Text: Matthew 6:16-21
OPEN:
Lent and fasting seem to go together naturally, since Lent harkens back to Jesus Christ's wilderness experience in preparation for his public ministry. Jesus intensified his focus on prayer by fasting from food for 40 days. Lent also may be associated with Moses' 40 days on Mount Sinai with God, and the 40 year journey of the Israelites in the desert. Lent is a period of somber self-examination in preparation for Easter, designed to promote intense hunger for God. Nothing reveals what eats at me as clearly as when my appetites are exposed in light of a renewed hunger for God.
So, why this emphasis on fasting? Doesn't the Bible warn us about people who “advocate abstaining from foods, which God created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth” (1 Timothy 4:1-3)? The Apostle Paul asks with dismay, “Why do you submit yourself to decrees such as, ‘Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch’?” (Colossians 2:20-21). Elsewhere Paul writes, “Food will not commend us to God; we are neither the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat” (1 Corinthians 8:8).Even Jesus told about two men: One said, “I fast twice a week”; the other said, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” It was the sinner who went home justified (Luke 18:12-14).
John Wesley: “Some have exalted religious fasting beyond all Scripture and reason; and others have utterly disregarded it.”
Why then a message about fasting? What masters us has become our god; and Paul warns us about those “whose god is their appetite” (Phil 3:19).
“In a culture where the landscape is dotted with shrines to the Golden Arches and an assortment of Pizza Temples, fasting seems out of place, out of step with the times. In fact, fasting has been in general disrepute both in and outside the Church for many years.” -- Richard Foster
Fasting is never intended to be punitive. True Christian fasting doesn’t seek suffering or self-denial as an end, but as a way to love something less so that God might be loved more.
Richard Foster: “Fasting is the voluntary denial of a normal function for the sake of intense spiritual activity.” So, fasting does not always deal with abstinence from food. It is the denial of any normal function of life in order to become more absorbed in seeking God.
Here's the bottom-line: What we hunger for most, we worship.
We gain from this passage a proper foundation for understanding the practice of Christian fasting....
I. NOT ALL REASONS PEOPLE FAST ARE GOOD ONES (vv.16-18).
"And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces to show others that they are fasting." (v.16)
Our text makes it clear that fasting was an accepted/common and assumed practice (verses 16,17). These are not first-class conditional sentences in the Greek (not “if”, but “when”).
1. The Setting for these Statements is Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. (Mt 5:17, 20)
The Pharisees were stuck on form—externalism.
Jesus moved beyond form to substance, beyond appearance to purpose.
2. Two Improper Reasons to Fast:
a. Pride (v. 16)
b. Manipulation (v. 18)
Manipulating others
Manipulating God
II. THERE ARE GOOD REASONS FOR CHRISTIAN FASTING (vv.19-21).
It is unfortunate that most separate verses 19-21 from the immediately previous instruction about fasting:
"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
1. Christian Fasting Reveals What We Treasure Most.
Richard Foster in Celebration of Discipline:
“More than any other discipline (spiritual), fasting reveals the things that control us. This is a wonderful benefit to the true disciple who longs to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. We cover up what is inside of us with food and other things.”
a. People Tend to Medicate their Pain with Food and Other Pursuits.
They anesthetize themselves to their hurt inside by eating.
But this is not some rare, technical syndrome. All of us do it. No exceptions. We all ease our discomfort using food and cover our unhappiness with other pursuits.
This is why fasting exposes all of us—our pain, our pride, our anger.
b. One of the Most Important Reasons for Fasting is to Know What Is In Us.
In fasting you will see it. It will come out and you will have to deal with it.
Out of the dark places of our souls emerge the dissatisfactions in relationships, the frustrations of attempting to follow Jesus, the fears of failure, the emptiness of wasted time.
Will I find spiritual communion with God sweet enough and hope in His promises deep enough to flourish and rejoice in Him in the midst of the self-denial?
2. Why Did God Create Hunger and Food?
Have you ever asked that question? God could have created life that has no need of food. He is God. He could have done it any way He pleased. So, why food? Why hunger and why thirst?
a. Hunger and Thirst Were Created For the Glory of God.
Food magnifies Christ in two ways:
1) By being eaten with gratitude for God’s goodness;
2) By being forfeited out of hunger for God Himself.
In fasting we demonstrate that we love the Giver of all things more than the gifts themselves.
The desert fathers believed that a person’s appetites are linked: full stomachs and jaded palates take the edge from our hunger and thirst for righteousness. They spoil the appetite for God.
3. The Birthplace of Fasting is Homesickness for God.
a. Christian Fasting is the Hunger of a Homesickness for God.
Half of Christian fasting is that our physical appetite is lost because our homesickness for God is so intense.
The other half is that our homesickness for God is threatened because our physical appetites are so strong.
In the first half, appetite is lost. In the second, appetite is resisted.
b. Christian Fasting is Not Only the Spontaneous Effect of Superior Satisfaction in God; It is Also a Chosen Weapon Against Every Force in the World That Would Steal Away That Satisfaction.
CLOSE:
The reward we are to seek from the Father in fasting is not first or mainly the gifts of God, but God himself.
What we hunger for most, we worship; therefore, every believer is urged to do whatever is necessary to promote intense hunger for God above anything else.
(Dr. Dane Fowlkes)
No comments:
Post a Comment