Jesus Is the Center & Climax of All Redemptive History
This article has been generated from the sermon manuscript of part seven in a recent series called, “The Savior Who Is Supremely Worthy To Be Followed,” (Matthew 9:14-17). That sermon can be accessed here.
Jesus Is the Center & Climax of All Redemptive History
Preached by Rev. Tom Brown on the Lord’s Day, May 8, 2022
Sermon Text: Matthew 9:14-17
14 Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” 15 And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. 16 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. 17 Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
Introduction:
The text before us today represents a great collision between two contradictory approaches to God. That collision can be framed by the question: Is the salvation of God earned through our works or simply received by faith as an undeserved gift? Within this passage is a collision between false, self-righteous religion that strives to earn its way to God through one’s own religious performance, and true religion, in which one humbly acknowledges their sin and inability, and, by faith, looks only to God’s promised mercy as their hope. As we will see, it is in fact a collision that represents two contradictory paradigms for understanding everything God has ever been doing throughout redemptive history.
I. A Collision of Incompatible Religious Paradigms (v14)
14 Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”
Our text begins with a question about fasting, but what we will discover is that this question is not really the issue at all. The real issue is what stands behind the question: a certain set of beliefs and values that will prove to be entirely out of accord with God’s saving purposes in Christ. Jesus is approached by the disciples of John as to why they and the Pharisees both practice the spiritual discipline of fasting while the followers of Christ apparently do not—at least not presently (or for the same reasons). Historically speaking, the Pharisees and the disciples of John had a regular practice of fasting twice a week, and it seems that they held that this habit was a mark of being a truly faithful Jew. What is more, it seems likely that the day of Matthew’s great feast—wherein Jesus dined with a host of irreligious sinners (v9-13)—was, for these inquisitors, a day of solemn fasting and devotion. Either way, these two incompatible approaches to God created both a stark contrast and mounting tensions.
We might ask, why were the disciples of John and the Pharisees fasting to begin with? What was the motivation behind their practice? Well, we know very little about the disciples of John. However, at least for the Pharisees, we know that they were fasting as part of their effort to earn the blessing of God through their own personal religious devotion, (Rm. 9:31-32). Based on their incorrect understanding of God’s purpose in the Mosaic Covenant, they had firmly adopted the view that God’s blessing would only come to those who lived by strict religious devotion. In fact, this kind of thinking is what accounts for the origin of the Pharisees. Before the time of Christ, certain Jews concluded that the reason their nation was in shambles was because they had not worked hard enough to keep the terms of the Mosaic Covenant. Therefore, they founded a religious reform group that aimed to cultivate meticulous devotion to every letter of the law in order to earn the blessing of God and restore their nation. Gaining God’s favor through personal religious devotion was at the very foundation of the Pharisees’ understanding of religion.
Thus, it becomes obvious why they were frustrated at the scene. Here they are, denying themselves and hungering in their bellies as they strive to earn God’s blessing by their own self-righteous performance. Meanwhile, they were looking on as the rag-tag followers of Jesus enjoyed a free, un-earned offer of forgiveness as well as an (obviously) unwarranted declaration of righteousness that was simply gifted to them through Christ. One group is slaving away trying to earn God’s blessing through their works while the other group seems to simply have God’s blessing granted to them for free, (Gal. 4:21-31).
And so we read the opening verse of our text again, now having a deeper understanding of the under girding context which stands behind it: 14 Then the disciples of John came to Jesus, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” What stood behind their question was something more like this: “Why aren’t your disciples keeping with earnest religious devotion like us? How could they ever hope to obtain the blessing of God when they fail to perform the religious works that must precede that blessing? What kind of religious teaching would endorse such things?”
Seeing this contrast between them leaves little wonder as to why the Pharisees were angry and the disciples of John confused. Their entire conception of religion and of righteousness were utterly contrary to that being set forth by the Lord Jesus Christ. The established religious leaders of the day taught that a person is saved by their works and that salvation must be earned through rigorous religious dedication, (Rom. 10:3). But Jesus was teaching something entirely different. Jesus taught that no person can earn salvation through their works—not even one, (Matt. 9:12-13; Jn. 6:63). He taught that all people are so utterly dead in their sins that it is impossible for them to ever hope to work their way to God, (Matt. 5:20). Jesus taught that whether you are the worst of all sinners or the greatest of all religious leaders, your only hope of salvation is to repent and place your faith solely in him, (Jn. 6:53). He boldly declared that he is the only Saving-Substitute for mankind, (Jn 14:6; Mk. 10:45).
And so we can see the great collision between these two incompatible approaches to God. What at first seems to be a rather docile question about fasting soon proves to reach much deeper. This small crack upon the surface of their interaction turns out to be a fissure that reaches to the very bedrock of redemption: Is salvation earned through our own works or simply received by faith alone as a gift? So how did Jesus reply?
