S.O.T.M. Fasting [Matthew 6:16-18]

Stand for the reading of the word of God [Matthew 6:16-18]

We come now to the third illustration our Lord uses to describe the Christian life, and again He uses it in a corrective sense. If you recall in verse 2 of chapter 6 our Lord said, “when you do your giving, do not sound your trumpet before men like the hypocrites do.” Again in verse 5, “when you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to parade around and be seen by men.” And in our text for today, “when you fast do not be like the hypocrites...”

So we see the common theme in these three illustrations is, our religious life is not to be on display to get the praise of man, but it’s supposed to be on display for the glory of God alone. Hypocrites do religious activity for the praise of men…and the Christian is not to be that way. Our giving and how we interact with others is to be done for the glory of God. Our prayer life and contact with God is so we can stay in touch with God, and even the aspect of personal discipline is to be done for the glory of God alone and out of a natural response to who God is and what He has done.

If you notice, all of these aspects used by our Lord are a given, when you give, when you pray, when you fast. He assumes they will be done in the life of the believer. We can see how giving and interaction with others is a part of our Christian life, we see how prayer and contact with God is a part of our Christian life…but fasting??? Does fasting really have a place in the Christians life today? If so, what place does it have? What is biblical fasting? Is fasting commanded in the bible and where? These are all good questions that we’ll attempt to answer.

If you’ll notice your bulletins, the outline of the sermon is more like points about fasting. The reason is, in our day fasting isn’t really practiced much and we don’t really know much about biblical fasting, so I want to give you a biblical background for fasting. Even though fasting has gained popularity in society for health and beauty reasons, that is not biblical fasting. Secular studies on fasting have shown several things. Effects of fasting are feeling better physically and mentally, looking and feeling younger, saving money. Obviously, if you don’t buy food, you’re going to save money.

Resting your system, cleaning out the body, lowering your blood pressure, lowering your cholesterol level, relieving tension, sleeping better, digesting better, feeling euphoric, sharpening your senses, quickening your mental processes, boosting your self-esteem, gaining control of yourself, sharing with those who are hungry and even receiving spiritual revelations. Now listen. That’s an amazing thing if it can give you all that. Everything from dropping some pounds to getting spiritual revelations through fasting, whatever that means. but Friends listen, The Bible never deals with fasting on a physical level. Fasting, in order to get the body beautiful or to improve health, is not the issue. That is not a biblical reason for a fast. Fasting, biblically, is always a corollary to something else.

Only one time did God ever command a fast. There is only one commanded fast from one end of Scripture to the other, just one. And it was a general public national fast. Leviticus 16, God said, on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, that one day a year when sacrifices of the nation are given for the sins of the people for the year past. On that day from sunrise to sunset, you will fast, Yom Kippur. That is the only fast ever given as command by God in the entire Scripture. But notice it is a fast connected with a deep mournful spirit in confessing sin. Now that ought to give you a hint of what fasting is all about. It is never isolated from something else. That’s why I said it’s always a corollary to something else, usually some deep spiritual anxiety of some sort.

Now beyond that one day, the bible never commands a fast, it’s commands us to give, it commands us to pray, but not to fast, yet fasting continued throughout the scripture. Let me just give you a few; Moses, Samson, Samuel, Hannah, Saul, Jonathan, David, Elijah, Jehoshaphat, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Daniel, John the Baptist, Anna, the prophets and teachers at Antioch, the apostle Paul. And most significantly, our own Lord Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, Matthew chapter 4 tells us. that’s a pretty important list of people that fasted.

The saints throughout history fasted from Luther, Calvin, the Wesley’s, Whitfield, and so many other great saints of old fasted throughout their life. And though it certainly is not a common practice today, I do believe our Lord, indirectly teaches us here that we should fast, after all he said, “when you fast...” almost assuming fasting will be a part of our Christian life. So I suppose we need to back up a little bit from the text, to understand the corrective of how to fast properly we need to understand biblical fasting properly.

What exactly is fasting? And what is it’s purpose? There can be no doubt that ultimately it is something which is based upon an understanding of the relationship between the body and the spirit. Man is body, mind and spirit, and these are very intimately related to one another and interact very closely upon one another. We distinguish them because they are different, but we must not separate them because of their inter-relationship and interaction.

