TRUE WORSHIP:  FASTING
Matthew 6:16-18

One of the lost aspects of worship in the 21st Century Church in America today is that of fasting.  Perhaps it is because of our love affair with food.  Americans are the best fed people in the world.  Want to attract a crowd to church – serve food.  Want to make a lot of money fundraising – sell food.  For many of us, if we don’t get three meals a day, we feel we have been starved. 

Perhaps we don’t fast because we don’t understand the nature and purpose of fasting.  Jesus connects fasting with giving and prayer as being areas of worship to our God. 

Just what is a fast?  The dictionary defines it as a total abstention from food.  We get the word breakfast from the thought that we break the night fast when we have eaten no food.  The essence of fasting can be achieved by abstaining from things.  In his book title, Prayer, Dr. Hallesby writes:

Fasting is not confined to abstinence from eating and drinking.  Fasting really means voluntary abstinence for a time from various necessities of life, such as food, drink, sleep, rest, association with people and so forth….  Fasting in the Christian sense does not involve looking upon the necessities of life, which we have mentioned, as unclean or unholy….  Fasting implies merely that our souls at certain times need to concentrate more strongly on the one thing needful than at other times, and for that reason we renounce for the time being those things which in themselves, may be both permissible and profitable.

What was the practice of the Pharisees during the time of Jesus?  They fasted twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, from dawn to sunset.  These were market days so there were lots of people in the streets providing lots of opportunity for public display.  On those days their hair was deliberately unkempt, their clothing deliberately soiled, and their faces whitened to accentuate their sorrow.  The Pharisees wanted people to know how spiritual they were.  If you close your eyes, you can almost picture the scene. 

What was the purpose of fasting.  According to the teachings of the Old Testament, it was a means of humbling oneself before God.  In Psalm 35:13, David declared that he humbled his soul with fasting.  Secondly, it was an outward expression of penitence from sin.  We read this of the response of the Ninevites after the preaching of Jonah:  Then the people of Ninevah believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them (Jonah 3:5).  Finally, fasting was an expression of a dependence upon God for future mercy.  Listen to the heart of Esther as she proclaims to Mordecai, Go, assemble all the Jews who are found in Susa, and fast for me; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day.  And thus I will go in to the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish (Esther 4:16).

In the Old Testament, fasting was always connected with mourning for sin and the repentance from sin and imploring the mercy of God.  In our next study, we shall look at some New Testament teachings on fasting.

Father, We confess that we don’t fast partly because we do not understand the significance of a fast.  Thank You for revealing to us, through this study, that fasting has to do with our heart’s attitude toward sin and how sin affects our relationship with You.  Give us a tender heart toward sin so that we might be quick to be repentant.  We pray this in the name of Jesus.  Amen.

 

Return to Sermon on the Mount Overview