This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Misc. Matthew sermons” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 15, 1998.

Tonight we are reading from Matthew chapter 9. We are beginning our scripture reading there. This is Matthew 9, beginning with verse 1. I’ll give you attention to God’s word. Getting into a boat, Jesus crossed over the sea and came to his own city, and they brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed.

Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, Take courage, son, your sins are forgiven. And some of the scribes said to themselves, This fellow blasphemes. And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Why are you thinking evil in your hearts? Which is easier to say, Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Get up and walk?

But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, Then he said to the paralytic, Get up, pick up your bed and go home. And he got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were awestruck and glorified God, who had given such authority to man.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting in the tax collector’s booth. He said to him, Follow me, and he got up and followed him. Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining At the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and his disciples.

When the Pharisees saw this, they said to the disciples, Why is your teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners? But when Jesus heard this, he said, It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means. I desire compassion and not sacrifice. for I did not come to call the righteous but sinners. Then the disciples of John came to him, asking, Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?

And Jesus said to them, The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the worst tear resolves. Nor do people put new wine in old wineskins, otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine in fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.

John’s Gospel, chapter 3, verse 22. After these things, Jesus and his disciples came into the land of Judea, and there he was spending time with them and baptizing. John also was baptizing at Anon, near Salem, because there was much water there, and people were coming and were being baptized. for John had not yet been thrown into prison. Therefore there arose a discussion on the part of John’s disciples with a Jew about purification. And they came to John and said to him, Rabbi, he who is with you beyond the Jordan to whom you have testified, behold, he is baptizing, and all are coming to him. John answered and said, A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been set ahead of him.

He who has the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made full. He must increase, but I must decrease. He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all.

What he has seen and heard of that he testifies, and no one receives his testimony. He who has received his testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true, for he whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hands. He who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

Let’s pray together. Father, if we find that our resolution is weak and that we are even tired by the day, we ask, O God, that you would give us your strength, that we might finish this day in strength and in power We pray, Lord, that the very power of your Spirit, truly the power of the risen Christ, may be with us. For surely it is true, we are gathered in this place to meet with the risen Christ, as surely as the disciples were gathered in the upper room and met with the risen Christ on that first Christian Sabbath. O Father, if we had been instructed earlier in the day, may our instruction continue, and may we profit this evening as we have profited throughout the day. Truly, O God, may you grant your people a glorious Sabbath, and may we be refreshed as well as informed from beginning to end. Praise to your name, O God, through Christ. In His name we pray, Amen.

Matthew 9, verses 1-34. We didn’t read them all this evening. form a unit in Matthew’s Gospel. A key and unifying element to these verses has been already forecast for us at the end of Matthew 8. Matthew 8, if you allow your eyes to peruse those verses, contains the sole storing record of Jesus’ supernatural power manifest in his miracles.

Stories about healings, stories about his power over the elements of creation, stories about his authority over demons. In the five miracles reported in Matthew 8, we hear not the least syllable of a discouraging Instead, we find multitudes flocking to Jesus while Jesus stays at Peter’s home, verse 16 in that eighth chapter, disciples overwhelmed in their amazement following the stilling of the storm, Matthew 8, verse 27, and swine herders among the Gadarenes excitedly rushing to relate their tale to their countrymen. after Jesus had cast demons out of the demoniacs living among the tombs, verse 33.

But it is at the end of this chapter, verse 34, that something of an ominous shadow begins to appear when the Gadarenes come out to meet Jesus after Jesus had healed the demoniacs. Upon seeing him, upon seeing Jesus, These Gadarenes asked him to leave their territory. Now, as to the exact reason for their request, we can only guess from Matthew’s account, for there’s something of a shadow there. But Luke tells us in his account that the people, the Gadarenes, were gripped with great fear in his eighth chapter, the thirty-seventh verse.

Matthew might well have left the matter vague because of now what follows, he giving them the faintest hint of what is about to come. You see, as the stories now of Matthew 9 unfold, one thing is clear. In contrast to the stories in Matthew 8, Each story recorded in Matthew 9 eventually involves a statement about opposition. You move from acceptance, glad response in Matthew 8, to opposition. Jesus now encounters opposition that will only intensify over the course of the chapter and truly over the course of the rest of the gospel to its very end.

