Propounded at some recent meetings. What is fasting and how does it apply to us today?
When the disciples asked the Lord concerning their inability to cast the demon out of the child, He replied, “This kind goes not out but by prayer and fasting” (Matt. 17:21).
We read of the Lord fasting forty days and forty nights in the wilderness (Matt. 4:2); of the prophets and teachers at Antioch fasting when they chose Barnabas and Saul for the ministry (Acts 13:2-3)— doubtless actual and literal refraining from food for the time being, so that they might be undistracted in their spiritual exercises.
But there is a practical and constant side to fasting that we ought to have our attention drawn to. We refer to Isaiah 58:3-8. Fasting is not merely external, as Isaiah asks, “Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?” If fasting is just a matter of food, attitude, dress, it is pure hypocrisy. Alas! how much there is of this.
Churches filled Sunday morning, a lasting communion, knees bent, eyes closed, lips moving, repeating a form of prayer; at night the theatre or the whist drive or the mazes of the dance. Where is reality in all this? It is sickening hypocrisy! But says the Lord, “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh.”
In short, fasting embraces self-denial, so that the needy of all sorts around may be helped and blessed. If Isaiah 58 were faithfully carried out it would mean constant self-denial, and this would prove a most acceptable form of fasting of a very practical nature. If the Christian, young or old, practised Isaiah 58 they would realize in detail what fasting means.
And yet, in practising it, what feasting would be the portion of the one so fasting—the feast of joy in seeing the blessing of others—the being watered in the act of watering others. Try it, and it will open out before you a path of fasting as to luxury, ease, self-gratification but feasting in the recompense of so doing.