How Does God Want Biblical Fasting To Impact Our Lives?

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How Does God Want Biblical

Fasting to Impact Our Lives?

Isaiah 58:1-14

How do you reach a godless culture, moving away from God? With Christlike Compassion. Our study from God’s Word today may be one of the most relevant to the culture we currently live in, than any other topic we could study. As we open our Bibles to Isaiah 1, let me ask each of you a series of five questions, that explains how God describes the moral and spiritual collapse that precedes:

THE DEATH OF A NATION
1. What happens when a nation with a long and deep Biblical Heritage turns its back on God? How about a group of formerly devout followers of the Lord who mostly have abandoned genuine worship, and godly behavior?
2. What does God’s Word prescribe when a nation that formerly honored Him, slips into Eastern mysticism and new age errors, accepts and dabbles in witchcraft and occultic errors, plunges into materialism and greed and allows idolatry and false worship to thrive?
3. What does God’s Word prescribe when a formerly God-honoring nation chooses the pathway of greedy over development of its land, allows and enables a culture of alcohol and drug-fueled addictions, with a bent towards unrestrained spring-breakish partying among its people?
4. What does God’s Word prescribe when a nation that was built upon the moral law of God descends into a place where injustice towards the poor and helpless reigns, and where the land becomes a place of growing lawlessness?
5. What does God’s Word prescribe when a nation that formerly revered God’s Word becomes a place where truth is replaced with lies, and absolutes with relativism, where cultural and educational elitism begins to rule as pride and arrogance are promoted at the highest levels, and national heroes are actually people who are sexually immoral and often addicted to substances that control their minds and actions?

EERIE SIMILARITIES
Doesn’t that sound like the land that watches the Baltimore Riots of 2015, and the current moral condition of the United States of America?
The similarity is eerie, but actually, every one of those five questions is behind what God Almighty Himself is asking to His Chosen People of Promise, the nation of Israel. The primary targets of these questions were the people that God Himself confronts in Isaiah 1-5.
As you sit with Isaiah open before you, may I ask a quick question? Why would we: in the New Testament Era, the Church Age, the time of Grace, turn back to the Old Testament, and start there as we study an important Biblical topic? Is there authority for our lives in the Old Testament?

THE MAGNITUDE OF ISAIAH IN GOD’S WORD
As you reflect on just the book of Isaiah, I think you will be able to answer that question yourself!
Isaiah is the fifth-longest book in the Bible, with 66 chapters, 1,292 verses, and 37,044 words.
Isaiah is quoted from or alluded to 472 times by 23 New Testament books.
ISAIAH contains more references to salvation that any other Old Testament book (The word salvation appears 33 times in the writing of the prophets, and of these, 26 instances occur in Isaiah.)
Isaiah contains the only Old Testament prophecy concerning the virgin birth of Christ (cf. Isaiah. 7:14 with Matthew. 1:21-23).
Isaiah contains the two furthest reaching events in all of history: The most ancient event is the fall of Satan (14:12-17) and the most future event, the creation of the new heavens and earth (66:22).
Isaiah has more to say about the greatness of God (40,43), the horrors of the Tribulation (24), the wonders of the Millennium (35), and the ministry of Christ (53) than any other book in the Bible.
Isaiah also contains one of the Old Testament’s clearest statements on the Trinity (48:16).
Isaiah 53 is probably the most important chapter in the Old Testament, as it is quoted from or alluded to 85 times in the New Testament. Jesus said that Isaiah saw His glory and spoke of Him (John 12:41).

Transcript

If you open your Bible to Isaiah, it’s the fifth-longest book in the Bible. If you don’t know the books of the Bible, you just go to the middle, Psalms, and then go to the right, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and Isaiah. It’s right there. We’ll be in chapter 1 in just a moment. As you’re turning there, what we’re looking at this morning is how do you minister in a culture that is declining, that is morally exhausted and morally bankrupt, where you see what we see.

If you at all are in touch with the news, you know that so far this weekend police officers have been injured in Seattle through riots, in Oakland, which is the poor part of San Francisco. Of course, you know about Baltimore burning down. In fact, I had a friend of mine who lives in the renovated Baltimore and was emailing looking out their condo window saying they’re on our block and they’re breaking the store windows across the street and they’re burning the place. Are we talking about Syria here? Afghanistan? Where? Is this Sudan? No, this is Baltimore. Francis Scott Key wrote The Star Spangled Banner from Fort McHenry and the Harbor. This is foundational to our country. We have riots and burnt police cars and unarmed people shackled with their hands. Who knows what really happened, but the Lord and the people there. But if even part of what they said happened it’s horrifically wrong to injure someone while restrained.

We’re living in a culture parallel to the world of 2,800 years ago. God, this morning, told the children of Israel how they were to minister in a nation that was in the death throes. Israel, declining, going off to destruction. Then, what you’re going to find at the end of our little time this morning, is Jesus lifts the very first element of how they were to minister, which is fasting and compassion, and inaugurates His public ministry saying, in the same heart of Isaiah 58-61, My church is to go out. So basically, if I was to give you a thesis, Christ wants us to have compassion, and to have a heart that is moved by the suffering we see in our declining nation.

