Just take your Bibles and turn with me in them first to Isaiah 58, beginning at verse 3. It's found on page 785. Isaiah 58. Children, as we read this, we're going to read a lot about fasting. Fasting. This chapter has quite a bit about that. Isaiah 58, beginning at verse 3. People of God, hear now God's holy word. Why have we fasted? And you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves and you take no knowledge of it? Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast and a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house? When you see the naked, to cover him and not to hide yourself from your own flesh. Then shall your light break forth like the dawn and your healing shall spring up speedily. Your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call and the Lord will answer and you shall cry and he will say, here I am. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong. You shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. and your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations. You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in. We won't read it, but those last two verses deal especially with the Sabbath day. We're not dealing with that now. Let's turn to the New Testament, to Acts 13. We'll read verses 1-3. It's found on page 1172. Acts 13. Now, there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaan, a lifelong friend of Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. 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. Let us turn to Matthew chapter 9. We'll read verses 14-17. Those verses are also our text. Page 1034, Matthew 9, verses 14-17. Then the disciples of John came to him, that is Jesus, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? 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. 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. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst, the wine is spilled, the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved. As far as the reading of God's Holy Word in congregation, we read three passages here and all of them deal with fasting. Well, some time ago we considered that, fasting, both as a congregation and through this sermon series through Matthew. What comes to your mind though? What comes to many people's mind when they think of fasting? Maybe you think of some political figure in prison going on a fast. Or maybe you think of something a monk does. Or maybe a spiritual person does. Maybe you do. Is it good to fast? Well, we'll say now, yes, it is good to fast. Well, then why and how and when should we fast? Again, we saw back in Matthew 6, verse 16, Jesus teaching on the Sermon on the Mount about fasting. But it comes up again in a different context. So it has before us fasting. And from it I proclaim to you that Jesus brings feasting in place of fasting. Jesus brings feasting in place of fasting. And first we consider verse 14, an old reason for fasting. Before we consider the question, we should notice it's not the teachers of the law, it's not the scribes, it's not the Pharisees who ask this question of Jesus or of his disciples. It's John's disciples. John the Baptist's disciples. Verse 14, Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? It seems to be a sincere question. Not one intended to trap Jesus or to condemn Jesus. Yes, Jesus was opposed by many religious leaders. But also, Jesus was not understood by many. By many faithful. Old Covenant saints. Because who Jesus is, what He came to do was unique. Here is the Son of God come in the flesh. And fallen man does not naturally understand Him. While the coming and the work of the Messiah were foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures, we can even see it in the Isaiah 58 passage we read. When the reality came before the church, Many saints had difficulty grasping all that was involved, even John the Baptist. Well, even today. The New Covenant Scriptures, they've been delivered. We've been studying them as a church 2,000 years. Perhaps you as a believer, many years, 20, 40, 60, 100 years. We're still seeing more and more of the depth of God's wisdom in Christ, aren't we? So if we're still learning today, How much more would there be confusion by sincere saints, by these disciples of John? I'm speaking as a pastor. Jesus and the Bible are still not understood by many today. I myself, I still grow in understanding. We often come to Jesus, we often come to the Bible with our own understanding of things, our own questions, our own concerns, rather than, Lord, what do you say? submitting to who He is, how He has revealed Himself in the Bible, His instruction. So these disciples of John come. Now, they don't come spreading rumors about Jesus. They don't go around, again, questioning, rebuking Jesus' practice. They don't gossip about Him. They go directly to Jesus. And they ask, straight to Him, truly desiring to know why. Why do we and the disciples fast, but your disciples do not? It doesn't make sense. Well, what is it about fasting? This fasting about which they ask. In the Law of Moses, there was only one time per year when fasting was required. The Day of Atonement. You can read of that in Leviticus 23, especially verses 27-32. Leviticus 23, where the church is told to afflict Themselves and we understand that and it seems what we know the Jews understood that is partly fasting Afflict themselves now surely Jesus obeyed Moses law there surely he fasted at that time. So the question probably doesn't refer to that In fact if we think in context, what did we just consider last time? About Jesus calling Matthew. Where was