The Discipline of Fasting

SERMON: 2007-10-22--sm0733--the-discipline-of-fasting SOURCE DURATION: 00:33:15.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.90 APPROVED: false REASON: All candidates consist of repetitive lyrics typical of a hymn or worship song, indicating that the main sermon content has already concluded and this material is non-sermon (music). Since all shown material is non-sermon in nature, I select the final candidate index as per the instructions. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:27:46.120-00:33:13.760 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well let me begin this morning by asking you a question. How many of you here have ever fasted for religious or spiritual reasons? Would you do me a favor and just put up your hand? All right, not a bad representation, but I'm willing to bet that if I were to ask you how many of you have ever contributed to the poor or spent time in prayer, probably all hands would go up. Is that not true? Let's just demonstrate it. Given to the poor, spent time in prayer, just about everybody. And what that illustrates, I think, is that though fasting is clearly evident in scripture, it has pretty much fallen out of favor in our self-indulgent society. We ask ourselves the question, why in the world would anybody want to fast? Why would anybody want to put his or her body through the discomfort of hunger or thirst? And yet scripture so clearly teaches us that fasting is a significant spiritual discipline. Note again how Jesus begins this passage. He says, "When you fast," do not look somber as the hypocrites do, referring to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who are fasting as a show to people as opposed to a demonstration of piety towards God. The passage doesn't say if you fast, but rather when you fast. And though I'm not so naive as to suppose this morning that by one presentation on this I'm gonna persuade you to take up fasting as a regular spiritual discipline, let me at least try to share with you in the time that we have what scripture teaches about fasting and why it's important as a spiritual discipline. So let's begin with the observation then that fasting is a soundly established biblical practice. Now here's a good test of Bible knowledge for you this morning. I wonder who knows what is the first recorded instance of fasting in the Bible? Anybody know? It's Moses on Mount Sinai when he receives the commandments of God. It's recorded for us in Exodus 34 28 where scripture says, "Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water." Clearly an instance where he draws his life from God because nobody can go without drinking for forty days. You can do it without eating but not without drinking. And then the first biblical injunction towards fasting, and you know if you're taking notes you might want to track some of these references, is Leviticus 16 29 where scripture says, "This is to be a lasting ordinance for you. On the tenth day of the seventh month you must deny yourselves and not do any work." The phrase "you must not deny yourselves" is generally understood as referring to fasting and in the NIV that's in fact one of the marginal notes. The tenth day of the seventh month in the Old Testament is what? It's the Old Testament day of atonement and this is the only day in all of scripture where the Israelites are commanded to fast typically from sundown of one day to sundown the next day. Now from here on in there are many instances in the Old Testament where God's people fast. I'll give you a couple of references quickly, Judges 20 26. This is in the context of the civil war between the tribes of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin and the scripture says that all Israel fasted in face of the horror of having to kill their own brethren. Other passage 2nd Samuel 12 16 this is the passage where David after his sin with Bathsheba fasts for a period of time because their child has become ill. God is determined to take the child from them and David is fasting earnestly for the child's life. Moving to the New Testament Luke 2 37 we have the story of the prophetess Anna. The Bible says that she didn't cease day and night to be in the temple praying and worshipping God and the Bible says she did so with prayer and fasting. She was looking for the coming of the Messiah and then Acts chapter 13 to the early church the teachers and the prophets are gathered together. They're praying and they're worshiping the Lord and they're fasting and it's in the context of that fast that Barnabas and Saul known to us as the Apostle Paul are set apart for the work of missionary work. Their apostolic journeys begin at that point in time. Later on in the next chapter Acts 14 we have a similar situation where leadership in the church the elders are appointed after much prayer and fasting. Think how many churches in the world today would be in much better shape if their leadership were chosen after not only prayer but also after fasting and then of course there's the example of Jesus Matthew 4 and Luke 4 a reference to it also in Mark's gospel he begins his ministry with a 40-day fast and then in addition to that there is the injunction of Jesus in Matthew 9 14 and 15 this is in the context of John's disciples who were coming to him and they say how is it that we in the Pharisees fast but your disciples do not fast and Jesus answered how can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with