So the rest of us will be in Mark chapter 2. Mark chapter 2. I'd like for us to read again there in verses 13 to 22. Says, and he, as Jesus, went forth again by the seaside, and all the multitude resorted unto him, and he taught them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him, follow me. And he arose and followed him. And it came to pass that as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many, and they followed him. And when the scribes and the Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, how is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners? When Jesus heard it, he said unto them, they that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And the disciples of John and of the Pharisees used to fast, and they come and say unto him, Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said unto them, can the children of the bride chamber fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days. No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment, else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse. There's a lot in this passage, but as I was praying and meditating on what to present this morning, the Lord prompted in my heart with all that's going on in the world, what's going on in the news, what's going on in our hearts is Christ's body. As I was thinking about people praying in the snow, as violence and danger surrounded them, my heart was prompted by the Spirit to ask, am I praying and fasting? Now, prayer, as we know, is an essential part of the Christian life, but fasting, I believe fasting is a very misunderstood and a very neglected part of the Christian life. As I was coming to this passage, I asked the question to myself, what exactly is fasting? Now, probably most of us, if not all of us, have attempted fasting at one point. But when we come to the Bible, we sometimes forget to ask questions that dig deep at the meanings of what we do. So when I asked what is fasting, I had to ask myself, is it just giving up meals to grow closer to God? Is it just giving up something to help me more focused on the Lord? And as I was going through, there's about 100 passages in scripture that deal with fasting. only a few, only a handful, actually teach on what fasting is about. And none of them explicitly say this is what fasting is. But when we come to Mark chapter 3, Among the many other teachings, we find a very important passage on what a balanced view of fasting is. And we know from other teachings, particularly from Christ's ministry, that we're not supposed to fast to look more spiritual than we really are. We're to fast when we're trying to deal with certain areas of spiritual warfare. And we understand that as Christ's followers, as believers, we are expected to fast. But as we examine our passage today, as believers, I think it's important for us to understand that God wants us to have a Christ-centered perspective when it comes to fasting. A Christ-centered focus while fasting. And when we look at this passage, we see a lot going on. Obviously, the purpose of the passage isn't necessarily to teach us on fasting, it's to point us to the fact that true religion is a joy-filled personal relationship with Jesus Christ, not some empty ritualism focused on promoting self. But Jesus does give us a balanced perspective of what fasting is. And we can see that when we look at what is presented here in this passage and reveal that there are two voluntary characteristics of the Christian life that are necessary for that balanced perspective, that balanced view. Now let me put a little caveat on that. These are voluntary in the sense that you can choose to have these characteristics or you can neglect them. But they're not voluntary in the fact that God commanded us to have these. And while they are not necessary for salvation, they are certainly to be a result of our salvation. And the first characteristic we see that is needed in order to have a balanced view of what fasting is. It's found in the first four or five verses there. That is, we must possess a true commitment. Now we see in verses 13 to 17, we see the calling of Levi. If you know Levi, his Greek name is Matthew. He's an interesting person. I really enjoy studying Levi because here's a Jew who was taking on a Greek name and was willing to essentially betray his countrymen in order to collect taxes for the occupying Roman presence. And in a very real sense, he was kind of an outsider. He betrayed his own people in order to get the job that he had, to obtain the wealth that he most likely had, But he, of course, was not exactly favored upon by the Romans. For the Romans, he was just a tool for getting what they wanted. And when Jesus came upon him, none of that essentially mattered. Jesus looked at Levi and said, follow me. Come with me. Now when it comes to Levi's calling, we tend to focus a lot on what he probably gave up, right? We think about, you know, he probably had a great estate, he probably had a ton of clothing, he had a ton of wealth, just all these things he was willing to just give up on the spot. But sometimes we neglect what happened immediately after Levi or Matthew was called by Jesus. Levi, of course, was called to follow Jesus, but he was called to have a joyful relationship with him. We see that in verses 15 to 16. Look there, it says, it came to pass that Jesus sat at meat in his house, in Levi's house. And it wasn't just Jesus, the disciples, and Levi. There were also many publicans and sinners. And then in verse 16 it says there were scribes and Pharisees that came to see him eat with publicans and sinners. In essence, this was a huge ordeal. This is a massive party. Jesus went with Levi and Levi used his wealth, what he had, in order to have fellowship and to be with Christ. The men who just told him to follow. Now, while this may or may