That's, look up. I'm going to open up the service
of Matthew 11, but this is Matthew 9. Issues of faith and repentance. And let's remember those in prayer
on our list. Let's also remember Cindy, Frank's
wife, Cindy Dale. She's going through a procedure
where they go down the endoscopy, I think that's what they call
it. She's been having some problems,
so remember her in prayer. She's not here this morning,
so let's pray for her. And I think, Jim, your sister's
at home now, isn't she? Bad shape, well, let's pray.
Her name is Carolyn. What's her last name? Carolyn
Ludeman, so remember her. And remember Leanne Flynn, Robert's
daughter, Leanne, her mother-in-law passed away this past week, so
going through that. Is there anybody else that we
need to mention? Okay. All right, let's bow our
heads in prayer. Our Father, we are met together
to worship in spirit and in truth by lifting up your holy name.
giving you all the praise and glory for your grace in Christ
Jesus, our Lord and Savior, what you have accomplished through
him for our salvation, that you would even look upon us, dear
Lord, in mercy is an awesome thought. For we know if any of
us got what we deserve or earned, it would be death and hell. And
so we pray, dear Lord, in such awesome, awesome, deep thoughts
of thanksgiving and gratitude, dear Lord, that you've saved
us from our sins and given us a perfect righteousness whereby
we stand before you justified. And dear Lord, that you've given
us life from the dead, that we have eyes to see, ears to hear
the truth and to love it, to believe it. Dear God, it's just
to think about it, In this fallen world that you would set your
love upon. People like us. But you've done
so and we believe it because you've said it in your word.
And we do pray for those who are sick and afflicted and going
through trials of the physical ailments of this body. Those
who are grieved over the death of loved ones. Those are going
through procedures. We pray for Cindy as she goes
through her procedure tomorrow. We pray dear Lord that you would
bless are continually going through the trials of this life. We know
that these trials are ordained by you for our good, for your
glory and our good. And so we pray, dear Lord, that
you would bless us through them. They are tokens of your love
for us as we are children of God. We pray for our brothers
and sisters who are watching on the internet and live stream.
And we pray for other churches, dear Lord, where the gospel is
preached, for there's so few today. And we know we do have
some, that you have your witness in this world. And as we go through
and approach the end, that it'll be fewer and fewer, but we know
that you're going to save your people because you're not willing
that any of them should perish, but they should all come to repentance.
We pray, dear Lord, that you would open doors for us of ministry,
witnessing the gospel, telling sinners about Christ, who he
is and what he did, why he did it, and where he is now. And
then as we open your word this morning here as a church body,
that you would feed us spiritually from your word, and that you
would bring us together, knit together in love, in the common
faith, in the worship, that it would bring us together and cause
us to grow in grace and in knowledge of Christ. And we pray these
things in His name and for His sake. Amen. Matthew chapter 9, beginning
at verse 14, just a few verses here because I wanted to deal
especially with the last couple of verses in this passage. I
want to just read the whole passage to start off with. It says, Then
came to him, that is to Christ, the disciples of John, John the
Baptist. And they said, Why do we and
the Pharisees fast off, but thy disciples fast not? Now, you
might read a passage like that, and you might say, well, these
are disciples of John, and there's the Pharisees. Are they together?
Well, no, they're not together. But, you know, Christ had dealt
with this issue of fasting. And I put in here, it's helpful
to look at the parallel passages in Mark and in Luke. Luke mentions
not only the fasting, but he mentions prayer with it because
the two went together. You know, a person who fasted.
Now, there was no requirement in the Law of Moses for fasting.
