Because of His Reverence
Week 3: Lenten Fast 2024
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
Hebrews 5:7-14
Pray
From Fasting to Feasting
Lord, help us to crave spiritual milk without which we can never grow up into righteousness. Let us graduate to solid food that by it we are made productive for the kingdom. Christ our savior not only abstained from bodily cravings, but he gave up the ultimate of sacrifices — his life for ours, our punishment for him — so we might live with God.
We want to hear you. We want to obey you. We want to revere you. We want to see your people feast in the land now and until we are filled in all fullness at the return of your son, Jesus Christ. In that name we pray. Amen.
Sovereignty and Surrender
The Christian life is a life of fasting.
According to Martin Luther in his book Concerning Christian Liberty, Christian fasting is useful:
On this principle every man may easily instruct himself in what measure, and with what distinctions, he ought to chasten his own body. He will fast, watch, and labor, just as much as he sees to suffice for keeping down the wantonness and concupiscence of the body. But those who pretend to be justified by works are looking, not to the mortification of their lusts, but only to the works themselves; thinking that, if they can accomplish as many works and as great ones as possible, all is well with them, and they are justified.
Luther is certain to point out that fasting, while useful for chastening the body’s sinful desires, provides nothing for our justification before God. In other words, we can’t work our way to being made right with God for eternity.
The work of fasting is a discipline to regulate our consumption. But that is only one side of the coin.
Fasting should also be a discipline to facilitate our production.
For a worker’s purpose is not to consume but to produce.
Nevertheless, it is necessary for a body to consume fuel for energy if it is going to do the work needed to produce.
It is a paradox, then, to say our fasting gives us the energy to work. Yet, it is a truth that the word of God teaches. The question: do we learn it?
If we don’t take the initiative to learn it, God will.
The Lord God spoke with the prophet Amos.
Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I was no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. But the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’
Amos 7:14-15
God calls Amos into prophecy. By it, God chastises the Israelites for their sinful desires. Namely, the people produce for the purpose of consuming, metaphorically cannibalizing one another.
[They] make the ephah small and the shekel great
and deal deceitfully with false balances,
that [they] may buy the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals
and sell the chaff of the wheat
Amos 8:5
God promises to discipline them by turning their feasts into mourning. He will send a famine on the land. But this famine will not deprive them of bread or water. Rather, it will deprive them of him, namely them hearing his voice.
They shall wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it.
Amos 8:12
Like Amos, a local missionary heard God’s calling him into Fellowship of Christian Athletes ministry. When he saw birds eating feed that had fallen off a truck departing the fertilizer plant where he worked, he knew God was speaking: if I care this much to feed the birds, how much more do I care for you?
So, having “listened” and heard, he spoke back by saying, God, I’m in! But you’re going to have to build whatever it is you want me to do.
This man did not hear from God and then take it as license to go it alone and do things his own way. In every way he depended on hearing from the Lord, he would depend on God to build whatever he had for him.
This takes ears to hear. And it takes surrender to God’s sovereignty.
Our fasting is meant to turn us away from the “wantonness and concupiscence of the body,” as Luther put it.
When we turn away from one thing, we turn towards another thing.
So, when we turn away from material gluttony, we do it to turn towards a spiritual feasting on the word of God. We give up pursuing our own sovereignty and we surrender to God’s sovereignty.
This is how God builds us and builds his kingdom through us.
If we are not making a point to go to God’s word, we will be spiritually malnourished, famished and unfruitful — because we’ll hear nothing from him.
But God, the creator and builder, is intimately involved in his creation. He has the building plans, and they involve making his creatures productive.
I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,
and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.
I will plant them on their land,
and they shall never again be uprooted
out of the land that I have given them,”
says the Lord your God.
Amos 9:14-15
We know that only in Christ are our fortunes restored, our cites rebuilt and inhabited, our vineyards planted and their produce enjoyed.
Only by and in the seed of Christ are we planted and never uprooted from eternal soil.
Only in the rule and reign of Christ does our fast turn to feast.
We grow and build because we hear from God through Jesus, our great high priest. We hear from God because we fast from the sinful desires of the flesh and feast on the milk — and then solid food — that is the word of righteousness.
Proclaim Christ exalted.
Let us fast from all food together from 12 noon today until 12 noon tomorrow. Please feel free to define your own parameters for joining in this fast, e.g. times, days, and dietary needs, as we seek to draw near to the Lord during a season of penitent prayer.
