The Mount No.17 The Third Piety

Let me repeat just for emphasis and to enable you to recollect a couple of verses. We're in the Gospel of Matthew and chapter 6 from verse 16. When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting.

I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face. So it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father who is unseen.

And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. I want to speak this morning on the third piety, the third piety. I'm rather regretful that sometimes a good old English word is abused, and instead of containing its classic sense, it becomes associated with that which was not present in the history of the English language.

And piety is a word like that. We think of Phariseeism in terms of piety. The person who is a pious person seems to have with him or her as she or he is so described a Pharisaical nature.

Well that's a misuse of the word. The word pious is a very pleasant and a very wonderful word. It's the sort of word that you and I really ought to be aiming to define in our personality.

Some of the popes of Rome, sometimes a characteristic, hopefully, that they had would be attached to their name or became their name. Pope Innocent, for example, we had a number of them, and the degree of innocence was occasionally at variance. And then there were a number of popes called pious, and some of them were fairly pious men, but others never really achieved piety in the biblical sense.

Now away with the Pope just a moment, and I use that as a figure of expression, a figurative expression. When you die, or if while you're alive, being looking at it a little bit more practically, could it be the case that people might say of you, David the pious, Anne the pious. Piety, you see, is really what our Lord is dealing with in the Sermon on the Mount, when He moves into defining what we will call the three pieties of the Jewish Christian faith.

The first piety was that of almsgiving, doing without finances yourself in order to improve the lot of others, and carried through in the New Testament closely associated with tithing your finance for the work of God and for the relief of people. A pious act, and Jesus said that those who were following Him ought to practice that piety. And then not just giving money, but investing time in intercessory prayer, that too shall become a piety, a pious act in the kingdom of God, and our Lord Jesus therefore emphasizes the need for such piety amongst the people who are listening to Him.

Giving, praying, two pieties, but there is a third. It's that of going without food, so that presumably you have time for other things. The third piety, now let's sort of put that on a scale and measure it in your life.

How do you rate almsgiving, praying, fasting, these areas where one could be and indeed should be pious? Are they illustrated in your life, in mine? When did you last do without food, so that you might have an opportunity to spend more in prayer? When did you last read through what the Lord was teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, and say, Father God you have spoken through your Son, what are to be the principles that fashion the lives of people in His kingdom? So I want mine to be ordered in line with His teaching, therefore I offer you a period of my life on a regular basis when I go without food, because Jesus said that that was part of the devotional practice of members of His kingdom. Well when did you fast? How do you fast? What's the point of fasting? That's what our Lord Jesus is telling us about here, and you remember that He cast His address first of all by the seashore of Galilee, when He got hundreds of people listening to every word that fell from His lips, and what He had to say then is applicable today. Because we also want to be amongst that large company of people, spiritually related to them, clinging on to every word of the Lord Jesus, and putting into practice what He has to say.

That's my challenge afresh. In the area of pieties, how are you doing with the third piety? Or could it be the case, as John Stott comments, here is a passage of Scripture which has been commonly ignored. I suspect that some of us live our lives as though these verses had been torn out of the Bible.

Our Lord was seeped in Judaism wasn't He? That means to say that He was a Jew. He knew the Old Testament Scriptures. The culture of the Old Testament was modern to Him, because it was contemporary for Him, and He knew full well that back in Old Testament days, this practice of fasting had a forefront position in the devotional habit of the Jewish nation as a whole, and individual people, as they tried to implement the instructions that God had given them through Moses and through the prophets.

The day of atonement. They would have a day when the nation would go without food. And there were other days too, not many, but there were specific days in the Hebrew calendar.

And our Lord knew that when you go through the pages of the Old Testament, to quote Richard Forster, a veritable who's who stands out in terms of people who fasted. There was Moses, the lawgiver. There was David, the king.

There was Esther, the queen. There was Daniel, the intellectual. And when you move on into the New Testament, you discover our Lord Jesus also.

