out of the new garment. But is it Christ? Is it all Christ? Paul said, I fear lest you be
removed from the simplicity. You look that word up, it means
all inclusiveness that's in Christ. Oh, they'll take bits and pieces
out of the, you know, here and there. That's part that they
like. But if any man be in Christ,
he's a new creation. Old things are passed away. You
see how this applies to our text? Behold, all things are become
new. A new creation. You know who
does that new creation? Who performs that new creation?
The same one who performed the old creation of the world in
this universe. Without him was not anything
made that was made, including you, Including you being saved We've talked about the old and
new covenants and again if you want to read about that Hebrews
8 7 through 13 In that he saith a new covenant. He hath made
the first old Now that which is that which decayeth and waxeth
old is ready to vanish away in the other part he says new wine
and Is not to be put into old bottles, bottles or vessels. Picture us all through the scripture.
We're a vessel. The first was our garment, our
standing. This is us, our nature. We are
old bottles. Bottles in that day, you know
what they were made out of? Flesh. skins of some kind of an ant. This bottle is made out of flesh
too. It's an old bottle before God now. And if you're going
to put the new wine now, if the new wine of righteousness and
the kingdom and truth, the gospel, then the bottle's got to be new
too. The Bible's got to be made old.
You must be born again. A new heart. The new wine is the
new heart, the believing heart, the new life that we have in
Christ. These are not agreeable to the old nature. We still have the old nature
in us, but the new is not put into the old. The new is put into the new. And it is in conflict with the
old. The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against
the flesh. That which is born of the flesh, our Lord said to
Nicodemus, John chapter 3, is flesh. It's never going to be
anything but flesh. But that which is born of the
spirit is spirit. And you're going to have to be
both if you're ever going to see God. Both for now. One day we won't,
there will be no flesh anymore. But not right now. We still have
that old nature in us. But if there's going to be a
newness of life, a new heart, a new walk, a new everything,
there's got to be a new person. You see what this is teaching?
It's really pretty simple, isn't it? Got to be a new person. And he gives us a new heart that
loves and believes on Christ. A new mind. A new spirit, a new
nature. And you see how this applies
to the self-righteous ideas set forth by these scribes and Pharisees
and disciples. I don't know what their spiritual
condition was at the time, whether they were believers or unbelievers,
but I know this, they needed to be taught something. And our
Lord taught them. Christ is teaching them the self-righteous
Old Covenant religious law-keeping will not patch you up. It will not make you complete.
It will not make you whole before God. Get rid of the old. Put on the
new man in Christ. Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,
Paul said. And the new wine of truth and
faith and life doesn't go into the old bottle of the old man
who goes about to establish his own righteousness. It will not
mix. If you're an old bottle, then the new wine cannot be retained
within you. Christ will profit you nothing,
is the way Paul put it in the book of Galatians. Christ has
become of no effect unto you. Paul said in Galatians 2 20,
I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me
and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace
of God, for if righteousness come by the law, if your fasting
is so necessary that you can't even imagine somebody even worshiping
without it, if you can't see how someone else can even know
God and not do it, then Christ is dead in vain, Paul said, dead
in vain. It's either you, the old you,
or him, and the new you in him. It's one or the other. There
can be no combination. The one warth against the other.
The new rends and breaks the old. The old trusts in fastings
and law keeping and goes about to establish a righteousness
of its own that God will accept. The new says Christ is all. The
new says cease from your labors and rest in him. All my righteousness, all my
sin offering, all my hope, Christ is all. And God makes new bottles,
and he puts new wine into them, and both are preserved. Revelation
21, 1 through 5, he makes all things, what? Now look at this final verse
now. That's a parable in and of itself. And then there's this
proverb added on at the end. And it can be confusing, but
think about it. Think with me. No man also, verse 39, no man
also having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new, for he saith the
old is better. Now the first thing we need to
realize is that this is a completely different proverb than the one
about the garments and the bottles. There are no garments or bottles
in this. This is about drinking old wine
or new wine. Completely different proverb.
In those, in the first two, the old garment and the old bottle,
There were garments and bottles. The old was bad in those, right? The old was bad. The old was
the old man, the old nature, the old covenant. The old was
bad. In this proverb here, the old is the good. And that's why
it might be confusing if you don't realize that this is a
completely indifferent thought here. This is about what to drink. This is not about storing anything
or patching anything. This is about what are you going
to drink. In this proverb, no bottles or
garments, he's not contradicting what he said. He's not saying
now that the old garment is a good thing or the old bottle is a
good thing. That's bad and always is bad. This has nothing to do
with those vessels or those garments. Only wine is being compared here.
