Biblical Fasting

Spirit of, explained

Is 58:6–7 “Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; When you see the naked, that you cover him, And not hide yourself from your own flesh?

Not to be made a subject of display

Matt 6:16–18 “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. 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.

Should be to God

Zech 7:5 “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 seventy years, did you really fast for Me—for Me?

Occasions it was observed

Judgments of God.

Joel 1:14 Consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.

Joel 2:12 “Now, therefore,” says the Lord, “Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”

Public calamities.

2 Sam 1:12 And they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son, for the people of the Lord and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword.

Afflictions of the church.

Luke 5:33–35 Then they said to Him, “Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and likewise those of the Pharisees, but Yours eat and drink?” And He said to them, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days.”

Afflictions of others.

Ps 35:13 But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth; I humbled myself with fasting; and my prayer would return to my own heart.

Private afflictions.

2 Sam 12:16 David therefore pleaded with God for the child, and David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground.

Approaching danger.

Esth 4:16 “Go, gather all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me; neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will fast likewise. And so I will go to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish!”

Appointment of elders.

Acts 13:3 Then, having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away.

Accompanied by

Prayer.

Ezra 8:23 So we fasted and entreated our God for this, and He answered our prayer.

Dan 9:3 Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.

Confession of sin.

1 Sam 7:6 So they gathered together at Mizpah, drew water, and poured it out before the Lord. And they fasted that day, and said there, “We have sinned against the Lord.”

Neh 9:1–2 Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, in sackcloth, and with dust on their heads. Then those of Israelite lineage separated themselves from all foreigners; and they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers.

Mourning.

Joel 2:12 “Now, therefore,” says the Lord, “Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”

Humiliation.

Deut 9:18 And I fell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you committed in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger.

Neh 9:1 Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, in sackcloth, and with dust on their heads.

Was rejected

Is 58:3 ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and You have not seen? Why have we afflicted our souls, and You take no notice?’ “In fact, in the day of your fast you find pleasure, and exploit all your laborers.

Extraordinary—exemplified by

Our Lord.

Matt 4:2 And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.

Moses.

Ex 34:28 So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

Elijah.

1 Kin 19:8 So he arose, and ate and drank; and he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights as far as Horeb, the mountain of God.

National—exemplified by

Israel.

Judg 20:26 Then all the children of Israel, that is, all the people, went up and came to the house of God and wept. They sat there before the Lord and fasted that day until evening; and they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord.

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 the right way for us and our little ones and all our possessions.

Esth 4:3 And in every province where the king’s command and decree arrived, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting, weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.

Jer 36:9 Now it came to pass in the fifth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth month, that they proclaimed a fast before the Lord to all the people in Jerusalem, and to all the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem.

Ninevites.

Jon 3:5–8 So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.

Of believers—exemplified by

Nehemiah.

Neh 1:4 So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.

Daniel.

Dan 9:3 Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.

Anna.

Luke 2:37 and this woman was a widow of about eighty-four years, who did not depart from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.

The early Christians.

Acts 13:2 As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

From: MacArthur, John: The MacArthur Topical Bible : New King James Version. Nashville, Tenn. : Word Pub., 1999, S. 405

A Hunger for God

(John Piper, edited from)

http://www.desiringgod.org/media/pdf/books_hfg/hfg_all.pdf

Carl Lundquist was the president of Bethel College and Seminary for almost thirty years. He died in 1991 from skin cancer. In the last decade of his life he devoted a lot of energy to studying and promoting personal spiritual devotion and the disciplines of the Christian life. He even established what he called the “Evangelical Order of the Burning Heart” and began to send out a periodic letter of inspiration and encouragement. In the September, 1989, letter he told the story of how he first began to take fasting seriously.

My own serious consideration of fasting as a spiritual discipline began as a result of visiting Dr. Joon Gon Kim in Seoul, Korea. “Is it true,” I asked him, “that you spent 40 days in fasting prior to the evangelism crusade in 1980?” “Yes,” he responded, “it is true.” Dr. Kim was chairman of the crusade expected to bring a million people to Yoido Plaza. But six months before the meeting the police informed him they were revoking their permission for the crusade. Korea at that time was in political turmoil and Seoul was under martial law. The officers decided they could not take the risk of having so many people together in one place. So Dr. Kim and some associates went to a prayer mountain and there spent 40 days before God in prayer and fasting for the crusade. Then they returned and made their way to the police station. “Oh,” said the officer when he saw Dr. Kim, “we have changed our mind and you can have your meeting!”