not have been the moment of Levi's spiritual conversion, that's not really what's in discussion here. What is in discussion is the fact that Levi was called to follow, to be committed to Christ. Yes, he had to give up things, but he also used things to build that relationship with Jesus Christ. It was a moment where he decided, you know, being a disciple isn't necessarily about giving up and leaving behind. It's about giving it up to Christ. That's what's important here when we're trying to have a balanced view of what fasting is. It's not to just give up something. It's to understand that what I'm giving up is to the Lord. It's a demonstration of my true, joyful commitment to Christ. But of course, Levi wasn't just called to follow him. He was called to have a savior. And we see that in verses 15 to 17, when the Pharisees came up to Jesus and said, why are you eating with these people? Why are you eating with these tax collectors? Why are you eating with these sinners? Whatever those individuals may have been known for, the fact is Jesus came to that meal and ate with them. It wasn't to condone whatever lifestyle they possessed. It wasn't to necessarily just be frivolous and whatever. I'm just gonna eat with these folks. He had a purpose. He says in verse 17, they that are whole have no need of a physician but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Jesus wasn't just calling Levi, these individuals, these publicans, these sinners, these Pharisees, to follow him. He was saying, you need to repent. You need to be converted. That was why Jesus went to this feast. That's why Jesus went to eat with them. It wasn't just to have a sweet fellowship time. It was to tell them, listen, you need me. You need a savior. And you know, I think it's interesting the way that Jesus worded things here, because he talks about the righteous. Well, there weren't any righteous in that room. The Pharisees had come to him and probably their ears perked. When Jesus said, I have not come to call the righteous, they thought, oh. He must be talking about us. No, he wasn't. He's talking about everybody in that room. All of those people at that feast, including Levi, including the disciples, including the Pharisees, needed a Savior. So when we come to the discussion here in the next verses about fasting, we need to understand that true commitment involves, of course, being a disciple of Christ as well as being a born again, forgiven child of Christ. Two distinct matters there, but both involving true commitment. We need that in order to have a right perspective of fasting. But there's a second characteristic that we need as believers in order to have a balanced perspective of fasting. And that's that we need to possess a right relationship. And we're alluding to this a little bit here in the verses we just looked at. But look with me at verses 18 and following. It says, and the disciples of John and of the Pharisees used to fast. And they come and say unto him, why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but the disciples fast not? And Jesus' response to them was, can the children of the bride chamber fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. And in essence, Jesus is telling them, look, there's something going on here. There's a magnificent event going on here. The people that are in that event, how can they fast, when there's so much to be joyful about, when there's so much to enjoy, when there's so much happening at this moment. There are so many groups of people that were at Levi's feast, but all these people had a different relationship to Christ. Every one of them. Some of them had a right relationship, many of them did not. Here we have Jesus, the disciples, publicans and sinners, the scribes, the Pharisees, the disciples of John, the disciples of the Pharisees, all of them, all of them had different, unique relationships to Jesus. Some of them good, some of them right, some of them wrong, some of them antagonistic. Now what's interesting here is what is emphasized in verse 18. When we're dealing with folks that were not Jesus' disciples, we're actually dealing with two different perspectives. We have the disciples of John, we have the disciples of the Pharisees. And what you end up with is some people with very confused ideas about Jesus, about his ministry, about what he was there to do, who he was. And Jesus essentially responded to them with a question. Why would these people with the special relationship, my disciples, why would they feel the need to fast when they're with me? And while this isn't essentially the point of Jesus's teaching, he definitely gives us the purpose of fasting right here in this section. So we'll take a little bit of it aside here and we'll look at the purpose of fasting. What Jesus is indirectly doing here is demonstrating the true bottom line purpose of fasting. Now this isn't explicit, but we can understand based on who he's talking to, how he responds, how we need to understand fasting. We know fasting, of course, is not a way to gain God's favor. It's not. That's what the Pharisees thought. That's why they went out and they rent their clothes and put ashes upon their heads. And they wept in the street corners and said, Woe is me. I'm fasting. I'm in agony. I'm afflicting myself. Why were they doing that? Because they thought that's the way they were gonna look spiritual, that they were gonna be godly. That's how they were gonna try and get God's favor. And I can tell you from passages in the Old Testament, if you look in Jeremiah, when the Israelites were facing judgment from God, impending doom, they fasted. They tried to seek God. But because of the sin that they refused to let go in their lives, their fasting meant nothing to God. It's because their fast, in essence, lacked the proper perspective. It lacked the proper purpose. On