Blog
On Christian Fasting
The Consistory of Ascension Reformed Church has adopted the following as instruction and guidelines for the congregation’s observance of the National Day of Prayer and other days of fasting.
Introduction
We have spoken in recent weeks about the significance of feasting and how it is a key metaphor for helping us understand what true, abundant life is all about. But there is another biblical concept that we want to address, and that is fasting. There are a few reasons for this. First and most importantly, the Bible teaches us that fasting is an appropriate Christian discipline. Secondly, we expect that this is neglected in our church; to our shame, your officers see this in their own lives. Thirdly, there are particular instances in the Bible when fasting is especially appropriate and an example of this is approaching, the National Day of Prayer.
In what follows, we provide a brief overview of the biblical teaching on fasting. Then, we provide some practical guidance.
Biblical Teaching
1. What, exactly, is fasting?
In his first book, Internalizing the Faith, Pastor Brandon provides a helpful definition:
“Fasting is abstaining from food or some enjoyment for a period of time for spiritual concerns, focusing on Christ and His purposes in the world.”
Most often, the Bible tells us that a fasting person abstains from food. At other times, abstention from water is explicitly noted. We might think, as well, about other forms of bodily enjoyment that could be laid aside. Daniel avoided applying oil to his body, something that both cleansed and revitalized a person (Dan. 10:3). He also avoided culinary delicacies like meat and wine. Uriah refused to lie with his wife, due to the dire situation facing Israel, the ark, and the armies of God (2 Sam. 11:11). In 1 Cor. 7:5, Paul instructs married couples that they may agree to abstain from intimacy for a time in order to devote themselves to prayer. There are also instances where fasting includes abstaining from sleep, e.g., Anna the prophetess (Luke 2:37) and King Darius (Dan. 6:18).
2. Fasting is appropriate under the new covenant.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus provides instruction to His blessed kingdom. He takes up fasting in Matthew 6:16-18, saying when you fast. Clearly, Jesus expected that fasting would be practiced by His disciples. This is supported by the fact that fasting is one of three acts of piety He was addressing in that context. First, Jesus spoke of giving to the poor: when you give to the needy (twice in Matt. 6:2,3). Second, He said when you pray (three times in Matt. 6:5-7). Third, He said, when you fast (twice in Matt. 6:16-18). It is undeniable that caring for the poor and prayer are essential to new covenant Christianity. Fasting falls into that category.
Jesus also helps us understand that fasting is appropriate for us when He answered the disciples of John and of the Pharisees (Matt. 9:14-15, see also Mark 2:18,19,20 & Luke 5:33,34,35). They asked, Why don’t your disciples fast? By using the metaphor of the bridegroom to refer to Himself, Jesus explained that it was impossible for His disciples to fast while He was with them. But that the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. Our bridegroom is absent from us, having ascended to heaven; therefore, it is appropriate that we fast and mourn His absence.
The Acts of the Apostles tells us twice that Christians spent time fasting. Both of these instances related to the ordination and appointment of church officers: Acts 13:2-3 and Acts 14:23. Fasting accompanied their worship and fervent prayer.
3. Christian fasting is an act of piety toward the Lord.
As health fads come and go, it is common to hear of different sorts of fasts and detox regimens. While there may be health benefits to fasting, that is not the purpose of Christian fasting, since it is directed toward the Lord, not toward oneself. We undertake it for spiritual health and spiritual concerns, not for bodily health. Recall the teaching of Christ with respect to the bridegroom. We will feast one day, when He is present. For now, we fast because He is absent. Fasting has respect to Christ; it revolves around His Person.
Anna the prophetess also demonstrates this Christ-centered approach to fasting. She spent much of her life living inside the Temple, praying and fasting. She was praying for the deliverance of Israel, and Luke’s Gospel presents the infant Jesus as the answer to her prayers. The redemption that she longed for, embodied in prayer and fasting, had finally arrived in the Person of Christ.
