Neh No.4 Prayer and Fasting

Now, you may care to have your Bibles open at the Book of Nehemiah, and I spend a few moments just reminding you, particularly for the benefit of friends who do not consistently attend the church here, that we are pushing our way somewhat slowly through this book, believing that in these historical volumes in the Old Testament, God has much to teach us as a church here in the centre of Worthing in 1978. And you will remember that Nehemiah, the man who gives his name to this particular Old Testament book, is in the employment of one of the great men in his day, the King of Persia. Nehemiah is a Jew, and as we discover him in this first chapter, we see him distressed and demented.

The reason, you recall, for his grief is this. He has heard from his brother and some colleagues of the State of Jerusalem. Some 90-odd years before these events, permission was given for the Jews who had been in exile to return to the Holy City.

Nehemiah had not yet gone back to Jerusalem himself. And when his brother gives him a report of the state of the Holy City, he discovers that the walls around Jerusalem are still in a state of disrepair. The walls thereof are burnt.

Now, it was the hope of any sensitive Jew that Jerusalem would always remain in the possession of the chosen people. The Jews were to pray for the safety and therefore the security of Jerusalem. So here is Nehemiah, a sensitive spiritual Jew, who is despondent when he hears about this report.

And you remember I say that his immediate reaction was not to go to Jerusalem, to stir the Jews up there, to doing what should have been their priority in the list of things that they were about, but rather, we're told in the fourth verse of this chapter, that having heard this sad news, he goes into his prayer closet and there he sits down and weeps and mourns and so on. Now what is this to do with us? Well, I said it has much every way. In as much as the wall around Jerusalem that is in a state of disrepair and the gates that were burnt and had not been replaced and rehung, stand for the work of God which you and I are to engage in today.

And many of us in our own lives would say that there are areas where God's spirit is not completely in control. We look at the church locally and we see even here in the tabernacle, blemishes, marks upon our testimony which displease God. The wall in some areas in a state of disrepair.

We look at the church nationally and internationally and again we see the sad condition of God's own children. Now what should this provoke us to? Well certainly dedication and ultimately activity, but primarily, first of all, it should send us to our knees. And this you see is the point of studying Nehemiah.

Here is the magnificent lesson that we grasp in the first chapter and it will be underlined in the second and subsequent chapters. The man who is to engage in the service of God, who is to build up the breach in the wall, is first of all to stand in the gap. And this was the principle that I've been putting before you for these, what is it, last three Sundays? This is the fourth I believe.

You've got to be a gap man before you can be a wall man. Now most of us, if we're honest, will say that it's easier to engage in activity in the service of God than what it is to go into our prayer closet and to intercede before the Lord and to engage in heart preparation and bring to the Lord the needs of our brothers and sisters, so that together, rightly equipped with a qualification and expertise of the Holy Spirit, we can go to the wall and build it, whatever that wall might be. Now I said from our study last week that it is salutary to remind ourselves that when Nehemiah hears of this sad news and he goes into his own room and engages in prayer, he does so in a lengthy fashion.

I computed that possibly some three months elapse between Nehemiah going into his room and then going before the king to ask for permission to return to Jerusalem. I also showed you by an analysis of words in the New Testament and relating them to the posture and the attitude of Nehemiah as described in this fourth verse, just what real prayer is all about. It's not a five minute quiet time if you're pleased with God in the morning, though I'm not obviously deprecating that, but there are moments when a person is caught up in the very agony of intercession, when he or she will pour out their hearts before God and break themselves in the presence of the Almighty Father, asking for the ability to go to Jerusalem and to engage in building the wall.

So we've got this picture in our minds and with this I start the revision of Nehemiah. In his own room in the palace of Shushan, sitting down, weeping and mourning and praying for a lengthy period before the God of heaven. But you recall I got so caught up last week with the concept of his attitude in prayer, that I wasn't able to complete the address that I wanted to bring to you, and I had to leave out the aspect that is plainly stated that was part of Nehemiah's attitude in this fourth verse.

