Mourning What God Celebrates

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All right, as they are going back and sitting down. Last week, we were in the portion of Matthew where we saw that Jesus was dining with the tax collectors and the sinners. He had called Matthew out of his job. Tax collectors were not well liked. And we came across what happens when God's grace offends God's people.

See, it's not just me who steps on toes. God shatters all of our paradigms throughout Scripture because humanity, what, has a history of taking things too far. We take the word of God, we create boxes, we take the feast of God, we create boxes. We take the Hebrew text, Greek text, whatever, and we create our own denominations, our own structures and. And our own boxes.

And God, throughout the entire Bible, whenever he has tried to be put in a box, shatters that box. This week as I labor in vain over you on this Labor Day. Somebody forgot to tell the elders that the pastor gets off on Labor Day. Oh, that's right, it's not Labor Day till Monday. So maybe they'll get me off on Monday, but they're not going to get me off on the Saturday before.

It's kind of like the birthday weekend as my wife gets older. There's not a birthday. My wife doesn't have a birthday. My wife has a birthday weekend, and then my wife has a birthday week. And pretty soon every day is going to be a birthday.

And y' all need to pray for me. So the new meaning of the touch, not the Lord's anointed. Ha.

No laughter. Only my wife in the Castellanos laughed at that. Isaac was texting the elders. He was like, y' all need to come back from vacation. This dude is already heretical this morning.

So today as we set up in Matthew, we're in the text of Matthew 9, 14, 17. And guys, we're going to be in Matthew for a really, really long time. I know for my conservative, feast loving, Hebrew, passionate people, whatever terminology you want to call that, more than one off teachings every single week is not new, exciting. But most churches go through the word of God verse by verse by verse. Why?

Because that empowers you. It empowers you to understand what Jesus was doing, what Jesus was saying, what the context of that was not only from the ancient Near Eastern concept, but what do we do with it today? If you didn't notice when you looked around, none of us looked like Israel in the first century, and none of us look like the Gentiles of the first century. So the context of the Bible was written to a specific people. And we gotta Figure out what to do with it today.

But today we've come to a place where we're gonna talk about the wedding feast. And so for many, many years of my life, the wedding feast was used to kind of cultish, like, pull me into saying, well, you need to act like the bride. Cause the bridegroom is coming, and the bridegroom is coming, and the bridegroom's coming. Every time a hiccup happens in Israel, somebody's like, the bridegroom is coming. Every time some antichrist rises up, the bridegroom is coming.

The bridegroom is coming. This was terminology that came a lot in my childhood. Today I want us to step outside of whatever your triggers have been in your life, whatever misappropriation or abuse individuals have done throughout the Scripture. And I want us to allow the Holy Spirit and God to speak from the text itself. Because today we're going to look at the bridegroom and the concept of the wedding feast.

For those of you who have been with this church for any period of time, we love the Feast of the Lord. Remember, we teach the Bible as an invitation, not an obligation. And that makes us a little bit different. People will say, you have to do this and you have to do that. Jesus was very clear.

He invited you to do things. He was not abusive. He was not controlling. He was not demeaning. Jesus was perfection.

And he modeled that so that maybe we could be more like him and made in the image of him. So when we approach the feast topics, whether it's the banquet we saw last week with Matthew or we talk about the feast cycle we're in, we're almost to the point where the feast of trumpet service, we're gonna have a worship night. That night we're gonna do a little bit of teaching. We're gonna flip the script. We got some cool things.

We're gonna do communion. Yes. Praise God. You know, we're going to do all kinds of things because the king is coming.

Thank you. Somebody's awake today. Look, it has been cold. There is no reason you didn't go all weekend. 100 and something degrees out there.

We had the hoodies out. We had Oktoberfest this week. It is the first time, I think I've had an Oktoberfest in Oklahoma in eight years that it wasn't 100 degrees outside. They don't mix. They don't mix.

But this week was gorgeous. The temperatures were perfect. And so we're going into the fall feast time. The fall feast is about some obligations. It's about the fact that you have a King Jesus who's coming back.

There is no other hope in the feast except through Jesus. You could say, oh, well, I got my shofar out, or I got my trumpet out, or I went to service. And all those things are good and all those things are appropriate, and all those things are in scripture. But the Feast of Trumpets is the day by which they say that Hebrew idiom, no man knows the day or the hour well, Yom Teruah or the Feast of Trumpets or Teruah, if you got some weird type of Hebrew going on, is the day that carries that idiom. Why?

Because it is a day that the priesthood. So all those people walking out in their backyard trying to be like, oh, I spot the sun, the moon. Not according to the Bible, you weren't. The priesthood would spot the new moon on the Temple Mount. They would blow the shofars and the people would come rejoicing.

It was a day of rejoicing. Why? Because it was the day of blowing. The day of shouting. It was the day where all the Jews were Pentecostal.

Praise God. Now that's a good word. I know. Cam thinks he's allowed to not come to church on his anniversary. He can't be here to say, that's a good word for me.

He better be shouting it in the tv. That's a good word. It was a day by which Israel as a nation, as a people came to celebrate. And I know I'm off topic and forgive me, but it does set the context for where we're going to go today. King Jesus is said to have come back.

