SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/01/2025 11:35 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2“A Royal Mandate”
Bible Reading and Meditation Reference: Jonah 3:7-8
Message of the verses: “And he cried out and said, “In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, animal, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat, and do not let them drink water. But both man and animal must be covered with sackcloth; and let men call on God with their strength that each may turn from his evil way and from the violence which is in his hands.”
Now as we look at these verses we can see that the king issued a series of prohibitions Do not let man, animal, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat, and do not let them drink water. Now these three times he repeated the phrase do not, emphatically demanding complete abstinence from food or drink, and this makes me think of what happened to Saul of Tarsus when the Lord saved him. No man, animal, herd, or flock was to taste a thing. The mention of man and animal shows that the command pertained to any living creature, and the reference to herd and flock included every domestic animal. The edit was all-inclusive.
The king did not stop there as he further specified, “Do not let them eat.” The word for eat refers to the grazing of cattle. People were already instructed not to taste a morsel of food or feed their animals. But this command went further than that as the king demanded that no animal was even allowed to graze in the countryside. In effect, the Ninevites would have had to lock up their animals to prevent them from finding food on their own. Now such a command would have both suspended business operations and disrupted the economy. So life in the city was brought to a halt so that everyone could just focus on repentance. Nineveh’s monarch also added this: Do not let them drink water.” MacArthur writes “Fasts often abstain from food but not always from water. While people may survive a number of weeks without food, they cannot survive beyond a few days without water. Such restrictions elevated the severity of the fast to an extreme and dangerous level to display an attitude of spiritual desperation.”
That was one of the first things that caught my eye when reading about this. This makes me think of a number of things, and the first one is what happened to Moses when he went up on the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, and then had to come down to the camp where he found the children of Israel in what could be best described as an orgy. After tending to this he went back up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments again for he had destroyed the first ones throwing them at the people. Moses was going to go without food and water for this total time of 60 days, which no human could do, so it was God who was sustaining him throughout this time. Next I think of Jesus who after His baptism by John the Baptist went out into the wilderness to fast; now it is my opinion that He did drink water during this fast of 40 days. “Mt 4:2 And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry.” Earlier in my life I fasted a couple of times, once for a month only drinking a glass of tomato juice a day, along with water of course. I did some studying on this subject and found out some interesting things. Fasting without water can be dangerous for I learned that a person can only live a very short time without water or liquid. I did drink water and the amazing thing, at least to me is that after three days I was never hungry, and that went along with the books I was reading on fasting. The first time I fasted I became rather weak, the second time I was not weak at all. The first time was after I retired from my job, trying to discern what the Lord wanted me to do after retirement. In my study I learned of a man who was fasting, (with water) for ninety days. Now as we look at the passage in Matthew 4:2 we can actually see when a person is to stop fasting: He then became hungry. Jesus was a perfect human being and so after forty days His body was telling Him to stop fasting, for if one fasts after they become hungry they are no longer fasting but starving themselves. This is why the man I was referring to who was fasting for 90 days could do this. Let me just say that fasting for a long period of time, only drinking water can be boring. You really don’t know how much time you take dealing with food until you stop eating it for a long period of time.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Fasting is something to do for health reasons and also for spiritual reasons, for as I think about Jesus’s fasting it happened right before He began His ministry and this would have been something that would help Him to be ready to begin His ministry.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I cannot rely on myself to win this battle of emotions, but rely on the Holy Spirit to get me through this.
11/1/2025 12:14 PM
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