Matthew 6:16-18 - January 19, 2025

The Sermon on the Mount and the Context of Christian Righteousness

So we haven't been in Matthew for quite some time now, and we're gonna get back into this. Our passage today, it comes as the third of a set of passages about the subject of Christian righteousness. But last time we got into this, it was probably over a month ago, and that was when we talked about prayer.

So I think a brief, brief review is necessary as we return to this subject, and as we get back into the larger context of this, which if you recall, is the Sermon on the Mount. So Jesus introduces this topic, this idea of practicing righteousness, in chapter six, verse one.

And he says, beware of doing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them. Otherwise, you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. So this is the introductory part of this verse that gives us a theme for the entirety of this section, chapter six, verses one through 18.

Jesus then proceeds to instruct his disciples not to draw attention to their almsgiving, which is giving to those that are in need. He also instructs them not to intentionally draw attention to themselves when they pray.

Now, Martin Lloyd-Jones says, we can look at these as aspects of our Christian lives, where with almsgiving, we do good to others, with our intimate, personal relationship with God when we're in prayer.

And now we're looking at an aspect of our Christian life that could be considered part of our personal spiritual discipline. We're gonna look at the issue of fasting this morning. And in our time together today, what we're gonna see is that though it's included with these other things, there are some significant differences with fasting, differences from the idea of giving or differences from the idea of prayer.

But there's obviously a major similarity here as well. Jesus was, if you'll remember the context, Jesus was having to instruct his disciples in the true purpose of all these things. He's telling his disciples the true purpose of prayer, the true purpose of giving, and the true motivation that should underlie all of these things, the true intention that should be at the heart of all of your Christian righteousness.

And the reason he had to teach this is because the Pharisees had taken all these things and they had turned them in to public religious performances, displays of public piety, acts for people to see and approve of and applaud them for how righteous and how religious they were.

And we see this very clearly as we turn to verse 16, which says, now, whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do. And the hypocrites, if you recall, is referring to the Pharisees.

For they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. So that's verse 16. And what we have here in verse 16 is the image of this person.

And you might know this person, maybe not necessarily when we're talking about fasting, but maybe you have that family member, or maybe you have that friend who's always so dramatic about what they're doing.

They're always so put upon, but not only are they put upon, but they make sure that everybody knows that they're put upon. They make sure that you can see the trouble that they're going to for you or for whoever.

And this is what the Pharisees are doing now. We have somebody practicing what's supposed to be a spiritual discipline, something that's completely appropriate, but going about it in a way that everyone knows that they're fasting.

And in this specific instance, we have these apocryphal stories of Pharisees doing stuff like putting on their dirtiest clothes, their rattiest clothes, messing up their hair, making sure that they look extra pale, or maybe in some cases, putting some dirt on their face so that everyone knows that they're fasting.

Everyone knows that for the sake of the righteousness of God, they're suffering deeply and they're committed. They're bought in. They are doing this, even though it's difficult. And we all have to know it.

Also that people would look at them in awe and people would look at them and say, I fasted, but it didn't look like that. Maybe I did it wrong. Or maybe I'm not as good a Jew as this Pharisee. Maybe I need to work harder on my own personal holiness.

And we see this again. We see this in so many different areas of our own religious life. But this is exactly what they were doing with prayer and almsgiving as well. They're doing these things for the attention, for the applause of people.

But don't forget what Jesus says about them at the end of verse 16 here. "'Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.'". Because religion is a performance or worship that's done for the purpose of being seen by other people.

It's not only worthless. It's not only pointless to have done it, but it's an affront to God. To do this stuff to be seen is an offense to God, no matter how righteous it appears to other people. And God rejects that worship.

Fasting in the Bible: Descriptive Examples and the One Prescribed Fast

Now, at this point, I think it's necessary for us to spend some time discussing specifically the topic of fasting. That's what this section is about. And on its face, the topic of fasting is pretty simple.

And the topic of fasting is one that probably all of us are familiar with. On the most basic level, it's just the process of abstaining from something. Most often, it's the process of abstaining from food, as in not eating.

