Sunday, November 15th
The Fasted Life

Welcome to The Journey Church. I'm Pastor Brannen Neumeister

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I always find it interesting to hear what peoples’ favorite spiritual discipline is. For most, its worship, bible reading, or prayer. On occasion maybe I hear meditation, memorization or journaling but one that I’ve never, ever heard before is fasting. And there really is no surprise there. We love to eat and hate to go hungry. We love comfort and fasting is uncomfortable. Many of us have tried fasting in the past and the experience was: “I felt hungry all day and all I could think about was how hungry I was and then it was finally over and I could eat again.” If that’s our view of fasting, no wonder we don’t do it! During Isaiah’s time the people of Israel were disappointed with the results of their own efforts of fasting: 

Isaiah 58:3 (ESV): “Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves , and you take no knowledge of it.”

God’s response is interesting:

Isaiah 58:5 (ESV): “Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the LORD?”

Sackcloth and ashes were symbols of humbling oneself. God asks: was that what I asked for?  I have to imagine the Israelites would have responded: “uh….yeah!” The Day of Atonement was the one annual occasion on which God explicitly commanded the Israelites to humble themselves through fasting. Leviticus describes it as a day of affliction and humility. So yes, God literally asks for actions of humility. The problem is that these Israelites were so focused on the acts of affliction and their expectation of what God would do in response that they entirely missed the purpose of fasting.

I think we often do the same. We focus on the thing we’ve given up, the discomfort of hunger. And maybe we push through that discomfort because we anticipate receiving the blessing, the thing we’ve been praying for or our spiritual growth. But what if fasting didn’t have to be this mopey gloomy thing, but itself could be a blessing and even a way of life? Fasting is what I call a reorienting discipline; it is meant to direct your attention off of earthly things and onto God so that you can find satisfaction and contentment in Him. 

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A couple of years ago I was tasked with teaching a class on fasting and prayer and as I was studying and praying about what direction to take it God brought the parable of the great Banquet to my mind. And I thought, God you must be confused, a Banquet is the opposite of fasting. But even though it is not specifically about fasting, there is a lesson to be learned from this parable on its purpose. 

In Bible times, the banquet often served as a way to show off your social status. You would invite people of as high status as would come to your banquet and make it a lavish affair in the hopes that the rich, high status people you invited would invite you to their own banquets and boost your status. A man who was dining with Jesus at one of these banquets remarked

Luke 14:15 (ESV): “‘Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!’”

The bread of this era was not like our bread today. It was often flat, dense, and coarse, this dude would be blown away by Panera bread, let alone heavenly bread. But he is thinking of the heavenly banquet through the lens of their banquet social system. “The food of heaven must be amazing, I’m thankful that I’m the kind of person that’s invited to that banquet.” But Jesus’ challenge is: just because you’ve received an invitation doesn’t mean that you’ll actually participate in the banquet. 

Luke 14:16-20 (ESV): “‘A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. 17 And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, “Come, for everything is now ready.” 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, “I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.” 19 And another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.” 20 And another said, “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.”

One of the greatest honors you could receive was an invitation to a great banquet, but the people of this parable want nothing to do with it. It’s not as if any of their plans are bad: there is nothing wrong with buying a field, oxen, or spending time with your new spouse. But the truth of the matter is these are all just excuses not to go. None of these preoccupations would keep these people from attending if they really wanted to go. So, the problem isn’t that they are busy, but that they don’t value this host or his banquet enough to prioritize their schedule around it. If they really knew the host of this banquet they would have made attending it their number one priority, but they don’t.  So, they dismiss and dishonor the host who invited them and he invites other people instead:

Luke 14:21-24 (ESV): “So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ 22 And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ 23 And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’”

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The religious leaders this parable was directed toward assumed that they were clearly the type of people who would be at the heavenly banquet. But the truth Jesus is telling them is that they have shown that they have no interest in such a banquet. They loved their positions of power and status and the praise of men.  They had their own earthly priorities that overshadowed any heavenly ones. So, while they reject God’s calling for them, it would be the poor, those of low status, the humble who inherit the kingdom because they were the ones to recognize their unworthiness of being guests at such a banquet and the kindness and mercy of the one inviting them.   

