Ask Pastor Mike Live

Focal Point Ministries: Marista, your pastor says Jesus commanded us to fast. He said it is not a suggestion, but a command. You say, "I've never fasted before. How do I know when I should do a fast? Will God be disappointed in me if I've never fasted before?" The only place, Marista, that your pastor would get that is a passage in Matthew chapter 6, verse 16.

The only way your pastor's going to say that is because the text says, "And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces." The pastors sometimes get up in the pulpit and they say, "It says when you fast, don't look gloomy. It doesn't say if you fast; it says when you fast. That implies that you're going to fast."

That's weak at best. That's implying that people, at least in Jesus's day—and this is a "then, always now" observation—because in that day, that was the pattern. Why was it the pattern in Matthew chapter 6? Because in Matthew chapter 6, there was one day under the Old Covenant system when every Jew was supposed to fast. It was the day called the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.

On Yom Kippur, everyone was supposed to deny themselves or afflict themselves, it was called. The Rabbis were clear what that meant, and that was you're not supposed to eat that day. That was afflicting your stomach, denying your stomach what it was used to, and that's food. So everyone was fasting on that day of Yom Kippur. In that day, Matthew 6, when you fast, everyone was assumed, if you were a Jew in the first century working under the Old Covenant, which everyone was in Matthew chapter 6, they were going to fast.

The command certainly was under the Old Covenant law because that was going to be in effect until the veil was going to tear in the end in Matthew 27 when Jesus dies on the cross. I know that because even when Jesus was healing people—think about the man who was healed of leprosy—He says, "Now go show yourself to the priest, take the sacrifice that you're supposed to give to the priest, and you will go and be clean and be assumed back into the community."

He was still telling people to bring the sacrifices to the temple and do all that the Old Covenant commands told you to do. We're still living under the Old Testament laws until the temple veil was torn, until the New Covenant age began. That was going to begin when Jesus said on the cross, "It is finished," and all the Old Testament was fulfilled. That wasn't going to happen until the end of the Old Testament really came to fruition with the death of Christ.

We had at least, at the beginning of the Gospels, a couple more years, three more years until that was going to happen. So you had at least three more mandated fasts according to the Old Testament. Let's just start with that, Marista. I can't say that Jesus commanded that we were going to fast or had to fast. If your pastor said Jesus commanded us to fast, He commanded the people in that day and assumed that they would fast under the Old Covenant law.

I don't think you have to fast. As a matter of fact, most of the fasts in the Bible, except for the fast on Yom Kippur, were all responses to grief or responses to some terrible event. I bet you have fasted, Marista, when something bad has happened in your family or in your life. Out of grief or some horrible event, you've just skipped meals because you've been in some tragedy. If not, you will, because you'll say, "I don't feel like eating. I'm going to throw up if I eat."

I've had plenty of those situations in my life, and a lot of times in the Bible that's what happens. People are in some tragic situation and they don't eat because they don't want to eat. They refuse food. That's a kind of fast that we do see in the Bible as well. Sometimes it's commanded by leaders in the nation because someone important has died, and so they call a fast in the nation. Sometimes it is because they're repenting of some national sin, and so they call a fast in the nation.

That's not happening anymore. Our government doesn't call for a fast. So just remember that, Marista. I think we've got to be careful if your pastor says Jesus commanded us to fast. The closest he got was that passage in Matthew chapter 6, verse 16. If you want to fast, that's your decision. Number one, you should be careful with your health that you can fast.

If you want to fast, that's fine. Fasting is not twisting God's arm to do anything. If you want to fast, you can, but it should just be something that you're doing to try and focus yourself on praying. That's usually the way we go about focusing our attention on prayer. We're denying ourselves something—in this case, food—to focus our attention and our mind on saying, "I'm going to be really focused here on giving myself fully to prayer."

When my stomach starts grumbling for food, I'm going to turn my attention even harder on prayer. You asked the question, "Will God be disappointed in me if I've never fasted?" The answer is no. Of course not. As a matter of fact, God has created food for you to enjoy. That's certainly what the Bible teaches, and it's to be enjoyed by people who believe and know the truth.

That's you, I trust, Marista, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, and that's what the Bible says. I think your pastor has overstated it, and in the original context of Matthew 6, I've explained that, I think, maybe ad nauseam at this point, as long as we're talking about fasting ad nauseam. Hope that helps, Marista. 1-877-913-5357.

We have a Believe the Gospel prayer request: "Thank you for your current series on Focal Point. It's been helping me through my joblessness this year. Can I ask you to pray for me and my job interview?" Let me just ask our whole listening audience. I don't have a name here, but your handle on YouTube is Believe the Gospel, and I hope everyone in the chat can pray for you. Maybe even drop your name in there, your first name at least, and we can pray more specifically for you.

We'd love for you to get a job. That's the biblical thing: you should get a job and you should definitely be earning your own bread. We'd love for you to get off of whatever you're doing to pay for your bread and be earning your wages. It's dignifying, it's the right thing, and we pray you get a job tomorrow. That would be great. Hope you secure a job tomorrow, and I pray that our listeners even right now will pray for you. If you give us your name, that'll help us pray even more specifically.