How Jesus Lived: Jesus Feasted & Fasted
Pastor Fletcher preaches about the spiritual practice of fasting in Matthew 9:14-17. Discussion points: We are often too full of small distractions and pleasures from the world to be hungry for God, Jesus didn’t come to patch up our religious practices but to transform them, fasting leads us toward gratitude and finding satisfaction in God.
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Scripture reader: [Matthew 9:14-17] Then the disciples of John came to him saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" And Jesus said to them, "Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away with the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wine skins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wine skins, and so both are preserved."
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Preacher: Good morning. I considered choosing the passage from 2 Kings this morning where the children are making fun of the bald man, and then Elisha calls down the she bears from on the mountains to come and maul the children. I have no idea what that passage means, but, I don't make fun of bald people. I think that's it.
Instead, we're going to continue our series on how Jesus lived. And today we're going to be focusing on this area of Jesus' life, you know, with almost each one of these that we've been going through, it's been kind of a, a place of confusion. many of the religious leaders approach, Jesus, and they are saying, why, why are you like this? Which is always a great question to ask someone. Why are you like this? And so they're saying, why are you like this Jesus? Why do you fast? Why, why do you don't you fast? Well, we are fasting. And so today we're talking about this idea that Jesus both fasted and that he feasted.
And I think this is a very apt time for this, for our congregation. You know, in the life of a church plant, in a church that's getting started. You have a lot of new beginnings, and especially in a church in the Boston area. You have a lot of new beginnings. People, it's a transient area, praise the Lord. We have new people all the time, but at the same time, people leave, and you have new beginnings all of the time, and I think that right now in the life of our church, we are at a new beginning. Things are going to be cranking up very soon. We're we're seeing a lot of new things happening. It's exciting to see what God is doing. But at the same time, if you've been here for a little while, as I have, for the past 7 years, um. Sometimes you get a little tired of new beginnings, and it's like, I'm not sure I want to crank it back up again.
I was actually praying a few months ago and just saying, God, I feel like we're going into a new beginning. Every time we get into a new beginning, this is what I do and I was just talking to the Lord. It's like I feel like I have to kick it into a new gear. It's like I have to figure out what where else I can improve. Where I can find more efficiency, how I can lead our church, and I just came to the Lord very clearly and said, I don't have any more gears. In fact, I'm probably at the place in my life and ministry, just personal stuff going on that I actually probably have to kick it down a gear. Like I, I just don't have much left to give. And I was just overcome by a sense of the Lord's goodness in that, and he said, good, because then you'll know that all of the growth came from me and not because you found another gear. And it's exactly what I think that the Lord needed to communicate to me at that time.
And so what I'm looking at when I look out at our church, even in last week, as I was preaching about prayer. And knowing that many of us are hungry for God's power and presence, but we are just so full on the garbage of the world, of our phones, of the internet, of just everything that the Lord has to that that that the world has to offer. That many of us cannot find the satisfaction that we're longing for. And what I just kinda sensed from the congregation, and maybe this isn't you, not everyone has to have this. And in fact, I had several conversations later that were very, very encouraging. And so it might not be you, but it was just a sense of maybe spiritual apathy at times, of lethargy, spiritual lethargy at times. It might just be like a like a sleepy spirit, like a, a spirit of slumber where it's like, I hate to say it, a lukewarmness to our faith.
And how is the Lord to address us in this season, where I know that if you're here on a Sunday morning in in this area, it's because you want to be here. It's because you want a hunger for the Lord, but it is so hard to cultivate that heart that hungers for the Lord. And so today we're going to talk about a practice, and I, I hope that you put some of the practices that we talked about last week in the place, but today we're going to talk about a practice that is designed to cultivate a hunger for the Lord. And maybe it is, if you are not experiencing a hunger for the Lord, that you have not practiced this to cultivate that in your life. Most of us really want to experience the presence of God, but we're so preoccupied that we have a hard time connecting with God. Isn't that true?
