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R edeem er Bible Church

Unreserved Accountability to Christ. Undeserved Acceptance from Christ.

Loving God, Part Five:

Inflaming Our Love through Fasting
Selected Scriptures

Introduction
It is a miracle that any of us loves the Lord. I do not say this lightly. It is literally
miraculous that any sinful person would love God. Romans 1 describes men in their
fallen condition as haters of God. The Apostle Paul tells Titus to remind the Christians
in Crete that before they came to know the Lord, they were “hateful, hating one another”
(Titus 3:1).

The Bible says that men are naturally God’s enemies. We love the darkness
rather than the light. We are blinded by our own sin. We willfully suppress the truth in
our unrighteousness. We are dead in trespasses and sins. We are positively hostile
toward God. In our sinful condition, there is nothing about the Lord and his rule that we
find attractive, except, of course, when the circumstances of our lives go our way—
when we’re successful. But even then, our hostility toward God manifests itself in our
failure to thank him for the good things we enjoy, saying ungrateful things like, “I’ve
been lucky” rather than ascribing to him the honor due his name.

This was our condition. And it was not a condition that we in our own strength
could overcome. Romans 6:17 says, “But thanks be to God that though you were
slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you
were committed.” We were held in bondage by our own sin. Paul told the Corinthian
Christians that the god of this age had blinded our unbelieving minds so that we would
not be able to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4). And
Romans 8:8 says that those who are in the flesh are unable to please God.

So the fact that there is a group of people in love with this omnipotent and
sovereign God is a miracle of the highest order. Once we were blind and now we see.
Once we were God’s enemies and now we are his friends. Once we were suppressors
of the truth, now we long for its exposure. Once we were dead in trespasses and sins,
now we are alive to God in Christ. Once we were ungrateful and unthankful, now our
hearts are full of gratitude and thanksgiving for all that the Lord has done. Once we
were haters of God, and now we love him!

First Peter 1:8 says that though we do not see him, we love him, and rejoice with
inexpressible and glorious joy. Affections that were once hostile have been transformed
into affections that are full of endearment. What an amazing turn of events! What a
miracle. God-haters have become God-lovers. Can you believe that you are a
Christian? Can you believe that you love the Lord?

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Now perhaps you can’t answer the question I’ve just asked. Perhaps you can’t
answer as to whether or not you believe you love the Lord because you are not sure if
you do. And the reason you’re not sure is that you don’t feel love for him right now.
Maybe you can’t even remember the last time you felt genuine affection for God. Your
Christian life has been so dry, so lacking in affection for the Lord, that you cannot
honestly say that you do love him.

I say “honestly” because I know how easily we can rationalize our lack of love for
the Lord. We so easily dupe ourselves into thinking we love him. We will even go so
far as to say that the Bible doesn’t teach that we need to feel love for God. We will turn
1 John 5:3 into a way of escaping the obvious conclusion that the longings of our hearts
have elicited from us. We will read: “This is the love of God: that we keep his
commandments.” And we will say, “I must love the Lord because I do what he
commands.”

But do you really do what he commands? How about this one: “You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and
with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). We are commanded to love God with all our
hearts. That means that we are obligated by a divine mandate to offer up affection for
him. So let us resolve to be honest with ourselves in the face of God. What are you
feeling for the Lord—even right now? Do you feel love for him? Can you say that you
love the Lord? Can you say, “I love you, Lord” and mean it?

If you can’t, you should be concerned. You should be concerned because your
lack of love for the Lord may be indicative of a lack of the presence of the indwelling
Holy Spirit. And “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to
him” (Romans 8:9).

Romans 5:5 says that “the love of God has been poured out within our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” What this means is that one of the marks
of the presence of the Holy Spirit is the presence of love for God. So if you don’t have
love for God, you don’t have the Holy Spirit, and if you don’t have the Holy Spirit, you
are not a Christian.

So do not think that simply because you believe that the Christian faith is true or
right or good that you are a Christian. Do not think that simply because you have
served in the church and exercised what have appeared to be spiritual gifts to the
advantage of others that you are a Christian. If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to
be accursed. If you do not love the Lord, you are not a believer. So be concerned.

