Hungering for God: Fasting for the Great Feast

Matthew 6:16–18 ESV

“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

What is the most dangerous thing in your life?

If you think it is sickness, you’ll be hyper aware of germs.

If you think it is a political party, you’ll be hyper aware of being infected by a political ideology.

If you think it is the devil, you be on the lookout for his ploys.

But what if I told you that the greatest enemy to your Christian life are gifts.

Take Israel for example…

What made them become apostate?

When Israel inherited the land…

It WAS gifts from God.

Deuteronomy 8:17–20 ESV

Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.

It’s NOT the enemy nations that will overcome them.

It’s NOT the wilderness and the beasts around.

It’s NOT even the pagan nations because they are unable to curse them. (Numbers 24:10-14)

It is the GIFTS that God gives them that eventually lead them astray.

“The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18–20).

The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.” —John Piper, A Hunger for God, 18

Jesus warns as much about these things in Mark 4:18-19

Mark 4:18–19 ESV

And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

“‘The pleasures of life’ and ‘the desires for other things’—these are not evil in themselves. These are not vices. These are gifts of God. They are your basic meat and potatoes and coffee and gardening and reading and decorating and traveling and investing and TV-watching and Internet-surfing and shopping and exercising and collecting and talking.

And all of them can become deadly substitutes for God.” —John Piper, A Hunger for God, 18

How do we fight against the sinful desires to skew God’s good gifts?

Fasting.

My desire here is to spend an extended time talking about the topic of fasting before we can understand what Jesus prescribes here.

It’s important to acknowledge that every religion acknowledges fasting of some kind.

They acknowledge the benefit of it.

The seriousness of it.

Even in our secular age, fasting is cool and trendy.

Is there something different about Christian fasting?

Just like not all GIVING or PRAYING is the same.

There is a distinctively Christian way to fast.

What is Christian fasting?

Fasting is to abstain from food (other pleasures) for the purpose of committing oneself to prayer.

It was to artificially intensify the earnestness that you pray with.

In the OT, fasting was observed for all kinds of occasions.

(1) There were prescribed fasts for the people from the Lord (Deuteronomy 4:4, 10:20, 11:22, Esther 9:31; Joel 1:14, 2:12-15),

(2) fasts were used to humble the people before the Lord (Psalm 35:13, 69:10, 109:21-25; Jeremiah 36:9),

(3) repentance and mourning (Judges 20:26, 1 Samuel 7:6, 1 Kings 21:27; Ezra 9:5; Nehemiah 9:1; Jonah 3:5 [Pagan nation]; ),

(4) after the death of a loved one (1 Samuel 31:13; 2 Samuel 1:12 [cf. 1 Chronicles 10:12], 2 Samuel 12:16-23, ),

(5) to seek the Lord’s face for provision (2 Chronicles 20:3; Ezra 8:21-23; Nehemiah 1:4; Esther 4:3-16; Isaiah 58:3-6; Jeremiah 14:12 [example of the LORD rejecting their fasting]; Daniel 6:18, 9:3).

The reasons for fasting in the OT were various.

Just because there was fasting in the OT does not mean we should fast under the New Covenant purchased in the blood of Jesus Christ.

Fasting much like GIVING or PRAYING are NOT all the same.

The unbeliever fasts as a way to please their pagan deities.

The secularist fasts in order to clean up their temple and appease the pagan desires of self worship.

The Muslim fasts in an attempt to make himself right before God.

There is a distinctively Christian way to fast.

“The birthplace of Christian fasting is homesickness for God.” —John Piper, A Hunger for God, 13

Christian Fasting is a Holy Homesickness for God.

The text we’re looking at today assumes fasting.

But Jesus gives a more foundational understanding of fasting in Matthew 9:14-17

Matthew 9:14 ESV

Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”

Notice that the people coming to Jesus are not His enemies.

They are John’s disciples.

John’s disciples loved Jesus even because John told them to (John 3:27-30).

John’s disciples picked up on a different between them and Jesus’ disciples.

John’s disciples didn’t eat several times a week.

Jesus’ disciples ate all the time.

Matthew 11:18–19 (ESV)

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’

And they ask a good question, “Why is this?”

Matthew 9:15 (ESV)

And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?

Jesus equates Himself with the bridegroom.

The One who will come to redeem the people of God.

The One to whom all the OT pointed to.

The One that will marry His adulterous bride (Jer. 2:2, 3; Hos. 2:2–20).

That One is HERE.

And His disciples cannot mourn while He is with THEM.

John 3:29–30 ESV

The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.”

John says right here that he is the friend of the bridegroom (John 1:6-9, 15, 19-36).

This means that His people are the bride and they are known because they believe in Him. (Matthew 9:15; Ephesians 5:25-27; Revelation 19:7-8; John 3:18).

“The friend who attends the bridegroom, the ancient equivalent of a ‘best man’ who organized the details and presided over a Judean wedding…found his greatest joy in watching the ceremony proceed without a problem, and in knowing that the groom and his bride were being united with great rejoicing.” —D.A. Carson

John the Baptist is this friend of the Bride Groom.

And he delights to watch the GROOM come near to His bride.

