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Where Is This Salvation You Speak Of – part 2
Isaiah 59:1-60:22 (59:9-15a)
October 6, 2024

You will remember that back in Isaiah 58
There was a question asked of God which did not sit well with Him.

Isaiah 58:3 “Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?”

This was a question in response to God’s promise in Isaiah 57

Isaiah 57:15 “For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite.”

So we have here
• A Jewish people who are suffering under the hand of their oppressors.
• They hear the word of Isaiah that God dwells with the humble.
• In response they engage in what they perceive to be humility.

The problem is, to their pragmatic minds, it did not work.
“Why have we fasted and You do not see?
Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?”

Now in chapter 58
God responded by telling them that what they did was not humility.
• They took off work, but they worked their laborers twice as hard.
• They took off work, but they used it to focus on work and how to get ahead.
• That was not humility and that was not fasting.

God then outlined the fast He wanted.
• He wanted a fast from selfishness:
• He wanted them to rescue sinners from their sin.
• He wanted them to divide their bread with the poor.
• He wanted them to honor the Sabbath as a priority.

That was true fasting, that was true humility.
What they did was neither.

But as we learned LAST WEEK,
God is still not finished answering that question.

Isaiah 59 indicates to us that these frustrated Jews
Had more than one explanation as to why God had not delivered them.

• In Isaiah 58 the insinuation was that He wasn’t faithful to keep His word.
• But in Isaiah 59 the insinuation is that maybe He can’t keep His word.

That is what God answered next.

#1 THE LORD’S REPROACH
Isaiah 59:1-8

(59:1-3) “Behold, the LORD’S hand is not so short That it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood And your fingers with iniquity; Your lips have spoken falsehood, Your tongue mutters wickedness.”

God revealed that the reason they had not been saved from Babylon
Or delivered from their oppressors
Was not because He couldn’t, rather it was because He wouldn’t.

These people were still living in the same sins
That caused Him to send them away to begin with.
NOTHING HAD CHANGED.

Isaiah had confronted their bloody hands and lying tongues
In the very first sermon of the book, and that hasn’t changed.

They still have bloody hands and a lying tongue
God has no interest in bringing them back in that condition.

He went on to speak about their sinfulness in even greater detail in verses 4-8.

We learned about their DISHONESTY (4)

“No one sues righteously and no one pleads honestly. They trust in confusion and speak lies; They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.”

They use a corrupt legal system to cheat and steal from their brothers.
Similar to the Corinthians who sued their brothers to cheat them.

We learned about their DEEDS (5-6)

“They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web; He who eats of their eggs dies, And from that which is crushed a snake breaks forth. Their webs will not become clothing, Nor will they cover themselves with their works; Their works are works of iniquity, And an act of violence is in their hands.”

That is to say they provide no benefit for the poor.
• When they do feed the poor it is with serpent eggs.
• When they do cover the poor it is with a spiders web.

We learned about their DIRECTION (7-8)

“Their feet run to evil, And they hasten to shed innocent blood; Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, Devastation and destruction are in their highways. They do not know the way of peace, And there is no justice in their tracks; They have made their paths crooked, Whoever treads on them does not know peace.”

They did not desire righteousness or holiness,
They loved sin and they ran to it as fast as they could get it.

And quite frankly God responded by saying,
“I DON’T WANT TO LIVE AMONG PEOPLE LIKE THAT.”

There’s a reason I haven’t delivered you.
There’s a reason I haven’t brought you home.
There’s a reason our fellowship is in shambles.
You have offended Me and you won’t change!

As I pondered God’s answer to Israel through Isaiah, I am convinced:
This is a message that EVERY GODLESS CULTURE NEEDS TO HEAR.

Surely Isaiah was speaking to Israel, that is certainly the chief application.
(To the Jews in Babylon and even to lost Jews today)

But could the message be any less true for any culture in any age?

Could our wicked society not learn from this as well?
• We wonder why God doesn’t want to deliver a people from their toil…
• We wonder why God doesn’t dwell nearer with a nation…

Perhaps it is because the dishonesty, deeds, and direction
of that nation is utterly repulsive to Him.

Has it not long been lamented in our culture
How our society has done its best to separate from God?

• We have lamented things like taking prayer out of school or the 10
commandments out of courtrooms.
• We have talked about groups like the ACLU who seek to fight any expression
of religion in the culture.

We see a nation that desires to separate itself from God
And then goes to a baseball game and sings “God Bless America”

The message was certainly for Israel,
But I don’t see how can fail to learn from it in our culture today.

Isaiah is about to show us what a culture under judgment looks like.

It’s as though Isaiah opens the newspaper
And he reads about the reality of the culture
And shows us the effects of distancing ourselves from God.

We’ve seen The Lord’s Reproach

#2 THE PROPHET’S RESPONSE
Isaiah 59:9-15a

I want to tackle this passage in segments.
I want us to start here by looking at verses 9-11

I want us to just gain an understanding of
The ramifications of a society that is separated from God.

To put it another way.
• If a society had offended God
• And if there was a separation from Him (as there clearly is in this chapter),
• What might that society look like?
• Would there be indications of that separation?

Satan promised Eve in the garden
That if she would distance herself from God
She would have freedom and wisdom and would be like God.
IS THAT TRUE?

What would it look like in a society if God was pushed aside?
What would it look like in a society if God pulled back His hand?
How would you spot it?

Certainly we are familiar with that famous 1st chapter of Romans
• Where we see when God gave them over to impurity, to degrading passions,
and to a depraved mind.

We see the existence of such problems as evidence of God’s wrath.

Here, in like manner,
Isaiah will show you the signs of a culture that is under the wrath of God.

In verses 9-11 Isaiah will give you 3 realities that would occur,
For they are occurring in the lives of the people he is addressing.

1) EMPTY HOPE (9)

“Therefore justice is far from us, And righteousness does not overtake us; We hope for light, but behold, darkness, For brightness, but we walk in gloom.”

We’ve talked quite a bit about hope
During our recent Wednesday night studies of the book of Romans.

One of the main points we have discussed is that
There is a difference between hope(n) and hope(v).

Verb hope is not nearly as valuable as noun hope.

Verb hope is something you do, (i.e I hope things get better)
Noun home is something you have, (i.e. I know things will get better)

Well the hope Isaiah speaks of here is THE VERB KIND
And that is why we call it an empty hope.

Notice what Isaiah says:
“Therefore justice is far from us, And righteousness does not overtake us;”

You could read that as Isaiah’s lament over living in a culture that has no moral backbone, (and certainly he did.)

But that is NOT the point.

Rather, Isaiah is talking about the inability to get justice in his culture.
• Someone steals your car but the corrupt court system acquits the criminal.
• Someone attacks you in the parking lot, but the cops refuse to come.
• Someone desecrates a public monument, but no one holds them accountable.

That is what Isaiah means by “justice is far from us”.

It means no one is coming to make things right.
• No one is coming to defend us.
• No one is coming to vindicate us.
• No one is coming to deliver us.

He means the same things when he says, “And righteousness does not overtake us;”

We always like to believe that “good wins in the end”.
We like to believe that “everything will work out for the better.”

Isaiah says, “Well those things are predicated on having a righteous God in your midst, but when you offend Him, you can forget it.”

Justice is a long way away and righteousness isn’t coming.

Jeremiah 18:17 “‘Like an east wind I will scatter them Before the enemy; I will show them My back and not My face In the day of their calamity.’”

Which explains the despair and empty hope of his day.
“We hope for light, but behold, darkness, For brightness, but we walk in gloom.”

There are countless things that seem to get our hopes up,
But it doesn’t seem like they ever come to pass.

We try to stay optimistic, but sooner or later reality sets in
And it never seems to work out for the better.

It is the old saying, “Cheer up things could get worse, so I cheered up and they got worse.”

In other words, you can hope, but you’re just going to be disappointed.

Welcome to a culture which God has abandoned.
Welcome to a culture that God has “given over” to its sin.
Welcome to a culture that God is judging.

Things like justice, righteousness, and hope begin to fade away.

And why wouldn’t they?
• He is the Savior…
• He is the source of justice and righteousness…
• He is the reason all things work for good…

Then why wouldn’t His absence trigger the loss of all those things?

That is a culture that has offended God.
EMPTY HOPE

2) FUTILE GROPE (10)

“We grope along the wall like blind men, We grope like those who have no eyes; We stumble at midday as in the twilight, Among those who are vigorous we are like dead men.”

What is this a picture of?
It is a picture of men trying to save themselves.

The problem is that man is powerless to save himself.
• Compared to a blind man or even a dead man.
• You just don’t have the ability or the resources to fix the problem.
• You can fight and scratch and claw and try to save yourself, but you can’t.

Moses told the people that if they failed to obey God then they would be cursed and one of those curses was this:

Deuteronomy 28:28-29 “The LORD will smite you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart; and you will grope at noon, as the blind man gropes in darkness, and you will not prosper in your ways; but you shall only be oppressed and robbed continually, with none to save you.”

God told Israel exactly what it would look like
When He is offended and a culture is cursed.

It will look like hopeless people trying desperately to save themselves
And never being able to.

What does it look like when a nation tries to save itself without God but is failing?
• Perhaps a nation $33 trillion dollars in debt…
• Perhaps a nation with corrupt and unqualified leadership…
• Perhaps a nation whose borders are overrun by foreigners…
• Perhaps a nation with no response to natural disasters…

Do you not get the sense that we are on a sinking ship, but still trying to pretend like any minute we’re going to figure it out and resurface?

When a nation abandons the true Savior
And tries to fix things themselves, THERE ARE SIGNS.

EMPTY HOPE, FUTILE GROPE

3) DESPAIRING MOPE (11)

“All of us growl like bears, And moan sadly like doves; We hope for justice, but there is none, For salvation, but it is far from us.”

Isaiah uses a literary tool here.

“growl” is HAW-MAW and it means “to murmur” or “become disturbed”

Psalms 55:17 “Evening and morning and at noon, I will complain and murmur, And He will hear my voice.”

Psalms 42:5 “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence.”

“moan sadly” is HAW-GAW which is “to make a sound with the throat”

Psalms 115:7 “They have hands, but they cannot feel; They have feet, but they cannot walk; They cannot make a sound with their throat.”

Isaiah says they HAW-MAW and HAW-GAW
We might say there is moaning and groaning.

DO WE SEE THIS IN OUR NATION?
• Do you have social media?
• Do you hear the general attitude of the people?

I don’t know the ratio, but I promise you the number of posts that are someone complaining are probably 10 to 1 over people rejoicing.

And it is not just because things are bad,
But because there never seems to be any relief.

Isaiah says, “We hope for justice, but there is none, For salvation but it is far from us.”

My grandpa used to sing me a song about a rabbit that didn’t have a tail and after each verse he’d sing the chorus, “Same song, next verse, could get better, but it’s gonna get worse.”

That is the general feeling of a nation
That has distanced itself from its savior.

Jeremiah 11:10-11 “They have turned back to the iniquities of their ancestors who refused to hear My words, and they have gone after other gods to serve them; the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken My covenant which I made with their fathers.” Therefore thus says the LORD, “Behold I am bringing disaster on them which they will not be able to escape; though they will cry to Me, yet I will not listen to them.”

God even told Jeremiah:
Jeremiah 11:14 “Therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry or prayer for them; for I will not listen when they call to Me because of their disaster.”

It is the utter hopelessness and helplessness and lament
Of a nation that has abandoned its savior.

INTERESTING NOTE,
but when Isaiah says we are hoping “for salvation but it is far from us.”

That word “salvation” is YESHUA
It is the Hebrew name of Jesus.

When a nation distances itself from its Savior
They are left only with
An empty hope, a futile grope, and a despairing mope.

Isaiah says this is the state of his people and THEN HE SAYS WHY,
And it is very important that each of us understand this.

(12-15a) “For our transgressions are multiplied before You, And our sins testify against us; For our transgressions are with us, And we know our iniquities: Transgressing and denying the LORD, And turning away from our God, Speaking oppression and revolt, Conceiving in and uttering from the heart lying words. Justice is turned back, And righteousness stands far away; For truth has stumbled in the street, And uprightness cannot enter. Yes, truth is lacking; And he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey.”

So it is obvious that Isaiah is here in full-blown confession mode.

We see his list:
• “transgressions”
• “sins”
• “transgressions”
• “iniquities”
• “transgressing”
• “denying”
• “turning away”
• “oppression”
• “revolt”
• “lying”

The people wanted to know why God wasn’t responding to their humility
They thought God was somehow unfaithful or unable,

Isaiah lays the blame at a different location.

