In the Bible, fasting is expected. Saying no to pressing physical appetites enables us to say yes to deeper spiritual nourishment. Fasting helps us attend to our souls. It helps us starve the flesh and helps us feast on God. Today, from Matthew chapter 6, what Jesus had to say about fasting.
Stay with us. From Chicago, welcome to The Moody Church Hour with Pastor Philip Miller. In a moment, a time of worship and teaching as we continue a series on the upside-down kingdom. From the Sermon on the Mount, we'll learn about what happens when we fast. Here now is Pastor Philip, along with worship leader, Tim Stafford. Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to The Moody Church.
Whether you're here on site or online or on the airways, we're really glad you've joined us wherever you are. We are going to talk about fasting today. Fasting from food and feasting on God.
Would you stand? Let's pray and give this service to the Lord. Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning. We acknowledge that our hearts hunger for you. Our souls thirst for you. You are our portion and we want to feast on your presence, your goodness, your grace today.
Father, help us to learn the spiritual exercise of fasting so that we might walk in obedience and faith, trusting you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. He's worthy of our praise today. Let's sing to him. Worthy of every song we could ever sing. Worthy of all the praise we could ever bring.
Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe. We live for you. We live for you, Jesus. Jesus, the name above every other name.
Jesus, the only one who could ever sing. Jesus, worthy of every breath we could ever bring. We live for you. We live for you.
Holy, there is no one like you. There is none beside you. Open up my eyes in wonder. Show me who you are and fill me with your heart and lead me in your love to those around me. I will build my life above all the walls of the foundation. I will build my life above all the walls of the foundation. Holy, there is no one like you. There is none beside you.
Open up my eyes in wonder. Show me who you are and fill me with your heart and lead me in your love to those around me. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits who are before his throne and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom priest for his God and father. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
That's who owns you, Jesus Christ. He has set us free, made us priests to serve our God. What gift of grace is Jesus my Redeemer? There is no more for heaven now to give. He is my joy, my righteousness and freedom, my steadfast love, my deep and boundless peace. To this I hope, my hope is only Jesus, for my life is only bound to his. Oh, how strange and divine I can see. Old is mine, yet not I run through Christ in me. Oh. No fate I dread, I know I am forgiven.
The future sure, the price it has been paid. For Jesus fled and suffered for my part. He was raised to the Lord from the grave. To this I hope, my sin has been defeated. Jesus, now and ever is my life. Oh, the chains I release, I can see. I am free, yet not I run through Christ in me.
Oh. With every breath I long to follow Jesus, for he has said that he will bring me hope. And day by day I know he will renew me until I say the joy before him. To this I hope, my hope is only Jesus, for the glory evermore to him. When the I then shall repeat, and not I run through Christ in me.
To this I hope, my hope is only Jesus, for the glory evermore to him. For when the list is complete, my lips shall repeat, and not I run through Christ in me. And not I run through Christ in me.
And not I run through Christ in me. Oh. Thank you, Lord, for your power. Thank you for your strength.
Thank you for your presence in our lives. Amen. Now if you'll recall, Jesus has been calling out the scribes and Pharisees for their religious hypocrisy. In Matthew 6, verse 1, this is what Jesus says, beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.
For then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Jesus is saying, look, God can tell the difference between the good things you do simply to please him and the good things you're doing in order to get noticed by other people around you. He says, beware, if you're using religion to get human recognition, human approval, human applause, then what you're doing, your righteousness, your religious behavior is actually chock full of ego.
You're doing good to look good. And that's selfish, and it's fake, and God sees right through it. You're like the hypocrites, Jesus says. That's the word from the Greek theater, the actors who wore the masks in the Greek theater.
He says, you're like an actor, you're play acting, you're a stage performer, you're a mask wearer. To drive the point home, Jesus has given us a couple of illustrations, three in total. The first one is about giving, almsgiving, to the poor, verses 2 to 4, this is what Jesus says. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets that they may be praised by others.
