When Ye Fast

Defining Fasting and the Problem of Ignorance

0:03 Seeking the face of God, prayer, intercession, contrition, penitence, or a sense of wanting to publicly acknowledge in terms of national fast days when the word came to Nineveh that they would be overthrown if they did not repent. There was this whole nation going down in sackcloth and ashes and fasting to declare their consciousness of their guilt and as an expression of their true penitence. So much now for a definition of fasting. Now by way of introduction I want us to consider a second thing. Why do we know so little of fasting in our day? Do you know that the Bible has at least in the area of 40 references to fasting in the Old Testament and 30 in the New? You don't need to go to Bible school to know that, just get a concordance and look up the references.

0:56 Now why is it that a subject which our Lord felt was important enough to put in what we call... the Sermon on the Mount, in the very context of prayer and of giving, exercises in which every one of us as a true Christian engages, we give and we pray, why is it that there is such a gross ignorance on the subject of fasting in our particular circles?

1:23 You see, we must beware of vague generalizations. You say the church knows nothing about fasting in our day. What church? What segment of the church?

1:31 There are segments of the church of Christ that know much about fasting. A lot more than I know. Experimental, as well as theoretical. But we're speaking now in terms of the circles in which you and I move.

1:43 Most of us, many of us, could be brought up in the average evangelical church in America and live and die and never once be called to a fast as a church. We might live and die in association with good Christ-loving people and never once have the subject of fasting brought into the conversation, let alone...

2:04 brought into practice. Now, why is this so? I believe it's necessary to understand that before we can understand what our Lord is teaching us in this passage. The first reason is this.

Reason 1: Reaction Against Romanism's Abuses

2:16 The first reason is a reaction against the abuses of Romanism. We like to think that all that we are today, we are because of the influences that have touched us directly. But we're not. You and I are products of a long stream of influences.

2:34 This is true of us in the physical realm. This is also true in the spiritual realm. And our spiritual roots as evangelical believers in America go back to the Reformation, that mighty work of God in which the great human instruments were Zwingli and Calvin and Luther and then later on Knox and some of the other great reformers. And the reformers who had seen the fallacy of this terrible religious trappings of the Church of Rome with all of its fast days, with all of its religious rigamarole, violently reacted against the sham and the hypocrisy of the Church of Rome.

3:13 Now, one measure of that hypocrisy was expressed in the fast days that the Romanists had. And so the reformers, some of whom like Luther, when they were bound up in the system of Rome, used to fast with a sense that so much fasting piled up so much merit. More fasting, more merit. Prayers, giving, fasting, all of this was like coinage that somehow bought and purchased the grace of God.

3:45 So it's no wonder that if they came to see the truth of the Bible, that grace is free, that forgiveness is not earned but received by faith, they would react from anything that would seem to be a twin sister or a bedfellow of that old heresy from which God delivered them. And so...

4:06 And so there was this same problem we face today of the pendulum swinging from this extreme to this extreme and throwing out the baby with the bat, a phrase that you've heard, I'm sure, many times. And this is the first reason why you and I know little about fasting. We are part of a movement which is a reaction against the sham of Rome. Just look at the so-called fast day of Friday.

4:33 It's just any thinking person can't help but laugh. You can laugh at it. You can stuff yourself full of fish and eggs and you're fasting. Well, that's ridiculous.

4:41 That's no burden for me. That's a luxury. Because I love fish. I enjoy a good piece of swordfish steak almost as much as I'd enjoy a good prime rib of beef.

4:53 There's no fasting involved. And so this is degenerated into an artificial sham. And so we have reacted against this. And it's the problem of overreaction and throwing out the righteousness and the right use of something because someone has abused it.

Reason 2: Ignorance of the Whole Counsel of God

5:09 A second reason. A second reason. And this is more serious. The second reason why we are in great measure ignorant of this matter is because in great measure the people of God in America that I have met, and I can't talk for all others.

5:25 I don't want to speak beyond the sphere of my experience. But the people of God that I have met are ignorant of the whole counsel of God. Jesus said, Ye do. Doer.

5:37 Why? Not knowing the scriptures. Nor the power of God.

5:45 And it's amazing. And you would be amazed as I have been amazed again and again how much of what we believe and what we don't believe,

5:56 how much of what we consider and don't consider is not dictated by the scriptures but by the evangelical tradition with which we've been brought up. And the truths that have been emphasized by our spiritual, we learn to emphasize. And the truths they neglected, we neglect. Why?

