Contagious Holiness [3-16-25]

March 16, 2025

Luke 5:33-39

“Contagious Holiness”

We’ve talked about this before. “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” It’s a fairly accurate description of the state of mainline, mainstream Christian belief over the past generation or so. As we read in the Old Testament and New Testament, sinful people are always cobbling together beliefs not grounded in God’s Word. It happens all the time.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is no different. Here are the five basic tenets of MTD:

A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

Good people go to heaven when they die.

{Who is not necessary in this formula? Right…Jesus.}

In one form or another, all or most of these beliefs resonate with people who say they are either religious or spiritual or Christian or all three. This question from pastor Virgil L. Walker sums up our contemporary cultural Christianity:

“If God answered all your prayers from the past month, would your life be more holy – or just more comfortable?”

It’s not unusual for people to cobble together a belief system that fits their worldview. People wedge these points in with Biblical truth. And that’s never a good thing. Keep that in mind as we move on to Luke 5:33-39:

And they said to him, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.” And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”

The big picture here…and we’ll get into the details in just a bit…the big picture here is quite simple:

THE GOSPEL IS ABSOLUTELY EXCLUSIVE.

The Gospel mingles with no other religion. It’s the only truth there is. It mixes with no other worldview. It accommodates no other belief system. The Gospel does not blend with any other faith. In fact, it replaces all other religion. The Gospel overwrites all other worldviews. It is absolutely exclusive.

I love how Jesus ends his parable:

“And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”

Don’t misunderstand. This I not an endorsement of the old ways of doing things. It’s simply a reflection of the mindset that is stuck in the old way of thinking. Such a stuck mindset fails to see the new things God is working through Jesus today.

There is one Redeemer…there is one Gospel…there is one, true Word of God. Nothing shall ever be added or taken away.

That’s where the conflict of these verses is ushered in. “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.” Over the years, religious leaders added their ideas of what should and should not be done to what was revealed in God’s Word. They made stuff up on the go. Do this, don’t do that. Can’t you read the sign? If you didn’t adhere to their worldview, you weren’t in a good or right or saving relationship with God. It was so performative.

Here's what that means. There’s only one fast day commanded in the Old

Testament. But what does verse thirty-three say? “The disciples of the Pharisees fast often.” Today we call that virtue signaling. The only fast

commanded is found in Leviticus 16:29-34:

“And it shall be a statute to you forever that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves and shall do no work, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you. For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the Lord from all your sins. It is a Sabbath of solemn rest to you, and you shall afflict yourselves; it is a statute forever. And the priest who is anointed and consecrated as priest in his father's place shall make atonement, wearing the holy linen garments. He shall make atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly. And this shall be a statute forever for you, that atonement may be made for the people of Israel once in the year because of all their sins.” And Aaron did as the Lord commanded

Moses.

This describes Yom Kippur, otherwise known as the Day of…? Right,

Atonement. It was the day when you examined the sin in your life. You didn’t eat. You mourned. You searched your heart, and you mourned. You grieved over your sin. Have there ever been times in your life when you were so troubled…so sad…so broken up over something either you did or was done to you…that you couldn’t eat? That you had no appetite? Yom Kippur was one of those planned times. It was the only fast. That’s all there was.

There was only one fast required. But what do sinful, broken people do?

They pile on the fasts and the public prayers and the alms in order to appear religious, spiritual, godly people. Welcome to the show. It’s a great way to parade your godliness. Why aren’t your followers like us, they ask Jesus?

That’s the question. And the question leads us to the answer. Before we go

there, let’s look at another Old Testament principle. First, there was the

fast.

Next, there’s the sacrificial system.

Here’s the simple way of thinking about the sacrificial system. Our sin places a barrier between us and God. Sin must be punished. No one with unpunished sin can stand in the presence of the One, True, and Holy God. So God provided a way. A sin offering was to atone for your sin. It was to cleanse you from defilement. These were mentioned in the Old Testament. They pointed forward to the perfect and final sacrifice of Jesus Christ. As Paul said in Colossians 2:17, the sacrificial system was “a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” So fasts

and sacrifices served a purpose. But now Jesus is here. Jesus is here.

