Fasting - Hunger and Thirst for God

A custom that's found in the Bible, that's an actual worship custom, is called fasting. It's the abstinence of food and water for a certain period of time. And it's commonplace among each of the Israelites, and in two weeks from today, we're going to be fasting. On the day of Atonis, the only commanded fast in the Bible. Now, the Israelites fasted, but what about Christians? Should Christians fast? Now, Jesus answered that. Let's go to Matthew 9. Matthew 9. Verse 14. Then the disciples of John came to Him saying, this is John the Baptist, Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?

Fasting was very important in Judaism at the time. In fact, the Pharisees usually fasted twice a week. They had two fast days a week. John's disciples, we don't know how often they fasted, but it was quite often. And so they came to Jesus and said, we don't understand. Fasting is important in our relationship with God. We're disciples, we have never seen them fast. Now, this is talking about the Day of Atonement, so they would have fasted on the Day of Atonement. But this is part of their normal, often fasting. Because remember, there's only one commanded fast. Why don't they do this? Jesus says to them, can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?

In other words, He's trying to tell them, they don't need to fast to get close to God. I'm with them right now. But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. Jesus expected His disciples, His followers, to fast. So what is the purpose of fasting? Why should we do it?

Is it to suffer for our wrongdoing? Is it somehow that we're making up for our sins? Is it the cynicism? The idea that if I suffer, God will bless me. Or if I suffer, God will forgive me of my sins. Or if I suffer, God will accept me. If I suffer, I will be a better person. I'm more righteous by my suffering.

And people who don't fast aren't as righteous as I am. The Pharisees saw it that way. This thought process, by the way, was the foundation of the monastic system. I must suffer to be a better Christian. It's why celibacy became taught in the Catholic Church for their priests and their nuns. Because if I abstain from food, if I abstain from marriage and sexual relationships, if I abstain from comfortable living, if I live my life in rigid suffering, God likes me better.

Because I'm freeing myself from the dirtiness of this body. Is that why we fast? Why do we fast? What's the purpose of it? I mean, have you ever fasted? You know, thinking, well, I need to draw close to God. Or I have something I want to ask of God. Many times we fast because we have a request. I want to go to God with a request, so I'll fast. And you fast, at the end of the fast, you think, well, what did that do?

I just don't feel good. I have a headache. I feel sort of weak. What good was that? You know, even on the Day of Atonement. You know, at the end of the Day of Atonement, the only thing you're thinking about is, you know what, as soon as that sun goes down, I'm going to the Roadhouse. That's what this is all about. As soon as that's over, what I can eat. Well, if that's the experience of fast, we're missing something very, very important.

Where you go to God with a request, and it seems like He never answers your request. But I fasted. I did what you said to do. I came before you. Why didn't you answer? I truly believe that there are a number of reasons why the Church can be very weak today. We in the Church, spiritually weak. Why we sometimes still wrestle with so much sin. Why we're sometimes just like so much like the world. And we're comfortable being like the world.

Or why we struggle with our marriage problems, or our unity in the Church, or all these issues we struggle with. I really do believe one of the reasons, not every reason, not all the reasons, but one of the reasons is we do not understand and practice fasting.

I mean, most people tend to fast once a year on the Day of Atonement. But what is fasting? If we understand what it is, then we understand that you and I should be fasting on a more regular basis. Because this is a very personal part of our relationship with God. Now, the only fast that's commanded in the Bible is the Day of Atonement. A complete fast is to go without food and water.

You see some fast in the Bible, or it seems like they drank water. You'll see short fast in the Bible. They'll find out somebody died, some tragedy happened in the Old Testament. And you'll see all the people fasted until sundown. Wait a minute, it's already mid-morning, but they fast until sundown. You'll see other times where people did three-day fasts, fast that lasted for weeks.

Jesus went 40 days, and he was the only one. There are different people in the Bible that went 40 days. I have to warn you here, don't go 40 days, you will die. It will kill you to go 40 days without food or water. We're just not in health that can do that. But fasting, and we'll just use the model. The model is the Day of Atonement. We'll just say the normal fast is a 24-hour fast.

It doesn't have to be sundown to sundown. It can be more than 24 hours. But let's just take this model, sundown to sundown, 24-hour fast. And say, okay, if this is our model, why would we do it? What would be the purpose? You ever fast and just go to work that day? You see, it's a lousy day at work. It's a lousy day at work. And of course, with low blood sugar and hungry and, you know, a little bit of headache, you're not the nicest person either.

So you just make everything worse. Why would we do it? What are we trying to achieve when we fast? So to understand that, let's go to Isaiah 58. Isaiah 58, we're going to spend a lot of time at Isaiah 58.

We're going to put a marker there because we'll leave it from time to time, but we'll keep coming back to it. Isaiah 58, an entire chapter about fasting, or most of it, the chapter is about fasting. And not just, you say, well, we're going to the Old Testament when we look at the physical side of fasting. This is the most spiritual explanation of what God wants to achieve in fasting in the entire Bible.

To get the context, let's start in verse 1. Verse 1, we'll see, he's talking to the people of Israel who have, well, let's just say they're very religious. These are very religious people. These are people who have regular Sabbath services. These are people who do sacrifices of the God. These are people who, many of them don't commit adultery. They don't worship idols. And yet there's something wrong in their relationship with God. He says, cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet.

This is what he tells Isaiah to do. Tell my people their transgressions in the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily. There's regular prayer going on. There's regular reaching out to God going on in their lives. That's not enough. I mean, I read these kinds of verses and they really bother me. And he says, these people are seeking me. God didn't say they're seeking other gods. They're seeking him. And yet there's not a connection between them and him. He'd think, well, anybody would seek God. He would respond, wouldn't he? Well, according to this, no.

To simply seek God isn't enough. Now, first of all, you have to seek God. The biggest problem in our lives is much of the time we're actually not seeking God. We're just doing whatever we want.

So you at least have to start with this. So we seek God, but he says that's not enough either. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways as a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of me the ordinance of justice, and they take delight in approaching God. So they want, they say the right things. They seem to outwardly do the right things, but he says there's something wrong.

And then they bring this question to God. Why have we fasted, verse 3, they say, and you have not seen? Why have we afflicted our souls and you take no notice? So these people were fasting. They weren't just waiting until the Day of Atonement. They're fasting. They're praying. They're saying we love to know the ways of God. And yet God said, your fasting isn't doing what I want. And I say, well, if I fast, God's naturally going to.

Just, what is your request? Why are you here? If I pray, God's just going to naturally do this. But he was saying, no, that's not what's happening. Why? And that's why Isaiah 58 is so important. Isaiah 58 tells us the kind of fast God doesn't want and the kind of fast God does want.

The important thing is we are too fast. We are too fast. And more than the Day of Atonement. But we also have to know what God wants in a fast. It's not a cynicism. It's not because He wants us to suffer because of our sins. It's not because He wants us to feel pain. It's not because it makes us more righteous than our neighbor. So let's now continue on the second part of verse 3.

In fact, so he starts off with, here's why your fasting doesn't work. In fact, in the day of your fast, you find pleasure and exploit all your laborers. In other words, you fast and you go around just doing what you normally do that day. You just do whatever you normally do, trying to, you know, please yourself.

Now, he doesn't say, by the way, that the fasting is the Sabbath. There's nothing that says that it's holy time set aside by God. So in other words, it doesn't say you can't work on the day that you fast. But he said the problem is you spend your fasting doing what you want. It's a self-centered day. Now, you even think about sometimes why we fast.

God, I need you to do something for me, and it's a self-centered day. The rest of this verse is something that is really... When I first read it, I remember years and years ago, it perplexed me for the longest time. It took me a long time to figure this out. He says, and you exploit all your laborers. In other words, in their fasting, they're probably telling other people, you have to do my work today because I'm fasting. Or in this case, he's speaking to people who actually have businesses or have servants in that culture, and he's saying, you exploit your laborers on that day.

