Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 30 March 2008
1. Cry throatily; do not hold back!
Raise your voice like a bullhorn and relate
to my people their transgression
and to the house of Jacob their sin,
2. and it will be me they seek day to day,
and they will delight in the knowledge of my ways,
like a nation which has done righteousness and did not forsake the justice of its God.
They will ask me for righteous judgments;
they will delight in the nearness of God!
3. “To what [end] have we fasted and You do not see?
We deprived ourselves and You didn’t notice!”
Look, in your fast day, y’all find pleasure and y’all drive all your laborers.
4. Look, it is for strife and fighting that y’all fast and for striking with a wicked fist.
Do not fast like today to make your voice heard in the height!
5. Is it like this that a fast is, that I should choose it – a day for a man to humble his soul?
Is it to bow his head like a reed and to throw down sackcloth and dust?
Is it for this you call a fast and a day of acceptance for Jehovah?
6. Isn’t it this – a fast I choose:
to open the manacles of evil,
to spring the bindings of the yoke
and to send forth the oppressed [as] freemen,
and tear off every yoke?
7. Isn’t it to split your bread for the hungry,
and bring home the poor vagabonds?
and when you see a naked man you cover him and not hide yourself from your flesh?
8. Then your light will break forth like the dawn
and your restoration will spring up speedily,
and your righteousness will proceed before your face;
the glory of Jehovah will be your sweep.
9. Then you will call and Jehovah will answer;
you will holler and He will say, “Here I am!”
If you will turn away from your midst the yokes,
the thrusting of the finger
and the speaking of iniquity,
10. and you will give out your soul for the hungry and satisfy the soul of the poor,
and your light will rise in the darkness and your gloom will be like the noon,
11. and Jehovah will guide you continually
and will satisfy your soul in scorched places
and fortify your bones,
and you will be like a watered garden
and the spring of water whose waters do not disappoint,
12. And those from you will build the eternal dry places -
you will raise up foundations of generation upon generation.
13. If, on the Sabbath, you make your foot turn away from doing your pleasure during my holy day
and you call the Sabbath “a delight,” Jehovah’s holy thing “honorable”
and you honor it instead of making your ways – instead of finding your pleasure, and He will speak a word,
14. Then you will take delight over Jehovah,
and I will make you ride upon the high places of earth
and I will cause you to eat of the heritage of Jacob your father,
for the mouth of Jehovah has spoken.
INTRODUCTION: Direction of Desire?
Chapter 58 opens with a command to Isaiah to cry aloud, or literally with the throat, and raise his voice like a bullhorn in order to point out the transgressions and sin of his people. Those people are called “the house of Jacob” referring to the Jews. The name “Jacob” means deceiver. Isaiah Was to prophesy into a people that was as unreliable as their forefather Jacob and faithfulness to god, and the heart of all prophecy is to identify now all the people have broken covenant with god and how to be restored to fellowship with god.
This is consistent with our calling today. James 5:19 says “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.” The command was to Isaiah but applies to all of us. If a fitting word it can help a fellow believer overcome sin, by all means speak out! It is important, however that when we confront a brother or sister we can clearly identify the problem as a sin biblically and that we’re not just expressing our irritation over a subjective cultural preference.
The result should that the party ends up drawing near to god. Now I know that many commentators and even some translations make verse two read as though
the seeking of the Lord
and delighting to know His ways
and asking righteous judgments of God
and delighting to draw near to God
are all hypocritical actions, but there are three reasons why I think this is speaking of the intended result of prophecy rather than describing hypocrisy:
What was this sin that these people were committing? We see it described in versus 3-9, but the root of it is self-centeredness. This self-centeredness shows up in hypocrisy in their relationship with God and it shows up in a lack of love for other people.
v.3 starts off with a question “To what end have we fasted and you do not see? We deprived ourselves and you didn’t notice!” This depriving/afflicting/humbling is and alternate phrase used in the Old Testament for fasting.
According to the Old Testament law, once a year the Jews were to fast in preparation for the Day of Atonement. Leviticus 16:29 says, “This shall be a permanent statute for you: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall humble your souls and not to do any work, whether the native or the alien who sojourns among you… It is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you, and you’ll be clean from all your sins before the Lord. It is to be a Sabbath of solemn rest for you that you may humble your souls.”