Two kinds of wine. In the first part, it's the old
nature and the new. that is new to that man, when
we say new nature, it's the nature of Christ. It's not new, but
it's new to you, you see. The message of the gospel is
new to you. Life is new to you. Every blessing
of God is new to you. But now we're focusing specifically
upon what it is that Christ puts into us. What kind of wine? What
does he put into us? And this is considered separately.
And now the roles of new and old are reversed. Because the
truth that Christ reveals in us is as old as God himself. Would it confuse you if I told
you that the new covenant is older than the old covenant? Why is it called the new covenant
then? Because it was new to them. It was newly revealed. But the
new covenant, the covenant of grace was made in Christ before
the foundation of the world. The old covenant was given at
Sinai. The new is older than the old.
And so you see why this is reversed here. The truth, the gospel,
The righteousness that we receive is as old as God, because it's
His righteousness, it's His gospel, it's His truth. That righteousness
that is new to us is Christ Himself, the Ancient of Days. God saw
us, considered us, loved us in Christ before the foundation
of the world. Our standing before God has always
been in Christ. God's eternal, we need to understand. We can't understand eternal things,
but we can understand what he reveals. Our standing before God has always
seen us in Christ. Now when we experience that by
faith, when we taste The old heavenly wine of covenant truth,
of gospel truth, of the same truth that saved Moses saved
you. No sinner has ever been saved any other way than by grace
through faith in Christ. By faith Abel offered a more
excellent sacrifice than Cain. That's way back in the beginning.
That's Genesis chapter 4. By faith he did it. By faith
in who? He killed a lamb and shed its blood. Who do you reckon
he was believing on when he did that? By faith. And once that happened, once
you taste that old wine, the Lord said, the new wine of religion,
You see how it's the new now, because everything, the truth
is eternal. So everything that, anything
that has, that takes the truth and adds anything or takes anything
away, that's newer. Once you've heard the old, once
you've tasted the old, you have no desire for the new. You have no taste for the perversions
of religion. You have no taste for this thing
of if you're going to be right with God, you've got to fast
twice in the week. Nonsense. I've got no taste for
that. I'm resting in Christ. Like his people have been doing
since the days of Moses. You see why the old is better? We spoke earlier of the comparison
of new and old being illustrative of the new and old covenants.
But the truth, the new covenant, as I said, is older than the
old. And that new covenant, though it's more newly revealed and
called the new covenant for that reason. But once you see it,
you see it to be as old as God himself. And once experienced, once tasted
by faith, We see that everything that man has concocted, all of
the homemade wine that man comes up with, the man-made free will,
man-glorifying religion of works, it's new and it's tasteless to
us. We have no desire for it, we're
repulsed by it. You won't desire it if you've
tasted the old. Wherefore laying aside all malice
and all guile and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speakings
as newborn babes Desire the sincere milk of the word that you may
grow thereby if so be you've tasted that the lord is gracious
once you taste That the lord is gracious to sinners like you
You're going to desire nothing else but the sincere milk Of
his word Nothing else will do it. When you hear something contrary
to it, you spit it out. You spit it out. Once we do desire
that sincere milk of the Word of God, everything that's newer
than that, which is everything else, everything that adds to it or
subtracts from it, everything contrary to it or is disagreeable
to the Word of God, Leave a bad taste in your mouth on it. You
ever experienced that? It leaves a bad taste in your
mouth. People say, well God's trying
to save you if you just let him. Oh, I don't like the taste of
that, do you? That don't taste right. My God has never tried
to do anything. He don't try. He just does. He said, I'll have
mercy on who I want to have mercy on. That tastes better, doesn't
it? I like that. These disciples reason for not
fasting. Think about that. I'm gonna close
with it. Why didn't they fast? You know why our Lord said they
didn't fast? Because they rejoiced in Him. Isn't that beautiful? They have the bridegroom. They're
too happy to fast. I'm too happy with Christ as
my righteousness and Christ as my sin offering to try to please
God with anything I do, such as fasting or walking an aisle
or making a decision or anything else. I'm happy with Him. I'm rejoicing in Him. When you're rejoicing in Him
alone, Even something that in other circumstances was a good
thing, like fasting. It was a good thing in the right
circumstances. But when you're rejoicing in
Him alone, you see that as unnecessary. Christ is necessary. Christ is the one thing needful. And you know what? By His grace,
He's the one thing desirable to us. That's a good combination. If the one thing that you need
is the one thing that you want the most, then you're blessed
of God. Happy are you. May He give us grace to rejoice
in the bridegroom and Him alone. Amen. Let's pray.