SERMON  OUTLINE

Time to Change

Matthew 9.9-17; Mark 2.13-22; Luke 5.27-39

Introduction

-Parables are mostly truths about the Kingdom of God.

-Two parables: Who Jesus was and why he came; The coming Kingdom of God will require change.

-Review setting of these parables. Mega-banquet at the house of Matthew/Levi with fasting and praying Scribes and Pharisees and disciples of John the Baptist attending.

The Parable on Change Luke 5.36-39

1) An old garment and a new patch ruin both garments.

2) New wine will ruin old wineskins and require new ones

3) Old wine is preferred to new wine

The New Covenant Promised in the Old

1) Ezekiel: A new heart and a new spirit (God’s Spirit) within. 36.26-27; also 11.18-20

2) Jeremiah: A New Covenant, law within on the heart, assurance of belonging to God, forgiveness of sins. 31.31-34; Hebrews 8.7-13.

3) Fulfilled by the cross and realized at Pentecost. Luke 22.20; Acts 2.1-4.

Conclusion

1) A change would be required by the Jews.

2) A change is required by unbelievers Colossians 1.13-14

3) A change is required by believers who have the indwelling Holy Spirit.

SERMON NOTES

Time For Change Matthew 9.9-17; Mark 2.13-22; Luke 5.27-39

-Lets review the setting in which these words of Jesus were spoken. Jesus is a year and one half into his three year ministry and is near Capernaum in Galilee. He has just called Matthew/Levi to follow him and Matthew leaves his post as a tax-collector to follow Jesus. Matthew would eventually become one of the 12 apostles and the author of the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew hosts a mega-banquet for Jesus and his disciples and invites his fellow tax-collectors and friends to come and eat and drink. The social custom of the time allowed uninvited guests to hang around the party and this was especially the practice when an important person was at the party. We have an example of this when a woman comes to the house of a Pharisee where Jesus is a guest and washes his feet with her tears and anoints him with perfume. There are a number of other occasions when the Pharisees and Scribes are part of the crowd even though not specifically invited. So we have at this party the disciples of John the Baptist, and Pharisees and Scribes. These disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees and Scribes are fasting and praying as they watch Jesus and his disciples eat and drink with the many guests. The Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist ask Jesus two questions. The first question is more of an accusation against Jesus for eating and drinking with sinners. “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” We will study this question and the answer of Jesus on July 17^th. The second question is “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Luke emphasizes the contrast between the Pharisees and Scribes and the disciples of John the Baptist with Jesus and his disciples by adding that they often fast and that they also offer prayers. Luke highlights the contrast between those asking the question and Jesus and his disciples by pointing out that instead of often fasting and praying they are eating and drinking.

-Jesus answers their question with two parables. In the first parable Jesus compares himself to a bridegroom and his disciples to the guests-of-the- bridegroom who are with him to prepare the wedding feast and to celebrate the festivities with him. Jesus is pointing out to the religious leaders that his coming is a special event fulfilling God’s purpose to bring the Kingdom of God to earth. The leaders of Israel are not to go on with the religious status-quo but are to evaluate the circumstances and then to celebrate the coming of the King and the Kingdom of God in the coming of Jesus Christ. The coming of Jesus is the beginning of the final fulfillment of God’s plan to establish the Kingdom of God and to be joined to His people. God the Father is to have a family of children. God the Son is to have a Bride. And God the Holy Spirit is to have a living temple in which to dwell. All of these purposes are to be fulfilled in the Church. So the coming of Jesus is a momentous step forward in God’s plan and an event worthy to be celebrated. By focusing on the continuation of their rituals and sacrifices they are missing God’s purpose.

-In this first parable Jesus says that the wedding feast is to be interrupted for a time and during that time the invited guests will fast and pray as they wait for his return. One day the wedding supper of the Lamb will take place and the Church will not only be the guest at the wedding but will be the Bride of Christ.

-In the second parable Jesus points out that the coming Kingdom of God will require change. The Kingdom of God has come with his coming to earth and will soon be in individual people after the day of Pentecost. The New Covenant which Jesus is bringing into fulfillment will require a new way of living and new religious expression. The new life will not fit into the old rituals, and the old rituals cannot be adapted to the new life. New life will require new expression so they need to be ready to make changes and to accept the changes that will be made.

-The second parable has three parts to it.

1) Verse 36, the first of the three parts of this parable, points to the change that the coming Kingdom of God will require. There is an old garment in need of repair. This represents the Old Covenant that was coming to an end with the coming of Jesus. There is a new garment. This represents the New Covenant. It would be foolish to tear a piece from the new garment and try to patch the old garment with it. Doing that would cause both garments to be ruined. The new garment would be torn and of no value and the old garment will look ridiculous with a new patch.

-Matthew and Mark frame this parable a bit differently. There is new piece of unshrunk material that is used to make a patch for the old garment. The new piece of material represents the life of the New Covenant and the old garment in need of repair is the Old Covenant. When the patch of new material shrinks it rips the old garment. The new life and the New Covenant cannot fit into the old system for it will only destroy it and the new will be wasted by trying to fit it into the old.

