from fasting to feasting
Notes
Transcript
Claim: God exposes hollow fasting and transforms it into genuine feasting — and calls his people to a whole-life devotion that the Lord's Supper seals and sustains.
Focus: The movement from self-referential fasting to joy-filled feasting is the movement from empty religion to life wholly given to God.
Function: That the congregation would recognise and repent of religious self-performance, and receive afresh the joy of God dwelling with them in Christ — expressed and renewed at the Lord's Supper.
PRAY
As God’s people, should we fast?
It’s a perfectly reasonable and fairly common question today,
as it was in Zechariah’s days.
The people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-Melek, together with their men, to entreat the Lord by asking the priests of the house of the Lord Almighty and the prophets, ‘Should I mourn and fast in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?’
A delegation travels from Bethel to Jerusalem. They've made the journey to ask the priests and the prophets something that's been on their minds.
For seventy years — they have commemorated the destruction of the temple with a fast in the same month - as we read in 2 Kings 25.
IN fact they had 4 fasts as we read later in chapter 8 to mourn different issues from that time period:
Mourning the destruction of the temple, mourning the fall of Jerusalem, the death of their govenor.
It sounds like a reasonable, Faithful. Disciplined. Consistent question.
The logic going, well
now things are changing. The exiles are returning. The temple is being rebuilt,
do we still need to do this? Can we stop the fast?
It sounds devout. It sounds like exactly the kind of question a faithful community should be asking their spiritual leaders.
But God's answer doesn't come back as a simple yes or no.
The Lord could have said ‘well the temple is rising but not yet finished, it will be done in 2 years so you can stop then.
But the Lord comes back with a lesson, rather than an answer, that cuts far deeper - they get a lot more than they bargained for.
And by the time we get to the end of chapter 8, the original question looks almost beside the point.
And i think it’s a lesson that can help us answer the same question we sometimes have today.
Should we fast?
So as not ot dissapoint too much, there will be neither and yes or no - but there will be a lesson - that might, as it did then, make the original question seem almost beside the point.
In short, God isn't just answering a question about fasting.
He's doing something much bigger.
He's exposing the emptiness of a selfish religion turned - and then,
in a stunning reversal, he's transforming it into something overflowing with joy.
The movement of these two chapters is the movement we all need to make.
From Selfish to Christ Focused Joy.
1. Fasting for Yourselves (7:1–14)
1. Fasting for Yourselves (7:1–14)
The Lord does what he often does, he answers their question with questions
‘Ask all the people of the land and the priests, “When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted? And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves?
The question behind the question pinpointed like only the oniscient all knowing God can do:
For seventy years they had fasted. And God says: was any of it really for me?
Notice he doesn't just challenge the fasting - when they didn’t eat.
He challenges the times of eating as well.
The religious observance and the ordinary meals — both of them had been for themselves.
The whole rhythm of their life, the sacred and the everyday, had become about self.
They weren't fasting in lament and repentance of their sin - which cased the destruction of the temple.
They were fasting to feel good about themselves.
Maybe To perform their grief.
To maintain their identity as the faithful ones.
To fit in with those around.
The fast had become a monument to their own religious seriousness.
And God sees straight through it.
This isn't new, God says to them.
The pre-exile prophets carried the same message from God — over and over again.
Justice. Mercy. Compassion for the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, the poor.
That's what I wanted. That's what true religion looks like.
And what did you do?
‘But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry.
They stopped their ears. They hardened their hearts. And so the disaster came — exile, scattering, the land lying desolate.
So did the punishment of God,
did His work of allowing them to be exiled change their hearts?
Did these new fasts cause them to mourn and repent rightly of their rebelion of God that casued their exile?
No says the Lord - you even turned the fasts into something for yourself.
In some sad irony, the fasts they claimed as a mourning over false religion, had become false religion themselves.
They fasted for themselves, not for God.
This is a devastating passage.
And it needs to be heeded today also by us.
Because the temptation to fast for yourself — to perform religion for our own benefit — doesn't belong only to sixth-century BC Judah.
It's one of the most persistent and subtle sins of religious people in every age.
