Should Christians Fast? Part 1

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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I want to encourage you to take out your Bibles and remain standing as we read the text of Scripture this morning.

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We're going to be reading from Matthew 6, verses 16-18.

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The title of this morning's message is, Should Christians Fast? We'll begin reading.

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This is Jesus speaking in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, and He says in verse 16, And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, that their fasting may be seen by others.

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Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.

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But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

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Father in Heaven, we thank You.

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We thank You for the blessing of coming together to study Your Word.

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And I pray, Father, I pray that You would keep me from error.

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I pray that I would not tear God's church, that I would not mangle Your truths, that I would not betray Your honor and that I would not murder the souls of men, but rather that I would proclaim the truth with confidence and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

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And I pray that as we address a subject such as this, that the hearts of the people would be in tune with Your Word and understand the value of what it is we are going to search this text for this morning.

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It's in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

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When I first took to preaching through the Sermon on the Mount quite a few many months ago, I wasn't sure how long it was going to take to preach through, but I knew that there were certain sections that were already laid out for me.

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And there were certain sections that we were going to have to devote more time to than others, such as the many weeks we spent looking at the Lord's model prayer.

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Well, when it came time to begin studying on the subject of fasting, I really felt like this was going to be a one week sermon.

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It's only a couple of verses, verses 16 through 18.

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And I said, yes, we can do that all in one sitting.

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We'll do that all in one sermon.

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I'll preach on fasting and then move on to the next section of the sermon.

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But as I began to prepare my message, I began to dig deeper into this subject than I ever have.

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I began to realize that not many people preach on the subject of fasting because it is not a popular subject.

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And I realized that there was no way I would be able to do it all in one week.

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So as not to rush an important subject, I have subdivided my message into two parts.

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I was warned this week, not many pastors get to preach once on fasting and doing it twice might lead to an open pulpit.

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But I hope that that would not be the case.

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This is a serious, serious topic.

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It is one that Jesus Christ connects to two other disciplines in the Sermon on the Mount, what we would call pietistic actions or disciplines of faith.

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If we look at Matthew chapter 6, Jesus has already expressed to us two things that are assumed of believers.

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He says up in the first portion of chapter 6 in verse 2, He says, when you give to the needy.

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When you give, that statement of when indicates that this is not something that you might or might not do, but this is assumed that you will do.

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It is not coming across in the imperative as a command, it is coming across as an assumption.

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This is something you, when you do this, do it this way.

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So too, when He comes down later to verse 5 in prayer, He says in verse 5, and when you pray, and He goes on to express the subject of prayer.

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So we have when you give, do it this way.

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When you pray, do it this way.

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And then we get down to verse 16, and in keeping with this pattern that Jesus has established as a good preacher, He preaches with a certain pattern.

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In His discussion here, He's keeping this somewhat of an outline at this section of the message.

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He says, when you give, give thus and so.

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When you pray, pray in this way.

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And when you fast, so what is the assumption? That you will.

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It's not given as a command, it's given as an assumption.

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It is an expected discipline in the Christian life.

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And so, that is how we're going to approach it.

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And we're approaching it from the same way Jesus does.

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Jesus comes at it and He says, when you give, don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.

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Don't give so that you show unto people.

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And when you pray, don't pray like the hypocrites do.

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Don't repeat your words over and over, thinking that that's going to help you.

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And don't pray in streets and on corners so that people see you, because that's not the way you're supposed to do it.

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So what's the statement that He's making about praying and giving? We're not to do them publicly.

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We're not to do them out in front of people.

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We're not to do them as a show unto people.

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And the same thing is said about fasting.

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It's not a show.

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It's not something that we do to impress others.

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In fact, it's not something that we're supposed to advertise that we're doing.

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All three of these disciplines are expected and all three of these disciplines can be manipulated.

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So Jesus is concerned with the manipulation of these disciplines.

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And as I've said, today's discipline is unlike the other two.

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It's unlike the other two, not in that it is not expected, because it is, as we've already noted.

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But it's unlike the other two because it's the only one in the list that modern American Christians, mostly, generally, and by and large, do not practice.

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If you talk to most Christians and say, should you give? They would say, yes.

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Do you give? Well, yeah.

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Now, not all give, maybe as they should.

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But they would say, we give something.

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We believe that giving is a part of the discipline of being a believer.

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Do you pray? Or should you pray? Yes, we should pray.

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Do you pray? Well, yes, I pray.

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Some only pray at dinner.

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Some only pray when things get bad.

