SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Scott O'Donoho.
SPEAKER_00: I am one of the pastors of the Village Church down in Hamilton, Ohio.
SPEAKER_00: We're a fellow X-29 church.
SPEAKER_00: And so we've known Pastor Justin for a while, and some of you in this room for even longer than that.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for letting me be here with you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I get to close out the series you've been in this summer called Holy Habits, and I am very aware that they brought someone in from the outside to talk about stuff that might make you feel bad about having lunch plans later today, thinking about what you might eat later.
SPEAKER_00: And so I get it, I'm not dumb.
SPEAKER_00: I see that.
SPEAKER_00: And that's maybe a little silly, but honestly, unless fasting is part of some diet that we're doing, right?
SPEAKER_00: Intermittent fasting, which is we're talking about fasting today, or uh, or maybe it's part of a cleanse or uh prep for some medical procedure or test or something that you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Um, if it's part of that stuff, then we can see how fasting is good and maybe good for us.
SPEAKER_00: It's healthy, that's easy to see, but when it's part of our spiritual life, um, it is easy to think about fasting as a way to make us feel bad about enjoying the good things that God has given us, right?
SPEAKER_00: Or to keep us from things that were actually meant to nourish us and strengthen us.
SPEAKER_00: Paul uh even tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 4, he says, it's the demons and the hypocrites telling folks to abstain from foods that God created to be received with gratitude.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that God created is good.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing is to be rejected if it's received with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul said.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And so our posture apart might be so let us eat and drink and be merry, all to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and to that I say, do that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that the church should feast better than anyone else on the planet.
SPEAKER_00: And what should make the feasting of the faithful so good, uh, so beautiful and distinct from the rest of the world, is that when we break bread and we drink deeply from the cup, it's not just our taste buds doing the talking, but it's our our soul, hungry for the things of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's our body feeling its daily need met by God's provision that sends our whole selves into worship when we feast, satisfied and strengthened by what God has prepared for us, what he has promised us, and whatever he has set before us today, however much or little that might be.
SPEAKER_00: But but man, all from Him, right?
SPEAKER_00: His grace and His truth that we might feast on those things and be strengthened all the more.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that He has given abundantly to us.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we're gonna do this morning, our main idea uh today uh for is this, for fasting.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about making us weak.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: Fasting is not about keeping our joy in check or tempering how much we look forward to a good meal.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting actually cultivates an honest hunger for the things of God.
SPEAKER_00: And not so just we stay hungry, but so that we can feast even better and be strengthened all the more on the grace and the power and the truth that God has set before us.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh if you will, if you've got your Bibles, you can keep them open or turn them back open again to Matthew 6.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to read our focal text one more time so it's fresh in our brains.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is Matthew 6, 16 through 18.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Whenever you fast, don't be gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so that their fasting is obvious to people.
SPEAKER_00: Truly I tell you, they have their reward.
SPEAKER_00: But when you fast, put oil on your head, wash your face, so that your fasting isn't obvious to others, but to your father who is in secret.
SPEAKER_00: And your father who sees in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so uh this morning I'm uh I'm a three-point sermon guy, so that's what you're gonna get from me today.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the the first point this morning is this that fasting is normative.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so the words that we just read, they are from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They're pulled right from the middle of a sermon that we aren't hearing all of.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's called the Sermon on the Mount, and he is giving that sermon to people who aren't us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we've got to clear up a couple of assumptions that Jesus might be making right on the front end, because he assumes he's assuming one, that y'all know what fasting is, right?
SPEAKER_00: That you know what it is, and two, he's assuming that the people who are hearing him are actually already fasting.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't introduce them to fasting in the sermon and say, so when you start this brand new thing that I just told you about, or or if you ever decide to fast, he says, whenever you fast.
SPEAKER_00: That's how he starts.
SPEAKER_00: And so I can't make those same assumptions that Jesus makes today.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting uh at a very basic level is this it is abstaining from food for a period of time.
SPEAKER_00: That might be one meal, uh, that might be a few meals, a few days of meals.
SPEAKER_00: Some people fast even longer than that.
SPEAKER_00: And fasting was actually a normal part of life for the Jewish people.