On one occasion, only one, but significant, at the beginning of His ministry, He does without food. And Matthew tells us He is a hungered, to quote the authorized version, at the end of that long period, forty days and forty nights, without having any food at all. Jesus, like Moses and Elijah, went for a long period without satisfying the natural hunger of His body.

The 58th chapter of Isaiah gives you tremendous teaching about the subject of fasting in Old Testament days. So you see, when our Lord is speaking to this large company of people out in the open air, speaking of course, in the vast majority to Jewish folk, He addresses them from the background that they know, and from the culture that He too accepts. Because when our Lord speaks out those glorious verses, which we call the Sermon on the Mount, He's not writing a new prescription.

It's not a completely new agenda that He is putting in front of the folks who are listening to Him. He's rather going into the Old Testament, and He is clarifying and sharpening and lifting out those things of perpetual significance and He is saying, look in my kingdom this is how it is to be. When you fast, and so He goes on, and the insinuation is that they will fast in His kingdom, as they fast in the days of the Old Testament dispensation.

When you move on into the New Testament, you find people doing what the Lord suggested. You'll discover in Acts 13 that the church at Antioch gathers together, and significantly like ourselves during the last few days, they come for prayer. And they associate with their prayer going without food, because they're in particular need of God to reveal something to them.

You find men like the Apostle Paul, quoted in the Authorized Version of the Bible, referring to fastings often. Sometimes it would have been forced upon him, because there was no food. On other occasions, because of his concern to develop a spiritual health, he would forego the pleasures of the palate.

The New Testament complements the Old Testament in indicating how desirable the third piety is. Now if you're feeling uncomfortable, relax, that's not my idea. You see part of my job as a preacher, or Tim's, or anyone else who comes to the pulpit, is to remind us of things that we should know of, that we have possibly forgotten, or it's never been taught us in the first instance.

And our objective this morning is not to make you feel guilty, or to ruin the steak that may be, at this moment, be in process of being cooked in your automatic oven, or what have you. But I have to bring you face to face with a teaching of our Lord Jesus in the area of fasting. Why is it, do you think, that by and large we've gone for the first two pieties, and missed the third? You see it's a bit of a conundrum isn't it, that there is there is as much teaching in the New Testament on fasting, as there is on almsgiving.

Now we're all for tithing, in as much as the principle is there on the page. And we know that what God has given us, He's given us on trust, and therefore a proportion of that we ought to directly invest in His work. Now nobody really questions the preaching, they may not always act on it, but at least it's fully appreciated that this is what the Bible teaches.

But why is it that on the area of fasting, we're not so clued up? Could it be that it's a product of the 20th century? When modern philosophy really says, or certainly modern psychology really says, satisfy every whim. You know you must have three good meals a day, and keep running to the coffee pot and the biscuit jar. That doesn't exactly help in terms of trying to keep a trim figure does it? But we live in a Western world which says go on pamper yourself.

Don't in any way cause yourself too much discipline. Perhaps I'm exaggerating in degree, but I think you'll appreciate that in principle there is that attitude in our modern society. Is it perhaps the case that some people feel that our Lord actually doesn't underline fasting as being a particularly necessary discipline, because it doesn't seem to come too high up on His priorities.

I mean that's what a rough and inaccurate conclusion of Matthew chapter 9 verse 14 through to 17 seems to suggest. Turn to it for a few moments and I'll sketch the context as you do so. Matthew 9 14, our Lord has has been involved in the calling of Matthew as one of his disciples.

Now Matthew was doing very well, he was a civil servant. He was paid by the Roman Empire and he was getting a bit of a ripoff in terms of excess taxes. And when Jesus accosted Matthew, not only is he called to be a disciple of his, but Jesus deigns to go into his home and they have a party.

Our Lord was quite a party goer. There were occasions when he would indulge in taking food in a spirit of revelry and sheer enjoyment. I love this picture of our Lord Jesus.