That fact seems to drive Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees question. In those days, a wedding celebration could go on for days. And there was nothing somber or sober about it. Jesus’ first public miracle was where? At a wedding. The wedding at Cana. And what did Jesus do? He turned water into wine. It was celebratory. Fasting was out of place. As Kool & the Gang once sang, celebrate good times, come on! No rituals of mourning or sadness. Feasting…not fasting. You invite me to a fast, I ain’t showing up.

Jesus says it would be ridiculous to expect his followers to fast. Absurd to

put on any public show of piety. Why? Because the Messiah is here. The trajectory of salvation history is going to end at the cross. There, the once-and-for-all sacrifice for our sin will be made. Amen? This is such an essential truth.

I love how this observation from Charles Spurgeon captures it:

“LET YOUR TEARS FALL BECAUSE OF SIN; BUT, AT THE SAME

TIME, LET THE EYE OF FAITH STEADILY BEHOLD THE SON OF MAN LIFTED UP, AS MOSES LIFTED UP THE SERPENT IN THE WILDERNESS, THAT THOSE WHO ARE BITTEN BY THE OLD SERPENT MAY LOOK TO JESUS AND LIVE. OUR SINNERSHIP IS THAT EMPTINESS INTO WHICH THE LORD POURS HIS MERCY.”

That is what Jesus did. The teaching of these verses foreshadows the cross. I love the phrasing by Spurgeon. Our sinnership has been drowned out by the grace and mercy of the Cross. Can you imagine what it was like for the disciples to be in the presence of Jesus? The Messiah? To paraphrase that great song, I can only imagine. What exhilaration. What joy. They were poor, but now they have been filled with all good things. They were prisoners to sin and death. Now they have been released. Joy to the world. They were in the presence of the son of God. They were witnesses to his power. They heard his teaching. Moping around like a bunch of sad sacks would have been ridiculous. Fasting would have been ridiculous.

Then Jesus adds in verse thirty-five, “The days will come when the

bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” Do you hear what Jesus is saying? Sometime down the road, the wedding joy is going to end. The groom will be taken away. The phrase used can mean both literally and figuratively lift something off or remove something.

Have you figured out what the point is? By his death on the cross, Jesus is going to be snatched away from them. And then they will mourn. They probably won’t eat, either. It will be horrible. This is the first reference in Luke where Jesus is speaking of his own death. But it won’t last. Easter morning returns their joy. Sorrow is fleeting – joy remains.

Finally, it should be noted that the word “new” is used seven times in verses 36-39. Seven times. The gospel is new. It can’t be patched into any old ways of doing things. Remember the trajectory of God’s salvation. The old existed to make way for the new. Once the new arrived, there was nothing past, present, or future that could be mixed with the gospel.

Here’s something you might want to write down. This captures the transition from old to new:

We don’t change so we can experience the transformational presence of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ transformational presence leads to change.

That is the essence of these final verses in chapter five.

Let’s close with an observation from R.C. Sproul:

“{Our} natural tendency is to flee from the presence of God and to have no affection for the Biblical Christ. Therefore, if you have in your heart today any affection for Christ at all, it is because God the Holy Spirit, in His sweetness, in His power, in His mercy, and in His grace, has been to the cemetery of your soul and raised you from the dead. So you are now alive to the things of Christ and you rejoice in the kingdom into which He has brought you.”

And together, the people of God joined their voices in an affirmation of faith:

HEAVENLY FATHER, THANK YOU FOR SHATTERING FALSE HOPE AND FALSE RELIGION. IN THIS BEAUTIFUL TIME OF WORSHIP, YOU BROUGHT TO US THE PURE DELIGHT OF THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST. AMEN.