The problem is NOT God’s unfaithfulness or God’s lack of ability.
THE PROBLEM IS SIN.

But here is where we need to pay special attention this morning.

I have little doubt that you could easily see
The current predicament of our culture in Isaiah’s words.

But the temptation is for us to far too often
Pin the blame on the most immoral among us.

We typically fess up to apathy, in the sense that I will hear people say,
“We stood by and did nothing when they took prayer out of school.”

That is sort of A HIGH-ROAD CONFESSION.
“They did all the bad and my association is only that
I didn’t try harder to stop them.”

Now that will certainly be part of it.
In fact you’ll see down in verse 16 that God “was astonished that there was no one to intercede;”

• Not standing in the gap is no small thing.
• Failing to intercede is no small thing.
• Certainly that is a sin of the people of God in this mess.

But that is NOT what Isaiah confesses to first.
Notice his use of the word “our” and “us”

Isaiah DOES NOT come before God and say, “Man God have they wrecked our society, and I’m sorry I didn’t do more.”

Isaiah joins in with the confession
That he was not just a failure to stop the problem,
But he was in fact an accomplice.

Do you remember Isaiah’s confession when he stood before the LORD?

Isaiah 6:5 “Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.”

There was no denying that Isaiah lived in a corrupt culture,
But Isaiah did not try to act as though he was not a part of it.

AND NEITHER SHOULD WE.

It is true that we may be guilty of APATHY,
But we must also admit that we are guilty of INIQUITY.

REVIVAL NEVER COMES BY ONLY RECOGNIZING THE SIN OF OTHERS.

CAN WE TRULY SAY THAT
• We have never abandoned the oppressed and those sinners whom God wanted us to deliver from their burdens?
• We have never turned our back from the poor and failed to divide our bread with the hungry?
• We have never dishonored His Sabbath and prioritized the world over worship of Him?

• We have never dabbled in idolatry or iniquity or lying?
• We have never turned away from God?

See, we’re fooling ourselves when we think that
The collapse of a culture is only the fault of the unchurched.

Have we forgotten the famous announcement of Solomon?
2 Chronicles 7:14 “and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

Isaiah comes before God in true repentance and humility.
He understands that the call of God is to
“My people who are called by My name”.

If we desire to see a nation restored,
This is where repentance must begin.

Peter taught us:
1 Peter 4:17a “For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God…”

LAST TIME we talked about that story
• Of when God’s glory departed from the temple and hovered on the mountain
overlooking the city just before Babylon came in to destroy Jerusalem.

If you back up to chapter 9
You see God’s announcement of that coming judgment
There is a very important reality that is seen.

In Ezekiel 9 God calls the executioners
Ezekiel 9:6 “Utterly slay old men, young men, maidens, little children, and women, but do not touch any man on whom is the mark; and you shall start from My sanctuary.” So they started with the elders who were before the temple.”

Do you see where God’s judgment began?
“you shall start from My sanctuary.”

But I thought there wasn’t any condemnation for those who are in Christ?
I thought God caused all things to work for good for those who love Him?
I thought God had not destined for wrath, but for obtaining salvation?

THAT IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE.

So why would God’s wrath start at the temple?
Why would God’s judgment begin with the church?

Well for one, there is a difference between discipline and condemnation.

But it is also true that: Just because someone associates with God’s people does not mean they are genuine or real, and God’s judgment starts there.

JUDGMENT STARTS WITH THOSE WHO KNOW BETTER.
Luke 12:47 “And that slave who knew his master’s will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes,

It has never been your physical location
That has proven the genuineness of your faith,
But rather the spiritual condition of your heart.

In that same Ezekiel passage, before the executioners were to come, Ezekiel was given a directive.

Ezekiel 9:4 “The LORD said to him, “Go through the midst of the city, even through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst.”

• And we already read verse 6 where the executioners were told, “do not touch any man on whom is the mark”.

We remember that God rescued Lot out of Sodom because:
2 Peter 2:8 “(for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds),”

It is of utter importance that those who claim to be God’s people
Actually live like God’s people.

It is of utter importance that our hearts align with God’s heart.
That our humility is genuine.
That our fasting is what God desires.
That our worship is pure.

So when Isaiah begins to talk about the need for the confession of sin,
He does not talk about THEIR sin, he talks about OUR sin.

(12) “For our transgressions are multiplied before You, And our sins testify against us; For our transgressions are with us, And we know our iniquities:”

Isaiah is not hiding the sin of his heart
Or his participation in the corruption of the culture.

He even lists the sins specifically.
(13) “Transgressing and denying the LORD, And turning away from our God, Speaking oppression and revolt, Conceiving in and uttering from the heart lying words.”

WHAT A LIST.

“Transgressing and denying the LORD”

That does not necessarily mean they audibly defected from the faith.

It means that by their lives they broke the covenant they made with God
And denied Him by their actions.

Titus 1:16 “They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.”

IT IS A DENIAL IN BEHAVIOR.

The church can have an accurate theology and still walk in utter apostasy
We can preach what is true from the pulpit
And utterly deny the Lord by our behavior.

Isaiah sees it as a “turning away from our God.”

When God says He wants us to rescue sinners from their sin,
• But we instead congratulate them in it.

When God says He wants us to feed the poor and clothe the naked,
• But we instead turn a blind eye to them.

When God says He wants us to prioritize our worship of Him,
• But we love the activities of the world more.

To deny God’s words is to deny God, and the church in America
Is just as guilty in this area as any unbeliever in our culture.

It is a ridiculous notion to assume that
The difficult state of our nation is only the fault of the unchurched.

Isaiah continues his confession.
“Speaking oppression and revolt”

The Hebrew word for “oppression” is O-SHEK
and it is often translated as “extortion”

Psalms 62:10 “Do not trust in oppression And do not vainly hope in robbery; If riches increase, do not set your heart upon them.”

• A constant desire to figure out a way to cheat someone else.
• A constant desire to figure out how to get ahead at someone else’s expense.

“revolt” is SAW-RDAW and it means a “defection or revolt”,
But primarily from what is morally right.

It is sometimes translated as “wrong-doing”

ISAIAH IS SIMPLY CONFESSING THAT
Even as those who are supposed to be God’s people,
We are just as bad as the world
When it comes to oppressing the poor and doing what is wrong.

YOU AND I KNOW THAT
It wasn’t just the un-churched who raided grocery stores on Tuesday
• To buy up all the bottled water and toilet paper out of pure selfish greed
• When news broke of a dock worker strike.

In Jesus’ day it was the Pharisee who devoured widow’s houses and even exploited that one poor widow into giving her very last 2 cents.

It was James who had to scold the church to stop showing favoritism to the rich and dishonoring the poor man.

James 2:1-7 “My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called?”

Can we honestly say that these things do not still occur today?
You see Isaiah’s confession here.

HE CONTINUES:
“Conceiving in and uttering from the heart lying words.”

It is not just lying, it is pre-meditated lying.
• It is knowing and planning to lie
• In order to escape trouble or to get ahead in some other area.
• Lie about the car you’re selling so it will bring more money.
• Lie about your income so you can pay less taxes.
• Lie about your boss or coworker so you can gain sympathy.

I HOPE WE UNDERSTAND WHAT ISAIAH IS SAYING HERE.

He opens a newspaper and he sees a culture
That is suffering under the hand of God’s discipline.

• They are a people with an empty hope.
• They are a people with a futile grope.
• They are a people with a despairing mope.

And Isaiah knows that it is rebellion against God
That has brought this calamity upon the society.

But he also knows that the fault is not just that of unchurched.
If judgment will start at the household of God
Then repentance should begin there too.

So Isaiah confesses the sin even of God’s people.
• This is OUR transgression.
• This is OUR iniquity.
• This is OUR sin.

AND ISAIAH REMINDS AGAIN
What such transgression and iniquity and sin has done to us.

(14-15a) “Justice is turned back, And righteousness stands far away; For truth has stumbled in the street, And uprightness cannot enter. Yes, truth is lacking; And he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey.”

Lest we deny our sin and try to pretend
That maybe we aren’t a nation under discipline,

Isaiah returns one more time to reminding us the state of the culture.

Once again: “Justice is turned back…”

Once again: “Righteousness stands far away…”

Once again: “Truth has stumbled in the street…”

Once again: “Uprightness cannot enter…”

But perhaps even the most telling is Isaiah’s final statement here.
“Yes, truth is lacking; And he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey.”

Isaiah speaks of a culture so far gone in sin
That if a person stands up for what is right,
They will actually become a victim of the hate of the masses.

• What happens if you publicly oppose abortion in our culture?
• What happens if you publicly oppose homosexuality?
• What happens if you call out drunkenness on homecoming weekend?
• What happens if you tell people to stop delighting in adultery?
• What happens if you expose the greed of gambling or hoarding?

You know and I know that you will be publicly shamed.

That is the mark of a culture that is under the judgment of God.

I know Isaiah is speaking to his culture.
I know Isaiah is speaking prophetically to Jews in Babylon.
I know Isaiah is speaking prophetically to lost Jews today.

But I just don’t see anyway we can’t recognize that
The same issues Isaiah recognizes are issues we deal with in our nation.

We bear all the symptoms of a nation that is under the wrath of God.

And Isaiah most certainly CALLS FOR REPENTANCE,
And he calls for it FROM ALL OF US, not just the unchurched.

I WANT TO CLOSE THIS MORNING
With one of the greatest prayers of repentance I find in Scripture.

Certainly we could go to the 51st Psalm, but there is one that hits even closer to home for our situation than that one.

In Daniel 9, Daniel recognizes the judgment of God upon his nation and he prays a prayer of repentance and confession to God on behalf of them all.

I can’t think of a more fitting prayer for a nation under God’s judgment than this.

TURN TO: DANIEL 9:1-19

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Where Is This Salvation You Speak Of? – part 1
Isaiah 59:1–60:22 (1-8)
September 29, 2024

This morning we come to a new chapter in Isaiah,
But we are still discussing the previous question.

If you will remember from chapter 58
• The people asked God a sort of accusatory question
• And it prompted God to call for Isaiah to give them a loud answer.

Isaiah 58:3a “‘Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?’”

And we remember the answer God gave.
You don’t fast for Me, you fast for you.
• You have this ceremonial, temporary, symbolic fast
• And you expect Me to just run down there and grant your every request.

God explained to them that what they were doing
Was not fasting and it was not humility.

He told them they needed
• To stop the oppression of sin,
• To stop ignoring the poor,
• And to stop dishonoring the Sabbath if they really wanted to get His attention.

But I bring that back up because
While we recognized their question,
We never really heard what it was they were wanting from the LORD.

• We know they were asking in the wrong way.
• We know their hypocritical fasting and praying was not accomplishing what they had hoped.

But what was it that they were wanting?
And the answer is: SALVATION

(1) “Behold, the LORD’S hand is not so short that it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear.”

Isaiah is still answering the question of 58:3.

THE IMPLICATION IS THAT
Perhaps the reason God doesn’t see or notice their fasts
Is because God is somehow incapable of saving.

“Maybe it’s just that He can’t do anything about our situation.”

To understand better what they want,
We need to stay in the context of Isaiah.

When we hear about God saving we tend to go to our understanding of salvation.
• We think of sinners being forgiven of their sin.
• We think of the lost being “saved”.
• We think of people be transformed into a new creation.

Indeed that is salvation.

But that is NOT what these Israelites were asking for.

They were talking about deliverance from their enemies
And their suffering as a result of those enemies.

We spoke of salvation back in chapter 56.

Isaiah 56:1 “Thus says the LORD, “Preserve justice and do righteousness, For My salvation is about to come And My righteousness to be revealed.”

And if you’ll remember, the “salvation” spoken of there
Is what you and I call “The Second Coming”.

It is the day the Lord returns and saves His people from their enemies.

When Israel is referring to salvation that it what they are talking about.
They are talking about God delivering them from their enemies.

Isaiah spoke prophetically of the Babylonian Exile.
• And so part of this application would be exiles in Babylon wondering why God won’t “save them” from Babylon.

Isaiah spoke prophetically even to our day.
• So part of this would even be present times where Israel would cry out wondering why God won’t deliver them from their oppressors.

But you understand, when they want salvation
They don’t mean from sin, they mean from their enemies.
Perhaps “deliverance” would be a clearer term.

But, as we noticed in chapter 58,
• Despite them fasting and humbling themselves for it,
• God has not granted their request.

He did, however, inform them of what true fasting and humility look like,
And He said that if they would do that, then He would most certainly save.

And we saw Sunday night some pictures of that salvation they desire.