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But they would never say they shouldn't pray.

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But this is where fasting is different.

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Because you might say to someone, should you fast? And they might say, well, yeah, maybe I should.

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And then you say, do you? Well, not really.

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So I say it's unlike the other two in that while we have maintained the discipline of prayer and while we have maintained the discipline of giving, we do it every Sunday.

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We pass a plate with the assumption that that's part of this action of worship.

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But when it comes to fasting, it's as if that was an action for bygone eras.

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That's not something we're expected to do any longer.

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In fact, years ago when I was in high school, the only person I ever knew to fast was my Catholic friend.

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And that's what a lot of people associate fasting with, is Catholicism.

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Because we know at certain times of the year, there are calendar days wherein Catholics are not supposed to eat.

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And then there are other days where they're not supposed to eat certain things.

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They can't eat meat on certain days during Lent, and we know how they have these established days of fasting within the Catholic Church.

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And that was the only exposure that I had to the practice growing up, was seeing it among my Catholic friends.

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Now, last night I was having a conversation, and it was mentioned to me, and I had thought about this, but I didn't put it in my notes.

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But in the conversation I said, well, you know, fasting is quite popular among charismatic groups.

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But often the fasting, and I'm going to talk about this more next week, but often the fasting which is seen in those groups is the penny-in-the-slot fasting.

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If I fast, I'm going to get thus and so, and it's an exchange.

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I do this, and I get that.

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If I send money to thus-and-so preacher, I'm going to get this special cloth that I can wipe on my forehead or put underneath my pillow, and God will bountifully bless me with X, Y, and Z.

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So it becomes somewhat of a divine transaction, where I'm doing this to receive that.

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And that's not good either, that's not right either, but that's what we see.

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So the question we're going to address, we've already asked the main thesis question of the sermon, and that is, should Christians fast? But I have actually established a series of questions that I think we need to ask on this subject because it is so undiscussed.

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We so lack information on this that I sat down, and as I often do, I sat and thought, what are the questions that people would have? And I've come up with a list of about seven or eight questions.

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And that's how I'm going to do this sermon.

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Rather than points, I'm going to answer questions regarding fasting, so that we might learn in that way.

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Because I can assume that these are questions that you yourself might ask.

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And I'm even going to often offer up something new.

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If at the end of today's message, since I'm going to carry this message into next week, if you have a question you'd like me to address, if time is open next week, I will add that question to this list if it is appropriate and it's something that would fit in with the message.

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So if you have a question at the end of today, if hopefully it might be one that I'm going to address next week, but if it's not, I will do my best to answer it as succinctly as possible.

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So let's begin with the questions I've asked.

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Miss Pam actually asked Alison if she put them in the screens, so they'll come up on the board.

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The first question we're going to address in this sermon is simply the basic question, what is fasting? What is it? I mean, I've been talking about it, I've been saying fasting, and I think most of you have an idea of what it is.

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But we need to at least have a biblical understanding, because there is a lot of worldly fasting that goes on.

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Mahatma Gandhi fasted for many days over many periods in his life.

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But those were not biblical fasts.

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So we need to understand, what is fasting from a biblical perspective? Well, the word for fasting in the Scripture, nesteo, is the Greek word.

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It comes from the root estio, which means to eat.

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And the ne at the beginning, it makes it a negative or an opposite.

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It means to not eat.

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To fast simply means to not eat.

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Now, that could not be made any simpler, I don't think.

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But approaching that, we need to add a few caveats in our understanding.

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Sometimes in Scripture, we see where people eat absolutely nothing, and they drink absolutely nothing.

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Moses was up on the mountain with God, and he neither ate nor drank for 40 days.

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And you say, that would kill someone.

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Yes, it would.

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If they were not being sustained supernaturally by God, it would kill someone.

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So one of the things I don't want you to do today is leave here and say, Pastor said we need to eat, neither eat nor drink for 40 days, because we won't make it.

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Unless God supernaturally keeps us.

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But when we talk about fasting, generally, fasting is not eating food, but still drinking water.

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That is a typical biblical fast, where people would still drink and keep themselves hydrated.

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You can go many days without food.

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You cannot go many days without hydration.

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And dehydration sets in very quickly, so we have to consider the fact that water is a necessary part of fasting.

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But there are also places in Scripture where we see not a complete removal of food, but a removal of foods that we would call delicacies.

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In the first chapter of Daniel, we see Daniel refusing to eat the delicacies of the king.

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He says, I will eat only vegetables and I will drink only water.

