I invite your attention back
to Matthew chapter 9. The title of my message this
morning is, No Mixture. No Mixture. Now this passage takes place
when our Lord is talking about new cloth on an old garment and
new wine in old bottles. takes place after our Lord has
disregarded and discounted the religion and theology of the
Pharisee. He has not set forth that there
was just a difference of opinion between the two. He said, you
don't count. I didn't come here for you. I came to call sinners unto repentance. He said that because the Pharisees
were astonished and appalled by the open spectacle of our
Lord not only calling Matthew, which was bad enough, a lowlife,
despised, money-grubbing publican, to be His disciple, but then
to publicly sit down and eat with Him and be joined with the
riffraff of unwashed society. It was just too much for their
sacred rectitude to consider. To them it was a spectacle when
they saw that. When they saw that, when they
saw it, they were amazed. Our Lord publicly helped them
out with their thinking. Openly He said unto them, you
fellows don't get it. Now think of who He's talking
to. He's not talking to a bunch of fellas that fell off a turnip
truck coming into Cherokee. He's talking to the brightest
and the best theologians of the day. I heard a priest this morning
on TV talking about the judgment that had been made by the ACLU
that part of the Ten Commandments should be removed, the ones that
mention the name of God. So I guess he's picking shoes.
But he was talking about right theology, and I thought, man,
you don't have a clue. You don't have a clue. Our Lord
said to these fellows, after he had called Matthew and sat
down to eat with him, and the worst of humanity sat down and
ate with him too. He said, don't you fellows know
that sick people need a doctor, but well people don't. At the pool of Siloam, where
the angels stirred the water, Only sick people had interest
in that, and only the partially sick could do anything about
it. The really, really sick and ruined could do nothing. The
whole need not a physician. Sick people do. Now you're making
reference to you fellas are whole. Y'all got all your ducks in a
row. You know exactly what your theology is. You feel like you
can command people. You do what you do to be seen
of men. You don't need anything. You're
fine. These people, This publican tax collector whom I've called
to be my disciple. These bunch of sinners and publicans
gathering around to eat with me and my disciple. They need
something. They need help. You fellas don't
need help. Preachers stand today and say,
everybody needs Christ. All you got to do is ask them.
Most people have no need of Him whatsoever. They're fine. So
if you're one of those persons this morning that I'm speaking
to, you don't have any need of Christ, I don't have anything for you
this morning, I can tell you that. So you can go ahead and go to
sleep and I'll wake you up when it's over. Our Lord told them in understandable
terms that all they did, everything they did, and all they didn't
do, and all their thinking amounted to nothing. To nothing. You want to get somebody upset,
talk to them like that. He told the brightest and the
best that religion had to offer the men who studied the scriptures,
for they thought in doing so there was evidence of their salvation,
that they just didn't get it. Many years ago, Bill Carver and
I had just become friends. He had started to come over here
a little bit. He's still with Jack James over in Waynesville.
Those fellas were big on the spirit, what they called the
spirit, when you got crying and carrying on, you know, you remember,
don't you? One night, one morning, Bill called me and told me, he
said, I've been in the trailer all night, praying and crying,
all night long. And I said, well, how about that?
He said, if I'd had a shotgun, I'd have shot you right there.
I'd be so mad. That's what our Lord said. Don't
you know you're eating with a bunch of Republicans and sinners? Don't
you? Well, how about that? How about
that? As to their thoughts of God and
how He saves sinners, they were clueless. They were absolutely
clueless. They were as clueless as a bag
of hair. Then in verse 14, an all too predictable and common
thing happened. Verse 14 says, then came to him
the disciples of John. Now, I believe they were privy
to what was going on between him and the Pharisees at this
time, because they grouped themselves in with the Pharisees, the disciples
of John did, when he talked to them. Then came the disciples
of John to him. Why do we and the Pharisees? Why do we and the Pharisees?
