Fasting as Sacrament
or Feeding the Correct Dog
An added thought based on this from a post last week:
Living things have brains, guts and outsides. This is Word, Sacrament and Government. Word is intangible, but our emotions are communicated symbolically through our bodies. Facial expressions and body language are the response of the “Holy Place” to the “Most Holy” of our inner soul. Eyes are organs of judgment. Eyes are also the windows to the soul. The crystal sea is a window to heaven. The “outer court” interacts with the world and needs cleaning. Only clean stuff is allowed inside the “Holy Place.”
So, basically, as a Tabernacle, if my mind is a symbol of the command from the Most Holy (Word), and my body carries out my thoughts and intents in the world (Government), what is in between? The Holy Place, the place of flesh offered to God.
The human heart is desperately wicked and deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9). The mind is the Most Unholy. What comes out it what makes us unclean, not what goes in (Mark 7:20). It is the mind that makes the flesh unholy.
But as Christians, we also have the mind of Christ. There is a black dog and a white dog. As one of my pastors used to say, whichever dog you feed the most will become the strongest. That’s true. But we are to kill the black dog.
Fasting is a form of death in the flesh. It is a temporary refusal of the Covenant blessings for the sake of those outside the Covenant. It is becoming “accursed” that we may win our brothers (Romans 9:3). Blood opens the door for the mind of Christ (the true Ark) and mortifies the lawless mind of Adam. [1] It is a refusal of the Tree of Judicial Wisdom until we ourselves are judged in the stead of another.
When we fast, we become broken bread and poured out wine. It is not a sacrament received, like baptism and the Lord’s table. These come from the body of Jesus. Fasting is a sacrament we can give from our own bodies for greater kingdom government. And a greater kingdom means a greater feast when we are done. We are Adam with his guts emptied to build Greater Eve.
Like Jesus, we are “torn in two” under the Covenant curse, that we may be put back together in greater glory, bread and wine reunited at Solomon’s wedding feast.
“Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
1 Cor. 7:20
The Holy Place was unseen by all except the priesthood. Fasting is to be a private matter, behind closed doors, in secret (Matthew 6:17).[2]
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[1] Both Zechariah 5 and Revelation 20 show the true Ark lid being opened and the false ark bound under a heavy lid and exiled. In both cases it was by the blood of Atonement. Fasting casts the Wickedness-woman, the man of lawlessness, into outer darkness. In Revelation, it was the massacre of the saints as bread and wine in chapter 14 that provided the first goat. But that’s another story.
[2] I have a summary of the book God’s Chosen Fast by Arthur Wallis in PDF here.
Artwork by Achikochi.
March 31st, 2010 at 4:50 am
It does seem that fasting probably does represent the death of the flesh — but whose flesh and to what end? I suppose it could represent either Christ’s sacrifice or, as you suggest, the martyrdom of the saints. But overall, I just don’t understand how fasting literally serves to expand God’s kingdom. Paul’s idea about suffering God’s wrath for his neighbors was merely hypothetical and served to demonstrate Paul’s love for the unconverted.
March 31st, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Drew
Good question. I think the process is always Word, Sacrament, Government, or Commandment, Servanthood, Dominion. So the reason we don’t have Hope and Change is because no one wants to be the servant to bring about that change. That’s what fasting is about and I think the Spirit lets us know when it is required - as in the book of Esther. Wallis’ book is the best one on this that I know.