Gospel of Matthew 9:14-26
Then the disciples of John came to Him, asking, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”
While He was saying these things to them, a synagogue official came and bowed down before Him, and said, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay Your hand on her, and she will live.” Jesus got up and began to follow him, and so did His disciples.
And a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak; for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch His garment, I will get well.” But Jesus turning and seeing her said, “Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well.” At once the woman was made well.
When Jesus came into the official’s house, and saw the flute-players and the crowd in noisy disorder, He said, “Leave; for the girl has not died, but is asleep.”And they began laughing at Him. But when the crowd had been sent out, He entered and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. This news spread throughout all that land.
So, we’re going to deal with a couple more miracles, and then a statement about fasting and the coming Kingdom of God.
Before we go to the part about fasting, I want you to consider that Jesus—in His three and a half years in ministry—would have healed hundreds and thousands of people. Just a couple weeks ago, we read how people from all the surrounding areas were coming to Him after He healed Peter’s mother-in-law. That was a common thing, in a sense. A fairly regular occurrence. There would be many people, many stories, that we don’t have specific access to in the Bible. So, the ones that are presented to us—the ones that are specifically mentioned—are not random. They are there for a specific purpose, and each one probably conveys to us something unique about Jesus Christ.
You think about how Jesus heals in different ways. He reached out and touched the leper, and (as we’ll talk about today) He touched the girl’s hand to raise her from the dead. Other times He just speaks. He touched the eyes of the blind man; and later on, with another blind man, He makes mud to put on His eyes.. So, Jesus does all these different things in different ways, and I think part of the reason He does this is: He doesn’t want us to get trapped into a formula. Because He knows that is our nature. Even though we are incredibly rebellious people, we still want formulas. We still want some parameters within which we can live out our rebellion, which is bizarre. But Jesus won’t allow that to happen.
Also, I can’t tell you for sure about these specific stories we’ll deal with today, but I think each one also has a unique take on Jesus Christ in terms of the Kingdom of God and His own spiritual message. We’ll touch on that a little bit, but I just encourage you—by the grace of God—when you’re going through the Scripture and you run across a healing that is specifically depicted, slow down to see if the Lord would give you insight into what’s actually going on in this specific healing and how it speaks to His authority.
We understand, as we’ve been shown just in the last two chapters, He has authority over the elements (when He calmed the storm), He has authority over demons, He has authority over sicknesses (He healed a leper, someone with a fever, etc). So there are numerous things that Jesus touches; and His authority (as the Divine) is without end. It really doesn’t have any parameters, because in every situation brought forth, Jesus is capable of dealing with it in his own unique way. And we, too, pray that in our lifetime, we get to experience Christ dealing with us in unique and specific ways. And helping us to come to grips with who He is. And especially, to yield to His authority. Not just over the spiritual world, but also over the physical world; of which He is the Creator.
So, this passage starts out with the disciples of John coming to Jesus and asking Him, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?”
Fasting, in Jesus’ day, was a powerful religious exercise. The Jews fasted on Mondays and Thursdays (and I think that might actually still be common.) Any good Pharisee or lover of God, trying to fulfill all the commandments, would fast on those days. And those days were chosen, not because the Bible said to do it then, but because they believed that Moses went up on the mountain on Thursday and came down on Monday, during his fast. They had this idea that if they fasted on those days, they could enter into the 40 day fast that Moses did.
Also, most of the fasts spoken of in the Scripture were day-fasts: From sunup to sundown, but eating each evening. If you go back into the Old Testament and think about Elijah; remember that God had him lie on one side for 80 days, and the other for 40 days. [Ezekiel Chapter 4] In our minds, we wonder how in the world somebody could do that. He had to cook, even, while lying on his side. But, it wasn’t that he was doing it for the whole 80 days. He did it during the day, most likely, and then at night he would go home; then he would get up in the morning and do it again. So, keep that in mind.
And we find this to be true even in Islam. Ideas about fasting probably have a stronger force on their people than on Jews today, or on Christians. But this is probably because, in Islam, they are commanded to do specific fasts, like Ramadan. Ramadan is a five-day feast/fast. They fast during the day and then feast at night. So it’s basically a five-day party, but during the day no one is eating. We, as Christians, on the other hand, don’t think much about fasting. Or very rarely. Perhaps I’m making an assumption, but I don’t hear people talk about it much, in terms of finding out what the Lord is doing.
