Has this ever happened to you.you read a passage of Scripture time and time again.many times over many years, and then you read it one day, and something stands out that never has before. Quite a few months ago now that happened to me.. I want us to look at the passage tonight that I read, and after the first reading I want to ask you the question has something stood out tonight that hasn t before.. SLIDE Matthew 6: 1-18 Read So..does anything stand out for you that hasn t before? In this passage, In the Beatitudes, which we have just read a part of; Jesus provided the pattern by which each of us is to live as a child of God. That pattern addressed three specific responsibilities of a Christian: giving, praying and fasting. Jesus says, SLIDE when you give, SLIDE when you pray,slide when you fast. When we give; when we pray; when we fast.. in this passage Jesus knew the importance of these spiritual disciplines, but in the passage he is warning us that when these spiritual disciplines and done with the sole intention of bringing glory to the doer, they lose by far the most important part of their value. SLIDE Jesus was warning the listeners, not to give just to demonstrate their own generosity, not to pray to demonstrate their exceptional piety or so that all can see it, and not to fast, just to show what a splendidly self-disciplined character they were.
In Matthew Henry s commentary on this passage, it says that Jesus is saying if your one aim is to get yourself the world s rewards, no doubt you will get them but don t then look for the rewards that God alone can give. In other words SLIDE don t give, pray and fast with the motive of impressing others but let them be a result of the instinctive outflow of our loving hearts to a loving God. Well, for quite a few months now, God has been challenging me on the subject of fasting and since then, I have been reading everything I can get my hands on about the subject. It may be something you have never heard preached on before, I know that I haven t in the past, but I believe God is directing me to preach tonight on this Spiritual Discipline. At the end of it, you will decide how you feel directed by God..to fast or not to fast.. OR do a whole lot more reading about the subject like I have!! What is Fasting? I believe we cannot disregard it at all, without having first looked at the subject in the light of Scripture. SLIDE Fasting is not dieting; going without food for a period of time Fasting is not only done by religious monks, or limited to ministers, officers or pastors or church leaders Stated simply biblical fasting is refraining from food (or can be other things I will mention that later) for a spiritual purpose. SLIDE As expressed by David s plea in Psalm 42, fasting brings one into a deeper, more intimate and powerful relationship with the Lord.
SLIDE In verse 7 David states deep calls unto deep. His hunger and thirst for God were greater than his natural desire for food. As a result, he reached a place where he could cry out from the depths of his spirit to the depths of God even in the midst of his trial. Once experiencing even a glimpse of this kind of intimacy with our God perspectives change. The realisation may come that fasting is a source of power that is overlooked by many. In Matthew 17, the story is told of a father who had a demonpossessed son. For years he watched helplessly as his son suffered with severe convulsions. As he grew older, the attacks became so severe that sometimes he would throw himself into an open fire, or a body of water. The situation became life-threatening. The father of the boy had exhausted every attempt to cure the boy even taking him to the disciples and asking for healing, but to no avail. This time even the disciples who had healed before, could not help. Then the father heard that Jesus was nearby, and in Matthew 17:15, it tells us that the father said to Jesus, I brought him to your disciples and they could not cure him. The Bible tells us that when the boy was brought to Jesus, he rebuked the devil and he departed out of him. What made the difference? The Bible tells in Matthew 10:1 SLIDE that Jesus had already given the disciples power to cast out evil spirits and to heal every disease. So why couldn t they heal the boy? The disciples also wanted to know the answer to this question, so they asked Jesus, and his reply is recorded in Matthew 17:20-21
SLIDE You didn t have enough faith. I assure you even if you had faith as small as a mustard seed you could say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it would move. Nothing would be impossible. But this kind of demon won t leave unless you have prayed and fasted. (KJV) It is interesting in my reading to note that many translations leave out either the whole of verse 21, or just the words and fasted. (The NLT leaves out verse 21, but there is a footnote mentioning it). In my Greek/English New Testament study book, it says that ancient authorities included this verse in their text. Tonight we are staying with the ancient authorities and including it! SLIDE In ancient Jewish tradition, fasting had two primary purposes. The first was to express personal or national repentance for sin; fasting was a form of humble supplication before God in the face of imminent destruction or calamity. We see this in the story of many in the Old Testament including Jonah and Esther. The second purpose of a fast was to prepare oneself inwardly for receiving the necessary strength and grace to complete a mission of faithful service in God s name. Primary examples are the forty-day wilderness fasts of Moses, Elijah and Jesus. Jesus combined prayer and fasting to overcome his temptations in the desert. The early church followed this practice at critical points in its life to discern how God was leading them and to empower their ministry. We just read the story of the demon possessed boy.
All these examples suggest that the combination of prayer and fasting invites a greater measure of God s power to be released through us than might be possible through prayer alone. Abstaining from food is the original meaning and most basic expression of a fast. If we are to recapture the practice of such fasting as a spiritual discipline, we need to know how to go about it. Soul Feast by Marjorie Thompson, a beautifully brilliant book on spiritual disciplines, reminds us that first we must prepare spiritually before fasting. SLIDE A fast for spiritual purposes must be centred on God and can be so only if we ask God s help. We must recover a reverence for our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit, and a genuine respect for food as a gift from God. This inner preparation will give us a vision of the spiritual dimension of fasting, and equip us with the weapons we will need when temptations and difficulties arise. Richard Foster, in his book Celebration of Discipline the path to spiritual growth; distinguishes between different types of fasts, all of which have biblical examples. SLIDE Normal fast involves abstaining from all food, solid or liquid, but not from water. Partial fast involves a restriction of the diet but not total abstention Absolute fast involves abstaining from both food and water. When starting to fast when you haven t before it is best to start with a fast of not more than twenty-four hours, not more than once a week.
