This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, I want to welcome you to our daily drive time devotions and our look
together at Mark chapter 2. We're going to be looking at verses 18 to 22 today.
In fact, let me begin by reading those verses.

Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. When people came up and
asked Jesus, "How is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees
are fasting, but yours are not? " Jesus answered, "How can the guests of the
bridegroom fast while he was with them?

They cannot so long as they have him with them. But the time will come when the
bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast. " No one
sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.

If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse.
And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst
the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined.

No, he pours new wine into new wineskins. This incredible teaching of Jesus
begins with a question. Why is it, the question is, that your disciples aren't
fasting, Jesus?

John the Baptist's disciples are fasting. That's the John that's being talked
about here. Our disciples, the Pharisees, say they fast.

Why don't your disciples fast? In that day, fasting was a regular part of
religious life. Every Jew fasted on the Day of Atonement.

And the most religious fasted two days a week, usually Mondays and Thursdays. It
wasn't the kind of fast that you might think of. Their fast was usually a 6 a.

m. to 6 p. m.

fast. So you'd have an early light breakfast, you would skip lunch, you wouldn't
eat all day Then you might have something a little bit late dinner. And Jesus
nowhere condemns fasting.

In fact, he teaches that it can be a good habit. He does condemn those who fast
just to impress others. In the Sermon on the Mount, he condemns those who try to
look hungry, who sort of paint their faces so that people can see that they're
fasting and see how hungry they really are.

He says don't do it to impress other people. But he says fasting in itself, it
can be a good habit. So if fasting isn't wrong, why aren't his disciples
fasting?

Well Jesus teaches that it's a matter of what I would call spiritual timing.
It's not always the right time to fast. And he gives them an example that they
all would have understood, a wedding banquet.

This wedding banquet is something that would have happened the week following a
Jewish wedding. After a Jewish wedding, you would have this huge banquet
celebration that would go on for literally a week in the home of this newly
married couple. It was this incredible time of joy, one of the most joyous weeks
in anybody's life.

Everybody loved to get together and to celebrate. And the guests at this wedding
party were exempt from fasting. In fact, the idea of the teachers in that day
was that they were exempt from anything that would lessen the joy of that
incredible occasion.

So Jesus is saying this is not the time for them to fast, just like a wedding
week is not the time to fast. This is the time for them to experience who I am
and to learn from me and to follow me. Now he does foreshadow the cross and his
death here when he says there's a day I won't be with them and in that day they
will fast, but he says now is not the right time.

This idea of spiritual timing. Jesus shows us just how important this teaching
is by adding two pictures so that all of us can get this. He talks about cloth
and he talks about wineskins.

And in talking about a piece of cloth, a piece of cloth that's new being sewn on
an old garment, the new cloth wasn't shrunk yet. So when you wash the garment,
the new cloth would shrink and tear away from the old cloth. It would ruin them
both.

He talks about wine and wineskins. If you put new wine into an old wineskin, an
old wineskin has become hardened by age. And the new wine that's put in, as it
ferments, it creates gases and it will try to cause the wineskin to expand.

It would have expanded this wineskin that would be made out of animal skins. It
would have expanded fine when it was new, but now that it's old, it'll burst and
the wine and the wineskin are both ruined. Jesus is saying in these pictures
that there's something about spiritual timing and he's talking about the
difference between just adding something to the Old Testament law, the old ways
of doing things and doing a completely new thing.

Jesus did not come just to add something to the Old Testament law. He came to do
a completely new thing. That doesn't mean the Old Testament law is completely
invalidated, but he didn't just come to add a little to it.

He came to give us new understanding of what it meant. Jesus didn't come just to
add something to your life, one more thing. He came to give you a completely new
life.

The difference between religion and a new birth and a new relationship with God
is expressed in what Jesus is teaching here. Religion is man's attempt to reduce
the life of faith to humanly accomplished and humanly controllable rules and
deeds. Roy Gustafson said about religion, "Religion is man's quest of God.

The good news is the Savior God seeking lost man. Religion originates on earth.
The gospel originated in heaven.