In the Old Testament, there are three specific things for which a fast was called: repentance, mourning, and direction. By the time Jesus came around, the Jews had in their mind that these fasts were self-punishment. They could say they were fasting because of their sin, but it really wasn’t about that; It was more about trying to mortify their flesh and get control of their own desires. The fasts they were participating in weren’t necessarily Biblical in nature; they had more to do with how men thought they could move God by mortification and self-punishment. And, of course, that is picked up again later on in Christianity with the monks, who based their societies around this idea of mortification or denying of the flesh, thinking that would be the thing through which they could grow closer to God. And there probably is some truth to that in regard to our need to deny the flesh, but I believe that many people who eat on a regular basis have as great or greater a relationship with Jesus Christ than any monk ever, in the history of the world. So, it’s not about eating and drinking; it is life, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit – this is what the Kingdom of God is about.
But in Jesus’ time, fasting was considered to be a religious exercise. And these disciples of John were most likely encouraged by the Pharisees to go ask Jesus this question: “Why don’t you and your disciples fast?” Apart from Jesus’ 40-day fast at the beginning of His ministry, there is no indication that He fasted again. Neither are there indications in the New Testament that any of the disciples fasted. In fact, Paul and the others do not command it in any of the New Testament writings. They commanded other things, but not fasting. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t done, however. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “When you fast…”, and also, “When the bridegroom is taken away, then you will fast…” He knows they will fast, but it wasn’t a primary topic or command. The purpose of a fast is to bring something about or deal with sin, and Jesus was in process of dealing with sin on the cross. He was literally going to BE the thing that people fasted for: A right standing with God. He was the fulfillment of the purpose of fasting.
In His answer to John’s disciples, Jesus says, “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they?”
By the way; isn’t that interesting? They came to him about fasting; another time it was about hand-washing. And isn’t that the way we are? So often in our Christian life, we want to know why somebody isn’t doing the spiritual exercises that we do, whatever they may be. Why don’t you read your Bible? Why don’t you pray for an hour every day? And we ask it, not because we actually want to know why, but because we want to make sure they know we are doing those things. Should we read the Scripture every day, and be in prayer? Yes, absolutely. There is no question about that. Should we fast from time to time? We absolutely should. But at the same time, we need to be careful not to take what is, for us, a sincerely rich experience with Christ, and impress upon somebody else that if they do it, they will also have the same experience. Because they may not. What we do need to do is encourage everyone to be led by the Spirit of God that dwells inside of them; and to do the things that God has asked them to do, whatever those things may be.
But like the men in this story, we often get caught into the spiritual comparison game.
And Jesus said, “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” To answer their question, Jesus goes to the idea of a wedding feast. A wedding feast was one event in the history of Judaism that actually exempted a person from many things, such as a fast or participation in the Day of Atonement. Numerous “crucial” spiritual activities in Judaism were set aside for the sake of a wedding. It shows how seriously they considered marriage; and how seriously we should consider it. They considered it to be, in itself a spiritual exercise, and not just a cohabitation of two people. This is why, when marriage is talked about in the New Testament, it is spoken of as not just marriage but of “Christ and the church.” So, Jesus is using the idea of a wedding feast to convey the reason His disciples did not fast; but, He also goes on to give insight into what is coming down the road.
And if we take this idea of a bridegroom at his wedding, and pull it into the next two things Jesus talks about with the un-shrunk cloth and the wineskins, we can think about the wedding garments themselves (an incredibly important part of the ceremony itself) and the wine, which was always part of the wedding ceremony.
But Jesus has moved on now, from the bridegroom and bride, to Himself and the church; and the coming crucifixion. So now He talks about things that are yet to come; things that will be valuable to them when the Holy Spirit brings it to their minds later on.