I refer to fasting and it seems to me incredible, and I apologize for this in the name of the Lord, that having spent seven or eight years in preaching from this pulpit, I have never yet given an address solely on the subject of fasting. We've touched on it from time to time, but never have I occupied your attention on a Sunday morning in considering the nature and the need for fasting as we engage in our priestly disciplines before God. So it's good that we have half an hour or so to look into this topic and to let the Word of God convict us and instruct us if we are defective in this area of our spiritual discipline.

Let me ask you a blunt question from a blunt Yorkshireman, from a pulpit that becomes increasingly blunt. What do you know about fasting yourself? Have you ever fasted? Listen to Martin Lloyd-Jones, a blunt Welshman. This whole subject has almost disappeared from our lives and even out of the field of our consideration.

How often and to what extent have we thought about it? What place does it occupy in our whole view of the Christian life and of the discipline of the Christian life? I suggest the truth is that we have probably very rarely thought of it at all. I wonder whether we have ever fasted. I wonder whether it has ever occurred to us that we ought to consider the whole question of fasting.

The fact is that this whole subject seems to have dropped right out of our lives and right out of our whole Christian thinking. What is fasting? Well it's not just a disciplined diet or the abstinence from food. Incidentally discipline in food consumption is something that the Christian should always practice.

The Apostle Paul says, I buffet my body. I control its desires. Its desire for sleep, its desire for food, its desire for drink.

I'm always living in a disciplined fashion as far as diet is concerned. I wonder if that's your case. It's a very important point, something that we jump over.

But the Bible doesn't jump over it. It applies teaching to these areas of our lives. But going without food in and of itself is not just what the Bible means by fasting.

There have been people in Belfast, have there not, who have engaged in hunger strikes and these really have been a political thing, drawing attention to themselves and to the cause which they claim rightly or wrongly to represent. That is not what is meant by biblical fasting. Neither is the abstinence of food or the control of food merely to trim your figure.

What is meant by biblical fasting, though it could be a very good practice for you, medically, with perhaps spiritual benefits also. Let the Puritan preacher Charles Hodge tell us what fasting really is. Fasting is a voluntary abstinence from food for a religious purpose.

It is a natural expression of sorrow because sorrow destroys the desire for food and the power to digest it. This abstinence is either total or partial, either for a day or for a prolonged period. You remember the Lord Jesus Christ in the passage we read from the Sermon on the Mount outlines three areas in which the Christian is to be disciplined and offer worship to God.

Two of those areas are very familiar to us. First of all there is the thought of giving, tithing. We recognize this as part of our obligations if we're Christian people.

And then of course there is the concept of praying, of engaging in intercession before the Lord. Now these two things we spotlight and they're often subjects for our attention as preachers call us to consider that passage or related passages of Scripture. But it's interesting that Jesus Christ does not vault over the concept of fasting, but seems to assume that amongst his followers such a practice will be followed.

When you fast, says the Lord Jesus, and the implication is that you will fast. And the Lord Jesus Christ himself not only publicly taught about fasting, but he personally indulged in it. Well what has all this to do with Nehemiah? I argue it has a lot.

In this respect that we find him engaged in a period of prayer, a prayer vigil that lasts several weeks. We've looked at him psychologically if you like, we've seen his attitude in prayer, but notice this he's going without food for this period of time. And why is he praying? Well because he's in soul distress.

He's concerned the walls of Jerusalem, they're broken down, the gates they're off, they've been burnt with fire, and not one of the Jews, although they've been back 90 odd years, has thought of rehanging those gates or building up those walls. And so Nehemiah engages in a fast. Not that this for him would be exceptional, you see the Jewish nation was brought up to keep one day as a fast day each year.

That was the feast of the day of the atonement, the Jews were called to prayer and fasting. And elsewhere in the Old Testament we hear one of the prophets saying, proclaim a fast, call a solemn assembly. Later on in the contemporary book of Esther, we discover that she's in a state of anxiety and so she makes a request of her uncle in her uncle who's with her in the court.