You know, Revelation says that he will leave the throne and he will come with a mighty trumpet blast and he will come back for his bride. And all the junk when the puppy poops in the crate and on Cory and when the kids don't listen and when all these things happen, they will all cease. And it doesn't matter whether you're Muslim, it doesn't matter whether you are an atheist. It doesn't matter whether you are a Baptist, whatever version of Baptist you are, it doesn't matter. Whatever type of assemblies of God or Pentecostal or Catholic or non denominational Messianic Hebrew roots, whatever roots, tide roots, Jewish roots, oak roots, maple roots, all the roots that are there.

Every knee will bow and every tongue will declare that Jesus is Lord. That's right. Even the Muslims.

There will be no question at that point in time. So a lot of times people come into a church and it's newer and It's a little bit different. They're like, oh, they're going to do these feast gatherings on Monday night. Oh, I got better things to do. Monday Night Football is back.

It will be back. At that point in time, I mean, I'm praying to God. I haven't looked at the schedule. Maybe my team's not playing. But you know what if it is?

It's the cross I have to bear to come together. Why? Because in the end, you come together with anticipation for Jesus coming back. That's the hope that we have. And that will be important today as we look at the Scriptures, when Jesus comes back to declare his kingdom.

Shortly following the Feast of Trumpets comes the day of Atonement. It's called Yom Kippur in Judaism. It is the holiest and high, holiest day of all the years.

There's been many years. Again, I've been doing this for 20 years of my life. That's why I have gray hair. Been doing this for 20 years of my life. Sometimes we look very, very Jewish.

Sometimes we don't look Jewish at all. Sometimes we're very observant. Sometimes we're not observant. And that depends on who you're talking to. But the day of atonement is the day by which they would fast, they would afflict their souls, and they would pray to God that he would be merciful upon them as they sent the scapegoat out.

I don't need a scapegoat anymore. Because there was this spotless lamb, this lion of the tribe of Judah that came and was born of a virgin in a manger. You know that time where heaven and nature sing, but we can't sing that time where heaven and nature sing, but we can't sing the time when heaven and nature sing, but we can't sing the time when the angels sang with the human beings and announced that there was one coming. The one that the entire Torah and the entire prophets spoke about. Everything in the Torah and the prophets was to foreshadow to this one.

Immanuel God with us. El Shaddai, El Gabor, El Elyon. Jesus the Christ. Yeshua Hamashiach and he came and he lived and he died. I don't need the blood of bull and goats to save me from my sins, because Jesus Christ was the spotless, perfect sacrifice for my sins.

And I am not washed by the blood of the bull and goats any longer. I am covered by the blood of Jesus. And that doesn't need to happen over and over and over again. Even though I sin over and over and over and over again. Because his perfection was perfection once for all.

Screw ups, even the ones that we don't want to confess. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all righteousness. And then after the Day of Atonement, there's this feast called Sukkot, or Tabernacles. We've talked about it a little bit. It's considered to be the wedding feast.

It's considered to be the feast of ingathering or indwelling, where the Lord had commanded his people to dwell in booths. Now some of us say, what an abuse of God to put me in a tent. He says, temporary dwellings. So an RV technically counts, unless you live in an rv, but I'm not your judge. A cabin is a temporary dwelling.

An Airbnb is a temporary dwelling. It's also a season of joy. So if you. If your spouse is being afflicted in her soul, you're doing something wrong. And guess what?

She's going to keep you in Yom Kippur during the Feast of Sukkot. It is a season of joy. Not because you have to, but because you're invited to. And I don't know about you, but if Jesus sets a seat at the table for me and he invites me in, I. I want to be there. I want to be there to the best of my ability, whatever that might look like.

I might come clawing in, I might come dirty in. But he set a seat at the table at the wedding feast for each and every one of you, and he's inviting you to come. And that started in the garden with the Sabbath day, in a rhythm, in a cycle. And so I say all of that because that wasn't in my notes, but that was bursting from my heart during worship today. For those in our congregation who are new, for those in our congregation who don't know why we do what we do, because we are a little bit different.

Not just because I have a man bun trying to be like the Chinese warriors.

The only thing I'm going to hurt is myself. Oh, what's on? Yeah, okay.

You know, it's okay to laugh. Sometimes we come to church and the world is so heavy that we can't laugh or we don't think we're allowed to laugh. God gave us joy as a fruit of the Spirit. He gave us peace as a fruit of the Spirit. He gave us the ability to laugh.

Now, just don't laugh at my sermons. You can laugh at my jokes.

All right. Just we're on the same page. I'm only human too. So today we are going to look at what happens once Jesus calls a tax collector Matthew, a man who was despised in society, yet he was welcomed at the kingdom table by Jesus. We saw how Jesus grace invited sinners and outcasts to a feast.

When the Pharisees took offense to the grace that God had given them once again, we saw that religion resists mercy. And Jesus told them to learn, I desire mercy, not your sacrifice. The kingdom of God was at hand. But those who they thought were going to be the leaders and the elders in the kingdom had found themselves consistently on the outside and on the juxtaposition of what Jesus said the kingdom actually was. So in the words of the great Stephen Curtis Chapman, saddle up your horses, we have a trail to blaze.

