Biblical Fasting | Sermon 08/07/22

Apologia Utah

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If you would, please turn with me in your Bibles to Isaiah 58.

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Isaiah is after Song of Solomon and right before Jeremiah. Isaiah 58.

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Like I said, we will be eventually starting our new expository series in the Gospel of John.

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I am working hard on the preparation for that and research for that.

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And in the meantime, I really have been convicted that I wanted to go over the topic of fasting.

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I think it's vitally important that we look into this and what the Scriptures have to say about it.

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And I thought, there is no better text, I think, almost, than Isaiah 58. So, the title of this sermon is simply

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Biblical Fasting. We are going to be in verses 1 -12 of Isaiah 58.

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Starting in verse 1, hear now the inerrant and infallible words of the living and true God.

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Cry loudly, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. And declare to my people their transgression and to the house of Jacob their sins.

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Yet they seek me day by day and delight to know my ways as a nation that has done righteousness and has not forsaken the ordinance of their

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God. They ask me for just decisions, they delight in the nearness of God.

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Why have we fasted and you do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and you do not notice?

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Behold, on the day of your fast you find your desire and drive hard all your workers.

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Behold, you fast for contention and strife and to strike with a wicked fist. You do not fast like you do today to make your voice heard on high.

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Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself? Is it for bowing one's head like a reed and for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed?

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Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the Lord? Is this not the fast which

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I choose, to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke?

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Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into the house? When you see the naked, to cover him and not to hide yourself from your own flesh.

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Then your light will break out like the dawn and your recovery will speedily spring forth and your righteousness will go before you.

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The glory of the Lord will be your rear guard, then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry and he will say,

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Here I am. If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom will become like midday and the

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Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places. And he will give strength to your bones and you will be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.

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Those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins, you will raise up the age -old foundations, and you will be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of the streets in which to dwell.

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Thus ending the reading of God's holy and inspired word, let's pray real quickly.

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Father, again, my greatest desire, Lord, again is simply not information, but transformation along with information.

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Lord, knowledge with change. And so,

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Lord, help us to be focused on your word today. Help us, Lord, as a church to recognize what your standard is and what you require of us and what you desire of us.

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Speak through me today, Lord, would you please. And God, as always, would you help me to speak clearly and let it be helpful and let it always be true.

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Let no error ever come from this pulpit. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Fasting.

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Fasting at its most basic definition is abstaining from the eating of food for a period of time to focus primarily on God through prayer, singing of praises, and reading his word while developing a deeper devotion as a

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Christian. We see many examples of those who fasted in the Bible. You have

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Moses who fasted for 40 days and 40 nights without both food and water, which means it was a supernatural fast, not something that is normative.

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The exact same thing occurred with the prophet Elijah, 40 days and 40 nights. Of course, you can see how that points to Jesus.

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King David fasted for the life of his son. Esther issued a fast for the lives of the

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Jews who were under threat of genocide. Daniel fasted in the

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Babylonian captivity. Anna, the prophetess in the Gospel of Luke, fasted and prayed and worshiped

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God in the temple. Paul practiced fasting. The apostles, in general, practiced fasting.

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And of course, as I said, the Lord Jesus Christ fasted in the desert, in the wilderness, in the temptation from Satan, 40 days and 40 nights.

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Fasting is throughout the Old and New Testament. Even the ancient early church document, the

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Didache, shows a whole section on fasting. It says the hypocrites fast on the second and fifth day of the week, but Christians fast every

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Wednesday and Friday. It's interesting. And moving further into church history, you have

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Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, John Knox, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, all these godly men and women practiced fasting.

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And yet, in our day, with food places on every corner and stocked pantries at home, there seems to be less and less an emphasis, especially from the pulpit, on biblical fasting.

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And sure, you hear about fasting of all types these days in regards to fitness.

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Fasting is all over the place with fitness right now. But what about the spiritual discipline of fasting?

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One researcher could not find a single book printed on biblical fasting from the years 1861 to 1954, almost a hundred years.

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There was no book, no scholarly dedication to the topic of biblical fasting.

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Author Richard Foster suspects fasting has been in decline the last couple centuries because it likely picked up a bad reputation due to the ascetics of the

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Middle Ages who would punish their bodies with fasting. Fasting used to carry with it extreme forms of self -mortification and self -flagellation, beating the body in a way that is not prescribed in the

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Word of God. It may have also been declining due to Christians being more focused on praying a prayer and looking the part rather than being concerned with the inward reality of what it means to be a

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Christian. In some ways, for decades now, people have been indifferent to their spiritual health.

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Also, Foster suspects in the United States there has been a food propaganda of sorts for decades.

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He says that the U .S. government has led us to believe that we absolutely need three meals a day with these specific food groups, part of this specific food pyramid, with these snacks in between each meal, and this is how we have to eat.

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That's been sold to us for a long time. And when you think about it, we truly are a society that is obsessed about food, in gluttonous ways and even health -conscious ways that can take it too far, in an idolatrous way as well.

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Right? Plus, we are a culture that thinks it needs instant gratification, and fasting, by nature, is in opposition to instant gratification.

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But with all that in mind, I think we shouldn't let the church off the hook. Fasting also has largely lacked prevalence because it hasn't been preached from the pulpit.

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And even if it has, it hasn't been modeled from the pulpit, it hasn't been encouraged from the pulpit to do.

