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“Why have we fasted,” they say,
    “and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
    and you have not noticed?”

‘Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
    and exploit all your workers.
⁴ Your fasting ends in quarrelling and strife,
    and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
    and expect your voice to be heard on high.
⁵ Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
    only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
    and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
    a day acceptable to the Lord?

In 1977, Arthur Wallis’s outstanding book, ‘God’s chosen fast’, was published. There weren’t many Christian books around on the subject up to that point. However, since then we have witnessed a plethora. In the church at large there has grown to be a renewed interest in fasting, and a new commitment to practice this ancient spiritual discipline.

But, as today’s reading shows, if our fasting is just ritualistic without having repentance at its heart, it is of no value. We cannot expect God to hear us when in our day to day lives we mistreat people. Prayer is more than a posture. It is about our hearts. It involves our lives.

Jesus clearly saw fasting as a key element of Christian discipleship, but He warned that there is a wrong way to engage in it:

” “When you fast, do not look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matt.6:16-18).

We can’t expect to be heard if we are mistreating our ‘neighbours’: people made in the image of God.

Also, we can’t expect to be heard if we’re showing off: parading our spirituality.

By all means let us fast, bearing in mind the great encouragement to do so (Mt.6:17,18). But also, let’s remember the various Biblical warnings about false fasting.

‘When you strive to be a spiritual person, you fight the constant battle of ”ritual versus reality.” it is much easier to go through external activities of religion than it is to love God from your heart and let that love touch the lives of others.’ Warren Wiersbe: ‘With the Word’, p.488.

‘Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
    Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
    and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
² For day after day they seek me out;
    they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
    and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
    and seem eager for God to come near them.

Here was the problem. This is why there was the need for straight talking. Here were a people who looked good on the outside. They seemed to be spiritually hungry. They looked like godly people. They were very good at the externals and rituals of religious profession. But God knew the truth about them.

‘The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’ (1 Samuel 16:7a).

It’s been said that ‘character is what you are in the dark’ – where the lights are off and no one else can see.

PRAYER: Lord make my heart to be one that pleases you. Remove all hypocrisy from me. Cause me to be real.

‘Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
    Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
    and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.

Genuine prophets are not popular. At least, not all the time. They tell it like it is (from God). In our sinfulness, we don’t necessarily want to hear.

As I read chapter 58 this morning, I couldn’t get further than the first verse. It hit me in this way: there are times you just have to give it straight. You won’t help people by being any other way. They need to know their disease before they will be ready to consider any remedy.

Of course we need to be sensitive, and led by the Holy Spirit in all our relationships and speech. I don’t believe in being ‘John Bull’ blunt and rude for the sake of it. But there does come a time when we must not ”hold back”.

It is, nevertheless, possible to be clear while also being gentle and kind.

PRAYER: Lord may we be led by you in all things. Give us the courage to say what needs to be said, and may we know the right time to say it and speak in the right manner. May our speech always be full of grace, seasoned with salt

I have seen their ways, but I will heal them;
    I will guide them and restore comfort to Israel’s mourners,
¹⁹     creating praise on their lips.
Peace, peace, to those far and near,’
    says the Lord. ‘And I will heal them.’
²⁰ But the wicked are like the tossing sea,
    which cannot rest,
    whose waves cast up mire and mud.
²¹ ‘There is no peace,’ says my God, ‘for the wicked.’

In the New Testament, Paul takes up these words in which God is speaking, and He applies them to Jesus:

” He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” (Eph.2:17,18).

Jesus ”came” in and through His church to those ”far away” (the Gentiles), and to those who were ”near” (the Jews) and He ”preached peace” to them: the possibility of ”access to the Father”, and mended relationships with each other.

If you look back in that chapter to verse 14, you see that Jesus ”himself” is the peace He proclaims. Only in Him can sinful people know reconciliation with God, and divided people be drawn into harmonious relationships with one another.

But what will you do with Jesus? He comes to you and preaches peace, but you (we) can reject His preaching.

¹⁶ I will not accuse them for ever,
    nor will I always be angry,
for then they would faint away because of me –
    the very people I have created.
¹⁷ I was enraged by their sinful greed;
    I punished them, and hid my face in anger,
    yet they kept on in their wilful ways.
¹⁸ I have seen their ways, but I will heal them;
    I will guide them and restore comfort to Israel’s mourners,
¹⁹     creating praise on their lips.
Peace, peace, to those far and near,’
    says the Lord. ‘And I will heal them.’
²⁰ But the wicked are like the tossing sea,
    which cannot rest,
    whose waves cast up mire and mud.
²¹ ‘There is no peace,’ says my God, ‘for the wicked.’

As the passage flows on, we can see that the ”contrite” experience ‘healing’. In other words, they come to know peace, forgiveness, a restored relationship with God. They are reconciled to Him. They have a near relationship with Him. Their standing before God changes (16-19). But this will not be the case for those who persist in unrepentance (20). There will be ”no peace” for them.

I believe I had heard the expression, ‘no peace for the wicked’ quite often, as a child, before coming to realise that it is in the Bible! But it is; and it is important to see its context. Anyone who truly repents can know peace with God, and the peace of God. But this is not so for those who persist in their godless ways.

There are stark alternatives here.

