Fasting and Feasting

I want to ask you for a quick show of hands, how many of you would say you love to eat? How many of you just love to eat? It's almost unanimous, right? I love it. Well, have you noticed how much the food bar has been raised in our lifetimes? You know what I'm talking about? I'm not talking just about, you know, fancy premium grocery stores and high-end restaurants. I'm talking about just, you know, budget level. The food bar's been raised.

For example, back in my day, this was salad. Iceberg lettuce, Thousand Island dressing, the end. That was the whole salad. Or if you really wanted fancy, there was this. Jello salad with celery and olives. Yuck. Today, just one example. This is one of many pre-made salads at Trader Joe's, right? I love these, but listen to this description in their Fearless Flyer. One of our favorite aspects of Thai cuisine, in pad thai in particular, is the balance of umami flavors, and it's precisely this elegant interplay that inspired our latest DIY bagged salad. In my childhood, nobody would have understood a word of that. It's just so different right now.

One more example, or a couple more. Back in my day, if you wanted a quick pasta, right, for the family that night for dinner, this was your only option. Franco-American SpaghettiOs. The neat new spaghetti you can eat with a spoon. Today you can try, for example, the vegan kale gnocchi at TJ's, right? And we would have looked at that and said, "What's Kale Gennachi? Things have completely changed.

How about frozen dinners? Does anyone remember Swanson TV dinners? Cooked in the finest aluminum American industry could provide, right? Today if you want a frozen dinner, you could try a Cuban style citrus garlic bowl or mini chicken tikka samosas, right? It's amazing the options that are out there. Back then, if we wanted to have any kind of cheese other than cheddar, this was our only option really. And I actually think they had to misspell cheese for legal reasons because there's not a molecule of actual dairy in there, right? Today, man, you could like try our fig goat cheese log among many, many other options, right?

One more. Back then, this was breakfast. It's a bowl of sugar. Today kids hurry up and eat your frozen organic acai bowl, right? It's just a whole new world. Raise your hand if you are grateful about all these other options that are out there. Raise your hand if you're grateful that Wonder Bread is no longer your only bread option, right? But it did build strong bodies 12 ways. One, two, three, four, five, right? So many things have changed.

Even the word foodie did not exist until New Yorker Magazine used it in an article about 30 years ago and now it's ubiquitous, right? We're all foodies. And yet our culture's relationship with food is still problematic. Obesity, worse than ever. Many more people struggle with eating disorders, body image issues, guilt, shame, because our society as a whole still has an unhealthy relationship with food because whether it's Swanson TV dinners or the finest chicken tikka samosas, overindulgence is still pushed.

And simultaneously, if you think about it, almost humanly impossible body images, right? In ads, people see levels of fitness and beauty that don't even actually exist in reality because all those models are photoshopped. And so it's crazy making. And consequently, for most of us, food has way more power over us than we would like to admit. So is there a way to enjoy food richly and ethically and yet not let it have an inordinate power over us? Is there a way to escape the schemes of the food labs and marketing groups that are cleverly trying to get you and me to eat more and more and more and more of their product? Is there a way?

No, I don't think so. Let's close in prayer. Yes, yes there is. Grab your message notes that look like this. You're going to need these today. We're in a series for Lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter. We call it Rhythm, walking daily in the spiritual practices of Christ because during Lent often you hear people whisper about fasting and prayer and meditation and so on. So we thought we would just kind of tackle those in a series.

If we had been literally following Jesus during his life, we would have seen he had a rhythm to his life. As you've heard Mark talk about the past two weekends, times of solitude and times of socializing, times of praying and times of preaching, times of fasting, times of feasting. And this is really the rhythm we want to focus on this week. And really this is much deeper even than food. It's about the power of no and the joy of yes. Fasting and feasting. Jesus had both in his life.

Jesus started his ministry with a fast. It says after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, Jesus was hungry. I guess so. And yet he was also known to be a guy who loved to go to parties, who loved feasting. He really was. In fact Jesus himself quoted his critics, "The son of man feasts and drinks." And you say he's a glutton and a drunkard and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners. And so we see both feasting and fasting. Fasting and feasting. There's this rhythm. So let's talk about it.

Now, today I'm going to spend at least 80% of my time on fasting. Because in our culture I would guess that we probably need a little bit more instruction on fasting than feasting. Although it's interesting, have you noticed what's happening with fasting? Suddenly, like out of the blue, it's almost become fashionable. You can find books on fasting everywhere, burning up the best seller list, TV shows on fasting, documentaries about fasting. Fasting is all the rage right now.