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And we intend to fix that here at Apologia. It has picked up pace in our day a bit with more charismatic denominations, but with all things, right, we must turn to the

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Scriptures. We want to determine what the biblical precedent is for fasting, how it is to be performed.

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We want to determine what we can stand to gain from biblical fasting, and if it's expected of us as followers of Christ.

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So let's do that now in our text. What's going to happen is I'm going to go through the text, and then we're going to spend some time on really a lot of application of what this is going to look like.

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It's going to be addressing really some very practical things at the end, but first let's go through our text.

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He says in verse 1, Cry loudly, do not hold back, raise your voice like a trumpet.

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The Lord is charging Isaiah the prophet to not hold back, to speak every word that the

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Lord has him to say. Do not withhold anything. Declare to My people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins.

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Make My people aware of their transgressions. This is an indictment upon the people of Israel.

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An accusation has been made, and witness from God is about to be brought to the table.

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Verse 2 says, Yet they seek Me day by day and delight to know My ways. As a nation that has done righteousness and has not forsaken the ordinance of their

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God, they ask Me for just decisions. They delight in the nearness of God. So despite all the people's sin, they act as if they want to know the ways of God.

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That's what he's saying. Yet they seek Me day by day. They're like hypocrites.

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They act as if they've done no evil and are in perfect harmony with their Creator. They sin.

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Then they ask God to make decisions for them. They transgress His law. Then they ask for His blessing.

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Isn't that often what we do? We sin against God. Maybe we don't confess it.

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We don't make things right with the Lord. And then we just desire more and more from Him. Do this now,

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God. Do this now. But like any relationship, now that we have with God, purchased by Jesus Christ, if I were to get in an argument with my wife and then

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I were to act as if we never even got in an argument and just, alright, honey, will you go do this? Will you do this now for me?

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She'd be like, we haven't made things right. God desires for us to confess our sin to make things right with Him and approach

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Him, but that's not what Israel is doing here. This is lip service. This is hypocrisy.

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Excuse me. Now, God through Isaiah is quoting the people of Israel in v.

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3. Go to v. 3 now. It says, Why have we fasted and you do not see?

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Why have we humbled ourselves and you do not notice? That's as if Israel is asking that.

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So, we see now the primary focus of this indictment is fasting.

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They think if they at least commit to a ritual of fasting, God will see it and be pleased.

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But what we will see is that there is a right way and a wrong way to fast.

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What seemed like an eager devotion to God was actually aimed at simply getting the benefits from God.

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Now, of course, we will see that there are benefits to fasting. We're going to go over that.

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But the greatest treasure of fasting is the Lord. He is our primary focus in our fasts.

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Not merely the possible benefits. The first charge against these fasting people is that on the day that they fast, they seek their own desire.

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They don't seek the desires of God. When they fast, it's not a day devoted to the

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Lord and from what we desire so that we can learn what God desires of us.

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But here, we see that they seek their own desire. And not only that, they fast and they do not work.

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So they drive their workers harder. So if you can imagine, this is like an employer who has workers and he essentially announces to everyone,

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I'm going to take the day off to fast. And go ahead, but you guys, you're going to have to make up for the fact that I'm not working and I'm fasting and you're going to have to work harder.

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He pushes his workers even harder. That's what they're doing here. Exploits them for his super spiritual fast.

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Fasting recognizes, though, a dependence on God. And yet here, they depend greatly on the production of their farms, and therefore, they drive their workers even harder.

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It's not something like, Lord, I fast and recognize You are the Lord of the harvest.

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You bring the early and latter rains. You bring me abundance. Would You please, Lord, according to Your mercy and grace, bring blessing to my land.

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That's not what's going on here in their fast. It's them fasting but still believing they actually have control over the fruit of this earth.

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Independence from God has never and will never be had by any creature in the heavens or on earth.

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There's no independence from God. We're all dependent on God. Lucifer knows that well.

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He sought independence. He got none. When we fast, we are to see our dependence on God in a higher degree.

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Feeling the hunger pangs is a reminder that apart from the provision of God, we would be destitute.

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We lean in to the feelings that we have of not eating and we go, wow, everything that I have comes from God.

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This is their fast. They actually fast for more contention and strife between each other.

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And it's possible that they fast in order to treat each other worse than they already do.

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That's what he's saying. Verse 4 says, you do not fast like you do today to make your voice heard on high.

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And by that verse, we see one of the first benefits of fasting.

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Biblical fasting. Having your voice heard on high. Meaning, your voice will reach the heavens.

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Your petitions will reach the ear of your God in a righteous fast.

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And now, the Lord will describe what a righteous fast looks like in verses 5 -7.

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It is a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself. Is it for bowing one's head like a reed and for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed?

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Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the Lord? Look at that.

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One thing to notice is it says, is it a fast like this which I choose?

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This is God speaking. Is this a fast that I choose?

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Is this God's desire for a fast? He's about to show us if we think fasting is simply about abstaining from food, about not eating today, then we have no clue what biblical fasting is.

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This is a day for a man or a woman to humble themselves.

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This is a day to recognize God is God and we are not. This is a day to recognize that all that we have is from the

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Lord and all we will continue to need and acquire is from the hand of the

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Almighty. This sort of fast is a day in which you reinforce your submission to the

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Lord. I remember, I don't know why it made me think of this, I remember as a young boy going to the aquarium and on this big hallway, they had true -to -scale images of whales.

