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We now turn our attention to the study of the Word of God. Will you take your Bibles and turn to Luke's Gospel, chapter five? We have now arrived at verses 33 through 39, and I've entitled my discourse to you this morning "The Exclusivity of the Gospel." Let me read the text to you, Luke five, beginning with verse 33.

"And they said to Him, "'he disciples of John often fast and offer prayers, the disciples of the Pharisees also do the same, but Yours eat and drink.'

"And Jesus said to them, 'You cannot make the attendants of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you?

"'But the days will come; and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.'

"And he was also telling them a parable: 'No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and puts it on an old garment; otherwise, he will both tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old.

"'And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined.

"'But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.

"'And no one, after drinking old wine, wishes for new; for he says, "The old is good enough."'"

Well, I must say that I cherish every opportunity to proclaim the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we have that opportunity yet again this morning - the one who has provided for us salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, which is at the heart of Christianity, and this is at the core, obviously, of Luke's gospel that exalts Jesus on every page. In fact, later on, you will see that he devotes 10 chapters of his historical narrative to a travelog of Jesus' final journey to the cross to save sinners.

But certainly, the world in which we live is one that is filled with atheists and agnostics and deists, deists who believe that there is a God, but they reject Christ. And it's interesting; they will constantly make sanctimonious references to God, but very seldom will they use the name Jesus Christ, especially the Lord Jesus Christ. Many politicians will even refer to themselves as a person of faith, but they will avoid, like the plague, using any reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, many religious people, if pressed, would vehemently deny the following truths about Christ that we see in Scripture. We see that he is the Son of God. He is the Creator and sustainer of all things. He is the Redeemer of all who place their faith in his sacrificial death on the cross. He is the only mediator between God and man. He is the only way to salvation. He is the head of his body, the church. He is the coming universal King who will reign on the throne of David forever. He is the final judge of all who reject him as Lord and Savior, and what this means is that all religions that deny this are false religions, and all who embrace the things they teach will be condemned to an eternal hell. The gospel message is therefore horribly offensive to self-righteous sinners. In fact, Paul says in First Corinthians 1:23, "To the Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who were the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

It's fascinating when you look around at our culture, you see that we live in in an age of tolerance. In fact, tolerance seems to be the supreme virtue these days in our culture. Ambiguity and uncertainty are celebrated in our society, where all viewpoints, no matter how absurd or contradictory, must be considered equally valid, and that, of course, is the zeitgeist of the age in which we live. In other words, the dominating spirit or idea that motivates members of our society, and this is why biblical Christianity is so despised, because it is so exclusive, it is so narrow. We tell people because God has made it clear to us that the Bible is the inspired, infallible, authoritative standard for faith and practice. It is the all-sufficient Word of the Living God, and we tell people that there is only one God, and it's the triune God of the Bible, and there is only one way to salvation, and that is through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. All other religions, therefore, are false.

Moreover, God has made it clear that all other religions are created by Satan. They're doctrines of demons, and Satan, of course, is the father of lies. And our society can be tolerant of the most immoral, absurd, irrational, ridiculous ideologies like transgenderism, but it will not tolerate the gospel of God, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only good news that can save sinners. And of course, this is the natural consequence of men who have no fear of God, because it's only when you have the fear of God that you can have wisdom and understanding, and the result, of course, is postmodernism, which you might say is the prevailing attitude of our day - an attitude of skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and therefore concepts like absolute truth must be rejected, and of that we are absolutely certain. Right? That's the world in which we live. And you know, as you think about it, once a culture celebrates sodomy, same-sex marriage, once it believes in gender that can be determined subjectively by an individual, by their personal identification rather than biology - once a culture has gone to that length, that depth of depravity, you can see that there is no hope unless God intervenes. Once a woman has a right to kill her own baby, the culture is sunk into an abyss of divine judgment, and God has given them over to a depraved mind, as we read in Romans one, that is incapable of reason. And today, our culture is tolerant of all viewpoints again, except the biblical worldview of Christianity, and they have no use for that. And this is why we cannot coexist with other religions in some unified global spirituality, as the bumper sticker says. I still see those bumper stickers. Don't you? "Coexist." And they got all the little signs on there. Folks, we are not of this world. When praying to the Father concerning the redeemed, Jesus said in John 17:14, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." And Jesus told his disciples in John 15 verse 19, "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you." And in First John 51:9, we are told that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one, and it is under the power of Satan who deceives the whole world (Revelation 12:9).

