Pray the Lord's Prayer

The King James Version (KJV) is mostly used in these lessons. Click here to access the KJV online.

So we looked at giving to the poor. We looked at prayer - going to a private room, don't babble, don't try to speak eloquently, just pray quietly from your heart. Pray the Lord's prayer.

Now the same attitude of humility goes for fasting. Yahushua tells us in Mat. 6:16 not to be sad-faced like the hypocrites. The word hypocrites means a pretender, a play actor and sad faced. Some translations say disfigure or unrecognizable. Don't do that like the pretenders so that your fasting won't be obvious to other people. Because that's what they do, they purposefully make their face disfigured or unattractive or sad - woe is me - they walk around like that, I'm fasting. What's wrong with you? - Oh I'm fasting, I'm fasting - it's okay.

What is their reward? People will see them and give them praise.

Now obviously there are times where we might go on a long fast and people will know it because our face naturally becomes disfigured from losing weight.

A word of caution: one should seek medical advice before proceeding on a long fast.

People go on 21-day fast, 30-day fast, 40-day fast, 50 day fast, having nothing except water. Fasting for that long, your face becomes disfigured your body becomes disfigured and people will obviously know that you're fasting.

Yahushua was not talking about the long fasts or Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement where it's a commanded fast day. That is when everybody knows each other is fasting. We're ‘afflicting our soul’ and the primary way to do that is to fast. He's speaking of just the normal week to week short fasts that were very customary among the Hebrew people.

For example, in Luke 18:9-14, Yahushua tells the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector that went up to the temple to pray. The Pharisee said - I'm glad I'm not like the tax collector, I give tithes of everything I own, I fast twice a week. He was bragging about fasting in his prayer. But there's a point that we miss here and that is, fasting was customary. It was actually a custom for a lot of people that were Hebrew. A lot of people that serve Yahuwah fasted two days or twice a week. So it's not only mentioned in Luke 18, it's mentioned in an early Christian document. This document comes from the late 1^st century A.D. It's a teaching manual for Christians, not scripture, but it has a lot of scripture in it. Chapter 8:1 says, “but as for your fasts let them not be with the hypocrites. Hypocrites there is probably a reference to some of the Pharisees. It says, for they fast on the second and fifth days of the week, but do your fast on the fourth and sixth days. The point here is that many early Christians fasted twice a week but chose different days from the Pharisees because they didn't want to be aligned or for anybody to think that they were a pretender or a play actor. As a side note chapter 8 also mentions prayer three times a day and it says not to pray like the pretenders which stems from Matthew 6. Then it says to pray the Lord's prayer instead, which is exactly what Yahushua told us.

It would make sense that when Yahushua said ‘when you fast’ he's speaking of the customary practice of weekly fasting - a day or two a week. It would be great to fast 2 days a week, that leaves us five days to eat.

Yahuwah says to keep the Sabbath, the seventh day, one day, it gives us six days to labor and do all our work. He didn't say, every week give me six days of rest and you get one day of work.

If the only time that we fast is on the Day of Atonement or just every now and then, then Yahushua's words in Matthew 6 don't really make sense. They don't really mean a whole lot if you just fast one day a year. That doesn't make sense when you fast only on the Day of Atonement. No he's talking about regular fasting. If you're in the habit of regular fasting then his words make sense. His words would make total sense.