The Acceptable Fast

Greeneville Seventh-day Adventist Church: Well, happy Sabbath again, church family. It's been a week, it's been two weeks for me. was in, what's it called, Conyers, Georgia two weeks ago for some evangelism training. And then it got canceled early because it was supposed to snow. And then it didn't snow that much. And then last week it really snowed. But we're back, we're back. Today we're gonna be in Matthew chapter nine, 14 through 17. We are continuing through the book of Matthew. This sermon was really convicting for me. So I hope it's convicting for you too. We just have to open our hearts to the Holy Spirit. Let's have a quick word of prayer. Father, God, thank you so much for the gift of your word and the gift of your spirit that makes your word applicable to each of our hearts. Lord, I pray that you would hide me behind the cross. and let that word go forth to each one of us, Lord, to convict, to convert, and to sanctify us by your truth. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. So, Matthew 9.14, context, what's going on here? So Jesus, we read it in the scripture reading, Jesus has these people come to him, the disciples of John. John the Baptist had disciples, and then Jesus had disciples. John the Baptist's disciples come to Jesus and ask him, why do we, why do the disciples of John and the Pharisees fast often? But your disciples don't fast. So the context, on the surface it sounds like a good spiritual question, right? And they were sincere, the disciples of John were very sincere. But if you look at the deeper context and some insights that we gained from other sources, this was prompted by some not so good motives. The Pharisees had gone to the disciples of John and started stirring up the water saying, you know, fasting is good, right? I fast twice a week, I'm pretty holy. But Jesus doesn't fast, and his disciples don't fast, right? Isn't that kind of weird? I mean, if he's who he says he is, don't you think he would at least fast and be righteous, right? So the Pharisees are contrasting their holiness, their piety, their righteousness with Jesus eating with publicans and sinners, eating all these things, drinking grape juice. ⁓ what a sinner. And they considered that as a standard to judge them by. And the disciples of John were carried away by this. And so they came to Jesus' disciples and asked, why? Why is this the case? So already you can kind of see when you look at the cultural background, the context, there's some tension here. But the questions, what kind of religion asks about fasting, yet rejects the God to whom you fast for? Right? So what is biblical fasting? I wanna clear that so we can kind of understand what we're talking about. We've talked about it a little bit in some sermons, but I don't think I've ever really just hammered it out from the Old Testament. We need to understand what fasting meant. So biblical fasting was not just dieting. Nowadays, fasting has become kind of like a fad. Intermittent fasting, two meals a day, that kind of thing. In the nutrition world, it has a lot of health benefits. Going through a fast helps your body to shed some excess, you know, burdens, ⁓ junk in the body helps it to cleanse itself. It's good stuff. But the Bible doesn't recommend fasting just because it's good for your health. Fasting, if you study it throughout the Old Testament, it's always related to mourning. And you see that when Jesus says, can the children of the bride chamber mourn? In answer to fasting, Jesus says, can they mourn? So there's a correlation between fasting and mourning. And you see in the book of Job when he loses his family, loses his children, loses his possessions, he fasts. In sackcloth and ashes he's mourning. You see multiple times throughout the Bible when Jonah went to Nineveh and preached to them that their city was gonna be destroyed, if they didn't repent, they repented and they mourned, they fasted in sackcloth and ashes. There is a connotation of fasting with this idea of heart-searching repentance. We're not in harmony with God, and therefore we need to repent, we need to mourn over our sinfulness and seek reconciliation with God. We need to make things right. We need to plead for God's mercy, plead for God's grace, humble ourselves, and seek Him. Right? That's pretty much what fasting was. It's a sign of... weeping, lamentation, and seeking for God. Sometimes it was not only for ourselves, but for others. ⁓ Grief for the dead, crises. This is what fasting was in the Old Testament. But by the time you get to the New Testament, fasting had become ⁓ just a religious ritual, a sign of holiness, a sign of piety. The zealous Pharisees, the ones who were the most, they fasted twice a week. They were very, very holy. So this is what we see here in Matthew 9 is this, contrast. Fasting had lost its original meaning and Jesus is trying to bring it back in line. So Jesus doesn't answer them right away. He doesn't tell them their theology is wrong. He doesn't tell them that you're actually not doing fasting right. He doesn't get into all that with John's disciples. They're sincere. They were deceived by the Pharisees. brings it back to himself. And it's interesting, he uses an analogy that John the baptizer, John the Baptist actually used for himself to talk about Jesus. When John's disciples went to John and said, why are so many people leaving you and going to see Jesus, right? I thought we were doing a good thing. And now this guy that you said is the Messiah, Everyone's running to him. And John the Baptist's answer was, it's the