Sermon: A Man of Desire - Fasting
Gospel of Mark • Sermon • Submitted
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· 10 viewsJesus is revealed through fasting to be the one true desire of God's people. Let's look at the all-important lessons Jesus taught about fasting and its place in the life of his disciples.
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Welcome
Welcome
Good morning,
I hope you’ve stirred your passion this week for our great Savior and have come here this morning longing for more of Jesus.
You know, I was thinking about how we approach Sunday this week. I would venture to say that most of us have, at one point or another, felt like Sunday worship is an event that happens to us. Like spectators watching a performance. We might enjoy the performance for the moment, but then we go on with our lives. Worship might be something that we go to, and, consequently, has very little to do with the rest of our life. However, did you know worship doesn’t have to be something that just happens to you? Worship can be something that we do together. Sunday’s worship can be what shapes and inspires our whole week. Sunday worship can be where we find purpose, mission, and joy.
So I was think about what makes the difference between worship that happens to you individually and worship that we do together. Where does the desire for deeper worship begin to be satisfied? Some people think its all about the church program, but the desire for deeper worship begins to be satisfied by how we come to worship. How we prepare for, cultivate, and approach worship determines how deeply we will worship God in the fellowship of his kingdom people. Like an athlete prepares for their game, or a musician prepares for their part in a symphony, we can only ever be satisfied with deep worship when we take time to prepare ourselves for worship so that we come expecting to find God!
Assignment
Assignment
To help guide your preparation this week, please read, meditate on, and pray through Mark 2:23 - 3:6.
A Man of Desire - Fasting
A Man of Desire - Fasting
Imagine someone who was doing something that would forever change the world. Their work was more than ground-breaking, it was world-shattering! To the people around such a person, who think they have things all figured out, this person doesn’t make sense. Misunderstandings about this person abound, creating constant conflict at almost every turn for this person. What kind of person would someone like this be?
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Jesus changed everything. He shattered how the people of his time understood life just as he still shatters how we understand life to this very day. Those who tried to understand him through the old ways constantly misunderstood him. But those who were driven after him by their deep longing for more saw what he was doing, and what they saw drove them to forgo everything, even the essentials of this life, in their pursuit of him. Jesus was a man of desire.
Today’s message looks at Jesus’ answer to a question about fasting, which explains what he came to do so that we can understand what it means to follow him as learners of his way of life in view of what he came to accomplish.
18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. People came and asked him, “Why do John’s disciples and the Pharisees’ disciples fast, but your disciples do not fast?”
John’s disciples approach Jesus along with the Pharisees to ask why his disciples don’t fast like their disciples do. This question is asking why Jesus doesn’t do things the way they do them. You see? Following Jesus / isn’t like following other great leaders / doesn’t look like it looks to follow other great leaders. Jesus is being questioned why he doesn’t teach his disciples the same way of life that their leaders were teaching their disciples. And, as we’ll see this morning, Jesus’ answer is that he teaches his disciples a different way of life because he’s not going in the same direction as the others going.
You see? Our way of life is determined by where we’re going. People who live for this world and following the course of this world to it’s destination. People who live for their religious traditions are following their religious traditions to their destination. How you live is what you live for.
Peter commented on this:
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1 Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same understanding—because the one who suffers in the flesh is finished with sin—2 in order to live the remaining time in the flesh no longer for human desires, but for God’s will. 3 For there has already been enough time spent in doing what the Gentiles choose to do: carrying on in unrestrained behavior, evil desires, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and lawless idolatry. 4 They are surprised that you don’t join them in the same flood of wild living—and they slander you.
So John’s disciples and the Pharisees fasted the way they did because their way of fasting moved them in a certain direction. They didn’t fast in pursuit of God. If they did, they wouldn’t be fasting in his presence because they would have the very thing their fasting was meant to express their desire for!
So Jesus answers their question about fasting with three illustrations:
The Bridegroom
The Unshrunk Cloth
The New Wineskins
And all three of these illustrations are wedding metaphors. We took a deeper look at this in our morning Bible class to explain how the dawning of God’s Kingdom was expressed in Messianic terms with wedding symbolism.
