3. ABOUT FASTING Mark 2:18-22 (Matthew 9:14-17; Luke 5:33-39) 18 And John's disciples--His converts. They (some, not all) were still holding John as their captain. A part of his disciples did not accept the leadership of Jesus as readily as did John. John recognized Jesus immediately as the Son of God and captain of the new movement and received him as such. He said: "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John 3:30.) Had John's disciples possessed the spirit he himself had and followed his precepts, they too would have accepted Jesus as their great leader without delay. (John 1 :29-36; 3:27-34.) But while John was baptizing some of them manifested a spirit of rivalry (John 3:26) and much more now since his imprisonment. Those who held aloof from Christ really sympathized with the Pharisees. (Luke 5:33.) and the Pharisees were fasting:and they come and say unto him, Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not--A statement of what John's disciples and the Pharisees were doing. Both the foundation for and the question asked are plainly stated. They left no room for quibbling. A third ground of opposition to Jesus is now introduced. The opposition to Jesus about him eating with publicans and sinners had no sooner been disposed of than the question about his disciples not fasting was introduced. This question probably came up the day Matthew spread his feast, however, some think it is doubtful. Whether this charge was made upon the same or a different day is unimportant. John's disciples and the Pharisees fasted, the disciples of Jesus did not, so they ask for the reason why they did not. The question was fair and legitimate. The Pharisees fasted twice a week (Luke 18:12), and John's disciples imitated them, and did not understand why Jesus did not require his disciples to do likewise. There was a great difference between John's disciples and Christ's in the matter of fasting. John's disciples imitated him, who "came neither eating nor drinking." On the other side, Christ's disciples followed him, who "came eating and drinking" as other men did. (Matt. 11:18.) Thus did John's disciples and Christ's--the one fasted often, the other fasted not. The Pharisees fasted as well as John's disciples. From this we learn that wicked men may be, and sometimes are, as strict and forward in the outward duties of religion as the holiest and best of Christians. They pray, they fast, they hear the word, they partake in the Lord's Supper; they do, yea, it may be, they outdo and go beyond the sincerest Christian in external duties and outward performances. Fasting was always connected with sorrow and humiliation. When the Jew sinned God forsook him or punished him. Under a sense of sin and sorrow he humbled himself, fasted and prayed that he might be freed from sin, might draw near to God, so that God would draw near to him. So fasting and mourning for sin are connected. Fasting rather grows out of a sense of sinfulness and a desire to humble the flesh before God than out of any command to fast. Fasting, like prayer, grows out of our sense of need of help from God, and leads us to draw close to him in spirit. The Pharisees fasted often as a display of piety. This was hypocrisy. 19 And Jesus said unto them,--In the question about eating with publicans and sinners, the complaint was made to the disciples about Jesus; but this time the complaint is placed before Jesus about his disciples. In both instances, Jesus makes the reply. The reply to this question is as unexpected and as logical as was the former, and made still more striking by its being borrowed from a well-known custom of that country, namely, from its marriage ceremonies, and especially from the practice of the bridegroom bringing home his bride accompanied by select friends, rejoicing over them and for them. Can the sons of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.--The form of the question here asked by Jesus is idiomatic, being that used when a negative answer is expected. The nearest approach to it in English is a negative followed by a question--they cannot--can they? The incapacity implied is not a physical but a moral one. They cannot be expected or required to fast; there is no reason why they should fast. The general principle involved or presupposed is that fasting is not a periodical or stated, but a special and occasional, observance, growing out of a particular emergency. This doctrine underlies the whole defense of his disciples, which proceeds upon the supposition that a fast, to be acceptable and useful, must have a reason and occasion of its own, beyond a general propriety or usage. It is also assumed that fasting is not a mere opus operatum, but the cause and the effect of a particular condition, that of spiritual grief or sorrow. (Matt. 9:15.) "Sons of the bridechamber" were the male attendants of the bridegroom, who, on the day of marriage, accompanied him to the home of the bride, to bring her home. This would remind John's disciples that he taught them Christ is the bridegroom (John 3:2 9); and the Pharisees that their prophets, in speaking of Christ, used the same figure to illustrate the relation between God and Israel (Ps. 45; Isa. 54:5; 62:5). Jesus compared himself to the bridegroom, his disciples to the children of the bridechamber, or friends who were eating at the bridal feast; and that he, as the bridegroom, was with his friends. The guests at the wedding cannot mourn. Mourning or fasting on such occasions would be out of order. It is a time of rejoicing and feasting, instead of mourning and fasting. While Jesus, the bridegroom, was with his disciples, they were enjoying a wedding feast, and it would be out of order to fast as if they were mourning. But when he left them they would fast, because that would be a time of sorrow. Real fasting takes place when there is real occasion for it. (Acts 13:2; 14:23; 2 Cor. 6:5; 11:27.) Probably John's disciples were mourning and fasting, because John, their friend, had been taken from them and placed in prison. If so, it was a time of fasting with them. But with the disciples of Jesus, it was a time of festivity and rejoicing. Their sorrow had not as yet come upon them. There must be a reason, something that calls for fasting and makes it appropriate. The arbitrary appointment of fast days, such as has been made by the Romish and other churches, is out of harmony with the teaching of Jesus. 