But in our day, we have all kinds of different fasts, right? We have fast from social media, for example, abstaining from something crucial to our life. Now, in the health and fitness world, fasting has been something that's just all the rage for the last several years.

People will do lengthy fasts, seven days, 10 days, 15 days, 30 days, all the way down to what's called intermittent fasting, where you just don't eat for a period of time. You fast for 16 hours and you eat for eight.

Does that math add up?

It does, good.

And the reason for this is that in a health context, fasting has been touted as providing all these different benefits. So benefits from increased mental clarity, all the way to weight loss and something known as cellular autophagy.

Autophagy, which is basically just the cleansing out of toxins at the cellular level. When you fast, your body cleanses those out because it has to use all the material there to keep you going. So there's that kind of health and fitness fasting.

But in the realm of religion, we have a lot of examples of fasting too. So ancient pagans believed that demons could enter your body through food. So ancient pagans fasted as a way to prevent more evil from coming into their bodies.

This was what they believed. In some Eastern religions, by Eastern, I mean, typically Asian religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, those kinds of religions, fasting is a way to purify the body and the soul. Fasting is a way to improve your self-control, increase your spiritual awareness, at least according to Google.

And some mystics attribute spiritual visions and spiritual insights to the clarity that they have attained by fasting. Now, we also know that Muslims fast during the month of Ramadan. So this is the ninth month of the calendar and fasting at Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam.

And this is important because for them, they believe that this specific month is when the Quran was given to Muhammad by Allah. So that's the reason for their fasting. And they believe that the spiritual rewards of fasting are multiplied during this time.

And as I know a lot of you know in this room, Roman Catholics have a wide variety of fasts. Roman Catholics have periods of time they fast, specific things they fast from, specific reasons that they fast.

So there's a lot of tradition in various religions of fasting, but none of these are Christian traditions. So what does the Bible have to say about the issue of fasting? Because remember, we're concerned only with what God's word specifically has to say about any of these topics.

We're not concerned about other religions. We're not concerned about culture. We're concerned about God. Well, the Bible has quite a bit to say about fasting, but primarily these are descriptive writings.

And as we'll see, there's not so much there that is prescriptive, that tells us exactly how to fast. So what we're gonna do, as you may have guessed, is we're gonna look at some examples of fasting in the Old Testament.

We're gonna look at some examples of fasting in the New Testament. And we're gonna establish, if we can, as best we can, a biblical model of fasting. So as we turn first to the Old Testament, what we see is numerous examples and occasions that people fasted.

Again, fasting is all over the Bible, but despite the variety that we see, there's only one text in the entirety of scripture, only one text in the whole Bible that prescribes a specific fast. And that's in Leviticus, Leviticus chapter 16, 29.

And that verse says this, and this shall be a perpetual statute for you. In the seventh month, on the 10th day of the month, you shall humble your souls and not do any work, whether the native or the sojourner who sojourns among you.

Now, one thing you probably noticed is that in that verse, Leviticus 16, 29, the word fast never appeared. But this is where original biblical languages are important because there's a Hebrew term, and the way that Hebrew term was translated in this passage was to humble your souls.

And that expression covers a wide variety of activity. For the Israelites to humble their souls also included the idea that they would fast, they would abstain from food as an act of self-denial. So while it wasn't stated specifically, it would have been understood by all of the Israelites at the time that they would be fasting.

And this particular period was known as the Day of Atonement, the one day that all of Israel was required to fast. Now, I tell you this in order to establish a biblical view of fasting, but we have to understand something.

In a moment, we'll look at several examples that show fasting and show reasons that people do it, but they are, again, descriptive, not prescriptive. And the Day of Atonement is prescribed, but guess what?

That falls under the category of things that Jesus fulfilled with his sacrifice. So we as Christians don't fast on the Day of Atonement. Again, all of these Levitical ceremonial laws, purification laws were fulfilled by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

So we have to keep that in mind as we look at this. So while fasting is certainly a good thing, potentially beneficial, it's not compulsory. There's no verse in Scripture that anyone in any Christian church can point to to suggest that it's required of us.