And then because it is 2025 and TikTok and Instagram allow us to mash up songs, we should be ready to diving in, going deep and over our heads. We want to be. This week we see that Jesus was challenged again, but this time it's a little bit different. To date, most of the interactions have been with the Pharisaical party. Once again, want to remind you of the cultural context at this time.

You have the Pharisee party, you have the Sadducee party. The they're not the same. Two different. The Pharisees and the Sadducees were basically the religious leadership. It's kind of like I would say in Catholicism, you have the cardinals and you have the Pope.

It's kind of that where like they come together, they make the decisions, they dialogue behind closed doors. And depending upon what they had for dinner, you see some sort of smoke that comes through the chimney. That's kind of the Pharisees and the Sadducees in our modern day. You then had the Essenes. The Essenes have become far more popular in the feast loving, Hebrew, passionate people.

The Essenes were basically the ones who got mad that they didn't get the office of the priesthood after the Hasmonean dynasty, which is where we get our story from Hanukkah. So they basically took their ball and they went home into the desert. They're basically in the first century, what we would consider pagans. They created a cult in the desert where they were holier than anybody else. That's where we get the Qumran scrolls and their writings of testimony.

They believe, just like the Pharisees and just like the Sadducees believe. Whenever this Mashiach was coming it's ironic. We live in a world that not many people believe in a Messiah or a Mashiach. But everybody in this culture believed that when Mashiach, not if, but when Mashiach came, that he would take this and he would instill them into power.

So when we reading Matthew's gospel, how ironic is it that Jesus is not interacting and engaging any of them into power?

They were wrong.

I know it's hard for us 21st century American Christians to believe that we might be wrong. We should probably start from a place of we might be wrong.

I mean, given the Gospels, we should probably, given the takes of the religious leadership, we should probably start from the point of view that we might be wrong versus we got it right.

And then you have the majority of the people, they were not religious leadership. They were just trying to get by. They were trying to go to work. They were trying to provide for their family. They were just trying to do right.

They were trying to overcome whatever the immediate sin or struggle or whatever was in front of them. They were. They were just trying to get by and survive. This is the largest group of people that Jesus was interacting. Yet today we see a difference in this banquet, in this interaction.

Today we see In Matthew, chapter 9, verses 14 through 17, Jesus is challenged not by the Pharisees, but by John's disciples.

See, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes and all the other people added a new nemesis. We could also consider it was an expansion team in the mlb. John the baptizer, John, John the Mikvah man. John John, the guy who baptized with water, who came under the spirit of Elijah, comes in this season to prepare the way for the Lord. John, John has his own disciples.

And so today we see John's disciples say, how is it that we, John's disciples and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast? You see, this is interesting because we just kind of gloss over that and we're like, oh, well, John and the Pharisees, like they were together. I've actually heard people say like, John was a Pharisee and, and then Jesus is a Pharisee. There's not a single scripture in the Bible that tells us that Jesus was a Pharisee. It's kind of like signing up to be a Republican.

You don't get to just be a Republican. You have to actually sign up to be a Republican and then they have to send you all of their mail. Same thing with the Green Party and the Democrat Party and all these types of things. You don't just, you're not just a Pharisee, like you have to become a Pharisee. John's disciples were, were similar in nature Here it's interesting because John's disciples and the Pharisees, even though this implies that maybe they were together, they actually were worlds apart.

John's disciples, Halakah or the way they walked, to walk and talk, to talk was not the same as the Pharisees. And most of the time they were on opposite ends of the spectrum of how do you do this? What does this practice look like? So John's disciples and the Pharisees were not buddies. Yet here you have the more reform minded of John's disciples questioning Jesus about his disciples practices and his practices based upon something that they did in common with a strict legalist.

The Pharisees were the strict legalists. Fast Forward to the 21st century. Reformed Baptists and anti Baptists, Baptists, Pentecostals, they don't like to hang out much at all, even on the things that they might agree on. Now thankfully there's some pastors who have the heart of God who are trying to step across denominational lines nowadays. But in this time they were all about who do you study under?

We see that in Paul's writings later. Did you know I got a degree from ou? Well that's great. I got a degree from Stanford and it's like I dropped out of college to be in a band and now I'm preaching the word of God. God does whatever God wants because he's God and he's sovereign.

But they both stood together here and they questioned why is Jesus not fitting into that box? Didn't fit into the box of John's apprentices and it didn't fit into the box of the Pharisees apprentices. And Jesus answers with a stunning metaphor and he says, how can the guest of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken and then they will fast. Why do we mourn what God celebrates?

Sometimes we're looking in the past and rather than using the parables and the principles from things that have happened in the past to implement them into today. Sometimes we're so worried about like what happened in the past and we're mourning something that God has come and redeemed and celebrates.

Now we're obviously talking about a wedding feast here. We're talking about a gathering. But I want men in this room.

The devil wants you to be riddled with guilt, shame and Condemnation. The devil wants you stuck in your addiction. The devil wants you to not lead your family and love your family. Well, the devil wants you because if he can destroy you and your family, he's destroying multiple generations to come.

