Christ the Controversialist (Part 1 of 2)

Guest (Male): Did you know it's possible to turn the blessings of God into burdens? The religious leaders in Jesus' day were particularly good at this with all their rules and regulations. So how can we avoid such burdens and embrace God's blessing? Consider that question today on Truth For Life. Alistair Begg examines the controversial teaching of Jesus that provoked the Pharisees and continues to provoke legalists today.
Alistair Begg: Mark chapter 2, we'll read from verse 18. "Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came 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 is 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. One Sabbath Jesus was going through the cornfields and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some ears of corn. The Pharisees said to him, 'Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?' He answered, 'Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat, and he also gave some to his companions.' Then he said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.' Another time he went into the synagogue and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, 'Stand up in front of everyone.' Then Jesus asked them, 'Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?' But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, 'Stretch out your hand.' He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus." Thanks be to God for his Word. Our prayer before we turn to the Bible: Speak Lord as we wait upon you so that beyond the voice of a mere man we may actually hear from you, the living God, as a result of your Word coming home to our minds. And we ask this in Christ's name. Amen. Jesus was not an establishment figure. The fact that he may be regarded as such today is as a result of all kinds of ideas and notions. Those ideas and notions are challenged by the teaching of the Bible itself as it introduces us to the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, along with his followers, spent the larger part of his three years of earthly ministry in dialogue, indeed in conflict, with the religious authorities of his time. When you read the Gospel records, it is clear that in bringing the message which he brought of the kingdom of God breaking in upon time, the call to repentance and to faith, he was challenging very straightforwardly and very forcibly the man-made traditions of the religious leaders of the day. As we have begun to study Mark's Gospel, we realize just why it is that Jesus has been described by some as Christ the Controversialist. Christ the Controversialist. That actually was the title of a book written by John Stott, published back in 1970. As he introduces one of the chapters, he writes as follows: "The popular image of Christ as Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild, simply will not do. It is a false image. To be sure, he was full of love, compassion, and tenderness, but he was also uninhibited in exposing error and denouncing sin, especially hypocrisy. Christ was a controversialist, and the Gospel writers portray him as such." Those of us who lived through the '60s, if we have any perception at all, even if we were not involved in it, we will know that we lived through a peculiar era for all sorts of reasons. This was the era of experimentation in issues of sexuality, in freedoms of expression in terms of drugs, and the notion of love that was unbounded by any constraints at all. Indeed, there was much to alarm in the '60s. Some of us recall that it was in the midst of that peculiar decade that we either were part of or we were confronted by what was referred to as the Jesus movement. The Jesus movement. From the West Coast of America, where there were long-haired, barefooted creatures gathering to sing new worship songs on the beaches, all the way across the nation and out and across the Atlantic Ocean and into the United Kingdom, where some of us were gathering in public squares to celebrate the Festival of Light. We were marching through the streets of London from Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park so that we could stand in Hyde Park and declare that in Jesus there is life and there is light. Some of us stood amazed at the fact that those who were on the stage, who were our leaders, who were the Christian pop singers of the time, found themselves not only followed by others of us who were younger and with them, but also opposed by those who hated this story of Jesus. I remember memorably one of the singers standing playing his guitar and as he sang a line, then he would move to the side one way and then move to the side the other way. This was not a form of dancing. He was avoiding the eggs and the tomatoes. They were coming at him from at that point the homosexual lobby who said, "Do not come here with the story of Jesus, with the story of light and of life. We are opposed to all you have to say." Here we are today, all these years later, and we have discovered, some of us to our great benefit, that when we turned on and we tuned in and we dropped out in relationship to Jesus, it was a whole new discovery. I met somebody just yesterday. She was wearing a T-shirt. It reminded me of this because that was what it said on her T-shirt. It said, "Turn on, tune in, drop out." And I said, "So you lived in the '60s, did you?" She said, "What?" I said, "Well, you don't think somebody invented that in the first decade of the 21st century, do