Fasting 101
- What is fasting?
- SELF-PUNISHMENT
- SELF-SERVING
- A BARGAINING CHIP
- A WAY TO GET GOD'S ATTENTION
- Why do we fast?
Fasting is:Fasting is not:
"Jesus, why do John's disciples and the Pharisees fast, but not your disciples?" (Mk 2:18)
- You can't fast while you CELEBRATE. (Mk 2:19-20)
- You can't add RELATIONSHIP to RELIGION . (Mk 2:21-22)
Fasting is: ABSTAINING from food (and/or other things for measured periods of time in order to heighten my HUNGER for the things of God.
Fasting is not:
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:00-00:08
Mark chapter 2 and verse 18, while you're turning there, tell me some of the biggest struggles you have with your Christian walk.
00:10-00:11
Just shout them out, go ahead.
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This is a safe place, we've established that.
00:14-00:17
What are some of the biggest struggles you have with your walk?
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Pray, who said praying?
00:19-00:20
Somebody said praying.
00:21-00:22
Yeah, that's like number one, right?
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How many people would say, "There are times in my life that I know that I'm not praying the way that I need to." Everybody, that's me too.
00:33-00:38
There are times I'm like, I know how important prayer is and I know that's my lifeline with God.
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Why am I not praying the way that I want to be praying?
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Right?
00:44-00:46
What's another area in which you struggle?
00:48-00:52
Oh, waiting for answer, oh, yeah, that one is actually on my list.
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I've been praying and I've been praying and I've been praying and I've been praying And a week goes by, and a month goes by, and God, are you hearing me, right?
01:04-01:09
You're not seeing the answer to prayer that you've been expecting.
01:10-01:11
Anybody else struggle with that?
01:13-01:16
That's been part of my story.
01:17-01:19
Something else, another area in which you struggle.
01:23-01:24
Knowing God's will, right?
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Like, discerning what direction the Lord wants me to go, or the Lord wants me to take my family.
01:32-01:33
Anybody struggle with that?
01:34-01:35
Discerning God's will?
01:36-01:38
All right, here's a couple more on my list.
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And you can raise your hand in agreement, okay?
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How about spending time in God's Word?
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How many people are like, "You know what, there are times I realize I don't spend time in God's Word like I should." Right?
01:50-01:50
Not true.
01:51-01:53
How about feeling God's presence?
01:53-02:01
Are there times that you're like, "I know God's with me, but I've been struggling with feeling His presence lately." Anybody?
02:05-02:10
How about focusing on Jesus in every area of life?
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Anybody struggle with that?
02:16-02:17
Well, here's the thing.
02:18-02:27
You want to focus on God, but the problem is you want other things more.
02:32-02:46
The problem is sometimes I want other things more, and even in my heart when I'm saying, "No, no, no, no, I want God more," my actions don't show that I want God more than other things.
02:47-03:13
identify with me on that. Don't leave me up here. I'm sincere. I'm not perfect, but I'm sincere. And I sincerely want Christ at the center, but there are times that it just seems like if you look at my life and my schedule, I make other things the priority instead.
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So here's the question, what do I do when what I want isn't what I choose?
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What do I do when what I want, we all just admitted the things that we want, what do I do when what I want isn't what I choose?
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Well, you know God actually gave us something to break the pattern and to make us focused on Him.
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And do you know what incredible gift God gave us?
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It's called fasting.
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Now, I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, please.
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I imagine there are probably some people in this room that have never fasted.
04:07-04:20
And I was talking to someone this week who's been walking with the Lord for a very long time and through life has been to quite a few churches, and he said to me, "I have never heard a preacher give a sermon on fasting.
04:21-04:28
I've just never heard it taught in the church." seldom discussed.
04:30-04:36
So to start this message before we get into the text is about fasting, but here's one of the things I struggle with as a pastor.
04:37-04:52
Like I really feel like before we just dive into the text that's about fasting, there might be some people that are like, "Well, I'm not quite sure what fasting even is." So in your outline today, this is fasting 101, okay?
04:53-04:55
This is fasting 101.