In the story of the paralytic with which this chapter begins, the scribes privately charge Jesus with blasphemy for claiming the authority to forgive sins, verse 3. By the time we reach verse 34, the Pharisees are openly accusing Jesus of conserving with of being in league with the devil. In between these two accounts, beginning and conclusion, Jesus is vilified by the Pharisees for eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners, verse 11. He is mocked by the mourners at the bedside of a little girl who has just died, and he is about to raise, verse 24. and he is ignored by the blind man he has just healed, verse 31.

That blind man, having been given instruction that he isn’t to report what has happened to him, and he goes out and willfully disobeys what Jesus had told him. The behavior of the Gadarenes in sending Jesus away at the end of Matthew 8 provides an entrance then, literarily, into the darker mood of chapter 9. Rejection of Jesus will not be reserved to regions polluted by swine’s flesh, but will express itself among the Jews and among their leaders, those who claim the most spotless record, those who claim a purity for themselves.

In fact, the situation is even more desperate still. You may have noted that I left out one story in my survey as we went through our accounting of the stories in chapter 9. That is the one that begins in verse 14, going through verse 17. The situation, I say to you, is even more desperate than we might imagine, given the opposition that we’ve listed thus far. particularly as that opposition is now brought into view in verses 14 through 17.

For the assault comes not just through scribes, not just through Pharisees, not just through those who misunderstand the ministry of Jesus and were gathered, for instance, at the bedside of a dead little girl. The assault comes even through the disciples of John the Baptist.

Our question for the evening is this, what in heaven’s name are John’s disciples doing in making mention of the Pharisees and their practices? Verse 14. Now, your response may well be, it’s not all that clear to me. that John’s disciples were in the same company with the Pharisees, the mention of the Pharisees by them is merely a matter of common practice.

Both John’s disciples and the Pharisees fast. That’s all there is to it. Both John’s disciples and the Pharisees fast. Period. John’s disciples are merely citing here a common practice, a common expression of piety. They are hardly keeping mutual company. Therefore, it is not a matter of common company, but of common practice.

But is this actually the case? we may do well to consider the parallel passages we find for this passage in the other synoptic renderings. For instance, we may do well to consult Mark 2, verses 18-22, where we find the same story spoken of. For here, more clearly than in Matthew’s Gospel, we have this incident specifically tied to one of the regular fasts, one of the prescribed fasts. We are told John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, verse 18. Now, the Pharisees indeed did fast twice weekly. We find that out in other passages in the New Testament. But there were also the prescribed fasts which, according to the law, occurred four times a year.

John’s disciples most likely are involved with the Pharisees in one of those regular fasts. Mark’s account furthermore makes it clear that the relationship between John’s disciples and the Pharisees was not merely a matter of their mutual observance of the fast. From the way Mark tells the story, the question to Jesus does not come from the disciples of John alone, but rather comes from both the disciples of John and the Pharisees. John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, Mark writes, and they came and said to Jesus, Why don’t your disciples fast? John’s disciples and the Pharisees are observing a common practice. but they are also, it would appear, keeping common company.

In fact, they are asking a common question. But if things weren’t baffling enough, as we move from Matthew to Mark, what if we add Luke into the mix? The parallel text there is in Luke 5, verses 33-39. And if you haven’t fallen out of your pew yet, where do you hear what Luke says?

For here it is the Pharisees, the Pharisees themselves and the Pharisees alone who ask the question, and in their question they merely cite John’s disciples as they put their question to Jesus. Luke, then, has the Pharisees by themselves ask the question of Jesus. Mark combines the Pharisees and John’s disciples in asking the question, and Matthew presents John’s disciples alone in asking the question.

And you’re sitting there saying, I have all sorts of questions now. What is going on here? What conclusion might we draw from what seems to be mass confusion? The conclusion we draw is that both groups, yes, as we sew the accounts together, both groups, John’s disciples and the Pharisees, were present. Both groups were engaged, yes, in common practice in fasting, but more than that, both groups were keeping, in certain circumstances, each other’s company, and even formulating questions in consultation one with another, formulating a joint, united approach to Jesus. Now, if we are a little cynical, we might be provoked to suggest a few things. we might be provoked to suggest, for instance, that both groups are using each other.

In Luke’s reading, the Pharisees cite John’s disciples. You recall, they cite John’s disciples. To what end? For leverage. for leverage with Jesus. After all, Jesus respects John, doesn’t he? In Matthew’s reading, John’s disciples appear to be citing the Pharisees as an authority. In either case, the one cites the other, it would seem, in order to gain credibility in the interests of an irrefutable we fast, we together fast, why don’t you?