Jesus comes and says, I can help you with that addiction, that guilt, that shame, that condemnation. I can remove it from you and I can fill it with something that will take away and keep you from for the rest of your life if you will allow me and you will walk with me. We saw this, I think it was two weeks ago. When Jesus is dealing with the paralyzed man and he says, your sins are forgiven, he said, what's easier to pick up your mat and to say, say go, walk or that your sins are forgiven? Sometimes we want the physical.

We don't want our wife and I to be in an argument. We don't want the yelling and the screaming. But we're not willing to do what's under the undergird of the spiritual, emotional side to make sure we don't have the physical manifestation. Whatever you're watching on your screen is not a physical thing. It is emotional, mental and spiritual thing.

How you talk to your spouse, to other people is not a physical thing. It is a mental, emotional and spiritual that is coming out in the physical. Women, same thing. If you have confessed your sin to Jesus and you have repented from it, he says that he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. It also says it's as far as the east is to the west.

So when you are carrying in this stuff with you from the past and you're mourning your mistakes, God in the heavens have already rejoiced in the fact that you have been set free and that you have been forgiven.

A lot of times the devil tries to keep you back there. He tries to pull you back there. He wants you to mourn. He wants you to stay in a place where you aren't empowered. He wants you to stay in a lifestyle where you don't feel like Jesus has really set you free or that you can be something different.

He wants you to stay in a place where your brain is all whacked out about like, oh, I'm a bad person. All of us are bad people. All of us make mistakes at times. All of us need to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. There is none perfect.

So as we talk about the wedding feast and mourning versus fasting, celebrating, feasting, dining, Jesus makes this statement. How can the guest of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them. The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken. Then they will fast. This is more than clever imagery.

This is again. Once again, Jesus said, I came to fulfill the Torah and the prophets, not to abolish. This is a fulfillment of the Torah and the prophets. Where do we find in the Torah and the prophets the concept of the bridegroom with Israel and what will happen? We find that in multiple places.

Places. Isaiah 54, Hosea 2 and Jeremiah 33. God Himself is pictured as Israel's bridegroom.

Weddings were times of joy, feasting and celebration. You don't cry at a wedding. If you do, you shouldn't have been on the guest list. It's wedding season. There's that really small period of time in Oklahoma where people can get married outside when it's not 105 degrees and you instantly melt.

That's a good word.

This year might be different since it's like 70 degrees outside and like beautiful at this point in time. So there's a lot of weddings coming up. We're gonna be a part of, gonna help do that kind of stuff. If I show up to a wedding and somebody in the back seat is going, hate being here, whatever. It's like, how did they get on the list?

They're like, oh, sorry, they're blood. Like, I had to. Like, I had to. Like, I had to. I didn't really want them to be here.

Like, we only talked to them like one time since, like in the last 10 years. But it's the only family I remember I couldn't invite. Everybody else is rejoicing. Even the mom who is slobbery crying.

It's out of joy.

It's out of joy.

So when we think of a wedding and we think of that allegory, that metaphor, we think of a time of great rejoicing. I love Kurt and Lexi. One of the few weddings I actually got to be a part of without actually having to officiate. And then let me like have fun walking down the aisle. And all of it was like super cool.

Don't take yourself too seriously in life. Have some fun. Enjoy it. It's a feast. God doesn't want you to be crying at the wedding.

He wants you to enjoy the feast part of that. By calling himself the bridegroom, Jesus is making a breathtaking claim that he is the God of the covenant of love in the flesh. He's not just another rabbi. He's not some other best selling authority.

He is God in the flesh. The one that Israel had been waiting for, the one that the prophets foretold, the one that the Moses foretold about, the ones that Deborah foretold about. He is the one. And guys, it should put it all into perspective. They knew more about the prophecies and they knew more about the Old Testament than any of us.

It was ingrained in their culture. It was ingrained in their families. It was ingrained in their DNA. We grow up and we talk about how great our brother was at a baseball player or how cool our uncle was, or did you know that so and so was friends with somebody's friends who knew somebody who was on American Idol. And that's what our culture is.

We grew up in that place. They grew up talking about the Exodus. They grew up talking about plagues. Like, hey, you remember that time when great Uncle Moses, like, literally, like, made the entire, like, turned to blood with Yahweh, like, really, really cool. And we're over here like, yeah.

My dad played one year in freshman high school baseball.

He still has his letterman's jacket. He can't fit into it, but he's got it. I'm gonna go home today, I'm gonna pull all my old baseball jerseys out of the attic and I'm either gonna go on a diet now that I said that, or I'm gonna have a lot of self esteem next week. Watch out.

This was their culture. This was ingrained in who they were. We're very much removed from that today.

But Jesus does not do away with fasting in this moment because fasting has its place and it had its place. The day of atonement was a time of grief and repentance and longing. If, if, and I say if, Israel retakes the Temple Mount and Israel has control of the Temple Mount and the political landscapes chill out a little bit, there will be altar sacrifices that will start. We shouldn't necessarily flip out. A lot of Christians are like, oh, how are we going to deal with sacrifices on the altar?

Not every sacrifice was about sin. It's kind of been mistaught for many, many years. But what will happen if that happens? I promise you there will be a sect of Judaism if that altar is up and functional. Come Yom Kippur time, they'll do the Yom Kippur sacrifice.