the other hand, you didn't just have the Pharisees. You had John's disciples. Now, you would think that the disciples of John the Baptist would have it right. But consider what John the Baptist's ministry was. John the Baptist's ministry was to point to a coming Messiah. And here he was. There he was, eating and drinking with publicans and sinners, teaching his disciples, confronting the Pharisees. He was active, he was present. And the disciples of John were still the disciples of John. Now why? I can't take a guess. But what I will say is that when it came to fasting, no doubt there's a difference between John's disciples and Jesus's disciples. And what you might would gather from that is that they were probably still trying to maintain the Jewish religion. That's alluded to later when we look at Jesus's parable about the wineskins. We talked about the old cloth and the new cloth. He's saying, listen, what is old is done away with. You can't put a patch on it and expect it to run well. You can't put new wine in an old skin because that old skin has already been stretched out. It's already been used. And when you put that wine in there, it's going to expand even further. It's going to rupture. It's going to break. You're going to destroy what was already there. No, what Jesus came to do was completely new, was completely different. And these disciples of John didn't quite get that. They didn't quite have the right perspective. They didn't have the right purpose for their fasting. So then when it came to Jesus's disciples, they still, they had a very different relationship to Jesus than even we do. They were in the presence of Christ. They were there with him. They didn't have a need to fast. And yet we do. Why is that? It's because fasting is a time to focus on and fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a time to deny other needs in order to take that time to commit to focusing on Christ, to having that fellowship with Christ. That is why prayer goes hand in hand with fasting. When we pray, we come into the presence of God. We're seeking to line up our thinking with God's thinking. And fasting is sitting inside the time to do just that. to be with God, to be in His presence, to understand who He is, to know what He's thinking, to get into His Word, to meditate, to enjoy God's presence. I can't help, as I think about fasting and prayer, to recall John Wesley. If you know John Wesley, he's one of the founders of the Methodist movement. He's a great man of God. And one of the things he would do is, every day he would spend about two hours in prayer. And then Wednesdays and Fridays, he decided he was gonna fast on those days. Why? To make himself pious or to make himself look like a good minister? No. He said, on Wednesday, He believed it was the day that Christ was betrayed by Judas. On Friday was the day that my Savior died. And he took those days to remember what Christ did. His focus was on Christ. His focus was to meditate on, to dwell on, to be in fellowship with his risen Savior. And I think that is a beautiful illustration of what it means to fast. It's not to say that there's one right time, there's one right way to fast. But it does tell us what we need to understand is that the purpose of fasting is to fellowship with Christ. And while he's not present with us physically, we can commune with him spiritually through prayer, through meditation, through digging into his word. And fasting helps us to do just that. So then moving back into the passage for us to have that balanced view of fasting, we need to have a right relationship with Jesus Christ. And I can tell you, even if you're a born again believer this morning or watching through the live stream, you may be in a wrong relationship with Christ. Why? Because your perspective on Christ may be skewed. Yes, you understand what Christ did and you believe it. You trust in Christ's death, burial, resurrection to one day save you from God's wrath. But if that's all there is, then your view on Christ may be skewed, and that affects your understanding of fasting. It affects your understanding of many things. Especially as believers, we need to determine what perspective, what relationship we have to Christ. We need to read, we need to study, we need to meditate on scripture, we need to line up in prayer our thinking with God's thinking. We may even need to fast in order to figure that out. So we understand that different relationships affect different views on fasting, affects different views on even who Christ is. But not only the different relationships, but also the different focuses, the different foci, create different relationships to Christ. Now this parable that we just talked about, the wineskins and the cloth, This parable may seem a little out of place in this passage. Here comes Jesus talking about, or responding to a question on fasting, and all of a sudden he's talking about putting an old cloth, or a new cloth on an old cloth. Say, what is that about? And really, it goes to the heart of what the disciples of John and of the Pharisees were missing. is the fact that their religious formalism was superior to their relationship to Jesus Christ. Of course, that's not to say that religious activity, that religion is obsolete. We have an entire book. We have the Epistle of James to tell us where religion fits into the Christian life. But we need to understand The focus of Christianity is not in what we do. It's in a person. It's in Jesus Christ. And that's what the disciples of Jesus understood. They were in the presence. They were following the Messiah. They weren't looking for him to come. They were not focused on doing things in order to get his favor. They were there to fellowship and have sweet communion with him. Of course, it may be easy to condemn the disciples of John and of the Pharisees