‘One can choose either the ”peace” of verse 19 or the ”no peace” of verse 21; the choice is up to us.’ Tom Hale: ‘Applied Old Testament Commentary’, p.1062.

And it will be said:

‘Build up, build up, prepare the road!
    Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people.’
¹⁵ For this is what the high and exalted One says –
    he who lives for ever, whose name is holy:
‘I live in a high and holy place,
    but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
    and to revive the heart of the contrite.
¹⁶ I will not accuse them for ever,
    nor will I always be angry,
for then they would faint away because of me –
    the very people I have created.

In theological terms we affirm that God is both ‘transcendent’ and ‘immanent’. These are complementary truths, and need to be held together, although in tension. In His ‘transcendence’ the Lord is far above us; far, far removed from us. In His ‘immanence’ He is close to us. He is nearer than our nearest and dearest. He is everywhere present at the same time.

In these verses it is those who are ”contrite and lowly in spirit” who are addressed. They are the ones who will experience a road being prepared for them, and obstacles being removed out of the way (14); they are the very people who will experience God’s mercy (16).

Jesus taught:

”Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

All these descriptions are true of the ”contrite”.

Tom Hale says: ‘The contrite are those who are repentant, who mourn for their sins (Matthew 5:4); they are the mourners mentioned in verse 19,” ‘Applied Old Testament Commentary’, p.1062.

PRAYER: Lord God, please work in my heart so that it is soft, and malleable and shaped by you. May my heart be pleasing to you. I long to know your nearness. Help me Lord, I pray.

‘Whom have you so dreaded and feared
    that you have not been true to me,
and have neither remembered me
    nor taken this to heart?
Is it not because I have long been silent
    that you do not fear me?
¹² I will expose your righteousness and your works,
    and they will not benefit you.
¹³ When you cry out for help,
    let your collection of idols save you!
The wind will carry all of them off,
    a mere breath will blow them away.
But whoever takes refuge in me
    will inherit the land
    and possess my holy mountain.’

It has been said that verses 3-13 have a contemporary feel. They are, we might say, ‘a distant mirror’, reflecting our own times. What is particularly disturbing, and possibly highly relevant, is the fact that the people had no fear of God because He had withheld His judgment. They feared men, but not the Lord.

If divine judgment is delayed, we must not be deluded into thinking that it will never happen.

”The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9).

God, in His mercy, regularly gives people time to get right with Him. But we must not allow God’s ‘longsuffering’ to cause us to think all will be well. When the time of judgment comes, those who trust in their idols will find no help there (13a). Only those whose faith is in God will have a secure place in His Kingdom (13b).

These remain the clear alternatives and we must choose: dead gods or the living God.

“But you, children of a witch, come here!
    Sons of a slut, daughters of a whore.
What business do you have taunting,
    sneering, and sticking out your tongue?
Do you have any idea what wretches you’ve turned out to be?
    A race of rebels, a generation of liars.
You satisfy your lust any place you find some shade
    and fornicate at whim.
You kill your children at any convenient spot—
    any cave or crevasse will do.
You take stones from the creek
    and set up your sex-and-religion shrines.
You’ve chosen your fate.
    Your worship will be your doom.
You’ve climbed a high mountain
    to practice your foul sex-and-death religion.
Behind closed doors
    you assemble your precious gods and goddesses.
Deserting me, you’ve gone all out, stripped down
    and made your bed your place of worship.
You’ve climbed into bed with the ‘sacred’ whores
    and loved every minute of it,
    adoring every curve of their naked bodies.
You anoint your king-god with ointments
    and lavish perfumes on yourselves.
You send scouts to search out the latest in religion,
    send them all the way to hell and back.
You wear yourselves out trying the new and the different,
    and never see what a waste it all is.
You’ve always found strength for the latest fad,
    never got tired of trying new religions. (The Message).

This theme recurs in the prophetic writings: Israel the serial spiritual adulterer. Her ‘lovers’ are other gods. She goes ‘whoring’ after them, but she ‘can’t get no satisfaction.’

The sexual imagery is doubly powerful because much of pagan religion involved illicit sexual activity in the rites and rituals of worship.

Saint Augustine hit the nail in the head when he said, ‘Thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts find no rest until they rest in thee.’

No man- made god will ever fill the God-shaped hole that lies within each of us.

But the human heart remains an ‘idol-making factory’.

The righteous perish,
    and no one takes it to heart;
the devout are taken away,
    and no one understands
that the righteous are taken away
    to be spared from evil.
² Those who walk uprightly
    enter into peace;
    they find rest as they lie in death.

When those we believe to be godly die ‘prematurely’, some of us may wonder ‘why?’

‘Why has God plucked these lovely flowers now, while they are still in their early bloom?’

Warren Wiersbe says that this passage points to the premature deaths of certain of Israel’s good leaders, and that, by being taken early, they were spared from seeing the terrible things that were to befall the nation.

This, however, still leaves us with the mystery of why other devout people are left on earth to witness harrowing things.

It has to be said that our calling is to trust in the Sovereign Lord. He has His own good and wise purposes for the lives of His children. John has a different destiny to Peter, and what God will do with John is none of Peter’s business. we must each of us keep our eyes fixed on Him.