And sometimes that picture was taken out of all proportion on the part of those who were criticizing him. Sometimes he's misunderstood, not just by his enemies, but those who are fairly close to him. And here's a case in point.

John's disciples verse 14, they come in the sort of backwash of this celebration in Matthew's house. And they say, how is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast. And the implication I think is borne out in the authorised version either in this gospel or in the parallel reading is, we fast much, but your disciples don't fast.

And Jesus gives a little story by way of illustrating where he's coming from in this whole teaching on fasting. He likens himself to the bride groom at a wedding. Now no weddings that you and I have ever been to are ones where someone has decided for that day to have a fast.

I mean it would be a very significant wedding, people would certainly remember it, and some people would be utterly astonished. And this is the way that Jesus illustrates the time that he publicly has been ministering with his disciples. It was to span some 36 months.

And Jesus said, in one sense it's just like a wedding. I am here as the bride groom, and here is the bride. And as we're together interlocked, enjoying one another's company, now is not the time to fast.

But the time will come, he says, when the bride groom will be taken from them. Then, then they will fast. When? Then, when Jesus physically is no longer present.

After they've done their damnedest and put him on the cross. After he's been raised again in the power of an endless life. After he's been taken back into heaven and given the name that is above every name.

Then on earth it will be the time for the bride to fast. In other words, the time is now. Richard Forster says, the most important statement in the New Testament on whether Christians should fast today, is this verse.

The time will come when they should fast. How are Christian people to go about fasting? Because as I've proven to you, and I'm sure that there's no one who would be prepared at this point of taking issue. I brought to you so many illustrations from the Old Testament by way of bringing characters to bear in your mind, in your thinking.

I've taken you into the Gospel of Matthew. I could take you into Paul's epistle to the Corinthians. I could take you through the Acts of the Apostles.

And I could sustain the fact that it is a practice for Christian people, ideally to fast. It's the implication of our Lord's statement here. When you fast, not if you fast.

He did in Matthew 6.16. Not suppose you might, or occasionally, or when you think about it once in a blue moon. Here is our Lord saying, when, when you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. Well there are various types of fasting aren't there? I mean there are some very severe ones.

If you were to go to the book of Esther, you would discover in the fourth chapter, in the 16th verse of that delightful book, that that most wonderful lady goes, and her servants, her female attendants, endure three days fast without food and without water. Why? Well because an act of genocide is about to be perpetrated. The whole Jewish nation are to be exterminated.

Or that is the thinking of evil people in the Persian court. And as a result of such horrific news, Esther goes without food and without water, as she brings the situation before the Lord. A most intensive fast that was indeed.

But it's not always quite as, quite as severe as that. Here is Daniel in the tenth chapter of his prophecy. Great things are to happen on the stage of history.

Daniel who's an intellectual, if ever there was one. And not just a cold intellectual, but a man whose heart has been warmed by the Spirit of God. He determines as a result of news that he's had, to engage in a peculiar discipline.

The second verse of Daniel 10. At that time I, Daniel, mourned for three weeks. I ate no choice food.

No meat or wine touched my lips. And I used no lotions at all until the three weeks were over. Not quite as severe a fast as that as Esther's.

In fact nowhere near as severe. But something that he was doing in order to show his concern about the seriousness of the situation. Now there may be other reasons besides fasting why some of us ought to give up cakes and sweets.

I always used to think as a kid, why was it that my auntie Jessie always said that it was the carrots and the sprouts and the cabbage that I needed to eat. Didn't she know that I'd like to start with the, with the treacle tart and make room for the vegetables if there was sufficient capacity left after I devoured what was her most choice abilities in making, in cooking for no one could produce treacle tart like my auntie Jessie. But back from auntie Jessie to Daniel.

He goes without certain delicacies because of the situation. It's part you see of the Bible's teaching by way of illustration of this whole subject of our fasting. The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 verse 5 addressing married people suggests that there can be sexual abstinence provided both are agreed to this from time to time in order to give specific increased seasons for prayer together.