you?" She said, "I didn't know." I said, "Well, no, that's it. That's the '60s. You should have been there." Some of you were turned on to Christ. You tuned in to the Bible. And you dropped out of a lifestyle of sexual promiscuity and drug addiction into the liberating bondage of Jesus Christ as Lord. Today you're in absolutely no doubt that Christ is a controversial figure. He has not come to prop up the religious establishment. He is not here on the side of that which is man-made and organized and palatable and easily absorbed. As then, so now, from the pages of Scripture, Christ as it were moves up and down the high streets of our cities, in and out of the rural areas of our country, and says, "I am the resurrection and the life and whoever believes in me will live, and whosoever believes in me will actually never die." Men and women are forced to somehow deal with a succession of controversial statements. In this little section that we read this morning—and we'll only get to part of it, I say that for your encouragement—all of the promise and prospect that was in Jesus is described here in terms of a newness. A newness that just bursts through the old wineskins that had been so quickly and easily rendered obsolete. To the extent that we enjoyed something of that kind of movement in the '60s, we might ask Jesus to come and begin another movement in this millennium. How we need Jesus to come. We don't need any more political movements. Those of you who are all exercised about that again, I'm forced to say to you, have I been with you so long and still you do not understand? Here we go again. The same old stuff. New names, new faces, new targets, same old agenda. Look in your Bible and see what Jesus did. Is there a moral component to faith in Christ? Yes. Is there a political dimension to it? Yes. Is it the issue? A thousand times no. What Jesus was confronting here was not ultimately the morality of the people whom he addressed, but it was the theology of the people that he addressed. What he was confronting here and what was so controversial was his view of the nature and character of God. Jesus steps onto the stage of human history and he says, "This is how God may be known. This is how God provides forgiveness." This is the only way that he may be known, and this is the only way in which he provides forgiveness. The people who were opposed to him from the side of organized religion absolutely were opposed to the idea. In his words and in his works, that is his miracles and his signs, Jesus is seen to be challenging the power and the authority of the religious leadership. Let me just point that out to you without going out of chapter 2. Look at how you have this conflict that is beginning to build. Verse 7 of chapter 2, the context is the healing of the man who was paralyzed, and the teachers of the law were sitting there, Mark says, thinking to themselves, "Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming. Who does he think he is?" That's essentially the question. It's a good question. It's a question that many are asking today if they think at all. Who does this person think he is? Who is Jesus? Just another political figure? Just another great teacher? Just another religious guru? He actually believes he can forgive sin? He can give me a fresh start? A brand new heart? Cleanse me from every record of my past? Set me on my feet? Who does this fellow think he is? Verse 16: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" The Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and the tax collectors and they said to the disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" Jesus is going to have to tell them, who do you think I'm going to eat with? You? Not only are you boring, but you're wrong. I didn't come to put a religious club together with people like you that look like you've been eating those horrible pickles that they give you with every sandwich here in America. I didn't come for that. I actually came to call sinners. I love the chance to speak to Levi and all of his friends. That's why I came. Thirdly, verse 18: "Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting and some people came and asked Jesus, 'How is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting and yours are not?'" Verse 24: they saw the disciples walking along, they began to pick some ears of corn, which from a Pharisaical perspective was regarded as a breaking of the Sabbath. It was one of the many, many laws that they had attached to the law of God. The Pharisees said to Jesus, "Look, why are the disciples doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?" You see this kind of dialogue, this conflict that is there? In the next chapter, in chapter 3 and in verse 4, it's Jesus' turn to ask a question now. He says to them, "Well, you seem to be the ones who know what you should be doing and what you shouldn't be doing since you're such geniuses at that, let me ask you a question. Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" And they remained silent. Why? Because he had them. It was like a great closing argument in terms of the prosecuting attorney. Nothing could be said. In each of these incidents, and we're only going to be able to look at the first of the three of them this morning, what Jesus Christ the controversialist is exposing is essentially the Pharisees' unique ability to turn blessings into burdens. To take things which God has given to us richly to enjoy and for our benefit and to make them a wearisome burden on the backs of people. We'll see that particularly when we come to the Sabbath next time. Here God has provided the Sabbath principle in order that there might be rest, in order that there might be enjoyment, in order that there might be all of the benefits that attach to it. The Pharisees come along and say, "No, we don't want you to be blessed as much as we would like you to be burdened." The three incidents are as follows. Incident number one, verse 18 and following, which emerges because the disciples are apparently failing to do what they should. Incident number two, which begins at verse 23, is on account of the fact that the disciples are apparently doing what they shouldn't. Incident number three is when Jesus of course says, "Well, let's just try and sort this whole thing out." Here we are in verse 18: "Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting and some people came and asked Jesus, 'How is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?'" Just in case we don't know what this is, to fast was simply to forego food for a period of time, either as an expression of abasement, perhaps as an indication of sorrow, or sometimes as a recognition of God's intervention. The fasting that was taking place here was taking place from two camps. One, the Pharisees, those who were the pupils of the Pharisees, those who would have been as orthodox as they possibly could be, they were obviously fasting. Then we're told that the disciples of John the Baptist, they were fasting. Whether they were both fasting for the same reasons or not, it isn't possible for us to say, although I think it's unlikely. It's possible that the disciples of John were fasting because John had been taken into prison and they were perhaps fasting asking God to intervene. We can't say that with authority because Mark does not set this in a timeframe. It may also be simply that they became fasters because of the austerity of John the Baptist. John the Baptist was an austere character, he was an unusual character, he wore an interesting garb, and he had an interesting health food diet. It's not difficult to see that somebody who would go down into these remote regions of the wilderness and send out such a striking message and call people to be his followers would say to them, "If you're really going to take this repentance stuff seriously, if you're really going to take following me seriously, then I suggest that you do this. It will do your soul good." Of course, it will help you with your health food diet as well. You will know today that some people in the secular world have discovered fasting. They went into the Bible and they said, "Wow, look at this. If you stop eating, you might lose weight. What a genius idea." Here they're able to interweave all these kinds of notions. The issue was this: the people are looking around, they see the Pharisees' disciples fasting. The disciples of John fasting. The disciples of Jesus partying. That can't possibly be right. If a person's going to be accepted with God, there's so many things he has to do. We, the Pharisees, the organizers of religion, the custodians of that which is external and orthodox, we know what they should be doing, and your boys aren't doing it. And we want to know why. The Pharisees were legalists. What that means is they believed that they could put themselves in a right standing with God as a result of what they did. Jesus was coming to say you can't ever put yourself in a right standing with God as a result of what you do. He was coming to say the issue is not what you're doing, but the issue is what I have done or what I am about to do. On the strength of what I am about to do in making an atoning sacrifice for sin, there will then be forgiveness and a place with God. Every other attempt to make ourselves acceptable to God as a result of our own endeavors is ultimately a worthless task. It doesn't stop people from trying it, does it? There is nothing that infuriates a legalist more than people who don't obey their rules. So this would tick them off. "Why? Why don't your disciples fast?" If you think about this in Luke 18, let's just set this in context because I think this is helpful. The context is absolutely crucial. Verse 9 of Luke chapter 18: "To some who were confident of their own righteousness." Okay, their own righteousness. In other words, a righteousness that they themselves created, established, and maintained by what they did or didn't do. To some who were confident of their own righteousness. We're either going to stand before God on the basis of our own righteousness or we're going to stand before God on the basis of the righteousness of another. These folks were confident in their own righteousness and as a result, they looked down on everybody else. There's only one place in the whole of the Old Testament where fasting is demanded, and that's recorded in Leviticus chapter 16 in relation to the Day of Atonement. Fasting appears all over the place for all kinds of reasons, good. In terms of God actually saying, "This is what I want you to do," it only comes there in relation to the Day of Atonement. The issue here is not fasting per se. It is that fasting represents the way in which the Pharisees with their systematized organized religion believed that they could be and would be accepted by God. So as long as they kept doing all these things meticulously, then God would be pleased to look on them with favor.