Now, John called the Pharisees a bunch of snakes and vipers,
didn't he? He told them they were going to hell, there was
no hope for them. But yet his disciples, because they hear
something from Christ that disturbs them, that disturbs their own
idea about their sanctity, they group themselves in with the
Pharisees and says, why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but
our disciples fast not? Our Lord came not with peace
but a sword and was approached by the disciples of John the
Baptist who raised a religious red flag concerning what they
viewed by their life as evidence that they were indeed children
of God. That was their view. Why do we
and the Pharisees? They evidently agreed with John
the Baptist that the Pharisees were snakes and vipers, but to
totally discount their denying themselves food as a righteous
act, an act that they were willing to publicly display, was surely
worthy of attention and should not be discounted. These folks,
we pray, we fast all the time. Often. When people see us, they
know we've been fasting. We've got a sad look and a sad
countenance on our face. They know we've been starving
ourselves for the righteous cause. And so did the Pharisees. Of
course, the Pharisees were fat cats. They kind of remind me
of the Politburo during the Cold War. All the Russians were skinny,
except for them. They were fat cats, but they
talked like they were of the people. These fellows were in
effect putting themselves forward as different from the do-nothing
vagabonds that sat at the feet of Christ and counting themselves
with those who have just opposed Christ and those who have just
been put out of business by Christ, but they're gathering with them.
And I know that Christ's sheep will not follow a stranger. I
know this. And I know that God's saints
have unction from the Holy One and cannot be deceived concerning
the Gospel. But don't ever think for a moment
that you have come so far that you cannot be led astray by some
winning personality, some obviously righteous person who appears
to be a good person with all the right credentials. People
do it all the time. You can be swayed. your hope
is that God will keep you, not that you keep yourself. It ain't
your rectitude and your piety, it's God's grace that keeps you. The believer may fall under the
influence of wicked men, thinking that they are fine, upstanding
citizens. I have no doubt that those in
Galatia who left the who left the table of the Gentiles who
had been saved by grace and went and joined up with the Judaizers
did so because they felt the Judaizers had something tangible
that would give evidence that they were really children of
God. People want that. And people who appear that way,
people who appear to have some sort of piety A lot of times people gravitate
to them, to their own demise, but they gravitate to them anyway.
And this is what happened to John the Baptist. When the Pharisees
were put down, you remember the disciples had difficulty with
this, themselves. When our Lord, in another place,
set the Pharisees in their place, the disciples said, don't you
know you've offended them? You don't want to offend these
people. You've offended them. The Lord said they're nothing.
They're blind leading the blind. Leave them alone. Don't even
pay no attention to what they're saying. Sometimes believers are
hoodwinked by those who ooze sincerity, by whose holy behavior
draw men's eyes to themselves and take their minds away from
Christ. Believers can get sidetracked
by meaningless issues. Every believer can. That is exactly
what happened here, I believe, with John's disciples. They knew
that Christ was the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the
world. Their preacher had told them so. Their preacher said,
He must increase and I must decrease. But they gave ear to the Pharisees
with whom they had a common practice of religious ceremonial fasting. And basically for us, that concept
is denying yourself something. Not denying yourself, which is
what you're supposed to do, your self. Denying you that you have
anything to do with anything and have any part in anything.
That's denying yourself. But they denied themselves things
and therefore they felt like they were giving up something
for Jesus. Kind of like Lent after Mardi
Gras. People give up what they love
supposedly for a week and that comes off for a month or however
long they do it as holiness, as righteousness. I read of one
preacher in Detroit. They asked him what he was going
to give up for Lent. One preacher said, I'm going to give up reading
the Bible. They said, why? He said, because I love the Bible
so much. I'm going to give up reading it as a sacrifice to
Jesus. Now how stupid is that? But he
was dead serious. He was dead serious. They, like
the Pharisee, had set aside the weightier matters of redemption,
grace, mercy, and judgment, and forgiveness, and they had opted
instead for more visible stuff. Stuff that can be seen. Stuff
designed to immediately gratify the religious appetites in an
open and therefore obvious display of holiness. Because that's what
they thought of it. They looked at these people sitting at the
feet of Christ. His disciples surrounding him,
this sorry tax collector who cheated the people, not only
took taxes for the government of Rome, but took a cut for himself. And they looked at all these
sinners sitting around at feet and they said, you know, these
fellows aren't doing anything. They're just sitting there. They're
just sitting there. They're not doing anything. We
fast off. Us and the Pharisees both. But
why don't your disciples fast? And the words of our Savior make
it clear that there is no reason for fasting
as the Pharisees did. And I say to you, the same goes
today. No reason for that. There may
be occasions when men fast in times of great strain and trial.
