Well, everyone wants Jesus. The problem is we want Him on our own terms. And so people attempt to customize Jesus like you would customize the front of your phone with this app and that app. A little love here and a little grace there. The problem is, Jesus insists that there be no customization of who He is. You see, religion edits Jesus. It's keep the teacher, delete the Lord. It's keep the prophet, but delete the Savior. So religions edit Jesus. Philosophies attempt to tame Jesus. That is, He's inspiring, He's just not authoritative. He's historical, He's just not supernatural. If religions edit Jesus and philosophies tame Jesus, then culture uses Jesus. Jesus plus my preferences equals consumerism. And Jesus plus my agenda is like my own little personal deity. Kind of rub the Bible a little bit and you get your three wishes, if you will. And Jesus' response to an edited Jesus is found in Mark chapter 2, where he says, hey, you can't patch me into your old way of living. Jesus, what we'll learn, is He's not renting space in your life. He's not even renovating. He is rebuilding a brand new foundation for those who follow Christ. The question the Scriptures are asking in Mark 2 are these. One, are you adding Jesus to something? Or, is Jesus transforming everything about you? And so, we begin with Mark 2, we begin with, what do you do with the presence of Jesus? The people come to Jesus and they ask these questions, you know, John's disciples, they fast. We fast, but your disciples, they're not fasting. In fact, not only are they not fasting, what are they doing in the earlier section of Mark chapter two, verses 13 through 17? They're feasting. We're fasting, you're feasting, and I never see your disciples fast. What's the issue? You see, fasting from food played a part of the weekly regimen of these two groups, the Pharisees and John's disciples. Old Testament law. demanded for Jewish people, Old Testament law demanded that they fast at least one day a year on the Day of Atonement. Now, that's not to say that there weren't other times where they did fast, but the requirement was that on the Day of Atonement, Jewish people were supposed to fast. And they fasted for a variety of purposes outside of that Day of Atonement. For instance, Ezra will lead the whole nation of Israel to fast when they're asking for God's blessing. Daniel, he fasts when he's seeking God's direction. Israel fasted during times of mourning, 2 Samuel chapter 6. John the baptizer's disciples, they fast, and they could have been fasting for one of two reasons. Either A, because John was preaching a message of repentance, and so fasting always accompanied repentance, or what we'll find out by the time we hit Mark 8 or so, Mark 9, something like that, is John is actually, John the baptizer's in prison. So perhaps John's disciples are fasting for that reason. Either way, if you read Luke chapter 18, here's what you know about the Pharisees. They fast two times a week. They fast two times a week, and when they do fast, here's what they do. They make sure that they mess their hair up. They thin their face on those days. They dishevel themselves and they walk around in such a way as so that everybody could set their watch by them and say, oh, it must be a Tuesday because look at the Pharisees. They had this outward show of what they were attempting to do. And so they come to Jesus and say, hey, why don't your disciples fast? And Jesus responds in Mark chapter 2 verse 19, look at verse 19. And Jesus said to them, can the wedding guests fast while the groom or the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. So in this short little section here, there are three commands in this passage, and the very first command is this, you can't mourn when the groom is present. You can't mourn when the groom is here. Imagine, someone said to me this morning, we ought to do some marriage vow renewals, because it feels like we're in a wedding tent here, right? Imagine going to a wedding and an evening that's supposed to be celebratory. And you arrive. But rather than having on your wedding vest, your tie is undone, it's kind of crooked off to the side. You came with spots on your sport coat, guys. Your shoes have not been cleaned. You came looking sad. Mascara is going everywhere. a sorrowing, sad countenance would do what? It would dishonor the bride and the groom. You don't show up to a wedding sad. When you come to the wedding, what do you do? It's time to celebrate. It's time to feast. It's time to party. And Jesus says, I'm the groom. That is, don't fast when you ought to be feasting. Like even the sinners and tax collectors in the passage prior had greater awareness than you do, religious Pharisees. And when Jesus says that He is the bridegroom, that statement has greater significance than you first realize. What's happening here, unbeknownst to the crowd that's listening to them, our Lord is actually alluding to some Old Testament passages. And so you're in Mark chapter 2, kind of hold your spot there. I want to show you two passages found in the book of Isaiah. So turn in your Bible to Isaiah 54. Isaiah 54, and we're going to be right back in the Gospel of Mark. So Isaiah, for me, if you turn smack dab in the middle of my Old Testament, that's where I find it. If you find the book of Psalms, go to the right, and keep going to the right until you find the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah 54. We're going to read verses 5-7. And then we're gonna continue with one other passage here. Isaiah 54, verses five through seven. The prophet Isaiah says this, for your maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts, Yahweh is his name, and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called. For Yahweh has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God. God says, for a brief moment, I deserted you. But with great compassion, see these next two words, I will, future tense, gather