An Audience of One 
Fasting (Matthew 6:16-18) 

Baxter T. Exum (#1740)
Four Lakes Church of Christ
Madison, Wisconsin
June 9, 2024

Good morning and welcome to the Four Lakes congregation! If you are visiting this morning or joining us online or on the phone, we are especially glad to have you with us, and we’d like to ask that you fill out a visitor card – online if you can, or if you are here in person, you can use one of the cards from the pew in front of you and give that to me on your way out this morning. We would love to hear from you, and we invite you to pass along any questions or prayer concerns.

As we get started this morning, I have to mention the pulpit upgrade! The swap happened last week, but we didn’t say anything, to see if anybody would notice. And since nobody noticed, mission accomplished! For a while, we’ve been talking about adding a monitor (a screen) here on the pulpit so that songleaders would have the option of leading not from a book but from what all of us can see on the wall up here, and this would also (hopefully) keep me from looking over my shoulder so much, because when I look over to the side, the audio cuts out (which obviously isn’t good for our YouTube or the phone-stream audience). We talked about getting a new pulpit, but that was a quick “no” for most of us, because this pulpit has some history to it. Al Ovadal made this when the church first started back in 1995, and it was and still is a work of tremendous craftsmanship. We used this pulpit when we met at Elvehjem Elementary School (and put it away on the cart each week as pictured on the wall back there), and then we moved it with us to this building back in October 2001. So, we wanted to keep it as much the same as we could, and Silas basically created a new top for it with room for a screen and some new wiring. My request was that it be as unobtrusive as possible (I don’t want to be standing behind a fortress up here, and I certainly didn’t want a 15” monitor bolted off to the side up here), and Silas came through for us in an amazing way. After nearly 30 years, the finish on the old pulpit was in pretty tough shape, so he refinished the rest of it as well. We have saved the old top (just in case we can use it in some way), but I am thankful for the upgrade. As he was working on it, I sent Silas a quote from Nehemiah 8:4. When God’s people returned from Babylonian Captivity, they rebuilt the walls around Jerusalem under the leadership of Nehemiah, and when they came together to celebrate, they read the word of God publicly. They were all there (men, women, and even the children), and the Bible says that, “Ezra the scribe stood at a wooden podium which they had made for the purpose.” That podium served a purpose. It held God’s law, and we certainly hope and pray that this new podium will do the same for the next 30 years or more.

We come together each Lord’s Day to remind each other that God loves us and sent his only Son to give his life for us on the cross. He was buried, but then he was raised up on the first day of the week. This is the good news, and we obey this good news through faith, repentance, and baptism (an immersion in water for the forgiveness of sins). And this morning we are sharing some good news from the Granbury Street congregation in Cleburne, Texas. They say that “Debbie Fountaine was baptized [this week] for the remission of her sins and to be added by the Lord to His church. We are so thankful for our new sister in Christ. Debbie lives at Renaissance Park Multi Care Center in Ft Worth.” It looks like this was a team effort, and we are thankful for the good news from down in Texas this week.

This next one comes to us from the Maricamp Road congregation down in Ocala, Florida. They posted last Sunday and they say, “Welcome to the family of God! This morning, Isabeall gave her life to Christ. It’s awesome to see friends bringing friends to Jesus!” I am guessing that Isabeall is pictured with her friend up here. So good to see it!

And we’ll share one more today, from White Beach near Puera Galera in the Philippines. They say that “As the waves roar, many angels in heaven are singing over one soul who repented and obeyed our Lord Jesus’ command to wash his sins away. Loreto decided to be baptized. Let us welcome our new brother in Christ.” Good news from the Philippines! And we share this good news as a reminder that the gospel is the same everywhere it’s preached, and you can obey the gospel right here in Madison, Wisconsin, today. If you If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch using the contact information on the wall up here (or on your screen at home). If you are joining us on the phone, you can send a text or give me a call at 608-224-0274.

This morning, we return to our ongoing study of the Sermon on the Mount by concluding our series within a series where we’ve been looking at the first half of Matthew 6, where Jesus emphasizes the importance of practicing acts of righteousness “for an audience of One,” with God in heaven being that “one.” The theme for this series comes from Matthew 6:1, where Jesus says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.”  We have looked at GIVING TO THE POOR, we’ve spent three weeks looking at PRAYER, and today we get to FASTING (in Matthew 6:16-18).