But fasting was an act of contrition. self-examination, and prayer
went with it, so Luke mentions that. And so, this is right after
the Lord had called Matthew to follow Him, and they had a feast
in Matthew's house, and you remember the Pharisees, the scribes and
the Pharisees asking, why does your master eat with publicans
and sinners? And of course, that great statement,
Christ said, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance. Thank God for His mercy. and His grace. Thank God that
He came to call sinners to repentance. That's what we are. Sinners who
have been brought to faith in Christ and repent, again, given
a gift. Oh, what a gift. The life of
Christ within us that's brought us to believe in Him and to rest
in Him and to turn away from everything else, everyone else,
but Him. He's our hope. As David said,
this is all my salvation. This is all my desire. That's
what faith and repentance is. And we're gonna look at this
in issues of faith and repentance. Is Christ all your salvation
or is part of it somewhere else? You see what I'm saying? And
when we examine ourselves in light of what we're commanded
to do in 2 Corinthians, when he says examine yourselves whether
you be in the faith, that's what we ought to be concerned with.
Is Christ the true Christ of the Bible? not a false Christ,
the counterfeit, but is the true Christ of the Bible, is he all
my salvation? Or is he just part of it? Now
those who preach and believe that Christ died for everybody
and that salvation is up to you, they cannot say, now they may
try to say it, but they cannot rightfully say that Christ is
all their salvation. Because if he died for people
in hell, as well as people in heaven, What makes the difference? Do you see that? And people say,
well, I never thought of it that way. Well, you better start thinking
about it that way because that's what the Bible teaches. And I
love that passage in 2 Samuel 23, David on his deathbed, this
is all my salvation and all my desire. Not only does he say,
this is all my salvation, but that's the way I want it to be.
Now, why would you want it to be that way? Because you know
yourself. Do you really know yourself?
Well, the Holy Spirit brings us to see ourselves as we really
are. I was talking to somebody the
other day about this, you know, that verse of scripture, I think
it was me, I think it was Robert I was talking to you about, in
Psalm 130, it says, Lord, if thou Lord shouldest mark iniquities,
who would stand? If God would charge me with my
sins, you see, that's why the doctrine of imputation is so
important. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not
iniquity. If God would charge me with my sins, I wouldn't stand. And somebody says, well, I've
tried to be moral, I've tried to be good, I've tried to be
religious, all of that, you see. And you ought to try to be moral
and good. You ought to shoot to be the
best person you can be. But still in your case, as in
my case, if the Lord would mark iniquities, you wouldn't stand,
I wouldn't stand. And that's the issue of this
faith and repentance. This is what's gonna be brought
out here. You cannot mix false religion with true salvation. And we're gonna see that. But
here they're talking about fasting and prayer, and Christ had dealt
with this back in the Sermon on the Mount, you remember. He
said, when you pray, pray this way, and don't do it to be seen
of men. You know, I've heard people say,
you know, when they want to draw attention to themselves in their
prayers, they say, well, that's my witness. Prayer is not our
witness. Prayer is a child of God communing
with the Father through the Son. That's what prayer is. Prayer
is faith and worship. That's what prayer is. We pray
unto God through Christ, our great high priest. That's not
our witness to the world. Because listen, the Muslims pray
three times a day. Buddhists pray, Hindus pray,
false Christians pray, they pray all the time, they have prayer
chains. You know what the purpose of a prayer chain is? Because
if they think they can get more people praying, that God will
respond to that prayer, and he'll either change his mind or give
in to what they, that's not the God of the Bible. Now I want
you to pray for me, my brothers and sisters, I want you to pray
for me. and you want us to pray for you, but it's not to gang
up on God and to try to get him to hear us because if we have
that many people praying, that's not the God of the Bible. God
uses prayer to help us, but it's a means by which he helps us. And that's okay, but it's an
act of humility. But prayer is not to be done
to be seen of men as if that's our witness. The gospel is our
witness. preaching the gospel, telling
sinners who Christ is and who they are. Why do I need such
a salvation by God's sovereign grace? Because I'm a sinner and
if salvation is on me, then I'm lost forever. Because I cannot
save myself, I cannot, listen, the Bible teaches us that we
by nature don't even want salvation God's way. So if we want it,
if we seek it, it's a work of God. And the Bible tells us that
we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works,
not because of. But these disciples here, they
came and they said, verse 14, why do we and the Pharisees fast
off, but thy disciples fast not? Now right away, you know they've
got the wrong idea of fasting. Because they're bragging about,
we fast often. And you know the Pharisees, they
fasted twice a week. You remember the Pharisee and
the publican? I fast twice a week. Somebody said it was on Monday
and Thursday that they fasted. But here's the thing about it.
