Matthew 6:16

THE LENTEN FAST

‘When ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites.’

Matthew 6:16

‘When ye fast,’—the Lord takes it absolutely as granted that none of His followers will attempt to evade, or be so foolish as to forget, the obvious benefit and necessity of this good old practice. ‘When ye fast,’ and then follow His directions.

I. The need of discipline.—‘When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance’; they fast, and fast, He seems to say, in vain, for it is the letter of the law they obey, whilst they violate its spirit. What is needed is real discipline. The formalist merely fasts to gain praise or notice. He has his reward. But what we must aim at, the disciplining of the spirit, is just the reverse of all this. What he considers gain, the Lord tells us is loss. ‘When ye fast’; the Lord lays down no iron rule of abstention from this form of food or the other, but He does lay down the immutable law that the fast is to be inward, and not outward. Each man may judge for himself that which is right for himself.

II. Things to abstain from.—But the teaching of the Lord is wider and bolder than all this. We ought to fast from many things besides food. For examples:—(a) Strong drink; (b) Extravagance; (c) Over-dress. Such, then, in spirit, is the fast the Lord enjoins. It is right that we should observe the letter, that we should keep the pious rules handed down in the Church of Christ; but besides the letter, the Lord expressly enjoins us to keep the spirit. To abstain from all appearance of evil, to walk circumspectly, to have an eye always fixed on the recompense of the reward; in a word, to remember we have no abiding city here, but that we seek one to come; this, and nothing short of this, is to be our aim and object.

—The Rev. Osborne Jay.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY

The text is taken from the Gospel appointed for Ash Wednesday, which conveys an earnest warning to every Churchman. We enter upon the great forty days of Lent, as ‘Days of Fasting or Abstinence’; and the Lord says to each one of us, ‘When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites.’ We are not to fast to be seen of men; we are not to fast for any other purpose than that which led the Lord Himself to fast, viz. to discipline the body and to bring it into subjection. It will be profitable for us to consider on this first day of Lent the relation of the body to the spirit.

I. The body a servant.—To establish the right relations between the body and the spirit, the body must be kept in its place. The body is a very good servant, but a very bad master, and if it is allowed to get out of its place and cease to be a servant and become a master, it becomes a cruel tyrant. Do not despise your body. God forbid. It is good; God made it, and made it with wonderful perfection. Moreover, it is the temple of the Holy Ghost; yes, the Holy Spirit of God has enshrined Himself in us by virtue of our baptism and our confirmation, while more than that, the Son of God condescended to tabernacle and enshrine Himself in our body, and He gives Himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament. The spirit is meant to rule and the body is meant to obey, and so long as that relation is kept then all will go well and smoothly, if the spirit is under the direct guidance of God Himself; but reverse that order, once let the body get the upper hand, then everything goes wrong, and moral chaos and confusion must necessarily follow. The Lenten discipline of fasting just does this then: it keeps the body in its proper place.

II. Its effect upon the spirit.—Yes, but you answer, ‘There is nothing wrong in eating and drinking.’ It may be in itself of no importance what we eat or do not eat, but it is important to teach the habit of obedience, and so to bring our bodies under the word of command, to teach the body to listen to the word ‘No’ when the body would itself perhaps have said ‘Yes’; and then when we have learned that lesson, when some great temptation assails us through the flesh, the habit that is formed will assert itself and save us, perhaps, from falling into deadly sin. So, keep under the body, and bring it into subjection by the Lenten fast.

III. The appeal from the Cross.—And does not the Lord Jesus plead with us from the Cross? From the Cross with outstretched hands He cries, ‘This have I done for thee; what hast thou done for Me?’ The Lenten discipline of fasting give us an opportunity of sharing in some degree in His sufferings by uniting ourselves with Him in Lent. Let us try and keep very close to Him in this Lent, and by sharing a little in the sufferings He endured for us.

—The Rev. Alfred Holland.

Illustration

‘The Jews to this day practise rigorous fasting: many a little Jewish boy or girl in the poorest quarters of a London slum will voluntarily and eagerly share the long fast of the Day of Atonement with the elder members of the family. No particle of food, no drop of water, for long hours must pass their lips. And yet they glory in their obedience. Ask them why, and they will reply, “It is part of my religion.” You will get no other answer, and you will not need one, for no better one could be imagined. “Part of my religion”; that is what the very disciples whom Jesus Christ was addressing would have acknowledged fasting to be. Prayer, which the Lord inculcated, was no new thing; worship, which He enjoined, was nothing fresh; the Jew was of course accustomed to both, in synagogue and Temple. And so with fasting: the Lord assumes it is a thing familiar to His hearers. And so it was: turn to the Old Testament Scriptures, and you will find the custom a continual one.’