Why Do Christians Fast?
Chapters
0:09:53 What does fasting mean in Christianity?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.600 | Fasting is the act of going without food for a certain amount of time.
00:00:08.880 | The act is not distinctly Christian, nor is it distinctly spiritual either.
00:00:13.320 | It could just be a physical act.
00:00:15.000 | And so, Pastor John, we get questions all the time about Christian fasting.
00:00:18.640 | What is it and why do we do it?
00:00:20.860 | And how would you frame this discussion and introduce Christian fasting?
00:00:24.360 | Well, first of all, let's define fasting.
00:00:28.600 | There's, I think, a pretty generally accepted definition of fasting among Christians over
00:00:37.160 | the centuries.
00:00:39.400 | Fasting is a temporary renunciation of something that is in itself good, like food, in order
00:00:51.240 | to intensify our expression of need for something greater, namely God and his work in our lives.
00:01:04.840 | Now, defined like that, fasting is not explicitly commanded in the Bible for Christians.
00:01:16.240 | Fasting doesn't have the same place in Christianity that it does, for example, in Islam.
00:01:23.260 | The fasting that Muslims do during the month of Ramadan in Islam is a requirement of every
00:01:31.120 | real Muslim.
00:01:32.960 | You can't really claim to be a Muslim if you say, "I'm just not going to do Ramadan."
00:01:39.420 | Fasting doesn't have that kind of place in Christianity, but even though there's no command
00:01:46.200 | to fast in the New Testament, nevertheless, there are indications that it was normal and
00:01:55.200 | that Jesus expected it would happen among his followers.
00:02:00.700 | For example, in Matthew 6, verses 16 to 18, Jesus says, "When you fast, do not look gloomy
00:02:10.240 | like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, that their fasting may be seen by others.
00:02:16.000 | Truly, I say to you, they have their reward.
00:02:18.640 | But when you fast, anoint your head, wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen
00:02:25.920 | by others, but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who is in secret will reward
00:02:33.680 | you."
00:02:34.920 | So several things stand out in that passage.
00:02:38.520 | One is that Jesus says, "When you fast," not, "If you fast."
00:02:44.400 | That's what I mean when I say it seems that he expects that his followers will be fasting.
00:02:53.040 | But even more clear in this passage is that Jesus insisted that our fasting not be for
00:03:02.720 | the sake of impressing other people.
00:03:04.640 | In fact, we should go out of our way, he says, as much as possible—like washing our face,
00:03:10.640 | combing our hair—go out of our way to keep other people from knowing that we are fasting.
00:03:18.160 | And that gives fasting for Christians a radically Godward focus.
00:03:25.680 | And in that sense, fasting is a great test and confirmation that God is real to us, since
00:03:34.200 | in many situations, God is the only person who knows you're fasting, and the discipline
00:03:39.320 | can't impress anybody, and all it can do is test whether you and God are really having
00:03:44.920 | a transaction here.
00:03:47.920 | Another important passage for the meaning of Christian fasting is Matthew 9, 14-17.
00:03:55.800 | Jesus compares the old pre-Christian fasting to old wineskins, and the fasting that his
00:04:05.040 | disciples will be doing as new wine that won't fit into the old wineskins.
00:04:11.960 | It blows them up.
00:04:13.820 | In other words, there's something new about Christian fasting that sets it apart from
00:04:21.160 | the Old Testament fasting.
00:04:23.200 | They're not the same thing.
00:04:24.920 | So here's what he says, "Then the disciples came to John, asking him, 'Why do we and
00:04:34.360 | the Pharisees fast, but your disciples, Jesus, do not fast?'
00:04:39.920 | And Jesus said to them, 'Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is
00:04:46.740 | with them?
00:04:48.620 | The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
00:04:56.040 | No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, or the patch tears away from
00:05:00.840 | the garment, and a worse tear is made.
00:05:03.960 | Neither is new wine put into old wineskins.
00:05:09.680 | If it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed.
00:05:14.540 | But the new wine is put in fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved."
00:05:20.280 | So Jesus says that his disciples are not fasting while he's with them.
00:05:29.900 | He's the bridegroom present.
00:05:32.200 | We don't fast when the bridegroom is there.
00:05:34.000 | Now, when he's gone away, he says, which he has, he's gone back into heaven, then the
00:05:39.840 | disciples will fast.
00:05:42.000 | And what that seems to indicate is that Christian fasting is a kind of, or a way of, expressing
00:05:50.640 | our longing for the bridegroom, Jesus Christ, our King, to return.
00:05:58.000 | That's the connection between the fasting and the second coming of Christ.
00:06:02.440 | One of the meanings of Christian fasting is that we are expressing our hunger for the
00:06:12.280 | Lord Jesus to come back and to take up his kingship in this world.
00:06:17.400 | And what sets Christian fasting apart as unique, new wine that can't fit into the old wineskins,
00:06:26.200 | is that Christ has already come.
00:06:30.800 | The bridegroom, the King, has already been here.
00:06:34.520 | We have seen him and known him.
00:06:36.300 | We love him because we've tasted of his presence.
00:06:40.160 | We have already tasted the presence of the kingship of Jesus.