It’s not so much a question, it’s an accusation. And if the Pharisees and John’s disciples are agreed, the suggestion is then who can disagree? Well, by now you may be wondering, are these disciples of the same man who earlier called the Pharisees a brood of vipers? a description, I might point out to you, which links the Pharisees to that old serpent, Satan himself. Are these the disciples of the same man who was especially hard on the Pharisees when the Pharisees came out to observe the baptism he was administering at the Jordan? How is it that John’s disciples and the Pharisees, given what John had said, could ever get together?

Has something or someone changed since we last checked in on things with John and his ministry? Well, certainly something has changed. John is now in prison, for one thing. But has something or someone changed in the scheme of things other than that?

Have the Pharisees, for instance, now, because of the preaching of John, produced those fruits of repentance sufficient to satisfy John’s demands? From what we know from the record in the Gospels, it does not appear that the Pharisees ever changed as a group. For instance, a short while after this exchange in Matthew 9, Jesus asks the Pharisees their estimation of John. In effect, the Pharisees held John to be an imposter. no profit, hardly worthy of their support.” Matthew 21, verses 23 and following.

What, then, explains this alliance in chapter 9? Was it, pray tell, though holding deeply to different convictions, that these disciples of John and the Pharisees were thrown together in a common cause, maybe their common contempt for Herod, John’s jailer, a particularly infamous sinner in the eyes of the Pharisees and in the eyes of the disciples of John the Baptist. Or was a public tolerance of John and even his disciples useful to the Pharisees as they sought to advance their own agenda with the multitudes whom they knew adored John? It is politically advantageous for us.

Or was the case actually the other way around? Were the Pharisees being used by John the Baptist’s disciples? Were they being used by the Baptist’s disciples in the interests of a more thorough and faster form of reformation for the entirety of Jewish religious life, in keeping with the Baptist’s ministry? Were John’s disciples, now that John was in prison, becoming more adept at playing the power game in Jewish religious and political life?

Or are we witnessing here something inevitable in sociological development? We have the Pharisee. essentially conservative law and order mainliners, representative of the establishment. On the other hand, we have John’s disciples, presently removed from the founder of their movement. He’s in jail. But they are impetuous, creative, separatist, non-conformists, alert to change and preaching change, challenging the establishment at the very heart and core.

According to the laws of cultural evolution, groups like these rise in all societies, but eventually, despite their original antipathy, these mutually seemingly exclusive groups begin to intersect. We are told by the best of sociologists that the best of cultures learns how to harness the energies of divergent groups. how to harness the energies of these two groups here presently in view, even to the point of minimalizing their differences. After all, there is so much about which both these groups agree.

For instance, both John’s disciples and the Pharisees believe adamantly in the supernatural. They believe in miracles, they believe in the resurrection of the dead, over against the Sadducees who reject both. These two groups also expected the Messiah. They had a Messianic theology. Both groups are committed to the law of God in what seems to be an absolute form, and beyond that to the traditions. In this, they are unlike the Herodians, who were playing fast and loose with the law of God and the traditions in order to make peace with Rome and advance a common cause with Rome.

And even beyond these similarities, both groups are moral and nationalistic purists. And at the same time, both oppose open insurrection and social revolution, and in this they stand over against the Zealots. So far it sounds like the Pharisees and John’s disciples could pass for an earlier version of conservative evangelical mainliners and the more amiable wing of the religious right, or possibly an earlier version of the alliance of evangelicals and Catholics, possibly an earlier version of an alliance of social religious conservatism rising out of the morally sensitive factions in the established Roman Catholic and Protestant churches.

And why? Because we have common commitments to a moral vision and a moral renovation of culture, and the preservation of society and civilization against the threat of barbarism. I have pled with you again and again that God, in giving to you his word, has thought of everything. You have not encountered, nor will you encounter, a situation in life that has not already been thought about by God and spoken about in his word.

Is the current difficulty that the Church faces being addressed here even in this text? As you are witnessing the alliance of the religious and cultural conservatives in Israel during the days of Jesus, as they together now step out to ask Jesus an accusatory question that calls into question truly his authority and identity. and that, you see, because there are issues and matters that are more important than Jesus. And there is a kingdom, according to our lights, that makes more sense to us than the kingdom that Jesus presents.

