 Matthew chapter 6 verses 16 through 18. Matthew chapter 6 verses 16 through 18. We're looking at fasting. Nobody here wants to do that right now, right? Fasting. Well, let's look at that. Let's see what the Lord has to say about fasting. Beginning at verse 16, reading to verse 18, Jesus said, 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. And surely I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face 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. Now, I'm going to lay a foundation so you can have a context of what Jesus is teaching in this particular portion of Matthew. As I've been sharing with you in chapter 6, Jesus is teaching on three basic disciplines of a believer in God. He speaks concerning charitable deeds, also called alms. He speaks concerning prayer, and now he's going to be speaking to us concerning the discipline of fasting. And what is interesting is to note that Jesus has just taught on prayer, and he moves into the subject of fasting. And that's because prayer and fasting are tied together many times in both the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. And so in order for us to gain an understanding of what the Lord would be speaking about here in these verses before us, I need to lay a foundation for us. Now, a couple of obvious places in Scripture that tie prayer and fasting together would be in the Old Testament books of Daniel as well as the book of Nehemiah. When you look into the book of Daniel, and you begin to read it, you see that Daniel was a young man who was taken into Babylonian captivity in around 606 before Christ. And when you read the book of Daniel, you'll see that this young man grew to be an old man. He remained in Babylon all of his life. But as he was there in Babylon, God used Daniel in a tremendous, tremendous way. And throughout his captivity from when he first got captured to the end of the book, he remains faithful to God and he remains faithful to the Word of God. Now, when you get to Daniel chapter 9, so nine chapters into his book, the Bible speaks concerning how that Daniel was reading a portion of Scripture from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, one of the prophets. And as he was reading through the scroll of Jeremiah, he came upon a portion of that scroll that startled him. It was a reference. It was a reference to God's judgment on Israel and the reason that God had brought judgment on Israel. Israel had neglected God's law and God had made a promise to them. He had once, one he had said, you have neglected my law and therefore you're going to go into captivity for 70 years. So that was part of what he had said. But he gave a promise. It's found in Jeremiah 29 verse 10, where it says, after 70 years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you and cause you to return to this place. So Daniel knows that the time of the completion of that promise, that the 70 years is almost up. And as he's reading through the scroll, his response to that is very instructive because it says in Daniel chapter 9 verse 3, I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. And so prayer and fasting are tied together in his response to reading the word of God. And so that helps us to know that God's word can be trusted and God's word is true because as Daniel was reading, he knew that the 70 years was almost up and he knew that God was going to keep his word. And so he knew that God's word could be trusted even as Jesus in John 17 verse 17 said, he said in his prayer sanctify them by your truth. And he goes on to say to the Father, your word is truth. So Daniel knew that the word of God is true. And by reading God's word, he realized that Israel's 70 year captivity was almost completed. Now in 536, the first group returned to Judah under the leadership of Zerubbabel. And when you read concerning that, it's found in the book of Ezra chapters one through six. When they returned, they encountered a great opposition by Samaritans. But even in spite of the opposition, the Bible tells us very clearly that they began to work on the city that was in rubble and they rebuilt the temple. But 50 years later, a group of Jews returned and they were led by Ezra. They never rebuilt the city walls. And what happens is that people become mired in distress and reproach. And so enter Nehemiah. Nehemiah was a Jewish man who was living in Persia in modern Iran. And he served in the court of the king. In 445, Nehemiah received word concerning the condition of the city of Jerusalem. And he heard this. He heard that the people were in great distress. The city's in shambles and he responded as it's recorded in Nehemiah 1.4 in this way. He said, I sat down and wept mourned for many days. He says I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. Prayer and fasting, prayer and fasting tied together in response to our desire to make petitions to God and to demonstrate to him our sincere desire for him to hear us. There's a woman in the New Testament by the name of Anna, a godly older woman. Luke speaks of her in chapter 2 of his gospel, verses 36 and 37, when he says there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Fanoel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age and had lived with a husband seven years from her virginity. And this woman was a widow of about 84 years who did not depart from the temple but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. So you see prayer and fasting tied together in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. Now why would prayer and fasting be connected in this fashion? If you want to see the connection, all you need to know is this, that prayer and fasting is a picture. It's a picture first of us attaching ourselves to God, that's what prayer is, and detaching ourselves from the world, that's what fasting is. I'll show you this