Moses and Elijah and the Lord Himself fasted, but it was as
a result of something, not a scheduled activity. With Christ, there
are no scheduled activities. We live and breathe and move
and have our being in Him. With the Pharisees, fasting had
become a common publicly advertised ceremony. It was an outward show
of supposed inward holiness, piety and devotion. It was done
for the sole purpose of obtaining the praises of men. Our Lord,
read Matthew chapter 23. The entire chapter is about what
religious men do and why they do it. They do it to be seen
of men. They want men to pay attention
to them, not to Christ, not even to God. They want them to pay
attention to them and exalt them for their holiness and their
goodness. Our Lord always dealt with this
matter of fasting as a private thing. He said that in Matthew
chapter 6 and insisted that when men do that they must do it in
secret and then wash their face and come out of the closet with
a smile so nobody will know that they fasted. Now that's just
opposite of what the Pharisees did. Believers are never to make
a show of religion. John's disciples seem to have
placed great emphasis upon religious custom and tradition. Perhaps
they did so under the tutelage of John the Baptist, as he perhaps
prayed and fasted for the revelation of the one who he was the forerunner
of, or perhaps for patience in dealing with the intractable
religion that he faced every day with these Pharisees. It
may have been proper. Our Lord says to John's disciples,
for the friend of the bridegroom and his disciples to fast before
the appearance of Christ is reasonable. It's reasonable. But our Lord
tells these disciples of John, the seekers of the Messiah, that
for the children of God to mourn when Christ was standing right
in front of them was stupid. It was just stupid. I know men
talk about these things. I remember many years ago, I
was at Straight Fork Baptist Church. Somebody invited me up
to Revival. I think it was the last one I went to. And that
was about 30 years ago. About 30 years ago. And this
fella, a great, corpulent preacher, and he was loaded, buddy. The
fat belonged to the Lord. He certainly belonged to the
Lord. He was huge. And he was talking about fasting
for 30 days. And I thought, when? When did
you do that? But the fact that he was talking
about it, the fact that he brought it up meant that we were to look
to him and look at him as an example. Our Lord said, if you've
got Christ, you don't need to fast. You've got Christ, you
don't need these ceremonies. You don't need them at all. You
shouldn't be mourning when you should be rejoicing. Our Lord
supports this teaching with some proverbial sayings, sayings that
are common to the day in which He lived and well understood
by those who heard Him. Should we fast, which was an
Old Testament principle and more of a tradition than a law, in
the Talmud but not in the Bible, should we fast, continue to fast,
when Christ has come? So we continue that old stuff
when Christ is here? Is that what we're to do? And
that's what he's addressing here. He says it this way, to require
his disciples to fast when the bridegroom was with them was
as ludicrous as sewing a piece of new cloth on an old garment. And not only that, it was like
putting new wine in old bottles. That's the proverb he uses. That's
a proverbial statement. Proverbial sayings are like parables.
They may apply to many different things, but they always teach
a single lesson. We have many proverbs. A stitch in time saves
nine. That may be applied to a thousand
things, but it always means the same thing. We say a bird in
the hand is worth two in the bush. That may be applied to
a thousand things, but it always means one thing. It always means
one thing. It means to be content with what
you have. It means having is better than wishing. That's what
it means. Having is better than wishing. Verses 16 and 17, our Lord says,
No man putteth a piece of new cloth into an old garment, For
that which is put in to fill it, to fill it up taketh from
the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put
new wine in old bottles, else the bottles break, and the wine
runneth out, and the bottles perish. But they put new wine
in new bottles, and both are preserved. Now these words may
be applied to many things, but the meaning is always the same.