6:15 Because we don't acquaint ourselves with the whole counsel of God.

6:22 And I'm convinced this is true with the subject of fasting. All you need do as a Christian is take your concordance, sit down for one evening, paper and pencil, and look up every reference to fast, fasting, fasted, fasteth, and you'd have a wonderful study and you'd see, my, fasting isn't something that the Catholics discovered. Fasting isn't something for monks and for monasteries and for a few hyper-spiritual people. For if you would just open up your Bible and look up the references to the word fasting, you would find, as I mentioned, 40 references or so in the Old Testament, 30 in the New, and would come to some tremendous discoveries.

7:04 Now there's a lesson to be learned here. I'm not saying all of this to be critical. I'm saying this to point out a principle, that what is true in relationship to the subject of fasting can be true in relationship to any subject. God have mercy on you as a people.

7:21 If God keeps me here 10 years, if you only are acquainted with the truths that I have emphasized under God, I seek to acquaint myself with the whole counsel of God. But every man has his blind spots. And every teacher of truth has areas of truth in which he feels more at home. And God, have mercy upon you if the only truths you confront are the ones you hear over this book.

7:48 You'll be lopsided.

7:52 Learn to search out the whole counsel of God with a concordance of Bible and a Bible dictionary. If you've got those three tools, that's about all you need to have some wonderful time. I can remember as an early Christian, you know where I learned the doctrine of repentance? I didn't learn it from the churches I went to.

8:07 I was told all my life, just accept Jesus as your Savior, believe on Jesus, all is well. I got so sick and tired of hearing it because I did accept him. And didn't believe him according to what I was taught. And nothing happened in my life.

8:20 And God in grace was pleased to open my eyes and save me. And I believe I'm accurate in saying this. One's memory fades as the years go. But I can remember one night sitting down at the table there in Stanford, Connecticut with probably brothers and sisters running around.

8:35 I don't remember. They might have been in bed. And I just had my strong concordance. My uncle gave me a big strong concordance for my, what, 17th or 18th birthday.

8:44 And I either did this before I went to college or one Christmas vacation. And I opened up my Bible and I began to look up every reference in the Bible to repent, repentant, repentance, repenting. And God the Holy Ghost taught me that an essential element of the gospel of Christ is the note of repentance. And I learned more in one night than I could have learned in 10 years in the average Bible school and 20 years in the average church.

9:11 And beloved, you can do the same thing. And God may have some wonderful truths to reveal to you and you'll come and say, Pastor, have you ever, have you ever discovered this? I say, no, I never gave it any thought. And you share it with me and I get hold of it and I share it with the rest of the assembly.

9:23 Wouldn't that be wonderful?

9:26 I never thought of that.

9:29 Acquaintance with the whole counsel of God. And I'm convinced this is the second reason why we are greatly in measure ignorant of what the scripture says on the subject of fasting. The third reason, and this is so vital as well, the great part of God's people are ignorant of a historical perspective of Christianity.

Reason 3: Ignorance of Christian History

9:53 We always judge things by what we see about us. We make the standard of our judgment as to what is normal, what we see about us in the sphere of our experience. Let me illustrate. There's a certain island and everybody on that island has three eyes and a green left hand.

10:11 Everybody.

10:13 This is just hypothetical. Some of you have found and looked at me.

10:18 I'm just telling a story. Not truth, but supposing. Three eyes. One smack in the middle of the forehead, two right.

10:26 There. And everybody has a green right hand. Everybody. Every child is born, three eyes and a green right hand.

10:33 About 500 people on this island.

10:36 But it's not so completely isolated that it doesn't have a library, that it doesn't have volumes of pictures of peoples from other lands, that it doesn't have forms of communication such as television and the rest, but it has no direct contact with people who just have two eyes and two white hands or black hands or yellow hands.

10:59 The only way they can know that most people have two eyes and two normal hands, no green hands, is to go beyond the sphere of what they see immediately surrounding them. They've either got to go to the library and read about peoples of other lands who have two eyes. Get a book on anatomy and read about two eyes. And get some magazines and look at pictures.

