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The journey through the life of faith is one where we need consistency and perseverance. One thing that God blessed me with is the ability to run. Sometimes you see me run by. I started to run competitively in high school and ran competitively into my late 20s.
In order to be a good runner, you need consistency and you need perseverance. Another way to say this is you need discipline. You need to run long, lonely miles on cold days and warm days and days in between.
You need to do hard workouts, even though many days you don't feel like it. But it is rewarding to do this. When race day comes, you are ready to put in a good performance because of the discipline you showed during training.
Now, you see the benefit of discipline in running and in all areas of life. You become prepared and better at whatever you do. God calls Christians to have consistency in our lives and perseverance in our walk with Him through the life of faith.
The Apostle Peter wrote about this in 2 Peter 1, verses 5 -8. He wrote, Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.
For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. What Peter is essentially saying here is pursue holiness in your life and do it in God's strength.
We need to do certain things in our lives that make us love God more and reflect Him more. This is the goal of the Christian life. Love God and reflect God. So what spiritual disciplines are we to take part in, in order for us to go down this delightful path?
There are many we need to do. Number one is that we are to read our Bibles. We need to know who God is and what He expects from us. We also need to pray. Bible reading and prayer go hand in hand. We should pray as we read the Bible that God would show us what is there and we need to have this continual conversation with God every day.
We should talk to God continually because He is an ever-present companion that always wants to help us and also to help others that we pray for. So we have to have this continual conversation with Him.
As we pray, we develop intimacy with Him and we show Him how much we need Him and He is glad to help us when we go to Him. Another spiritual discipline is Christian fellowship. What you guys are doing today, gathering on Sunday.
One way we measure how closely we are walking with God is through fellowship with others. If we enjoy rich Christian fellowship with others, this is a good sign that we are walking closely with the Lord.
This fellowship shows up in corporate worship on Sunday mornings, like today, at Bible studies and sporadic gatherings also. So to this point, I have listed as spiritual disciplines Bible reading, prayer, and Christian fellowship.
But there is one more spiritual discipline that is often forgotten and that is fasting. In our text this morning, we are going to see the spiritual discipline of fasting. Now in Matthew, we have already had a sermon on fasting.
Several months back. But this morning, we are once again going to revisit this because once again, the Gospel of Matthew revisits the topic of fasting. We always go where the Word of God takes us. So at this time, I encourage you to turn in the Bible with me to Matthew chapter 9.
We'll be looking at verses 14 through 17. And if you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on page 967. This sermon is titled, The Absent Bridegroom and the Need to Fast. And here's our big idea. This is what this sermon is calling you to do.
I was telling someone this week. I can't remember. I think it was Mark. It's got to be you, right? I was telling Mark this week. Every sermon, you're being called to make a decision. So this sermon, you're being called to make a decision.
And the decision is, make fasting a regular pattern in your life. And I'll explain what I mean by fasting. We're not just talking about food. But I'll explain that later. Make fasting a regular pattern in your life.
And we will see four reasons why in this text. But before we jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we were one Sunday ago. We looked at the encounter where Jesus called Matthew, the tax collector, to follow him.
The call of that text was to pursue the authentic, otherworldly life. We saw three character traits how. The first is by cutting ties with your former life. The second is by spending time wisely with the non-religious.
And the third is by understanding the meaning of true righteousness. What we saw is unique from how the world lives. The world desires to hold on to their sinful life. The self-righteous think that you should have nothing with those who wear sin on their sleeves.
And we also saw the uniqueness of Christianity. Christianity is the only religion in the world that says you can't earn your way to heaven. Only through Christ's finished work can you be counted righteous and become righteous.
Now this leads us to our text this morning. Let's begin by reading verse 14, chapter 9. Then the disciples of John came to him, came to Jesus, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?
Let's stop right there. Now in the previous passage, we saw the Pharisees question Jesus, and they did so in an insincere way. It was a gotcha question. They were doing it not because they really wanted to learn anything, but because they were accusing.
They were accusing Jesus of spending time with those sinful people. You're not supposed to do that. Remember the question they asked them? But in this verse, we see a different group of people asking the question.