That's what I'm good at. This proverbial the meaning is
always the same whether it's applied to the old man or the
new man The application is the same the old covenant or the
new covenant The old paths of the new paths the old things
of the new things the old world or the new world The meaning
is essentially this we must never Must never Try to mix things
that do not mix It's that simple Never. Don't mix things that
don't mix. Many great evils have risen in
the church and could have been avoided if the lesson of these
Proverbs had simply been heeded throughout the ages. The failures
of the Reformation and the return of many Reformed denominations
to the elements of the papacy are due to this mixture. They
can't let go of this stuff. Well, preacher, you're saying
we don't have anything to do with the Ten Commandments? We don't have anything
to do with the old ceremonial rites. No more fasting, things
like that. No more openly scheduling prayer
so men can know we're praying. We don't have anything to do
with it. That's what I'm saying. I don't know how much clearer you can
get. That's taking an old piece of cloth and trying to put it
into a new garment. Or a new piece of cloth into
an old garment. Or putting new wine in old bottles. Many of
the evils existing in the church today could have been corrected
if the lesson had been followed. Don't do this. No mixture. And I mean no mixture. And our
Lord makes this so in our studies of the Old Testament, beginning
with Genesis all the way through to where we're at now in 1 Kings,
the same principle applied. No mixture, none whatsoever of
grace in works. No mixture of the law and grace
or no mixture of the Old Covenant. And the new is simply no mixture.
The Old Covenant no longer is in force. The Old Testament is
enforced because it teaches us of Christ, but the Old Covenant,
which was a conditional covenant based upon your obedience whether
or not you receive blessing, that no longer exists. If you're a child of God, you
can do nothing to get blessed by God. If you're a child of
God, you can't do something to get blessed by God. Because if
you're a child of God, you have already have all spiritual blessings
in Jesus Christ. You got them all. Now if you
got them all, you don't need no more. And if you're looking
for something, you're looking for something other than what
you have. Never mix the idea of doing and
gaining blessing with the true principle that you already have
all things in Jesus Christ. Don't mix those two. That's not
hard to understand, is it? That's the principles that are
set forth. In spiritual matters, we must never attempt to mix
things that simply do not belong together. Does law and grace
belong together? No. Some say that we've got to
have a little modicum of law in with our grace because people
need a rule to live by. They've got a rule to live by
if they're a child of God and that rule is, God forbid that
I should glory save in the cross of Christ by whom the world is
crucified unto me and I'm crucified unto the world. That's our rule.
What kind of rule is that? It's the only rule we've got.
He's the only one. Look over at Deuteronomy 22.
I remember when I was a young man reading these verses and
wondering, what's that got to do with anything? There are some people who still
try to apply this today in its natural sense. Our Lord said
this in Deuteronomy 22. Verse 9, he says, Thou shalt
not sow thy vineyard with diverse seeds, differing seeds, lest
the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown and the fruit of thy
vineyard be defiled. Thou shalt not plow with an ox
and an ass together. Well, couldn't they do the work?
I expect. I don't know. They might not
like each other. I'm not sure. But the Lord says
don't do that. Thou shalt not wear a garment
of diverse sorts. As of woolen and linen together,
don't do that. So what's that got to do with anything? Thou
shalt not make thee fringes upon the four corners of thy vesture
wherewith thou cover'st thyself, because that's supposed to be
a plain garment, you're not supposed to put fringes on. What was he talking about? Was he talking about wool and
linen? Was he talking about oxen and asses? Was he talking about
damn diverse seeds? Was he talking about fringes
on garments? What was he talking about? Don't mix stuff that don't
belong together. That's what he's talking about.
Just as under the Mosaic Law, the mixture of linen and wool
and the plowing of an ox and an ass together were prohibited,
so in the Gospel Age, we are not to mix and must never try
to mix law and grace, flesh and spirit, Christ and the world,
or carnal ordinances with spiritual worship. We're just not to do
that. Not to do that. We don't have a lamp stand in
here. We don't have an Ark of the Covenant. We don't hang a
menorah. We don't do any of that stuff. We don't have crosses
and symbols and religious doodads that would make people think
that they're religious because they see it. We don't have that
stuff. Why? You know, you mix it with that which cannot be
seen, which is spiritual, faith which cannot be seen. The problem
at Galatia was that they tried to put the old wine of mosaic
laws and the ceremonies into the new bottle of grace. And
Paul said, you despise the grace of God by doing that. You despise
it and frustrate it. The Judaizers of Galatia were
trying to mix Judaism and Christianity. You can't do that. And they're
trying to do that today. They're trying to do that today.