bridegroom that marries the bride. The best man is just happy to stand there and watch them get married. And so I rejoice that they're following Jesus. He must increase, but I must decrease. That's where that comes from. It's beautiful. Very beautiful. And so Jesus picks up the same analogy and he says, can the children of the bride chamber mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, but the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken from them and then shall they fast." So Jesus is saying, he's pointing back to himself as the bridegroom, and he's saying, why are you so concerned about fasting and all this? The Messiah has come. Why do you want them to mourn and fast and afflict their bodies? When the Messiah, the one prophesied for thousands of years is right in front of them. And miracles are being done, the sick are being healed, the dead are being raised, the gospel is being preached to those in need. Why is this a time for fasting? And so he also hints at his departure. That the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them and then shall they fast. So when it comes to fasting, we see a couple of interesting little things here. This is, I'm not sure how to put this in a way that doesn't sound kind of crazy. But fasting here, according to Jesus, is something that we do when we're not sensing the closeness with Jesus that we ought to. Does that seem accurate from the text? He's saying, if the bridegroom is with them, should they be mourning and fasting? No. But when the bridegroom is taken, then they shall fast. And so if we apply that in a spiritual sense, if we are having a super vibrant walk with Jesus, and there's this communion, this deep communion, do we need to be mourning? No. But if we're having things that are separating us from God, if there's sin in our lives, if there's struggles going on, if there's something, some trial, some whatever, that's getting between the soul and God, What does Jesus say we should do? Then they shall fast. So this is, Jesus brings fasting right back to its original intended purpose in one sentence. And then... He goes on to address the Pharisees. But I want to hit on what the Pharisees are saying. I think it's so dangerous, and I think we do it too. The Pharisees had turned something that was meant to seek God into a standard of its own, whether or not they're righteous. Fasting is a tool, according to Jesus, it's a tool to bring us closer to God. It's an outward fruit of an inward sorrow that... My soul is hungry for God and it's manifesting itself in sorrow and in sackcloth and ashes. Do you think Job had to think about, man, I just lost my kids. My wife told me to curse God and die. I lost all my possessions. I've got boils on my skin. Maybe I should fast. Do you think it was like a thoughtful, no, it was probably a natural response. This dude lost everything. The natural response is to fast and to pray and to seek God. And so it should be for us. When we sense, man, my soul's not right with God, the natural response should be to fast. It shouldn't be, ⁓ well, I didn't fast this week. I've lost two rungs on the ladder. No, but that's kind of what we do. If we change the word fasting, well, I read my Bible every morning, so I'm pretty holy, right? Or I never miss church, so I'm good, right? I know all the doctrines, all 28 of them, I can tell you. Three biblical references for each one of them. I can give you a Bible study. I've gone through it is written voice of prophecy. I listen to John Bradshaw every week. Sometimes we do that, right? And that becomes our standard of if we're righteous or not. I pray, I serve, I fast, therefore I'm good, right? And that's dangerous. That's very dangerous because the Pharisees did all those things. And yet they were the ones who were foremost in missing Jesus. So religion becomes dangerous when it's not used as a tool to reach and cling to Christ, but to minister to self and become a way of self-righteousness. So, now getting into first 16 and 17 that we've put that in its place, he really hits the Pharisees on the head. What the John's disciples had done is they had indirectly accepted the Pharisees' idea of righteousness. They figured in some level that there was merit in their works to recommend them to God, right? Something that they did would make them more acceptable to God and more right with God. That's kind of the whole idea of works righteousness is there's something that I can do on my part that will make me more acceptable to God, that will atone for my sins or make me more righteous, something like that. And they had kind of bought into this idea and that was kind of the whole form of religion in those days. That was the religion that the Pharisees had created. is you tithe the dill, the cumin, the mint, and that makes you righteous. And you you memorize the Torah and respect your rabbis, and that makes you righteous. And you know, do your ritual cleansing and put the oil here, let it drip down here, and then you're clean and you're righteous. And it's all this external stuff that I can do that makes me more close to God and righteous. And Jesus confronts this in 16 and 17. He says, no one puts a piece of new cloth into an old garment. For that which is put in to fill it up takes from the garment and the tear is made worse. I don't sew. I don't pretend to know what sewing is. But if I had to, you know, conclude what he's saying, if you took an old garment, a cloth that was probably old and raggedy worn, and tried to sew in a piece of a new garment, it wouldn't last very long. Because it's gonna