The purpose of fasting is to draw close to God and to demonstrate that he is more important to us than anything else - even food. But this was apparently not the purpose for which the Jews were fasting. They were trying to use a religious activity to manipulate God to do what they wanted. There are so many ways that we try manipulate God through religious activities:
T Simply going to church can often be an exercise in self centeredness. One person may dress up in a nice dress or coat and tie and sing perfect harmony on the hymns or even lead in prayer or scripture reading, all the while hoping that people will be impressed with them. Meanwhile someone else shows up to church and they’re not dressed up and they’re not so good at singing and they’re thinking, “I bet that guy in the coat and tie is looking down his nose at me.” Both of them are focused upon themselves rather than upon God Whom they’re supposed to be worshiping. Our preoccupation with ourselves and with what other people think of us might be analogous to a husband or wife who’s keeping up an adulterous relationship with another person but still comes home and tells their spouse that they love them. Their actions betray the truth behind their hypocritical words.
T As I was discussing this chapter of Isaiah with my Dad, he told me the story of a woman that he knew who had been convicted because of her lack of being involved in personal evangelism. She wasn’t willing to obey God and share her faith, but then one day per son got very sick and she found herself in the emergency room. In a panic she hit upon plan. She began going around the emergency room witnessing to people. Later she confessed to my Dad that her motivation for witnessing to those people in the emergency room was just to manipulate God into healing her son. There are so many ways that we try to manipulate God. Often it comes as a prayer, “Dear God, if you’ll just help me pass this test or get well or get through this difficult time, then I will do such and such for you.” - as though God needed us to do anything for Him!
T On this fast day (which may have been the Day of Atonement), v.3 says that the reason why God is not paying attention to them when they fast is that they are seeking to delight themselves rather than seeking to delight themselves in God. If you look down to the end of the chapter – v.13 also talks about this problem. God calls His people “on the Sabbath to make your foot turn away from doing your pleasure during my holy day and to honor the Sabbath instead of making your ways and finding your pleasure.” Instead they were to “take delight in the Lord.” Why would God identify the Sabbath and fasting in particular here? I think it is because these religious rituals are some of the easiest to fake. The first commandment is a bit harder to fake, “You shall have no other gods before me." There is nothing to fake about that one: Either you love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength or you don’t. But it is easy enough to show up at church on Sunday and make a show of honoring the Sabbath. Like fasting, the Sabbath is not an outward ritual to be endured, but something you enjoy and do in order to be with God.
T Verse 5. describes some of these outward rituals: calling for a fast, bowing down, throwing ashes or dust around, and lying on top of a mat made of sackcloth/burlap. There’s nothing necessarily righteous about calling for a fast. Queen Jezebel called a fast in order to kill Naboth (1 Kings 21) and steal his vineyard for her husband. It has to be done for the right reason, to draw near to God. (Fasts were called for proper reasons in at least two cases in the Bible: Jehosaphat in 2 Chronicles 20 and Ezra in 8:21ff.)
T In verse thirteen it says to “turn your foot away from the Sabbath from doing your pleasure on my Holy Day.” The German commentator Franz Delitzsch wrote that this means not to “tread upon its holy ground with a foot occupied in everyday work.” The fourth commandment gives us the divine behest that we “must not do any work” on the Sabbath because God “rested on the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Do you keep one day a week unspotted by regular work and unspotted by worldly entertainment in order to keep the day holy? I’m not going to define for you what is or is not work or what is or is not worldly entertainment. That is for you to work out before God. I trust each head of household here to thoughtfully create your own home culture that reflects your unique set of experiences and convictions and gifts and passions, that in your own way, you will honor His day as no one else can.
T This does not mean that we cannot enjoy the Sabbath. Quite the contrary we are to call the Sabbath a delight - an “exquisite delight.” Sunday should not be a drudgery at all. In making this one day of the week special and honorable and delighting in the Lord, it becomes a day that we look forward to all week long. In addition to purposefully doing things that we naturally enjoy on Sunday, I also find that there are some things that my flesh bucks against, but which bring me delight in the end: I must confess that all my life – even as a boy – going to Sunday night church has seldom been something I’ve felt like doing. However, by the end of the evening, I am usually glad I went because I have been refreshed by the spiritual fellowship. If we do what delights God, even though it grates against our sinful nature to do it, in the end we find that God has made us in such a way that we are much happier when we live to delight God than when we live to delight ourselves.