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So number one, what is fasting?
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What is fasting?
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We'll start with this.
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I'll jot this down.
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Fasting is abstaining from food, parenthetically I have, and/or other things, for measured periods of time in order to heighten my hunger for the things of God.
05:25-05:44
substaining from food and/or other things for measured periods of time in order to heighten my hunger for the things of God." Now, when you study your Bible, and honestly I could spend probably a month worth of messages just on this subject, but we're going to just cover fasting 101 today.
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But when you study your Bible, you'll see that fasting is connected with prayer.
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It's connected with prayer.
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You see fasting all throughout the Old Testament, you see fasting in the New Testament, you see fasting in the Gospels, you see fasting in the Epistles.
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Do you know that Jesus Christ Himself fasted?
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Alright, Bible students, in the Old Testament, did you know there was only one required fast in the Old Testament?
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Just one.
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And it was a one-day fast, and it was the most important day on the calendar in the Old Testament.
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Who knows what that is?
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It's actually the Day of Atonement, right?
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Remember that one day a year, Leviticus chapter 16, that one day a year where the high priest would -- it was a picture of Christ who was to come.
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What a beautiful picture.
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That one day a year, you can read about this in Leviticus 16 and Hebrews comments on it.
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But what would happen is the high priest, remember he had all these like really elaborate robes, right?
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Remember he had the breastplate with all the stones representing the twelve tribes, and he had really elaborate.
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But on the Day of Atonement, he would take all of those elaborate robes off and he would dress just like all the other priests.
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And they actually had two goats and they would cast lots.
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And the goat that's like rolling dice or it's like a game of chance, you would… it was to determine which goat was going to be taken into the Holy of Holies in the temple to be sacrificed for the atonement of sin for the entire nation of Israel.
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Now this was a huge deal because this was the only day of the year that anybody went to the Holy of Holies, the only day of the year.
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It was this room inside the temple where the Ark of the Covenant was, and nobody was allowed in there except the high priest and him just this one day a year.
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So they would cast lots, he would sprinkle the blood of that goat on the mercy seat, that's the top of the Ark of the Covenant.
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And the high priest would actually come out, again he was stripped down in his regular clothes, he'd come out from behind the veil, and then he would lay hands on that second goat.
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And it was to symbolize that He was transferring the sin of the people onto that goat.
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And with that goat, they would let it go into the wilderness.
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And it was to symbolize that God was taking their sins away from them.
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And that goat was actually called the scapegoat.
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How many people have heard that term, the scapegoat?
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You know the guy that like takes the blame for everything?
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You know like that silly guy at your office that eats glue or whatever, and you're like, He's the guy that we blame everything on.
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He's our scapegoat." Well, that's where that term came from.
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Taking the blame, all of the sin put on, and it was a symbol.
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And the reason that God instituted that was to prepare His people for Jesus Christ.
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Jesus Christ, fully God, just like that high priest stripped off those elaborate robes, Jesus Christ in His humility, you could say stripped Himself of His divinity in a sense, by humbling Himself and becoming a man.
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And Jesus Christ didn't just go into the Holy of Holies to offer the sacrifice of sins for the people.
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What did Jesus do?
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When He was nailed to the cross, what happened to that veil that separated the holy place from the Holy of Holies?
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The Bible says it tore, and that was to show that Jesus Christ gave us access to God.
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You have the same access to God that Billy Graham does, that the high priest does, that anybody does, because Jesus Christ made that available by tearing the curtain.
09:55-10:03
But that one day a year, that lesson went a little further than I expected, but that one day a year was the day that Israel was called to fast.
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But you also see there were many voluntary fasts.
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After the Israelites came out of exile, the Jews started doing a four times a year fast.
10:23-10:30
Post-exilic Jews said, "We're not just going to fast one day a year now, we're going to fast four times a year." Well, fast forward to the New Testament times.
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The Pharisees, you know how they were, right?
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Overkill!
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They're like, "We're fasting twice a week, okay?
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Not this once a year stuff, that's Mickey Mouse, okay?