So we saw the Pharisees before, but this group are John's disciples. Now there's a few Johns in the Bible. The John this is referring to is John the Baptist. He was the first Baptist, right? And we continue his legacy.
And these are his disciples. John the Baptist was a forerunner to Jesus. Isaiah 40 verse 3 predicted that John would come. That verse said of him, A voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, we saw John baptize Jesus in Matthew chapter 3 verses 14 through 17. In John's Gospel written by the Apostle John, not John the Baptist, different John.
The Apostle John quoted what John the Baptist said in John chapter 3 verses 28 through 30. You yourselves bear me witness that I said I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. The one who has the bride is the bridegroom.
The friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore, the joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease. So what we see is that John had a purpose and people knew his purpose.
He was not the Christ, but he laid the way for the Christ. He was the forerunner. His baptism, when he was baptizing all these people that were coming to him, his baptism was meant to prepare people for the call to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
Once John's ministry was fulfilled in preparing the way for the Messiah, his followers were now to follow Jesus. And if they didn't, they missed the whole point of his ministry. Sadly, some of John's followers began not to follow him, or not to follow Jesus, that is.
They were disciples of John and they remained disciples of John. As Matthew 4 .12 tells us, not long after John fulfilled his purpose, he was put in prison and later would be beheaded by King Herod. Now, since these followers of John were not yet followers of Jesus, they were still very much a part of the Jewish religious system of the first century.
There is only one place in the Old Testament that required Israelites to fast, and that is in Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement. But as we have learned going through the Gospel of Matthew, the Jews added man-made laws and put this burden over people.
It was very burdensome to be a Jew in the first century. One of those man-made laws is that the people were to fast twice a week. What we learned in the Sermon on the Mount is the outward displays of godliness were just for show.
In Matthew 6, we learned that they gave to the poor, prayed and fasted to be seen by others and to appear righteous. But they did not understand how one truly has a relationship with God. A true relationship with God comes through repentance and faith.
And once you do this, you can truly pursue God and God is pleased. This is very important to understand in order to have spiritual disciplines that truly have value and truly mean something. True spiritual disciplines show your dependence on Him, give you intimacy with Him and make you reflect Him more.
In order to experience this, you must be saved. One of the lines you hear most at this church is that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone. Once you have believed in Christ that He died for your sins and was raised from the dead, then you can be on this wonderful path.
You're saved and now you're on the road to heaven. But sadly, the self-righteous Jews did not understand this. Now earlier in Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6, verses 16 -18, Jesus told His disciples to fast and He told them how to fast.
If you can remember, the Bible does not command us to fast, but it is something that God expects us to do. It's only going to be to your benefit that you do this. In Matthew 6, verses 16, Jesus said, When you fast, not if you fast.
So the spiritual discipline of fasting is something that Christians should take part in. But they must do it differently than the unbelieving Jews did. They must do it differently than how false religion does it.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus explained that the Jewish leaders did it to be seen by others. But true fasting is done with a sincere heart toward God. But this group of John the Baptist's disciples did not understand this yet.
They were going with the flow. They were sucked into the false system set up by the unbelieving Jewish leaders. As we know from their question, they thought following these traditions is what everyone following God should do.
But unlike the Pharisees, their question was sincere. They were truly wondering, why aren't you fasting? Are we missing something? Isn't this what God's people are supposed to do? There is only one way to fast that brings honor to God, and that is from a sincere heart.
We saw that in the call to worship, Isaiah chapter 58. Fasting is not done to be saved, but because you are saved. And it is done because it is beneficial to you and it brings glory to God. We will see more how it is beneficial later on.
We are to make fasting a regular pattern in our lives. And the first reason why is to pursue true religion rather than false. Now, Jesus answers the question put forward by John's disciples in the remaining verses.
Verses 15 -17. We are going to read those verses, and then I am going to explain the meaning of what Jesus said. And once I am done doing that, I am going to revisit a little bit what we looked at. The first time we talked about fasting in Matthew chapter 6, because I think that would be beneficial to you.
