The Freedom of Fasting

Was struck. I guess it's just been maybe three weeks now, not even that long, that the media was brought to attention on the family that was living in the American Embassy. I'm sure those of you who followed that situation, the Soviet family, Pentecostal Christians, had been living in a room in the basement of the American Embassy in Moscow for, I think it was three and a half or four years in just a couple of rooms. And the reason why the media focused attention on it was because they had entered into a hunger strike. And all of a sudden, something that had been pretty much unknown to most of us became a terrific issue. And a lot of attention was brought to bear on it because these people had been going without food enough that had made it about three weeks at the time I'd seen it. And it was interesting to me how that one, that whole situation really hadn't changed. It's just a new dimension had been added. And that dimension was that of the hunger strike, of the fact that the people weren't eating. Why did they do it? Why did they finally come to the point of not eating? Well, the reason was, is because change is very difficult to bring about. It's very hard to get a situation to change, isn't it? How many of you know that you can hear everything that's happening here this morning. You can sense the spirit of God. You can hear the testimony of our brother. You'll hear the teaching of the word. And somehow when you go home, when you slip behind the television set and watch the super bowl and you have a big dinner and the end of the evening comes, and somehow all the memories of what God shaped into your life right now get a little dulled tomorrow. It was just a glorious memory. And then pretty soon it hasn't affected us. That's not a condemnation against people watching television. But you know what I'm saying that we slip back into a routine that absolutely dumps cold water on the flame of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. And change is very difficult for any of us to come into. Our personal lives, I expect, are the most difficult area that we find change to come. Today we're going to talk about fasting. We're going to talk about fasting for spiritual purposes, and we're going to talk about it because fasting is an instrument of change. One thing I was very committed to not doing this week was to give you a little lecture on how to fast whether you want to or not. And I didn't want to slip into anything that would have to do with going through all the motions and having some spiritual teaching that absolutely wouldn't affect your life at all. My prayer is that all of us will be able to come to grips with why God has set aside fasting as a means of bringing about change in our lives. How many of you want to change something in your life? Praise the Lord. My desire, and my prayer, too, is that we'll be open to whatever God institutes as a means to bring about that change. And today, as we face the establishment of our elder body of our eldership, elders council, whatever we're going to call it, we want to draw our focus on that dimension of fasting as an instrument of God's blessing for our community. But there's going to be a lot of personal application in this, too, if you're open to it. Now, let's start first of all by addressing some of the fears and some of the abuses that have spawned fear on us with regards to fasting. It's only been in the last few months, or last couple years at best, that hunger strikes have become a popular instrument in political arenas to get something to happen. What name was spattered all over our television screens for weeks as he slowly died? Bobby Sands. How quickly we forget. And then a succession of other men who died a slow and agonizing death of starvation for the sake of some measure of political change in Ireland. And then it wasn't all that long ago that perhaps unrelated to the physical change, but something that strikes fear in a lot of us was the article that was in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and this was in September of 1982. Women die of starvation in religious fast. Remember that? Boy, did they have a field day with that one. And every person that had ever considered entering into a fast as a religious discipline, as a means of. Of coming before the Lord was considered by this article to be in danger of having some real serious mental problems. And so all of us are very aware of the abuses and of the possible pitfalls and traps of fasting. But like so many other things, just because somebody hasn't used it properly does not negate the fact that God intended it to be used properly. And, beloved, we need to lay aside some of these fears. None of us want to be hooked up with some religious weirdo establishment. None of us, including God, he's not interested in that. And the last thing I want you to do is to think that we're trying to railroad this body into something that they have no intention of really doing. And you say, well, if fasting was so important, how come I Never heard about it anyplace else I ever went. There's a lot of things you haven't heard about other places that we've gone. And the tragedy of it all, really, is that the reason why many of the churches and bodies of Christ are in such pitiful condition is because no one told them about things like this. No one told them about verbalized praise. No one told them about living in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. And just like community or praise or the Holy Spirit or any of those things can become a tangent, which cause people to spin off into erratic fanaticism, so can fasting. But beloved, I'm convinced that if we properly enter in with understanding, with our heart open before God, we will see marvelous change in ourselves personally and in our body corporately. I'm very, very convinced of that, not only from the scriptures, but through personal experience in my own life. Now, another thing that causes a lot of fear in us is we have a mindset about food, don't we? And we feel we're entitled to three meals a day plus seven days a week. And so the minute our body is deprived of that, we have these little relays that go off inside of our system that absolutely go wild. If you miss a meal and two meals, you get flashes all over. Disaster is about to strike. And yet it's medically proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that some fasting is healthy. For in fact, after the first four or five days, your body begins to destroy a lot of the toxins that had built up and the poisons in pockets of your system, so that you really end up being healthier at the end of a prolonged fast than you were before. But in the midst of it, as you're starting out, you can't believe this is good for you. There's no way. You know the old adage of the world, if it feels good, do it when we take it. Just conversely, when it comes to fasting, if it feels this bad, don't do it because we think that there's got to be some damage done to us, and it just isn't true. Unless you have a medical condition such as diabetes or something, there's no reason why you cannot fast. Now, I don't say that blanketly. I realize some of you may have some problems or you have some personal complications, but don't say, just because I feel bad, it can't be good for me. If you've drank six cups of coffee a day for the last 10 years and you stop drinking it for a day, your Body's going to say, feed me. It's going to put that in me. It begins. And as you'll see in a minute, that's part of the whole process of why we fast, is to break that enslavement now. So if we can lay aside our fears of being weirdo fanatics and getting off on tangents, and we can lay aside our fear that we're going to hurt ourselves, then we can look and see. Well, what does the Bible have to say about fasting? First thing it helps you to understand this is to realize that some of the less obscure personages of the Bible fasted. Jesus, Paul, David, Moses, Esther. Sorry, ladies, there's. There's nothing in there that frees you from this responsibility. Anna, the prophetess in Luke 2. All of them were involved in fasts. Nehemiah, Ezra, the list goes on and on. Every significant person that we would put up there as a model of the Christian life was involved in fasting at some portion of their life. And fasting, brothers and sisters, is always for spiritual purposes. It's always for spiritual purposes. It's never if you fast unto God, it's never so you can look better because of it. Now, some of you have been involved in athletics. Wrestlers know that there's other reasons to go on fasts, to drop down 26 pounds in three weeks. I know some of you that have family members that have done that kind of thing. Some of you who are concerned about your appearance know that you can lose a lot of weight very quickly by not eating. Now, there's all kinds of reasons why you can come back if you don't exercise and so on, but fasting unto the Lord is not fasting so you can look better. It's not fasting so you can compete in a different weight class. It's under the Lord. It's for his purposes. And it's important that you see that God wants to bring about a spiritual change as a result of that. Now, if you're writing down notes, you want to note these three things. There's three biblical forms of fasting. The normal fast in the Bible is to go without food, without food of any kind, solid or liquid. That is to say that biblical normal fasting is water only. Now, there's somebody here in the fellowship this morning. I think they're. They're teaching, so I won't mention their names so they can defend themselves. But a while back, we were having a season of fasting, and this brother was new and his heart was really right in it, but he Felt like fasting meant you didn't eat any solid food. So he parked himself down at Wendy's and had about six milkshakes. Kind of compensated for the bulk, but didn't do a whole lot for the nourishment. It's called the milkshake fast. Now, we joke about it a lot, but that's not the normal fast. The normal fast is water. Only Jesus participated in that. If you read carefully in Matthew 4, at the conclusion of his fast, the Bible says he hungered, but it doesn't say he thirsted. Obviously he would have thirsted had he not had water. Now, there's some supernatural fasts that you can explain in no other way. I believe the Bible says that Moses neither ate nor drank for 40 days. Don't try that. It has to be divinely revealed and enabled. The second kind of biblical