Putting God First: Fasting

There is work ahead of us. For this sermon to land, you need to be willing to consider if giving up something good for a time offers enough spiritual reward to make fasting valuable.

If you devote a day to the Lord and skip bacon & eggs for breakfast, forgo mac & cheese for lunch, and refuse pork chops and potatoes for supper, your faith in God will grow.

If you refrain from sexual relations with your spouse for a week to concentrate on urgent prayer to the Lord, as Paul suggests in the NT letter to Christians in Corinth, your relationship with your spouse and with God will grow.

If you fast from using your cellular device all Sunday, so you can show love by being present with your household and worship God intentionally, a day fasting from devices will help your spiritual development and sense of peace.

Fasting is a spiritual exercise that can help most people grow in faith. Yet, other than in Lent, 40 days dedicated to preparing for Good Friday and Easter, we don’t often talk about fasting.

Let’s be clear: Fasting is different than dieting. When we diet, we’re trying to lose weight or get healthy. When we fast, we’re building reliance on the Lord. Instead of trying to improve our own attractiveness, fasting helps us reflect on how attractive God is.

To be honest, fasting is not something I do regularly. Shortly after I was ordained, when I had young kids at home, I fasted on Fridays. After supper Thursday until supper Friday I didn’t eat solid food. I drank water, coffee, and apple juice. It worked. I was focused when I prayed on Friday morning. Friday is sermon-writing-day. I had super-concentration while fasting.

I appreciate fasting as a spiritual discipline: my body’s hunger for food echoed my longing for God’s presence and grace. When you’re fasting, it’s clear all day long, at a gut level, that you’re devoting yourself to God. It highly experiential.

Here's the trouble: you know how in late afternoon, around 4, people get hungry and angry: “hangry”? Kids are fussy, parents’ fuse gets short; you know the deal. When I fasted, I got short of patience every Friday before supper. It’s no longer a healthy spiritual practise, if it leads to frustration and tears.

I should have scheduled a hefty snack at 3 pm. Instead, I stopped fasting. I’ve fasted since then, but not weekly.

During my sabbatical, I read a suggestion. Fasting as a devotional exercise doesn’t need to be 100% without food. A day eating simple food, bread and butter or plain rice, could be a successful fast. It’s still a way to experience hunger and thirst for the Lord and grow in faith.

The Bible views people holistically. Both the OT and NT describe body and soul as firmly connected. What you do with your body affects your spirit because your body is a unit.

That’s why some people raise hands in worship or get down on their knees to pray – your body affects spirit.

Same thing if you indulge in sexual activity, drinking alcohol, or other drugs – your body affects your soul.

And if you devote a day to fasting for the Lord or eat bread and drink the cup at the Lord’s Supper – what you do with your body affects all of you, including your soul.

Let’s zoom in on that:

Your body position in prayer or worship affects your spirit.

You know this from talking to other people. If their arms are crossed and they’re turned away, it’ll be a tough conversation. But if their posture is open and relaxed, they’ll probably listen to you.

It’s something to consider when you’re praying, reading the Bible, or singing. Are you slouching? Got your hands in your pocket? Or does your body posture reflect your love, respect, and openness to God?

Fasting concentrates your mind and soul on God.

Not just through hunger.

It’s also the deliberate decision to devote the time talking to God when you’d ordinarily get up to make lunch or rummage around for a snack.

Eating the LS energizes your faith.

We don’t ordinarily eat and drink in worship services. Next Sunday is a special occasion to celebrate Lord’s Supper.

Eating the bread and drinking the cup are physical actions that represent something happening on a spiritual level. In a mysterious way, at the LS, God feeds our faith through the bread and cup.

When we overindulge in food or fantasize about food, we can stray into the sin of “gluttony,” a form of idolatry where food dethrones God as #1. That behaviour affects our relationship with the Lord too.

That is what Jesus teaches a little later in Mt 6:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Matthew 6:25–26 (NIV)

Your invited to rely 100% on our heavenly Father for food, clothing, and everything else you need for life.

Here’s the trouble: just like our first parents, we have trouble trusting God’s promises and instructions. There is something in us working hard to be independent of God, wanting to make our own choices. It’s a battle of our sinful nature against faith.

Our thoughts of self-sufficiency, our determination to be independent of God, break faith with the Lord. It creates distance and a barrier between us and God. It leads to sin, broken relationships, and God’s judgement.

God always punishes sin. What is the punishment for sin? It’s death. And nothing I do can pay for my sin.

That’s why Jesus came. God the Son entered his own creation and became human. He faced all the temptations we do.

In Wednesday’s daily reading this week from Mt 4, we read, “After Jesus fasted for 40 days and forty nights, he was hungry.” Yet Jesus refused the Tempter’s suggestion to misuse the HS’s power to make stones into bread. Jesus held on to God’s assurance in Deut. 8.

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4:4 (NIV)

After a life of obedience and resisting temptations to sin, Jesus was falsely accused and unjustly sentenced to death on a cross.

That cross is where Jesus took the punishment for my sin and your sin upon himself. He died to rescue us from sin and death. Three days later he rose from the grave so we can be raised to life with Jesus: life for Jesus.

 So, fasting is not a way to make up for your sins. Don’t think of fasting as penance to pay for wrongdoing. Fasting is an act of obedience, imitating Jesus’ obedience and Jesus’ spiritual practise of fasting to strengthen our reliance on God’s word and promises for life, fulfillment, and joy.

Fasting is an act of faith, declaring that “life is more important than food.” A day of fasting reinforces the truth that life and joy does not come from bacon or a 7-course meal. Life and joy come from God. So:

“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. Matthew 6:16 (NIV)

Fasting, like other spiritual disciplines, can devolve into virtue-signalling: religious showboating. We’re often tempted to pride, showing others how good and spiritual we are.

In Luke 18, Jesus told a parable about religious showboating. He described 2 men at the temple: Pharisee and tax collector.

The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ Luke 18:11–12 (NIV)

Drawing public attention is all the reward such people receive.

Jesus also described how the tax collector prayed:

The tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Luke 18:13–14 (NIV)

That’s the goal of life: humble reliance on God for everything we need for life and salvation. Forging a deep, deep relationship with God, made possible through Jesus Christ.

Here’s the invitation: Without drawing a lot of attention to your actions, try fasting as a spiritual practice. I’ll give 2 suggestions, you can come up with more, I’m sure.

1. Go a day without sweets or without food as a way of reminding body and soul to keep God as #1 in your life.

Let me put an asterisk here: If you’re under 20, don’t fast too long. A long fast is not healthy when you’re growing.

2. Put your all your devices in a closet and walk away for 4h or 8h so you can focus attention on other people in your household and on worshipping God. It’s especially helpful if Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon is “family time” and includes devotions with the whole household.

When you feel that urge to check your device, use it as a prompt to worship God by praying or reciting a Bible verse you’re working to memorize.