They'll send off that goat someplace and they'll do that. And as they do this and as they send it to Azazel out into the devil and all of the metaphors that are happening and all the things that are seen in front of their eyes. They will still not see that as Jesus has taken the place for the atonement of sin. And they'll continue to do that. And all of my messianic loving, feast loving people will have a choice to make.

Are you gonna lay your hand on a goat or are you gonna stand with the greatest of all time? See what I did there? Goat Jesus Christ, that came to me in the moment. I'm not going to say that was Holy Spirit, but it definitely wasn't. In my notes, Jesus is telling them that the time for grieving and repentance and longing is no longer here.

Because what you have been grieving and what you have been longing for no longer exists in this presence because I'm in your midst.

And this is important for us who love the feast, love the festivals, love the Sabbath day. You're here on a Saturday, the Sabbath day. I don't care if you can take your Sabbath day on Monday. We love the Sabbath day. When Jesus comes back with a great sound of the trumpets and he comes for his bride.

And you're like, sorry, Jesus, you didn't come on the right day.

You'll find out real quick that whether you were Christian or not, whether you were messianic, Jewish or not, whatever it is, you were left behind. Just like Kirk Cameron because he's going on to somebody else because he ain't worried about that. There was a time for a feasting, a time for rejoicing, a time for mourning. To everything turn, turn, turn. And Jesus is saying, this is not that time.

You do not fast, you do not mourn, you do not weep because the bridegroom is with you. There is coming a time when this will happen and then you can weep and you can fast. The this is not a time for mourning. I am here now. The kingdom is here.

Everything that he had started talking about from the Sermon on the Mount, he continues to put into action in the kingdom of action through Matthew's Gospel. The kingdom is here, the kingdom is now.

Why do we mourn what God celebrates?

But then there's this prophetic glimpse of the cross.

It's the first time in this gospel recording where Jesus alludes to the fact that he will be taken away. And it says, but then comes a shadow. The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken away.

We know that now to be he will be crucified and he will be put in the grave and he will resurrect and he will ascend and he will go back to the Right hand of the father. Father.

That word taken. There is a Greek word called apyro. Apyro. It's not a casual word. It's not like Jesus just kind of strolled along with him.

It means to be seized or snatched violently. So there will come a time when the bridegroom will be seized or snatched violently away from the bride.

This is the first hint at the cross. In Matthew's Gospel, the joy of the wedding will give way to the sorrow that Jesus has taken and beaten and crucified. And the irony of the Greek word in the modern culture, a pyro is what my buddies and I were in high school. We would go and we would light stuff on fire. I am a pyro.

A pyro. I didn't know what the Greek word was at that. I didn't even know Greek was a thing at that point in time. But a pyro in Mason, Ohio, was. You got a bolt of a Bic lighter and you lit stuff on fire and you prayed to God you didn't burn somebody's house down.

That was a pyro, a person who ignites a fire. And Jesus death lit a fire that would come to the full fruition at the feast of Pentecost, the day of Pentecost, or known in the Hebrew as Shavuot, when the tongues of fire would be set forth from the heavenly realm and fall on every person in the room who. Who would be in one accord.

It was the greatest outpouring of the Holy Spirit in one place to date. And yet, even in this, Jesus wasn't abolishing fasting. He was redefining it.

It's no longer about your empty ritual.

It's about longing for Jesus return and hungering for the fullness of the kingdom of God manifested here with the hope of eternity.

The first week back from our sabbatical last year, the first Saturday, I started a series called the Remission Series.

And I talked a lot about the parable of the garment and the wineskin. And I'll give you the very quick Cliff Notes. It's still on YouTube for you to go back and watch, and I encourage you to do so because I think it also will help you today put some of this in context. But for the sake of time, I'm going to gloss over that portion real quick. A wineskin for all of you who like to walk into the liquor store and get yourself some Manischewitz, the finest of the finest.

For it's literally one step up. It's the Jewish Boone Farms. Like. Like let's just be honest with each other. Like, nobody should be drinking it.

But if you do, that's fine that you're right. We all have different tastes. You know, I like Burger King, so, you know, I know somebody said what it's like all y' all people out here calling God's chicken chick fil a when everybody knows that Popeyes is better. So are you trying to say the devil is better than God's chicken? It is not.

Lies. That is a good word.

But a wineskin was a skin. It wasn't a glass bottle. It wasn't a bada box. It was a skin. And when the wine would kind of start to dry up, they would drink it, they would use it, all of those types of things.

It would become more brittle, become a little bit hard. And so what would happen if you were to take all this new wine and you were to put in this shrunken wineskin that becomes somewhat brittle? It would burst. So Jesus says, no one puts old, new wine in old wineskins. But the reconditioning process of a wineskin is pretty amazing.

Maybe it's a coinkydink. I don't know. I don't think God does anything as a coincidence.

You have to first drain out all the old wine. Then you have to take the skin and you have to fully submerge it in water. You have to re saturate it with moisture. Then once the wineskin goes into the water and comes out, you start the process of taking wine. Excuse me, oil.

And you start massaging both the inside portions and the outside portions so that the moisture that was in the submersion of the water can be locked in by the oil. This is a process. This isn't something that happens overnight. If you have ADD or adhd, probably not the thing for you. You rub it with oil and you let it sit.

