PT-3 "Proper Fasting" (Matt. 6:17-18)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/14/2020 2:07 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                            Focus:  PT-3 “Proper Fasting”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matt. 6:17-18

 

            Message of the verses:  “17  "But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 "so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly” (NKJV).

 

            We be begin this SD by looking at the next reason for proper fasting and that is Penitence, as this was often accompanied by fasting.  We have already mentioned about David’s fasting and praying about his son’s life, the son with Bathsheba.  David also fasted after the sin of committing adultery with Bathsheba and then having her husband Uriah sent to the front of the battle to be killed.  Daniel also fasted and prayed about the sins that Israel committed as he confessed their sins to the Lord, and in that ninth chapter of Daniel he also confessed that he too was a sinner even though there is no recorded sin of his found in the Bible, but like all of us Daniel was born a sinner.  Let us now look at a person that we may have forgotten that he too fasted.  I will pick up this story from 1 Kings 21 in the middle of it as we will look at verses 27-29 “27  It came about when Ahab heard these words, that he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and fasted, and he lay in sackcloth and went about despondently. 28  Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, 29  "Do you see how Ahab has humbled himself before Me? Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his days, but I will bring the evil upon his house in his son’s days’” (The story is about Ahab and the death of Naboth which was actually his wife’s idea to have him killed).  John MacArthur writes about another fasting after he mentions something about Ahab. “Because of Ahab’s sincerity, the Lord postponed the judgment (v. 29).  Centuries later, after the exiles had returned safely to Jerusalem, the Israelites were convicted of their intermarrying with unbelieving Gentiles.  As Ezra confessed that sin in behalf of his people, ‘he did not eat bread, nor drink water, for he was mourning over the unfaithfulness of the exiles’ (Ezra 10:6).”

 

            We have been learning about Jonah over the last few weeks at our church, actually we have been learning a lot about the book of Jonah, and in that book we see a wonderful work of God from a reluctant prophet as we see repentance and fasting directed by the king of Nineveh at the preaching of Jonah.  Nineveh was one of the cruelest empires of that time, and may rank as one of the most cruelest of all times, yet God brought a great revival to that city at the preaching of Jonah who did not want to be there.  It was the words that he preached to them that caused this great revival, not the fact that he would have rather been elsewhere. 

 

            MacArthur talks about the next reason for fasting:  “Fasting was sometimes associated with the receiving or proclaiming of a special revelation from God.  As Daniel contemplated Jeremiah’s prediction of the seventy year’s desolation of Jerusalem, he gave his ‘attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes’ (Dan. 9:2-3).  As he continued ‘speaking in prayer,’ he reports, ‘then the man Gabriel, whom I have seen in the vision previously, came to me in my extreme weariness about the time of the evening offering.  And he gave me instruction and talked with me, and said ‘Daniel, I have now come forth to give you insight with understanding’’ (vv. 21-22).  A short time later, just before receiving another vision, Daniel made a partial fast—by forsaking ‘any tasty food…meat or wine—for three weeks (10:3)  It is important to note that, though fasting was related to the revelations, it was not a means of achieving them.  Daniel’s fasting was simply a natural accompaniment to his deep and desperate seeking of God’s will.”

 

            I will conclude with what I believe to be a very important paragraph from MacArthur’s commentary even though it is a short one:  “We often fail to understand God’s Word as fully as we ought simply because, unlike those great people of God, we do not seek to comprehend it with their degree of intensity and determination.  Skipping a few meals might be the small price we willingly pay for staying in the Word until understanding comes.”

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I believe that these are some very good reasons to conduct a fast that we have been looking at in this section of Matthew.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  It is my desire to continue to pray that the Lord will bring revival to me and to others too.

 

12/14/2020 2:38 PM

PT-2 "Proper Fasting" (Matt. 6:17-18)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/13/2020 2:18 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                            Focus:  PT-2 “Proper Fasting”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matt. 6:17-18

 

            Message of the verse:  “17 No, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face 18  so that nobody knows that you are fasting—let it be a secret between you and your Father. And your Father who knows all secrets will reward you” (Philips).

