{"id":4794,"date":"2013-12-04T00:05:59","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T08:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=4794"},"modified":"2013-12-03T23:12:48","modified_gmt":"2013-12-04T07:12:48","slug":"right-time-and-wrong-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2013\/12\/04\/right-time-and-wrong-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Right Time and Wrong Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and He said to him, \u201cFollow Me!\u201d So he got up and followed Him. <\/p>\n

\tWhile He was reclining at the table in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came as guests to eat with Jesus and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked His disciples, \u201cWhy does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?\u201d<\/p>\n

\tBut when He heard this, He said, \u201cThose who are well don\u2019t need a doctor, but the sick do. Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I didn\u2019t come to call the righteous, but sinners.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThen John\u2019s disciples came to Him, saying, \u201cWhy do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?\u201d <\/p>\n

\tJesus said to them, \u201cCan the wedding guests be sad while the groom is with them? The days will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one patches an old garment with unshrunk cloth, because the patch pulls away from the garment and makes the tear worse. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. But they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.\u201d (Matthew 9:9-17)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tMark Twain once said that it wasn\u2019t the stuff in the Bible that he didn\u2019t understand that bothered him. It was the stuff he did understand.<\/p>\n

\tJesus told the religious leaders that the sick needed a physician, not the healthy. Jesus told John\u2019s disciples that fasting would be an odd choice at a wedding party. Then Jesus illustrated what he meant by talking of new wine in old wine flasks, and patching old clothes with unshrunk cloth. No one would be so silly. So what was Jesus\u2019 point?<\/p>\n

\tSome have suggested that Jesus was referring to Judaism versus Christianity, the Old Testament versus the New Testament, but in the context, that doesn\u2019t fit. The context is the healthy versus the sick, fasting versus not fasting. Jesus continues that theme of polar opposites with old versus new. But he doesn\u2019t say that one is better than the other.<\/p>\n

\tInstead, Jesus\u2019 point is very simple: do the right thing at the right time. Jesus was playing off the passage in Ecclesiastes, that there is a time for everything: a time to mend, a time to tear, a time for joy, a time for sadness. Thus, the disciples of John and Jesus\u2019 pharisaical critics were failing to discern the times.<\/p>\n

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He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and He said to him, \u201cFollow Me!\u201d So he got up and followed Him. While He was reclining at the table in the house, many tax collectors and sinners … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4794"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4794"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4797,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4794\/revisions\/4797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}