So we are people of another realm, and our allegiance is to another king. Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is not of this world." By the way, as a footnote, that's why there is no such thing as Christian nationalism. That's a concept that is foreign to Scripture and rooted in an errant eschatology known as postmillennialism; that the kingdom of God will gradually grow and it will become the dominant influence of the world and society will be transformed. And then, after a long period of a largely Christianized world, then Jesus will come, and essentially, therefore, the church is supposedly going to usher in the kingdom and give it to Christ. The Bible says something very different. It says that the world is going to get worse and worse until the Lord comes and establishes his kingdom.

Now, all of that background pertaining to the culture in which we live to demonstrate that in the first century they dealt with very similar ideas. When Jesus arrived on the earth, Satan was using the same type of tactics of deception and intolerance, but with different actors, shall we say, and with some different ideologies. And primarily, Satan opposed the gospel in the first century through apostate Judaism and its most fanatical proponents, the Pharisees, and the purpose of this narrative here in Luke five is to expose this by underscoring, as I say, the exclusivity of the gospel of Jesus Christ; that it mixes with absolutely nothing; it cannot be added to any other religion. It cannot be added to any other worldview. It stands alone in its singularity, and its exclusivity is therefore the source of enormous rage among those who believe, for example, that there are many ways to heaven and many different religions that are viable, and so forth.

Now, let me give you the context here before we look more closely at the text itself. This scenario, where the Pharisees and actually the some of the disciples of John the Baptist confront Jesus, is just another miracle of of divine providence at work, and you're going to see this because what happens here is the inevitable outcome of Jesus' deliberate actions. What Jesus did in his earthly ministry wasn't just kind of just walk along and let's see what happens. No, he had it all planned very very carefully, and all three of the synoptic writers -Matthew, Mark, and Luke - record this episode. And it's interesting that they place it right after Jesus stunned the crowds by calling Matthew the tax collector, to follow him. However, I might add that there is no close chronological order of the two events, but there is a logical kind of a thematic link, if you will.

Now, think what has happened up to this point. Think what God has been up to in his providence, orchestrating all of these events in this sequence. First, you will recall that Jesus returned to Capernaum. He healed the paralytic, that amazed the crowds, and then on top of that, he claimed to be able to forgive sins. And of course, the Pharisees were apoplectic when they heard that, because only God can forgive sins, and this is just some dude from Nazareth, you know what's the deal.

And secondly, we read how Jesus demonstrated his great love for sinners by calling Levi or Matthew, the tax collector, to follow him. Then he, remember, he goes into Matthew's house and for a celebration of Matthew's conversion and his change in career, and shares a meal with a number of Matthew's partners in crime, all of the riffraff of that area. And it's interesting, by the way, in Mark 2:15, we read that some of them were also following Jesus, so some of them came to faith in Christ during that time, and some of them may have already been following Him, not sure who He is, and so Jesus just kept frustrating the Pharisees and the scribes. He was not trying to find common ground, all right? He was not trying to create a dialog so that we can find things upon which we can all agree and hold hands and sing kumbaya. He wants to expose them. He wants to expose their self-righteous legalism, their hypocritical law-keeping, and help everyone see that what you must do now is repent and believe in him for forgiveness of sins. And again, this caused the Pharisees to be absolutely apoplectic, because Jesus now - this Jesus of Nazareth - is making a mockery of our religion. In fact, later Jesus would say to his disciples in Matthew 11:19, "'The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet, he says, "Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds."