Wait a minute. Fasting has to do with me going to God and bringing Him my petition, my desire, about what I want. And he's saying, he doesn't listen to my fast because the way I treat other people? Yes. And as we go through this, it's actually an important part of what he says a proper fast is.

A proper fast includes the way we treat other people. You probably didn't know that before. Fasting includes the way I treat others? Yes. And he tells these people, the first reason you and I have a problem with your fasting, and he says, I don't respond to it, is because you just do whatever you want on that day, just like it's any other day except you're not eating, and you exploit other people in the name of your fast.

You know, it's okay for me to treat you bad today because I'm fasting. It's okay for me to be grumpy today. I'm fasting. So this is the way he starts this. This is in any way the way we think about fasting. And this is why he says he's not accepting their fast. Verse 4, Indeed, you fast for strife and debate and strike with the fist of wickedness. He says, part of the problem with the fasting of ancient Israel, and I want you to ask ourselves that question of ourselves today, is we do it to display our own righteousness, that we do it to get God on our side.

We fast so that God will be on our side of a debate, on our side of things. God, I'm fasting you today because I'm being oppressed by somebody, and I want you on my side. He says, you actually fast, and it creates debate and strife with others. That's other people. How does fasting have to do with other people? That's why you fast. And to strike with wickedness. So that you can feel superior to other people. You fast for those reasons.

And then he goes on, he says, you will not fast as you do this day to make your voice heard on high. I am fasting today because in my suffering I know you will listen to me. You have to understand that's actually a pagan concept. It is the pagan's concept to believe if I do the right ritual, or if I suffer, that gods will do what I ask them to do.

I've been reading recently about what happened in the 4th century when Christians began to think this way. They began to believe that I must suffer for God to love me. So they would take whips and walk around beating themselves. And through the entire Middle Ages, there were groups of people. You could walk down the street with their backs open, you know, just beating themselves raw. Because God loves me if I did this. In Egypt in the 4th century, he got so strange.

This one man went out in the desert and he built himself a huge pole and climbed up on top of the pole. And he just sat up there. And people would bring food and take it up to him. I guess when his clothes rotted off, they'd send up other clothes. He sat up there for years. He never left the pole. He had to do all sort of contortionist exercises to keep his blood flowing and everything.

But people came to see him so he didn't like it. So he moved even farther in the desert, which now created an entire movement of people. In Egypt, where hundreds of Christians were right into the desert to stand and watch him. And no matter how far he went into the desert, they just followed him out. Because he had to have somebody to keep coming out to give him water or food, or he'd die. So he had ideas that you can't drink anything but water or eat anything but bread. Because God loves you more. Because the body is evil.

Fasting isn't a way of showing us the body is evil. But there's a physical reaction to it, isn't there? What is that physical reaction? He says here, you're not doing this so that somehow your suffering makes God say, That's good, I'll listen to you now. I like that. I like what you're going through. Because if that was true, fasting for 24 hours isn't a lot of suffering.

I mean, for some people it is. For most of it, it's not a lot of suffering. We need to beat ourselves. We need to fast twice a week. And if that's what the purpose is, we need to shave our heads and walk around in burlap. And itch all the time. We need to do that if that's what this is all about. So what is it about? Is it just to make my voice heard on high?

We are, doing it fast, allowed to bring a request to God. It is proper to bring a request to God while fasting. But it is not to manipulate God to fulfilling our request. One of the greatest examples of this is something that a lot of people misunderstand. And that's in 2 Samuel. 2 Samuel 12. You know the story. David commits adultery, murders the man's wife, the woman's husband. And Nathan goes to him and says, God is, you know, you are a sinner before God. And David realizes he's forfeited in his life and he always says, I've sinned before God.

I'm sure at that moment he expected to be told you're going to die. Instead, God told him, no, no, no, you don't get off this easy. He says, you have shamed me. Not only does all of Israel know that you did this, but all the nations around know that you did this. You have shamed me to the whole world. The man that everybody said, this is the man of God.