Let me go through that with you, because what does a nation look like that’s dying? Israel is dying and this is how God described Israel. What happens when a nation with a long and deep biblical heritage turns its back on God? Israel has a long and deep biblical heritage. God Himself came down and dictated to Moses the law. They had God, His presence, hovering over the center of their capital city, that Shekinah glory in both the Tabernacle and later in the Temple. How about a group of formerly devout followers of the Lord who mostly have abandoned genuine worship and godly behavior? God instructed what He wanted, but they had abandoned it. What does God’s Word prescribe when a nation that formerly honored Him slips into Eastern mysticism?

Now some of you think I’m talking about America. It is eerily similar. Israel abandoned the one true living God for Eastern mysticism. They were all doing their lotus bows, sitting in the courtyard in all their relaxed, stretched positions worshiping toward the sun. Very Eastern, very much permeated by Satan’s lies and New Age errors and accepts and dabbles in witchcraft and occultic errors. Again, Israel was allowing witchcraft and all of its forms: astrology, horoscopic living, and hepta-scopic living. There were all these ways they told the future, diviners. They didn’t want to ask God for His direction. They began asking the devil through seances and tarot cards type of things back then.

The nation plunged into materialism and greed, and they allowed idolatry and false worship to thrive in God’s place.

What happens when God’s Word prescribes, or what does God’s Word prescribe when a formerly God-honoring nation chooses a pathway of greedy overdevelopment of its land? Now here, I’m not talking again about what we see in America, which is so true. No normal person can afford to live in San Francisco today. There are so many billions of dollars awash in the technical industry that we have, that you can’t even buy a house for under three-quarters of a million. How many of us in this room, or either service, could afford a home? A few. But we’re talking about a place where the poor are displaced because it’s so much. Tear those squatty houses down, and let’s put in towers where we can have hundred-million-dollar condos. The poor just are displaced, that was going on in Israel.

This incredible overdevelopment allows and enables a culture of alcohol and drug-fueled addictions, and you’ll see that was going on in Israel, bent toward unrestrained spring break-ish partying among people. The Bible talks about worshiping Baal. Do you know what they did? They took their clothes off, got intoxicated, and they committed horrific sexual immorality. Sounds like spring break on Florida beaches. There are such eerie parallels to our cultures.

What does God prescribe? How are we supposed to reach out to a nation that was built on the moral law of God when it descends into a place where injustice towards the poor and helpless reigns? The whole Old Testament is about how judges were bribed by the rich to take from the poor the little that they had so the rich could get richer. We see eerie parallels today where the land becomes a place of what we’re seeing on television. Riots and police cars burned. In Israel, complete lawlessness.

Finally, what does God’s Word prescribe when a nation formerly revered God’s Word, a place where the king, in his first year as king of Israel, had to hand copy the first five books of the Old Testament by hand? He couldn’t take it to Kinko’s or FedEx Kinko’s or office whatever. He had to hand write it so that he personally thought over and wrote down every word of God’s law. That was the first year of the king’s life. It took 600 to 800 hours to copy the Pentateuch by hand, by lamplight. So, God’s Word was revered from the top down or supposed to be.

What happens when no longer is God’s Word revered, when it becomes a place where truth is replaced with lies? Kind of what we’re seeing at the highest levels of academia. Where absolutes are replaced with relativism. We decide if something’s right or wrong by public policy, by how many people are for it; let’s all just vote on whether it’s right or wrong. Relativism. Where cultural and educational elitism begins to rule. Isn’t that what we see? There’s a privileged class. There were then, the Sadducees, the Pharisees in Christ’s time, the rich, and the knowledgeable in Isaiah’s time. Where pride and arrogance are promoted. They’re almost virtues. Arrogant, swaggering pride is extolled. That’s a sign of a nation, when that is a pandemic, it’s a nation on the death rattle.

Where national heroes are actually people who are sexually immoral and often addicted to substances. That was going on in Israel. That just described much of what’s coming out of Hollywood. Sexually immoral people who are addicted. If you read the news, how many are in and out of the rehabs constantly? They can’t stay married; they don’t get married. They find someone to have their child so that they can parade them. There are our heroes. The lyrics they write, most people that are 40-something and down know them. They’re heroes. Their songs are written on our hearts. Yet God says, why are you making them heroes when they’re sexually immoral addicts? Why am I not your hero? That’s interesting.

The similarities to our culture are eerie. Because everything I said, if you look at Isaiah 1, describes what was going on in the 8th century B.C. But why are we in Isaiah? Why do New Covenant, under grace, New Testament Christians even bother with the Old Testament?

Let’s think about how big Isaiah is. Isaiah is an amazing book in the Bible. It’s the fifth longest, Jeremiah’s longer, Psalms is longer, and Genesis is longer, but it’s quoted or alluded to in 23 of the 27 New Testament books 472 times. Certainly, the New Testament Church needed Isaiah, because they couldn’t even prove their points without quoting from this book or alluding to it. It also has more references to salvation than all the other prophetic books put together. It describes more than any other book in the Bible two of the furthest reaching events from each other. Isaiah describes more about the fall of Satan and what the throne of God was like before sin entered, and what the new heavens and new Earth are like more than anyone else in the Bible. It’s amazing what Isaiah is loaded with and what is vital.

It has also more to say about God’s character, the attributes of God, and His goodness. In fact, Isaiah 53 is the single most important chapter probably in the whole Old Testament because it personifies the substitute in the substitutionary atonement in Jesus Christ. It personifies the Lamb of God. It tells us everything about what He did to redeem us. Isaiah is an important book.

