The Glory Days

The Glory Days.

The dictionary defines the Glory Days as a time that is better than the present, which is a terrible definition.

But when I say the Glory Days, where do you go?

Do you think back to the past, some period in the past that was so good?

Or maybe like me, my personality type, you might think more the future is where the Glory Days are at.

I think all throughout my teenagehood, I was always looking forward to the future, to the Glory Days, looking forward to getting my license and then getting a car, getting my P's, getting married, having kids, always looking forward to the future.

But the danger of seeing the Glory Days as either in the past or the future is that we can neglect the present.

And in fact, it's obvious that we never, ever, ever, ever live in any time other than the present.

So anything that makes us not fully take hold of the present is not a good thing.

I think in our passage today we see an invitation from Jesus imploring us to see that the Glory Days are now.

These are the Glory Days.

So as we open our Bibles to Mark chapter 2, let me pray.

Lord, we thank you for just the joy that we have in gathering together this morning for baptisms, for worship, for exciting stuff with community care, for prayer, for your word in front of us.

I pray now as we come to study it for the next so many minutes that you would speak to us individually and as a church.

We want to be people who are formed by your word and what you would have us do, how you would have us live.

So we pray that the Spirit of Truth would illuminate all of our hearts now, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, this is the 10th message of our Gospel of New Beginnings series.

As you know, we're working our way through the Gospel of Mark over all of 2024, 72 sermons, and this is the 10th of 72.

We have different sermons morning and night so that we can fit Mark into this year.

So please catch up on the previous sermons via the podcast or the website.

If you were here last Sunday night or if you caught up online, you would have heard a message called, Follow Me.

We were looking at the story of Jesus calling Levi to follow him.

It was a simple story, a simple surface story, but beneath the surface of that story were all these interesting kind of subsurface movements.

And now today we come to the passage, Mark 2, verses 18 to 22.

The title of this message is, The Glory Days.

As we tackle this passage, I want to start from a 30,000 foot view and kind of look at the passage as a whole, see the structure and then we'll zoom in.

So when we zoom out, we can see that the first thing at the start of this passage is a question about fasting.

The disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees come to Jesus and they ask him quite an obvious, quite a logical question about fasting.

And then Jesus responds in the form of three kind of metaphors, three parables almost.

I must confess, when I came to this passage this week or a little bit of last week, it took an hour to have any idea what Jesus was talking about.

On the surface, it seems as though he doesn't actually answer their question, but I think when we dig into it again, we'll see, what a surprise, Jesus knows what he's talking about.

And he actually has some wisdom for us.

I think this passage is not actually about fasting.

So this message is not trying to convince you to fast or not to fast.

But as is, I think, so common the Jesus way, Jesus takes a simple question and he takes it on a deeper level.

He was always doing that, so I think there's something deeper for us here.

I think Jesus is setting up a old-new dichotomy, an old-new relationship.

So as we tackle this passage, we're going to adopt that framework of talking about the old and then the new, starting with the old, Mark 2, verse 18.

Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.

If we just pause there and just ask, who are we talking about?

John is, of course, John the Baptist, and the Pharisees were a well-known religious group.

These people are the followers of John the Baptist and the Pharisees, which means they're people who subscribe to or follow the thought world of the Pharisees and John the Baptist.

Now both John the Baptist and the Pharisees are kind of people who understand God and the world and the Bible in a particular way, and that is that it is more important than anything to be faithful to God.

The Pharisees and John the Baptist were grounded in the past, anticipating the future.

For the Pharisees, they took the Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible as their scripture.

That was everything.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

The whole life of a Pharisee was memorizing, teaching and practicing the Torah.

John the Baptist was that prophet who was foretold by Isaiah 40.

In fact, the Gospel of Mark opens with that quotation.

It says, The voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord.

Both John the Baptist and the Pharisees are those who are grounded in the past and anticipating the future.

And when you have that particular mix of theology and worldview, that leads you to fast.

Because fasting is this practice of the anticipation of God.

Therefore, John the Baptist and the disciples were fasting.

John the Baptist and the Pharisees' disciples were fasting.

What is fasting?

Well, when we look at the Old Testament, we can see examples of people fasting for heaps and heaps and heaps of reasons.

I want to give just five briefly.

Firstly, there would be fasting as atonement.

Atonement is that word that means to cover over sin.

Leviticus 16 says, God says, This is to be a lasting ordinance for you.

On the tenth day of the seventh month, you must deny yourselves.

That's an idiom for fast.

