And please turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter nine. Matthew chapter nine. I'm gonna read and preach verses 14 through 17 this morning, where Jesus is asked a question about fasting, and he responds with three illustrations about a wedding, a garment, and a wineskin. And in doing so, he teaches us more about himself and about you and me, and about the new life he came to bring. Not a patch to fix our old life, but a new life and a new heart for his spirit to dwell in. That's what he came to bring to all who trust in him. We'll consider that together from these verses, but first let me pray for us, then we'll begin. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you came to give us a new heart and a new life because that is what we need, not just an addition to our old life, but a new life and a new heart indwelt by your spirit. We pray that you would teach us more about yourself from this passage this morning and about us and who we are in relation to you as believers and about what it is you came to bring to all who trust in you. We pray in your name, Jesus, amen. Matthew chapter nine, reading verses 14 through 17, this is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast but your disciples do not fast? 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. 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. As you can see in your sermon notes there, we'll first consider the question the disciples of John asked Jesus in verse 14, and then these three illustrations Jesus gives in response, verses 15 through 17. The disciples of John, that is John the Baptist, came to Jesus on this occasion with a question about fasting, the practice of abstaining from food for religious purposes, for spiritual purposes. They ask him there in verse 14, why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? So the disciples of John and the Pharisees fasted habitually, perhaps twice a week, like the Pharisee in Luke 18 boasted about, as part of what they understood to be their duty before God, and for some, as a key component of their self-righteousness, again, like the Pharisee in Luke 18. The Pharisees and the disciples of John fasted, but the disciples of Jesus did not fast. They feasted with Jesus, like at the dinner Matthew hosted in the previous passage. So why the difference, John's disciples are asking. And we might wonder, is there a question behind the question? Why did they ask this question of Jesus? Maybe they genuinely wanted to know the answer and to learn something from Jesus. Maybe they were jealous because the disciples were feasting while they were fasting. Maybe they were angry or perhaps hangry, as you've been, I'm sure, before, because they thought the disciples ought to be fasting like they were, but weren't. Remember the words of Luke 18, verse nine from last week, that Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, quote, to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. If that's what they were doing, trusting in themselves that they were righteous, that may have been what they were doing to the disciples, treating them with contempt because they thought they were being unrighteous. When we're relying on our own righteousness, we respond to the righteousness or unrighteousness of others with contempt, don't we? When we're relying on the righteousness of Christ, We respond to the unrighteousness of others with compassion, with grief instead of disgust, and with a desire to see them change and experience the same grace that we've been given. We're not told why the disciples of John asked this question, but if it's because they were angry, we know what that's like, and it can prompt us to pray for a heart of compassion instead of contempt. Well, Jesus responds to their question with three illustrations, and we'll consider those in the remainder of our sermon. The first is about a wedding. Look at verse 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. What is Jesus saying here with this illustration? Basically he's saying this is a wedding, not a funeral. It's a time to rejoice, not a time to mourn because the bridegroom is here, the bridegroom has come. Note three things here. First, Jesus refers to himself as the bridegroom. In the Old Testament, Yahweh, the Lord, was the bridegroom of his people. And I will betroth you to me forever, Hosea 2.16. For your maker is your husband, Isaiah 54.5. As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you, Isaiah 62.5. So Jesus is identifying himself with and as the God of the Old Testament. In the New Testament, also, Jesus is the bridegroom of the people of God. John the Baptist understood himself to be the best man, and Jesus, the groom. John 3, 28 through 30. You yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease. In Ephesians 5, 25 through 27, Jesus is the groom. with the church as his bride. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Verse 32 of that chapter says, this mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. Paul says to the Christians in Corinth, I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ, 2 Corinthians 11, 12. Jesus is the bridegroom, and the bridegroom is here, the bridegroom has come. This is a wedding, not a funeral, a time to rejoice, not a time to mourn, he's saying. Second, note that Jesus refers to his disciples and by extension to us, as wedding guests. We are those in the parable who were invited to the wedding feast by the servants of the king, servants who went out to the main roads and invited us to come in to the wedding banquet. Revelation 19 verse nine says, the angel said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb. Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. When you open up your mailbox at home and you shuffle through your mail and your eyes fall on that formal looking envelope that you've been waiting for, an invitation to a friend's wedding, how joyful that is. How much more joyful, therefore, is it to have an invitation to the marriage supper of the Lamb? But of course, if we shift from analogy to reality, we are more than guests, we are the bride. Revelation 19 verse seven, let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. Revelation 21, two and three, and I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. We, the church, are the bride, and Christ, our Savior, is the bridegroom. We have a perfect husband who loves us and delights in us and in whose presence there is fullness of joy. But returning to the illustration, we've noted that Jesus is the bridegroom and that we are the wedding guests. The third thing to note here is that the presence of the bridegroom with the wedding guests determines what the wedding guests should do. Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? Jesus asks. Of course not. Mourning often accompanied fasting. That's why Jesus mentions mourning in response to the question about fasting. And Jesus is saying that the wedding guests don't mourn and fast when the bridegroom is with them. The wedding guests rejoice and feast. Can you imagine a wedding reception without any food? No hors d'oeuvres or dinner or a wedding cake. No, a wedding reception is a time for feasting, not fasting. Wedding guests don't mourn and fast, they rejoice and feast because the bridegroom is with them. But, Jesus says, the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. Jesus was taken away, first by his death, and then by his ascension after his resurrection. Of course, he is with us by his Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts, but in another sense, the bridegroom is currently away from us and we await his return. And during this time of waiting, we fast. We see the early church doing that in the book of Acts. Chapter 13, verses two and three. 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. Or in chapter 14, verse 23. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. So that's the point that Jesus is making here. The presence of the bridegroom with the wedding guests determines what the wedding guests should do. While he is present, they feast. While he is absent, they fast. That's the first illustration Jesus uses in response to this question about fasting. Three things by way of application here before we look at the other two illustrations together. First, give some thought to what it might look like for you to incorporate fasting into your practice of the spiritual disciplines. If you haven't already done that, if you don't already do that. Now fasting can be a little mysterious, admittedly. We may have more questions about the practice of fasting than we do say about the practice of Bible reading and prayer. Those are pretty straightforward, relatively. But fasting is actually assumed and exemplified in many places in the Bible, like in our passage where Jesus says about us while he is away, and then they will fast. Or in the Sermon on the Mount, I've already looked at where he says, when you fast. Fasting is a help to praying. It's a prayer helper. It doesn't earn us brownie points with God, but it can put us in a frame of mind for prayer. So we feel hungry, and we can sort of piggyback off that physical hunger in order to express to God in prayer our spiritual hunger for Him. We feel the need for food, and that reminds us of our need for God. It helps us feel our need for God. It makes us more aware of our dependence on God. which helps us to pray and to seek him and his grace and help in a time of special need. So let me encourage you to give some thought to what it might look like for you to incorporate fasting into your practice of the spiritual disciplines. Second, pray that the posture of your heart daily would be one of longing for the return of the bridegroom. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast, Jesus says. The bridegroom has been taken away from us and we long for his return. Except sometimes we don't. Sometimes the return of Christ isn't even on our radar. We're so focused on the things of earth that we forget that we are citizens of heaven and from heaven we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Philippians 3.20. worldly cares rush to the front of our minds each morning, and the return of Christ gets pushed to the back of our minds. We're more interested in the arrival of that package from Amazon than we are in the arrival of the Son of God. We might benefit from doing what J.C. Ryle is said to have done each morning. He would get up and walk over to the window and look outside and pray, maybe today, Lord, Maybe today. And it's said the same each evening. Maybe tonight, Lord. Maybe tonight. Try not to let a single morning or evening go by where you don't think about the return of Christ. Like an engaged couple eagerly waiting for their wedding day to come, let us eagerly wait for the return of Christ. Pray that the posture of your heart daily would be one of longing for the return of the bridegroom. Thirdly here by way of application, praise God that you are a wedding guest for the marriage supper of the lamb. And even more so, that you are the bride. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you've been mailed an invitation with your name on it to the greatest wedding and the greatest wedding reception imaginable. And you didn't earn it, you didn't pay for it, you don't deserve it. It is a free gift from the God of grace. We just sang together, each of us cries with thankful tongue, Lord, why was I a guest? Each of us who are in Christ should cry to God with thankful tongue, Lord, why am I a guest? How is it even more so that I am the bride? I know my heart, I know my thoughts, I know my sins. How in the world could I be a guest at the marriage supper of the Lamb? How could I be the bride of the Lamb? Praise God, thank God, give glory to God that you are a wedding guest. and that even more so, you are the bride of the bridegroom. Well, Jesus responds to this question about fasting with two more illustrations, about a garment and about wineskins. Let's consider those together in the time we have left this morning. Jesus says there in verse 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. 