As I went back to the hotel I reflected that I had never fasted like that. Perhaps I had never desired a work of God with the same intensity. . . . His body is marked by many 40-day fasts during his long spiritual leadership of God’s work in Asia. Also, however, I haven’t seen the miracles Dr. Kim has.

Dr. Lundquist told about one of the “Burning Heart” retreats that he was leading when he saw a seminary senior not eating. He asked him if he was all right and learned that the student was near the end of a twenty-one-day fast as part of seeking God’s leading for the next chapter of his life. Dr. Lundquist said that in the later years of his ministry he found a modified fast very helpful in his life and work. He said, Instead of taking an hour for lunch I use the time to go to a prayer room, usually the Flame Room in nearby Bethel Theological Seminary. There I spend my lunch break in fellowship with God and in prayer. And I have learned a very personal dimension to what Jesus declared, “I have had meat to eat ye know not of.”

I take this to mean that forfeiting food through fasting proved to be a great profit for Dr. Lundquist. In giving up his midday meal to meet with God another way, he found meat to eat in the fellowship of Jesus. “I have meat to eat that ye know not of” (John 4:32 KJV). It seemed that in the Flame Room Carl Lundquist experienced personally the fulfillment of Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me.” In forfeiting physical food Dr. Lundquist found another kind of feast in fellowship with Jesus. He went into his closet away from presidential praise, and the Father rewarded him.

One of the texts that moved Dr. Lundquist in those latter years of his life was the one we look at in this chapter, Matthew 6:16-18. Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance in order to be seen fasting by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you fast, anoint your head, and wash your face so that you may not be seen fasting by men, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will repay you. The thing that gripped him from this text were the words in verse 16, “Whenever you fast . . .” Like so many others, Dr. Lundquist noticed that it does not say, “If you fast,” but rather, “when you fast.” He concluded, as I do, and as most commentators do, that “Jesus takes it for granted that his disciples will observe the pious custom of fasting.” Jesus assumed that fasting was a good thing and that it would be done by his disciples. It’s what Jesus underlined when he said in Matthew 9:15, “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” So in Matthew 6:16-18 Jesus is not teaching on whether we should fast or not. He is assuming we will fast and teaching us how to do it and, especially, how not to do it.

If Christian fasting should become a part of our lives, as a way of seeking “all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19), then we need to know how not to do it. This does not mean mainly being aware of physical tips on how to avoid headaches, but rather being aware of spiritual dangers that haunt the space of every holy act. The Bible has virtually nothing to say about the physical dangers of fasting. It leaves that secondary matter to our inspection and discretion. But great are the biblical concerns for the spiritual dangers of this sacred deed.

Jesus warns us in Matthew 6:16 not to be like the hypocrites: “Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance in order to be seen fasting by men.” So the hypocrites are folks who do their spiritual disciplines “to be seen . . . by men.” This is the reward the hypocrites desire. And who has not felt how rewarding indeed it is to be admired for our discipline, or our zeal, or our devotion? This is a great reward among men. Few things feel more gratifying to the heart of fallen man than being made much of for our accomplishments, especially our moral and religious accomplishments.

This craving had infected the religious leaders of Jesus’ day in great measure. Concerning the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus warned the people that they “like to walk around in long robes, and like respectful greetings in the market places, and chief seats in the synagogues, and places of honor at banquets, [and that they] devour widows’ houses, and for appearance’s sake offer long prayers” (Mark 12:38-40). Oh, how strong is the love of the praise of men! We will dress for it (“long robes”), and strut our status in the marketplace for it, and posture ourselves for it at parties, and take up an important pose at church, and even lengthen our prayers to cover our heartless love of money with religious camouflage. All of this we are prone to do because of our seemingly insatiable appetite for the praise of men. We want to be made much of. We want people to like us and admire us and speak well of us. It is a deadly drive. Jesus warned us, “Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23:12).