Now I should add that this concern should not be limited to testing yourself to see
if you are in the faith. For you can be a true Christian and struggle with waning affection
for God. So if you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, if the love of God has
been shed abroad in your heart through the Holy Spirit he has given you, and yet you
find yourself in a dry condition when it comes to your love for the Lord, you need to be
concerned as well. You need to be concerned because a lack of love for the Lord is a

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sin. And as sin, you need to deal with it decisively. You cannot let it persist. Hebrews
3:7-12 says,

Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if you hear his voice, do
not harden your hearts as when they provoked me, as in the day of trial in the
wilderness, where your fathers tried me by testing me, and saw my works for
forty years. Therefore I was angry with this generation, and said, ‘They always
go astray in their heart, and they did not know my ways’; As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’” Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one
of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.

If your heart is hard, if you lack affection for the Lord, it is an issue of unbelief.
For we love the Lord we do not see with the eyes of faith. And you need to take care
lest you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. You need to be concerned.

Hoping in the Grace of God

Having, I think, sufficiently warned you, I must also say that though you should
be deeply concerned over your lack of love for God, you should not despair. There is
hope.

As we have said, it is a sheer miracle that our hearts would be inclined to God in
the first place. Our love for the Lord is not the product of our efforts. We did not work
up the love of God in our hearts—he put it there. Our love for the Lord is solely the
product of his grace. And the love that we are demanded to offer him is no different.
We are not only saved by grace, but we are sanctified by grace as well. We start with
grace and we stand in grace.

So the love that we have and continue to show is a wonderful and undeserved
gift from God’s sovereign hand. We were created to love him, to delight in him, to
glorify and enjoy him now and forever. And in Christ Jesus he has reconciled us to
himself. By his grace, he has changed our hearts that we might love him.

And the truth that love for God is the product his grace is what gives us hope.
Why? Well, think about it. If we were to rely on our own resources for offering the love
that God requires, how successful would we be? How much love for the Lord do you
have in your heart right now? Is it perfect, full-orbed, completely consuming,
wholehearted love? Is it equivalent to Jesus’ love for the Father? When you lay your
head on your pillow at night, can you truly say that you loved the Lord your God with all
your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength that day? When we are
honest with ourselves, we recognize that all our love for God falls short of what he
requires.

So the grace of God gives us hope because it means that our love for him does
not ultimately depend upon us, it depends upon him. So I ask you: Is he a reliable
resource? Is the Holy Spirit powerful to affect a change of heart? Does our God ever
sleep or slumber? Can his power for righteousness ever be exhausted? Never!
Therein is our hope. All the resources that we need to love him are found in him. And

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all he is, is ours in Jesus Christ. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in
Christ (Ephesians 1:3).

Of course, the big question is this: how do we access the grace we need to love
him like we should? Well, the answer is found in what has been called the means of
grace. And as you know, the means of grace refer to “any activities within the
fellowship of the church that God uses to give more grace to Christians.”1 And what we
need to love him is exactly that—more grace!

So far in our series on loving God we have examined the means of meditation,
prayer, and fellowship. This morning we will look together at one more: the means of
fasting.

Fasting
Today we don’t hear much about fasting in American evangelicalism. It is a
Christian discipline that has fallen into disuse. And yet, as one author has said, fasting
“is the acceptance of a divine invitation to experience [God’s] grace in a special way.”2
Through fasting God invites us to partake of the table of his delights in a unique way.

Turn in your Bibles to Matthew 6:16-18:

"Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for
they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are
fasting. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you fast,
anoint your head and wash your face so that your fasting will not be noticed by
men, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done
in secret will reward you."

The first thing that I want you to notice about Jesus’ teaching concerning fasting
is that it is assumed that his followers would fast. In verse 16 Jesus says, “Whenever
you fast,” and in verse 17 he says “when you fast.” Though fasting is not commanded
of Christians; nevertheless, it is assumed that Christians would fast. And in the context,
it is understood to be as normal to the Christian life as almsgiving (verses 2-3) and
prayer (verses 5-7).

Now the burden of Jesus’ teaching here in Matthew 6 is the manner of our
fasting—how we are to do it. Verse 1 summarizes what Jesus is conveying in verses 2-
18. Read it with me: Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be
noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in
heaven. He then goes on to use almsgiving, prayer, and fasting as examples of such
righteousness—acts of righteousness that can be performed for the glory of man rather
than the glory of God.