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Not this four times a year, that's for kids." I'll show you who's holy.
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The Pharisees said, "We fast twice a week, every Monday and every Thursday they fasted." All right?
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There are many kinds of fasts, biblically normal fast, no food, drinking water but not having food.
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There's a partial fast, maybe you just have vegetables or juice for a season.
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There's the absolute fast, no food, no water.
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And also there's the corporate fast.
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You even see Acts chapter 13, Acts chapter 14, the church corporately fasted.
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I'm not here to give you medical advice, okay?
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I'm not a doctor.
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So if you're considering fasting after we talk about this message, here's my little disclaimer, okay?
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Make sure, you know, under a doctor's care, if you have some health issues, you might have to modify or adjust your fast, okay?
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Like if you're diabetic or whatever, all right?
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I don't want to get sued.
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I'm not giving medical advice, I'm giving you what the Bible says.
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Everybody say "message received." All right, confirmed.
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That's what fasting is.
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I'm abstaining from food and/or other things for measured periods of time in order to heighten my hunger for the things of God.
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Okay, fasting is not.
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Please, make sure you catch this.
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I don't want anybody leaving here with this wrong idea of fasting or I've failed.
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Fasting is not, I want you to jot these things down.
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First of all, fasting is not self-punishment.
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Okay?
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Fasting is not self-punishment.
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Like, "Oh, I've been such a bad boy and God must be so mad at me.
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I'm going to punish myself by not eating." And that statement is like eight levels of wrong, okay?
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Fasting is not self-punishment.
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Like, "Yeah, I've really, I really screwed up, so I'm just, I'm going to let myself have it.
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I'm not eating." That is not what fasting is for.
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Secondly, fasting is not self-serving.
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Like, "What do you mean by that?" Here's what I mean by that.
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You could leave this message today and think, "You know what, Pastor Jeff, I do need to a couple of pounds, so maybe I'll do this fast, maybe get a little holy, shed a couple of pounds, you know, pants fitting a little nicer." That's self-serving.
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If that's your motive, that's not what fasting is for.
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Thirdly, fasting is not a bargaining chip.
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It's not a bargaining chip.
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Like, "Okay, I want something from God.
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God, it's okay God, here's what I'm going to do.
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I'll fast and then you give me this thing that I want you to give me." God doesn't work that way.
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God doesn't play let's make a deal.
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God says this is the deal, okay?
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You're not going to bargain your way to get what you want.
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Fourthly, along the same lines, fasting is not to get God's attention.
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think, "Well, I'm just going to fast.
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You know, I haven't really felt God's presence, so if I fast, I'll get God's attention.
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Hey, look at me, God.
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Look at me, God.
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I'm fasting.
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I'm really serious, God.
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I'm fasting.
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Do you see me?" Fasting is not about God noticing you.
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Fasting is about you noticing God.
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And lastly, and I would suggest to you most importantly, because this is what Jesus said, fasting is not for show.
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Matthew chapter 6, Jesus talked about three things that followers of the Lord do, giving, praying and what?
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Fasting.
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All three of those have the exact same teaching.
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If you're doing what you're doing to get people to notice you, Jesus says, "Congratulations, the pat on the back is all you're going to get out of it." He says, "You need to do what you're doing in secret, and your Father who is in heaven will see and will reward you." So if you're fasting and you're walking around like, "Hey Justin, you want to go to lunch this week?" "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot I'm fasting.
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Sorry.
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I totally forgot I'm fasting, you know, Justin, because I do that.
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I'm a faster.
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I don't even need breakfast because I don't break my fast.
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My fast is intact.
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I'm a faster.
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I'm a faster.
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I know what you're thinking, Justin, and you're right.
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You're right.
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I am just that spiritual.
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Do you notice?
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Do you notice how weak and faint I look?
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It's because I haven't been eating.
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I've been fasting.
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Did I mention that?
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Well, that's what the Pharisees did.
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The Pharisees would make it a big… it was this dog and pony show.
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It's Monday, I'm fasting," and Jesus was like, "Those applause, that's all you're going to get, because if you're doing what you're doing for show, you're totally missing it." All right?