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. Let me explain briefly these two illustrations and then we'll consider the meaning of these two illustrations relative to the question. So these were everyday things in the lives of the listeners. No one would try to patch an old garment using a piece of new cloth because the old garment was already fully shrunk, having been washed many times, but the piece of new cloth was unshrunk. And so if you patch it onto the old garment, the new cloth would shrink when washed and would pull at the old garment, and instead of repairing the tear, it would make it worse. Everybody understood this. Regarding wine skins, there's a bit more science to it. Commentator D.A. Carson explains well, in time, the old skin became hard and brittle. If new wine, still fermenting, were put into such an old skin, the buildup of fermenting gases would split the brittle container and ruin both bottle and wine. New wine was placed in only new wineskins, still pliable and elastic enough to accommodate the pressure. Makes sense. Again, these were everyday things the listeners would have understood without explanation. But what they often didn't understand was the meaning of the illustrations. And what Jesus seems to be saying here, in light of the question and who's asking it, is something like, You can't just take me and the kingdom I'm bringing and patch it onto or pour it into your legalism and self-righteousness. That won't work. Just like it doesn't work to take a new cloth and patch it onto an old garment or to take new wine and pour it into a new wineskin. Or an old wineskin, rather. You need a new garment. You need a new wineskin. Jesus and the kingdom he brings is not compatible with legalism and self-righteousness that we see so often in the Pharisees. He didn't come just to add something to the Pharisees' whole system of works righteousness. He came to bring something that would replace their whole system of works righteousness. A salvation that was by grace from start to finish. And that included a new heart. and a new life in him. Two things for us to consider in light of that as we draw to a close this morning. First, Christianity is not about just adding Jesus to your life. It's about having a new life. It's about getting a new heart and a new life. Didn't say to Nicodemus in John three, you must make a little room for me in your life. No, he said, you must be born again. We need a new heart and a new life and both come from God, not from us. By his sovereign grace and power. And if you recognize your need for a new heart and a new life this morning and that you lack those things, Ask God for it. Ask Him right now where you sit to do in you what only He has the power to do in you. Ask Him to take your spiritually dead heart and make it alive. Ask Him to remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Ask Him to raise you from spiritual death in sin to new life in Christ. Repent of your sin, turn from your sin. and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't add Jesus to your old life, to your existing life. Receive from Jesus a new life. And make Jesus your life now. That's what we seek to do as believers, though we often fail. Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Secondly, we learn from what Jesus is saying here that the gospel and legalism are incompatible. The gospel of grace and the legalism of trying to earn God's favor by our performance are incompatible. Relying on the righteousness of Christ is incompatible with trusting in ourselves that we are righteous. The imputed righteousness of Jesus is incompatible with the self-righteousness of our sinful hearts. Now I didn't say the gospel and the law are incompatible, but the gospel and legalism are incompatible. That is trying to earn salvation by our obedience or trying to accomplish sanctification by our obedience apart from relying on Christ. Jesus and his gospel and his kingdom that we've been reading about, are incompatible with any kind of system where we earn things from God, or where we do most of the work, most of the heavy lifting, and Jesus is just a patch on our understandably imperfect self-righteousness. Think of it in terms of a bank account. We owe an infinite debt to God, but Christ pays our debt in full, bringing our previously negative account to zero. And then he credits our account with his infinite funds. And that's all well and good. That's amazing really. But even after all that becomes ours by believing in Jesus, we can slip into this old garment, old wineskin mentality. Where we think that by our obedience we can add funds to that account. but we don't add anything to our account. We don't make any deposits. We only make withdrawals of the grace we need through using the means God has given us to withdraw the grace we need. Our right standing before God is not based on the righteousness of Christ and the obedience we add to it. Nor is it based on our righteousness merely patched up by Christ. No, our right standing before God is based on the righteousness of Christ alone. Jesus is not a patch. He's the whole garment. He provides the new wine and the new wineskin. When we come to Jesus in faith, what he gives us is not a patch, but an entirely new garment, a garment of salvation. The robe of a righteousness that is not our own, but that is ours by faith. What he gives us is not just the new wine of his spirit, but a new heart and a new life into which and out of which his spirit flows. What does this mean then? for how we live the Christian life? Well, it means that every day we need to remind ourselves that Jesus is everything. Jesus is everything. He is our all in all. He is not meant to be part of our life. He is our whole life. We have a new heart and a new life because of Him and from Him. We live and move and have our being physically and spiritually He is our bridegroom who loves us and protects us and in whose presence we can find real joy, true joy. He is our garment of salvation and the new wine of our new life. It is no longer we who live with that old works righteousness mentality. As old as a worn out garment or as hard and brittle as an old wineskin. It is now Christ. who lives in us, empowering us, bearing fruit in us. In the life we now live in the flesh, we live by faith in Him who loved us and gave Himself for us and is with us by His Spirit until He returns. Let's pray together. Jesus, we thank you for who you are, for all of who you are for us. You are everything to us. Please help us to realize that and to experience that more and more. Thank you for the new heart and the new life you've given us. Help us each day to walk by faith in you while we await your return. We pray in your name, amen.