fast is a partial fast. You see this in Daniel, chapter 10. This is when Daniel wanted to hear what the Lord was saying in regards to what was ahead. Revelation, he was seeking. The Bible says that he ate no meat or delicacies and drank no wine. Doesn't mean necessarily there weren't some other things that he ate. Salads, maybe fruits, what have you. But he chose to limit his diet. It was restriction. That's called a partial fast. And then the third kind of fast is what the Bible calls an absolute fast. And that is abstaining from all forms of. Of intake, liquid, solid, water, anything. You only see that a couple of times. Esther did it. In the book of Esther, when it looked like the Jewish people were to be wiped out as a race, she called her people to a fast. They ate nothing for three days. No water. That's about as long as your body can go three to four days, roughly, some more than others. With food, you can go anywhere from 21 to 40 days before you begin to starve. And that's why these men, as you recall, lasted some of them 60, 65 days before they died. So an absolute fast is the very extreme example of biblical fasting. Normal, partial and absolute. Now, most of the Bible talks about fasting in private terms, something that you and the Lord do. Jesus fasted unto God. Nehemiah, chapter one, an interesting passage there. He fasted unto the Lord in repentance and in mourning. Private fasts for all kinds of reasons and because of our time limitation today I'm not going to be able to really uncover all this. So if you want to know more, there's some things written, and I'm sure from time to time we're going to have more teaching on this subject. But for the private fast, here's a few reasons to be heard of God. Look in Daniel chapter 9 for repentance and deliverance. In Nehemiah chapter 1, for personal mourning, David mourned and fasted when his son, his first son, was taken because of his sin and disobedience. So there's all kinds of personal reasons for fasting, and the Bible has a lot to say about it. But we want to focus today on the public fast or the corporate fast. Now, in the Old Testament, there was only one day that originally set aside for prayer and fasting that was called the Day of Atonement. You'll see it in Leviticus 23:27, one time a year. If you read carefully, in the New Testament, how many times a week did the Pharisees fast? Twice a week, and they told everyone about it. Wednesdays and Fridays they fasted, and to them it was an indication of their spirituality and they let the rest of the world know how spiritual they were. And Jesus had some pretty direct things to say in answer to that kind of hypocrisy. Now, Israel also fasted corporately in times of emergency. There's some fascinating stories. We won't take the time to look at them, but you might want to jot them down and look on your own this week as you're praying about fasting. Second Chronicles chapter 20. That's when the Israelites were surrounded by the enemy. And I'll tell you, just to get a sense of this, you want to flip over there? You may. I'll grab it for you real quickly. Second Chronicles 20 after this, the Moabites, Ammonites, and with them some of the Maonites came against Jehoshaphat for battle. Some men came and told Jehoshaphat, a great multitude is coming against you from Edom, from beyond the sea. And behold, they are in Hezaz and Tamar, and that is in Gedi. Then Jehoshaphat feared and set himself to seek the Lord and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah assembled to seek help from the Lord. From all the cities of Judah, they came to seek the Lord. You see, when they needed a change, when they became desperate to hear from God, they fasted. That's what took place. Judges, chapter 20, Ezra, chapter eight. You'll see it over and over again. The nation of Israel came together for time of corporate fasting. Now, in the New Testament, there are not a lot of illustrations of this beyond Jesus teaching, but turn to one that's very relevant to us. Acts 14:23. This is very relevant for where we are as a community. In fact, let's pick up in verse 19 just to get the fact feel of the context. Acts 14:19. But Jews came there from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the people, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead, talking about persecution for our faith. But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city. And there's an implicit healing that's going on there. The Bible doesn't say they prayed and anointed him with oil. But when he was looking dead and dragged outside of the city, the elders surrounded him and the Holy Spirit lifted him up and healed him. On the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. And when they had preached the Gospel to that city and made many disciples, we don't know how long that was exactly, but it was enough time to make many disciples. They returned to Lystra and Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And look at verse 23. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they believed and beloved. That's what we're doing. We're seeking to appoint elders with prayer and fasting, corporate expression, seeking the Lord together. So that's the biblical reference. We've dealt with the fears. The biblical reference. Now, historically, did it end here in the New Testament? Well, no. Right on through. In fact, Jesus said in Matthew 9:14. I'll flip back and look at it just so you can mark it in your Bible and turn there later if you like. Talking about when he would leave the earth, he says this. Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, why do we and the Pharisees fast? But your disciples do not fast. And Jesus said to them, can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast. Has the bridegroom been taken away physically? Most other believers that I've read in this passage believe that it's talking about this age. Jesus is taken out and we need the closeness of his presence. And fasting helps to bring about that experience. It's interesting to me. That's connected with the Wineskins passage, isn't it? You see the living water the wineskin, the new wine comes from a people who seek the Lord with all their heart. But then after the New Testament church, as you get into the early years of the church, after Constantinople, when it became a state religion, things began to become kind of set in concrete. And how many of you know when the spirit of reality leaves, the form of the law increases. Think about it. When the spirit of reality is not present, the form of the law increases. Listen to this. Here's the kind of people. This is what happened after the spirit of reality was leaving. Some of the monks practiced extreme austerities. There were the pillar saints who lived on the top of pillars. One of the earliest and quite the most famous of these was Simon Stletes, who died in 459. He dwelt on the top of a pillar east of Antioch for 36 years and is said to have touched his feet with his forehead more than 1244 times in succession. I don't quite know what that means. And to have dripped with vermin. I know what that means. And yet he felt like he was keeping the religious commandment of God. And then another man, Theodore of Sikaon of the latter part of the sixth and first part of the seventh centuries, born an Asian minor son of a prostitute. From early childhood he was very devout and began following the ascetic road. So early did he commend himself by the singleness of purpose that he was ordained a priest. At age 18 he journeyed to the holy places in and near Jerusalem and at his request was given the monks habit near the Jordan. But he felt like he wanted to get close to God. Returning to his home country, he led a life of extreme asceticism. Much of the time he lived in a narrow cage suspended from a rock where he was exposed to the storms of winter and had himself loaded down with chains, undertook prolonged fasts and followed a severe regimen of psalm singing. Can you picture this guy? Here's this rock and I picture out over a cliff just to make sure that there's total fear in his life. And he's dangling from this cage. He's got chains on and people are coming. Hey, what are you doing? Seeking the Lord out here. There's this storm blasting through it. And it's this kind of thing that fasting we're getting into. This is what's going to happen to us. When reality is removed, form increases. Just remember that, beloved. That's important to us. And so the historical church lost sight of fasting through the ages. And then the Reformation came And it's really fascinating to me that men like Martin Luther and John Wesley, John Calvin, John Knox, Charles Finney, all these people practiced fasting as a discipline. John Wesley would not ordain men as ministers in the Methodist Church unless they fasted two days a week. That's how much he believed in it. Wednesdays and Fridays, it became a discipline, almost an imposed discipline, which I'm not advocating, but I'm saying he really, really believed in it. And in fact, he used it as an instrument. You know that, don't you? That John Wesley, Basically, he and his brother Charles were responsible for the preservation of the nation of Great Britain in the mid 17th century, 18th century, actually. And in 1756, Britain was about to be overwhelmed by the French. They were on the borders ready to attack. John Wesley called the nation to a season of prayer and fasting. And through his concerted effort to call the people to repentance and prayer and fasting, the whole thing was turned around. I just have to read to you this one little passage. It says, the fast day was a glorious day such as London has scarce seen since the Restoration. Every church in the city was more than full, and a solemn seriousness sat on every face. Surely God heareth prayer, and there will be yet a lengthening of our tranquility. And in a footnote, he wrote, humility was turned into national rejoicing, for the threatened invasion by the French was averted. The reformers knew the power of fasting. And then for about 150 to 200 years, very little was said about it. And it's just been recently, in the last several years, that in America our consciousness has been awakened by the intercessors for America, who have called the people of God to prayer and fasting first Friday of every month. And some excellent books, such as this one, God's Chosen Fast, by Arthur Wallace, which I highly recommend, if you're interested in this, have been published and give a lot more instruction on this