Sermon: Afflicting Our Souls

Fasting to Spur Change
#1729
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 25-Sep-23; 73 minutes 2023-09-25

description: (hide)

To the young and to outsiders, those who do not keep the Day of Atonement, the most recognizable facet of this holy day that they see is the fact that those who keep this day as holy, fast; that is, eat no food, drink no water or any kind of drink, for the entire 24 hours of the day. They tend to say things like, "How do you do it? I would die! I could never get through a whole day without eating. And no coffee? Insane! Aren't you just ravenous when it's over?" And of course, you know the answer to that is, "Yes!" I mean, it does not affect us any less just because we keep the day. As a matter of fact, sometimes it affects us more because we are thinking the thoughts we are supposed to be thinking.

Now, perhaps some of the smarter ones among them would ask questions like, "Why would God have you starve and suffer on a feast day? Doesn't He want you to be happy? What's the purpose of this fast?" And such questions are pretty par for the course, I think. But we get our marching orders from the book of Leviticus. And if we go back there to Leviticus 23 we can see the command that God gives us in this section.

Leviticus 23:27-34 "Also the tenth 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. And you shall do no work on that same day, for it is the Day of Atonement, to make atonement for you before the Lord your God. For any person who is not afflicted of soul on that same day shall be cut off from his people. And any person who does any work on that same day, that person I will destroy from among his people. You shall do no manner of work; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. It shall be to you a [S]abbath of solemn rest [or you could translate that as Sabbath of Sabbaths], and you shall afflict your souls on the ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to evening, you shall celebrate your [S]abbath."

We know these instructions. We have read them for many years, but they never say that we are to fast. That is an English term that has come through the Germanic languages, but it does command us to "afflict your souls" twice and "be afflicted of soul" once in these six verses. So three times in six verses it makes it pretty clear that He wants us to afflict our souls. It is pretty much the hallmark of this very solemn Sabbath, a day that is supposed to be one of complete rest. No work on this day on pain of death! I mean, that is pretty strong where He says, "I will destroy him from among his people" for working on this day. And it is also a day of holy convocation like we are doing right now.

Atonement is a unique holy day among God's appointed times. It is an oddity. You know, I mentioned that God has feasts, but this feast is a fast. That makes it different, that makes it unique. And that oddity demands that we take notice. I mean, if you have a bunch of things that are all the same, but if you see one that is different, that one gets your attention. It draws you in, and in this case, Atonement is supposed to make us think and consider why it is different. What makes it different? What are we supposed to be doing differently on this day? So its uniqueness, we could say, proclaims its specialness and it should garner our utmost attention.

Let us go back to Leviticus 16 for some more instructions about this day. We are going to look at the ones at the end of chapter 16, verse 29 through the end of the chapter here.

Leviticus 16:29-34 "This shall be a statute forever for you: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all, whether a native of your own country or a stranger who sojourns among you. For on that day the priest shall make atonement for you to cleanse you, that you may be clean from all your sins before the Lord. It is a [S]abbath of solemn rest for you, and you shall afflict your souls. It is a statute forever. And the priest, who is anointed and consecrated to minister as priest in his father's place, shall make atonement, and put on the linen clothes, and holy garments; then he shall make atonement for the Holy Sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tabernacle of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the congregation. This shall be an everlasting statute for you, to make atonement for the children of Israel, for all their sins, once a year."

Again, highlighting these differences from all the other appointed times in God's calendar. But it is essentially the same as the one we saw in Leviticus 23, also telling us to afflict our souls twice. Now, the emphasis of this passage is far heavier on the making of atonement. It says it six times in these verses: for the people, for the Holy of Holies, for the Tabernacle, for the altar, for the high priest, and for the priesthood.

However, the average Israelite's job was to afflict his soul, refrain from work, and attend the holy convocation, the holy calling together.

So between the two of these passages, there is no wiggle room should we attempt to argue the point. These are necessary vital parts of this holy day, that we follow the command here to get out of this day what God wants us to get out of this day—the holiest day of the year, the Sabbath of Sabbaths.