1
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 1994), 950, italics omitted.
2
Donald S Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1991),
176.

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So in verses 16-18, Jesus wants us to fast in such a way as not to bring undue
attention to ourselves, otherwise we forfeit the blessing that we ought to be seeking. He
tells us not to look sullen and gloomy; he tells us not to neglect our appearance as a
hypocrite would to call attention to his apparent devotion to the Lord. Instead, we are to
anoint our heads and wash our faces so as to keep our fast a secret—something
between God and us alone.

This, he says in verse 18 is so that our Father who sees what is done in
secret will reward us. If we want the blessing of the Father and not simply the passing
pleasure of the blessing of men, then we need to see to it that our fast be directed to
God alone.

All of this is as good as it goes: Fasting is assumed in the Christian life and
fasting is to be done for the pleasure of God alone as a way of experiencing his
blessing.

But what these verses leave out is as important as what they address; for we do
not learn from the text what fasting is, why we would do it, and what it means. To begin
to find these answers, turn to Matthew 9:14-17:

Then the disciples of John came to Him, asking, "Why do we and the
Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?"
And Jesus said to them, "The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn
as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when
the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. But no one puts
a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the
garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do people put new wine into old
wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the
wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are
preserved."

Apart from his initial 40-day fast in the desert immediately following his baptism,
Jesus practiced little, if any, fasting. Neither did his disciples fast. In Luke 7:33-34,
Jesus says, “For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and
you say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you
say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’”
So this is what prompts the question of verse 14: “Why do we and the Pharisees fast,
but Your disciples do not fast?”

Beginning in verse 15, Jesus answers their question. He gives two related
reasons with three illustrations. The first reason is contained in a single illustration of a
wedding. Notice verse 15: And Jesus said to them, “The attendants of the
bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But
the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they
will fast.” Very simply, Jesus is saying that now is not the time for fasting. It is not
that fasting is not important—there will be fasting (they will fast)—it is just that the
timing is wrong.

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What makes the timing wrong is that the attendants of the bridegroom cannot
morn as long as the bridegroom is with them. The first point I will mention is that
Jesus understands fasting to be associated with mourning. This he picks up from the
Old Testament. Fasting was used primarily for purposes of self-humiliation with regard
to sin, or to make some special request of the Lord out of a sense of anguish or despair
or longing. Fasting, therefore, was an expression of broken-heartedness and
desperation. You would fast because something was desperately wrong and you
longed for the deliverance only God could bring you.

Second, Jesus understands himself to be the bridegroom. As you know, in the

Old Testament, the bridegroom metaphor was frequently applied to the Lord himself.
Isaiah 54:5 says, “For your husband is your Maker, Whose name is the LORD of hosts;
And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, Who is called the God of all the earth.”
And in Hosea 2:19-20, the Lord says, “And I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will
betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, In lovingkindness and in compassion,
And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the LORD.”

So Jesus is saying something astonishing. He is saying that now is not a time for
mourning, for the bridegroom is with them. God’s promise for his presence among his
people is fulfilled. All their longing for the time of redemption is realized in the person of
Christ. So the reason they do not fast is that they have nothing about which to mourn.
Weddings are a time for feasting, not a time for fasting. The bridegroom of Israel is in
their midst. This situation is too happy, too thrilling to warrant fasting. Fasting is for
times of aching, yearning, and longing. All their aching, yearning, and longing has been
met with the presence of God’s Anointed.

So Jesus, if you will, is turning to the disciples of John the Baptist and reminding
them of the Baptist’s own words: “You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not
the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent ahead of Him.’ He who has the bride is the
bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices
greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made full”
(John 3:28-29).

But Jesus doesn’t end there. He says in the rest of verse 15 that the days will
come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. Our
bridegroom, as it were, began his feast with us, and in the middle of the feast he is
taken away.

Now this where is illustration should strike us as a bit strange. I mean, the idea
that you don’t mourn at a wedding makes perfect sense, but bridegrooms don’t leave
wedding feasts. They stay as long as the wine holds out.

So in Jesus’ explanation for the absence of present fasting he introduces an

oddity. Here is a story of a wedding celebration that a bridegroom suddenly leaves.
More than that, he is suddenly removed. Such a situation would have brought about
great mourning on the part of the guests, and especially the bride. This much is clear
enough.