Christ and his disciples were rejoicing over a sinner who has
been brought under the gospel. Matthew. This Matthew, this publican. Christ effectually called him
providentially under the gospel. And so this Matthew, here's an
object of God's redeeming, electing, eternal love. Here's one whom Christ would
be dying for, redeeming him from his sins. Put away his sins and
bring for him an everlasting righteousness of infinite value
by his one offering. Matthew was born again by the
Spirit. He was gonna be, or he was, he
was gonna be born again by the Spirit, drawn by invincible grace
to the Savior as he was taught the gospel. We know this, all
this is true. And here he's rejoicing. You
know, the Bible says there's more rejoicing in heaven over
one sinner that's brought to repentance than 99 that need
no repentance. So the Lord is saying, this is
time for rejoicing. He says in verse 15, and Jesus
said unto them, can the children of the bride chamber mourn as
long as the bridegroom is with them? Now he's the bridegroom.
The children of the bride chamber are his children, his people,
the ones whom God loved with an everlasting love, the ones
whom God gave to him before the foundation of the world and conditioned
all of their salvation on him. And so, can they mourn? But the
days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and
then they shall fast. Fasting here is equal to mourning. Now, these disciples of John,
you know, John the Baptist pointed sinners to Christ. That's all
he did. And so these disciples of John,
I'm convinced that they had not yet been taught the reality of
fasting and prayer. And they were still in the ignorance
of what they had been taught by the Pharisees. They weren't
with the Pharisees as far as salvation. But you know, even
a child of God, you know, Brother Mahan used to say it this way.
He said, it's like Lazarus, when he came out of the tomb, he had
those grave clothes on, and he had to take those grave clothes
off. And I think, I believe that when we first come to Christ,
we still have some of those grave clothes on, and they have to
be stripped off. Have to be taught right. That's what he was doing
in the Sermon on the Mount, teaching his disciples. He said, when
you fast, do it this way. Don't let people know what you're
doing. And don't go around all disheveled and all, you know,
making sure, you know, I want you to know what I'm doing for
the Lord. You know how people are. Don't
do that. When you pray, go into your closet.
Pray privately to the Father. And even when you sit down to
have a meal, yes, thank God for it, but do it in your mind. Don't
make a big spectacle of it. You see what I'm saying? And
that's what he's saying. So he had to teach them, and
he dealt with them gently here. He did. And so he says, what
he's saying here in verse 15, now, because the bridegroom is
with them, Matthew had been called unto the gospel, now's the time
to rejoice. It's not a time to mourn. I put
in your lesson here about the book of Ecclesiastes, you know,
Ecclesiastes talks about there's a day and a time for everything
in Ecclesiastes 3. There's a time to mourn, there's
a time to rejoice. All of that, you can read about
that. But here these Pharisees, you know, their fasting and their
praying was self-righteous. And you know, the Lord told,
this is why John the Baptist told, even John the Baptist,
now these are John's disciples. Remember what John the Baptist
told them? In Matthew chapter three, he said, old generation
of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come,
bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance. Now what
is that? Well, that's the fruits of God's
grace. That would be praying and fasting,
but not to be seen of men. And you remember Christ in Matthew
chapter six, he said, if you do that to be seen of men, you
have your reward. You want the testimony of men
about yourself? You want men to look upon you
and brag on you? Well, okay, they'll do it. You'll
find people who do it. Oh, that Bill, boy, he prays
every day. I had a man tell me, he said,
I pray every night. I mentioned to everybody. Why
are you bragging to me on prayer? What's that mean to me? Well,
a lot of people would say, well, boy, I know you're saved. Well,
my friend, people pray all the time who don't know the Lord
because it's natural for man, especially when they get in trouble.
But here with the Pharisees, fasting and prayer had become
dead works. You know what dead works are?