So what is that? What are we supposed to get out of fasting, doing no work, and attending this holy convocation? Mostly though I am going to be concentrating on the afflicting of the soul. But let us, in that vein, go to Isaiah the 58th chapter. We are going to just look at verse 3 right now because the children of Israel, probably in this case, the Jews, ask this same question. What is the fast? What are we supposed to get out of it? Why is it not working?

Isaiah 58:3 "Why have we fasted," they say, "and You have not seen? Why have we afflicted our souls, and You take no notice?"

First, let us look at the structure here of this verse. It is a very exact parallelism and each section of each of couplet matches exactly with the one in the other one. So we have fasted; "why have we fasted?" is exactly the same question as, "Why have we afflicted our souls?" And, "You have not seen" is exactly the same as, "You take no notice."

Here, we have one-on-one correspondence between fasting and afflicting our souls. We know from Scripture that when God tells us to afflict our souls, we are to fast and it is a complete fast. A lot of the other fasts that you can do, do not afflict your souls very much. I mean, look at the the fast of the Muslims. You know, they fast all day and they eat all night. I mean, I am sure they could get through 12 or 15 or 16 hours before they start feasting again.

But this fast is supposed to hurt a little bit. It is supposed to make us feel bad, supposed to make us understand that we are physical and if we do not eat, we die; we do not drink, we die; and if God does not do His part in providing us things, we die. But on the very surface, we at least have here in verse 3 the direct correlation between fasting and afflicting our souls. So we can see it in black and white. That is always good to see that sort of thing.

The word "fast" translates the Hebrew word sum. It looks like s-u-m, but the "s" is pronounced with the "z" sound. It means "to voluntarily abstain from food and water." Oh, what do you know? That is exactly like the English word's meaning to fast. And also the Greek term that we would find if we would go look for it in the New Testament, is nesteuo. This is exactly the same. The meaning of that word is "going without food and water." So, we do not learn a whole lot there.

Now "afflict your soul" though, is a little more interesting in its meaning. It is actually a phrase, like it is in English, and it contains the word ana, which means afflict, humble, oppress, mistreat, or deny. So ana means afflict, humble, oppress, mistreat, or deny. And the other part of the phrase is nephesh, our life, our life force, our soul, as it has often been translated, or maybe for this particular subject, the inner self is the best way to translate that. So it is afflict, humble, oppress, mistreat, or deny the life, or the life force, or the soul, or the inner self. We are supposed to deny ourselves on the inside and this is both our organs inside that process all our food, but it is also inside in terms of our heart and our mind.

So, it is not just afflicting our bodies, it is afflicting us on the inside, afflicting minds and hearts. And you do know, I am sure you are aware of it, that when you do not eat, your mind goes fuzzy, you might not be good at making heavy decisions when you do not eat because things just do not work properly without the food, the energy, that it takes to do those things. Your brain actually takes more of your body's energy than anything because it is always working and processing. Your blood has to flow in there with nutrients in huge quantities in order for your brain to work. So when you do not eat, you begin to afflict everything—from all your physical organs to the mental organ and also our intellect, our thought, our feelings, everything starts to go a little bit askew. And the longer you fast, the worse it gets, at least until you reach that plateau where, "Hey, I feel fine. It's been seven days."

So in Scripture, afflicting one's soul or fasting relates to humbling oneself. Or it could also bring out piety, grief, repentance, and along with prayer seeking God's will. You will see people fasting for these reasons: to humble oneself because they are grieving over something or someone, they will fast to show their piety. In the Jews' case, it was publicly. But in our case, it should be that we are doing this toward God. Also people will fast in order to spur repentance in themselves. And along with prayers, as I said, they will fast in order to be on the same wavelength with God so that we can determine His will on a matter.

As I just mentioned, and as you probably know, it was a much-abused practice in Old Testament times, and not only in Old Testament times, but among the Jews in Jesus' day. What happened was afflicting of one's soul, or fasting, just developed into an empty routine ritual. It was something they did for religious points, that either they were keeping the score themselves or other people were keeping it for them. And it was supposedly a good work that other people could applaud because they saw you doing it.

