Know Your Enemy: Remedies Against the Flesh—Fasting in Israel & Babylon | 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

All right, so I preached last week on self-denial and we learned from the words of our Master himself, from Christ, that we are called as believers to a life of cross-embracing, Christ-following self-denial from Luke 9 23, right?

And we must therefore deny anything and everything that tempts our flesh to oppose God, His Word, His will, and His call for our lives and for our specific situation and circumstance, right? So we must fight our fleshly desires, those that oppose God, that are sinful, and put them to death in both a positive and a negative sense, which is something that happens or takes place in our sanctification.

Not in order to get right with God, but because we've been made right with God in our sanctification, which is the work of God's free grace. Whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more progressively to die unto sin, that's the negative sense, and to live unto righteousness, that's the positive sense.

Fasting as Self-Denial and Sanctification

And so even though we all have our particular weaknesses and are more susceptible to certain temptations, right? There is one weapon, one particular means, which God has given us, all of us, that is one of the most effective remedies against the same problem that we all face, against the same enemies that we all face, no matter what your particular weaknesses are, and that is fasting.

Fasting. Now, any of you who have sat in for more than a few of my sermons would know the next question that I'm going to ask, the question that it begs now, that we always need to seek to answer first, and that is to define our terms, right?

So then, what is fasting? What exactly is fasting? What does it mean to fast? And in Greek, the word nestio means to not eat, to not eat. It's from two words in particular, from the ne, which is a negation or not, and estio, which is to eat, so not eating therefore, or to abstain from food.

And in Hebrew, the word to fast is also a derivative of several words, such as to oppress, humiliate, torment, afflict, as well as to be distressed. To be distressed. And in Isaiah 58 5, we see the Lord says, is it such a fast that I have chosen a day for a man to afflict himself.

Well, this is actually the psalmist saying, I'm sorry, the prophet saying that, but for a man to afflict himself. There we see a parallelism which I've preached on before, but that's what it means. It's to afflict ourselves, our flesh specifically, and that word himself is the nephesh, the living soul of man, the whole person.

And so in our text for today, in 1st Corinthians chapter 9, verse 24, we also, I'm gonna read it once again. Do you not know that those, that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize.

Run in such a way that you may win. Therefore, now everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible one.

Therefore, I run in such a way as not without aim or purpose. I box in such a way as not beating the air, but I discipline my body to make it my slave so that after I preach to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

And there you see, once again, the contrast here that he's talking about disciplining his body, our physical body specifically. And that is because fasting, which is, we learned last week as well, is also a form of self-denial.

It is in many ways, the ultimate form of self-denial. And it is a method of discipline and of self-discipline as we will also see. Now, permit me to introduce to you all a most excellent friend of mine, the Dutch reformed theologian, Wilhelmus Abrakel.

Wilhelmus Abrakel, who provides us with a very thorough and excellent definition of fasting that we will unpack later on. This comes from a systematic theology on the Christian's reasonable service. And I heartily commend to you, not just this quote that I'm going to read, but all 2700 plus pages of this magnificent work to you for your benefit and edification.

Highly commend it to you all. He says that fasting is a special religious exercise in which a believer deprives himself from all that invigorates the body, that invigorates the body, humbling himself in body and soul before God as a means to obtain what he desires.

Okay. Fasting is a religious exercise. In other words, it's not for health. It's not primarily for health benefits or for anything else. It's a religious exercise in which one seeks after God, pursues God.

Fasting due to poverty, avarice, illness, for health reasons, or being prevented from eating food due to business activities is not applicable here. That's not what biblical fasting really refers to. Rather, we speak here of fasting as God focused to seek God thereby.

Fasting is an active engagement of secret dealings with God. It is a special exercise, a special one. It is not a regular or daily activity such as prayer or reading or Thanksgiving and singing. Rather, it is practiced at special seasons or occasions of need, such as being threatened or oppressed by the danger of a plague, having to engage in a very weighty task, perplexity, or having to make a choice concerning a serious, a weighty matter.

It can even relate to everyday matters such as seeking communion with God, the need for strength to oppose specific sins and our enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil, right? And growth in grace.

A hearty amen to that. Very good stuff there. A lot to unpack there. And even though fasting is seriously neglected, shamefully neglected, and it runs contrary to our entire modern way of life. All of it.

All of this fast-paced, microwave, instapod, instant ready, like have everything available right now. Don't wait on anything. And self-denial, that's like a foreign, people don't even know what that means these days, sadly.