 

            We are talking about the meaning of proper fasting and part of that has to do when a person is in deep grief as we mentioned about David’s fasting when he and Bathsheba’s son was dying.  John MacArthur writes “Unless a person is getting seriously weak from hunger or has some specific medical reason for needing to eat, we do them no favor by insisting that they eat.”  I mentioned that I studied physical benefits for fasting before I began my first fast in July of 1999.  I also mentioned that after three days of fasting that you are not hungry at all.  You can get weak, but you are not hungry.  The next time that you get hungry after the initial first three days you have to eat or you will be on a starvation type of situation.  We read in Matthew chapter four about Jesus when He fasted for forty day before He began His ministry and Matthew says that He fasted for forty days and then He became hungry.  As mentioned He was not hungry for those forty days and it is my belief that Jesus had water to drink or else He would have died, but when His fast was completer He became hungry and so He would have to eat after this.  Most people who go on a water only fast will certainly go longer than 40 days until they become hungry, but Jesus being a perfect human being was in perfect shape and so after the forty days He became hungry.

 

            I want to move to a passage that I had read before my first fast which comes from the book of Ezra as we look at another reason to fast, and that is overwhelming danger, which is seen in Ezra’s book.  He was leading a company of Jewish exiles away from Babylon as the king was allowing him to do so.  He had told the king that he would not need his protection because God would care for them.  Perhaps he began to wonder why he did not ask for the king’s protection and so Ezra declared a fast as seen in Ezra 8:21 “Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river of Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God to seek from Him a safe journey for us, our little ones, and all our possessions.”  He then continues in verses 22-23 “22 For I was ashamed to request from the king troops and horsemen to protect us from the enemy on the way, because we had said to the king, "The hand of our God is favorably disposed to all those who seek Him, but His power and His anger are against all those who forsake Him." 23 So we fasted and sought our God concerning this matter, and He listened to our entreaty.”  Now you can see why I made the statement that perhaps Ezra had regretted not taking the king up on his offer of protection.  Instead Ezra chose to call a fast that the Lord would protect them as there were a great many dangers out they on their upcoming journey.  The Lord would answer Ezra’s request and He brought them safely on their journey.

 

            I think that I will stop hear and not get into the next reason for having a fast as the next reason will take some time to explain, and I don’t usually go to long on Sundays. 

12/13/2020 2:43 PM

PT-1 "Proper Fasting" (Matt. 6:17-18)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/12/2020 12:22 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                            Focus:  PT-1 “Proper Fasting”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matt. 6:17-18

 

            Message of the verses:  “17 No, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face 18  so that nobody knows that you are fasting—let it be a secret between you and your Father. And your Father who knows all secrets will reward you” (Philips).  “17 "But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face 18 so that your fasting will not be noticed by men, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you” (NASB95).

 

            As one goes through the New Testament they will find that fasting is mentioned around thirty times, and it is almost always done in a favorable manner.  However it is possible that fasting was even overemphasized in some parts of the early church for at least four times a reference to fasting seems to have been inserted into the original text where it is not actually found in some of the earliest and best manuscripts.  The following are these places where fasting probably was inserted:  Matthew 17:21; Mark 9:29; Acts 10:30; 1 Corinthians 7:5.  As I look at the verses from the NASB95 version one can see that most of them have brackets around them showing that they were not in the earliest manuscripts.

 

            As we begin to look at verse seventeen we that Jesus says “when you fast” which shows that this was a normal thing for people to do in the time when Jesus was on the earth, something we have already spoken about in an earlier SD.  I believe that Jesus is assuming that His followers will fast on certain occasions; however He does not give a command or specify a particular time, place, or method of fasting.  We have written about the only time in the OT when fasting was required, which was the Day of Atonement, and since the Day of Atonement ceased when Jesus made the once-for-all sacrifice on the cross as seen in Hebrews 10:10, this single time of fasting where it was required had ceased.

 

            I want to talk about a section of Scripture found in Matthew 9:14-15 “14 Then the disciples of John came to Him, asking, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?" 15 And Jesus said to them, "The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”  I believe that the reason that Jesus’ disciples did not fast while He was with them was because many times fasting was done when someone was mourning, and not just mourning over the loss of a loved one or friend.