00:06:45.180 | So Christian fasting is not merely hoping and longing and hungering and aching for something
00:06:51.520 | future.
00:06:52.520 | It's based on an already and not just a not yet.
00:06:58.000 | The King has come.
00:06:59.440 | He's died for sins.
00:07:00.840 | He's risen from the dead.
00:07:02.360 | He's gone away into heaven.
00:07:05.280 | We already have the down payment in our hearts of his presence and his spirit, but we long
00:07:12.660 | and we hunger for the consummation, for the day of his return, his coming and reigning.
00:07:19.960 | So Christian fasting is unique in all the fasting of the world.
00:07:24.360 | It's unique in that it expresses more than longing for Christ or a hunger for Christ's
00:07:31.840 | presence.
00:07:32.840 | It's a hunger that is rooted in, based on, an already present, experienced reality of
00:07:41.680 | Christ in history and in our hearts.
00:07:45.280 | Let me give one more passage that gets at the meaning of what fasting is for Christians.
00:07:52.560 | In the book of Acts, chapter 13, verses 1 to 3, there's this beautiful illustration
00:07:58.760 | of how fasting became instrumental in the shaping or the laying hold of God for the
00:08:08.040 | shaping of world-changing ministry.
00:08:11.160 | Here's what it says.
00:08:12.160 | "Now there were in the church in Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon, who
00:08:18.400 | is called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manian, a longtime friend of Herod the Tetrarch, and
00:08:24.120 | Saul," or another name, Paul.
00:08:26.760 | "While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart
00:08:36.000 | for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.'
00:08:40.960 | And then, after fasting," some more, "and praying, they laid hands on them and sent
00:08:47.880 | them off."
00:08:48.880 | So, the leaders of the church were fasting, it seems, in order to express to God their
00:08:56.480 | own need and longing and desire with their bodies for God's guidance in missionary breakthroughs.
00:09:06.240 | And God responded with an answer that totally transformed the world, seriously, because
00:09:14.800 | the mission of Barnabas and Saul, or Paul, was one of the most important missionary endeavors
00:09:21.440 | in the history of the world, because the advancement of the gospel broke into the Western Roman
00:09:28.800 | Empire and nothing in the world has ever been the same since that breakthrough.
00:09:35.720 | So let me summarize the heart of Christian fasting and why we Christians do it.
00:09:42.600 | One way to say it is that fasting is the hungry Christian handmade of faith.
00:09:51.120 | Fasting is not a replacement for faith in Jesus.
00:09:54.080 | It's a servant of faith in Jesus.
00:09:57.260 | Fasting is a way of saying with our stomach and our whole body how much we need and want
00:10:04.280 | and trust Jesus.
00:10:06.720 | It's a way of saying that we're not going to be enslaved by food as the source of our
00:10:11.640 | satisfaction.
00:10:13.440 | We will use the renunciation of food from time to time to express that Jesus is better
00:10:20.080 | than food.
00:10:21.080 | Jesus is more needful than food.
00:10:24.280 | Food is good.
00:10:26.120 | Let there be no mistake about this.
00:10:27.480 | We're not ascetics in that we deny the goodness of God's creation.
00:10:32.280 | Food is good.
00:10:33.280 | It is a gift of God, and we glorify God with it in two ways, not just one way.
00:10:40.640 | We feast on it with gratitude for God's goodness, and we forfeit food out of hunger for God
00:10:50.000 | himself.
00:10:52.080 | When we feast, we gladly taste the emblem, the emblem of our heavenly food, the bread
00:10:58.720 | of life, Jesus himself.
00:11:00.480 | And when we fast, we say, "I love the reality more than I love the emblem."
00:11:08.760 | Both feasting and fasting are worship for the Christian.
00:11:13.860 | Both magnify Christ, and of course, both have their peculiar dangers.
00:11:20.460 | The danger of feasting is that we fall in love with the gift, and the danger of fasting
00:11:27.680 | is that we belittle the gift and boast in our willpower, our discipline.
00:11:33.920 | But at its best, Christian fasting is not a belittling of the good gift of food.
00:11:40.960 | It's simply a heartfelt, body-felt exclamation point.
00:11:46.680 | At the end of the sentence, "I love you, God.
00:11:49.760 | I need you more than I need food, more than I need life."
00:11:54.680 | Amen.
00:11:55.680 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:57.440 | And speaking of food and overeating and gluttony and spiritual side of weight loss, we have
00:12:01.560 | four other episodes on the topic, and two recent ones.
00:12:05.360 | See episodes 785, 752, 321, and 123, all in our online archive at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:12:16.160 | And you can find Pastor John's book on fasting, A Hunger for God, is the title, online for
00:12:21.120 | free at DesiringGod.org/books.
00:12:25.880 | So why do Christians go to church, and why do we go on Sundays?
00:12:29.120 | Pastor John will take a stab at that question tomorrow.
00:12:32.160 | No questions, no answers are assumed on this podcast, so please keep them coming our way,
00:12:36.200 | no matter how simple those questions seem to you.
00:12:38.320 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:12:39.320 | I'll see you tomorrow.
00:12:39.320 | I'll see you tomorrow.
00:12:42.160 | [BLANK_AUDIO]