We’ve all felt the pull to add one more pious act—fast a little longer, pray a little harder—convinced the right combination will finally make us right before God. In Matthew 9, John’s disciples bring that same assumption directly to Jesus, and his answer reframes not just the practice of fasting but the question of what season we’re actually living in.

Study Questions

The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.

The pastor uses the analogy of baking cookies to explain how we sometimes add extra “ingredients” to our spiritual lives thinking they will make us more holy. What are some modern examples of spiritual practices or disciplines that Christians might over-emphasize or rely on to earn God’s favor rather than respond to His grace?
Jesus tells John’s disciples that it is not the time to fast because “the bridegroom is with them.” How should this parable shape the way we understand spiritual disciplines like fasting, prayer, and Bible study today, when Jesus is no longer physically present with us?
The sermon emphasizes that practices like fasting and prayer are good, but they don’t make us holy—God’s grace does. How can we tell the difference between engaging in spiritual disciplines as a response to God’s grace versus engaging in them to try to earn holiness?
The pastor contrasts Matthew’s humility (not mentioning what he gave up to follow Jesus) with the pride of those who want others to know their sacrifices. How can we practice spiritual disciplines without slipping into pride or self-righteousness about our efforts?
Using the “pumpkin spice” metaphor at the end, the pastor suggests that God’s grace should “season” all of our spiritual practices and good works. What does it look like practically to live in the joy and freedom of God’s grace while still engaging in prayer, service, Bible study, and other Christian disciplines?

Transcript

This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.

He’s got the whole world in his hands. He’s got the whole world in his hands. He’s got the whole world in his hands. He’s got you and me, brother. In his hands, he’s got you and me, sister. In his hands, he’s got you and me, brother. In his hands, he’s got the whole world in his hands.

So tonight we’re thinking about taking things out of our own hands. Because we sing that song, but we still want it to be in our hands. And the problem when we want things to be in our hands is that we don’t really know what should be in our hands.

I’d mentioned, oh, a year, year and a half ago, I think it was now, that I was on the quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. And I had in my mind the chocolate chip cookies I remember at Christmastime as a kid, and I wanted to get right back to that exact cookie. It needed to be just, like, certain texture, certain height, certain saltiness to it, all these different things. I had this in my mind, but every time I tried to make a set of chocolate chip cookies, there’s a reason why Jackie’s the one that makes all the delicious things around here and not me, they would come out different. They were kind of, you know, unique cookies. And sometimes they’d be, like, kind of fluffy, like cake, and sometimes they’d be flat, and sometimes they’d be this, and sometimes they’d be that. The one thing they never were were what I was trying for.

And I was bound and determined to figure out what I was doing wrong. And so I thought, well, most of the recipes don’t call for baking soda in, or baking powder, rather, in the cookies, just baking soda. But maybe if I add some baking powder, maybe that’ll do it. And at first it seemed to get a little better. Ah, I finally found the thing. And I did that for a little while, and all of a sudden I started doing the same old thing again.

And I thought, well, maybe it’s how long the butter’s sitting out. I’ll try that. And I left the butter out longer or shorter, tried all these things. Still came out differently. A lot of times they kind of have a yeasty taste to them. I couldn’t figure this out either. And then I realized that I’d been focused so long and so hard on what ingredients were going in, I wasn’t thinking about what the relationship of those ingredients were in the recipe.

And one thing I had simplified on the recipe was the fact that you need to keep the dried ingredients in one bowl and the moist ingredients in another bowl, the sugars and the butter and the eggs and so on, and you mix them at precise time. You don’t just dump them all into one bowl. And that might seem obvious to some of you that have baked a lot more cookies than I have, but I had been doing it, and it seemed to work at first, but it’s like so many things. It might work because it just happened to all go together right that one time or two times. But then you start to wonder, why isn’t it working anymore? And boy, was it not working. It was just so frustrating that these cookies wouldn’t come out.