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And they had killer whales and beluga whales and blue whales and gray whales and the blue whale was the largest of them all.

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I think they were about 100 feet long, 330 ,000 pounds, and I was standing in front of this life -like image along a hallway of this gray whale and I was just a little kid like, wow, this would be tremendous to be in the ocean and be next to a beast this large.

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I was humbled standing next to something so big and fasting, in a way, should cause us to look at the enormity of the greatness of God and feel like a kid standing next to a blue whale.

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We should, in our fast, see how much more sovereign and bigger and glorious God is through our fast.

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Like going up to one of these Wasatch Mountains and you stand at the foot and you look directly up and maybe you don't even see the pinnacle or the peak.

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It's going through the clouds of the sky. It's amazing. And that's what fasting should cause us to do, to see the enormity of the glorious aspects of God.

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We see our pitiful and sinful state and see the holiness and perfect uprightness of God, which would then cause us to run to Him for mercy, grace, safety, and security.

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It says it's like bowing one's head low, like a bent reed next to water or a stalk of grain that is bent over from a storm.

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Fasting is related to sackcloth and ashes, we see. Sackcloth and ashes in the

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Old Testament was a symbol of sometimes grief, humility, but especially repentance.

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Repentance. When Jonah called the people of Nineveh to repentance, lest God destroy them, the people started to fast and they put on sackcloth and ashes.

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And get this, they even put sackcloth and ashes on all their animals. They were like, please,

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Lord, don't destroy us. Even on their animals. And it wasn't merely the act, right?

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It's not the ritual of fasting. It's not the ritual of putting sackcloth and ashes on and God is like, okay,

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I see it, checkmark, I'm not going to destroy Nineveh. It's the heart behind the fasting.

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It's the heart behind the sackcloth and ashes. It's the repentance behind those actions that stays the hand of a holy

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God. In the book of Esther, Mordecai tore his clothes.

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He put on sackcloth and ashes so as to petition the Lord so that Haman would not destroy all the

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Jews. If you remember that. All this to say the wearing of sackcloth and ashes was of course an outward sign of an inward condition, a correction of condition.

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A deep sadness over one's sin or current state. He continues to call them out.

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Is this an acceptable day? Isn't this truly a fast? The Lord says in v.

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6 there, Is this not the fast which I choose to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke and to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke?

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Once again, we see in v. 6, Is this not the fast which I choose? This is the fast that the

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Lord chooses. There are objectives to this fast. There are benefits and action we see now in v.

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6. To loosen the bonds of wickedness. Have you, church, been tied up?

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Bound in your sin lately? Has your sin been overwhelming you? Has the flesh been wrestling the

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Spirit and winning due to your sin? Fasting, it says, will break the bonds of wickedness.

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There is something, I think, so powerful about denying yourself something so fundamental as food and pleasure, things of course which are good in the eyes of God, but can be taken to wicked degrees easily.

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Things that can feed the flesh more than the Spirit. Denying those things to your body can aid you in repentance.

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That's what we see here. Fasting can, in a way, cause you to take a different look at your sin.

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As if when you fast, you're able to climb up to a high pinnacle and you can look down upon yourself and see more of the picture of who you are.

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Fasting will allow you to observe yourself and what you've been doing lately in a fuller picture.

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A bird's eye view, so to speak, of how you've been. Where once things were blurry or fuzzy, in fasting they are clear.

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Now you know what you must do. You know what will honor God. You know you must correct things and obey your

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Heavenly Father. He says the bands of the yoke...

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You see, the beasts of burden would have heavy wooden yokes over their necks, over their backs, and they were tied down by these bands.

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And so essentially, your sin is weighing you down. And Paul says to run this race, run this race of the

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Christian life. And as we see other believers on the track, they are sprinting with endurance.

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But we take it upon ourselves to grab our old wooden yokes, and we put them back on our backs.

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We put them back on. We try to put the bands back on.

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And then we drag a cart of sin. Every other believer is just passing us by.

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And we could easily repent and drop the yoke and the cart, but for some reason, sometimes we continue to drag that cart with us in this

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Christian life. But church, you'll never be able to bring that cart of sin across the finish line.

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So why carry it even for a little while? Drop the cart. Drop the burden. Take the wooden yoke off your back.

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Don't place it on. Don't place it back on. It's killing your endurance. It's tiring you out.

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You can't bring it with you. Fasting will help undo the bands of such a yoke of sin.

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Christ came to set the captives free, to remove from us our yokes and take on His. And what does

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He say? His yoke is easy and His burden is light. He's given us an easy yoke and a light burden.

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And we go, no, let me take the old heavy one and then drag a cart of sin in this

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Christian life. It weighs us down. Sin oppresses us.

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But in Him we find rest. It's like this. Imagine being in a dark, black, cold, wet, cell, dungeon.

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No light. Imagine being in that black, wet dungeon your whole life.

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It's all you've ever known. And one day, one who is shining in white garments, one who comes to the cell doors with light that you've never seen before, light that is blinding you, opens the cell doors and a gentle but strong at the same time voice says, come, follow

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Me. Today you will be free and you will be free indeed. Imagine that.