In the prophecy of Zechariah, we read that fasting is not acceptable before the Lord if it is not directed toward Him. The Jews had wondered why the Lord was not answering their prayers and fasts. He answered by asking the rhetorical question, “Was it for me that you fasted?” (Zech. 7:5) The implication is that they had so corrupted fasting that it was self-serving. The verses that follow indicate that the Jews persisted in disregarding the teaching of God’s law. They were full of pride while they fasted before the Lord.
4. We humble ourselves when we fast.
As in the aforementioned text from Zechariah 7, Isaiah 58:3-6 tells us that the Jews were perplexed as to why the Lord was not answering their fasts and prayers. The Lord replied that their humility was only external. They pursued their own pleasure on their days of fasting and indulged in wicked speech and the oppression of the lowly. The Lord commanded them to fast from wickedness. Sharing bread with the lowly is more pleasing to the Lord than refraining from bread. Clothing the lowly is more pleasing to Him than going about in sackcloth. In other words, if true humility of life is neglected, fasting is nothing more than outward theater that the Lord disdains.
But this shouldn’t cause us to avoid fasting. There were times when the Lord withheld food from the Jews, something of a “forced fast,” because He wanted to humble them. In Deuteronomy 8:3, the Lord told Israel that He let them go hungry in the wilderness (he humbled you and let you hunger) in order to teach them that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.
Our chief example of personal humility in fasting is that of Jesus Christ. As He embarked upon His public ministry, the Lord drove Him into the wilderness to fast for forty days. His faithfulness in the midst of humility and hunger provides the antithesis to Israel, whose forty years in the wilderness were characterized by grumbling (Matt. 4:2, see also Luke 4:2). Of course, the humiliation of Christ only continued in His earthly ministry, as He went from the actual wilderness to the spiritual wilderness of the crucifixion and wrath of God.
5. Fasting is fitting for times of repentance.
Each year, the Jews would fast for the Day of Atonement. It was so etched into their minds that it could simply be called “the Fast” (Acts 27:9). The Old Testament doesn’t indicate this explicitly, but the Jews understood that fasting was intended when they were told to afflict (or humble) themselves in preparation for that momentous occasion. After all, on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. The Jews brought food and drink offerings to the Lord while they abstained from food and drink themselves. The clear inference is that fasting was an avenue for the Jews to humble themselves due to their sins, as they repented and sought forgiveness from the Lord.
But a corporate act of repentance was not reserved only for the Day of Atonement. Joel’s prophecy, which may have been a liturgical form, provides guidelines for how Israel should have responded to famine in the land of Canaan, because this was an indication of God’s judicial curse. To undertake corporate repentance, Joel declared, consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. They should fast, weep, and mourn their sins and return to [the Lord]. This should not be merely outward repentance, but also inward: rend your hearts, and not your garments (Joel 2:12-16, see also Neh. 1:4; 9:1f.).
Fasting was also appropriate for an individual who was repenting for sins. We could turn to King Ahab, who humbled himself in repentance for the death of Naboth. The Lord was pleased with Ahab’s response of repentance to that wicked situation (1 Kings 21:9-27). Daniel is another individual that undertook a fast before the Lord. In Daniel 9:3, we read that he realized that the seventy years of exile would soon come to an end, so he prayed earnestly with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. He interceded for Israel and for the Temple, confessing his own sins and those of the nation and their forefathers. He pleaded for forgiveness.
6. Fasting embodies our spiritual desperation.
Imagine the physical desperation someone experiences when they cannot find food or water. They will do almost anything to escape that situation. When a Christian brings this upon oneself, it is for the sake of embodying one’s spiritual desperation.
When the Jews were desperate for the Lord to provide them with direction, they fasted, prayed, and offered sacrifices (Judges 20:26). When the Jews were desperate for salvation from the sword of their enemies, they fasted, confessed sin, prayed, and offered sacrifices (1 Sam. 7:6; 2 Chr. 20:3). When David saw his son approaching death, he fasted in desperation for the Lord’s salvation (2 Sam. 12:16-23). When Ezra realized their desperate need for protection on a journey, he proclaimed a fast (Ezra 8:21-23). When King Ahasuerus issued a decree that all Jews be put to death, the Jews responded by fasting, weeping, and lamenting. They turned to the Lord in their desperation and asked Him to save. The royal psalmist, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, prayed for His enemies with fasting, asking the Lord to deliver them from illness and misery (Ps. 35:13).