But here is the second reason we are to make fasting a habit in our lives, a spiritual discipline. And that is to long for God's presence. Let's read this in verses 15 -17 of chapter 9 here. And Jesus said to them, can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?
The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made.
Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved. So Jesus tells us here, he talks about the bridegroom.
And the bridegroom being in their presence, and then the bridegroom going away. And of course we know who the bridegroom is. The bridegroom here is Jesus. And he gives two illustrations here, to talk about him being in their presence now, and going away.
The first illustration is a piece of unshrunk cloth going on an old garment. And what he's saying here is that if you do that, a bigger tear will result from it. And then the other illustration he gives is putting new wine in old wineskins.
The way the wineskins were made, they were very elastic. And so a new wineskin would stretch when you put wine in it. But if you put new wine in an already stretched wineskin, what would happen is that the thing would break.
So he's saying you can't put new wine into old wineskins. So what does he mean when he says this? What he's saying here is you cannot mix old ceremonial fasting with the rich new fasting that Jesus is putting forth right here.
This New Covenant, this Bible-saturated, Gospel-saturated fasting, this true fasting. He says you can't mix it with this false fasting. This old way of doing it that the Jewish leaders have been teaching.
And that even John's disciples here have been sucked into. So what he's saying in these verses is that once he left the disciples, after his resurrection and went to heaven, New Covenant fasting meant looking ahead to the final resurrection with longing.
So Jesus is saying here, you know what? I'm with the disciples now. And because I'm in their presence, we're not fasting. We're feasting. When I'm going to go away. Jesus was raised from the dead. He spent 40 days on the earth.
But once he ascended to heaven, he says that's when my disciples are going to fast. When I'm away. When Brianna and I started dating, we had a long-distance relationship. We were head over heels for each other, but we lived an hour away.
She lived in Wyoming and I lived in Mound. And there were stretches where we knew we weren't going to see each other for a while. And it was hard being away. We would talk to each other on the phone and send messages.
But any communication we had while away did not compare with being together. I remember arriving at her home and being so excited to see each other. It didn't matter what we did. We were just glad to be together.
This is what the relationship is like between God and his people. It is a long-distance one right now. But one day it won't be anymore. One day we will be in his presence. In the future we will be in his presence just as his disciples were in the presence of Christ during his ministry.
And when we are in his presence, there's no fasting. But only feasting. This is what Jesus is saying to John's disciples. I am there right now in their presence. And so they're not fasting just like all you are.
Everyone here in the Jewish community is fasting. But they're not because we're only together here for a short time. But a day will come when they will fast. And this longing when he goes away is meant to satisfy our hearts.
Because he is the one who satisfies our hearts. As we live in this world, we need to love the gifts that God has given us appropriately. Because when we think about fasting, what is fasting? It's abstaining from God's gifts for a purpose.
There's a reason behind this. Fasting helps us check where our true love is. We need to be longing for God. And we can do that through enjoying his gifts. But what if we get carried away with those gifts?
And we're drawn away from God? There can be a danger. They can become idols. It's important to stress that we are to enjoy his gifts, right? We are to feast with every one of his gifts. The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 4, verses 4 and 5,.
For everything created by God is good. And nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. For it is made holy by the word of God in prayer. So we are not to be gift abstainers. There was a group of people in ancient times, they were known as ascetics.
These were false teachers who made forbidden the good gifts of God. If you were having any kind of enjoyment, you were somehow disobeying God. They wrongly thought that spirituality required this. They thought you were to discipline the body and not enjoy things.
But how wrong they got it. Think of how wonderful this is. The Bible tells us to enjoy God's gifts. We are to receive everything with gratitude and praise. James 1 .17 says that every good and perfect gift comes from above.
But since his gifts are a temptation toward idolatry, there are times when we need to take a fast. And tell the Lord, you are the one who is truly my joy. Not whatever the gift is. Now technically fasting is abstaining from food.
But we can also abstain from other things. Think of all the things that have done too much can possibly steer our heart away from God. Television, movies, internet, social media, music, phones, sports, shopping, work, and many more.