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Imagine then being in that cell and seeing that light and the cell door opens and you have not had strength like this ever and you're able to leap out of that black, wet dungeon with strength that you've never known in your life.

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That's what Christ does for us. Christ frees us from a place like that.

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He sets the captives free. He removes us from that oppression. But again, often as believers, even though Christ sets us free from such a place, we look back at it like Lot's wife when she looks back at Sodom and Gomorrah.

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We look back at the dungeon. The dungeon is all that we've known. And so sometimes in the

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Christian life we get back in the dungeon willfully. The cell door is still open.

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We can leave at any time. But sometimes it's what's familiar. It's the sin that we've known.

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But we are to remove ourselves from such a place. We are not to go back towards those trapping dungeon bars.

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The doors are open. We're free to leave. Christ put the rulers and powers of darkness to open shame.

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He made a spectacle, it says, of them. They have no more power, and yet we get back in there.

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Fasting is almost as if an adrenaline shot allows you to leap forward, to come back out of that.

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Almost as if you were dazed and in a stupor, and you'll see things for what it is.

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Fasting breaks every yoke. It makes you run to freedom. And verse 7 expands on it further.

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Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into the house, when you see the naked, to cover him and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

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Here's something that we don't normally hear in regards to fasting. When you fast, it is an opportunity to do good deeds.

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Practically speaking, if you're fasting one day, take the food of the three meals that you would have eaten, and that you're not eating that day, and give it to someone who needs it.

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That could be a great way to take the focus off yourself in your fast. Make a meal for someone in your church, a family in need.

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Maybe there's a mom with a new addition, a new baby.

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Or you know of a family who's been struggling financially. In your fast, bring them a meal.

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Bring them food. Drop off food at the homeless shelter on the day of your fast.

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Bring clothes and hats to those who are exposed to the elements in your community. This goes right in line with Jesus' thinking in Matthew 25 when

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He exhorts us to feed the hungry, care for the sick, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, give water to the thirsty.

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So once again, we see that fasting is a spiritual discipline that takes the focus off of yourself and primarily puts it on God, which then allows you to put it on towards others who need help.

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And that's why He says, is it not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

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Hide yourself from your own desires? Don't focus on your hunger. Don't focus on the next big meal that you're going to get after this.

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Focus on the hunger of others. That's the heart of that. Now, the

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Lord begins to explain the incredible blessings of a true fast that He has chosen in verses 8 -10.

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Then your light will break out like the dawn and your recovery will speedily spring forth and your righteousness will go before you.

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The glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. You won't be in darkness anymore.

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You won't be in the black dungeon anymore. You won't be in the gloom or darkness of sin.

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Your light will break out. It will break out like the dawn. He says.

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You know, it reminds me of my apartment in Harriman, which we're leaving soon.

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But I do have a wonderful view. In my room, I have a window right in front of my desk where I prepare all my sermons and do all my exegesis.

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There's a window right in front. And it faces east. So what do I see? I see the peaks of the

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Wasatch Mountains. It really is beautiful. And I remember a couple weeks ago,

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I was having trouble sleeping. I woke up around 3 .30

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or 4 a .m. Some of you are like, well, that's normal for me. That's not normal for me.

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I'm 7 .30, 8 a .m. And I'm a night owl. I stay up until like 1 a .m.

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And so I woke up at 3 .34 and I opened up my blinds and I thought, you know what,

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I'll read my Bible and I'll maybe even try to work more on my sermon that is coming for this

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Sunday. And I opened the blinds and it's still dark out. It's still dark.

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But after a while, this like glow is coming over the mountain.

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And then, I'm sure some of you have seen this before in your life. Maybe here in Utah, maybe elsewhere.

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But then, it seems like it's just for a moment at the right moment. And you look at the top of the mountain, when the sun was coming up, the fringe of the mountain at the very top, the tip of the sun was peeking over the mountain and rays, like actual light rays, shoot forth and break the black shadow of the mountain.

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It just shoots outward and it's magnificent. I mean, you can't even compare it though to the glory of God.

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What will the glory of God look like? The Shekinah glory of God. And yet, I look at something like that and the light shoots out and that's what

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He's saying. Your light will break out like the dawn. It will shoot forth.

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Your recovery will speedily spring forth. A biblical fast will have you break out like the light of dawn from your state of grief or sin or whatever it may be.

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Denying yourself something so elemental is like waking up to the fresh morning light and your recovery comes.

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You will find yourself running from sin, running from darkness. A commitment to righteousness, one that is only wrought by a new heart that has

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Christ's righteousness imputed to it, it will march forward, it says. Your righteousness will go before you.

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And the glory of Yahweh will be your rear guard coming out of your fast.

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The glory of Yahweh, the thing that makes God our God, His glory will be your rear guard.

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If we fast, if we confess, we repent, we seek God's aid to conquer sin,

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He will then be faithful to guard us. He will guard you where you normally aren't quick to look.

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Where the devil typically gets a foothold in your life. The God of the universe will watch that for you.

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He will be a watchman of the night for you. God. And here's the most amazing result of fasting.

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Verse 9, Then you will call, and the Lord will answer.

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You will cry, and He will say, Here I am.

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You will call, and the Lord will answer. You will cry, and He will say, Here I am.