This is the kind of fasting that Isaiah 58 rails against, this empty routine ritual and hypocritical fasting. And that is the answer to why God would not hear them. Why He would not see them. Why did He take no notice of them. Because they were not fasting properly. They were not getting out of it what they should have.

So we are going to look today at this subject of afflicting our souls to learn why God commands us to fast on Atonement. And at other times, it does not always apply to Atonement. It could be the fasts that you do yourselves throughout the year. His desire, of course, is for us to take advantage of the atoning sacrifice of His Son. We are in this position, we are here because of what Christ did, not for anything that we did. That is the reason for the command not to work so we recognize that we did nothing to be justified by Jesus Christ. But there are still more things to do. I mean, justification is just the first part of it.

But all of that—maybe we could put it under the mantle of grace—He did. He was the one that gave the sacrifice. All we have done is believe in Him and accept that sacrifice. But He did all the heavy lifting and all the hard work. Of course, God wants us to draw near to Him and to submit to Him and become like Him as much as possible. And so He gives us a means to do that. And fasting on the Day of Atonement is a very big part of that and other times of the year.

So He commands us to afflict our souls to spur the motivation to change so 1) He does not have to afflict us ourselves in wrath. And 2) so we can grow in the character image of His Son and ultimately enter the Kingdom of God. But fasting is a tool that He has given us to do what needs to be done beyond His atoning sacrifice. Because that is what gets us changing, or it is at least part of it.

Let us go to Matthew 6. It is always a good practice when studying about these various subjects to check what the Boss has said about it. So we are going to go over these verses again. We just went through them a few months ago in my sermons as we were going through the Sermon on the Mount. But it is just a good idea to review.

Matthew 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."

Recall, if you remember from a few months before in that sermon, that I showed that it was part of a trio of passages on godly works. It starts out with charity and then goes on to prayer and then concludes here with fasting. And the theme of all three sections is hypocrisy, the hypocrisy of those who do these good works. They are to be done by Christians. In each one He says, "When you do this, you do it this way, not like them."

So He shows that they do these things wrongly by making a show of it, by being out in public this way and drawing attention to their piety before the people. They just did it for show, to be seen, to appear to be righteous, and to receive the praise of men. And that is what He was angry about. He did not like that. He wants His people, His disciples, to do it a different way and make it a spiritual fast, a fast that is not easily seen on the outside because it is not for other people. It is for you. It is for, as I mentioned earlier, your inner self. It should be totally between you and God, not anybody else.

Jesus, in these three sections, condemns that kind of blatant, self-serving pretense, whether it is a good work, some kind of charity, whether it is in prayer, or whether it is in fasting. Instead He implies (and we will just concentrate on fasting here) that fasting is a private, inconspicuous act of righteousness between the disciple and God. It is not going to help another person when you fast, not necessarily. It will do something for you and your relationship with the Father and with Jesus Christ, but it is something, a tool like Bible study and prayer and meditation, that we use to grow in character, to learn more deeply the things of God, to get on a right wavelength with God, to humble ourselves before Him and see what is right and good. See the difference between us and God.

And this is the fasting, Jesus said, that God respects and rewards.

No one else needs to know. Actually Jesus urges us to go to the far extreme away from that and say that it needs to be private. Make sure that it appears that you are not fasting because once you gain the acclaim of men, He says that is your reward, you have not done it right.

Just to sum this up, fasting is an internal spiritual good work. It is done in the inner self, by the inner self, and for the benefit of the inner self. Any other kind of fasting has little or no spiritual value. It may have a health benefit. We hear health gurus out there all the time talking about fasting. And if you are "this" age, you should fast like this long and start at this time and all that. That is fine if you want to do that. But if you are going to do a spiritual fast, a fast before God, it needs to be done within these parameters to get anything good out of it.

That was not the only thing He said about fasting. Let us go to the book of Luke chapter 5. We will start in verse 33 and we will go through verse 39, which is the end of the chapter.

Luke 5:33-39 [Here He is being questioned about fasting and as you will see, why His disciples do not.] Then they said to Him [these are the Jews], "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 [now notice how He answers that question], "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." Then He spoke a parable to them, "No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one; otherwise the new one makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. And no one having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, 'The old is better.'"