Jesus? Well, he reclined at table verse 10 in the house. It was a feast and You just come from feasting. And so probably it comes in that context even. Now the Pharisees and apparently John's disciples fasted many times, perhaps as often as twice a week. Now, that wasn't required by Moses' law, but it seems it was generally understood then as an act of piety that would be expected of someone who was serious about spirituality. Jesus was a great teacher. John, the disciples following John, they would have been pointed to Jesus. Why then doesn't this great spiritual leader, this teacher, lead his disciples in the spiritual discipline of fasting? Again, what is fasting? Well, fasting simply put is giving up something that's lawful. In this case, fasting meant not eating food. even though they were allowed to. Not talking about pork or unclean things, but clean food. Now, saints today, when we speak of fasting, it's not only food, but we might fast from television watching, or fast from the internet, or your smartphone, or social media. But fasting especially speaks to food, not eating food for a certain time. But there was more to this fasting the disciples of John and the Pharisees would do It seems there's an element of mourning. And Jesus even brings that out from verse 15. Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? Our reading from Isaiah 58, verse 3 especially, the idea of humbling oneself. Verse 5, spreading sackcloth. That was a sign of mourning, grieving. Fasting in the Old Testament was depriving oneself of food and then also along with that mourning, grieving. And so fasting is the opposite of feasting, which again Jesus just did in verse 10. Feasting is having a good time, a merry time around a table of food. Think of a wedding feast, as Jesus brings out. But this religious fasting also involved mourning. Now why would someone then refrain from eating? Why would they mourn? What's going on there? Again, not just the visible practice, but deeper. In the Old Covenant, there would be a great reason to fast and to mourn. Why? Because of sin. Sin had not yet been paid for. God often disciplined the Church for their sins against Him. And the Old Covenant Church, in response to that discipline, or if perhaps discipline had not yet come, but they were grieved over their sin, the Church would fast and mourn. And that's especially what fasting and mourning pointed to. A Savior is needed. Someone to remove sin, to remove its effects. Someone to undo the punishment God sends because of sin. Someone to restore us to wholeness, to righteousness, to fellowship with God. Our Isaiah passage brings that out. The right way to fast in that aspect was to help those in need and in so doing to reflect a Savior. albeit in our actions an earthly Savior, but we reflect the Savior. Isaiah 58 looked ahead to the Savior, the Christ. And that is the great need of man after Adam's fall into sin. That's your need and my need to be reconciled to God. All other needs come behind that one. fasting, depriving oneself of food, not meeting the bodily need or want for food. That was especially an Old Covenant way of pointing out how desperate we need to have our sins removed and be made right with God. Now perhaps not everyone understood fasting that way. Obviously many people in Isaiah's time did not. Because they just went through the motions of fasting and thought, well, this is something I do that God rewards me. Again, we read Isaiah 58. Why have we fasted and you have not heard? It seemed like they thought it was some ritual that they could use to put God in their debt, some ceremony that showed how religious they were and how they did not deserve punishment. It's the opposite. And so we can imagine that's similar with the Pharisees and their followers. Because we know from other places, Pharisees got it wrong at core. They thought they were righteous, but they weren't. And so little would they know that by their own very fasting and mourning, they were testifying to their own sin, testifying they deserve punishment for their sins, instead of saying, look how righteous I am. You see, the Pharisees twisted these ceremonies of the law, not pointing out their sin, but supposedly pointing out their righteousness. But with John's disciples, we can think they had a right understanding of fasting. Not legalism, self-righteousness like the Pharisees, but true fasting out of mourning for sin. We know John preached a message of repentance, didn't he? So we can assume that the disciples of John fasted rightly. But it was still fasting, even as John was the greatest of man, greatest of the Old Covenant prophets in that sense, it was still fasting in the Old Covenant. fasting and mourning because our sins are exposed. That was especially the reason for fasting. The Old Covenant reason for fasting. Now with Jesus coming, though, the reason disappears. That reason. And so we come to, in our second point, feasting. The reason to feast now. Verse 15, the first part. Now before you read that, children, what makes your birthday so special? Yes, you receive presents properly, but what else? Often you have a birthday cake, maybe a birthday meal, maybe you have friends over, family over. You celebrate, don't you? You're not at your birthday meal crying and weeping and sad. No, of course not. It's a happy time, usually. It's a time to feast, not to fast. So it is spiritually with the coming of Jesus, the coming of the Messiah. Jesus is the reason to feast now, who He is, what He has come, what He has done. Jesus is the son of God and he came to save us from our sins from God's punishment upon us