7. Fasting is suitable for times of grief and lament.
There are also instances where God’s people respond to a death with fasting. It is not because they are attempting to raise the deceased from the dead. But fasting gave expression to their grief and misery. At the news of King Saul’s death, soldiers fasted for seven days (1 Sam. 31:13; 1 Chr. 10:12). David and his men observed a fast, as well, when they heard of Saul’s death (2 Sam. 1:12).
8. Fasting is not meritorious.
The Lord gives us good and appropriate religious practices, like fasting. But, in our sin, we take the best of things and corrupt them. We might think of how the hypocrites corrupted prayer, as they stood on the street corners and “showed off,” in order that everyone could see their piety (Matt. 6:5), how the Pharisees boasted of their knowledge of the Scriptures, or how hypocrites corrupted the giving of alms to the poor (Matt. 6:2). They turned good practices into merit badges to stroke their self-righteousness. The problem was not with the practice, but with personal sin that corrupted the practice.
The same can be said of fasting. Abuses of fasting are noted in Scripture, e.g., the aforementioned Isa. 58:3-6. Jesus knew of these abuses and the sinfulness of the human heart; yet, He still said, when you fast. He directed us away from the abuse and clarified how to fast appropriately. Instead of displaying our fast for everyone to see, we should conceal it, in order that it is between God and us. Instead of boasting with the Pharisee, I fast twice a week and tithe faithfully!, we should beat our breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”Fasting earns us nothing. It is supposed to declare the exact opposite by embodying our humility before the Lord.
Practical Guidelines
As we have noted, we would encourage you to consider fasting on the Day of Prayer. Our authorities have asked us to pray for our nation, and, knowing the true and living God, we of all people should respond. But how might we go about this?
1. Pray for our nation with humble, desperate prayers.
Everyone knows that our country is in a difficult place. Surely, we differ as to the underlying reasons for this. We desire similar things, but achieving those ends seems impossible. Let us pray fervently for the Lord to restrain His hand of judgment and bring peace and blessing to our country.
2. Confess your sins and those you see around you.
We may be prone to see only the sins of those that are on the other side of the political aisle. In fasting, we should, first and foremost, humble ourselves. We begin by confessing our own sins. Only then do we acknowledge and confess the sins we see around us.
3. Refrain from food for a significant period of time. Perhaps refrain from drink.
We are not encouraging you to put yourself in a situation where you will pass out from lack of food or drink. Oftentimes, the Jew would spend the day of fasting in one place, work being set to the side. You need to think about this with respect to the nature of your work. Perhaps it would be perfectly safe for you to spend 24 hours without food, or maybe you just skip lunch. Perhaps you cannot completely refrain from food, so you confine yourself to salads. There are various ways to go about this. The thing we seek is to be physically humbled by our abstinence, in order to embody and encourage spiritual humility before the Lord.
4. Remember that physical humility can lead to spiritual humility.
Our culture is very concerned about being inauthentic. Of course, we must avoid hypocrisy, but we often overreact to this fear by imagining that our heart always leads our bodies. Therefore, if our heart isn’t in a particularly humble position, we conclude that we shouldn’t humble our bodies: “Wouldn’t that be hypocritical?” We need to understand that what is physical also affects what is non-physical. What we do with our body affects our heart and soul. You may begin the Day of Prayer without feelings of desperation and humility on behalf of our country, but our bodily practice of fasting can help you end the day with this realization. What we do with our bodies matters, and fasting is one area where this reality comes to bear upon us.
John Calvin and the Sacramental Word
This is a guest post by Drew Admiraal, a member of our church, a licensed exhorter in the URCNA, and an M.Div. student at Westminster Seminary California. One of the great and somewhat forgotten confessions of the Reformation is the Second Helvetic Confession, written by Heinrich Bullinger in 1562. Bullinger begins it with a chapter […]
Genève Cathédrale St. Pierre Innen Kanzel 1. Zairon Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
This is a guest post by Drew Admiraal, a member of our church, a licensed exhorter in the URCNA, and an M.Div. student at Westminster Seminary California.
