Mark 2:18-3:6 - People, Not Procedures, Are The Point

Well, I hope that you're all read up on your ancient Pharisaical laws because today, we've got some very important things that we're going to be looking at in Mark chapter 2 and chapter 3. Just kidding.

You don't have to know anything about Pharisaical law. Anything you need to know, we'll go through together. We are journeying through the gospel of Mark.

We've been journeying with Jesus. We have jumped right into the thick of him preaching the gospel, the good news. He's proclaimed that he can forgive sins and he's proved it through his miracles, that he's been working.

He has shown that he cares about people, not just like the rich and famous or well-read or religious.

Instead, he's going after the people that everyone else despises and hates and thinks doesn't deserve to be in God's people and he's going after them and he's loving them and inviting them to know God and to become his disciples.

And that's where we find ourselves now in Mark chapter 2 and verse number 18. Now John's disciples, so this would be John the Baptizer, John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.

People came and asked Jesus, why do John's disciples and the Pharisees' disciples fast, but your disciples do not fast?

Okay, so now we jump into 2,000 years ago, what were the kind of like normal spiritual rhythms of the people of God during that time? Well, they didn't have physical copies of God's Word in the way that we do today.

They would have them at perhaps the synagogues, at the temple, those kinds of places would have copies of God's Word, but there wasn't personal bindings or scrolls that people would have of that.

Many people were not literate, and even among those that were literate, having to, you think of how big Genesis is in a Bible, think if you have to unscroll all of the book of Genesis. So you didn't really have that.

You went to synagogue or you went to the temple and you would hear God's Word and you would think about it. You would, as we've talked before in the book of Psalms, you would meditate on it. You would say it quietly to yourself.

You would memorize these portions of God's Word. So you didn't really read your Bible. You would pray.

One of the big things that people would do regularly is they would fast. It would be a time where they would, if you will, deny their body of something that they needed here, in this case, food.

They would say, I'm not going to eat food today or I'm not going to eat food for these couple days or these three days or for this week. I'm not going to eat food during this time so that I can pray and think about God. Okay.

Well, that was a great thing. Another one that I do want to mention. So prayer was very regular.

Fasting was very regular. And giving money to the poor was very regular and was one of the things that it was assumed. Yeah, you do these three things.

If you look at the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus says, okay, here are these three spiritual disciplines that you all do that you just normally do. Here's the way in which you do them so that you're not just trying to get accolades from people.

So he says, hey, when you pray, don't do it out on a street corner and be like, oh God, I thank you that I'm not like the sinner over here. He says, go into your closet and your father who hears you pray in secret will reward you openly.

He says, don't seek praise from people. He says, pray to God, not to people. He says, when you're giving money to the poor, he says, don't let your right hand know what your left hand's doing.

He says, don't make a big show of, oh yes, I'm giving all this money to this person. He says, just do it quietly. Don't do it to get praise by people.

Do it because you love God. And, as a result, you love people and want to help them. He says, when you fast, he says, don't put sackcloth and ashes and make it super obvious, oh, I'm just so hungry.

Oh, I've been fasting for days. I'm so righteous and holy. He says, no, wash your face.

Make yourself just look normal. Don't let other people know that you're fasting. He says, if you're setting aside time to dedicate your soul and your attention to God, he says, let that be what you do.

Don't fast so that people will praise you and be like, oh man, I could never do that. Oh, how wonderful that you can serve and worship God in this way.

So here, now John's disciples and the Pharisees' disciples, they fast regularly and people are asking Jesus, hey, like your disciples don't do this. What's up with that?

Verse number 19, Jesus said to them, the wedding guests cannot fast while the groom is with them. Can they? So he says, when you're at a party, he says, the wedding guests, like they eat while the groom is there.

He says, as long as they have the groom with them, they cannot fast. He says, but the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them and then they will fast on that day. He says, no one sows a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.