SPEAKER_00: So many of the people that Jesus was preaching to, uh, they would have been fasting twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, and then other times throughout the year.
SPEAKER_00: Now, today, plenty of people still regularly fast.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, about eight in ten Muslim Americans fast for spiritual reasons at some point throughout the year.
SPEAKER_00: Half of Jewish Americans feast at some point, or fast at some point, about 40% of Catholics do that.
SPEAKER_00: Our particular flavor of Protestant Christianity, we barely make it over the 15% mark as something that we do for spiritual reasons at some point in the year.
SPEAKER_00: So uh I can't assume that you would know what fasting is or why we should do it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I can safely assume that 85% of us don't, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh and to be clear, if you think that that Pastor Justin invited me to talk about this because I am a fasting guru, I am not.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Uh if you feel convicted at some point because you're hearing a sermon about fasting, you're in that 85%.
SPEAKER_00: Think about preaching the sermon and being in the 85%.
SPEAKER_00: All right, that's me.
SPEAKER_00: And so I have entered preparation for this sermon humbly as a learner, right along with you.
SPEAKER_00: So if you find yourself there, I am joining you in the seats today.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and where I started, what where that process began for me is letting myself be confronted with what I just couldn't get around, which is that fasting across the entire history and the entire tradition of God's people is normative.
SPEAKER_00: All right, there's no hard and fast rules about how or when or how often to fast, but the people of God, from ancient Israel all the way to the modern day church, have practiced fasting as a regular means for spiritual health and strength and vitality.
SPEAKER_00: And so when I think, ah, fasting is this uh this ancient thing, it's from a different culture, old covenants.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's not really relevant to me today from my walk with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Or uh, gosh, I know in the past that the church has tied fasting to penance as a way to try to make up for sin or earn merit before God, and I don't want to fall into that, I don't want to be associated with that.
SPEAKER_00: That feels like law.
SPEAKER_00: I want to swerve towards gospel, or you know, I'm just not as productive when I'm hungry.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I uh my brain gets fuzzy, uh, no one gets my best, God doesn't get my best, I'm distracted, I get hangry, and no one gets more of Jesus when I'm hangry, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so I get all of that.
SPEAKER_00: But but whatever the reason, if we choose to never fast, and we're saying that we're okay being the exception to the rule of this long, unbroken practice of God's people across time and cultures and continents, and my guess is that we don't want to be that.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be the exception to the rule.
SPEAKER_00: We're not trying to redefine or erase holy habits, and so um, I just don't want you to take my word for this even.
SPEAKER_00: I want to paint a picture of this for you, starting with the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So biblically, fasting runs cover to cover from Old Testament to New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: All right, Moses, who wrote the first few books of the Bible, he's the first person that we see fast in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: He fasted while he was up on the mountain, getting the stone tablets of the law from God.
SPEAKER_00: He fasted again on behalf of God's people when he found out how wicked they were being, uh, worshiping a golden calf.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Samuel led all of Israel to fast in repentance of their own idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: David fasted while he was pleading with the Lord over the failing life of his baby boy.
SPEAKER_00: Hannah fasted while she was suffering infertility and the daily torment from a cruel woman in her life.
SPEAKER_00: Ezra led God's people to fast, asking for a safe passage before they made a long, dangerous journey back home.
SPEAKER_00: Esther fasted before she confronted a king to beg him to spare the life of her people.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel fasted in mourning.
SPEAKER_00: The church at Antioch fasted as a normal part of worship.
SPEAKER_00: Paul and Barnabas fasted as they appointed elders and said goodbye to churches that they had planted.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting was formally commanded by God, one time in the scripture, once a year, for all the people on the day of atonement.
SPEAKER_00: And then later in Zechariah, as the Jews were returning back to their home from exile, he mentions that there are these monthly fasts that they just kind of put on their own calendar that God's people would do.
SPEAKER_00: And by the time we get to the New Testament, we see those twice a week fasts.