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And that could be described as a type of fasting.

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He's eliminating certain things from his diet.

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He's eliminating those foods which might be considered the best foods, the most sumptuous foods, the fatty, good, tasty, salty, sweet foods.

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Those foods that we all enjoy.

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And he says, no, I'm only going to eat the vegetables and I'm only going to drink the water.

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And I thought about that this week for people who can't physically fast because of a health issue.

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Some people cannot not eat something.

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But Daniel gives us a demonstration of eliminating those things which would be sumptuous or delicacies.

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To eliminate that as a sacrifice from our diet is an example Daniel gives in Daniel 1.

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There are also other areas wherein we can deprive ourselves of certain things and it could rightly be called fasting.

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This is something that Lloyd-Jones talks about, that we can actually separate certain things and that would still be fasting.

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I want to show you in Scripture, if you have your Bibles, turn to 1 Corinthians 7.

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Hold your place in Matthew because we will go back.

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But in 1 Corinthians 7, the Apostle Paul is talking.

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You know what? Oh, I'm in 2 Corinthians.

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I was sitting here thinking that's not right.

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1 Corinthians 7, he's talking about marriage and he's talking about intimacy in marriage.

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I don't have to go any further.

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You know what I mean by that? He's talking about the intimate relationship within the marriage couple.

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And he says in verse 5, do not deprive one another.

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And he's speaking there of intimacy.

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He says, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourself to prayer, but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of the lack of self-control.

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So what is Paul admonishing there? Times of abstinence from intimacy that we might devote those times to prayer to God.

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And that could be called a type of fasting.

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Certainly it's not the most basic sense in which fasting is described because fasting relates to food.

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But this is another urge that we have as human beings that urge for intimacy, this urge for this relational connection with the husband and wife.

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And Paul says there's times where you could stop doing that just for a short time.

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Use that time to pray and grow, but don't make it last too long because you don't want to end up with some type of lust that develops as a result of holding yourselves back from one another for too long.

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I think that is one of the most practical passages.

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The apostles being very practical there and telling, you know, do this, but only limit it to a certain time.

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But see, this is an example of self deprivation, which could be applied to fasting.

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Now, having said all that, typically, as I've already noted, fasting generally relates to food.

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So could we say we're fasting from intimacy? Yes.

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Could you say you're going to fast from television? Yes.

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Could you say you're going to fast from Facebook? Double yes.

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Could you say you're going to fast from the Internet or you're going to fast from anything in life because you want to grow as a disciplined Christian and you want to use that time that you were devoting to Facebook or you were devoting to YouTube or you were devoting to television or you were devoting to talking on the telephone and you're going to use that time to pray and grow? Yes.

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Could that be described as a type of fasting? Surely and certainly it could.

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Before our time today and into next week, I kind of want to limit this to the food part because the biblical definition is food.

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The biblical definition of fasting is not eating.

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And while I think many of us might be willing to give up Facebook for a day or give up YouTube for a week or give up email for a month or a year or two years, we might be willing to do all these things, but food is such a natural impulse.

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It's such a natural need that it requires an extra measure of discipline to stop yourselves from eating food, especially in America where food is so plentiful.

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We drive down the road and there's giant golden arches and there's giant signs that are in the shape of tacos and hamburgers and pizza and they're all causing these cravings and it becomes very difficult.

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So, you know, I want us to focus on the food aspect of this because I think it is one of the areas that we lack.

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And I include myself among those who do not fast enough.

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So I certainly don't stand in front of you as one who is preaching to you.

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I am one who is preaching the Word of God to us all because we all could hear this message and apply it better.

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I want to, on the end of this question, what is fasting, I want to add one more thing before we move to the next question.

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Fasting is a voluntary discipline.

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Fasting is a voluntary discipline.

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What I mean by that is nowhere in Scripture is there a command that everyone has to fast on Friday or that everyone has to fast two days a week or three times a month.

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The only fast in the Old Testament and the New Testament that was ever mandatory outside of specific fasts that were called by kings because there are times where Jehoshaphat called a fast among the people, the leaders of Nineveh called a fast in the preaching of Jonah.

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Those are specific individual fasts for a reason.

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But the only fast that was ever annual and required among the people of God was on Yom Kippur, which is also known as the Day of Atonement.

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In the Old Testament, on the day where the sacrifice was brought to the people of God and the animal was sacrificed and the blood was taken into the Holy of Holies and it was sprinkled on the mercy seat, that was a day wherein it was demanded that all people all throughout the land of Israel should fast.