And it runs contrary also, sadly, to what many churches themselves teach or neglect to teach. And many churches avoid fasting altogether as a subject, as a practice, they just avoid it like the plague.

But you will nevertheless find in our reformed tradition that there is a treasury of sound doctrine on the subject of fasting. And we just saw that quote from Abrakel, where he provides some very excellent guidance and wisdom on this matter.

And also like I've been reading from John Owen, whom we will also see, has very excellent things to say on this matter as well. Now, fasting served various purposes in both the Old and the New Testaments.

So we therefore need to make proper covenantal distinctions with respect to how and why God's people fasted back then, and how and why God's people should fast now, today. And you might be surprised to learn just how much the Bible discusses fasting all throughout, all throughout.

And some of the material that I'm going to use today, I gleaned from Mark Copeland and G. Craig Lewis. But we, of course, nevertheless need to keep certain unbiblical views that they have in check, to chew the meat and spit out the bones, right, as always.

And I've also previously recommended Nave's topical Bible, Nave's topical Bible. And I should have brought it with me, but this is one of the best tools that you can have to help you to study the Bible in a more systematic and comprehensive manner, according to specific topics such as fasting.

Everyone should have one of these at home to study with. Okay, so now let's survey the Old Testament to see what we learn about fasting. We're going to focus primarily on the Old Testament today. The only official fast that was commanded by the law of Moses was during the Day of Atonement.

It was during the Day of Atonement. In Leviticus chapter 16 and verse 29, if you turn with me there, Leviticus 16, beginning in verse 29, we will see when God instructed Israel to put this into place.

It's a little hidden at first, but we will see it become more clear as we understand what the Lord is teaching us. Leviticus 16, starting in verse 29, and this shall be, God is speaking here, a perpetual state for you, meaning ongoing.

In the seventh month on the tenth day of the month, you shall humble your souls, note that phrase, and not do any work, whether the native or the sojourner who sojourns among you. For it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you.

You will be clean from all your sins before Yahweh, from all your sins before Yahweh. It is to be a Sabbath of solemn rest for you that you may humble your souls. It is a perpetual statute or law. Okay, now this may not be so clear, like where's the fast at?

Where does it say to not eat? And the phrase, the key phrase is the one I highlighted, is to humble your souls, humble your souls. That is a phrase that also represents what fasting means, is to humble ourselves in self-denial and humiliation.

And you will find that the book of Acts actually refers to the day of atonement as the fast, the fast with a capital F in chapter 27, verse 9. So this was commonly known and understood that you would fast on the day of atonement.

In Yom Kippur. Now people fasted in the Old Testament, both publicly and privately, often out of their own initiative, not so much as a command from God, but out of their own initiative in times of danger, calamity, war, sickness, affliction, mourning, or distress.

And there's other reasons as well, but these are some of the primary ones. And you'll note, you'll find that these occasions for fasting are actually very similar to the list, to the list of perceived threats against our own assurance of salvation, which Paul enumerates in Romans 8 .35, in Romans 8 .35, where he says, who will separate us from the love of Christ?

Will affliction or turmoil or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword or war? The answer, of course, is a huge resounding no. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. But likewise, you see the similar occasions to fast in these types of trials.

Fasting was done in times of war or the threat of war for God's protection and deliverance from enemies, from the enemy. Israel, for example, fasted at Bethel during the war against the Benjamites in the book of Judges and at Mizpah in the Philistine War in 1 Samuel 7.

Or also when loved ones were sick to intercede on their behalf, there would be a fast, such as when David fasted and wept for his son when the boy was ill and he was recently born. And he in fact stopped fasting when the boy died in 2 Samuel 12.

Important things to note there. The psalmist also fasted for his enemies when they were sick. Fasted for his enemies. And you see that law, that principle there of loving your enemies. You fast for them.

I mean, who does that? Fasting for your enemies. Think about that. Let that sink in. In Psalm 35 verses 11 through 13, there was also fasting to mourn over loved ones who died, such as the men of Jabesh Gilead who fasted seven days when Saul died.

The King Saul had died. Or when David and the people fasted for the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. And Jonathan, his best friend. Or when the people sought God's forgiveness. God's forgiveness. And this ties directly into the Day of Atonement, which is a day of pardon, of forgiveness from God, which is correlated with the fast that he had instituted for God's people to do.

