posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi
Jan. 6 - Intro
Jan 13 - Fasting in Faith
Jan 20 - Fasting seeking Answers
Jan 27 - Fasting as Submission
Feb 4 - Fasting for a Time
Fasting in Faith
Y'know, I knew I was wandering off the well-worn path of expectation and tradition when I started looking into this, but I didn't expect to have two of my assumptions shot down on the very first foray into the Scripture.
I was going to write today about two men who did extraordinary fasts...what should have been fatal fasts... and look at why and how those happened, and how they survived.
What I found was that my assumptions about who did these very specific fasts were wrong. Firstly, only one of them is specifically recorded as doing it; the second is, I think, *assumed* to have done it, based on the circumstances, but nowhere is it specified that he did exactly that. That was a surprise. The other surprise is that the first one did the extreme fast not once, but twice. In pretty short order.
And in all my years of Bible study...even teaching from these very passages...somehow I had overlooked it. Funny how our expectations can color what we read, even from the Bible itself.
So, having the expectations of what I would find and my semi-thought-out direction utterly undone, now I must dig into that and see what the significance of it really is.
It's a little scary, but the truth is I love it when that happens. It usually means something new and fresh is coming....
The extraordinary fast of which I'm speaking is, of course, going 40 days without food or drink. Anyone who knows anything about the human body will tell you that three days w/o drink will result in death by dehydration. Our bodies need water, and lots of it, to function properly. For someone to go without eating or drinking anything for 40 days is beyond possible. It's miraculous.
So who did...and did not...do this miraculous fast?
Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God. He said to the elders, "Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them."
When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud. To the Israelites the glory of the LORD looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and nights. -- Ex. 24:13 - 18, NIV
"When I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the LORD had made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water. The LORD gave me two stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God. On them were all the commandments the Lord proclaimed to you on the mountain out of the fire, on the day of assembly. -- Deut. 9:9-10
Of course, this is the very familiar story of Moses getting the revelation from God up on the mountain. He was directly in the presence of God...in the cloud that concealed the glory of God (see Ex. 33:18) and appeared, from the perspective of the people in the camp below, to be a consuming fire. For forty days and nights he was there, without bread or water, by his own testimony. Small wonder the people despaired of his return. To them, it looked like Moses had gone into a raging inferno. Not an excuse for the idolatry they subsequently fell into, but perhaps an explanation of why those folks said, "As for this fellow Moses, we don't know what has happened to him" (Ex. 32:1)
So, what did happen to Moses?
- He was called into the presence of God
- He obeyed and walked into a supernatural experience. I honestly think Moses was put in a place outside of time for 40 days. I don't think he moved...I think the presence of God moved time away from Moses. All of this is conjecture, of course, but something happened to allow Moses to exist without the necessities of life. I just can't see Moses stopping in the middle of,say, getting all those details about the tabernacle to ask God's permission to wait a moment while he, um, answered nature's call. Somehow, heaven met earth and time fled for a time.
Then God sent him back down the mountain, with the tablets, telling him the people had already rebelled against those commandments. Moses smashed the tablets when he saw what had happened...after all, the people had already broken the covenant. There was judgment at that moment...the Levites slaughtered 3,000 of the people for their idolatry, and God sent a plague. The account in Exodus just states that The next day Moses said to the people,"You have committed a very great sin. But now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin." (Ex. 32:30). But in Deuteronomy, Moses recalls what happened when he went back before God:
"Then once again I fell prostrate before the LORD for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water, because of all the sin you had committed, doing what was evil in the LORD's sight and so provoking him to anger....I lay prostrate before the LORD those forty days and forty nights because the LORD had said he would destroy you. I prayed to the LORD...and the LORD listened to me at this time also. It was not his will to destroy you." -- Deut. 9:18,25 & 10:10
Exodus records part of that intercession, in which Moses requests that God blot his name from the book instead of the names of the people who had sinned (Ex. 32:32).
If I'm reading this right, Moses had scarcely a day in between two forty-day total abstinence fasts. This was not just miraculous...it was beyond miraculous.
The first time was in obedience, the second time was in intercession. I think he dared to venture the second because of what had happened in the first. He knew the incredible power of God to defy even natural laws. He was not afraid to enter a place of total abandonment to God. And God somehow gave him extraordinary grace to endure what no other human could withstand.
That's right...no other human. The other famed 40 day fast occurred when the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. Matthew and Luke both record details about this event but, to my surprise, neither one mentions that Jesus did not drink. Matthew states After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. -- Mt 4:2. The Greek word translated 'fasting' there, nesteuo, means 'to abstain from food'. Luke writes ...He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.- Lk 4:2b. I looked up 'ate nothing' and found that 'ate' is phago, which translates 'to eat, meat' and ouden, which means 'none, nothing, not any at all, nought.' Clearly, Jesus ate nothing. Also clearly, nothing is mentioned about drinking, despite the fact that I have heard folks say that Jesus neither ate nor drank in all that time. I suppose the inference is that, since he was in the desert, there was no water, but that's not necessarily true. I believe Jesus found enough water here and there to stay alive. I don't think he had the same kind of experience that Moses had.
There are several reasons I think this. Nowhere is it mentioned that Moses had any effects from his fast; both accounts specifically say that Jesus was hungry. And the point of Jesus' temptation was that he had to resist that to which humans succumbed...it would not have been the same if he'd been existing in a state of supernatural grace. By resisting the temptations in a highly weakened, fully human state, Jesus more than fulfilled that point...he excelled beyond it to completion.
It goes without saying that his trip into the desert wasn't a vacation...he was led by the Spirit. He went in obedience...and faith... to a place of death and survived. Moreover, when he had resisted the devil until the devil fled, angels came to him and ministered to him...there was a supernatural restoration.
But I want to point out one more thing. Neither Moses nor Jesus set out to fast for 40 days. They fasted until the release came and the victory was won.
Points to ponder: What is God calling me to do that requires absolute faith? What do I need to surrender, give up, quit looking for in order to walk where He is leading? Do I trust Him to either take care of me through the event or restore me afterward? Can I really fast in faith?
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