So if you've seen all these books, you might have been wondering, what's the Bible say about fasting? What did Jesus say? What's the point? Why would anybody fast? Can we cut through all the pop culture noise and get to what the Bible says is really the core of fasting? I'm going to try to hit all those questions today. Maybe this is going to be one of those sermons where literally every sentence is going to be something you've never thought of before.

Because many of you probably have never heard a sermon about fasting before. And what I'm hoping to do is to give you a better understanding of fasting. Listen, so that you just have a tool for improving your life that was in the toolbox of just about everyone in the Bible. This is not meant to pressure you or to guilt you or to make you feel like fasting is mandatory. It's just to describe a potential tool for you to use in your life. So are you ready for this?

All right. What is fasting? Well, from a Christian perspective, fasting is abstaining from something, usually food, for a limited time in order to more fully engage in a spiritual practice. From a biblical standpoint, it's not just about dieting. It's about abstaining from one thing, usually food, but it could be a social media fast, TV, binge watching fast, so that you can use that time and energy and do something else with it.

Okay. Why is fasting important? Or dare I ask, is it really important? Or is it really just some fad or something from some bygone era? Well, once you start looking for it, you'll see it's all through the Bible, like in every major Bible story. Moses, Samuel, David, Ezra, Esther, Nehemiah, Jesus, Peter, Paul, John the Baptist, all the apostles, the entire nation of Israel every year on Yom Kippur, it's all through the Bible, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

And it's all through church history. Did you know that for the first three centuries after Jesus, the early Christians all fasted every Wednesday and every Friday? That's not just monks and hermits. It's just what everybody did. It was just kind of part of the Christian culture. And all the major figures in Christian history like Justin Martyr, Polly Karp, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Martin Luther, John Wesley, all fasted and recommended fasting. Billy Graham, one of my heroes, said fasting can be a wonderful spiritual experience. Believers who never practice fasting are missing a spiritual discipline that has blessed many throughout the ages.

And then third, it's good for me, physically and spiritually. Physically, I'm not going to go into depth on this, but I found a mountain of peer-reviewed clinical journal articles with evidence suggesting that fasting seems to actually be good for your physical health when done properly. And of course for centuries, people have written about the spiritual benefits. Like what? We'll get to that in just a second. But first you might be thinking, okay, this is great, but is this still just sort of a human trend? Was fasting important to Jesus? Because that's what's most important to me as a follower of Jesus, right?

Well Jesus fasted as we saw, and Jesus expected us to fast. He just assumed it. How do I know? Well in a chapter of Matthew that follows his own fast, Jesus preaches the Sermon on the Mount. And in the middle section, he takes three aspects of the spiritual life and he talks about how to do them. He says in order, when you give, do it like this. When you pray, do it like this. And then when you fast, do it like this. What if, when? He just took it for granted.

Now look at that list. Nobody would ever say, yeah, giving is something that Christians don't need to be concerned about anymore. Or praying is something Christians don't need to be concerned about anymore. So why do we say fasting is not something for Christians to do anymore? And then Jesus taught us how to fast in the next couple of verses. And as you would expect from Jesus, his teachings are not at all about the rules of fasting. He doesn't say anything about what you should fast from or how long you should fast. And that's exactly what you would imagine Jesus to be teaching about, right? He doesn't even seem to care about those details.

Jesus talks all about the attitude of your heart. What does he say? We're going to look at that in a minute. But first, let me be clear, fasting is not a command. There is no biblical command for all Christians to fast anywhere in the Bible. So it's not mandatory. Don't let anybody guilt trip you into it ever. But it is an opportunity to use a tool to engage in a practice that Jesus did, that the apostles did.

So if this is all true, all kind of good reasons to consider fasting, why do people ever stop fasting, right? How come it's not a part of our routine like it was for all these people in the Bible and a Christian history? Well, it's interesting. Fasting didn't really stop as a common practice of Christians in America anyway until just a couple of centuries ago. And so I suspect it stopped for three reasons.

First, it seems kind of legalistic, right? And if you're unfamiliar with that word, legalistic is the word used to describe when I think my good behavior earns me kind of spiritual credits with God. And this is very dangerous, even though a lot of people look at religion this way. But if this is how you look at your praying, your church attendance, your giving to the poor, your fasting, whatever it is you're doing, it's like, good, cha-ching. I'm earning another credit with God, another browning point. That's going to lead to one of two bad things. It's going to either lead to despair or pride.