2) Verses 37-38 are the second of the three parts of this parable. Here we have a batch of new wine which will continue to ferment and give of gases. If this new wine is put into old wineskins it will burst them. Wineskins were animal skins sewn together to hold a liquid. It the skin had been previously stretched by new wine and was old and dried out and inflexible the expansion of the new wine would burst the old wineskin. The new wine needed to be put into a new wineskin to allow for stretching and expansion with fermentation. Here the new wine represents the new life in Christ, the new age after Pentecost, the new walk in the Spirit. The new life that Jesus was going to give could no longer function under the old system of the law and sacrifices and priests and temple rituals. God’s new order in the Kingdom of God would require a new expression.

3) The third part of this parable is found in verse 39, “And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good’”. By nature people prefer what they are used to, “the old wine”, and will be reluctant to try and accept what is new. There must be change but change will not be easy.

-Often this parable is used to defend the need for change in the church. That is a valid application when the change is in response to God’s truth and the fulfilling of God’s purpose. But as Jesus is telling this parable he is focusing on the great change that he is going to bring through his death on the cross. With the coming of Jesus and the Kingdom of God the Old Covenant will come to an end and the New Covenant will replace it and major changes will be required to move from the Old to the New.

-In the OT we find the promise of the New Covenant that God is going to make with His people. In the book of Ezekiel God promised to give His people a new heart and a new spirit. “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove your heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules (36.26-27; also 11.18-20). God promised that in the future His people would be motivated from within by the heart and by the Holy Spirit and that this would cause His people to walk according to His ways, and would mark His possession of them. In the book of Jeremiah we find God’s promise to make a New Covenant with His people. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more”. (31.31-34). The New Covenant was to consist of the indwelling Holy Spirit, an inner knowledge of God, an inner compulsion to obey God, and the forgiveness of sins.

-On the day of Pentecost God poured out the Holy Sprit and brought the Church into existence. With the coming of the Holy Spirit the New Covenant and the Kingdom of God was brought into the lives of individual believers. Jesus made the New Covenant possible by shedding his blood as a sacrifice for sin. With the coming of the Holy Spirit into believers, obedience to God was caused from within by the power of the Holy Spirit and was no longer to be driven by the outward commands of the Law. Obedience to God’s law became an inner compulsion of love and holiness in gratitude to God. God became known as “Abba, Father” because of a new intimacy with God by the indwelling Holy Spirit. And forgiveness and a clear conscience became an experienced reality where before it was only a temporary covering and outward purification (Hebrews 9.11-10.4).

-All that was in the past in the OT was now fulfilled and focused on Jesus Christ and the Church – the Law, the Temple, the Priesthood, Worship, Sacrifice, Faith, Grace, Love and the forgiveness of sins. All of the OT practices and provisions would need to be reappraised and re-expressed in relationship to Christ, the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the fellowship of the Church.

–Hebrew 8.13 after quoting Jeremiah 31 where the New Covenant is promised says, “In speaking of a new covenant, God makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.” The book of Hebrews expresses the struggle of change from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant, from focus on the Law and Moses to faith and Jesus, from the priesthood and sacrificial system to Jesus and his final sacrifice for sin, and from Israel as a nation to the new Jerusalem which is the Church. (Hebrews 8.7-13)

-So in these two parables Jesus declared that he was bringing the Kingdom of God to earth, and as we now know to individual people. To the leaders and Jews of his day Jesus was letting them know that a new age was upon them and this new Kingdom would require change. The old ways would no longer suffice and a new way to worship God was coming. Change would not be easy but was necessary. Jesus died on the cross and in his blood brought into existence the promised New Covenant. In the New Covenant people could be fully forgiven of their sin and filled with the Holy Spirit. They could become spiritually alive and experience fellowship with God. They would be moved to obey God by inner compulsion and not by outward commands. To the Jews of his day Jesus was telling them the Kingdom of God is come and that Kingdom will require radical changes.

-Today we take the Kingdom of God for granted. The Kingdom of God is not something special and new to us. We sing about “the old, old story of Jesus and his love”. Yet the Kingdom of God today continues to demand change from everyone. If you are not yet a believer this morning, you are not in the Kingdom of God but in the kingdom of the Devil. God is able and willing to transfer your citizenship from the kingdom of the Devil to the kingdom of God. “God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1.13-14). The Kingdom of God has come and God calls you to enter into the Kingdom and make the most important change of all from darkness to the kingdom of light, from the Devil’s kingdom to the Son’s kingdom.

-For those of us who are believers, God calls us to learn and understand the Kingdom of God that we now belong to and are living in, and to make the changes needed to live in it as we should. The NT is all about the new life we have in union with Jesus Christ and how we are to conform to that new life by walking in the Spirit. If the kingdom of God has come to you change must be evident. God has not only come to earth in Jesus Christ but God has come to live inside of you and His rule in your life means change that conforms to His character. These are awe-filled truths and we have the privilege to know them and experience them.