So Jesus, my point here, Jesus has been deliberately leading these apostate Jewish leaders, and all those that follow them, to a natural conclusion, and that is that the gospel of saving grace being granted to those who trust in Him is diametrically opposed to the self-righteous Judaism of that day, where you have to somehow keep the law in order to earn your salvation; so he's essentially saying your religion is false. The gospel I preach is true, etc. etc.

So I want to divide this passage of scripture into two real simple headings. We're going to see first of all the legalistic reaction, and then finally the divine response. First, the legalistic reaction here, verse 33. "And they said to Him, 'The disciples of John often fast and offer prayers, the disciples of the Pharisees also do the same, but Yours eat and drink.'" In other words, what's the deal here? You're ignoring our traditions. You're ignoring our ritual fast. Now remember, not all of the disciples of John the Baptist knew who Jesus was. We won't go there, but if you go to Acts chapter 19, the first seven verses, you will see that Paul encounters some of his followers some 30 years after Jesus' baptism, and some of them still weren't sure who he was. Now, some of them may be jealous because so many people are following Jesus rather than John the Baptist, who, by the way, is now in prison at this point. And you will recall in John 3:26, we read that they came to John and said to him, "Rabbi, he who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, he is baptizes and baptizing, and all are coming to him." And in verse 30, John says, "He must increase, but I must decrease."

Now remember, those who responded to the preaching of the of John the Baptist were truly repentant and were looking for the coming Messiah that had been foretold, and many of them had been baptized in the wilderness, and they hung around for a long time, and many of them would have gone home, and they have a real desire for holiness, but they don't have at this point the New Testament scriptures, only the Old Testament. So they were in transition between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, not really sure how to conduct themselves in faith and obedience. So, like all good Jews, they followed very scrupulously the Old Testament law, which required fasting one time per year on Yom Kippur; you can read about that in Leviticus 16. But they also fasted according to the traditions of the Pharisees, who fasted twice per week. They would fast on Mondays and Thursdays, according to Luke 18 verse 12. Plus, they had invented, you will recall, all kinds of rules and doctrines and traditions that they would obey to make themselves feel religious and give them the illusion of spirituality and so forth. In fact, you might think of of Judaism as a three-legged stool. There are three legs to it: prayer, alms giving, and fasting. That was kind of what their world revolved around, but there was really no true worship from the heart from the vast majority of them. In fact, Jesus excoriated them in Matthew 15, beginning in verse seven, "'You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.'"

Now there were a number of voluntary, shall we say, non-mandatory fasts mentioned in the Old Testament associated with grief and sorrow over sin, and sometimes during a season of intimate communion with God. So John's disciples would have been motivated by these factors as well. So they're wondering what's going on here with Jesus and the disciples. Now the Pharisees-they're there to confront Jesus. I mean, John's disciples were just legitimately confused, but not so the Pharisees. I mean, their pride was wounded, and they were looking to find anything to somehow get rid of Jesus, and certainly the Jesus and the disciples are violating their made-up rules. By the way, if you've ever been around real hardcore legalists, you will quickly find yourself on duty, right? You're kind of walking on eggshells because you don't know what you might say or do that's going to offend them because they've got so many rules. And typically, they have a spirit of animosity and jealousy and harsh attitude, judgmentalism and so forth. I always think of legalism like roadkill. Nobody's attracted to it, and everybody's repulsed by it. So that's what's going on here.

So again, verse 33, they say to Jesus, "'The disciples of John often fast and offer prayers, the disciples of the Pharisees also do the same, but Yours eat and drink.'" So that's the legalistic reaction. Now, what about the divine response? Here's where it gets really fascinating. Verse 34, Jesus said to them,

"You cannot make the attendants of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you?

"'But the days will come; when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.'"