T The end of verse 13 mentions speech on the Sabbath. Literally it says, “and he will speak a word.” Most English translations render it as some kind of selfish or idle or angry speech that we should refrain from on the Sabbath. Hosea 10:4 uses this phrase to describe the faithless and idolatrous Israelites who made worthless covenants, and Abraham’s servant used this phrase to describe carrying out his master’s business. Franz Delitzsch observed that “on the Sabbath, God rested from speaking His creative word, so to a certain extent rest on the Sabbath includes rest from words,” and he quoted a rabbinical text that says, “Let not your talking on the Sabbath be the same as on working days.” This carries on the thought from the end of verse 9 where we are called to turn away from speaking iniquity/wickedness/maliciousness. While I agree that this is true to some extent, I think that the emphasis is more upon letting God do the talking. This verb is in third person “He” not “you” and is followed in the next verse by the same verb “the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” I take this to mean that if we stop pursuing our own pleasures and our own ways and turn our hearts toward God, and delight in Him, He will bless us by speaking to us through His word.
T In his book In Search of Wonder Mr. Howard describes worship as a “counterfeit detector which exposes the competing, conflicting worldviews that are passed off as reality. In worship, the community of faith reminds itself of the alternative world that God has ordered. Worship is also an alignment center. We pull into the station with out wheels heading the wrong way – worshipping our careers, our money, our friends – and there remember that Jesus is the only Way and Truth and Life. And worship is a compass recalibrator. It tells us again which way is “due north” …Our corporate worship helps us make sense of the world by reminding us of sin, salvation, and [the choice] between God and evil. Not only does that awareness turn us toward God, but it also prompts ethical renewal.
Let’s go back to verse 3. “To what end have we fasted and You do not see? We deprived ourselves and You didn’t notice!” “Look, in your fast day, y’all find pleasure and y’all drive all your laborers.” Fasting is an act of self-discipline, a physical action intended to signify humility. Self-discipline without love and religious tradition without love for God and man are not good. If you have truly humbled yourself, you will stop thinking of yourself and bless others.
“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life” – but it doesn’t stop there! “that he lay down his life FOR HIS FRIENDS.” The purpose is not to end in some kind of self-denial such as fasting or even laying down your life. The purpose is to do it FOR FRIENDS/for others. (John 15:13)
The Apostle Paul described all sorts of great religious activities we can do in I Corinthians 13 – speak in tongues, prophecy, give to the poor, even give your body to be burned – but he says without love these things are “nothing.”
“What good is it if you rest on Sunday, but you make other people work?” asks God through Isaiah at the end of v.3. When I was on a mission project in Africa, I came back from church one Sunday and realized that the staff at the hostel we were staying at had not been able to go to church. I brought this up with the director, who is a pretty well-known Christian, and you know what he said? “Of course they have to work on Sunday, otherwise, how would you and I have a hot meal today?” Are there any ways that we hold people back from being able to rest and worship on the Lord’s Day – it may be food preparation or other chores around the house I can do so that others who do those things all week can take a break, or it may involve planning your shopping or gas fill-ups ahead-of-time so you don’t need to go by a store on Sundays. My wife’s favorite restaurant, White Fence Farm, caters to a lot of church-goers with a dinner after church on Sunday, but closes down on Mondays to give its employees a day of rest.
In verse 4, it appears that the people who were fasting and being hypocrites were tolerating sin in their lives. They were getting grumpy from fasting and then showing up at church for worship and running into other people they didn’t really like and boom, a fist-fight erupts. Maybe you don’t get into fistfights, but you will engage in a verbal sparring match. Or maybe it is other sins you’ll tolerate – like a lustful look at someone in church. Ted Haggart pastored a huge church in Colorado Springs and was a standard-bearer for the missions movement that I worked in – everybody looked up to him, but last year a man in his church revealed that Ted was involved in sexual sin with him and had been keeping that sinful relationship open rather than repenting of it. This kind of behavior is self-centered. It is delighting in our own ways rather than in God. It hurts us because it shuts off our relationship with God, and it hurts others because they are oppressed by us.