because of our sin verse 15 and Jesus said to them Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? So Jesus here is speaking of himself as the bridegroom. That was not a common title used of the Messiah but if you remember back to John the Baptist Gospel account of John John compared himself to the friend of the bridegroom and these are John's disciples coming. John 3 verse 29. Obviously a wedding is important more even than celebrating a birthday. Children you might not understand that now but you grow older you'll see that the bridegroom is important. And speaking of himself as the bridegroom brings out that Jesus thought of himself as someone extremely special. Jesus is the son of God. Now again, children, each one of you is special. You're made in the image of God. But we shouldn't speak of ourselves in certain ways. We aren't certain things. We shouldn't boast about us being the Son of God. We're just creatures, sinful people at that. But with Jesus, He is God the Son. He is the Messiah. He is unique. He is special. And it is okay, it is fitting for Jesus to speak of Himself in this way as the Bridegroom. Now we think, this morning, it would be immodest, that is, it would draw attention to oneself for a man to come into our church service here all dressed in a fancy tuxedo, right? Or women, if you came in in your wedding dresses, that might be fine on a Wednesday night, that's fine then. But for church to come dressed in your wedding dress, to come down, or other fancy dresses like that, that would be immodest, wouldn't it? Draw undue attention. But it would not be wrong if you come dressed that way and it's your wedding day and you're the groom. You're the bride. Well how much more so with Jesus. He's the son of God and his presence among us means something wonderful at that time is happening from our perspective has happened. We are at a special time in the history of the world. Now, we enjoy weddings. We look forward to weddings. They mark a turning point in the life of the people getting married. In fact, other than birth, death, and events related to salvation, the wedding is the most important event in someone's earthly life. It's certainly the event for which we dress up the most, and perhaps spend the most, and celebrate the most. Jesus brings before us that because of who He is, the Bridegroom, the Son of God, something unique, something wonderful is about to happen. Something especially the Bridegroom in relation to fasting. He chooses that specifically, purposely. There's a wedding. When God and man are united together in intimate fellowship. And that's reason to feast. A wedding is a time of feasting because a man and a woman are joined together in covenant, aren't they? For the rest of their life on earth, a close bond, a unique fellowship is formed. Human love comes to its fullest expression in a marriage. And the wedding marks the beginning of that marriage. It creates that marriage, doesn't it? Well, similar with Christ's work on earth. Now, God, we saw already with Abraham, the covenant of grace, even with Adam back, the promise, Genesis 3. But with Jesus coming, there's something new and amazing. God has taken upon Himself our human nature. He is united in one person, two natures, God and man. There is intimate communion, but even more, the Son of God, by His suffering and His death on the cross, Jesus paid for our sins. He has reconciled sinners to God. Again, apart from Jesus, our sins, we must answer for our sins. And God is angry with the wicked every day. And as a just judge, God punishes sin and sinners in this life and in the life to come. We need to have our sins removed, forgiven. We need to have God's wrath removed from us. We need to be rescued. That's what Jesus did by His suffering, His death. And on the third day, He rose again, bringing righteousness and life. And in a wedding, a man and a woman marry each other. Now these two persons, hopefully, we do premarital counseling, it's obvious they're not enemies of each other before the wedding. They're good friends and they're growing in friendship and love with each other. The marriage enhances that friendship. It deepens that love. It gives a framework and a commitment, a commitment in which that love is to be more deeply expressed. But with us as sinners, Before Christ's work is applied to us. We are enemies of God haters of God and This wedding the spiritual wedding than is so much better than our earthly weddings for we go from being enemies of God to children of God From hating God to loving him That word bridegroom. It's a wonderful word, but but it is just captures one sliver of the glory of the fullness of the grace and goodness God brings to us in Christ and And here is reason to feast. With Christ, in Christ, our sin has been paid for. God has come to live with us. By His Spirit, God dwells within us. Who will not feast? What believer in Jesus will continue to be sad and mourn? We have God as our Heavenly Father. What can we fear? Why should we mourn? Brothers and sisters, when you're sad, when you mourn, when you weep over the trials in this life, when you weep over your sins, and it is good to weep over our sins we commit, turn your heart and mind to the Gospel of Christ. To the good news of what Christ has done. He has paid for your sins. He has reconciled you to God. You are an heir of eternal life, a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. No matter what you're going through in this life, God is your Father for the sake of Christ. Praise God! What an encouragement that is to us in this life. This life that is often filled with disappointment, with