Another thing I came to realize is I had been taking, I guess maybe at first I’d been using some really nicely packed flour, and I’d just take the big scoop, the measuring scoop, and level it off and dump it in, and it was fine. But the cookies kept varying. And then I started taking a spoon and putting little bits into that measuring scoop and evening it out after each one so it was really compacted. And those two things, putting the right ingredients in at the right time so they had the right relationship to each other, and putting the right amount of flour so the amount of flour in the mix was actually the healthy amount for a batch of cookies, all of a sudden the cookies started, I wouldn’t say they’re perfect, but they started coming out one consistently. And they also lost some of those really annoying attributes like tasting more like bread than cookies.

It seems that maybe I’d happened to stumble across some flour that was really well compacted, like I said, and so it was coming out okay. But then the next batch of flour I made was fluffier, and so less flour would go in, or more flour would go in because it was too compacted. But it needed the care to actually put the right amount in.

As we seek to be good, we keep trying to add in ingredients. I know the recipe doesn’t call for baking powder, but maybe some baking powder is just what it needs to fix things. And so we say, well, maybe if I fast a little more, maybe if I say certain prayers when I’m praying, maybe if I find another Bible study or another devotional or another this or another that, and I add just a little bit more, then I will be good. And some of those things can be good, right? Baking powder is a good thing, and there are a lot of things you can’t make without it. It’s a wonderful thing, but you need to know where it belongs. Flour is necessary for baking things, but you need to know how much and make sure it’s actually the right stuff going in at the right time.

What we’re going to see tonight as we continue in Matthew chapter 9 is that Jesus is saying to John’s disciples, you need to know what the necessary mix is, and you need to know what time it is, and what’s supposed to go in right now. And let’s pray tonight for all of us, because all of us are going to struggle with that, not just with baking. Maybe you don’t even struggle with it with baking, but we’re going to struggle with it in different parts of our lives. And pray that God would help us to understand what that right now for us is, where we’re at, and what the right ingredients are. Let’s pray.

Father, we do pray that you would help us tonight to do your will and to understand what your will is. Lord, would you guide us? Would you refine us? Would you help us to see where we’re putting the wrong mix in? And Lord, it’s so easy to do, but we pray that you would help us to understand more clearly this day exactly what you want to have in the recipe of our lives. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Here’s what we often think the missing ingredient is. We think the missing ingredient is we just have to do enough pious works. Because those who are in a church, as often, if we haven’t really soaked in the recipe, or even if we have, we kind of revert back, oh, I just need to do this extra work, then God will be pleased with me. That’s exactly what John’s disciples were struggling with.

You see, they had followed John out into the desert, and John’s out there practicing an ascetic practice, giving up the things of the world, living in a very uncomfortable way, and they got that, but they didn’t get why they were doing that. So they thought the ingredient to the good life is simply human piety.

Take a look at verse 14. Then the disciples of John came to him saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast? But your disciples do not fast.” Well, it’s a fair question, right? If you’re so great, Jesus, why is it that these other disciples, we’re disciples, they’re disciples, we’re suffering, we’re doing all this stuff to glorify God and be holy, and on the other hand, your disciples, it’s like they’re having a party every day. What is this thing? Why is it so much better for them? What’s wrong with you, Jesus? Don’t you see this?

Sort of the other side of the attack from last week, right? The Pharisees come to the disciples and say, “Why, Jesus, do you always hang out with sinners? What’s wrong with you? Don’t you realize they’re sinners?” Now John’s disciples are saying to Jesus, “Why do you have these lazy, good-for-nothing disciples?” Because they’re not going and doing disciple things. They should be doing more pious acts. They need to go fast more. They need to do all this stuff to prove that they actually are holy and committed to God’s way.

Is that what God really was asking for? Is that the point? John’s disciples said it was withholding from the things of the world. The Pharisees, a little differently, but basically the same idea. They said, well, it’s just keeping the law enough, right? John’s disciples may not have disagreed with that, but probably looked at some of the Pharisees and actually thought they were slackers, right? Because the Pharisees were still living comfortably in the world. John’s disciples are out in the desert. So it’s a race to see who can do the most pious acts of the right kind.