The one for me that for many years had a hold on me was sports. And several years back I was thinking, you know what, I need to take a fast from sports. And I did. And it was beneficial for my heart. What is interesting about COVID -19 is that a fast was imposed on all of us.
All entertainment vanished back in March. What we learn is that we don't need these things to enjoy life. Sometimes they're a hindrance to have really a deep enjoyment. Especially if these things become distractions, if they become idols in our lives.
So fasting, whatever it's from, whether it's from food or whether it's from other things, is an opportunity to long for the Lord's presence. To have deeper intimacy with Him here in our long-distance relationship.
And long to be in His presence when we pass from this earth or when Christ returns. The hunger pains or any pains that we have from fasting remind us that our hunger really is for Him. Not any earthly thing.
He's the one we've always longed for. He's the one we were created for. When you see Christ, you're going to say, this is what I've always been longing for. We're created to know Him, to love Him, to enjoy Him.
So make fasting a regular pattern in your life. And the second reason why is to long for God's presence. So we've gotten through the text at this point. But I want to revisit two of the reasons we are to fast that we looked at several months back.
So the third reason we are to make spiritual, make fasting a spiritual discipline is this. To accompany times of urgent prayer. We have already seen in our call to worship the bad example of fasting in the Old Testament.
They did it for ritual, outward appearances rather than a true heart toward God. These were people doing horrible things. They fasted and they thought, well somehow God is pleased with us. The book of Ezra is very helpful as we think about fasting.
Ezra fasted in two ways. The first in times of intense prayer. In Ezra, he fasted and prayed that the Lord would lead him in the exiles of Israel safely to Jerusalem. In the history of Israel, the people were taken into captivity first by the Persians in 722 BC.
And then the southern kingdom was taken into captivity in 605 BC by the Babylonians. And at this point in the story of Ezra, they had already rebuilt the temple. Because when they pillaged Jerusalem, they destroyed the temple.
But now Ezra was returning to Jerusalem with a large number of exiles. So Ezra is praying for this journey as they head back to the city. The city of their forefathers, the city of Jerusalem. And he is praying for their safety.
This would have been very dangerous times. There was no guarantee they were going to make it. So he calls for a fast. In Ezra chapter 8 verse 21, this is what he said. So as we see here, Ezra was praying for an urgent need.
And he felt the need to fast. He believed God's ear would be more likely to be listened to if they fasted while praying than if they just prayed. So he called for a fast. In our lives, we have big moments that come up where we should not only pray, but we should also fast.
You called me to be your pastor in January 2017, four years ago. And during that time, I was an associate pastor at Mound Free Church in Mound. That's about 25 miles west of Minneapolis. The elders of that church and I decided to fast so that we'd have a smooth transition here.
We believed that our prayers would be more effective if we fasted, so we did. And I think the transition here is pretty smooth. So the Lord heard our prayers, and we're so grateful where we are four years later as a church.
Let me give you another story. One of my professors in seminary, his daughter was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. They didn't know how serious it was. They thought it was possibly life-threatening. And so they pleaded before the Lord, and they fasted, and the Lord heard their prayers.
It ended up that the cancer wasn't as serious as they thought, and she's able to live a full life now. So one of the ways we pray and fast is when an urgent need arises, something very important that calls not only prayer, but also fasting.
So that's the third reason why we should make fasting a regular pattern in our lives, when an urgent prayer need arrives. The fourth is this, to accompany times of confession before Him. Earlier in this sermon series, when we were in the Sermon on the Mount, we saw the Pharisees had ashes on their faces.
Many times when there was repentance in the Old Testament, they sat on sackcloth and ashes. The Jewish false teachers did this, of course, for attention, to be seen by others. But in the Old Testament, this was also done with sincerity.
Ezra is once again a good guide as we think about when and why we should fast. In Ezra 9, Ezra and the people came before God in prayer and fasted because some of the Israelites intermarried with non-Israelites.
