Here now the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter nine, verses 14 through 17.

"Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast. And Jesus said to them, can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch. Tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed, but new wine is put into fresh wineskins and so both are preserved."

The grass withers, the flower fades. But the word of our God endures forever.

Well, we are coming into late December, which is in the middle of a very busy, very tumultuous, very chaotic season of the year. I'm not talking about the Christmas season. I'm talking about the college football coaching carousel season every year. If you follow it right about this time of year, some teams fire their coaches. Other teams hire new coaches from among those who were fired. And that causes this cascading, rippling whirlwind of chaos through the college football landscape as one goes here and then another one goes here to follow him. And it's all very confusing if you're following it at all.

But what's interesting is not just sort of this global level, but in individual college football program. When that program changes the head coach, it isn't just sort of plug and play. You put in the new head coach, and that coach just carries on business as usual, and nothing really much else happens. And no, if you follow this and we get to follow this a lot, don't we? If you follow this, you know what happens. The replacement of the head coach drives a thorough change throughout the entire administration of that program. Uh, not only are the other assistant coaches replaced, but even all the way down to particular staff positions. Um, just a few miles away from here, the director of video technology was replaced as a part of this overall overhaul of the entire staff. It's it's a very frightening time for these families, uh, for for their jobs, not knowing what's going to happen, uh, but also for the players. You have some players who were committed who are going to de-commit and go somewhere else or transfer away. Other players who haven't been on the radar, who come in, everything is thrown into confusion. And you have to ask, why is this necessary if you're watching this or if you care at all about this? I mean, aren't they all playing the same game of football? Why would so many drastic changes throughout from top to bottom in the administration be necessary in this? And the answer is because, again, a change in leader drives a thorough transformation in the entire change in the program and the administration of the program.

Everything must be coordinated and cohesive from the top down. And as this is happening, fans along the way are going to cheer some things and they're going to grumble and complain about other things. But no one really knows. No one really knows how this is going to work until, you know, 4 or 5 years when we do it all over again. But if this is what happens, if these kinds of thorough changes happen in the course of something that is ultimately as unimportant as football, how much more does this kind of thorough upending transformation from the from the top to the bottom of the administration of God's covenant with his people happen at the arrival of Jesus? He said when Jesus came, he was a new leader over God's people. But it wasn't just plug and play. He didn't just put in a new man, and he just carries on business as usual. Jesus thoroughly overhauls and reforms everything about God's administration of his covenant with his people, because he is a new mediator who inaugurates a new covenant, which is built on better promises than the Old Covenant. It's the same covenant of grace that God made with his people. And yet what Jesus is doing is making everything absolutely new. When the passage we're looking at today, we are seeing Jesus's authority brought into the realm of worship.

Worship, in particular, Jesus has authority to reform the way God's people worship. And our big idea today is this, then, that Jesus has authority to command worship in spirit and truth. Jesus has authority to command worship in spirit and truth. And you may be familiar. I'm borrowing that from John four verse 23, when Jesus says that his father is seeking worshippers who worship in spirit and in truth. But three parts to the sermon today. First of all, formalism in worship.

1. Formalism in worship
2. Force fitting the New Covenant
3. Fresh wineskins for new wine

Formalism in worship

So first of all, Jesus addresses a question of formalism and worship in verses 14 through 15. When in verse 14 the disciples of John come to him, saying, why do we in the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast. Now to start to understand what Jesus is doing here, it's important to remember the context of what has just happened. In the previous passage, Jesus was not fasting, he was feasting. Jesus had been eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners like Matthew and and people of his ilk. Other tax collectors and sinners who who threw a big party in Jesus was there. And now we have the disciples of John, John the Baptist coming to Jesus, saying, why do we fast and the Pharisees fast? But your disciples don't fast.

This may have come immediately afterwards in time. Maybe the next day, the disciples of John look around and say, why are we going to all this trouble if if you're just going to be out partying on the days that we're supposed to be fasting, or it may simply be connected by logic and and theme, and Matthew was sort of putting these two stories together to show us something about the nature of what Jesus came to do. But either way, they are intended to tell us something important about the nature of what Jesus came and how he came to reform worship. So look at what specifically the question is. If we miss the specific question that these disciples of John are asking, we will not understand the three answers that Jesus gives. The disciples of John say, why do we and the Pharisees fast? Now that's important. We don't know a whole lot about the disciples of John the Baptist, but we know quite a bit about the Pharisees, and we know quite a bit about the fasting practices of the Pharisees. In Luke chapter 18, when you read about the very proud Pharisee who stands up and prays, Lord, I thank you that I am not like this sinner over here, this tax collector over here. One of the things that he bragged about to prove to God what a great person he was, was the fact that he fasted twice per week.