Mark puts it this way in Mark 2 verse 19, and Jesus said to them, "While the bridegroom is with them, the attendants of the bridegroom cannot fast, can they? So long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast." Now, this is a perfect analogy that the Jewish people would have understood, not only because of their Jewish culture, but because they were Old Testament scholars. You see, no one would fast and mourn during a wedding feast. I mean, that's a time not to fast but to feast, right? I mean, we all do that. It's not a time of mourning; it's a time of celebration. By the way, as I think about this, isn't it great that we have great joy in Christ? Right. I mean, yes, the bridegroom has gone away, and later on, the disciples grieved and mourned over that until the Holy Spirit came, and they began to understand those things, and then they would rejoice with exceeding joy, even though temporarily you might be going through trials.

By the way, if I can make this real practical to you, it's really sad when we as Christians walk around like Eeyore. Oh woe is me, my, such a difficult life. I mean, my mama and my daddy-they did this to me, and all these horrible things, and oh, look how big that victim's badge is! Let me polish it up. You know, folks, please, I mean, if you know and love Christ, you need to get rid of that victim's badge forever. Put on the Soli deo Gloria badge. My goodness, set your mind on things above, not on the things of this earth. I mean, what did we read in our scripture reading? Paul said, "Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal." And what is that? Well, it is the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. It's Christ likeness. I mean, focus on those things.

Well, anyway, he's talking here now about the bridegroom. You celebrate when you think of the bridegroom, and here Jesus is comparing himself to a bridegroom. And by the way, he's also introducing himself as the bridegroom of his bride, the church. But a day is coming, as we see here, when the bridegroom is going to be taken away from them, and they will fast. By the way, that was a prediction of his death, and I'm sure they did not catch this. None of them really put two and two together. Maybe they did later. Maybe some of them did, who knows, but Isaiah prophesied that the coming Messiah would indeed be taken away. To use the same language, Isaiah 53, beginning in verse eight, "By oppression and judgment He was taken away." Goes on to say,

"His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death, because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth?

"But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief."

 And you will recall, in the Upper Room, on the evening of Jesus' crucifixion, he celebrated the joy that would eventually follow, even though he talked about a temporary mourning time. In John 16, we read about this, beginning in verse 20. Jesus says,

"Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will grieve, but your grief will be turned into joy.

"Whenever a woman is in labor, she has pain because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world.

"'Therefore, you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.'"

So all of this to say, at this stage in Jesus' ministry, his disciples were still convinced that that Jesus was the Messiah King, that he he had come to conquer and to reign, not to seek and to save. And later in Matthew 16, verse 21 and following, we read that, "Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day." And it's interesting what it says next. "Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, 'God forbid it, Lord! This will never happen to you.'" So obviously, they didn't really understand all that was going on here.

I want to digress for a moment to underscore Jesus comparing himself to a bridegroom. It's really a fascinating thought. A Jewish wedding feast would last typically seven days, and the festivities would begin when the bridegroom arrived with his attendants. It's a time of celebration, not a time of fasting. And I find there there are many parallels between a Jewish wedding and Christ's relationship with his bridal church, including events surrounding his second coming. Now, the Old Testament never directly refers to the Messiah as the Bridegroom, but it does describe Israel as the Lord's bride, "in whom He delights," (Isaiah 62:4-5). The prophet Hosea says in Hosea 2, beginning in verse 19, "I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in loving kindness and in compassion, and I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, then you will know the Lord." Now, although Jesus' reference to the bridegroom would have been a veiled messianic claim, the Pharisees and John's disciples would have at least understood the imagery of the Old Testament, one that the New Testament would would build upon further by describing the church as as the bride of Christ. You read about that, you know, in Ephesians five and Revelation 19 and so forth. And Revelation 21:2 says, "And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband." And the imagery of the redeemed being the bride of the Lamb, as we read in Revelation 19:7 is found in numerous passages of Scripture, and it really describes God's deep personal union between himself and those he has chosen by his grace, and this must be understood in the context even of a Jewish betrothal and wedding.