One of the great and somewhat forgotten confessions of the Reformation is the Second Helvetic Confession, written by Heinrich Bullinger in 1562. Bullinger begins it with a chapter on Holy Scripture in which he discusses the perfections of Scripture in three articles. He, then, turns to the preaching of the Word in article four. Here he writes that when Scripture “is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very word of God is proclaimed… and that now the word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; for even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the word of God remains still true and good.”[1]
This is an amazing claim for Bullinger to make. Not only is Scripture the Word of God, but that preaching that comes from an ordained minister and conforms to Scripture is itself the Word of God. So as the very Word of God, preaching is a truly divine act. But Bullinger was very aware of the truly human nature of preaching as well. Even if the minister is evil and a sinner, if his message is biblical, Bullinger claims that it should still be regarded as the Word of God. So preaching on the basis of Scripture is a truly divine and a truly human activity. How can this be?
John Calvin provides a helpful paradigm for understanding preaching as both truly divine and truly human in his concept of the sacramental word.[2] Calvin, like Bullinger, held the highest view of preaching as the speech of God himself.[3] On Calvin’s view, Christ and all his benefits is the content of both Word and sacrament. And the necessary link between the words of the preacher and Christ, who is held forth to us in those words, is the same as that which is between the signs of a sacrament and Christ, who is signified to us in the sacrament, the Holy Spirit.[4]
On the Reformed view, there are three components to the sacraments: the tangible external sign (water, bread, wine), the inward and invisible grace signified (Christ and all his benefits), and the union between the sign and thing-signified effected by the Holy Spirit. This is how Calvin understood not only the sacraments but the preaching of the Word. The words of the minister are an external, tangible sign and when these words are based on Scripture, they present Christ and all his benefits. The union between the two is effected by the Holy Spirit.
As we read in Romans 10:17, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” It is in the faithful preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ that the Holy Spirit unites the sign of the words of the minister with what is signified, Christ and all his benefits, making the preaching of the Word effective for those whom God draws to himself. The Holy Spirit creates faith through this Word, bringing sinners from death to life, and sustains Christians in their faith through this same Word as he communicates Christ and all his benefits to them. Understanding preaching as a divine and human activity should have significant implications for our worship. God is pleased to use the means of preaching by weak and sinful men to communicate his grace in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to its hearers. This means that preaching should hold the central place in the worship of the church, that all Christians should make it a priority to attend a church where the Word of God is preached faithfully, and that we should trust that as we hear the Word preached, putting our faith in Christ, not only are we hearing a minister in front of us, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are receiving Christ and all his benefits.
Nurture 2022: Christian parenting conference
Friday, August 12, 2022 6-8pm at 3620 Epley Lane, Cincinnati The Lord has given Christian parents an awesome opportunity and responsibility to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. This means holistic discipleship of their head, heart, and hands. How can we undertake this intimidating – yet exciting – task with […]
Friday, August 12, 2022
6-8pm at 3620 Epley Lane, Cincinnati
The Lord has given Christian parents an awesome opportunity and responsibility to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. This means holistic discipleship of their head, heart, and hands.
How can we undertake this intimidating – yet exciting – task with faithfulness and wisdom, especially as the world vies for their affections? How can we teach our children well?
You’re invited to join us for an evening that promises to be informative, encouraging, and empowering.
This year’s guest speaker will be the Rev. Brad Peppo. After working as a Christian school teacher and an attorney, Brad entered the ministry and has been a church planter in SW Ohio. But he has also remained heavily involved in Christian education and is currently working to start Reformation Classical Academy in Dayton, serving as both a board and faculty member.
Talk 1. “Why we teach”
Talk 2. “Why we teach what we teach”
Our own pastors will also give a brief presentation on the practice of catechizing children in the home.
Childcare will be provided for younger children. Reach out if you have any questions.