What does this have to do with us? God has invited us to the same heavenly banquet! Jesus says:

John 7:37 (ESV): “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”

John 6:35 (ESV): “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger.” 

Matthew 11:28 (ESV): “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” 

Jesus offers us the spiritual sustenance and life that can be found nowhere on earth but only in knowing him. The unfulfilled longing that we all have in us by nature. But if we look in the mirror of this parable, we find that we are too often like the guests making excuses than the guests overwhelmed with gratitude at the invitation. Pastor Paris challenged us last week on the topic of time, talent and treasure. There are plenty of excuses we can come up with as to why we aren’t using these things for God’s purposes. But at the end of the day, we need to ask: where do our priorities lie? Does God get the first fruits of our lives or the scraps?

This is where fasting comes into the picture. The question we should ask before fasting is: what are the things I’ve become so reliant on, attached to, oriented toward that my desire for them overshadows my desire for God. 

How much of life is ordered around food? Maybe you skip breakfast but if you’re like me you hardly ever miss lunch or dinner and if we do usually we’re at least snacking on something to hold us off until we can have that next meal. Food is such a priority that there is almost nothing that will get in the way of taking the time to eat. If we have to eat at our desk at work, order doordash or grab fast food on the go, we’ll find a way. 

Now imagine if we had that same perspective toward our spiritual life. What if we were so aware of our need for God that we had the mindset to have regularly scheduled times of Bible reading and prayer. And even if things are busy, I feel exhausted, I overslept my alarm and am rushing out the door, I’m still going to find a way to spend time with God. Maybe it's listening to an audio Bible in the car or during lunch, maybe it's taking the occasional minute or two when you have a breather to connect with God, but if it's our priority, we’ll find a way. 

This is how fasting becomes a reorienting spiritual discipline: it helps direct your focus away from things that have too much weight in your life and reorient that focus on God. So, what is it in your life that is taking up more of your focus, time, and devotion than it should?

Do you feel the need to check this (phone) as soon as you wake up and throughout the day, so you don’t miss out? Do you feel the compulsion to continually check your notifications or scroll through social media? Bring that to God.

Are you so consumed with a particular show, hobby, or other activity that it has become the thing you anticipate and long for throughout the week. The thing your mind dwells on and your schedule revolves around?  Are you anticipating this sermon being over so you can go home and watch football? Imagine you're on the way to watch a show or game or do the hobby you’ve been looking forward to and on the way, you saw someone stranded on the side of the road and you felt the prompting of the Spirit to help them. Would you hesitate or refuse to obey that prompting if you knew it would result in you missing out on that thing you had been looking forward to? Bring that to God.

When you get stressed out and overwhelmed do you turn to food, entertainment, alcohol, shopping. When you consider any of these things: If your thought is I couldn’t go without that or I don’t want to go without that, that might be the very thing God is calling you to fast from.

That’s what makes fasting so difficult at times, we are giving up something we don’t want to go without. But while there is an aspect of fasting that does require sacrifice and some discomfort, if your focus is on the affliction of fasting then you’ve missed the entire point. 

This was the Israelites mistake in the passage I read earlier. They say to God, don’t you see how we’ve afflicted ourselves with our fasting. We made ourselves miserable for you, now do your part! What a warped view of God. Is that really why we think God calls us to fast, to make us miserable? If that’s our mindset then we’re missing out on the blessing fasting can be. See in comparison how God describes those who do the actions of humility like fasting the proper way:

Isaiah 58:11 (ESV): “And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”

Have you ever wondered how Jesus fasted for 40 days in the desert? Remember even though Jesus is God when He took on flesh He became just as human as we are, with the same physical longings and hunger, but Jesus lived the reality of this verse. Just prior to entering that desert, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus and He entered God the Father’s mission for Him.  We focus on the physical desert Jesus experienced but what we miss is the spiritual oasis Jesus always had with the God the Father. It was His relationship with the Father and Holy Spirit that allowed Jesus to find satisfaction even in scorched places. 