Maybe it’s just simple service. We see that elsewhere. Remember Mary and Martha. Martha’s all worked up because Mary isn’t working. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”

Martha says, “I’m working. Mary isn’t. Jesus, why are you talking to Mary? Don’t you see she’s being a lazy bum? Come on. Time to get to work.” But John’s disciples, as they come and approach Jesus here, the issue is that they have associated getting closer to God with fasting. And so if they fast and Jesus’ disciples don’t fast, they must be closer to God than Jesus’ disciples are.

A bit of irony to that, of course, because where were Jesus’ disciples in proximity? To God? Really, really, not just emotionally close, not relationally close alone, but actually physically close, right? The God of the universe incarnate in the flesh is with them, teaching them. And ironically, John’s disciples come to the God of the universe in the flesh and say, “Why aren’t your disciples doing what they need to do so they can be close to God?”

Because they see this ingredient. Maybe this is the one that’s going to make everything rise just right.

I said last week that Matthew understood what the right ingredients were by how he tells the story of his own conversion compared to how Luke tells it. And if you recall, Luke tells all the things that Matthew did, right? He threw this incredibly expensive banquet. He gave up everything he had. He’s doing all this stuff. Matthew leaves all that out.

And if you recall, the reason I believe that he leaves it out, I think this is really important, is that Matthew knows that’s not what matters. It doesn’t matter what he had and he gave up. What matters is he has Jesus. He doesn’t need to include all the other ingredients. When you’re writing down a recipe for someone, you don’t write everything down in your pantry that you didn’t end up actually using, but you have in case you ever need it.

And I think if Matthew were talking to Luke, he would have said, you don’t really need all this. And of course, God gave Luke a different purpose in writing his gospel. But for Matthew, just wanting to explain what he personally experienced as he came to believe in Jesus and to follow him, he knew the only thing that mattered is that he was now with Jesus. It didn’t matter what he had given up.

A lot of disciples didn’t get that until later, but Matthew clearly, as he’s writing the gospel, which is, to be fair, later, so he had some time to reflect on this, he knows it’s not even worth mentioning. It’s not. It’s the sort of thing we notice if we’re around someone who is genuinely humble. They don’t try to slip in what they gave up.

Someone’s helping us, right? And there’s a person that wants you to know that they gave up something to help you. And they’re just upfront about it. “I was going to go to this great baseball game today, but here I am. I can’t leave you without a car. I have to fix the flat tire on your car,” right? But I gave up this great baseball game. And you know when you ask that person to help you, you’re going to hear all about it.

And then there’s the person that’s sort of what we might call falsely humble, where they just sort of make it almost seem like an accident. They slip out somewhere in the conversation they gave something up. “Oh, no, don’t worry about it. I didn’t really even want you to know that.” Well, yeah, you did. But then there’s that person that helps us. And we don’t know until much later when someone else says, “Well, how did it work out with your car?” And you say, “Well, what do you mean?” “Well, I was going to the baseball game with John, and he said he had something else he had to do. He was going to help you with your car.”

I didn’t know he was going to the baseball game. The person who’s so humble about it and just wants to serve, it just doesn’t even seem necessary to say what they’re giving up. That’s Matthew, and that is understanding what you’re really trying to do.

John’s disciples, yeah, they wanted to serve God, but they also wanted everyone to know they were serving God. They wanted everyone to know what they were giving up because part of the importance there was what they had given up, not just that they had this relationship with God. Matthew got it. And over time, Jesus’ disciples in general got it.

Part of the problem, I think, is that some of these things that we can do are things that at times we should do. It’s not wrong for Christians to fast. It’s not wrong for Christians to set aside long times to pray. It’s not wrong to throw yourself into extra Bible studies or anything else, or just plain service, right, to be a Martha and to help people because it’s needed, right? Those things are needed. But the problem is we start to confuse the things that are good and maybe even at times edifying to us with the things that actually save us.