SPEAKER_00: And before and during and after all that stuff, uh God's people fasted voluntarily as they felt led.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so it's in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Historically, the very first church manual that we see for what like normal church life should look like, it's called the Diddyke, it was written in the first century, the same century that Jesus walked the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And it says Christians should also fast twice a week, uh, but on Wednesdays and Fridays, not uh not Mondays and Thursdays like the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: It also says that when someone's about to be baptized, that person and the person doing the baptizing, they should fast a day or two in it leading up to that baptism Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Justin Martyr and Tertullian in the second century, Origen in the third century, Athanasius in the fourth, Augustine and the fifth, all of these people speak to the significance of fasting in the church.
SPEAKER_00: You fast forward to uh to Martin Luther and John Calvin and John Wesley and Martin Lloyd Jones, the Protestant Reformation, the 1500s, all the way to heavy hitters of the last century.
SPEAKER_00: They all fasted.
SPEAKER_00: Our seasons of fasting and prayer in our church have been high days indeed, Charles Spurgeon said.
SPEAKER_00: Never has heaven's gate stood wider, never have our hearts been nearer the central glory.
SPEAKER_00: The practice of fasting is just unbroken throughout church history.
SPEAKER_00: And even Christologically, which is a uh just a big word for what does this have to do with Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Um, fasting is a good and appropriate practice.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself fasted.
SPEAKER_00: It was the first thing he did when he was uh baptized.
SPEAKER_00: He confronted the devil and his temptations in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus expected his disciples to fast, like we're seeing in today's passage.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then he expected us to keep fasting even after he was gone.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: The time that we are in right now, while Jesus is away from us and we're waiting for him to return, this is exactly when we should be fasting.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says this in Matthew chapter 9.
SPEAKER_00: The only thing Jesus wanted to stop when it came to fasting was us doing it from a place of pride.
SPEAKER_00: It was not Christ's intention to reject or despise fasting, Martin Luther said.
SPEAKER_00: It was his intention to restore proper fasting.
SPEAKER_00: And so look, uh, I know none of that is immediately practical.
SPEAKER_00: No one walked in wanting a church history survey of fasting, you know, throughout the centuries.
SPEAKER_00: But if it gets some of us to say, oh gosh, maybe I should consider fasting, then I think that's a win.
SPEAKER_00: I think that is sort of practical.
SPEAKER_00: And there is no set frequency or rhythm for fasting set forth for us in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: There's not a set length, not one set of reasons.
SPEAKER_00: You guys heard all the reasons why people fast in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It's all over the place, right?
SPEAKER_00: But there is one unbroken testimony that fasting is normative.
SPEAKER_00: It's a normative practice in the church.
SPEAKER_00: It should be the rule, not the exception.
SPEAKER_00: And so should we, right?
SPEAKER_00: But why?
SPEAKER_00: Why would we do that?
SPEAKER_00: That is our second point this morning that fasting is beautifying.
SPEAKER_00: Now I know that is a weird word to maybe use.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'm using it, and I like it because it's an idea that's hanging out here in the text, and I think it points us to uh a bigger story, a familiar story for us that might help us understand fasting a little better.
SPEAKER_00: So uh I get to live with three awesome women, uh, my wife Kelly and daughter Mabel and other daughter uh Vera, and I become very aware over the years, especially as we enter into the high school era of things, of uh skincare routines, right?
SPEAKER_00: All the bottles and things, there's uh cleanser and there's toner and there's moisturizer, not uh not lotion, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's different.
SPEAKER_00: Somehow lotion is different from moisturizer, and it can't be any moisturizer, it has to be facial moisturizer for the face.
SPEAKER_00: I guess like other skin gets dry differently than your face, and so I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: All I know is that it comes in a smaller bottle and it's twice as expensive as anything else.
SPEAKER_00: As weird as it sounds, Jesus is referring to skin care in our passage today.
SPEAKER_00: When he tells them not to make themselves look gloomy or disfigure their faces when they fast, but to wash their face and put oil on themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying, don't stop your skincare routine.
SPEAKER_00: Washing and oiling the face.
SPEAKER_00: That was what they did to keep themselves looking uh clean and clear and under control.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they did.
SPEAKER_00: Oil was the moisturizer of their day.
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of folks uh wouldn't just give up food when they fasted, they would give up looking good.
SPEAKER_00: All right, and so they would make themselves look bad, or or Jesus says disfigured on purpose.