Truly I say to you, they've received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing so that your giving may be in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you. The second illustration example is in verses 5 to 6, it relates to prayer. When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, but they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they've received their reward in full, but when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you. And then Jesus has a brief aside in verses 7 and 8 about not praying like the pagan Gentiles do either, you know, with their torrents of empty words, don't pray like that either.
And then he gives the Lord's prayer as a model, a template, as a counterexample. And then he gives us a couple verses reminding us about the importance of forgiveness, all the way down to verse 15, and now we finally come to the third example, which is fasting. Matthew 6 verses 16 to 18, our text for today, this is what Jesus says, and when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they've received their reward in full, but when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your father who sees in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you. Now these three spiritual realities that Jesus is talking about, spiritual practices, giving, praying, fasting, they're all supposed to be about loving the Lord our God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves, right?
And yet they can be twisted, they can be twisted into being about us. Look at me, you know, and notice me, applaud me, and then all of a sudden it's not about love of God or neighbor that's motivating us, it is love of ourselves. And Jesus says beware, be wary, be warned, don't fall into this deadly trap called religious hypocrisy. But notice that he doesn't say, you know what, just forget about giving, praying, and fasting. You know, those spiritual practices, they really don't matter, God cares about your heart, that's what really matters, it doesn't matter what you do, that's just religion. No, he doesn't say that, he says when you give, when you pray, when you fast, just because these practices can be misused doesn't mean they don't have a proper use. Sure, you can twist giving and praying and fasting into self-promoting religious acts, but that doesn't mean they have no proper role to play in the spiritual life of disciples of Jesus led by the Spirit of God in the kingdom of heaven. He does not say if you give, if you pray, if you fast, he says when, when you give, when you pray, when you fast. So Jesus is reminding us, he's saying, look, I don't want you to give up on these spiritual practices altogether, follow me, and I will give you a new heart that is alive by the Spirit of God in the kingdom of heaven so that when you pray, when you give, when you fast, you'll be able to do it in a way that pleases your Father, a way that's quiet and secret, without fanfare, that's genuine from the heart, the kind of righteousness that looks to the audience of one. Your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Three times he says that, that's the point. Now today's passage is laser focused on the spiritual practice of fasting. Now my mouth is already watering for the steaks that we're going to grill this afternoon, but let's talk about fasting first, shall we? My aim this morning is to show you that fasting is a kind of cultural blind spot. It is nevertheless a biblical paradigm, and it is quite a helpful practice that we ought to embrace.
It's a cultural blind spot, a biblical paradigm, and a helpful practice. That's our outline for this morning. Let's bow our heads, let's pray, and we'll jump in.
Okay? Father, we hunger for you. We need more of you. Would you be our portion, our everything this morning as we open your word?
Let us hear your voice that we might live. In Christ's name, amen. First of all, fasting is a kind of cultural blind spot, cultural blind spot. I don't know about you, but I never really learned that much about fasting when I was growing up in church. We read about fasting in the Bible. We read people like Moses and Elijah and David and the apostles and Jesus, how they fasted, sometimes for ridiculously long times, like 40 days.
But that was for spiritual giants, you know, not for little people like us. Fasting always seemed like advanced spirituality for super saints, you know, monks, missionaries, pastors of The Moody Church in Chicago, but not an average guy like me, okay? And I have to confess that over the course of my life, I've done very little fasting. So I'm preaching to myself this morning. Oh, maybe I fasted when they had a big life decision to make or when something really bad happened and I wanted God to change things. But day to day, on average, it's pretty easy to neglect. And I think because in my mind, fasting was always optional, kind of a bonus activity, sort of a extra credit for the spiritual overachievers out there, it was easily just passed over by someone like me.
But here's what's strange. Jesus is talking about the big three core spiritual practices of a faithful life of devotion to God. Giving, praying, fasting. That's the list.
The big three. Now, would anyone argue that giving is like optional? No. Would anyone argue that prayer is sort of optional? No. Well, why does fasting, why is it not equal on the list in terms of our habits and the way we live? This is a question.