This is the one man of God and you've shamed me. So I'm not going to kill you, but the child will die. And everyone will know God took your child from you because of what you did to me, to all the people in the world. Now the child's born and the child's sick. Verse 13. Let's turn to verse 14. And the Lord... this skipped out to verse 16.

I was going to read all this, but I'm just told the whole story. And the Lord struck the child that your YHWH's wife bore to David, and he became ill. And David therefore pleaded with God for the child, and David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground. So the elders of the house rose and went to him to raise him up from the ground, but he would not, nor would he eat food with them.

Then on the seventh day it came to pass, and the child died. David went before God, poured out his heart before God, and begged for that child's life. For seven days. He begged for that child's life for seven days, and he fasted. Now you can imagine what he's saying. I know what I would be saying. It's not the child's fault. And he had to learn something from this, because God's saying, I know it's not. That's the point, David. Your actions hurt other people. And in this case, it hurt everybody in the known world.

Let's face it what David did. It hurt everybody in the known world. Everybody around Israel. What hurt my... what? The God of Israel? This is what his servants do. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, indeed, while the child was alive, we spoke to him, and he would not heed her voice.

How can we tell him that the child is dead? He may do some harm, and he may kill himself. David was so distraught that they thought he might kill himself. When David saw his servants were whispering, David perceived that the child was dead. Therefore, David said to his servants, is the child dead? And they said he is dead.

What would you do after fasting seven days? How can God be fair? I have fasted seven days. I have afflicted myself. I have taken blame. I have repented. No, he repented. I will do whatever it takes to win back your favor. I will trade my life for the child. You know he said that too. You know what anybody would be saying in this case. After seven days of that, the child dies.

And he raises up. He changed his clothes, went into the house of the Lord, and worshiped. He went into the house of the Lord, and worshiped. He went into God and said, You are so incredibly wonderful and above the rest of us.

Now how did he get there? This is real important. I believe it's why it took seven days. How did he get there? Then after all of this, he goes to God and says, Thank you. I worship you. You are more righteous. You are greater. You are wiser than all of us. We are nothing compared to you.

He did say he went to God and said, I'm upset with you. He was already upset. He started upset. Seven days later, he goes and worships God. He goes and he worships God.

And we went to his own house. And when he requested, they said food before him, and he ate. Verse 21. Then his servant said to him, What is this that you have done? You fastened a whip for the child while he was alive. And when the child died, you rose and ate food. You know, because it was the opposite of what happened. When people died, it was natural for people to fast. And that was part of what they did. When someone died, they would rip their clothes, throw dust on their head, and fast. It is today why, before a funeral, what do we do? We all take food over to the people's house, because you know what? We know they're not eating. Not eating is part of the morning process. And fasting was what... that was just the custom of the day. You're doing the exact opposite of what people do. Shouldn't you now be fasting? Shouldn't you now be going to God? Verse 22. And he said, When the child was alive, I fastened and wept. He didn't say I fastened, because I wept. For I said, Who can tell whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return. And here's the great lesson. We do not fast to prepare God for us. We fast for us to be prepared for God. See, we tend to fast because we're bringing something before God and we want it done. And somehow in my suffering, God is going to now be prepared for my request. We're allowed to bring requests. We're supposed to bring requests while we're fasting. But we fast not to prepare God for our purpose, but for God to prepare us for his purpose. After seven days, David was totally, completely prepared for God's answer and accepted God's answer and worshiped God for his answer. Fasting is a little different than sometimes what we thought it is. It is to be prepared by God. That's the purpose of this.

Let's go back now to verse 5 here. And I see it. So once we understand this, the purpose of fasting is not to prepare God for us, but for us to be prepared for God. Now the whole thing shifts. There's a dramatic shift in why we do it, and there should be a dramatic shift in our desire to do it, in our desire to fast. Because we understand what's happening here. God is preparing us for something, and he's preparing us for his will. Back in Isaiah 58, verse 5, he says, Is it a day? Is it a fast that I have chosen? A day for a man to flick his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bull rush to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a fast and an acceptable day to the Lord? And what they would say is, yes. Oh, yes. It's interesting that Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, gives instructions about fasting. He says, don't go around mopey, telling everybody, fasting today, on God, does that smell good?

