Discipline, Devotion, Revival | Sunday, September 21, 2025

Then they said to him, "Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and likewise those of the Pharisees, but Yours eat and drink?" And He said to them, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days." Then He spoke a parable to them: "No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one... And no one puts new wine into old wine skins, or else the new wine will burst the wine skins... But new wine must be put into new wine skins, and both are preserved. And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, 'The old is better.'" (Luke 5:33-39)

Why Jesus's disciples didn't fast—and why those of us living in "the days when the bridegroom is taken away" should reconsider this forgotten discipline.

Jesus Breaks the Mold

As I contemplated this passage, I realized there are many ways we could approach it. We could talk about the new thing Jesus was doing that was unlike the religious Pharisees and even the followers of John the Baptist. That fits everything we've seen in Luke 5.

At the beginning of the chapter, Jesus calls disciples to be with him. That wasn't abnormal for a first-century rabbi—a teacher would invite disciples close to learn his way of life. But typically a rabbi chose the smart, learned, trained ones who did well in synagogue school. Instead, Jesus invites fishermen. They weren't dummies, but they weren't the cloth other rabbis would have cut from.

Then he goes further outside the norm. He touches the untouchable leper—a terminal illness associated not just with sickness but with sin. He heals and forgives outside the religious structure, requiring no sacrifice or visit to the temple, forgiving a paralyzed man who was obviously a sinner. He calls a tax collector to be a disciple, then goes and eats at his house with many other tax collectors. Jesus is breaking the mold at every turn.

The Question About Fasting

Now his followers are breaking the mold too. A group—probably the more religious people of the day—comes to Jesus and essentially asks, "Why don't your disciples do what we do?" They saw Jesus doing very spiritual things: healing, casting out demons, preaching. But he wasn't doing some of the things they equated with deep spirituality, like fasting. "Don't you know you're supposed to fast? Remember John the Baptist—your friend? He fasted often, and so do the Pharisees."

The Pharisees were hyper-religious, committed not only to the law of Moses but to all the traditions of their fathers, and they fasted regularly. The problem was, they wanted everyone to know it. They would disfigure their faces and look mopey. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says don't do that. John the Baptist was not given to pompous display, but he and his disciples did fast often. Jesus and his disciples did not, and everyone watching could see it.

We could also dwell on the prophetic implications, because here Jesus prophesies that he'll be "taken away"—an allusion to his future crucifixion—and that in those days fasting will once again become a reality, since fasting is associated with desperate, difficult, and mourning times. Or we could focus on the newness of the covenant he was inaugurating. Those are all good approaches. But I want to zero in on something easy to skip over—and that maybe we'd like to skip over. Here we are in the future Jesus described, when the bridegroom is no longer with us. So we're going to talk about fasting.

What Fasting Actually Is

Fasting isn't something we often like to discuss. You may not have heard many Bible teachings on it, and you may not even know precisely what it is. In our day people say they "fast" from their phones, social media, or football. But in the historical and biblical sense, that's not really a fast—that's a discipline. Giving up a form of media for a time is fine, but it isn't fasting.

In the biblical sense, fasting most traditionally has to do with food: taking no solid food—and sometimes no liquid at all, not even water—for a set period, typically twenty-four hours or more, denying yourself completely. Even at that basic level, this is something we're not too interested in, because it seems too religious. Our church culture is non-traditional and casual. I wear a t-shirt and sandals; sometimes I'll wear shorts and really offend people. That would never fly in a Southern Baptist church, where it's a three-piece suit every week. We're not the hyper-stringent, religious sort, and some of you came out of rigid backgrounds, so fasting just feels like a Pharisee thing.

But we also avoid it because it's hard. I asked both services if anyone likes to go without—not a single hand went up. We don't like to deny ourselves. "Die to yourself" doesn't sound fun. We figure we didn't sign up for this; we came for the coffee, donuts, and an all-right message.

