Habits Of Pruning, Part 2: Fasting (Matthew 6:16-18) Series

[I am very grateful to SermonCentral contributor Jim Luthy for his sermon "To Fast or Not to Fast." His opening illustration and structure formed the backbone of this sermon.]

Good morning. Please open your Bibles to Matthew 6.

How many of you are tea drinkers? I know we are in the south, so let me clarify: How many of you are HOT tea drinkers? Ok, a few of you. Others are saying, “Don’t be coming in here with your Yankee ways.” For those of you who don’t drink hot tea, let me paint you a picture: I have hot water and a tea bag. To make the tea, I put the the bag in the water, right? Now, what’s going to happen if I just briefly dip the bag into the water? On the other hand, what if I continuously submerge the tea bag into the water?

The longer you keep the bag in the water, the stronger the tea, right? The longer the tea leaves are immersed into the water, the more the water gets into the tea and the more the tea is released into the water.

This is the way it is with our spiritual life. We are the tea bag, and the water is the life in the Spirit that God desires for each of His children. And so the longer we immerse ourselves in the life of the spirit, the more the life of the spirit is developed in us and the more our personality and giftedness and talents and abilities are released for use in the kingdom of God.

We’ve been talking about spiritual disciplines for several weeks now. We’ve talked about prayer, and scripture, community, accountability, and last week the importance of the Sabbath. And I’d like you to imagine that each time we engage in one of those disciplines, its like dipping the tea bag into the water. The more we practice the various disciplines, the stronger the tea gets.

And there’s this as well: the longer the bag is in the water, the less flavor is in the bag. We get to the point where we say, “You know what? [hold up the tea bag] THIS isn’t even tea anymore. [hold up the cup] THIS IS. I think that’s what John the Baptist meant when he said “He must become more, I must become less.” (John 3:30).

And so, this morning, I’d like us to examine what is maybe the least observed of all the spiritual disciplines we are going to study. We’re going to talk about fasting. For a lot of us, the idea of fasting is weird. We imagine fasting as something that only fanatics or super-spiritual people do? A lot of us put fasting in the same category as we put walking across hot coals or accupuncture. But consider this: Fasting is mentioned more often in the Bible than baptism (7So first I want to talk about what fasting is. Then, I want to deal briefly with some of the reasons not to fast. Then we will finish up by talking about when and how to fast.

First, some “fast facts.” (See what I did there?). In his book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, Donald S. Whitney defines fasting like this: He says, “Christian fasting is a believer’s voluntary abstinence from food for spiritual purposes.” And I think nearly every word in that definition is super important.

• Underline “believer” on your listening guide. If the person fasting isn’t a believer, then it isn’t Christian fasting.

• Now underline “voluntary.” Christian Fasting is never mandatory. If someone forces you to go without food, that’s not fasting. That’s “enhanced interrogation.”

• Underline “food.” I know that a lot of people have expanded the definition of fasting to include all sorts of things—from media, to alcohol, to ingredients in food like sugar or caffeine. And those might all have their benefits. But whenever the Bible talks about fasting, it is always, only talking about food. So we’re going to stick with that this morning.

• Finally, underline “spiritual purposes.” If its fasting to get bloodwork done, that doesn’t count. Or if its not for the purpose of getting closer to God, its not a fast. It’s a diet.

Ok, so that’s a definition of fasting. And you see on your listening guide that there were several different kinds of fasts recorded in the Bible. I won’t highlight all of these, most of them are pretty self explanatory, but I’ll mention two: [Each fade on click]

• Normal: Food, but not water (Matthew 4:2)

• Partial: limiting diet, but not abstaining from all food (Daniel 1:12)

• Absolute: all food and water (Esther 4:16, Acts 9:9)—both of these lasted only three days, which is about the limit for the human body to go without water.