Should New Testament saints know Isaiah? Yes. Why? Jesus said that Isaiah saw His glory. Jesus’ virgin birth was most clearly identified by Isaiah, chapter 7, verse 14. Yes, it’s a vital book about inspiration, about the character of God. But basically, it’s vital for us because it describes when a nation abandons God.

Let me just, you’ve got your Bibles open. Let me go through these and I’m going to show you. Remember, I just said all these things that you thought were describing America? Look at Isaiah 1:3-6. What happens when a nation with a biblical heritage turns its back on God? Look at verse 3. The ox knows its owner, the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel doesn’t know Me. My people don’t even consider Me. Look at the end of verse 4. They’ve turned away backward. What He said is, they’ve not only turned their back to Me, they’re walking away from Me. They aren’t walking away this way, looking at God and saying, sorry, we shouldn’t be doing this. They just turned around and they’re walking away. Verse 6, From the sole of the foot even to the head, there’s no soundness. He says, these people are absolutely not following Me, yet they’re My chosen people.

Look how rapidly it happens. I just read a Bloomberg report, a timeline showing how fast societal change is occurring. It showed how long it took America to finally come to the point they thought slavery was wrong. Scores and scores of years. How long did it take before they realized that women should be given equality in voting? Scores and scores of years. How long did it take for them to decide about prohibition? Decades and decades. How long did it take to, and it just went through that. It says, but look what’s happened in the last ten years. Abortion. The redefinition of marriage. It showed a graph that what used to take scores of years and then decades and years now takes a matter of months before society says we’re not sure what God said. The Bible’s irrelevant anyway. Let’s just do whatever is nice to everybody, except God. We don’t want to offend anybody, but God. So that’s the mantra today.

Look at verse 11. How about people who have abandoned genuine worship? The Lord says, what is the purpose of a multitude of sacrifices to me? America has more churches, more billions of dollars of churches than anywhere else. In fact, more than all the rest of the world combined in square footage of facilities, of churches. I’m not talking about mosques. I’m not talking about Buddhist temples. I’m talking about churches, supposedly, to God. Yet, Jesus Christ has been redefined as not divine, and His Word is no longer infallible or inerrant, or even relevant.

Where the people’s behavior, look what it says. Verse 12, When you come and appear before Me, who has required this from you to trample My courts? He says, you’re coming in just like a herd, and you’re coming in with no reverence, and you don’t even know, as verse 11, your sacrifices aren’t even to Me. In verse 14, he says, My soul hates and they are a trouble to Me, I’m weary of bearing them. He says the worship that’s being offered by people whose hearts are far from Me is sickening to Me. I wonder in our largest display of footprint of churches in America, how much sickens God. Because they have ordained homosexuals that God said cannot be ordained. They have ordained women that God also says cannot be ordained. They’ve elevated man’s philosophies over the Word of God. The worship, He said, sickens me. The real parallel between 2,800 years ago and today.

Look at Isaiah chapter 2 and verse 6. This is what He says in 6. You have forsaken your people, the house of Jacob, because they are filled with eastern ways. See, the New Age mysticism, Isaiah 2:6, had flown in and crept in and diluted Israel. It wasn’t just that. They were also accepting, at the end of verse 6, dabbling in witchcraft. Look what it says. The soothsayers like the Philistines, and they’re pleased with all the children of the foreigners. All these philosophies and ideas and power and how to relax, and let something outside of you control you, which is the whole idea of mysticism, and the Eastern religions. He said that’s taken over instead of the living and true God that’s in your midst.

You turn your back and are going away from Him, and you’re going toward what we have nowadays and is an oxymoron, Christian yoga. Now, that’s like saying, what’s the one that they had? A jumbo shrimp. That’s an oxymoron, too. But did you know yoga, there was an article I just read in the New York Times by a man from India. He’s the one who promotes a return in India to yoga. He said the Americans; think it’s an exercise. He said it’s not an exercise. He said it’s an invitation to the great spirit power out there. By the way, it’s not God. He didn’t define it. It’s an invitation to the Devil. To empty your mind, take all restraint away, and get to a point where you allow something to fill you and energize you. Christian yoga? It’s an invitation and Israel is doing it.

Look at verse 7. They were into materialism and greed. Chapter 2, verse 7. Their land is full of silver and gold. There’s no end to their treasures. Their land is full of horses. There’s no end to their chariots. Look at our chariots. You get a chariot for $80,000, $100,000. If you get it loaded, $120,000. Look at the new high-end cars. Low-end cars are hard to find. Everybody is just worshiping the material and you’ve got to be surrounded by comfort. Their land is full of idols, verse 8. They worship the works of their own hands. That is so back then and now.

Then chapter 5, look at this. The nation chooses greedy overdevelopment. You say, is that in there? Yeah. They join house to house, they add field to field till there’s no place where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land. Do you know what the new way of cleaning up a city is? You renovate it so much like San Francisco that no poor person can fit in that city. They can’t even buy bottled water. That is supposed to be positive. Crime should be down. Yeah, they moved it all to Oakland. They moved it all outside of the rich parts of San St. Louis or outside of the rich parts of the Beltway. Put it out there where the people can’t afford it and where they have no place.