Okay, so that said, I told you there were a number of purposes for which people in the Old Testament fasted. So let's look at some of them. The first one was that people fasted in times of sorrow or grief.

One example of this is with David. And when the child that David had with Bathsheba was stricken ill by Yahweh, was stricken ill by God. We see this in 2 Samuel 12, 16. David therefore sought God about the boy, and David fasted and spent the night lying on the ground.

Now, we could also argue that in a time of grief such as this, where David was facing the illness and what was to be the certain death of a child, it would probably be hard to eat. We might not be in the mood to have a whole bunch of food.

We wouldn't feel like eating. Nevertheless, we still see these crucial words. David therefore sought God. And fasting for David was a part of that seeking of God. Now, second, we see fasting during times of danger.

Now, when the Moabites and the Ammonites were threatening King Jehoshaphat, we see this in Chronicles 20, verse three, or second Chronicles, excuse me, 20, verse three. And Jehoshaphat was afraid and set his face to seek Yahweh and called for a fast throughout all of Judah.

So here, what we see is someone facing what is the imminent invasion of their kingdom. And we see that he set his face to seek Yahweh. Again, you're gonna see this over and over. You're gonna see the idea of seeking God when it comes to fasting.

And that's gonna be important as we talk about this later. And in this case, a king called for all of the people to fast. That's another thing that we commonly see in scripture. Now, on the topic of times of danger, if we step forward to Ezra, we have the Israelite exiles about to leave Babylon to return to Jerusalem.

This wasn't a simple trip. It was a dangerous trip. They were about to leave their captors and return to their homeland. And we see this in Ezra 8, 21. Then I called for a fast there at the river of Ahava that we might humble ourselves before our God to seek from him a direct journey for us, our little ones and all our possessions.

Once again, seeking God. Another occasion, times of penitence. Now, this is different from sorrow or grief. We have to distinguish this. This is not the same thing. Time of penitence is more about mourning your sins against God.

And if you've been with us for all of the Sermon on the Mount, maybe this reminds you of Matthew chapter five, verse four, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Because you'll recall that mourning in the context of the Sermon on the Mount is mourning our offenses against God, which we all commit.

So times of penitence. An example, the prophet Elijah confronted King Ahab about his wicked, sinful behavior. His wife Jezebel. He has a prophet confronting him. And we see this in 1 Kings 21, 27. Now it happened when Ahab heard these words that he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and fasted.

And he lay in sackcloth and went about despondently. So we see him in times of penitence. Another example, times of penitence. Daniel, Daniel fasted as well. He fasted in the context of praying for the sins of his people, as we see in Daniel 10, three.

He says this, I did not eat any tasty food, nor did meat or wine enter my mouth, nor did I use any ointment at all until the entire three weeks were fulfilled. Now I wanna take a quick break right here and tell you that a lot of you probably know there's a book out there called the Daniel Fast, right?

There's nothing spiritual about that. That is pure marketing. Somebody taking a concept from scripture, saying, hey, we can make a diet out of this, I'm gonna write a book, and putting it in a Christian bookstore.

So that's just a little bit of an aside, a little bit of a rant on the way that the Christian publishing industry kind of works. You don't see the Daniel Fast prescribed to us in scripture. Daniel was specifically moved by the Holy Spirit to do this for very specific purposes in his very specific situation.

Preparation for Ministry in the New Testament

Now we turn to the New Testament. And we see several examples of fasting here as well, primarily for one particular purpose, and that is times of preparation. And more specifically, this is times of preparation for ministry.

In this case, we're looking at people who are either about to be launched out into their ministry or about to undergo something difficult. The first example of this is obvious to anybody who has been here for our Matthew series.

We know that Jesus fasted. Jesus fasted in Matthew 4 too. And after he had fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, he then became hungry. And what happened after that? The temptation from Satan started. Temptation, by the way, that Jesus easily overcame with the Word of God, with the power of the Word of God and his preparation.

Probably another part of the reason that Jesus' fasting is to demonstrate a reliance on God. He was what appeared to be physically unprepared for the testing that was about to come for him. Yet the fasting allowed him to seek and rely on God the Father.