The Bridegroom Is Here

When Jesus is asked why his disciples don't fast, he gives a great answer: "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?" Obviously Jesus is saying, "I'm the bridegroom. These disciples are like the groomsmen. We're at the wedding." You don't go to a wedding to fast. A wedding is a celebration, a feast, a time of joy and rejoicing—not self-denial. Now is the time for feasting, not fasting.

His answer is wonderfully practical, and that reminds us how Jesus approaches everything. He is the most spiritual person who ever walked the earth, yet his spirituality was practical, not high-minded or out of reach. That's what the incarnation is all about. To Jesus, prayer, fasting, and other spiritual disciplines are good, normal, and should be regular parts of our lives—but they are not the be-all and end-all.

Point one: the theology and spirituality of Jesus are exceedingly practical. Being a Christian is not a headgame for brainiacs or merely the pursuit of knowledge. We can turn Christianity into nothing more than gaining doctrinal understanding and answering Bible trivia, but that's not what the Christian life is about. The earliest believers weren't called "Christians"—they were called followers of the Way. Jesus had a pattern of life and called his disciples to "follow me." Paul said, "Imitate me as I imitate Christ." The Christian life is a way of life to be lived out daily, in communion with God. And since it's a life, it involves practical rhythms, practices, disciplines that become habitual—one of which is fasting.

Jesus Didn't Abolish Fasting

Christ's teaching does not set aside the religious practice of fasting that God's people observed under the old covenant. They fasted regularly, with set times on their calendar. Jesus didn't come to destroy that. "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17).

Jesus exemplified fasting. After his baptism he went into the wilderness and fasted forty days and nights before his temptation (Matthew 4). He taught it in Matthew 6, saying "when you fast"—not "if you fast"—but warning against the hypocrites who disfigure their faces; instead fast privately before your Father who sees in secret. The early church in Antioch—where believers were first called Christians—fasted and prayed to send off Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13-14). Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11 that he lived "in fastings often."

Point two: the new covenant of Christ is a new way of life for his followers, and those who lived under the old way will find the new way challenging. That's the point of his parable—you don't sew a new, unshrunk patch onto an old garment, and you don't put new wine into old wineskins. When we first follow Christ, we discover that our old patterns, even religious ones, get challenged. We may feel we liked the old way better. But Jesus was doing something new—and better.

Nine Truths About Fasting Under the New Covenant

Point three: nine truths about fasting under the new covenant.

First, it isn't required. That deserves an amen. Under the old covenant Israel had set feasts around the three harvests—Passover, Pentecost, and the fall feasts like Yom Kippur, Tabernacles, and Trumpets. They also had set fasts, like Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when they fasted in recognition of their sin. The most religious would fast twice a week—remember the Pharisee in Jesus's parable boasting, "I fast twice a week." For the Christian, fasting is not compulsory. It's voluntary.

Second, it isn't primarily about repentance. In the Old Testament, fasts were often called because of sin, illness, death, defeat, or national crisis. Those remain valid reasons—there may still be times when we, a church, or a nation are called to fast. But that's not the primary thing under the new covenant.

Third, fasting is a discipline and a devotion. As Christians we develop habits we never had before: prayer, reading Scripture, fellowship, communion. Another overlooked practice is Sabbath rest—I have a hard time with that one, because I'm American, and we're workaholics. People in Germany and France told me repeatedly, "You Americans work too much." But God does call us to Sabbath, and he calls us to fasting. In Luke 2:37, Anna served God "with fastings and prayers night and day." Antioch fasted as a regular part of worship.

If your devotional time feels dry or lacking, consider adding fasting. I recently spoke with someone whose prayers felt unanswered and whose Scripture reading felt dry and distracted. There's no way to grow without consuming God's word and spending time with him in prayer—and among these things, you might add fasting. These practices don't make you better or holier than others; that was the Pharisee's error. But fasting helps us draw nearer to God, align with his Spirit, and give our spirit power over our flesh. Paul said, "Bodily exercise profits little, but godliness is profitable for all things" (1 Timothy 4:8). Just as physical exercise makes us stronger, spiritual exercises strengthen our spirit over our flesh.