Jesus’ point though to the disciples of John about fasting is:

We cannot fast while the groom is with us!

Matthew 9:15 ESV

And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.

Christian Fasting Aches for the Return of the Bridegroom.

King Jesus as we have seen has brought the kingdom of God to earth.

He has inaugurated the kingdom here in the hearts of His people through His life, death, burial, and resurrection.

Yet the kingdom of God is not completely here.

It’s HERE but it’s not here fully.

We are in the days that the Bridegroom has come!

And yet we WAIT for Him to return.

The kingdom of God is HERE and yet we wait for it fully.

Luke 22:16 ESV

For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”

Luke 22:18 ESV

For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”

“in this age there is an ache inside every Christian that Jesus is not here as fully and intimately and as powerfully and as gloriously as we want him to be. We hunger for so much more. That is why we fast.” —John Piper, A Hunger for God, 38

What should the Christian do when we feel dissatisfied in this world?

What should our response be?

Grumble and complain…

Fill every desire in an attempt to make the feelings of dissatisfaction go away…

We ache because the Spirit within us groans with groans too deep for words.

We ache because we have seen that the KING has come and we desire for Him to be more clearly known in this world.

We ache because of the struggle against sin within our flesh.

We ache because we see the disastrous effects of sin.

Christian and Suffering

I know you’ve experienced the ache and longing within your soul for things to be made right.

Don’t fill it with artificial things that cannot satisfy.

Fasting validates the ache of soul.

Fasting confirms and places the ache in the right place instead of medicating us.

Christian Growth

Fasting forces me to ask the question…

Do I really hunger for God?

Do I miss Him?

Do I love for Him?

Have I begun to be content with his gifts and not with the giver?

Is there something different about Christian fasting?

Christian Fasting is dissatisfied contentment in the New Wine.

Matthew 9:16–17 ESV

No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”

Christian Fasting is dissatisfied contentment in the New Wine.

Fasting at its core is about dissatisfied contentment.

We are dissatisfied with the way the world is.

We are dissatisfied with the sin in our own lives.

We are dissatisfied with what we see.

We are content in Jesus Christ.

And our fasting, then is a sign of the pursuit of finding contentment in Jesus Christ.

The former way of fasting for the Jew was looking forward to God’s redemption of Israel.

The Jew would fast looking forward.

But all these forms of fasting will not do.

We need a distinctly Christian fasting.

We need a kind of fasting that knows and acknowledges that Jesus has already COME.

He has come ONCE to defeat the Grave.

He has come once to save His people from their sins.

But NOW we wait with an aching longing for the coming of Savior and Lord again.

Matthew 9:16 ESV

No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made.

We cannot just slap an old garment of Old Covenant fasting on the new garment of the New Covenant.

The New Covenant is indeed new.

You cannot just place the garments of the Old Covenant upon it in the same fashion as before.

The New Wine of the New Covenant is placed into new skins.

One of the reasons for this is the new wine would build up pressor and the old skins would tear because they could not handle the pressor.

The same could be said of Old Covenant practices when just slapped upon the skins of the New Covenant.

The kind of fasting that Jesus expects of His disciples will be fundamentally different than before.

The Jews would fast before because they looked forward in hope and expectation for the kingdom to come.

The newness of the New Covenant is partially that we believe the King has indeed come.

The King has come and brought His kingdom rule and reign.

The King has come and the Spirit has been poured out upon His people as a sign of the full redemption to come.

The King has come and this is partially what Christian fasting celebrates.

The King has indeed conquered and this compels us to ache and yearn for the RETURN of our GREAT KING.

This is partially why I would contend that fasting is like a HOLY Homesickness.

Unbeliever

You’re probably wondering why we’re even talking about this at all.

You’re probably wondering why we are even speaking of fasting thinking…

“Maybe this would be good for some health benefits.”

“Maybe this would help my diet I would like to go on.”

But let me explain it like this for you.

We fast because WE WAIT for our BELOVED to return.

But you don’t understand this because you don’t know the BELOVED.

YOU MUST see the LORD Jesus for who He is.

Savior and LORD.

Resurrected Lord that has defeated sin and the grave.

Fasting says,

“I’ve tasted but I want more!”

“We’ve tasted the beauty and glory of the New Covenant, and we’re NOT satisfied in it!”

“Give us more of YOU, Oh Lord!”

Christian’s Avoid Fasting Like Gnostics

“Therefore bread was created for the glory of Christ. Hunger and thirst were created for the glory of Christ. And fasting was created for the glory of Christ.” —John Piper, A Hunger for God, 21

I don’t want us to think that food is somehow the problem…

1 Timothy 4:1–3 ESV

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

The teachings of demons is a form of gnosticism that sees the physical things of this earth as evil.

Gnosticism argued that the physical earth was evil and should be rejected in place of a hyper-spirituality.

They forbid marriage, abstinence from foods, and could likely include a litany of any number of physical things here.

But God created the physical world with it’s gifts to be received with joy.

Everything created by God is to be enjoyed and nothing is to be rejected when sanctified with prayer and the Word of God.