Despair because you're worried that you're not doing enough. Or pride because you know you're doing more than most people. And so you're like, man, I'm better than most people. I'm in. I'm solid. And the Bible talks about both of those negative effects of legalism. The Bible says we are not saved by any of our good works. And it specifically says so that no one can boast. Nobody can boast that they're better than you because they do more than you. Every single thing that we get from God, our life, our new life, the blessings he lavishes on us, they're all a free gift of his grace.

In fact, just take a breath right now. That breath is a gift of God's grace. Your salvation is a gift of God's grace made possible by the redemption Christ bought for us on the cross. So what I'm getting at is fasting is not transactional. Neither is any other good deed that you can possibly do in your Christian life. It's not transactional. It's not something that you give in order to get something from God in a transaction. Like I'm going to fast so that God will see how good I am and grant my prayer request. That would be legalism, but that's not biblical fasting. Fasting doesn't earn you anything from God.

So why should I do it? It's just good for you all on its own. So I think that's one reason people have stayed away from it. And then second, it seems kind of weird. And if I can just say this boldly to Protestants at least, Catholics might talk about fasting from something for Lent. Protestants hardly ever, why? I heard somebody say that in the divorce between Catholics and Protestants a few centuries ago, it was just like a divorce. Like you get the car, I get the dog. And it was like Catholics got fasting and weekly communion and we got evangelistic sermons and Bible studies, right? And so we're unfamiliar with it. It seems foreign, but that's no reason not to explore it, especially if it's in the Bible.

And finally, it seems hard, right? It just seems tough. So why should I try it? How is fasting good for me? Next page. I want to focus on three reasons. Number one, it teaches me self-control. It teaches me self-control. You probably heard of the famous experiment at Stanford called the marshmallow test, where kids were left alone with a single marshmallow. And they were told they could have that marshmallow immediately or wait until the experimenter came back, in which case they could have two marshmallows.

And then, this is brilliant, the social and cognitive skills of those children were tested years later when they were seniors in high school. And the ones who had delayed instant gratification in preschool were the ones who did much better in school, both academically and socially, years later than those who had had little self-control. Other research started in 2005 at the University of Pennsylvania, repeated the test, and just recently concluded, self-discipline, out does IQ in predicting academic performance.

The point is, self-discipline, self-control, learning to say no to your immediate appetites may be the most important life skill that you could ever learn. And you can learn it. In the book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg points out, self-control is a skill that works like a muscle. It must be trained. Well, is it any wonder that part of Christian discipleship for most of the history of Christianity was regular fasting? Because it's just a simple way to work out the self-control muscle, to learn to say no to an appetite so that the self-control muscle gets stronger.

I just want to say something just from my heart, and I hope you hear it. I want to show you three of many passages I could show you from the Bible to make my point on this. But I really feel, church, like we need to hear this. I mean, Christians in America, but I'm talking about specifically us here at Twin Lakes Church in Santa Cruz County. We need to hear this. Now watch as I make my case for this.

In 2 Peter 1:5 it says, "For this reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness and to goodness knowledge." Now stop there because most Christians think this is all it takes to be a good Christian. I just need faith, need to be generally good, and probably need to learn more, right? Get more knowledge through sermons and books. But Peter doesn't stop there, even though we often stop there. He says, "And add to knowledge," what? "Self-control, and to self-control perseverance, and to perseverance godliness." Urgent message we need to hear.

As a pastor, I have seen so many Christians nearly ruin their lives because although they embraced God's grace, they never got to this. Self-control. Why? Here's my theory. In the name of grace, follow me here. Many Christians who have escaped legalism, like I did in my life, have for far too long run from anything that even smells to us like it might be legalism. And what's happened is we've confused legalism with self-discipline. Self-control, self-discipline is not legalistic. Self-control leads to life and to love.

Watch what Peter says next. He keeps adding. "And add to godliness mutual affection, and to mutual affection." What? Love. Let me hear you say it. Love. The goal of being a self-controlled man or a self-controlled woman is not so that you can develop six-pack abs and have a faster half-marathon time. The goal is love because it's a lack of self-control that actually can't destroy the very people I love.

One weird example. I don't know if you've ever seen Little Shop of Horrors, the musical or the movie. The basic idea is a lowly flower shop assistant finds a little carnivorous plant like a Venus flytrap. And it's so adorable he keeps it as a little pet and one day it talks and it says, "Feed me." And so he begins to feed it but quickly discovers that what it really thrives on is human blood. And so he gives it his own blood but the more he feeds it the larger it grows and the more it needs until he's rationalizing all kinds of bad behavior including kidnap and murder to feed this appetite.