in scripture and see how this works. You see in prayer we attach ourselves to God because we're looking to God for help. Jesus had just taught us our Father who is in heaven. And so Jesus has taught us that God is our Father and because He is our Father we cry out to Him and we cry out to Him for help and we attach ourselves to Him. It's like what it says in Deuteronomy 30 verse 20 where we read, cling to Him for He is your life and the length of your days. Cling to Him. When my Josiah who just turned 12, my first grandchild, was a small baby, he became attached to me as his, he calls me Papa, as his grandfather, as his Papa. And Marie and I were just talking about this the other day how she would be, we would be sitting with my family on the couches in our living room and and my daughter Corinne would be holding her baby who was about a year or so old at that time, even before that and he would lean towards a person next to him. And so the person next to him will say it's his auntie, reaches over and takes him to hold him, then he would lean past her to an uncle. And then finally Marie would be seated next to me and so finally grandma's there and he would lean to grandma and she'd go and then he'd lean out of her arms and he'd come to me. And once he was holding on to me, you couldn't peel him away from me. He would actually grab hold of my shirt and if you tried to peel him away you couldn't do it. My granddaughter Zoe who's a year old now does the same thing. She will come and she'll grab hold of me, she'll put her little head on my shoulder and if Marie tries to pull her out of my arms she grabs the sleeve, she holds on to me and you can't pull her away. She's clinging to me and then I look at Marie and I'll say I'm so sorry. I wish she loved you, I like what I say. Cling, cling to him, cling to him as if someone were trying to drag you away from him and that's what the Lord tells us to do, cling to him. Why? He is your life, he is the length of your days. That's what prayer is. It's clinging, it's holding on to the Lord. In Psalm 27 verse 7 it says, here oh Lord when I cry with my voice have mercy also upon me answer me. Prayer is where we attach ourselves to God as we look to him for help. There was a syrophoenician woman, it's recorded in the Gospel of Mark who came to Jesus. She had a deep emotional request. Mark 7, 25 and 26 says, a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him and she came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, a syrophoenician by birth and she kept asking him, cast the demon out of her daughter and so when we pray it is a picture of us attaching ourselves to God, our Father who is in heaven and so one prayer represents attaching and fasting represents detaching. So we're attaching ourselves to God and detaching ourselves from the world. Turning to God includes turning away from that which would keep us from him. It's forsaking all else. It's forsaking whatever it is so that we might come to him. Jesus would say it's picking up your cross daily and following after him. It's leaving things behind to follow after him. I'll be teaching on Wednesday concerning blind Bartimaeus who came to Christ and when Jesus called him he left everything behind. He left that which he had used as support and security. He leaves everything behind in order that he might come to the Lord and that's what happens when you come to faith in Christ. You don't bring your sin with you. You don't say Jesus I want to come to you but I want to keep some of these things. No you don't do that. You say I'm giving it all so that I can have relationship with you. So turning to God would include turning away from that which would keep us from him. James says it in a very powerful way. It's found in James chapter 4 verse 4 where he says adulterers and adulteresses. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity, is hostility with God. Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. You can't have both Jesus said it. He said you can't have love for the world and a love for God simultaneously. You cannot serve God in mammon he says. You can't have them both. You have to make a choice what's it going to be this one or that one but you can't have both. Joel in chapter 2 verse 12 says therefore says the Lord turn to me with all of your heart with fasting with weeping and with mourning. And so when you fast fasting is more than simply depriving yourself of food. When you pray and when you fast it's a demonstration that I am attached to God detached from the world. Now in the law in the law of Moses in their religious law the nation of Israel was commanded to fast but they were commanded to fast once a year. Once a year they would fast on what is called the day of atonement. In Leviticus 23 27 it says the 10th day of this seventh month shall be the day of atonement. It shall be a holy convocation for you. You shall afflict your souls and offer an offering made by fire to the Lord. The term afflict your souls is a reference to fasting. You shall fast. Now afflicting your soul is referred to in that way because sincere fasting represents voluntary humility as well as mourning. Psalm 35 13 asks for me when they were sick my clothing was sackcloth. I humbled myself with fasting and my prayer would return to my own heart. Psalm 69 10 when I wept and chastened my soul with fasting that was to my reproach. You see when someone is grieving or sorrowful they normally do not desire to eat. You go through an emotional trauma a great loss, great sorrow. Somebody you love very much has suddenly passed away and you mourn and you grieve and there's times when you just don't eat. You just don't eat because the sorrow and mourning is so deep you lose all appetite. Fasting is a picture of us losing appetite for things so that we might have a relationship with God. Fasting