Ezra & Nehemiah: A need for fasting

It's hard to imagine what life was like for the people of Israel after they went into exile. Jerusalem had fallen to the Babylonians with great violence and brutality, as recorded by Jeremiah in Lamentations. But empires come and empires go, and in 539 BC, the Persians defeated the Babylonians and absorbed the lands of Israel and Judah into their territory. The next year, Cyrus allowed the people of Judah to return home and rebuild the temple of the Lord. Around 458 BC, another group of Judean exiles returned under Ezra's leadership (ESV study Bible).

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah (often viewed as one book) give us a historical narrative about these returns to Palestine, but with important theological lessons about God's covenant faithfulness. The exile was not the end of the story for God's people, and the book of Ezra shows an amazing turnaround of these pagan rulers giving favour to God's people and actually commissioning them to re-start their religious community centred around the temple. The rebuilt temple was nowhere near as great in grandeur as the first, so it was a bittersweet reopening (see Ezra 3), but the fact remains that God had preserved for Himself a remnant. He had not wiped out the descendants of Abraham. He still had plans to prosper them (Jer 29).

It was a great challenge for this broken, battered community to live distinctively and faithfully to the Lord. They had been in exile for 70 years. As they come back to the Word of God and the Law of God, they have to come to terms with their own disobedience and figure out how to move forwards. Ezra's leadership is bold and strong as he urges the people to obey the commands of the Lord, even at great personal cost (such as the removal of foreign wives and children - see Ezra 9-10). What struck me looking at these narratives was the place of fasting in the post-exilic community, as an integral part of their repentance and turning back to the Lord.

Fasting is not something we talk about very often. It is not something we do very well, I'm guessing (if my own practise is anything to go by). In OT Law, it was only prescribed for the Day of Atonement (see Leviticus 16), which was fundamentally about purification from sin. The people were charged to 'afflict' themselves (v29) and 'do no work', which suggests that fasting and prayer was part of this holy day where their sins would be dealt with before God in the Holy of Holies. In the offerings and the goat sent into the wilderness, God gave His people a vivid picture of their sin being atoned for, which ultimately pointed to Jesus' death on the cross. So I'm not suggesting we should go back to OT Law and fast like we're trying to add something on to Christ's work- He said, 'It is finished'! (John 19:30) But it's interesting that during the exile and afterwards, fasting became something God's people did when they realised their need for God. You could look at Esther calling a fast before she was to appear before the King to try to stop the killing of the Jews (a situation of desperation, see Esther 4). You could look at the prayerful life of Daniel and how he fasted and prayed when he realised the 70 years of exile had passed and God had promised through Jeremiah that He would bring the people back (Daniel 9). In Ezra, he fasts and falls on his knees in intercessory prayer when he hears of the mixed marriages of the exiles (Ezra 9). Nehemiah fasts and prays over an extended time when he hears of the state of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 1). Why did they fast? Because they were desperate. They were full of grief over sin (not always their own sin, but the sin of the nation, of their community). They wanted to humble themselves before God and pray, and abstaining from food was an important part of that. It showed repentance (you could also look at Nineveh in the book of Jonah for that).

Why don't we fast? Because we're not desperate. We want to see God move, but we're not desperate enough that we're willing to give up the things we rely on each day to get us through - this isn't just our three meals, but other things too like social media, our mobile phones. I read something on Revive our Hearts where the speaker made a point that you wouldn't congratulate someone on being very self-disciplined if they managed to eat three meals a day. Imagine it: 'Well done! You actually managed to eat breakfast, lunch AND dinner!' It's something we take for granted, unless we're ill. Well fasting is meant to show us that the same commitment we have towards feeding our bodies is the commitment we should have in prayer. We NEED God more than we need food to survive (Jesus told the devil 'Man shall not live by bread alone' in Matthew 4:4 when He was tempted to turn stones into bread during a 40-day fast).

I know it's easy with fasting to become legalistic. In fact, Jesus warned His disciples not to fast like the Pharisees, to make a song and dance about it, and do it for human praise and attention (Luke 18:12). But He did teach on fasting as though it was meant to be a regular part of life for His followers - 'when you fast...' (Matthew 6:17). He was questioned on why His disciples didn't fast, and He replied, 'But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.' (Mark 2:19) Until Jesus comes again, there is sin, there is suffering, there is wrong-doing in the world. There is desperation. So fasting is to be part of following Christ until that day when He puts everything right.

If we don't fast, it's like we're saying there's nothing to grieve over. Our culture doesn't do grief. We're told not to focus on the bad things. But biblically, we should! We should grieve over the sins of our nation. We should mourn the hypocrisies and failures of the Church. We should deeply feel the horror of our sin and in the midst of our gratitude to Christ for making our atonement, it's not always wrong to set aside special time to fast and pray for victory over habitual sin. I'm not saying 'fast and God will listen to you'. I'm just trying to recognise that Scripture tells us there IS a need for fasting, and I know I need to do it a lot more than I do at the moment.

Esther

I've been reading the book of Esther recently, and I always feel challenged to actually think about it and not just race through the story (which is pretty gripping). I don't think it's a particularly easy book for Christians to read and respond to, but it is there in the Bible for a reason! I was reading some articles about it and I thought I'd briefly post on some ideas for how to receive and apply the book.

1. Esther is a heroine, but not always an ideal one.
I have felt uncomfortable before with books or speakers who, in their quest to find examples of female heroines in the Bible, use Esther as a prime example. They often draw on her courage -which is definitely one of her strong points- and hail her as a hero of faith -something a little less clear in the book itself. She calls a fast, which implicitly would link with prayer, but she doesn't explicitly talk about God or give Him credit when the Jews are delivered (at least, not that is recorded in the book). This would contrast with someone like Deborah in the book of Judges, or Miriam in Exodus 15, who both give songs of praise to God for delivering His people. The events of the book -a great aversion of tragedy- should give rise to the same kind of praise as these previous events in Israel's history. The people celebrate with a feast (still kept today in Judaism), but the reader is left to draw his or her own conclusions about the events the book so meticulously describes.

I think the situation of Esther is certainly an unorthodox one. She is living in exile and to become part of the king's harem, eventually his queen, perhaps seems to be taking 'assimilation' too far. The book of Daniel really emphasises his desire to keep himself separate from the corrupt pagan practices around him; we don't see this in Esther. However, it does seem that God put Esther in her position of power at a key time so that she could intervene to save the Jews from destruction: 'And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?' (4:14) She has to put her own life in danger in order to make her request of the king, and she doesn't let her fear hold her back. Where did this courage come from? Surely it must have come from some amount of faith that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would not let His covenant people, despite being in exile for their disobedience, be annihilated? Esther is certainly the heroine of the story, not always an ideal one, but she does act in courage and (implicit) faith.

2. God is the hero!
Although God's name is never mentioned in the book, God is the hero of the story. So many elements, the events that took place, were outside human control... but not beyond divine intervention. It seems that the whole time, God is providentially watching over His children, and no power against them can stand. There isn't really any other explanation for how the deliverance of the Jews could happen, as there are so many 'co-incidences' or chance meetings which end up being crucial for the saving of God's people. This is, I think, the main way to apply the book today: trust in God's sovereignty over every event, situation in life, and take responsibility to act with courage and initiative when circumstances require it. Barry Webb writes:

'In particular, the hiddenness of God that we find in Esther mirrors the world many of us live in today... the absence of the miraculous does not mean the absence of God. He remains committed to the welfare of His people, and works all things for their good, even when He is most hidden.' ('Five Festal Garments' p131).