I think about the movie, OK, I'm gonna make a strong claim. You ready? Greatest animated film of all time, come at me, Wall-E, OK? Wall-E, greatest animated movie ever. All right. Wall-E is awesome. Not only is it a great animated movie, it's a thought piece. Like how many nights have like my last thought been about Wall-E? It just happens all the time. Here's the thing, Wall-E has like layers to it, because in this movie, in case you don't remember, the basic premise of this movie is in the not so far distant future, but it's in the, in the future. And, Americans, you know, just all consumerism has taken over all of American life and all of the world's life. And so the big corporation has devised a spaceship. Because the world is no longer habitable. And so they, they put everybody on the spaceship that can fit on the spaceship, and they fly them out and they leave robots to take care of the earth until it is habitable again. And so what do they do while they're on the spaceship, but they just force more consumerism upon the people.
It is wild because this is a Disney movie. And it has just got these layers of like, maybe, maybe our bosses aren't the best. so they just force feed these people junk food and entertainment. Junk food and entertainment, so that they're placated, so that generations go by and they forget what they're doing. And they forget their longing to be back in a place that's real. They have these fake screens and they have junk food and they are full. And they don't even know what they're missing. In fact, they become so obese that they can't even walk anymore. They're just moved around in these chairs around everywhere. And it takes a wake up call from a little robot named Wall-E.
And I think that this is an apt illustration of our generation. We live in abundance, do we not? Most of us throw away more food than many people every day, than many people in this world live off of everyday. When you feel hungry, what do you do? One little hunger pang, I'll have a little food. One little pang of boredom, I'll have a TikTok video or 2, or 17 or the next thing I know, 3 hours. We are people. Who are too distracted to have a hunger from God. I see this is not a new problem. This is a problem that's been around for generations.
Before the advent of the iPhone, we had a man named CS Lewis that we quote all the time, and CS Lewis said this about the author Narnia, you know, he said this, he said, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We're half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum, because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.
And so the biblical method of stopping the force feeding of the world. And I'm gonna get to what Jesus has to say in just a moment. But the biblical method of stopping the force feeding of the world and to cultivate a hunger for God. Is a spiritual practice of fasting, a largely forgotten and mostly ignored spiritual practice of fasting. Fasting is all about fostering a hunger for God. Mark Sayers puts it this way, he says fasting is a way to desecularize our hearts. Isn't that something we long for, for our heart that's desecularized. If John Piper, I love this quote, This is so good. He says, if you don't feel strong desires for the manifest, I can't do it without a little bit of Piper voice, for the manifestation of the glory of God. It's not because you've drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world.
Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there's no room for the great. God did not create you for this. There is an appetite for God, and it can be awakened. The church, it can be awakened. You can be hungry for God again. Because I do believe that many of you at one point had that hunger. We must be people who are not satisfied by going through the mundane steps, the mundane rituals of what it looks like to be a Christian. We must be a people who have a genuine, heartfelt hunger for God's manifold presence, his loving kindness, his goodness, his greatness upon our lives. Christianity without that hunger is a bland dish with no flavor at best, and at worst it is a rancid dish that no one wants to be anywhere near.
Today's passage is actually not an example of Jesus fasting. It's an example of Jesus feasting. But I think in this passage, we get this understanding of why people fast and why Jesus' disciples are feasting and why we might fast and feast. So let's dive into here because fasting without feasting is just empty religion, as we will see. Verse 14, then the disciples of John came to him saying, why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? Now we have to assume that this is probably a genuine question. These are not the Pharisees. A lot of times when people come to Jesus with this sort of question, they're trying to That's Jesus in one of those gotcha moments, you know. But here it's not a gotcha moment. This is from the disciples of John, who were generally friendly with the disciples of Jesus. In fact, John is pointing people toward Jesus and trying to get people to worship Jesus as the Messiah. And so they're coming and they're asking this honest question.