 

            John MacArthur writes “Fasting is never shown in Scripture to be the means of heightened spiritual experience, visions, or special insight or awareness—as many mystics, including some Christian mystics, claim.  Fasting is appropriate in this age, because Christ is physically absent from the earth.  But it is appropriate only as a response to special times of testing, trial, or struggle.”  Speaking of a struggle, I can remember a former Pastor that I sat under from 1978-1986 who was preaching about fasting and he mentioned that one of the members of our church had decided to fast and pray because he had lost his job and was having a difficult time in finding one.

 

            As I am going through the Bible in a different way at this time from when I was just reading straight through I came across the difficult passages of when David sinned against Bathsheba and her husband, and then when Nathan came and confronted him with this sin.  Nathan told David that their baby would die and so David was fasting and praying before God in hopes that God would save the baby’s life.  He would not eat, and he was dressed in some type of mourning clothes while he was fasting.  David did not desire any food because of his sorrow, but after the baby died he washed himself and changed his clothes, which is a sign of a new beginning and went to comfort his wife Bathsheba, as his fasting was over.

 

            I believe that when a person is mourning and does not desire to have food that perhaps it is a good idea not to force them to eat, as I think that their whole being is in a state of mourning and does not want any food similar to David’s story.

 

12/12/2020 12:50 PM

Pretentious Fasting (Matt. 6:16)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/11/2020 11:17 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus:  “Pretentious Fasting”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 6:16

 

            Message of the verse:  “16 "Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.”  “16 "Then, when you fast, don’t look like those miserable play-actors! For they deliberately disfigure their faces so that people may see that they are fasting. Believe me, they have had all their reward” (Philips).

 

            I want to look at the phrase “when you fast” to show that Jesus knows that people will fast, and so I think that we will need some direction as to when and how we fast.  The word fast is nesteia in the Greek and MacArthur states that this “literally means not to eat, to abstain from food.  Fasts were sometimes total and sometimes partial and ordinarily only water was drunk.”

 

            There were two extreme views of eating that were held by the Jews of Jesus day.  Many are like the ones mentioned in this passage as they made it obvious that they were fasting as they would go out onto the streets and put on a show for those around them as our verse speaks of.  The other view was because food was a gift from God some of the Jews would try and eat every kind of food while alive so that on judgment day they could say that they tried all of God’s food.

 

            When Jesus came to earth fasting by the Jews was like almost every their aspect of Jewish religious life.  They perverted it like the others we spoke of in our past SD’s before we got to the Lord’s Prayer section. 

 

            Many of the Pharisees would fast two times a week as seen in Luke 18:12 and they usually did it on the second and the fifth days of the week.  There claim was they did this because these were the days Moses made the two separate trips to receive the tablets of the law from Mount Sinai.  However as mentioned they also liked to do it on the days when people came to the market to shop which were the second and fifth days of the week.  They did not miss a trick.  They would bring attention to themselves as seen in our verse by looking “like those miserable play-actors” according to the Philips rendition of the New Testament. 

 

            Warren Wiersbe’s comment “The heart of the matter is the problem with the heart” can be seen here as their hearts were not right with God and so they just brought attention to themselves like seen in Luke 18:9-14 “9 And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 “The Pharisee

stood and was praying this to himself: ’God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 ’I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ 13  "But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ’God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ 14  "I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.’”

            MacArthur concludes “Unfortunately, throughout the history of the church fasting has most often been viewed in the two extremes that were common in Judaism.  John Calvin said, ‘Many for want of knowing its usefulness undervalue its necessity.  And some reject it all together as superfluous, while on the other hand, where the proper use of fasting is not well understood, it easily degenerates into superstition.”

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Continue to learn about fasting and once I learn more about it I will know when and where to do it.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Continue to pray for our countries election that the Lord will give us grace to accomplish what He desires to happen here, for our good and for His glory, to continue to pray for revival for myself, and for believers around the world.