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So that's what fasting is not.
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So number two, why do we fast?
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Why do we fast?
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is stopping the feeding of ourselves with other things to focus on our relationship with Jesus Christ.
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I'm going to say that again because it's really important.
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Why do we fast?
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We are stopping the feeding of ourselves with other things to focus on our relationship with Jesus Christ.
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Now, let me ask you, your hunger, your appetite, is it limited or is it unlimited?
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Is your appetite limited or unlimited?
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You're like, "Oh, this is a trick question." It's not.
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Your appetite is limited, isn't it?
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Isn't it?
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I mean, I know some of you can eat, but everybody stops eating at a point, right?
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So your appetite, can we all agree with that?
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Because this is really important.
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Your appetite is limited, right?
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It's limited.
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Otherwise, you'd pull the chair up to the buffet at Ponderosa, and you'd stay there from whenever they open until whenever they close, and then you'd need to hit McDonald's on the way home.
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Your appetite is limited, right?
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But listen, listen church, not just for food.
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Your appetite is limited for everything that you take in.
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And I want you to think about how much you take in over the course of a day.
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Food, work, conversation, entertainment, reading, television.
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People think, "Oh, I'm just going to relax and watch television." Do you know studies show that watching television is the most draining thing you can do?
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Did you know that?
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Watching television is draining, but you only have so much hunger and every day the capacity to satisfy yourself is limited.
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I want to use an illustration.
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I want everybody to look up here.
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This table top represents your appetite.
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For some of you it's a little big, and for some of you, Darren, it's a little small.
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This table top represents your appetite.
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I can say that because I'm his brother.
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He won't hurt me too bad.
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But this is your appetite.
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Let this represent not just your belly, but your heart and your mind and everything.
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This is what you have room for to take in every day, right?
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Is everybody with me?
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Everybody with me?
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Okay.
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This is your appetite.
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And this is what we do over the course of a day, right?
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The first thing we do, one of the first things we do, is we have breakfast, right?
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So we get up and we eat and maybe we read the paper.
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Okay, more things going into our appetite, are you with me?
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Our appetite is being filled.
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There's food, there's bad news, and then maybe we got the latest CTA catalog and we gotta make sure we're looking at that, taking more things in.
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And we're drinking this.
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I'll make sure we have coffee.
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I only brought one coffee cup.
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This by no means signifies how much coffee I drink.
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And then we go to work, right?
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So we take our lunch for work, and then we gotta make sure that we have our snack.
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And look, our appetite, getting filled up, isn't it?
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It's getting filled up.
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And oh, we gotta make sure that, you know, we gotta have our late afternoon snack.
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And you're like, I don't know what you're eating for lunch, but I eat a lot more than that.
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and we're just constantly filling ourselves up, filling ourselves up, and then we get home, pizza, pizza, right?
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And, okay, and then we're filling our appetite.
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Oh, at some point in the day, we had our beef jerky.
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Don't forget the beef jerky, right?
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Oh, and our gelatin, make sure you have our jello.
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That's not real jello, that's like generic store jello.
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but make sure, okay, so then, is that it?
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Of course not.
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We have our Rice Krispie, I actually had this Rice Krispie treat pack, but no one ate it.
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But our appetite is getting filled, right?
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And this time of year, make sure you get your pumpkin pie.
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And okay, so that's like all the eating that we do, but think about how you're filling your appetite in your heart and in your mind.
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I mean, think of all the things you do for that.
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Oh, I'll just get this one right off the bat.
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Here's the biggest one, right?
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Your smartphone.
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Do you realize how much of your heart and mind appetite you're feeding with your smartphone?
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You have all of the information in the world at your fingertips.
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And every time you're sitting there going through Facebook, scanning the net, checking your email, feeding an appetite, feeding an appetite.
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And maybe at some point in the day, we're going to read, okay?
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And we have our book.
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This is the world's greatest collection of church jokes.
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Not one of them are funny.
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Okay, oh, and then, oh, don't forget, oh, there's some candy.
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You gotta have your sugar fix, right?