is a visible picture of separation to God by denying the cravings of physical hunger. Fasting is to visibly represent genuine mourning over sin as well as a need for God and it is replacing a physical hunger with a spiritual hunger. It's like what Job says in Job 23 12 neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. My spiritual hunger is greater than my physical hunger. Fasting is to represent that. My spiritual hunger is greater than my physical hunger. Now like giving and like praying fasting can be noticeable and that makes it open to abuse and that's what Jesus is dealing with here in this passage and that's why he says in verse 16 when you fast do not be like the hypocrites with a sad countenance. So fasting during his time has become an outer show like giving and like praying. It was being twisted to get personal attention. By the time of Christ fasting had become part of the religious ritual of the religious leaders called Pharisees and their fasting and their practice of fasting had become so common that Jesus even uses it as an illustration in one of his teachings. Luke tells us in chapter 18 verses 9 through 14 he spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others and here's the parable. Two men went up to the temple to pray one a Pharisee the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself God I thank you that I am not like other men extortioners unjust adulterers or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week I give tithes of all that I possess and the tax collector standing afar off would not so much as raise his eyes they haven't beat his breast saying God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted notice again how this Pharisee said I fast twice a week. So at that time the Pharisees would fast on the second and the fifth day of the week that was their habit. They did that because they believed those to be the days Moses made the two trips that he made up Mount Sinai to receive the law. It's interesting though these two days were also the major Jewish market days and so when there were the most people that's when they were fasting and it produced a religious hypocrisy Jesus later gave special attention to this in Matthew 23 5 when he said all their works they do to be seen by men and that's what they were doing now notice in verse 16 how he speaks concerning hypocrisy which is a word that is used to describe an actor the hypocrite was an actor he had the mask of tragedy he had the mask of comedy and and what it was is simply wearing a mask in order to portray himself in a certain herself in a certain way that's the root word for hypocrisy it's an act and Jesus is speaking concerning this religious acting and he's speaking concerning the fact that what they would do is they would disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting when he says disfigure it doesn't mean that they would take his ticket hit themselves it means that they would put ashes on their face to appear like they've lost weight they would wear shabby clothing and they would mess their hair up and as it went about they wanted people to know that they were fasting after all they hadn't eaten for an entire day so they wanted to make sure that they looked like they were hungry and so Jesus is speaking about this you walk around with ashes on your face you mess up your hair you wear old clothing and you walk around and somebody says would you like oh no i'm sorry i can't i'm fasting oh you're so holy you're so righteous so Jesus speaks about it and you cannot help but think that the common people even as mark says the common people meaning the regular folks heard him gladly you cannot help but believe that they were seeing through this hypocrisy too they could see through it and finally someone who was just addressing it you know what hypocrisy is obvious acting can be obvious and sometimes we want to appear that was something that we're not when in reality anybody with eyes anybody with eyes can see my dad was a truck driver and he used to make deliveries you know local deliveries he worked out of los angeles and he had a what we called a bob tail small delivery truck and that's what he drove for many years and my dad worked out of a small warehouse called davies warehouse there off of fourth street in los angeles and during during october season when the nation was celebrating halloween my dad would get boxes of candy they would give him boxes of candy he would bring the boxes of candy home and we would distribute that candy to the kids who would knock on the door and our house was kind of like a a center of activity because my dad got some great candy you know we didn't we didn't hand out oranges and apples and things like that you know my dad gave mounds bars almond joy things like that and the kids you know how it is when you're a little you're not going to door and they said here you go here's some moth balls you know i mean but when you came to our house my we would drop a mounds bar in almond joy some good some good candy and the kids oh it went around the neighborhood you know go to resolvices man they've got some they got some good candy and my mom was busting up at the door one day i was a little boy at that time about eight nine years old and she's laughing she says you got to see this well what had happened as a little boy had come to the door by himself his mama standing on the sidewalk but he was dressed up like Dracula he was Count Dracula and his face is kind of you know we had pasty white and he had those those weird little teeth and all of that and he had a cape on in a little hood and what had happened is he came and knocked on the door and said trick or treat and my mom opens the door and hands him a couple of mounds bars and he's looking at his prize going man and a minute later you hear a knock on the door again