Fasting, Prayer, and the Sabbath: Tests for the Heart - Isaiah 58

[58:1] “Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet;

declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins.

  [2] Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways,

as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God;

they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God.

  [3] ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not?

Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.

  [4] Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist.

Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high.

  [5] Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself?

Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?

Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the LORD?

 

[6] “Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

  [7] Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

  [8] Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily;

your righteousness shall go before you;

the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

  [9] Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’

If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,

  [10] if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,

then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.

  [11] And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places

and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

  [12] And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.

 

[13] “If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day,

and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable;

if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;

  [14] then you shall take delight in the LORD, 

and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;

I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,

for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”  (Isaiah 58 ESV)

In the book of Revelation, when the Lord Jesus addresses the seven churches of Asia, to several of them He says, “I have this against you.”  Here in Isaiah, God mentions two specific things He has against the people of Judah: Superficial fasting and disregard for the Sabbath.  Or the two could be combined into one thing: empty religion.

When God speaks to His people and He says, “I have this against you,” things are not good.  If I were to say to some of you, “I have this against you,“ you might be tempted to say, “Who do you think you are?”  And depending on what I had in mind, you may be right to respond that way.  If I said, “I have this against you: Your car is filthy and it’s an embarrassment to the church,” you might respond with, “Is that your Subaru in the parking lot with enough dirt on it to plant potatoes in?”  So my rebuke wouldn’t carry much weight because of my hypocrisy.

God is not a hypocrite.  He is holier than thou.  So when He rebukes His own people, we are never in a position to say, “Well who does He think He is?”  He knows who He is, we know who He is, and we had better shut up and pay attention to what he’s saying.  

God’s complaints against Judah were many.  Their many sins were the cause of their many troubles.  Their primary sin was the sin of idolatry which is the most false of religions.  But in this chapter, the Lord focuses on two other particularly weighty transgressions which also contribute to false religion: institutionalized fasting and ignoring the Sabbath.  

There was only one national fast prescribed in the Mosaic law which was on the Day of Atonement.  It is referred to as “the Fast” in Acts 27:9.  But the practice of fasting was widespread.  It was often associated with mourning because of some calamity.  For example, David fasted in the hope that God would spare his son born to Bathsheba.  Fasting was always practiced in conjunction with prayers of petition to the Lord to perform some work on behalf of the people.  

Here in Isaiah, we can clearly see the motivation of the Jews in their fasting:

“They ask of Me righteous judgments” by means of fasting, hoping to move the hand of God in their favor, but “in the day of your fast, you seek your own pleasure and oppress all your workers.”  They say, “Why have we fasted and you see it not?  Why have we humbled ourselves and you take no knowledge of it?”

“God, why aren’t you paying attention to our fasting and our humbling of ourselves?  We’re doing our part, why aren’t You doing yours?  We’ve humbled ourselves, we sit in sackcloth and ashes, we bow our heads, we fast and pray.  We’re doing all the right stuff.  We scratch your back, so now it’s time for you to scratch ours.”  

This is not unlike the mentality I see and hear regularly among many Christians today.  It is as though God is indebted to us when we send up enough prayers.  If we just pray enough, and burn enough candles, and hold enough vigils, and fervently plead long enough, then God is obligated to respond in a favorable fashion and perform whatever we request.  It is a spiritualized bartering system.  

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine mentioned on his Facebook page a serious medical condition that a relative of his was facing, and he said, “Please say a prayer for them”.  It was not long before 23 people, myself included, responded.  My response was a very short prayer.  But there were many responses that struck me as being superficial: ”Prayers, prayers.”  “Prayers going up.”  “Prayers sent up.”  “Prayers are said.”  And my favorite, “I will certainly pray for them and keep positive thoughts going their way.” 

I certainly don’t want to criticize anyone for praying.  I would be guilty of great hypocrisy if I did.  But there are acceptable prayers, and there are unacceptable prayers to God.  Here in Isaiah 58, the Jews were guilty of sending up unacceptable prayers.  God rejected their fasting and praying.  Why?

The expectation of the people was that God SHOULD answer them because they had gone through the  motions of fasting and praying.  But what made it all totally unacceptable was that they did so to the neglect of their own personal holiness.  They had a religious life and religious activities and a desire for God to bless them.  Then they had their business life and their personal life which was characterized by oppression of the “less fortunate”.  And they saw no connection between personal holiness and religion, as though the two were totally unrelated.  