And then after it has been anointed with oil, all the old wine has been dumped out. It has been submerged in the water, and it has come out of the water. It has been anointed inside and outside with oil. Then and only then is that old wineskin available to accept new wine. And even when it is filled with new wine, then it must go through a fermenting process before you drink it.

All of us are like, I got saved today, and tomorrow I'm apostle.

The wineskin parable says, I got out of seminary today. I'm a pastor.

I got a strong concordance, and so now I can be a Bible teacher.

Better resources available. Guys, come on. It's time to graduate. You are the wineskin in the parable. You have to pour out the old wine of the sinful nature.

You must go into the water and be cleansed inside and outside. You must be anointed both from the inside of the Holy Spirit and on the exterior of your body by the oil that only comes from God. And then you should grow ferment into your role, whatever that would be in your life. By the power of the Holy Spirit. You are the wineskin.

Nobody puts old doctrine into new doctrine.

We are working on a rental house for some friends of ours. Nobody puts new paint on old paint. Why? Because when you do, it's the same paint, but it ain't from your eyes. In fact, it looks like somebody had blood splatter all over the wall and you just were like SpongeBob SquarePants in it.

All over the wall.

God does things in front of us modern days guys that we see these analogies all the time, but we just gloss over them as if they're just life. God is reminding us through scriptural things every day and things we do in our life that that you are to be a new creation. All of God's Torah and prophets was about a time where this king would come and he would make us into a new creation. Anybody who thought that at some point in time we had the ability to make ourselves into a new creation hasn't read the Bible. How's that working out for you?

There's been billions of people who thought that they could make themselves new creations and it doesn't work. Only he can make you new creations. Cause he's the one who created all creation. And through dying to ourselves and living in Jesus, we can become a new creation. That's the most Torah observant thing you can do.

Everything in the Torah and the prophets. I'm Torah observant. I'm messianic, I'm Hebrew roots, I'm whatever you want to call yourself. Seventh Day Adventist. The most biblically accurate thing you can do is to allow Jesus to make you new.

Because all of creation was cycling and God had to step in and make it a new creation. It didn't matter whether you're a Jew, a gentile, part of Israel, not part of Israel, whatever.

No one patches an old garment with unshrunk cloth. Neither do you pour new wine into old wineskins. Verse 16 through 17. Jesus drives home his point about mourning and feasting by telling the people using parables that you cannot embrace the new kingdom of life while holding onto your Old religious systems, the old wineskins of your legalism, your ritual acts, your self effort that leads to self righteousness. It cannot contain the new wine of the spirit because you are at odds with the new spirit when you are attempting to hold on to your old spirit.

If you try, both will be ruined. The old wine and the new wine.

This is personal.

This is extremely personal.

If you're an addict, a liar, a cheater, a self righteous Pharisee, you must be renewed, reconditioned, made into a vessel that God can pour into.

If you cannot allow Jesus to heal you and set you free, you will remain an old wineskin, rough, tough and bitter.

A lot of times I find that people are scared to fellowship and get close in a church because they don't want people to see their old wine.

But if you don't pour out your old wine, you'll never be able to be filled with the new wine.

Whether that's in how you think about your marriage, how you think about finances, how you think about whatever it is the old wine was. Listen to the Pharisees and let them tell you what to do while they modeled something different in their life. The new wine of the kingdom of heaven that Matthew is writing here is a wine that is unlike anything they've ever seen. It's one that says, not the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the only people allowed at the table. That random person on fentanyl can come to the table too.

That person at the last church you were at that hurt you. They're most likely going to be sitting next to you at the table.

Jesus didn't tell you to do one thing and model something different. Jesus spoke something and modeled the same thing. He wasn't like any other messianic rabbi. It's personal. Because no longer was this some mountain far off.

Jesus sitting and speaking. Jesus has left the mountain where he has spoken these words and he is putting these things into action. This is the kingdom in your midst. It's here, it's now. And if you cannot allow Jesus to heal you and set you free, you will remain that old wineskin.

The fast that was there was no longer about atonement. Jesus was showing everyone the atoning work of the kingdom, the atoning work of Jesus the Christ. It was now a fast from the presence of God. I don't go in and fast. When we give up things for the 28 days or we give up things for fast.

I don't ask you to give them up so that somehow you can be atoned I ask you to give them up. Because we're asking for Jesus presence to come and fill us with wisdom and discernment and knowledge to so that we can manifest his kingdom, his power, his character, his nature. I don't ask you to fast because somehow your fasting is going to make you holy and righteous. I ask you to fast because in the fasting I'm praying that the Holy Spirit will empower that area that you have abstained from. And this is why I say, hey, look, I don't care if you abstain from food, if you abstain from Facebook, it's actually probably better for you because most people use Facebook or social media more than they use food.

And if you can abstain from something in your life that draws you away from God, God can send his spirit, his new wine, into that area to empower you to be different. You don't need me to be different. You need the power of God to be different.

My job is to help push you towards the power of God. And if you don't come back next week because you think I stepped on your toes, that's fine. If you. In the end, I'm responsible for what you hear and what I have taught you. And I will stand before God.