discipline. And so God is restoring this means of life to the church. Now, why should we do it? I'll give you some biblical support, some historical support. Why should we do it? Does the Bible command that we fast? You can search the scriptures, but you'll never find a place where Jesus said where. Our New Testament writer said, you must fast. Look at Matthew 6, Jesus in a Sermon on the Mount, talking about kingdom, living here by the power of the Holy Spirit. Won't read a lot, just look at it. Chapter six, verse two. When you give alms, sound no trumpet. Talking about giving Verse five. And when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites giving praying, verse 16. And when you fast, do not look dismal like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. Jesus never said you must fast. But implicit in this, as far as I'm concerned, is the fact that he expected that we would and that there's a right way and a wrong way to fast. I don't know who said this, but I like it. The best indication that you're fasting is a toothpick. Do you understand? It just takes the tension away. You have to have something to remind yourself that you're fasting. Just put a toothpick in your mouth. All right? Why do we fast? Not because it was commanded. Not because we're trying to yank something free from the Father. We get this idea that if we fast and really hit ourselves with the chains in the back, that God will listen to us. That's not what it's about. Fasting is not trying to convince God that you're worth receiving something, that you really, that you're willing to do whatever you can to yourself in order to get him to listen to you. It's not some sort of a ploy or some sort of a lever to wrench. How many of you think of God that way? If we really twist his arm, he's going to give it to us. It's not why God calls us to fast. We don't fast because somebody else is doing it and told us what a good idea it was. It's easy to be intimidated by some people who have had a lot of experience in fasting. And you say, wow, gee, I could never fast for two weeks or three weeks or whatever it is. But that doesn't mean that God's called you to a three week fast. And they may be disobedient if they don't do it. And you may be disobedient if you do fasting. Is this a biblically established means of drawing near to God by the willful subjection of our flesh? It's a biblically established means of drawing near to God by the willful subjection of our flesh. Whether or not we want to admit it, beloved, we are dominated by our own desires and our own drives and our flesh. Now, the word flesh, sarx in the Greek means a lot of different things. It means this right here. Go ahead, pinch. Some of you need to pinch yourself we only have a few minutes left. It can mean this, but it mainly refers to the inner nature of which this is a manifestation. And there is, in the spiritual realm, a link between this physicalness of ourselves and the fleshly nature. So much so that Ezekiel wrote that the sin of Sodom was that they were fat and prosperous and loved to eat. He didn't even talk about homosexuality, but it was their wallowing in the goodness and fatness of themselves. The link between the physical being and the fleshly nature. And I'm coming to believe that it's very difficult to break one without breaking the other. And whether or not we want to admit it, and I say this as one among you, we are many of us enslaved to the flesh. We are enslaved so that if we miss one day of our caffeine or one day of our sweets, that our flesh just cringes and we're incapacitated. And beloved, that is bondage. That's being enslaved. And Paul said, I won't let anything enslave me. Are you against coffee, Jake? No. Do you not like desserts? But beloved, I do know that when it gets to be a bondage in our lives, then God isn't pleased with it. And why do we fast? We fast so that we can come. Write down Psalm 69, 10. Don't turn there, but write it down. David said that he came to humiliate his soul. He literally came so that his soul would be humbled before God. And somehow in the spiritual realm, fasting humbles our soul before God. It brings us low before him, so that we can be, as James 4, 10 says, exalted. Because God exalts the humble. And there's something that happens in us when we fast before the Lord, that we realize our wretchedness and our poverty and our inability to change. And fasting can be just an expression to God. I can't change myself, Lord. I can't break these habits. And you'll find that when you begin to fast, God will reveal the depths of your bondages and your body will remind you how given over you are to so many of your own indulgences. And it also reveals to you a lot of your character flaws unrelated to your own flesh. And sometimes I've found when you fast that you begin to see the anger that's within you or the jealousy that's within you or the apathy that's within you. But fasting begins to break it all. It humiliates our soul before God. Ever wondered why, when the Bible says, humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and he will raise you up. That's one way of doing it, not the only way, but that's one way. And we focus on God. Anyone who fasts will tell you that you absolutely find yourself refocusing