Have you ever met a Pharisee? Not the ancient kind, but the modern sort—the one who makes your business their business, who spends more energy monitoring your walk than examining their own. They lurk in every church, ready to trade freedom for rules and grace for control. In Mark chapter two, Jesus confronts them head on, and he doesn't back down. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll describes this face-off between Jesus and the Pharisees, and shows us how to deal with current-day joy stealers.
Yes, it's a fight worth having.
Now, if your Bible is open to Mark chapter two, verse eighteen, you will see immediately that this group of Pharisees has been watching things occur, and they are now all over him, wanting to know why aren't you getting into line along with the rest of our followers? You see, Jesus came from Galilee, preaching this gospel of fresh. A wonderful news regarding forgiveness and hope and purpose and abundance of life, and he met straight on, face to face, those who had been dominating and controlling the people with their constant put downs, their negative emphasis, and they ran into Jesus and they met their match. I love the boldness of our Lord as he handles it. Great, what we're going to have here.
In the verses in front of us are three battles worth fighting for. First is the battle for joy. Second is a battle for flexibility, and third is a battle for grace. We'll take them in order. First, the battle for joy, which we call fasting and feasting.
That's in verses eighteen to twenty. John's disciples, verse eighteen, along with the Pharisees and their disciples, were fasting, and they came and said to Jesus, "Why do John's disciples fast and our disciples fast and we are fasting, but your disciples do not fast?" See, Pharisees don't take time to check the reason behind it. They just look at the surface things and they form conclusions, and then they attack. And no one can attack like a legalist. No one, not even the lost person.
So they attack Jesus. These are Judaizers. These are Pharisees. They want to know why don't you fast like we're fasting? Why aren't they somber and sober?
Why all the joy? Why all the pleasure in ministry as you're involved in it, and there isn't enough solemnity and seriousness?
Now, please observe Jesus, who does not back down. This is a battle worth fighting for. But look at how he handles it. He asks them a question. He's great at counter questions.
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. He no longer asks, but now makes a declaration.
So look at his answer. It's important you understand the background of it because, even though weddings today certainly are times of great joy, weddings in those days were extended periods of great joy. I'll tell you, there is nothing that could characterize the body of Christ like joy. The church ought to be the place where there is the loudest of laughter and the freest opportunity for joy and pleasure and delight in one another.
Now, notice the first reference in Mark's gospel to the cross is in the verse that follows, verse twenty. First reference to the cross: the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. There will be a day when there will be a somber mood of sadness as they as they see the bridegroom gone from them, and in this case nailed to a cross. And how sad that will be! But for now.
Wonderful it is that we can rejoice. Please notice there's no response from the Pharisees. When you confront a legalist with the facts, they usually have no answer. But they run and back to their little huddle and try to get an answer, as they beef up their position, which really is with without root. And logic.
So Jesus confronts them with this, and he addresses their lack of joy. I won't apply it here any further than saying, part of being free is being free to laugh, even laugh at yourself, laugh at life. And help your family know how to laugh. One of the responsibilities of every parent is to help their children know the joy of laughter, the fun of living. I've said for years, I hope my kids remember me as the one who had fun in life, and threw their mother in the pool and lived to tell the story.
For example. Throwing her in the pool is no big thing. Living to tell the story is a big thing, and I've done both. Thank goodness, I've lived to tell the story. I hope my children remember laughter in the walls, rather than a preacher who frowned at them all through their childhood and young adult years.
I hope they learn to laugh at life. I hope they learn to laugh even beyond the hardship. And strange events that occur in life, I'm convinced these disciples often laughed in their gatherings, and it drove the Pharisees up a wall.
Now we come to the next picture in verses 21 and 22 of old wine skins and new wine. Let me shock you by giving it new titles: old bags and new booze. Verses 21 and 22. It's okay. It's all right, folks.
We're just having a little fun here. No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Notice, he's going beyond the joy now and going deeper into the subject. The point is, when Jesus came on the scene, his message was so different from the Judaizers, so refreshing with good news and forgiveness and hope, that it was like brand new wine. To be served to guests, and so he uses this as an illustration.
