The text this morning is Matthew 6, 16 through 18. These are the words of Jesus Christ. Jesus spoke them and he is still speaking them today. It stands written. Hear now the word of God. And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. For they disfigure their faces, that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they've received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." The Word of God. I don't know about you, but many of us here used to be Roman Catholics. I was one. I was one and used to be one until I was confirmed at age 15. My parents said, it's up to you now whether you go to church. And I said, that's easy. So I didn't go. And then one day when I was 19, after a long series of events, I became a born again Christian. And then I learned after that, that the only kind of Christian is a born again one. But I remember from my Catholic days, the season of Lent. Lent is the 40 days prior to Easter. And the question was asked to us youngsters at CCD, what are you going to give up for Lent? We would say things like liver and onions, swearing, a TV program that we hated anyway, just to placate the nuns. And there was always a wise guy that said, they're going to give up Lent for Lent. That was really a technicality, I guess. And as we got older, actually, everybody did give up Lent for Lent. And we never did it again. Before Lent starts, there's a thing called Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday, if you will, down there in New Orleans and some other places where there is great excess and indulgence. You want to get it all in before the 40 days start. And so that's the way that Mardi Gras starts. And of course, when you go the next day to start Lent, you get your ashes. And the priest says these scary words, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And he draws a cross on your forehead of ashes, hopefully not of people's ashes. I didn't think they were, but I may be wrong. Anyway, and you wouldn't wash the cross off. You'd have to leave it on all day until it came off by itself, or you took a shower the next day. And so that would kind of cut directly against what Jesus said, when you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do. In fact, may your devotion be secret. Do you ever see those things where, you know, on Facebook, hopefully you haven't done them, but I'm always on Facebook because it's part of my platform to advertise the gospel of grace. It's what I do. I put sermons up there, reels up there. If you're not my Facebook friend, you ought to be. Just send me the request and I'll... Say yes. But, do you ever see those posts that say, you know, oh, this is my wife. She's the best wife in the world. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Better than any wife that ever existed. Or people put all their intimacy on Facebook and it's like, eww. I don't even know your wife and I don't even think she's that great, you know. Or whatever, your husband, you know. He's the greatest husband in the world. Well, What Jesus is saying, if it was 2024, Jesus was standing right here, he would tell us, don't put your devotion, your devotional, your prayer, your fasting on Facebook. May your devotions, the inner heart of your prayer, be secret. Be between you and God. He'll reward you. if it's secret. Sincere devotion is secret devotion. Amen? And it's that simple. And remember when we who were Catholics, they told us that if we ate meat on a Friday, you would commit a mortal sin. And a mortal sin means you're going to hell. And then what happened was fish markets. We had a wonderful fish market in Lemonster. It was run by a guy who looked like a lobster. His name was Bucky. He had two hands. One was regular, and the other one looked like a catcher's mitt. You ever see a lobster has the big, what do they call them, the crushing claw, and then the pincher claw? Well, Bucky looked like a lobster. And here's why. He would shuck clams. in oysters like this. And so invariably, he would knife himself every day. And as he did, his hand just got bigger and bigger with all the swelling and inflammation. But let me tell you something. The seafood there was unparalleled. It came right from the boat to the plate. Boom. It was incredible. But then in 1983, Bucky got some bad news. The Roman Catholic Church said, you only have to eat fish on Friday during Lent. When previous to that, you had to eat fish on Friday, every Friday of the year. And people were mad. They said, wait a minute, in 1982, It was a mortal sin, but now in 1883, it's not. What happened? So a lot of people were disillusioned and left the church. But I guess right now the issue is that you are supposed to eat fish on Fridays and Lent, but the rest is up for grabs. So anywho, I always thought that was kind of unusual, unusual results. If you were trying to be austere and you were fasting, you could eat a lobster on Friday, but you couldn't eat a hot dog. Just kind of scratched my head on that one, you know. Get away from that hot dog, you'll sin. Try this lobster. You know, with the shrimp stuffing and everything, drawn butter, you know, dripping off the sides. So, yes. Fasting is assumed by Jesus. He says, and when you fast. It's not commanded by Jesus, but it's assumed by Jesus. It was commanded under the old covenant, but it's not commanded under the new. However, the practice is encouraged. Not for weight loss, but for devotion in prayer. If you, for instance, had a very serious issue, it would be a good thing to engage in fasting and prayer to the extent that you're able. Now, some people are diabetic, more and more, I think, in our society, and fasting for them can be very difficult, can be challenging for their lives because their blood sugar will go up and down and all these things. So you may have to become creative and you're fasting and maybe fast something else as opposed to, you know, eating. But you can fast a lot of things, right? I'm fasting work this week. But listen to this. Fasting is calculated to bring a note of urgency and importance into our praying. and to give forth to our pleading in the court of heaven. The man who prays with fasting is giving heaven notice that he is truly in earnest. There are some times that our prayers go no further than the drop ceiling. And you know why? Your heart. Is your heart in it, or is it rote? I remember our kids used to pray, and they'd say, Dad, I wanna pray. We had the four little ones sitting around the table, and this was their prayer. God is good, God is great, let us thank him for our food, amen. And sometimes, you know, the little ones would really say to us, God is good, God is great, let us thank him for our food, amen. I was like, could you say that a little slower and lower? But, you know, your heart needs to be in it. And when you're fasting, your heart is really in it. And the Lord hears that kind of a prayer when it's coming from your heart. It's coming from your socks, if you will. Right? There are times we need to concentrate on God intensely. Remember Jesus, when he picked the disciples, the apostles, what did he do? He prayed all night for the right people. And today, our society is so fast and so quick, do we have time for devotion to the Lord God? We have not heard about fasting very much. Fasting, you hear about now a lot, intermittent fasting for weight loss. In fact, actually everybody in this room fasts. When we go to sleep, we usually don't eat, right? Unless you're a baby or something, but I practice fasting every night. I go to bed and I wake up and I haven't eaten a thing. But anyway, in America, technology was supposed to help us, but it actually didn't. It caused us to be more busy, right? You're in your car, and the thing is beeping. Your phone's beeping. It wants you to look at it. And then if you look at it, the light changes, and you almost get killed. And then your email comes in, and that makes a different noise. Your text messages make a different noise, right? And all these things are happening, and phone calls, and deadlines, and commitments. We have Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, WhatsApp, whatever it is. Fast food, drive-thrus, emails, instant breakfast, instant credit, instant oatmeal, smartphones, remote controls, Monster, Red Bull, Jolt, Surge, 5-Hour Energy, and coffee with a shot of espresso. It's a wonder why we don't have all heart attacks. It's just like where society is running around like crazy. We're type A multitaskers, are we not? Channel surfers, fast forwarders, too busy to wait to think, to meditate, to rest, to pause. to be interested in anything for a moment. In fact, there is the one-minute Bible, one-minute prayers, one-minute devotions. Those things are available to you. Could you imagine getting the one-minute Bible? I would feel really bad buying it if I was in a Christian store. Yeah, give me the one-minute Bible. Oh, you're a spiritual dynamo, aren't you? I mean, you could do it at Walmart, say, hey, hey, hey, get out of here. But not there, right? True fasting is secret, and it's not ceremonial. Listen to these words, and tell me when they were written. Take time to be holy. The world rushes on. Spend much time in secret with Jesus alone. By looking to Jesus, like him you will be. Your friends and your conduct, his likeness we'll see. It's a hymn called, Take Time to Be Holy. And it was written in 1882. Can you imagine? Now, fasting does not obligate God to bless us. Amen? We can't force our will upon God. His will is sovereign. And we don't do it just as some kind of, like we're playing a lottery ticket or something like that. But we're doing it because we're earnestly praying and asking God that he would meet us in a situation. What if, you know, you go to the doctor and you think everything's well, and he sees this lump on your leg or on your face or whatever it is, and it says it's cancer and it's malignant, and he thinks you only got three months to live. You might start fasting, wouldn't you? Something of that nature would really shake you to your core, perhaps. Now, if you were thinking rightly, As a Christian, you would say, wow, my journey's almost through. I'm going to be home soon. But that's not the mindset of even Christians today, is it? Is it? You know, we want to live at all costs. I knew a man about 20 years ago who had a great banquet in his honor. He was a local man. He grew up poor. And he made a lot of money in business. And while his ethics were questioned by many, this man was quite successful in business. He had a magnificent house. He had an airplane. And I worked on that doing airplane leases. It's my only airplane lease in the history of my law practice. It's pretty cool. You know, and how you buy an airplane is very interesting, too. You kind of get to test it out first before you buy it. Because, you know, so he had a vacation home. He had nice cars, a great salary, and people envied him. He had lavish lifestyle. And so this banquet was a given for a lifetime of achievement. It was held at one of the finest hotels in Boston. They served plenty of delicious foods and drinks. The man's friends, family, and employees were invited to this event to honor the man. Important people were there also, politicians and sports stars and celebrities. The man was getting old and he wanted, you know, to receive this award. And he made a speech that night before all the guests. But there was something very peculiar about the award. The man's lifetime of achievement was really not marked by philanthropy of some noble cause. To people who really knew him, it