 

12/11/2020 11:45 AM

 

 

Intro to Fasting without Hypocrisy (Matt. 6:16-18)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/10/2020 10:38 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                      Focus:  Into to “Fasting Without Hypocrisy”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matt. 6:16-18

 

            Message of the verses:  “16 "Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 17 “But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 “so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”

 

            I was listening to a sermon that goes along with this section yesterday and found out that when John MacArthur was preaching through Matthew chapters five and six that he skipped the “Lord’s Prayer” and went from the section about giving and praying right to this third area which is fasting.  In these section we find that Jesus gives a corrective to the hypocritical religious practices that typified what the scribes and the Pharisees practices typified at that time.  MacArthur writes “In each case the perversion of God’s standard was caused by the overriding desire to be seen and praised by men (v. 1).

 

            Fasting is something that I have studied for some time now going back to when I retired from my regular job at a foundry that I worked for 34 years.  I was wanting to find out what the Lord’s desire for me after I retired and so I fasted for a week or so trying to find out what God wanted me to do. 

 

            Fasting has been practiced for various reasons throughout history for different reasons; many of those reasons were either religious or health reasons.  In my study I read about a man who actually fasted for 90 days and only had water to drink for that time period.  Needless to say he must have been a lot overweight in order to live off the fat that was in his body to fast that long.

 

            As I listened to MacArthur’s sermon yesterday I had some thoughts that perhaps he did not go into about fasting, and one of them was that even if a person is fasting for a Biblical reason, and we will go into those reasons later on, if a person fasts and only has water for an extended period of time they will benefit in their health too, so not only in their spiritual reason for fasting but in their health too.  When a person fasts they will get rid of many toxins in their body and perhaps a person is fasting to ask God to help them get rid of a sinful problem, so I think you can see that these two go along.

 

            MacArthur writes “The Bible records no teaching or practice of fasting for practical reasons.  Legitimate fasting always had a spiritual purpose ad is never presented as having any value in and of itself.”  Here is where I have to disagree with what MacArthur is saying.  I’m sure that what he is saying about the Bible not stating that fasting is good for physical reasons, there has been much documented evidence in people who have studied fasting to show that it is good for a person physically.

 

            When I was getting ready to do my first fast I was reading in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah who talked about their fasts and this seemed to show me that this was what God wanted me to do.  There are more people in both the Old and New Testaments who have talked about how they fasted including our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

            I will do as I normally do and that is quote the last paragraph from MacArthur’s commentary to help us see the direction that we will be going in.

 

            “Because it is not elsewhere commanded by God, fasting is unlike giving and praying, for which there are many commands in both testaments.  Both the Old and New Testaments speak favorably of fasting and record many instances of fasting by believers.  But except for the yearly fast just mentioned” (Day of Atonement) “it is nowhere required.  Beyond that, fasting is shown to be an entirely noncompulsory, voluntary act, not a spiritual duty to be regularly observed.”

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I truly see nothing wrong with something spiritual helping my physical being, and I believe that is the way that God designed it to be.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  I trust that the Lord was the One who provided wisdom for those men who wrote the constitution of the United States, and I have to believe that the things that are going on in our country at this time were one of the reasons that God led those brilliant men to write what they wrote.  I trust that the Lord will work this out for our good and for His glory.

 

12/10/2020 11:30 AM

 

  

PT-5 "Protection of Prayer" (Matt. 6:13-14)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/9/2020 9:09 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                            Focus:  PT-5 “The Protection of Prayer”

 

Bible Reading & Mediation                                                             Reference:  Matthew 6:13-14 

 

            Message of the verses:  “13 And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. 14 “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”

 

            I mentioned in our last SD that I would complete our study in the Lord’s Prayer in this SD.  At the end of this SD John MacArthur has written a prayer, which is similar to what he ended his last sermon on the Lord’s Prayer.  I like what this prayer says as it gives some direction on how I should pray.  I have to caution myself not to just pray this prayer in a similar way that Jesus cautioned how the Gentiles pray, not understanding the meaning.

 

            “The Lord will hear your prayer because He cares about His own and will lose none, no not one.  He will never let you get into a situation that is more than you can handle.

            “The prayer closes with a doxology:  ‘For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.  You don’t dissect it.  You just say it, think it, and offer it to God.

            There is some evidence that Jesus didn’t ever say that.  That’s why it is not included in some of the versions of the Bible.  Some manuscripts have it and some do not, but I’ll tell you one thing—it’s true.