So we know the Pharisees fasted twice per week, and we have other things outside the Bible to tell us this. In fact, other sources suggest that their particular practice was to fast on Mondays and Fridays every day of the week. So is Jesus opposing all fasting? When he answers him. Well, no, we have to remember just a little bit earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter six, verse 16, and the sermon on the Mount, Jesus already addressed the question of fasting. And Jesus there seemed to assume that his disciples would fast sometimes because he said, not if you fast. But he said, when you fast, don't fast like the hypocrites do. And so Jesus condemned fasting like the hypocrites do with the hypocrites were only concerned, only interested in being seen by other people. They would disfigure their faces and smudge their faces with dirt so everyone would know, oh woe is me. I'm suffering as I am so high and holy and obedient to the Lord. Jesus said, don't fast that way, but when you fast, let it be between you and God. That's what he said there. But what's interesting here is that the Bible actually only commands one set time in the old covenant for God's people to be fasting. In Leviticus 23, verse 27, there's only one day that was set aside for fasting. It was the Day of Atonement. And there, um, uh, God had commanded his people to, uh, afflict themselves, or that's how it's translated in the ESV.

But but the word literally means fasting. There's a footnote there. If you look, Leviticus 23, verse 27 up, they were supposed to fast on that day alone. So when Jesus is talking to these disciples of John, it's important to understand that they with the Pharisees are going above and beyond what God had actually commanded his people to do in the Bible. So Jesus is not responding as though he wanted to abolish all fasting under every circumstance. What he is rather doing is addressing this practice of fasting at set times. Fasting religiously at these set times every Monday, every Friday, twice a week. Why do your disciples not do this? When we are doing this, the disciples of John ask. Why then did the disciples of John? And why did the Pharisees fast? Well, these fastings were practices where they were sort of entering into a time of mourning. M o u r n they were sorrowful and they were waiting expectantly for the Messiah's coming. They would practice twice a week to to sort of get themselves in the mindset and into the spirit where they were waiting for the Messiah to come. And so when Jesus gets this question, there's a lot going on here. It's not just a simple question of whether one should fast or not. It's really getting at this specific practice where there's this formalistic thing, these set times for fasting that the disciples of John the Baptist are asking Jesus about.

Now Jesus responds to this question with three answers. The first answer comes in verse 15, the second in verse 16, and the the third in verse 17. Each verse there's a new answer where Jesus is giving a new aspect of the answer by a new illustration. The first problem that Jesus addresses in verse 15 is the problem of religious formalism. Formalism to try to, uh, practice religion by adhering to specific forms. And so in verse 15, Jesus says to them this. He says. Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? Now, very literally, this is phrased actually a little bit differently. It's something more along the lines of this wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? He's expecting a negative answer. Of course they can't. It would be. It would be very difficult to do this. The party is on. How could they fast during this time? So Jesus is not simply giving permission. I hereby free you from this obligation of doing this. He's not doing that. He's saying, this wouldn't even make sense. This wouldn't make sense to to enter into this time of mourning, this time of sorrow. That's what characterized their fasting. And that's why Jesus talks about the wedding guests mourning. It wouldn't make sense to try to pretend that we were mourning at a time when the bridegroom is here, when the Messiah has arrived.

This doesn't make any sense anymore. It would be inappropriate to do so. And even this language of can they do this suggests that it would actually be impossible to do this. As Leon Morris writes in his commentary. The wedding guest cannot be feasting or cannot be fasting while the feasting is at its height. You're criticizing me for feasting. This is the time for feasting, Jesus is saying. But again, Jesus doesn't say that all fasting everywhere is wrong. Notice the next thing he says the days will come. When the bridegroom is taken away from them. And then they will fast. This is the first time that Jesus is clearly thinking about himself as the bridegroom, and he's talking about his disciples as the wedding guest. Those were the questions of the the disciples of John the Baptist pose. Why don't you and your disciples fast? So he's the bridegroom. They're the wedding guests, his disciples. There will come a time when Jesus will be taken away from his disciples. It's the first time we read about Jesus being taken away from his disciples. It's the first time where Jesus foreshadows his coming death, when he will be taken away from them in death and and buried behind the stone rolled over the mouth of the grave for a time, until on the third day he rises again from the dead. And in that time, there will be time for mourning. There will be time for sorrow and fasting, because then the bridegroom will be taken away, and that will be an appropriate time to mourn.

