Matthew 6:16-18 Fasting for whom?

Hearing God say “Well done, good and faithful servant” should be the goal of all disciples of Jesus Christ. What we should not seek after, however, is the accolades of other people as we serve our God. The Pharisees wanted people to recognize their devotion to God in their giving, their praying, and in their fasting. Jesus, in this chapter, denounced their religious pretentiousness and explained what our true motivations should be as we worship and serve the Lord.

Matthew records what Jesus taught here about fasting. First of all, observe with me that Jesus appears to assume that His audience was in the habit of fasting regularly. The Lord doesn’t say “If you fast” but rather “Whenever you fast”. I must confess that I have no personal experience with fasting. The idea is to abstain from food so as to devote yourself to prayer and worship. In my country, we live in a culture that takes practically everything to excess so the idea of denying oneself food or anything is odd. However, I think the idea of disciplining ourselves and bringing our desires under control is healthy. Certainly, if someone decided to fast for a period of time they should do it as a personal choice without feeling compelled and they certainly should take precautions for their health.

The Lord then commands us how we should not fast. He tells us that we should not attempt to draw attention to ourselves so that people notice that we’re fasting by putting on “gloomy faces”. When I was a freshman in college I was a saxophone major. Branford Marsallis was playing a free concert in Auburn, Alabama and I wanted to go but I had to work the next day. Now, I shouldn’t have done this but I went to work at my part time job and pretended to be sick so I could call in the next day. I put on a “gloomy face” so that people would see how sick I was. In much the same way, these Pharisees wanted people to say “Look at ol’ Levi. Boy, that dude is fasting hardcore.” They wanted people to think of them as being religious and holy.

There are people in church today who do the same thing. Anything that we do can be a religious activity if we do it out of the wrong heart attitude. The question to ask ourselves is “Who do I want to impress here?” Do we want men to admire us or do we want to serve our Lord. Instead of making it obvious to people that we are fasting, we should “anoint [our] head and wash [our] face”. In other words, we should do whatever we would normally do in preparing for our day. Our goal is to not draw attention to ourselves but rather to make this act of devotion noticeable only to God.

We can overcome our prideful, self-centered desires to gain the acclaim of people by concentrating on what should be our true motivation—serving God from a humble heart. When we fast or worship the Lord in any other way, we should devote ourselves to the only thing that should truly matter to a disciple of Jesus—the glory of God. When we do that, our “Father who sees what is done in secret will reward” us.