II. Jesus Christ Is the Center & Climax of All Redemptive History (v15)
15 And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
Jesus uses the metaphor of a wedding to reach right to the heart of the question. The two key elements of his illustration are a great event—the Wedding—and the central figure of that event—the Bridegroom, (or the one whom that event is all about). By so doing he is essentially telling his questioners that they have apparently missed something very important. It is as if Jesus said, “The difference in religious practice is because my disciples know both where they are—at the Great Wedding of Redemptive History—and who they are with—the Great Bridegroom of Redemptive History. But you don’t seem to understand either of these things.” Though it may seem a bit cryptic to us, Jesus is essentially telling these highly religious people that for all their self-righteous devotion, the Great Day to which the Holy Scriptures have always been pointing is finally here, and yet they have neither eyes to see it nor ears to hear it.
The critical question for us to ask is why? Why do those who claim to be—above all others—most devoted to God and most meticulous about keeping his Word, end up scorning and rejecting that God when he comes down from heaven to save them from their sins (Matt. 1:21)? How on earth can this be? Elsewhere in the Holy Scriptures Jesus gives us the answer. As he was being rejected by the religious leaders of the day, Jesus traced their error back to a misunderstanding of the Mosaic Covenant. Jesus said, “For if you believed Moses,” as they adamantly claimed to do, “you would believe me; for he wrote of me,” (Jn. 5:46). Apparently, the message that the Jews thought Moses had given them was not the message that Moses had actually given them. Somewhere along the way a serious misunderstanding had ensued. It is, in fact, that critical misunderstanding that has caused these disciples of John and the Pharisees to mock and reject the Great Bridegroom of their salvation, rather than to joyfully embrace him.
The Mosaic Covenant is a conditional covenant. It only promises blessing to those who perfectly and perpetually obey everything that is written in it. The terms which God gave in this covenant can be summarized in this way: Blessed is the man who obeys all that is written in the book of the law and cursed is the man who does not, (Ex. 24:8; Deut. 27:26; Lev. 18:5; Rom. 10:5; Gal. 3:10). The question we need to grasp is: why would God give a conditional covenant like this to his sinful people? How can the fallen offspring of Adam ever hope to perfectly keep the law of God? This question strikes at the very heart of the misunderstanding that led to two contradictory paradigms for seeking the salvation of God.
When God published his law, he knew the hearts of his people; God knew they could never hope to keep his law perfectly. (This is precisely why the sacrificial system was published alongside the law—even though it was only a “shadow” pointing forward to Christ and not actually able to take away sins [Heb. 10:1-4]). The purpose of the law, according to Holy Scripture, was not to encourage a self-righteous pursuit of salvation, but rather to empty men of all hope of providing salvation for themselves. By ruthlessly exposing our guilt and inability before the face of God, the law is designed to turn our eyes away from ourselves and onto God’s promised blessings through Christ, (Gal. 3:22). It is not intended to puff us up in the illusion that we can earn the blessing, but rather to empty us of that delusion and convince us beyond all doubt that if we are ever to be saved it must come by a gracious gift of God’s undeserved mercy. We read this very explanation in Romans 3:19-25:
19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
Sadly, this is not the understanding that the Pharisees and many other Jewish leaders had taken, (Rm. 9:32). Though a true reading of the law radically exposes man’s guilt, they refused to be humbled by its convicting ministry. In sinful unbelief and rebellion, they refused to be allow it to make them “poor in spirit”, “mournful” and “meek”, (Matt. 5:3-5). They were so full of themselves that they had not yet come to a true “hunger and thirst” for the “righteousness” that only God can provide, (Matt. 5:6). Therefore, they rejected God’s good purpose in the Mosaic Covenant. Instead of allowing the law to lay bare their sinful need and crush their souls toward utter dependence upon Christ, they perverted its purposes. They saw the Mosaic Covenant as a viable path for obtaining their own salvation by their own effort. They saw the law as a ladder to climb in order to gain their entrance to heaven, instead of a bright light of holiness meant to illumine their great guilt and need.
In Romans 10:2-4 the Apostle Paul—himself a Jew and former Pharisee—explains how the Jews lacked a true understanding of God’s purpose in the Mosaic Covenant. He teaches that it is because of this perverted understanding of the Mosaic Covenant that they rejected the Great Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ:
2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
Thus comes the great collision. The Scripture says that “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who…” does what? Works really hard and earns their own way? No! “To everyone who believes;” it is a free gift of God received by faith. But this reality is the very antithesis of the understanding that most of the Jews had. This point is so important that I want us to take a moment to see it in Galatians 3:24 as well. The Scripture says:
24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
The word used for “guardian” here is the word “pedagogue,” which means teacher. Thus, in this verse we learn that the law was given to God’s people in the same way that a tutor is hired to help someone who struggles with Math or Science. The purpose of the tutor is to help the student learn important lessons that they do not yet rightly understand. In the same way, the Scriptures teach us that God gave the law to his people to tutor their souls toward Christ! The law was meant to teach them important lessons about their own corruption and inability—not so that they would continue to trust in themselves and try harder to earn their salvation, but so that they would be emptied of all trust in themselves and place all their hope in the Bridegroom who was to come…(and is now here)!