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If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking of wickedness, when you call to the

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Lord, He will answer. If it feels like He hasn't been hearing you lately,

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He will answer. If it's been hard to see where He is, where He's been working in your life,

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He will show Himself to you. He will say, Here I am. You want to find

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Him? He will let Himself be found. This is just like James 4 when we went over that.

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It says if you draw near to God, He will draw near to you. The promise is amazing.

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You can have a great expectation that if you truly seek the

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Lord in your fast, you will find Him. And He will be with you. And He will uphold you with His righteous right hand.

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And whatever you need, He will come to your aid. Do you see why in the

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Bible in almost every time that they needed victory, every time that they needed to make a big decision, they needed

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God to do something huge, they prayed and fasted. How, I wonder,

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I asked myself this. It almost brought me to tears. How have I gone this long in my Christian life without making fasting a dedicated practice?

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How? How have I done anything without fasting and God provided?

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By God's grace. It's just by God's grace. I'm not trying to make

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God sound like a genie. Like if we fast and ask God things, He's just going to provide it. That's not what I'm saying.

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Of course, fasting is not something that is outside of God's sovereignty. And yet there is this promise.

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These promises. That when we fast, when we pray, we come before the Lord, He will draw near to us and help us.

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He brings us back to reality. You can have this. The Jews can have this. Repent from your false fasting.

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Repent from your wicked fasting. Remove the yoke of sin from your midst. Shatter the idols that you have made.

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Stop blaming others. Stop pointing the finger. Stop blaming

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God. Stop blaming wickedness. We blame everyone for our sin except for ourselves.

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This is a call to not partial submission and partial obedience. This is an all -out call to faithfulness to the

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Lord their God and His commandments. Verse 10, And if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom will become like midday.

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Remember, we learned in James 1 what pure and undefiled religion was. To care for the orphans and the widows and to keep oneself spotless from the world.

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That's what pure and undefiled religion is. James echoes what has been said over and over and over again in the

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Old Testament from God to His covenant people in Israel. If you abstain from food, if you focus on Me, if you seek

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Me, if you repent, you will find Me. And if you take the food that you were going to eat and give it to those who need it, if you care for the afflicted, then your darkness will once again turn to light.

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He says like the midday. Like the midday. Like high noon.

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When the sun is straight up in the sky at the highest part in the sky, in the middle of the sky, when it's directly above you, what?

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There's no more shadows. At the highest part, at high noon, at midday, where no shadows will be found, that will be what it is for you.

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Like the brightest part of the day, so will your countenance be before God after such a fast.

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Then he gives his final promises in verses 11 and 12. And the

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Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places and give strength to your bones, and you will be like a watered garden.

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And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. The promise is that the

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Lord will continually guide a person like this. Someone humble. Someone who recognizes their dependence on God.

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Someone who sees the value in fasting. The word guide here in Hebrew is nahah.

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And it means literally that God will direct your steps. He will make your steps where they need to go.

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It implies leadership. That you won't simply be walking through this life alone, but God will be with you.

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And that doesn't mean like you're driving on the road and there's faded street signs and you're like, okay, do

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I turn here? It won't even be like a navigation system in your car.

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It means that the success and sanctification that you go through is directly correlated to God.

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God, He will finish what He has started in you. He will direct you. He will show you where you need to go.

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Your success is His success. Your growth is to His glory. Your maturity is for the presentation of a spotless bride to Christ.

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Like an oasis in a desert when thirsty. Like honey that is found in the wilderness when hungry.

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Like a big shade tree in the hot sun, so will the

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Lord be to you. Whatever sin you think is giving you pleasure right now, church, whatever sin you think is giving you pleasure right now, it won't last.

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It won't. It's not the oasis in the desert. It's the mirage.

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It's the mirage. We keep chasing it, but it's never really there. It's never bringing true joy.

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The relationship, the pornography, the sex, the money, the idol, the pride, it never comes.

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It will never be of true substance. It's like if you've ever seen a hologram or something projected down on the ground and you see your kid tries to grab it and there's nothing actually there.

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There's no substance to it. So is our sin to us. It's worth nothing.

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It won't satisfy the way that only Christ can. Only God will accomplish that.

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Only God will fulfill that. He will fulfill our needs. Don't look to the things which are made.

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Look to the Maker. You'll get strength through your bones. You'll be like a watered garden.

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You guys know I've talked about gardens and trees. I love gardening. I loved it back in Arizona.

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I can remember on a spring day in my backyard, we had about 15 fruit trees.

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We had a raised bed of onion and garlic and the stalks were over a foot high.

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Green as can be. We had tomatillos and peppers green.

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Reds, oranges. We had a tomato bed with just climbing up this trellis.

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There was just tomatoes everywhere. It's like when you let your kid decorate the Christmas tree and they put a thousand ornaments and there's no more green.

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That's how my tomato plant was. The Lord blessed us with abundance.

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We had, of course, blossoms going. Tangerine, orange, lemon. The blossoms in spring.

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The fragrance that citrus blossoms let off is just glorious. Nectarine, peach blossoms that are pink and white.

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I just remember after it would have a little light rain or if I'd water the garden, there would just be droplets glistening on everything.

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All of a sudden after watering the garden, it felt like it would drop a couple more degrees in the whole backyard and it would get very cool.

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Maybe dusk was coming and you could see a prism showing through the light with sprays of water and just everything would become serene and calm and the vibrancy of all the colors would come more alive.

