Matthew 17:21

Matthew 17:21

By prayer and fasting.

Fasting a means of subduing sin

I. This duty of fasting admits of several kinds and degrees. For in fasting as well as in feasting we may find variety.

1. The first kind is of constant, universal exercise. It obliges at all times and extends to all persons. This is a temperate use of the creature; in abridging the appetites of nature for the designs of religion.

2. The second kind of fast is of a total abstinence, when for some time we wholly abstain from bodily repasts. The remedy to be successful must bear some proportion to the distemper. Necessity gives place to extremity.

3. The third kind of fast is an abstinence from bodily refreshments in respect of a certain degree, for some space of time. We must distinguish between murder and mortification; Christ never destroys the body to save the soul. Self-denial is a duty, but not self-murder. The height of prudence is in all precepts, laws, and institutions to distinguish persons, times, and occasions, and accordingly to discriminate the obligation.

II. The qualifications that must render this duty of fasting both acceptable to God, and efficacious to this great purpose.

1. The first is, that it is to be used, not as a duty either necessary or valuable for itself, but only as an instrument. There is no excelling in fasting itself; is any spiritual design carried on in it?

2. The second condition of a religious fast is, that it be done with a hearty detestation of the body of sin, for the weakening of which it is designed. Fasting means war against sin; who ever fought valiantly against him whom he did not first hate?

3. The third condition of a duly qualified fast is that it be quickened and enlivened with prayer. The reason of the fast requires the society of prayer for the procuring of good or deprecation of evil. David, Daniel, took this course.

4. The fourth condition of a truly religious fast is that it be attended with alms and works of charity (Isaiah 58:4; Isaiah 58:7).

III. Show how this duty of fasting comes to have such a peculiar influence in dispossessing the evil spirit, and subduing our corruptions. That it does not effect this work-

1. Either by any casual force naturally inherent in itself, for if it did, fasting would constantly and certainly have this effect upon all who used it.

2. Nor does fasting effect this great change by way of merit, as procuring and enjoying the help of that grace that does effect it, it is impossible for a created nature to merit anything from God by way of reward.

From whence then does this duty derive this great virtue?

1. It receives it from Divine institution.

2. Fasting comes to be effectual to dispossess the evil spirit, by being a direct defiance to that disposition of body and mind upon which especially he works.

1. It is a notable act of self-revenge.

2. It corrects the ill temper of pride. (R. South, D. D.)

Constant temperance better than occasional fasting

And whosoever struggles with any unruly corruption, will perhaps find, that the constant turn of a well-guided abstinence will, in the issue, give a surer despatch to it, than those extraordinary instances of total abstinence and higher severities, only undertaken for a time. As a land flood, it carries a bigger stream and comes with a mightier force and noise, yet presently dries up and disappears; but the emissions of a fountain, though gentle and silent, yet are constant and perpetual; and whereas the other, being gone, leaves nothing behind it but slime and mud, this, wheresoever it flows, gently soaks into verdure and fertility. This constant temperance, therefore, is by all means intended by the rules of Christianity; the constancy of which, running through our whole lives, makes abstinence our diet, and fasting our meat and drink. (R. South, D. D.)

Obstinate sin to be overcome by strict fasting

Every remedy is successful according to the proportion it bears to the distemper: and certainly a cure is not likely to be wrought where an ordinary remedy encounters an extraordinary disease; where the plaster is narrow and the wound broad. Temperance is good, but that is to be our continual diet; and surely, that man is not like to recover who makes his food his physic. Where the humour is strong and predominant, there the prescription must be rugged, and the evacuation violent. We must leave the road of nature when nature itself is disordered, and the principles of life in danger. (R. South, D. D.)

Necessity must give place to extremity

And the physician is merciful, if he pines his patient into a recovery. In this case we encounter sin in the body, like a besieged enemy: and such a one, when he has once engarrisoned himself in a strong hold, will endure a storm and repel assaults: you must cut off his supplies of provision, and never think to win the fort, till hunger breaks through the walls, and starves him into a surrender. (R. South, D. D.)

Fasting a help to virtue

Now, by all that has been said it appears, that fasting is required, not as a virtue, but as a help to virtue; and that by controlling its hindrance, removing its impediments, subduing the emulations of a contrary principle, and so enabling it to act with freedom. Otherwise, were there no reluctancy from the inferior appetites against a virtuous and a pious course, these arts and stratagems against the flesh would be superfluous, and we should have no more need of fasting than the angels or the blessed spirits have of eating. Could the mariner sail with as much ease and safety in a storm, as he does in a calm, he would never empty or unlade his vessel. (R. South, D. D.)