God rebukes them soundly, and with a great deal of sarcasm:

. . . while they live ungodly lives.  They live for their own pleasures, they abuse and overwork and beat their laborers, and they quarrel among themselves.  And they sing the national anthem, “God bless Judah”.  Beloved, God is not Amazon.com.

If you want to buy something, ANYthing, Amazon.com probably has it.  So, if you give your credit card information to them, and give them all your contact information, and tell them what your bank account number is, and go through all the motions and push all the right buttons, and fill in all the blanks, Amazon will send to your door whatever you’re willing to pay for.  But Amazon could not care less how you live.  Nobody at Amazon is going to give you a call or send a company representative to hold you accountable to live a godly life.  As long as you do what they require (i.e. pay up), they will give you what you want, and your morality is absolutely of no concern to them.

Thankfully, God is not like that.  He expects His redeemed people to live holy lives, not merely be religious.  It is not acceptable to God for us to come to church each week, sing songs of worship and praise, pray together, and listen to His word preached, and then try to cash in those “religion credits” for the stuff we want God to do for us WHILE we simultaneously live unrepentant and ungodly lives at home or at work or with our co-workers or family members.  Why would we expect God to hear our prayers when we live this way?

The Jews did.  And God commands Isaiah with these words:

Are we guilty of superficially seeking God daily, reading our obligatory devotionals, praying our obligatory prayers, going through all our Evangelical religious motions, and fully expecting God to be impressed with such piety, WHILE ignoring His commands to live holy lives, being irresponsible stewards of the things He’s given us, indulging the lusts of our flesh, and not submitting to His will?  

That is not only empty religion, it is evil.  To reduce God to the level of a celestial Walmart where we trade religious activities for blessings on our self-centered lives is evil.  To expect God’s blessings while denying Him our love and obedience is wicked.  It is sinful.

What kind of fasting and praying does God hear?  James gives us the short answer to that.  The King James Version says it this way: Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (James 5:16 KJV)

I like the way the English Standard Version states it: Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. (James 5:16 ESV)

A righteous man’s prayer is powerful.  A man’s personal holiness empowers his prayers, not how many prayers he can muster.  Fasting, and praying, and singing, and consistent church attendance (even in the middle of winter through snow storms and ice-coated parking lots), are no proof of personal righteousness.  

The Jews were guilty of ongoing transgression and oppression against their fellow men.  But they fasted and prayed and couldn’t figure out why God wasn’t answering.  God says to them, “You call this fasting of yours a day acceptable to the Lord?”  Don’t be deceived.  God is not mocked.  God hates empty religion that parades itself before Him as though it were genuine godliness in the self-righteous expectation that God will see it and be impressed.   

Well then, what kind of fasting and praying does God expect of His people?  Isaiah tells us:

The Jews were guilty of oppressing the poor, or we might call them today, the working class.  It included people who may have even been enslaved or had become indentured servants, who were in debt so deep they could not repay their debtors.  It no doubt included those who had to sell their own children into slavery in order to survive.  It is summed up in this phrase: Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.  You drive them, you exact from them extensive labor, you press them for your own profit.  

At the same time, these are the very people in Israel who are hungry, homeless, and naked.  They qualify for welfare.  ‘And they are your very own people!  But you hide yourself from your own flesh and blood, your own kinsmen.  You don’t socialize with them, but you enjoy your pleasures off of their backs.  And you want me to bless you because you fast and pray?’

What moves God to answer prayer?  What must I do to impress God and get Him to respond to my prayers?  The prophet Micah said it very succinctly:

God commanded the people of Judah to stop with all the religious mumbo-jumbo and repent of their oppression of their fellow Jews and SHOW SOME COMPASSION AND MERCY FOR A CHANGE.  THEN and only then would He hear their prayers and bless them.  

Man looks on the outward appearance.  We expect God to do the same.  Man is easily impressed with an outward façade of superficial religion.  We’re often impressed with the religious pomp that accompanies so much of so-called Christian practice.  God is not so easily impressed.  He’s not impressed with robes and hats and censers and big, fat Bibles, and radios with all the buttons preset to the Christian stations.  He’s not impressed with long wordy prayers offered up publicly, or with heads bowed at McDonalds.  He’s not impressed with how many Bible studies we attend or how many miles we’re willing to drive to attend a conference.  He’s not even impressed with prayer and fasting.

God does not look upon the outward appearance of things.  He looks upon the heart.  He looks at the motives behind the things we do.  