So what we need to What we need to do is co-belligerence. Let’s join forces with all conservative people, because we share common values. Both the Pharisees and the disciples The disciples of John and the Pharisees have a common question about Jesus, and the startling thing is that because of this question, and despite the apparent sharp disagreements before them, they are, in this story at least, one. and the same. Contrary to the general impression, these groups are one politically and culturally, but more importantly still, they are one religiously. The point is drawn for us on the issue of fasting.

You see, the Pharisees do not believe Jesus is the Messiah, and as you would expect, they would continue to ignore the pattern of his life and the life of his disciples in the interests of that life that they have already embraced. The Pharisees do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah. and they continue to live religiously the same as they have always done.

John’s disciples, on the other hand, had been told by John that Jesus is the Christ. But now it would seem, in joining forces with the Pharisees, they challenge Jesus. And why? because they, too, are interested in living the same old way. Do I need to go over that again? The Pharisees do not believe that Jesus is the Christ, and they continue to live the same way religiously. The disciples of John have been told that Jesus is the Christ by John, but they hesitate and now challenge Jesus in the interest of living the same old way, in fact, the same way that the Pharisees lived.

Jesus tells the disciples of John. Here, as it is said for us in Matthew’s Gospel, that the Bridegroom has come, and that all things now must be assessed in light of his coming and in light of his presence, even matters that pertain to the law order as it had been given to Moses to the children of Israel centuries before. Jesus is saying, in light of my coming and in light of my presence, this is no time for fasting and mourning. Now is the time for feasting, and that’s why you have the story of the feast immediately preceding this story about fasting. But if such instruction is incomprehensible to John’s disciples, especially in light of their commitment to what they judge are the true provisions of the Old Testament law, then what Jesus says next had to be even more impenetrable to them, if that is possible. For Jesus tells these men about his departure, that he is going to go away. And when that happens, he says, then the time of fasting will come.

Then it will be appropriate to fast again. But for these disciples, what Jesus was saying to them was all wrong, since, according to their theology and commitments, Not only would the Messiah maintain and reinforce all religious givens, particularly the law and the traditions of the Fathers, but having come, he would hardly leave. He would hardly go away.

Would it not be his purpose, according to their theology and their estimations, would to establish in the earth his righteous rule for the sake of his people, who would live with him in this world in a perfectly transformed culture, a perfect society. But Jesus here speaks about his death. a dying Messiah, a departing Messiah, and the particulars of his gospel then determining the substance, the appropriateness, and the dynamics of all religious devotion, all acts of religious piety, are now assessed in light of him and his gospel.

He is not subordinate to the law and the traditions The law and the traditions are subordinate to him. He is not subordinate to cultural aspirations and political dreams and sociological inventions. All such things are subordinate to him and to the dynamics of his gospel.

John’s disciples want old patches on old pants, old wine in old wineskins. Jesus brings the new, but it is especially important for you to understand the character of the new. Is it just something new from the earth, or for the earth? to endure forever in the earth. What Jesus offers belongs to an entirely different order. It belongs to heaven and to heaven’s administration of the kingdom.

As yet, here in Matthew 9, John’s disciples’ inability to grasp this does in fact place them in the Pharisees’ corner trapped with the Pharisees by a worldly vision and worldly commitments. Be those commitments defined to them by the law given by Moses. Theirs is a religious way of viewing things that will inevitably leave them. Yes, if they are not converted, if they are not transformed, if they do not come to Jesus Christ in faith, and cast themselves down at his feet, slaves to social and political mood swings, victims of an earthbound rhetoric for reform, or is it revival, and blind to the true nature and reality of the heavenly kingdom proclaimed by and embodied in the dying, rising Son of God.

Where might they recall, where might they listen again to the testimony of their very own master, John, who, before being led off to prison by Herod, said to them, He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. Of course, as you know, the one who came from heaven has returned to heaven and is presently preparing in heaven a place for you, and that is the character of his kingdom.

Not just the Pharisees, but the disciples of John don’t get it. But you do. Not to give you fat heads. were an inflated estimation of yourself. But to set before you this consideration, if John the Baptist’s disciples on their own could not get it, then how did you get it? and you in no way deserve this gift.

Because you have it now, those places that Jesus is preparing in heaven, he is preparing them for you In looking to you, our God, we are compelled to look heavenward. And this despite the fact that we know that you are present with us even here. But you call our attention above. And the ministry of your son. Calls our attention above also. The nature of his kingdom. Focuses our eyes on war.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.