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But there’s more. Keep in mind that this story is part of the response to a
question posed by the disciples of John; namely, “Why don’t your disciples fast like we
do?” In other words, Jesus is trying to establish the differences between the fasting of
the disciples of Christ and the fasting of the Pharisees and the disciples of John. This
passage sets forth two.

The first difference is that the fasting of the Pharisees and the disciples of John
anticipates the wedding day. In all their fasting they longed for the day of divine
visitation. Jesus’ disciples, on the other hand, need not fast; indeed, they cannot fast,
because it is the wedding day—the day of feasting has arrived. They don’t have to
anticipate what has already arrived.

The second difference is found in the odd removal of the bridegroom. In verse
15, he says that the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them,
and then they will fast. It is only after the bridegroom is suddenly removed from the
party that the groomsmen will fast. The Christian in the audience knows precisely what
this refers to—Jesus’ return to the Father. At that time, fasting will function a bit
differently. It will not only be prospective, but retrospective as well. It will look back to
the feast that Jesus began and look to the future for him to finish it. The bridegroom will
return for his groomsmen to finish the feast.

So Jesus’ answer to their question is that now is not the time for fasting but for
rejoicing. What John’s disciples fail to understand is that Jesus’ presence means that
they don’t have to fast any longer. The time that they were waiting for has arrived. In
addition, it sets forth a change in the nature of fasting itself. It will no longer be a purely
prospective activity, but a retrospective one as well. This, of course, brings an even
greater sense of anticipation, a greater longing for what is to come.

A Fundamental Shift in Fasting

This becomes all the more apparent when we read verses 16-17: But no one
puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from
the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do people put new wine into old
wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the
wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are
preserved.

Here, Jesus gives two illustrations expanding on the theme of the newness of the
age introduced with the bridegroom. The first has to do with unshrunk cloth on an old
garment; the second with new wine into old wineskins.

If you were attempting to patch an old garment, you would have looked for
material of the same quality. To sew unshrunk, or brand new cloth onto an old shirt
would result in a worse tear because when it was washed and shrunk, it would rip the
garment still further, thus defeating the purpose of the patch. In the same way,
previously used, or old wineskins, since they had already been stretched to their
capacity by the fermentation process, would have become very weak. If you were then
to pour new wine into the skin, the process of fermentation of the new wine would have

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resulted in a tear of the wineskin. The contents would simply be too dynamic to be
accommodated by the outdated container.

Now the garment illustration ends with the destruction of the old piece of clothing,
but the second illustration goes further. Not only is the wineskin destroyed, but the wine
is lost as well: the wine pours out.

What, then, is Jesus saying? Well, here’s what he’s not saying. He is not simply
saying that trying to contain the new in the old does a disservice to the old. He is saying
that it does similar harm to the new. Both lose out. The old, because it was not
designed to accommodate the new, is destroyed. As a result, the new is not seen for
what it is; instead its value is greatly diminished. So much so that it loses its
significance altogether: the wine pours out.

D A Carson’s summary of Jesus’ examples is helpful:

These illustrations show that the new situation introduced by Jesus could
not simply be patched onto old Judaism or poured into the old wineskins of
Judaism. New forms would have to accompany the kingdom Jesus was now
inaugurating; trying to domesticate him and incorporate him into the matrix of
established Jewish religion would only succeed in ruining both Judaism and
Jesus’ teaching.3

So Jesus answer to John’s disciples’ question is two-fold: first, the day of feasting
has arrived; and second, a time of different fasting is on the horizon. Since the feasting
has been interrupted, Christian fasting will look forward to finishing what has already
begun.

Think of it like this: you have waited your whole life to enjoy the company of
someone you have been told gives greater joy than anyone you’ve ever met. When you
finally meet this person, you find that all that you had heard was not only true, but was
even greater than you had anticipated. Then, suddenly, that person departs. How
much more would you long to be with them again? You had tasted and seen that he is
good; wouldn’t you long all the more to taste and see again?