We see this in the early church in Acts as well. When individuals are sent out for ministry, specifically people like Barnabas and Saul, they fasted. We can see this in Acts chapter 13, verses two through three.

If you want to turn with me to Acts chapter 13, verses two through three. In verse one, they named several people who were there and several people who had been set apart for ministry. In verse two, we see this.

And while they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul "'for the work to which I have called them.'". Verse three, Then when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.

This is not the only time. The proper biblical model for governing a church is elders. And as they established churches and appointed elders in the book of Acts, we see this in Acts chapter 14, verse 23.

So just a couple of pages from where we were. Acts chapter 14, verse 23. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

So that's what we'll look at for fasting in the New Testament. It's primarily another way to seek the will of God, to understand the will of God and to rely on God, and especially in the context of ministry.

How to Fast Without Hypocrisy

So at the risk of repeating this too many times, what we've seen here is a representative, though not exhaustive list of verses about fasting. And while any one of those verses and other ones like it could serve as guidance for us in our own decision to fast, we have to be careful about something.

We have to be careful not to take any one of these verses as a command and build a theology around it. That's a bad way to go about interpreting Scripture. The Bible's clear about prayer. Jesus taught us how to pray.

Jesus didn't teach us how to fast. So again, we have to be careful about how we take verses when they're descriptive or prescriptive. Now, all that said, the interesting thing about this passage is that there's an implication that we will fast.

And how do we know that? We see it in the first part of verse 17. He's already talked about the hypocrites fasting in verse 16. Verse 17, he says, but you, when you fast. And at the risk of belaboring, we have instruction on giving, we have instruction on praying throughout the New Testament.

So there's no question about those, but this is different. So what I wanna do is to try to develop at least a biblical approach to help guide us with regards to when and why we might fast. But first let's look at how we fast, because for that, we actually do have some very specific instructions and we have very specific instructions from Jesus in this passage.

Continuing on in verse 17, Jesus says this, to anoint your head and wash your face. And while to us in our modern context, this might sound at least a little bit like a special procedure for the people that he's talking to, really what he's getting at is just to practice normal personal hygiene.

In contrast to the hypocrites who dirty their face and make it look painful. He's like, wash your face, comb your hair. Don't make it look like you're doing some sort of super special effort. And we'll get to the reason why that is in just a second.

But the purpose is not so that everybody knows that you're fasting. And that's the opposite of the point of fasting. Just like your personal prayer and your giving to the poor, nobody needs to know that you're fasting.

Because the reason you're fasting is to take something important, probably something personal to the Lord. And fasting is part of your private devotional life. And speaking of your devotional life, this is also related to the how, but fasting should always be accompanied with prayer.

Because if you look at our verses, these two always go together. Prayer doesn't always get accompanied by fasting, but fasting is always accompanied by prayer. And finally, fasting is also accompanied by a pure heart.

Going back to the Beatitudes, my favorite, Matthew 5, 8. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And if you remember what we determined that that means is, that's a heart undivided, a heart devoted solely to God, to the things of God, to seeking the will of God.

Having a pure heart means that you're seeking the will of God to obey the will of God, to live a godly life. And we see this in passages like Zechariah chapter seven. So if you would, turn with me to Zechariah chapter seven.

We'll look briefly at verses five through 10. This says, speak to all the people of the land and to the priests saying, when you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seven months, these 70 years, was it actually for me that you fasted?

And when you eat and when you drink, are you not eating for yourselves? And are you not drinking for yourselves? Are not these the words which Yahweh called out by the hand of the former prophets? When Jerusalem was inhabited and at ease along with its cities around it, and the Negev and the Shephela were inhabited, then the word of Yahweh came to Zechariah saying, thus has Yahweh of hosts said, judge with true justice and show loving kindness and compassion each to his brother and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the sojourner or the afflicted, and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.

So God sees people fasting, God sees people praying, but he sees them praying for their own means. And not only that, but he sees them praying and fasting and then mistreating the people that live in their land.

And he pronounces judgment on them for that. And not only that, did you catch what was in verse five? That was 70 years worth of fasting that God said, it didn't matter, because your heart wasn't pure with that fast.