And I don't want to be an old wineskin. I don't want the old wine and I don't want your blood on my hands. So we must go before the Father. We must see that there's a seat at the table for everyone, and we must allow him to recondition us into a new wineskin with his power, with his might, so that we don't stay in a brittle, tough, arrogant, prideful state of a sinful nature.

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

The gospel message should go forth. I hear a lot of people and I watch a lot of people talk about how bad the world is today.

What if you took the time to not talk about Trump and Fox News and CNN and you took time to share the gospel of Jesus Christ? Because I have never met a Fox News story or a CNN story that will set you free. But the gospel is the only thing that can set you free.

Jesus never tells us to recondition another person's wineskin. This was the the Pharisees had a double masters in other people's wineskins. JT why do you not use two cubes of butter on your Sabbath bread?

Mark, you didn't say the mato vu three times before you came in here today. Today. They were constantly analyzing somebody else's walk and finding some sort of issue with their walk. And yet what God is revealing in the flesh, Jesus is revealing. They spent so much time pointing out your business that they have not turned inwardly to their own hearts to be made.

New American church, Western church, wake up.

Your wineskin is what you should be working on with the Lord, not somebody else's. And I'm not saying you don't call out sin. That's not the point.

But a lot of times we're sitting on our front porch drinking our coffee or our tea, just waiting for somebody to make a mistake we don't like. Oh, that's bad theology right there.

The portals are open. We have to go into our prayer closet now, Martha.

Never opening the scripture, never praying in their own life. This is the juxtaposition of what we see is happening with Jesus. Jesus, in just a few verses, challenges the human religious systems, claims divine identity, redefines spiritual practices, prophesies his own death, and calls us from mourning into joy. Worship team, you can come back. It is one juxtaposition after another.

Matthew is going to great lengths to record that the Kingdom Torah observant Jews at that day was not the kingdom of God at hand and that Jesus was a leader who not only preached the words like the Pharisees had done, but he was now going to do the words unlike what the Pharisees had done in Jesus Kingdom. Your words mean very, very little if your actions don't testify of that kingdom. Everything in the Torah and the prophets had testified about this moment. Yet we still embrace the shadows rather than clinging to the one the shadows told us to cling to. Well, when did we become the people who hate Christmas and Easter more than we love the Sabbath and the feast?

When do we become the people who have so many disagreements with the Baptists or the Pentecostals or other denominations? Meanwhile, we're over here not reading our own Bible.

It's one juxtaposition after another. Jesus Kingdom is here and now, and he's calling you to be different. You can only be different by his power and his spirit, because every other human being who operated in their power and their spirit did the same thing. Let me take you from wherever you are on that ladder and put you underneath myself so I feel better.

That's the human culture. And Jesus goes to the bottom of the mud in the muckety muck and he says, hey, let me help you up into that place. One is of Jesus Kingdom and one is of our own. Infirmities, weaknesses, the Old ways had mourned, yet the kingdom celebrates the old way clings to rituals, yet the kingdom clings to relationship. The old ways had left us empty.

And yet it says in the Bible that Jesus alone fills.

John was the one who was prophesied to come at the spirit of Elijah. And here we see John even who had the spirit of Elijah hid. His disciples were struggling with what they saw with Jesus. They were being taught by a man who the Bible clearly says was preparing the way for the Lord. And they still struggled.

We have many today who still struggle with, well, Moses or David or the Psalms. And how do those interact with the Gospels?

These people in their culture were moving forward towards the words of Jesus in their present. We have the words of Jesus in our past and the testimony and the historical facts that Jesus is the Christ in our past. But many of us want to go past Jesus and rehash arguments of cultures and centuries over and over and over and over and over again.

Are you trying to pour old wine into a new wineskin? Are you trying to pour new wine into an old wineskin?

The kingdom isn't far off, guys. And this isn't some doom and gloom. The great and powerful day of the Lord. The scripture is true. It'll happen.

This is an invitation not to be scared, but to be empowered. The kingdom of God is around us at Aldi. The kingdom of God is around us at Premier Sports. The kingdom of God is around us when we're working on drywall or we're laying flooring. The kingdom of God is around us, manifested in our midst.

The moment Jesus stepped off that mountain, he was never not on mission for his kingdom. And it was an invitation, not an obligation. Jesus didn't obligate you to do anything. He invited you to join him.

This is our present reality. We don't live pre Jesus.

All the crazy theology out there.

Theology doesn't get you to the kingdom. Jesus does.

Why do we mourn what God celebrates?

The invitation of Christ is joy, renewal and a relationship with the bridegroom himself.

Yet so many today are mourning one. We should be rejoicing.

God celebrated the ability to rest with Adam in the garden.

Our life is busy. It's hard to get here on Saturdays, as if you're the only one who makes sacrifices.

God knew it would be hard for people from all over the world to walk or to ride donkeys for a long point. And so he said in his feast cycle, there are three times a year when I want everybody to get together, have a big old party, tell you this. I don't always get along with all my siblings, but the once or twice a year I go back, we try to make it a party, and Jesus commands you to come to the feast with anticipation.

Well, I don't really think it's that important.

Why do these people worship on Sunday? Why do these people have separate holidays? Why do these people do this?