God promised LIGHT
(8) “Then your light will break out like the dawn”

God promised RECOVERY
(8) “And your recover will speedily spring forth;”

God promised RIGHTEOUSNESS
(8) “And your righteousness will go before you.”

God promised ANSWERED PRAYER
(9) “Then you will call and I will answer; You will cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’”

God promised to GUIDE, SATISFY, AND GIVE STRENGTH
(11) “And the LORD will continually guide you, And satisfy your desire in scorched places, And give strength to your bones;”

God promised to REBUILD, RAISE UP, REPAIR, AND RESTORE
(12) “Those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins; You will raise up the age-old foundations; And you will be called the repairer of the breach, The restorer of the streets in which to dwell.”

And ultimately God promised to bring them home and give them THE HERITAGE OF JACOB
(14) “They you will take delight in the LORD, And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.”

Those are the things Israel wanted.
Those are the things they equated with salvation.

Those are things God had yet to give, even though they had asked.

And now the accusation is that maybe God just isn’t capable of saving.

So here, Isaiah responds to Israel to explain
Why God has yet to deliver the salvation they desire.

• Why must we live in such a world without justice?
• Why must we be exiled to Babylon?
• Why must we dwell in a world with such darkness?
• Why does God allow us to stumble and walk without hope?
• Why doesn’t God save?

IS IT THAT, HE CAN’T?

Now, before we jump into Isaiah’s answer to the people
I want you to just understand this simple reality even as it applies in our world and our nation.

• Now, no, we are not a covenant nation as Israel is.
• You cannot take prophecies given to Israel and apply them to the U.S.A.

However, you can learn here of the character of God
And understand why we, like Israel, live in an unjust and corrupt world
And God just seems to allow it to continue.

So while we’re talking about Israel,
There are some issues of great interest to us here as well.

The entire sermon actually encompasses all of chapter 59 and 60,
And there 4 main points to get us through all of that.

But let’s begin working our way through it this morning.

#1 THE LORD’S REPROACH
Isaiah 59:1-8

The question is obvious.
They want to know if God is just not strong enough
To deliver them from their enemies.

WHERE IS THIS SALVATION YOU SPEAK OF?

And here comes God’s brutal answer.

“Behold, the LORD’S hand is not so short That it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear.”

That makes clear the accusation that was going around.

It’s sort of like when Elijah was mocking the prophets of Baal, daring them to speak louder because maybe their god was hard of hearing.

That is the question here.
• Is God just not strong enough?
• Can He just not get to us?
• Can He not hear us when we call?

Again, it is the unbelievable audacity of sinners
To blame their predicament on the weaknesses of God.

In chapter 58 they questioned as though He just wasn’t faithful to keep His word.
In chapter 59 they question as though He’s just too weak to keep His word.

But the answer is given here.
NO! “the LORD’S hand is not so short that it cannot save;”

It is coming in the form of a rebuke, which we will see,
But we can’t help but stop and rejoice in what great news this is!

There’s not a sinner God can’t reach.

David reminded us that there was no one God can’t see or hear.
Psalms 139:7-12 “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me. If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,” Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.”

Nebuchadnezzar reminded us that there was no one God can’t humble.
Daniel 4:37 “Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exalt and honor the King of heaven, for all His works are true and His ways just, and He is able to humble those who walk in pride.”

Lazarus taught us that there is no one too far gone.
John 11:38-44 “So Jesus, again being deeply moved within, came to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. “I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.” When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.” The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Paul taught us that there is no one God can’t commission.
Acts 9:13-16 “But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to Your saints at Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.”

There is no such thing as a sinner outside of the reach of God.

Where could you be?
What sin could you be in?
What manner of pride could you have?

That God would throw up His hands in defeat and say,
“Sorry, you’re too far gone”?

That person does not exist.

It is true that not every person gets saved,
And this chapter will help us see why,
But it is not for lack of power on God’s part.

Beyond that:
“Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear.”

This speaks to God’s awareness to the plight of sinners.
• Is the noise too great?
• Is the distance too far?
• Is the grave too silent?
• That God is just somehow unaware of your plight?

Do you think God doesn’t know of your circumstance
Or cannot hear your cry for help?

THAT IS NOT THE PROBLEM.
God most certainly can hear and God most certainly can reach.

SO WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

(2) “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear you.”

Are you ready for the answer?
• It’s not that God can’t save you, it’s that He won’t.
• He can bring you home, He just doesn’t want to.

That does not mean that God doesn’t want men saved,
It means that He refuses to deliver you in your current state of sin.

Why were they sent to Babylon to begin with?
Was it not for their sin?

Why was Israel broken off in the days of Jesus?
Was it not for their sin?

So why would He bring the home
When they are still in the same sin that sent them there?

Think back to the beginning of Isaiah’s ministry.

Isaiah 1:11-15 “What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?” Says the LORD. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle; And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. “When you come to appear before Me, Who requires of you this trampling of My courts? “Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies— I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. “I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. “So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.”

Now look at their current state:
(3) “For your hands are defiled with blood And your fingers with iniquity; Your lips have spoken falsehood, Your tongue mutters wickedness.”

NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

What was the command of God back at the beginning to keep them from being exiled?

Isaiah 1:16-20 “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow. “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD, “Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool. “If you consent and obey, You will eat the best of the land; “But if you refuse and rebel, You will be devoured by the sword.” Truly, the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

The command then was to repent and put away their sin
And that command hasn’t changed.

Now they are under God’s hand of judgment,
Crying for deliverance, wondering why God won’t bring them home,
And God says: BECAUSE NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

It’s not that He can’t save, it’s that He won’t.
He can bring you home, He just doesn’t want to.
Your sin has offended Him and caused a separation from Him.

And can we just add this to our doctrine of sin?

It is referred to as: HAMARTIOLOGY (the doctrine of sin)

From John MacArthur:
“Sin creates enmity, a hostile situation between parties. Romans 5:10 says that before salvation in Christ, people are “enemies” of God. Unbelievers are “alienated from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18). Also, “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God” (Rom. 8:7). The responsibility for the enmity lies solely with man.”
(MacArthur, John; Mayhue, Richard; [Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary Of Biblical Truth; Crossway; Wheaton, IL; 2017] pg. 459)

That says it in a nutshell.
SIN CREATES ENMITY

It was one of the consequences of the Fall.
Genesis 3:15 “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

But it didn’t stop there.
Genesis 4:8 “Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.”

And it didn’t stop there.
Genesis 3:22-24 “Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.”

There is a separation that occurs between man and God.

And even when God was willing to come and dwell with His people
He did so from behind a veil which no man could enter.

To dwell with God…
To walk with God…
Righteousness is required.

Sin wrecked that, and it wrecks it still.

These people of Israel are lost.
• They have sinned against God in every possible way.
• They have broken every commandment.
• And God refuses to dwell with them.

Consider the book of Ezekiel, which carries us through the events of God’s departure from Israel and the subsequent exile.

We don’t have time, but go read Ezekiel 8 sometime.
• Read about how everyone in Israel was worshiping false gods.

Read Ezekiel 9
• About how God promises to bring judgment as a result.

And then read Ezekiel 10
• When we see God on the move.

Ezekiel 10:4 “Then the glory of the LORD went up from the cherub to the threshold of the temple, and the temple was filled with the cloud and the court was filled with the brightness of the glory of the LORD.”

God moved from the holy of holies to the door of the temple.

Ezekiel 10:18-19 “Then the glory of the LORD departed from the threshold of the temple and stood over the cherubim. When the cherubim departed, they lifted their wings and rose up from the earth in my sight with the wheels beside them; and they stood still at the entrance of the east gate of the LORD’S house, and the glory of the God of Israel hovered over them.”

God moved from the door of the temple to the gate of the city.

Ezekiel 11:22-23 “Then the cherubim lifted up their wings with the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel hovered over them. The glory of the LORD went up from the midst of the city and stood over the mountain which is east of the city.”

God moved from the gate of the city to the mountain overlooking the city.

And then Babylon came in and destroyed the place.

SIN DID THAT.
• God was angry.
• There was enmity.
• He would no longer dwell among their sin.
• There was a separation.

Do you understand the devastating effects of sin in a life?

Those who are unredeemed are separated from God.
• There is enmity between them and God.
• There is no fellowship.
• It is terrible
• It is explanation for lostness and the coming judgment.

But, it is important that you also understand the difference
When one has been redeemed.

For we read regarding the saved:
Romans 8:1 “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Romans 8:38-39 “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Scripture clearly teaches that
• Because of Christ’s atonement those who are in Christ can never be moved back again to that state of enmity.
• There can never again be a separation between God and man because we have been brought near in Christ and He is our peace.

Romans 5:1 “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,”

So we know that the statement made here in Isaiah 59
Is NOT directed at a redeemed person, but at a lost one.

There is no total or final separation when we are in Christ.

SO DOES SIN NOT AFFECT US WHEN WE ARE SAVED?

• Since we can never be separated…
• Since there is no longer any enmity…
• Since there is no condemnation…

Do we not have to concern ourselves with sin any more?
Can we just do whatever without any fear of repercussion?

How does a believer look at the consequences of sin?
Let me give you some verses to chew on.

Ephesians 4:29-30 “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

Clearly there are dealing with redeemed people
• Who have been “sealed for the day of redemption”,
• Meaning they cannot lose their salvation or be separated from God.

But Paul is also clear that if they dabble in sin
They can “grieve the Holy Spirit of God”

That is to say they can cause the fellowship to suffer.
There can be a hiccup in the relationship.

If I offend Carrie with my behavior, or if she offends me with her behavior, it is not going to end our marriage. We know that our marriage is secure, but it still might make the fellowship a little chilly until repentance occurs.

The 1689 London Baptist Confession gives a great statement here:

“17.3 “They may fall into serious sins through the temptations of Satan and the world, the power of corruption remaining in them, and neglect the means for their preservation, and may even continue in them for a time. In this they incur God’s displeasure, grieve His Holy Spirit, have their graces and comforts impaired, have their hearts hardened and their consciences wounded, and hurt and offend others, and bring chastisement upon themselves. Yet they will [in time] renew their repentance and bed preserved through faith in Christ Jesus to the end.”

While a believer cannot be separated from God or lose their salvation, they can lose the joy of their fellowship.

Assurance can be taken, and doubt and despair slip in.
Sin messes up the fellowship we enjoy with God.

Let me tell you another thing sin can do in the life of a believer.
IT CAN BRING PHYSICAL DEATH.

Remember the Corinthians and the Lord’s Supper?
1 Corinthians 11:29-30 “For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep.”

Remember James warning the church?
James 1:15 “Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.”

Remember what John said?
1 John 5:16 “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will for him give life to those who commit sin not leading to death. There is a sin leading to death; I do not say that he should make request for this.”

What we learn is that a believer can actually fall into sin,
And in their stubbornness God can actually decide
just to take their life to stop the sinning.

In such a case, death is actually God’s protective measure to keep you from going too far and falling away.

And my point is that even for the redeemed
Sin brings terrible consequences.

The only civil course of action is to repent of it and be reconciled to God.

A LOST PERSON
• Must confess their sins to God,
• They must repent of their corrupt thinking,
• They must humbly return to God for forgiveness and salvation through Christ.

A SAVED PERSON
• Must also confess their sins to God,
• They must also repent of their corrupt thinking
• They must humbly ask God for mercy and forgiveness and restoration of fellowship through Christ.

Sin kills relationships.
That is the point.

AND THIS TIME GOD WILL GET SPECIFIC
REGARDING THE SIN THAT HAS CAUSED THEIR SEPARATION.

READ 4-8

Do those 5 verses not strike us with a bit of familiarity?
They should.

We’ve read that statement of Paul in Romans 3 where he compiles several Old Testament texts to show us God’s view of humanity.
• It’s where we read that there is “none righteous, not even one”
• It’s where we read that “no one does good, not even one”
• In Romans 3:15-17 Paul actually quotes verses 7-8 here.

The idea is not lost on us here.
God is showing us the terrible sinfulness of humanity.
It is the terrible sinfulness of the unredeemed.

It also brings to my mind that other famous Old Testament passage:
Proverbs 6:16-19 “There are six things which the LORD hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that run rapidly to evil, A false witness who utters lies, And one who spreads strife among brothers.”

That is the type of passage we have here.
It is God elaborating on the offensive sin of humanity.

I think it will be easiest to see if we break them down into 3 points.

1) THEIR DISHONESTY (4)

“No one sues righteously and no one pleads honestly. They trust in confusion and speak lies; They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.”

What is the point here?
People will lie and cheat one another if it means they can get ahead.