Verse 15 of chapter 4 of the book of Esther, then Esther bade them return Mordecai this answer, go gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan and fast ye for me and neither eat nor drink three days night or day. I also my maidens will fast likewise and so will I go in unto the king which is not according to the law and if I perish I perish. Here is Esther and Nehemiah was brought up in this contemporary scene who is indulging in a fast.

She sees a critical situation and she wants to stretch this before God in prayer. And as I say on the day of atonement once per year the whole Jewish nation was commanded to engage in fasting. Very interesting that in 1967 on the 5th of June which if your history, if your memory of history is good, takes us back to the six-day war between the Jews and the Arabs.

The chief rabbi called for a day of prayer and fasting amongst the Hebrew community. You have to go back a long long way in English history to find any politician or any religious leader calling the nation to a day of fasting and prayer because of the critical situation that was in England at that time. Actually one was attempted interestingly enough in 1852.

Again if your history, your memory of history is good, that was the time when the cholera epidemic was raging through this country and one man asked that the nation should be called to a day of fasting but Palmerston would have nothing of it. But in 1572 when the Bishop of London heard of the savage and brutal attack of the Roman Catholics in Paris amongst the Huguenots and indeed in many of the French cities and the deaths of so many Protestant people the nation was called to fasting that God would root the enemies of the gospel of Jesus Christ on the continent of Europe. Well I say all this in passing but underlining the fact that in the Old Testament economy the concept of a day of fasting of calling the redeemed community together to stretch themselves before the Lord was quite common.

Well why did Nehemiah engage in fasting here? And the answer is obvious I say. It's got to do with the pitiful state in Jerusalem, in the holy city itself. But it seems to me that Nehemiah's fasting is also a product of his own spiritual condition.

He is suffering from what I diagnose as being spiritual sickness, a spiritual sickness. The psalmist is another example of this particular condition. He says in Psalm 42 and three verse three, my tears have been my meat night and day.

He couldn't eat. Spiritually he felt sick. Hannah was barren you remember and she came before the Lord God and asked for a child and you read the story in the opening chapters of the book of first Samuel and she too is without food.

She can't eat. She's distressed spiritually and for the reasons that I've outlined. You know my cat has an inordinate appetite.

One of the wonders of the world is that such a little fellow always demands more and more food. Where he stacks the stuff away I don't know. But it's a challenge to feed him and we never successfully rise to the challenge.

It's that seems to be his opinion. But when he's sick he doesn't eat. Sometimes we wish he'd be sick more often it would be easier on the pocket.

When a person is spiritually sick, spiritually distressed as was Nehemiah, the desire for food wanes. You see the point. Here is a man who's concerned the walls at Jerusalem are broken down.

No one's doing anything about it. The gates well they've not been remade or rehung. And so sick of heart is Nehemiah when confronted with this that he goes into his own sanctuary into his own private quarters in the palace at Shushan and he pours his heart out before God.

Now I want to ask you Christian people and God knows this word finds me out too. When was the last time you were so upset spiritually that you didn't want to eat? My tears, my sorrow. Those were my diet.

That was my diet. Day after day and night after night. So says the psalmist.

This I believe is the sensitivity that is to be required from God's children before we'll see that real revival and reformation that we we are pleading for. We look around the streets of Worthing. We consider the situation in this county, in this land, around the globe, situation of the church as well as of ordinary people.

We see so many defects, so many walls that are broken down, so many relationships which have crumbled and in grief of soul we go back into our prayer room and we break ourselves before God and if you were to offer us a meal at that time we couldn't take it because we've been physically affected by what we have spiritually worked out to be the situation in this land. I ask you are you as sensitive as Nehemiah was to the condition of God's work? Now let me break off and say this, that there is a danger in fasting. There's a danger in fasting.

Here I'm not referring to extremism. You know you always get the extremist don't you? We're plagued with extremism. The whole history of the church has often been a story alas as one extreme to another extreme.

You know an orderly service or a disorderly service as though you can have something in between. No fasting or extreme fasting. So you get the absurdity of some of the monks in the third century who were so going without food that it was affecting them physically and almost causing their death.