It often, as it does in this passage,
shows up clearest in the people who shout most about their own devotion to the Lord.
This is how I worship God, Look at me!
THIS is the BEST way, the ONLY way.
I’m not talking about those who humbly encourage one another to devotion to the Lord,
But those who subtly draw worship of themselves
who value show over substance,
Performance over purity
False humility over Christs Alone
Experience and feeling over truth and humble repentance
It’s subtle but others start to value impressive people, rather than true godliness through faithful reading and trusting God’s way and His exulted saviour Jesus.
The fasting — whatever form it takes — has become about them.
And God's question cuts through every generation: is it really for me?
Not the outward form. The heart.
We not only need to be careful of those like this, but we need to seriously check ourselves:
Was the prayer really for The Lord, or was it to feel spiritual, or so others would think I’m holy?
Was the giving really for the Lord, or was it to feel generous?
Was the church attendance really for the Lord, or was it to look like I’m a good Christian?
God isn't impressed by religious performance.
He never has been. What he wants is the heart. Turned toward him. Genuinely.
Please don’t mistake what we are saying.
we are not talking about godly disciplines
- sometimes we read our bible, or come to church, or pray, not because we ‘feel like it’ but because we know it’s good and right before God,
so we discipline ourselves, even with a bad attitude - to come and do anyway.
That is not the sin of this passage - what they ‘felt’ about the fast is almost irrelevbant.
It’s what they used the fast for. For themselevs!
To choose God’s ways even when we don’t fell like it or want it because you know it’s his will and desire for you, is actually almost the opposite of their behaviour.
That is clearly not fasting for yourslef, but for God as we sacrifice our own desires for his ways.
Obeying God, even when we don’t ’feel it’ is actually evidence of the good fruit of your ‘heart’ being aligned with God.
This wanring is for those who come to look good, to feel good, to impress, to be respected, to he honoured by man.
Do not fast for yourself.
2. Fasts Become Festivals (8:1–19)
2. Fasts Become Festivals (8:1–19)
This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I am very jealous for Zion; I am burning with jealousy for her.’ This is what the Lord says: ‘I will return to Zion and dwell in Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the Faithful City, and the mountain of the Lord Almighty will be called the Holy Mountain.’
The tone shifts completely. Chapter 7 was diagnosis of a heart disease.
Chapter 8 is the cure — and it's staggering. - The cure is God’s jealousy.
God's jealousy here is not childish or bad tempered like ours.
It's not wounded pride.
As we said a few week back, It's the burning,
fierce loyalty of a husband who will not let go of his wife.
It's the love that drove the whole story of redemption, salvation.
I am jealous for my people. I will not leave them in exile. I am coming back to dwell with them.
And then we get the picture of what that return looks like:
This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each of them with cane in hand because of their age. The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there.’
So normal - but glorious?
This is peace made visible.
Safety. Rest. Joy.
Children playing in the streets — not hiding, not fleeing — playing.
Old people sitting in the sun.
This is what it looks like when God comes back to dwell with his people.
Home. A good Home.
in the next few verese,
The exiles are gathered from east and west. The curse of judgement v13 becomes blessing.
Judah — once a byword for disaster — becomes a byword for flourishing.
God says to the returned remnant: your hands were weak, the work was hard, there was no peace, everyone was against everyone. But now? Let your hands be strong. v9,
There were no wages, now there are v10,
no saftey, now saftey,
While God’s people may not have changed with their self serving religion.
God has promised to deal with them differently,
not as their sins deserve but
But now I will not deal with the remnant of this people as I did in the past,’ declares the Lord Almighty.
‘The seed will grow well, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop their dew. I will give all these things as an inheritance to the remnant of this people.
God promises blessing despite what they deserve.
And in response to God’s blessing, here is what they must do:
These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts; do not plot evil against each other, and do not love to swear falsely. I hate all this,’ declares the Lord.
The restoration, salvation, peace of God doesn't make moral obediecne to him optional.
It makes them urgent. You are becoming a people among whom God dwells. Live like it.
Truth. Justice. No plotting, no false dealing.
No fasting or feasting for yourself!
This is not the condition for the blessing. It's the shape of life in the light of the blessing.