Why does Grace Fellowship exist?  Why do I preach every week?  Why do I want to be your pastor?  Why do I write these sermons and record them and put them on the Internet?  What is my motivation for doing what I do?  Those are questions I should ask myself very often, because that is the very thing God is concerned with when He sees me in this pulpit.  What is it in my heart that drives me to do all of this?  

That is also what He is concerned with when He sees you sitting in those chairs, and when you pray, and when you read your Bible or attend a Bible study or a prayer meeting.  Why do you do the religious stuff you do?  If it is all for show, as though God is impressed with such things, then we’re no better than these Jews or the Pharisees whom Jesus repeatedly condemned for being religious hypocrites.  In Isaiah’s day, Judah was an entire nation of hypocrites.

Secondly, Judah displayed their hypocrisy in the way they claimed to be God’s people while ignoring the one covenant that was the most easily observed by others.  It was the clearest indication that the Jews were God’s peculiar people: The observance of the Sabbath.  In the days of the Old Testament, only the Jews were observers of a sabbath rest on the seventh day of every week.  According to the Law of Moses, violating the Sabbath was a capitol offense: Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.  (Exodus 31:15 ESV).  Keeping the Sabbath was no trivial matter.

There is a LOT of controversy surrounding the issue of the Sabbath.  Is the Sabbath something Christians should observe along with the other 10 Commandments?  If so, how so?  If not, why not?  Was it only for the Jews and not for New Testament Christians?  Do we only have nine commandments now and this one is optional?  Does the New Testament Lord’s Day replace the Old Testament Sabbath?  Should we worship on Saturday or Sunday?  Does it matter?  And on and on and on it goes.  I have my own convictions about these things that may differ from yours.  I don’t intend to discuss this topic in detail today, but it is something we should all be very conscientious about.

Here’s one thing I believe is unavoidable when considering this issue of the Sabbath: The Jews were to make one day out of seven holy and separate and different from the other days of the week.  The Gentiles did not observe the Sabbath.  So the sabbath observance was peculiarly Jewish.  The Sabbath made them different from all other people.  They honored God by making much of Him on the Sabbath, to the neglect of the rest of the world every seven days.  No work, no business dealings, no commerce.  Only rest, and it was to be done gladly, as a memorial to God’s own rest on the seventh day of creation.  They were to “call the Sabbath a delight!”

But as far as we’re concerned, regardless of the technicalities involved in which day should be observed, Old Testament sabbath vs. New Testament Lord’s day, etc., etc.;  Regardless of all that, what is our heart attitude toward this issue?  If the heart isn’t right, the technicalities don’t matter much.  I am convinced that when believers make the corporate worship of God a priority to be observed every seven days without fail because they love God, God will bless it and the unsaved world will take notice.  

Will they think it is silly?  Will they will say you are a fool to refuse to work on Sundays, particularly when there’s good money to be made working weekends?  Will they will have a difficult time understanding how you and I could consider “religion” to be more important than a more lucrative career and a bigger paycheck?  Absolutely!  But a commitment to this principle of corporate worship every seven days, driven by love for the Lord Jesus, is one of the easiest ways for us to be a visible and consistent witness to an unbelieving world.  It will show them and us what is in our hearts.  

That is not a legalistic attitude, although it easily could be.  You could fall into going through the motions with no heart for worship just for the sake of making others think you’re pious, or for the sake of keeping your pastor or your wife or your Mom off your back.  Or you could commit to regular, heart-felt worship with God’s people because you love the Lord, because God is pleased with such, and because He hears and answers the prayers of the righteous.

The book of Nehemiah tells the story of the Jews returning from exile in Babylon and rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem.  In the final chapter we read these words from Nehemiah:

That is determination.  Nehemiah threatened bodily harm to those merchants and peddlers who tempted the people to violate the Sabbath.  The principle is this: Do I love God more than myself?  Do I really want to please Him more than I want to please myself with this world’s stuff?  Is God REALLY the most important Person in my life?  Am I committed to follow Him and serve Him and obey Him, even if the rest of the world thinks I’m an idiot for doing so?  

Fasting and prayer, and the Sabbath.  Those were the things that showed Judah’s true colors.  How they performed those religious duties revealed the condition of their hearts.  Those same things serve in a very similar fashion to show us our hearts, and our motives.  Why do we do the religious things we do?  Is our “Sabbath” day a delight to be enjoyed or a chore to be endured?  Do we go through our Christian motions because we’re trying to make points with God, or because they are expressions of heart-felt gratitude and joy for the salvation that is ours in Christ?