So why does Jesus respond with this analogy about the wedding guests and fasting and feasting and things like that? It's because Jesus is not criticizing the the the practice of fasting altogether. He's criticizing formalism in worship. Formalism where we play act a posture outwardly that is not genuine inwardly. It's not that fasting is never appropriate, but what Jesus saying is it's only appropriate at appropriate times. If it's not a time to be mourning, that it's not a time to be fasting just for the sake of practicing that fasting, even if it comes at supposedly set times. What Jesus is demonstrating here is that he has the authority to regulate and to reform his worship. He has the authority to command that we worship him in spirit and in truth, as he talks about in John verse or chapter four, verse 23. When Jesus says that he wants worshippers, the father is seeking worshippers who worship in spirit. He's saying he wants worshippers who are worshiping from a genuine spiritual authenticity that arises from the depths of their soul. And then when we are to worship in truth, we are to do so according to the truth of the Word of God. We're not playacting something. We're not sort of pretending or doing some kind of process of make believe. What God calls us to do is not to pretend that we are something we are not.

Pretend that we are mourning. God calls us to start right where we are. Maybe you came in Ambivalently this morning. Maybe you came in angry this morning. Maybe you came in sorrowful. Or maybe you came in joyfully this morning. Wherever you are, God called you into his presence. And then God begins to speak to you by his truth. And as God confronts you with his truth and as you respond in faith. Well, then God begins his work of his process by His Holy Spirit, where through His Word and His Spirit, he gives you a new spirit. This is all foretold in the Old Testament. In Psalm 51, David prayed, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. It's not about pretending to be something. We are not play acting certain postures at set times, but it's about being drawn in by the word of the Lord into his presence in worship and responding and repenting to His word in faith. I was, uh, listening to a couple of very famous actresses talk about acting, and they were having a conversation about some of the things that are most difficult for actresses and actors. And one of the things they said was interesting is that I would probably think fake crying would be the most difficult thing. What they said, actually more difficult than fake crying is fake laughing, because when we laugh, we have so many spontaneous gestures and and our faces do so many things.

That's very difficult, except for the absolute most skilled actors to pull off and to look genuine when they are laughing. Everyone knows when they hear someone fake laughing. Um, I'm sure not at one of your jokes, but maybe at mine. And so, um, there it is. So, uh, what they said, though, is that when you talk about fake crying. It was really interesting to hear them talk about having to get themselves in a place where they'd be able to do this, because to do this, they had to reject and close out the whole world around them. They had to go into their little, little trailer and they had to, you know, turn down the blinds and they had to be in the dark and they couldn't be around anyone, because if they were around another human being, they'd be brought out of their make believe world where they were trying to remember something really sad, to get them into this emotional place where they'd be able to bring about tears on command. No one could talk to them because that would cheer them up, that would break the spell, that would bring them back into the real world, and they wouldn't be able to manipulate their emotions enough to cry. This is not what worship is, friends. Worship is not where we are able, by great concentration, to manipulate our emotions, to do something, to perform in some way, either before other people or before God.

Jesus does not want us to mimic and expression with our bodies. That is not true in our hearts. Jesus does not call us to set forms of mourning like fasting. That will work on us. Apart from working on the spirit, the soul from the inside out. In this new administration, Jesus is calling for a thorough cleansing, a thorough reformation from the top to the bottom. A new leader is not just carrying on business as usual. He is turning everything upside down. He's reforming everything Jesus wants us to worship in spirit and in truth. Now. Jesus. Begins by addressing this question of formalism. That's the problem. We can't pretend to be mourning when it's the time for feasting. But he carries this idea forward by by showing that what he has come to do in inaugurating the New Covenant is so incompatible with the Old Covenant that it will tear the Old Covenant apart. And what he says in the next passage, the next verse, is that you cannot force fit the New Covenant into the old formalism. Jesus did not come to carry on business as usual, but to change everything. So this brings us to verse 16, where Jesus talks about force fitting the new covenant that is into the old.

Force fitting the new covenant

Look at what he says in verse 16. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment for the patch, tears away from the old garment, and a worse tear is made.