11:22 And suddenly, what will happen? You'll have a man who goes into that library for an afternoon. He comes out. He's made a tremendous discovery.

11:29 He says to his neighbor, he says, look, John, John, look, look, you know what I discovered today? John, we're freaks. Who's a freak? We're freaks, John.

11:38 Did you know we're freaks with these three eyes and a green hand? Hey, what do you mean we're freaks? Look around. Look down the street.

11:43 Everybody on that street's got a green hand and three eyes. Yeah, John, but you...

11:48 Oh, listen, don't tell me that. Look, listen. Get in the car with me. Get in the car with me.

11:52 So against his protest, he gets in the car and they take off down the main street. He says, what do you mean we're freaks? Look, everybody we see going in and out of the store, three eyes and a green right hand. He says, but John, you don't understand.

12:02 You don't understand. He says, oh, don't give me that stuff. We're freaks. And he takes him all over and when he's all done, he brings him back home.

12:08 He says, now look, John, are you done? Can I have just five minutes? He says, all right, all right. You still got that crazy notion that we're freaks?

12:14 All right, speak up. He says, look, I spent an afternoon down at the library.

12:20 You know what I discovered? We're 500 people on a little island with three eyes and a green right hand.

12:28 There are two and a half other billion people in the world with two eyes. And two hands of either black or white or yellow skin.

12:39 John, you think we're normal because your judgment is based merely upon what you see immediately surrounding you. And if only you'd get acquainted with the rest of the world, you'd know differently.

12:52 He says, Pastor, what does this have to do with fasting? It's got something to do, a great deal to do with fasting and a lot of other truths. Listen, dear ones. Most of us judge what normal, natural Bible Christianity is by what we see around us in our own churches.

13:12 That's what we set as the standard, the norm. And because we live in an age when all Christians are feasting instead of fasting, we think that's normal. But it will take time to read. Not only the Bible, but church history and Christian biography.

13:28 You know what you'll discover? You'll discover as you open up the pages of the Old Testament that all the great men of God fasted in times of crisis, spiritual pressure, that the whole nation would go down before God in fasting in times of national humiliation. You'd move into the New Testament and you'd find our Lord and John and the apostles and the disciples fasting. You'd find the early church fasting.

13:54 You'd find the church fathers practicing fasting. You'd move down and see the abuse of this through the church of Rome, but then the reformers, Luther, Calvin, Knox, all of these men fasted. Wesley, Brainerd, all of these men whose names we've been taught to revere, all of them knew the blessing of private fasting and prayer. And suddenly, when I take time to go to the library and look at someone else who doesn't have three eyes and green hand, I realize if I as a Christian who've been saved for a period of five or ten or fifteen years, if fasting has not been,

14:33 I should say, a vital part of my life, let me change my word, if fasting has not been at least, a real part of my spiritual exercise at one point or another, beloved, I'm a freak in terms of historic Christianity. I may not be a freak in terms of those around me, but I am a freak when it comes to historic Christianity. And this is what gives me great joy in preaching these other related truths.

15:02 Bible repentance, the sovereignty of God,

15:07 submission to Christ as Lord. These are no novel doctrines. They are no novel doctrines. They are no novel to people with three eyes and green hands, but they are not novel in the great stream of historic Christianity.

15:22 And so I submit to you tonight that the third reason, and there's a valuable lesson to be learned from this, that we are in great measure ignorant of the place and blessing of private fasting connected with spiritual ends is because of our ignorance of historic Christianity. And again, I do not say this critically, but I trust I say it accurately and say it with a word of exhortation. Acquaint yourself with historic Christianity. If some of you had spent one-tenth the time reading Christian biography and Christian history that you've spent in front of your television set in the past ten years, you'd be a lot further down the road with God.

16:09 You can tell me what's on channel four or seven or eleven or everything else at eight o'clock and such and such a night, but you can't even tell me who Augustine was. Shame on you.

16:20 Shame on you.

16:22 For much of the blessing you and I know today is because a man named Augustine was an instrument in the hands of God to bring certain truths into focus which had been the possession of the church from that day till now.

16:39 Acquaint yourself.

16:42 Pastor, I don't know what books to get. Oh, nothing make me dance with joy more than to have you come and tell me that.

16:48 I've got a library full of them.