All I’m saying is this is not new. If you want to read an indictment on a lot of what’s going on in America, read the Minor Prophets. God says, when you oppress the people that are helpless, you’re oppressing Me. So how do you minister in a culture of alcohol and drug-fueled addictions? Look at verse 11. Woe to them, they rise early that they may follow intoxicating drinks and continue all night. They play the music in verse 12. They don’t regard the works of the Lord. They’re so amused and distracted. They don’t even consider, how the New American puts it, they don’t even pay attention to God. That’s where we are.

Look what it leads to. Look at verse 12. Verse 18, Woe to those, they draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as with a cart rope. What they’re saying is, that what Isaiah’s illustrating is, that the people were so laden with sins, they didn’t want to let go of any of them, so they put a cart behind them, and they put sins in the cart. They’re pulling them with a rope, going through life, overflowing with sin, and pulling more with them. That’s what I call the spring break-ish partying that we see so much in America.

Look at verse 20. Woe to those who call evil good. This new redefinition, revisionism, relativism, and they call good evil. We can’t allow any even implication of God. We want to erase Him. We don’t want any of that stuff. They put darkness for light and switch light for darkness. They put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. If that’s not enough, here comes the elitism, pride, and arrogance there. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, prudent in their own sight, and on top of all that are these horrible heroes. Woe to men, mighty at drinking wine. Woe to men, valiant for mixing intoxicating drinks, etc. That’s what Isaiah said.

What does God’s Word prescribe? In verse 23, you justify the wicked for a bribe and take away justice from the righteous man. There’s injustice and then look at verse 24 at the end of it. Because you’ve rejected the law of the Lord of Hosts, you’re lawless. Despise the word of the Holy One of Israel, you’re irreverent. Israel got there. We’re fast approaching.

The question is how are we supposed to respond to that? Are we supposed to move to the thumb of Michigan and build a bunker? Get a shotgun? I was reading an article that says the ratcheting of a shotgun with some dangerous people in your presence usually makes them leave. We should all have a shotgun by our door and put the shells through it to let them know we’re ready to blast them. Is it to get more security, to protect more and more stuff for us because they don’t deserve it, they didn’t earn it, they didn’t go to school, they don’t have it? We do, and it’s ours, and we’re going to sit on it and let them starve. Is that how are to be? What kind of attitude does God project in His Word?

Let’s turn to Isaiah 58 because Isaiah 58 is the prescription of what God called His people to do. He called them to have what I call an operating system. What is supposed to be running in the background of our minds, living in a morally declining nation just like Israel lived in 2,800 years ago? What did God call the people who had ears to hear? The believers, the saints of 2,800 years ago, who were living with injustice, who were living with greed and materialism? And people who were heroes in their wicked lifestyles. What did God call them to do?

He said you should have an operating system of compassion. Because that’s what Christ had. Let me show you what I mean by compassion. This compassion is in Isaiah 58, starting in verse 6. In fact, I will go through the whole list of them.

Look at what the Lord says we should have. Compassion for captives in oppression. Those who are totally trapped by their oppression. For the hungry, the homeless, the cold, the suffering. Those discriminated against, and just basically all the needy ones. Verse 6. Is not this the fast I have chosen? What God said is, you’re going through this mindless worship, those of you who hear My voice, what I want you to do is to be involved in a spiritual discipline and exercise that causes these things to be promoted in your life. To lose the bonds of wickedness. To undo the heavy burdens. To let the oppressed go free and break every yoke. He said, I want you to have compassion and look at people, whether they’re rich or poor, and see that they are truly desperately needing.

Now, I’ll just give you one little example. In my little world that I live in, I’m always looking for unsaved people because when you work at the church, we expect most people here to be Christians so I’m surrounded by people that already know the Lord. How do you evangelize? So, I really look everywhere I go and I try and pick out different individuals that I try and share the Gospel with. One of those that I’ve been befriending lately, I noticed that one of the strange things, or unusual, or unique things about them is that they’re constantly putting whatever it is on their hair, and I’m not talking about normal hair color. We’re talking about chartreuse green, glittery gold. I don’t know if you painted that on or what, but it’s just wow! You’ve never seen red, purple, yellow, everything.

Last week I walked up and I said, hey, did you know your hair is the primary color of Heaven? She said, what? I said, of Heaven. She touched her hair. She said, this green? I said, yeah, that’s the primary color. The throne of God is an emerald hue. She said, how did you know that? I said it’s in the Bible. So, the next time I saw her, she had a whole different color and she went, is that one in the Bible? She now, every time I see her, talks to me because she’s made a connection with me. Her hair color and the Bible. All she knows about me is I noticed her hair and I know the Bible. Do you know why she does all that? Because there is an emptiness that she’s trying to fill with acceptance or being noticed or something.

She is a captive to the oppression of sin. She doesn’t know the Lord. Neither do most of the wealthiest people in this world. Neither do many of the poorest of this world. God describes all of them as captives. They’re spiritually handicapped, they’re spiritually blind, and they’re totally bound by the cords of their sin. So, the Lord says, you should have compassion for them.