And Moses also fasted for 40 days due to the sins of Israel. In Deuteronomy chapter 9, even King Ahab, the vile, wicked, perverse Ahab, the worst king of them all, like the Bible says, humbled himself in fasting to be forgiven for his abominable, wicked deeds at one point.

And God actually spared him at that time. He spared him. I mean, that's how gracious and merciful God is. But he did not spare his descendants in 1 Kings 21. So now we're beginning to see the several different reasons and motives for fasting in the New Testament.

Nineveh. Remember Nineveh, those vile, the entire town, the entire city of Nineveh was given over to wickedness. And they repented and fasted completely from food and drink. They even put the animals on a fast.

Nobody eat or drink nothing, not even water. At the preaching of Jonah, the reluctant prophet, in chapter 3, verse 4 of his book there. And God, as you know, spared them because they repented and fasted at first.

And then, of course, the sin always comes back and then God judges them later on. There was also Israel's national fast at the public reading of the law by Ezra, the reformer, as an act of penitence or repentance as well in Nehemiah chapter 9.

Daniel, the prophet, also sought God by prayer and supplications with fasting, sackcloth and ashes, which is a common expression in the Old Testament, when he confessed the sins, iniquity, wickedness and rebellion of Israel.

I mean, if it wasn't clear enough just how bad Israel was. He went on a fast on their behalf, on Israel's behalf, in Daniel chapter 9, verse 3. Note here, though, that this is a different occasion from the contest that Daniel had against the king, the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, and his men in Daniel chapter 1, okay, when he ate only vegetables, as we'll see in a bit further on here.

Now, people also fasted when faced with impending danger in the Old Testament. Jehoshaphat, for example, fasted when he was threatened by Edom. By Edom. Ezra also led the people in a fast to seek God's guidance and direction for their return from exile, when they were exiled outside of their homeland, which was fraught, the journey was fraught with many perils, toils, dangers and snares.

And God was moved by their entreaty to respond to them in Ezra chapter 8. Nehemiah also fasted in prayer and supplication when he heard of the calamity that befell Jerusalem. Many calamities had befallen Jerusalem.

And the Jews themselves fasted, wept, and wailed when they heard that Haman, or Haman, had obtained the king's decree against them. Esther and Mordecai also fasted for God's intervention before she went to the king for mercy.

And fasts were also established to commemorate calamities. The numerous calamities that took place in the history of the nation of Israel, in Zechariah chapter 7 and 8. During and after the exile of Israel, special fasts were observed on the days that these calamities befell Jerusalem, such as the burning of the temple in Jeremiah 52, or the murder of Gedaliah in 2nd Kings 25, or the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem and its fall as well.

And another important thing to note here as well is that fasting is, you will see throughout scripture, that fasting is frequently coupled with prayer. Fasting and prayer, they go hand in hand. Not always, but often.

Both in the Old and New Testaments, as we will find out. So now I want us to focus specifically on Daniel and on his life and the fast that he did in order to kind of clear up some confusion that surrounds what he did in these fasts.

Because you'll also find so-called Christian ministers that have made lots of money, lots of money, by selling misinformation and false teaching about the so-called Daniel fast, like Rick Warren's The Daniel Plan.

And you know, there's a lot of similar books like that. So even when you find books on fasting, which is rare, oftentimes they're garbage. They're not good. They're not biblical. So it's something that we do need to have this discernment, have our discernment antenna turned on.

And you will see that there are at least three instances in the book of Daniel, where he restricts himself from eating food or drink, but not necessarily a fast. Okay, this is where we have to make the distinctions.

Only one of them, in fact, was an actual fast. And that was the one that I mentioned earlier in chapter 9, verse 3 in the book of Daniel, when he, with prayer and supplication and fasting, sackcloth and ashes, pled to God for Israel's sin and rebellion.

That was the only case that's recorded in the book of Daniel that was an actual fast, which, as we understand, to fast means to not eat, right? To abstain from food and drink. The other major scenario that gets convoluted or confused is in Daniel chapter 1, verses 8 through 16.

If you turn with me there so we can clear up what's really happening there, what's going on in that episode of Daniel's life, in Daniel chapter 1, verse 8, the book of Daniel chapter 1, here we will find a very often misunderstood passage.

So, verse 8, starting in verse 8, But Daniel said in his heart that he would not defile himself, listen to that phrase, note that phrase, he would not defile himself with the king's choice food or with the wine which he drank.