16:52 Nothing thrills me more than someone comes and gets an appetite and asks the question, just to borrow a book. Now, it won't impress me if you just come and ask about it and you don't get it by osmosis, you know, sitting on your shelf instead of mine.

17:05 But acquaint yourself with the great heritage that is yours. The fourth reason, there may be more, but I believe these four are basic. Why we in our present generation on our little island with our three eyes and our green hands, why we think it's normal to go on in our Christian experience without fasting having any integral part is because not only of the ignorance, of historic Christianity, our ignorance of the whole counsel of God, my first point, I've forgotten it, our reaction against Rome, but fourthly, because of the indulgence of our affluent society.

Reason 4: Indulgence of Affluent Society

17:45 We read in Philippians 1 of a people whose God is their belly.

17:50 I've been asked to speak in the past two, I spoke the past two nights at banquets in churches. It's been a long time since I was asked to come and speak at a church for a day of prayer and fasting. I've been asked to speak at banquets, but no one's asked me to come and talk at a gathering of saints who are fasting. Feasting, not fasting.

18:15 But, here's the fourth factor. You and I are living on the crest of the most affluent,

18:22 plush, sleek, fat, overstuffed society that perhaps history has ever known. And we're affected by it, dear ones. I'm affected by it. I'm affected by it.

18:37 We're the gospel callers. It calls us to hardness and to self-denial and to discipline. Our whole society calls us to self-indulgence and to ease and to soft.

18:50 Seven-hour working day will be down to six and the six to five. Why?

18:57 Lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. That's why. You and I aren't isolated from this world. We breathe its climate, dear ones, as Christians.

19:07 We breathe its atmosphere. And that's why Paul said, don't let the world squeeze you into its mode and let the world squeeze you into its mode. The world has squeezed the church into its mold of feasting instead of fasting. Now, there's a place for feasting in the Bible.

19:20 I won't take the position of some that a Christian never has a right to feast, that it's wrong for God's people to get together, say, as we did with the Wilsons, and have a good meal that cost us some money and feast. No, I read of the early church that they met from house to house and ate their bread with singleness of heart, praising God. They had their love feast in the early church. But, beloved, if it's all feasting, and no fasting, it's because we're overindulgent.

19:48 A place for feasting. A place for it. Some of you may not agree, but you'll run headlong into a lot of Bible if you do. You disagree, but, oh, there's a place for fasting.

20:00 And the influence of our overstuffed society has gripped us. It's gripped me, dear ones, when I read, and I sometimes wish I hadn't read them from the standpoint of the wounds they give to my conscience. When I read of John Wesley, he said he would no more think of giving up his two days a week of fasting than he would of giving up one of the cardinal doctrines of Christianity. The early Methodist societies, two days a week, fasted till three in the afternoon to give themselves to concentrated prayer.

20:33 I don't know that kind of continuous discipline, so I must be honest with you and acknowledge that the influence of an overstuffed society has made its mark upon my own life.

20:48 It's hard for me to respect a young preacher, who goes to see physically, eating too much. Yet it's a common thing, isn't it? Preachers are supposed to be the best chicken eaters and pie eaters and all the rest.

21:05 I love it. It's an indication of something,

21:08 the influence of an affluent society. So much, then, for the reasons why we know little of fasting.

The Place of Fasting in Godliness

21:17 Now may I just pose one other question. What place does fasting have in the life of godliness? I've already hinted at this. In the Old Testament, only one, one fast was commanded by God.

21:28 On the Day of Atonement, the children of Israel were to fast. That's the only fast day God commanded. Apparently, later on in their captivity, the Israelites practiced fasting at certain periods to give themselves to prayer for their deliverance from the bondage of heathen empires who had put them under their heath. Yet we read that the people of God, when emergencies came, would fast.

21:51 If there was a particular battle and they were concerned about knowing the mind of God, one of the Israelite leaders would call a fast. You remember David, when Nathan said, the Lord's going to take your child, and as long as the child was alive, David fasted and prayed and pled with God that he might intervene on behalf of his son. Daniel said in Daniel 9, I set myself to seek the Lord by prayer and by fasting. It wasn't a total fast.

22:17 It was the foregoing of some of the nice things that would titillate his palate. We see, then, emergencies, national, personal, individuals, in the Old Testament, fasting in connection with prayer. In the New Testament, I mention some of these indications. And in the history of the Church, as we have previously mentioned.