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I remember this fresh light and yet earthy sweet smell.

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This aroma filled through the garden. Revitalized is the word that comes to mind when that would happen.

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Revitalized. Weary, drooping, but now upright, alive, and vibrant.

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That is what the Lord will do for you. If you are bent over, if you are weary, if you are drooping down, you will be like a watered garden,

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He says. And what does a watered garden do? It bears fruit.

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A watered garden bears fruit. Fast like this and you will bear fruit.

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He says you will be like a spring of water whose waters never fail. The river flow will never dam up.

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The waterfall will never cease. The glacier fed spring will never stop bubbling from the bottom to the top.

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Basically, it's life. Life comes to you. You will find life, my friends.

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And that's a tremendous promise. And in verse 12 He says, what was torn down will be rebuilt.

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We will then rebuild the ancient ruins. We will raise up the age -old foundations. And we will be called the repairers of the breach.

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That is to say, if sin has torn you down, covered you in dust and decay, you will be made new, reinforced, and rebuilt.

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And our foundation is Christ. He is the cornerstone. We must brush off the hay and the stubble and build with stone, silver, and gold, and metals.

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Build with something that lasts. It's like Proverbs 14 v. 1.

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It says, the wise woman builds her house, but the foolish woman tears it down with her own hands.

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And that's what we do in our sin. Something has been built up in us and then we're trying to tear it down.

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You see all these arbitrary things that we do? Going back to the dungeon, grabbing the old yoke, and then doing something like this?

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Tearing down something that's been built? Thank God we can't do that. Thank God He holds us.

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Thank God we're not at this risk of losing this with our performance.

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Praise God for His grace in upholding us that way. But the text says there's been a breach.

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Paul says don't give the devil a foothold, but sometimes we let the foothold turn into a big breach.

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So we are to restore the walls. To be on guard. Don't tear down what

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God has built up. Don't tear down what is God's. Because you are God's.

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You are His temple. Temple of the Holy Spirit. We belong to Him. And so that's truly amazing all that fasting does in these 12 verses.

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So here are some things. That was the text. Now here are some final things that I want to remind you of about fasting.

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Some practical things. Some application things. We kind of touched on this when

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I introduced fasting, but fasting shouldn't be seen as a form of self -abasement. It shouldn't be an act of punishing the flesh.

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That would be acting like the Gnostics or the Docetists who say flesh and material is wicked.

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The ones who deny that Jesus came in the flesh. We don't want to act like that. We don't want to do that to ourselves.

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A time of humbling yourself is not the same as punishing yourself for sin.

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Humbling yourself is not the same as punishing yourself for sin. Fasting, therefore, shouldn't be seen as an act of atonement.

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Your fast will not atone for your sin that you committed that week. That's not what Isaiah was trying to say here.

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Jesus alone took our punishment. Jesus alone paid the ultimate price. It's His atonement.

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Any fasting we do will not purchase even an infinitesimal degree of eternal life.

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Any fasting you do will purchase you none of it. That's one thing to remember.

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Now here's another. Fasting for diet or intermittent fasting are for health choices.

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Those are health choice related things. Those are not to be confused with biblical fasting which

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I've already told you contains much more, as we've seen, than physical benefit.

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We are to focus on the Lord in our fast. One commentator states, our human cravings and desires are like a river that tends to overflow from its banks.

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Fasting helps keep the waters in the proper channel, he says.

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It's like when Paul says, I pummel my body and subdue it. Or David wrote in the

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Psalms, he says, I have afflicted myself with fasting. Again, that's no ascetism.

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That's discipline. And discipline brings freedom. Fasting can teach us the ability to exercise self -control, which is the fruit of the

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Spirit. Fasting can increase spiritual awareness. We saw that happen with the apostles when they fasted in the upper room and they received confirmation from the

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Holy Spirit that they were to set apart Barnabas and Paul to the work of the Holy Spirit. That happened as a direct result of fasting in Acts 13.

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And as we saw, fasting reveals the things that are trying to control us.

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Fasting can help bring victory over sin where normally it seemed next to impossible to overcome.

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Fasting can help you cultivate a deeper and better prayer life with your

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Lord, because fasting slows us down. And how often when we pray are we just sometimes trying to get through the prayer to get to the next thing, or we're speed praying.

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Fasting will slow you down in that. Fasting ultimately, as we saw, draws you closer to God.

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And of course, biblical fasting can have health benefits, but that's simply a by -product.

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But it can have health benefits. Certainly. There are a couple different types of fasts.

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There is a normal fast, which is simply abstaining from all food and beverages except for water.

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That is the most regularly practiced fast. Abstaining from food and beverages except for water.

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Drinking water. Then there is a partial fast, which is abstaining from certain types of food, like when

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Daniel abstained from the king's delicacies. He partially fasted against things that he knew wouldn't be good, or simply in that moment he didn't want to participate in celebration by eating these luxurious items.

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Humbling himself in a partial fast. Then, the other type of fast is an absolute fast.

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An absolute fast is abstaining from eating all food and all types of beverages, including water.

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No food, no water, nothing. It's called an absolute fast. And that is not normative.

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That's not something that you see very often or is practiced very often. I did share with you,

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Esther called for an absolute fast with the Jews. She said no food or water.

