Isaiah 58-66

So lesson number one, The Fast I Have Chosen, from Isaiah fifty-eight verses three through twelve.

Truth: True fasting joins devotion to God with compassion for his children.

Now what gives me a fire in the bones for teaching this is, is just the excellent insights that Isaiah gives us on the practice of fasting.

He helps us to discover the greater purpose behind it, and this lesson can give our students a reason to approach their next fasting experience with greater purpose, generosity, and love.

Now what should the teacher know before teaching this lesson? Now there's a three-part structure to Isaiah's message on fasting here.

Verses three through five describe what I would label the wrong way to fast, verses six through seven, the right way, and verses eight through twelve, the blessings of a true fast.

So let's start with the wrong way to fast.

Verse three begins with a complaint that the people are making to the Lord.

They're saying, "Wherefore have we fasted," say they, "and thou seest not? Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge?" So they're basically saying, "Hey, w- we've been fasting, but it doesn't seem like you're really noticing, Lord.

You're not taking knowledge of it.

Why do we keep afflicting our souls here?" And I think there's something revealed about their attitude towards fasting in the very way that they're asking the question.

They call it afflicting their souls, and I'm not so sure that that's the way the Lord wants us to view fasting, as an affliction.

Are we sometimes guilty of that? Do we wake up with a groan on the first Sunday of each month and say, "Oh, no.

Gosh, has, has it been a month already?" But because they're seeing it that way, what effect does it have on them? Verse three: "Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labors." Uh, so when you guys are fasting, you do whatever you please, and you're exploiting the people that are around you.

Verse four: "Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness.

Ye shall not fast as you do this day to make your voice to be heard on high." A- and whoever wrote the footnotes for this chapter really hit the nail on the head with footnote four B, with their interpretation of the word debate in that verse.

What does it mean to fast with debate? Says, "Fasting without spiritual motivation only engenders discomfort and irritability." [laughs] And i- is that the effect that it has on us? Do we ever find ourselves a little more irritable on Fast Sunday? Getting annoyed at any little thing, moping around just thinking about our stomachs.

Does it make you, uh, hangry, right? [laughs] Hungry and angry at the same time.

Or when we fast, do we make our voice to be heard on high? Is our change of mood and aggravation so obvious that people can hear us coming from a mile away? Do we make sure that everybody else knows that we're fasting? Do we complain so much that we make everybody else miserable? Verse five: "Is it such a fast that I have chosen, a day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?" We've got some more imagery here.

Do we bow down our heads like, like a, a weepy weed, a bulrush, dragging our feet, hanging our heads? And then the next image is a little hyperbole.

I even take it to be a little sarcastic from Isaiah.

To spread sackcloth and ashes under yourself, n- that's a sign of mourning, deep mourning.

That's, that's what you did when, when somebody ha- had died back then.

So he's saying, "Okay, people, I'm looking around here at a lot of long faces.

I'm wondering, is this Fast Sunday, or, or is it a funeral?" So Isaiah's just given us a really great description of how not to approach fasting.