This honest question comes within the context of Jesus just enjoyed a dinner with tax collectors and those who are known as sinners. It is the unseemly crowd. He is enjoying a party with his disciples and many others who the religious folks might not be caught dead with. And so they're asking, they're coming with this context, saying, Jesus, why is it That your disciples are marked by celebration and joy, and we are marked by mourning and longing for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Why is it that your disciples are feasting while we are fasting? Shouldn't you be taking your spiritual life a little bit more seriously, Jesus? That's the that's the subtext here, which is just, you know, it's humorous. God, shouldn't you be taking your spiritual life more seriously?
And Jesus said to them, verse 15, can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? Obviously a rhetorical question, but Jesus is getting to the heart of fasting here. You see, in ancient Jewish culture, fasting was usually done during a time of mourning. And so you would mourn, and so you would fast. It was during serious moments that you would fast. During moments where you needed to make a serious life altering decision, where you were feeling a moment of repentance or tragedy, you would mourn.
And by fasting, what would happen in this ancient Jewish culture is that you would deprive yourself of worldly satisfaction while you search for joy from God. But here's the question that Jesus turns on them and says, if God is walking around with you. Why are you fasting? If you're searching for joy from God, why would you fast? He's right here. Isn't that the whole point that you fast so that you might feast upon what God has to offer? And so Jesus likens his presence to that of a wedding day. No one should be fasting on a wedding day. There is no diet, there is no calorie counting or any of that silliness on a wedding day. You feast on the wedding day. And so Jesus is saying, look, if you knew who I was, you would be celebrating too.
And so Jesus continues, says says says the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. And obviously here Jesus is alluding to his crucifixion. And the fact that he will not always be with his disciples, and his ascension that he would go from us and he wouldn't be with us, and then fasting would resume. And so I just want you to pick up on this, OK? If you're if you're skeptical of that, we've often times talked about fasting as this thing for the spiritual green berets of our culture. Fasting is just something that Jesus assumes that his followers will do though. He says, The days will come when the bridegroom is taken from them, and then they will fast. He just assumes.
Now I need to make a confession as I preach this, OK? Fasting is something, it's a part of a it's a spiritual practice that I'm not particularly skilled and experienced in. And so this is like one of those things. I feel like I've almost preached as many sermons about fasting as days I have fasted at this point. I am not disciplined in fasting, and that I need to change that. I need to make this a, a change, um. When I fast, it's not pleasant. I, I lose concentration. I'm, I'm not, I'm a, I, I don't enjoy it. So earlier this week I was praying about, fasting. I was praying through the sermon. I was like, oh, I should fast to prepare for this. And then I proceeded to order DoorDash and ignore those, those promptings from the Lord. and then about an hour later, my DoorDash driver kept my food and I was fasting for the day. And sometimes God does that type of thing to get your attention.
Jesus offers two parables, that illustrate his point after he says this. He says, neither of the, he says neither of these are things that, 00, he has these two points, these two illustrations, OK? He, Jesus loves teaching a point and then giving a parable that kind of muddles up his point previously. but that's what he does here. He gives us two illustrations, neither of these. Things that are things that I have a ton of experience with. So maybe they're they're new to you also.
But the first one is this, verse 16. He says, no one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Now, many of us might have experience with the first part of this, in that clothing might shrink when you wash it, and especially if you dry it. we've experienced this. Maybe you put something into the washer for too long, used hot water when you should have used cold. For me, I throw things into the dryer, and for some reason they always shrink in the same place, which is like right here, you know. But maybe that has more to do with my body moving than the clothes. And so what Jesus is saying is if you have clothing that's been washed, that's been pre-shrunken, would you take a new unshrunken patch and sew it taunt onto the clothing? If you did, what would happen? Well, that patch would then shrink at a faster rate than the clothes, and it would tear. And so Jesus is saying, I can't just come and patch up your religious stuff. I can't just come and give more rules for your religion that you're already practicing. I've come to do something totally different.