SPEAKER_00: That's a harsh word for Jesus to say about someone's faces, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but but Jesus is saying, you don't have to do that.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to do that when you're fasting, because fasting isn't about making you look weaker or uglier than you really are.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about the the way people see you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh fasting very much involves your body, but it is not at all about altering your physical appearance.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about you.
SPEAKER_00: All the habits that you've talked about in this series so far, uh being in community, being in the word, being a people of prayer and solitude, all of those things involve your body.
SPEAKER_00: It's placing it among the people of God, or taking it away and being by yourself for a little bit, or uh maybe it's using your hands to open up your Bible and flip through the pages and your eyes to read uh the scriptures, or maybe it's closing your eyes and lifting your hands or putting your hands on someone's shoulder in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: But fasting, it uniquely involves and discomforts the whole body.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I I know for some of you being around people is like the least comfortable thing on the planet, right?
SPEAKER_00: For some of you, being by yourself is the worst.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're we're all different in that, but the kind of discomfort that we're talking about today is a little bit different.
SPEAKER_00: It is voluntarily not giving your body something that it needs, refusing to satisfy when it's telling you what it needs most, right?
SPEAKER_00: And letting yourself go about your day, just living in light of your own lack.
SPEAKER_00: Why would anyone do that?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Why what does it have to do with beauty?
SPEAKER_00: It might be helpful to then situate fasting inside a much bigger story than just our our weekly meal plans that we might have on our fridge or in our calendars.
SPEAKER_00: See, our our unbroken lineage, and not just in the church, but for all of humanity, it began with people created by God from the dust of a wilderness on a on a formless earth a long time ago.
SPEAKER_00: And God picked a place on that formless earth, he called it Eden, and he planted a garden there, and he put those people in that garden with every provision and every protection they could possibly imagine.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, a whole garden, right?
SPEAKER_00: A tree of life that would sustain them.
SPEAKER_00: There was only one fruit, one tree in the whole garden that they couldn't eat from that would lead to death and not life.
SPEAKER_00: And yet all it took was one tempter, the same tempter who tempted Jesus in the wilderness after he was baptized, to get us to see the food that God said would kill us as, and I quote, good for food, delightful to look at, beautiful, and desirable for obtaining wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: And the consequence for what feels, maybe that feels small, was actually a cosmic rebellion and a garden lush with the goodness of God, and God himself was death.
SPEAKER_00: That was the consequence for that.
SPEAKER_00: It was a life sent back out into the wilderness, back to the dust where we came from, separated from God and his garden and the fruit of the tree of life.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the fall of humanity means we now live a life of hunger for the things that we were made to be satisfied by.
SPEAKER_00: And it also means a life of being tempted to see deadly things as beautiful things.
SPEAKER_00: Apart from God, our life, our body and our soul, leads to death.
SPEAKER_00: And so fasting reminds us in a place and a period of time in which we are lush with food and worldly comfort, that we aren't living in the garden anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Even with stocked pantries and lunch plans, when it's easy to cozy up to this idea that everything really can be as maybe it should be.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting says no.
SPEAKER_00: We are still living body and soul outside of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: We haven't tasted the fruit of the tree of life.
SPEAKER_00: Our bodies aren't self-sustaining.
SPEAKER_00: They were never meant to be.
SPEAKER_00: Our souls really are hungry.
SPEAKER_00: They're longing and they're groaning just like the rest of creation.
SPEAKER_00: And they should be, we should be nervous if they're not, because we were never meant to feel full or be fully satisfied apart from the full presence of God and his goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting reminds us we have not made it back there yet.
SPEAKER_00: And it's also a reminder of what we need while we are here.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us don't need to be reminded that you're not in paradise.
SPEAKER_00: Your heart is weak.
SPEAKER_00: You came in hungry with heavy hearts today, or your body does groan.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you literally do that when you stand up and you sit down, you groan out loud.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so what fasting reminds us is what we really need while we're here.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not new knees or new hips, it's not uh a different headline in the news.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the server getting your order right or being quick and prompt and on time.
SPEAKER_00: This past week, on a day that I was fasting, like practicing this, getting ready for this sermon, my laptop just died.
SPEAKER_00: Just stopped working.
SPEAKER_00: Black screen, uh, blinking lights on it, just stopped working.