grief, with sickness, with trials, with war, with sin, with death. Sometimes when a husband and a wife, maybe they're going through hard times, a disagreement with each other, it's good to look back. To look back at the joy of their wedding day. To review those vows. Maybe look at the pictures. Other joyous events. Well, we have the greatest event of all to look at. The death and resurrection of Christ. And this is in part what we do as we celebrate the Lord's Supper today. We hear it in the Gospel proclaimed, but today we celebrate it in the Lord's Supper. We remember and believe and we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Believe who Jesus is, the Son of God. Believe what He has done. He has paid for sin. And trust yourself to Him for your forgiveness of sins. Messiah has come and it's a time of feasting. We should mention that the Old Testament was not only fasting. There were feasts in it as well. Again, that time of fasting, Day of Atonement, comes within the context of one of the major feasts. And that was good. There should have been feasts, and there were, because even though the true sacrifice of Jesus had not yet been made, even though God had not been actually reconciled to his people, yet there was still grace, there was still forgiveness, because of the sacrifice that would come. We today live after the death and resurrection of Christ. What God promised to the old covenant saints, what Christ would come, and that he would die for their sins, And that God forgave their sins in anticipation. Well, we live now after that has happened. So there was feasting back then, but because Christ had not yet come, there was also fasting with that bent. But now there ought to be no fasting over our sin, mourning over our sin in that way. Because our sins are no longer exposed. And Satan has been cast down and cannot accuse us any longer. In that sense, there's feasting in place of fasting, that fasting. And it's no coincidence that one of our sacraments is a supper, is feasting with the Lord, celebrating the Lord's Supper, which we're blessed to celebrate today. And while we are to be reverent during the celebration of the Lord's Supper, let us not celebrate it with weeping and mourning, but with rejoicing. We celebrate the Lord's Supper. It is a joyous yet reverent occasion. For Jesus brings feasting in place of fasting. There is reason for feasting now. And yet Jesus himself in our passage speaks of fasting that will occur. And we read from Acts when the early church fasted. So it is proper for Christians today to fast. And that's what we move to in our third point. A new reason for fasting. A new reason for fasting. Verse 15b, Jesus said, The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. Now how should we understand that? It seems Jesus is speaking narrowly here about the time between the crucifixion and the resurrection. It appears Jesus is not speaking about you and me today, that we ought to mourn and fast because He's no longer here. Now it's true, Jesus is no longer with us bodily, is He? But in his divinity, majesty, and grace, kids, what's that catechism? You're memorizing it right? In his divinity, majesty, and grace, he is not absent from us for a moment, is he? And what do we celebrate in the Lord's Supper? It's not just bread and wine. Well, in one sense, it is just bread and wine. The bread is bread, the wine is wine. But the Holy Spirit, through true faith, the true believers, he joins us to Christ, and we feast on his body and his blood. You see, He is not absent in that way. Jesus Himself said in Matthew, the Great Commission, Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. By the Spirit's working, faith within our hearts, by the Spirit's uniting us to Jesus, we participate in that blessedness, righteousness, eternal life that Jesus earned for us by His death. There is no reason to fast as the old covenant saints fasted. Because the redemption Jesus accomplished by his death and resurrection, it's as good today as when Jesus walked the earth after his resurrection. That's important to grasp. The coming of the Messiah, his death, his resurrection, the outpouring of the Spirit upon the church, that has changed everything. It reorients our practices even as it transformed worship itself. from being centered on a temple in Jerusalem with animal sacrifices and a Levitical priesthood, to occurring in spirit and in truth throughout the world. That's what we've been reminded through heaven. We did this point. Chapters 8 and 9. Haven't we seen that? The man who had leprosy, he couldn't worship at the temple. The centurion, he couldn't go. The demon-possessed, the paralytic, he couldn't get up. This woman, we'll come to that later, the woman who had a flow of blood, Jesus coming changes everything. It changes fasting into feasting. And perhaps that's why fasting is not something regularly done for spiritual reasons by new covenant saints as it was for old covenant saints. We find that alluded to then in verses 16 and 17. Jesus said, 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. 