So, these three illustrations are meant to provide his answer to their question about fasting by framing the answer by the realities their fasting seeks. So Jesus’ answer to their question tells us a lot about the purpose of fasting in the Christian’s way of life and why fasting absolutely should be a regular part of every Christian’s lifestyle.
19 Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the groom is with them, can they? As long as they have the groom with them, they cannot fast. 20 But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.
Jesus’ first illustration uses the metaphor of the wedding guests from John the Baptist’s teaching, which, in turn, used Old Testament Messianic terms.
So let’s take a look at these two together:
29 He who has the bride is the groom. But the groom’s friend, who stands by and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the groom’s voice. So this joy of mine is complete. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease.”
5 Indeed, your husband is your Maker— his name is the Lord of Armies— and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of the whole earth.
When Jesus started baptizing, John’s disciples came to him about a dispute over why Jesus was baptizing people. John responds by saying that his ministry was pointing to something and someone greater. John understood who Jesus was: he’s the one they’ve always longed for, whose presence they’ve always desired. So Jesus is using Messianic symbolism that they would’ve been very familiar with to tell them that fasting in his presence would be altogether inappropriate if their fasting has been about him and not just about themselves. Isaiah’s prophecy contributes to this the understanding that the “groom” is their Creator - the Lord of Armies - the God of the whole earth!
In simple terms, they’re completely oblivious to what’s happening right in front of their face. How can one fast when the substance of all their heart has ever desired is right in front of them? Who goes to a joyous wedding and refuses to join the feast? Jesus’ coming changes everything because he is the substance towards which everything else pointed.
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I think this first illustration is instructive to us for how we understand our religious observances: we must never lose sight of the substance that our religious observances symbolize. There’s no better definition of dead-religion than the practice of religious observances that have been emptied of their substance!
Here’s Jesus, the very one for whom their fasting was meant to draw them to, and they’re still over there fasting because their fasts had become the point themselves rather than something that pointed them in a meaningful way to God.
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Fasting is motivated by our desire to be with God. Our hunger for Christ displaces our appetite for this world.
21 No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new patch pulls away from the old cloth, and a worse tear is made.
Jesus’ second illustration uses a metaphor from a piece of unshrunk cloth, which, if sown onto an old garment to repair a tear, will cause an even bigger tear. This metaphor builds off the wedding symbolism of the first illustration and envisions what Jesus was doing like someone thinking about repairing a torn garment to wear to a wedding feast.
Jesus said:
17 “Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.
The old forms and customs were fulfilled in Christ, but these old forms and customs aren’t enough when thinking about getting ready for a wedding celebration. They would be like wearing the work clothes you to garden in to a wedding where everyone is wearing tuxedos. Your work clothes might be good enough to put food on the table, but you need something more for the joyous occasion of a wedding!
Jesus didn’t come to sew new righteousness onto an old garment because these would destroy each other.
We're given an entirely new garment of righteousness in Christ Jesus:
30 It is from him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us—our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption
27 For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.
14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
7 Let us be glad, rejoice, and give him glory, because the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has prepared herself. 8 She was given fine linen to wear, bright and pure. For the fine linen represents the righteous acts of the saints.
We're given entirely new robes of righteousness that make us fit for the wedding feast of the Lamb! Jesus himself is our righteousness. We’re given his robes of righteousness when we are baptized. And we daily put these robes on in life. As we put off malice and put on grace, as we put off lying and put on truth, as we put off unfaithfulness and put on faithfulness. We daily put on the righteousness we’ve been given in Jesus Christ so that we are ready and clothed for his wedding feast when he comes!
Jesus is telling them that their fasting is like wearing old-garments to a wedding celebration; they don’t understand the occasion that they’ve come to!
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Jesus is bringing in the very reality that Isaiah the prophet spoke about in the context of fasting:
1 “Cry out loudly, don’t hold back! Raise your voice like a ram’s horn. Tell my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins. 2 They seek me day after day and delight to know my ways, like a nation that does what is right and does not abandon the justice of their God. They ask me for righteous judgments; they delight in the nearness of God.” 3 “Why have we fasted, but you have not seen? We have denied ourselves, but you haven’t noticed!” “Look, you do as you please on the day of your fast, and oppress all your workers. 4 You fast with contention and strife to strike viciously with your fist. You cannot fast as you do today, hoping to make your voice heard on high.
