Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Luke 5:33–35
“Jesus said to them, ‘Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days’ ” (vv. 34–35).
Ecclesiastes 3:1–8 stands as one of the most familiar texts of Scripture in modern culture even outside the church, for this passage was famously adapted by the rock group the Byrds in 1965 as the hit single “Turn! Turn! Turn!” The focus of the passage is the idea that in God’s created order, there is a proper time for all sorts of things, from birth to death to mourning to dancing to war to peace and so on. The implication of the text is that living wisely entails discerning the proper time for every activity.
The principle of needing to know the right time for the right activity lies behind today’s passage. Immediately before Luke 5:33, Jesus said that He came to call sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32). This prompted some people to remark that the disciples of John the Baptist and the disciples of the Pharisees would fast, but the disciples of Jesus would eat and drink (Luke 5:33). It is not entirely clear in the original Greek who makes the observation. Many commentators believe that the Pharisees raised the point, but others think that some individuals from the crowd were the ones who heard the teaching of Christ. Either way, the reason for the remark seems to be an apparent incongruity between Jesus’ description of His ministry as a declaration of repentance and the expected actions one would take in response to this call. Historically, Jews often fasted when they saw a need for repentance, and refraining from food and drink was an outward sign of the seriousness with which they were taking their sin. For example, when the prophet Daniel saw that the time for the end of the Babylonian exile was drawing near but that the Jews had not yet turned from their sin, he sought the Lord’s face and in behalf of the people fasted and asked God for mercy (see Dan. 9). The disciples of Jesus, who came to call people to repentance, were feasting and not fasting, and this did not make sense to some onlookers, who thought that a call to fast should always accompany a call to repent.
Jesus responded that while there is an appropriate time for fasting to accompany repentance, His earthly ministry was not that time. While He, the Bridegroom, was present, it was time for celebration, not deprivation. We feast at a wedding when the bridegroom marries his bride, so when Jesus came to seal His marriage to His church with His blood, it was time to feast (Luke 5:34–35; see Eph. 5:25–33).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Wisdom consists not only in doing the right thing but also in doing it at the right time. Often, knowing the right time to do something is the most difficult thing. The only way to attain sufficient wisdom to do the right thing at the right time is through careful study of the wisdom given in God’s Word, accompanied by prayer that He will help us understand its teaching.
for further study
- Ecclesiastes 8:5
- Romans 5:6
the bible in a year
- Deuteronomy 11–13
- Mark 13:1–13
- Deuteronomy 14–19
- Mark 13:14–14:31