make the tear worse. They don't go together. They're probably not the same stretchiness or whatever. I don't know how works. But it would probably make it worse. That's what he's saying. He's saying you can't put a piece of a new garment on an old garment. You can't do patchwork religion, is what he's saying. You can't just patch that one area and make it right and expect the whole thing to be good. And then he's saying, neither do men put new wine into old bottles. Bottles back then were made out of animal skin. And when animal skin was new, it was stretchy and molded to the pressure of the bottles because They didn't have good refrigeration back then. So wine or whatever, grape juice, whatever they would put in those bottles would start to expand a little bit, I could say. And the skins would expand with them. But if it became old and hard and brittle, if you don't take care of your leather, you know, it gets old and creaky and that's what he's saying. If you put new wine into an old bottle, the bottles will break and the wine will spill out and the bottles will perish. But you put new wine into new bottles and both are preserved. So he's got two parables analogies here. First, it's patchwork religion, right? He's saying, you can't patch on my teachings to your old form of religion and expect it to fit. You can't just take one of my ideas, one of my principles that I'm preaching about, and try to fit it in your whole works-based system of religion and expect it to make sense. He's saying, need to scrap it all together. And he says the same thing with the other one. My wine, my teaching, my doctrine, you can't put it into your old self. It's going to explode you. You can't contain the things that I have to teach you in your old selfish way of life. You need to be a new bottle if you're going to take my new teaching. And so he's condemning the religion of the Pharisees saying, you guys have got it wrong and you can't try to just fix a couple things and think it's okay. You need to scrap it and start from the beginning. And that goes right along with what Jesus said to Nicodemus, you must be born again. Unless you're born of water and of the spirit, you will not see the kingdom of God. So this was really convicting. And Ellen White talks about this a lot. was very, very strong about what she said. She actually compares this to Laodicea. She says it's the same mindset of Laodicea. This right here. This idea that something that we do makes us rich and increased with goods, that we have need of nothing, when we don't realize that we're wretched and miserable, and poor and blind and naked. So I thought, know, I could stop there, but God kept putting something on my heart as I was studying for this, telling me to go to Isaiah 58. So, ⁓ we're gonna go to Isaiah 58. It's gonna get a little more touchy, a little more personal. But Christ's verdict to Laodicea was you say I'm rich and increased with goods and you don't know that you're wretched and miserable, poor, blind, and naked. So the combination here, can see, we can fast, we can pray, we can read our Bibles, we can go to church, we can have all the right doctrines, and still be missing the Messiah. Still be empty. And this was the whole issue of the Pharisaical religion. So turn with me to Isaiah 58. We are going to dig into this chapter. I think it's very, very, very relevant for us, and it relates perfectly to Matthew 9. Isaiah 58 starting in verse one, cry aloud. Is this loud enough? Do not spare. Lift up your voice like a trumpet and show my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins. So I'm supposed to, according to this, I'm supposed to show you where you're sinning. And it's something specific according to this. And I think it's something that we need to take in mind. I was very convicted when I was reading this and studying this. So we have an issue that God has with his people. that he calls a sin. Says, yet they seek me daily. That's a good thing, right? They seek me daily, they delight to know my ways. That's a good thing. As a nation that did righteousness and forsook not the ordinance of their God, they think that they're doing righteousness and not forsaking any ordinance of God. They ask of me the ordinances of justice and they take delight in approaching God. Isn't that good stuff? They seek God every day. They delight to know God's ways. They delight in approaching God. And they think they're doing righteousness. That's pretty good stuff. I mean, that's all you can ask of someone, right? To seek God every day. But there's an issue. There is an issue. Transitioning verse three is the people speaking to God, these people that he's talking about, my people. Why have we fasted, they say, and you do not see it? Why have we afflicted our souls and you take no knowledge? So the people are saying, God, we're seeking you through fasting. We're trying to do something to make you acknowledge us, right? We're seeking after you. We're trying to work our way into your favor. Why aren't you acknowledging it? Why aren't you answering our prayers? Why aren't you doing what you've promised? That when we seek you, you'll be found. What does he say in verse four, or the end of verse three? Behold, in the day of your fast, you find pleasure and exact all your labors. Behold, you fast for strife and debate and to smite with the fist of wickedness. What is that saying? Saying, in your fasting, in the day of your fast, and you're seeking God, you're doing it for your own pleasure. You're still exacting all your labors. You're fasting for strife and debate, right? I mean, we