And I do have a good memory associated with this passage. Several years ago, when our daughter was home from college for a break, she was working at the credit union, and she came in one night after working hard one day, and as she came in the door she was looking dangerously hungry and she called out, “What’s for dinner?” And as the good dad that I am, I called right back, “Prayer and fasting!” And with no delay whatsoever, she replied, “Anoint your head and wash your face!” She got me!

Well, even before we read the passage, I hope we notice how Jesus jumps into this new topic just as he did the previous two, “When you give to the poor,”  (in verse 2), “When you pray” (in verses 5 and 7), and now, “Whenever you fast” (in verse 16). In other words, Jesus assumes that his people will fast, just as he assumes that his people will give and pray. And although fasting is never commanded, these three do seem to go together. And so the question for us is this: Is fasting something we do? And is fasting as common in our Christian faith as giving and prayer? But I would point out that just as Jesus doesn’t say “if you fast,” but neither does he say, “you must fast.” He does say, however, “whenever you fast.” Fasting, then, is assumed, but never commanded.

So what are we talking about here? The most basic definition of fasting is “not eating” (this is the definition of the word). And most of us have probably fasted for some reason or another. There are times, for example, when we may need to fast before some kind of a medical test or procedure. I have a physical scheduled in a few weeks, and I will not eat the morning of that appointment, anticipating that my nurse practitioner will send me to the lab. Or perhaps you have practiced intermittent fasting for health reasons, as I have over the past 6-7 years. Basically, I don’t eat dinner anymore, and there have been some life-changing benefits to that. However, the fasting Jesus is talking about here is the kind of fasting we might do for a spiritual reason. And it’s not pleasant! When we don’t eat, we get hungry, and hunger is the body’s way of telling us that we are missing something that we need to live. But, we are not doing this for us, we are doing this for God (or for our relationship with God); or, as we’ve said over the past month or so, we are doing this “for an audience of One.”

But again, as far as I can tell, fasting was never directly commanded under the Law of Moses, although it is mentioned several times throughout scripture. I’m putting an overview of the Old Testament references up here if you would like to take a picture or screenshot or write these down for further research. We just talked about this in our study of Leviticus on Wednesday evening a few days ago, but the closest we get to a command to fast under the Law of Moses goes back to that passage in Leviticus 16:29, where God said that on the Day of Atonement, “...you shall humble your souls.” Now, he never said HOW they were to humble their souls, but that passage was later INTERPRETED to be a reference to fasting. And in scripture, we do have a number of examples of God’s people fasting as a way of humbling their souls before the Lord (or for some other religious purpose).

We think of Moses fasting for forty days when he received the commandments on Mount Sinai. The Bible says (in Exodus 34:28) that “he did not eat bread or drink water.”

In Judges 20:26, the Israelites fast and pray after defeating Benjamin in battle after the incident with the concubine. As I remember it, a Levite had a concubine with him, she was raped all night long by the locals, she dies on his doorstep, and the next morning, he chops her up into pieces and basically mails each piece to each of the tribes of Israel as a message: Something terrible has happened here and you guys need to come here and do something about it, which they do, and afterwards they fast.

We have the people of Israel fasting for seven days after they bury King Saul and Jonathan (in 1 Samuel 31:30).

Or we might think of King David at the loss of his firstborn son in 2 Samuel 12:15-23. When the child was sick but still alive, the Bible says that David fasted and wept and laid on the ground. We also have a reference to David fasting in Psalm 35:13.

Later, we think of King Ahab. When Ahab is condemned by Elijah the prophet, the Bible says (in 1 Kings 21:27-29) that “...when Ahab heard these words, that he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and fasted, and he lay in sackcloth and went about despondently.” And in the next two verses, God speaks to Elijah and recognizes that Ahab has “humbled himself before Me.” And this is where we see the connection between fasting and the humbling of the soul.

Or we might think of King Jehoshaphat (in 2 Chronicles 20:3), when he proclaims a national fast as the people are threatened by the Moabites and the Ammonites.