Thus we can now see why so many of the religious leaders failed to recognize that the great wedding day was here—as well as the even greater reality that the Bridegroom himself had come. It was because they weren’t looking for it! They were not looking for a Messiah who would offer salvation as a free and unmerited gift of undeserved mercy. They did not even think that such a salvation is what they needed. Instead, they were too busy looking at themselves, monitoring the merits of their own performance, vainly trying to earn their own way, (Rm. 9:31-33).
For those who rightly understood God’s proclamation of the gospel through all the covenants of the Old Testament, they would be taught by those covenants to look with great urgency for the coming of the Messiah. They would be waiting in eager expectation for the promised child of Genesis 3:15 to come forth and crush the head of the serpent on their behalf, to usher in the blessings promised to Abraham and those who share his faith, to perfectly keep the holy law of God in their place, to offer the sacrificial blood that would finally take away the guilt of their sins, to be eternally seated upon the kingly throne of David, and to pour out his Spirit from heaven in order to give new hearts of faith to his chosen people from every nation. Anyone who was truly looking for these promised gifts of God—as all the covenants of redemptive history declared they should be!—would be ushered by these Old Testament “promises” to be earnestly looking for Christ, (II Cor. 1:20)!
Both the disciples of John and the Pharisees were distracted from beholding Jesus as Messiah by their misguided self-righteous pursuits. This is the great error that stands behind their question about fasting in v14. When Jesus replies to their question, he declares that if they had any proper understanding of redemptive history at all, their eyes would be fixed on him—not on fasting! The whole Old Testament has been one grand series of preparations, all pointing forward to the greatest of all weddings—a wedding between Christ and his eternal bride, the ransomed Church. In v15, Jesus declares that the day of that wedding is now at hand, and that the Bridegroom himself is standing before them. By naming himself as the Bridegroom of the people of God, Jesus unequivocally asserts that he, and he alone, is the great fulfillment of all Old Testament anticipation—the central focal point and climax of all redemptive history.
III. Jesus Christ Is What All Redemptive History Has Been Preparing For & Pointing To (v16-17)
16 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. 17 Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
Having presented himself as the centerpiece and King of all God’s work in redemption—the very Bridegroom himself!—Jesus now proceeds to teach us still more. Through two simple metaphors Jesus will address the question of how the previous covenants of redemptive history are to be rightly understood in relation to him, as well as how we are to go on relating to those covenants as God’s people today.
In the first picture which Jesus gives (v16), he calls forth an image of an old, worn out garment. Jesus sees it as an absurd notion that anyone should cut up a piece of new, unshrunk fabric, and sew it onto the old worn out garment. If this happens, it will not only result in the wasting of the valuable new fabric, but also in further complications for the old worn out garment. The solution, as he implies it, is not to try to attach a piece of the new to the old—thereby giving the old the priority—but rather to let go of the old as having run its course and to wholly embrace the new. What is Jesus’ meaning here?
As we have seen, Jesus has set himself forth as the Bridegroom—the centerpiece and climax of all redemptive history. In so doing, he has asserted that he is not some small patch of cloth to be woven into the Old Covenant. He is not a mere footnote to be recorded in the book of redemptive history. Jesus is the book itself; he is the what the entire story is all about, (Lk. 24:27; Jn. 5:39-40; Eph. 1:3-10; Col. 1:15-21). Thus, just as the old garment in Jesus’ metaphor was worn out and had run its course, so the Mosaic Covenant has served its good, God-given purpose. But it must now be put aside in order to be surpassed by the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ—the very ministry which the Old Covenant existed to prefigure, prepare the way for, and promote, (II Cor. 3:7-11). In other words, Jesus is saying that if you truly understand the ministry of the Mosaic Covenant, you will now let go of the Mosaic Covenant and come to Christ—the one to whom that covenant has always boisterously pointed!
Next Jesus gives us an image of a worn out wineskin (v17). In this image he uses the common practice of storing wine in animal skin to further illustrate how his own ministry is to be understood and received. If new wine is placed into an old, used up wineskin, the fermentation of the new wine will cause the old wineskin to be stretched beyond its capacity. This is because it has already been expanded to its limits by its previous use. It has no more elasticity left, it can’t reach any further than it already has. Therefore, having served its purpose and run its course, it is now ready to be retired. The new wine must not be poured into the old wineskin, but rather into a new wineskin. This is the only path that does not lead to the destruction of both the wine and the skin.