They tried to hold to the law and the gospel. They wanted both
Moses and Christ, and you can't have them both. Moses is dead. His body is hid outside the promised
land. God did that. So if you want
Moses, you're going to have to leave the promised land to start
with. You're going to have to leave Emmanuel's land to find
him. And I ain't wanting to leave Emmanuel's land. But you're going
to have to leave Emmanuel's land to find him and you're going
to have to search all your life because God hid him and you ain't going
to find him. That's the law. There ain't no law in the promised
land save the law of grace. They tried to mix physical circumcision
with spiritual circumcision. When physical circumcision only
taught spiritual circumcision. That's all it taught. That's
all it taught. When was circumcision a law? It later became a law at Sinai.
It was added to the laws of Sinai. But was it a law? To one man. Circumcise your children as a
token that you belong to me. Now that circumcision was of
the flesh. But Paul talks in Romans chapter 4 of the circumcision
becoming uncircumcision. How can that be? Because the
circumcision didn't have to do with the flesh, it had to do
with the heart. The heart. That's what our Lord said through
Paul about true Israel. True Israel is the church of
the living God. He is a Jew who is not a Jew outwardly in the
circumcision of the flesh, but a Jew inwardly in the circumcision
of the heart as praises of God and not of men. Such mixture
can never take place. It's as simple as that. The plainness
and the beauty of the true Christian faith is that it has no joke
to it. There's nothing added. It's just
one thing and that is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Either we
are under the law or we are free from the law. And when I mean
free, I mean free. You have nothing to do with the
law or you have something to do with the law, one or the other.
And the child of God has nothing to do with the law. To take the
law into your life, or try to put yourself under the law as
a rule of life, or for righteousness, justification, sanctification,
peace before God, is to put that new patch on an old rag. It's to put new wine in old bottles.
One or the other. That you're yea be yea, or you're
nay be nay. Everything else is evil, the
Lord said. It cannot Be both. Don't be brought again into bondage. Stand fast, therefore, in the
liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free. And be not brought
again under the yoke of bondage, it says. If grace is grace, then
it has nothing to do with works. If works is works, then it has
nothing to do with grace. In the early church, many tried
to mix the philosophies and religions and customs of the pagan world
with the gospel of Christ. It wasn't long after our Lord
left this earth that the Greek philosophers that preceded Him began to have an influence in
the church. Platonic dualism, where men felt that they had
a side of them that was perfect and never did anything wrong.
And then there was the flesh side that didn't do anything
but wrong. That's what they thought. I don't see that in myself personally.
I see myself with a spirit and a carnal nature. But I don't
know which is which, do you? I mean, really. If you do, that's
suspect, really. You think, well, this is spiritual.
Is it? Well, this is carnal. Is it?
They are contrary to each other and you can never know what you
are doing. Paul said, I don't know what I'm doing. But I know
this, that when I would do good, evil is present with me. That's the issue. That's the
issue. One thing. One thing only, no
mixture whatsoever. Nothing is new under the sun.
We know that in the earliest days after the apostles. And
even with the apostles, while the apostles were living, there
were those who attempted to make the gospel palatable to the world
by mixing religious customs, traditions, opinions of paganism
with the gospel of Christ. Paul had to deal with those things.
The result was disastrous then, and it's still disastrous today.
But it's big business, and it goes along well with people,
and it fills churches, because it works. It works until the
bottle busts, until the rag is rent. That's coming. But until
that time, it will work. The result was disastrous. Compromise
over the years paved the road to Romanism Today men are laying
the road back to Rome as fast as possible you look at the excuse
me of the so-called What we do Ref reformers whether it be reformed
Presbyterian or reform badness or reform whatever No matter
who they are. They're working their way back
to Rome They're working their way back to Rome The Lutherans
and the Roman Catholics in Germany are having mass together now. Why? Because they want to get
back to Rome. Their idea was to reform Rome. I don't want
to reform Rome. I think it's irreformable if
there is such a word. Rome ain't going to be reformed.