It's interesting, in a Jewish betrothal and wedding, you have really three different stages. You first have the kiddishin. In Hebrew that means the the dedication or the commitment or the betrothal and that's an engagement period and it includes a contract whereby the couple were considered legally married. And as his bride we are betrothed in eternity past to Christ by his uninfluenced sovereign choice. And then secondly, in the Jewish scheme of things, you have the presentation. At the close of the betrothal period, the groom would go to his bride, often unannounced, and take her to his father's house and present her to the the family, to the friends over a period typically of one week. It would be a time of festivities, and at the end of the presentation, the bride then would return home briefly, gather her things and her bridesmaids, and then the groom and the groomsmen would go to the bride's house and escort her and her bridesmaids to the actual ceremony. And this is again a time of great festivity, a time of fasting.

By the way, I can remember very vividly waking up fairly early in the old part, the old city of Jerusalem. There's a section called the Old City, and I hear all of this singing, all these different instruments, and I look out the window, and it's a bridegroom coming for his bride with the whole entourage; it was a fascinating thing to watch. And this presentation, I believe, will occur at the rapture of the church when he comes - when the bridegroom comes unannounced - and takes us unto himself as the pure virgin, the sanctified church, and presents us to the heavenly host. And then the third part of the whole wedding series is the ceremony, and this began at the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19 verses 7 through 9. But it's going to extend, I believe, through the millennium, with the final consummation being the new heavens and the new earth, with the descent of the new Jerusalem that comes down. You read about that in Revelation 21:2. It comes down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And there, in the new heavens and the new earth, you have the glorified bride, which will include the redeemed of all ages, and we will live in perfect union with the bridegroom in the bridal city; for indeed we are likened to a bride adorned for her husband. And by his transforming grace, beloved, by his transforming grace, this is precisely what happens to all of the redeemed who have been made new creatures in Christ. Ephesians 5:25, "Christ loved the church, gave Himself up for her that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water and the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless."

Now back to the text. This divine response, bear in mind now, the focus here is not on the wedding, it's not on the bride, it's on the bridegroom. He alone is the source of honor and our greatest joy. It's interesting how different it is in our culture. I've done many weddings - it seems like I've done 100 just this last year - but typically, you know, the bridegroom gets dressed in some closet back there someplace, and he comes out and stands, and nobody really cares. But oh, when the bride comes, everybody stands up, and all of the music. I'm not saying it shouldn't happen, but all of the focus is on the bride, not the bridegroom. It is very different; it was it was not that way in their day. But even entrance into the kingdom is compared to the admission into a wedding feast, right? We read about that in Matthew 22 and Matthew 25, and so forth. And the ultimate celebration that we will enjoy at the heavenly wedding feast would have never been possible apart from the sacrifice of the bridegroom on our behalf, and so Jesus is really saying to his protesters, "Your apostate religious system is utterly foreign to God's plan of salvation, and you can't see it. Otherwise, you would be celebrating because the bridegroom is here instead of mourning and fasting."