We can see the purpose of fasting plainly described in this text:
To seek God and his attention by denying ourselves and choosing him
To delight in his ways
To delight in his nearness
However, we can see that the manner in which they practiced fasting contradicted what their fasting sought to accomplish. The result was that they were frustrated because their fasting was without effect and God did not pay attention to them.
Isaiah rebuked their hypocrisy by saying:
Their self-denial was pretense: they still did as they wanted
Their delight in God’s ways was pretense: they oppressed others and practiced strife
Isaiah’s message is clear: you cannot use fasting as a means to come to God when your heart and life are in defiance to him!
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Put simply, before their fasting can become meaningful, they need to receive and put on the righteousness they lack from Christ, and know whose presence it is they’re entering into!
22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the skins. No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins.”
Jesus’s third illustration uses a metaphor from the old wine-skins, which become hard and brittle from the old wine. So if someone puts new wine, which is still fermenting, into old containers, the buildup of fermenting gases would split the brittle container and ruin both the bottle and wine. New wine must only be placed in new wine-skins that are still elastic enough to accommodate the pressure of the still fermenting wine.
In the same way, the righteousness that God desires cannot be placed in our old natures:
3 For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering, 4 in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
15 For both circumcision and uncircumcision mean nothing; what matters instead is a new creation.
So Jesus is telling them that they cannot fast in the manner that God desires unless he comes to do what he’s now doing in their midst. Their fasting does not accomplish what they want it to accomplish because they’re like someone trying to put new win into old wineskins; the corruption of their flesh is destroying the righteousness they seek when they fast!
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To fast in the manner that God desired first requires that we be made new:
6 Isn’t this the fast I choose: To break the chains of wickedness, to untie the ropes of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, and to tear off every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and homeless into your house, to clothe the naked when you see him, and not to ignore your own flesh and blood? 8 Then your light will appear like the dawn, and your recovery will come quickly. Your righteousness will go before you, and the Lord’s glory will be your rear guard. 9 At that time, when you call, the Lord will answer; when you cry out, he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you get rid of the yoke among you, the finger-pointing and malicious speaking, 10 and if you offer yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted one, then your light will shine in the darkness, and your night will be like noonday.
Fasting is powerful in someone who has broken the chains of wickedness, who has released those they once oppressed, and torn off the burdensome yokes they had once placed on others; who shares their food with the hungry, who brings the poor and homeless into their home, and clothes the poor, and takes care of their family.
When those who live like this fast, their “light appears like the dawn”, “their recovery comes quickly”, and “their righteousness will go before them” and “the LORD’s glory will be their rear guard”! They “call to the LORD” and “he answers them!”
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I grew up in the Church without any examples of fasting. Growing up, the only time I ever heard about fasting was that “fasting should not be seen”, which is, by the way, a grave misinterpretation of Jesus’ teaching from the sermon on the mount. So the result was that fasting was entirely neglected in all the Christian circles that I lived in.
Jesus taught fasting in his sermon on mount as one of three spiritual disciplines listed after charity and prayer that he expects his disciples to practice. In the same way that we should think it unusual for a Christian not to pray or practice a lifestyle of compassionate giving, so we should think it strange for Christians not to practice fasting as a regular part of their life.
Unfortunately we don’t have much time left to develop this point, but I do want to offer this concluding thought: I recognize that there are some people whose condition in life doesn’t accommodate full-fasting, who can’t totally eliminate all food-consumption. For example, pregnant and nursing women should not fast. But for those who cannot practice full-fasting, much the same effect can be accomplished by eating only raw or unseasoned foods. One can still express their earnest, insatiable desire for Jesus through limiting and regulating their food consumption.
Fasting should should be a regular practice of every healthy disciple. Fasting expresses our deep desire for Jesus’ presence. Fasting is an exercise of self-control enlivened by the Holy Spirit in our life. Fasting is one of the means by which we deny ourselves as we follow Jesus, trusting his grace to supply our weakness. And, perhaps most importantly, we fast in the reality of the new creation dawning in the Kingdom of God.
Invitation
If you feel God’s conviction in your life right now and need someone to talk to or pray with, or if you want to respond to this good news today and begin your journey as a follower of Christ, I invite you to come forward as we stand to lift one voice in worship to God!