Fasting joined with hatred of sin

If we have not first wrought our minds to a settled dislike and a bitter disgust of sin as our mortal enemy, all our attempts against it will be faint and heartless, our mortifications treacherous, and our lastings frustraneous; much like David’s sending an army against Absalom with a design to save him, and to deal with him gently. It will be only an alarm to sin to put itself into a posture of defence, to retreat further into the soul, and there to rally together its strengths, and to secure itself by a firmer possession. (R. South, D. D.)

Fasting joined with humility

It is not a mournful expression, a solemn dress, or a thin table, that God so much regards. It is the heart, and not the stomach, that He would have empty; and, therefore, if a man carries a luxurious soul in a pining body, or the aspiring mind of a Lucifer in the hanging head of a bulrush, he fasts only to upbraid his Maker, and to disgrace his religion, and to heighten his final reckoning, till he becomes ten times more the son of perdition than those who own their inward love of sin by the open undissembled enmities of a suitable behaviour. (R. South, D. D.)

Fasting and prayer

Prayer, joined with fasting, is like “an apple of gold set off with a picture of silver.” Now we have it at its best advantage; it shines bright, and it flames pure, like fire without the incumbrances of smoke, or the allay of contrary blasts. (R. South, D. D.)

Fasting

No doubt the primary meaning of the word translated “fasting,” is that abstinence from food which was practised by the saints of the Old Testament, by our Lord Himself, His apostles, and His Church in all times and climes, for the subjection of the flesh to the spirit. But the Church of England, while she commends and commands this Scriptural discipline, makes no severe definitions and lays down no rigid rule, for many and righteous reasons.

I. Because no rules could be applicable to all, the young, the old, the weak, the poor.

II. Because, if it were compulsory, it would become a mere form or evasion; e.g., a fast from flesh meat might be only a feast on other dainties.

III. Because a fast kept ostentatiously in direct disobedience to our Lord’s warning that we appear not unto men to fast, would only be a feast of pride-the pride which apes humility.

IV. Because under the gospel, in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, we fast by the love of virtue and our own choice, rather than by the coercion of any law.

V. Because the best form of abstinence is to be temperate in all things.

VI. Because bodily fasting is but a part of that self-denial which Christianity teaches, and which has a far more definite and comprehensive scope. True fasting is, to spend less upon ourselves, that we may have more to spend upon others; less upon luxuries and dainties, that others may have common food. (S. R. Hole, M. A.)

Fasting

When the greatest speed of a horse is to be tested, the trainer does not allow him to run at will over in the pasture, nor does he simply put him on a wholesale diet. He almost counts the straws that he gives the horse. He cleans and sifts the oats, and gives him the very best kinds. He measures the horse’s exercise, and every part of the horse is under the trainer’s watch and care, that he may be in the finest condition when he puts forth his energy in competition. And shall a man do so much for his horse and nothing for himself? Shall there be no preparation, no discipline, no care as to diet, no training, nothing but going on through the linked year, Sabbath joined to Sabbath, taking things as they come, allowing themselves to move about as the current sweeps them along? Is that the wisest method of spiritual culture? (H. W. Beecher.)

Extraordinary means necessary

When the Christian is buffeted with any temptation, or overpowered with a corruption, and cannot by the use of ordinary means quench the one or mortify the other; when the short dagger of ordinary prayer will not reach the heart of a lust, then it is time to draw out the long sword of extraordinary prayer upon it. Some poor souls complain that they have come to the Word in their daily prayers, begged power over such a lust, resolved against it many a time, and none of these means cure it; what can they now do more? Here thou art told: bring thy condition to Christ in this solemn ordinance of prayer and fasting; this hath been the happy means of strengthening many a poor Christian, to be avenged on those spiritual enemies which have outbraved all his former efforts, and, like Samson, to pull down the devil’s house upon his head. (Gurnall.)

National fasting

If we are not to expect that the devil should go out of a particular person, under a bodily possession, without extraordinary prayer, or “prayer and fasting;” how much less should we expect to have him cast out of the land and the world without it! (President Edward.)