Religion is man-made. The gospel is the gift of God. Religion is the story of
what sinful man tries to do for a holy God.

The gospel is the story of what a holy God does for sinful man. " In order to
become a believer in Jesus Christ, I have to set aside my man-made religion, my
way of getting to God, and I have to accept a relationship with him. That's the
good news of what he wants to do, what God has done for me in giving him himself
on the cross and being resurrected for me.

I accept the gift of salvation rather than trying to earn it by my own religion.
That's how I become a believer in Jesus Christ. Now, once you become a believer
in Jesus Christ, does that mean you're no longer tempted by this religion?

Of course not. It's a constant temptation to do something that makes you and I
feel like we have become experts at faith and we're doing better than everyone
around us when it comes to this issue of faith. Those are the feelings that go
along with religion.

Now, why are we tempted by religion? Because if I make my faith into some just
list of rules of deeds, religion, then it becomes something I can check off my
list. Then it becomes something I can get done so I can go on and do what I want
to do.

Faith in Jesus Christ can't be checked off your list like, "Finish that for
today. Now I'm going to go do what I want to do. " It is a part of your life
every part of the day.

It's a part of who you are. So Jesus talks about new wine in new wine skins. He
talks about new cloth on a new garment.

It is a totally wasted effort to try to just add something to your religious
life. It doesn't work. In fact, when I just add religious deeds to my life,
Jesus is saying here, "You end up worse at the end than in the beginning.

" Oh, you may feel better about yourself, but you're getting further and further
from God and the relationship that he wants to have with you. Now, what is Jesus
talking about here when he talks about old wine skins, old cloth? Well, here's a
list that I've experienced in my life.

My previous experiences can be an old wine skin. This is how God worked in my
life this time, so he has to do it the same way this time. God loves to work in
new ways.

My present level of growth can become an old wine skin. I can be very joyous
about a decision I've made and a level of faith and growth I've gotten to, but
God's always going to challenge me to go to the next level. My way of looking at
things can become an old wine skin.

I've always looked at it this way. I've always seen it this way, but then God
wants to broaden my perspective. He wants to reduce my prejudices about faith
and broaden my perspective about life and what he wants to do in my life.

Me having to say, "Well, maybe my way of looking at things, maybe it wasn't
complete," as prideful as that can sound, me having to say that can become an
old wine skin. My daily habits can become an old wine skin. Even my way of
relating to God, my way of reading the Bible, my way of prayer, it can become an
old wine skin.

Many of the traditions that we have today that most of us look at and say, "Why
would people get so caught up in those traditions? " At first they were good
spiritual habits, but at some point people began to do them just as an end in
itself, not as a way to connect with God, but just because if I do this then
I've checked it off my spiritual to-do list. My daily habits can become an old
wine skin.

Maybe God has some new habits in your life that he wants to work in. My comfort
with the familiar can become an old wine skin. I'm comfortable with what is.

I don't want the new challenge. Here's the radical thing that Jesus said. Don't
try to revamp or renew the old wine skins.

Don't rub them down and try to make them work so they can do just a little bit
more. Just get a new wine skin. You're a new creation in Christ.

So stop trying to fit the new life of Jesus into your old life. You need a new
wine skin. Live the new life that he gives.

Stop trying to fit the priorities of Jesus into your old set of priorities. You
need a new wine skin. Live the new life that he's giving you.

Stop trying to fit the love of Jesus into the old way that you love. You need a
new wine skin. Live the new life that he's giving you to live.

The new wine skin life. Let's pray together. Lord, I ask myself in prayer today,
where am I trying to put new wine into old wine skins in my life?

Where maybe am I being an example to others that they should do that in their
lives? Where am I giving myself to that which will certainly fail in the end?
How can I instead, instead of giving myself to my own selfishness, my own way of
doing things, how can I instead give myself to you, to new wine skins and new
garments?

Show me how, Jesus. And then give me the faith to follow you. In your name I
pray.

Amen. Tomorrow we're going to talk together about what Jesus had to say about
the significance of the Sabbath.