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Well, guess what? Yom Kippur is no more.

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Yom Kippur has been done away with because it was fulfilled in Christ.

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We no longer have a Day of Atonement.

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We no longer have a day where we have to take a goat in front of all of us and sacrifice that goat and take the blood into a place called the Holy of Holies and sprinkle His blood.

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That is over with.

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Christ has come and He has fulfilled that type that represented Him.

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So no longer are there any mandatory fasts.

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Because that was the only one and it has been abolished.

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So all fasting that you do, all fasting that you participate in is by nature voluntary and is between you and God.

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So what is fasting? Here is the definition.

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Fasting is the voluntary decision to go without eating.

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That is the most basic definition I can give you and that is what it is.

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Fasting is the voluntary decision to go without eating.

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So let's move on to question two.

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If we know what fasting is, the next question is this.

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Why do God's people fast? Well, as I mentioned during our communion celebration this morning, fasting is not normally associated with celebratory occasions.

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They didn't proclaim wedding fasts because that wasn't what fasting was for.

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In the Old Testament, wherein we see all kinds of fasts that are proclaimed among the people, there is one common denominator that runs through all of the various fasts and is this, that fasting is associated with all manner of spiritual distress and burden.

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Fasting is associated with all kinds of spiritual distress and burden.

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I already mentioned Jonah preaching to the Ninevites.

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What did Jonah say? He said, in 40 days God is going to judge Nineveh.

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And what happened as a result? The people knew God's judgment was coming.

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The prophet who just got spit from the belly of a whale, so he came probably looking quite disheveled as he rolled onto the shores of Nineveh, and he came walking in with a little seaweed in his hair and skin bleached white from the gasses of the belly of the great fish.

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And he said, what? Repent.

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And guess what they did? Okay.

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They repented.

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They naturally repented in distress.

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And it says every person from the king all the way down to the animals went without food.

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They made their animals fast.

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Just think on that for a minute.

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Because you can't explain to your animals why you're not feeding them.

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People know sackcloth and ashes and prayer and repentance.

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Animals don't know nothing except for we're not getting food.

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What do we do? But the distress leads to the fast.

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Jehoshaphat, the great king of Judah, he's got enemies at the gates.

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They're about to come in and destroy him and his people.

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And he knows he does not have the soldiers to win the battle.

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He does not have the army to slay the oncoming hordes.

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And so he declares among his people, let us fast.

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And so they fasted.

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And the story continues that God saved them.

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But it was a fast of distress.

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Nehemiah.

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I don't know if you know much about Nehemiah.

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I know I haven't spent a whole lot of time in the Old Testament teaching these stories.

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But most of you who have read through the Old Testament, you know Nehemiah had a concern for Jerusalem.

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Its walls had been destroyed and there was no protection.

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And he fasted for Jerusalem.

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We see also in Scripture, Esther.

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Remember Esther? She's going before the king, her husband.

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She's not allowed to walk in front of him.

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She's not allowed to go and talk to him.

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But she's going to do it anyway for the sake of her people.

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Because the evil Haman had called for their death.

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And she wanted freedom and safety for the Jewish people.

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So she says, I'm going before the king.

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Fast for me.

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So we associate fasting with spiritual distress.

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Now I want to show you a text, again in the New Testament, to kind of affirm what all I've been saying to you.

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Go with me to the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 9.

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Matthew chapter 9 and verse 14.

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Jesus is questioned by the apostles of John.

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The disciples of John come to Jesus and question him about why they don't fast.

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Because apparently the apostles, during the whole three year ministry of Jesus, did not practice this spiritual discipline.

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They did not fast.

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Even though it was a regular part of Jewish tradition.

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It was a regular part of the disciples of John.

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Jesus' disciples did not fast.

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And here was, they say to him in verse 14, 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.

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You see, brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ just made a very important connection for us.

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Because they said, why aren't your disciples fasting? He said, mourning comes when the bridegroom is gone, not when the bridegroom is here.

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So what has Jesus equated fasting with? Mourning.

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He's equated it to distress.

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He said, that's not going to happen while I'm here.

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Now I will be taken away, and then they will fast.

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I will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.

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Now some people have interpreted that to mean that the three days that Jesus was taken away, that the disciples didn't eat.

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Now I'm pretty sure that's true.

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I'm pretty sure that food would have tasted like ash in their mouth.

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Because they weren't hungry, having just watched their Savior nailed to a tree and put in a tomb.

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But I don't think that Jesus is referring only to those three days.