You must deny yourselves and not do any work whether native born or a foreigner residing among you, because on this day, atonement will be made for you to cleanse you.

Then before the Lord, you will be clean.

The scripture there says, Fasting is somehow involved in what it takes to atone for sin.

Secondly, we see fasting as mourning to Samuel, Chapter 1, just after Saul and Jonathan have been killed.

Then David and all the men with him took hold of their clothes and tore them.

They mourned and wept and fasted till evening for Saul and his son Jonathan.

Thirdly, we see fasting as preparation, especially preparation for God to do something, Esther, Chapter 4.

Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai, Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa and fast for me.

Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day.

I and my attendants will fast as you do.

When this is done, I will go to the king even though it's against the law, and if I perish, I perish.

Esther was fasting.

All the people were fasting to prepare for God to do something.

Fourthly, we see fasting as pleading.

The scripture says in 2 Samuel 12, After Nathan had gone home, the Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife had born to David, and he became ill.

David pleaded with God for the child.

He fasted and spent the night lying in sackcloth on the ground.

David is, through the practice of fasting, pleading for God to do something.

And then fifth and finally, I think most importantly, we see fasting as return.

Joel chapter 2, even now declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.

Rend your heart and not your garments.

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.

Those are five of the examples of fasting that we see.

We see many more, including fasting for self-discipline to try and break the power of sin.

But I think when you zoom out and look at the picture of fasting in the Old Testament, it kind of boils down to the summary that fasting is for the anticipation of God.

You fast to anticipate and to get God to do something for his glory.

And as you lift up God through fasting, there's this kind of consequential humbling of the self.

That's what fasting means.

And that's why John the Baptist and the Pharisees practiced it.

They were fasting in anticipation of God to do something.

They were trying to petition God to act in this world.

And so Mark 2, 18 says, 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?

And then Jesus responds in these three metaphors.

And we see as we look at these three, he creates this old and new kind of dichotomy.

So now we look at the new.

The first metaphor that Jesus uses to respond to the question about fasting is Mark 2, verse 19.

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.

The second metaphor in verse 21.

No one sows a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, otherwise the new piece will pull away from the old and make the tear worse.

The third metaphor is verse 22.

And no one pours new wine into old wine skins, otherwise the wine will burst the skins and both the wine and the wine skins will be ruined.

No, they pour new wine into new wine skins.

As I said before, when I came to that, I had no idea how that connected to fasting.

I mean, the first of the three metaphors, he at least mentions fasting.

But the second two make no sense at first when I came to the passage.

And I reckon that's probably the way that the people would have heard him say it.

They would have heard him say, what are you talking about, new wine?

We're talking about fasting.

We're talking about not drinking.

Why are you now talking about new wine?

But again, that's just classic Jesus, is to take a simple question and to go so much deeper.

And touch on something that affects all of us.

So Jesus, through these three metaphors, is creating an old new dichotomy.

Old wine, new wine, old cloth, new cloth, and the relationship between them.

To sort of unpack that, I want to take us back to the first words that Jesus says in the Gospel of Mark.

He says in Mark 1, 14, after John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.

This is the first words.

The time has come, Jesus said.

The kingdom of God has come near.

Repent and believe the good news.

The time has come, meaning the kairos, kairos is the Greek word for time, the God-appointed season, the time that God the Father had set has come.

It is on.

Jesus says the kingdom has come near right now.

Therefore, repent and believe.

What is just beautiful about that line is effectively Jesus is saying that the kingdom that you Pharisees and disciples of John the Baptist are fasting for, that thing that you are anticipating has come through Jesus.

It's right in front of you, right now.

And so Jesus says, how can my disciples fast when I'm right here?

The disciples have been following Jesus around, watching him heal and forgive sin and cast out demons.

The kingdom is coming.

Jesus says, why would they fast?

What are they waiting for in the future if it's not right now?

The kingdom has come into the present.

And so as for fasting as atonement, we've seen Jesus forgive sins with one word.

He says, your sins are forgiven.

As for fasting as mourning, the kingdom is coming and transforming lives.

This is the time for joy and not for mourning.

As for fasting as preparation, what are you preparing for?

The kingdom is here now.

Wake up, Jesus says.

As for fasting as pleading, no one has to plead to get Jesus to do anything.

He's the most generous human being who's ever lived.

He gives and he heals and he loves.

And you don't have to twist his arm.

As for fasting as return, Jesus says, repent and believe.

That's how you enter the kingdom.

You don't need to fast necessarily to be in the kingdom.

Jesus says, repent and believe and the kingdom will come to you.

