Fasting

Last time I taught through disciplines and why they are important. We looked at how Jesus not only is the King and savior but is also the way of life. He is the human that fills the gap we have created. He is the human who walks with God rather than using their own wisdom to go their own way.

- The one aspect of this that has been incredibly helpful for me is understanding that the world has an agenda, you can make it spiritual or not. But the world wants to form you into it's image. Wants you to buy what it's selling, eat what it's making, take in all that it has to offer so that you begin to look like it. Yet we are the images of God, who are marred by sin yes, but Jesus has cleansed us of that sin, allowing us to come before the thrown boldly, looking more and more like Kingdom citizens we are. This is the 10,000 ft view of spiritual disciplines and why they are incredibly important.

The tension that we feel when we think of spiritual disciplines and maybe you are feeling it even when I talk is a little of what Trip Lee hit on last week and it's why I wanted to do one more teaching, a little more in depth for fasting. He hit on it briefly but he talked about the idea of we are a body but a lot of times we have this dualist mindset that only our soul matters and because that is saved because of Jesus we can do whatever we want with our body.

- But the important thing is what we do with our body matters greatly!

“Our bodies are a part of God’s mission in the world.” Trip Lee. Therefore, we must take care of it, but we also need to submit it to the Lord, all of it.

This even makes sense with the formation I was talking about last time. There are full body disciplines so our body can be formed to look more like Jesus. This is a tough one to wrap our minds around but it is important.

- Examples of this disciplines are communion and tithing. These are disciplines that we use our body to participate, we are physically stepping into them so that we can be formed. However fasting is tough.

“Fasting is a different matter (comparing to communion and tithing). Fasting hurts. Fasting can become exaggerated into an excessive and neurotic indulgence. Fasting, carried too far, can harm the body… and fasting, submitted to theological and spiritual scrutiny, asserts that soul and body are, and that neither is without the other. For many Christians, that itself is a disturbing precept better left unexplored.” Phyllis Tickle.

- Word fasting shows up 20 times in the NT. And 44 in the OT. We see in the NT that fasting is something Jesus does, he teaches on a couple of times, and then we see it once in Acts.

John Calvin “Whenever people are to pray to God concerning any great matter, it would be expedient to appoint fasting along with prayer. Their sole purpose in this kind of fasting is to render themselves more eager and unencumbered for prayer…. With a full stomach our mind is not so lifted up to God.”

- This quote sheds some light on why we often don’t look into fasting or even want to think about doing it. We often attribute it to those who are super spiritual or something that is done to earn salvation. Yet as she said and as Trip Lee said, the body and the Spirit are one. We cannot separate them.

o Paraphrasing Trip Lee from Sunday, “The body is not gross, the body is beautiful and we need to walk in that beauty.” Goes on to say “Our physical bodies, this is what we have to be faithful to Jesus with.”

§ So not only doesn't it biblically and theologically line up that what we do with our body matters but also we see fasting show up in scripture. If we believe that we are followers of Jesus then we need to look to his life as the example and we see Jesus fasting right before his ministry begins.

Matthew 4:1-4

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,

“ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”[1]

Right before this Jesus was baptized and a miraculous thing happened. Where we see God the Father speaking over the Son and the Spirit coming upon Jesus to begin his earthly ministry. So this beautiful. So something about this moment leads Jesus to go into the wilderness and to fast.

- This is what one pastor calls sacred moments. This pastor did a study on all of the times that a fast shows up in the bible and what they found was one of the moments that fasting shows up is during a sacred moment. And this is one, a moment where God moves in a powerful way, such a powerful way that the only way they can respond is by not eating.

o Scot McKnight – “Fasting is the natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous sacred moment in life.”

Uses the framework of A – B – C

o If one wants to see the full Christian understanding of fasting, one must begin with A, the grievous sacred moment. That sacred moment generates a response (B), in this case fasting. Only then, only when the sacred moment is given it's full power does the response of fasting generate results (C) – and then not always, if truth be told.

§ Fasting is a response

The majority of fasting appearances are in regards to sin and repentence. Why?

- “There is an act of stopping the normal thing that we do, going along thinking that things are great but then you see your sin and you embody it. It's not about punishing yourself but about grieiving over the state of ourselves and our world that thought this way of living was okay. Too often there is a failure to feel the weight of sin.”

Joel 2:12

- 12 “Yet even now,” declares the Lord,

- “return to me with all your heart,

- with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; [2]

Fasting because of Sin – 1 Sam 7:6

- 3 And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, “If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.” 4 So the people of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtaroth, and they served the Lord only.

- 5 Then Samuel said, “Gather all Israel at Mizpah, and I will pray to the Lord for you.” 6 So they gathered at Mizpah and drew water and poured it out before the Lord and fasted on that day and said there, “We have sinned against the Lord.” And Samuel judged the people of Israel at Mizpah.[3]

Third is a tragedy – Psalm 35

“Events so grievous that our only response is to stop everything and not eat… In the biblical worldview death is such a tragedy and so far from what God intended for creation that my onmly response is to stop and not eat. I cannot go on acting like everything is okay.”

- 11 Malicious witnesses rise up;

- they ask me of things that I do not know.

- 12 They repay me evil for good;

- my soul is bereft.

- 13 But I, when they were sick—

- I wore sackcloth;

- I afflicted myself with fasting;

- I prayed with head bowed on my chest.

- 14 I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother;

- as one who laments his mother, I bowed down in mourning. [4]

This was David for his enemies.

- John Goldingray says “The Psalm assumes that merely to feel sadness is not enough; because we are physical creeatures and not just minds and spirits, it would be odd not to express sorrow in abstention from food and then afflicting one’s spirit and one’s self.”

Dallas Willard “But the new life in Christ simply is not an inner life of belief and imagination, even if spiritually inspired. It is a life of the whole embodied person in the social context.”

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Mt 4:1–4). (2016). Crossway Bibles. [2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Joe 2:12). (2016). Crossway Bibles. [3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (1 Sa 7:3–6). (2016). Crossway Bibles. [4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Ps 35:11–14). (2016). Crossway Bibles.