Sermon on the Mount – Fasting from sense brings healing
Mrs. Eddy defines “fasting” as “refraining from admitting the claims of the senses” (My. 222:14)
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The Holy Bible
Is. 58:6, 8 (KJV)
Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily. . . .
Matt. 6:16-18 (NLT)
[W]hen you fast, don’t make it obvious, as the hypocrites do, for they try to look miserable and disheveled so people will admire them for their fasting. . . . But when you fast, comb your hair and wash your face. Then no one will notice that you are fasting, except your Father, who knows what you do in private. And your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.
Matt. 4:2-4 (NLT)
For forty days and forty nights [Jesus] fasted and became very hungry. During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.” But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.‘”
Matt. 9:10-13 (NLT)
Later, Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. But when the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with such scum?” When Jesus heard this, he said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do.” Then he added, “Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.’ For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”
Luke 18:9-14 (NLT)
Then Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else: “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Is. 58:1, 3-9 (NLT)
Tell my people Israel of their sins! ‘We have fasted before you!’ they say. ‘Why aren’t you impressed? ….”I will tell you why!” I respond. “It’s because you are fasting to please yourselves. Even while you fast, you keep oppressing your workers. What good is fasting when you keep on fighting and quarreling? . . . .You humble yourselves by going through the motions of penance, bowing your heads like reeds bending in the wind. [You] cover yourselves with ashes. Is this what you call fasting? Do you really think this will please the Lord? “No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help. “Then your salvation will come like the dawn, and your wounds will quickly heal. Your godliness will lead you forward, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. Then when you call, the Lord will answer.
Mark 9:15, 17-18, 24, 25, 26, 27-29 (NLT)
When the crowd saw Jesus,. . . .one of the men in the crowd spoke up and said, “Teacher, I brought my son so you could heal him. He is possessed by an evil spirit that won’t let him talk. And whenever this spirit seizes him, it throws him violently to the ground. Then he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast out the evil spirit, but they couldn’t do it. . . .I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!” When Jesus saw that the crowd of onlookers was growing, he rebuked the evil spirit. “. . . . “I command you to come out of this child and never enter him again!” Then the spirit screamed and threw the boy into another violent convulsion and left him. The boy appeared to be dead. . . . But Jesus took him by the hand and helped him to his feet, and he stood up. Afterward, when Jesus was alone in the house with his disciples, they asked him, “Why couldn’t we cast out that evil spirit?” Jesus replied, “This kind can be cast out only by prayer and fasting.
John 8:15 ( KJV)
Ye judge after the flesh . . .
John 7: 24 (NLT)
Look beneath the surface so you can judge correctly.
I Cor. 2:9 (NLT)
No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.
II Cor. 5:7, 8 (KJV)
[W]e walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
Col. 3:1-2, 8, 10, 12, 15
Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. [N]ow is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior . . . . Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts.
SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES by Mary Baker Eddy
SH 264:24
Spiritual living and blessedness are the only evidences, by which we can recognize true existence and feel the unspeakable peace which comes from an all-absorbing spiritual love.
SH 51:28
Jesus was unselfish. His spirituality separated him from sensuousness, and caused the selfish materialist to hate him; but it was this spirituality which enabled Jesus to heal the sick, cast out evil, and raise the dead.
SH 52:13-14, 29-32
“Despised and rejected of men,” was Isaiah’s graphic word concerning the coming Prince of Peace. The accusations of the Pharisees were as self-contradictory as their religion. The bigot, the debauchee, the hypocrite, called Jesus a glutton and a wine-bibber.
SH 53:3-5
Jesus was no ascetic. He did not fast as did the Baptist’s disciples; yet there never lived a man so far removed from appetites and passions as the Nazarene.
SH 20:10
He knew that men can be baptized, partake of the Eucharist, support the clergy, observe the Sabbath, make long prayers, and yet be sensual and sinful.
SH 597:4-10 – The motives and affections of a man were of little value, if only he appeared unto men to fast. The great Nazarene, as meek as he was mighty, rebuked the hypocrisy, which offered long petitions for blessings upon material methods, but cloaked the crime, latent in thought, which was ready to spring into action and crucify God’s anointed.
SH 52:2-3, 4
His master was Spirit; their master was matter. . . . His affections were pure; theirs were carnal. His senses drank in the spiritual evidence of health, holiness, and life; their senses testified oppositely, and absorbed the material evidence of sin, sickness, and death.
SH 313:24
He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause.
SH 15:7-9
The Father in secret is unseen to the physical senses, but He knows all things and rewards according to motives, not according to speech.