He says, “But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results.” In our culture, we most likely don’t understand this concept. We wear polyester and other mixed fabrics; we can purchase shirts that are shrink-less, and it takes a long time for things to wear out. But, remember, in their day they only had access to certain fabrics, all of which they made themselves out of cotton or flax or animal skins, etc. Everything they used or made was not genetically altered to withstand the test of time, like many things we use today.
For instance, if you had an old shirt made completely of cotton, and it got a big hole in it; and if you took a new piece of that same material and sewed it onto that old shirt; that new, un-shrunk material would start to pull on the fully-shrunk, old material and ultimately create a bigger problem than before. And this is what Jesus is saying: we can’t take something that is new and put it on something that is old. And He also talked about not taking new wine and putting it into old wineskins. New wine has a volatile molecular nature, and if you put it into an old wineskin—which has already been fully extended to its maximum limit— it will push against the stretched material and cause it to burst.
Here Jesus is obviously telling us about the Kingdom of God. And telling them also. To the question, “Why don’t you and your disciples fast?” Jesus is saying, ‘You have a religious structure set up in a certain way. Mondays and Thursdays you can do your thing and you can believe that you are pleasing God in these exercises that you do; though they are completely physical in nature and require nothing of you in a spiritual sense. The Kingdom of God is going to require something completely different. And what I’m going to bring to people is a new body.’ Because Jesus is aware that a new patch on an old skin is not going to work. It’s going to create problems.
One of the reasons we have struggles in the church is because we’ve done just that. We’ve taken a patch—a new thing—and placed it on our old bodies as an addition; but pretty soon this new thing starts to stretch and pull on our old skin and make it feel uncomfortable. Jesus is saying that what He is bringing to us is something completely new. We are going to be reborn, and have a new life. But until that happens, Jesus didn’t want His disciples to fast, because they would be fasting in an old way that would not be helpful to them.
As saints, we have so often made the mistake of taking something of Christ (or Christ Himself) and believed that He could just come along and renovate us. The term “born again,” in many people’s eyes, actually means “renovation.” And renovation is great for earthly things, but didn’t need to be renovated. We needed to be made new. We needed to be infused with the Spirit of the Most High God; to have Christ dwelling inside of us. Otherwise this will never work. If all I’m doing is putting a patch on this old self; sooner or later, the Christ that is patched onto my life will pull and tear until something worse befalls me. We need to understand that being born again is crucial. And to believe you are born again is just as crucial. We cannot make it by simply doing the old things in a new way. It does not work.
And then the Scripture goes on and in verse 18 says, “While He was saying these things to them, a synagogue official came and bowed down before Him, and said, ‘My daughter has just died; but come and lay Your hand on her, and she will live.’ Jesus got up and began to follow him, and so did His disciples.”
If you open to Mark chapter 5, you can see that a little more is added to both of these stories, here. Mark and Luke both say that the offical came to Jesus and said, “My daughter is dying.” So, when he approaches Jesus, his daughter actually hasn’t died yet, but he knows it’s inevitable. And how long this official waited until he went to Jesus, we don’t know. Jesus came in and out of Capernaum all the time, and if this event is coming right after chapter 8, then we can assume the official decided that morning, he would go talk to Jesus; because he didn’t know what else to do—just like the woman with the hemorrhage. He had tried everything else. So, he approached Jesus—and in Matthew all the narrative is cut out—and he simply said, “My daughter has died.” In Mark the story has others come and confront the official, saying, ‘Why did you bring him? She’s dead now.’ [paraphrase] So we don’t know what kind of timeline is involved — we can assume several hours at the least. But, either the daughter had already died, or she was in the literal process of dying when the father came to Jesus.
And so, Jesus starts to go to this girl, and on the way: “A woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years, came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak; for she was saying to herself, ‘If I only touch His garment, I will get well.’ But Jesus turning and seeing her said, ‘Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well.’ At once the woman was made well.”
