The Bible Study Podcast, episode 418. Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study with the

gospel of Matthew in chapter 6.

Welcome to the Bible study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. I've been thinking about

fasting. And fasting is something that I usually don't get much further than thinking about,

but it is going to be the first thing that we learn about today in the Gospel of Matthew.

And it starts like this.

When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting.

Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your father who is unseen, and your father who sees what is done in secret

will reward you. The first question that you have to ask when you look at verses on fasting

is why would someone fast? Why do we fast? Jesus is asked why his

disciples don't fast at one point and says that you don't fast when the bridegroom is there,

that basically as long as he is there, the disciples won't fast, but they'll fast sometime later on. And it's certainly a practice

that Christians have done for years, some more than others. Certainly it was very strong within

the monastic tradition, but I know people who fast today. And I have fasted occasionally, and

honestly, I'm pretty bad at it. And I say bad at it. One of my problem is I may

disfigure my face just because I get a headache and I start to get light-headed in, so it's

difficult to fast in a day that I'm trying to do something. And my other problem is I just have

no willpower. At least that's how I think of myself. Now, in the last couple of years, I've gotten

to the point where I have a regular devotion. I have irregular prayers. And this year, I've been walking fairly faithfully 10,000 steps a day. And yet I still consider myself as somebody who has poor willpower. And part of that is because I wake up in the morning and decide at 7 o'clock that I'm going to fast, and by 8 or 9 o'clock,

that seems like a poor idea. Or I decide I'm going to diet or whatever. But there's a difference

between dieting and fasting. The reason why we fast, as is implied in these verses, is almost as an

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