See basically fasting is, and I'll touch on this in more detail in a few moments, basically fasting is enshrines the principle of self-control doesn't it. You know one of the best spin-offs of these last seven days. I testify quite sincerely as far as I'm concerned is that I was never at home to listen to the television.

Seven days without the television. Some of you know of my admiration for Malcolm Muggeridge. Tremendous skill in the English language.

I wish I could write like him, he writes like an angel. Now Muggeridge was a man who was very much a media man. He was involved in making news and writing news.

He's also a very cynical man. He can express his cynicism and cut anyone down to size if he wishes to. Remarkable incisive vocabulary and brain that he has.

And I remember Muggeridge fairly recently in the last few years saying that that he no longer has television in his house or radio. And he went on record as saying that he felt so much better now he'd had all his aerials out. There is a sense in which when we turn ourselves aside from that which occupies our minds so often and perhaps wastes time so much.

When we turn aside from that there is a spiritual benefit and you come to the conclusion why have I been such an idiot that I have allowed so many of these things to encroach on prime time in my life when I feel that much better to be free of them at least for a while. I'm not suggesting our Lord when he gave this teaching had television in mind though I do think that his foreknowledge of what was to happen was complete. But I think it does not do any injustice to his words and to his argument to bring to you the point that fasting is the enshrining of a principle and it's the principle of discipline.

Because this is what Jesus is setting up. You're going to be members of my kingdom. You good people from Galilee where I've been reared as a boy.

These villages and cities that I know so well. The school that I went to. My own friends here.

You're hovering on the decision of becoming my disciple and nothing wonderful than to be a disciple of Jesus then and now. But tell me you don't need a degree in the English language. What does the word discipline or disciple also enshrine? I've given you the answer I muffed it.

There's discipline within the word disciple. The one is the noun and the other is the action that springs from the noun. The disciple is a disciplined person.

And don't you see that this is basic to the Christian gospel. What delineates. What differs.

What makes a difference between the ordinary Bible believing Christian and the person who's not. And the answer at rock-bottom is this. The Bible believing Christian unless it's just word only that's baptized his mind and he's known nothing of the working through of the Holy Spirit has become a disciplined man.

A disciplined woman. And this is what Jesus wants us to be. Because there are so many calls upon our lives.

There are so many threatening influences. There are so many forces and powers who would play a monopoly upon us. And Jesus wants us to be free.

Whom the Son sets free is free indeed. Says the Apostle Paul, a man is a slave to the thing that masters him. What masters you? What masters you? No I'm not being cruel.

Really if I were to identify the person who causes me the greatest trouble in the tab, I just look into a mirror. Because the hardest thing that I have to do in my own life is to bring it under the disciplines of the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. It's a hard thing.

But when I think I'm making progress, forgive me if this sounds pious in the wrong sense of the word, it brings so many heaped up blessings in terms of helpful consequences. Why should you fast? Why should you take time away from food occasionally? Well I put it like this, to give God elbow room in your life. I told some of you that one of the problems of verse 2 is that the cabins are so small.

Claustrophobia will be quite a problem for those who sail on this ship. Do you know I sometimes think God suffers from claustrophobia in terms of His relationship with us. You see the room that we give Him is so limited.

He dwells in the high and holy places. I'm not being fanciful. He dwells in the high and holy places Isaiah.

And with Him who is of a humble and a contrite heart. How much elbow room do you give the Lord? To be able to make more time, a little bit more space for the Lord. But by pushing aside some of these things that are perhaps not too beneficial for you in any case.

Not only will your body profit by the doing without, but your spirit will improve enormously as a result of directing your attention to things spiritually of more lasting value. Give the Lord room. And what about guidance? I find guidance one of the hardest things, don't you? To acquire.

And isn't it interesting that in Acts 13 when the church wanted to know in Antioch who to separate for the work of the Lord in terms of first missionaries, then they engaged in prayer and fasting. Now some of you are at a pivotal stage, if my premonition was right, earlier on in your life. You're wanting guidance.