My van, the one sliding door lock doesn’t work right. And so if you unlock the car doors, it will unlock, but when you lock the car doors, it doesn’t relock. And if you just open up and reach and push down the lock, it won’t go down. And so over time, I’ve gotten this really kind of silly-seeming ritual that I do to get the van door to lock.

When I get out of the car, I press the lock button three or four times to kind of prime things, and then I go back in the back, and I pump the handle like I’m trying to pump water on the back door, and I do all that, and then I push down on the mechanism, and then I shut the door, and what do you know? It finally locks.

Now, in my head, I suspect that I don’t need to do all that, that some portion of that is actually what fixes it. But consistently, if I do all that, it works. And so it’s sort of like, well, you know, I’m just going to do all of it because it will get it done. It will get it locked. So I bet I probably could investigate and get to the root. Here’s the thing that actually needs to be done. And then go even further, and here’s the thing that actually fixed the door, right? Finally take it to the mechanic and say, “Okay, I’ll pay the money, take the panel off and fix the lock,” right?

I’m putting that off because the mechanic told me how much it was going to cost, and I thought, okay, I can pump the door for a little while longer. It’s fine, but let’s say I finally break down and fix it, or the panel has to come off for some other reason, and it’s cheap to fix it while that’s already happened. So it’s fixed now.

What do you want to do? Just hypothetically, let’s play this out for a moment. How likely do you think it is that the next time I get out of the car after it’s fixed, I push the lock button three or four times, and I open the back door, and maybe I’m shocked and kind of tug on it because it’s not opening, right? Because we just get into these routines, we have these rituals, and even when it’s not necessary, we keep doing it. Even if it was necessary at some point, we keep doing it when it’s not.

John’s disciples were supposed to fast, supposed to be out in the desert, because they were preparing the way for the Messiah to come. They were following John, proclaiming the coming of the King. But they kept pumping and pressing when the Messiah was standing right there in front of them. It’s like if I were arguing with that door that won’t open, because what do you know, it actually locked like it was supposed to.

Why won’t you open like the door used to open? Come on, I need to lock you. Why are we pressing buttons that we don’t need to press to get life locked in?

I think a lot of times with those holy practices we do, even the good ones, we’ve gotten so confused with what saves us versus what might be good at a particular time and place that we keep doing it even when it’s actually not healthy for us, when we’re not actually able to focus on what God wants us to focus on because we’re so busy even doing good things. We can serve to the point that we actually aren’t really relating to our God at that particular time or place because we’re just so busy. We can spend time fasting and be too weak to do the thing that God’s actually calling us to. We can spend time in prayer and be so focused on that we need to pray, ironically, that we’re not actually listening to God as he’s leading us.

That sounds really weird to say, doesn’t it? You might be praying too much. To be kind of brutal to us in our culture at this moment, I’d suspect that’s not generally most of our problems. We do have a praying church, but there aren’t a lot of modern stories of people doing, say, what they do in the Middle Ages where people go and just disappear for weeks at a time and just pray. Not pray and then let people know they’re praying. Not pray and go do something else, just praying. Or become a monk or a nun and just pray all the time.

We often don’t do that, so we don’t want to overplay this, but the point being, are we actually listening to what God’s calling us to do? Sometimes he’s telling us to stop and listen and pray. Sometimes he’s saying, okay, now you’ve prayed. Now I’m sending you to go do something with what you’ve been praying about. Sometimes he’s saying, go and serve my people. Sometimes he’s saying, now you need to come and actually spend some time with me because you’ve been so busy serving, you’re forgetting about who you’re serving.

It’s all about balancing and putting the right ingredients in, right? Not too much flour, not too little flour, the right amount.

But when we become convinced that this one ingredient is the thing that saves us, we just want to pour it on, right? Just bring it on. It’s like Peter at the Last Supper saying, if you need to wash my feet, then just wash all of me, right? Because, you know, whatever is good, just give me more of it. We’re often a lot like Peter. God says, no, actually listen to it. Stop and actually listen to what I’m saying.

