YouTube video sermon
Matthew 9:14-17
Let me invite you to take your copy of God’s Word and turn with me to Matthew 9. We’re beginning a little 4-week Lenton series that I’m calling Spiritual Disciplines. Now, if you’re not familiar with what a spiritual discipline is, let me give you the answer that theologian and author, Donald Whitney, provides in his classic book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.
He says, “[S]piritual disciplines are those practices found in Scripture that promote spiritual growth among believers in the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are habits of devotion, habits of experiential Christianity that God’s people have practiced since biblical times.” In other words, spiritual disciplines include scripture reading, prayer, fasting, worship, serving, journaling, evangelism, silence/solitude, repentance, forgiveness, confession, and so forth. This morning, we’re going to consider fasting.
Unfortunately, most of the fasting that we do today is related to medical treatments. But that’s not always been the case. A manual of church instruction from near the end of the first century, the Didache, says, “Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on Mondays and Thursdays, but do your fast on Wednesdays and Fridays” (7:1). In other words, the early church sought to distance itself of the emptiness of fasting without losing the value of the practice.
Epiphanius, a bishop in Italy in the 5th century, said, “Who does not know that the fast of the fourth and sixth days of the week are observed by Christians throughout the world?” And a guy that most of us have heard about, a man named John Calvin had this to say about fasting:
“Let us say something about fasting, because many, for want of knowing its usefulness, undervalue its necessity, and some reject it as almost superfluous; while, on the other hand where the use of it is not well understood, it easily degenerates into superstition. Holy and legitimate fasting is directed to three ends; for we practice it either as a restraint on the flesh, to preserve it from licentiousness, or as a preparation for prayers and pious meditations, or as a testimony of our humiliation in the presence of God when we are desirous of confessing our guilt before him.” (Institutes, IV.12, 14, 15)
As we continue this season of Lent, I want to turn our attention to the words of Jesus on fasting. Does He teach us to fast? Or is it part of the old wineskins left over from the Old Testament that has no place in the new, free, celebrating people of God? And I’d like to conclude by challenging some of you to join me in fasting for the next several weeks. Let’s read Matthew 9:
14 Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?” 15 And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. 16 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. 17 Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
“Lord, what we know not, teach us; what we have not, give us; and what we are not, make us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Richard Foster, who wrote the book Celebration of Discipline, said, “[Jesus’ words in Matthew 9] are perhaps the most important in the New Testament on whether Christians should fast today.” So, let’s give close attention to this text and ask the Lord to teach us what we should know and what we should do in regard to fasting.
Why Didn’t Jesus’ Disciples Fast?
In Matthew 9:14 the disciples of John the Baptist came to Jesus and asked why His disciples didn’t fast? So, evidently Jesus’ disciples were not fasting while He was with them. And Jesus answered with a word picture. He says, “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they?”
With those words, Jesus teaches us two things: one is that fasting was (by and large) associated with mourning in that day. It was an expression of broken-heartedness and desperation, usually over sin or over some danger. It was something you did when things were not going the way you wanted them to. But that’s not the situation with the disciples of Jesus.
Here’s the second thing Jesus teaches: The Messiah has come and His coming is like the coming of a bridegroom to a wedding feast. It’s too good to mingle with fasting. So, Jesus was making a tremendous claim for Himself here. In the Old Testament, God had pictured Himself as the husband of His people Israel (Isaiah 62:4f.; Jeremiah 2:2; 3:20; Ezekiel 16:8; Hosea 2:19f.) and now the Son, the Messiah, the long-awaited One has come and He claims to be the Bridegroom. This is the kind of partially veiled claim Jesus made about His identity with God. If you had ears to hear, you could hear it.
This is so stunning and so glorious and so unexpected that Jesus says, “Look, you can’t fast now – not in this situation. It’s too happy and to spectacularly exhilarating. Fasting is for times of yearning and aching and longing. But the bridegroom of Israel is here.” After a thousand years of dreaming and longing and hoping and waiting, the bridegroom is here! So, the absence of fasting among the disciples was a witness to the presence of God in their midst.
So When Will They Fast?
But then Jesus said, “But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” That’s the key sentence: “Then they will fast.” When is He referring to?
Some have suggested that Jesus was referring ONLY to the several days between His death and resurrection. They would fast just for those days. But that’s very unlikely. For several reasons. One is that the early church fasted after the resurrection. For example, in Acts 13:1–3, we read, “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” And fasting is mentioned in other places in the New Testament (Acts 14:23; 2 Corinthians 6:5; 11:27). So, it can’t be just a few days.
Others have suggested that in Matthew 25:1–13 Jesus pictures His second coming as the arrival of the bridegroom. In other words, the Bridegroom is taken away until the second coming of Christ. Arthur Wallis takes this position in his book God’s Chosen Fast: “The time is now.” In essence, Jesus is saying, “Now, while I’m still here in your midst as the Bridegroom, you can’t fast, but I’m not going to remain with you in this fashion forever. There will come a time when I return to my Father in heaven. And during that time, you’ll fast.” Well, that time is now.
It’s true that Jesus is with us in the person of the Holy Spirit. But Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:8, “We [would] prefer to be absent from the body and at home with the Lord.” In other words, in this age there’s an ache, and a longing, a homesickness inside every Christian that Jesus is not here as fully and intimately and as powerfully and as gloriously as we want Him to be. And that’s why we fast.