Otherwise, the new patch pulls away from the old cloth and a worse tear is made and no one puts new wine into old wine skins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins and the wine is lost as well as the skins.

No new wine is put into fresh wine skins. So here Jesus gives kind of three illustrations. First he says that the wedding guest, he says he is the one that everything is about.

He puts himself forward as preeminent. He says, my disciples will fast when I'm no longer with them. And here even the first inklings of Jesus has not come to be with them forever.

He's not come to be the king of the world at this time. So here's kind of the first seeds that he's planting of that. He goes, there's going to time.

There is going to be a time when I am no longer here. And when that time comes, then they'll fast. Then they'll think about me.

Then they will have this time of self denial so that they can remember and pray to me. But then he says in verse 21 and on, no one sows a pair of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.

So as in he gives a similar thought with wine and wine skins, he says if you try and put the old with the new, it's not going to work.

So he says if you're doing it with cloth, then as the cloth naturally fades and ebbs and stretches, he says if you're trying to like patch it up, it's never going to work quite right. It's going to tear. It's all going to be ruined.

He says in regards to the wine skins, he says if you put the new wine in the old wine skins, as the new wine ferments, as it bubbles, as it does all of its things, it's going to burst in old wine skins.

So you have to put it in something new that will grow and flex along with the new wine. So here Jesus says, this is something that does not fit with this new way. He says, I'm doing something new, and you can't put the old disciplines onto the new.

It's gotta be, here's a new way of interacting with God that comes through Jesus. And he says, it's all different now. I'm not doing things in the old way.

And then we have kind of a real life example of what this looks like in verse number 23. On the Sabbath, he was going through the grain fields, and his disciples began to make their way, picking some heads of grain.

They're hungry, they're snacking along the road. The Pharisees said to him, look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?

Okay, if you remember from when we looked at the Sabbath laws, like you're not supposed to work, but there was nothing against like snacking. They weren't, you know, doing harvesting and stuff with a Sith, like they were just snacking.

But here, the Pharisees, they had, I'm going to link in the show notes, I preached a sermon on the parallel passage to this in the Gospel of Luke, I think it was last year. And they had, I want to say it was like 34, 40, somewhere in that range.

They had 34 laws on top of the not working on the Sabbath law. And they said, okay, here's the things that God said not to do.

And to make sure that you don't do that, there's four categories that we have that these four things are all breaking God's law. And so then we're going to enumerate and elucidate on all of these.

So they would say, okay, if you build a fire on the Sabbath, that's working. And so you cannot build a fire. And if you can't build a fire, then you can't put out a fire either on the Sabbath.

And some of those laws and practices have still continued to this very day.

And there was even a fire in New York several years ago because that got extended once technology had evolved into you could not press a button for an elevator because, you know, electricity and it's kind of like fire.

And you couldn't turn off, as happened in the apartments in New York, they could not turn off a heater or a burner.

And so there was great loss as a result of these laws made thousands of years before that were not what God had said, but it was what people said about what God said. So they tell them, hey, it's not lawful.

You cannot pick things or break, you know, you can't pick a peanut and crack the shell and eat the peanut inside. You could not do that. So they said, hey, they're not doing what's lawful in the Sabbath.

Jesus said to them, verse 25, have you never read what David and those who are with him did when he was in need and hungry? So here, have you never read? OK, they spent their entire lives reading the Old Testament and all of the works around that.

So here is someone insulting. He's like, you guys are illiterate. Haven't you read what David and those who are with him did when he was in need and hungry?

How he entered the house of God in the time of a byathar, the high priest, and ate the bread of the presence, the showbread that we learned about in Leviticus, those 12 pieces of bread that were lined out in front of the altar.

And he says, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priest, and also gave some to his companions. He says, David ate food that was only meant for the priests, so it wasn't lawful.

And he says, in verse number 27, Then he told them, the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. So then the Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath.