He said, "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." And he goes further: No one puts new wine into old wine skins.
Now, stop there. We live in a day when there isn't. This practice, where wine was kept in skins of animals, a goat skin, for example, and they preferred one that was hardly torn, that would be a large bag, and they would sew it up so that it would hold the content. And because it was it was new skin, it it was supple. It had flexibility, and when you put the new wine in there, as it would ferment, it would expand, and the expansion of the wine required that the skin in which it was kept would expand.
That's why when you open a wine bottle, you hear a pop; you hear a the the cork pops because there's been expansion within. Because now wine is kept in bottles. In those days, it was kept in wine skins. All of you look at me like you've never heard it pop, but I know you have.
So we'll go right on. Look at verse 22. It's okay. It's all right. I understand.
Verse 22. No one puts new wine into old wine skins. Why not?
Well, think of old bags.
Okay, they're brittle. There, there's no give. They're not supple. They're not soft.
So if you put this new wine into old bags that are that are rigid, they'll stay rigid. And before long, you'll hear the bag tear, and the wine will pour out. He says, "No one puts new wine into old wine skins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and the skins as well. But one puts new wine into fresh wine skins." Please observe the silence of the of the Pharisees. They have no answer.
First of all, it's hard for them to imagine anything fresh related to religious things. Their whole life is built on traditionalism. Remember one of my favorite quotes, Jaroslav Pelikan from Yale. Put it this way: Tradition is the living faith of those now dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of those still living.
Judaizers were full of traditionalism. There's nothing wrong with tradition. Like Paul tells Timothy more than once, return to the traditions. Stay with the sacred text. Defend the text.
Stand for the truth. Is there anything more traditional than the long-standing theological truth of Scripture? We stand for the traditions of the Scriptures, but traditionalism. Let's be careful here. I'm coming with a fresh message.
And you're trying to hold it into what I'm teaching into the old brittle bags of your traditional Judaism. No wonder it's bursting. No wonder there's such a number of people following me and turning away from you. Don't think that didn't make them hostile. Without getting too deeply right now into the application, let me warn you that one of the one of the reasons for inflexibility is aging.
So understand, nothing wrong with aging. We're all doing it, and it's happening fast. About the time your face clears up, your mind gets fuzzy, and you. You start you start showing signs of age, and before long, everything about you is getting brittle. You like that end seat, right?
I've seen some of you fight for that end seat. You know, I ain't moving down. It's my seat.
Now, you know that's okay too. That's fine. Just be nice about it. Just get up and let other people pass by. But we got a thousand.
This is my parking spot. My spot. That's where I belong. It can happen anywhere, and my mind goes to another example that I will not go to.
So we'll go verse twenty three through twenty eight. Let's let's wrap this up. Here is the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. This gets so good. It happened that he was passing through the grain fields on the Sabbath.
Don't miss that. The Shabbat. Nothing wrong with the Shabbat. Of course, there isn't. God established it.
Now He replaced it with the first day of the week worship, but back in those days, it was still the day of worship. It was the day of rest. But you can't believe how many additional rules the Pharisees added to the Shabbat. I mean, all kinds of things—how you washed, and how you held your hands, and how you poured the water, and how you went over every. The law didn't say all of that.
The Pharisees said that.
Furthermore, they miss the whole point. The Sabbath was first created for the help of man to help mankind. We we aren't made to worship the Sabbath. We're made to realize the benefit of a day of rest, a break in our workload. Just as our Lord took time to rest following the creating six days, so we and He established it for the Jews.
It's one of the characteristics among the Jews, but these guys turned it into a fetish. As you will see, so Jesus and his disciples walking along on the Shabbat, and the disciples begin to make their way along while picking the heads of grain. Matthew and Luke both tell us that they were hungry, and they one of the writers says that they rubbed the grain in their hands, and then they ate the grain because they were really hungry. Why would you ever do that on the Shabbat?
Well, the Lord never talks about grain and the law, but the Pharisees did. Remember, their laws are important to them as the word of God's, as the law of God.