We’ve read in 1 Corinthians and their attempt to defraud one another.
1 Corinthians 6:1 “Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?”

We had brothers in the church suing one another.

Paul concludes by saying:
1 Corinthians 6:8 “On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud. You do this even to your brethren.”

That is the picture here.

God certainly ordained law courts and the legal and justice system,
But it was a system designed to produce justice
Not to distort justice in order get what you want.

But that is what God sees taking place.

They get a lawyer to use big words “they trust in confusion and speak likes; they conceive mischief”

You see the problem.
God sees a people that will use any means necessary
To cheat and take advantage of one another.

They are dishonest.
They are greedy.
They are corrupt.

And that is nothing like God.
And quite frankly He doesn’t want to live among them.

2) THEIR DEEDS (5-6)

“They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web; He who eats of their eggs dies, And from that which is crushed a snake breaks forth. Their webs will not become clothing, Nor will they cover themselves with their works; Their works are works of iniquity, And an act of violence is in their hands.”

I will admit, I spent a great deal of time on these two verses
Trying to figure out exactly what God was saying here.

And I have come to the conclusion
that what God is addressing here is their failure to do any real ministry or to care for the poor.

In verse 5 He speaks of them hatching and weaving.
• Clearly the emphasis here is on food and clothing.
• You eat eggs and you weave clothing.

But there is a problem in what they are producing.
• The eggs they are hatching are poisonous
• The clothing they are weaving is the equivalent of a spider’s web.

He says in verse 5, “He who eats of their eggs dies,”
He says in verse 6 “Their webs will not become clothing”

It seems to me that the idea is that
They produce nothing of any value to anyone else.

To which God says, “Their works are works of iniquity, And an act of violence is in their hands.”

So not only are they dishonest,
Dragging their neighbors into court to lawfully steal from them.

They also produce no benefit to their neighbor at all.
When they do feed their neighbor it is a poisonous egg,
When they do clothe their neighbor it is a useless web.

There is no brotherly love or care here.
And God does not want to live with people like that.

3) THEIR DIRECTION (7-8)

“Their feet run to evil, And they hasten to shed innocent blood; Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, Devastation and destruction are in their highways. They do not know the way of peace, And there is no justice in their tracks; They have made their paths crooked, Whoever treads on them does not know peace.”

This is the verse directly quoted by Paul in Romans 3.

And the key words make it clear to us what the point is.
“feet” – “hasten” – “thoughts” – “highways” – “way” – “tracks” – “paths” – “treads”

God is referring to their direction.
• He is referring to the path they walk and the way they go.
• He is talking about the tracks they leave for others to follow.

And there is nothing good in any of it.

This is a culture that not only lies and steals and exploits the poor,
But also a culture that wants more,
And teaches others to do the same.

• They love evil.
• They love to shed innocent blood.
• They love iniquity, it’s all they think about.
• They love destruction.
• They care nothing for peace or justice.

And by their example they are leading others there too.
And God doesn’t want to dwell with people like that.

These are the very types of people
That caused Him to depart from His temple to begin with
And you can’t figure out why He won’t bring you home?

Imagine a tenant renting a room in your house.
• All night long he screams obscenities
• He paints up the walls
• He trashes the room
• He stashes drugs
• He brings in other guests to do the same
• He is vile in every sense of the word

SO YOU EVICT HIM.

Then 3 days later, he starts calling you, still in his same condition, with no hint of repentance and he starts leaving messages wanting to come home.

BUT YOU ARE IGNORING HIS CALL

• He says, “I humbled myself and called you, why can’t I come home?”
• He says, “What, can you not hear?”
• He says, “Are you unable to talk on the phone?”

The problem is he hasn’t changed and you have no desire to let him back into your house in that condition.

Do you understand then the problem here?

These people are sitting here wondering
Why God won’t hear their prayers for deliverance
And rescue them from Babylon and bring them home.

And God’s answer is:
IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU!
• You’ve still got the same bloody hands you had when I kicked you out.
• You’ve still got the same lying tongue you had when I kicked you out.
• You’ve still got the same wicked desires you had when I kicked you out.

Why would I let you come home like that?

What an important lesson again for us.
• Sin is absolutely destructive and God will not overlook it.
• If your relationship with God is to be restored, it will only be restored with repentance.
• If you will repent and if you will return, God will forgive and restore.

That forces an internal look for each of us.
How is my fellowship with God?
• Have I ever been reconciled through Christ or am I still at enmity with God?
• Even as a child of God, am I grieving Him and quenching the fellowship with Him that I could have?

• Is repentance in order?
• Is it time to humble myself before Him?
• Is it time to turn from my sin and beg His mercy?

If you want deliverance, if you want the salvation God speaks of,
This is a necessary requirement.

Matthew 4:17 “From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

download here

That’s Not Humility – part 3
Isaiah 58:1-14 (7-14)
September 22, 2024

We’ll jump back in tonight.
• You know God gives grace to the humble.
• You know these people were upset because they thought they were being humble and yet God had not answered them.
• God responded to their frustration by pointing out that what they were doing was not humility.

#1 GOD CALLS THE PROPHET
Isaiah 58:1-2

• God calls for Isaiah to loudly confront the sin of His people.
• They fancied themselves to be a righteous nation, God did not agree.

#2 GOD CORRECTS THE PEOPLE
Isaiah 58:3-4

They had fasted.
• What that meant was they had stopped work for the Sabbath and they expected God to bless them for it.

God corrects them to say, what you call a fast wasn’t a fast.
• You still worked all your employees hard.
• You didn’t focus on Me but rather how to get ahead.
• That is not the kind of fast that works.

We gave a principle on humility:
HUMILITY IS NOT CEREMONIAL.

#3 GOD CONFRONTS THE PEOPLE
Isaiah 58:5

God breaks down the reality of this so-called humble fast.
• Do you think God only wants one day?
• Do you think God only wants a token bowing?
• Do you think God only wants you to sleep in the ash heap?
• That is not a humble fast.

And we learned a second principle on humility:
HUMILITY IS NOT TEMPORARY

#4 GOD CHALLENGES THE PEOPLE
Isaiah 58:6-14

AND THIS IS WHERE WE ARE.

God is challenging His people to participate in a genuine fast,
Not the phony ones they are accustomed to.

We are currently looking at verses 6,7,9,10, & 13
Where God outlines exactly the type of fast He wants.

If you really want to fast from something,
Fast from SELFISHNESS.

That is to say, “If you want to fast, then stop doing what the flesh wants all the time and start doing the things that matter to God.”

And this morning we saw the first example of this.

1) STOP DISCARDING SINNERS (6)

“Is this not the fat which I choose, To loosen the bonds of wickedness, To undo the bands of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke?”

When you look at that through New Testament eyes
We see Jesus reminding us that He came to “set the captives free”.
• We hear Jesus saying, “everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin…so if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
• We hear Jesus saying, “Come to Me all who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest.”

Jesus came to rescue sinners from their sin
And the wrath that rests upon it.

God would have us do the same.
“To loosen the bonds of wickedness”

We read (Galatians 6:1-2) how Paul told us to fulfill the love of Christ
By restoring our brothers who are caught in their trespasses.

But as we also said,
• That is hard.
• That is time-consuming.
• That is messy.
• That can be frustrating.

It is much easier just to throw them away and go on without them.

JESUS NEVER DID.
He made a ministry out of calling the “throw aways” to Himself.

• We’ve read many times the story of that “throw away” baby in Ezekiel 16 that God passed by and rescued and washed and clothed and entered into a covenant with.

• Perhaps Jesus gave us the greatest picture of this when He took a man like Peter who had denied Him 3 times and entrusted Him to “feed His sheep”.

It is not easy, it is not comfortable, but it is what God desires.

So if you want to fast then fast from selfishness
And stop discarding sinners.

Well, let’s look at the second example of selfishness that God would have us fast from.

2) STOP DISREGARDING THE POOR (7)

“Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry And bring the homeless poor into the house; When you see the naked, to cover him; And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?”

There is no doubt that verse 6 is loaded with spiritual implications about freedom from wickedness.

There’s equally no doubt that verse 7 is loaded with practical implications about meeting physical needs.

AND DON’T WE NEED THIS REMINDER.

In our culture it is really easy to get sucked in to political narratives.
It is really easy just to align with one side of the aisle
And let them do all our thinking for us.

And the tragedy is that in many cases poverty and the needy
Have become a super-charged political issue.

When those on the left talk about things like
• Welfare
• The homeless
• Refugees
• Whatever else,

We tend to look at it through political eyes and not through gospel eyes.

Now I’m certainly not defending the ideologies of the left,
But I would like us to read a verse like Isaiah 58:7 without a political filter.

We see things like “divide your bread with the hungry”
• But nothing is said regarding why he is hungry.
• Just divide your bread with him.

We see things like “bring the homeless poor into the house;”
• But nothing is said about why he is homeless.
• Just welcome him in.

We are told “when you see the naked, to cover him”
• But again we are not told how he came to find himself naked.
• Just clothe him

We are simply commanded “not to hide yourself from your own flesh”

MY POINT IS THAT
It is part of our selfish human nature to see someone in need
And to first try and justify my own disregard of that need
If I can determine that the person has done this to themselves.

AND IT IS TRUE,
They may very well be suffering from their own poor choices,
But God doesn’t even factor that into the equation.

And maybe I’d just add that
• If they are suffering from their own poor choices
• Then now we have the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone
Since by helping them we will be helping a sinner leave their sin
AND a hungry man to be satisfied.

BUT AGAIN, I GET IT.

When you start talking about helping the poor
You are talking about a bottomless pit.

You are talking about an unfillable hole.

Even Jesus said:
Matthew 26:11 “For you always have the poor with you.”

And therefore it is very easy to grow cynical and hard
And to just want to be left alone.

And my only point here is that
Very rarely will you see a poor person or a hungry person or a naked person and your flesh want to help him.
• Your flesh wants to take the path of least resistance.
• Your flesh wants to do what is most comfortable for your flesh.
• Your flesh wants to take care of itself first.

So in order to help the poor you really have to crucify the flesh
And kill your selfishness and help beyond what may feel good.

IT IS HARD.

BUT THIS IS THE FAST GOD ASKS FOR,
And my goodness is there a lot of information on this in Scripture.

Let’s begin with MOSES.

Deuteronomy 15:7-11 “If there is a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks. “Beware that there is no base thought in your heart, saying, ‘The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,’ and your eye is hostile toward your poor brother, and you give him nothing; then he may cry to the LORD against you, and it will be a sin in you. “You shall generously give to him, and your heart shall not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all your undertakings. “For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land.’”

That one really covers it all thoroughly.
• We are told not to harden our heart.
• We are told not to close our hand.
• We are told to help “freely” “generously” “sufficiently” in “whatever he lacks”
• We are told not to be worried about being scammed.

God’s heart on the matter is not difficult to detect.
We even read it there as though the poor are left if for no other reason than to give us an opportunity to give God what He desires.

Proverbs 19:17 “One who is gracious to a poor man lends to the LORD, And He will repay him for his good deed.”

You see the connect there.
God takes our care for the poor personally.

THE PROPHETS who came after Moses certainly bear this out.

We read last Sunday night that passage in Zechariah
• About if they should keep fasting on the 5th month or not,
• And how God asked them if they were really fasting for Him or not.

Well God continued by telling them what He did want instead:
Zechariah 7:8-10 “Then the word of the LORD came to Zechariah saying, “Thus has the LORD of hosts said, ‘Dispense true justice and practice kindness and compassion each to his brother; and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.’”

Can I throw out a buzz word at you?
A word that has grown to have extreme negative connotation in our day?

SOCIAL JUSTICE

We hear that word in a negative light
Because it is often used to defend sinful and immoral behavior.

• We are programmed to think of things like LGBTQ or Black Lives Matter when we hear the word “Social Justice”.

• We think of those awful “He Gets Us” commercials where they turn Jesus into some sort of social activist instead of the Savior from Sin.

Our world clearly has no concept of true biblical social justice.

But don’t let the world’s bad policy
Cause you to throw aside a topic that is very important to God.

• It matters to God how we treat the poor.
• It matters to God how we treat the alien and the widow and the orphan.

If you let it get politicized and then justify ignoring them
Be careful you don’t find yourself on the wrong side of God’s justice.

Amos 5:21-24 “I hate, I reject your festivals, Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. “Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. “Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. “But let justice roll down like waters And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Micah 6:6-8 “With what shall I come to the LORD And bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, With yearling calves? Does the LORD take delight in thousands of rams, In ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?”

God calls for His people to biblically and socially active.
• We are NOT to just turn a blind eye to plight of humanity.
• We are NOT to pass them off as our enemy.