 Now I want you to notice how Jesus uses two more comparisons to support that whole idea of of apostate Judaism being a false system and so forth. He gives an example of attaining of patching a garment and wine and wineskins. Notice verse 36, "And He was also telling them a parable: 'No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and puts it on an old garment; otherwise, he will both tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old.'" Mark says in Mark 2:21, "'No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear results.'" I have to pause for a second. This just popped into my mind. In seventh grade, and I know this is going to be foreign to most of you, but in seventh grade, we had as boys, we had to take a course in home economics. I learned to bake a cake. I learned several other things, I don't even remember, but one of them that I learned is how to darn a sock. And I remember them telling us we had to bring socks. You know how you get holes in the heel, and they had to get the cloth just right. And they use analogy similar to this. Now I'm not saying I could still darn a sock. In fact, now when the socks get that way, we just throw them away, right? But anyway, you get the idea, and that's what's happening here. And he's basically saying that you cannot take a new piece of fabric that hasn't been pre-shrunk, and patch that onto an old garment. Everybody would have understood that, you know, because once it's washed, the patch will shrink and tear away from the old garment. And the analogy here is simple: look, you just can't mix the old and the new-they're incompatible. You can't patch the new cloth of the gospel - of repentance and salvation by grace, the forgiveness of sin through faith in Christ - you can't patch that onto the old, worn-out garment of legalistic, apostate, Pharisaical Judaism. You cannot, let's put it this way: you cannot mix law and grace. That's what the Judaizers would constantly do. Now you want to be very careful here. Jesus is not denigrating the Mosaic law, nor the Old Testament as a whole. Remember, Jesus did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5). In fact, verse 17 of that text says, "Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

Another important digression for a moment, to make sure you remember these things, there are really three divisions to the Old Testament Mosaic Law. You have first of all the moral law that regulated how Israel should love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and their neighbor as themselves. All of that was based upon the 10 Commandments and so forth. Then you have the the judicial law that basically regulated the nation of Israel and their theocracy, and then you had the ceremonial law that regulated Israel's worship, and ultimately the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled each division of the law, as we just read in Matthew 5:17; and the judicial and ceremonial laws were were fulfilled in Christ and are now obsolete, although the moral law is still being fulfilled through the church because we are united to Christ through faith and so forth.

Now, caution here: there's a big danger, and we see this a lot of times in evangelicalism, but certainly in some of the quasi-evangelical - frankly cults - that surround evangelicalism. Never take certain aspects of the Old Testament law, like Sabbath restrictions, diet regulations, observing certain feasts and convocations, and try to incorporate them into the gospel of grace. That causes so much confusion. Some of the quasi-Christian cults, like Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventists-they're notorious for arbitrarily transporting selective aspects of the judicial and ceremonial law into their works-righteousness system, mixing law with grace. By the way, it's interesting that all four of those cults that I just mentioned, were born within a 250-mile radius of each other in the 1800s, and they all claimed extra-biblical revelation that they were given secrets that nobody else was privy to, and they all believed they were the true church, and they were all enslaved by self-styled prophets and prophetesses. They had a different gospel, and frankly, a different Jesus.

So, anyway, back to our our text, the primary emphasis here of Jesus' comparison is the incompatibility - the exclusivity - of the gospel, and therefore the incompatibility of rabbinical stipulations and traditions, and the the extra biblical prescriptions and works- righteousness system that the Pharisees had created and that they promoted. It's absolutely incompatible with the new covenant message of salvation by grace. That's what Jesus is pointing out here, and this is further emphasized later on remember when Jesus deliberately violates their man-made Sabbath restrictions and declared himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath.

Now back to the text, he reinforces this with another comparison, verse 37, "And no one puts new wine into old wine skins; otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins." And maybe you've seen these before. I mean, they still have them over in the Middle East. They would put wine in animal skins, especially a goat; they would take that a portion of the leg and the neck, and they would turn it inside out, and they would seal it up and use a small end as a spout, and when you put new wine in it, it would ferment, and therefore emit gas and expand, and a new hide would therefore stretch with it, all right? But to put new wine in an old wine skin that had already lost its elasticity-I guess that would be the word-you know-if you do that, it's going to explode. So you can't do that. And his point here is that the gospel of grace is the new wine. You can't put it in an old wine skin. You've got to forsake the old, and you've got to replace it here now with the new.