Now, why does it say that? Why does it say that he would not defile himself with the food from the king? The reason is because the food from pagan nations, and specifically the meat, the meat, the animal, was often sacrificed and offered unto idols, unto their false gods.

In this case, the false gods of Babylon, like Baal, and you know, they had a number of these false gods, and this is in fact forbidden by God himself. If you turn with me to Exodus, we'll jump real quick here to Exodus chapter 34, because it's important to see this with your own eyes, to really cement this point.

Exodus chapter 34, verse 12, we will see what God has to say on this matter. Specifically, in Exodus chapter 34, verse 12, one of the five books of the Pentateuch, of the law of Moses, as it's also called, we see the warnings that God gives.

For you shall not worship any other god, any other god, for Yahweh, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God. Listen to this, verse 15. And in some cases, humans, to their gods, and one of them invites you to eat of his sacrifice.

Right? There we see God says, don't do it. Don't participate in any of those things that they do, including eating idol meats that were sacrificed and offered up to an idol. This law, this principle still applies to us today.

We still have an obligation to not do this. Okay? But we have to be careful to exercise the analogy of scripture appropriately, that we don't misunderstand what the New Testament says about this as well.

We are commanded to have no fellowship whatsoever with the unfruitful works of darkness. Do not even try to redeem it, any of it, the corrupt, pagan, false religious practices. None of them, like God says, don't do any of them.

But instead, what does he say? Tear them down. Tear down the idols. Tear down the altars. Tear them down. Have nothing to do with their idols and their false religious practices. That includes cutting yourself, or marking yourself, tattooing yourself.

All of those things were done to offer worship unto false gods. And it still is. It still is. Do not make covenants then. Do not cut covenants with false demonic gods, which still happens to this day.

Whether by eating meats sacrificed unto them, or by swearing oaths to them, just like they do in Freemasonry, and even in fraternities and sororities. You find that every college has, even Christian colleges, so-called, have these fraternities and sororities, swearing oaths to false gods, to Greek gods, like Athena and Apollo.

And what is going on here? This is forbidden explicitly by God. But instead, what does the Bible say? What does God say? To expose them for the false practices and idols that they are, in Ephesians 5 .11, and several other places.

Now, this may require some further clarification in Romans 14, in 1 Corinthians 8, verse 7. There, in 1 Corinthians 8, verse 7, we see Paul says, however, not all men have this knowledge, that there is only one God.

But some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol, even if it wasn't sacrificed to an idol. And their conscience being weak is defiled. Okay, so we need to understand this properly.

This does not negate anything that I just said, based on Ephesians 5 .11. God's Word does not contradict itself. Amen? There's no contradictions with God. He is not the author of confusion, but of peace, love, and a sound mind of truth.

Truth here means that there were cases where believers who were recently converted, and therefore weak in the faith, and had a weak conscience, they had a previous lifestyle of false worship unto idols.

And they would take meat and sacrifice it and offer it up unto their idol, especially in Rome. There were several cases where this happened, false gods, where they would offer sacrifices unto the idols of Rome.

Rome had many false gods. And those who were weak in the faith would sometimes still associate meat with these idols that they would worship. Any meat, even if it wasn't meat that was actually sacrificed unto idols, because of their, that baggage that they carried over.

And I preached on this last week, right, how we need to be careful with our particular weaknesses and susceptibilities that we have because of our flesh and the sins that we fell prey to, that now becomes a weak point or a weakness, a kink in our armor that we have to watch out for.

That's an example of this. People, believers with overly sensitive consciences that wouldn't allow them to eat meat at all, whether it was offered to an idol or not, because of their past idolatry and offering sacrifices to idols.

So that's what this means, okay? It doesn't mean that, oh yeah, it's okay to offer meat to idols. That's not what Paul is saying. It is okay to eat meat, even if it was sacrificed to an idol, because he says idols are nothing.

There's no such thing as idols. They're just demons, right? They're false gods and demons. There's only one God, amen? One God, and he is God alone. So that's what Paul is, that's what the word refers to here.

So now let's go back with this understanding to Daniel chapter 1 in verse 8 and finish the story there, what God has to show us here. So in Daniel, back in Daniel chapter 1, I'm going to pick up on verse 8.

So he, Daniel, sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself. Again, we see that phrase. He doesn't want to defile himself by cutting a covenant or making a pledging allegiance as to these false idols in eating their sacrifices.