And so Jesus, through these three metaphors, the bridegroom metaphor, the old cloth, new cloth, and the old wine, new wine, he's saying that the old gives way to the new.

The new has come now.

And the old has to go because the new is here.

We've called Mark the Gospel of New Beginnings because every paragraph, every story, Jesus brings a new beginning for someone.

Whether he forgives sins or heals a sickness or teaches or casts out a demon, he's just making new beginning after new beginning.

Everyone who Jesus comes into contact with is transformed.

The old gives way to the new.

It's what Jesus is saying through these metaphors.

My favorite part of the Bible is the Sermon on the Mount.

And I hope that if I say that enough, I'll be associated as the Sermon on the Mount guy because that's what I want.

My favorite part of the Bible.

Just call me the Sermon on the Mount guy and that's good.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says six times in the second half of Chapter 5, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, six times.

You've heard that it was said, but I tell you, don't even be angry, don't even look lustfully at a woman.

Jesus sets up this old and new thing, and the sense in which these two are related is that the new fulfills the old.

It doesn't abolish the old, as Jesus says, but the new way fulfills the old way.

The kingdom fulfills everything that the Old Testament, Old Covenant was pointing towards, is fulfilled in Jesus.

Jesus brings a new way of being human.

The problem is, these metaphors Jesus is talking about, the old and the new, but specifically that the old, the new cannot be bolted onto the old.

Jesus says, you can't take an old cloth and then a new cloth and just whack it on there.

It will get worse.

It actually tears away.

In the same way, you can't take an old wine skin and just put something new on it and expect that to go well.

Both get ruined.

So Jesus says, even though I have brought a new kingdom that is transforming lives, something has to be done about this.

The old cannot contain the new.

And as we see in the Bible, this is not a new problem.

This is an old problem.

And because it's an old problem, God actually said something about it.

Back in Ezekiel 36 from verse 25, God says, I will, in the future, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean.

I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.

I will remove from you your old heart of stone and I'll give you a heart of flesh.

That was the promise of God, that when God acts in history and he did in Jesus, that the old would be taken away and the new would come.

And as the new is given, the kingdom would come through the new.

And that's what the cross was.

The cross of Jesus here was Jesus taking all of the old, the sin, the brokenness, the old way of doing things, on himself and he died and he left it in the grave.

And when he rose again on that Sunday, he had new life in him, new spirit, new heart.

And now Jesus gives that new heart to anyone who has faith in him.

Jesus made a way for the old to be done away with and the new to come.

Therefore, 2 Corinthians 5 is true, that from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.

Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, meaning has put their faith, has repented and believed in the Gospel that he brings, the new creation has come.

Past tense.

The new creation has come.

The old has gone and the new is here.

Because Jesus makes a way for the old to be taken away and the new to come.

So then that's how you get a new cloth onto a new cloth.

New wine into new wine skins.

Because this body is made new in the past, when we put our faith in Christ, so that now we can contain the kingdom.

We can receive the new heart, the new beginning that God has for us.

The old gives way to the new.

The old has been made new.

So we've looked at the old and the new.

What about the now?

I like three letter, three times three letter words.

What now?

What does it mean now to have a new body?

The fact that the old has been made new.

Well, I think it means the glory days are now.

These are the glory days.

Because this stuff is broken and I will die, but I will rise again, and anyone who has faith in Christ will do the same.

The new creation has come now.

So it's, you know, it might be true, there were good days in the past.

Praise God.

Certainly the best is yet to come when he returns.

But the glory days are now.

The kingdom comes now.

The new heart comes now.

The new way of being human that Jesus brought comes now.

We don't have to wait for it.

If I were, I'll just do a little test.

If I was to say the mm and mm kingdom, what words am I saying?

The mm and mm mm kingdom.

The now and not yet.

Whoever came up with that did a great job.

That is catchy.

That little line and more importantly, the rich theology that that teaches has just gone throughout the whole church, and that's great.

The problem with the way that I always understood that line is I thought that this was kind of a static reality.

That the kingdom is in the future and it's in the present, but kind of like not moving.

Like it's present here, but it's static.

I think the exact opposite is true.

We read in Matthew 16, Jesus says, I tell you that you are Peter, Petros in Greek, and on this rock, Petra in Greek, there's a wordplay, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

The rock is the revelation that Jesus is the Messiah.

On that rock, Christ will build his church, and he assumes it will move.

The gates of hell can't overcome it because the kingdom on earth is not static.

It's not now, but like over there and not moving.

It is alive, moving, as the king of the universe builds his kingdom on earth.