These stories have purposes, which we want to try to glean. Mark, in chapter five of his gospel, adds much to this story. When the woman touched Jesus’ garment, she knew that she was healed from her disease immediately. And then Jesus turned around and asked, “Who touched me?” because He knew that something had gone from Him. Someone had, by faith, pulled something from Him. Some people think that Jesus was surprised by this extraction, and while I would never say that isn’t possible, I do believe it’s improbable. I think something more than just this healing is going on. The story tells us that this woman has had this hemorrhage for twelve years; which, by the way, makes her “Levitically” unclean. She cannot participate in anything that has to do with the temple, because of this flow of blood. She is not a leper, but she would still be on the outside of religious society. Mark tells us that she had spent all that she had, trying to deal with this flow. And in Jewish writings, there are at least 11 separate treatments for this specific issue. Only six of those consisted of something that had to do with tonic or medicine; the rest were completely—what’s the word? I guess we could say, nonsensical. In one “treatment,” the woman is supposed to say, “Flux, go from me,” so many times and it was supposed to leave. They had these superstitious ways in which they tried to heal people. And then they also tried medical things; tonics, elixers, essential oils, etc.
But, twelve years. As a male, I don’t get that. But, any female in this room can think of twelve years of being in “that time of the month.” That’s what this is. Twelve years. And she tried everything; so much so that she lost all that she had. She was at the end of her rope, which I do get. So she comes to Christ and she thinks, ‘If I just touch the fringe of His garment, I’m going to get well.’ She knew He was a healer. Eddersheim says she might have reached for the hem of His garment because she knew how extravagantly the Pharisees and officials dressed and she wanted to touch that; but also she would not have wanted to face Jesus because of shame. After that many years of living with this disease, she would have been completely downtrodden; felt completely despised by the people around her. Her friends, mostly likely, slowly left her over the years, assuming she was a sinner, or she would not have had this incurable disease. And we don’t know that for sure, but it makes sense that it could be true.
So, this woman comes to Jesus and would have basically had to reach down, or kneel or lay down, to touch the fringe of His garment. Jesus turned around, even though He was being jostled by the crowd, and asked who touched Him. The purpose of that question was not for His benefit—it was for hers. What most likely is taking place is that Jesus wants her to know that though her healing came when she touched His garment, it was not His garment that healed her. It was Jesus Himself. This wasn’t about another superstition, another hopeless attempt. Jesus tells her, “Go, your faith has made you well,” but for the rest of her life, when she retold the story, she would recognize that her healing was about Him.
One of the unique lessons we can glean from this story, is that we tend to be man-worshippers. If one of our loved ones was healed by a human being, there would be no limits to the awe and rejoicing we’d give to the person who healed him or her. And if the healing happened through a prayer-chain type of thing, we’d say, ‘My church brought about this healing.’ Jesus is saying, ‘Don’t do that. I am the one who heals.’ Yes, the woman touched his garment hem and healing came forth, but it was not meant to glorify the garment or the faith that reaches, but rather to glorify Christ and Christ alone.
If we think of the church and the sacraments as being garments, their purpose is to present others to Christ. The church is not the instrument that brings healing or new life to someone. Christ is the instrument. The church is the avenue through which faith receives and takes hold of Truth. But if the church stands up and says, ‘No, it is we who did this,’ then you will be woefully disappointed as your life goes on. Woefully disappointed. The purpose of the church of the Living God is to bring people to Jesus Christ. And if we take this analogy, this is exactly what happened. This woman came, and touched “the church” and then Jesus brought healing to her body; and then He quickly turned around and asked, ‘Do you know that this is not about the church? This is about me.’ And she got it. The reason I know this is because Jesus says, “Daughter take courage; your faith has made you well.” Not only did He heal her of her sickness, He healed her of all the superstitious nonsense that she had been carrying around in the last twelve years in her search for healing.
Jesus then goes on with the official. The Bible says, in Mark, that the people caught them before the reached the house and asked, “Why did you bother him? Your daughter has died.” But Jesus, “saw the flute-players and the crowd in noisy disorder, He said, ‘Leave; for the girl has not died, but is asleep.’ And they began laughing at Him.” Jesus took into the room with Him only the Mother and Father, and James, John, and Peter. Everyone else stayed out. Some people think that Jesus is being exclusive because He only wants people of faith in that room, and I wouldn’t discount that, for sure. The mourners leaving must have had something to do with that. But also, I want you to understand that the mourners had no place there. The reason Jesus told them to go wasn’t simply because they lack faith, it was because they didn’t belong. This is not a place for mourners; this girl is not dead. She is sleeping. And some people jump on that and say, ‘Well then she really wasn’t dead, she was in a coma.’ Like that takes something away from it. I get it; raising someone from the dead is pretty awesome. But, touching someone and bringing them out of a coma is pretty awesome, too. But some people try to make logical sense and find ways to lessen what Jesus did. In my opinion, the girl really was dead; either before the father left or while he was on his way to get Jesus. The Scripture basically says nothing about the Mother and Father after this point—they aren’t part of that story anymore. I guess you could imagine if you brought Jesus back to heal your daughter and you were met with the news that she had died, whatever hope you might have had would surely be gone then, if the girl had been alive when you left. So, the mother and father must now be thinking, ‘What is the use?’