I'm looking for a new Jerusalem. I don't give a hoot about Rome.
Don't give a hoot about Rome. Today men are laying that road
back to Rome. Baptist churches. practice things
that are pagan. Pagan. They have things that
are supposed to be representative of Christ, whether it be crosses
or things like that that people can relate to. They hold up They
had pictures of Jesus supposedly. It looked like Wild Bill Hickok
or some really pale Caucasian guy. Christ was a Jew. Probably
had black curly hair and a big nose. I don't know. If you're
Jewish, I apologize for that politically incorrect statement. The success of many so-called
churches in the world today is due to their ability to mix that
which our Lord prohibits to be mixed. They have a way of doing
it. There simply cannot be any mixture,
none whatsoever of flesh and spirit or works and grace in
the worship and service of our Lord. Now we know it's best no
matter how hard we try. There's enough of us in the worship
of Christ to discount it altogether as having any merit on its own.
We know that. But we know what is right. And that is the gospel
of Jesus Christ. Paul said, we are the circumcision
which worship God in the spirit. Spiritual worship. What does
that mean? That means our worship, you can't see any religious activity
in it. You can't pinpoint and say, well,
there's some evidence. Because y'all are just sitting
here like lumps on a log while I'm up here talking. What kind
of worship is that? Why aren't y'all doing this?
Why aren't y'all jumping up and down? Why aren't you speaking
in tongues? Because that's a mixture of old and new. The old apostolic
way, which ended in about AD 70, or the gospel, one or the
other. Ceremonialism. All those things. Religious symbols. Angels. People
big on angels. Crosses. Pictures of Jesus. The
law. Sabbath keeping. Self-help is
a big deal today. Keeping the feasts and new moons
and ceremonialism and genuflecting and kneeling and sanctimonious
posturing and religious showmanship are the order of the day. That
goes on everywhere. But they are deadly. They are
deadly and dastardly concoction which will benefit neither the
old or the new. They won't. Do not sew the righteousness
of Christ on the garment of your personal merit to patch up the holes therein.
And your personal merit is full of holes. Do not drink the wine
of communion mixed with the wine of fornication of Babylon. Do
not put new wine in old bottles. The message is simple. It's been
that way since our Lord came into this world. He said, see
that temple? Boy, that's a fine piece of architecture
there. Tear it down and I'll raise it
up in three days. Tear it down. What? That's our
temple. But he wasn't talking about that,
was he? He was talking about his body being resurrected. Spiritual
versus natural. 1 Corinthians 5 says, it says,
Purge out therefore the old leaven. Purge it out that ye may be anew
loved. As you are unleavened, you are
already unleavened. For even Christ, our Passover,
is sacrifice for us. 2 Corinthians 5.17 says, Therefore,
if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are
passed away. Behold, all things are become new. What's that talking
about? And I used to drink and smoke and chew and mess around
with folks who do. I don't do that no more. I'm
a new creature. That ain't what that means. That means everything
practiced under the old covenant is gone. done with, and everything now
in Christ is brand new. Our Lord looked at those who
held on to tradition, even those who had been fooled and faked
by the Pharisees into thinking that they were doing something
that was righteous, and said, all you're doing is putting a
new patch on an old rag that's going to tear. All you're doing
is putting new wine in an old bottle and the bottle's going
to bust. There ain't no way it's going to turn out well. The thing
is this, I said this morning in this morning's Sunday school
lesson, the minute, the second you've
got anything, no matter what it is, that takes your eyes off
Christ, you're in trouble. The minute. And we ought to, as a church
of the living God, at least endeavor our best never to put something
in between Christ and His people. Never to do something that will
bring attention to ourselves and not to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the only way to do that is to declare it's all in Christ
and nowhere else. Father, bless us to understand
and pray in Christ's name. Amen.