Am I the only one? What happened? In Jesus' day, the religiously devout fasted twice a week. We know it was on Mondays and Thursdays.
Twice a week, fasting. The whole nation of Israel fasted together as a nation on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The early Christian church continued this pattern of biweekly fasting, although they shifted it to Wednesdays and Fridays. We know that from a book called the Didache, the Teaching of the Early Church.
It's a early second century document. But they shifted it so it would be a little different than the Jewish practice, so Wednesdays and Fridays. But regular fasting has been a pattern throughout church history, especially in monastic religious orders. In fact, Lent, you've heard of Lent, right?
We don't celebrate that in a way that other people maybe do. But Lent is the period leading up to Easter, and it has historically for the church been a 40-day fast leading up to the resurrection of Jesus. As recently as the late 1700s, John Wesley, you know that name, John Wesley, the great revivalist? John Wesley bemoaned in writing that American Christians in particular were abandoning the traditional practice of biweekly fasting.
That's not that long ago. Fasting, friends, is historically practiced. Fasting is historically practiced.
I just want you to see it's normal in terms of church history. In fact, also, if you were to zoom out and broaden your horizons globally, if we went to the global south or the far east, we would find that fasting is far more common around the world in Christian circles than it is here in the United States. Many of our global brothers and sisters would find our normal practice of prayer without fasting to be odd. They would say, wait a minute, prayer without fasting, that's like a peanut butter without jelly sandwich, right? It's like trying to mail a letter without stamps.
Why would you even try to do that? Prayer and fasting just, they go together. So why has fasting fallen out of use in our circles, in our tradition? Well, I think one of the factors goes all the way back to the Reformation. The Protestant church has always been wary of anything that's a little too Roman Catholic.
And since spiritual disciplines have been a hallmark and strength of the monastic life, which has been strongest in the Catholic tradition, it's not hard to see how Protestants maybe have swung a little bit to the other extreme. But even within Protestantism, fasting is fairly common around the world, but uncommon here in the United States. Why?
Why would that be? I do wonder if there's a connection because here in America, we're pretty obsessed with food. Amen? We're pretty obsessed with food. We love our gourmet restaurants, our sumptuous meals, our chef-inspired culinary delights. We Instagram our food because you are what you eat, I guess. If we haven't eaten in like two hours, we get hangry, right? Between our meals, we prop ourselves up with coffee and pop and snacks.
And of course, right before bed, we got to have a night snack, right? We even stream shows about food we can't even eat. That's so weird. We just like to watch food.
That's weird. The average American eats 4.2 commercially prepared meals a week. This is before COVID. The restaurant industry in the US is $50 billion a year.
Again, pre-COVID. Three out of four Americans are obese and overweight, 30% of children. I think it's fair to say we have a love-hate relationship with food. We love how it tastes, but we hate how it pads our bodies, right?
The paradox is never more clear than the grocery aisle checkout, right? You've got models, chiseled models, Chris Hemsworth, right? Next to a food magazine, just decadence right there.
Buy one of each. There you go. That's America. There's so much pressure in our culture to look a certain way, right? We're chasing the latest fads.
We're on keto and Whole30 and paleo. We have rampant body image issues, eating disorders, anorexia, bulimia. And we find ourselves swinging between extremes, between the worship of food and overindulgence and the worship of body image and overrestriction.
And in many ways, listen, our bodies have become our masters. Our bodily appetites must be indulged on one hand and our body image must be maintained on the other. Friends, is it any wonder that in a culture of self-indulgence, something like fasting, which is all about self-denial, would sort of fall out of use?
Could it be that this has creeped into even our worldview within the church? And to us, fasting feels weird. It's like, why would you regularly give up food when you have so much good stuff around you? Why would you even think of fasting? And if we do think about it, it's all about weight loss and body image. That's the reason we skip meals.