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And it was for three days so that the Jews wouldn't be exterminated. Three days only.

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And then it also occurred with Paul. When Saul, before he was Paul, was on the road to Damascus and he was struck with blindness and he learned that he was persecuting the church of Christ, it says that when he got to Damascus, he didn't eat or drink anything for three days.

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It was an absolute fast. Once again, three days. Moses, as I said, did an absolute fast.

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No water, no food. Forty days. It's not humanly possible. It was a supernatural fast.

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So, it's pretty impeccable. The Bible is right on with three days, typically for most people.

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At about day four, when day four starts and you have not had water, you are beginning the process of dying after three days of not having water.

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It's just amazing that three is what they have here. The Bible is on track with the 40 days without food.

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At day 41, typically for most body types, at day 41, the body then starts the process of dying from starvation.

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All reserves are consumed at that point. And at day 41, your flesh is then beginning to degrade and be consumed.

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It's being absorbed. How perfect is God's Word? Three days water, 40 days food. That's fairly typical.

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So, I recommend church a normal fast where you are drinking water. I would not try unless somehow the

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Lord made it clear that we were to do that in a dire situation. Do a normal or partial fast.

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In the Bible, fasts were called for repentance. They were called for temple dedications. For God to give the people deliverance from an invading nation.

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And for very big decisions. There were public fasts and there were private fasts.

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And there was only a couple in the Old Testament time and little by little after the time of the exile, after Ezra and Nehemiah's time, more fasts were added to their tradition.

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And now today with Israel, there are I think more than 20 different fasts that they observe as a nation.

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It didn't start that way. Joel 1 .14 says, Consecrate a fast.

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Proclaim a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the

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Lord your God and cry out to the Lord. So, it is very fitting honestly for us to sometimes do corporate fasts as a body.

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Even as a nation sometimes. It brings unity to people.

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God will act with a corporate fast. Listen to this. In 1756, the

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King of Britain called for a solemn day of prayer and for a day of fasting in 1756 because they were being threatened by invasion of France.

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France was rumored about to invade upon Britain and they were not ready for this.

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So he called this solemn day of prayer and fasting. And John Wesley records what happened that day on February 6.

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He says, The fast day was a glorious day, such as London had scarce seen since the restoration.

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Every church in the city was more than full and a solemn seriousness sat on every face.

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Surely God heareth prayer and there will yet be a lengthening of our tranquility. And then later, he writes, this was later in a different journal entry, he responded to what happened that day.

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He said, The humility was turned into national rejoicing for the threatened invasion by the

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French was averted. They never came. They never came. Now the question is, is fasting commanded in the

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Bible? I know it's been going a little bit. I've only got a little bit more. I want us to be thorough.

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Is fasting commanded in the Bible? Explicitly, fasting is not commanded.

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Fasting is not explicitly commanded in the Bible. It is not commanded in the Law of Moses, nor is it commanded in the

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New Testament text. However, in the Sermon on the

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Mount, Jesus says this, when you fast, do this. Jesus presupposes,

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Jesus assumes that His followers will fast. They will fast.

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And He describes what we should and should not do when we are privately fasting. You probably have heard it before in the

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Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says, Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting.

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Remember Isaiah? He said in their fast, they seek their own desire. What do the Pharisees do now?

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They don't wash their face. They put a sad face on. They have a sad countenance. They go around and they hope people notice that they are fasting.

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Jesus says, Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full, but when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face so that your fasting will not be noticed by men, but by your

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Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

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So, fasting isn't something where you take a selfie with a sad face and you put it on the internet and you put hashtag fasting today.

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You know? That's not what we're supposed to do. This isn't explaining to people, you're so tired because you're on a super spiritual fast.

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Oh boy, I've just... You know when sometimes when we want a little consolation, we walk into a room, oh boy...

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It's been a hard day. What's the matter,

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Wade? I told you you wouldn't get it. You know? We're just like playing it up.

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What's going on? I've been fasting. It's like, no, we're not supposed to do that. That's not what the

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Word of God says. Right? It's between you and your Father, Jesus says. Now, listen to this.

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You may have to inform your wife of why you're not eating food or your husband or whatever.

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Maybe you decide as a couple to fast. Maybe you have to let your immediate family know that you're fasting.

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And that's okay. That's okay. We see the heart of what Jesus is hitting at. They wanted glory for themselves.

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They wanted the... They were man -pleasers, is what I should say.

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So, it appears though, of course, that fasting should be between you and God.

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As much as you can make that possible between you and God when you do a private fast. There's corporate fasts, private fasts.

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When you're in a private fast, make sure only those who need to know know. And then in a corporate fast, only we know as a church.

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Only we would know. Okay? So, Jesus believed we would do it.

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Jesus assumed we would do it. In Matthew 9 .14 -15, it says the disciples of John came to Jesus asking

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Him, Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?

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And Jesus said to them, The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they?

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But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and they will fast.

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So, Jesus has been crucified. Jesus has been buried. He has been raised.

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And He has ascended into heaven. So it's time for those who follow Him to fast.

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It's time for us to fast. So, let's fast, church. Let's make it a practice.

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I'll tell you, practically speaking, you may, if you've never done it before, you may have to start small.

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Okay? So, what I would suggest, before you try shooting towards 40 days with water, you should probably try something like eat on Thursday night dinner.