20 But the days will come,--The time will come when Jesus, the bridegroom, will be put to death--when the circumstances will be changed, and fasting with his disciples will be becoming and very appropriate. When he is taken away, then their festivity will be ended, then will be the proper time of sorrow and fasting. when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them,--A prediction of the death of Christ. and then will they fast in that day.--The day or time of Christ's death and removal. That will be a special time of sorrow and of fasting for his disciples. That will be the time to use the tokens of sorrow and grief. The duty of fasting, being thus dependent upon circumstances, may and will become incumbent when those circumstances change, as they are certainly to change hereafter. The bridegroom is not always to be visibly present, and when he departs, the time of fasting will be come. To express this more strongly, he is said to be removed or taken away, as if by violence. Then, at the time of this removal, as an immediate temporary cause of sorrow, not forever afterwards, which would be inconsistent with the principle already laid down, that the value of religious fasting is dependent on its being an occasional and not a stated duty. There is no foundation therefore for the doctrine of some Romish writers, who evade this argument against their stated fasts, by alleging that, according to our Lord's own declaration, the church after his departure was to be a fasting church. But this would be equivalent to saying that the Savior's exaltation would consign his people to perpetual sorrow. For he evidently speaks of grief and fasting as inseparable, and in Matthew's narrative of his reply, the former term is substituted for the latter. (Matt. 9:15.) Even the plural form, in those days, has respect to the precise time of his departure, much more the singular, in that day, which the latest critics have adopted as the true text. 21 No man seweth a piece of undressed cloth on an old garment:--Jesus in reply to his interrogators used three illustrations, all of them going to establish the same thing, namely, that we should observe a fitness and propriety in things. The first is taken from a marriage. Having fully stated the facts and made the applications of this illustration, Jesus here introduces a second which was familiar to all his auditors --namely, putting new cloth as patches on old garments. This, like the first illustration, shows that there is a propriety or fitness of things. Mark states how the patch is put on by the word "seweth." He points out to his hearers what no one of them would think of doing. else that which should fill it up taketh from it, the new from the old, and a worse rent is made.--Jesus here gives the reason why an old garment should not be patched with new cloth. A patch from new cloth would shrink and tear the old cloth and make the slit in the old garment larger. Such patching would be folly. But it would be just as unbecoming and foolish to unite fasting, which is a sign of sorrow and grief, with the joyous work of the disciples of Jesus, while he, the bridegroom, is with them. "What is meant is not simply new cloth, but cloth which has not been completely dressed. A part of the process of preparing woolen cloth for use consists in shrinking it, and a patch of unfulled cloth not duly shrunk would contract the first time it became wet; and, as the older and weaker cloth around it must give way, the result would be a worse rent. We must remember that Jewish garments at that day were all wool;and if unfulled, would shrink like our flannel." (Broadus.) 22 And no man putteth new wine into old wineskins; else the wine will burst the skins, and the wine perisheth, and the skins: but they put new wine into fresh wineskins.--This is the third illustration to demonstrate that we should observe a fitness and propriety in things. It, like the other two, was familiar and well understood by his hearers. [He presents the incongruity of applying the rules and practices that had grown up under the Jewish law, or even the preaching of John the Baptist to the disciples of Jesus, by another comparison: putting unfermented wines into old, dried skins, that had been stretched and dried until they had lost all their elasticity. Under the fermentation of the wine in the new skin, the skin would yield and stretch so there would be no danger of the skin bursting and losing both it and the wine. In the dried skin the fermentation of the wine would cause the skin to burst, and the wine would be spilled, the skin worthless.] The argument drawn from these two examples is not, as some have supposed, that it would be absurd to patch the old Jewish garment with the unfulled cloth of the gospel, or to put the new wine of the gospel into the old Jewish bottles; for the question at issue was not one concerning the proper relation of the gospel dispensation to the old Jewish law, but one concerning the propriety of fasting on a certain occasion. Moreover, in Luke's report of this answer we find the additional argument, "No man having drunk old wine desireth new; for he saith, The old is good." (Luke 5:39.) To carry out the interpretation just named would make Jesus here argue that the old dispensation was better than the new. But the argument is the same as in the first example. It shows that it would have been absurdly inappropriate to the occasion for his disciples to fast, as much so as to mourn at a wedding, to patch an old garment with unfulled cloth, or to put new wine into old bottles. The arguments not only vindicated his disciples, but taught John's disciples that fasting has value only when it is demanded by a suitable occasion.