In Esther 4:16 we have Queen Esther calling for a three day fast before she approaches the king.

We have Daniel and his three friends being taken captive and taken away to Babylon where they abstain from eating the king’s food and restrict themselves to vegetables and water (in Daniel 1). And then later in Daniel (in Daniel 9), we have Daniel examining the prophecies made by Jeremiah, and Daniel says, “So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.” He goes on to confess the sins of the nation before the Lord in prayer. And then (in Daniel 10) we have a partial fast, where Daniel mourned and “...did not eat any tasty food, nor did meat or wine enter [his] mouth” for a period of three weeks.

We have another interesting scenario in Nineveh. We often think of Jonah and his disobedience when we think of Nineveh, but it’s easy to overlook something amazing that happened in that account. After Jonah’s preaching, the pagan king calls for a national fast, not only for his people, but even for the animals. He is torn up over how they had offended the Lord. And he does this to please God.

Beyond this, we have several passages regulating fasting in the prophets, where God basically condemns his people for fasting as an outward show without the true sorrow or change of behavior. We see this throughout Isaiah 58, and we have God asking for fasting along with mourning and heartfelt repentance in Joel 2.

In the New Testament, we have several references, starting with Jesus fasting for forty days in the wilderness as he starts his ministry. This morning, we sang about Jesus, “fasting alone in the desert.” Then we have the Pharisees upset that Jesus’ disciples are not fasting according to their traditions (in Matthew 9:14-15). And then we have several examples in Acts. In Acts 9:9, Saul himself refused to eat for three days (between seeing the Lord on the road to Damascus and being baptized by Ananias). And then we have several examples of the early church fasting. In Acts 13:1-3, we have a reference to the church fasting and praying as they prepare to send Barnabas and Saul out on their First Missionary Journey. And in Acts 14:23, on their way home from that journey, they fasted and prayed as they appointed elders in every church along the way. So, this was something they did everywhere. Fasting was a common practice for the early disciples.

However, as with giving and prayer, there is a right way and a wrong way to fast. And this brings us back to Matthew 6:16-18, where Jesus says,

16 “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. 17 But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face 18 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.

As we learn from Jesus this morning, I want us to go back to our familiar pattern here as we look at both the good and the bad.
 
I.	And we’ll start with the NEGATIVE here.

As with giving and prayer, Jesus says (in verse 16) that the problem with fasting isn’t with the fasting itself, but the problem is that the hypocrites (the pretenders, the actors) were putting on a “gloomy face.” These men were “neglecting their appearance so that they will be noticed by men while they are fasting.” The issue here is the motivation. As we’ve already learned from scripture, the purpose of fasting is to humble ourselves before the Lord; we may fast due to grief, or due to some other kind of mental anguish; we may fast as a sign of sorrow over sin. But here, these guys were fasting “to be noticed.”

And once again, this brings us back to the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Over in Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable aimed directly at “some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt.” According to Jesus, “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’” I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” And that’s the exact problem Jesus addresses here in Matthew 6. Some people were fasting, not to humble themselves before the Lord, but they were fasting to make themselves look good – the exact opposite of what God is looking for.

And ironically, to make themselves get noticed (to make themselves look good), they would actually make themselves look miserable! They would disfigure their faces (as some translations put it). They would neglect their appearance. They would go around moping and miserable. And so, instead of fasting in response to some feeling of overwhelming sorrow or grief, these people would schedule this! Next Wednesday I need to go out there and look miserable! They were acting miserable when they should have actually been miserable! And as with giving to the poor and praying, Jesus explains that when these people fast for the applause of men, that applause will be their only reward, because God is not impressed.

The attitude reminds me of that passage from Isaiah 58 I referred to earlier. In that chapter, the people were complaining to God and saying, “Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?” And God answers throughout the rest of the chapter. In verse 3, in fact, God answers and says, “Behold, on the day of your fast you find your desire, and drive hard all your workers.” In other words, as you people are fasting, 1.) You do whatever you want, and 2.) You’re mean to people! And from there, God continues: The fast I want is for you to let the oppressed to free, and to share your bread with the hungry, and to welcome the homeless poor into your home, and to cover the naked. That’s the kind of “fasting” that God really wants. He wants his people to do good. So, if you want to fast to make yourself look good, don’t! All it will do is make you hungry for no good reason, and God is not impressed.