So it's true that the kingdom will come fully in the future, and it is here now, but it is like here now, as in it's alive, it's moving.

The king is alive.

And so the invitation of the Gospels is to partake in that kingdom now.

It's one of my heroes, Dallas Willard.

I saw a quote that he said the other week.

I mean, he's long gone now, but I saw it the other week.

He said, we're not only saved by grace, we're paralyzed by it.

What he meant is, Jesus didn't come to give us grace so that we could say, great, my past is forgiven.

Let me keep living as I was always living, paralyzed to do anything.

No, the grace of God came to forgive us of our past and to empower us to become like Jesus in this earth, to see the kingdom of God come.

And I love that idea.

So the invitation for us is to repent and believe, to partake in the kingdom of life, the kingdom of God.

As individuals, therefore, and as a community, we're not to be marked at the deepest level by our nostalgia for the past, as though those were the glory days.

And nor, I think, are we to be marked by our yearning for the future to the expense of the present.

But the truth is, we only ever live in the present.

And the present is when God wants to move, when the kingdom is coming into this earth.

So that's what we're called to be as a community, and our vision for this year is Go24.

I think the Lord has nailed that one.

We are this year focusing our entire year on what it means to be people who receive the mission of God and go.

That vision is built on the premise that the kingdom and the church is not a static reality, but is active and moving.

Therefore, we ask those questions that Virginia referenced.

What habits do we have to stop?

What do we have to start?

What do we have to say no to?

What are we being invited to say yes to?

Because the kingdom is coming in and through us, and we are part of seeing that kingdom come.

That's what this year is about at NorthernLife, which is exciting.

Jesus' first words in the Gospel of Mark.

He said, The time has come.

The kingdom is here right now.

And then when you go to the Gospel of Matthew, you see the last words Jesus says is go.

He says, The time has come, and then he says go.

And when we hold those two together, that is just exciting for us as a church and as individuals, that the kingdom is here.

God wants to do his thing through us as a community and through us as individuals.

And as we do that, we are obeying the last words of Jesus in Matthew, that we would go and make disciples of all nations.

That's what we're called to do.

So as I land this plane, what practically does this mean for us, to be people who live as though the glory days are right now?

I think probably a hundred things, and I pray that the Holy Spirit would, as we dwell on this this week, would show us those things, but I'm going to list out a bunch of things that I had thought of, and maybe the Spirit had prompted me to type, and maybe He'll touch your heart with one of these things.

So what does it mean for the kingdom to come through us right now?

What does it mean that the glory days are now?

Well, it means now is the time to be reconciled with that person who you've lost relationship with.

Now is the time to break the addiction in Jesus' name.

Now is the time to let go of a burden that you shouldn't be carrying, because he can take it.

Now is the time to cross the street like the Good Samaritan and show a radical love for our neighbors.

Now is the time to have that conversation that we've been putting off, to share the gospel with maybe our literal neighbors next door.

Now is the time to take a step of faith.

Now is the time for a new beginning.

Now is the time to go as a church.

Now is the time, especially this February, to pray bold kingdom prayers in Jesus' name, that He would do something for His glory.

And as we're about to do, now is the time to worship Jesus with a fierce passion for His holy name.

Now is the time.

By the grace and mercy of God, we are a community, those who have faith in Jesus, who have been made new.

The old was taken away and the new has come.

We are new wine skins, new cloths, ready to receive the new kingdom, to receive the new wine.

Therefore, these are the glory days.

These are the glory days, because the kingdom is active and is coming through us.

So let's be people who go, who receive the kingdom, and who press into it because we know Jesus is worth it.

Let me pray.

Our Lord Jesus, we thank you that you brought the kingdom to earth.

In your ministry, every teaching, every healing, every deliverance, every parable, every bit of love that you showed was bringing that future kingdom into the present.

And you don't want it to stop there.

I thank you that if we repent and believe, if we have faith in you and you're finished work on the cross, the old has been taken away and the new has come.

Sometimes it's hard to feel particularly new, but I pray that by your spirit in all of us, living in us, you would show us what it is to be made new.

Show us the habits that you would have us start and stop and say yes to and say no to.

We want to press into your kingdom because we believe that you are worth it, Lord Jesus.

We want to pray prayers that are bold, that you would transform our lives, our communities, because we believe prayer has power.

We thank you, Lord, that there were good times in the past.

You've always been faithful.

And there will be good times in the future.

But Lord, we want to see that the glory days are now.

Would you show us, Holy Spirit, as we leave this place, your will for our lives, transform us and help us to go.

In the name of Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

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