Now it's not that form of extremism that I'm referring to at the moment when I point out a danger in fasting. It's this, that having listened to me or listening to me at this moment preach a sermon on this subject you may deduce ah that's what's been missing in my life. This is the reason why my family haven't come to know the Lord God.

This is the reason why I've never had some real dynamic experience of God's Holy Spirit. From now on I'll start to fast and I say that that's dangerous. Let me develop my argument further and you'll see the point.

And I'll introduce the concept of tithing. Now I believe very much in tithing. I believe that this church has been blessed and blessed and blessed again.

Because there are people who tithe and the income of this church is tithed. And because in one sense we're not letting our right hand know what our left hand is doing in supporting the work of God around the world. But you see many books and booklets have been written about tithing particularly of late and testimonies have been given to to God's goodness toward people who've fallen into line in this area of Christian teaching.

And the very hasty conclusion has been drawn all right let me tithe and then I'll be prosperous. Let me fast and then all my prayers will be answered. And I say that in that reaction lurks a danger.

Our attitude to prayer, the discipline of tithing and fasting is not to be the slot machine approach. You know you put the money in and out comes the answer. God doesn't work that way.

It's anti-biblical to draw those deductions. The benefits and there are benefits which I shall be pointing out in a moment or two that attend fasting are indirect rather than direct. Why do I tithe my income? Because of blessings that will come my way.

God forbid. I haven't time to develop that but that savors to me of justification by works. You know you placate this God of glory by giving him money or you placate him by going without food.

And as a result of that he he gives you these blessings. I tithe, I give of my substance because I love the Lord my God with all my heart. I say not that to impress you but because it is true as God is my judge.

That indirectly blessings come my way because I maintain this scriptural principle is a lovely thought but in no way is that what I'm angling for when I engage in tithing. Simply fasting. If you go away from this church thinking right every Tuesday, every Friday or whatever it is I'll engage in fasting and then God will really bless me dynamically and all the prayers that have been unanswered for these years will suddenly come to fruition.

Then I say you have misunderstood me and you are dealing wrongly with scriptural teaching. Why does a person fast? Because he is concerned for the glory of God. Because he wants more time to be given to seeking out God's presence.

Because he's enraptured with God. He's in love with his Redeemer and he wishes to know him more and more and more. That is the only justification for fasting and indeed for tithing.

But having alluded to the dangers of fasting, let me now put up the question and try to answer it though not exhaustively. What are the indirect benefits that comes to the person who engages in this practice? And I work these out from the experience of Nehemiah. There are four things that strike me as I read on into this book.

And the first is that the person who indulges in fasting knows a more intimate relationship with God. Elsewhere in scripture the Lord says draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you. Well what is Nehemiah doing in this fourth verse? What is described is in an attitude of prayer for a prolonged period.

He's going without his food. His concern is to draw near to God. Now is it surprising that in the second chapter when you find him confronting confronting the king himself, that Nehemiah sends an arrow of prayer directly to the Lord from the presence of the king.

Nehemiah you see is aware throughout his life as this book makes it very very clear that God is a present reality. That God is always near him. Now it's this nearness of God that I think is one of the byproducts of fasting.

This this sense of the closeness of the Lord God. Nehemiah practiced the presence of God and through fasting sought him out more. And Nehemiah enjoyed a close walk with the Lord.

But what is more another benefit that came Nehemiah's way is this. He knew guidance from God. Now this is what he was requiring more than anything else.

We find this particularly in the eleventh verse. He was beseeching God. He is beseeching God for for a good audience with with with the king.

He was beseeching God ultimately when he got to Jerusalem for guidance so that he would be able to marshal enough forces to rebuild the walls and to remake and rehang the gates. He needed guidance. What is that area that most Christians stumble over in their spiritual pilgrimage? It's guidance is it not? How many of us would say oh if only I knew God's will more clearly.

Have you noticed in Acts of the Apostles chapter 13 what the New Testament church was doing at Antioch as and after they sent out Paul and Barnabas as the first missionaries to the Roman world. They engaged in prayer and in fasting. When was the last time you heard of a local church indulging in fasting before it commissioned one or two of its members to the work of God across the seas? The early church did it.