A Foil for the Flesh

Fourth, fasting is a foil for our flesh. To "foil" means to prevent from succeeding, and almost nothing is more destructive to the flesh than fasting. The flesh is our carnal nature—this body with its appetites and desires. Many of those desires are good. The appetite for food is necessary; the desire for sex is good in its proper context of marriage. But when we give in to every good desire for everything, we become like an American—seven out of ten of whom are obese—consuming and consuming, indulging every appetite.

If we're weak to the strength of our flesh, we're called to walk in the Spirit and build up the spirit. The psalmist said, "I humbled myself with fasting" (Psalm 35). Ezra proclaimed a fast "that we might humble ourselves before our God" (Ezra 8:21). Jesus was prepared for temptation by forty days of fasting.

This verse is important to me: "I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified" (1 Corinthians 9:27). At twenty, a year into teaching the Bible, I weighed 305 pounds and was not healthy. I read that verse and thought, "I'm a young preacher; I want to be an old preacher, and the way I'm living makes that unlikely." Paul says he made his body his slave—so the spirit controls the body, not the reverse. At that point my spirit didn't. Between my twentieth and twenty-fourth birthdays I went from 305 to 175 pounds. I didn't start fasting until about a year and a half in—not to lose weight, but to have power over my flesh rather than my flesh having power over me. Then it became a regular part of my life.

Walking in the Spirit

Fifth, fasting helps us to walk in the Spirit. "Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another" (Galatians 5). Every one of you has experienced what Paul describes in Romans 7: "The things I want to do, I don't do; and the things I don't want to do, I practice." I know I shouldn't eat that third piece of cake, but I have no self-control. "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

We live in a culture of hyper-abundance. Our pantry is like the snack aisle at a store, calling to me when I'm weak. I tell my wife, "Self-control begins at the supermarket—if you bring it home, I have no self-control." We live in perpetual feasting, and it's unhealthy for our bodies and our spirits, which are connected. If we're always feeding the flesh, the flesh grows stronger and we become its slave.

The works of the flesh are evident (Galatians 5:19-21)—not only adultery, fornication, and murder, but contentions, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfishness, and dissensions. If you find yourself irritable, on edge, impatient, and snippy, it's an indication you're walking in the flesh. But as we deny the flesh and walk in the Spirit, the Spirit grows stronger and produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Remember the Lord's words: "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me."

Preparation, Mission, and a Temporary Practice

Sixth, fasting is a practice of preparation. Jesus was prepared to face the devil's temptation by fasting (Matthew 4).

Seventh, fasting is paired with prayer and mission. As we fulfill the Great Commission, fasting is one of the tools we use.

Eighth, fasting is temporary—for this time, until the arrival of Christ's kingdom. "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?" A day is coming when we'll be with the Lord, and one of the first events at his return is the marriage supper of the Lamb—a feast. I see no evidence of fasting in the kingdom of God. This is a temporary practice for now. And we can't ignore the health benefits, either—science increasingly shows fasting helps the body through autophagy, ketosis, and the removal of toxins. The Bible knew it long before science came along to confirm it.

A Weapon of Our Warfare

Ninth, fasting is a weapon of our warfare. In Mark 9, a man brings his demon-afflicted son to Jesus's disciples, who had previously been given power to cast out demons—but they couldn't. A crowd gathered. When Jesus arrived, he cast out the demon, and afterward, when the disciples asked why they couldn't, he said, "This kind does not come out except by prayer and fasting." Fasting is connected to spiritual warfare.

This matters because we are living through very evident, wicked spiritual warfare in our culture. We often feel powerless or discouraged in the face of it. One challenge is that our culture has spent at least 150 years in an experiment of denying that there is a God—and along with that, denying there is a devil. There's a line from a 1995 film: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist." We live in a culture that thinks the devil doesn't exist—until you see total, horrible evil in HD. I'm convinced that every manifestation of wickedness in the worldly realm reflects wickedness behind the scenes in the spiritual realm.