That is the easy thing to do.
That is certainly the less expensive thing to do.
But God calls for more from us.

Take that idea into the NEW TESTAMENT.

You’ve read;
Luke 10:33-34 “But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him.”

• And you remember Jesus saying “Go and do the same”

Or we remember the crowd gathering around Jesus
And the disciple concocting an excuse to send them away, but Jesus saying:
Matthew 14:16 “But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat!”

Or Jesus commanding His followers:
Luke 12:33-34 “Sell your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves money belts which do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near nor moth destroys. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

And of course no one can forget the famous “least of these” passage.
Matthew 25:45 “Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’”

Jesus did not shy away from what He thought
About our responsibility to care for the poor.

We think of the APOSTLES:

Paul:
Romans 12:10-13 “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor; not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.”

We think of his first ever meeting with James and Peter in Jerusalem:
Galatians 2:10 “They only asked us to remember the poor—the very thing I also was eager to do.”

We certainly think of John the apostle who took a page right out of Isaiah 58 when he wrote:
1 John 3:16-18 “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”

You can’t get much more direct than that.

But perhaps the most direct comes from James.

I love the perspective of James.

When you read from Peter or Matthew or John you are reading from guys who followed Jesus for 3 years of ministry.
• They saw Jesus minister.
• They heard what He said.
• They saw what He did.
• Certainly they have an accurate understanding or what He expects from us.

But the perspective of James is different.
• James was His brother.
• James grew up under the same roof.
• James saw Jesus in all sorts of situations; personal and private.

And when James looked at the behavior of the church
He didn’t see a church that was failing to obey Jesus,
James saw a church that wasn’t living like Jesus.

What did James tell us about the poor?
James 1:27 “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

Or again:
James 2:14-16 “What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?”
James knew exactly how Jesus lived,
And he called the church to act like Him.

And this again is reiterated in verse 10, “And if you give yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,”

And you know that we could go on and on with this subject,
But I think we get the point.

Here we have a people
Who thought they had fasted and humbled themselves because they took a day off of work.

God exposed that faulty fast and said that is not the kind of fast I want from you.
• I want you to fast from your flesh.
• I want you to fast from selfishness.

• I want you to stop discarding sinners
• I want you to stop disregarding the poor

Tell your flesh “No!”
Do what is uncomfortable
Do what your flesh doesn’t like and do it for Me!

If you want Me to feel honored…
If you want Me to feel loved…
Then fast like that.

And that goes back to that third principle of humility:
HUMILITY IS NOT SYMBOLIC

• It is practical, it is visual, it is measurable.
• It shows up in helping a brother out of sin.
• It shows up in helping a poor man in his poverty.

That is the kind of humility God is looking for.

Stop Discarding Sinners
Stop Disregarding the Poor

3) STOP DISHONORING THE SABBATH (13)

“If because of the sabbath, you turn your foot From doing your own pleasure on My holy day, And call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD honorable, And honor it, desisting from your own ways, From seeking your own pleasure And speaking your own word,”

We talked about this one just a few weeks ago
So perhaps we don’t have to address it as deeply tonight,
But again we see the point.

• We had men who used the Sabbath to do “your own pleasure”
• We had men who did not call the Sabbath “a delight”
• We had men who did not consider the Sabbah “honorable” or “honor it”
• We had men who did not use the Sabbah to honor God or seek His pleasure or speak His word.

They used it for their own selfish desires.

I remind you again that THE ISSUE IS PRIORITY.

We know
• We rest from our labors daily through Jesus Christ.
• We rest in His finished work just as God rested at creation from His finished work.

We are NOT trying to earn salvation by recognizing a particular day.
We talked about this.

BUT
• A failure to recognize a day…
• A failure to love a day of worship…
• A failure to spend a day in gratitude…
• A failure to elevate the things of God over the things of the world…

Does say something about our priority
And perhaps the idols that dwell within our hearts.

And ultimately here it is God saying,
“If you really want to fast from something, then don’t take off work and make your employees work harder, take off work and call it a delight!”

LET IT COST YOU SOMETHING.

Do you remember when David sinned against God by numbering the people?

• God gave him the option of what punishment he wanted,
• Ultimately David chose a 3 day plague from the LORD.
• When David cried out to God to stop.
• God told him to build an altar on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

1 Chronicles 21:22-24 “Then David said to Ornan, “Give me the site of this threshing floor, that I may build on it an altar to the LORD; for the full price you shall give it to me, that the plague may be restrained from the people.” Ornan said to David, “Take it for yourself; and let my lord the king do what is good in his sight. See, I will give the oxen for burnt offerings and the threshing sledges for wood and the wheat for the grain offering; I will give it all.” But King David said to Ornan, “No, but I will surely buy it for the full price; for I will not take what is yours for the LORD, or offer a burnt offering which costs me nothing.”

That is sort of a lost mentality.

David wondered how you could call it a “sacrifice”
If he did not have to sacrifice to give it.

We might ask that same question regarding a fast.
How can you call it a fast if it does not offend the flesh to give it?

As it stood these people were ultimately dishonoring the Sabbath
Because they made the Sabbath all about them.
• It was a day for “their own ways”
• It was a day to seek their “own pleasure”
• It was a day to speak their “own word”

And God is left wondering if any of it is for Him?

So THE POINT is laid out for us quite clearly.

1. These people came to God with their phony fasts
2. And wondered why God didn’t respond
3. And now God has corrected them, confronted them,
4. And here challenges them to do better.

If you really want a fast that impresses Me…
If you really want a fast that captures My heart…

Then fast from your selfishness.
Fast from the gratification of your flesh.

1. Get over yourself and get down in the pit and help your brother overcome sin.
2. Get over yourself and take notice of the poor man and meet his needs.
3. Get over yourself and spend a day honoring Me and not yourself.

“Is this not the fast which I choose..?”

That is what God desires and we learn a lot there.

Now, here is where the goodness of God really shines.

God has every right to tell us to do that “or else”.
As in, do this or I will crush you!

But that is not what God does.
He actually promises tremendous blessing to us
If we will fast like He chooses.

And let’s take a look now at these tremendous blessings.
• We’ve seen the “If” you will portion of the text.
• Now let’s look at the “then” I will portion.

And this is verses (8-9a) (10b-12) (14)

(8-9a) “Then your light will break out like the dawn, And your recovery will speedily spring forth; And your righteousness will go before you; The glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. “Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; You will cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’”

Look at the promises from God listed there if we will fast correctly.

GOD WILL RESTORE YOU
“Then your light will break out like the dawn, And your recovery will speedily spring forth;”

Light breaking out like the dawn is a reference to HOPE
And that hope is seen with the promise of recovery.

Who doesn’t like the sound of God causing us to recover?

Well then fast as God has intended.

GOD WILL GUARD YOU
“And your righteousness will go before you; The glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.”

Remember when the children of Israel came out of Egypt and they camped but they were stopped from fleeing by the Red Sea?

Do you remember what God did?
Exodus 14:19-20 “The angel of God, who had been going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them. So it came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel; and there was the cloud along with the darkness, yet it gave light at night. Thus the one did not come near the other all night.”

Wouldn’t it be something to have God that eager to defend His people?

GOD WILL ANSWER YOU
(9a) “Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; You will cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’”

Wasn’t that their complaint in verse 3?
“Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?”

Well God says, it’s because you have not humbled yourself,
But if you would, then I would definitely hear.

2 Chronicles 7:14 “and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

Because God dwells with the lowly.
God gives grace to the humble.

Look then at verses 10b-12

“Then your light will rise in darkness And your gloom will become like midday. “And the LORD will continually guide you, And satisfy your desire in scorched places, And give strength to your bones; And you will be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. “Those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins; You will raise up the age-old foundations; And you will be called the repairer of the breach, The restorer of the streets in which to dwell.”

There are more great promises from God.

GOD WILL GUIDE YOU
“And the LORD will continually guide you”

GOD WILL SATISFY YOU
“And satisfy your desire in scorched places,”

GOD WILL STRENGTHEN YOU
“And give strength to your bones”

GOD WILL REFRESH YOU
“And you will be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.”

GOD WILL REPAIR YOU
“Those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins; You will raise up the age-old foundations; And you will be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of the streets in which to dwell.”

Who wouldn’t like a return to the good-ole days?

Do you see all the promises God makes
That are contingent upon Israel fasting properly
And humbling themselves the right way?

God is waiting for them to stop discarding sinners,
To stop disregarding the poor,
And to stop dishonoring the Sabbath.

He is asking them to put aside their selfishness and if they will
He will come through for them in a mighty way.

Then look down at verse 14

(14) “Then you will take delight in the LORD, And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

And I really like the way this one is put.

In verse 13 God asked them to honor His Sabbath.
• He asked them to deny themselves and put Him first.
• He asked them to stop their own ways and seek His ways.
• He asked them to forsake their own words and speak His words.

And THEN we see the blessing that will come.
“Then you will take delight in the LORD”

The timing and order there must be noted.
Denial of self precedes delight in God.

This is where faith comes in.
• First you leave the old life and then He blesses you with the new.
• First you sell your possessions then you get the treasure in the field.
• First you deny yourself then you gain Christ.

You honor and obey and trust God first
And then the blessing comes.

God is not a good of proof, He is a God of confirmation.

He tells the people, let go of your flesh and I will make it worth while.
When you fast for Me, I will compensate you.

Matthew 19:27-29 “Then Peter said to Him, “Behold, we have left everything and followed You; what then will there be for us?” And Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name’s sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life.”

God is not out to cheat anyone.
• He will gladly answer you.
• He will gladly dwell with you.
• He will abundantly bless you.

But He requires you to first love and seek Him.

“I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

What is this promise about “the heights” and “heritage of Jacob” ?

Do you remember when Jacob was fleeing from Esau?
Genesis 28:13-15 “And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. “Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed. “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

That is the promise God is giving His people here.
Humble yourself and I will bring you home!
(Not just to the land, but to Me)

And with that comes our final principle regarding humility.
HUMILITY IS REWARDED

• God dwells with the humble.
• God restores the humble.
• God compensates the humble.
• God guards the humble.
• God satisfies and strengthens the humble.
• God restores and repairs the humble.

Humility is worth it because you gain the favor of God.
You gain God’s grace.

So as this chapter comes to a close
Learn from the loud sermon of Isaiah.

God is happy to visit and reward His people
But He will not do it based on a ceremonial, temporary, symbolic religious charade.

If God’s people really want Him He is happy to arrive.
But they must really want Him.

And they show that through their help of the broken
And their help of the poor and their love of His glory and honor.

Give God true humility and His blessing will follow.

download here

That’s Not Humility – part 2
Isaiah 58:1-14 (6)
September 22, 2024

We learned last Sunday morning that God dwells with the humble.

Isaiah 57:15 “For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite.”

Sunday night we turned to Isaiah 58 and found a group of disgruntled people who were complaining that apparently that verse is not true.

Isaiah 58:3a “‘Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?’”

We have people who are calling into question the promise of chapter 57,
For they say that they are humbling themselves
And yet God is not listening to them or dwelling with them.

In their minds, Isaiah 57:15 isn’t true.

And we noted how quickly mankind
Can recognize a perceived injustice like this
And immediately assume that the problem is somehow God.

• Apparently God’s word isn’t true.
• Apparently God doesn’t dwell with the humble.
• Apparently God isn’t faithful.
• Apparently God’s promises can’t be trusted.

But it is also just like humanity to blame God when in reality
The blame falls squarely on our own shoulders.

ISAIAH 57:15 IS TRUE.
So what is the problem?

These people did not actually humble themselves.
The problem wasn’t with God, it was with them.

And that is THE MESSAGE OF ISAIAH 58.
God does dwell with the humble, but what you are doing is not humility.

AND WHAT A VALUABLE LESSON FOR US TO LEARN.
There are few things we need to get right
As much as we need to get humility right.

Since God dwells with the humble…

Or as it says in:
Psalms 138:6 “For though the LORD is exalted, Yet He regards the lowly, But the haughty He knows from afar.”

And in:
James 4:6 “But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.”

Since God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble,

It should be of the utmost importance to us to know the difference
Between the humility God rejects and the humility He honors.

Isaiah 58 is a message to enlighten us to that very thing.

We began this last Sunday night, but allow me to recap it a little this morning.

#1 GOD CALLS THE PROPHET
Isaiah 58:1-2

One thing you can’t miss is how important this topic is to God.

Not only does God dictate the message that is to be presented,
But God also dictates the tone with which it is to be preached.