You can't say I'm quoting from the Old Testament covenant and therefore it doesn't apply to us today. Here is the New Testament people taking over the Old Testament practice of fasting. They received guidance as they engaged in prayer and fasting before the Lord.

A third benefit to fasting that comes indirectly is it increases faith. I didn't say produces faith. Faith can't be produced.

Faith is a gift of God but faith can be cultivated. It can grow and Nehemiah is a man who knows much faith. He needed that faith to stand before Atazurks.

He's the king. He needed that faith who comes to confront the enemies of the Jews at Jerusalem. John Wesley argued that fasting is the appointed way by which unusual faith is acquired.

Again finally fourthly spiritual power comes through this discipline. Nehemiah is a very powerful man not only because he has authority from the king but because he has a spiritual power that God has infused into him. When his enemies would detract him from doing his work he says should such a man as I flee? He has power.

He has authority. Interesting is it not that when Jesus comes down the mount of transfiguration with his three closest disciples he walks right into a scene in which the rest of his followers are completely incompetent. You remember there was a demoniac child and they couldn't heal him.

They couldn't cast out the demon and so the demented father comes to the Savior and and he attends to the problem and then he takes the disciples on one side and he said you know friends this thing comes out only by prayer and fasting. Spiritual power you see a by-product of fasting. Is it not significant that after our Lord's 40 days and nights in the wilderness in which he engaged in a fast the Bible tells us the gospel writers narrate that he comes back to his ministry clothed in the power of the Spirit.

So these four things are by-products of fasting and there are other benefits that I could enumerate but time will not allow me. Well let me put up my last question and answer it briefly and in the light of my arguments it seems almost a naive one to pose. Should we fast today? Should we fast today? Indeed we should for two reasons.

The first extracted from the context of this particular chapter and the second from the words of our Lord Jesus. I've already shown you that as we are considering this Old Testament but we're not just pursuing some historical inquiry. We note those walls of Jerusalem are standing for God's work today.

Now here is Nehemiah. He wants to be a successful ambassador for God. He wants to be a wall man.

He's got as much concern to get to that wall and to get to the gap in the wall to hang a gate as any other Jew who is spiritually sensitive might have had. But he's got his priorities in order. He realizes that you must be a gap man before you can be a wall man and one of the ways of acquiring strength as you stand in the gap is by prostrating yourself before God in prolonged intercession and in fasting.

I'm arguing yes from the context of this chapter that we have a critical situation that faces the evangelical church in the 20th century and what God for hundreds of Nehemiahs will stand in the gap and bring the need of the Lord of the church to the Lord in prayer and fasting. And then I said my second reason was because of the words of the Lord Jesus. Here in the ninth chapter of Matthew's gospel his disciples are being criticized.

John has followers and they copy the example of the Pharisees in fasting but Jesus's disciples don't. Then verse 14. Then came to him the disciples of John saying why do we and the Pharisees fast oft but thy disciples fast not.

And Jesus said unto them can the children of the bride chamber mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them but the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken from them and then they shall fast. The day will come when the bridegroom Jesus will be removed physically from them then they will fast. Those are the days in which we live today and therefore it is necessary I say for the church in our church here in the tabernacle to look again at the concept of fasting individually and collectively.

Charles Spurgeon who had such a great influence on the founder of this church and was himself the pastor of the most flourishing church in the world in those days has this to say about the experience of his people in respect of my subject this morning. Speaking of the congregation at Metropolitan Tabernacle our seasons of praying and fastings have been high days indeed never has heaven's gate stood wider never have our hearts been nearer the central glory. Spurgeon's vast congregation knew what it was to have days of prayer and fasting and they knew a quickening of God's work in London which verged on revival.

I believe that as this church moves more and more pushing back the frontiers of intercession and service knowing blessings from God we need to come back also to reconsider not only academically but experimentally as individuals and as a corporate whore for biblical teaching and fasting because we've walls to build and we've gates to rehang.