your day, though on the outside, you're going through the same motions inside. Your spirit is looking to God and you're expecting something. And there's a release that's happening right inside of you as you go through your day, because you're focusing on God. And I don't have time to look at motives, but you want to look at Isaiah 58 and see the kind of fast that's heard in heaven. It has to do with motives. People say, by the way, they'll read that Isaiah 58 and say, well, that just means I don't need to go through this other stuff that you're talking about, Jay. I just need to take care of the poor and the homeless. No, it's not talking about that. It's not excluding one at the expense of the other. It's talking about the whole motive in which we come to God. And I want you to look at one more passage. Look at Joel. I'll give you about five minutes. The easiest way is to turn to the major prophets, Ezekiel and Daniel, and then flip over a couple pages. Why do we fast? Beloved, listen to these words. To me, this says it corporately. Verse 12 of Joel, chapter 2. Find Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and then flip over about five or 10 pages. You'll get it. Just past Isaiah. Yes. All right, Joel 2. If you don't have it, just listen. Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments. You see, beloved, fasting rends your heart. That's what it does. It sets your heart free to receive from the living God. When you've read in the Bible and it said, seek the Lord with all your heart, and you said, well, what does that mean? One of the things it means is that you come to him completely in earnest, so earnest that you're willing to lay aside your normal necessities of life to seek the Lord. That's all we're saying. And, beloved, if we want the leadership of God in our community, and we're willing to say to the Lord, lord, I want that so bad that I'll lay aside the normal things of my day to seek your face and rend my heart, I believe God will grant it to us. I believe he'll give it to us. Okay, well, I'm going to have to leave out some things. What does God do? Just write these down and look them up later. He gives wisdom and revelation in response to fasting in Judges 20 in Daniel 10. He gives deliverance in 2nd Chronicles 20. He gives mercy in Jonah 3:10. He gives power to the prayers of his People in Isaiah 58:4. And God pours out His Spirit on a people who humble their hearts before him in prayer and fasting. Now let me conclude regrettedly, there's a number of things I'm just going to have to leave out. How do we do this? The first thing I want you to do this week is just to begin to pray. You and your husband, if you're married or someone in your home group link with them or just on your own, say, lord, what should I do about this? Is this your word that I'm hearing today? Or is this something that I just can't really come to that yet you pray about it. Because beloved, we don't want anyone to do this just because were calling for now there's wisdom in calling for a fast in Joel. If you're still there, notice what it says. Verse 15 Blow a trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast that is call for a fast. Beloved, the servants council is calling for a fast. We're calling this body to fast before the Lord on on Friday of this week. We want you to confirm it with the Lord. If you call yourself a part of this body and you're committed to its ongoing life. What we want to ask you to do is to prepare yourself for that fast by reading and looking over some of these scriptures, getting before the Lord as you do in your regular time with Him. And then you need to make a couple other preparations. First of all, if you're in business, you need to keep yourself free Friday at lunchtime. Don't make the mistake that I often have in the past of planning to go out to eat on Friday and then sitting there looking at your glass of water while the people that you're with wonder boy, you really are getting stressed. So if it's possible, if it's possible and you can stay in your office and just shut the door and pray. You do that if you have flexibility. But plan ahead. Wives and moms, if you have children and so on and you're not sure how they're going to handle, isn't all that difficult. If you plan ahead a little bit to get the food out without passing out from the aroma of it, we're just calling for a fast of 24 hours. You'll have your meal Thursday evening, pass up late night snack on Thursday night, fast through breakfast and lunch, and then break your fast together Friday at dinner time. Now I can hear some people thinking, well that's simple, I'd do that all. I don't eat breakfast and lunch anyhow. Well then you need to ask the Lord if you need to go an extra day. Well really, if it doesn't, if it doesn't, if your body doesn't feel it, then you've just gotten yourself into a regimen where you can handle that and you can just say, well I'll just attach this one. The Lord, he's looking at your heart, he knows your heart in it. Now in conclusion, at the end of that time, sit down and I've got to warn against this. The temptation is to just dive into three plates of spaghetti after that and try to fill up everything that you hadn't touched all day long. And there's something tha