And of course, getting back to the main theme of our chapter or our passage here, purity of heart precludes you, prevents you from seeking recognition from others for your fast. And we see that in verse 18.

So that your fasting will not be noticed by men, but by your father who is in secret, and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. So this is the instruction we have about how to fast.

Do it privately, do it for the right reasons. Don't do it for other people. So how about when and why? Because this is the bigger question. Maybe this is the bigger question, but this is certainly a question.

And when and why go together. So we'll cover it that way. And then I'll also provide a caution about fasting here. Turning to Martin Lloyd-Jones again, he says, fasting means an abstinence from food for the sake of certain special purposes, such as prayer or meditation, or the seeking of God for some peculiar reason or special circumstance.

So that's kind of a general answer. Because we have no specific command as to when you should fast. And for that reason, we have to turn back to our examples, the examples we already looked at. And if we translate those things into something that might apply to our life, if we look at times of sorrow or grief, times of penitence, times of danger, times of preparation, if you had a particularly significant decision in your life and you lack clarity in that decision, then fasting could be an appropriate decision, an appropriate means to go along with the prayer that you should already be doing.

Maybe you're experiencing some kind of difficulty, some kind of tragedy, pain, struggle, spiritual, emotional upheaval, and you need to take it to God. In that situation, fasting could be an appropriate response for you in addition to your prayer.

Maybe you've recognized the depth of sin in your life and you're beginning to understand, and because of your understanding, you're beginning to mourn the offense that that is before God. Maybe that sin is also something that you need to cut out of your life or that is something you need to cut out of your life is contributing to that sin.

That would be a time to fast too. You fast from that thing and you take it to the Lord in prayer. And maybe you're facing persecution. Maybe there are people coming for you for some reason and you've reached the end of your ability to deal with it on your own.

This is probably similar to sorrow and grief in some way, but this would also possibly be a time that you would fast and you would take this to the Lord in fasting and prayer. And again, these are just examples of occasions or examples of times when fasting could be appropriate to add to the prayer that you should already be doing.

But I wanna give you a caution about fasting too. This caution also equally applies to prayer. And really there's two cautions. So the first one, I'm gonna give you another Martin Lloyd-Jones quote this morning.

You're just getting all kinds of riches from Martin Lloyd-Jones today. He says, fasting should always be regarded as a means to an end and not as an end in itself. It is something that a man should do only when he feels impelled or led to it by spiritual reasons.

It is not to be done because a certain section of the church enjoys fasting on a Friday or during a period of Lent or at any other times. We should not do these things mechanically. We don't fast on a schedule.

We don't fast based on a church calendar. We don't fast to check a box of spirituality. We don't fast because a religious authority tells us to fast. We fast when the Holy Spirit prompts us to do that.

Now, if we were a big modern evangelical church and we're talking about fasting, I would probably propose that we do a church-wide fast. Now that we're talking about fasting, we can all fast together to prepare for whatever it is that God has to show us or something like that.

But that would be hypocritical in the context of what I'm just talking about. Because fasting is something that we do when we're prompted by the Holy Spirit. It's not something that we do because Matty said, it's time for Mount Zion Community Church to fast.

So that's one caution. We don't fast mechanically. We don't fast just because somebody says it's time. The second caution is very important. And we should never fast because we expect direct results from it.

God is not our magic wish-granting genie who's sitting on a cloud in heaven waiting for us to come to him and waiting for us to tell him what it is that we want him to do so that he's forced to respond by orchestrating the situation to be exactly the way we feel like it should be.

And this is a similar error that people make with prayer. Martin Lloyd-Jones calls this the penny in the slot error, which probably doesn't make any sense to people that are below a certain age. But you put your penny in the slot, push it in, pull the drawer out, and you get what you put your penny in there for, right?

But so this is not the way prayer and fasting works. You don't send up a prayer, reach your hands up, and pull down what you ask for, nor does that happen when you fast. I've seen this. I've seen this in groups of people where they get together and pray for something.

They get together and pray for something important. They get together and pray for something that by all logical means, God should answer. And he does not answer in the way that they think that he should.