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I believe He's referring to the period that we are in.

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Because He is in heaven, He is not physically present with us, and while He is in heaven and not physically present with us, we wait here on the marriage supper of the Lamb.

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We wait for the bridegroom to come and take us to be with Him forever.

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We wait for that great consummation of that beautiful heavenly ending to this time.

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And in the midst of this waiting, apart from our bridegroom, we fast.

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So Jesus says that fasting is accompanied to mourning.

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Now, on top of this, I want to add a thought.

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Fasting is also a natural thing.

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Fasting is something that we do.

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You ask, why do people fast? Why do God's people fast? Well, God's people fast in accompanying with spiritual distress, spiritual burden.

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But it's also something that people do naturally when they're burdened.

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I don't know how many of you have lost someone close to you.

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I imagine everyone in here, maybe except for the very young, have lost someone that they love very much.

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Mother, father, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, grandmothers.

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What is the natural response to great grief? The lack of a desire to eat.

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In fact, why do we take food to people's houses when they have a funeral? To encourage them to eat because we know that that encouragement is needed because most people don't want to eat, but they should.

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But they don't want it.

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In fact, in the ancient times, when the ancients would talk about the seat of the emotions, do you know what was considered in the Old Testament times the seat of the emotions? It was the belly.

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The bowels.

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In our day, the seat of the emotions is what? The heart.

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Tell somebody, I love you with all my heart.

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You can imagine saying, I love you with all my belly.

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But in the ancient world, emotions were associated with the belly.

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Why? What is the part of you that is most distressed whenever you have times of burden and emotional turmoil? Your stomach.

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In fact, men who go to war and battle are told very early in training that one of the things that happen to you when you go out and you're faced with imminent death or having to take another's life is physical revulsion.

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Your stomach hurts.

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You may even have a moment of physical sickness having had to take the life of another or someone trying to take your life.

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Our belly, our bowels, our gut is strongly associated to our emotions.

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So as a result, we often fast naturally when times of distress comes.

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Now, I'm not saying that's biblical fasting.

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I'm just making the connection.

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Because fasting scripturally is associated with distress.

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Fasting naturally is associated with distress.

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Here's how we know the difference between a natural fasting and a biblical fasting.

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And here it is.

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A biblical fast is one where intense spiritual burden pushes us to intense moments of prayer.

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You might want to write that down.

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Intense spiritual burden pushes us to intense moments of prayer.

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Fasting is not an end in and of itself.

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We don't fast just to fast.

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We fast to pray.

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We stop eating so that we'll devote this time to God in prayer.

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In the Bible, there is never a time where fasting is not associated with prayer.

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We don't fast just for the sake of not eating.

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We fast for the sake of intensifying.

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I like that word intensifying.

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It kept coming up this week as I was studying.

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Many men have written that word as sort of the reasoning for God's people to fast is it intensifies our moments of prayer.

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Because we're replacing the passion for food with a passion for God.

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We're replacing the appetite for physical with an appetite for that which is spiritual.

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Desiring God is the ministry of Dr.

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John Piper.

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This was on one of the things that they had written on fasting.

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I'm not sure that John Piper himself wrote it, but one of the ministry men wrote this.

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And it says this.

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Fasting is a desperate measure for desperate times among those who know themselves desperate for God.

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It is a desperate measure for desperate times among those who know themselves desperate for God.

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So what is fasting? Fasting is voluntarily going without food.

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Why do God's people fast? Because spiritual burden has pushed them to an intense need for prayer.

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It's not an end in and of itself.

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It is a means to an end.

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Now, I want to ask two short more questions, and then we'll come to a conclusion.

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Is fasting a New Testament practice? I didn't want to leave this one out today.

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Is fasting a New Testament practice? The answer is yes.

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We see fasting among the disciples.

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We see it in the book of Acts.

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I'll read this to you.

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Acts 13, verses 1-3.

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Now there were in the church of Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaan, a lifelong friend of Herod, the Tetrarch, and Saul.

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And while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.

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Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off.

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You see, they're getting ready to send Barnabas and Saul out into the ministry.

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What do they do? They fast.

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What did Saul and Barnabas do? They fast.

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They fast to get ready for ministry.

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Oh, church! Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if we fasted when we commissioned leaders? If we fasted when we commissioned elders and deacons? If we cared enough to stop putting things in our mouth and allow the prayers to come out of our mouths? The earliest extra-biblical document that we have is something called the Didache.

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The Didache is a first century document.

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It's not part of the Scripture, but it is something that is attributed to the time of the apostles.