you. You're in Isaiah 54. Turn to the passage that was read to us this morning in Isaiah 62. Isaiah 62, verses four and five. Again, the prophet Isaiah is preaching to the nation of Israel. In Isaiah 62, verses 4 and 5, it reads this way, My delight is in her, and your land, married. For the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you. And the bridegroom shall rejoice over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. I'm back in Mark chapter 2. See, by referring to himself as the groom, Jesus is identifying Himself to the religious elites to say, I am God. I am here. Come in flesh. The promised one. So, Jesus, we can say it this way, right? Jesus is spiritual Israel's divine husband. spiritual Israel. That is, those who have truly trusted in the coming Messiah. Jesus is spiritual Israel, divine husband. And what you ought to be thinking when I say something like that is you ought to be saying, wait a second, there's another passage in the Bible that refers to Jesus as the groom and somebody else as the bride. Revelation 19, verses 6 and 7, the Apostle John writes this, Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude crying out, Hallelujah! For the Lord our God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him glory. Why would we do that? For the marriage of the Lamb has come and the bride has made herself ready. And so what you have in Isaiah predicting that there would come a groom who would finally marry the unfaithful people of God, and now Jesus stands and they say, hey, why aren't you all fasting? And Jesus says, hey, when the groom is here, you don't have to fast, right? When the groom is present at the wedding ceremony, what do you do? More cake, more food, let's go. And Jesus says, I'm here. Because the groom has come and the wedding feast is coming, Christian people are joyful people. Now, I don't know about you, as soon as I wrote that this past week, Christian people are joyful people. I can get behind that the groom has come, and that I'm supposed to feast and not fast, but all of a sudden, what that means is Christian people are joyful people. But let me tell you what I don't mean. I don't mean giddy hilarity. I don't mean a lightness, kind of a brainless giddiness. I'm not talking about a joy in that sense. What I'm speaking of is this, that the once long predicted and long promised one has come, so be joyful. That is, we can say it this way, be confident that he's come. that this joy, that this bridegroom is here, this joy is a settled assurance. That's the joy that the passage is calling us to. A settled assurance of all that God has promised is true. I can think of two ways to illustrate this. One of the greatest delights of being a pastor, and one of the greatest sorrows, one of the greatest delights is to be at the hospital bed of gray-haired saints and to sing hymns. And though there's tubes all over the place, there's the whirr and the beeps of the machines in that hospital room, perhaps there's an oxygen tube over their nose, but in the midst of all of that noise, worrying, nurses checking, keeping them awake in the middle of the night, all of that is the settled joy. To be absent in the body is to be present with Christ. That's the joy that Jesus says that we're to have because of Christ. I think of one other illustration. When I have had the privilege going on mission trips, going to see where the gospel is being proclaimed in areas where the gospel has not been proclaimed in centuries or even decades, to see believers who have little and who worship, if they had 300 plus people on a gathered Sunday morning, it would blow them away because all they're used to is about 15 or 20. but to walk into those gathered worship assemblies, in that living room, or in that small business complex, and to hear the joy. So, I have sung, all glory be to Christ, in Turkish. And to hear the joy of those saints, that's what the passage is referring to. Now, in Mark 2, in verse 20, Jesus actually is predicting that there's going to come a time where the groom's going to be taken away. And when the groom's taken away, that is crucified, well then, his disciples will fast. I want you to look at verse 21 of Mark 2. Jesus says, to continue this illustration about the groom, He changes metaphors a couple different times. He says in verse 21, now no one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and the worst tear is made. You can say it this way, don't repair what God replaced is the idea here. Don't repair what God replaced. The patches are used to extend the life of clothes. I'm old enough now where I remember growing up where when I would get holes in my jeans, what would my mom do? She'd buy some patches. Now, my daughter will come home and show me her new jeans and I'll say, girl, I would have given you an extra 10 bucks if you would have bought them from a different rack. No, but when I was little, My mom would iron, I remember this as a seven or eight year old boy, she would iron a patch to my jeans. And I remember one of the days that she would iron that patch on. Of all the times that the patch, most of the times the patch worked, but there was one time it didn't. And no matter what she did, the patch continued to curl on the edge. And then being the seven or eight year old boy that I was, I continued to pick at it until eventually we threw the jeans away, right? Here what Jesus is saying is that new patches were used as they were sewn to old clothes. But when those clothes would be washed, the new patch would shrink and inevitably pull at the old fabric, thus tearing it. The old clothes here, the parable that Jesus is using, the old clothes is Judaism. The patch is Jesus. What he's saying is you can't patch Jesus to your old religion, Pharisees. I want you to go back to the book of Isaiah. Turn back to Isaiah 42. Isaiah 42. The book of Isaiah is actually called the Gospel of Isaiah. It's referred to the Gospel of