and it's the same kid but this time he's got his hands over his face with his cape and he's got his bag out my mom starts laughing and drops a couple of candy bars in knock knock third time this time he's going like this or this hands up same kid over and over again my mom's just busting up giving him these almond joys and finally she said that's enough Dracula get out of your ear i'll put a stake in your heart you know so you can see through it you can see through it oh you know i've got this ashes on my face i got my old clothes on i haven't eaten in six hours you can see through it and that's all jesus is speaking about don't be like that don't be so transparently hypocritical wanting the attention event for your religious activity don't be that way don't do things spiritually to be rewarded by the attention men can give you you don't have to wear a 500 pound cross and carry a huge family bible everywhere you go wow look at that that guy's got a tuna on the back of his car the fish more like a tuna you don't have to do that you see fasting is speaking about my desire to be attached to god and detached from the world not attached to the world and detached from god and hypocrisy will detach you from a relationship with the lord it's to be done in secret jesus isn't saying it's wrong to fast he's simply saying do it in the right way do it in the secret place because a father who sees in secret rewards you for that genuineness of your faith somebody once said the most important important part of a christian's life is the part that only god sees so the kind of devotion that god intends for us to have is the devotion of the heart see americans like the idea of fasting at least in general we speak about it but we normally say yeah fast when you're wanting to purge your system are you fast when you're on a diet you know that isn't the kind of of fast that the lord's speaking about at all of course a fast that is genuinely spiritual is one that's devoted to god with the purpose of drawing closer to him so jesus is warning against the sin of religious hypocrisy now why would he warn against the sin of religious hypocrisy well hypocrisy has a way of robbing us of spiritual blessings hypocrisy robs us of spiritual depth and understanding of the ways of the lord when we substitute ritual for relationship we end up deprived of the reality of god's presence i can give in a ritualistic way i can pray in a ritualistic way or i can fast in a ritualistic way when i grew up this is not a slam hope you don't take it personally if it's something that may offend you but my testimony it's what i grew up with and some of you can can understand what i'm going to try and say at this moment when i grew up you know i was raised in the catholic church and so when i grew up for us you had fridays which were a day that you weren't supposed to eat meat how many of you remember that or perhaps you're aware of that yeah you don't eat meat and so every friday somehow i conveniently forgot it's friday or when you go to confession you confess all the sins that you remember but i would conveniently forget some of the sins until i got out of the confessional so i was given absolution but i hadn't given the full story either because i took what was supposed to be a spiritual discipline i took it and i made it into a ritual there was no sincerity in my heart for confessing there was no sincerity in my heart to be set apart for god none of that was real it was just an act that's what the lord is talking about those kinds of religious things that we can do my mom now forgive me this may offend some but it's true it was ash wednesday mama forgot to go get ashes so she got cigarette ashes and put them on her forehead now is my mom i mean the desire for people to see her as a religious person outweighed sincerity that happens that can happen jesus says don't let it happen why because i'm looking for the heart you see when you obey god from the heart god has a way of blessing you jesus and john 14 verses 21 through 23 said it like this he said he who has my commandments and keeps them it is he who loves me and he who loves me will be loved by my father and i will love him and manifest myself to him judas not as scary it said to him lord how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world jesus answered and said to him if anyone loves me he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him i will manifest myself to you when your heart is right when you love me and keep my word if you keep my word i will show you who i am i will reveal deeper things to you so you're not going to know god if you want to you're not going to know god deeply if it's all shallow and it's all pretense it doesn't happen that way you can pray all day long ritual prayers you can say the our father all day long i was in greece and as every time we drove we were in greek and the buses they're going through various parts of the city we're in uh thessalonica and patras and and and patras who were going through different parts of the city and all of these greek older greek women were there on the bus with us and every time we went by a church they would make the sign of the cross but they continued talking as they did it and it was just a reflex that they would do that's how they did it religion for these people was simply something that you do without thinking jesus is saying no we don't do that i want to manifest myself to you so be sincere in your heart because hypocrisy will keep you from becoming deep in the things of god a second thing about hypocrisy is it robs us of spiritual influence in the lives of other people if you want to impact somebody then then be free from hypocrisy if if you're saying one thing and doing another you're not going to impact people in a positive way you can't because what you are speak so loudly they