It's about us. Now, despite all of this cultural baggage, I want to show you this morning that fasting is nevertheless a biblical paradigm. It is a biblical paradigm. Fasting honors our created design. In Genesis 2 7, the Lord God forms the man of dust from the ground and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man becomes a living creature.
Remember this creation text? We are dust and breath. Dust and breath. We are physical and spiritual beings. Animals are just physical. Angels are just spiritual. But human beings are both physical and spiritual beings. We're amphibians like that. We can swim in the water of the spiritual and we climb out on the land of the physical.
We live in both realities. Both dimensions of our being require attention. So our physical side needs nourishment. It needs exercise.
It needs hygiene. We have to attend to our physical life to flourish. And in the same way, our spiritual life needs nourishment, needs exercise, needs hygiene. We have to attend to our spiritual side to flourish in life. And we're holistic beings, which means we're not compartmentalized. There is interplay and interdependence between the physical and spiritual dimensions of our being. Everything we do on one side affects the other.
So just look at the fall, okay? When Satan wanted to take down humanity, the human race, when he wanted to inflict a deadly spiritual wound, how did he do it? With food. With fruit. Genesis 3, 6. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was delightful to the eyes, that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and she ate. And she gave some also to her husband who was with her and he ate. Now the deep reality of what's going on in this text is that Adam and Eve chose to do what they wanted to do instead of obeying God.
They didn't trust him. They sinned and the world fell apart. But notice at the very heart of the downfall of humanity is the inability to say no to our appetites. The inability to say no to our appetites. She saw it was good, it was delightful to the eyes, desirable to make one wise. Do you see all the language of appetite there?
She and Adam indulged their appetites and then the world unraveled physically and spiritually. Now in some sense from that day on our bodies have ruled over us. We find ourselves unable to resist our appetites when it comes to food or drink or sex or impulse shopping or binge watching shows or mindless scrolling on our phones. We're dominated by our desires. We're ruled by our bodies.
We are slaves to our appetites. But then comes Jesus. The new Adam as Paul calls him and he faces the temptations of Satan in the wilderness head on, right? Face to face with Satan.
And how does he do it? Fasting. And what is the first temptation of Jesus?
Food. Matthew 4. Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting 40 days and 40 nights he was hungry. And the tempter came to him and said if you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. But he answered it is written man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
You see Jesus succeeds where Adam failed. Where did Jesus get the strength to face this moment? Did he carb load to get ready for the big moment? No, he was fasting. It took him 40 days of fasting to have the strength to face the devil head to head.
That's amazing. Just like with Adam and Eve, the temptation surrounds food. But it's not really about food. It's not about the bread. That's why Jesus responds man shall not live by bread alone, physical, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, spiritual.
Dust and breath again. I'm sustained, Jesus is saying, body and soul by my father. I will trust his word. I will live from the spiritual nourishment that my father provides even though my body is crying out in hunger. It's just the opposite of the first Adam, you see, who was overruled by his body, who was enslaved to his appetites. Jesus, the second Adam, is overruling his body, mastering his appetites.
Jesus succeeds where Adam fails. And Jesus is showing us what it means to live from the spiritual sustenance that God provides. Even when there's no food around, he is nevertheless metabolizing spiritual resources for life. He's physically famished and yet spiritually full.
Do you see he's living from a deeper set of spiritual resources? It's just like in John chapter four when the disciples left Jesus at the well and went into town to buy food and they come back and they find Jesus ministering to the woman at the well. And they say here rabbi is some food and he says I've had food to eat that you know nothing about.
And they look at each other and say could somebody have brought him lunch? And he says my food is to do the will of him who sent me. In other words, Jesus is showing us that saying no to pressing physical appetites actually enables us to say yes to deeper spiritual nourishment. Fasting, it turns out, is biblically expected. It's biblically expected.
It's just assumed. It's a routine spiritual practice. It's modeled all the way through the pages of scriptures. Moses fasted, David fasted, Elijah, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, Paul, the apostles fasted together in Acts 13 and 14. Jesus fasted. Jesus expects his disciples to fast. He says when you fast.