They're works that are aimed at making us right with God.
when we know that the only way to be made right with God is
the work of Christ, the blood of Christ, the righteousness
of Christ, and nothing else. So while these people were fasting
and praying and mourning and all of that, some people, they
say that that's holiness. I remember watching a movie one
time about, it's a historical movie about the Catholic church. And there was a sect of monks
who believed that it was a sin to laugh. And they really did. This is historical. Because they
say it distorts the face, it takes your mind off. A sin to
laugh? The Bible says a merry heart. Rejoice in the Lord. And Christ
is saying, now's the time for rejoicing. Now there's gonna
come a time for mourning. Now he's talking about when he
goes away. Look at it in verse 15 again.
Jesus said unto them, can the children of the bride chamber
mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will
come when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then
they shall fast. Now you know he's talking about
his going to the cross. He's dying for the sins of his
people. And they mourned. You know, the disciples were
sad. Anytime he talked about going to Jerusalem and dying,
they were sad because they were human. They didn't want him to
leave. Now he had taught them. You know,
he told Peter, he said, I've got to go. Remember when Peter
tried to stop him, you know, after that great confession that
comes later on in Matthew, thou art the Christ, the son of the
living God. And then he told him, and he said, flesh and blood
didn't reveal that to you, but my father, which is in heaven.
And then he said he had to go to Jerusalem, he had to be arrested,
had to suffer and bleed. And Peter said, oh, no, no, no.
And he said, get thee behind me, Satan. You know what we are,
just like Peter. We're walking enigmas. We have
such opposite desires within ourselves. And what you call
that doesn't matter to me. Some say new nature, old nature,
that's okay. We've got the Spirit of God within
us. He's given us a new spirit. That's
new life. New knowledge. I know things
now that I didn't know before, before God the Spirit opened
my eyes. New life. But we still have that
flesh, don't we? And that flesh just, you know,
a lot of times we talk about death and Some people talk about
what they call dying grace. You know, even a believer, up
until a certain point, we fear death. We fear the unknown. I'm not talking about, we know
what's coming after death. We know that because God's revealed
it to us. But we don't know how we're going to die, do we? We
don't know what's going to happen in that process. Whether I lay
in a bed suffering, begging for pain meds or whether I just lay
down my head and go to sleep, which is what we all want. Wouldn't
that be nice? Whatever day the Lord's appointed
for me to die, I'd just like to lay my head down on the pillow
and just go to sleep and never wake up in this life again, but
go on to be with the Lord. But it may be God's will for
me to hurt, to suffer, and to go out writhing in pain. I hope
not. I don't want that on anybody. But it happens, doesn't it? But
you know, the closer we get to death, it seems like the Lord
is pleased to give us what he calls dying grace. And we go
out knowing that the Lord, we're gonna wake up in paradise, like
he told the thief. Today, this day, you'll be with
me in paradise. And that's what we want. But
they mourned because of losing him. They were so protected providentially
by his presence, the sovereign Lord. Nobody was going to take
him and persecute him one second before or one second after it
was appointed by the Father. And we know that. And so when
he died, they mourned. And they gave up. You remember
when he died and they went back fishing? I think it was Peter
who said, well, I go fishing. It's almost like he's saying
it's all over. Well, I think he knew better.
But when Christ came back, then they rejoiced in his presence
there. And he revealed certain things
to them. And then he ascended unto the Father. There was probably
some mourning there. But then the Spirit descended
like a bolt of lightning from above at Pentecost. Peter preached
the gospel boldly, joyfully. And you see that joy coming through
in his letters, 1 and 2 Peter. So there's a time to mourn, there's
a time to be joyous. And Christ is telling them now's
the time to rejoice. The bridegroom's here. The bridegroom,
Christ has called one of his sheep into the fold. Matthew,
let's rejoice. It's not a time to mourn. Well,
listen to what he says at the close here in verse 16 and 17. He caps it off with this. No
man putteth a piece of new cloth. Now that's in your concordance
it might say a raw piece of cloth, unwrought, unworn. a new piece
of cloth into an old garment. For that which is put in to fill
it up taketh from the garment, and the rent or the tear is made
worse. So if you're gonna fix a garment
that's been torn, you're not gonna use an old piece of worn,
tattered cloth, you're gonna use a new piece. And then he
says in verse 17, neither do men put wine into old bottles,
new wine. new wine as it's fermenting and
as it's fresh, else the bottles break. And the wine runneth out
and the bottles perish, but they put new wine into new bottles
and both are preserved. Now what's his point here? These
two proverbial statements. They basically give us an idea
of what I say are three things, and I've got this in your lesson.
