Fasting and the Justice of God

Introduction

As we head into the final week of our 21 days of prayer to begin the year, I want to encourage you to undertake some sort of fast, if you have not done so. Even if it is just one day, the spiritual discipline of fasting is something that is invaluable if done with the right heart. But like any other religious practice, it can also be useless or even harmful if you go into it with the wrong motives. This morning we are going to look at the right reasons for fasting and the right outcome that we should pray for as we fast. Since we have been in the book of Isaiah for the last couple of weeks, we will continue our study in this powerful book of the Bible. Turn with me to Isaiah 58:1-12

Isaiah 58:1–12 ESV

“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. 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. ‘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. 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. 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? “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? 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? 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. 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, 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. 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. 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.

My first encounter with fasting made it seem really fanatical. I remember a friend who went a way for a retreat and he came back a lot thinner and unable to eat solid food. And so I asked him where he went and he told me that he went to a retreat and that everyone fasted for 5 days. As a non-Christian I didn’t know what to think about that and so I said that’s nice but in my mind, I was thinking what kind of cult are you in, what kind of crazy group of people would not eat for a week. Clearly fasting is not cultish in any sense. People throughout history and even across religions have practiced one form of fasting or another. Just because we no longer practice these things in modern times doesn’t make it strange. But having said that, not all fasting is equal and so we have to distinguish what the true purpose of biblical fasting is.

The intended purpose of fasting from this passage can be summarized in this way:

Increases awareness of our own sin and need for forgiveness

Helps us to identify with the pain and sorrow of this world

Prepares us for reasonable service to the poor and oppressed by:

Most Christians have probably heard many messages on prayer but sermons on the topic of fasting are fairly uncommon. And it makes a lot of sense why this is the case. On the list of spiritual disciplines, fasting is likely to be at the bottom in terms of people’s favorite spiritual practices. I think we can all admit that fasting of any kind is extremely difficult. No one likes to be hungry and to deprive themselves of the comforts of life. People, in general, love to eat and here in the US, we have taken food to the next level. We have whole channels devoted to cooking. We plan vacations around the restaurants that are found in the city of interest. Some of us even like watching other people eat very large quantities of food on YouTube.

No wonder it is so hard for us to fast and that isn’t even accounting for the psychological and spiritual factors. If you have every undertaken a fast, you’ll quickly realize that whatever you decide to abstain from, it becomes the greatest temptation. For example, some people can easily skip meals when they get busy and it is no big thing to skip breakfast but as soon as you call something a fast, you have to have 3 square meals. You feel like you are literally going to die if you don’t eat meat. It’s funny how the human heart works when you try to control what it desires. Therein lies one of the side benefits to starting the New Year with fasting of one kind or another: learning how to temper your natural human desires can help develop control over your sinful desires. As Jesus tells Satan in the desert after a period of fasting for 40 days.

Matthew 4:4 ESV

But he answered, “It is written, “ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”

In the Old Testament, there is only one fast that was required in Judaism and that was on the Day of Atonment.

Leviticus 23:27–28 ESV

“Now on the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. It shall be for you a time of holy convocation, and you shall afflict yourselves and present a food offering to the Lord. And you shall not do any work on that very day, for it is a Day of Atonement, to make atonement for you before the Lord your God.

The Day of Atonement or what the Jews call Yom Kippur is considered the holiest of all the Jewish festivals and also the most solemn. Traditionally, the proper way to observe Yom Kippur was a day of strict fasting, (no food or water), no sexual relations, no work, and among certain Jewish sects, you couldn’t even put on lotion or perfume. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the idea of afflicting yourself or humbling yourself before God most often meant the spiritual practice of fasting. I think we would all agree that not eating for even a day amounts to some level of torture. And in a period of human history where food could be scarce and times of famine unpredictable, fasting was symbolic of a complete dependence on God. It was so to speak, the secret weapon that could be used in desperate times to move God to action. For example, queen Esther called the Jewish people to fast when it appeared that they were on the brink of genocide.

Once in a while, desperate times can call for desperate measures but the purpose of fasting during Yom Kippur was specifically for the forgiveness of sins. On that day, there would be an elaborate ritual where two goats would be presented by the High Priest, lots would be cast, and the goat that lost would be sacrificed for the sins of the nation, symbolizing the righteous punishment for sin. Then the other goat who won the lot would be taken into the wilderness, the high priest would then confess all the sins of the people on its head, and it would be set free. This is where we get the term, “scapegoat”. And practiced correctly, the observant Jew would reflect on their sin that had just been forgiven. They would also consider the abounding mercy of God who so graciously took their sin and removed it far away from their lives. It is a beautiful foreshadowing of the gospel in the OT.

Unfortunately, like many religious practices, the discipline of fasting during Yom Kippur became more of a show of personal piety rather than producing true righteousness. Based on our passage, it would appear that large numbers of people who went to the synagogue to observe this holy day would not give their workers the day off so that they too could come before God. On top of that they would quarrel and fight, looking out only for their own interests, not caring at all about the well being of others, especially the poor that they were oppressing. And the root issue that seems to be the source of all these other problems is using these religious rituals as a means to seeking personal pleasure in the pretense of seeking God.

One of the most difficult things to discern in the exercise of the Christian faith is whether or not we are motivated mainly by a desire seek our own pleasure or to truly seek to please God. The problem is, that on the surface, these two things look exactly the same. Two people could be worshipping side by side, both with their hands up, their faces shining like angels, but internally they are motivated by two diametrically opposed reasons. One person worships to force God to bend to his will and another person worships in order to bend her will to the force of God, pleasing yourself versus pleasing God. In Isaiah’s writings, we see the dangers of self-centered religion over and over again.