And what's Jesus mean by this? Well, he means that what he is doing is so radically new that he's not just patching an old garment. This isn't the the same business under new management carrying on in the same old way. Jesus did not come to just Jesus ify the old covenant. If you try to do that, you're going to split and tear the old covenant apart. There's got to be a thorough change of administration from the top to the bottom. But why does Jesus say this? Well to begin, this is very important. Jesus is not demeaning or devaluing the old covenant. The old covenant was not bad. It was not evil. It was not misguided. It was simply by nature, by God's very design. The old covenant was simply incomplete. God designed the Old Covenant so that it could not fulfill what it demanded, so that when Jesus stepped forward, when the new mediator of a new covenant enacted on better promises stepped into the picture, we would see the fullness of his glory. But the old covenant could not do. Jesus will do. The old Covenant then was characterized, and this is where its incompleteness came to the fore. The Old Covenant was characterized by an externality, by an outward focus. It was an externality that was filled with what the Westminster standards call an outward glory. There was a great outward, visible glory that we could see.

And this outward glory was designed to give us a picture. And as we've talked about many times, the purpose of the picture of the Old covenant was to point to a person. Now, what's interesting here, also in thinking about the Old Covenant, is that what John's disciples were asking Jesus to do. Why don't you fast in the way that we and the Pharisees do, namely twice a week? What John's disciples were asking Jesus to do was actually to go above the old covenant. And in doing so, they were confusing the picture given to them in the in the externality of the old covenant with the person that that picture was designed to point to. They were even asking him to do more than the old covenant required to really give a solid picture for them to see. Twice per week where they fasted on a set schedule. Play acting morning twice every week. And what Jesus is saying is that he has not come to expand or to extend this outward formalism. It's not business as usual. Rather, his presence shatters the images of the Old Covenant altogether. I've mentioned this a few times, but Allison, my wife, and I had a long distance relationship for about two and a half years before we got married. Um, I was down in Birmingham, Alabama at seminary, and she was up in Chicago at Moody Bible Institute, finishing college there.

And during those times, I treasured the few photographs that I had of her. It let me see her, her beautiful face from afar. And that was a wonderful thing. I had some portraits, some senior picture kind of thing, and I also had some of the candid photos that things that we did together, maybe some photos of both of us and whenever we visited each other. It's interesting. As much as I treasured her photos in her absence, her photos were absolutely worthless. Whenever we could visit each other, whenever we were together. I mean, imagine if she came and I pulled out the picture and I said, well, okay, I'm going to I'm going to try to compare your photo to you. You know, you're smiling better in this photo. Could you? Yeah, a little bit more on this side. Can you imagine that? I wouldn't have done that. She wouldn't have stayed. And I wanted her to, you know. So imagine then, if I tried to say, hey, let's reenact this picture. And we spent our entire time just trying to reenact something that we had done in the past that would make absolutely no sense. The purpose of the picture was to point to a person, and when the person was there, her presence eliminated the purpose of the pictures altogether. The same thing is true of what Jesus does in New Covenant worship. His presence means that there is no longer a purpose for the external, outward formalistic pictures of Old Covenant worship.

Worship in spirit and truth brings us directly into the presence of God, even though Jesus is not here bodily. Jesus sends His Holy Spirit from heaven, so he is with us right now in our midst. We are in the presence of God to think about this old covenant worshippers never enjoyed. And the old covenant? Your worship was distant. It was apart from the presence of God. If you are an old covenant worshipper, the closest you could do if you were a Jew, not if you were a Gentile, but if you were a Jew, is you could bring your sacrificial animal into the courtyard of the temple, and then the priest would take that and slaughter it, and offer your sacrifice on the altar, and take some of the blood into the holy places. And that's the last you would see of him. You couldn't go in there into the presence of God, into the holy places. Only the priest could, and even the priests couldn't go all the way into the Holy of Holies, where God's footstool was. Only the high priest could go there once per year. Everyone else was kept at a distance away from the presence of God, in the presence, in the person of the Holy Spirit. And it's so interesting to think of what happens when Jesus dies on the cross. Do you remember what happens? That veil is torn. That old garment that separated God's people from his direct presence was torn in two.