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Okay? If you've never done fasting ever, it's going to be a shock to your system. Eat Thursday night for dinner.

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And then don't eat breakfast on Friday. Don't eat lunch on Friday. But then go 24 hours and eat again at dinner.

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So you've kind of had a 24 hour period. That's if you're brand new to it. And then after you've kind of done that and your body's used to that, then eat

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Thursday night. And then don't eat again until Saturday breakfast. And then go again and maybe do two days and three days.

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And I'll tell you, scientifically speaking, the first three days of a fast are the worst.

01:02:39

They're the hardest on the body. They're releasing the most toxins. So, especially if you're a tea or caffeine drinker or a big sugar eater, it will be headaches and things like that.

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But you just keep drinking water and you keep letting it... You let those pains humble you.

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You let those headaches remind you of your dependence on God. And they say at about 9 to 11 days is where you really hit the sweet spot.

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Where once you've fasted for 9, 10, 11 days, you no longer really have a lot of the hunger pangs.

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And you're really having more energy. From days 4 to 7, 4 to 7, you are typically very tired.

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It's hard for you to do regular tasks, like even picking up your kids. But again, around days 9, 10, 11, 12 and onward, a renewed energy will come to you.

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And Christians will go two weeks, three weeks. But again, I say all that though where you should probably even check with your physician and make sure that that's something you could do that long.

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But I know the Lord could help us to do it. Definitely try to work your way to just even a day.

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A day would be a good place to start. So, if you can't though, if you can't give time to the

01:04:04

Lord in your fast, if you can't devote time to Him, don't do it. Don't do it then. Then just call it a health or fitness fast.

01:04:12

But don't act as if you're actually fasting for the Lord. If you can't devote time of prayer, singing of songs, reading of the

01:04:19

Word to Him. Because, like I said, if you learn one thing today, biblical fasting, the smallest part of biblical fasting is the abstaining from food.

01:04:31

It's one of the smallest parts. You can keep a journal during your fast.

01:04:37

You might see things spiritually that you've never seen before. So it might be wise to have a pen and paper ready and realize some things you have done.

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I know when I did it recently, there was a sin that I realized

01:04:53

I had been doing habitually for a time now. And again, it brought me out of my stupor during that time, and I was able to see and repent from that.

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So you can keep a journal during that time. Sing songs. Give your food to a needy or another church family.

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Ask the Lord to show you if there's any wrong way in you, as the psalmist says. And if you get angry during your fast, then you might have a spirit of anger.

01:05:21

If you get impatient during your fast, you may have to deal with a spirit of impatience.

01:05:29

If you have idleness, and you're lazy during your fast, you may then have to deal with laziness.

01:05:37

It might reveal to you a pattern in your life that you are given over to anger and impatience easily.

01:05:43

So it will bring out in you what you need to target. The other thing that I'll mention is you can fast from things like technology, phones.

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That technically isn't a biblical fast, but I think there's good principle there. If you've been on the

01:06:03

Facebook too much, if you've been on the phone too much, it might be prudent to say I will fast from this.

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I know when the Lord saved me, I fasted from alcohol for like seven years. And then

01:06:14

I finally, in liberty, was able to participate here and there. When I have a celebration,

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I might have a drink or so. But for seven years, before I was saved, alcohol was such an idol to me.

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I was becoming drunk every day. I needed to just, boom, seven years I stopped. So it can be wise for other things than food.

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That's the principle we have. But in the end, church, I've been very convicted the last year that at some point

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I wanted to preach this. I wanted you all to know what the Bible says about biblical fasting.

01:06:51

I think it's important. I think we need to start practicing it individually and then corporately as a church.

01:06:59

So you'll probably be seeing from now on if big things are coming up or things are happening in our society, in our country,

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I think we'll declare a day of fasting. And you don't tell anyone if you're participating.

01:07:14

Just participate. We'll just call it generally. And if you can that day, do it.

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If you can't, understand. There are, again, some churches in the Didache that showed some

01:07:26

Christians fast every... they choose a day of the week. Every week. As long as it doesn't become ritual.

01:07:36

As long as it doesn't become a rite. It must be something that is genuine, that's always seeking the

01:07:43

Lord. You see what God wants. This is the fast I choose. This is the fast

01:07:49

I choose. And He'll break all the bonds of wickedness. And He'll let your light spring forth like the dawn.

01:07:56

And that's the promise. So that's what we will do, church, to the glory of God. And only by His grace will we be able to do this.

01:08:03

Let's pray the Lord will help us to be faithful with this moving forward. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, again, we thank

01:08:11

You, Lord, for this time. We thank You, Lord, for the word that has gone out. I pray that it would bless

01:08:17

Your church. I know we've had a lot of long sermons for our people lately,

01:08:23

Lord. But I just pray, God, that their focus would be on Your truth and on transformation, on change.

01:08:31

Lord, we need You to help us to institute this in our Christian walks. We truly do. We will be tempted to move forward from here and not try it again for another five years.

01:08:43

Lord, help us to remember this wonderful, glorious, spiritual discipline that Jesus Himself has practiced.

01:08:53

That when we are deep in our sin and it's hard for us to see out of it, that fasting,

01:08:59

Lord, You will use it to help us break out of it. So Lord, I pray that this is something that us as a church body will do from here on out, all to Your glory.