So we find that fasting was a point of contention between Jesus and the Jews. And even John's disciples wondered why Jesus' disciples failed to fast. They were under a fair amount of scrutiny as they went around behind Jesus throughout His ministry and everybody noticed, at least the Jews and the disciples of John noticed, that His disciples were always eating and drinking and having a good time; and it kind of made them mad. "Here we do all these pious things. We fast often yet Your disciples never do. We never see them tearing their garments or throwing dust in the air or, you know, on their heads or whatever. They do not do all those things. Why? You must have a reason for this?"

Of course, we can assume that the disciples fasted on the Day of Atonement and they were not told by Jesus that they could not fast on other days if they so choose. But being young men, they probably chose not to, if they had the choice. Maybe they did, maybe they did not. We do not read in the gospels anywhere that, you know, Thaddeus and one of the Judases were fasting this day, but they went behind Jesus nonetheless. It just does not tell us that much detail about the disciples.

But if we just take the Jews and John the Baptist's disciples word for it, they noticed that they rarely, if ever, fasted. And the reason why they were so observant of this—not like us, we do not think of fasting all that often, it is not part of our culture, but it was a big part of the Jewish culture. The Jews kept several fasts throughout the year and expected the people who they taught, as well as their disciples, obviously, to keep these same fasts.

The Pharisees normally fasted every Monday and Thursday. So twice in a week. You have heard that: "I fast twice in a week, and I give. . ." blah, blah, blah. That is what the Pharisees did, Mondays and Thursdays. And there were several special fasts throughout the year. There was one in the fourth month, one in the fifth month, one in the seventh month, and one in the tenth month. The seventh month one must have been the Day of Atonement, maybe it is not. But some of the others were for times like the fall of Jerusalem and things like that.

So they had at least four big fasts and then two a week of their normal fasts. So they were fasting all the time. If you want to look up those fasts: Zechariah 8:19 where they are spoken about there. And they were not done. They fasted in times of crises like war or drought, plague, or for any number of other reasons, including personal reasons. You know, if they wanted to appear extra pious or impress somebody else, they would start a fast. But they have fasted frequently and publicly, and Jesus' disciples, always eating and drinking. You know, going out with Levi [Matthew], having a good time on his dime, stood out among them. They just thought Jesus and His disciples were ultra-liberal. They were untraditional, they were not doing what the Bible wanted them to do or at least the law of Moses, or at least the rabbis.

Let us get to Jesus' answer here. Jesus' initial answer, meant to answer their question directly, uses the metaphor of a wedding and of Himself as a bridegroom, that is, the chief person at the wedding along with the bride. Now, what is a wedding? A wedding is a festive occasion marked by eating and drinking, along with the ceremony. And He uses this metaphor of the bridegroom and the wedding to stand for His presence on earth and His ministry. His ministry was this ongoing wedding and He was the bridegroom and He was instructing or having a festive occasion with His disciples who were the seed of the bride of Christ.

So He makes His ministry a special occasion. It lasted three and a half years, but He said these three and a half years when He was here with his nascent bride here, in His disciples, was a time of joy. A time of feasting. The feasting was mostly the disciples eating of His teaching, as it were. So it was not a time to be solemn and fasting. That did not fit the times that they were in. The time that they were in was a time of a feast, not a fast. And the key reason it was a feast is because Jesus Christ was there personally teaching them. They did not need to fast. If they wanted to get close to their Creator, all they had to do was go up and talk to Him and follow His teachings.

A wedding, a time of joy and abundance, is not a time for fasting. He is using a metaphor, a very simple comparison to get the Jews and the disciples of John the Baptist to understand that it was all about Him and being there in person, and all the teaching that He was giving them, and they did not need to fast. But, He reassures them that fasting will become necessary once His ministry concluded and He was no longer physically present among them. Then they will fast.