There can be no question that physical bodily states and conditions do have a bearing upon the activity of the mind and of the spirit, so that the element of fasting must be considered in this peculiar relationship of body, mind and spirit. What fasting really means, biblically, is abstinence from food for spiritual purposes. That is the biblical notion of fasting which must be separated from the purely physical. The biblical notion of fasting is that, for certain spiritual reasons and purposes, men and women decide to abstain from food.

Fasting had become a regular part of Jewish life, and at the time of Jesus day, the really religious Jews fasted up to twice a week. That was never prescribed by God mind you, as our Lord points out it was simply an ego trip to impress people…and that was absolutely wrong. Fasting shouldn’t even be regarded as just a part of Christian discipline either. I think in our day that’s what it has become. i.e. It’s more or less for the real spiritual elite, the common Christian doesn’t fast, but the really spiritual person…they fast. This is wrong. This is not a biblical understanding of fasting. The Greek word for fast, it’s a very simple word, nēsteia, from nē, which means not and esthiō, which means to eat. It means not to eat, not to eat. To abstain from food.

The word Fasting is almost the equivalent of the phrase to humble oneself before the Lord. As Leviticus 16 says, fasting equals inflicting one’s soul. In other words, it is a self-denial act. Fasting is to deny self. But it is not done in a vacuum. You don’t just say, “Well, I’m going to deny myself. I’m going to say no to myself,” and stop eating for no good reason, because here’s what’s going to happen. If there’s nothing else in your mind, you’re going to go nuts not eating and all you’ll think about is food and you lose the whole import of the fast. Or secondly, you’re going to be patting yourself on the back saying, “Boy, aren’t I something. I’m getting spiritual.” So that fasting never occurs in a vacuum. It never occurs, biblically, without a corollary.

There is a reason to humble yourself in that manner. There is a reason to deny yourself in that manner. There is a reason to inflict yourself in that manner and the reason is a consuming one, so that fasting is almost not something you choose to do, but something you cannot avoid. A very different idea of what most of us would think about when we talk about fasting right.

So, what about the period of the fast. How Long? In the bible the fast could be one day or up 40 days. But it depended on what the individual felt. It wasn’t that if you were some what spiritual you fast for a day…but if you’re really spiritual you fast 40 days like Jesus did. No it’s not like that at all. For example, in 2 Corinthians 6:5 and in 2 Corinthians 11:27, Paul says the same thing twice there. He says – in chronicling his life, he says, “I was in fastings often.” So that in his lifetime there were fastings, different kinds and different times and different reasons and different purposes. And there was no standard uniformity.

And, by the way, if fastings often were true of Paul, you would have thought that he would have said something about the fact that they should be true of us and yet he never uttered a word about that. In all of the commandments and directives that he gave in his letters, never is there one regarding fasting. It is such a spontaneous and such a voluntary and such an individual and such a personal thing.

The only commanded public fast was the Day of Atonement and when Christ died on the cross, the Day of Atonement stopped existing. There’s no longer a Day of Atonement so that the only public fast commanded in the bible is done away with. Whatever there is of fasting that remains it is personal, private, spontaneous, and voluntary. And it is so much that, that the Bible never even commands it, but assumes it. It is almost as if it will happen when it should happen. And that is because fasting is a corollary to something else.

[skip]{{{Sometimes in the Bible, for example, most commonly, a fast was from sunrise to sunset. You didn’t eat from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun. That is a fast. There were, in many cases in the Old Testament, seven day fasts, such as 1 Samuel 31. Daniel chapter 10 talks about a three-week fast. Jesus fasted 40 days in Matthew 4… And then we saw in Luke 18:12 where the Pharisee fasted twice a week. So the times and the length of times are varied depending on the situation in each given element.}}}

I said the in the bible the fast will happen when it should happen. Fasting is always a corollary to some deep spiritual anxiety. So what does that mean? and when does that happen? What provokes a fast? I’m going to give you eight things that provoked a fast in the bible, eight biblical reasons for fasting. There are probably more, but I found at least eight.

One, fasting is a result of lamentation or sorrow. You know some people think that fasting is just sort of a – a ticket to blessing in and of itself. Martin Lloyd Jones said “There are some people who fast because they expect direct and immediate results from it.” In other words, they have a kind of mechanical view of fasting. He called it – the penny in the slot view. You put your penny in the slot, then you pull out the drawer and you have your results.

