Luke 5:34

‘And Jesus said to them, “Can you make the sons of the bride-chamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?”

Jesus therefore points out that such fasting would be inappropriate. The Bridegroom has come. The Kingly Rule of God is at hand. Those therefore who are benefiting from it should not be fasting but rejoicing.

His first point is that fasting is reserved for times of mourning and unhappiness, mourning over failure and unhappiness about sin, and especially mourning because God has not yet acted in history and the Messiah and the Holy Spirit's outpouring have not come. But those who are appointed at a wedding to be with the bridegroom to sustain him cannot fast, for they would then mar the celebrations. Rather must they eat and drink and be joyful. A Jewish wedding lasted for seven days, and they were days of feasting and merriment during which the bridegroom would be celebrating. And he would have with him his closest friends to share his joy with him. To seek to fast under such circumstances would be an insult. (The Rabbis indeed excluded people at a wedding feast from the need to fast). Thus a unique occasion, and only a unique occasion exempted men from fasting.

This in itself was a remarkable claim, that because He had come men need not fast. It was to claim divine prerogative. Moses could not have said it. Elijah could not have said it. John the Baptiser could not have said it. It required a greater than they.

But unquestionably Jesus was conveying a deeper message even than this, as the next verse brings out. He was pointing out that the Messiah had come. He was pointing to Himself as the great Bridegroom whose presence meant that men need not fast, the great Bridegroom promised in the Scriptures. In Isaiah 62:5, the prophet had said “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so will your God rejoice over you”. The picture there is emphasised and poignant. Isaiah points out that they have been called Forsaken, and their land Desolate, but they will be renamed because God delights in them and their land will be married. They will become God's bride. He will be their Bridegroom. So there God is the Bridegroom, and His restored people are the Bride, and it is clearly pointing to the time of restoration. Thus Jesus, by describing Himself as the Bridegroom of God's restored people, shows that He is uniquely standing in the place of God and introducing the time of restoration.

A similar vivid picture is also brought out in Jeremiah 2:2 where the Lord says of His people, “I remember concerning you the kindness of your youth, the love of your espousals, how you went after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.” Here we have the Lord as the Bridegroom in waiting (compare Jeremiah 2:32. Compare also Ezekiel 16:8). It is thus very doubtful whether a discerning listener would fail to catch at least something of this implication.

Furthermore that Jesus emphatically saw Himself as the Bridegroom comes out elsewhere in the Gospels. Consider the marriage feast for the son (Matthew 22:2) and the Bridegroom at the wedding where the foolish virgins were excluded (Matthew 25:1), both clear pictures of Jesus. So His being the Bridegroom was a theme of His. And John the Baptiser described Him in the same way (John 3:29). Thus Jesus was by this declaring in another way that the ‘the Kingly Rule of God has drawn near', and that He was a unique figure come from God, the heavenly Bridegroom, God's Messiah.

But if God has come on earth as the Bridegroom, how can there be fasting by those who have recognised Him and welcomed Him? It would not be seemly. The others only fast because the truth has not come home to them.