Look at verse 7. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry? Did you know we’re supposed to have compassion for hungry people? If we know of people who do not have enough food to make it and we don’t respond to that, do you know what the Bible says? How does the love of Christ dwell in your heart? Jesus was moved when He saw people in need. He didn’t move away from them. He moved toward them. That’s what He says. He says, how do you deal with a culture that’s disintegrating? You have compassion for the people that are oppressed, for those that are hungry, for those, in verse 7, that do not have a place. Bring them into your house, the poor that are cast out.

I was raised in Lansing. My parents, who my mom didn’t work, and my dad worked at General Motors hourly. We lived in a less than 900 square foot house with five of us. We had one bathroom, yet they brought home new converts from the mission, the Lansing City Rescue Mission. If someone came forward and got saved, gave their life to Christ and wanted to have a fresh start, my parents would help them with that, getting started, getting back into life. Sometimes it worked gloriously, and sometimes they took anything they could stuff in their pockets from our house. We’re supposed to help. It isn’t if no one hurts me, I’ll do this. If it doesn’t cost me any money, if it doesn’t injure or risk anything, I’ll do it. No. Compassion for the homeless has its price.

For the cold, for those that don’t have enough clothing. For those who are suffering. Verse 7, look how it ends. Don’t hide yourself from your own flesh. Those are people out there. They’re not statistics. They’re not rioters. They’re people that are rioting, but they’re humans that we’re to have compassion for.

Those who are discriminated against. Look at the end of verse 9. If you take away the oak from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and the speaking of wickedness. This is prejudice, sarcasm, and the whole bad talking. Did you know it is not godly to make fun of homosexual people? There’s nothing that God is honored by mocking all of these trans. What, in the newspaper, is happening to Bruce Jenner is not funny, and it’s not to be mocked. It’s horrible. Our Olympic guy, Bruce Jenner, who’s becoming a woman? That’s because of the depth of his hurt on the inside that he is rejecting how God made him and becoming what he can make himself. We’re not supposed to mock that. There should never be a place for racial or moral jokes. God says compassion from Me makes that type of discrimination bad, whether it’s racial or sexual orientation. We never are to point the finger and mock them.

Then finally, compassion for the needy, verse 10. Extend your soul to the hungry. That’s compassion. Satisfy the afflicted soul. That’s relief ministry. What’s the benefit of that? Verse 10, your light will dawn like the darkness. Your darkness will be like noonday. The Lord, verse 11, will guide you continually. Lots of good blessings from Christ like compassion. Why? Because that’s what Jesus did.

Now, to end, before we go to communion, let’s turn to Luke chapter 4. This is a truncated version and of course, you know me, we will certainly revisit all this again because I’m saying it so fast, especially Isaiah 58. But Jesus ministered to the oppressed. When Jesus launched His ministry, He goes to the synagogue in Nazareth in Luke chapter 4. He asked to be the one that speaks and they gave Him the scroll and He opened it up to Isaiah. He went to chapter 61 of Isaiah. By the way, the chapter numbers weren’t in there until the 12th century A.D. He just went to that part of the scroll, it wasn’t dictated by or inspired by God with chapters.

He went to where we see in Isaiah 61 and that’s what it says in verse 18. So, look at Luke 4;18. Jesus said the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He has anointed Me to preach the Gospel. Then look at how He describes those who need the Gospel, the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to recover sight to the blind. To set at liberty those who are oppressed.

Now, if you track with Isaiah 61, that last line really doesn’t sound like that in Isaiah 61, 1 and 2. That’s because Jesus actually pulls the word from Isaiah 58:6. That word oppressed is the very same word that we just read in Isaiah 58:6. See, Jesus knew the Scriptures in and out. He said that I am primarily called to minister to these oppressed. The Gospel He came to proclaim is to explain the way that we are to look at those who live around us. We’re supposed to look at everyone that lives around us, look back at verse 18, as poor, broken-hearted, captives, blind, and oppressed, but we don’t.

We look at the new rich of Silicon Valley and the entertainment industry, they’re the rich and they don’t need anything from us. In fact, we would like to be like them sometimes. We look at the poor as only those who are economically poor or morally poor. Of course, that would cover the Hollywood crowd, but we differentiate. We actually see people by their economic status and educational status. Do you know what fasting is to do? Change that. We’re supposed to see everyone, from Warren Buffet and Mr. Tesla guy Musk, and all of the San Francisco crowd, the Applenistas, and everybody, we’re supposed to see all of them as verse 18, poor. Because it doesn’t matter how much money you have, you’re born with a black hole of emptiness and hopelessness. They try and stuff as much in as they can, but they’re actually spiritually totally bankrupt and poor.

Secondly, broken-hearted. Why do people do the crazy things they do? Because their heart is not operating. They’re trying to become a woman because they had such a bad time being a man. It’s just tragic, the broken heartedness and the blindness. They don’t understand anything about God or His will or His plan or His inviolable eternal precepts. They are blind to all that and they’re oppressed.

In fact, what Isaiah 58 is saying, we need to see people through Christ’s eyes. Stop seeing people as financially rich and poor and start seeing everybody as spiritually poor. Everybody’s spiritually bankrupt. Jesus came to those who were oppressed. The word Jesus uses here speaks not of someone in jail or prison. It’s used for someone who’s imprisoned by life. When you see those rioters, they’re imprisoned by their lives. They’re imprisoned by their sins. So are all of us, all the way up the spectrum. The Gospel is the only thing that liberates. We’re supposed to have a liberated life and go tell them how we got liberated.