And although the movie tacks on a happy ending in the musical version it consumes everyone he loves and finally it consumes him. And then kind of the Greek chorus of all these people who have passed away come back on stage in the musical not the movie and they make it clear that the whole play is meant as a metaphor that this is what happens whenever you feed an appetite. Whatever appetite in your life is always saying to you, "Feed me." If you keep feeding it it becomes a monster and it takes over and it can consume the very ones you love. So don't feed it.

So what do I do? Try sheer willpower? Not exactly. Look at this from Titus 2:11, "For the grace of God has appeared." Don't miss that. That offers salvation to all people. Now watch this. It, what's it? The grace of God. It teaches us to say what? No to the unregulated appetite, to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.

It's not legalism that teaches you how to say no in a healthy way. In fact legalism doesn't really work. It's grace that teaches you how to effectively say no. If it's properly understood. How does grace teach me how to say no? Because if you really absorb the gospel of grace that everything you have is a gift from God, everything. That God unconditionally loves you and that God has a plan for you and that God shows you, you want to develop self-control because you don't want to miss out for a day on what God's got for you.

And if you don't grow in self-control, here's what happens to you. Look how Paul in Philippians describes some people he knows. They're calling themselves Christians but he says they're living as enemies of the cross. He says their destiny is destruction. Now watch this. Their God is their one. Their stomach. And he means that both literally and metaphorically, they're being mastered by their appetite for whatever. And their glory is in their shame. Their mindset on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven.

Let me ask you a tough question. Do you have an appetite that is in danger of becoming your God? You know there are multi-billion dollar industries that meet with their media teams to essentially try to figure out ways to make this happen to you. To get you hooked on their product. And going without stuff is a way to say to our consumer culture, "Nope, you do not control me. That is not my God." That's learning the power of no. It's not just about willpower. You've got God power by God's grace to say no.

Well second, it focuses my prayers. All through the Bible when people need to focus their prayers, they fast. I put just a few examples there in your notes and there's many, many, many more. But how does fasting focus my prayer? Well I think it's simple. It gives you time. Usually when I pray it's often just short little Twitter sized prayers because I'm busy rushing to something. Now I'm a novice at fasting, but I have found and I've spoken to so many other kind of fast fasting fans this weekend have come up to me.

By the way, you find somebody who does fast regularly, they are enthusiastic about it. And person after person has told me this weekend, "You're exactly right. Somehow it focuses my prayers." And I think it's because we have the extra time instead of being at a meal to sit and think and to pray. Clarifies my prayers. And then it develops empathy for the poor. How? Well, when you fast it's kind of like you are a tourist in a country that many people must live in. The land of hunger. And you develop empathy because you go, "Wow, a lot of my brothers and sisters around the world feel like this all the time."

And so from compassion, not out of sense of obligation, you're moved to give. And you see this link all the time in the Bible like Isaiah 58. God says, "This is the kind of fasting I want. Share your food with the hungry and give shelter to the homeless." And so fasting develops my self-control muscle. It develops my prayer muscle and my empathy muscle.

So is fasting all good and we should all just rush off to fast because it's all fantastic? No. There are three problems to avoid when fasting right from the pages of the Bible. And we need to pay attention to these or we can get seriously messed up. First, fasting as mere tradition. In Zechariah 7, God is speaking to the Jewish exiles who've been in Babylon for 70 years keeping all of the traditional feasts. And listen to how he critiques them. "Say to all the people of the land and to the priests. When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months during those 70 years, did you really fast for me? For me?" Implied? Those were just tribal rituals, traditions. And he's saying, "Don't fast just because it's traditional to fast at Lent or whatever."

Second, fasting as magic ritual. Almost like kind of a magic spell. I fasted two days and now God is more likely or even obligated to grant my prayer request. Back in Isaiah 58, don't miss the... Isaiah 58 is such a great chapter, by the way. Go home today, read the whole thing. It's riveting. But God criticizes the people for exactly this attitude. Watch this. This is humorous. God says, "We have fasted before you," they say. "Why aren't you impressed? We've been very hard on ourselves and you didn't even seem to notice it." I'll tell you why. You humble yourselves by going through the motions of penance and you cover yourselves with ashes. Is that what you call fasting? You really think this will please the Lord?

So what does please the Lord? The verse we saw earlier. This is the kind of fasting I want. Share your food with a hungry, give shelter to the homeless, and so on. Again, self-control fasting is not an end in itself. We fast and we become self-controlled so that we can grow in love toward others. And then the third trap to avoid, and this is so subtle, fasting as a means to admiration. You know, to get your friends to think, "Wow, you've really leveled up your Christianity." Kind of like, "Yeah, you know, we all went out to lunch at Gordo's the other day and when we ordered René," said, "No, thanks, because he's now fasting one day a week during Lent." That is so cool. That didn't happen, by the way.

