What does the Bible say about fasting?

• Deuteronomy 9:9, fasting of Moses (Moses fasted on the mountain for forty days and nights before receiving the stone tablets)
• 1 King 19:8, fasting of Elijah (Elijah fasted for forty days and nights on Horeb, the mount of God) 
• Esther 4:15-16, fasting of Esther (Esther asks for all the Jews to fast on her behalf) 
• Isaiah 58, true and false fasting (isn't the fast I choose to break the chains of injustice?) 
• Daniel 10:3, fasting of Daniel (Daniel fasted while in mourning) 
• Joel 2:15, a fast of repentance (blowing a trumpet consecrates a fast)
• Zechariah 7:5, a message from God on fasting (God rejects hypocritical fasting) 
• Matthew 4:1-4, fasting of Jesus (Jesus fasted in the wilderness for forty days and nights) 
• Matthew 6:16, Jesus' message on fasting (fast in private)
• Matthew 9:14-15, a question about fasting (feasting first, then fasting)
• Luke 18:12, fasting in a parable (Pharisee fasts publicly)
• John 4:32-34, fasting of Jesus (satisfied by doing God's work) 
• Acts 9:9, fasting of Paul (Paul didn't eat or drink for three days after his Damascus road encounter) 
• Acts 13:2, fasting of Antioch church leaders (the Holy Spirit speaks during a fast) 
• 1 Corinthians 6:12, the role of food (while all things are lawful, I will not be dominated by anything) 

Sermon ideas about fasting

A voluntary discipline

To the uninitiated, fasting is surprisingly common among the people of God — among them Moses, David, Elijah, Esther, Daniel, Anna, Jesus, and Paul, as well as Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, and countless others. 

What concepts can a sermon on fasting highlight? First, fasting is distinct from dieting and from hunger strikes. People undertake diets and hunger strikes from various physical and political motives but undertake fasts to turn their hearts toward God. 

Since the body cannot go without water for more than a few days, the fasts conducted by Moses (Deuteronomy 9) and by Elijah (1 Kings 19) would have needed supernatural support. 

Fasting is a voluntary spiritual discipline. There are no commands in the Bible to fast — unlike, for example, the directives to pray or to give generously. But in Matthew 6, Jesus speaks first of giving alms (don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing) and then of prayer (do not pile up empty phrases) and then of fasting (don't look dismal while fasting), as if these are all natural practices for a believer. Jesus treats almsgiving, prayer, and fasting as the same sort of thing — regular spiritual disciplines. And while Jesus does not command fasting, he does in Matthew 9 state an expectation that his disciples will fast after his departure.  

Fasting for freedom? 

A sermon on fasting should teach that a genuine fast is God-centered. The idea is to isolate and celebrate our sheer dependence on God for life itself, and to increase our hunger and thirst for God. As the desert fathers knew, human appetites are linked. Abandoning gluttony, the desert fathers counseled fasting as a deliberate deprivation that would sharpen the hunger for God and the desire to feast on God. "Fasting is feasting," writes Richard J. Foster in Celebration of Discipline. 

Both Foster and Dallas Willard, following centuries of Christian reflection, say that among the spiritual benefits of fasting is that it reveals and breaks down our devotion to food and to other gods. A fast brings to the surface the things that control us, and undermines them. Fasting teaches us "how powerful and clever our body is in getting its own way against our stronger resolves," Willard writes in The Spirit of the Disciplines. 

Like every classic spiritual discipline, the goal of fasting is freedom. Discipline is not the enemy of freedom; discipline is the very basis of freedom. Discipline takes aim at our bondage in order to break it. 

When freedom from idolatry arrives, so does a kind of contentment. Our comfort food is now the blessed word of God. And contentment can spread. Foster cites Elizabeth O'Connor, author of Search for Silence, who recounts how fasting both increased her contentment and made her more mindful of the sufferings of Jesus and of hungry people around the world. She began to feel compassion for them and to pray for them. When Christians fast, their spiritual landscape shifts in healthy directions.  

Excerpts about fasting 

Following are sample excerpts from Zeteosearch.org sermon resources about fasting: 

• "Communal fasting also encourages Christians to keep fasting in its proper place, in short, to fast with virtue." Article about Worship and the Sacraments by Jamie Cain from Conversatio Divina   

• "Fasting will help you gain self-control, especially over desires for self-will and immediate self-gratification. Fasting will unite you with Christ who sacrificed himself for you, and with the many hungry people in the world, and with 250 million Orthodox Christians in every land with whom you are keeping the Fast." Article about Worship and the Sacraments by Bill Olnhausen from Fr. Bill's Orthodox Blog  

• "For the most part, the Christian church in Pakistan observes seventy days of fasting every year—thirty days with their Muslim neighbors during the month of Ramadan, and in addition, forty days during Lent according to the Christian calendar, between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday." Article about Worship and the Sacraments by Eric Sarwar from Calvin Institiute of Christian Worship