It’s people overwhelmed by the pains of life, by abusive relationships, someone overwhelmed by illness or financial woes, or all the other endless struggles of life. They are overwhelmed, they are afflicted, they are joyless, they are hopeless, and they’re empty. Jesus said, I came to those who know it, that will acknowledge their bankruptcy, their hopelessness, their lostness. If they will confess that, He said, I will save them.

Jesus left us to share the Gospel of salvation. He left us to point people to Jesus, who said in Matthew 11:28, come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, those of you that are oppressed by life and you can’t go on. You are pondering ending your life like a higher and higher percentage of young people across this globe are doing because life has no hope, no possibility. They’ll never dig themselves out of the ditch they’re in.

God wants us to focus on why it is we’re here. We’re supposed to be living redemptively. We’re ambassadors of reconciliation. We say your real problem is not finances, your real problem is not that you didn’t have an Ivy League education, your real problem is not that you don’t have a Silicon Valley job, your real problem is that you have a void, and emptiness, and horrific godlessness in your life. That’s why you’re trying to become something you weren’t created to be and that’s why you’re destroying your mind and your body and amusing yourselves to nirvana. But I’d like to introduce you to the One whose arms are open like mine are to you. I will point you and share with you how He changed me because I was equally as desperately evil. That’s another thing we do. We think those homosexuals, they’re really bad. My pride and arrogant and gluttonous life is not as bad as theirs. That’s how we think. We’re addicted to other things.

One of the things the Messiah does is come to the person who’s overwhelmed and oppressed. What is that oppression? It’s sin. It’s sin. It’s the burden of sin. The wearying burden of sin, the weight of the law, and unable to keep God’s righteous standard. God will come, the Messiah will come, and He will take the whole burden of their sin, the whole burden of trying to keep the law, and give you rest. That’s what we tell people. You don’t even realize what’s driving you. You are under the law of sin and death, and it’s crushing you. I was a similar crushed person, and I found the escape route.

It reminds me of the Twin Towers and how the fireman went up and led the people through the smoke and showed them how to get out. People couldn’t see it, and they couldn’t breathe, and they just trusted them. We’re going in the 9/11 Twin Towers of New York City, the World Trade Center, in the smoke and darkness, and we’re holding the hands of these people, if they want, showing them the way out.

He comes to poor prisoners blind and oppressed by sin. He takes them and makes them spiritually rich. Spiritually rich. That’s why this Gospel, even in Kalamazoo, that God wants you to be rich and healthy, is not from God. God never said that. I don’t want you rich and I don’t want you healthy. I’d like you poor and sickly if you’ll serve Me and have your attention on me. God says, I want your attention. Paul said today is a day of salvation. It’s time for the poor prisoners blind and oppressed to come to Messiah and be forgiven and receive salvation. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has come to rescue us forever from our spiritual poverty, our spiritual prison, our spiritual blindness, and our spiritual oppression. He’s come to give us riches and freedom and sight and deliverance. He wants us to do His ministry of telling others how He did that for us so that we can take them with us to Heaven.

So how do you minister to a society in its death throes? You live out the Gospel by letting Jesus Christ set us free, open our eyes, and enrich us with His gracious presence. We spend the rest of our lives undistracted by everything the rest of the world is canoeing toward, materialism and self-centeredness. We go upstream looking at anybody who will listen to us, and we share the Gospel and say, follow me as I’m following Christ. So, this communion can be a wonderful time for us to say, Lord, I would like to do whatever it takes to start cultivating this kind of heart of compassion like you had, Lord Jesus. I want your compassion.

Let’s bow before the Lord in prayer, and as we do, I invite the men to prepare to serve us communion. The elders and deacons are going to go out and we’re going to bow before the Lord and invite His work in our hearts. Father in Heaven, we ask that as Paul told the Colossians in chapter 3:12-14, we would put on, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, compassion. I pray that we would have Your heart for those around us who are well-dressed and poorly dressed, but both of them are spiritually bankrupt. Both of them are equally, horrifically handicapped in blindness. They’re pulling around carts of sin, refined sins for the rich and unrefined sins for the poor, but sin, and all equally need the Gospel of you, O Christ, delivering us from the death row we all sit on taking our place on the cross. Tell them that, hallelujah, what a Savior we have. I pray that this communion will be a time when You stir our hearts toward the compassion You desire. To see this crumbling society around us not to protect our assets from them, but to immerse ourselves in sharing the Gospel with them. In a thousand years, we will forget our assets, and we will rejoice in what investments we made in people for eternity. Thank you for Your presence with us. Thank You for this bread that reminds us that You are the sin-bearer, and our sins are on You. In the name of Jesus, we thank You. Amen.

How do you reach a godless culture, moving away from God? With Christlike Compassion.

Our study from God’s Word today may be one of the most relevant to the culture we currently live in, than any other topic we could study. As we open our Bibles to Isaiah 1, let me ask each of you a series of five questions, that explains how God describes the moral and spiritual collapse that precedes:

The Death of a Nation

1.     What happens when a nation with a long and deep Biblical Heritage turns its back on God? How about a group of formerly devout followers of the Lord who mostly have abandoned genuine worship, and godly behavior?

2.     What does God’s Word prescribe when a nation that formerly honored Him, slips into Eastern mysticism and new age errors, accepts and dabbles in witchcraft and occultic errors, plunges into materialism and greed, and allows idolatry and false worship to thrive?

3.     What does God’s Word prescribe when a formerly God honoring nation chooses the pathway of greedy over development of its land, allows and enables a culture of alcohol and drug fueled addictions, with a bent towards unrestrained spring-breakish partying among its people?

4.     What does God’s Word prescribe when a nation that was built upon the moral law of God descends into a place where injustice towards the poor and helpless reigns, and where the land becomes a place of growing lawlessness?

5.     What does God’s Word prescribe when a nation that formerly revered God’s Word becomes a place where truth is replaced with lies, and absolutes with relativism, where cultural and educational elitism begins to rule as pride and arrogance are promoted at the highest levels, and national heroes are actually people who are sexually immoral and often addicted to substances that control their minds and actions?

Eerie Similarities

Doesn’t that sound like the land that watches the Baltimore Riots of 2015, and the current moral condition of the United States of America?

The similarity is eerie, but actually every one of those five questions are behind what God Almighty Himself is asking to His Chosen People of Promise, the nation of Israel. The primary targets of these questions were the people that God Himself confronts in Isaiah 1-5.

As you sit with Isaiah open before you, may I ask a quick question? Why would we: in the New Testament Era, the Church Age, the time of Grace, turn back to the Old Testament, and start there as we study an important Biblical topic? Is there authorority for our lives in the Old Testament?

The Magnitude of Isaiah in God’s Word

As you reflect on just the book of Isaiah, I think you will be able to answer that question yourself!

Isaiah is the fifth longest book in the Bible, with 66 chapters, 1,292 verses, and 37,044 words.

Isaiah is quoted from or alluded to 472 times by 23 New Testament books.

ISAIAH contains more references to salvation that any other Old Testament book (The word salvation appears 33 times in the writing of the prophets, and of these, 26 instances occur in Isaiah.)

Isaiah contains the only Old Testament prophecy concerning the virgin birth of Christ (cf. Isaiah. 7:14 with Matthew. 1:21-23).

Isaiah contains the two furthest reaching events in all of history:  The most ancient event is the fall of Satan (14:12-17) and the most future event, the creation of the new heavens and earth (66:22).

Isaiah has more to say about the greatness of God (40,43), the horrors of the Tribulation (24), the wonders of the Millennium (35), and the ministry of Christ (53) than any other book in the Bible.

Isaiah also contains one of the Old Testament’s clearest statements on the Trinity (48:16).

Isaiah 53 is probably the most important chapter in the Old Testament, as it is quoted from or alluded to 85 times in the New Testament.  Jesus said that Isaiah saw His glory and spoke of Him (John 12:41).

Should New Testament Saints Know Isaiah?

Certainly we should if we want to be grounded in Biblical doctrine! So what does Isaiah 1 say? Please stand, follow along and hear the Voice of God as we read Isaiah 1:1-4 (NKJV):

1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth!
For the Lord has spoken:
“I have nourished and brought up children,
And they have rebelled against Me;
3 The ox knows its owner
And the donkey its master’s crib;
But Israel does not know,
My people do not consider.”

4 Alas, sinful nation,
A people laden with iniquity,
A brood of evildoers,
Children who are corrupters!
They have forsaken the Lord,
They have provoked to anger
The Holy One of Israel,
They have turned away backward.

Pray

Walk back through the text of God’s Word with me this morning, starting in Isaiah 1. What we see is a description by God Himself of what it looks like:

When a Nation Abandons God

Here are those fives questions in the context of God’s Word:

What happens when a nation with a long and deep Biblical Heritage turns its back on God (Isaiah 1:3-6)? How about a group of formerly devout followers of the Lord who mostly have abandoned genuine worship, and godly behavior (Isaiah 1:11-14)?

What does God’s Word prescribe when a nation that formerly honored Him, slips into Eastern mysticism and new age errors (Isaiah 2:6a), accepts and dabbles in witchcraft and occultic errors (2:6b), plunges into materialism and greed (2:7), and allows idolatry and false worship to thrive (Isaiah 2:8)?

What does God’s Word prescribe when a formerly God honoring nation chooses the pathway of greedy over development of its land (Isaiah 5:8), allows and enables a culture of alcohol and drug fueled addictions (5:11), with a bent towards unrestrained spring-breakish partying among its people (5:12,18)?

What does God’s Word prescribe when a nation that formerly revered God’s Word becomes a place where truth is replaced with lies, and absolutes with relativism (Isaiah 5:20), where cultural and educational elitism begins to rule as pride and arrogance are promoted at the highest levels (5:21), and national heroes are actually people who are sexually immoral and often addicted to substances that control their minds and actions (5:22)?

What does God’s Word prescribe when a nation that was built upon the moral law of God descends into a place where injustice to
wards the poor and helpless reigns (Isaiah 5:23), and where the land becomes a place of growing lawlessness (5:24)?

God Calls His People to Respond Spiritually to a Ungodly Culture

The whole book of Isaiah is about salvation. That is also what the rest of the Bible is about.

God is appealing to the people that He has transformed. He explains to them how they can impact any culture.

No matter when in history we live, God’s Word explains God’s desires for our lives.

No matter how dark, how evil, how morally decadent any people become, God’s plans for His [people are always the same.

God wants us as spiritually healthy and fit as possible. That is the only way to serve Him anywhere and anytime. But a key that ties Israel’s declension back then, and our eroding, post-Christian America together is in this passage.

What is God’s Plan for Believers Operating in an Ungodly Culture?

As we open to Isaiah 58:6 we find a remarkable statement from God Almighty to the people of Israel in the 8th Century before Christ. He says: “Is not this the fast that I have chosen”. God had designed a fast to shape their lives. They had chosen to ignore and replace God’s plan with their own.

But God continues and explains for those who have ears to hear, just how God wants to impact our lives through Biblical fasting. This morning, before we read Isaiah 58, trace with me the way we got here.

We have been examining Biblical Fasting as Hungering for God over the past few weeks.

We have seen Christ’s explanation of fasting, that it would characterize the longing hearts of His church as they lived, awaiting His Reutrn.

We also have seen how Biblical fasting frames the lives and ministry of the early church at Antioch, as well as Paul’s life and ministry.

Then we saw how the early church guarded their longings for Christ’s return as they fasted and denied their flesh the upper hand.

Now, look down at this amazing explanation of what true believers, living in the time of Isaiah’s 8th Century BC words were expected to do for the Lord. This list is amazing, given by God Himself.

Most important is the clear emphasis in the New Testament on the results of fasting, not the methods of fasting.

The Compassion God Wants to See in Our Hearts

Isaiah 58:6-12 gives a Divine Prescription for what Biblical Fasting is to do inside of us by the power of the Spirit of God.

God wants to stir us inside so that we are Christ-like in these areas that He was:

Compassion for the Captives in Oppresion (6)

Compassion for the Hungry (7a)

Compassion for the Homeless (7b)

Compassion for the Naked (7c)

Compassion for those Suffering (7d)

Compassion for the Prejudice (9b)

Compassion for the Needy (10)

 

 

Now go back to the very first one in Isaiah 58:6. What brings this full circle, and right back where we started is this verse. This verse contains the very same word that Jesus used to launch His ministry. Look there with me in Luke 4:18-19.

Jesus Ministered to the Oppressed

Jesus explains the Gospel He came to proclaim. What is amazing is that in His reading from Scripture He ties together the words of Isaiah 61, with Isaiah 58:6, and explains the way we are to look at those we live around. Everyone needs the Gospel no matter what they look like on the outside. Everyone is born oppressed, impoverished, and spiritually blind.

Jesus came as the Messiah to those who were bankrupted and impoverished spiritually and they know it. Jesus came to rescue those who know they are on God’s death row for their sins awaiting eternal execution. Jesus came to heal those who know that they were born handicapped by spiritual blindness. That is the first part of v. 18. But the last line is where we need to look.

Seeing People Through Christ’s Eyes

Jesus came finally to those who are “oppressed”. The word Jesus uses here speaks of not someone in jail or prison. Rather it is used for someone that is imprisoned by life. People overwhelmed by the pains of life. Someone overwhelmed by abusive relationships. Someone overwhelmed by illness, financial woes, and all the other endless struggles of life. They are overwhelmed, afflicted, joyless, hopeless, and empty: and they know it.

Those are the ones that Jesus came to save as Messiah. The poor, bankrupted spiritually sinners who know their lives, their choices, their sins have made them worthy of eternal imprisonment in God’s maximum security pace of punishment facing the vengeance of a Holy God.

Jesus left us to share the Gospel of salvation. We point people to Jesus who said in Matthew 11:28, “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

God Wants Us Focused on Why We’re Here

Today we represent Jesus. We go to people and see them as He does.

One of the things a Messiah does is come to the person who is overwhelmed and oppressed. And what is that oppression? It is sin. It is sin. It is the burden of sin, the wearying burden of sin, the weight of the law being unable to keep the law.  Jesus will come, the Messiah will come, take the whole burden of sin, the whole burden of trying to keep the law off and give you rest…rest.

To those who are spiritually bankrupt, to those who are in the dungeon of their own sinfulness awaiting final execution and hell, to those who are blind to truth and reality, to those who are oppressed by the heavy, heavy burden of sin and all the issues of life that come with it, the Messiah comes.

He comes to poor prisoners blind and oppressed by sin and He comes to make them spiritually rich, to bring the forgiveness that sets them free from death and hell, to give them sight and to deliver them from all the issues of life that oppress them and give them rest.

Paul said it, “Today is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor. 6:2) It’s the time for the poor prisoners, blind and oppressed, to come to the Messiah and be forgiven and receive God’s salvation.

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has come to rescue us forever from our spiritual poverty, our spiritual prison, our spiritual blindness, our spiritual oppression.

He has come to give us riches, freedom, sight and deliverance. That’s what He said to the people that day, and that’s what He says to the people today.

He’s still the preacher, for it is His sermon that we have heard this morning.

Maybe in this congregation some poor who cry out in recognition of their destitution, some prisoners who cry out in recognition of their doom, some blind who cry out in recognition of their darkness, and some oppressed who cry out in recognition of the seriousness of their distress as they bear the burden of sin.

God will hear and will save because that’s why He sent Jesus Christ.

Do that mighty work, we pray, for Your glory. Amen.[1]

[1] http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/42-54/Jesus-Return-to-Nazareth-Preaching-in-the-Synagogue-1-of-

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