He said, wash your face, anoint yourself, and go around with purpose.

Because your fast isn't for other people to see, it is for you and God. I mean, there's a time to tell people you're fasting, and there's a time to let other people know. But what you're talking about here is a complete show. It had become a religious ceremony. You did this ceremony, this ritual, and as you did this ritual and this ceremony, God was going to respond to you. A number of years ago, in the Church, I was greatly encouraged, because it was the first time I had ever seen it happen. Every time I had seen a Church-wide fast, it was because the Church needed our request of God. And a number of years ago, when the United First started, there was a request for everybody to fast, so that we could go and meet together at the GCE and ask God what He wanted. I'll never forget that.

And yes, we're finally figuring a few things out. This was supposed to be our purpose all along. We're not supposed to prepare God for us.

It's not the purpose of fasting. Verse 6. Is this not the fast I have chosen? Oh, now God's going to tell us how fasting works. He tells us how it doesn't work.

Now let's look at how it's supposed to work.

He says, To lose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke. The purpose of fasting is in the end.

The burdens of our sins, our anxieties, our fears, the burdens of the oppression that we feel from others, is to be lifted by God.

We know when our fast has been accepted. Sometimes not during the fast, but after the fast. Because there is a certain freedom.

Now I didn't get my new car. That's what I was fasting for.

Well, how do you prepare God enough to give you a new car?

If I dance enough, will you give me a new car? Am I fast enough? I mean, what am I supposed to do here? And you'll give me a new car.

But there is a release of our own burdens, our own sins, the yokes that are upon us. That happens. Why?

Because we're now prepared for God, and that is what God wants to do in our lives. He wants to free us from all this.

He said, this is the fast I have chosen to free you from these things.

What happens when we fast, and it's the fast that's right before God, it's an interesting thing.

We stop being centered on our hunger and thirst, and we start to be centered on our hunger and thirst for God.

There's a reason for this. He calls it that we are to be humbled.

There is a reason for this. When we fast, we are brought face to face with our own smallness. We are brought face to face with our own mortality.

Fasting makes everybody equal, doesn't it?

It makes us all human beings.

It brings us all before God in this humility, in which we are now saying, okay God, prepare me for you. I hunger for you.

This is the great problem in our society, and it's the great problem in the church today. Are we hungry for God?

Do we hunger and thirst for God?

Have you really been hungry? Have you really been thirsty?

And none of us have been starving.

Do we desire God at that level?

Psalm 63.

Psalm 63.

I remember one time my son and I were hiking in the desert in Big Bend National Park. We'd been here three days, you know, three days living in a tent, no shower, cooking food on a camp stove.

And we spent one morning hiking in the desert. It was 103 degrees, I remember that.

And after hiking all morning, we came out. There was nobody else there. It was too hot.

No one was stupid enough to go hiking in the desert, okay, except he and I.

And we come out and there's a camp store there. There's nobody in the camp store, okay.

There's no campers in the campground. We're even in a different campground.

But we hike out and we go in this camp store and there's some guy half asleep behind the counter, you know.

And I'll never forget, we bought a bottle of cold water. We paid 50 cents for a shower.

And we bought an ice cream bar. And I'll never forget, he's, I don't know, 16 years old, 17.

The two of us sitting out in front of that camp store after having cold water and a shower and eating ice cream.

And we just giggled like a couple of little kids.

We're just starting to laugh. We can stop laughing.

You know, that's what fasting is. It's being in the desert and coming across God.

And God does something to us.

Psalm 63 verse 1.

He says, Oh God, You are my God, David says.

Early will I seek You. We have to seek Him. My soul thirst for You.

My flesh, He says, My body itself, everything I am, longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.

This is what we lack.

We lack having our thirst suaved by God.

Because we lack acknowledging our thirst.

We lack having God fulfill that spiritual hunger because we lack understanding that the hunger is there.