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And then, oh, and the TV, right?
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That fills up with, I mean, I just brought the remote, but how much of the space of the appetite of our hearts and minds does the TV fill?
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I just brought the remote for illustration purposes, right?
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Oh, and you know, maybe we take time, we play a little PlayStation, okay?
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So we're gonna put this on our, fill our appetite with the PlayStation.
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Corinne sure hopes that you take some time.
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This is to exercise, right?
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This is a TheraBand that my kids ripped, but I couldn't rip it, but my eight-year-old did.
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And you take time to exercise, and then maybe you take time at the end of the night to watch a movie.
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So look at what you've done with your appetite over the course of a day.
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Do you see, can you see visually how much you've filled yourself?
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Can you see that?
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You're like, "Well, what's the problem?" We're going to let this represent your relationship with Jesus Christ.
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Here's the problem.
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We get to the end of the day, and we've been stuffing ourselves with all of this stuff that we're just like, maybe, no?
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I don't, I don't really have any room in my appetite left for God.
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And somehow we just try to maybe fit it in, and we wonder, "Why don't I have much appetite for Jesus?" Because I've spent so much of my day filling myself with lesser things.
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Now, none of these things are bad, right?
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None of these things are bad, but none of these things are Jesus.
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And we fill ourselves with all these lesser things and then wonder why we don't have an appetite for Jesus.
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So the question is, why do we fast?
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This is what fasting is.
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I'm not putting anything in my appetite except focusing on my relationship with Jesus Christ.
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This is what fasting is.
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I just want to focus on Him.
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I am going to voluntarily get rid of all these other distractions and all these things I've been feeding my mind and heart and belly with.
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I'm putting them aside for a season.
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I am putting them aside for a season because I just want to focus on Jesus Christ." That's what fasting is.
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So if you don't hunger for God, it's not because you're satisfied, you're full of God to the point that you have no hunger for that relationship, you have no hunger for that fellowship, it's because you've filled yourself with lesser things.
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Fasting gets everything off the table and frees us to focus on what we really want.
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So church, have you ever fasted?
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I encourage you, if you are finding focusing on Jesus Christ has been difficult, if you are finding that you haven't had an appetite for prayer, I would encourage you to use this gift that God has given to control your appetite.
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Maybe you would try a partial fast.
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Maybe you'd say, "You know what?
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For the next three days, I'm just going to skip lunch and instead spend time just praying and getting in the Word.
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Instead of feeding my belly, I'm gonna spend time feeding my soul.
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Maybe you start there.
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And then when you do, I promise you, when you do and you realize the benefits of it, you're going to start.
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You know what?
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I'm going to take a day to fast.
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I'm going to take three days to fast just to focus on my relationship with Jesus Christ, focus on my identity in Jesus Christ, Focus on the fellowship that God has blessed me with in Jesus Christ.
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That's fasting.
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My appetite is going to be focused on one thing and one thing alone, Jesus Christ.
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And then underneath that, fasting is not… fasting is not… just jot this down.
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Fasting is not to make you holier.
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Fasting is not to make you holier.
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You don't rise a rank in God's eyes.
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You don't get brownie points with God.
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You don't get street cred with God when you do a fast, okay?
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It's not to make you holier.
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It's to focus your appetite.
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The reason I needed to close this little section with this is because this is the crux of the issue in the passage that we're going to look at.
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Look at Mark chapter 2 and verse 18.
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It says, "Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.
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And people came and said to him, 'Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast." On the surface, that seems like a pretty legitimate question, right?
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Keep in mind, John's disciples and the Pharisees, okay, not buddies, all right?
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So don't think that them being mentioned in the same sentence meant that they were like on the same volleyball team, because they were not, okay?
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They were actually in quite opposition to some worldview things, you could say.
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But they did have this in common, was that they were very sincere people, and they were people known for fasting.
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So they come to Jesus and say, "John's disciples fast.
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The Pharisees fast.
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Why are you partying?
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It's like you're out of touch, Jesus.
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I mean, you hang out with sinners, you go to parties, and look, your people don't even fast like the religious people do.