In verse 39, he says, "And no one, after drinking old wine, wishes for new; for he says, "The old is good enough."'" This is just a picture, really kind of a humorous thing that Jesus is saying. It pictures just the tragic results of inebriation, and it was symbolic of the Pharisees being so intoxicated with their own apostate religious system that they were desensitized to the taste of something that is infinitely better: the gospel of grace that Jesus is preaching - the new wine of the gospel. So here we see Jesus underscoring again the exclusivity of the Christian gospel. It mixes with nothing. It cannot be added to another religious system. It stands alone. You know, folks, as Christians we coexist with non-Christians on this planet spiritually in certain ways, I should say physically, but not spiritually. We just can't do that. You might say we're in two different worlds. Haven't you heard people say, "Christians, those people, it's like they're from another planet." Well, at some level, they're right, you know, that's why Jesus said we're, "not of the world, even as I am not of the world (John 17). In fact, we guard ourselves from being conformed to this world, right, Romans 12:2; and we do that because this is where Satan rules. It has no appeal to us. By the way, if the world appeals to you, if you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you. You have no basis to claim saving faith. If you love this world, it's characterized by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life. Unbelievers are citizens of Satan's kingdom. Romans 6:19 says they're "slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness." I like the description of the world that was given by the 19th century Archbishop of Dublin. His name was R.C. Trench, and he described the contemporary beliefs and values that make up just the moral environment of the world in which he lives. And it's the same today, he says the world is, "...that floating mass of thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, aspirations at any time current in the world, which it may be impossible to seize and accurately define, but which constitute a most real and effective power, being the moral or immoral atmosphere, which in every moment of our lives we inhale again, inevitable to exhale." Really interesting statement. Of course, we understand that today. We're postmodernism, relativism, wokeism, all of that crazy stuff, and this is why, at a most fundamental spiritual and moral level, true Christians can have nothing in common with unbelievers. I mean, we can be friends with them, and certainly we want to love them for the sake of the gospel, but we cannot be close with them in some way as to adopt their values, and that's why, again, as Paul says in Romans 12:2, "be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Literally, don't let the world shape you into its image without you realizing it. But rather be renewed. Let there be a metamorphosis that occurs so that who you really are on the inside will be manifested on the outside. And how does that happen? Through the renewing of your mind.

Well, again, bottom line, we're not of the world. I read it earlier. Jesus said, "If you were of the world, the world would love its own, because you're not of the world. But I choose you out of the world; because of this the world hates you." Again, our allegiance is to the Lord Jesus Christ, and that's why we see this mounting hostility with the Marxists that are out there, the progressive left, what do they call them, the democratic socialists, and crazy stuff. Because of the exclusivity of the gospel, and because we will not bow and worship the state, they've got to eliminate us, and that's what they will try to do. All you have to do is look at where this stuff has been forced upon people in other parts of the world down through history, and you will see very quickly that one of the first things they have to do is get rid of biblical Christianity. They have to outlaw it, because our moral authority is not the state; it's God and his Word. As I read earlier, Philippians 3:20, "our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself."

Therefore, in obedience to our Lord and King's command, we pray for his kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Well, folks, as we close this morning, please hear this: Do not compromise the gospel with other ideologies of the world, be willing to stand up and to say that it is exclusive - that Christianity doesn't mix with anything, that you cannot be saved apart from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ - and certainly when you say those things, you are going to be met with great hostility. But isn't it great that, by the power of God's grace, there will be those who will hear that truth, and they will be profoundly convicted, and they will be saved, like hopefully all of us. And if you've never come to a place where you really know who Christ is and you love him, and you have a desire to serve him, you have a hunger for His Word, a burden for the lost, oh, I pray that even today will be the day you get serious about your need to be reconciled to a holy God through faith in Christ; that today will be the day of your salvation, and you too can experience the miracle of regeneration. What a great thing! Amen. Let's pray together.

Father, thank you for the great truths of your Word. Thank you for the gospel, and help us to proclaim it, to never be ashamed of it, but to proclaim it with love, with sincerity, with boldness. But certainly in a way that makes it very clear. That there is only one God, there is only one way to salvation, there is only one good news of salvation, and that is through grace by faith in Christ alone. We thank you, we give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen.