Isaiah 58 is very, very challenging. Why doesn’t God hear my prayers? And: Might there be something deeply wrong with my worship? Lots to learn & pray about here…
`Day after day they seek me out [says God];
they seem eager to know my ways…
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.
“Why have we fasted,” they say,
”and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?”’ (vv2-3 NIV).
Why indeed? (I found myself reading this on a day when I was fasting about a big decision… ouch! It reminded me of what my son said when he was young: `I hate it when the Bible’s relevant!`) What might be a problem?
It’s strange to be writing this because John Piper has a section on this chapter in his brilliant book on fasting called A Hunger For God (downloadable free!- link below), and his chapter is way better than anything I can write. But I don’t want to omit ch58 from this series, because it’s so important. Piper’s summary of the issue here is `Beware loving loving God, rather than loving God`! Israel `love to come to worship. They talk the language of the nearness of God… What is wrong with seeking God, and delighting to know his ways, and… delighting in his nearness, and fasting and humbling ourselves before him?… It sounds like the very way we talk about worship at its best! … Does that not make us tremble? Does it not make us want to get so real with God that we could never be startled by the Lord in this way?`
If it doesn’t, we’re in serious trouble. So let’s list the issues God raises as to why Israel’s worship is so fruitless, indeed unacceptable to him. And why their prayers go unanswered: as Isaiah’s next chapter puts it, `Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear. But … your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear…` What sins then?
First: `On the day of your fasting, you do as you please` (v3): Lord, is the big thing about my worship what I enjoy, and what gives me pleasure?
Then a sudden shift: `On the day of your fasting, you… exploit all your workers.` We cannot be involved (even distantly) in exploiting the poor, and at the same time expect our worship to be acceptable to God. Too many things in our world are `good deals` for us because the poor are being cheated. Lord, what might this mean for me? For what I buy? Or where I save or invest?
Then a shift again: `Your fasting ends in quarrelling and strife… You cannot fast as you do today, and expect your voice to be heard on high` (v4). Going home from worship to launch into a family quarrel devalues all we’ve done… `If there is an unresolved pocket of sin in our life and we are fasting, instead, about something else`, says Piper, `God is going to come to us and say, “The fast that I choose is for that sin to be starved to death”`…
Next, v5 repeats the point that making oneself temporarily miserable has no spiritual value in itself; then God presents the things that do matter in the following verses:
V6: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and… set the oppressed free?` (Is it possible for me to revel in the intensity of worship but ignore that whole dimension of the discipleship of Jesus and his Spirit (cf Isa 61:1)? Oh yes; all too easily!)
`Is it not to share your food with the hungry… spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry?` (V7,10) – in this world where, each day, families watch 40,000 of their children die from hunger and easily preventable diseases? Let’s remember too that fasting from luxuries, upgraded gadgets for instance, may accomplish more than fasting from food. (Provided, that is, we ensure that the money saved actually goes away somewhere fruitful!)
And then: `Is it not… to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them?`
And then: `not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?` Motyer takes this as returning to the theme that our worship is invalidated by unpleasantness to our own family. But I suspect Piper is right that the command here is not to turn away from (choose to ignore/do nothing about – oh, it’s so easy) the needs of the hungry or oppressed, who are my fellow-humans; indeed (I’ve just been hearing about believers starving in India, right now) my sisters and brothers… Piper says that in order to `not turn away` we may need to expose ourselves very deliberately, and continually, to the realities of these needs. Sign up, for example, to barnabasfund.org… Lord, please help me understand what each of these means now for me…
Then what? V10: `IF… you spend yourselves` [not just your money, Piper notes, `yourselves`] `on behalf of the hungry, and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then…’
• ` Your healing will quickly appear` (v8 – if you want to be healed, fast yes, but care for the poor!- Piper has a great story about this);
• `Then you will call, and the LORD will answer` (v9 – godly social action and prayer belong in the same spirituality!)
• `Your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday` (v10 – `If you want the clouds to roll back`, eg from your family or small group, says Piper, `start pouring out your life for other people… Pray hard about the gloom and light factor in your life, and see if there’s a prescription here for you`)
• And `then… the LORD **will guide you always**` (v11)
• `He will satisfy your needs, [even] in a sun-scorched land… You will be like a well-watered garden` (v12; Piper: `In the service of others your soul will become less and less dependent on external circumstances`)
• `Then you will find your joy in the LORD; and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land` (v14)!
Finishing this now, I know I need to go back through these, and pray about them, one by one. Some I have not yet got in order at all. You may want to do the same…
(Three PSs. First, Piper’s superb book on fasting (etc!) is downloadable free from www.desiringgod.org/books/a-hunger-for-god . Then: read Zechariah 7 (I suspect Isaiah is the `earlier prophet` referred to in vv7,12?), to grasp this issue more deeply: ‘”When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,” says the LORD Almighty’; why?
And lastly a tough question: I’ve omitted one application here, the importance of keeping Sabbath (58:13, see also 56:4,6); because Colossians 2:16 makes clear that the specific sabbath rules don’t apply to new testament believers. (Just as it does with the `new moon`, honoured in Isaiah 66:23.) Sometimes some of the vital `works of faith` God calls us to, to show our faith in him, vary from one era to another (Adam, don’t eat the fruit; Abraham, take your son and kill him…) Isaiah 56:3-5 exemplifies one such change. Obviously this can only occur where, like the Sabbath laws but unlike, say, adultery, the issue is non-moral. Still, as Jesus said, the sabbath too was made for man; and we neglect safeguarding a day off a week at our considerable peril!)