Fasting, we find by going through this metaphor, is a help to overcome the disadvantage that we have here on earth with Christ in heaven. We have a disadvantage to what the disciples had. They had Christ in person. They walked around with Him all the time. They talked to Him all the time. They did so many things with Him. They watched all His miracles. But we do not have that and they did not have that either once He ascended to heaven. And so they had to begin to fast to maintain that close relationship with Jesus Christ and with the Father. So it was no longer a time of a wedding once He left. It was normal life when the bridegroom was off, He went away, and so He said they will fast because they will need to draw close to Me when I am not physically present.

Then He gives us a parable, which is to me very enlightening. He gives the Parable of the Cloths and the Wineskins or whatever men call this particular parable. It is kind of dual. You use the cloth, you use the wineskin one. The metaphor works either way.

Now, this metaphor or this parable seems odd that it would be stuck behind the direct answer to the question about fasting. But if you start thinking it through, it is actually not as odd as you might think given what I have already told you. The main clue in the parable as to what Jesus is getting at here is the word "new." It appears several times in the parable. The parable or the parables, if you want to split them in two, have to do about new and old cloth or new wine, new wineskins, old wine, old wineskins. It is the difference between old and new that should be at the center of our thinking when we are trying to understand what this parable means.

Jesus and His message and the New Covenant that He brought, were new. To whom were they new? To the Jews and to the people, the people to whom He came. What He brought was new. His approach was new. His gospel was new. The covenant was new. Everything about Jesus and what He did was new. Now, why is that? We know we can look at just about every doctrine that there is in the New Testament and realize that it was actually spoken already in the Old Testament. Why would they think that what Jesus brought was new? Because He was quoting the scriptures that they had memorized! It should not have been new to them. But it was.

Why was it new? Because they were not doing their religion necessarily out of God's Word. How many times does Jesus castigate them for doing what they wanted to do, for preaching the things that their sages had come up with and not what actually the Bible said? They were going on their oral law in many cases, not necessarily what the Bible said. Jesus was new to them in His first coming because they did not expect His first coming or His coming as they saw it. They did not see two, they just saw one. They expected that He would come. And as even the disciples said, "Restore the kingdom to Israel." They said that after the resurrection! "Aren't You going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?" "No, you guys still have 2,000 years of preaching and teaching and suffering and all the rest you have to do before I come again."

Even the disciples did not understand the difference between old and new. They learned a lot, I am sure. And as they got the Holy Spirit and as Jesus promised them, it brought all these things to remembrance and they were able to figure it out after that even more closely, even better. But Jesus even says that way in the book of Revelation, Revelation 21:5, "Behold, I make all things new." That is something about our Savior. He makes things new. There is not a lot of old with Jesus. He is on the times, He is modern—in a godly way.

So what did He do? He came with a new approach, to call a new people, give them new teachings, and unveil new goals and new rewards. And it was all better than what the old was, the traditional Jewish teaching. And that did not sit very well with the old guard. They were used to the old, they are the ones that say they are in verse 39, "The old is better." They were looking at what Jesus brought as totally heretical, something they could not abide because it did not follow the traditions of the Jews. Jesus basically says, "What if your traditions aren't right? You need to be following what is the new, what is the truth."

By this point, we are only five chapters in to the book of Luke here, but already the new wine was bursting their seams, if you will. They were having a hard time understanding what Jesus was trying to teach them because they were so constricted in their way of thinking that they could not see the new as better. And that is why Jesus says He has got to put his new wine into new wineskins. He has to find a people who are receptive to the new and not hidebound with the old. And that is what He did. He called young men as disciples and that was the beginning of things in the church.

Now, let us think of this in terms of fasting. This was a pivot point in this old and new debate. Jesus' approach to fasting is quite different from their traditional approach to fasting. To them, it was a way to tempt God. It was a way to make Him do something for them, if it was not just a way to appear pious and receive the acclaim of men for being religious. They thought Jesus' new way of teaching about fasting as too liberal, too arrogant, too avant-garde. Jesus was too easy on His disciples so it did not receive their blessing. In fact, to them, His way of teaching about fasting made them suspicious and resistant to Him. They would not accept it and many of His other "innovations," as they saw them. They were stuck as old wine in their old wineskins and it would not be long before they would blow a gasket here (I mix my metaphor, but blow a seam, as I said before), because He was just giving them too many new things to think about at once and they just rejected them altogether.