1 Timothy 4:4 ESV

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,

Remember what Jesus was talking about in the Lord’s prayer…

Matthew 6:11 ESV

Give us this day our daily bread,

We shouldn’t feel guilty that we have food.

To feel guilty that we have food while others don’t doesn’t help anybody.

It neglects the good gift and doesn’t feed anybody in the process.

“The danger of eating is that we fall in love with the gift; the danger of fasting is that we belittle the gift and glory in our willpower.” —John Piper, A Hunger for God, 21

Just like eating is received with joy.

So fasting is exercised with the same joy.

Now we can turn to Matthew 6:16-18…

A genuine follower of Jesus does not practice righteousness to be seen by other people.

They practice righteousness for an audience of ONE.

They practice righteousness before their Heavenly Father as adopted children in the kingdom of God.

Jesus comes to the next kind of righteousness that people typically saw practiced within Jewish life: fasting.

Matthew 6:16 ESV

“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.

Christian Fasting to an Audience of One.

Matthew 6:1 ESV

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

It’s interesting that Jesus mentions about fasting directly after talking about asking for the bread sufficient for today.

It’s almost as if Jesus assumes that God will provide the food needed for today, but what we will need to learn to do is go without.

We will need to learn to artificially create an environment of dependance on our Heavenly Father.

Fasting to be rewarded by others attention.

The warning is,

“Don’t be like the gloomy hypocrites!”

“Don’t be like those actors that act sad in order to show everyone in their life they are fasting when they do it!”

He repudiates the outward showing of fasting to gain attention from others.

They do this by looking sad and somber.

They do this by contorting their faces in order to be seen by others.

They disfigure their faces so that they can show everyone exactly what they’re doing.

It’s not wrong to fast.

But it’s wrong to fast for the wrong reason.

“To Judaism, a fast was an outward sign of an inward condition. To Jesus, a fast was an inward sign of an inward condition.” —John Piper

Jesus is concerned here, not that others know, but that we like them to know.

Being seen fasting and fasting to be seen are two entirely different things.

You’re fast isn’t ruined because other people find out about it.

It’s not that they find out about it as much as why you want others to find out about it.

It’s not wrong that they know.

It’s wrong that we want them to know so that they view us as spiritually superior.

So if it happens that we have a church plan a corporate fast specific day and time, it’s not wrong.

But it would be wrong if we wanted everybody in the church to know that we are fasting.

The one is a matter of happenstance, and the other is a matter of purpose.

The one is circumstantial, and the other desiring of the praise of men.

Matthew 6:17 ESV

But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face,

The command for the disciples goes against the nature of what the Pharisee’s would do.

Most of our mothers before dinner would often say,

“Make sure you wash up for dinner.”

Now this was more than just something mom wanted you to do in the ancient world.

Part of the traditional Jewish practices were to ceremonially wash before they ate food.

It was a more of a tradition than a cleanliness thing, but washing was emphasized all the same.

I find it funny that in other portions of Scripture Jesus did not care at all about ceremonial washing.

Mark 7:2–5 ESV

they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

Matthew is picking up on the sheer irony of what Jesus commands them to do.

Jesus did NOT care about the traditional ceremonial washing.

BUT with FASTING HE demands washing.

If a person did not wash before they ate, they would become dirty and everyone would know they were fasting.

They would think,

“Look at him, he is dirty and has not washed, he must be fasting.”

“Look how spiritual he is by fasting for so long!”

That was the goal of the Pharisee’s.

They desired to be observed by all in their fasting.

It sheer irony that here Jesus commands his disciples to “wash” in a moment that they would not be demanded to wash from the tradition.

The same thing went for anointing.

Anointing would make a person’s appearance be lifted up.

Similar to a “beard oil” that would make your face have a radiance and glow.

So anointing would bring an excellence to a person’s face.

But in order to not draw attention to themselves,

“Wash your face so that people cannot discern that you’re fasting.”

“My followers fast to an audience of One.”

Fasting to be rewarded by the Father.

Notice the purpose that Jesus lays before His followers.

Matthew 6:18 ESV

that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Jesus again reiterates that He desires His followers to fast to be seen by God and by God alone.

By seeking the reward from the Father’s hand, we seek the giver and not the gift.

Food is a gift.

Fasting is a gift.

And both are to be received with joy before our Father in Heaven.

“If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.” —John Piper, A Hunger for God, 23

Christian Fasting for the Feast to Come.

Fasting from fullness.

The Christian does not fast as though we are empty the Christian fast because we have been filled with all the fullness of God in Jesus Christ.

Fasting then is a constant reminder that we long for more of the fullness that God has offered and will continue to offer in Jesus Christ.

So let me give you an example what this might look like, let’s say you have a friend that is seriously struggling with illness or a job crisis or decision.

Fasting would be the constant reminder every time you feel the pans of hunger that day that we should be drown to prayer.

But we should be drawn to tangibly ask for God‘s kingdom to come.

It has been inaugurated in Jesus Christ in his first coming and fasting is for him to come again and make all things right.

Fasting declares,

“I long for you this much! Oh God.”

Christian fasting is a weapon of holy homesickness, that aches for God’s kingdom, and fights for a greater pleasure in Christ through abstaining.