Yeshua’s famous fast of 40 days and 40 nights in the desert (Matthew 4, Mark 1, Luke 4) inaugurated His three-year public ministry of unmatched power. Perhaps the most eternally significant outcome of that fast was Yeshua’s established victory over every level of temptation (or testing) that satan could throw at His humanity. That complete victory could be viewed as the over-arching purpose of the fast; yet I believe there was a vital element to that victory without which the purpose could not have been fulfilled. That element was to optimize the preparation of His mortal body as a conduit through which supernatural power could flow to minister first to His generation, and then to all mankind.

Yeshua’s fasting was a means to that powerful end. The Holy Spirit ensured that at least one Gospel writer would record a very important before-and-after comparison. Luke 4:1 begins the narrative with the ‘before’ picture: “Yeshua, now filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan” (where He had just been baptized) and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Then in verse 14, having narrated the full 40-day fasting test, Luke presents the ‘after’ picture with these loaded words: “Yeshua returned in the power of the Spirit to the Galilee, and news about Him went out through all the surrounding region.”

Well, duh! Of course the news about Him began to spread like wildfire, because the power of God began to be manifested through this Galilean to an extent that it had never before (and has never since) been manifested through a mortal body.

I used to think that 40 days was all the fasting that Yeshua did, but now I know better. From the account in John 4:4-34, I know that Yeshua fasted at other times during His ministry, sometimes even to the consternation of His disciples as in John 4:31-34: “The disciples were pressing Him, ‘Rabbi, eat!’ But He said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you know nothing about. So the disciples were saying to each other, ‘No-one brought Him food to eat, did they?’ Yeshua told them, ‘My food is to do the will of the One who sent Me and to accomplish His work.'”

In Luke 4:18-19, Yeshua articulated His divine mandate as the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1-2, supernatural ministry to mankind that would demonstrate the benevolence of God and usher in the Gospel of salvation. In John 5:36 Yeshua said, “The works the Father has given Me to finish – the very works I am doing – testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me.” The Gospel accounts are replete with examples of His definitive works, and in Matthew 11:5 Yeshua Himself listed some of them: “The blind see and the lame walk, those with leprosy are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news proclaimed to them.”

Not only was Yeshua’s supernatural ministry undergirded with fasting, but it was sustained with prayer as well. That is why He, even while operating through a mortal body, had victory over spiritual entities which He said are not defeated except through the powerful punch of prayer and fasting (see Part 1 of this article, below). Luke 5:16 reveals that Yeshua “would often slip away into the wilderness and pray.” So we know that He sometimes retreated, away from the crowds and their pressing needs, in order to re-charge his power-pack for ministry. He would sometimes even retreat from His disciples, as we read in Luke 6:12: “Yeshua went out to the mountain to pray, and He spent all night in prayer to God. When day came, He called His disciples, choosing from among them twelve whom He also named emissaries” (the apostles).

The daily miraculous works that Yeshua did, sometimes in full view of multitudes and otherwise in the privacy of homes with just a few present, had never been seen before. Prophets and patriarchs of Israel had sometimes demonstrated the miraculous power of God working through them, on accasion to the extent of raising the dead; but even the most faithful among God’s people had ever seen anything like this 24/7 miracle-working Galilean! Yet, the basic concept of combining prayer with fasting was nothing new to the Jews, and that is why Yeshua could encourage His disciples to continue His ministry with prayer and fasting once He was taken away from the earth. As the spiritual Body of their resurrected Messiah, being submitted to Him as their Head, what could they expect to accomplish?                                                                                                                                                        [To be continued]

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If you’re old enough you’ll remember Popeye cartoons. Popeye’s secret ingredient, which pumped up his biceps and powered his punch, was spinach. Now, unless you’ve been terribly disadvantaged you’ll also have heard of Jesus Christ, whose powerful deeds in Israel 2,000 years ago were a lot more historic than Popeye’s, and were not limited to the reach of a physical arm. Every Jew who knew Jesus personally then, called Him by His Hebrew name, Yeshua; and those who became convinced of His divinity by observing the display of His power, added to His name the title Ha Mashiach (The Messiah).

Yeshua, even while He lived in Galilee as a mortal, had the most powerful ‘punch’ recorded in history. Read the Gospels – the story of Yeshua’s incarnation told in the Bible by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – and you’ll know about the power of Yeshua’s ‘punch’. It sent diseases packing, leaving their former victims healthy; it sent evil spirits (demons of all sorts) packing, leaving their former victims restored to soundness and self control. It threw curveballs at some secular and religious authorities that they could neither dodge nor hit; it punched down social barriers that no-one else thought to (or dared to) challenge. It left the devil himself speechless and defeated at his own game – death. It brought vision to the blind, hearing to the deaf, liberation to captives, elevation to the downtrodden, affirmation to the undervalued, and raised the dead back to life.

Yeshua’s disciples tried to do as He did – to exercise that same ‘punch’ against the devil’s work in their environment, but at first they disappointed themselves and disappointed some others. We read of one such occasion in Matthew 17:14-21 and Mark 9:14-29, where they failed to help a child who was tormented by epilepsy, and whose father had appealed to them for healing ministry. That father aparently concluded that they lacked something, and that He should go directly to the Source of the power that could heal his son. After Yeshua responded to the father’s appeal and healed the child, the disciples also realized that something was missing from their ‘punch’ and asked their Master what it was.

Yeshua said (Matthew 17:21), “This kind does not go out (Mark 9:29 – ‘come out‘) except by prayer and fasting.” Although the inclusion of this fasting reference is under debate by some Christians based on its exclusion from some manuscripts, the fact that Yeshua underpinned His power-packed ministry with an inaugural 40-days-and-40-nights fast is undisputed (Matthew 4:2, Luke 4:2). Besides, the fact that His subsequent ministry was totally effective against the devil’s influence is also undisputed among believers. The only time that the devil may seem (in unenlighted eyes) to have gotten the better of Him was on the days of His betrayal, capture, trial and crucifixion.

Yeshua countered this predictable misperception in advance by promising His fellow Jews, at His most memorable Passover visit to Jerusalem (John 2:19, 21): “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up … He was speaking of the temple of His body.” He later explained, this time specifically to the Pharisees (John 10:17-18), “I lay down my life … no-one takes it from me. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again.” Later still, as His persecution approached its climax and Peter cut off an attacker’s ear in defence of his Master, Yeshua said to Peter (Matthew 26:52-53), “Put your sword back… do you suppose that I cannot call on My Father, and at once He will place at my side twelve legions of angels?” Then He assured the crowd of witnesses (Matthew 26:56), “All this (His capture, which He had allowed) was done that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Three days after His crucified body was consigned to a sealed and guarded tomb, Yeshua did just what He had said he would. He raised His own ‘dead’ body back to life to demonstrate His victory over the devil, death and the grave, and so that He could use the same body (now glorified) on earth for forty more days.

The source of this power that Yeshua had at His disposal to use as He saw fit, was divine. However, this unmatched power could only be exercised through a mortal body because Yeshua had totally submitted that mortal body to the Godhead through prayer and fasting.       [To be continued.]

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