That brings up a question. What was so new about Jesus' concept of fasting other than not requiring it of His disciples while He was among them? I mean, Jesus' explanation of fasting by using the parable implies that He was making fasting new too. And you know what? A lot of the time when Jesus would make something new, He would return it to its original purpose. He renewed it, and that is what He does with fasting. Under His governance fasting would not be done in the old way for the old reasons, the ones that the Jews had, the way the Jews did it. He would take fasting and put a new but original spin on it.

As the parable suggests, the new wrinkle would not be something that the traditionalists among the Jews would like. The new way of fasting originated in the Old Testament, as I said, as most true doctrine does, but the Jews had never accepted it. They just thought that it should be done often at prescribed times. They never got what God wanted them to get out of it. And so it faded into the past and they put new ideas into it. And so by the time you get to Jesus' day, they thought their way was right. But Isaiah 58 is in the Old Testament, which they should have read.

Let us go back there. Isaiah 58, verses 1 through 5. Oh, and even at this time, the Jews are complaining as we saw. "Why haven't you heard us, God? Why haven't you seen what's going on here and done something about it?" It never went into their skulls—and this is the absence of the Spirit of God—that He wanted them to do fasting differently for different reasons.

Isaiah 58:1-5 "Cry aloud, spare not; lift up your voice like a trumpet; tell My people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek Me daily, and delight to know My ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of Me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching God. '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. Indeed you fast for strife and debate, and to strike with the fist of wickedness. You will not fast as you do this day, to make your voice heard on high. Is it a fast that I have chosen, a day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? [He is talking about the way they physically appeared when they fasted] Would you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?"

Now, as we fast today, we need to keep some of these principles of this chapter firmly in mind. It begins with God acknowledging that the Jews were a sinful people, very sinful people, but they were also a very religious people. Now, you think that would not go together, but it usually does actually. There are a lot of people that are very religious who are hypocrites to the core, appearing religious but living sinfully. They put religion on like a garment, it is on the outside. So people think that they are pious, but inside they are not. As Jesus said, they were full of bones, full of dead men's bones, I think He says. They were dead inside spiritually.

So they were a people who were outwardly hypocritically pious, religious, but inside they were sinful.

It says here that they love to seek God, it was a hobby to them or an entertaining way of doing things. They could get together and they would go to all the feasts and hear all the songs, sing their songs, eat well, and then when the time came to fast, they would make fasting a religious thing that everybody could get involved with. It was something to be seen doing, not necessarily something that is designed to help them spiritually.

So, enjoying their religion and being seen of all these people and people telling them, "You're a righteous man. You sure get into the songs and you do everything right and people follow your advice," or whatever. So they thought they were good with God. They were doing what He wanted them to do. And they were wondering here, by the time we get to verse 3, why God was not responding to them. It was no longer like the days of Moses or the days of the early prophets when there were miracles being done and He was saving their armies from destruction and that sort of thing. By this time, they are doing all of these religious things, but God seems so far away.

But He says, kind of like, "You stupid people. Don't you understand if you don't do what I want you to do, if you don't obey Me, if you don't make these strides in overcoming your sins, then there is no way I'm going to respond to you." He responds to those who obey His voice. They were acting like they were obeying His voice, but they were not obeying His voice. He could see inside them and see that they were rotten inside and the whole nation was rotten. And one of the ways He saw it was the way they conducted their fasts. They found fasting pleasurable! That is not afflicting your soul. They probably had bands up on the stage and they were singing and dancing while they were having their fast.

I am just kidding. But that is the way it would work today, that the fast was not hard on them at all. They had a good time on their fast. What does He say? "And you exploit all your laborers." What did they do? Make them work double on fast days? I do not know. But it shows some sort of oppression of the people working for them even while they appeared pious by fasting. They fasted for strife and debate. They wanted to win an argument. They wanted God on their side to strike with the fist of wickedness. I mean, they are really getting out of bounds here. And He says, "You will not fast as you do this day, to make your voice heard on high." Yeah, they fasted to try to get God's ear so that He will support them in whatever they wanted to do. And He says, "This is not the kind of fast that I've chosen. This is not the fast that I taught you. This is not what I'm looking for."