A Patch of Unshrunk Cloth and New Wine
But then Jesus says something very crucial in verse 16–17. He says, “But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do men put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out, and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”
The patch of unshrunk cloth and the new wine represent the new reality that has come with Jesus. The kingdom of God is here. The Bridegroom has come. The Messiah is in our midst. And that’s not merely temporary. He’s not merely here and then gone. The kingdom of God didn’t come in Jesus and then just vanish out of the world.
Jesus died for our sins once for all. He rose from the dead once for all. The Spirit was sent into the world as the real presence of Jesus among us. The kingdom is the reigning power of Christ in the world subduing hearts to the king and creating a people who believe Him and serve Him. The Spirit of the Bridegroom is gathering and purifying a bride for Christ. All of that (and more) is the new wine.
Old Wineskins Can’t Contain the New Wine
And Jesus says, “The old wineskins can’t contain it.” What’s the old wineskin? Well, in the context, it seems to be fasting. It seems that fasting is what is meant by old wineskins. Remember, fasting was inherited from the Old Testament and it had been used as part of the Jewish system of relating to God. Now, Jesus says, the old wineskins of Judaism can’t contain the new wine.
So, what do we do? In verse 15 Jesus says that we will fast when the Bridegroom is gone. And in verse 17 He says that the old fasting cannot contain the new wine of the kingdom. What do we do?
New Wine Demands New Fasting
My answer is that the new wine demands new fasting. Years ago, I wrote in the margin of my Bible beside this text, “The new fasting is based on the mystery that the Bridegroom has come, not just will come. The new wine of His presence calls for new fasting.”
In other words, the yearning and longing and ache of the old fasting was not based on the glorious truth that the Messiah had come. Mourning over sin and yearning in danger was not based on the great finished work of the Redeemer and the great revelation of Himself and His grace in history. But now, the Bridegroom has come. In coming, He struck the decisive blow against sin and against Satan and against death.
The great, central, decisive act of salvation for us today is past, not future. And on the basis of that past work of the Bridegroom, nothing can ever be the same again. The wine is new. The blood is shed. The Lamb is slain. The punishment of or sins is executed. Death is defeated. The Bridegroom is risen. The Spirit is sent. The wine is new. And the old fasting mindset is simply not adequate.
What’s New About the New Fasting
What’s new about the fasting is that it rests on all this finished work of the Bridegroom. The yearning that we feel for revival or awakening or deliverance from corruption is not merely longing and aching. The first fruits of what we long for have already come. The down payment of what we yearn for is already paid. The fullness that we are longing for and fasting for has appeared in history and we have beheld His glory. It’s not merely future.
We have tasted the powers of the age to come, and our new fasting is not because we’re hungry for something we haven’t tasted, but because the new wine of Christ’s presence is so real and so satisfying. The newness of our fasting is this: its intensity comes not because we’ve never tasted the wine of Christ’s presence, but because we’ve tasted it so wonderfully by the Holy Spirit and we cannot now be satisfied until the consummation of joy arrives. We’ve got to have all that He promised. And as much now as possible.
So, I urge you to join in, not because you haven’t tasted the new wine of Christ’s presence, but because you have – and you long, with a deep joyful aching of your soul, to know more of His presence and power in our midst.
A Challenge to Fast
To that end, I want to challenge each of you to take one day (just one day) this week and work a fast into your daily schedule. I know that many of you can’t fast all day because of medications that you’re taking for various things. If that’s you, then I want you to consider fasting for one meal or consider fasting from something that isn’t food: maybe social media, maybe TV, maybe that cup of coffee in the morning – something that you can consciously give up for the purpose of praying to God or identifying with His suffering and
sacrifice.
Trust me; skipping coffee will help you appreciate the cross. It’s silly, I know, but you’ll be surprised how little you think about the agony of Jesus until you miss your coffee. Seriously, take those little moments of fasting, from whatever it is you’ve determined to abstain from, and meditate upon Jesus in the Garden, mediate upon how He felt in the Upper Room (knowing that He was going to be betrayed), think about the false accusations of the late-night trials, think about the scourging (oh, the scourging), think about the long and arduous walk down the Via Dolarosa (“the Way of Suffering”), mediate upon the hours Jesus was on the cross. That little spiritual discipline, as imperfectly and as inconsistently as you apply it, will nevertheless heighten your love for Christ and what He accomplished for you at Calvary.
To the rest of you, when you fast, when you skip that meal, when you take time away from the computer or the phone, I want you to offer prayers for specific people who you know don’t have a relationship with Jesus. And I also want you to pray that God would soften your own heart towards them – that He would give you the boldness and the courage and a creative and unique way to encourage them in the gospel. How cool would it be, if by our deliberate fasting and praying over these next several weeks, that on Easter we had a harvest of souls for the kingdom? If nothing else, hopefully, our hearts will be renewed and refreshed with the joy of our salvation. Let’s pray.
“Our Father and our God, You designed us in such a way that we might require food and water for daily life. And yet, in the midst of that need, You also call us to deepen and strengthen our faith by growing closer to You. Help us, we pray, in the coming week to take the time and discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness and holiness – that You might renew our faith and bring others to faith in Christ Jesus. Lord, as we turn our attention to Your table, would we receive the gift that You gave – Your body and blood – as a reminder that indeed the Bridegroom is coming again and we long for that day. For we offer this prayer in the name of Christ. Amen.”