Listen to the words of John Piper:

“The new fasting is based on the mystery that the bridegroom has come,
not just will come. The new wine of his presence calls for new fasting.” In other
words, the yearning and longing and ache of the old fasting was not based on the
glorious truth that the Messiah had come. The mourning over sin and the
yearning for deliverance from danger and the longing for God that inspired the
old fasting were not based on the great finished work of the redeemer and the
great revelation of his truth and grace in history. These things were all still in the
future. But now the bridegroom has come.4

3
D A Carson, Matthew in the Zondervan NIV Bible Library CD-ROM.
4
John Piper, A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer (Wheaton, IL: Crossway
Books, 1997), 40.

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This is why the disciples will fast: because a time of feasting and rejoicing has
been cut short; it has only been experienced in part. And this departure produces in the
Lord’s attendants an aching to be with him. This aching, this longing, is expressed most
vividly in fasting. We want our bridegroom back. We are looking for; we are waiting
with expectancy for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God
and Savior, Christ Jesus. And so we fast.

It has been said that the soldier of old would often place a pebble into his boot
before going off to war. His discomfort was meant to remind him of his being separated
from a beloved wife or fiancée. Temporary fasting is designed to do the same thing.
We willingly abstain from food so that our discomfort will remind us of our longing for the
Bread of Heaven. The aching of our stomachs expresses the longing of our hearts.

So we fast under the New Covenant not because we long for something we
haven’t experienced, but for that which we have known and long to know more
intimately. New Covenant fasting does not come because we haven’t tasted the new
wine of Christ’s presence, but because we have! And our hearts won’t be satisfied until
it is consummated in our being in the very presence of our Lord! It is the expression of
a righteous discontentment with the interruption in the feast.

In the heart of every genuine believer is a longing for the return of the
bridegroom. Together with all the saints we say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” We long for the
day when seeing in a mirror dimly will be transformed to a face to face encounter with
the Risen and Ruling Christ. But don’t you find that this inner reality doesn’t bubble up
to the surface nearly as often as we would like? Don’t you find yourself too content with
the absence of Christ?

Fasting will help. It will show you what is in your heart. When I fast I am
astonished at how much more I long for my next meal than I long for the savior. But
this, in a sense, is a good thing! It allows me to ask the Lord for grace to long for him
more than food; it gives me an opportunity to cultivate an aching heart for the return of
the bridegroom I love.

And if you’re feeling really dry, fasting will refresh you—provided that you enter
the fast in a spirit of repentance circa Isaiah 58:1-11.

Conclusion
So this week, fast for Jesus’ sake. Fast to show forth what is perhaps lying
dormant in your heart. Confess and repent of your sins and fast for refreshment in the
Lord. Take the time you normally reserve for eating bread to learn that man shall not
live by bread along but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

Now in terms of the fast itself—you can do it many ways. Biblically speaking,
fasting involves going without food and/or drink for an interval of your choosing. In
Scripture, there is fasting from all food, except water. There is fasting from certain types
of food, or certain amounts of food. There is absolute fasting—fasting from food and

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water (only three days in length—your body does not do very well without water much
longer than three days).

And the length of the fasts ranges from part of a day to 40 days. It is up to you
as you follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

But you may also choose to abstain from anything else that in and of itself is not
sinful, but nevertheless is put aside for purposes of devotion to Christ.

Listen to Martyn Lloyd-Jones:

[F]asting, if we conceive of it truly, must not only be confined to the

question of food and drink; fasting should really be made to include abstinence
from anything which is legitimate in and of itself for the sake of some spiritual
purpose. There are many bodily functions which are right and normal and
perfectly legitimate, but which for special peculiar reasons in certain
circumstances should be controlled. That is fasting.5

Whatever you choose is not as important as the fast itself. Take this
encouragement to heart:

If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it
is not because you have 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 is no room for the great. God did not create you for this. There is an
appetite for God. And it can be awakened. I invite you to turn from the dulling
effects of food and the dangers of idolatry, and to say with some simple fast: “This
much, O God, I want you.”6

So let us pray that the Lord would bless our fasting—that he would use it to
invigorate our love and longing for greater intimacy with the one we love so much. May
our hunger for God himself grow out of all proportion to our hunger for the food (and all
the other good gifts) he so graciously provides.

Redeemer Bible Church

16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Office: 952.935.2425
Fax: 952.938.8299
info@redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.solidfoodmedia.com
5
D Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, Vol 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1960), 38.
6
Piper, Hunger, 23.

Loving God, Part 5: Inflaming Our Love through Fasting © 2004 by R W Glenn