SPEAKER_00: And it was a sweet reminder for me, as frustrating as it was in the moment, that my greatest need isn't something to type on.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: My greatest need, and our greatest need isn't built, it's not bought, uh, it's not grown from the dust of the wilderness that we're in.
SPEAKER_00: We need the God who planted a garden right in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_00: All right, a barren wasteland sprung to life.
SPEAKER_00: Not because life just found a way, not because we uh were the ones who took dust from the earth and breathed life into that.
SPEAKER_00: No, that that's what God does.
SPEAKER_00: God does that.
SPEAKER_00: He speaks life and it lives.
SPEAKER_00: And so we need him.
SPEAKER_00: And we need him to move, and we need him to move first and foremost in us.
SPEAKER_00: We see lots of things in this world that we reckon need fixing.
SPEAKER_00: Some things maybe even in us.
SPEAKER_00: God, like I just I need you to move here.
SPEAKER_00: I need you to move in me, do something in me.
SPEAKER_00: I've hit a wall, I feel the limits of what I can do as a finite being in a fallen world that I'm seeing way too much of.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we see things, maybe obvious things, and say, God, go to work there, do that.
SPEAKER_00: But we forget what's obvious to God.
SPEAKER_00: That even in the garden, our sight was the first thing to go.
SPEAKER_00: What God said was deadly, we saw as beautiful, and that is ugly.
SPEAKER_00: It's a disfiguring of the image of God that we bear that needs cleansed and beautified because of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so, fasting, whether it is a part of a routine or we find ourselves caught in sin and seeking repentance, or we're mourning, we're interceding on behalf of someone else, whatever the occasion, fasting is a whole body, whole self-confession that we don't see rightly, right?
SPEAKER_00: Even when we look in the mirror, which is where beautifying ourselves begins, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh we don't see what God wants us to see.
SPEAKER_00: And so we ask Him for eyes to see.
SPEAKER_00: God, help me see like you.
SPEAKER_00: Help me to not be blinded by my own sin, not be swayed by the tempter that I know I'm tempted by.
SPEAKER_00: Help me hunger for the right things and forsake the false satisfaction that keeps me numb to the things you made me to long for and be satisfied by.
SPEAKER_00: There's an ugliness in me, God, that I don't see the depths of, but that I know you need to wash.
SPEAKER_00: There is an image of you in me that needs beautifying.
SPEAKER_00: So, God, go to work in me, in the obvious places, and also in the places that are a secret to me because they're not a secret to you.
SPEAKER_00: Tell me once again where I am, what I am, what I need, and by your grace, speak life to me that I might live today hungry and yet somehow satisfied in you.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting is an embodied spiritual posturing.
SPEAKER_00: It's not trying to make you look like something you're not, right?
SPEAKER_00: Putting lipstick on a pig like the hypocrites who make their self-righteousness obvious to the world.
SPEAKER_00: It is an intentional visceral posturing to help us live before God more honestly, as we already are, but just really hate to admit and don't want to feel.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't want you to change your skincare routine when you fast.
SPEAKER_00: If you wash your face every day, do it when you fast.
SPEAKER_00: If you've never moisturized in your entire life, Don't start doing it on the days that you fast.
SPEAKER_00: It would be weird if I walked into the office one day and my face looked like whatever it would look like if I started using toner, whatever that is, and people were like, Oh, why do you look different today?
SPEAKER_00: And I said, It's because I'm fasting.
SPEAKER_00: It's not.
SPEAKER_00: It's like as I'm fasting, it's gonna put toner on my face, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's why I would look different.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting is concerned with beautifying the inside, not the outside.
SPEAKER_00: If anything weirdly beautiful shows up, it should be more fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: What should be obvious on days that we fast isn't that we are fasting or gloomy about it.
SPEAKER_00: It should be Christ in and through me, who always provides for me every single day.
SPEAKER_00: Practically, it is common to hear that when you're fasting, hey, just take the time that you normally set aside for eating, uh, read your Bible, right?
SPEAKER_00: Pray.
SPEAKER_00: And that's really good.
SPEAKER_00: I like that.