I think sometimes we've glossed over some of the Gospel accounts of the same things that we might be dealing with in different corners of Christianity today. They're not exclusive to the feast of the Sabbath. They're. They're in all forms of denominations. Calvinists are fighting against the people who don't believe in Calvinism.

The Baptists fighting with the Catholics.

I've looked up in the sky a lot over the last three years. I've never found a star fighting with another star. Maybe, I mean, maybe I'm just too stupid to see it, but I never saw a star, like, come over and be like, to another star and then like, run back, you know. At one point in time on our sabbatical, we could see multiple planets. Never once did I see the planets fighting with each other.

Walked around lakes a lot. I like bodies of water. I've never seen a rock fight with another rock. Has anybody ever seen that? I mean, I've never seen it.

Never just seen a rock laying next to another rock. It just like hops up and kicks it into the water, then like, goes back and acts like it wasn't moving in the first place.

The body of Christ kicks, bites, fights like toddlers with temper tantrums against each other. We don't have to worry about other religions wiping us out. We don't have to worry about other people taking issue with us. We don't even have to worry about the adversary coming to attack us. We're very good at attacking each other.

But if the stars were meant to worship, then why wouldn't I?

If the oceans stop at the crest of where God has separated the dry land and the water, and that is their form of worship, and why wouldn't I stop at the healthy spot of where he tells me to stay in my land?

If the wolves on the east side of Norman, we don't have them on the west side of Norman, but on the east side of Norman, if the wolves are howling to their creator, that's what they're doing. When you're all freaked out and you're like, oh, they're going to hunt. No, they're just singing. Singing the new Bethel song. Chill Out.

Yeah, that's all they're doing. It's just far off. So you're hearing the reverberation. It's a really cool effect. They have autotune.

But if creation sings God's praises, then why aren't we?

See, creation understands the rhythms and the rest and the cycles of who God is and what God does.

We're the ones who wrestle with who can be there. How can they be there? How long can they be there? Why should they be there? Oh, we don't need to be there.

There's another parable of a wedding fellow.

The master throws this beautiful wedding feast and he calls all of his friends, that's like me, I put it on church center so all you guys can come. You know, just like at a progressive Hanukkah party where everybody comes to my house and we hang out. I know a pastor who opens up their house. Shocking. And we hang out.

Only this is a bigger feast because this guy's far more wealthy than I am. And so this master throws this beautiful feast and he sends his servants and says, hey, go. Go get my friends. Go get those people who are close to me. Here's the.

Here's an invitation list. So I invite the Cassianos, I invite the Davises, I invite the Atkinsons, I invite the Petersons, I invite the Fortners, Smilovichis, the prices. Everybody's like, no, I'm going to get emails. Brandedfamily.com. i invite Isaac and the Juarezes and all the other people.

Everybody in here, I invite. So you can, you can't email me.

And what does the parable say? Well, the Davis's had a puppy, so they couldn't come that day.

The Fortners had a newborn who had a sleep schedule that couldn't come that day.

The Lopez's had something else that couldn't come. And all of a sudden, out of all these hundreds of thousands of. Of people that, that have been invited to this feast, to this wedding feast. They're all busy. Nobody comes.

I'll be there tomorrow. Can we move it to next week? Like, no. And so then the master says, okay, okay. My friends, my colleagues, my community, all these people, they couldn't come.

You go out into the streets and you grab every person that's there. I don't care if they're naked. I don't care if they're clothed. I don't care if they're drug addicts. I don't care.

Care if they're coffee addicts. I don't care if they're if they watch bad shows, I don't care what. I don't care if they think Hitch is the greatest movie under the sun and he's got to keep it right here with his dance moves before Trump was even popular. You bring them all, and they're all invited to my table.

This is like the feast we see here.

Just because you think you're a part of a community, just because you think you're part of an area, just because you think you have everything figured out, remember that Jesus came for those who knew they needed something. They just didn't know what it was. They're just trying to get by. And it was the people who knew, thought they knew everything, that struggled the most with undoing the old wine and allowing themselves to be filled with the new wine. And so today, as we respond, before we get into some pretty miraculous miracles in the text next week, spend this week in reflection.

If the rocks cross cry out in worship, so will I.

If the stars cry out in worship, so will I.

If everything in this world exists to lift Jesus high, then I better not be a person who is trying to remove him. Because I'm the juxtaposition. I'm the opposite of what creation is doing.

The sum of all of our praises.

I think we forget sometimes that the invitation of God to the feast is not like it's a feast that's here. It's a feast that's. That's already happening in the heavenlies with the elders and the beasts.

Don't let Jesus labor be in vain in your life. So as we sing today, as we respond today, reflect in your heart. Allow the Holy Spirit to be that still, small voice in your heart to tell you the areas that you know need to be more like Him. Allow the Holy Spirit to. To reflect in your heart the areas that you've kept apart from Him.

Allow the Holy Spirit to point out the areas by which you are not modeling the character and the nature of God. Because there's a wedding feast and the people who showed up at the feast were rejoicing with Christ. Christ. While the ones who thought they had it all figured out, the ones who thought they were religiously solid, they were the ones who were questioning, why don't you fast? Why aren't you mourning?

And what we find in this text is that it is too easy for us as human beings to celebrate what God mourns and mourn what God celebrates. If you will stand with me, let's respond.

I was made to worship you.