Be Hungry for God's Sake
Notes
Transcript
Sack cloth, and ashes.
A selfie in a disaster zone.
What do these have in common?
A political photo op and handshake in a disaster zone. Manipulate the cameras. Show how invested you are.
We’d never do that, would we?
1 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
Talk about our sacrifices, what we’ve given up in serving God, what difficulties we’ve endured.
?
The snapshot:
the simple message here
the sermon on the mount
fasting big picture
us?
Don’t fast for a selfie
Don’t fast for a selfie
16 “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
The problem:
Fasting with the wrong kind of need
The need for ‘likes’.
The point:
Need food
Need God
Fasting an act of needing God more than food.
Wrong king of fasting is to do it because you need humans to notice.
Flourishing and wholeness
a stent, a transplant, a tonic -
// some customs - during Lent, some churches now, early church manual (diff days to Jews),
“1 Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on Mondays and Thursdays, but do your fast on Wednesdays and Fridays.”
Didache - 1st century church living manual - still gets it wrong
What’s the deal with fasting?
What’s the deal with fasting?
To understand we need to think through how fasting was used by Israel.
29 Those who do not deny themselves on that day must be cut off from their people.
Day of Atonement - forgiveness for all the sins no other sacrifice covered - big need for God, big deal of sin. The one command by God about abstaining in the Old Testament - and probably about fasting.
21 There, by the Ahava Canal, I proclaimed a fast, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask him for a safe journey for us and our children, with all our possessions.
Big enemies. A history of sin. Big needs, well out of their hands.
Fasting because they needed God. A physical expression of that neediness, that hunger, that appetite for God.
You can feel hunger, deep inside you, it is strong and basic, and almost desperately clouds out anything else.
That is the way we need God.
Because of our sin, our smallness, our powerlessness.
Because of the world’s brokenness, enemies, crises.
In almost all (29) of the 42 references to fasting in the Old Testament it was alongside crying out to God.
It isn’t self-denial for self-discipline.
It isn’t self-denial for good healthy eating.
It isn’t self-denial because God can be manipulated.
1 You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.
Denying food because you’re needy
Not needy for the ‘likes’
Needy for God
Needs of horror and holiness - hunger and thirst for righteousness
We are in a disaster zone still.
It is no accident that this follows the Lord’s Prayer:
Matthew 6:9–10 (NIV)
9 “This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
This is actually your greatest need. For God’s plan to come to be completely.
Matthew 6:11–13 (NIV)
11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’
Provision, forgiveness, protection.
These are the drives to be hungry for God.
Only he can make these so.
Do we fast?
“When you fast...”
“When you fast...”
Two weeks ago I said ‘when[ever]’ means Jesus expects they will. Expects we will.
For prayer. For giving.
Not so with fasting.
His disciples didn’t - the bridegroom was taken away (died) but is with us by his Spirit.
Only mentioned twice in Acts by early church.
This is not ‘fish on fridays’/’vego in lent’, fasting before communion
Reemember it was in response to need, not about weekly, seasonal.
Remember not:
for health, for discipline, to strong-arm God
8 But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.
This is about food and idols. But counts here too.
16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.
These things do not make us holy. Ever.
Some have eating disorders. Harm can be done by being ignorant of this struggle. Don’t try it if you’re not healthy.
In the same way that communion and baptism are physical ways of living out that we’re joining in with Jesus.
By fasting, we’re missing out on food that we need and are physically living out that we’re in need of God
When God actually talks himself about bad fasting in isaiah, he gives us a kind of ‘fasting’ that all of us still should be chasing:
Isaiah 58:6–7 (NIV)
6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Whether you abstain from food is not the ultimate question.
If you are hungry for God in this broken world, you’ll put your shoulder to the wheel in big and small ways to do good.
[Whether you virtue signal that you’re voting Yes or No in the Voice referendum or not, all Christians in Australia will want the injustices of the past righted, the horrific gap of disadvantage for indigenous Australians to be righted. You may land politically all over the spectrum. And we all know a governmental solution from any party will never fix hearts. We must be those who call on God for need, and get busy doing good.]
// not forever - running training recently… knowing it is not forever and good comes
Being hungry for God is not wasted
Being hungry for God is not wasted
Whether it is in skipping meals to seek God in your need.
Or simply seeking God in your desperate hunger for him.
It is not wasted. He will not waste it. He will pay you back - all that it has cost you and more.
18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Whatever it costs you in seeking God -
in your needy sinful desperate turning back to him.
In your service in his kingdom with the sacrifices nobody else knows
in your prayer for his kingdom to come, his will to be done, his name to be honoured
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Will be satisfied. The word for sitting back after a satisfying meal.
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Give you rest. These instructions on fasting have to be recognised as said by the same one who said this.
His aim is to give you rest, not make you weary and burdened.
16 ‘Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them,’ nor any scorching heat.
17 For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’ ‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”
Never hungry or thirsty again.
Praying. And giving. And fasting are all fallen world activities. There’ll come a day we won’t need them.
Things made right. Brokenness restored.
God near. Sin gone.
Don’t fast for a selfie. Be hungry for God.