seemed that his greatest achievement was making money. But there was something even more peculiar about the event. The whole thing was orchestrated by the man himself. He actually invented the award, through the big party and gave himself the award as if it was coming from somebody else. Isn't that interesting? We live in a world of hype and spin. Even the church, in many ways, relies on artificial hype to generate results. We're going to talk about this at four o'clock, but you know what's happening right now? The church is scrambling for numbers. We're trying to get bodies into church, right? We got bills to pay, and we want to get people into church, unless people go to church today. You know why? Well, people don't want God in their lives. They want autonomy in their lives. They want to do whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it, with whomever they want to do it. They want autonomy. And they don't want some pontificating pastor to tell them what comes from the Word of God, do they? So they're like, I ain't going to church. I don't need anybody to tell me anything. I'd rather stay home and roll over, right? And so, in a world of hype and spin, the church is seeking to get people in the doors through something other than the Word of God. Like what? Lights, fog machines, tricks, candy, games, trunk or treat, name a million things. All these little things, gimmicks and stuff. Bait. It's like bait. It's like throwing bait on East Main Street. There's a candy bar at the end of some little kids walking by on the sidewalk and I'm I prefer that the only bait be the message on the sign about the message that's going to be delivered from the Bible in church on Sunday. Amen? Because look at guys, if we're here together about something other than the word of God and God himself, then this is just a social club. We'll call us the Elks. You know? Hey, come to that Elks Club meeting. There's nothing wrong with the Elks, if you're an Elk. I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend an Elk, if you're an Elk. I don't see any horns on anybody, so I think I'm safe. But remember that the Pharisees, one of the criticisms against them is everything they did was for men to see. They had their reward. Their devotion was not secret. It was not sincere. And fasting is accompanied by a serious desire to draw near to God in times of sorrow, in times of danger, in times of repentance, in times of dedication and consecration to God's work. Fasting is always accompanied by prayer. You can pray without fasting, but you cannot fast without praying. Amen? And true fasting is always linked with repentance. Repentance is so important, isn't it? My natural inclination everywhere is to come into a room or a church or a courthouse or a building and start pointing fingers at people. Yeah, that guy, him, her. It was them! Right? We're like octopuses that just go, We're like Tom Brady when he was pointing at the linebackers. That's what he was doing. He wasn't saying they were bad people. Well, kind of. But we as Christians shouldn't be pointing at others, right? We should be pointing at ourselves. Right? First take the log. Hopefully it won't leak. First take the log out of your own eye. So you can see to take the speck out of your brother's eye, right? We're walking around with logs in our eyes. All right, let me do eye surgery on you. It's not going to go so well, right? So repentance. We always have to start with ourselves. That's what Jesus said. If you're looking for a problem in somebody else, you know what they did to me there? You know what they said to me? You know how they treated me? You know what she's doing? You know what he's doing? Stop, stop, stop, drop and roll. Stop and look at yourself and ask yourself, what is my contribution to this mess? Right? And the Lord is promising blessing from fasting if we stop being finger pointers, but actually repentant people. But we attempt to attain righteousness on our own, don't we? You know what happens every Good Friday in the Philippines? People crucify themselves. It's a practice that they actually crucify themselves on a cross. It's part of their ritual. And one guy vowed to be crucified every Good Friday for 15 years if God would carry his wife through a difficult childbirth. Another man was crucified 27 times during Passion Week. Can you imagine? And the church there in the Philippines disapproves of the ritual, but the government will not come in to stop it. The government has just advised you need to have a tetanus shot and you need to use clean nails, of course. But have you ever seen it? It's something to behold. It's crazy. But our devotion comes by grace through faith, not by self-righteous deeds or pious deeds. They're not called for by the scriptures. And fasting is not to be some pious deed that somebody pats you on the back for. It's meant to be sincere and secret devotion. Amen? And it's hard to fast in America because we have food everywhere. We're so blessed, right? We get to actually pick what we're going to eat. My wife says to me, what do you want for dinner? And I don't know. It's usually after we had just had lunch or something. I'm like, ask me when I'm hungry. So my stock answer is something good. She'll say, What do you want for dinner? And don't say something good, and I'll say something really good. Anyway, we have a lot to eat here in America. And you know, some of us, including me, this is D for David. This is D for diabetes. And so it's hard, isn't it? You have to fight your flesh. And that's the point. You got to fight yourself. Fighting yourself is good. Don't give into yourself. Monitor yourself. Fight your thoughts. What are you thinking? What's on your mind? Fight it. Right? You know what true fasting leads to? Loving others. Isaiah 58 says that, that we will be ones that will love others, wanting the reconciliation and restoration of others. It leads to blessing. Isaiah 58 also says to keep our feet from breaking the Sabbath. Keep our feet from breaking the Sabbath. I wanna know if you would like seven and a half weeks of vacation in your life. Imagine if you went to your employer and said, you work at McDonald's maybe, and you say, I want seven and a half weeks of vacation. They would say, you have taken leave of your senses, and here is a pink slip. Bye. Have a great day. But I'll tell you this. If you want seven and a half weeks per year of vacation, and you'd like to spend them with God, you can do it. All you need to do is go to church every Sunday. Amen? Honor the Sabbath. Right? That's 52 Sundays. And instead of making church the last thing on a long list of things to do, like, let's see, go to work, try to stay alive, make money, all that stuff, put it on the first thing. And then on your week, style your week that everything leads to you being in church to worship God on Sunday, even if you're on vacation, you're tired, whatever, right? The battle is won or lost that way. If you just start thinking about Sunday on Saturday night, it's usually too late. And you know what the funny thing is? This is really funny. I've had a lot of people who have said they were going to come to Mission and Grace Church when it was in Gardner for years. And they're now coming out of the woodwork saying, hey, I'm going to come this week. I said, we were there for 11 years. You never came. We're gone. I mean, it's just this week it happened. Actually, yesterday. What time service? I said 1030 in Westboro. Where's Gagner? Gone. It's gone. It's not there anymore. So we should make keeping the Sabbath one of our priorities. He will give us deep joy. Amen? Well, as we close, I want to tell you two stories. They're short, and they're real, and they're true. And they may involve me. I think they do, actually. Over 28 years ago, a young couple received some news that their baby might be born with devastating developmental abnormalities. An elevated alpha-fetoprotein test pointed in that direction, and a genetic marker test was performed, and the results were to be made available one week later. And the dad fasted all week, even though they were on vacation, and prayed more intensely than he had ever that this child would be born in full health. A closeness to the Lord was experienced that was unparalleled in his Christian history. Nobody knew he was fasting. And when the couple received results that this child would be born healthy with normal chromosomes, they praised the Lord for his graciousness. You could argue that the first test was accurate. You could argue that the first test was not accurate. If you argued that the first test was not accurate, then, you know, it was just the second test that was better than the first test. But if the first test was accurate, then the Lord answered that prayer and had that child born healthy. Sincere devotion is secret devotion. It is love. It comes from a heart that's ravished by the love of Christ. It comes from time spent in the presence of Jesus. If people notice, it will bring glory to God. When they saw the courage of Peter and John, the scriptures say, and they realized that they were unschooled ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. In my house, And my house, I have a storage closet that's 20 feet long. But it doesn't have a full eight foot ceiling. It has like a five foot ceiling with a little door. And you have to go in there like this. And when we first got the house, I said, this is the perfect prayer closet. I would go in there and lay prostrate, not prostate, prostrate, meaning flat on my stomach. And I had all my prayer lists right there. And it was the place that I prayed. No one, the kids didn't even know where I was. They didn't even know if I was in there. I don't even, they probably don't even remember it, but I would go in there and pray. But it was a storage closet. And over time, clutter and junk got into my storage closet, and it displaced my prayer life, because I didn't have a place to go like that, right? And the question to you today is, in your devotions, your devotions are so important. They're personal devotions. Only things that you can do, Right? Things that you need to do, not with anybody else, just you, your devotion. It can be prayer. It can be fasting. It could be journaling. It could be meditating on the word of God, whatever it is. How is your devotional life? Has it become cluttered? Is there too much junk in your life? too much time being taken away from the things that you need to do. We all need to. Make room, right? If we don't, it won't happen. Jesus says this. Listen to his invitation. It's as relevant today as it was when he said it. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Amen? So then, let us, from time to time, as the Lord leads, fast. By fasting, we learn to seek first the kingdom of God, we take time to pray about an important matter, and remind ourselves that He is our strength. Teach yourself to long for larger and more lasting pleasures, right? Today at four o'clock is the time of feasting, not fasting, but we as a people of God are moving toward a feast, aren't we? Around a heavenly table. Everybody will be there. Every Christian you ever knew would be there, and it'll be wonderful. There won't be any more fasting. But right now, let's pick up the pace and go someplace. Hallelujah. Amen. Amen. Yeah, yeah. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do indeed thank you for this time together. We thank you, Lord, for your word. And we pray, Lord, that this word would settle deep into our hearts, that we would live it in Christ's name. Amen.