And he gives another illustration. He says, and back in the day, he's talking about wine, and this is verse 17. Neither is new wine put into old wine skins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wine skins and both are preserved. Now we don't use wine skins anymore. We use bottles or if you're fancy, a box. And so we, we don't use these wine skins, but the way that the wine skins would work is they would get. A, it is like a leather pouch, essentially, that they would store, wine in. And everyone knew that you had to put wine that had not been fermented yet into a new leather pouch, because the leather then would still have room to expand. If it's leather or whatever material it is, it would still have room to expand at that point. But if you took new wine that hadn't been fermented, because fermentation requires some bubbling and some expanding, if you took new wine that hadn't been fermented yet. And you put it into old wine skins, it would burst the wine skins.
And so it's the same illustration as previously, which is, you can't just take something old and improve upon it. What he's not what he's doing. He says, I'm here to take your religion and to revolutionize it, to change it completely. I'm not coming just to make your spiritual practices have more meaning. I'm coming to change the meaning of your spiritual practices, is what Jesus is saying. Fasting is not a way to show your piousness, like the Pharisees. But fasting is a way to cultivate a heart that hungers for the presence of Jesus. And so we come again to this idea of fasting and feasting. Jesus is no longer with us. He's in heaven, of course, he's with the the Holy Spirit, the counselors with us. But we live in this world that oftentimes ignores his presence. We live in a world of abundance.
But in our abundance, what we find is that we often have a feeling of being full. Without ever feeling satisfied. We have feelings of fullness without satisfaction. If you long to have a hunger for God, the first thing you're going to have to do is to turn off the garbage pump that's constantly pumping in things that are filling you up, but not satisfying you. And so I know last week I kind of gave you a few tips. I, one of them, I, I just, I think I've actually heard from a few people who's not sleeping next to their phone anymore. A few folks. Amen. Praise God. I'm so glad that you've moved your phones, and I hope that that's helped slow down the garbage pump. But we might take another step of turning that garbage pump off, today with this idea of fasting.
Pastor in New York City, John Stark, he, he puts it this way, he spoke at our retreat last year. He said that all of us keep things in our lives that dampen our hunger for God. So we never feel the deep hunger pangs of our souls. We are always full, but never, never satisfied. That's where I got that from. Regular rhythms of fasting have a way of connecting our physical hunger to our spiritual hunger. The growl of our stomachs reminds us. That we also have a growl in our souls.
And so I'm, I'm gonna be super honest with you, fasting is difficult, no lie. I get hangry. I, honestly, it, it's one of those things where it feels so counterproductive because I'm so inefficient when I haven't had food to eat, and I just end up, I, I'm like, how long have I been staring at this wall? I have no idea. I've been distracted. But fasting is a way to cultivate a heart that longs for the Lord, and so it's ironic that I see it as inefficient when I'm supposed to be leading you all to have a heart that longs for the Lord. Is we use those hunger pangs to remind us to pray though, and to remind us to seek God that nothing on earth will truly satisfy.
And Jesus fasted, we know that he fasted. He did a 40 day fast in the wilderness, and he expects for us to fast. That not only did he fast, but he also feasted. And there's a time for fasting and a time for feasting. In fact, I think that all fasts should end with a feast, even if it's simple. So if you're going to fast, I'm gonna give you some tips for fasting here in a moment, but if you're going to fast, plan to end it with some sort of feast, even if it's a relatively simple one. But I have a friend who likes to say, hunger is the best sauce. I, I tell you, I, back in my early days, my young days, I used to run half marathons, never the big boy marathons, but, you know, the half ones. And, an off-brand protein bar can taste like a $40 lobster roll if you've run for 13 miles. It's just hunger is the best sauce. It makes you long for things.
So let me just give you a few practical applications for fasting. First, and this one might sound really, counterintuitive based upon how this whole sermon has gone. There are some of you in here who shouldn't fast from food. You should find other things to fast from, whether it be coffee or chocolate or dessert or whatever, because, one, you might have a medical condition that doesn't allow you to fast, and that is totally OK. Or two, you might have a relationship with food that is unhealthy. And it would be doing something in your soul that would be counterproductive to what you're doing. And so, just to throw that out there, some of you should ignore everything I have to say about fasting from food, but the majority of us should move forward with this and, and consider it.
