Ezra was a descendant of Aaron living in Babylonia among the Jewish exiles during the reign of Artaxerxes, the 3rd in a succession of kings who were moved by God to issue decrees enabling the rebuilding of Jerusalem and her temple, around 520 BC.
The rebuilding of the temple under Zerubbabel and Jeshua the High Priest was already in full swing. It would be another 13 years before the Lord called Nehemiah to return to Jerusalem to rebuild her walls.
According to Ezra 7:6, he was a “scribe skilled in the Law of Moses that the Lord, the God of Israel had given.” A few verses later we are told that he “had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and teach His statutes and rules in Israel.”
A tall task, because by now many of the people of Israel had forgotten their core Scriptures. In fact, it didn’t get reintroduced to them till Nehemiah finished the walls and their gates and had Ezra read the whole thing out loud to the assembled people in the square by the Water Gate (Nehemiah 8:3).
Ezra gathered a group of several hundred clan heads and Levites to take with him to Jerusalem. But before setting off from the river Avaha, he proclaims a fast. It is described in only three verses, but it is a significant act of consecration to the Lord, packed with spiritual insights into the importance of a fast that are still relevant to us some 2,500 years later.
Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods. For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, “The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him.” So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty. (Ezra 8:21-23)
- The purpose of a fast is to humble yourself before the Lord. (verse 21). A fast sets aside our preoccupation with satisfying our bodily needs. By demoting those to a lesser priority, we elevate seeking God as our first priority which is an act of worship and reverence.
- The activity of a fast is to seek the Lord and entreat Him. Not that we can twist His arm to give us what we want by fasting. That would be self-serving. No. Seeking Him and entreating Him means that we intentionally make ourselves dependent on His grace for a specific request. In Ezra’s case, it was a safe passage for a group of relatively vulnerable people on a dangerous journey in keeping with what they had told the king about God’s hand on them. For us, it could be God’s intervention in a crisis, His guidance for an important decision, the launch of a ministry, and so on. All of our entreaties are made in the spirit of what Jesus told us in John 15:5: “Apart from me you can do nothing.”
- The reward of a fast is that the hand of the Lord is on all who seek Him. (verse 22). If you intensify seeking the Lord, you may expect the reward of His presence of grace to be on you with intensity as well.
- The result of a fast is that He listens to our entreaty. (verse 23). God responds to hungry hearts. 1 John 5:14, 15 tells us: “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” Hearts that are hungrier for Him than for food are hearts that are more ready to receive what He wants to impart.
Whether you fast from electronics or food, denying bodily needs to focus on God empowers your prayers. That goes for personal prayer, as well as intercession for others, our nation, and the world.
Fasting even goes hand in hand with revival. After Ezra read the Book of the Law and the Feast of Booths was celebrated, all Israel gathered in fasting and sackcloth to confess their sins and the sins of their fathers (Nehemiah 9:1,2). The result was newfound consecration and service to the Lord. That’s the stuff revivals are made of, and we are in need of it in today’s America as much as in Ezra’s days, if not more.
I am the first to confess that fasting does not come easy to me. I admire people who do it routinely for a day, a week, or even more. But I do feel a sense of conviction about doing it more often. It is important that the people God has raised up to pray for our Church and nation do so with fasting to entreat the Lord for mercy and revival. Actually, every believer should pray regularly for the Church and for our nation and do so with the intensity of a fast. I pray that God gets hold of every believing heart and moves it to pray for our nation with fasting and heartfelt entreaty.
The momentary discomfort of hunger pains or keeping your eyes off a phone pales in comparison to the intimate presence of the Lord when you fully focus on Him. It should, of course, never be a reluctantly held obligatory habit. God only values it when we do it to seek Him with all our hearts (see Matthew 6:16-18).
When we seek Him, we will find Him, with all the fullness of His grace, and His ear inclined to our entreaty, ready to unload His blessings.