He tells them, God's laws are not meant to be like restrictive or harm people from having their needs met. He says, that's not the point. The point wasn't, okay, you have to be hungry on the Sabbath.

He says, the point is like, don't work because God is working on your behalf. He says, the point is not, they can't eat a snack on the road. He says, you guys have completely missed the plot.

You missed the point. And so then he ends with that very definitive statement, the Son of Man, the Messiah, the one who is coming to conquer Earth's kingdoms and rule the world. He is Lord, even of the Sabbath.

He says, I'm the one that put down the Sabbath rule because I'm the Lord and I'm the one who decides what it means, not you guys. Wow! It is a definitive, declarative statement.

And then we can see in the next six verses a way in which this played out that wasn't just about hunger, but a way in which these teachings about what was right and wrong to do on the Sabbath that the Pharisees had just completely lost the point of

what God had wanted for his people. Verse number one, Jesus entered the synagogue again and a man was there who had a shriveled hand. In order to accuse him, the Pharisees were watching him closely to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath.

So here they don't care about this man. They don't care about the fact that he has undergone a lot of hardship in his life or that he is in need of healing. They're trying to use him to trap Jesus.

And man, when we use people as traps, as tests, instead of caring about them, wow, what a sorry state that we are in. Verse number three, Jesus told the man with the shriveled hand, stand before us.

So he would have the man come and the synagogue was kind of centered, kind of in a U shape. And so Jesus has this man and he's standing and everyone can see this man.

Then Jesus said to the Pharisees, is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil, to save life or to kill? So he gives them a binary option. He says, hey, is it right to do good or to do evil on the Sabbath?

And here he's basically telling them like, I can do good and that would be a good thing to do. And if I do not heal this man and I have the power to do it, then I am doing evil. I am doing wrong in relation to this image bearer of God.

It says, but they were silent. After looking around at them with anger, he was grieved at the hardness of their hearts and told the man, stretch out your hand. So he stretched it out and his hand was restored.

And you would expect, given what we heard with the man who was paralyzed, oh, there will be glory to God that's given.

But instead in verse 6, immediately the Pharisees went out and started plotting with the Herodians against him how they might kill him. Man, no wonder Jesus looked around at them with anger. He says, you don't care about people.

You care about being more righteous than everyone. And you don't have a care for this person. You don't want him to be healed.

You don't want him to enjoy God's best for him. You just want to prove a point against me. He says, that's wrong.

But he cares for this person. And it doesn't matter if other people think that Jesus is doing wrong. He's going to do right.

Sometimes people will think that you are doing something wrong because you're just following the Lord.

Even here as Jesus examined, there's been times, man, even over the past six months where someone didn't understand why I would say or why I would do something, that I just wanted to follow God's Word. And not everyone agrees.

Not everyone agrees with God's Word. And man, I want to be so careful that I don't put extra laws on top of God's laws, because here that's what these spiritual leaders of Israel had done.

And they had done it to the detriment of their own souls, that they didn't realize that Jesus was the Messiah. They did it to the detriment of the people that were around them, that they were not enjoying God's best as a result.

Today, may we realize Jesus is for us. All of his laws, all of the things that he did really say, do this, they were for our benefit. And so we can obey God knowing, hey, this isn't going to lead me into misery.

This is going to be for my good and for the good of those around me. And then lastly, yeah, let's have a grace that we give towards others. Let's not try and stack laws on laws on laws.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm going to connect the sermon that I preached last year to on the parallel passage of this in Luke. I'm going to put that in the show notes. That way you can listen to it if you would like.

I'm going to put the podcast link and I'm going to put the YouTube link. That way, if you want to watch it, you can. If you want to listen to it, you can also do that.

And I've got some more applications in that sermon as well that I'd encourage you with. Procedures aren't the point. People are the point.

Loving God is the point. Let's make an intent on doing that. Let's not have the heart of the Pharisees.

Let's have the heart of Jesus. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll continue in Chapter 3 tomorrow.