And then — finally, after two full chapters — the answer to the original question arrives:
SHould we fast?
This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘The fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months will become joyful and glad occasions and happy festivals for Judah. Therefore love truth and peace.’
All four fasts. Every one of the commemorative mourning fasts, will now be festivals full of Joy. Gladness. Happy days.
When God dwells with his people, The mourning is over the celebrations begin.
Not suppressed. Not managed. Over.
Because what the fasts mourned — the absent God
— has been reversed.
God is returning. God is dwelling with his people. The reason for the fasting is gone.
So in realy history, the Israelietes kept observing the fasts until the temple was rebuilt 2 years later,
at which point they stopped them and turned them into celebratory feasts.
Perhaps even more interestingly for us,
when that temple was eventually destroyed in 70AD the Jewish leaders reintroduced the Tisha B'Av — the fifth month fast.
So what does this mean for us today?
I actually think the Jews help us here.
Why do they still observe the 5th month fast?
Becasue they think the temple no longer exists,
and so they are to mourn their sin and the subsequent loss of the temple representing God’s presence and peace upon them.
IS that what Christians believe?
By no means!
Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’
Jesus Christ is the temple, destroyed and rebuilt in 3 days, died and rose again on the cross.
Jesus is the returning God, dwelling among us (John 1:14).
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The commemorative fast has nothing left to commemorate if Christ is in us.
The mourning is over - Jesus the temple lives and reigns on high and in our hearts!
The fasting laws of the OT are fulfilled in Christ.
But we do still have a command to commemorate the destruction of our temple.
The Lord’s Supper does just that.
We remember, repent, mourn our sin that Casue the body broken and blood shed of our Lord Jesus - the temple, the dwelling place of God.
But it’s no longer a fast, it’s a feast! A meal, a celebration.
A mourning of sin and destruction of the temple, that is immediately a meal of celebration, and festival, looking forward to the final return of Christ where we will feast again with him!
Our Fast has become a Feast in Christ.
And so should we fast you ask again, until Christ returns again?
15 ‘so now I have determined to do good again to Jerusalem and Judah. Do not be afraid. 16 These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts; 17 do not plot evil against each other, and do not love to swear falsely. I hate all this,’ declares the Lord.
I think, as with all the OT laws that are fulfilled in Christ, the question is not not, should we,
But in Christ what does fasting now look like?
Jesus himself said in the Sermon on the Mount about the Law of God:
you have heard it said, but I say to you.
He didn't come to make the law easier. He came to drive it deeper.
Do not Murder becomes do not even hate.
Do not commit Adultery becomes do not even lust.
And so fasting — food abstention as a religious act — becomes the orientation of an entire life toward God.
We no longer sacrifice food, we sacrifice our whole lives to and for God.
We no longer commemorate the death of Jesus on religious days, but everyday all the time.
Isn’t this the Lord’s point and accusation against their fasting for themsleevs?
Instead of specific fast, - do mercy and justice, and all of life for me,
19 This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘The fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months will become joyful and glad occasions and happy festivals for Judah. Therefore love truth and peace.’
Love truth and peace.
That's what Paul means in
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
Not a meal skipped. A life given.
That's the fast that is fulfilled only IN chirst, and fulfils and surpasses every OT fast.
Not food for a day. Everything, every day.
Should we fast?
I don’t, think we are given a yes or no in the NT.
What is important is that we
do not do anything for ourseleves, but we live our lives as a fast for God:
These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts; do not plot evil against each other, and do not love to swear falsely. I hate all this,’ declares the Lord.
We’re out of time,
But just look how God will use a church that fasts our whole lives for God, a church that loves truth and peace:
This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Many peoples and the inhabitants of many cities will yet come, and the inhabitants of one city will go to another and say, “Let us go at once to entreat the Lord and seek the Lord Almighty. I myself am going.” And many peoples and powerful nations will come to Jerusalem to seek the Lord Almighty and to entreat him.’ This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In those days ten people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, “Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.” ’
The nations flock in when they see God’s church live rightly.
Ten people to every 1 Christian saying: take us with you. We have heard that God is with you.
Pray