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And they were stuck in a religious, got to keep the law mindset.
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So what's the answer to that?
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Well, number one, look at Jesus' answer, number one on your outline, you can't fast while you celebrate.
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That's just like, that's like fasting 101.
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You can't fast while you celebrate.
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Verses 19 through 20, "And Jesus said to them, 'Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?'" A parenthetical note, in the Old Testament, who was called the bridegroom?
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Jehovah God.
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He said Israel was his bride.
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So Jesus was equating Himself with God in this passage.
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He was saying that He's the bridegroom, which is what God referred to Himself as in the Old Testament.
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So can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?
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As long as they have the bridegroom with them, Jesus said they cannot fast.
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The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.
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So you can't fast while you celebrate.
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Did you know in Jesus' day that was actually a rabbinical law?
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It was like a rabbinical law.
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It wasn't like, "Eh, fasting at a wedding is not a good idea." The rabbis wrote a law, "You are not allowed to fast at a wedding." A wedding ceremony actually took place over the course of seven days.
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Like, "You are not allowed to fast during a wedding ceremony.
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are forbidden to fast during a wedding. And we kind of get that, right? I mean, imagine, you know, for those of you who are married, think back to your wedding day. For those of you who aren't married, think ahead to your wedding day. But imagine it's your big day. You're sitting at that table up front with the wedding party. Just had this beautiful ceremony, and you look over at your brand-new spouse and their food is untouched on their plate. And you're like, "Are you sick?" Like, "No, I'm not sick." "Do you want me to get you some different food you don't like?" "No." "Why aren't you eating?" "I'm fasting." "You're what?!" "Fasting." "No, you and dancing and partying, and you wouldn't show up at the wedding and be in the wedding party and be fasting.
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Jesus said, "Someday the bridegroom's going to be gone." He said, "Then, then they will fast." And I want you to circle the word "then" in your Bible.
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Note the expectation.
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Don't think that Jesus was like fasting.
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That's not what Jesus was saying at all.
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He says, "You can't fast while I'm here." You see, if fasting is about focusing solely on your appetite and your relationship with Jesus Christ, you really can't do that when you're physically in His presence.
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The bridegroom is here.
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This is the most unique chapter in the history of the earth because God's walking on it.
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Okay, so how can you expect the people to be fasting when they're with the bridegroom?
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He says, "But someday the bridegroom's going to be taken away, then, then they will fast." Remember we mentioned Matthew chapter 6 earlier, Jesus said, "When you give, don't be like the hypocrites.
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When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites." And Jesus said, "When you fast," and He didn't say, "If you fast," He said, "When you fast." notice that there's an expectation, just like giving and praying, there's just an expectation that part of being a disciple is fasting.
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Oh, so now that Jesus is gone and He's not in our presence, I fast to get more righteous, right?
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Because you have to, we're going to close with this, but you have to see how Jesus cut off a wrong line of thinking before it got started.
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"Oh, so when you go, I fast and that makes me more righteous." Write this down in your outline, you can't add relationship to religion.
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You can't add relationship to religion.
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Two pictures here.
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Jesus said, verse 21, "No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.
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If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made." "Aaron, what do I know about sewing and like doing the laundry?" Zero, right.
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So I had to study this part.
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In Jesus' day there were no synthetics, right?
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Like, "Hey, nice polyester toga." No.
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No synthetics.
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So all the clothes that they had shrunk, right?
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They all did.
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And here's Jesus' picture, okay?
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So you have like, you have like these old blue jeans that have a hole in them, and they've They've been through the worsh, as my dad would say, they've been through the worsh so many times, they're like your favorite jeans.
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You know how your favorite jeans feel, right?
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Oh, you love your favorite jeans.
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But they get a big hole in them, and you're like, "I can't part with these, they're my favorite jeans." So you take a piece of brand new cloth that hasn't been shrunk, and you like patch that in the hole, what happens the next time you worsh them?
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That patch is going to shrink, and it's going to rip the garment, and it's going to be even worse than when you started, right?
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Jesus with the sewing lesson.