“Cry loudly, do not hold back; raise your voice like a trumpet…”

• This is no secondary message to God.
• This is no optional piece of advice.
• This is coming through the loud speaker.

And what is the topic of this loud message?
“And declare to My people their transgression And to the house of Jacob their sins.”

It is important that we understand
Where we are in this final invitation of the book of Isaiah.

1. We know that the end of the book is an offer of salvation to wayward Israel.
2. We even recognize the prophetic implications that reach even into our own day.
3. We have a Christ who in chapter 53 has atoned for sin through His death on the cross.
4. And now we have a prophet who is calling men to come and accept the salvation which He purchased.

This salvation is particularly attractive to the humble and broken.
• People like that barren woman.
• People like that rejected woman.
• People like that eunuch.
• People like that foreigner.

They seem to be flocking to the salvation which Christ purchased
For they see no other way of being saved.

But the people who are proving difficult to reach are the proud.
The religious elite aren’t so quick to run to this salvation.

And it brings to our mind that important evangelistic reality,
And one that we face daily.

“You have to get a person lost before you can get them saved.”

By that we simply mean.
Before you can offer the grace of the gospel to a sinner,
You first have to show him that he is a sinner who needs it.

This was the purpose of the Law, to condemn sinners under God’s justice.
This was the cry of the prophets, to expose the sin of the people.

And that is what Isaiah is being commissioned to do here.
You go and yell about the sin of these people.

• Don’t let them rest in their self-righteousness.
• Don’t let them find comfort in their religious works.
• You go and expose them.
• You blow up their false assurance.

You go and loudly proclaim their sin until they fall on their faces
And realize how badly they need salvation.

That is the call of God to the prophet here.

And if we want to focus in a little more
We see that God specifically wants Isaiah to attack:

THEIR HYPOCRITICAL RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT.

(2) “Yet they seek Me day by day and delight to know My ways, As a nation that has done righteousness And has not forsaken the ordinance of God. They ask Me for just decisions, They delight in the nearness of God.”

And you remember the point.
• These were a people who had transgressed against God.
• These were a people who had forsaken His ordinances.

But they acted like they hadn’t,
They proudly marched right into God’s temple to present their requests
As though He ought to be glad to see them.

They had offended Him in every possible way
But were totally oblivious to the fact.

It’s no wonder God wanted Isaiah to get loud.
These people are deaf!

So God calls the prophet

#2 GOD CORRECTS THE PEOPLE
Isaiah 58:3-4

We saw this one Sunday night as well.

You see their point of contention with God.
They feel as though God has not kept up His end of the bargain.

“Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?”

We find out later in the chapter
• That by “fasted” they meant they stopped work for the Sabbath.

And we see here that in their mind
This was a demonstration of their great humility.

So they appear before God as if to say, “Look we humbled ourselves by not working on the Sabbath, don’t You think You owe us an audience?”

Well God corrects their misconception.

(3b-4) “Behold, on the day of your fast you find your desire, And drive hard all your workers. “Behold, you fast for contention and strife and to strike with a wicked fist. You do not fast like you do today to make your voice heard on high.”

They wanted to know why God failed to honor their humble fast
God says, “Because it wasn’t a fast and it wasn’t humility.”

Sure you took the day off of work,
• But you worked your employees twice as hard to make them make up the slack.

Sure you took the day off of work,
• But you didn’t use it to focus on Me and worship Me, you used it to conspire and scheme how to get ahead of your competition.

Fasting like that is not the way to get My attention.

And to that we gave our first principle of humility:
HUMILITY IS NOT CEREMONIAL

Physically going through the outward ordinances of religion
Without a heart that matches is not humility before God
And He will not honor it.

• So what you skipped work…
• So what you skipped a meal…
• Your heart never turned from focus on those things to Me.

God is not amused.
HUMILITY IS NOT CEREMONIAL.

God calls the prophet; God corrects the people

#3 GOD CONFRONTS THE PEOPLE
Isaiah 58:5

Here God addresses the pathetic nature
Of this so-called humble fast they participated in.

God confronts it with some very penetrating questions.

“Is it a fast like this which I choose, A DAY for a man to humble himself?”

• When we are talking about humility before God do you really assume that just one day will do it?
• Do you really suppose that you can live however you want for six days but then humble yourself on the Sabbath and all will be fine?

You’ve got a lot to learn about fasting and humility.

“Is it for bowing one’s head like a reed”

• A read sways in the wind and no sooner does it bow than it also pops its head right back up again.
• And God compares that to the short-lived humility of His people.

Sure you bowed in supposed reverence,
But you didn’t stay in that posture long.

“And for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed?”

• Yes you put on sackcloth.
• Yes you laid in the ashes.
• But you went to sleep!

You weren’t repenting, you weren’t confessing your sin,
You weren’t pursuing sanctification, you were sleeping!

Am I really supposed to be impressed with your humble piety?

And God asks:
“Will you all this a fast, even an acceptable day to the LORD?”

Is that really what you are bringing to Me and calling humility?

And to that we introduced our second principle of humility:
HUMILITY IS NOT TEMPORARY

And this is where we had to stop Sunday night
So let’s continue on with this thought for a moment this morning.

HUMILITY IS NOT TEMPORARY
Just an example of what we mean:

Hosea 6:1-6 “Come, let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. “He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, That we may live before Him. “So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; And He will come to us like the rain, Like the spring rain watering the earth.” What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? For your loyalty is like a morning cloud And like the dew which goes away early. Therefore I have hewn them in pieces by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of My mouth; And the judgments on you are like the light that goes forth. For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

God is well-aware of the commitment of the heart regardless of the words of the mouth.
• He is not impressed by eloquent prayers or teary promises.
• God wants men whose humility lasts beyond the invitation.

We have seen this with Israel throughout their history.
• They are good at humbling themselves why the pressure is on,
• But once God lets up, they quickly forsake their commitments.
• The book of Judges tells that story repeatedly.

Psalms 78:34-37 “When He killed them, then they sought Him, And returned and searched diligently for God; And they remembered that God was their rock, And the Most High God their Redeemer. But they deceived Him with their mouth And lied to Him with their tongue. For their heart was not steadfast toward Him, Nor were they faithful in His covenant.”

It is false humility and we know so because it did not last.

But I hope you are getting the point.
• The reason God hasn’t answered…
• The reason God hasn’t drawn near…

IS BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T HUMBLED YOURSELF.

I know you took off work for a day.
BUT THAT’S NOT HUMILITY

Humility is not ceremonial
Humility is not temporary

Humility is an inward state of the heart
And one that lasts beyond the moment.

So the first 5 verses have been rough to listen to.
• God is loudly proclaiming His displeasure for false humility.

But God doesn’t leave the people with only a rebuke.
THERE IS AN OFFER COMING.

And that is what the remainder of this chapter is about.

#4 GOD CHALLENGES THE PEOPLE
Isaiah 58:6-14

Now, we read that entire passage
And admittedly we see two sides of the coin.

We get a lot of those “If” – “then” statements.
(If you will do this, then I will that.)

(And we will get to all the promises
That God makes to those who truly humble themselves.)

BUT THE THRUST OF THE POINT
Comes in that opening statement of verse 6.

“Is this not the fast which I choose…”

God is about to define biblical fasting.
God is about to explain biblical humility.

And as we read all of those verses
I’m wondering if you spotted specifically what it is that God wants them to fast from if they are to fast correctly?

Let me read the explanatory verses again.
(6-7) (9b-10a) (13)
Those are the verses were God specifically outlines
What biblically humble fasting looks like.
The other verses are His promises.

Let’s read those again and you see if you can get a feel for what God is actually asking you to fast from.

(6-7) “Is this not the fast which I choose, To loosen the bonds of wickedness, To undo the bands of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke? “Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry And bring the homeless poor into the house; When you see the naked, to cover him; And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?”

(9b-10a) “If you remove the yoke from your midst, The pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, And if you give yourself to the hungry And satisfy the desire of the afflicted,”

(13) “If because of the sabbath, you turn your foot From doing your own pleasure on My holy day, And call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD honorable, And honor it, desisting from your own ways, From seeking your own pleasure And speaking your own word,”

When you read those do you spot anything in common?
Is there anything in particular that God wants His people to give up?

• In verse 6 He wants them to set the oppressed free.
• In verse 7 He wants them to not to hide from the poor and hungry.
• In verses 9-10 He restates that again.
• In verse 13 He wants them to make the Sabbath about Him.

So what are we talking about here as the common denominator
Of what God wants them to fast from?

SELFISHNESS

If you want to know what biblically humble fasting is,
It is to stop being selfish.

If we could state in a positive light we would say,
It is to WALK IN LOVE.

• You know that the opposite of love is not hate.
• The opposite of love is “self” because love sacrifices self for the good of
another.

These people have approached God really proud of the fact
That they humbled themselves and took a day off of work
And God says that’s not the fast I want.

I want you to walk in love!
I want you to stop being so selfish!
If you want to fast from something, fast from that.

So let me first give you a third principle of humility:
HUMILITY IS NOT SYMBOLIC

That is to say, it is not a metaphor.
Humility is measurable.

That should not surprise you, everything God asks of you is measurable.
For example:
• How do you know if a person has faith? (works)
• How do you know if a person has love? (works)
• How do you know if a person has humility? (works)

Here God outlines the types of works that demonstrate true humility.
Here God outlines the types of works that demonstrate love.
Here God outlines the types of works that demonstrate a fasting from selfishness.

And let’s look at this a little more closely.
We’re looking first at verses 6,7,9,10, and 13.

And in those 5 verses I can give you
3 examples of fasting from selfishness.

1) STOP DISCARDING SINNERS (6)

(6) “Is this not the fast which I choose, To loosen the bonds of wickedness, To undo the bands of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke?”

It is certainly possible to read that in a purely humanitarian light
And see this as a mission to abolish slavery or perhaps political injustice.

• That God is asking you to set slaves free
• And go to work on behalf of people who have been unjustly treated by the penal system.

AND CERTAINLY THAT WOULD BE A NOBLE TASK.
I think you can even include this verse as justification for such labors.

But it is really the New Testament
That brings us clarity on what God means here.

Listen to Jesus explain the purpose of His coming:
Luke 4:17-21 “And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written, “THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD.” And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

There Jesus quoted from Isaiah 61 and He mentioned some of the very things stated here.
• He talked about “release to captives”
• He talked about “set free those who are oppressed”

And you and I know what He was talking about.
• He DID NOT go on a national campaign to stop slavery.
• He DID NOT go on a march for prison reform or to renovate the penal system.

What Jesus spoke of was rescuing sinners from their sin.

You see the same from Him later:
Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. “For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

If we want to get even more specific
• We would talk about the people who were bound in a legalistic religious system
• That had pushed them to the brink of exhaustion
• With no peace or salvation to show for it.

We know about the Pharisees:
Matthew 23:4 “They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.”

You had the Pharisees who were busy throwing burdens on people
And you have Jesus who was working to remove them.

I’m always mindful of:
Matthew 9:35-36 “Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.”

These people were not being cared for by the religious elite,
They were being skinned and cast aside.
And Jesus saw that.

Now certainly there was physical relief given by Jesus
In His healing and feeding the multitudes
And we’ll come to that in a moment,

But the primary aspect of His ministry
Was to set sinners free from their sin
And the cruel consequences that came with it.

When the paralytic was lowered through the roof the first thing Jesus did was forgive that man.

When the woman of ill-repute wet His feet with her tears and dried them with here hair Jesus offered her forgiveness.

After He healed the paralytic at the Bethesda pool He told Him:
John 5:14 “Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.”

After rescuing the woman caught in adultery He told her:
John 8:11 “Jesus said, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.”

And later in that chapter Jesus said:
John 8:34-36 “Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. “The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

This is what is meant by release to the captives
And freedom for those under a yoke.

And Isaiah even makes that clear in verse 6 when God says “to loosen the bonds of wickedness,”

The primary focus here is of helping sinners escape their sin.

But let’s be honest, that is not something we enjoy.
• It is really difficult to help a sinner from a distance.
• It is really difficult to help a sinner simply by commenting on his social media post.

Helping sinners escape sin
Requires a much more hands-on approach.

AND YOU KNOW THIS.
• God gave His entire Law from heaven regarding a clear explanation of the ‘
reality of sin and the effects it will have.

• God sent His prophets to expose and warn about the dangers of sin in your
life.

But when God determined to set sinners free from sin, what did He do?
HE TOOK ON FLESH AND CAME TO US.

He entered the world.
He walked the streets.
He touched the lepers.
He ate with sinners.

He didn’t just look down from heaven
At sinners drowning in the muck and the mire,
He jumped down into the muck and the mire in order to pull us out.