So we keep busy. We keep busy and we have to face the hunger for God.

Fasting is supposed to make us... Okay, just bring us into focus, folks. Are you hungry? Yeah. You feel weak? Yeah.

Is all this stuff important right now? No. All this other stuff loses you.

When you're really hungry, nothing else really matters. Good.

Hunger for that, for me like that. That's what God says.

Hunger for me like that.

And then I'll prepare you for me. I'll prepare you for what I want to do with you.

It is a time for special prayer and study.

You know, it's interesting that you read in the book of Matthew, but the disciples couldn't cast out a demon.

And Jesus comes along and casts out the demon. He tells them, this... this was powerful.

This can only be cast out by prayer and fasting.

In other words, there are times in our lives where the obstacles, where the spiritual obstacles put through by Satan, our own obstacles of our own human nature, our own sins, our own problems, our own thought process, what people do to us, our families, our work, whatever. Those obstacles...

He says, some of those spiritual issues are only dealt with. They can only be taken out of the way through prayer and fasting.

So if we don't fast, they're still going to be there.

Until we're drawn close enough to God through this humble submission, acknowledging our hunger for Him, so that He draws us in and prepares us for His will, the problems stay.

And we keep asking God, fix this problem the way I want it fixed. I fasted. Why did you not do this?

Why did you not fix my problem? I fasted. I said, but you didn't hunger for me.

You didn't understand. You're starving. You didn't understand it. So how could you be prepared for me?

How could I feed you until you actually accepted that you're starving?

Spiritually, we're starving without God. And fasting draws us into that.

How much do we hunger and thirst for that relationship with God?

I ask myself that question. I ask myself that question a lot.

Am I really hungering and thirsting for that relationship with God?

Why are there so many other distractions in my life that God's really secondary?

Oh, He's there, but I don't hunger the way I supposed to.

And therefore, God's not doing in my life what He wants to do.

How willing are we to set aside for a little period of time our absolute centering of our lives on physical things? Because God doesn't say physical things are bad. He didn't call us to be aesthetics.

God doesn't say physical things are bad. But He says, I want you to once in a while just pull away from all of it and become spiritually minded.

Pull away from all of it so that you remember that these things are all temporary.

Let's go back to verse 7 now, Isaiah 58.

Now, here's what I find really interesting in this.

We already read where He says, now, I don't accept your fast because the way you treat your laborers, your employees, the people who work with you, work for you, or even work with you.

The way you treat them when you fast is wrong.

Now, remember, this is the fast He has chosen.

Verse 7, is it not to share your bread with the hungry and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out when you see the naked that you cover him and unhide yourself from your own flesh.

We want to know when our fast has connected with God.

Oh, I know my fast has connected with God. Do you know why? I get my request.

Well, not necessarily.

We have to be prepared. David did not get his request.

And David worshiped God because of it. He was prepared for God's purpose.

We know when our fast has opened up where God is now interacting with us because we now see and deal with the needs of others.

I mean, I'm not making this up. That's what he just said.

I mean, verse 6 says, is this not the fast that I have chosen?

Verse 7 is, this is the fast he has chosen.

This is the result of the fast he has chosen.

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, but to bring into your house the poor who are cast out when you see the naked that you cover him, and you hide yourself not from your own flesh?

That last statement is that you start really taking care of and spiritually involved with your own family.

Fasting drives us to become better husbands, wives, parents, children inside a family.

Fasting brings us into those relationships.

It says that we know at the end of the fast when we're really chosen by God because we look at our wives and say, I need to treat her better.

But I wanted a car! I mean, we used to fast for a car. I mean, that's trivial. But God, I really wanted better health, or I wanted a better job, or I needed this.

So I was fasting, you would correct my wife. See, we fast for strife, right? And debate.

At the end, I know you accepted it because now I've decided that I need to treat her better.

Acceptable fast is we now treat others differently because we've opened ourselves up to God's purpose.

And it opened ourselves up to God's purpose. God now starts to work through us what he wants to do.