In Matthew 6:16, Jesus says that if this reward from other people is what you love, this is what you will get. “Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.” In other words, if the reward you aim at in fasting is the admiration of others, that is what you will get, and that will be all you get. In other words, the danger of hypocrisy is that it is so successful. It aims at the praise of men. And it succeeds. But that’s all.

But there is a problem here. Why is this hypocrisy? Here you have religious people. They decide to fast. Instead of concealing that they are fasting, they make it plain that they are fasting. Why is that hypocrisy? It would seem to be the opposite of hypocrisy. Why isn’t it hypocrisy to fast, but to anoint your hair and wash your face and not let anybody know that you are fasting? Isn’t the definition of hypocrisy: trying to look different on the outside than you are on the inside? So these religious folks are letting reality show, right? Why are they not the opposite of hypocrites? They fast, and they look like they fast. No sham. Be real. If you fast, look like it. But Jesus calls them hypocrites. Why? Because the heart that motivates fasting is supposed to be a heart for God. Fasting, in Jesus’ way of seeing things, is a hunger for God, or it is worse than nothing. But the heart that motivates their fasting is a hunger for human admiration. So they are being open and transparent about what they are doing, yes, but that very openness is deceptive about what’s in their heart. If they wanted to be really open, they would have to wear a sign about their necks that said, “The bottom-line reward in my fasting is the praise of men.” Then they would not be hypocrites. They would be openly, transparently, unhypocritically vain. But as it is, they hide their vanity and cloak it with fasting. This is their hypocrisy.

So there are two dangers that these fasting folks have fallen into. One is that they are seeking the wrong reward in fasting, namely, the esteem of other people. They love the praise of men. And the other is that they hide this with a pretense of love for God. Fasting means love for God—hunger for God. So with their actions they are saying that they have a heart for God. But on the inside they are desperate to be admired and approved by other people. In Matthew 6:17-18, Jesus gives an alternative to this way of fasting—he describes the way he wants it to be done. He says, “But you, when you fast, anoint your head, and wash your face, so that you may not be seen fasting by men, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”

Now there are all kinds of public fasting in the Bible, including the New Testament. For example, in Acts 13:1-3 and 14:23, Paul and Barnabas fast in a way that could not be kept secret. Were they disobedient to Jesus’ commandment here? Does Jesus mean that the only fasting that is permitted is private fasting that nobody else can know about? Practically this would almost put fasting out of existence, since even private fasting is nearly impossible to keep secret if one is married or ordinarily takes meals with others. But there are several contextual reasons for thinking that Jesus was not excluding corporate fasting. One is that the earliest church, including the apostles, practiced public fasting (for example, Acts 13:3). Another is that this section of Matthew 6:1-18 begins with the warning “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them.” The point of the whole section is not that public righteousness “before men” is bad, but that doing it “to be noticed by them” is bad. This is confirmed by the fact that even though he said, “When you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret,” nevertheless he himself practiced public prayer (Luke 3:21; 11:1; John 11:41). The motive for praying and fasting is what matters, not whether the acts are public or private.

Another confirmation that not all public fasting is wrong and that what matters is the motive is the fact that Jesus said in Matthew 5:16, “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” Here he goes beyond saying there are some kinds of righteousness that are public and cannot be concealed (like the ministry of the good Samaritan), but rather he says that the disciples should want the world to see this practice of righteousness so that God would be glorified. “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works.” So the motive at stake is not simply whether you want your acts to be known by others, but why you want them to be known—that God be glorified, or that you be admired.

I conclude, therefore, that if someone finds out you are fasting, you have not necessarily sinned. The value of your fast is not destroyed if someone notices that you have skipped lunch. It is possible to fast with other people—say, our church pastoral staff fasting on a planning retreat to seek the Lord together—and yet, in that corporate fasting, not do it “to be seen by men.” Being seen fasting and fasting to be seen are not the same. Being seen fasting is a mere external event. Fasting to be seen by men, as Jesus means it here, is a self-exalting motive of the heart. As usual Jesus is testing our hearts, not just regulating our behavior. He says that when we are fasting, we should not have a heart that wants men to take notice of this discipline and admire us. In fact, he goes beyond this and says that we should make some efforts in the other direction, namely, not to be seen fasting. Fix your hair and wash your face so that, as far as possible, people will not even know that you are fasting.