Conclusion 1: Universal Practice of God's People

22:39 Now, what conclusions do we draw from all of this? The first conclusion we draw is that all the people of God, in all the periods of the history of the Church, had, to a greater or lesser degree, practiced fasting with prayer. That's the first conclusion we draw. When we take all that the Bible teaches on fasting, and all that the history of the Church would teach us on fasting, we come up to the first conclusion that all the people of God, in all the periods of her history, had, to a greater or lesser degree, practiced fasting.

23:14 That does not mean every individual Christian, but all in the sense of all groups, in all circumstances. Now, you see what this tells me? If all of God's people, from the Old Testament down through the New, from the Church Fathers down to the Reformers, from the Reformers down to the great men of the Evangelical awakening, Whitfield and Wesley, and over in this country, Jonathan Edwards, if all of these have, to a greater or lesser degree, practiced fasting, then what does this tell me if I, as a Christian, in the 20th century, know nothing of fasting? It tells me I am not a Bible-historic Christian.

23:54 I'm the Greek. Isn't that what it tells me? That's the conclusion I must draw. I must draw that with anything that sets me apart from what God said in the Old and New Testaments and in the history of the Church.

24:11 This is a principle, dear, when it touches every area of the Christian experience, of Christian doctrine. And I long that as a Church we get hold of this. Somebody comes along and says he's got something new, I say, I'm not interested. I'm not interested.

24:26 Why? Because God the Holy Ghost has been resident in the Church, speaking, revealing, leading, directing His people into the knowledge of truth. Some truth revealed 100 years ago or 200 years ago may come to fuller light, but don't anyone come and say he's got something altogether new. He can't excite me.

24:45 He can talk about footprints on the ceiling and lights and bells and visions and voices and all the rest, and, beloved, he doesn't get me excited one bit. But if he can say, look here, let me show you something God showed me about Abraham and about Paul and about Augustine and about Luther, and about Calvin and Wesley and Judson, oh, then he's got my fangs dripping. I want to know anything that'll put me in the great stream of what God the Holy Ghost has done for His people in the glorious periods of the history of His Church. From the moment that's our desire, beloved, then we realize this is the first conclusion that we are not Bible Christians in the historic sense unless we know something about fasting. Second thing we conclude in our study is that fasting is always in connection with spiritual exercises and never in a sense of merit. Now, there are some books coming out on fasting in our day, and people got this idea. Fasting is sort of like a, well, it's sort of like bribing God.

Conclusion 2: Fasting as a Means, Not Merit

25:53 Fast for two days, God will give you two days worth of blessing. Fast for a week, you get, oh, that's Romanism. That's Romanism. Think that I fast so much, God will give me.

26:04 That's the way some people teach tithing. They say, oh, I was in a mess. My business was shot. My family was poor.

26:10 I was baggy at the knees and drooping at the shoulders and driving old 40-year-old cars. But then I began to tithe. And look at me now, driving Cadillacs, wearing $150 suits. That's not the Bible.

26:23 You don't tithe to earn the blessing of God or fast to earn the blessing of God, no. But having said that, I must say, the second principle, prayer and fasting were always in connection with spiritual exercises, not in the sense of merit, but in the sense of a means that God has ordained for spiritual blessing. There's a difference between merit and means. Prayer is not merit.

26:52 So much prayer does not earn so much blessing, but prayer is a means by which we obtain blessing. And there's all the difference in the world. If you think prayer is merit, then you pat yourself on the back when you get the answer saying, I pray. If you think it's a means, you get on your face and say, Lord, you've done it.

27:11 All the difference in the world. That's not playing with words. And the same way with fasting. If you think that fasting is merit, when you're all done, what you'll tell people is say, look what God gave me when I fasted.

27:23 Instead of saying, when I fasted, look what God gave me. See the difference of emphasis? The difference between merit and means. All the difference in the world.

27:36 And it's always in connection with spiritual exercises. Humbling and contrition. Joel chapter 2, one of the best chapters on fasting. God says, turn unto me with all your heart and with fasting and with weeping and mourning and rend your heart and not your garment.

27:54 Fasting was in connection with mourning before God over the sinfulness of the nation. Many times connected with intense intercession so that the time spent eating or the interest of the physical flesh do not enter in. A man like Daniel is gripped with the fact that God said your people are going to get back to the land after 70 years. Daniel understood that the time was drawing near.