            “It seems a fitting climax.  Some commentators say it would have to have been included originally because the Jews would never have closed a prayer on a negative note.  Whether Jesus said it or not, it’s an echo of 1 Chronicles 29:11: ‘Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted as head above all.’  And with that glorious doxology, are right back to where we began with the first three petitions in this prayer.

            “What have we learned from the Disciples’ Prayer?  That all we need is available to us.  God gets His rightful place in the first three petitions, and then our needs are brought to Him and met in His wonderful, external supply.

            “Father, we echo this prayer in our hearts.  Deliver us from evil.  Deliver us frosin’s penalty, dominion, and guilt.

            “Deliver our wills from bondage, our judgments from perversion, our imaginations from falsehood.  Deliver our instincts from sinful drifting.

            “Deliver our affections from what is earthly.  Deliver us from weakness that we may know the fulness of Your strength.

            “Thank You for this prayer.  Your name be hallowed, Your kingdom come, Your will be done.

            “Continue to give us abundantly our daily bread.  Help us to be forgiving others that we may know the promise that You’ll never lead us into anything we can’t handle.

            “Help us meet the conditions to know the fulfillment of the inestimable promises of this prayer, and to pray as we ought for Your glory, for Your’s is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever.  Amen.

 

            So this ends our study of the Lord’s prayer and one of the things that I desired to learn was how to pray effectively over what was going on in our country with the phony election, and the thing that God taught me was that not everything that happens is His will.  I can’t imagine God’s will is to have a President whose desire is to continue to kill innocent babies in the womb, or to have people working with him that desire to kill old people.  God has plans that we don’t know about and that are not in his will, but God is so wonderfully powerful that He can cause all things to work together for His glory and for our good.  That is how I can make sense of what goes on in our world.

 

            In our next SD, Lord willing, we will begin to look at fasting.

 

12/9/2020 9:39 AM

                       

PT-4 "The Protection of Prayer" (Matt. 6:13-14)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/8/2020 11:01 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                           Focus:  PT-4 “The Protection of Prayer”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Matthew 6:13-14

 

            Message of the verses: 13 And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. 14 “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”

 

            We continue to look at what MacArthur wrote in his book “Jesus’ Pattern of Prayer” in our SD for today.  It looks like we will have one more SD to do after this one in order to complete our study of the “Lord’s Prayer.”

 

            “And so in the midst of trial I say, ‘O God, I need Your strength infused in me, and I submit to the truths of Your Word.  My responses, attitudes, actions, and thoughts are all in submission to Your Word.

            “It is His Word that prunes the branches in John 15.  It is His Word that is hidden in our hearts that we might not sin (Psalm 119).  It is His Word that is sweet and defends us against the attack (Ephesians 6).

            “As we submit to the truths of His Word and take up the sword of God and begin to put it to use in our lives, we resist the devil and he flees.  We cry with Christ, ‘Father, spare me the trial, but if the trial fits Your wisdom and Your way and Your plan, protect me so that I can survive it and grow.’

            “Will God hear this prayer?  Yes, based on 1 Corinthians 10:13), one of the greatest verses in the Bible.

            “There hath no temptation (peirasmos, trial from Satan) taken you but such as is common to man:  but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted [peirazo, tried or tested] above that ye are able.’  Never.

            “You can never say, ‘It was too much for me.’  He will always with the trial provide the way out.

            “John 18 illustrates that so powerfully.  Jesus was in the garden.  He had co to be captured by the fort soldiers, who were led by officers of the chief priests and Pharisees.  They came with their lanterns and their weapons, and Jesus said to them: ‘Whom do you seek?’

            ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’

            “He made them say that two times, because that was exactly what He wanted them to utter.  They nad no right to take anybody but Him.  He made them admit that publicly.  He answered in John 18:8, ‘I have told you that I am He.  If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way,’ referring to the eleven disciples with Him.

            “Why did He say that?  Verse 9:  ‘That the saying might be fulfilled, which He spake, Of them which Thou gavest me have I lost none.’  He would not let His disciples enter a trial that they could not endure (1 Corinthians 10:13).

 

12/8/2020 11:23 AM