him the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them then they will fast and so here we have an ongoing instruction and expectation that as long as Jesus has not yet returned and is in heaven there will at least be seasons when God's people are invited to engage in a fast so fasting is a well-established and a sound biblical practice even though there are very few immediate directives that are addressed to it second observation I want to make this morning then is that fasting in scripture and in history can take a number of different forms there is what's known as a partial fast the partial fast is where you deny yourself perhaps certain foods for a certain period of time the best example of that biblically is Daniel and his four friends they come into Nebuchadnezzar's palace they want to feed them rich food and Daniel and his friends do not want to defile themselves with food that is unclean and so they choose to eat only vegetables and drink only water the Roman Catholic traditional practice of not eating meat on Fridays or abstaining from certain things during the season of land or even the Muslim practice of fasting during the daytime in Ramadan is an indication of a partial fast then there is what's known as a normal fast and a normal fast is what you think of when a person doesn't take food drink or both in some instances the typical biblical fast runs for one day typically from sundown to sun-up and will often include not drinking and not eating for that period of time but there are other instances of a three-day fast Esther when Mordecai is brewing his plan to destroy all of Israel in the book of Esther and she's called upon to go to the king she fasts for three days and that fast that David engaged in earlier when his son was so ill if I read scripture right that was probably a seven-day fast that's a normal fast it will often include drinking but certainly not eating and then there is what's known as an extreme or a radical fast that's for much longer periods of time Moses is 40-day fast certainly falls into that the fast of Jesus in the New Testament for 40 days that's a typical radical fast you can go about three days without drinking before you run into serious trouble and I remember from IRA terrorists who would go on hunger strikes back in the 70s and I think maybe in the 80s that you can go without food for maybe 60 or 70 days but by then you're seriously damaged and beyond that you very quickly die and that is certainly not the biblical recommendation so it's an established biblical practice it can take a number of different forms and of course it serves multiple purposes I mean one of the first questions that we ask in our comfortably self-indulgent society is what good am I to God when I'm hungry right and what spiritual function does not eating serve when I can do all of the things that I'm accustomed to doing well biblically speaking a fasting serves a number of purposes the first is related to health reasons now in the Bible this is fairly rare the only instance that I can think of is that story that I referred to a few moments ago Daniel and his friends not wanting to defile themselves with a king's rich food but one of the the interesting schizophrenic aspects of North American society and I don't know if you've ever thought about this is that on the one hand dieting books and on the other hand cookbooks are both bestsellers all the time so we stuff ourselves and then we feel badly that we've stuffed ourselves and then we have to diet or do whatever else to get ourselves back to where we want to be fifty percent of North Americans are overweight forty five billion dollars a year is spent on a variety of dieting programs those programs have about a five percent success rate two-thirds regain their lost weight in one year and almost everybody after five years and one of the reasons for that is that your body adjusts to the lack of food that you're taking in and for that reason a lot of people that try to diet by denying themselves food discover that very quickly they put it back on the Bible doesn't talk much as I said about dieting for health reasons it does say that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and that therefore they ought to be yielded to God and we ought to take care of them and we ought to take care of them well health reasons more importantly from a biblical point of view is to help us control our passions now if I were to ask you this morning what do you think is the strongest passion that most people struggle with chances are that you would say our sexual drive and yes sexual drive is a powerful drive but it is far exceeded by our drive for food and drink long before an individual reaches sexual maturity they hunger and thirst and cry out for food and long after our sexual prowess has begun to wane or perhaps disappeared all together hunger and thirst are still major issues and so because they are such a strong urge and listen to me carefully they often can be at odds with what God's will is for our lives and you can illustrate that simply by looking at your own life what happens when you're hungry or what happens when you're thirsty it begins to dominate every part of our lives and if you look at scripture you will discover that at every major temptation it was food that was the issue Adam and Eve in the garden Israel in the wilderness Jesus with his temptations make these stones into bread