But here's what Jesus would have said if that had happened back in Matthew 6. When you fast, don't make it obvious as the hypocrites do. They try to look miserable and disheveled. Some of you are thinking, "I don't even have to try." But they try to look miserable and disheveled so people will admire them for their fasting. I tell you the truth, that's the only reward they'll ever get. What Jesus is saying here, to use contemporary languages, if you're fasting, don't humble brag about it, right? You know the word humble brag? That basically means you're bragging, you're boasting about something that you're doing, but with this thin veneer of humility so that you'll be admired by all your friends.

Just to give you some examples of humble bragging, I decided on Friday to go on to Twitter and to see if I could find some examples of a humble brag. An easy way to find humble brags is to go on certain celebrity accounts. I won't tell you who these celebrities were, but here's one. I hate my Lamborghini. Police always pull me over just because it's a Lambo, so they always think I'm speeding, but I'm not. Lambo must go, "Hey, I'll trade you my Toyota Solara right now," right? How about this one? I just realized I've only showered in one of my five showers since I moved in here. This must change, #totesproblems, right? How about this one? Somebody posted, this is my favorite one, not seeing the irony, "I just did something very selfless." But more importantly, it was genuine, and I know it means a lot to the person in the long run. #soworthit.

I told Valerie, "That's totally inappropriate," but you get the idea. So a humble brag related to fasting might be something like, "Had no idea how easy it would be for me to fast twice a week for Lent." #easyfast, right? Jesus says, "When you fast, don't make it obvious." Now this is tough. Somebody said, "People do most things so they can tell other people about it, right?" But you have to kind of resist that temptation that's between you and God.

So with all this in mind, let's get practical. Three ways to start fasting. If you decide to do it, first pick something to fast from. Traditional option is food, but you could also choose to fast from all kinds of other things, sugar, alcohol, caffeine, social media, TV, your phone, whatever monster is saying, "Feed me," and you're going to not feed it.

Second, try it sundown to sundown. This was what they did biblically. This is the traditional 24-hour fast, and this is genius because it goes from an early dinner that you eat one night to dinner the next night, and so it's brilliant, right? Because you're really only skipping two meals, breakfast and lunch, and you're asleep for half the time, but it's still 24 hours. And consider a weekly rhythm like maybe sundown, Sunday to sundown Monday, and if that sounds intimidating, just start with one meal, okay? Just skipping breakfast or lunch, and remember, you don't have just willpower when it comes to this. You've got God's power inside you, so lean on Him during your fast.

Now, disclaimer, please, if food is a trigger, be wise. If you have an eating disorder, if you have a medical condition, fasting from food may be unwise for you. So remember, fasting doesn't have to be about food. You can fast from your phone, social media, et cetera. That is still self-control practice, and as always, use wisdom and grace, and don't be legalistic about it.

And finally, don't forget to feast. Some of you have been waiting this whole time for me to get to this, but we're out of time now, so. But you do need both, and feasting is all through the Bible. Jesus feasted. Look at what Nehemiah tells the people of Israel when they're burned out from building the walls of Jerusalem. Go celebrate with a feast of rich foods and sweet drinks, and share gifts of food with people who have nothing prepared. This is a sacred day before our Lord. Don't be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

And look at how the Bible pictures heaven, the ultimate heaven, the new heaven and the new earth, Isaiah 25:6. I think this is like one of my favorite verses in the Bible. In Jerusalem, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of heaven's armies will spread a wonderful feast for all the peoples of the world. It will be a delicious banquet with clear, well-aged wine and choice meat. I love that. In heaven, wine with no alcoholism, rich meat with no cholesterol problems. That is just beautiful.

But here in this life, it's about learning the rhythm, fasting and feasting, and learning both the power of no and the joy of yes. Now as we wrap up, remember fasting and feasting are not ends to themselves. Their purpose is to help us grow closer to God and to be transformed into loving people. And so let's ask God to grow love in us right now. Would you bow your heads with me? Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we look at this interesting tool in scripture. And I pray that we would use it with love and joy as the end game, not for some legalistic reason. And God, thank you for all these tools that are in your word to help us grow into people of love. May Twin Lakes Church be characterized by grace and joy and godly grace founded self-control so that we as a community of faith can just overflow in love for others. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.