Not if, when. And friends, this turns out to be quite a helpful practice that we ought to embrace. It's a helpful practice we ought to embrace. Not only is fasting immensely beneficial to your physical health. Did you know fasting is really good for your body? Did you know that? It helps with weight loss.
I looked all this up. It helps with weight loss, insulin sensitivity. It speeds up your metabolism. It promotes longevity in life. It improves your brain function. It boosts production of a protein called BDNF, which is brain derived neurotrophic factor.
I have no idea what that is, but I want more of it. It improves immunity. Listen, if you're in student ministry, this one's for you. It improves acne. Yes and amen, right? Alright, so it's really good for your body, but I want to show you that fasting is spiritually beneficial. That's the main reason we do it. It's spiritually beneficial.
Three ways. First, fasting is helpful to us in attending to the soul. Attending to the soul.
The practice of fasting, that is cutting ourselves off from food for a period of time, hours, days, sometimes weeks, is not just about saying no to the physical. It's about saying yes to the spiritual. We're diminishing our reliance on physical nourishment in order to increase our reliance on spiritual nourishment. We're weaning off to have more. Remember, we're amphibious creatures.
Remember this? Physical spiritual beings. But far too often, we live as if the physical is all that really matters, don't we? That this is real. And it is the most satisfying dimension of all of our lives. It's where real happiness lies, but it's not true. The real and deeper world is the one that we too easily ignore, and it's the realm of the spiritual.
It's where God is. In fasting, we are decreasing our dependency and preoccupation on the physical in order to focus our full attention on the spiritual. Back in the first century, meal preparation took a major portion of the day's hours, some estimates five or six hours a day, just making meals for the family. But when you, as a community, fast, and all of a sudden those meals don't need to be made, do you realize it frees up an enormous amount of time for everyone to refocus their energy and time on God? To read the scriptures, to pray, to worship, to reflect, to sit in solitude and stillness.
To give ourselves to the unrushed attention to the spiritual side of life. That's what fasting is for. Now you can broaden the principle out.
It doesn't have to be about food necessarily. You can do a screen fast. Oh man. Did you know you can put this away? Did you know you don't have to bring this to the restaurant?
Talk about a love-hate relationship, right? You can do a phone fast, a media fast, a social media fast. Oh, you're meddling now. If you think about Sabbath, Sabbath is a day of rest. It is a fast.
Sabbath is a fast from work. It is the moment to slow down and attend to our souls. So fasting's not just about food. It's about a pattern of living to decrease our obsession with the physical so that we might attend to the spiritual.
This is the first thing that it helps us do. Secondly, fasting is spiritually helpful in starving the flesh, starving the flesh. In fasting, we're learning to say no to our appetites. We're learning to say no to our appetites. Just think of how many of our problems in life relate to our inability to say no to our appetites.
Sexual temptations, anger problems, gossip, credit card debt, self-medication, addictions, impulse buying. Friends, if we could learn to say no to our appetites, to gain mastery over our own bodies, to show our bodies who's boss, it would change everything, wouldn't it? In fasting, don't you see what we're doing is we're training ourselves to say no to our appetites, to our desires.
If we can learn to say no to pizza, it is Chicago. If we can learn to say no to pizza, maybe we can learn to say no to anger. Maybe we can learn to say no to lust. Maybe we can learn to say no to the things that are wrapped around our neck.
Friends, fasting is like going to the gym. You're building spiritual muscles to gain mastery in one area, which will then help you gain mastery in another area. So you start with food and one meal, and then you learn to say no, and then that helps you in other areas. In Romans chapter 7 verse 19, Paul describes the conflict of desires that we understand how this feels. He says, I don't do the good thing I want to do, and the thing I don't want to do, I keep on doing it. How many of us can relate to that? All the good intentions that we can't execute on, and the stuff that we know we shouldn't do, and we keep going back there, and then we go, why did I do that?