Isaiah or the Gospel of the Old Testament. Isaiah chapter 42. And I want to show you how Jesus is fulfilling what a prophet predicted in Isaiah 42. Isaiah chapter 42, verse 9. The prophet Isaiah says, behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare. Before they spring forth, I'm gonna tell you of them. Look at chapter 43, verses 18 and 19. Isaiah 43, verses 18 and 19. The prophet Isaiah says, remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old, Behold, I am doing a new thing, and now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, right? So immediately, as a good New Testament believer, you'd be saying when you read, I will make a way in the wilderness, you're thinking of John the baptizer, what does he do in the wilderness? He proclaims, he comes proclaiming a new way. He comes proclaiming the Messiah that is to come. You're in Isaiah 43. Look again at one more passage in Isaiah 48. Isaiah 48 verse 6. And then we'll go back to Mark 2 for the remainder of the message. Isaiah chapter 48 verse 6. Isaiah says, you have heard. Now see all this, and will you not declare it? From this time forth, I announce to you new things, hidden things, that you have not known." And so, I'm back in Mark 2. I show you those verses, and those are just the three that I pulled, that there is this thread woven throughout the book of Isaiah to say, something new is coming. Something new is about to come. Wait for it. Wait for it. Here it is. Here it is coming. And Jesus is saying, hey listen, you religious Pharisees, you're taking a patch and you're placing it on the old clothing of Judaism. Judaism by this time. Let me say it this way. When you read the Old Testament faithfully, What you read is what Martin Luther read when he was struggling before that Protestant Reformation came around. The faith that the Old Testament calls for is always faith in the Messiah. We can say it this way. If we had a cross right here, right? If we had a cross in the center, And the Old Testament saints are here. How did they get saved? They didn't get saved by doing religious deeds and by following the religious system of the Old Testament. How were they saved, to use our language? They had faith in the coming Messiah. They didn't have all the knowledge that you and I have, but they had faith in the Messiah. That's why the Bible says in Genesis chapter 15 that Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him righteousness. New Testament believers. We're not on that side of the cross, we're on this side of the cross. What do we do? We look back to the cross. We're both saved by faith in Messiah. But here's what had happened by the time Jesus came to this earth. The religious Judaism had become a system of religious works of do's and don'ts filled with priests, and smoke, and hollow prayers, and religious holy days, and extra-biblical applications. Traditions became binding. Rituals, shrouding the truth. Shadows, overtaking the substance. So here's the second command that Jesus gives, is that you can't patch Jesus onto your old religion. Specifically here in this context, you can't patch Jesus onto your old Jewish system. Today, I don't see anyone in here who's tempted to follow all the laws of Judaism of the Old Testament. Today, churches and denominations have become nothing more than 21st century Judaism. What is so damning about that is there's enough light to see, but enough darkness to dam a soul. I think the only way for me to help give explanation or understanding to this is to give some specific illustrations, and I know that as I give these illustrations, I'm going to be stepping on toes. If I step on your toe, I genuinely mean this. Feel free to come up to me afterwards. Say, Pastor, what did you mean by that? Because I don't want to just be up here spitting, throwing religious, biblical hand grenades out there and shrapnel flying everywhere, Like, I don't know if I buy into all that. I invite conversation. Let me repeat what I'm saying, though, that Judaism had become filled with do's and don'ts, filled with priests, smoke, hollow prayers, religious holy days, extra-biblical applications, traditions becoming binding, rituals shodding truth, and shadows overtaking the substance. That is, there was enough light to see, but there was enough darkness to damn. And so here, let me give a few illustrations. This is the case, brothers and sisters, with a man like Joel Osteen. where you have enough Jesus, where I've sat on a Saturday night service, and heard an entire service, and at the very end, there is a gospel call, and I praise God for those individuals who have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, and have repented of their sins and trusted Christ. There is enough light to be born again. But what is so damning is that people can sit week after week after week and hear Jesus and self-esteem and think that's okay. This is the case with the prosperity gospel, meaning capitalism and Jesus, or Jesus plus wealth, and that somehow is the Christian gospel. That is not the Christian gospel. Again, I want to be very gentle with how I say this, and I invite you to talk to me afterwards. Folks, this is the case with Roman Catholicism, where you have Jesus plus religious actions or religious deeds that equal righteousness. And so that we're equal opportunity offenders around here, this is true of Baptists. This is true of Baptists who find their righteousness in their Jesus plus their applications, or Jesus plus their way of life, or Jesus plus their obedient kids. Do you see what I'm saying? Our only righteousness, folks, our only hope, our only salvation is in Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ alone. When Jesus said, it is finished, He meant what He said. He did not mean, I've done my part, now you go do your part. And for 2,000 years, the greatest threat to the church has been a Jesus plus theology. That is, Jesus is enough. Jesus alone is enough