That's just a remarkable thing. We usually start our fast for selfish reasons. And we know that our fast is acceptable to God because we're no longer motivated for the selfish reasons we began our fast for.

How many times did it come out of the fast? I say, I don't know. I'm sort of weak and hungry. I don't know why I did it. Because God told me to, I guess. See, when we fast, we need to read Isaiah 58, and we need to ask for this to be fulfilled in us.

Because this is what God accepts.

He goes on to verse 8.

He says, then your light shall break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily, so in other words, physically even, we receive benefits, and God gives us healing from fast.

The spiritual healing, emotional healing, obviously physical healing, and your righteousness shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.

In other words, God now is going to be directly involved with you.

You have fasted, you have humbled yourself, you're preparing yourself for God's purpose, and God says, now, here's what I do.

Verse 9. And you shall call, and the Lord will answer, and you shall cry, and he will say, here I am.

What God wanted a fast is for us to be there right in front of him, and him to be able to say, I'm right here.

Now, that's what God wants in our fast. That's not what we want in our fasting most of the time, because we already know what we want from God.

Now, it's not wrong to bring up petition. It's not wrong to say, this is what I would like.

I'm drawing close to you and asking for this petition.

But don't be surprised that sometimes as you go through the petition and go through the fast, at the end you say, Oh, okay, so I need to be asking for something different. I understand now. I'm asking for the wrong thing.

Because God says, I'm here. I'm here to interact with you. I'm here to listen to you.

I'm here to respond to you, because we have responded to him properly.

That's what we want in a fast.

Suddenly, you're not so spiritually hungry. You're being fed. God's there.

It's very interesting, though. He doesn't end right there.

There's the big if. The Bible is full of ifs. God says, I'm going to do this. Now, if you do this, I do these things. I promise you I do these things, but you have an if in this. You have to do something too.

If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, you have to stop the way you're treating, badly treating other people.

You have to stop the way you're always putting others down.

You have to stop this. The feelings appear to others.

Stop that. Obviously, he's not saying you stop putting out sin.

We're all just pointing out sin in the world. We're told to do that.

But he's talking about the way they were treating each other as the people of God.

Because he's talking about how they're treating each other as fellow Israelites.

So today, we'd apply that how we treat each other in the Church of God.

So you have to stop doing that.

Verse 10. I have to think of something. Before we go there, let's go to Isaiah 55.

Just over a few chapters.

I really like the way this is written. I get a kick out of the way it's written in English.

Because the sentence starts with, Hey! Hey! That's how it starts.

It's just a shout.

I'm getting your attention here. Hey, hey, hey, listen to me. Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and you who have no money, come buy and eat.

Yes, come buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Why do you spend money for what is not bread?

We buy lots of bread when you and I eat very well.

Suffering from physical hunger isn't something that you and I face except when we make ourselves do it.

Other people face it every day.

I heard a figure just yesterday on the news. They said that over 800 million people on the earth don't receive enough food every day to live.

Because most of those people, they said, lived in countries where there was war going on.

Many of them in parts of Asia, parts of Africa.

But that's a lot of people. They don't get enough food every day. I don't have that problem. Now, we may not eat a lot of nutritious food every day, but we have lots of food. We don't feel hungry.

He says, why do you spend money on what is not bread? And your wages are what does not satisfy.

God says, listen carefully to me and eat what is good and let your soul delight in abundance.

He says, listen to me and receive the spiritual food that you need.

You know, it's interesting, on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, we read the Beatitudes and they're nice little quaint sayings, but they're not nice little quaint sayings.

They are some of the deepest things in the entire Bible.

And he said, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Blessed!

Blessed by whom? Is God blessing this? He's pouring out here.

Blessed are those. No, hungering and thirsting for righteousness is uncomfortable.

It can be more uncomfortable in your emotional mental state than hungering and thirsting for food.

Hungering and thirst for righteousness, these are blessed people who do that.

These are blessed people who struggle with, I want to be close to God, who struggle with wrong human nature, who struggle with the society around them.

These are blessed people who sometimes say, God, I just need to have you there.

