You call that fasting?

There is a good reading for you to discover or re-discover in Isaiah 58.  I hope you go read that text because it sets up a marvelous illustration of how wrong and difficult the people of God can be. Look at the very first verse:

“Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
    Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
    and to the descendants of Jacob their sins."

Any prophet of God would be nervous at saying something like that to his hearers, but God wanted Isaiah to make sure everyone knows God is displeased with the rebellion of his people.  God says they seek him every day and seem eager to know his ways, as if they were a nation that was doing all the right things.  They were seeking just decisions from God, and had the appearance of those who were eager for God to be near them. 

God's professed followers were shocked that God wasn't happy with them.  They argued with God about how they had been fasting and God hadn't even noticed. "We have humbled ourselves and you were not even paying attention." (v. 3)

But God did notice.  He noticed on their day of fasting, they also mistreated their servants, and they instigated quarrels among themselves, and to top it all off, they got into fistfights with each other.  Then there is the verse that convicts them.  "You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high." (v. 4)  God, through Isaiah, continued in describing them as people who had the outward appearance of loving and honoring him with their fasting, but in reality there were other things which demonstrated their unfaithfulness.  In fact, God gets right to the point when he asks the question: "Is that what you call fasting?" (v. 5)

God's message to his people not only instructs them on the subject of fasting, but also gives them the true picture of who God his and who he desires them to be.  He tells them the heart of their fasting should be concerned with godly actions like  " loosening the chains of injustice and untying  the cords of the yoke, to setting the oppressed free." (v. 6)   God didn't stop there. He continued adding things like feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and sheltering the homeless.  Yes, God is telling them and us, acts of righteousness (fasting) lose his intended purpose if we do not accompany them with the power of God's love.  That's the same love we experience when we are in relationship with him, and the love we extend to others when our hearts are inclined to love others as we love ourselves. 

It is no wonder when Isaiah delivered this message of God, he gave the outcome of our acts of righteousness, accompanied with deeds of kindness and concern. "Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.  Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;  you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I." (vs 8-9)

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