for forgiveness. Jesus alone is enough for righteousness. Let me say this, we value baptism around here, we value church membership highly, but let it be equally clear, none of that will contribute or get you any way closer to heaven. The only thing that will gain a person access to God the Father is faith alone in Jesus Christ. No patches to old ways of thinking is the idea. The third command is found in verse 22. He changes metaphors on us. Verse 22, Jesus continues and He says, No one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins. Say it this way, you can't pour Jesus into your old life. Your old life. You can't pour Jesus into your old life. Let me give you a little bit of background on wineskins. They were made of goat skin. And so with age, what happens is these skins became hard and lost their elasticity. And so as new wine was poured into them, the fermenting process would, as the wine fermented, it would burst the old skins. And so a double loss would take place. The wine would be lost, and the skins would be ruined. Jesus is saying you can't pour new wine into old wineskins. You've got to use new wine for new wineskins, and vice versa. That is, the new life of redemption in Christ cannot be confined to the old forms of Judaism. That is, don't integrate the new with the old. That the gospel of Jesus makes us new creatures. And this was predicted, right? The prophet Ezekiel writes in Ezekiel 36, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. So when I say that you can't put new wine into old wineskin, I'm not talking about our bodies here. I'm talking about into our old way of thinking, into our old way of living. And when we hear these passages read and taught, we're often instructed about stopping our old way of living and embracing our new life in Christ. 100% accurate. Let that stand. But using this Mark 2 passage, we are also being warned about what is called religious syncretism. You know what religious syncretism is? The syncretism is the taking of two ideas and blending them in together. So religious syncretism is the blending of two or more religious belief systems, incorporating beliefs and practices from two traditions into an existing kind of religious framework. Saints, was this not God's chief concern when instructing Israelites to reject Canaanite ways and not to marry outside their faith? This is exactly what our Lord is concerned about with His people, Israel. I don't want you to bring in the Canaanite ways, but what do they do? We know that over time, the Jews incorporated Baal worship into the worship of Yahweh. We look at that and we're like, that's crazy. How in the world could you do something like that? Perhaps if you wanted a modern day example of this, it would be kind of the fusion of animistic, kind of indigenous beliefs in Latin America with Roman Catholicism, or again, to be equal opportunity offenders. It is kind of the idea of taking Christianity and capitalism and bringing them together into the evangelical church, and referring to it as the prosperity gospel, that is, Jesus is saying you can't take new wine and put it into a wineskin that's old, that no syncretism is allowed. Saints, I'm going to give a few applications here in just a moment, but I understand in giving these applications that there could be a thousand other ones. There's nothing more appropriate about my applications than perhaps the ones that you have in your mind, but I just want to say things like this, that what happens in a 2025 culture, Jesus is telling us you can't pour Jesus into your old way of living. That is, in the name of love, Christians affirm lifestyles that are contrary to God's Word. In the name of culture, we, We pick and choose parts of the Bible that we want to obey. And we wink at those parts that we don't want to obey. In the name of unity, we compromise core, I'm not talking about secondary church, I'm talking about core teachings of the scripture in the name of unity. But saints, what Jesus is getting at is this. is that Jesus and His gospel are distinctive. Jesus and His gospel are exclusive. Jesus and His gospel are authoritative, that is, above all. Saints, does Jesus speak? Does Jesus have a word about marriage? Does Jesus have a word about the permanence of marriage? He does. These are ways that we can subtly adopt a culture that undermines the teachings of Scripture. Do the Scriptures speak as to how a home is to be ordered with a husband and a father leading and directing? Yes, it does. These aren't foreign ideas. These are ideas that our Lord has laid out for us. And so here's the question. The question posed by the image of the wedding feast and these two parables is this. The question is not whether disciples will make room for Jesus in their already full agendas and lives. Here's the question. The question is whether we will become entirely new receptacles for the expanding fermentation of the gospel in our lives. And so the Christian who got saved, he got saved at 17 and now you're 27, the fermentation of the gospel is intended to change your life over time. And for the believer who got saved at 37 and now you're 67, there's supposed to be the greater aroma of the gospel at 67 than you had it when you were at 37. Why? Because the Kingdom of God, the Gospel grows and changes in our lives over time. So saints, say it this way. Don't add Jesus. You're not adding a patch. You're not putting new wine into old wineskins. What you are doing is this. Jesus isn't renting. He's not even renovating, what He's doing is He's rebuilding a foundation in your life. And what we need, saints, are these. We need teenagers who says, that's my Jesus, that's my teaching, that's what I'm following. We need some dads in here to say, that's my Jesus, that's my teaching, that's what I'm following after. some grandpas and grandmas, some aunts and uncles, to say that's, I want the authority of Christ in my life in every way. Let's pray.