Our worship of God can be easily corrupted by a sense of self-righteousness because we think have mastered this spiritual discipline or that. We often forget that our religious practices should result in righteous actions especially in regards to how we love others. One of the signs of self-seeking religion is the notion that God has to answer you on your own terms, to benefit only you. The complaint that is voiced in verse 3 is one that we often think but might never say, why should I pray and fast if God doesn’t acknowledge it and give me what I want.

And so in response to people’s self-centered reasons for fasting, God reveals how our personal sin contributes to the problems of injustice in the world. When we practice religion simply to satisfy our own personal needs, it adds more oppression and strife to a world that is already filled with enough injustice. John Oswalt in his commentary on the book of Isaiah puts it this way:

“The point may be simply to say that their religious exercises are primarily for themselves, primarily to serve those covetous instincts that motivate all our lives far more than we care to admit. That being so, their fasting results in oppression.”

If you consider the root of all injustice and where we can find the source? It is found largely in man’s insatiable desire to live for our own pleasure at the expense of others. Religion is no exception to this rule and if our pursuit of God is only out of self-interest or for self-improvement, we have missed the entire point of the Gospel. The end result of all our spiritual practices has to be for the love of God and for the love of others.

Now, many people mistake Isaiah 58 as a denouncement of fasting but when we take a closer look we see that it actually is an endorsement of the right type of fasting. The correct end result of a genuine fast is an increase in concern for others. The turning of the heart to feed the hungry, free the oppressed, and to provide shelter and clothing for the naked.

From a certain perspective, this makes some sense. How can you know the hunger of the poor and the oppressed, if you have never ever been hungry yourself? Fasting is a way of entering into the suffering of this world and having a first-hand experience with those who lack the neccessities of life not by choice. In many ways, fasting if done properly replicates the ministry of Christ, who freely chose poverty and the troubles of this world, so that he could identify with us.

As fasting has it’s intended effects on us by increasing our awareness of sin and drawing us into the pain and sorrow this world, it prepares us for reasonable service to the poor and oppressed or what the Bible would call acting justly.

There are many models and paradigms of justice that are being taught in our universities and by sociologists. Some of us might think that any model of justice that promises to alleviate the pain and the suffering of the poor is good whether it is secular, Christian, Buddhist, whatever you might have. Today, I want to bring up as food for thought, the point that the only valid model of justice is one that is centered around the teachings of Christ, in other words the very Word of God. And a good starting point in adopting a truly biblical stance on justice is the understanding that our righteous acts are but filthy rags before God.

Isaiah 64:6 ESV

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

Our concern for the poor and everything that we do for the oppressed, does not merit any sort of right standing before God or men. This is vitally important because in my life I have met many people (both Christian and non) who are caught up in the self-deception that all their good works makes them somehow a better person and everyone else is inferior. It is so easy to gain our sense of self-worth, self value, and sense of prominence and fame in tackling these noble causes but the great danger is that we do these things for all the wrong reasons and you keep yourself from the blessings of God. The warning of Christ is clear, be careful of doing your works of righteousness before men, because if you do, you will have received your reward in full but you have to even keep your left hand from knowing what your right hand is doing. The irony is that Jesus teaches us that even the practice of giving to the poor can be self-serving, if you are not aware.

Matthew 6:1–3 ESV

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,

And this is one of those profound statements out of the Sermon on the Mount and in its essence Jesus is teaching us that we need to be completely unaware of ourselves when we go out to feed the poor and clothe the naked. It is not about you and how good you are but rather it is about God and how good he is. You do these things so that your Father in heaven might receive the glory. In fact, if God is not the central motivation for our good deeds, it is possible that we are contributing to a greater injustice.

Os Guiness, reminds us of the important biblical truth that, “If the problem of the world is me or us, then whatever the evil and injustice we fight, the problem is within us too and we must be aware of the dangers for ourselves.”

For those who ignore this timeless truth, there are essentially two errors that we fall into:

1. Dualism - the view that divides the world into two camps: discerning evil in others and denying it in ourselves - us and them, you bad and me good.

2. Utopianism - the belief that human beings can progress together towards a perfect society. This view denies the evil that is readily apparent in our fallen human nature. We have to always remember that in their own pursuit of utopia, men like Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung killed millions of people.

Anyone who claims to truly want justice in this world must be well versed in three key areas of the Christian faith.

1. The Kingdom of God. They must have a comprehensive understanding of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is the ultimate expression of God’s justice. We will not have complete victory over injustice until the church ushers in the Kingdom with Christ. Without a understanding of God’s kingdom, we are just going to be a part of vicious cycle where we just trade one injustice for another.

2. The Sermon on the Mount. A practical understanding of the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is the ethical standard for the Kingdom of God. Just as Moses was given the law of God on the top of Mount Sinai, now Jesus gives the new Law on the top of this mountain. If Christians live out the Sermon on the Mount, the yoke of injustice will be broken.

3. The Power of Prayer and Fasting. Within the Scriptures, we see such a clear connection between praying, fasting, and the justice of God. Distinguish the difference between revolution and the Exodus.

Conclusion

In the last few verses of the passage we read, we see the incredible blessings that come as a result of a genuine concern for the poor and the oppressed.

Our light will break forth like the dawn.

We will recieve our own healing

God’s glory will be our protection

He will answer us and fulfill satisfy our desires

God will strengthen us to rebuild what has been torn down.