This is one lesson about fasting that is too commonly neglected: You’re not fasting unless you’re also feasting on God. If your focus during fasting is on the thing you’ve given up, how you can’t wait to eat again, it’s going to be a miserable experience. If you decide to fast from your cell phone but you invest the time you would have spent on your phone watching tv instead, you aren’t going to see any spiritual benefit from that. Fast from the thing you feel like you can’t live without, so that you can find what you are truly longing for in God. 

Every time you feel those hunger pangs: God I feel so hungry right now, give me that same hunger for you! God I feel so physically, mentally, spiritually dry that I feel like I need to check my phone, I need to go shopping to give me some reprieve, but help me to find an oasis in you instead. God alcohol has been my way of escape, to numb the pain but I don’t need alcohol. I need you! Anything that your heart longs for, that you feel the compulsion for, hand it over to the Lord and see what God does when you entrust it to Him. 

For some things it may be God’s desire to give you full deliverance from it. The more you take your addictive compulsions for drugs, porn, junk food your doctor advised you not to have and use those unwanted longings to drive you to God rather than trying to overcome them through brute willpower the more progress you will experience in finding victory over them.

Other things God doesn’t want to completely remove from your life, God doesn’t want to starve you to death or take away the hobby or show you enjoy.  But He does want to redeem your relationship with them. What happens if you go without food or caffeine for too long? Are you on edge, irritable, more prone to lash out at other people? That’s not God’s desire for you. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t fast as often as I’d like or ought to, but when I first came to know the Lord I regularly did food fasts. And over time I started recognizing that my stomach was no longer dictating my schedule or emotions.  As Paul said in:

1 Corinthians 6:12 (ESV): “All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything.”

God doesn’t want to take the good things he’s given away from us. He wants us to find satisfaction in His good gifts with Him rather than apart from Him. If our desires dominate us then what happens when those things are stripped away? We are plunged into despair, bitterness, or misery. But if we view God’s good gifts as signposts pointing us to the ultimate satisfaction found only in Him, even if those things were stripped away in the deserts of life we have a fountain of living water inside of us.

That means fasting is not a spiritual discipline to just practice once a year but a way of life. Anytime something is holding too much weight in your life that it's distracting you from God’s purposes, even leading you away from God, that is an opportunity for fasting. Something I’ve tried in the past is if I consume too much junk food or screen time on a given day then I make the decision to fast from it the next day. So that my focus is directed back to where it ought to be. So I want to challenge you today: Identify something in your life that is holding too much sway over you, and intentionally set it aside for a time this week. Use that time to draw near to God, seeking Him through prayer and His Word.

There is no minimum time for biblical fasting. It might be a meal, a day, or longer. Maybe when you get home from work you're tired and hungry so you immediately turn on the tv and eat some food. You could intentionally set aside that first 30 minutes at home withgoing food and entertainment to read your Bible and pray instead.  Delaying your typical schedule so that God is taking priority in your evenings. But whatever you do, don’t view fasting as a lack of something. View it as an opportunity to grow in your longing for God so that you can feast on His presence. View it not as “God is taking away something I enjoy”, but “God is showing me that the satisfaction I find in this thing is just a small taste of the enjoyment available in Him.” 

Jesus invites us to the banquet:

John 7:37-38 “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.’ whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 

Fast from the things that compete for your devotion so that you can feast on His presence. Come to Him and experience the satisfaction, freedom, and life that only He can provide.

Next week we look at living the grateful life.

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Message Questions

1. Is fasting just a good thing to do when we feel like it or does God expect it to be an intentional part of the believer’s life?

2. Why do you think fasting is often considered the least practiced or most intimidating spiritual discipline in the modern church? What has your personal experience with fasting looked like in the past?

3. Compare the two groups of people in the Parable of the Great Banquet, what caused their difference in reaction to the invitation? What does it teach us about how even good things in life can negatively impact our relationship with God?

4. Some people seek to fulfill the desires of their heart without restraint, while others act as if any activity that doesn’t have a Chrisitan label is sinful. What is the Biblical middle ground between these two ditches?

5. How does viewing a fast as an opportunity to feast on God rather than simply forgoing something change our perspective and benefit we receive from this spiritual discipline?