Here's the reason. Our strongest desires are not always our deepest desires. Our strongest desires are not always our deepest desires. We might have the deep desire to be healthy and fit, but our strongest desire is for ice cream.
We may have a deep desire to spend time with Jesus in the morning, but our strongest desire is to sleep in. Our deepest desire may be to live holy under the Lord, but our strongest desire is to feel happy right now. Friends, so much of our lives hinges right here in the world of desires. Which desire do we feed? Which desire do we cultivate? Which desire do we satisfy? And it compounds. Galatians 5 16 to 24 says this, but I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
You hear that language? For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. So part of the Holy Spirit's job is to live in you and cultivate new desires so you learn to not do what you want to do. This is why you have the Holy Spirit. If you don't have the Holy Spirit, you can't do this.
It's why you go to Barnes and Noble or wherever books are sold today, and the self-help section is huge and people buy 20 of them and they keep buying more because they don't ultimately work. You cannot ultimately change the deep desires of your life until the Holy Spirit drops in and comes alive and gives you new desires and teaches you to walk with Him. Paul keeps on going. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. The works of the flesh are evident. This is the long list of bad things. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envies, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.
All of those things, things that we desire, we run amok, they're out of control living. I warn you, Paul says, as I warned you before, those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. That's not where the kingdom of God is, friends. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and against such things there's no law. And all those who belong to Christ, Jesus, listen, have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Paul says if you follow Jesus, you will crucify the flesh with its desires in order that you might live to the Spirit, walk with Him in the new desires and the new heart of the kingdom of heaven.
Now how do you do that? Crucify, put to death, starve it, put it away. Apart from Christ, friends, we are dominated by our desires. We're ruled by our bodies. We're slaves to our appetites.
We just live from one appetite to the next. But then Christ, by the power of the Spirit, sets us free to die to sin, to live to Christ, to crucify the desires of our flesh that we might live for the desires of the Spirit. And don't you see, when fasting is all about leaning into this spiritual reality, we starve the flesh, we're regaining mastery over our bodies so that we might live in the freedom of the Spirit of God, free from the tyranny of our appetites. Because fasting is spiritually helpful in feasting on God.
That's the other part of this. Starving the flesh, feasting on God. When we fast, friends, we're knocking out the supports that food, comfort, and satisfaction normally provide in our lives. It's amazing how quickly we become hangry, isn't it?
Am I the only one that gets hangry? It's like a thing. My wife sometimes says, you know what, you need to go eat something.
Okay, fine. We get all stressed out when we don't have our food and our comforts, and we say, look, that's not really me, I was just hungry. Do you realize that is who you are? If you strip away all your comfortable life, that's the monster that you are, right? That's really us.
It's amazing how much of our goodness isn't. It's just comfortable. It's not sanctification, I was just full, I was satiated.
I'm not Christ-like, I was just comfortable. I'm not spirit-filled, I'm just full. Friends, fasting knocks out all those supports so that we learn to rest on God, to feast on Him, in our hunger to look to Him who satisfies, in our aching to look to Him who is our comforter, in our desperation to look to Him who is our provider, in our emptiness to look to Him who is our portion, in our weakness to look to Him who is our strength. Fasting is a redirection of our appetites, away from the temporary things that never satisfy us in the end, and attaching on to the eternal, infinite, all satisfying delights of who God is.
Or better yet, fasting isn't really about appetite suppression at all. It's about the cultivation of our appetites, the right appetites, not the trivial appetites for sex and drink and food, but the deep appetites for glory and majesty and beauty and holiness and splendor and love and goodness. Fasting is in fact feasting. It's feasting. It's delighting ourselves in the Lord. It's gorging upon His goodness. It's imbibing His presence. It's rejoicing in His love and life. It is exalting in His glory. Psalm 16, 11, in Your presence, O God, our fullness of joy and at Your right hand our pleasures forevermore.
That's appetite language. O taste and see that the Lord is good. Psalm 34, 8, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not hunger. He who believes in me will not thirst. John 6, 35, abide in me and you will bear much fruit.