But Jesus takes her hand and says, “Talitha kum!” which means ‘little girl, arise.’ [Mark 5:41]
The Bible says that this news spread “throughout the land,” and I can imagine that it did. Ironically, in the gospel of Mark (5:43), after Jesus heals her, it says, “He gave them strict orders that no one should know about this, and He said that something should be given her to eat.”
I think I mentioned last week; or maybe it was in a Bible study, that the reason Jesus sometimes says to tell and sometimes says not to tell has to do with the circumstances and the ways in which others might receive that news. In this case, He says not to tell anyone, but in Matthew it says the news spread about through the whole land. And I think that’s exactly what would happen. If your daughter is dead and the guy who healed her says you cannot tell anyone … you would tell people. You would tell people. Your daughter was dead and people had gathered for a wake. And now she is alive. There is no way you would be quiet; you couldn’t be.
Jesus has power and authority over sickness; both spiritual (our superstitions and wishy-washy ideas about what it means to have faith in Christ) and physical. He comes to heal and to bring us new life and cause us to see that He is exactly who He said He was. He is THAT Messiah. The One everybody had been waiting for. He proves it to us spiritually—in the new life He breathes into us. And I can honestly say, as a person who has had that life breathed into me, I am not the same person I was when I got saved at the age of 25. I still sin; I still fail. I get that. But I am not that person; my life was changed dramatically from the time I said “yes” to Jesus, until now. Jesus has come to bring us spiritual new life. To create in us a nature that desires to know Him, and a willingness to walk it out.
Like I said last week, He gives us new life in the same way somebody might give us the keys to a beautiful car we don’t know how to drive. ‘I want you to figure this out. I’m giving you the ability to do it, but I want you to take the steps to figure it out.’ I get that the church is a mess, because of all the ways in which people are trying to figure this out; all the different theologies and ideas. At Sunday school today, one of the questions that was asked was something to the effect of, Have you ever been rejected for being a believer? And I think anyone who answered said, ‘Not for being a believer, but rejected by other Christians for things I believed.’ And honestly, that’s a sad testament. Very sad. I think it’s because we’re afraid; and we doubt what we believe. If we are confident in our beliefs, then when somebody brings something to us that maybe is moving around (but not centered in) Christ, we are okay with that; because they are at least moving around Christ. And part of the reason we are okay is because Jesus Christ is the only answer, and anybody who truly is looking for truth is going to find it only in Jesus Christ. Only in Jesus Christ. Years and years ago, in a Bible study I led in Stratton, this lady and I got in several disagreements—very civil ones—because she watched televangelists all the time. She didn’t go to church anywhere; she just watched televangelists. So we’d have discussions about those things; and I finally, literally begged her, “Shut your stupid TV off, and open up the Scripture for thirty days. That’s all I’m asking—thirty days. Stop listening to these people and open up the Word of the Living God and I guarantee you Christ will meet you in the Word. And He will not meet you in the people you’re listening to.” She refused. As a matter of fact, we were having the study in her house at the time and she decided she wanted the study to stop, even.
We, as saints of the Living God, need to center ourselves in the person and work of Jesus Christ. When you are reading the Scriptures, I really encourage you, and you run across these stories. (we’ll be in the parables pretty soon) think about what is taking place and why it is taking place. Ask: “How does this relate to the Kingdom of God?” “What does this tell me about Jesus Christ?” “How do I make this practical in my own life?”
The Lord bless you guys.
Go in peace.