And might I remind you that this is the call to the church today?

Galatians 6:1-2 “Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.”

The word “caught” there in Galatians
• Can mean “caught IN any trespass” as in you caught him doing something sinful.
• It can also mean “caught BY any trespass” as in the sin has caught him and he can’t get out.

And Paul says that in order to “fulfill the law of Christ”
You and I must “restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness”

“restore” is a Greek word there is KATARTIZO
And it literally means “to mend nets”

Matthew 4:21 “Going on from there He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and He called them.”

It means you take something that is broken and torn and tattered
And you get down there and do the work of patching it back together.

God does this for us:
1 Peter 5:10 “After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.”

“perfect” there is that same word KATARTIZO
After you have suffered God will start to mend you.

THIS IS THE CALL,
To get down in the mud and help your brother out of his sin.

James 5:19-20 “My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

BUT LET’S BE HONEST.
This is a difficult and messy and often times frustrating ministry.
• Sin traps are not the easiest to get people out of.
• Even once you get out sin traps have a way of luring people back in and you
have to help them out over and over.

Perhaps you’ve seen the video on social media where there is a trench and a sheep is stuck in that trench and the man works and works to pull that sheep out of the trench and literally within two jumps the sheep is right back in it.

That is what this ministry can be like.
• It is frustrating…
• It is exhausting…
• It is heartbreaking…
• It is confusing…

And it would be much easier to just cast people aside.

The Pharisee approach to sinners is much easier than the Jesus approach.
• It is much easier to throw rocks at sinners than it is to offer them mercy.
• It is much easier just to point the finger at sinners than it is to offer them a hand up.

That is what Isaiah says down in verse 9
“If you remove the yoke from your midst, The pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness,”

But that is definitely easier.
• When you invite a Matthew into the camp he comes with a lot of baggage.
• When you enter the house of a Zaccheus you’re going to be confronted with some repulsive things.
• When you have a conversation with a woman at the well there is bound to be some bad decisions you’ll have to wade through.
• When you reach out to a prodigal you might have to deal with the smell of pigs.

And because of that it is easier to just throw sinners aside.
We live in a replacement culture, just replace them.
Toss them away.

Jesus approached sinners.
Jesus ate with sinners.
Jesus rescued sinners.

Perhaps the greatest illustration here is right after Matthew was saved.

Luke 5:29-32 “And Levi gave a big reception for Him in his house; and there was a great crowd of tax collectors and other people who were reclining at the table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners?” And Jesus answered and said to them, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

Do you understand the love of Christ there?
• We know He was not in there affirming their greed or covetousness.
• We know Jesus was not tolerating their sin.
• We know that.

But Jesus wasn’t avoiding it either.
And Jesus wasn’t avoiding them.

These were people who were caught in their sin
And Jesus came to set those types of people free.

THIS IS THE CALL.

If God had wanted you to be totally free from the nuisance of sinners
He would have raptured you the second you believed.

BUT GOD DIDN’T RAPTURE YOU WHEN YOU BELIEVED.

Instead God sanctified you and filled you with His Spirit
So that you could be the presence of Christ to other sinners.

1 Corinthians 5:9-10 “I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.”

This is where God starts His explanation of the type of fast He wants.
• He wants you to get over yourself.
• He wants you to put your selfishness aside.
• He wants you to be willing to get down in the mud and help sinners escape.

This week I saw on social media
A man and a woman who spent probably an hour breaking into a car
Because a dog had been locked in it during the heat of the day

AND PEOPLE JUST RAVED OVER THEM ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

And it should not be that we work harder to get a dog out of a car
Than a sinner out of sin.

WHICH IS WORTH MORE?

Jesus pointed out the same thing.
• You’ll work to get your ox out of a ditch,
• But you won’t work to get a sinner out of his sin.

That is because it is uncomfortable and hard work to do so.
• People with addictions…
• People with offensive sins…
• People with bad reputations…

To get down in the mud with them is costly,
But God is calling His people to fast from their selfishness
And get down there and help them.

STOP DISCARDING SINNERS

(6) “Is this not the fast which I choose, To loosen the bonds of wickedness, To undo the bands of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke?”

That is what Jesus did.

Philippians 2:1-11 “Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Well that sums it up doesn’t it?
• Quit being selfish.
• See others as more important than yourself.
• Be humble.
• Look out for others.

Be like Jesus who left glory and came to this earth
And gave Himself up for sinners.

If you want to humble yourself in a way that God notices,
• Start there.

If you want to fast,
• Then fast from the selfish mentality that overlooks and discards such people.

“Is this not the fast which I choose..?”

We’ll look at the rest tonight…

download here

That’s Not Humility – part 1
Isaiah 58:1-14 (1-5)
September 15, 2024

This morning were reminded of a wonderful truth about our great God.

Isaiah 57:15 “For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite.”

• Even if a man has offended God in every possible way…
• Even if he has continued in that sin stubbornly for some time…
• Even if he did it with absolutely no fear of God…

If that man will humble himself and return to God,
God will forgive him and heal him.

OUR GOD DELIGHTS IN THE HUMBLE.
That was true, is true, and will always be true.

And yet tonight we run into a disgruntled group of people
Who are doubting the truth of that statement.

For in verse 3 we read:
“Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and you do not notice?”

These are a congregation who thinks they are “the contrite and lowly”
Whom God promises to dwell with,
And yet God doesn’t seem to be noticing them at all.

And isn’t this just like humanity?

When we read a promise of God,
And then things don’t work as we expected,
We immediately assume that the problem is with God.

We immediately question the character of God, the love of God,
The faithfulness of God, the compassion of God, etc.
But we never seem to question the genuineness of our humility.

But that is the point of Isaiah 58.
HUMILITY IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK.

God’s answer to this disgruntled crowd
Who fancies themselves to have been so humble before Him is:
“That’s Not Humility”.

And what a valuable lesson this will be for us.

Let’s begin our look at it here tonight.

#1 GOD CALLS THE PROPHET
Isaiah 58:1-2

The opening of the chapter is one of intentional confrontation.

God not only dictates the message,
But God here even dictates the tone.

“Cry loudly, do not hold back; Raise your voice like a trumpet,”

Today it would be “Type that message in all caps!”

This is quite a shock to the system
To people today who think that Jesus was only mild and soft spoken
And that any instance of raising your voice is sinful.

God here tells Isaiah to get loud.
• He tells Isaiah to give it all he’s got.
• He tells Isaiah to ring like a trumpet in their ears.

THE POINT IS that there is nothing subtle about what God wants to say.
He wants everyone to hear it.

And what is this message that God wants so loudly proclaimed?

“And declare to My people their transgression And to the house of Jacob their sins.”

The message that God wants shouted over the loudspeaker
Is a message ABOUT SIN.

And you will notice that the message is spoken to
“My people” “and to the house of Jacob”

He is NOT asking Isaiah to walk through Israel
And scream about the sin of the Moabites or the Philistines.
He wants God to walk through Israel and yell about the sin of His people.

So much for Joel Olsteen’s preference to not talk about sin and to only talk about things that make people feel better and build people up.

God’s subject is SIN.
God’s tone is LOUD.

AND WHAT IS THIS SIN?

The beginning explanation is that of
A total CLUELESSNESS regarding their devotion to God.

THE FIRST THING God would have Isaiah announce is that
They are not as pleasing to God in their behavior as they would assume.

(2) “Yet they seek Me day by day and delight to know My ways, As a nation that has done righteousness And has not forsaken the ordinance of their God.”

The key word in those two lines is “AS”
“They seek Me…AS a nation that has done righteousness.”

God speaks of their pompous arrogance
With which they appear before Him.

They march right in here and approach Me with their requests
Like they haven’t just spent the entire week offending Me.

And then “They ask Me for just decisions, They delight in the nearness of God.”

I hope you are detecting the absolute disdain in God’s voice.

• They spenk all week living in utter rebellion against God, doing the very things which offend Him to the core.

• And then they walk into the temple like they’ve done nothing wrong and ask God for justice and just to be near Him.

IT’S ALL QUITE OFFENSIVE TO GOD!

Remember Isaiah 1?
Isaiah 1:12-14 “When you come to appear before Me, Who requires of you this trampling of My courts? “Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies— I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. “I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them.”

Remember Jeremiah 7?
Jermiah 7:9-11 “Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery and swear falsely, and offer sacrifices to Baal and walk after other gods that you have not known, then come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—that you may do all these abominations? “Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,” declares the LORD.”

Remember Malachi 1?
Malachi 1:9-10 “But now will you not entreat God’s favor, that He may be gracious to us? With such an offering on your part, will He receive any of you kindly?” says the LORD of hosts. “Oh that there were one among you who would shut the gates, that you might not uselessly kindle fire on My altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the LORD of hosts, “nor will I accept an offering from you.”

It’s like the Pharisee in Luke 18 who went to the temple to pray:
Luke 18:11-12 “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’”

• He just knew that God was so pleased with him because of his service.

That is what God is talking about here.
God has announced that He dwells with the contrite and lowly.
God has announced that the humble are welcome to Him.

And these people quickly assumed that God was talking about them
And just pranced right into His presence
As though He would be glad to see them.

In reality He was infuriated that they would have such audacity to come into His temple and ask for justice.

• They are like Aaron’s sons with the gall to offer strange fire on the altar.
• They are like Uzza with the arrogance to reach out and touch God’s ark.
• They are like Saul with the brashness to offer his own sacrifice.

Who do they think they are?

It is clear that GOD IS NOT IMPRESSED
He wants Isaiah to loudly inform them of that reality.

This is a “Jesus clearing the temple” sermon.

Nothing Isaiah says here should be taken lightly.
This sermon is not a suggestion.
• God is intense.
• God is livid.
• God is jumping up and down, pounding the pulpit, and stomping His feet.

“Cry loudly, do not hold back; Raise your voice like a trumpet,”

You get in those people’s face and you give them a piece of My mind.

So just understand that as we get going.
Tone matters and God’s is heated.

God calls the prophet
#2 GOD CORRECTS THE PEOPLE
Isaiah 58:3-4

Why is God so intense?
Why is God so loud?
Because they have asked Him an absolutely offensive question.

He was angry at their sin.
They were totally oblivious to the fact.
They then walked into the temple expecting blessing.

God was actually quite merciful for not crushing them immediately.
He was actually quite restrained by simply remaining silent.

And then they had the audacity to ask this question:
(3) “Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?”

In a simple sense they approached God and asked,
“What’s the matter with You?”

Ever been in this situation in just a human relationship?
• You have offended someone greatly and didn’t even know it.
• They are seething mad and you are totally oblivious.
• Then you approach them, but they are cold toward you
• So you ask, “What’s your problem?”

And all at once they just unload on you!

Now you understand the force of Isaiah 28.
These people have determined that in some capacity God has failed to do that which He ought.

• “We fasted”
• “We humbled ourselves”
• “You do not notice”

That is to say, “You have not responded in the manner in which you are contractually bound to respond and we just thought we should point that out to you.”

It is no wonder Isaiah has been commissioned to answer them…LOUDLY.

But let’s further analyze their question to get to the heart of the problem.

As you can see the behavior in question is that they have “fasted”
Which they see as something God should respond to.

SO LET’S TALK ABOUT FASTING FOR A MOMENT.
Dictionary.com says fasting is defined as: “to abstain from all food.”

It is not something that is ever commanded in Scripture
But it is something that is practiced often.

• Jesus Himself fasted for 40 days while in the wilderness.
• The early church is found fasting as they sought God about who to send on mission.

I do think it is something that seems to get misunderstood
In religious circles today just as it clearly was here.

What becomes apparent to us here in verse 3 is that
These people clearly thought that their fasting
Merited a response from God.

“Why have we fasted and You do not see?”

It’s as though they viewed their fast as something
God was somehow legally bound to respond to.
It was a manipulative gimmick to strong-arm God into action.

And unfortunately much of the fasting I hear about today is exactly that.
• People seem to think that if they do without food that somehow God is now more obligated to respond.
• Sort of like Opie Taylor in the Andy Griffith Show holding his breath to force Andy to respond to his requests.
• But that is certainly not the fasting which Scripture mandates.

I’ve told you before but, “Fasting is any time that the spiritual becomes more important than the physical.”

It would be those times that you are so intent on seeking God;
So intent on finding His will
That it doesn’t make sense to stop and eat a hamburger.

We see this mentality in Jesus when He fasted.
Matthew 4:2 “And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry.”

• I don’t know that we would say that Jesus was not hungry during those 40 days
• But the fact that Matthew says it was after that that He “became hungry”
• Does at least indicate that if He was hungry it wasn’t His priority.