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And it was an early church manual.

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Kind of like our Constitution, if you will.

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Kind of like our statement of faith.

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It was like this is how the church is going to operate.

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And it's a very interesting document.

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And one of the things that I've often said about the document is I think people should study it because it gives a glimpse into what the early church looked like.

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One of the things about the Didache that we see is in the early New Testament church, they fasted regularly.

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And they fasted, according to the Didache, for three reasons at least.

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One, they fasted for those who were persecuting them.

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They fasted on behalf of their enemies.

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Number two, they fasted when they were baptizing people.

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So like when someone would come to be baptized, that person would fast the day before their baptism and so would the person baptizing him have to fast the day before the baptism.

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And also, they would fast two times a week as part of regular Christian devotion.

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But they made sure not to fast on the same day as the Pharisees because the Pharisees, when they fasted, they fasted on market day.

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Anybody want to guess why? So that people would see it.

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They fasted on the day that everybody went to market.

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And the Didache specifically says, do not fast on this day and this day for that is the day when the Pharisees fast, but fast rather on this day and thus day.

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So as not to be confused with their fasting.

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Wouldn't it be awesome? Wouldn't it be interesting if when a new believer came to our church and when somebody was moved to come to Christ and we won their soul to Christ by preaching the Gospel to them and the Holy Spirit came upon them and they were born again by the Holy Spirit and they requested baptism, that we said, you know what, I'm going to fast on your behalf.

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I'm going to stop eating and I'm going to pray for you because I know that this is the most dangerous moment in your life.

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The Gospel of Luke tells us that when that seed goes out into the world and hits the ground that Satan comes in and wants to grab that seed and yank it away and we fast for them because we care about their souls.

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Would it make a difference in our acts of devotion if we chose to fast? I can't see that it wouldn't.

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I can't see any way that it couldn't.

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Final question and then I'm going to draw to a close.

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Final question.

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Why don't we fast? Why do we not fast? That should say, that's okay.

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It says, why do we fast? We don't.

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Why don't we? And you might say, well, Pastor, I fast twice a week.

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I don't know that.

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That's great.

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That's what Jesus said it should be.

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But if you do fast and this is a regular part of your discipline, I commend you for that, but I also say that it's good that I don't know.

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But I would say this, generally and by and large, most of us don't.

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And why don't we? Why don't we fast? And I hesitate to say this for fear that it might be misunderstood, but I'll say it, trusting God through the Holy Spirit to make it clear.

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Modern American Christians do not fast because we are not accustomed to sacrificing anything for our faith.

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Modern American Christians do not fast because we are not accustomed to sacrificing anything for our faith.

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We are not under heavy persecution.

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We are not outlaws for the Gospel.

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We are not under constant threat of beheading.

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And as a result, most of us drive in comfortable cars to comfortable buildings to hear comfortable messages.

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And anything that would cause us any level of discomfort is by nature repulsive to us.

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You know one of the ways in Muslim countries that they weed out Christians? They impose a tax on them.

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They impose a tax on Christianity.

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If you're a Christian in a Muslim nation, they impose a tax.

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Why? Because it's the quickest and easiest way to eliminate the nominal believer.

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Because as soon as it becomes financially difficult to serve the Lord, so many people just walk away.

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Those who are serious about their faith pay up or die.

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What would we do? Would we pay up? Would we fight back? Or would we say praise Allah? Sacrifice is not a part of our normal expression of faith.

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And as a result, we don't fast.

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And often we don't give.

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And more often than not, we don't pray.

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So I want to challenge you this week.

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Consider these words.

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I'm not calling you to go out and make a big to-do about fasting.

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I'm not even calling you to skip a meal.

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What I'm asking you to do is consider the words of Scripture that Jesus assumed we would fast.

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And if we are choosing not to, why? Next week, we're going to look at unbiblical fasting and complete the lesson.

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But we'll complete now with the prayer, Father God, we thank You for Your Word.

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We thank You for the truth.

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We thank You for the conviction that comes with studying it.

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And I pray that You would continue to convict us by the power of Your Holy Spirit to draw closer to You.

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And I do pray that we would all see the value of biblical fasting.

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That we would all avoid unbiblical fasting.

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That we would seek to draw closer to You in prayer.

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That our spiritual burdens and our spiritual needs, our spiritual times of repentance, our times of persecution, our times of distress would shove us onto our knees and cause us to forgo the physical and receive the sustenance of the spiritual.

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It's in Jesus' name we pray and for His sake, Amen.