So, the Pharisees, verse twenty-four. Notice they're again minding Jesus' business. They were saying to him, "Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait? Hold it, Pharisees, hold it." You say it isn't lawful. God doesn't say it isn't lawful.
That's your rule. That's not God's rule. But they called it not lawful because to them their laws were as important as God's law. And so Jesus, verse twenty-five, I love it. Doesn't say, okay, we're sorry, guys, put the grain back, spit the grain out.
No. You don't give in to legalists. You give in to legalists; they take over. It's like giving in to a bully. You fight bullies.
There's nothing like a great punch and a kisser to help a bully learn a lesson. The point is, a bully who gets his way will be in control of your life, and you can kiss freedom goodbye.
So Jesus stands up to these dudes. Look at what he says. Have you never read what David did when he was in need, and he and his companions became hungry? Jesus quotes them a story from the Bible. How's that?
How he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and he ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests, and he gave it to those who were with him. Jesus said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." How brilliant is that? You guys are missing it. You're turning what ought to be for our benefit into a ball and chain. The Sabbath was made for us.
First, there was man created, living, existing, surviving, having families, and then came the Sabbath. It wasn't the other way. The Sabbath came for our benefit.
Now look at this. Practically, here we are. Our men are hungry. There's grain available, and they took some of the grain and they ate it because they're hungry.
Now the law states: get this. If they had taken a sickle to the harvest, they would have broken what God writes in Deuteronomy twenty three twenty five. You can't sickle the grain and call it your own. That's stealing. But there's nothing in the law that says you can't, you know, eat it if you're starving.
Rules are rules, and rules are, are. Are for a purpose, but don't make the rules into fetishes because the need is greater. These men are are really hungry. People in need trump rules and regulations. What we do for the good of others is more important than the day we do it.
Now, this is hard for some of you because you were raised by parents who said, "You know, this is the Sabbath. We need to keep it. Sunday is not the Sabbath." Never has been the Sabbath. Shabbat is seventh, seventh day of the week. Isn't Sunday?
Saturday is the seventh day of the week. Jesus was raised on the first day of the week. The church worshipped the first day of the week. On the first day of the week, when you come together to give of your offerings and your prayers and to hear the teaching of the scriptures, it's it's the first Sunday. It's the first day of the week.
It's the time we worship. Be careful now when you interpret the scriptures that you don't read Old Testament requirements into New Testament new new wine delivered by Jesus. You know what it means. It means you have to think. I know it's hard, but you have to think.
Does this really apply? Is this really man's rules? And I hope this doesn't sound the wrong way, but sometimes our parents were wrong in what they taught us. They meant well. God honors their their their motive, but if they taught you that Sunday is the Sabbath, that's not true.
Sunday has never been the Sabbath. It's okay. It's all right. Takes a while for all of this to make sense. It's a it it requires a you know new bag.
Along with the new, fresh word from the Lord, I love this because you can almost hear the the bells of the Reformation ringing through this section, where Jesus is about to tell him about the priesthood of the believer. How fabulous is that? I don't need a priest to go to. I don't go through another. I go to Jesus Christ with my needs, and He becomes my high priest before God.
I have instant access. That isn't irreverent. That's obedience. We come boldly before Him. In fact, I love His closing line, verse twenty-eight, which must have drove those guys up the wall.
In fact, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Shabbat. Whoa. You're telling me you are Lord. Yes, I am. Yes, I am.
Says Jesus, and don't you forget it. We're not surprised that shortly thereafter, verse six of chapter three. They began a conspiracy on how they might destroy him. Never doubt it. A legalist is a grace killer and a freedom thief.
You don't get in line; you're going to get rid of you. Which is exactly what they did with Jesus. I'm telling you, folks, this is a battle worth fighting for. This is freedom. I mean, we'll fight for our country.
We'll even put in Thomas Jefferson's memorial these words: "What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." I love that quote. What is its natural manure? The blood of patriots.
You will stay free only as long as you're willing to fight for your freedom. Don't give it up, which is what Romans six is all about. That's where you're going to need grace, and you're going to need joy, and you're going to need flexibility. Let me say right quick now: this is all about battles that are worth fighting. The first is a battle for a lifetime of continual joy.
