Fasting: A Seven-Fold Synthesis, Part IV. The Text
The Synthesis
From the biographical background of DFK we move into his Scriptural synthesis, which offers us a seven dimensional view of the spiritual discipline of fasting, drawn from both the NT and OT and applied by the leaven of the Spirit down to the level of experience.
To summarize, fasting;
1. Brings down the Resurrection power of Christ;
2. Accomplishes the Promises of God;
3. Defeats Satan;
4. Hastens Repentance;
5. Opens the Door for Salvation;
6. Helps Christian Marriage; and
7. Furthers Christian Ministry
Now, as I was only able to scribble down a few notes in real-time (the image of which is above), I unfortunately do not have the full text of the sermon to present to you. What I can do, however, is direct you to the Scriptural references for each of the aspects of fasting, then ask that you work through their particular application as time goes on. In the first point, I’ll add quotations from prior, recorded sermons on these subjects. Later on, I will offer only the Biblical references themselves and their sermon links, if available.
To begin,
1. Fasting brings down the resurrection power of Christ;
Dr. Kelly (or as a gas station attendant and longtime member of Reedy Creek, whose practical spirituality, profound humility and self-denying generosity pointed us continually to the Lord, would call my father, “Preacher Kelly”) directs our attention first to Mk 9. Here, the disciples are coming down from the Mountain of Transfiguration and they meet a man “with a dumb spirit” who “seizes him and throws him down” to such a degree that he “gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid” (9:17-18). (As an aside, I dealt with this very thing while working in Trujillo, Peru prior to starting medical school…)
When his disciples are powerless to “cast him out,” Jesus reveals to his disciples that “this kind goes out not out but by prayer and fasting” (9:29). (And for a medical case bearing witness to such a reality, I can take you to a patient that presented to an ACT clinic in Addis Ababa, which occurred after I finished residency.)
Andrew Murray on Fasting
“This kind goes out not out but by prayer and fasting.” This word takes us to Murray, who had a deep influence on my father to the degree that he carried with him for many years together with his Bible and a list of prayer requests an old copy of Murray’s Waiting on God. In another of Murray’s works that my father referred to often, With Christ in the School of Prayer, he makes the following point first on a how a life of prayer must be centered in Christ Jesus, then on how such a life is worked out practically in faith and self-denial—both key dimensions of fasting.
Christ Jesus is our life and the life of our faith. It is His life in us that makes us strong and ready to believe. The dying to self which much prayer implies allows a closer union to Jesus in which the spirit of faith will come in power. Faith needs prayer for its full growth.
Then he offers us an image which my father often returned to both in lectures and in preaching:
Prayer is the one hand with which we grasp the invisible. Fasting is the other hand, the one with which we let go of the visible. In nothing is man more closely connected with the world of sense than in his need for, and enjoyment of, food. It was the fruit with which man was tempted and fell in Paradise. It was with bread that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. But He triumphed in fasting.
And finally, as to the eminent practicality of fasting (which may be why it’s not often preached on…), being that which is suited to our natures as “creatures of the senses”, Murray writes,
We are creatures of the senses. Our minds are helped by what comes to us in concrete form. Fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, even ourselves, to attain the Kingdom of God.
Mark 2:18-22 & Lk 5:33-39
And as to our pathway to “attain the Kingdom of God,” we return to the Scriptural synthesis. From Mk 9, Dr. Kelly takes us back to Mk 2:18-22 and its parallel passage in Lk 5:33-39 (the full exposition of which can be heard in a recently released sermon series on the newly created DFK Archives from the Gospel of Luke in 1979-1980). Jesus in these passages reveals how the resurrection power of our Lord works in us to transform our personalities such that we can begin to receive and bear witness to the Gospel of the eternal Kingdom.
First, Jesus is asked the question of “why the disciples of John fast often and make prayers and likewise those of the Pharisees” but the disciples of Jesus “eat and drink.” Or to put it more another way, “Why do the disciples of Jesus not follow our system of spirituality?”
And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?
As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast (Mk 2:19, cf. Lk 5:34).
The reality of our union with Christ, the Bridegroom, is present to the disciples such that they can “eat and drink” and rejoice in His bodily presence with them. The “invisible”, in Murray’s conception, has become “visible.”
Not always, though:
But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days (Mk 2:20, cf. Lk 5:35).
And here Christ draws back the curtain, as it were, revealing to us what is happening when we fast the true fast in the Lord:
Then He spoke a parable to them:
“No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one; otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old.
Or, as “Preacher Kelly” commented in 1979,
And Jesus is saying the salvation I come to bring is not a “patching up” affair. It’s not that you take some of the religion of the Pharisees, and some of Jesus’ religion, and some of the religion of the Buddhists, and some of the religion of the Muslims, and some of the liberal humanitarian philosophers.
And you mix it all together in a pot and make a soup and then you drink it and then you have the essence of all human religions—Jesus says, I have nothing to do with that because there would be death in that pot, like in the days of Elijah.
The Christian religion, Gospel salvation, conversion and eternal life, is not a patching up affair, of taking some ideas from the Bible, and some ideas from philosophy, and some ideas from here and from yonder, and cutting out some things from the Bible so that it will fit in with what is current in any one generation. And then offering that up as a mess of pottage that you are to eat.
Jesus says there is nothing in that but destruction. What I have come to give you is something entirely new.
Then back to Christ’s next image,
And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined.
But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, ‘The old is better’ ” (Lk 5:36-39, cf. Mk 2:21-22).
This is to say, fasting is like we are paradoxically eating and being nourished by the living epiousios bread of the New Creation.
As Christ in the wilderness, as Moses on Mt. Sinai, as Elijah on Mount Horeb.
“I have food to eat which know not of” (Jn 4:32)
“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work” (Jn 4:34).
And this bread and this new wine cannot be contained in the pre-metanoia modes of thinking of the “old man” without bursting them open (ῥήξει).
Or to put it another way, the bread that we moment-by-moment consume will sustain us “but for a moment;” but the bread of Christ Jesus, the living bread of the coming Kingdom will nourish us for all eternity. For in the process of our ingesting it, this bread begins to transform our entire person so as to receive and bear witness to the Gospel of the Kingdom. We are no longer trying to put new wine into old wineskins. We are, in the words of Paul, a new creation.
As new creational men and women, into the fullness of the New Creation, Jesus beckons us to come:
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.
To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches (Rev 3:20-22).
And with that I will bring this to a close.
The remaining points with their Scriptural references are below (with sermon links to the DFK Archives…with more being added by the day).
Fasting:
1. Brings down the resurrection power of Christ
2. Accomplishes the Promises of God
Daniel 9-> Jer 9 (esp v. 3, 10:2, 10:12ff)
3. Defeats Satan;
II Chron 20:1-30, the sermon exposition of which is entitled, Christian Worship Overthrows Satan; as well as
Esther 4, All on the Altar; and
Esther 5, The Value of Prayer and Fasting.
4. Hastens Repentance;
5. Opens the Door for Salvation;
Acts 10:29-33, an exposition of which is here.
6. Helps Christian Marriage;
I Cor 7:3-5; and
7. Furthers Christian Ministry