Consider the examples. On August 22nd, Iryna Zarutska was savagely murdered on a light-rail train in Charlotte; her murderer had been arrested fourteen times before, with a recent arrest following 911 calls claiming man-made materials had been implanted in his body directing him to do things he didn't want to do. He suffered from schizophrenia and was tormented by voices. I'm not saying every mental disorder is spiritual, but there are spiritual dynamics, and when you see something that demonic, it's an indication of evil.

Five days later, a 23-year-old fired dozens of shots into a Catholic church and school in Minneapolis, killing three children and injuring twenty-one. He suffered from gender dysphoria, and in his journals there was a sketch of himself looking in a mirror, seeing the devil, with words in Cyrillic that translate, "Who am I? When will this end? Help me." If that's not demonic, I don't know what is. The young woman who shot up the Presbyterian school in Nashville left hundreds of pages of journals; she saw herself as an apprentice of the devil. And we all witnessed Charlie Kirk's assassination by Tyler Robinson, whose worldview, by available evidence, was radically altered over the last five years.

Jesus said to those who wanted to kill him, "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning... When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it" (John 8). We are in a spiritual battle. Ephesians 6 tells us to put on the whole armor of God; 2 Corinthians 10 says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God. I want to suggest that one of those weapons is fasting.

God Is Moving—Get in the Fight

Point four: fasting readies us for battle and strengthens us for victory. When we see the wickedness happening, it's easy to be discouraged and fearful. But the Scriptures say, "Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world." I'm convinced that when the enemy moves—as he clearly is moving—it is in response to the moving of God. God is moving, and the enemy is trying to stop it. "The gates of hell will not prevail against the church." In ancient times the gates were where planning was done; the deceitful plotting of the enemy will not prevail.

Let me leave you an example. I graduated from Orange Glen High School in 1998 and played football on that field. Friday night I was back there because my son plays for Escondido Charter, and they were playing at Orange Glen. They lost—a bummer. But immediately after the game, my son, his coach, and some players led 200 students in worship right on the fifty-yard line. We have a video of it.

God is doing something right now. Hundreds of thousands will watch Rob's gospel message at Charlie Kirk's memorial—just one of many things happening. A recent report found that Gen Y and Gen Z now attend church generationally more than anyone else. Baby boomers, they're beating you. God is moving, the enemy is fighting to stop it, and this kind of thing is happening on campuses all over the country. You should rejoice—and you should get in the fight.

So I'm asking you to consider fasting. Don't declare a 40-day fast tomorrow—your doctor will call me. If you've never done it, start with twenty-four hours. Skipping breakfast isn't a fast; fast for a full twenty-four hours. Yes, it will be hard. Your flesh will yell and scream, your head and stomach will hurt, you'll be distracted the whole time. It's a discipline—and like working out, it isn't easy on day one. Start there. Do it once or twice a month, then add twelve hours to make thirty-six, then forty-eight.

I regularly build fasts into my life to break down a flesh that has too much power. My wife and I went on vacation, feasted, and got into the pattern of feasting—you know the pattern. I came home and fasted for five days to break it. Was it hard? Yes. Suck it up, princess. (I can say that in church because Pastor David Guzik said it to me first.) Get in the battle, or you'll be overcome by your flesh. You should be far less worried about the devil than about your own flesh. Think about it.

Closing Prayer

God, thank you for your word. It is living and powerful like a sharp two-edged sword. It cuts deep and sometimes it hurts; it divides between joint and marrow, soul and spirit, and discerns the thoughts and intents of our hearts. I pray you would challenge us to follow you and your pattern of life, and help us see the effects spiritually and physically. Transform us by the renewing of our minds, that we would follow your example and be able to say, like Paul, "Imitate me as I imitate Christ." That's my desire, Lord—to say to others, "Follow me, just as I follow you." God, help us. We praise you.

And now may the Lord bless and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May He lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.