Similar to the point that Jesus made in the previous picture, he is showing us that his ministry cannot be understood as fitting into the Old Covenant—as if the Old Covenant were the Bridegroom and Jesus were only a wedding guest! That picture is exactly backward! The Old Covenant—along with all of the covenants in the Old Testament—are to be understood as the servants of the Bridegroom; they exist to honor and exalt him! Thus trying to “pour” Jesus and his ministry into the “Old Covenant” will only waste the wine and burst the wineskin. That is because even though the Old Covenant had a good, God-given purpose, it cannot possibly be stretched beyond that God-given limit and still be useful. Whenever this is attempted, it always leads to the loss of both the wine and the skin. Instead, the old wineskin must be recognized as having served its purpose. It must now be set aside as the new wine and new wineskin of Christ’s surpassingly glorious ministry are wholly embraced as the defining paradigm of all true religion and the only hope of salvation, (Jn. 2:9-11).
Now, when we speak of setting aside the Old Covenant we have to be careful to rightly understand what this means as well as what this does not mean. We also have to remember that we are only looking at the teaching of a particular set of verses, not everything the Bible has to say on this important subject. So, in an effort to keep us on the right track I want to share two final illustrations to help us rightly apply these important truths.
First, we can think about setting aside the Old Covenant in terms of the construction of a great building. As the building is initially being constructed it is surrounded by scaffolding. In fact, for the most part, all you can see during this part of the process is the scaffolding and not the building. The scaffolding is extremely important because it allows the builders to lay each stone in its proper place, (Ps. 118:22). But once the building is complete, what happens to the scaffolding? It is set aside and put away. Why? Because while the scaffolding was essential to the process it was never the primary point. The scaffolding existed for the purpose of the building, not the building for the purpose of the scaffolding. And so it is with the Mosaic Covenant at the coming of Christ. Like scaffolding, the Mosaic Covenant served a critical function in laying the foundation of Christ’s coming ministry. But once Christ has come and the true Temple of God has been built, it is time for the scaffolding to be put away because it has now served its purpose and run its divinely-intended course.
Secondly, however, I want us to consider that although the ministry of the Old Covenant has run its course, and, in a very real sense, has been put away, this does not mean that its good, God-given ministry has no continuing function for us, (Rm. 3:31; I Cor. 10:1-13; I Tim. 1:8-11). Although our text has already used the metaphor of a marriage, imagine with me a different marriage; a marriage between two ordinary people. The husband is a son who has been raised in a particular family and the wife is a daughter from another family. When they come together in holy matrimony they will “leave and cleave”; they will each come out from under the headship of their birth family and form a new family together as husband and wife. In a sense, when two people enter into a marriage the old pattern of their life is put away and replaced by a new pattern. But we are not to think that the husband or wife will suddenly forget all the important lessons their parents taught them while they were growing up. Nor are we to think that as a married couple they will never consult the wisdom of their parents in order to be helped along in their new marriage. Much to the contrary, we hope that all the lessons of their childhood will be carried with them into their new union in order to bless them and help them flourish, (Gal. 4:1-7; Acts 20:27, 32; II Tim. 3:14-17).
In this same way, the law of God should not be neglected or forgotten by God’s people. Putting away the Mosaic Covenant does not mean that the holy law of God has changed or is no longer binding upon men. The holy law of God in the Mosaic Covenant is still a faithful publication of what is morally pure and right in the sight of God; the standard of holiness cannot and does not change. As our passage has abundantly taught us, we are not to look to the law as our Savior! But we are to look to the law as a righteous and helpful guide. When we read the law as God intended it to be read—as a lighthouse guiding us to the shore of Christ—it will continue to bless our souls by exposing our sin and pointing us to the Great Bridegroom of saving mercy. We can and should still receive the Christ-exalting ministry of the Mosaic Covenant in this respect. We should continue to allow the law both to lead us to Christ, and to lead us in Christ, insomuch as that law shows us what the path of holiness in Christ truly looks like.
Conclusion:
So, in this extremely deep and profound passage, what has Jesus been teaching us? There is so much to be taken away and applied, but I want to draw your attention to three of the most critically important things:
Jesus has shown us that salvation has never been by man’s works or effort. Salvation only comes by the free and unmerited gift of God’s sovereign grace in Christ. No one, no matter how zealous for religion, is good enough by themself. All men need Christ.
Jesus has shown us that he is the focal point and climax of everything God has ever been doing in redemptive history. He is the Bridegroom for which all history has been making wedding preparations—and all who trust in him are his ransomed Bride.
Jesus has shown us that every covenant in the Bible serves the unified purpose of preparing the way for, pointing the world to, and exalting the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the only proper way to truly understand the message of the Bible.
Is this the way you are trusting in Jesus? Is this the way you are beholding Jesus?
Are you reading and applying the whole council of God in light of Jesus?