And they were forbidden from doing this because God did not want the Israelites to pollute themselves with these sinful groups of people. And so this is what Ezra said in chapter 9, verse 5 of that book.
So as we see here, fasting was used in times of repentance to confess sins and heal the fractured relationship with God. Now, in the New Testament, we are commanded to live lives of repentance. However, we are not commanded to fast when we repent, but it is still something that is wise to do in certain cases.
Since repentance is always important in the Christian life, repentance should be continual. And in times of fasting, one thing we should do is confess our sins. That should be on our minds. Take a day where you don't eat any food and think, Lord, there's some sins in my life that I want to confess to you.
It's a great time to do it. And I think, too, as we enter the season as a country, this is a great time to fast as well, to fast and pray. Fast and pray for our leaders. Fast and pray that the gospel would go forth during this season.
Fast and pray that the church would be purified, that the church would be pruned. I believe a great pruning is happening in America right now. And one of the ways that's going to come about even better is if God's people, if we get on our knees and we pray and we fast as well.
So here we have seen in this sermon, we are to make fasting a regular pattern in our lives. And we've seen four reasons why this morning. We are to pursue true religion rather than false. We are to long for God's presence as the bridegroom is away.
And we long for that day when we are in his presence. We are also to fast as it accompanies times of urging prayer and lastly, to accompany times of confession before him. As I said in the introduction, spiritual disciplines are very important.
You don't grow in holiness by accident. It doesn't just happen. It takes hard work. It's this team effort between you and the Holy Spirit. I think of Romans 8 .13, it says, But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
So it's the Spirit's help. And then you do your part in putting to death the sin in your life. And this happens through spiritual disciplines. Reading your Bible. Spending time in continual conversation with the Lord.
Valuing Christian fellowship. And I have one of my great concerns. I think there's been surveys that have said that about 20 of the people might not come back to church after COVID. That's a serious problem.
You develop a pattern of not going to church. And then it becomes easier not to. And so, if you know people who... I don't have anyone in mind particularly in this church. But I'm thinking, if you have Christian friends, encourage them to get back into their church.
We want people to have a church family. A place to come together. A place to be encouraged. A place to have Christian fellowship. We need it. In fact, it's commanded in the Bible that we meet together.
So may we do that. And we are to fast as well. It's an important spiritual discipline that we are to take part in. And as we do this, we will see the benefit of this in our lives. As we do these spiritual disciplines.
The Apostle Peter wrote in 2 Peter 1, verses 10 and 11. If you practice these qualities, you will never fall. If you do these spiritual disciplines and you see your character come from it, your character is produced out of this, what Peter says is you will never fall.
If you look at faithful disciples down through the ages, people who have walked with Christ all the days of their life, one thing that everyone will tell you is that they had spiritual disciplines. They read their Bible.
They prayed. They had Christian fellowship and they fasted on occasion. But he says here, if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
So with that goal in mind, may we live this out. May we take part in these spiritual disciplines. And as we focused on today, the discipline of fasting. Now next Sunday, we will look at Jesus perform more miracles.
We've seen him do this over and over again in Matthew. And this miracle somehow, I believe, outdo's the miracles that he has already done. So we are going to see Jesus' power over death. The great enemy, death.
We're going to see his power displayed over it next Sunday. At this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, Lord, when we preach the Bible, when we go through this every Sunday, it's interesting, Lord.
It's not up to me where we go. I'm going wherever you take us. And today you wanted us to talk about fasting. So that's what we talked about. And so my prayer, Lord, is that you would speak this truth into the hearts of the people.
We need to have regular patterns where we take breaks from things. Just to show, Lord, that those things are not our idols. And so I pray that you would show us those areas where we need to fast. And really, the focus of this passage, though, is that we are to long for you above all.
So when we enjoy gifts, Lord, may our greatest longing not be for the gift, but for you. And when we abstain from gifts, may those pains remind us of the longing that we have for you, that we are to have for you.
Lord, we were created to know you, to love you, to enjoy you. And I pray for the people in this church that that would grow in their hearts as the days go forward. And we pray all this in Jesus' name, Amen.