That is the way some view of fasting. If you want certain benefits, they say, fast. If you fast, you get the results. But fasting is not a spiritual gimmick. It is not a penny in a slot. It isn’t going to produce more spirituality in you or anyone else. There is no merit in a fast unless that fast is a provoked fast for reasons of the heart.

And sorrow is a cause for fasting. Let me give you some illustrations. When the plague hit, the people of God in Joel 1:14 – it says that there was a fast. In Nehemiah chapter 1 in verse 4, when Nehemiah heard the word that the walls of Jerusalem were broken down, his heart was broken. “And it came to pass when I heard these words,” – he says – “I sat down and I wept and I mourned for days and I fasted and I prayed before the God of heaven.”

David, when his enemies became ill, fasted in Psalm 35:13. And David, when Abner died, fasted. In 2 Samuel 3:35, “and when all the people came to cause David to eat meat while it was yet day,” David sware saying ‘so do God to me and more also if I test bread or ought else till the sun be down.’” He says Abner is dead and God strike me down if I can’t fast one day in mourning and sorrow and lamentation over that misspent and wasted life. It’s amazing to me that some of these people were fasting out of lamentation over personal calamity and some were fasting out of lamentation over the calamity of somebody else. Not just a friend, but an enemy even. David not only wept when his friend died and fasted, but even when his enemies were ill he says in Psalm 35.

When David’s child by Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, was struck with a terrible and fatal disease, the Bible says in 2 Samuel 12, “David therefore besought God for the child and David fasted and lay all night upon the earth.” Can’t you see him there? You can identify with that can’t you? I can as a parent. I believe your body responds to the anxiety and hurts of your heart.

The Hebrews used to talk about the fact that the emotions were felt in the bowels. That’s why the Bible tells you about the bowels of compassion or the bowels of mercy. The heart was the mind to the Hebrew because the Hebrew always saw something physical. And so, when it says “as a man thinketh in his heart,” you know that the Hebrew saw the heart as the thinking or cognitive element. But when you felt it, it was in the bowels. Why? Because anxieties in the mind always affect the stomach, don’t they?

That’s why when a loved one is lost, loss of a spouse, child, father, mother, etc. The one grieving usually has no appetite, they don’t want to eat because they’ve been grieved and hurt and food is the last thing on their mind. That’s why when someone is in grief, people will often urge them to eat something, but don’t force them to eat. It’s a natural response to loss. I’m afraid in our day we’ve become so desensitized to death, and tragedy, and hurt that it doesn’t even affect us as it should. I still remember when 911 happened, as I watched the news coverage of the towers falling, I felt sick to my stomach over all those people who lost their lives. But in our day we are barely past one tragedy when we are confronted by another one. I pray the Lord keep us from be desensitized to hurt and tragedy.

Second is the sense of danger causes fasting. There were times when people were in such severe danger that their fear forced them to fast. They couldn’t eat, they were too scared. They were so afraid they couldn’t eat. And they knew that their only protection and deliverance was God. In 2 Chronicles chapter 20 verses 3 and 4, the Ammonites and the Moabites are combined against Jehoshaphat, and they knew that from the human viewpoint they can’t win. The Israelites couldn’t win. And out of shear fear they go without food as they cry out to God that God would deliver them.

I remember Esther, who had reached the place of favor with the king Ahasuerus and then found out that Haman had developed a plot to slaughter all the Jews. And so, she said in effect, tell my people that I will go to him and I will put my life on the line and if I perish, I perish, but I will go on behalf of my people. And the people were afraid and the Bible says they fasted. When Ezra was about to lead the people out of the Babylonian captivity. And as he approaches the journey, he has a most interesting approach. Ezra 8:21 he proclaimed a fast because he knew the dangers they would face. So fear, knowing God is the only source of protection caused fasting.

Thirdly, Conviction of sin causes fasting. This is very common. In fact, on the Day of Atonement, according to Leviticus 23, the reason they were to fast was they were to fast in confessing their sin. They were to fast in confessing their sin. I think about David. David sinned such a great sin, such a heinous sin. And then when he had not confessed his sin, but still held it in, it says that his life juices dried up. He was aching from head to toe. He was sick. He could not eat, he could not sleep, he could not exist. And then he says and when I confessed my sin it was as if all that flood went out from me and I was whole again.