He said, these are blessed people.

Why are they blessed? The rest of the sentence.

For they shall be filled.

That's an interesting statement because, let's just reverse this.

If you don't hunger and thirst, you won't be filled.

Which means you will just be hungry and thirsty internally, inside, spiritually, and it will never be filled.

You'll fill with other stuff, drugs, entertainment, fill this with sex.

Whatever you have to fill that with, you'll fill it.

That hunger, but this hunger never goes away.

It's like being starving to death and eating a Twinkie.

You get just a little bit of like, I'm not hungry, but you really are because it's killing you.

You're still dying. The Twinkie is just not helping you. It just gives you this temporary feeling that you're not hungry, but you are.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

You and I have to hunger. We have to be uncomfortable in this.

True Christianity isn't being comfortable.

True Christianity is hungry and thirsting for the greatness of God in this evil world.

Let's go back now and finish in Isaiah 58.

We're still back to an if statement.

He says, if you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, he said, so in your hunger you reach out to others.

Think about that's not just in physically. If I'm hungering and thirsting for God, I'm going to need to reach out to others who are hungering and thirsting for God.

It's funny, if you truly understand the gospel, try to not share it with others. I read this one years ago and you've heard me say it many times.

The gospel, just one starving man telling another starving man where to get food, that's what it is.

Be a starving person and God gives you food. You can't help it.

You don't look at another starving person and say, I don't want to get food. You can't help it.

That's the amazing thing about this and that's what he's saying.

If you really fasten and open yourself up to God, you're going to want to say, Hey, fella, I know what you're going through. I can tell you where to get bread.

So we live in this sort of dull Christianity, going through life hoping nobody notices we're different.

Never reaching out, never touching another person's life.

Then you need to hunger for God. You're not hungering enough for God.

You don't realize the depth of your hunger. You're actually hungry, you just don't know it.

You don't realize the depth of it.

It's interesting that people who starve to death, there's a point where they don't even want food.

They don't hunger anymore.

It's like they're past the point where the body is just giving itself up to death.

We never want to get to that point.

He says, then your light, this is what happens, then your light shall go on in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noon day. God's going to fill you with light.

The Lord will guide you continually. This is what we want.

This is what David did when he got up off the floor after seven days of fasting and his child died.

God was now guiding him continually.

Where God wasn't guiding him before, not at all.

And satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones, and you shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.

That's what happens when we truly fast.

Have you ever had a fast like that? I hope so.

I have to say, not every one of my fasts are like that.

I struggle with fasting like you do. It just gets too physical at times.

But it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to lead us here into the presence of God, or he says, Here I am. That's what a fast does. It brings you to a God.

And here I am. And sometimes your petition at that point doesn't even seem that important.

Because you're with God.

As I said at the beginning of the sermon, one of the reasons why I believe so many people in the church still struggle.

We struggle with the world. We struggle with our own sins, our own attitudes.

We struggle with unity in the church. We struggle with our marriages, our families.

I think it's because we don't recognize our hunger and thirst for God enough.

And in order to do that, you have to hunger and thirst for some Cheerios for a while.

It's a pretty... I mean, when you think about prices to pay, that's a pretty small price.

I've been a hunger and thirst for Molochurios for a while, so I can now understand my hunger and thirst for God.

People ask me, how often should I fast?

Remember, deprivation, you know, this is about being aesthetic. I fast every day.

You know, there are people who actually fast part of every day. They might have one meal a day of some monks.

So they're closer to God. And it's not making them closer to God.

But we are to fast. And Isaiah 58 shows us how to fast.

And how often should I fast is a very personal question.

So let me leave you with this question.

Because this question will lead you to your thoughts about how you should fast and how often you should fast.

How often should I set aside some physical needs to hunger and thirst for God's presence in my life? How often should I set aside some physical needs to hunger and thirst for God's presence in my life?

Because that's what we're supposed to do.

So I hope that all of you have, two weeks from now, a very wonderful day of atonement.

And that you really get a chance to hunger and thirst for God.

Thank you.