Good Christians can do a great job of keeping others in bondage. in v.6 it talks about loosing/opening the evil, painful bands around the hands (the manacles). It talks about springing open/untying the bindings from the yoke. The yoke was a crossbar laid across the shoulders of a beast of burden. Some kind of strap or rope or wooden binding ties that yoke around the neck of the animal so that it can’t get away from the cart attached to that yoke. Then Isaiah mentions the bondage of slavery. In the O.T. law, they treated criminals and unemployed people differently than we do today, so if you committed a crime and couldn’t pay the damages, or if you ran out of money and couldn’t get a loan, you would simply become a slave for seven years and learn a job from your master while he paid your expenses. At the end of the seven years, you were supposed to be set free (Ex. 21:2). Hopefully you would have learned how to support yourself better in the process. But…
The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 13 "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I myself made a covenant with your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, saying, 14 'At the end of seven years each of you must set free the fellow Hebrew who has been sold to you and has served you six years; you must set him free from your service.' But your fathers did not listen to me or incline their ears to me. 15 You recently repented and did what was right in my eyes by proclaiming liberty, each to his neighbor, and you made a covenant before me in the house that is called by my name, 16 but then you turned around and profaned my name when each of you took back his male and female slaves, whom you had set free according to their desire, and you brought them into subjection to be your slaves. 17 "Therefore, thus says the LORD: You have not obeyed me by proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother and to his neighbor; behold, I proclaim to you liberty to the sword, to pestilence, and to famine, declares the LORD. I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. (Jeremiah 34:12-17, ESV)
Well, you’ve never owned any slaves. How does this apply to you? Shaming people, avoiding people, disapproving of people, and being condescending are all ways we proclaim bondage to other people and hold them there. That includes the “pointing finger” in v.9.
Additionally there are others whom we did not put under bondage, but who will not become free physically, socially, or spiritually without our intervention:
T Our church sends financial support to Shepherd’s Crossing, an agency in downtown Manhattan which provides financial counseling and assistance in paying for rent, medicine, and utility bills for those who need it. When I met the director of Shepherd’s Crossing last year, she said that although they are authorized to give on the order of $200 of financial assistance per quarter to each applicant, they can only afford to give in the neighborhood of $100 because they have more needs than they have supporters. Our church only gives $25/month. Could we afford to double or quadruple that?
T There may be other classes of oppressed people that you become aware of who will remain in bondage if we do nothing. Don’t wait for the government to “do something.”
T Proverbs 28:27 says, “He that gives to the poor shall not lack; But he that hides his eyes shall have many a curse.”
T Let us take hold of the opportunities that God brings to our attention. Not because God needs our help, not to somehow impress God, not to win the appreciation of those who are helped – they may never express appreciation, but simply because you take delight in God, and that means you will delight to enter into the kinds of things that God does out of selfless love.
I John 3:16 “In this we have known love, because He, on our behalf, laid down His own life, and we ourselves, on behalf of the brothers, are obliged to lay down [our] lives. 17 But whoever might have the worldly means and might be taking a long look at his brother when he is having a need, yet shuts off his affections toward him, how can the love of God remain in him? 18 Dear children, let us neither love in word nor in talk, but rather in work and truth.”
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' 40 And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' (Matthew 25:31-40 - ESV)
“None of these blessings are deserved or earned. Repentance simply unblocks the flow of covenant blessings to sinners.” (K. Wilson)
Do you want these kinds of blessings? They are yours in Christ Jesus who has blessed us with every spiritual blessings in the heavenly places (Eph 1). Simply ask God to forgive you of your self-centeredness when you have approached Him in worship and ask for God’s forgiveness for your self-centeredness in relating to others. Take the time to make it right with people you’ve hurt, and then walk in seeking Him daily, delighting to know His ways (especially as they are laid out in the Bible), asking God for wisdom in every decision you make, and delighting and enjoying the nearness of God!
Nate Wilson’s website – Isaiah Sermon Expositions
Christ the Redeemer Church website - Sermons