The idea is important. And there are elements of the church that would say it isn’t today. And they’ll say, you don’t really need to do the things God calls you to do. And it doesn’t matter if you sound just like the world and act just like the world. If you cuss as much as the world, and you watch the horrible things the world likes to watch, and you listen to the horrible things the world likes to listen to, and you’re in it for yourself just like the world, and even when you’re trying to do what I’ve called you to do, you just act like the world. It doesn’t matter.

I mean, there’s a part of the world that says that. But the correct counterpoint to that isn’t, well, let’s just be so much like John’s disciples that we’ll just go out into the desert and eat bugs and wear hair shirts and prove how holy we are.

We’re not trying to prove our salvation by how wild we can live or by how restricted we can live but by whom we live in.

What John’s disciples were missing is the key ingredient wasn’t their piety. The key ingredient was God being with them. 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 apart, and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed, but new wine is put into fresh wine, so both are preserved.

Jesus is saying to the disciples of John, “Here, let me give you a hint. The problem is you don’t realize what you’re preparing today. You’ve lost sense of what time it is right now.”

Take a look at what time it was, because John himself told them. John 3:30, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Follow him. He’s the one.

Now, even John himself struggled with that over time, right? We know John says, “You know, Jesus, things aren’t going quite as well as I thought they were going to go. I’m about to be beheaded. I’m in prison. This seems kind of bad. That was not the kind of cutting-edge ministry I thought you were going to do. What’s going on here, Jesus?” So even John himself struggles, and John’s disciples all the more.

They’re looking at John and what he did and saying, “Well, this is the picture of holiness, right? John, he was out in the wilderness. He was fasting, doing all this stuff. We already know what holiness looks like in Jesus. You and your disciples don’t look like that.”

It says, “Do you realize what time it is?”

He uses several metaphors here to kind of reset them there, and he says, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” Is it appropriate to be mourning as the groom is standing there? No. Mourn if the groom’s arriving late, right? But when the groom’s there, you don’t keep mourning. You celebrate.

Ah, now we’re going. The wedding is happening. This is good. And Jesus says, “You’re acting like you’re mourning, anticipating something, wondering when it’s going to happen, and it’s here. It’s here right now. Don’t you see it?”

Jesus’ disciples weren’t in mourning, weren’t in grief, because they were actually with the promised one. He was there with them.

It’s not a denial of fasting, but to understand when it’s time for joy. Not to mistreat joy and turn it into an occasion for mourning. If you’re celebrating something, and someone is so worked up on being sad that they’re just really sad as you’re really joyful, and rightly so, you kind of put the damper on it, right?

Now, if we’re empathetic, we might feel like, “Well, maybe my friend’s going through something harder than the joy is great for me, and I need to focus on that.” But when you’re with the Son of God Himself, God incarnate in the flesh, here He is bringing His kingdom. Everything that’s been promised is happening. It is not the time for mourning. It’s the time for joy. Jesus says don’t mistreat that.

Where does that leave us, though? Because Jesus ascended into heaven. He’s not gathering us all out into the parking lot here, or coming up to the pulpit, and preaching to us tonight. How lovely would that be? Wouldn’t that be… Talk about guest preachers. Oh, boy. Someday, right? Someday, we’ll actually hear Jesus speaking. Can you imagine?

If they had it, where does it leave us, though? Because we don’t. Not in that same way. We have an advantage they didn’t have. We have the rest of God’s Word written down for us. We have the Holy Spirit. But a lot of times, we really would just like to sit at Jesus’ feet and hear Him speak, and rightly so.

But Jesus goes on to say, beyond that wedding metaphor, something’s changing. Something new. That’s what we really see in verses 16 and 17. He says, “You don’t put a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, because 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 apart, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed, but new wine is put into fresh wine, so both are preserved.”

He’s saying there’s something new here. And notably here, Jesus doesn’t say the old wineskins are bad. But you need to put the right thing in the right place, right? Because there’s an order to things.

