THE FAST AND THE PRAYER-OUS
Text: Matthew 6:16-18
INTRODUCTION:
1. When I let my wife know that I was thinking about preaching on fasting, she said, "You’ve probably never fasted in your life."
a. That’s not true (when I was younger, fasted with aunt and uncle)
b. So I have fasted (just not lately)
2. I am not going to spend time trying to tell you that the New Testament teaches that we must fast.
a. I do not believe that fasting is a requirement
b. But I will not say that it is condemned either
3. We like to look at Old Testament decrees as simple precepts and the New Testament as making application of those precepts to your life.
4. Let’s examine this issue in that light.
5. Fasting was done in order to spend more time praying and communing with God.
6. It is giving something up in order to clear room in your life for your relationship with Christ.
7. So fasting was done to clear room in your life to commune with God.
TRANSITION: First let us determine what fasting was and is.
I. Fasting
A. Nasteuo
1. To abstain from food or drink as a religious exercise
2. Either entirely if it was a short time
3. Or selected nourishment if it was for several days
B. The word does involve abstaining from or severely limiting your food intake.
C. Jesus fasted at least once that we know of in Matthew 4:2.
1. He went into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan
2. He went in order to prepare himself for what was to come
a. His work that was to come
b. And the temptations that he was going to face
c. 4:1 says that he went into the wilderness to be tempted by
the devil
d. He gave up his regular diet in order to help prepare himself for what he was about to face
D. Fasting was a time of giving up food in order to pray and commune with God
E. It is neither bound nor prohibited here or anywhere else in the New Testament.
TRANSITION: I think it now goes beyond the simple food issue today.
II. What do we fast from today?
A. John 4:32-34
1. 32, "I have food that you do not know about."
2. 34, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work."
B. So is the preacher saying we should quit studying God’s word in order to commune with God?
1. Absolutely not
2. Without studying God’s word we cannot commune with him
a. We cannot know him
b. We cannot approach him
c. We cannot have any part with him
C. What I am suggesting is that we abstain from the desires, cares, and concerns of the world.
1. Placing the spiritual over the physical
2. Learning to get your food from God and not from the physical food we eat
3. "It is written, ’Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’." Matthew 4:4
D. Not that we never eat
1. Matthew 6:11 "Give us this day our daily bread."
2. But we let go of the need to feel in control
a. Understand that God provides
b. Do not even let physical food take precedent over spiritual food.
c. Give up the world so you can stay focused on God
d. "Let go and let God"
TRANSITION: What else do we give up?
III. I Corinthians 6:12-20
A. "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable"
1. What was profitable for Paul?
2. Philippians 4:21, "For me to live is Christ, but to die is gain."
3. To extend the boarders of the Lord’s kingdom is what drove Paul
a. To live is to do God’s will
b. Luke 19:10, "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost."
B. "Food is for the stomach" and vice versa
1. God will do away with both
2. Your body is not for immorality, but for the Lord.
C. I Corinthians 3:16-17, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him for the temple of God is holy and that is what you are."
D. I Corinthians 6:19, "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?"
1. We are the temple of God
2. We stand for him
E. Is this talking about the physical body of the church body?
1. It is both
a. The word here in I Corinthians 6 is óùìá
b. The word for the body of the church in Ephesians 4 is óùìá.
2. Do not misunderstand me; I know that there is a difference in physical and spiritual body.
a. And in I Corinthians 6:13 he is talking about the physical stomach
b. But he also says that the body is for the Lord.
F. See, the physical body is used in service to the Lord.
1. Where is he to carry out this work?
2. In the church
3. You see, the body is made up of parts.
a. The eye cannot work without the stomach
b. The hand cannot work without the head
c. All parts depend on each other in order to operate properly.
4. So the spiritual body, the church, is made up of those of us who possess these physical bodies.
5. The church, his body, is made up of us.
G. If we do anything that destroys the body, he will destroy us.
TRANSITION: What can we do that destroys the body?
IV. Living unhealthy unrighteous lives
A. "…Neither fornicators, not idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, not thieves, coveters, swindlers, drunkards, revelers, will inherit the kingdom of God."
1. Not receiving the inheritance of heaven is the destruction from God.
2. Separation from him for eternity
3. We lose that relationship with the one who sustains life.
B. Anything that we do that hurts the cause of Christ hurts the church which is his body.
1. Matthew 18:6, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him that a millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."
2. Verse 7, "Woe to the man through whom the stumbling block comes."
a. Even if it is your own foot, hand, or eye
b. Separate from it
3. I think this also can be applied to the dual nature of the body.
a. If there is something causing you individually to stray and stumble, separate from it.
b. If there is something that causes harm to the body of Christ, separate from it
c. Even if that person is someone inside the body
d. Just as we are to separate from the physical hand also
4. That stumbling block may or may not be in the church, but if it causes us to stumble, we must separate from it.
a. "He who loves father or mother, sister or brother is not worthy of me." Matthew 10:37
b. Even our closest relationships are not to stand in the way of our walk with Christ.
c. After all, did the Father not send his son down to save us from ourselves?
d. See, he lived this; he loved us enough that he sent his son to save us.
e. He asks us to love him in return.
TRANSITION: OK, so what is it that we give up?
V. Whatever harms the body
A. I John 2:16, "For all that is in the world, the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, the pride of life is not from the Father but is from the world."
B. Love for and longing for the world, these harm the body.
1. The drunk who longs for another drink
a. Fills the lusts of the flesh
b. Destroys the physical body
i. Kills the brain
ii. Destroys the liver
c. And is a bad influence, losing the spiritual battle
2. The fiend who longs for and indulges in pornography
a. Destroys his sense of values and decency
b. Demeans other humans
c. Loses his spiritual fight
3. The preacher who loves to hear his own voice
a. Gets puffed up with pride
b. Takes the glory from God
c. Ultimately may pull many away from the church
d. He loses his spiritual battle
4. Each of us on this temporal plane has demons that we battle.
a. These are what we are to abstain from
b. That helps us commune with God by removing those
distractions
CONCLUSION
1. See, Jesus is talking about fasting in Matthew 6:16-18.
2. The main point is when you do fast, do not do it in such a way as to make it a show
3. Fasting as a tradition has not carried on into today’s culture in the USA
4. But as Christians who feed on the spiritual food of God’s word, we are to be in a continual fast.
a. The drunk fasts from drinking
b. The perverted from pornography and immortal situations
c. Each of us is called to give up and abstain from the things of the world
5. If we do not abstain, we destroy the body
6. If we destroy the body, God destroys us
7. Work on keeping pure. If you slip, God picks you up, Jesus dusts you off and says, "That’s OK", "Let’s go forward"
8. If you choose to stay down, they leave you behind.