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Jesus was saying this, "You don't add a new to the old, or you ruin both." And just so there's nobody that thinks that Jesus...
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Like, how do you know He's not giving a sewing lesson, Pastor Jeff?
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on with me. He says, "And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins and the wine is destroyed and so are the skins." He says, "But new wine is for fresh wineskins." In biblical times, do you know what they used for wineskins?
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You can actually read about this in the book of Joshua.
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They actually used a goat hide.
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Okay, like chop off the head, that's the spout now.
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Chop off the legs, sew them up, and you have this nice little wine skin.
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Well, what happens to wine when it ferments?
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That skin expands, right?
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It's only going to expand so far.
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So you wouldn't take this old wine skin that you've used already and say, "Well, I'm going to make more wine.
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I'm going to put the new wine into this old wine skin.
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When that ferments, it's going to stretch, and what's going to happen?
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Stretch beyond breaking point, right?
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And just, "Pshh." And you're like, "Okay, I just made a terrible mess, and I've just wasted a lot of wine." So what's Jesus' point?
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You don't put new into the old or you ruin both.
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Does that sound familiar?
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Both of these stories have the exact same meaning, and here it is.
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Religion, rituals, ceremonies, keeping the law, that is the old garment.
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And you can't patch the old garment with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Jesus Christ didn't come to patch.
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He came to replace.
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And church, please, you've got to hear this.
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Some people think that God had this really great law in the Old Testament, and God was up in heaven like, "Oh man, those people just aren't doing what they're told.
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They keep breaking my law.
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Oh, I got an idea.
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Jesus will fix it." That is not it at all.
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That's exactly what Jesus was talking about here.
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I'm not here to put a patch on the law.
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I'm not here to fix this broken system.
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He says I'm here to replace it.
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Again, there's the religion, the rituals, the ceremonies, they're the old garment that you can't patch, but they're also the old skins that you don't just add Jesus to it.
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And church, that's the attitude that a lot of Christians have.
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As I'm a pretty decent guy, I'm pretty moral.
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I kind of grew up in Sunday school.
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I follow the Ten Commandments.
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Like, I'll just kind of add Jesus to that.
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Jesus didn't patch the law, and Jesus isn't an add-on to the law.
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Like, "Oh yeah, obey the Ten Commandments, just add Jesus." You can't add Jesus to the old, because Jesus Christ is about all things new.
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And again, church, fasting, which started this whole conversation, isn't about getting cred with God.
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It's about single-minded focus on your relationship with God.
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And I believe that's why Jesus launched into this garment, wine-skin illustration, is because He knew that people would read this and try to make fasting some kind of like a New Testament law thing.
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It's not.
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It's about focus.
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It's not about keeping a law.
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And church, you know, do you know why we pour new wine of the gospel into the old wineskins of the law?
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Do you know why we do that?
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Because it's easy.
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But it's wrong.
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Grace is not an easy thing for us to understand.
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I met a man very early on in this church that visited many times, by his own admission was an atheist.
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And I've had lunch with him, and I've met with him.
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Do you know what his hang-up was?
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He says, "I don't understand unmerited love." He goes, "It just doesn't make any sense to me that God would love me." No strings attached.
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At least He was honest, because the truth is I don't understand that either.
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I believe it, but I don't understand that, that God would love me?
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Like the lowest of the low, He would love me?
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Slightly less hard to understand, He would love you?
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But it's easy for us to try to add Jesus to our mindset of the law, because grace is so hard to understand for us sometimes, because we want to measure where we stand, don't we?
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We want to measure where we stand.
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Give me the checklist.
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Give me the Ten Commandments.
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Okay, didn't murder anyone today, didn't steal today, honored my parents today.
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The gospel says you are forgiven, you are born again, you are a child of God, but there's something in us that wants something tangible, so we run to the law.