A few tips here. If you've never fasted before, I'd recommend starting small, maybe with lunch, OK? So maybe you have a, a, a breakfast, a normal breakfast, not a 10:00 a.m. breakfast at Ball Square Cafe. But a normal breakfast, and then just skip lunch and take the time that you would use to eat lunch, to get along and to pray. Now it's very important, in fact, Jesus speaks about this a good bit, that you do not let other people know when you are fasting, because then that is your reward, that people are like, oh look how pious he is. That's great, look at him. He, he must be really holy to make his face so grouchy looking. You do not need to let anyone else know. But then you use the hunger pangs to lead you toward satisfaction in God and trusting in him. And then I would encourage you, even when it comes to dinner time, don't snack. Finish the meal, make your dinner, sit down, thank the Lord for it, and eat and enjoy and be reminded that food is just a, it, it is something that we can glorify God for, but it's not ultimate, right? And so a lot of times we, we do live like that. And then hopefully you can work up to like a 24 hour fast. And that's where you would eat dinner the night before, wake up in the morning, skip breakfast, skip lunch, you're gonna be getting really hungry at that point, really longing for the coming of the Lord, or at least of dinner. And then you, you have dinner. And I think that that's a really great pattern for many of us.
But I would encourage you, here's my challenge for you. Let's give it a try. Let's try fasting one day this week. I'll give you a special one time exemption on Jesus' command not to let other people know, OK? If you wanna talk about it with your community group, go for it, OK? Talk about your experience, but don't let your co-workers know that that's not in good taste. And so, you, let's try it this week. Let's see if we can cultivate that hunger for the Lord, and see if our experience next Sunday is any different. See if our spiritual lives can benefit from this. I hope that this experiment might shock some of us out of the spiritual stupor that we're living in and reinvigorate a hunger for God. But at worst, you just skip a meal, right?
So. What are the consequences? Church, we have to be, we are both a fasting and a feasting people. We fast because we long for more of Jesus. We feel the ache of his absence, and we hunger for his presence to fill us more fully. But we also feast because Jesus has come. We can celebrate. The bridegroom has arrived. The kingdom is here, though it is not yet at the same time. And nowhere is that more clear that the kingdom is here, but not yet than in this sacred holy meal that we celebrate at the table each week. Beautifully demonstrated. With this meal, we taste and see that the Lord is good. We take the cup and the bread with gratitude, remembering that the bridegroom gave his body and his blood for us. That Jesus fasted from worldly pleasures, so that we might enjoy his presence.
And now we follow him, but it's not because we, we, we have to fast, not because we have our lives all put together. You know, Jesus is able to delight in the Lord at all times, and so we're fasting so that we might delight in the Lord in those moments where we can be reminded of him. But Jesus has done the thing ultimately for us, that he lived the life that we could never live. He died the death that we deserve to die. And at the same time, while this is a a feast that the Lord is with us, it's still just a bite. We long for the wedding supper of the lamb. Will we be where we will be united with Christ and enjoy the feast that is to go for eternity, where we are celebrating with God. And on that day we will see Him face to face, we will fast no more, we will feast forever. We only fast as we long for the coming of the Lord. And so let this meal be something every week that we participate in it, we're awaiting the coming of the Lord. We do this until he comes again. We're being reminded that we're longing for that, and that is our ultimate priority. So if you would stand with me as we prepare our hearts to receive this meal from God as we feast partly, but also long for his coming fully.
God, we thank you for this meal. We pray that you would. That you would bless it, that you would fill us with your presence, that we would be a people that hunger for what you've done, that because of the life of Christ, that we get to have life in the Trinity with the Father, with the Son, with the Holy Spirit, and, and Holy Spirit now we pray that you would fill us, that you would give us this hunger and ambition to know you, to know you more clearly and to find satisfaction in you and not the things of this world. And so we ask these things in Christ's name that you would bless us and keep us, and God, I pray for anyone who is, who is not clear on if they know Christ. God, would you give them an introduction this morning? We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.