Now God granted Daniel loving kindness and compassion before the commander of the officials in Babylon. And the commander of the officials said to Daniel, I am afraid of my lord the king, king Nebuchadnezzar, who has appointed your food and your drink for you to eat it.

Uh, lost my place here. Sorry. Okay. For why should he see your faces looking more haggard, more gaunt than the youths who are your own age? Then you would make me forfeit my head to the king. So he's saying like, why would you not eat the food?

Because if you don't eat the food, he's going to cut my head off because he commanded me to give you the food to eat it. But Daniel said to the overseer whom the commander of the officials had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.

This, as you might remember, is Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who were later on thrown into the lions, into the pit of fire. Um, Daniel's, uh, friends, Hebrew friends. Verse 12 continues, please, please test your servants for 10 days and let us begin.

Let us be given some vegetables to eat and water to drink instead. Then let our appearance be observed before you in the appearance of the youths who are eating the king's choice food and deal with your servants according to what you see.

So he listened to them in this matter and tested them for 10 days. At the end of 10 days, it was seen that their appearance was better and that they were fatter than all the youths who had been eating the king's choice meats.

So the overseer continued to withhold their choice food and the wine they were to drink and kept giving them vegetables. Okay, so this is very interesting what's going on here. Very interesting stuff.

Now, we must first distinguish between a fast and a diet, okay? There is a difference between a fast and a diet. Abstaining from only some foods as opposed to all foods is not fasting. That is a diet, okay?

A diet is when you abstain from only some foods and not all foods. A biblical fast, therefore, is when you abstain from all food and drink. That's not what the, but that's not what a diet is. That's what we see Daniel doing here.

This was not a fast and that's what a lot of people falsely teach and misapply as a fast. It was not a fast. It was a diet. It was a special type of diet in order to, it was for no particular reason, but to go against the king's meats and choice food because it was offered unto idols.

So, Daniel just said, hey, well, I want to eat food that wasn't given over to idols. Can we just eat some vegetables then? That was why it was done. It was for no other particular reason than that, than to keep their faithfulness to God and obedience to God.

So, the whole point of this particular diet in Daniel, not a fast, remember, not a fast, was that to show the king, it was to show the king, Nebuchadnezzar, the pagan king, that he did not need to participate in the false worship of idols, of their gods, by eating choice meats and to show the king also that he and the Hebrew boys could look better.

That's what it means by fatter. It doesn't mean fatter like, like fat, like obese, but fuller, healthier, and perform better than the king's men simply on vegetables and water, as opposed to the wine and the fine drink.

It was just water because God was the one sustaining and equipping them. That was the point of this diet. On the contrary, they likely had to eat much more than their counterparts, than their pagan counterparts, in order to compensate the lack of meat and hearty food.

They had to eat more vegetables to make up the difference, and they therefore ended up being 10 times better than all the magicians and conjurers who were in all the kingdom of Babylon. That's what scripture says in chapter 10.

I'm sorry, in verse 20 of chapter 1. That's very powerful, but it's also very simple. This is a problem when people tend to over spiritualize things in the Bible. It's like, that was why Daniel did it.

He's like, look, I don't want your filthy pagan food. I want to eat stuff that's not going to make me sin against God. Can I please have vegetables that haven't been offered up as sacrifices instead? So that's what, that's what happened.

And God, God took care of them and sustained them through that special diet, just as he maintained the Israelites when they were in exile, fleeing in the wilderness with manna from heaven. Similar, similar thing there.

So that's what, that wasn't not a fast. And the final case in Daniel's life that is recorded in the book of Daniel is in chapter 10, verse 1. If you turn with me there, the beginning of chapter 10, we see the final instance of Daniel restricting himself from food.

And I say that carefully because I'm including both diets and fast, because in both of those cases, you're restricting food. It just depends on how much and whether it's all or some right now in Daniel chapter 10, verse 1, we read in the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, a word was revealed to Daniel, a prophetic word who was named Belteshazzar.

That was his Babylonian name. And the word was true and one of great conflict, but he understood the word and had an understanding of what had happened in those days. I, Daniel had been mourning for three weeks.

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. Okay. This is the other case in Daniel's life where he restricted food in a special diet.

Now, granted this diet was for a spiritual reason. Once again, it was to mourn. It was to mourn over the state of what was going on with Israel, but it was not a fast. Okay. He simply did not eat anything that was tasty or choice food.