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Or we try to make our own standard, and we try to treat the gospel of Jesus Christ like it's an outside-in thing. Like I don't dance, I don't smoke cigarettes, I don't watch dirty movies, so God must be happy with me." That is not the gospel. The gospel is, you were dead in your sins. You were at the morgue, and God gave you eternal life through His Son, Jesus Christ, and now God's very presence lives within you. So the gospel isn't an outside-in kind of religion, And it's an inside-out relationship with the God who loves you and dwells in you.
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That's the gospel.
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And the two ideas, obviously, are mutually exclusive.
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Because church, isn't it true that we want to believe that when we're good, God loves us, and when we're bad, God's mad at us?
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True or false?
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We want to believe that.
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When we're good, God loves us.
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I had a good day today, I was pretty good to my wife, I was pretty good to my kids.
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God's happy with me today.
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God's happy with me today, but it has nothing to do with what I've done.
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It has everything to do with what His Son did.
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But more often than not, I hear the other, right?
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Don't you hear the other?
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"Oh, I had a rough day.
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I had a rough day.
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You know what, I like totally cussed out a fellow employee, and I was kind of mean to my wife, and I watched something on TV that I shouldn't have watched.
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God must be mad at me." That is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, because God's satisfaction or dissatisfaction with you has nothing to do with you.
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It has everything to do with the work that His Son accomplished on the cross.
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Jesus died to take away your sin.
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He arose from the dead to give you eternal life, and the Bible says that He actually gave you His righteousness, so that when God sees you, if you're a follower of Christ, when God sees you, He sees you as righteous as His own Son.
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Not because of what you've done, but because of what He did.
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But when we live with the attitude that when we're good, God loves us, when we're bad, God is mad at us.
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That type of living always leaves us defeated, doesn't it?
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Maybe you grew up in a home where your father treated you like that.
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If I did all my chores, Dad was happy with me and he was my buddy, but if I did something wrong he acted like he hated me.
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And we try to transfer that same mindset of a relationship to God.
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That's not God, because that's not the gospel.
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You will never measure up to God in your flesh.
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You never will, because your standing with God, Christians, your standing with God is permanently fixed on a finished work of Jesus Christ.
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So trying to add Jesus to your works is like trying to add a new patch to the old cloth, Both are ruined.
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You can't keep the law, you're just unable to, but in trying to keep a law, you nullify grace, right?
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That's why both are ruined.
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Did you get that?
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Jesus in both of these stories says, adding the new to the old ruins both.
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This is what He was talking about.
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You're unable to keep the law, right?
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You're unable, you just can't.
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Like if I said, "Bob Mastarino, I'll give you a $100,000 check if you can go this week without sinning," you would not make it, man.
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You wouldn't make it on the drive home.
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True or false?
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I love you, man, and it's because you're honest.
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You can't keep the law, but in thinking that trying to keep the law makes God happy means you nullify grace.
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That's why Jesus said, "Well, you ruin both when you try to add the two." Christ is not an add-on, and He's not a safety net when we fail.
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Jesus Christ is our righteousness, and Jesus Christ isn't just part of our life.
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The truth is Jesus Christ is our life.
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I believe it was Warren Weersbe that said this, "There are two ways to end the life of an acorn.
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You can smash it with a hammer, or you can plant it, and out of its death comes new life." Well, the latter is what Jesus Christ did with the Old Testament law.
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He didn't destroy it, but the law had to die, and out of it grew a whole new way of knowing God.
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So church, it's time to stop striving to keep the law, and it's time to focus on your identity in Jesus Christ.
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And if you've been having a hard time lately, resting totally in Jesus Christ, maybe it's time to fast and spend a season where He is all that you are focusing on. Let's pray.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Mark 2:18-22
Why do you think the disciples of John and the Pharisees were bent out of shape about Jesus’ disciples not fasting?
Was Jesus saying fasting is obsolete (see Matthew 6:16-18)? What would the purpose be of fasting today, if it is not something to make you “holier”?
What was Jesus’ point about His two stories (the garment/patch and the wine/wineskins)? What are ways people try to mix the old (Law, religious works) and the new (Gospel, grace)? Why can’t you mix the old and the new?
Breakout Questions:
When was the last time you fasted? Is there a reason for you to fast in this season of your life?
Pray for one another.