Something was terribly wrong and it was shown in the way they fasted. And the same for the Pharisees. Their problem was that their fasting or their affliction of soul did not progress past their hypocritical simulation of godly fasting. Though they may have denied themselves food and water seemingly afflicting their bodies, their fasting did not affect their hearts, not in the least. They felt no anguish over their sins. They felt no humility or sense of inadequacy before God. They had no sense of grief for the perverse course of the world that they lived in. They had no desire to change—not at all—because they felt they had no need. Were they not doing what God required of them?

But after they fasted, they were still the same old mean, selfish, argumentative, greedy, violent, demanding, and disobedient people they had been before they stopped eating. No matter how many times they fasted: twice a week, four other times during the year for monthly fasts, and many other times when they did it on their own volition—it made no difference in their lives. They were still sinful, they were still breaking the covenant, they were still becoming further and further away from the people that God had called them to be. In fact, it went so far, as we know, it ultimately brought on punishment from God. And though they thought that their fasting would appease Him, instead it worked for the other effect. That He actually came down on them harder when the time was finally up.

So they ignored their faults. They considered themselves safe from God's judgment because they were God's people. They were so oblivious that they could not discern that this was not an acceptable way to fast before God. As it says in another place, they were people who did not know how to be ashamed. It is really sad, but it is how a veneer of trying to live by God's truth works. I mean, you have got to live the way of life He brought from deep inside. It cannot just be a surface thing and go your way and not worry about how things are progressing in your life.

Let us read what He says here in verses 6 through 12 so we can get an idea of what God's fast is supposed to look like. This is the new fast that Jesus was alluding to in Luke 5. His new way of fasting is found right here in the Old Testament.

Isaiah 58:6 "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?"

Notice the language there: loose, undo, free, break, break every yoke. He is talking about atonement not being a restrictive thing, but a means of freeing others, freeing oneself, freeing everybody that you come in contact with so that you can see the freedom in Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 58:7-12 "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? Then your light shall break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily, and your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and He will say, 'Here I am.' If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones; you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. Those from among you shall build the old waste places; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, the Restorer of Streets to Dwell In."

Now, we should not think of these things that He says, particularly in verses 6 and 7, as things we do while we fast. The breaking of the bonds of wickedness in ourselves, yes, that should happen while we fast. And maybe there are a few others, but these are things that happen as a result of our fast and it spreads, then, from a person to many people until we get to the whole nation, and the nation is, then, for many generations, under the blessing of God. That is the kind of the progression of how it goes here in verses 6 through 12. That it goes from a person fasting, losing the bonds of wickedness within himself, and then that is starting to spread with his charity and the other things that he does in helping other people around him until the whole nation is back to godliness. And God answers when they call because everybody is now in the right frame of mind to serve God.

So, the fasting that impresses God is the kind that overcomes sin and its effects, resulting in a change of a person's attitude toward others, making him, that is, the person whose attitude has changed, making him willing to sacrifice for them, making him willing to help fill their needs, making him willing to make their lives better.

The attitude change that the fast brought about—the affliction of soul brought about—is humility. And humility is realizing that God is wise and powerful and sovereign far beyond what we can imagine. And simultaneously, we ourselves are lowly, inconsequential, no better than anybody else. In fact, we are probably behind them.

If you get nothing out of this sermon, remember what I say next.

During a proper godly fast, we acknowledge reality. Most of the time we go around fooling ourselves, that we are chummy-chummy with God, that He has everything in our best interests, which He does. But we think He has our best interests ahead of everybody else's best interests. And we think that we are doing all right the way we are. "What need for me to change? It's the other guy that's sinful." But the fact is, the truth of the matter is, we are still human. We still have human nature that at every turn wants us to make the selfish choice. We think that we are almost there, like Jesus right next to God's right hand, and we do not need to change.