II.	This brings us to the GOOD part of this passage...

...where Jesus says (in verses 17-18),“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.” So, instead of going around trying to look all sad and gloomy and miserable, just look normal. Do what you usually do. And in a sense, anointing your head and washing your face were things you might do if you were feasting, not fasting. To me, this sounds like getting ready to go out. And that’s the idea. My brain, though, is wanting to ask the Lord, “But what if I normally look grumpy? Do I need to fake being happy? Or do I need to dress up? Do I need to wear a tie?” And then I thought, “No, if I’m wearing a tie, somebody is either dead or getting married.” So, I don’t need to dress up to fast, but then I’m thinking, “If I’m fasting and haven’t eaten for a day or so and if I’m starving on the inside, do I need to FAKE looking normal?” Or, to put it another way, “Is Jesus telling me to be a hypocrite here, or maybe a reverse hypocrite?” But really, that’s not the point of this. The point is: When you fast, don’t do it for the purpose of being noticed. And then my brain starts wondering, “Would it ever be possible, then, to fast with others?” And my conclusion would be the same as for giving and prayer. The early church did pray together, and they did give together, and they did fast together with God’s approval. So once again, motive matters. And then I’m wondering, “What if I’m fasting and somebody figures it out? Does it cancel out any possible benefit?” And again, motive maters. Being seen fasting and fasting to be seen are not necessarily the same. So, Jesus is saying: When you fast, do not fast for the purpose of attracting attention, but do it for you and for your relationship with God; make sure you are fasting “for an audience of One,” with God being that “One.” Forget about yourself, forget about trying to impress anybody, focus on God alone, “and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”

One of our online viewers asked a really good question a few weeks ago, and the question is: What is this “reward” Jesus refers to? Is this some kind of financial reward? I gave the best answer I could by email, but in context, I think we have a good answer in the next few verses as Jesus goes on to tell us not to lay up treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. So, I think we’re talking about spiritual blessings here; eternal blessings; forgiveness; justice; comfort; rest; every good and perfect gift that comes down from above. As we fast, let’s remember: We are seeking heavenly treasure.

Conclusion:

We live in a world that doesn’t like going without. We want the best, and when it comes to food, we want the all you can eat buffet, and we want it right now. This morning, we’ve looked at the spiritual discipline of not eating, even when food is available, and we’ve learned that when we fast, we do it for the Lord. What we’ve said about fasting, by the way, can also be said for singing, for reading and studying the word of God, for partaking of the Lord’s Supper, for serving others. Pretty much anything we do can be done for the wrong reason. However, we are to do these things not to impress others, but for God. And if we can keep that in mind, I am sure that we will do well this week. Do good, for an audience of One!

In terms of fasting, I think it’s interesting that since God has not legislated the details, it seems we have some freedom here. God knows that going without food for any length of time just isn’t possible for some people, and that’s okay. Fasting doesn’t even have to involve food. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul even refers to husbands and wives giving up intimacy for a time, but only by mutual agreement, for the purpose of devoting yourselves to prayer. That’s not the fast we might have had in mind. But I think that opens it up to giving up anything for the purpose of refocusing on God. Some may choose to go without soda, or sugar, or perhaps social media, or video games. Or do a fast like Daniel: Eat whatever you want as long as it doesn’t taste good. The possibilities are truly endless. I thought about giving a challenge of some kind, but it’s hard to even give a suggestion as to how to apply a lesson like this. So, I would simply encourage you to think about this passage and to come up with some way of applying in your life this week. The warning is: Whatever you do, don’t do it to impress others, but do it for the Lord.

As we close our study this morning, let’s go to God in prayer:

Our Father in Heaven,

We long for you just as a deer longs for water, and we know that our relationship with you is even more important than the food we eat. We ask for your help in putting you first this week. Give us strength to serve in ways that do not attract attention. Guard our hearts. Restore to our hearts the joy we had when we first obeyed the gospel.

We come to you this morning in Jesus’ name. AMEN.

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