When I was a kid, we definitely did not do the brand name cereal thing. We did the cereal that came in bags. And my friends, you know, other things were maybe in a little different place for their family. They would buy the kind of cereal where you got toys in the cereal and there were games to play on the back of the box, and the cereals were 80 to 95% sugar with a tiny bit of corn mixed in there, which is also sugar. And then what would happen is on they would also get the designer cereals, like anytime a new toy would come out, and toy makers were like, Stupid kids will buy that. Let's make more of it, except the kind you can eat. And so all my friends would get like Star Wars O's or Nintendo cereal. Somebody had like a Legend of Zelda cereal that they got. And something that I think we were pretty dishonest with each other about as kids when we were eating that designer cereal, always at someone else's house, was that effectively every single designer cereal was just Lucky Charms, but with slightly different shapes mixed in there. There's a Link Boomerang or a Master Sword. Yeah, it's still a marshmallow or a little piece of oat. I could see what you people are doing. You got two extra bucks out of my friend's parents, but not my parents. No, they saw through the facade. They understood the game that was being played. We would walk right by all that designer cereal and we would go to the section at the end where they had the cereal in bags. And then we would walk by the section with the bags where the bags had names and color schemes that vaguely resembled the cereal I wanted, like Colonel Crunchy or Fruit Circles. And we go right past that, right down to the literally black and white generic section. And there you'd have uh, you know, some white and a black impact font on it, and it would say things like puffed wheat or flakes of corn. It was literally exactly what the thing is. There was never a toy in there, not even once. And you know what? It was just fine. So every morning I'd power through three bowls of this stuff. I'd dump sugar on, and you know, I'd get all amped up. And then by lunch, I'd get this weird tunnel vision thing, and I'd feel shaky and wobbly, and I never knew what the problem was. And we go to the doctor, and the doctors would look at my parents and be like, Are you feeding them a bunch of sugar? And they'd be like, No. And I'd be like, No, we don't even get sugared cereal. But the truth was, I was loading up on cheap carbs and sugar every morning at 7 a.m. and then going to school and playing hard as you know, kind of collapsing and crashing by lunch. You know how this works. And so finally, after years of this, I one day myself figured out that if I don't eat breakfast at all, not even good breakfast, but just nothing, I'm great until lunch. And so I just stopped eating breakfast. And in doing so, I began the practice of intermittent fasting way, way sooner than normal people figured it out. Now, I know it's very fashionable to skip a meal or try to reach a certain hour count before you eat the next time. And people do it for health reasons, but in Bible times, I don't think anybody was trying to fast for health reasons. Like not having food would have been more of the problem in the first century Eastern Mediterranean world than having so much and nothing to do to burn calories that we all just get super fat and feel bad about ourselves, and so we have to forcibly deprive. No, when fasting occurred in this context, it was of course a religious fasting. And the reason for it was to deprive yourself of something you really wanted, and frankly, more than really wanted, really needed. And so, in that regard, I think the whole concept of fasting isn't one that neatly translates to how we think today. Because for most of you who are hanging out with me here, and certainly for me, food, we know it's a necessity, but it just happens so easily and is in front of us all the time that it is something almost easily, subconsciously mistaken for uh a pleasure, a joy, a luxury. And so to deprive ourselves has a very different meaning. But when there's no ambiguity about that in Bible times, it would seem that somebody fasting at that point is really trying to remind themselves who the sustainer of their life is, is God. I'm not just going a little bit hungry, I'm forfeiting control over this absolutely vital aspect of my life. And again, I think the hope is that some kind of clarity or focus or greater intimacy with God might occur. Now, at times, my understanding is that fasting could be an act of what later came to be called in certain Christian circles penance, but I think for the most part, it was a proactive spiritual discipline, at least in the minds of the audience who Jesus is talking to in Matthew chapter six, as he's in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, as he's in the middle of the part of the Sermon on the Mount where he's talking about spiritual disciplines or spiritual drills that we do religiously for whatever motivation might be. And he's kind of pushing back on the bad motivations here in Matthew 6 and talking about what kingdom motivations might look like or what these religious drills might look like in light of the values of the kingdom that he's been talking about. So he says in Matthew 6, 16, when you fast, don't look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men their fasting. I tell you the truth, they've received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so it won't be obvious to men that you're fasting, but only to your father, who is unseen, and your father, who sees what's done in secret, will reward you. All right, you've been hanging out with me. We did the same thing with the passage on giving and on prayer. Jesus is clearly following a formula here. The formula is first and foremost a test of the heart for the hearer. Who do you do religious things for? Is it to impress people or is it to genuinely move closer in your relationship with God? Is it to serve some actual spiritual point or to glorify God in some way? Well, you know, the simple truth of the matter is one of those answers is awful. Trying to please people with something that you claim to be spiritual is like the worst and hyper