SPEAKER_00: But look, talking about what's making uh what's being made obvious in the way we go about doing this.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't normally bring a Bible to the cafeteria, um, or if you're not like jamming out the hymns all day on the car ride or at in the office in your cubicle, whatever, my encouragement would be not to suddenly show up one day in some super spiritual costume, all right, on the day that you fast.
SPEAKER_00: And that is not me saying, don't read your Bible at work.
SPEAKER_00: That is me saying, what's stopping you from reading it at work any other day of the week, right?
SPEAKER_00: I I have confidence, I believe in you that you can turn pages in your Bible and also eat a sandwich at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: You can do that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Just even thinking about what fasting might look like in your life, it can reveal to us what we truly depend on to get us through the day, to carry us through hour by hour, minute by minute.
SPEAKER_00: Is it actually bread alone or the very words of God?
SPEAKER_00: The point is this when you fast, show up as you normally would.
SPEAKER_00: Do what you would always do, and do it with a heightened bodily and spiritual awareness that on your own, cut off from the garden, you have got nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You are wandering the grocery store and the cubicles at work, you're wandering soccer fields as one in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: And all that you need and all that you've got is all that matters, which is the power in the presence of God sustaining you, his truth guiding you, the spirit strengthening you in whatever he wants you to see and whatever he wants you to do around you, or maybe even especially in you, as you stand in front of the mirror and confess to him in secret what he already knows.
SPEAKER_00: That we are weak, that sin is in us, that there are wounds to heal in us, that a tempter is claiming he can heal.
SPEAKER_00: Help me see God as you do.
SPEAKER_00: Beautify your image in me.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting teaches us to live our normal, everyday life carried along by him.
SPEAKER_00: Beautified by him.
SPEAKER_00: And that is not a life of just mere desperation.
SPEAKER_00: That is a life of expectation.
SPEAKER_00: We get to look forward to what God might be up to.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the third point this morning that fasting is expectant.
SPEAKER_00: Expectation is a built-in feature of fasting.
SPEAKER_00: When we stop uh eating, when we start fasting, stop eating, we expect to start eating again.
SPEAKER_00: That's what a fast is.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we put food down, knowing that we are going to pick it back up again.
SPEAKER_00: If you've fasted before for any reason, uh you know that you really look forward to that next first meal, right?
SPEAKER_00: You look forward to that.
SPEAKER_00: You're already thinking about it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you're hungry.
SPEAKER_00: When it comes, you mighty eat more than you normally would.
SPEAKER_00: It tastes extra good, you put an extra heaping on your plate.
SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: You're allowed to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Because fasting reminds us that while, yes, we are spiritually hungry, it also tells us that we were made to be full.
SPEAKER_00: We were made to feast, but here outside the garden, stuck in a wilderness, our appetites for what we were made to enjoy, they have been dulled by the stuff of this world because all we can eat here is dust.
SPEAKER_00: We we live for long weekends, or a second pour, or a salad that's too expensive.
SPEAKER_00: One more game, one more bite, one more minute, one more round, one more swipe, right?
SPEAKER_00: One more sweater that's gonna hang in the closet forever.
SPEAKER_00: We're never actually going to wear it.
SPEAKER_00: It's just dust.
SPEAKER_00: It's dust, dust, dust.
SPEAKER_00: Dust was the stuff that the hypocrites left on their face for people to see, and dust was all they got when people saw it and they were impressed.
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's food or man's approval, the only thing the world can reward us with is dust.
SPEAKER_00: They became hungry for the things of the world.
SPEAKER_00: They got the things of the world, they have their reward, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: But for those of us in Christ, we have a different one.
SPEAKER_00: Author C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis wrote this banger.
SPEAKER_00: He said, uh, It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong.
SPEAKER_00: He finds our desires too weak.
SPEAKER_00: We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he can't imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.
SPEAKER_00: We are far too easily pleased.
SPEAKER_00: It's mud, it's dust.
SPEAKER_00: And God's not trying to rub our faces in it when he calls us to fast.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to see it all for what it is, but but to detox us.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to retrain our taste buds so that we'll start to see the futility of seeking satisfaction in stuff that lasts for five seconds, and so we can start craving the better stuff that he made us to enjoy.
SPEAKER_00: Righteousness, peace, prosperity under the rule and reign of King Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And it's often the lack of those things that leads us to stuff our faces literally and figuratively with the stuff of this world, because we are coping with the state of things, the state of us, but dust will never satisfy us.
