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LOST RIVER CHURCH OF CHRIST | |||||||
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The Father Who Sees In Secretby Lawrence Kelley
INTRO: The sermon on the mount deals with attitudes. Obviously the beatitudes are a revolutionary way of thinking about God, ourselves and other people. Jesus also corrected the people's false attitudes toward the law, citing six examples of how men had failed to grasp its true meaning. As we turn to chapter six we will see that Jesus is still dealing with attitudes. This time, He takes aim at our motives as we practice religious duties. He shows us that right things can be done for wrong reasons. When this occurs, the results are disastrous for the wrongly motivated doer. OVERVIEW: The theme tying Chapter six together is the simple but profound truth that, God is ever present and always knows what is going on. The Father is mentioned twelve times in this chapter and men are encouraged to remember that nothing they do escapes his notice. Since we are usually in the presence of other people who are also watching us, we are tempted to remember them and forget God. Therefore, Jesus tells us to beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them (6:1a). APPLICATIONS: Jesus makes three applications of this principle: charitable contributions, prayer and fasting. Each of these fall under the heading of practicing righteousness and can either be performed for the sake of pleasing God or for the sake of pleasing men. Charity, 6:2-4 - God has always required His people to give to the needy (Deut 15:11; 1Jn 3:17). A heart for the poor flows out of the recognition of our poverty stricken state before the Lord who has richly blessed us with all things in Christ. Unfortunately, too often our generosity does not flow out of this spirit of gratitude and a genuine desire to relieve the poor. It is rather a public relations stunt. We are not really giving to the needy; we are buying a reputation for ourselves. Or perhaps we are giving in order to foster our own sense of pride or self importance. "What a good deed; am I not a great and generous benefactor." Instead of blowing our own horn, or pumping our own ego, we should not let our right hand know, what our left hand is doing. Prayer, 6:5-8 - Prayer is talking to God. But unfortunately it is easily reduced to performing before men while pretending to talk to God. There are at least two problems here. One is the problem of offering our private prayers (which ought to be offered in the closet) in public so that people will see what devout folks we are. The second problem is leading public prayers, where the primary audience is the people and not the Lord. Here is an important question, are we more thoughtful and passionate in our private prayers or public prayers? Are we more nervous when praying before men? Why? The same holds true for other acts of religious devotion whether singing, preaching, reading scripture. Are we serving the Lord or boosting our ego's? Fasting, 6:16-18 - Jesus assumed his disciples would perform acts of charity, that they would pray and that they would practice fasting. However, it should be noted that while fasting was a tradition many Jews practiced twice a week (a tradition Jesus does not find fault with) it was only required by God once a year, on the day of atonement. Fasting was practiced by Jesus and we have biblical records of it in the N.T. church.* However, Jesus main concern here is on the problem of fasting for show. Don't do that. If you fast, the general public need not know. These and all such acts of religious devotion are to be done for the glory and honor of God and from a heart that
yearns to please Him. It is God's approval we must appraise above all others. The honor of men is as fleeting as time
and it is as empty as a fasting man's stomach. The reward of God is eternal and full. In Your presence is fullness
of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore (Ps 16:11).
Views about fasting tend toward extremes. John Wesley noted, Some have exalted religious fasting beyond all Scripture and reason, and others have utterly disregarded it. While some overemphasize fasting, the opposite extreme is the norm among our circles. Even though the scriptures reveal that the early disciples practiced prayer with fasting, our habit is to get together for prayer with feasting, with most of the emphasis on the supping rather than the supplication. My view is not that we should fast more than feast (God gave the Jews scores of feasts but commanded only one annual day of fasting) but that we should not dismiss occasional fasting out of hand. Should Christians fast? Jesus anticipated that his disciples would fast. "Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance...But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly (Matt 6:16-18). In this passages Jesus assumes that His disciples will fast, that they will fast differently than the Pharisees and that their fasting would be noted and rewarded by God. The time when Jesus disciples were expected to fast was not during His earthly ministry, but during the time between His ascension and second coming, during the time that the bridegroom is taken away (Matt. 9:14-15). When Should Christians fast? There are occasions that call for fasting according to scripture. In the O.T. people fasted when confronted with the threat of divine judgment for their sin. Two notable examples are the city of Nineveh in which everyone fasted at the preaching of Jonah (Jonah 3:4-10) and Daniel who fasted as he confessed the sins of Israel (Dan 9:3ff). When it is clear that God's judgment is upon us for our sin, fasting is a Biblical response. Christians should also fast when faced with decisions of critical importance. The church at Antioch fasted as a group while ministering to the Lord. Their fasting and prayer resulted in the sending out of Barnabas and Paul to do missionary work (Acts 13:1-3). In Acts 14:21-23 We find that the appointment of elders was accompanied with prayer and fasting and that this was the standard practice in every church. Why Should Christians Fast? Fasting afflicts the soul, "I wept and chastened my soul with fasting" (Ps. 69:10). By denying ourselves food, our soul as well as our body is made hungry. Fasting is an act of humbling ourselves before God and recognizing our absolute dependence on Him. So we may, as Paul says, "give ourselves to fasting and prayer" for a time and then return to normal life with renewed perspective (1Cor 7:5). How should we fast ? Since we have no specific guidelines it would be legalistic to set a standard where the Lord has not. However, a few suggestions may prove helpful. First, fasting should not be practiced in a way that is harmful to the body. Those with eating disorders, diabetics and others with medical conditions should not fast. They might occasionally deprive themselves of some of their favorite foods, but should not jeopardize their health. Second, fasting is most commonly done by simply going without food from sundown one day till sundown the next (Judges 20:26; 2Sam 1:12). In other words, after eating supper don't eat again till supper the following evening. This is the only kind of fasting I have personally done and I continue to drink water throughout the day. Each time the hunger pains hit, let them remind you of how dependant you are upon God, Who is your life and pray about the specific thing that occasions your fast. Thirdly, unless it is something done as a group, keep your fasting to yourself. Jesus warned about turning fasting into a public display of self-righteousness. This must be carefully avoided. Finally, we must not think that fasting makes us superior saints or that it gives us the right to sin in other areas. For example, Isaiah condemns fasting while abusing others and oppressing the poor (Isa 58). This may be why Jesus pairs charitable deeds with fasting in Matthew 6. It was based on this pairing that Christians in the first and second centuries gave the food saved in fasting to feed the poor. It is vital that when Christians fast they do so as Christians. In fact, it is essential that whatever Christians do they do it as unto the Lord. The Lordship of Jesus extends to every facet of our lives redeeming our otherwise vain works and transforming them into meaningful acts of service and worship to God. When Christians fast they do so unto the Lord, and when Christians eat they do so unto the Lord. This means we do not fast like pagans, or gnostics given to will worship, but with a mind distinctly trained to think about our deprivation of food in the way the word teaches us. Mark Copeland has an excellent study on fasting at www.executableoutlines.com Click the "topical sermon series" icon and go to "fasting - a special study" |
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