And in the new order that comes, in the new covenant that comes, it’s not going to work if you try to tuck all that inside the wineskins of the Old Testament law, where you’re still living as if, somehow, you’re going to earn your own righteousness. Or all the traditional practices they had accumulated. You’re not going to make yourself more righteous by fasting like John’s disciple.

Now, Jesus isn’t saying, never ever fast. But that’s not where your holiness is located. And if you still think it is, you have a problem. And it’s just going to burst. It’s not going to work.

I think the way that Jesus hangs on to both the old wineskins and the new wineskins is very much apropos to what he said just a few chapters before in Matthew 5:17. He said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.”

There will be a time for that wine that’s been aging in those old wineskins to be poured and to be enjoyed. Because it’s all been building to something. And then as God’s people are set on, what are they supposed to do? They’re not supposed to keep acting as if they keep using that. They’re supposed to embrace what Jesus is doing. To know what time it is.

This can be a little confusing for us because it may sound like you want to say, “Well, Tim, it seems like you’re speaking out of both sides of your mouth.” And on one hand, you’re saying fasting isn’t bad, prayer isn’t bad, Bible study isn’t bad. You should hope not. And all these sorts of things. Service isn’t bad. And on the other hand, you’re saying, “But don’t do those things thinking it’s going to make you holy.” And the answer is yes. Right?

Because to say that they’re good, even, and to say that those are the things that make you holy are two different things. John’s disciples were confusing a practice that at times can help focus on God with a thing that actually made them right before God. It doesn’t work that way.

In the distractions and the wait for the Messiah to come, do they need to be fasting and preparing themselves? Yes, that was a perfectly good thing to do. But when you’re actually sitting there in front of the Messiah and you’re able to ask him, “Hey, why aren’t your disciples fasting?” For those of John’s disciples that ultimately came to understand who Jesus is, I bet they looked back and thought, “Of all the questions I could have asked God himself, why did I waste it on that? So many things I wanted to know, and I was questioning him on why he wasn’t strict enough on fasting practices.”

It was because they thought that’s what made them holy. Do we think it’s making us holy? Do we understand what season we’re in? That we’re in the season of that new covenant. And so all these things, even the good ones, yes, they’re good, but they’re not about making us holy. They’re about us responding to the holiness that God gives us. That’s profoundly, profoundly different.

And it allows us to say at times, “Okay, I need to put a little less of this ingredient in.” You become convinced that the baking powder is not only going to make your cookies proper, but it’s going to keep them from killing you. And you start to become convinced that most food is only safe to eat because you put baking powder in it. You’re going to put it in whether it’s appropriate or not at that time. You know what? Your food’s going to taste kind of salty and metallic because a lot of times if it doesn’t need to be in there, those ingredients don’t react properly and you’re going to taste something really awful instead.

A lot of times when we’re trying to be righteous, that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re causing an awful taste in our mouths and in the mouths of people around us because what we’re trying to do is take something that is our response to God making us holy and use it to make us holy.

We understand. But crucially, it isn’t about abolishing. It’s about understanding how it fits into the overall story.

You realize we’re almost to August? Kind of hard for me to get my head around that this is the last Sunday in July already, but here we are, and you do know what August means, right? This is a great joy and for some of you this is going to be a great horror, but August means the return of pumpkin spice.

It’s coming. It’ll be here next month. It will. As sure as the sun rises, pumpkin spice will be arriving on the shelves. And some of you, right? Do we have any pumpkin spice latte lovers in here? Anyone who likes pumpkin spice latte? Pumpkin spice is not well represented tonight.

I’m with you, Chris. I do enjoy pumpkin spice latte. But you know the interesting thing about realizing that the season of pumpkin spice has returned? Pumpkin spice is added to things. It doesn’t replace them, but it makes them right in that moment.

If you’re drinking a pumpkin spice latte, you know what you’re drinking? You’re drinking coffee with pumpkin spice in it. You don’t need coffee. But if you actually enjoy it, Chris, if you keep drinking just regular coffee when you could be having the pumpkin spice you’d like to have because now it’s here, you’re missing out on something really good.