Then he adds the positive counterpart: do all this “so that [you may be seen] by your Father who is in secret.” In other words, fast to be seen by God. Fast with a clear intention of being seen by God. As Jesus teaches it, fasting is an intensely Godward act. Do it toward God, who sees when others don’t. Jesus is testing the reality of God in our lives. Do we really have a hunger for God himself, or a hunger for human admiration?

O, how easy it is to do religious things if other people are watching! Preaching, praying, attending church, reading the Bible, acts of kindness and charity—they all take on a certain pleasantness of the ego if we know that others will find out about them and think well of us. It is a deadly addiction for esteem that we have.

But that is not the only defect in the motive of wanting others to see. There is something that assaults God even more directly. It is the subtle sense that grows in us, usually unconsciously, that the real effectiveness of our spiritual acts is at the horizontal level among people, not before the face of God. In other words, if my children see me pray at meals, it will do them good. If the staff sees me fasting, they may be inspired to fast. If my roommate sees me read my Bible, he may be inspired to read his. And so on. Now that’s not all bad. Jesus’ public prayers certainly inspired the disciples (Luke 11:1).

But the danger is that all of our life—including our spiritual life—starts to be justified and understood simply on the horizontal level for the effects it can have because others see it happening. And so God subtly and slowly can become a secondary Person in the living of our lives. We may think that he is important to us because all these things that we are doing are the kinds of things he wants us to do. But, in fact, he himself is falling out of the picture as the focus of it all. And this registers in the motives of our hearts so that we feel satisfied when others are watching, but feel unmotivated if no one knows what we are doing—no one but God! What Jesus is doing with these words in Matthew 6 is testing our hearts to see if God himself is our treasure. He is pressing fasting from the external to the radically internal, and making it a sign of our true Godwardness. “To Judaism, a fast was an outward sign of an inward condition. To Jesus, a fast was an inward sign of an inward condition.” He is testing to see if the admiration of other people or even the spiritual effect on others of our piety has become the God-supplanting food that entices our soul. How do we feel when nobody else knows what we are doing? How is it when no one is saying, “How goes the fast?” Are we content in God when no one but God knows that we have done what we ought to have done? Jesus is calling for a radical orientation on God himself. He is pushing us to have a real, utterly authentic, personal relationship with God. If God is not real to us—personally, vitally real to us—it will be miserable to endure something difficult with God alone as the one who knows. It will all seem very pointless, because the whole range of horizontal possibilities will be nullified since no one knows what we are going through. All that matters is God, and who he is, and what he thinks, and what he will do.

Which brings us to the last part of verse 18 and the promise Jesus makes about what God will do for those who focus vertically on him and do not need the praise of men to make their devotion worthwhile. He says, “And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” It is good and right to want and to seek the reward of God in fasting. Jesus would not have offered this to us if it were defective to reach for it. I have argued for decades that seeking the reward of the Father is not sub-Christian or unloving or contrary to true virtue.

As C.S. Lewis said: There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man’s love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love for exercise less interested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.

Doing right “just because it is right” is not the Christian ideal. Doing right to enlarge our delight in God is. So here again the question arises: shall we hear Jesus and learn, or shall we bring our philosophy from outside the Bible and silence him again? Jesus says, “[Fast not to be seen by men but] by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” The English word “repay” (NASB) is probably a misleading translation because of the mercenary connotations of the word. It seems to suggest that fasting is a kind of performance we render for God that then obliges him to pay us wages or some honorarium. But the Greek word (apodo-sei) does not carry that necessary connotation. It may refer to paying back financial debts (for example, Matthew 5:26), but not always. It was the word used for Pilate’s giving the body of Jesus to Joseph of Arimathea (Matthew 27:58), and Jesus’ handing the scroll back to the synagogue leader after reading it (Luke 4:20), and Jesus’ returning the healed boy to his father (Luke 9:42), and the apostle’s giving witness to the resurrection (Acts 4:33), and God’s giving Paul a crown of righteousness (1 Timothy 4:8). The word itself does not imply a business transaction of work and wages.