28:18 And so he began to cry to God and enter into conflict. And you know the story. During that period, he didn't understand why the answer didn't come immediately. But God sent his emissary who came into conflict with some emissary of the devil.

28:33 Daniel for three weeks sought and wrestled and finally prevailed and the answer came. But always in connection with spiritual exercises. This is the fasting that we find in the scripture and in the history of the church. The third principle that arises and we must take this into account because you know what will happen if we don't?

Conclusion 3: Susceptibility to Abuse

28:53 If some of you don't get this, mark my word. I wish I'd never preached this message. I wish I'd never expounded this passage if you don't get the third principle. You all ears?

29:06 Here it is. Fasting was always exposed to abuse. And when spiritual life waned, one of the first indications was fasting came under the condemnation of God because people began to fast with the wrong motive. Isaiah 58 is the key chapter in the Old Testament on this.

29:31 The people said, Oh God, we fasted and you haven't heard. And God said, Why have you fasted? Is this the fast that I have chosen? He says this business is just denying your physical body certain needs for a certain amount of time.

29:46 He says the fast I've chosen is to undo the yoke and to let the oppressed go free. Draw out your soul to the hungry. You see what fasting had degenerated into? A merely mechanical thing by which they hope to gain some merit from God.

30:01 That's exactly what our Lord was dealing with here in Matthew 6. The Pharisees fasted twice a week. Remember the Pharisee who stood in the temple said, Lord, I thank you. I fast twice in a week.

30:10 And he did. That took some discipline, didn't it? Sure did. But what was his motive?

30:15 To commend himself to God. And so the Lord said, When you fast, don't you be like them. And that's the third principle that we see in the Bible. We see it in the history of the church.

30:22 It wasn't long, if some of you have read some of the early church history, it wasn't long before you had groups of people who said, All right, since fasting is a spiritual exercise and since it's connected with contrition and blessing, then fasting must be legislated. That's the first principle that we see in the Bible. The second principle that we see in the history of the church is that fasting is a spiritual exercise and since it's connected with contrition and they began to set up the rules and regulations and before long you had groups withdrawing, going into cloistered walls and giving themselves to all kinds of excesses of physical deprivation. Even in Paul's day you had it.

30:57 Colossians 2, he talks about people who seek to buffet the flesh but he said was of no profit to the sanctifying of their lives. It was a form of will worship. I can say no for seven days. And along came someone and said, I can say no for ten days.

31:13 And it just fed pie, fed pie. You had people who began to say God had called them when they were married but they no longer had an obligation to fulfill their conjugal responsibilities and they bragged about the fact that though they were married they no longer were married. Paul had to write later and say beware for demons come along and the doctrines they teach include what? Forbidding to eat meats and forbidding to marry.

31:43 Two basic God-given legitimate physical needs. Food and the sex appetite and already in Paul's day people came along and said if you're going to be really holy you can't fulfill these. So dear ones listen if you don't get that I'm going to be sorry because sure as anything in a group this size there's someone whose whole temperament and makeup is such you'll take a tooth like this and you'll get the bit in your mouth and you'll run off with it and you'll make a pastor eat. Remember this third principle.

Conclusion 4: No Specific Regulations

32:13 There's always a strong tendency to abuse. In the scriptures we see it in the history of the church and I trust we'll take eat and then the last principle as we read the scripture and what it teaches on fasting and view the history of the church we find that the scripture gives no regulations as to the frequency of fasting the extent of fasting or the occasion of fasting. No regulations as to the frequency. How often should we fast?

32:47 Now if God leads you to fast two days in the week fine but don't you come to me and tell me I must. Isn't that the tendency? The way God led me better lead everybody and I'm going to see two a day and he does. No Bible regulation as to the frequency of fasting.

33:04 No Bible regulation as to the extent of fasting. Am I fasting only if I partake of nothing but water? No because Daniel fasted and he partook of some basic stable foods. So there's no regulation as to the extent of the fast and to what it should include and there is no regulation as to the occasion of fasting.

33:30 When should I fast? God doesn't say thou shalt fast when bing bing bing bing doesn't say that. And so I must go to the scriptures and I trust you'll do this. I trust some of you will this week and you begin to see when did David fast?