Using the exact same language for tear as we find here. That old garment was torn in two. Why? Because in the New Covenant, what Jesus had came to accomplish was to bring us directly into the presence of God. And we still enjoy that today. We're not kept at a distance. Even though Jesus is in heaven, he is not remained aloof from us. He pours out His Holy Spirit and gives us His word, so that by the Bible and the spirit and the sacraments and prayer, we are directly in the presence of God. And this is why our worship. It's so simple. This is why our worship doesn't have the outward glory of the Old Covenant. The persistent message of the New Testament is that the invisible that we have is better than the visible of the Old Testament. Our Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter seven, paragraph six says this, that under the gospel, when Christ the the substance of the covenant of grace was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, which, though fewer in number and administered with more simplicity and less outward glory, yet in them it is held forth in more fulness, more evidence, and more spiritual efficacy or power to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles. And it's called the New Testament. We cannot force fit Christ into the formalistic, outward Old covenant worship.

God designed that to be incomplete so that we would see the the joy of being in the presence of God and the person of Jesus here in this story and now by the person of the Holy Spirit who indwells us as his people, as we worship. Because the presence of Christ obliterates the purpose of the pictures. Now, in the third answer that Jesus gives in the next verse, Jesus takes this logic one step further. Not only does his presence invalidate any need for formalistic, external outward facing pictures. But what Jesus says is that to try to mix Jesus with Old covenant formalism spoils the glory of his ministry. This is why the change of Jesus's leadership must bring about such thorough change in the top down from the administration of the New Covenant. And so here we see in the third point, fresh skin wineskins for new wine, fresh wineskins for new wine.

Fresh wineskins for new wine

Jesus says this in verse 17, neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed, but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved. Now, in some ways Jesus is saying the very same thing. If you try to, uh, just as the old, old garment was destroyed with the trying to force fit the patch into there. So also these old wineskins will be destroyed if you try to put new wine into the old wineskins.

But there's a key difference here that the patch was not destroyed in the previous passage. I was talking about how Jesus eliminated obliterated the purpose of the pictures of the Old covenant. It was foreshadowing the time when Jesus would tear the old garment of the veil that separated us from the presence of God. But here the key difference is that while the patch was not destroyed, the wine here the new wine is spilled if you try to mix it with the old wineskins. So it's only by putting new wine into fresh wineskins. Where the new. Where the fresh wineskins can can expand as that wine goes through, its process of fermentation and gases are released and it's stretched and pulled in different ways, where an old wineskin would burst apart and all the wine would be lost. This new wineskin will preserve the fresh wine. What Jesus is saying is that only by worshiping Jesus in New Covenant forms can we preserve New Covenant glory. You probably are aware that World War one, um, made trench warfare famous. Um, you've probably seen pictures of those trenches. Maybe you had to read All Quiet on the Western Front, which talked about this system of below the ground trenches, uh, filled with underground bunkers where people would line up and stay in their trench, and then they would maybe go into the no man's land between their trench and the enemy's trench, and they'd get mowed down by the machine guns and the the mustard gas of the other side.

And so you didn't really want to go into the no man's land. They tried a few offensives, but ultimately people would just die if they did there. So it was just a war of attrition. World War One was until it all ended in 1918. But after World War One, in the 1930s, France, uh, dug a new state of the art trench system. They spent 3 billion francs, which is a roughly $3.9 billion in today's money. And they did so to fortify the French German border. This is called the Maginot Line. They thought that the next Great War would follow the old forms, the old ways of doing warfare. And so they were caught off guard when Germany, who they were right to be worried about, invaded in a place that they didn't think would make sense for trench warfare through the Ardennes forest. And very quickly Germany invaded France and surrounded the Allies at Dunkirk, and everything went from there. The German invasion of France took only a month and a half, because they assumed the old forms of warfare that just improving upon those the next generation of the old forms would keep them safe. So if you look up the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the Maginot Line, one of the definitions is it's a defensive barrier or strategy that inspires a false sense of security.

It became a notorious, infamous for inspiring this false sense of security. And Jesus is saying that about trying to bring Old Covenant formalism into our new covenant worship. When we practice the practices and do the disciplines, it might make us feel secure, but it misses the nature of what Jesus has called us to do. And furthermore misses out on the joy that Jesus came to bring. Well, how do we apply what Jesus was saying in his day to the disciples of John the Baptist as we think about where we stand today. But what Jesus is teaching us here, when he casts away the sort of worshipping that play acts formalistically as though we were mourning twice a week, just because that's when the set times are set to do it. The application to all of this is that in worship, don't just go through the motions. Don't just go through the motions and worship. What all of this demonstrates is that we are not play acting. We're not rehearsing some kind of drama. We are actually brought right into the drama. We're not acting, play acting as though we were doing something else. We are doing the thing right now as we come into the presence of Almighty God. We don't see him. He is invisible by His Spirit, but he is here. He speaks to us by His Word, and he is present in dwelling in us by His spirit. Now, we don't have a lot of the outward glory that the Old Covenant have.