SLIDE Fasting opens to the door to a deeper, more intimate, more powerful relationship with God. It enables us to spend time totally focussed on listening to what God has to say to us, to almost wallow in his presence, and to feel the tender touch of God on our lives. Pastor Yonggi Cho pastors the largest church in the world (believed to be the largest church in history) - over 700,000 members! He and his staff have such a belief in the power of prayer and fasting, and have seen many thousands of answers to pray come after praying and fasting; that they rarely, counsel people. If someone comes to them with a problem or urgent need, their answer is, go to your prayer place and fast and pray for three days. If they return with the problem still unmet, they tell them to go and fast and pray for a week. (Then for ten days/then for forty days.) They do not think it possible that a person would ever return to them again with the problem still! SLIDE There are many, many biblical reasons to fast, these are a few: 1. To worship, love and glorify God (Luke 2:37; Zechariah 7:5; Isaiah 58:2) 2. To intensify the effectiveness of our prayer (Ezra 8:23; Isaiah 58:9 Judges 20) 3. To seek wisdom and guidance (Jeremiah 29:13; Daniel 10:1-3; Acts 13:3, 14:23) 4. To express repentance (Leviticus 16:29-31; Jonah 3:5-8; I Samuel 7:6; Acts 9:9) 5. To teach ourselves humility and deepen our dependence upon God (Psalm 35:13, 69:10) 6. To rededicate our lives to the Lord
(Joel 2:12) 7. To intercede for and help spiritual captives (Isaiah 58:6; Daniel 9:1-21; Matthew 17:21; Mark 9:28-29) 8. To wage spiritual warfare with God s Holy power (Matthew 17:9-11) 9. To speed physical healing (Isaiah 58:8) 10. To overcome strong temptations and strengthen obedience to God (Luke 4:1-2) 11. To enhance personal devotions (Matthew 6:16-18) 12. To respond to times of great crisis and seek deliverance (II Chronicles 20:3-4; Esther 4:16) 13. To devote time to witnessing and soul winning (John 4:4-34) I have many books on the subject if you are interested in pursuing this spiritual discipline in your own life. Again in her book Soul Feast, Marjorie Thompson relates other fasts that we can apply to our lives. She mentions that our intimate relationship with God is affected by our consumer mentalities. She relates how our society voraciously consumes just about any and every things: food, drink, sex, drugs, guns, cars, clothing, energy, gadgets, TV, computers, mobile phones, videos, gossip, fads, programs, even work and leisure. We need disciplines of abstinence because we have come to relate to all those things I just mentioned, not as lovely gifts to be enjoyed in
moderation and gratitude, but as things that have overtaken our lives. Are those things we consume, consuming us, are those things we possess, possessing us? The only way back to health and balance spiritually in our lives, is to refrain from using those things that have control over us. To give up anything that comes between ourselves and God is the core dynamic of self-denial. Think about this..do you ever rush back into the house because you have left your mobile phone at home? Do you ever rush back into the house because you have left your Bible at home? Other fasts could involve abstaining for a period of time from constant media stimulation. Choosing natural sounds or silence over incessant tv, radio, CD, or phones. What would it mean to fast from judging others, or even from judging ourselves to harshly? Whatever way we choose to fast, it is not primarily a discipline through which we gain greater control over our lives, but one through which God gains access to redirect us and heal us in body, mind and spirit. On this journey of fasting I am still learning. Jentezen Franklin in his book on fasting, mentions that his church fasts for twenty one days at the beginning of each year. Some only fast for a day a week, some for two or three days, some for the whole twenty one days. He believes it sets the course for the rest of the year, just as beginning our day with prayer sets the course for the rest of the day.
Pastor Franklin in his first years as a pastor saw answers to prayer yes, but in the last years since starting the beginning of the year with the 21 day fast he has seen amazing answers to prayer, healing for people in body mind and spirit, and people totally transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. His book is full of their stories. Fasting or not fasting is a personal decision you have to make for yourself. I am just sharing with you what God has revealed to me. There are many other spiritual disciplines for us to explore such as meditation, submission, confession, spiritual reading, prayer, & worship. If we are not careful, we can allow life to get us into the same old ruts and routines without even realising it. The same can be said about our spiritual lives and our relationship with God. If we don t do what it takes to stay sharp and sensitive to the Holy Spirit, our praise, our worship, offerings and yes even our preaching will become heartless routines to God. As believers, we can pray, read our Bibles and go to church week after week and still be losing sight of our first love. God desires to move more powerfully in our lives. His plans for us are always developing and progressing. He desires to speak with each one of us as we would speak to our friends. There are dimensions of our glorious God that will never be revealed to the casual, worshiper. There are walls of intercession that will never be scaled by the apathetic worshiper.
We need to take steps to break out of the ordinary and worship him as he deserves. Let s look at our own spiritual journey and see where God is leading us tonight.