There were many times when God’s people confessed sin. And fasting was part of it, because they didn’t stop to eat. Food was the furthest thing from their mind. Saul of Tarsus was smitten on the Damascus Road, fell into the dirt, rose from that place. And the Bible says that in confessing his sin and turning to the Lord, he fasted for three days, Acts 9:9. Transgression is a cause for fasting. The distress of sin is so deep, the anxiety so far down in the human spirit that fasting isn’t forced. It flows out of a need to focus on a right relationship with God.

We should even be grieved by the sin of those around us and by the sin of the world. I’m not suggesting that if you have never fasted before go out and fast, but, we should be praying for a heart that is compassionate and aware of our own sin and the sin around us that fasting will just be a response that we can’t help.

Fourth, I’ll get through these last one rather quickly. Fourth is seeking revelation from God causes fasting. And I’d add not just seeking revelation but proclamation of God’s word as well. At times when God’s people were either going to receive God’s word or proclaim God’s word, we frequently see a fast. In other words, like Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”

Daniel, in Daniel 9, was reading Jeremiah and he got a little idea that God was going to perform something over a period of 70 years, but he hungered to know the fullness of this. So, he says in verse 3, “I set my face unto the Lord God to seek by prayer and supplications with fasting and sack cloth and ashes. Then I prayed to the Lord my God and made my confession and said Oh Lord the great and awesome God keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love Him and them that keep His commandments.” And then he goes through this confession and so forth. And he is hungering for God, to see him with a pure heart and that God would reveal His word.

I can identify with that, there are times when I’m deep in God’s word and desire to understand it more that time escapes me and I don’t eat, the same could be said of proclaiming the word. Sunday’s I don’t eat this after worship, food just doesn’t set well.

Fifth, Fear of divine judgement causes fasting. In Jonah, we have an illustration of this. In Jonah chapter 3, the message was given to the people of Nineveh that God was going to judge them. And what was their response? The people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast. They poured out their hearts. They were afraid of the judgment of God.

We don’t have enough of that today. If you go around preaching the judgment of God, people get mad at you. And the people that get mad at you aren’t the unsaved, they’re the saved. They say you don’t have any love if you preach God’s judgment. If somebody’s going to die and perish and go to hell, I think the loving thing to do is to warn them, don’t you? But we don’t really care about the lost the way we should. When’s the last time you skipped a meal because you were so exercised in your spirit over our nation which is condemned to hell without Christ? Or over our world, or over your neighbors, over somebody you know and love? Oh Lord convict us!

Sixth, choosing Godly leadership causes a fast. In Acts chapter 13, when the church in Antioch appointed Saul and Barnabas they did so after a time of fasting and prayer. This would be beneficial for the church today if we were so concerned about our leadership that we couldn’t eat, we typically feast over some decisions where we should be fasting.

Seven, seeking direction from God. In Genesis 24, the servant of Abraham was seeking a wife for Abraham’s son Isaac fasted while seeking direction from God. I believe in 1 Corinthians when Paul refers to being in fasts often he was referring to while seeking direction from God.

Eight, and this really the key to it all, Fasting is always linked to prayer. I’ve searched the Scripture from one end to the other regarding fasting. I’ve read every part that I could read. And where the Bible talks about fasting. I find no times where fasting is without praying. Fasting then is not an end in itself, but is a corollary to a spiritual struggle that draws us into the presence of God.

Let me add one final thought on this. Prayer is always linked with fasting. And true fasting always comes out of a pure heart. It is a response to a pure heart. That’s so important. It is a response to a pure heart. You say, “Well, what do you mean by that?” Well, I mean this. That if your heart isn’t right and you fast, your fasting is a sham.

That was the problem with the religious leaders of Jesus day, their fasting was for show, but true fasting is a heart that is consecrated to God and weaned from the world. I hope this helps us understand fasting better, but mainly I pray it convicts us to pray we would have hearts ripe for fasting. Let us pray.

Help us Lord to be compassionate. Help us not to be desensitized. Help us not to be so preoccupied with creature comforts to which we can so easily retreat, that the real world never touches us. Give us the heart of Christ who could know every suffering that ever occurred in all of human history, and yet weep over one person, like He did for His friend Lazarus.

God soften our hearts, sensitize us, draw us to Your presence as those who pray so truly and so faithfully that fasting will occur when it should occur. Touch every life here this morning with that which is needed. In Christ’s name. Amen.