John 15. Friends, fasting is feasting. It is the unleashing of our soul's endless appetite upon the infinitely satisfying entree of God Himself. Our Father who is our life, the Son who is our sustenance, and the Spirit who is our greatest desire. The triune God, friends, is the source and substance and satisfaction of our souls.
In fasting, we learn what David meant in Psalm 73, 26, when he said, my flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Amen. So what's the takeaway? I worked really hard on this. I kind of massaged the words. I think it's pretty brilliant.
Ready? Just do it. Just do it.
Yeah, that's mine. I came up with that. But seriously, why not? Why not? Why not just do it? Jesus said, do it. Let's just do it.
No, seriously. What are you waiting for? Just come up with a plan.
Pick a day. When are you going to do it? Do it in a medically wise way. Some of you have blood sugar issues you need to pay attention to. Use juice. Do a juice fast.
Don't get legalistic about this. Start with dinner. This is how I do it. Start with dinner. Don't eat after dinner because when you wake up in the morning, you're halfway done. Right? Twelve hours, baby. Look what I just did.
Yeah. Then you just skip one meal at a time. You skip breakfast and then you kind of go a little bit. Skip lunch. Skip dinner. Oh, you did it.
You did it. It's that easy. Some of you might want to try multi-day fast. I wouldn't start there though. Start with one meal. Just start skipping breakfast. If you do that routinely, skip lunch. Just start small. If you haven't been doing this, don't try to go whole hog on day one.
That won't work. When the hunger pangs rise, use that as a prompt for prayer to redirect your attention to the spiritual dimension of who you are. God, be my sustenance, my strength. You are my portion, my deeper and greater desire.
Help me to long for you like I long for this meal. Feast like Jesus. Open God's word.
Drink it in. Let God's word be the source of your strength. When you find yourself getting hangry. So one of the things fasting does is it teaches us the things that control us.
So let that help you see yourself. Why am I so cranky right now? Why am I so dependent on food for my Christian behavior when I ought to be reliant on the deep character of Christ that the Spirit is birthing in me? Pray that God would give you the strength to have power over your appetites, to have self-control in these moments, to find spiritual reserves of strength in the hardness of the moment. And if you find yourself like you just can't do it, like I'm so mad and cranky and I'm being awful to everyone around me and it's just, I got to eat something. Listen, listen.
Treat yourself compassionately just like Christ treats you. It's baby steps. When my little kids were learning to walk, they took like one step and fell down and I never scolded them because I was just proud that they were making the effort.
That's your father. He's just glad you're making the effort. You're trying to walk in obedience.
He's delighted. So don't be hard on yourself. The goal is not guilt.
It's freedom. Would you pray with me? Father, we love you. We thank you for your goodness to us. We thank you that you are our portion and our strength forever. Help us to learn to walk in obedience in this area.
Lead us, we pray, for Jesus' name and his sake. Amen. Amen. Our benediction today is one of my favorite verses from Galatians 2 verse 20 where Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. This is our life. We are hidden in Christ, purchased by his blood and his love. Amen. Amen.
Remember Moody Church, you're loved more than you know. And now it's time to go and eat the church. Awesome.
Have a great day. On today's Moody Church Hour, we heard Pastor Philip Miller telling us about what happens when we fast. This has been the 18th in a 24-part series from the Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Matthew. Next time on The Moody Church Hour, we turn to the topic of treasures in heaven. We'll answer a crucial question.
Will we invest our time, energy, and resources in the kingdom of earth, or will we get in early and invest in the kingdom of heaven? Join us as we learn about the two treasures, the two eyes, and the two masters. The Moody Church Hour is a listener-supported ministry. We count on the ongoing financial support of listeners like you. Together we share solid biblical teaching that transforms lives across America and around the world. You can call us at 1-800-215-5001.
That's 1-800-215-5001. Online, you'll find us at moodychurchhour.com. That's moodychurchhour.com. Or write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. This broadcast is a ministry of The Moody Church.