How then should we think about God’s rewarding those who fast not for the praise of men, but to be seen by God? God sees us fasting. He sees that we have a deep longing that is pulling us away from the ordinary good uses of the world in order to fast. He sees that our hearts are not seeking the common pleasures of human admiration and applause. He sees that we are acting not out of strength to impress others with our discipline, or even out of a desire to influence others to imitate our devotion. But we have come to God out of weakness to express to him our need and our great longing that he would manifest himself more fully in our lives for the joy of our soul and the glory of his name.

And when God sees this, he responds. He acts. He rewards. What is the “repayment” or the “reward” that Jesus promises from the Father in these verses? In a perverse way, one might even wonder if the reward God promises is “the praise of men”—as if God said, Since you did not seek it by public fasting but looked to me, I will give you this longed-for wish of human praise. If we hoped for this, our fasting would make a cuckold out of God. This is what James 4:3-4 makes clear. James pictures prayer as a petition to our heavenly husband. Then he ponders the possibility that we would actually ask our husband to pay for our visit to the prostitute. “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?” The word “adulteresses” is the key here. Why are we called “adulteresses” in praying for something to spend on our pleasures? Because God is our husband and the “world” is a prostitute luring us to give affections to her that belong only to God. This is how subtle the sin of worldliness can be. It can emerge not against prayer, but in prayer—and fasting. We begin to pray and fast—even intensely—not for God as our all-satisfying husband, but only for his gifts in the world so that we can make love with them.

No, the reward we are to seek from the Father in fasting is not first or mainly the gifts of God, but God himself. Where in the context might we look for the reward that the Father encourages us to seek? I think a reliable guide would be the prayer that Jesus just taught us to pray in Matthew 6:9-13. It begins with three main longings that we are to hope for from God. First, that God’s name be hallowed or revered; second, that God’s kingdom come; and third, that his will be done on earth the way it’s done in heaven. That is the first and primary reward Jesus tells us to seek in our praying and our fasting. We fast out of longing for God’s name to be known and cherished and honored, and out of longing for his kingly rule to be extended and then consummated in history, and out of longing for his will to be done everywhere with the same devotion and energy that the indefatigable angels do it sleeplessly in heaven forever and ever.

To be sure, God gives us our daily bread—and many other things through prayer and fasting. And it is not wrong to seek specifically for his help in every area of our lives. But these three petitions—that his name be hallowed, that his kingdom come, and that his will be done—test and prove whether all the other things we long for are expressions of our hunger for God, or whether his gifts are vying for his own place of supremacy and preciousness in our lives. The supremacy of God in all things is the great reward we long for in fasting. His supremacy in our own affections and in all our life-choices. His supremacy in the purity of the church. His supremacy in the salvation of the lost. His supremacy in the establishing of righteousness and justice. And his supremacy for the joy of all peoples in the evangelization of the world.

Seeking from God the reward of God’s all-satisfying supremacy puts all other desires to the test. Are they for God’s sake? This is the ultimate reason why Jesus called us to fast without wanting to be seen by others. Not just so that we could get worldly desires satisfied from God rather than men (and thus make God party to our spiritual adultery), but so that we would count God himself as our desire, and all else a subordinate spinoff of his enthralling glory. And so we ask, as we fast and pray, Do we want to conquer bad habits and old enslavements, to remove every obstacle to the fullest enjoyment of God, so that people might see and give him glory? Do we want our prodigal sons and wayward daughters to come home because this would honor God’s name? Do we want our churches to grow because the hallowing of Christ’s name is at stake among unbelievers? Do we want China and North Korea and Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Libya to open their doors to the gospel for the sake of the advance of the kingship of Jesus? Do we want upright leaders in government because this world is meant to magnify the goodness and justice of God?

This is what Jesus is calling us to—a radically God-oriented living and praying and fasting. So for the sake of your own soul, and in response to Jesus, and for the advancement of God’s supremacy in all things for the joy of all peoples, comb your hair, and wash your face, and let the Father who sees in secret observe how hungry you are for him with fasting. The Father who sees in secret is brimming with rewards for your joy and for his glory.