don't strive, right? We don't debate. We don't tell people, ⁓ I've got the right day of the week, and you got the wrong day of the week, and don't you know this and this and this? Beat them with the Bible sometimes. Sometimes we do that, don't we? You fast for strife and debate and to smite with the fist of wickedness. Sometimes do we seek God to better ourselves alone. Can we turn God's selfless religion into a way to minister to our selfishness? When we turn it into God, I'm seeking you so that you can save me and help me so that I can take my pleasure and still do my labors and be right and exalt myself above my brother. He says, you shall not fast as you do this day to make your voice to be heard. God says that kind of stuff's not gonna get my attention. That's not gonna, to bring us together. That's not what I am asking of you. Is it such a fast that I have chosen a day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bull rush to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast and an acceptable day to the Lord? He's saying, is that what I want from you? The end goal of your fasting Do I just want you to be afflicted and bow down your head to spread sackcloth and ashes? Is that what is pleasing in my sight? Do I just want you mourning and naked in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what makes me happy? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free. and that you break every yolk. That's powerful, isn't it? Is it not to deal your bread to the hungry, that you bring the poor that are cast out to your house, when you see the naked, that you cover him and that you hide not yourself from your own? So what is God saying here? God is saying my people, my people that seek me daily, my people who delight to know my ways and delight to come to me, they're selfish. They're still selfish. They find their pleasure, they strive, they debate, they exalt themselves. to gain my favor. But what do I want? I want you to eluse bands of wickedness. I want you to be ⁓ a ⁓ source of light in the world, salt to the earth, to undo heavy burdens, to help people break free from the burdens of sin and self and society, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. Doesn't this sound like spiritual? Deliverance. We need to be free from evil and to free others from evil. That's what God is saying here. And then the second part in verse seven, is it not to deal your bread to the hungry? That's pretty straightforward. Give your bread to those who need it, physical and spiritual. That you bring the poor that are cast out to your house, physically and spiritually. When you see the naked, that you cover him physically and spiritually. And that you hide not yourself from your own flesh. Do you consider the people outside of the church your own flesh? This is what God is asking of us. Because we can do all of the things, all the right things, and still be selfish. And that's what Ellen White says when she talks about Isaiah 58. She says, those who make great pretensions of godliness, are narrowed up with selfishness. And God says, the fasting that I need from you, the thing that you need to do to humble your soul and seek me. is to send yourself out in ministry to those in need. And then he has a promise. Then your light will break forth as the morning and your health will spring forth speedily. Your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord shall be your reward. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry and he will say, here I am. If you take away from the midst of you the yoke and the putting forth of the finger and speaking vanity and if you draw out your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light will rise in obscurity and your darkness shall be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your soul in drought and make fat your bones and you will be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. And they that shall be of thee shall build up the old ways places and raise up the foundations of many generations and you will be called the repairers of the breach. and the restores of paths to dwell in. Isn't that beautiful? And it's convicting. I don't know if it's convicting to you, it's convicting to me. Because in all of the efforts to pursue God, we can sometimes get so caught up in the first four commandments that we lose sight of the last six. We get so caught up in yes, I'm honoring God, I'm trying not to have any idols, I'm making sure not to take his name in vain and be a good Christian and I'm keeping the Sabbath, I go to church on the right day, that sometimes we forget, am I honoring my parents, am I honoring those outside of our walls, am I indirectly Murdering. by not doing what I can to save. It's heavy, at least for me. We need to be intentional about ministry to those in need. We've been given great truth, amen? Great truth, beautiful principles of light and liberty. I don't know about you, but when I read these things, it's like, man, it just makes me like, woo! And those things. Inasmuch as we know something above and beyond someone else, we're indebted to them to give it to them. And that's what he's saying. He's saying, we have so much to offer. Why are we not offering it? If we disappeared, would our community even notice? That's the question. And my friend turned that question around, and I thought that was convicting too. He said, if our community disappeared, Would we even notice? That's a question. Would we notice if that homeless guy who's always on the side of the road just stopped showing up one day, would you notice? You