I will fight for that to the last day of my life. The battle for continual joy. Christ brings the abundant life, which is continual blessed joy. Second is the battle for ageless flexibility. Be careful, my friends, as we get older, that you don't become so brittle and so opinionated that it's just us four and no more.
And I'm not sure about you three. Watch out about that. Stay flexible. That's why I love it when teachers at seminaries and colleges stay there a long time, year after year after year after year, teaching these young students, staying there, listening to their questions, working with them, thinking with. You stay flexible.
You stay open. You're listening. You're learning. You're growing. That's that's that soft new wine skin.
That goes with the fresh work of the Spirit, the battle for ageless flexibility. It's worth fighting for. There's a third, the battle for meeting real needs. Real needs. You meet someone in real need, and it's Sunday.
Meet the need. Meet the need. Sunday doesn't nullify. The need to meet other people where they are hurting, and remember who the Lord is. The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.
Isn't that great? He's the one we honor. He's the one we please. He's the one we answer to. He's the master.
He's the shepherd. We're the sheep. He calls the shots. He's the star. The rest of us, we're just part of the family.
I didn't think I'd ever know a time when I would end a message with a quotation from Elvis Presley, but I'm flexible. Very little is quotable, but I did find one thing. He was doing a concert, and one lady that just idolized him had put together a pillow with a throne on it. And she walked up to the front, pushed her way to the front, and she said, "Oh, Elvis, Elvis, you're the king, you're the king." And he stopped her and he said, "No, honey, I ain't the king. Christ is the king.
Me, I'm just a singer. Me, I'm just a singer. You keep that in mind. Don't ever idolize me. Don't ever pedestalize me.
I'm just a preacher." I'm just as flawed as any one of you. You can respect—that's fine. You can appreciate—that's nice. Never idolize. One deserves the throne.
One—that's Christ. Otherwise, you'll never be free. You're slaves of the one who is on the throne, and only Him. Got it? And this been fun.
Wow. Lord, thank you for the privilege of just being together with people we love and and we need. Thank you for helping us in a journey full of bullies and people who would make our lives miserable. Thank you for giving us the courage to stand up to them. May we never succumb, never succumb to their slavery.
May we get guts as we grow in grace. Give us thick skins and soft hearts. In the name of the Savior, we pray. Everybody, say Amen. Only one belongs on the throne, and his name is Jesus.
When we hand that place to legalists or to our own set of rules, we trade freedom for slavery. In contrast, Jesus fought for our joy, our flexibility, and our freedom to meet real needs, and he calls us to the same courage. This is insight for living from his study in Mark chapter two. Chuck titled today's message: "Battles Worth Fighting." You know, most of us don't wake up short on information about God. We wake up short on time with him.
That's the wonderful thing about a resource we'd love to put in your hands: Swindoll's Living Insights for Every Day. It's a beautifully designed flip calendar that sets a verse or two in front of you each morning, drawn from nearly every chapter of the New Testament, along with a few honest words from Chuck to help it settle into your heart before the day pulls you away. And because it's perpetual, it never runs out. The same page that studies you this year will be waiting for you the next. Truth doesn't expire.
To make it yours, call 800-772-8888 or go to insight.org/offer.
Now, if that new calendar shows you what God says, Chuck's new memoir shows you what God does with an ordinary life fully surrendered to Him. In Awakened by Grace, Chuck opens the door on his own story. A stammering, unsure boy from South Texas who had no earthly reason to expect that God would use him to reach millions, but that's the whole point. God rarely picks the polished; He takes the willing and makes them useful. And that same grace that awakened Chuck's story is ready to awaken yours.
We'd love to send you a copy of *Awakened by Grace*. For Chuck Swindoll's memoir, call us at eight hundred seven seven two eighty eight eighty eight, or go to insight dot org slash memoir. Ever feel like you are under suspicion? I'm Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuck Swindoll describes how to stand with courage Tuesday on Insight for Living.
The preceding message, "Battles Worth Fighting," was copyrighted in 2010 and 2026, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2026 by Charles R. Swindoll Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.