In this light we see fasting then as a form of INTENSE SEEKING.

It is not a manipulative tactic
Whereby God is somehow forced to respond,
But it is a person who is seeking so intently
That perhaps God is motivated to respond.

What do we mean then?

If you go through the motion of the fast without the intent to seek God what are you actually accomplishing? NOTHING.

That is like a person who gets baptized but who has not truly trusted in Jesus; what is the water supposed to have done?

Or like a Jew who is circumcised outwardly, but not inwardly;
What good is that?

YOU GET THE POINT THEN.

These people are upset because they danced the dance,
But didn’t get the response.

One other thing we notice about their fast
Is that they obviously equated fasting
To somehow be the equivalent of humbling themselves.

That is made clear in the way they ask the questions:
“Why have we fasted and You do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?”

So this is a people who in their minds
Wanted to demonstrate to God how humble they were
And the method they determined to use was to fast.

Perhaps they understood that God dwells with the humble.
Perhaps they understood that He is near to the contrite.

So they determined to fast in order to show God
Just how humble and contrite they are.

But again, in their minds, God messed up
Because He did not respond as they expected to their obvious humility.

What could possibly be the problem here?

How about:
Matthew 6:16 “Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.”

Could it be that their fasting was not humility,
But in all actuality only a religious show?

Apparently that is the case here too.

It’s like the old comedian who said,
“I received an award for being humble once, it was a humble button. But they took it away from me because I wore it.”

It’s really hard to demonstrate your humility
Through some sort of outward show,
But that is what they were doing.

Paul spoke of it too, to the Colossians:
Colossians 2:20-23 “If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.”

There the newly believing Colossians
Had been hood-winked by a band of grandiose religious pretenders.

These religiousites were fasting and flogging themselves and boasting about their angelic visions and such and they had totally convinced the Colossians that they were at some elite spiritual level that the Colossians had not reached.

Paul called it out as nonsense.
“These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom…but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.”

That is to say, their religious actions are all show and no substance.

And there we understand the fast here in Isaiah 58 again.

Here we have a group of people
• Who decided not to eat to put their humility on full display
• And then sat back and waited for God to respond favorably.
• When He was not impressed and did not respond they were frustrated.

SO HERE GOD CORRECTS THEM
With regard to this humble demonstration they put on.

(3b-4) “Behold, on the day of your fast you find your desire, And drive hard all your workers. Behold, you fast for contention and strife and to strike with a wicked fist. You do not fast like you do today to make your voice heard on high.”

First we pay special attention to the twice-stated “Behold”
There is the loud cry God spoke of.

God is here responding with an imperative.
God is firing back at their foolish accusation.

And God does so to challenge whether their fast was really a fast at all.

“Behold, on the day of your fast you find your desire…”

A fast is when you gave up the desire of the flesh
In order to satisfy the desire of the Spirit.

Remember in the garden when Jesus asked the disciples to pray but they were sleepy?

Matthew 26:41 “Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Jesus indicated that there are instances in life, (in fact there are many),
In which the Spirit and the flesh do not have the same desire.

A fast would be when we tell the flesh to do without
So that the Spirit may be satisfied.

The Spirit wanted to seek God, the flesh wanted to sleep, which one are you going to follow?

Well here we have a people who actually did without food
And thought they were demonstrating their humble search for God.

And God sees through their hypocritical display as if to say,
• “But did you really fast?”
• “Did you really starve the flesh?”
• “Did you really disappoint the flesh for the Spirit?”

And the answer is – NO!

What does He mean?
“on the day of your fast you find your desire”

Well how did they do that?
How did they do without and get what they wanted at the same time?

THE ANSWER: You “drive hard all your workers”

Now we learn something else about this fast of theirs.

Not only was it somehow linked to humility,
Their fast was also linked to their observance of the Sabbath.

This fast of theirs is coming into view.
• We have a people who desired to fast and demonstrate their humility to God
• The way they did that was by giving up working on the Sabbath

“Look God, we didn’t go to work today,
We fasted from our labors so that we might worship You.”

And they’re mad because God didn’t honor their sacrifice.

But God says, “What sacrifice?”
You skipped work sure enough, but you made your employees pick up the slack!

You “drive hard all your workers.”

You didn’t sacrifice at all, your expected quotas remained the same,
You just took the day off and made your employees do more work.

Am I supposed to be grateful for such a noble sacrifice on your part?

AND THAT’S NOT ALL

God goes on:
“Behold, you fast for contention and strife and to strike with a wicked fist.”

WHAT COULD THAT MEAN?

IT IS TRUE that they took the day off from their normal labors.
• No, they didn’t go to the field or to the vineyard.
• No, they didn’t go to the market or perform their normal labors.

They took a day off from the grind of physical activity.

But what did they use that day off for?

• Did they use it set their minds on God and to worship Him?
• Did they use it to focus on how God rested in His finished work and
someday we will rest in His work as well?
• Did they use to be grateful to God that they could rest their bodies while God
still promised to provide?

NO, NOTHING LIKE THAT!
They used this day off to do some plotting and scheming and planning
As to how they might further get ahead
And maybe even make ground on their competition.

They took the day off, but it wasn’t to focus on God
It was to focus on how to be more successful in the world.

So if we are understanding this humble fast a little better,
THIS IS WHAT IT WAS.

• They took off on Saturday,
• And told their employees to work longer and harder,
• While they went home and plotted how to gain ground on the competition and
become even more successful.

Then they tried to use it for “double credit”
And tell God that they fasted and He should bless them for it.

Like the Pharisee who gave money, but he did it for notoriety…
Like the Pharisee who prayed, but he did it publicly for fame…
Like the Pharisee who fasted, but he did it to be noticed…

And God says, “Was that really for Me?”

We see people do that today.
They make a big end of the year contribution to the church.

But they would do good to ask:
• Why was it given?
• Was it really a sacrifice or was it just to help on your taxes?
• Was it really for God?
• Which benefit were they after?

That is why God would not answer.
That is why God did not honor it.
That is why God did not bless it.

In fact God says,
“You do not fast like you do today to make your voice heard on high.”

That verse might read a little peculiar to you, but I can help you here.
There is no punctuation in the Hebrew to help us read it better.

But if you will put a couple of commas here,
You’ll understand God’s point just fine.

“You do not fast [comma] like you do today [comma] to make your voice heard on high.”

When you read it like that it is clear what God is saying.
If you are wanting My attention and My acknowledgement,
This type of fast won’t do it.

You can’t just go through some outward display with sinful motives
And expect Me to be fooled and honor you for it.

THAT IS NOT HUMILITY!

So now let me give you a principle of humility.
This is sort of a sub-point.

HUMILITY IS NOT CEREMONIAL

These people decided to humble themselves before God
And it was nothing but an outward display of a religious ritual.

• IT WAS NOT A SACRIFICE since their employees picked up the slack.
• IT WAS NOT A DESIRE OF THE HEART since their focus was on business.
• IT WAS NOT SPIRITUAL AT ALL, it was a calculated tactic meant to obtain God’s blessing while actually getting ahead in the world.

If anything we would say here that they were trying to deceive God
Into thinking that their worldliness was actually humility.

If you think you can go through some outward ceremonial ritual
And fool God about the desire of your heart you are gravely mistaken.

Joel 2:12-13 “Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “Return to Me with all your heart, And with fasting, weeping and mourning; And rend your heart and not your garments.” Now return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness And relenting of evil.”

Matthew 23:23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.”

The outside without the inside does not fool God.

If you skip work to attend church,
• But you did it to manipulate God into blessing your work
Are you really worshiping Him for the right reasons?

If you give money to God,
• But you only do it so that God will give you more money
Is that a proper motive?

James 4:2-4 “You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

If the motive is wrong can the action really be right?
TRUE HUMILITY IS NOT CEREMONIAL.

IN THE BOOK OF ZECHARIAH
You had people who were participating in all sorts of community expected fasts.

They actually identified them as:
“The fast of the fourth, the fast of the fifth, the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth months…” (Zech. 8:19)

• They fasted on the 10th month to commemorate the siege of Jerusalem.
• They fasted on the 4th month to commemorate the fall of Jerusalem.
• They fasted on the 5th month to commemorate the burning of the temple.
• They fasted on the 7th month to commemorate the murder of Gedaliah.

They were not commanded fasts, they were commemorative fasts.
Sort of like we might honor December 7th or September 11th
As we remember horrible tragedies in our past.

Well, in Zechariah
• The people were back in the land
• The temple was being rebuilt
• So the people wanted to know if they still had to keep that fast on the 5th month which remembered the burning of the temple?

Zechariah 7:2-3 “Now the town of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regemmelech and their men to seek the favor of the LORD, speaking to the priests who belong to the house of the LORD of hosts, and to the prophets, saying, “Shall I weep in the fifth month and abstain, as I have done these many years?”

THEY WERE CONFUSED
• FIRSTLY it seemed strange to fast and weep over the lost temple when the temple was rebuilt.
• SECONDLY it didn’t seem like God was honoring the fast and so they wondered if they should keep doing it.

Here was the answer God gave through Zechariah:
Zechariah 7:4-6 “Then the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying, “Say to all the people of the land and to the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months these seventy years, was it actually for Me that you fasted? ‘When you eat and drink, do you not eat for yourselves and do you not drink for yourselves?”

What a question!

They asked God if they should keep doing it.
God asked them,
• “Why were you doing it at all?”
• Was it for Me?
• Or was it for you?

And believe me, God already knew the answer.

And that is the same point here.

You can’t manipulate God through outward ritual.
Humility is not ceremonial it is of the heart.

Now it is true that a truly contrite and humble heart
Might very well fast before God.

But to fast without the humility is an empty diet.
It’s like baptism without salvation.
It’s like giving without loving.
It’s like attendance without worship.

And do not expect God to be pleased.

So God calls the prophet
God corrects the people
#3 GOD CONFRONTS THE PEOPLE
Isaiah 57:5

So God corrected them
As to why they were wrong to assume their fast should have worked.

But now God goes on the offensive
To poke holes in their “so-called” humility.

“Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself?”

Wow! There’s a question for you.

You thought you were doing God some big favor
Because you took off of work to come to worship.

And God says, “You thought a day of humility (or a half-day of humility) was all it took to cause Me to be moved?”

Is God so starved for attention?
Is God so lonely
That if a person will just give up a few hours of their busy schedule
That He’ll just fall all over Himself and give them whatever they want?

Come on God I went to church, You owe it to me now to bless my labor!

I remember in high school when I was still unredeemed, but outwardly religious, I would go to church on Superbowl Sunday night because I wanted God to make sure the Cowboys won.

Somehow that doesn’t seem quite like humility or worship,
At least not of God.

Don’t you know that God was so grateful that someone like me
Would take time out of his busy schedule to attend Sunday night worship
That He would just give me whatever I wanted!

Do you see the blasphemy in that?

Or how about this one:
“Is it for bowing one’s head like a reed..?”

That’s just a courteous nod, sort of like you see in Asian cultures when they approach one another and sort of bow in respect.

And here is the person who wanted to show God how humble they were
So they laid down on the floor and then after a few seconds
Got right back up and said, “There, did that do it?”

And once again God must have been so impressed!
“Oh wow! They actually got on the floor!
Oh wow! They actually bowed their head!”

DADS…
When your daughter comes home and wants to go out with that local thug who is the known town playboy and every week can be seen with a different girl.

And she says, “But he loves me daddy, he told me how pretty he thought I was.”

And you say, “Oh wow! He must really love you to say something like that!”

You get the idea.

Or how about this one:
“Is it for…spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed?”

What does that mean?
It means they spread out the ashes and the put on the sackcloth.
(a picture of humility)

(Hence the old humility presentation of “sackcloth and ashes”
Where a person would mourn before God over their sin)

But this guy spread out the ashes, put on the sackcloth,
And then laid down and went to sleep.

Is that what repentance really looks like?
Is that what humility really looks like?

Do you get credit for praying all night
If you fell asleep while praying the night before?

It that real humility?

To which God asks one more question:
“Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the LORD?”

Perhaps your definition of fasting is wrong.

THAT IS NOT HUMILITY.

I know we’re out of time here tonight,
But I’ll go ahead give you the second principle here.

We saw a moment ago that humility is not ceremonial.
Well here’s your second principle:

HUMILITY IS NOT TEMPORARY

If your conviction to respond to God
And walk the aisle and all of that religious stuff
Doesn’t even make it to the parking lot then it wasn’t humility.

True humility lasts.
We’ll talk about this more next time.