hypocritical. Hyper hypocritical? I double hypered there. And doing things that you get no credit for and that nobody even knows that you did, but that cost you something, well, that could be a pretty genuine expression of discipline or commitment to God. So uh the hypocrites, it's not hard to imagine. And you know what? Truth to be told, I do very much prepare for this stuff, but I didn't even bother to go and look to see if there were hypocrites who would make sure everybody knew they were fasting, because that totally passes muster with what I know today. For example, have you ever heard the saying, how will you know if a couple is cloth diapering their baby? Answer? Oh, you'll know. And the reason that you'll know is because they're going to tell you. You will always be told by a cloth diaperer that they are cloth diapering. And now if I tell you whether we did it or not, I'm just falling into my own trap. So I'm not gonna do it. And if you are a cloth diaper, I don't dislike you and you did make a tremendous sacrifice, and I'm not in any way trying to judge you, but it's true. You have to tell people that you did it. And likewise, how will you know if someone's doing CrossFit? Oh, you'll know they're not gonna do CrossFit and not tell you in some casual way that they do CrossFit. They're just certain things because of human nature when we're making a sacrifice that we just kind of like other people to know that we're doing this little extra thing. I understand there are exceptions. If you are one of them who do amazing sacrificial things and cool, disciplined things with your body and your lifestyle and nobody knows. I salute you. And that is not an ironic salute at all. But come on, Jesus' statement rings true when we look at our own nature and the nature of the people that we love and can be understanding with when they do things just like we do, but about different topics, because we all like people to know the things that we do that go above and beyond. So you got these hypocrites who are like, I am fasting for the Lord and I am giving up so much right now, and I'm a little tired and I'm a little weak and I'm a little beat down, but it's just worth it, you know, for God. And he just made sure that everybody knows they're disheveled and exhausted. And Jesus is like, look sharp. In fact, this might be the only time, at least that I can think of off the top of my head, where like Jesus is like, hey, look good. Like, put on the nice outfit, let's let's make this one right. And the reason is to blatantly disguise the fact from others that you are doing this thing that is supposedly about God, and to make sure that you do not deprive yourself of the actual blessing that is actually present when you do this kind of stuff. Look, I understand that not as many people fast today. I thought about doing a whole thing about like, well, should we fast now or should we not? I don't know. He assumed that his original audience did, but unlike the other two things that he assumed his original audience did, like being generous with your money and thinking about money in kingdom terms and praying, Jesus talked about those two things a lot in a lot of other places. Fasting, it just doesn't come up nearly as much. And so you kind of get the impression that he is speaking to a discipline that people did a lot, not giving some new commandment or reiterating fragments of old commandments to say, hey, everybody ought to be doing this today. But what you'll hear a lot when when sermons happen on this passage is they'll do the when you fast. Look, Jesus said when you fast. So he's assuming you're doing it, so you better do it. And even though the Bible doesn't actually tell you how to do it, I'm gonna tell you how to do it because I'm the one who knows. And I that's just such a backwards read on this text. And the rest of that sermon might be great and they might cover great things, but I do think that is a bad read. I think instead what we see here is perhaps Jesus saying this could be useful, or Jesus doing something that he did a page earlier when he was talking about the divorce stuff, something that is concessional. Um, okay, this might be something you do, could be useful, could not, or even this is something you're doing for the wrong reasons. But okay, you're doing it. Here's what it would look like to do it for the right reasons. Whatever the case, I don't view this as a mandate for all people to fast forever. And I think if we used that interpretive approach uh across all of Jesus' words, it would actually get pretty weird. So for the second day in the row, I remind myself and I remind you that I'm in charge of nothing. Uh in charge of your body, you can fast or not fast. You can read this as being a thing that you're supposed to do or not supposed to do. I don't know. It seems like Jesus has a relatively positive view of it, and that maybe even there is some kind of spiritual depth to be gained from it. That's how I kind of read this language about a reward from the Father who sees what is done in secret. Whatever the case, I don't know, is maybe kind of keep that under wraps. It seems like it's the sort of thing that is between you and God, and the kingdom doesn't really need a great big giant complicated policy on fasting because nobody really needs to know if you're fasting, if you're getting it right, according to this text. So for like the tenth passage in a row, the underlying theme is don't do the cold external religion thing if you're a citizen of the kingdom. Do the thing where you like mean it, and you buy into this and you're vested and you you care about the king and you care about the kingdom and you're sold on the kingdom values. Or to put it another way, using the absolutely simplest youth group Bible retreat language that just still happens to really ring true, God wants your heart. Whether you're doing spiritual discipline stuff, whether you're trying not to do naughty stuff, trying to do nice stuff, whatever the case, the motivation is that God wants your heart. And that seems to be how kingdom values manifest in the stuff that we do. And that seems like a great place to hit pause for now. I'm Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Catch you tomorrow.