Self-Discipline God's Way

Readers’ Digest tells the story of a man who worked in a dimly lit office downtown. There was a large fluorescent light fixture above his desk, but the tube was burned out. He made repeated requests of the building department to get it replaced, but they never got around to it. Finally, in frustration, the man went out on his lunch hour to an electrical supply store and bought a fluorescent tube himself. He brought it back to the office, replaced the burnt out tube, and sat down to a brightly lit desk. He took the burnt out tube and put it over in a corner of the office beside a file cabinet.

But then he began to worry. What if the building department came by and found the burnt out tube? They’d know that he had replaced the light, and he wasn’t a member of the electricians’ union. There’d be all sorts of trouble. How was he going to get rid of a seven foot long fluorescent tube without anyone finding out? Finally, he had an idea. There was a construction site near where he caught the bus on the way home. He’d just take the fluorescent tube along with him, drop it off at the construction site, and nobody would know the difference.

So when five o’clock rolled around, he got up from his desk, grabbed the fluorescent tube and headed down into the subway. He got on the train, which was pretty crowded, and he had to stand. He held onto the pole with one hand, and in the other, he held his seven foot long fluorescent tube. Everything was going great, except that at the next stop, ten more people got on the train, and five of them grabbed hold of his fluorescent tube.

That’s when our resourceful man had a better idea. When he got to his stop, he simply let go of the tube and walked briskly off the train. Who knows what the other people must have thought when they discovered what they were holding onto!

The Bible gives us something solid and substantial to hold onto. Jesus said “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”

Jesus has been teaching us that being a Christian can be hazardous to your spiritual health. There are dangers that you face as a Christian that you don’t face otherwise. There’s a danger that you can take the things you do for God and turn them around and really be doing them for yourself.

Jesus said in Matt. 6:1 “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” In other words, you’ll be a hypocrite. You’ll be doing spiritual things for selfish reasons.

Now we all live our lives in three dimensions. There’s our relationship with others, there’s our relationship with God, and there’s our relationship with ourselves. Jesus shows us how the danger of hypocrisy can catch us in each of those three areas.

We can become hypocrites in the things we do for others. Our giving to the poor can become a flashy show that draws attention to ourselves. We can become hypocrites in our relationship with God. Our prayer life, our communion with God, can turn into an exhibition of piety meant to impress others with how spiritual we are. And even in our relationship with ourselves, with our practice of the disciplines of the spiritual life, we can become hypocrites. This is what Jesus is talking about when he brings up the subject of fasting in v.16-18.

Fasting is a subject which is little practiced and much misunderstood among Christians today. Fasting, according to the Bible’s definition of it, is when you do without food for spiritual reasons. You’re saying no to one of your body’s basic physical appetites in order to give yourself to something that’s more important - to growing in your relationship with God. When you fast, what you’re doing is breaking out of life’s routine and denying your desires, your appetites, your own physical needs so that you can fully give yourself to seeking God and His righteousness.

Fasting is not a shortcut to spirituality. Fasting is not a magic formula for health, wealth, and success. Fasting doesn’t earn you special brownie points with God. Fasting does not force Him into blessing you. Fasting is simply a way of stating to God and to yourself that you believe that your relationship with Him is more important than that you have three square meals a day.

Jesus never commanded his disciples to fast in the Bible, but He assumed that we would. He said “When you fast…” not “If you fast…” and He practiced fasting Himself. Remember when he was in the wilderness for forty days. That’s when he told the devil “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” You know, Jesus wouldn’t have been truthfully able to say that unless he had already broken the habit of eating by fasting.

In the OT, there was only one time when God commanded Israel to fast. That was on the Day of Atonement. But we read of many times when the Israelites fasted voluntarily, either as a nation or as individuals. For example, there was the time when King Saul and his son Jonathan were killed in battle. The people mourned and fasted for seven days. There was the time that David fasted and prayed for the life of the baby that was born out of his sinful union with Bathsheba. There was the time in the book of Esther that the Jews in Persia fasted when they were threatened with destruction by Haman.

God’s people fasted when they repented of their sins. God’s people fasted when they faced national emergencies. That was true not only in Bible times, but also in the history of America as well.

For example, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed April 30, 1863 to be set apart as a day of national fasting and prayer. He wrote “It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon. The awful calamity of Civil War which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity, and too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us then to humble ourselves before God, to confess our national sins, and to pray for forgiveness.”

If the President of the United States made a proclamation like that today, the ACLU would be all over him, and the Supreme Court would strike it down as unconstitutional.

Then there was the time in 1877 when the farmers of the State of Minnesota faced the prospect of having their crops wiped out by locusts. The previous year, there had been terrible locust swarms in the state which had caused widespread destruction. The next spring, the farmers of Minnesota knew that if it happened again, they’d be ruined.