can't hear a word that you say it's easy to say i love you but if i don't treat you like i love you then the word love that i understand isn't the word love the way you communicate it so for me you can tell me all day long that you love me but i'm only going to know that you do by the way you treat me when marie and i my wife and i got together and all and we began to move in a deeper relationship and we grew to have this kind of feeling towards one another's kind of devotion and all that we began to have with one another that was one of the things that we conversed about and and i said to her listen i said the way that i think may not be like other people and and she knows this very well i said you can say something to me all day long and it doesn't matter if you say one thing and do another all i know is what you do not what you say your influence on me is not going to be your words alone it's going to be your words and your behavior you say you love me and i say i love you how are you going to know i love you if i say i love you and do things that would make you think i didn't so they have to correlate they have to be tied together and if they're not tied together i'm going to believe your activity more than the words because for me the words talk is cheap is real it's real i was talking to a man and this is going to sound self-serving forgive me i know it is but i was talking to a man yesterday to illustrate this and i was at a men's conference and after i'd shared it was lunchtime and i had gone out and a fellow approached me and said i know your your son joseph i'd like you to say hi to him he said i went to bible college with him in myrietta and he said your son is a very sweet young man and i said he is yes he said i have a son around his age this is an older gentleman he says i have a son around joseph's age and when we were in bible college together i had the opportunity of speaking to joseph and i asked joseph the question how is it that you became such a good young man what did your father do in your life to help you to become a good young man i'm a father i have a young son a son your age i would like him to be a good young man and he this man was telling me this and he said you know what his answer was he said let me tell you your son's answer joseph said my father he said what has helped me what has contributed to me becoming a good young man loving the lord my father has never willfully sinned in front of me in my entire life my father has never willfully sinned in front of me in my entire life and that's the truth that's the truth i have never and i don't say this i know it sounds self-serving forgive me i'm taking up a collection later on for my perfection it sounds self-serving it's just an illustration but that's true if there's ever anything in my mind that i've ever had in the raisin of my children it's to be an influence in their lives so that if they ever saw a godly man they would use me as their model that was my desire it still is my children are all adults they're all adults three of them have children of their own joseph is holding out he's not that good and i say that is an encouragement not as a boast forgive me if it sounds self-serving i don't mean it that way but fathers daddies keep that in mind because your your daughters and your sons they're looking to you you are the influence in their life not me not their sunday school teachers even though mama is an amazing influence of course she's supposed to be they looked at daddy what is daddy like i want to serve the god of my father not simply the god of my mom now for single mamas this is no no guilt on you at all forgive me if it even sounds that way speaking to dads as a daddy i want to influence my children to know jesus christ because i want to be in heaven with my children i want them with me your influence amen your influence is amazing and hypocrisy will undermine your influence proverbs 20 verse 7 the righteous man walks in his integrity his children are blessed after him and then third hypocrisy robs us of reward from the lord you you can choose the worthless praise of men or the eternal praise of god that's a choice you can make if you want men to praise you you can put on like you're very spiritual and you'll get what you want you get like jesus had your reward which is attention for men or you can receive god's word to you where he says in matthew 25 23 well done good and faithful servant that's what i want to hear well done good and faithful servant i want him to have me enter into the joy of my lord and so hypocrisy will rob you of the eternal reward from the lord so uh fasting is not simply the juice faster vegetable only faster uh sun sunrise the sunset fast or a multiple day fast of abstaining from all foods and just drinking water is those things are all part of the discipline of fasting the various kinds of fastings but what is the fast that god would want us to have it's a fast that comes from a devoted heart again we are attached to god and detached from the world and isaac 58 verses six and seven this is what is what it says is is not this the kind of fasting i have chosen to lose the chains of injustice untie the cords of the yoke to set the oppressed free and break every yoke is it not to share your food with the hungry to provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood isn't that the kind of fast i have commanded to do good and not evil to seek justice and righteousness and generosity it's not just the abstaining from food it's the attaching of myself to my god and detaching myself from this world and the result of that having influence for christ in this time so i can choose to have the worthless praise of men or the eternal praise from god and that's what the lord would be reminding us the church today make a choice which do you want god's praise or man's