SPEAKER_00: At the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, because they'll be satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: The Father's reward that Jesus mentions here, he says, earlier that reward is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That satisfaction is waiting for us with him there.
SPEAKER_00: And later in this series, uh this very same chapter, the same sermon that we're in, he says, the world spends all of its time wondering what it's gonna eat and what it's gonna wear, seeking after food and clothes.
SPEAKER_00: But I say, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, because if you do, you will get those better things, you'll get that reward, and you'll get the food and the clothes or whatever you need to do all that stuff thrown in.
SPEAKER_00: God feeds birds, right?
SPEAKER_00: He dresses the flowers.
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry, uh, your life is more than food.
SPEAKER_00: Your body is more than clothing.
SPEAKER_00: It's all for the kingdom, and I'm gonna give you everything that you need to work with me on that.
SPEAKER_00: And so we fast expectantly, first, knowing that if even we end a fast and we're still hungry for whatever we're broken by or wanting more of, that we will one day be satisfied fully and forever by our Father in heaven, and when his kingdom comes here, this gets at the heart of Jesus' warning today.
SPEAKER_00: We should fast when we are at a loss and we're seeking wisdom or repentance, the Lord's divine intervention in a situation, but that doesn't earn an immediate answer or put him in our debt so he'll do what we want him to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's not what fasting is for.
SPEAKER_00: The only way to not be hungry now is to forsake the Father's future reward and get a lesser one from the world instead.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus warns us not to die with a full belly, but to live with a hungry and hopeful heart.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting helps us learn to be less easily pleased and learn to live hungry and expectantly for better promised things.
SPEAKER_00: Which is the second thing that we get to expect.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, not just future satisfaction, but a present provision from God to help you bring into today this kingdom that is coming to stay.
SPEAKER_00: In Isaiah 58.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we won't read this, won't be on the screens, but you can turn there if you want.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 58, we hear God's people complaining.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's a lot of bad stuff happening.
SPEAKER_00: I a lot of stuff going on.
SPEAKER_00: They need help, they've been fasting, uh, but God's not answering like they expected.
SPEAKER_00: And so they're looking at their watches and like, hey, we we have been fasting, we've been denying ourselves food and all this other stuff, and it kind of feels God like you're denying us.
SPEAKER_00: You're not answering the way that we wanted.
SPEAKER_00: And God responds first with this He says, Why would you expect me to listen to you when on the days that you fast, you're horrible people, right?
SPEAKER_00: You're terrible bosses, you're mean to your employees, you are grumpy with your coworkers, you bicker, you're fist fighting in the parking lot, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you're coming to me as someone who can fix all these other things outside of yourself, but you're living as if I've not given you what you need today to just be decent human beings.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care if you've not eaten food.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting is a posture of heart that should make the kingdom that you're longing for visible in you.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this the kind of fast I would choose?
SPEAKER_00: This is what God says in Isaiah, starting in verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: He says, For you to break the chains of wickedness, to untie the ropes of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, to tear off every yoke.
SPEAKER_00: Is it not to share your bread with the hungry while you're fasting?
SPEAKER_00: Bring the poor and homeless into your house, clothe the naked when you see them, not to ignore your own flesh and blood.
SPEAKER_00: Do that, and then your light will appear like the dawn, your recovery will come quickly, your righteousness will go before you, and the Lord's glory will be your rear guard.
SPEAKER_00: One of the heartbeats of this whole series is that regular spiritual practices are meant to give you strength in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But that strength isn't just meant for you.
SPEAKER_00: You yourself are meant to be a supplemented strength in the lives of others, and fasting is no different.
SPEAKER_00: It is kingdom building.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting takes food and all the things of this world, including your bodies, and it helps us see them with spiritual eyes and put them in their proper place.
SPEAKER_00: Not as unimportant, right?
SPEAKER_00: Not as things that we should enjoy less or feel bad for enjoying at all, but as an even greater means of eternal significance in helping others taste and see and surrender to the beauty of Jesus, who's breaking into this world, right, by his kingdom, that's coming into you through you and into the world.