his response was you don't live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and so the test of our spirituality is not so much how obedient am I to God when all my needs are satisfied and I feel comfortably stuffed and good about myself the question is will I still do what he wants me to do well I still trust him and I'm hungry and when I'm thirsty and so fasting in scripture is one way of coming to grips with not being controlled by the lusts and the passions of our body and our mind the Apostle Paul put it this way he said I don't run like a man running aimlessly I do not fight like a man beating the air no I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others I myself will not be disqualified for the prize and perhaps nowhere else is the difference between being a Christian and living in the world more clearly demonstrated then in this difference between feeding the flesh catering to our own indulgences and learning for a greater cause to lay aside our desires our passions and our longings in order to be obedient to the will of God so for health reasons to control our passions and then of course to grieve over our sin we read in Deuteronomy 9 18 the words of Moses once again I fell prostrate before the Lord for 40 days and 40 nights I eat no bread and drink no water because of all the sin you had committed doing what was evil in the Lord's sight and so provoking him to anger you might recognize that text after Moses came down from the mountain he had just fasted for 40 days and 40 nights now he's coming down the mountain they've made his golden calf he is furious and he falls on his knees before God and now he fasts in other 40 days and another 40 nights so 80 days in rapid succession clearly only empowered by God's presence and by God's power but he grieves for the sin of the people of Israel and in one Samuel 7 6 we read the same thing when they had assembled at Misbah they drew water and poured it out before the Lord and on that day there they confessed we have sinned against the Lord again in the context of Israel's battle with the Philistines and their need to surrender to him wholeheartedly and to get rid of their idols sackcloth and ashes in Scripture are often the visible sign of that kind of repentance we read in 1 Kings 21 27 that King Ahab when he heard these words that is the judgment of God pronounced on his household because he had stolen Naboth's vineyard he tore his clothes put on sackcloth and fasted and he lay in sackcloth and he went around meekly interestingly enough God took note of his grievous repentance and withheld judgment in his lifetime and made sure that it would come in the lifetime of his children so grieving over seen is part of fasting and then of course there is the whole issue of seeking the Lord wholeheartedly we read in Joel 2 12 even now declares the Lord return to me with all your heart with fasting and weeping and mourning seek me with all your heart I think you'll agree with me this morning when I say that very often when we seek the Lord for you know some answer to prayer or some solution to a problem that we face or maybe a sin that we need to overcome or relationships that need to be restored we we make it a matter of prayer we pray maybe for a day maybe for a week maybe a little bit longer but then when the answer isn't forthcoming we just put it on the shelf justified by saying well the Lord must not be interested in me or interested in answering my prayer and on we go with life and what fasting indicates in Scripture and indicates to the Lord is that I'm did serious about the answer that I'm looking for and I'm not gonna let go of you Lord God until you you either give me what I'm asking for or you can show me whatever else it is that you're doing in this situation so it is an outward demonstration of our seriousness before God it's not a tool for manipulation because God doesn't respond to manipulation very well if you haven't discovered that in your life he just as well you know I'm God and you're not and you can throw all the tantrums you want and I'm not gonna give you what I don't want to give you but when it comes from our heart and we're seeking him with all of our heart sometimes that's the only way to break through those strongholds remember one of the versions in the gospel about that young lad that was demon possessed and Jesus says this coin does not come out but by prayer in fasting fasting is an indication of seriousness before God and then of course throughout scripture when we seek him wholeheartedly sometimes it's for protection and deliverance sometimes it's for clarity and direction but in all of those cases they're instances where we seriously engage the Lord and say Lord I'm not gonna let go of you I'm not gonna let go of you until I hear from you and you guide me and you direct me and you protect me how many blessings do we miss out on sometimes a wonder because we're not prepared to go through the discomfort of really fighting this out with God and laying hold of him until he fulfills his word and fulfills his promises in our lives it's not that he's hesitant to grant us blessings even though that's often our experience of it isn't it we we try so hard and we get so little and we have so many questions and so many doubts like God why don't you make this a whole lot easier but sometimes God is just withholding things to make sure that we really know what it is that we're asking for and that he can