Readings [i]
John 14:1–14 I am the Way the Truth and the Life
Acts 7:55–60 The Stoning of Stephen
1 Peter 2:1–10 Grow Up – Living Stones & Holy People
Introduction
There are reasons for fasting and there are reasons for feasting – but the greatest reason for fasting is feasting.
Be Hungry Children
Peter urges us to feed on pure spiritual milk.
He is not, like Paul (1 Cor 3:2), contrasting milk with solid food, but simply using the example of new-borns and their singular focus on feeding to urge us to be like them.
We, like new-borns, have a great deal of growing to do; growing up into Christ, growing up together into s spiritual house, growing up into our calling to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Issues with Food
But there is an issue revealed in this call. You don’t have to urge babies to feed, it is instinctive. We, however, require encouragement, and Peter identifies two issues that we must deal with if we are to feed and grow.
- The first is that we already have an appetite for the wrong food, unwholesome rather than pure. So, we need to learn how to wean ourselves off the wrong food.
- The second, is that we need to discover a taste for the right food. Unless we find this food good to taste, we will not hunger for it or feed on it as we should.
There is, perhaps, a third issue – that of wanting to grow up into what we were born to be – but I think that the desire for this is bound up with our developing taste for the pure food.
Weaning ourselves off Junk
We know Junk Food. One of the issues in much of western society is the prevalence of junk food and its role in creating obesity and other health issues. There is undoubtedly lots of advertising behind it, but if we are honest, they are pushing against an open door – we have a taste for it.
A Complex Deceptive Relationship
You only have to explore the issue of obesity to realise how complex this relationship with junk food is. It is not simply eating too much, or greed. Our bodies seem to have a natural taste for it. It is deceitful, offering goodness, but ultimately, withholding satisfaction. And it can easily become a self-medication for ills that we are not able or willing to deal with.
These appetites compete with our spiritual food – the food that feeds our inner being. So, when God wants us to hunger for pure (wholesome) spiritual food, he first urges us to put away deceptive and unwholesome food.
“put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander”[ii]
1 Peter 2:1
The call is repeated in the last part of this section of scripture [iii]
11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
1 Peter 2:11-12
Fasting from Junk Food
This is not just about abstaining from sin, as an act of will, it is about our appetites, about our hunger. God’s word recognises the way that such things are a deceptive food. They wage war against our souls, but like junk food, they are deceptive – offering something that seems satisfying at first, though its satisfaction fails, leaving a bitter after-taste.
Nobody sins without desiring. As James tells us –
“Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”
Jas 1:15
Putting away “malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander”, is like fasting. We should recognize this and not be surprised when they surface as desires within us. They can be as tasty as junk food and as hard to put away. Our minds may understand them and reject them, but we still need to retrain our heart’s appetites.
So, treat this like fasting. When you fast it is hard. All you can think about at times is food, and especially junk food. But, as anyone who has persevered will attest, cutting out junk food can allow you to taste real food in a new way.
That is why we fast in order to feast – we fast from the things that wage war against our souls and stunt our Christians growth, so that we can feast on pure spiritual food.
Taste and See that the Lord is Good
But it is not enough to fast from sin. We must also develop a new taste for God. So, it says – put away the junk and long for the good stuff … “if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
Have you tasted that the Lord is Good?
Have you tasted that the Lord is Good?
Faith is at the heart of being a Christian, but it is not just about believing certain things. It is so much more. It is about coming alive to God in Christ –
- like a glorious light shining in your heart, captivating you with his beauty and glory (2 Cor 4:6); or
- like a new taste in your heart, that previously seemed as nothing and now tastes like nothing else.
Is this your experience of God?
God is to be Enjoyed
The deepest call on mankind, the command of God, is to love God with all that you are. Love, in its beginnings, can be an act of the will. But true love, authentic love, is always more than that – it is a joy and delight in the one loved; it is a deep satisfaction that pours itself out in love … and yet is always most fulfilled when it does so. That is the sort of love that God is calling forth from our hearts.
Jesus pursued his mission to rescue us, despising all its costly shame and sorrows, because of the joy that was set before him (Heb 12:2). And it was a joy that he longed, and prayed, to share with us (Jn 17:13,24).
Too many Christians miss out on this vital truth. God is meant to be enjoyed. He is meant to be the ‘light of our eyes that rejoices our heart, and the good news that refreshes our bones’ (Prov 15:30). The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10), but it is not its end or goal – that goal is love, when perfected it casts out fear (1 Jn 4:18).
The steward that failed and buried his talent, did so because he thought that his master was unfair and demanding. God is no man’s debtor (Rom 11:35). In the end, we will find that all our suffering and sorrows are dust in the scales compared to the weight of glory that he will share with us – and at the centre of that joy-filled glory will be God himself (Ps 16:11).
Even in the middle of Sorrows
But it is not just in the final consummation that God will be our joy. Something of that joy is meant to be our sustaining experience, even in the midst of sorrows. So, Paul – who experienced more suffering than most of us ever will – said that he was “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor 6:10). In life we may know days of joy and days of sorrow, but in Christ we can know days of sorrow in which (in our sorrows) we also experience a real and deep joy.
This is meant to be a sustaining experience – the joy of the Lord is your strength (Neh 8:10). The joy of the Lord, is not just God’s joy, but your joy in him. Read Nehemiah, they were meant to party with God and share in his joy.
Learn to Taste and Enjoy
There are plenty of tastes that are ‘acquired’. Children’s palates may not enjoy tastes that later in life are a real joy to them. And we are not born with a taste for God – quite the opposite. In fact, we need to be born again for the taste of God to be a joy to us. And, even then, we need to wean ourselves of the junk that we have enjoyed, to truly savour God.
If you have not yet tasted and discovered the goodness of God, he will answer your prayers: “satisfy me in the morning with your steadfast love, that I may rejoice in you all this day” (Ps 90:14). God wants to give you this joy, for you to taste him as good.
Jesus said, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (Jn 14:13). And God is never more glorified in us, than when we enjoy him
Fast to Feast
So, let us put away the junk and hunger for the pure spiritual food that God himself gives us. Let us fast, to feast I Him.
[i] All scriptures (unless otherwise specified): 2001. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[ii] Verse 1 is not in the Lectionary reference but is a key part of what God is saying in these verses. So, I have included it in our readings
[iii] Again, not included in the Lectionary, for reasons that are beyond me.