Those Who Mourn
Week 4: Lenten Fast 2024
Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
Jonah 3:4-10
Pray
From Fasting to Feasting
In your great mercy and judgement, father, bring us to a place of sorrow over our sins. Restore to us a spirit of gladness, that our joy may be filled in our great savior, lord, and comforter. Call us to a fasting from our man-centered economy of progress, that our building would bring us into the purpose made in us by you, our Creator. In Jesus we pray. Amen.
Mourning and Mercy
The Christian life is a life of fasting.
We fast so that we would be nourished, that we would be humbled, that we would build.
We build the Kingdom by feasting on the word and presence of the Lord.
But building ain’t easy.
So, we fast for strength to press through the failures, struggles, and obstacles of our own making.
Tertullian, church father and apologist living in the second and third centuries, wrote of the relationship between fasting and prayer for the purpose of repentance. He wrote:
“fasting being, of course, the escorting attendant of their prayers. For peril has no time for food, nor sackcloth any care for satiety's refinements. Hunger is ever the attendant of mourning, just as gladness is an accessory of fullness.”
The Lord sent the prophet Jonah to Nineveh, to announce promised peril and call the city to repentance.
Nineveh was an “exceedingly great city.” The people were builders, yet Jonah told them they would be overthrown in 40 days.
The city responded by calling a fast.
Like theirs, when the battle to build rages against us, we fast so that our prayers of desperation run swift to the ear of our Lord, that we might not lose anything or anyone.
It is, of course, our sin that causes our casualties in battle.
It was sin that brought Jonah to prophesy in Nineveh. It is our iniquities, as the prophet Isaiah said, that create separation between us and God — that blocks God’s ears from hearing our cries.
And the petitions of our cries would be left unheard if it were not for the great high priest interceding on our behalf, taking us and our prayers to God.
In the sermon on the mount, Jesus said,
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Matthew 5:4
Our sin causes us to lose things we love, namely fellowship with God. But for those who mourn the sin that separates, Jesus promises comfort.
For one who acknowledges his fault in the battle, and turns from his own ways in order to have his losses restored, God promises he will be comforted forever in the blood-bought redemption of the one and only mediator, Jesus Christ.
Even more, God promises this salvation to all his church.
Let our fasting bring our prayers to God, confessing our sins, and building up the body of believers.
Just the way King Darius did for Daniel after he threw him in the lion’s den:
The king declared to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!” And a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel. Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; no diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him.
Daniel 6:16b-18
Let’s fast and pray. And behold the Lord’s merciful salvation of his Kingdom builders.
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.