know, if the people who are struggling, your neighbors, if they just disappeared, would you notice? And that's the crux of the matter of Isaiah 58. Jesus did not come to just set in line a bunch of righteousness principles and show us how to live by being holy. The majority of Jesus' life was in what? Service. Teaching those who were ignorant, ministering to those who were sick, healing the blind, covering the naked. That was the life of Jesus. And if we're gonna call ourselves Christians, followers of Christ, I think we need to be doing a lot more of that. Not to the detriment of our truth. Not in a way where we just take care of your needs and don't tell you about these hard truths that you need to know. But people don't know, they don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care. And God was putting the verse in my mind, you know, speaking the truth in love, we may grow up, in edification of the body, and twisted it in my brain. It's not, I used to think of it as speaking the truth in love as a way of this is how I tell you the truth in a loving tone, right? But for me, was switching in my head. We speak the truth in love in, Love as an action. The way we can speak truth to someone is by how we love them. And if we don't have those loving actions towards them, we can't really communicate the truth to them. And so this was convicting to me. I hope it was convicting to you. But we need to do something about it. Because, I mean, if we just say amen, good sermon pastor, and go home, what's going to change? What can we do as a church to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free? And that's not saying we don't do anything. We have a wonderful CSC, praise the Lord for that, and the people who work there. have health ministries that tell people about our health message and help people with depression and anxiety. We have people who go and minister to their neighbors. I'm not saying we don't do stuff, but I'm saying I don't think we do as much as we could. I think we have so many talented, gifted individuals here. We could be a light in the darkness. We could be like the talk of the town, not in a, woo, look at us way, but where people know that this is a place where they can come for help. And I wanna work towards that. So like, think with me, think with me. What if, what if, this is just a big what if, what if we had small groups where, yes, we pray together, we fellowship with each other. and we pour into each other and I think that in itself is a huge need. But we're also, we take those small groups and then we take, we schedule times, whatever works for that small group, to go out and minister to the community. We take a ministry Sabbath, a mercy ministry Sabbath, whatever you wanna call it, maybe once a month, whatever works, and we just go and we take that time and we meet needs. Not to convert them, not so that they join the church, but just because we care about people. We go to our neighbor and say, Find the lady who needs her lawn mowed and say, would you mind if we mow your lawn? Or the lady who's a single wife with three kids and, hey, can we buy your groceries this week? Or whatever it looks like. God will provide what we need to do for the individual, but we need to be available. We need to be present. And I think that could be a great way to do it. Mrs. White talks about having organized bands of Christian workers. And I think that we should take her counsel seriously. She might be inspired or something, I don't know. But I would love to see that. I would love to be part of that. I don't know how we would do it. I'm just a little kid, you know. I feel like Samuel, oh Lord, I am but a youth. I don't know what to do, but I know we need to do something, right? And so I would love to work on this as a church, and I would love to obey the counsel of God in Isaiah 58 here. Because this is the fasting that Jesus asks of us. I don't know about you, but I don't think I individually, or maybe us as a church, if we go back to Matthew 9, have that nearness and communion with Christ that we could have. I don't think we have that rejoicing, that fellowship where we're just shining as much as we could. And so the answer is we should fast. And what is the fasting that God calls us to do? A fasting of pouring ourselves out for the needs of humanity. So if it's your desire, if you're willing to be made willing, to apply this in your life in whatever way God impresses you, I ask that you stand with me as we pray. Heavenly Father, God, thank you for your word. Thank you that you've given us such clear counsel. Lord, you do not want us to be far from you. You do not want us to be deceived or distracted or discouraged. You give us such rich promises, such plain, practical counsel. But Father, we are stubborn. We are ⁓ sometimes kind of foolish, simple-minded. and we need your help. Lord, we can't do any of this without you, and I just ask that you would work upon each one of our hearts that we really can be a blessing, that we can be more like Jesus in our day-to-day life, and that we can slow down from all the busyness, all the things that go on, and that are important, but that we can make time somewhere to be a blessing to those in need, to minister to those who are hungry, to cover those who are naked. not to hide ourselves from our own brothers and sisters in the world. And I ask that you would just bless our desire for that, give us the guidance and the direction we need, show us what we should do, and lead us toward this end and draw near to us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.