33:45 Well if I'm in a similar situation then perhaps I ought to consider fasting. When did the early church fast? When it came to matters of seeking to discover the mind of God as they waited upon the Lord and ministered to the Lord and fasted the Holy Ghost said separate Paul and Barnabas and after he revealed his will it says when they prayed with fasting they sent them forth times of spiritual concentration in the commissioning of the servants of God. They fasted so we learn to get some of the principles but we get no regulations and we don't like that.

34:18 We're all good Catholics by heart. We want to have it spelled out. Fast on Friday. Don't fast.

34:24 Isn't that the way we are? Some of you would be so happy if I could give you a list and say this is when you ought to fast and these are the circumstances and what you ought to do and hand it out in mimeograph form. Wouldn't you? That would really make you feel good.

34:39 Only one thing wrong there wouldn't be scripture. That's all. There wouldn't be scripture. There wouldn't be scripture.

34:44 And we're all made that way. Because if we don't have it spelled out if we're going to not abuse but properly use this means then we have to be shut up to God as to the direction of how to use it. And that's what the flesh doesn't like. To be shut up to God.

Summary of Principles and Exhortation

35:04 And to be sensitive to His law. And so I trust you'll learn those principles that I'll learn them. May I give them to you again in closing? As we look at the place of fasting and the life of godliness of God's people in the Bible and in the history of the church there emerge these four principles.

35:24 All the people of God in all the periods of her history of the church history have practiced fasting. Therefore if fasting is foreign to me I'm not a Bible Christian in the historic sense. Fasting was always in connection with spiritual exercises. Humbling.

35:41 Contrition. Never a sense of merit but a means ordained of God for spiritual blessing. Thirdly, always a strong tendency to abuse. And so I must as a faithful shepherd cry out not only for the use of fasting but cry out against the abuse of fasting.

36:00 And the fourth principle there are no regulations as to frequency, extent or occasion but that we are shut up to God for the direction. You see there's no truth but what Satan does not try to destroy either by getting the people of God to run to extremes with it or causing them to bury it in the rubble of neglect. No truth but what the devil tries to do. And only the person walking in the fear of God and under the teaching of the Spirit can learn to approach a given truth discover it in its proper perspective and then allow that truth to be worked into his or her life so that it does not become an extreme. And I trust as we carry on then a word by word exposition the Lord willing next Monday morning of our Lord's teaching on the how of fasting the motive of fasting the blessing of fasting that God will use what we've considered tonight to be somewhat I trust of helpful background. I know there's been a lot of material that may seem academic but dear ones as one called to expound the word and when I come to this it sure will look fishy if I jump from verse 15 down to verse 19 wouldn't it? Wouldn't it look right?

Call to Prayer and Repentance

37:22 And so we've confronted it in this sermon and so we must deal with it and I believe it's God's time to confront us as a church for I believe God in His grace His purpose blessing for His people here and if so then we must be acquainted with every means that He has ordained in the coming of that blessing and I believe one of the means is not only prayer but fasting. And isn't God good in the way He times these things? If I had decided to bring a sermon on fasting a year ago might have just looked like some extreme thing but here we are it's there and I believe God has brought many of you to the place where you've said Lord you've shown me the necessity of prayer and you're praying more now than you ever have before and you're saying Lord if there's anything else I need to know about how what means you've ordained to precipitate spiritual blessing God perhaps has even said to your heart tonight listen this is something you need to take heed to and God has brought you into a teachable frame and now by His Spirit He's going to teach you through His word so let's praise Him for His tenderness and His wisdom in dealing with us and let's plead with Him that we may be taught it and if you're here tonight someone who perhaps has thought well what in the world is all this? beloved this is instruction to the sons and daughters of God and if you're here tonight one who's never been awakened by the Spirit and brought out of

38:52 the state of nature into a state of grace this is no doubt and perhaps very tedious to you but may I explain to you why because you don't know the conflicts the longings the burdens of the children of God and if you've learned anything tonight by being bored to death maybe you could learn this principle that you need the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart to make you at home with God's people and the things that interest and concern God's people and so I'd urge you to seek the Lord in a way of repentance and faith until He has mercy upon you and for us as God's people let's pray in the principles and let's ask God to teach us all that He wants to teach us as we come to the exposition of this passage the Lord willing next Lord's Day shall we pray