know that we're really serious about what it is that we're seeking him for so it's an established biblical practice can take many different forms it serves multiple purposes and let me just talk and a few of these closing moments about some very practical considerations the text makes clear how easily this too can be distorted to our own advantage the Pharisees clearly used fasting as a way of making their own mark only one commandment to the best of my recollection and if you know otherwise correct me only one commandment in the Old Testament for one day's fast a year they prided themselves in fasting twice a week but very clearly as the text says not to be seen by God but to be seen by other people and like all other spiritual disciplines we ought to stay away from trying to impress other people with our spirituality not as much a danger with fasting as I said earlier than maybe giving to the poor and spending time in prayer simply because it is much less frequently engaged in but nevertheless a danger that we can easily succumb to you so our fasting should be spirit directed not something you just jump into you but something that you feel the prompting of God's Holy Spirit maybe you're in an impossible situation maybe there's something that isn't yielding maybe there's the nudging of God's Holy Spirit deep in your heart maybe you'll come away from a service like this uncomfortable on the inside because the Lord is saying to you it's time for you to deny yourself some food and drink and to seek me earnestly because I want to take you the next step in my life with you if he does that hard as it may be try to step out and obedience as we'll see in a few moments you'll be richly rewarded we need to be sensible about it if you've never skipped a meal in your life don't start in a 40-day fast you won't do very well and you'll never do it again if you're engaged in a lot of physical work be realistic about what you can handle if you have an eating disorder don't use our religious reason to proclaim an unholy fast which will do you in be sensible about starting where you can start and seeing what you can handle do it wisely know what to expect if you've never fasted most people think that the biggest problem they face when they fast is that they get hungry do you know that well I want to tell you that's the least of your problems because after a day or two days your hunger pangs disappear your stomach shrinks and your body readjusts but if you're having coffee drinker and you're not drinking coffee I'll guarantee you'll have headaches because you'll have a caffeine withdrawal you'll have periods of weakness not as much as people think but there will be moments of weakness moments of dizziness and you'll get cold and not only that the worst part of fasting and my limited experience with fasting is the sense of loneliness especially around meal times you cannot appreciate the degree to which eating a meal together feeds our souls and provides fellowship and you can sit at the dinner table it's painful enough to watch everybody else eat but the sense of not participating puts you in a whole other space and that of course is part of the purpose of fasting because even while physically you are withdrawing from the indulgences of the world spiritually you get attuned to God sometimes in ways that you were not attuned before know what to expect be realistic about it and then remember and this is important the Lord rewards obedience notice again how the passage ends your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you what kind of rewards I cannot tell you many people tell that spiritual clarity increases during or after a fast it may take the form of an answered prayer it may take the form of a breakthrough in an area that you've been fighting for it may just be the sense of God's approval because you've taken up your cross and you followed him and his will has been more important than the desires and the passion of your body doesn't make a lot of sense in today's world only makes sense in today's world from a health and fitness point of view but it makes huge sense biblically from a spiritual point [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:27:46.120; remove through 00:33:15.000] of view because God promises [CUT] to reward us as we seek him with all our heart this is my desire to honor you Lord with all my heart I worship you all I have within me I give you all I adore is in you Lord I give you my heart I give you my soul I live for you every breath that I take every moment I'm away Lord have your way in me this is my desire to honor you Lord with all my heart I worship you all I have within me I give you all that I adore is in you Lord I give you my heart I give you my soul I live for you every breath that I take every moment I'm away Lord have your way in me Lord I give you my heart I give you my soul Lord I give you my heart I give you my soul Lord I give you my heart I give you my soul Lord I give you my heart I give you my soul Lord I give you my heart I give you my soul I live for you every breath that I take every moment I'm away Lord have your way in me Lord I give you my heart I give you my soul I live for you every breath that I take every moment I'm away Lord have your way in me Lord have your way in me Lord have your way in me [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:33:15.000; resume after this 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