They were intended to show them that he, the Lord of glory, did
not come just simply to add something new to the old ideas of the Pharisees. He didn't come to enhance what
the Pharisees taught. What the Pharisees taught was
a lie. And preaching the gospel is not
adding truth to a lie. People talk about Calvinism and
Arminianism today. And I don't use those terms a
lot. Arminianism is basically freewillism. Calvinism is basically the sovereign
grace of God. But John Calvin and Jacob Arminius,
they believed a lot of things that is crazy stuff. So I don't
use that term. I'm not a Calvinist. I am a sovereign
grace preacher. But I don't follow Calvin, I
follow the gospel, I follow the Bible. But just to make a point,
salvation is not morphing from an Arminian to a Calvinist. Salvation is when God brings
a sinner to see that all of his works and efforts even religious,
no matter how sincere or dedicated he was, that before he knew Christ,
before she knew Christ and His righteousness and become cemented,
that it was all dead works. You can't add anything to dead
works. It's dead. So you can't put an
old piece of cloth into a new garment or a new piece of cloth
into an old garment. You can't do that. You can't
put new wine into old bottles. It's gotta be a new bottle and
new wine, and wine is normally a metaphor for the gospel. So that's one thing that's taught
there. Secondly, this also speaks of the difference between the
old covenant law and the new covenant gospel. The old covenant
law was not a covenant of salvation, whereby the new covenant is just
an addition to it. The old covenant law was a law
of condemnation. Look over at 2 Corinthians chapter
three. Listen to how the Apostle Paul
gives us a plain open contrast here. He says in verse five of 2 Corinthians
three, Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything
as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who hath made us able
ministers of the New Testament, the new covenant, and we're gonna
take the Lord's Supper today, the new covenant that is in the
body and the blood of Christ, not of the letter, but of the
spirit, for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. The
letter is the old covenant law. And it killeth, it was given
to show them their sinfulness and deservedness of death, but
the Spirit giveth life. But if the ministration of death,
that's what the old covenant was, written and engraved in
stones was glorious, so that the children of Israel could
not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of the
countenance, which glory was to be done away with, how shall
not the ministration of the Spirit be more glorious? For if the
ministration of condemnation be glory, that's the old covenant.
Much more is the ministration of righteousness exceeding glory,
that's the new covenant. So you can't just look at the
Bible like that and say, well, here's the old covenant and that
taught salvation by works. No, it didn't teach that at all.
It taught the impossibility of salvation by works. And that
was capped off in the blood of sacrifices that pictured salvation
by the grace of God in Christ. But then the third thing that
this metaphor about old bottles and new wine and all that, it
shows us that we cannot rightly maintain our profession of truth
in the true gospel within the parameters of an old profession
of faith in a false gospel. Some people say, well, I was
saved under the preaching of free willism, but now I've grown
into the doctrines of right. No, you can't put new wine into
old bottles. You can't put the true gospel
into the old bottle of a false profession. is not willing that any of his
people should perish, but that all of them should come to what? Repentance. What was my religion
before I heard the gospel? It was dead works. It was fruit
unto death. It was evil deeds. But now when
God shows us the glory of God in Christ, the beauty of that
blood that was shed that conquers our sins and brings us into the
kingdom, the righteousness that God has imputed to us, we see
that now all that we thought and all that we did under that
old profession was nothing but dead works, fruit unto death,
evil deeds. And that's new wine put into
a new bottle. That's a new piece of cloth and
a new garment. And it's all into the glory and
the praise of God's grace in Christ. Okay. Philip, I'll tell you in just
a moment.