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. So fasting is still something New Covenant Saints may do, and is commendable for New Covenant Saints to do, but it's in a different context from the Old Covenant Saints. We live in the time of the new garment, of the new wine, not the old garment, not the old wine or wineskins. And so we do not fast in exactly the same way or for the same reasons old covenant saints did. And so we shouldn't be going back and trying to put a new patch, which we are, on an old garment or putting new wine in old wineskins. We cannot mourn over our sins as the old covenant saints did because Jesus has actually, really in history, paid for those sins. And the old covenant saints, they had Satan accusing them because of their sins. And that was reason to mourn. But with the death and resurrection of Jesus, Satan has been cast out. And he can make no further accusation because Jesus has died. Who is he? Romans 8 says. Who is he to condemn? Jesus Christ has died. And he pleads his own shed blood before the Father. Things have changed. Forever changed. The time for fasting and sorrow over exposed sin has passed away. The time for feasting has come. But fasting is something we may do, although we're not commanded to do it anymore, not even one day a year. Now why would a New Covenant saint fast? Why would it be proper for a New Covenant church to call its members to fast? We find in the New Covenant scriptures, the New Testament scriptures, recounting the New Covenant Church's activities, two occasions for fasting. We just read one of them, Acts 13, 2-3. But also you can look at Acts 14, 21-23. Again, we read only from Acts 13. In these two instances, mourning over sin that's exposed, that's not found at all. What is found is when an important decision was before the Church, when a great change was in store for a congregation. The first instance, which we read, was when the Spirit led the church in Antioch to commission Paul and Barnabas to go out on what was the first of the missionary journeys. How incredible was that? The church fasted before that decision, it fasted after that decision, but before they were commissioned and sent out. The second instance was Paul again, Barnabas they appointed elders in the churches that were first established on the missionary journey And they commended the newly established churches to the grace of God as they were leaving them in those two instances then aren't mourning over sin that's exposed and We should note that fasting was there linked with prayer or worship It was not just independent on itself serving some spiritual purpose in itself. I Fasting would allow believers to come away from the work of preparing food to spend it in prayer, to spend it in worship. Just think of that. We've got a lot of conveniences, don't we? Ladies, what if you had to cook over a fire? What if you had to go to the market downtown and get your food every day? We think of that. What if you had to kill an animal and dress it? I didn't eat animals that often in that culture. That took a lot of time. It's quite an undertaking. Fasting would allow everyone in the congregation, not just the men, everyone to spend time in prayer and in intense worship. It's praying, worshiping that seemed to be the focus and fasting served to help the believers in that. We find a parallel example in 1 Corinthians 7 verse 5. The apostle permits a husband and wife to fast or to abstain from what? Marital relations. Do you remember why? to devote themselves to prayer. Again, to help in their praying. That's a reason that comes through in these passages from the New Testament of the early church. So fasting is good for us yet today. You're encouraged to fast. And sometimes it can be because of your sorrow for a particular sin or caught in sin or things like that. But don't fast as though a savior hasn't come. As you mourn over your sins, look in faith unto Christ and what He has done, His death and resurrection. We don't beat ourselves up in what we do. We look to Christ. And from that gospel, be encouraged and rejoice and go forth in strength to serve and to live, to say no to that sin. And when you fast, fast to help in your praying or in your worshiping, particularly when a major decision is facing the congregation. Choosing office bearers, calling a minister, sending out missionaries, Perhaps a time of intense persecution. These are all good reasons to fast as a church. And individuals, families, you can choose to fast, again, for various reasons. Perhaps, again, applying the seeking or the direction of a blessing concerning the individual or family. Maybe your child's going off to war. Maybe to college. Maybe moving away. Maybe marriage. But what's key to keep in mind, fasting today is not geared towards sorrow in the same way as the Old Testament. Because Christ has come. Our sins are forgiven. And fasting is especially a tool of prayer to aid worship. Jesus brings feasting in place of fasting. And so in faith, let us rejoice and feast. Believers, come to the table of the Lord. Receive from him, eat his flesh, drink his blood by the Spirit through faith. Receive from Him nourishment, so you can live for Him, not in your own strength, but in His strength, by the power of the Spirit, rejoicing in hope. And as we seek God's guidance as individuals, as families, as a congregation, let us fast to aid us in our prayer life, to aid us in our worship. And in all this, may God receive all the praise for His providing all that we need according to His riches in Christ Jesus. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come to You. We thank You for sending Your Son. Before, our sins were exposed. Now, He is paid. Our sins are covered. not just a promise in the future, but a reality now in the past applied to us presently. We look forward to the future, the wedding supper of the Lamb, when all this will be fulfilled, perfected, completed, consummated. We long for that day. Keep us faithful till then, O Lord, trusting in you, seeking your guidance, seeking your direction, humbling ourselves before you always. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.