So Governor John Pillsbury proclaimed April 26 a day of fasting and prayer, urging that every man, woman, and child in Minnesota call upon the Lord to intervene. A strange hush descended over the state as the people gathered to pray. The next day, the sun rose in cloudless skies. The temperature soared into the mid-eighties and it stayed there for three days. With the unseasonable heat, the locusts began to hatch out of the ground by the millions. The people wondered with mounting fear what sort of answer to prayer this was. But then on the fourth day, a cold front moved in. That night the land was gripped by a deep frost, and all of the locusts, because they had hatched early, were wiped out. That summer, the farmers of Minnesota harvested a bumper crop of wheat, and not a locust was to be found. April 26,1877 went down in the history of the state of Minnesota as a day when the people fasted and prayed and God answered.

There are times when it is appropriate to fast - to go without food to remind yourself that your relationship with God is more important than even the most basic necessities of life. But Jesus warns us that when we fast, we’d better be careful not to make a show of it.

In Jesus day, the Pharisees had taken fasting to an extreme. They made a habit of it. They fasted twice a week, on Monday and Thursday. Fasting had become a routine thing for them. It wasn’t special anymore. It was just something they did, and they thought that because they did it, they were getting extra points with God.

Some of them went out of their way to let everybody know they were fasting. They wore old clothes, they looked disheveled, they didn’t comb their hair. Some of them even went as far as to rub ashes on their face to make themselves look pale and haggard.

Jesus said “That’s the kind of thing you shouldn’t do in your devotion to God. You need to be discrete in your self-denial. Your acts of spiritual self-discipline can really become acts of self-promotion if you’re not careful.

I used to work for Sears when I went to Seminary. I worked in the hardware department. Every so often, Sears would put a special handtool - lets say a power saw - on sale. In preparation for the sale, they would send us a display which featured a sample of that particular tool on a colorful background. But when you looked closely at that sample tool, you’d see the words “Do Not Sell - For Display Purposes Only”, because that tool wouldn’t have a motor in it.

That’s the way it can be with our spiritual life. If we’re living the Christian life for display purposes only, then we have no spiritual power within us.

There’s always the temptation to congratulate ourselves and to seek the applause of others for how spiritual we are. Jesus said don’t do it. When you fast, don’t make a big deal of it to attract attention. Put oil on your head (modern equivalent: use styling mousse) and wash your face, (things that you would normally do) so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father. Because your spiritual life is a matter between you and God.

This is the root principle that Jesus is teaching here. We must always be careful not to make a show of our spirituality. This relates to areas other than just fasting. Several years ago, it was fairly normal practice to get dressed up for church. People at first did it as a sign of reverence and respect for God. But somewhere along the line, it became a sort of contest to see who could wear the best outfit. What originally had been an act of spiritual devotion became an act of showmanship.

It’s no wonder that many of the young people back in the sixties decided to wear jeans and bare feet to church instead. But then something funny happened with that. Their protest wardrobe became an artificial spiritual standard of its own. They began to think that you weren’t really spiritual unless you wore tie-dyed shirts and beads - unless you looked and dressed and talked like a Jesus freak.

We all have a tendency to want to measure our spiritual life by externals.

Among some Christian groups, the size of the Bible you carry confers a certain spiritual status. Or what particular translation of the Bible you use. Or how many witness bumper stickers you have plastered on your car. Or whether, as a woman, you do or you don’t wear makeup.

Over in Romania, the believers have this thing about how many buttons you have on your suit jacket. If you have two buttons, you’re o.k., but if you have three buttons, you’re too worldly. You’re trying to show off.

A few years ago, an evangelist by the name of Jack Van Impe wrote a book called Heart Disease in the Body of Christ. He told how he and his ministry had come under the influence of some hard-line fundamentalists who had all sorts of rules about what you could or couldn’t do, and who you could or couldn’t associate with. I remember the time when he came to put on an evangelistic campaign in the city of Buffalo. Our church was invited to support the campaign, but we were told that we couldn’t participate on the steering committee because we allowed our women to wear slacks.

Van Impe went on to detail how these people would not even allow a man wearing wire frame glasses to be on the platform. The thinking behind that rule was that wire frame glasses were popularized by John Lennon of the Beatles, and John Lennon was an ungodly man, so anyone who wore wire frame glasses must be just like John Lennon.

These are the kinds of things we must guard against. Jesus says you must never reduce your spiritual life to externals. You must never fall into the trap of expressing your spirituality for the approval of anyone other than God. Because if you do succeed in winning the approval of people, then you have received your reward in full. God has nothing for you.

Our pride is always lurking around, waiting to pounce on us. Even in our most spiritual moments - when we’re giving alms, when we’re praying to God, when we’re fasting - our pride can turn our devotion inside out and make it all an empty sham.

There was a chorus that was popular a few years ago that said “Let’s forget about ourselves and magnify the Lord, and worship Him.” We are at our most spiritual when we just forget about ourselves, and put our eyes on the Lord. May God help us to do so.