But the reality is, if we really looked at ourselves objectively, is (and I got in trouble years ago for saying this, but I am going to say it again), we have not changed a whole lot. We still do some of the same stupid sins that we did years and years ago and we have not repented of them. We still hold grudges against people. We still will not overcome certain feelings for people that we should, one way or another. We still have lust and greed. We still do all kinds of things that we should not do. Yes, those sins have been covered by the blood of Christ, but we keep bringing them up and we have not repented of them.

Now, I know a lot of the lack of change may be in personality, but also a lot of that personality that we have is because we are still sinful and we are not actually acting like Jesus Christ at all. And this is what fasting is supposed to do. Fasting should, if done right, make us realize that we are a worm, that we are very little and God is very big, and it should produce a great deal of gratitude toward God for calling us—as miserable as we are, as stubborn as we are, as unchanging as we are, and still giving us His Spirit and all the helps that He can give us to help us to make those changes that we need to make. We need to do them. And fasting brings us to a point where we can start thinking, start deciding to do something about these things.

But notice that the first thing He says that we need to do when we fast is loose the bands of wickedness. Sin has captivated us and captured us and we have got to break those bonds that sin has over us. And that means some very deep repentance. And only when that happens, only when sin is no longer controlling us, can we actually begin to do some of these other things like undo the heavy burdens that we are placing on other people, letting those people we oppress go free, and breaking every yoke we have put on people, and then we can start doing good.

That is what a fast is supposed to produce in us; a great deal of change because we repented and we have seen what we actually are and are grateful to God. And we then get on His course of change, spiritual change, that He has been trying for such a long time to get us to accept.

So under this attitude of humility, a godly fast can produce character change, deep character change, a diligence to please God, and to obey His instructions about living godly lives. And out of this diligence comes righteousness, doing right things, not just in our daily walk, but for others who intersect with us. And of course, it should cause a closer relationship with God so that we receive all the help that we need. Because when we call, He will answer, and He will give us the things that we need to make those changes.

So done right, fasting spurs us to work together with God to build up, to repair the breaches in our character, to repair the breaches in our relationships, and bring blessings, not just to ourselves, but also to generations to come, as He says here. We can start a cycle of closeness to God within ourselves and it expands out to our family and could go for generations into the future based on one person's submission, humble submission to God.

Let us go to II Peter 1, verses 2 through 11. This is such a great passage of Scripture, but it gives us a template that we can follow here. Not necessarily it has to be adhered to strictly, but it is something we need to think about. He says,

II Peter 1:2-4 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness [this is what Jesus did, this is what He continues to do for us], through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these things you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

This takes us through our calling and our justification and we faithfully decided that we would accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and we became baptized. This is about where it puts us here, sometime in the early part of our conversion. Now, look at verse 5. Verses 2 through 4 is where God has done all these things. Now we get to our part.

II Peter 1:5-11 But also for this very reason [That you have been given great and precious promises, that you will be in God's Kingdom if you continue in the way, if you have escaped, then, the corruption that is in the world through lust.], giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is short-sighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Now, the apostle assumes that we realize the extent God has gone to call us, to give us faith, to expand our knowledge, forgive our sins, and set us on the road to these exceedingly great and precious promises. These acts of God, as I mentioned before, on our behalf, should produce both gratitude and humility. We could not have done any of those things ourselves. There is no way that we could work to accomplish any of those things that He did for us.

So, we then have salvation or the promise of salvation. Salvation, if we can keep it, if you will, salvation if we stay on the road to the Kingdom of God. And so what that tells us, that even though God has done all these things for us, things that we could not do, that is not the end of the course of sanctification. I mean, this is where the Protestants stop. Protestants stop right here at justification and they do not think they need to do anything else, essentially. They believe they are saved at that point and it cannot be taken away from them.

But Peter tells us that once we are at that point, we must begin adding things to our faith, or to our faithfulness, to become complete and ensure our calling and entrance into God's Kingdom. And fasting, afflicting our souls, is a key element in adding these necessary traits to our character.

Now, verse 5, where it says also for this very reason, giving all [more to come ASAP]

RTR/aws/drm