SH 242:9-20
There is but one way to heaven, harmony, and Christ in divine Science shows us this way. It is to know no other reality — to have no other consciousness of life — than good, God and His reflection, and to rise superior to the so-called pain and pleasure of the senses. Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error, — self-will, self-justification, and self-love, — which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death.
SH 52:19-23
The “man of sorrows” best understood the nothingness of material life and intelligence and the mighty actuality of all-inclusive God, good. These were the two cardinal points of Mind-healing, or Christian Science, which armed him with Love.
SH 54:1-5, 10-13, 16-17
Through the magnitude of his human life, he demonstrated the divine Life. Out of the amplitude of his pure affection, he defined Love. With the affluence of Truth, he vanquished error. That he might liberally pour his dear-bought treasures into empty or sin-filled human storehouses, was the inspiration of Jesus’ intense human sacrifice. . . . This was the highest proof he could have offered of divine Love.
SH 19:6
Jesus aided in reconciling man to God by giving man a truer sense of Love, the divine Principle of Jesus’ teachings, and this truer sense of Love redeems man from the law of matter, sin, and death by the law of Spirit, — the law of divine Love.
SH 220:26-30
The belief that either fasting or feasting makes men better morally or physically is one of the fruits of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” concerning which God said, “Thou shalt not eat of it.”
SH 221:1-4, 14-20
I knew a person who when quite a child adopted the Graham system to cure dyspepsia. For many years, he ate only bread and vegetables, and drank nothing but water. At this point Christian Science saved him, and he is now in perfect health without a vestige of the old complaint. He learned that suffering and disease were the self-imposed beliefs of mortals, and not the facts of being; that God never decreed disease, — never ordained a law that fasting should be a means of health.
SH 14:12-16, 18
Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual, — neither in nor of matter, — and the body will then utter no complaints. If suffering from a belief in sickness, you will find yourself suddenly well. . .. Hence the hope of the promise Jesus bestows: “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; . . . because I go unto my Father,” — [because the Ego is absent from the body, and present with Truth and Love.] The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer of Soul, not of material sense.
SH 95:30-32
Material sense does not unfold the facts of existence; but spiritual sense lifts human consciousness into eternal Truth.
SH 272:3-5
The spiritual sense of truth must be gained before Truth can be understood. This sense is assimilated only as we are honest, unselfish, loving, and meek.
SH 365:15
If the Scientist reaches his patient through divine Love, the healing work will be accomplished at one visit, and the disease will vanish into its native nothingness like dew before the morning sunshine. If the Scientist has enough Christly affection to win his own pardon, and such commendation as the Magdalen gained from Jesus, then he is Christian enough to practise scientifically and deal with his patients compassionately; and the result will correspond with the spiritual intent.
SH 495:14-15, 20
When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea. Let Christian Science, instead of corporeal sense, support your understanding of being, and this understanding will supplant error with Truth, replace mortality with immortality, and silence discord with harmony.
FRUITAGE: SH 634:15-17 (np)
As the son of a physician, a graduate in pharmacy, and an ex-druggist, I had a perfect contempt for what I thought Christian Science to be. About six and a half years ago, however, having exhausted all material means at my command, — materia medica, electricity, gymnastics, cycling, and so on, — and being in a hopeless state, the study of Christian Science was taken up. I had been a sufferer from catarrh and sore throat for over thirty years, and in the last five were added several others, including dyspepsia, and bronchitis, and a loss in flesh of sixty pounds.
I was completely healed, and regained health, strength, and flesh through the spiritual understanding of Christian Science, the result of about six weeks’ study. . . . While most grateful for the physical healing, my gratitude for the mental and spiritual regeneration is beyond expression. When I learned that Jesus’ mission of healing sickness as well as sin did not end with his short stay upon earth, but is practical in all ages, my joy was unbounded. . . . Every thought of prejudice immediately vanished before the proofs that Christian Science is indeed the elucidation and practical application of Jesus’ teachings, which are demonstrable truth, “The same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.” — C. N. C., Memphis, Tenn.
SH 150:4
To-day the healing power of Truth is widely demonstrated as an immanent, eternal Science, instead of a phenomenal exhibition. Its appearing is the coming anew of the gospel of “on earth peace, good-will toward men.” This coming, as was promised by the Master, is for its establishment as a permanent dispensation among men; but the mission of Christian Science now, as in the time of its earlier demonstration, is not primarily one of physical healing. Now, as then, signs and wonders are wrought in the metaphysical healing of physical disease; but these signs are only to demonstrate its divine origin, — to attest the reality of the higher mission of the Christ-power to take away the sins of the world.
SH 249:1-4
Let us accept Science, relinquish all theories based on sense-testimony, give up imperfect models and illusive ideals; and so let us have one God, one Mind, and that one perfect, producing His own models of excellence.