SPEAKER_00: Food becomes fuel for mission.
SPEAKER_00: Not when we stop eating it, but when we let God humble us and loosen our grip on all that we have, that we might invite others to come and eat.
SPEAKER_00: Come and drink, come and taste and see the goodness of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Literally sharing a meal with the homeless, or by the fruit of the Spirit being born in you.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting helps us live in expectation that God's kingdom will come in full.
SPEAKER_00: And has already begun coming, and it's gaining ground today, not by our strength, not by the clarity of your mind, by the lack of fuzziness, or you not being hangry, but by the strength of God given through his son by his spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So look, when you fast, expect to be distracted.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe a little hangry.
SPEAKER_00: Expect your brain to be fuzzy.
SPEAKER_00: Expect to wonder if it's even doing anything.
SPEAKER_00: Why am I even doing this?
SPEAKER_00: With with it, do I even have the right posture of heart when I'm coming at it?
SPEAKER_00: And my encouragement to you, if you ask those questions, is to keep doing it.
SPEAKER_00: And look, real quick, no medical advice is being dispensed up here today.
SPEAKER_00: For real, if you have questions or concerns about you stopping to eat food, you should talk to your doctor before you do that, right?
SPEAKER_00: So I just want to encourage you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm not a doctor or trained physician.
SPEAKER_00: You should probably talk with a professional before you do this.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, here's the thing you can pick up any spiritual discipline with the same mentality Jesus warns us about here.
SPEAKER_00: And if it if it doesn't give you an immediate result, if you don't get some immediate feedback or some immediate high, we ditch it, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so what I want you to do, I want you to plan to fast, do it, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then do it again.
SPEAKER_00: Let God do the slow, steady work of tilling your heart, sowing seeds, and reaping a harvest that will bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: It will bear fruit, but it won't even be fully finished until he once again brings our bodies out of the dust and breathes life back into them and places us back in the garden with him.
SPEAKER_00: So I could keep going this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I have to wrap up.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked a lot about posturing ourselves towards the Lord, and I want to end by talking about Jesus' posture towards you.
SPEAKER_00: One of the last things that Jesus wanted to do with his friends, he wanted to share a meal with them.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to feast in celebration of God's provision.
SPEAKER_00: And at his table, there were all kinds of people.
SPEAKER_00: There were traitors, uh, there were government employees, and also people that wanted to burn the whole thing down and just some blue-collar folks that were trying to get on with their life, right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that describes some of the people in this room this morning.
SPEAKER_00: At this final meal, he broke bread and he drank wine, just like we'll do in a few minutes.
SPEAKER_00: But he said this: he said, I tell you, I'm not drinking this wine again from now until the day I get to drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: So look, I don't think it's theologically accurate for me to say that Jesus is fasting right now, while he's in glory on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, while he is physically absent from you, he is abstaining from good things.
SPEAKER_00: He is waiting for you.
SPEAKER_00: He's waiting for you to arrive at his table in his kingdom before he takes one more sip of that good wine.
SPEAKER_00: He's waiting until we can share it with him face to face, body and soul reunited.
SPEAKER_00: And just like he expects us to be fasting, whenever you fast, is how this began, right?
SPEAKER_00: His final words at this meal aren't, if I get to see you again.
SPEAKER_00: If you make it.
SPEAKER_00: It's when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And then they sang hymns in worship.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you need to hear that today.
SPEAKER_00: That is Jesus' posture of heart towards you.
SPEAKER_00: Not if, but when.
SPEAKER_00: Before you pick up another holy habit, you need to know something that maybe you've never known before, never believed it before, or maybe you have, but but your heart's been dulled by the world.
SPEAKER_00: You've forgotten that redemption and eternal life and the promise of unending peace and prosperity in a kingdom that has no end, those aren't won by your spiritual practices.
SPEAKER_00: They are secured in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus who poured his whole life out for you.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And even as he refrains from feasting, he is offering you his strength.
SPEAKER_00: He expects you to join him at his table.
SPEAKER_00: But not because he's just gonna help you get there.
SPEAKER_00: But because by grace he is carrying you there all by himself.
SPEAKER_00: The church's witness is not unbroken because the church is just that disciplined, but because Jesus is just that gracious.