for what they did, but it's really not too different from Mary and Martha's situation. We recall Mary and Martha when Jesus went into their home, right? When Mary sat at the feet of Jesus and listened to him teach, and Martha was in the kitchen working and slaving away, trying to make sure that everything was done right, and everything was squared away, and that all the people were taken care of, what did Jesus' response to Martha be? What did Jesus tell Martha? He says, Mary has chosen the better thing. She has the better portion. Why? Because Martha's focus was on act. Mary's focus was on the Savior. When it comes to a balanced view of fasting, or any really religious practice, that is not the focus. When we fast, when we pray, fasting and prayer are not ends to themselves. We recognize in the age that we're in, we don't have the physical presence of Christ to enjoy fellowship with. So in order for us to do that, we need to go into his presence prayerfully, meditatively, through the scriptures, spiritually. And it may involve fasting. It may involve having to put aside a meal or two, or three, or five. and saying, Lord, this time I commit to you, to knowing you, to fellowshipping with you, to being with you. Because as we are now, we recognize we're in an age of famine. We're in an age of earthquakes, of wars, of rumors of wars. We're in a dangerous time between the first advent and the second coming of Christ. It's a dark time. It's a terrible time. You don't have to watch the news for more than two minutes to know that this is a terrible time to live in, but it's also a joyful time, why? Because we get to experience the grace of God in the midst of all of it. We get to experience the presence of God through prayer. We get to dig into his perfectly preserved word and know him personally, have fellowship and communion with him, maybe not breaking bread with him physically as the disciples did, but spiritually in a way that no other saint before the time of Christ got to experience. What it tells us is that we have a, in a sense, a joyful grief in this time. Yes, we look at what's going on around us. We look at the sin that remains in us. We look at the carnage that is going on all around the world. And we long, we desperately want Christ to return and be here and to make things right. but there's a joy in knowing that Jesus already came. He already died. He was already buried and he rose again so that we could have sweet fellowship with him. So I ask you today, do you have a Christ-centered focus when it comes to fasting? And I'll be the first to admit, I struggle in this area of fasting. We do not do it enough. It's an important spiritual discipline. And for us to fast with a Christ-centered focus, we need to possess those two voluntary characteristics of the Christian life. We need to have that true commitment. We need to have that right relationship. Now, the prerequisite for those are, of course, salvation. So if you're sitting here this morning and you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, you've never trusted in the finished work of His death, burial, and resurrection to save you from eternity in hell, That's your first step. Don't even start fasting. Don't even start praying until you settle that matter right there. But as believers, as born again Christians, I ask you, are you praying? Are you fasting? It's not a requirement in the sense that you need to be doing it every day. But in times like these, I can't help but wonder, should we be fasting and praying more? And if we are, do we have that Christ-centered focus? Do we have that true commitment? Do we have that right relationship? In these trying times, let us have that Christ-centered focus in whatever we do. Let's bow for a word of prayer. As you're sitting there with heads bowed and eyes closed, I'll not ask for any raises of hands or for anyone to come forward, but I will ask you in your heart in prayer to God, have you trusted Christ as your Savior? Whether you're sitting here in person or you're watching on the live stream, whether it be right here at this moment or even in years to come, Have you trusted in the finished work of Jesus Christ? If you have, you have the privilege of sweet fellowship with our Savior. Our God comes to us when we pray to Him, when we get into His Word, when we draw nigh to Him, whether it be with a broken or contrite heart or with a joy-filled praise. And it may be that our hearts are broken, that our hearts are desperate, and it may need a season of fasting, a season of prayer, a season of setting things aside, needs, personal needs, to focus on our Savior, to line up our thinking with God's thinking. And if you, Christian, are struggling with this area of fasting, and I put myself in that category, then let us do better. Let's have that Christ-centered focus. Let's work on that true commitment. Let's work on that right relationship. for the glory and for the name of Jesus Christ. Father, I lift up every person in this room, myself, those on the live stream, as we are in constant need of a refocus, in constant need of a reminder, in constant need of an adjustment to ensure that we have a Christ-centered view in general. When it comes to this matter of fasting, Lord, we fall short. We do. It is so often neglected. And Lord, while you expect us to fast, you haven't necessarily told us when and where to fast. And so we thank you for the opportunity, the flexibility you've given us to look into our own hearts and determine what your will is for us. based on your word, based on what the Holy Spirit guides and directs us to do. And Father, if there's anyone here today, this morning, that feels a prompting, a desire to fast, I pray it would be directed toward a Christ-centeredness that creates a deeper, sweeter fellowship. and ask this all in Christ's precious holy name.