And it wrecks people because they have a wrong view of prayer. And then they assume that God doesn't answer prayer. But this is a faulty view of God. This is an unbiblical view of God and prayer, that it automatically gets answered the way we want it to.

We don't impel God to do anything that he's not already sovereignly decided to do. And we put ourselves in God's place when we think that we're the ones that know better than him what should happen with his own creation.

And it's the same with fasting. Psalm 115 .3 tells us this. He says, our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. And as creatures, who are we to dictate to the creator? We can request, but remember, our requests are to seek God's will.

God's will doesn't always look the way that we think it should. So that wraps up this section on fasting, our brief overview of fasting. And again, I know there's not a lot of concrete stuff to hold onto with this, because it's not a concrete subject.

I mean, if we forced people to fast, we might cause some physical problems with people who really shouldn't be fasting. So again, there's appropriate and inappropriate times. But for all of us, it is a spiritual thing that's personal and should be prompted by the Holy Spirit.

So if you have other questions about that, I definitely invite you to ask me. I'd be happy to discuss it with you or continue to dig into your Bible, look at the examples in your Bible of what we have.

God’s Glory, Not Human Approval, in Almsgiving, Prayer, and Fasting

But what I wanna do now, as we move towards wrapping up, is do a wrap up of this section of verses that we started several weeks ago. Because again, this is three passages that are with an overall theme.

Once again, Matthew 6, 1, beware of doing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them. Otherwise, you have no reward with your father who is in heaven. So in all that we do as Christians, in every area of our lives, our goal, our purpose should be one thing.

And it's that all we do should be done for the glory of God. It should be to please God. It means it's not to please other people. Now, this doesn't mean that we don't care for other people, because that wouldn't bring glory to God either.

Nor would it please God to ignore the plain needs of someone but even worse, it's a reminder that when practicing righteousness in almsgiving, fasting, prayer, anything, our audience is never other people.

That's the whole point of this. None of these things are a performance. And if they've ever become a performance, then you've missed the point. You're not doing them for God anymore. You're doing them for yourself and you will never get anything beyond whatever people provide you for what you've done.

It's always for God. Now, as usual, Martin Lloyd-Jones is just succinct and devastatingly accurate. He says this, our Lord's principle is always this, forget about other people altogether. It is this interest in the opinions of other people that is so wrong.

Don't worry about the impression you are making. Just forget yourself and give yourself entirely to God. Be concerned only about God and about pleasing Him. Be concerned only about His honor and His glory.

And that is a principle that you can take into every area of your life as a Christian. Now, don't misunderstand me. It doesn't mean you're unloving. It doesn't mean you're uncaring. It doesn't mean that you are more important than other people and that you ignore everything that's going on around you.

But it does mean that ultimately what matters is that you can truly in your heart say and believe that what you're doing is for God's glory. And let me tell you, this will upset people in your life. It will, just because you are seeking the will of God and doing what you're doing to please God and not please other people.

Now, this gives you a small window into the reason that I preach the way that I preach. Because I believe that careful, detailed teaching and preaching that leans heavily on what the word of God has to say about any particular topic is most glorifying to God.

That is why I do this the way I do it. And I can show you this concept reflected in scripture as well. 1 Thessalonians 2, 4, Paul writes this, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts.

And Galatians 1, 10, for am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a slave of Christ. I encourage you all to take these concepts to your own life.

Be certain that you're seeking the will of God. Be certain that what you're doing is to please God and not to offend somebody. But if it is, go with it. And let me close with this reminder from Colossians 3, verses 23 and 24.

Whatever you do, do your work heartily as for the Lord, rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord, you will receive the reward of inheritance. Serve the Lord Christ as all that matters. Let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Father, once again, we thank you. We thank you for the grace and the mercy that you've shown us. There's not a single one of us here that lives our lives exactly the way that we should. We sin, we dishonor your name.

We reject your word. We reject the opportunity that we have to go to you in prayer. We rely on ourselves. We rely on what society says is right, even when it's in direct contradiction to your word. Yet you still show us love.