We don't have smells, we don't have bells, we don't have vestments, banners, icons, etc. and we don't go through an elaborate dance of physical postures. The most we do is to stand up and sit down. Our worship is so simple. Why? Because the Bible tells us. Jesus tells us that his reformation of worship for the New Covenant brought about much less outward glory. It's not in what you see. It's in worshiping in spirit and in truth. We cannot reduce worship to mere formalism. If you don't engage God from your soul. Our worship services are going to be very boring. And the old covenant wasn't that way. Can you imagine going and they were trumpeters blaring and and they were animal sacrifice. And the blood was flowing and the smoke of the sacrifices hung in the air. There would always be something to look at. Not here, not here. If you don't worship God from your soul in this process, this will be so boring. It's so simple. It's so plain. But if you do engage God from your soul. Hearing his word, responding in prayer, then this worship in spirit and in truth is awe inspiring. Think about what we've done today. God has personally spoken to you to summon you into his worship. That wasn't just a general thing that God gave. That's kind of true, and I guess we can respond. God spoke to you to call you into worship this morning, and then God laid his finger on the sin in your life as he spoke to us in His word and led us to confess of our sins.

And then when you prayed in response, if you did it in faith, God spoke in other word from his once for all given, laid down in the scriptures of the Old New Testament word, to speak to you yet again, that he is forgiven you of your sins if you've trusted in Christ. And now, as we've studied His Word in this sermon, God has been instructing you by the teaching of Jesus here. He's not absent. This isn't play acting. Make believe. Pretend God is here. The Lord is presiding over this service. This has been a spiritual conversation, a dialogue with the maker of heaven and earth who sent His Son Jesus Christ to die and rise from the dead for you. And he, the son, who is exalted into the highest heavens as now, received the spirit from the father, and pours out his spirit on his people to give you the personal indwelling presence of God Himself. Don't just go through the motions. Engage with God. Here's a simple test to evaluate your worship, how you enter into worship, your spirituality, even your private worship. Your devotions when you talk about what you are doing in worship. Do you talk about what you do or what God has done? In your worship? Are you independently exercising some set of disciplines, maybe away from the presence of God, or are you brought in your worship directly into the presence of God and you are responding to him? Is faith in faith? Are you an athlete alone in the gym, where it doesn't matter if there are people there or not, you're just doing your thing independently, doing your disciplines.

Or are you brought into a meeting with God every time you open His word? An intervention that God has called to confront you about the sin in your life, and to hold out to you the good news of the gospel of Jesus again. Do you talk about it as I'm going to go do my Bible reading or say my prayers? Or do you sit down to listen to God speaking to you by His Word through the Holy Spirit? And then do you respond to God calling upon the name of the Lord in faith in response to that word? One of these ways of describing what we do is me centered. It's autonomous. It's what I am doing as I execute my disciplines. But the other is God centered and responsive by faith. Now, I want to be clear. The point is not to be legalistic. We're going to go around and police. The way you talk about this. It's fine if you talk about it as doing my Bible reading or saying my prayers, and we're not going to come down on you for that.

The point is not the language. The point is how genuinely do you think about what you're doing? Is it about what you are doing isolated from God? Or do you recognize that Jesus has commanded his reformation, his authority to transform from the bottom, from the top to the bottom? Everything that's happening in his the administration of his covenant, that part of what this means is that he's commanded worshiping in spirit and in truth. He has not come to continue business as usual, where the only thing that matters is just going through these formalistic external motions. Whether the change in the mediator of God's covenant of grace drives through change in every aspect of the administration of God's covenant with his people. Jesus is calling us to worship him in spirit and in truth. Not after the old forms, but according to putting new wines and new wineskins and putting unshrunk cloth as a patch, not just a patch up the old garment, but to bring us all the way into the presence of the holy places of God. This is the privilege we have. Let's not just go through the motions. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that we would not go through the motions. That as we come before Jesus Christ. That we would see you, that we would trust in you by faith, that we would wholeheartedly respond from the depths of our soul to what you lay out before us in your word. Father, we pray that you would do all of this in Christ's name and for his glory. Amen.