Once again, meat or wine. This is not a fast. I hope that's clear now. The difference. This is a dietary restriction for the purpose of mourning in this particular case. Now, I wanted to end with this as well by saying that it's also not just food, it's drink as well.

And you see that in, you kind of see that highlighted in Daniel because of the wine or of the drink, special drink. This is important as well because drinking food instead of eating it is not fasting either.

Okay. It doesn't count. You can't just stick it in a blender and say, oh, I'm just going to drink. I'm just going to drink my meal and that's how I'm going to fast. That doesn't work. That's not going to work.

It's not going to have the effect that it's supposed to have. And I have a funny story to tell about this because we have some personal experience here. There is a person very near and dear to my heart that we had talked about going on a fast.

And so she wanted to go on a fast. And so she said, okay, I'm going to go on a fast. I'm not going to eat anything. And when I visited her, I saw that she had been, she had this bottle of kefir. You know, kefir is like this thick yogurt.

And she had been, she told me, I said, hey, what's that? Like, and she's like, oh yeah, I've just been sipping on this throughout the whole day because I'm not, because I'm fasting, I'm not eating. It's like, well, that's not going to, that's not going to have the effect because you're still nourishing your body with this thick pasty yogurt.

That's, you're not, you're not depriving yourself. That's the actual purpose of fasting, right? Like we saw from a brother, Braco, is to deprive your body so that you're hungry and that you're not nourishing it or feeding it and thereby also feeding your flesh.

So it's also important to remember when fasting that drinking food or even flavored beverages like soda, especially sugar, my goodness, sugar is horrible for your body. In addition to also feeding your flesh and wine, of course, alcohol, that's obviously, that should go without saying because it impairs your mind.

It impairs your, your inner man. And you're obviously your body as well. So this is the, I wanted to start out with this in the Old Testament because we do need to make proper sense of, fasting is not the same everywhere you see it in the Bible.

And there are key differences that we will see in the New Testament, next Lord's Day, Lord willing, that we have to consider because some types of fasting were, are no longer, they're no longer practiced today.

They're no longer valid because the covenants are no longer, they're obsolete now. We don't follow the old covenant. We are now under the new covenant. Amen. So that is something that we need to keep in mind.

And I want to also give us a heads up. I want to also invite us all to participate in a fast as I go through this last part of the series on the world of flesh and the devil, the flesh here in particular.

So I want to invite us all to prepare ourselves to go on a fast as we are able. Of course, there's lots of things that we have to watch out for. There's just, you have to be careful, you know, don't, the purpose of a fast also is not to harm yourself, right?

It's not to make you worse off than you were, it's to make you better. It's to improve your health and your state of mind and your well-being. That's the point of a fast, but it's going to be, if you're going to do it right, in order to do it right, it's going to hurt a little bit.

You're going to have to challenge yourself to not feed your body, your flesh, right? So I'm going to dig into that some more next week. And with that said, let's go ahead and close out today with a prayer.

Our gracious Lord and almighty Father, we thank you, Father, for your blessings of worship and public worship and fellowship as we can gather today as your people. Lord, we also thank you, Father, for the amazing means of fasting that you have provided for us in order to equip us and give us what we require to fight against our most pernicious and most insidious of our enemies being the flesh.

Lord, thank you, Father, so much for these provisions that you've given us. Help us to take hold of these means, Father God, and to be salt and light before the world and before your church, Father, because this is sadly so neglected today.

It is so neglected. It is so avoided and so abused and misunderstood in other cases, even when it is practiced. Father, help us to have a right understanding and a right balance of all of these matters, Lord, on this important subject that is so prevalent throughout your word.

Help us to make proper sense of it through your analogy, the analogies of scripture and of faith to extract and to systematize the proper doctrines from it and to apply it in our lives appropriately as we need to, Father God, as we help us to gauge our flesh, Lord, our spiritual condition, our physical condition to point to us, to help us to be aware of ourselves so that we know when it is appropriate, when we need to deny ourselves, Father God, and more specifically and most effectively through denying ourselves of food and fasting.

Father, we thank you, Lord, and we ask those who couldn't be here with us and who are sick and are facing trials, Father, to also be with them, Father, dry night to them. Also, and to encourage each other to fast and when we fast to help each other, to encourage each other to go ahead and endure the fast to the end until it has completed its work and its effectiveness in breaking the dominion of the flesh over us, Father.

The Day of Atonement and the Meaning of Humbling the Soul