Could I suggest to you that if you went without maybe food, certainly without television for a while, or the other things that may be innocent in themselves, but are not as vital to you as time with the Lord. That if you gave those a push for a while, then it would clear your mental faculties and give you an ability to come before the Lord and to know His will in a way that you have not perceived heretofore. Fasting, I argue, gains spiritual satisfaction for you.

Don't you want that satisfaction? The ability to be in control of your life. The Bible talks about the flesh warring against the Spirit. I'm going to be touching upon this with a more extended comment this evening, but isn't it the case that very often your body seems to be in control, and the Bible teaches that that really is not the ideal situation.

Who should be in control of your body? Your spirit. It shouldn't be your body fulfilling every quorum, every whim of the stomach. It should be your spirit directing, designating, utterly in control.

Listen to the Apostle Paul as he writes, and I read from the amplified version of the Bible, do you not know that in a race all the runners complete, but only one receives the prize? Now every athlete who goes into training conducts himself temperately and restricts himself in all things. They do it to win a wreath that they will soon wither, but we do it to receive a crown of eternal blessedness that cannot wither. Therefore I do not run uncertainly without definite aim.

I do not box as one beating the air and striking without an adversary, but like a boxer I buffet my body, handle it roughly, discipline it by hardships, and subdue it for fear that after proclaiming to others the gospel and things pertaining to it, I myself should become unfit, not stand the test and be approved and rejected. You see the point? The man who is disciplining his body is the master, he's in control, and that gives you such spiritual satisfaction, and then as a result there is the recovery of power, the recovery of power. Says Charles Finney, a great evangelist of yesteryear, when he felt that somehow the power had been taken from him, he'd used it all up, he said, I would then set apart a day for private fasting, and this power, the power would return upon me with all its freshness.

John Wesley says, prayer and fasting are the appointed means by which unusual faith is attained. Is that what you want? Unusual faith for a specific situation. Well, says our Lord, when you fast, when you give time to God, when you discipline yourself, you're fulfilling the three tiers of piety which are so necessary to be members of my kingdom, the kingdom of my Father.

So, when we engage in this discipline, we don't let everyone else know about it, we don't blow ash on our faces as some of the Pharisees used to do, or we don't make a great deal of it. You can go out to work, you can do your normal job, and yet you can still be in a condition of fasting. And in one sense, fasting is the queen of the pieties.

Why do I say that? Well, you see, if I fast, it releases more finance, so I can attend to the first piety a little bit more with my excess money. What's more, if I'm not eating, it gives me more time, therefore I can take that benefit and invest it into the second piety. So, you see what a jumbled up lot of people we are.

If we go for the first and say, yes Lord, I want to be pious in that area, giving. And the second, yes Lord, I want to be disciplined in that area, praying. But fasting, well, make me an exception to the rule.

No, says our Lord, this is so unnecessary for you. When you fast, don't look somber as the hypocrites do, don't let everyone else know. Let it be something secret between you and the Lord, and the Father who is unseen will see what you do in secret, and will reward you with the guidance, and the power, and the stamina's, and the spiritual perceptions which for so long have only been in your life in a modicum, instead of in absolute degree.

My brothers and sisters, I call each one of us here at the tab back to the disciplines of the Sermon on the Mount, back to a lifestyle that shows how different we are, by God's grace, from other people. Let's pray. Just a moment or two for that word to work its way through into your life, where I accept my spoken confession for us all.

There are areas where our disciplines have lacked, and as a result, our spiritual lives have been impoverished. Help us, Father, to get these back into order, not just by our effort, but by the ministry of your Spirit combined with a voluntary response of our own wills, and teach us as disciples of Jesus to be disciplined people, and grant to us all the many spin-offs in blessings that come, as you reward folk openly for what they do privately. In Jesus' blessed name.

Amen. Amen.