Oh, and s’mores too. Yeah, you need the s’mores too. You need all those wonderful warm autumn foods all together, right? It’s not that the other things are bad, but you’re going to miss out on something good.

John’s disciples were missing out on something good because that base of coffee, that coffee of God’s law, was preparing them right, but now God was going to bring the gray spice season. It was time to season things properly. You’re going to miss out on it.

You’re going to miss out on it because they said, “Well, but we have here, we have this coffee, we can see it, that other thing that you have there doesn’t even quite look, doesn’t even quite look the same.” Right? If you’re drinking coffee properly, it’s black. All of you heathens that add things to it otherwise, coffee should be black. Pumpkin spice is not because it has, it’s a latte, it has milk in it and so on, right? It doesn’t look right.

John’s disciples said, “This doesn’t look right.”

It wasn’t that Jesus was telling his disciples, “Go and be immoral sinners,” right? Jesus told people over and over again, “Go and sin no more,” but they understood now that it’s time for the season to come in to bring it to a different place.

If you’ve been looking forward to that pumpkin spice, if you’ve been looking forward to that seasoning and you don’t adapt and you just keep acting like it’s still July and August, you miss out on something that you’ve been looking forward to all year.

And figure out all of humanity, humanity was looking forward to a way, some way, any way to somehow fix what’s broken in us. And ironically, a lot of times, even though gray spice season has been in season for 2,000 years, we’ll act like it isn’t.

We look somewhere else for what’s going to season us into holiness. Gray spice doesn’t reject what came before. It doesn’t. But it changes our focus.

Just like that latte changes our focus. We’re thinking about all these pumpkin spice seasonings that are going in.

Think about your favorite thing that shows up in the fall. We all probably have things we look forward to. There’s all kinds of additional spices and stuff when we taste that. That doesn’t mean the other stuff’s bad. It means it’s now being brought to a new level.

And that is what Jesus was doing. He was saying, “Yeah, everything, the whole Old Testament, it’s all still here in our Christian Bible.” Why? Because it’s still true and it’s still necessary. And the things that God values are still the things that God values. It hasn’t changed.

But we’re missing out. We’re not centered on God’s grace. We’re missing out if we don’t understand what time it is. And John’s disciples, at this point at least, we’re very much missing out.

For many of us, we might realize to a degree what time it is and yet we still forget. I’ll order the bottle of pumpkin spice latte and forget and it just expires in the fridge because I just go and get my regular coffee because it’s what I do the rest of the year.

And God’s saying to us, don’t let my grace just sit in the fridge and expire. Experience it. It’s here for you.

And if you’re a Christian, when we get off track a little and we’re a little more legalistic and we start counting ourselves, that doesn’t mean we’re giving up on our salvation but it does mean we’re giving up on enjoying it.

We understand what’s foundation? God’s grace. Being in His presence. Having that relationship with Him. The thing that John’s disciples could have had, they could have had that relationship. And even when we’re doing those other things, because yes, we should be studying God’s Word and we should be going to church and we should be praying and we should be serving people. We should be doing all those things.

But are we doing it in such a way that we understand that Grace Spice is seasoning all of it?

Jesus calls us to recognize the time because it’s the time to be seasoned not by mourning but by the joy of His grace.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we do pray that You would help us to be those seasoned by Your grace, so easy to say but so hard to do because we want to be those who are in charge of the seasoning so that we can somehow make things right.

But Lord, we can’t make things right on our own and we do pray that You would help us to understand the only thing that does make things right and that’s You.

Without our God giving us His grace we are in a hopeless state.

And if we have that grace and yet we live as if we still were making it right on our own, we’re missing out on the joy.

Lord, would You help us to recognize that the only thing that makes us holy is the gift of our God and to live in that even as we do other things that we live in the freedom and the joy of that grace that we know that You are the one who makes things right.

We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.