Isaiah chapter 58, and we'll
read from verse one. Cry aloud, spare not, lift up
thy voice like a trumpet and show my people their transgression
and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily,
and delight to know my ways. As a nation that did righteousness,
and forsook not the ordinance of their God, they ask of me
the ordinances of justice. They take delight in approaching
to God. Wherefore have we fasted, say
they, and thou seest not? Wherefore have we afflicted our
soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast
ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. Behold, ye fast
for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness.
Ye shall not fast, as ye do this day, to make your voice to be
heard on high. Is it such a fast that I have
chosen, a day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his
head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?
Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bands of
wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed
go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread
to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast
out to thy house, when thou seest the naked, and thou cover him,
that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine
own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth
as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily,
and thy righteousness shall go before thee, the glory of the
Lord shall be thy weary word. Then shalt thou call, and the
Lord shall answer, and thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I
am, if thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting
forth of the finger, and speaking vanity. And if thou draw out
thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall
thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness shall be as
the noonday. And the Lord shall guide thee
continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat
thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like
a spring of water whose waters fail not. and they that shall
be of thee shall build the old waste places. Thou shalt raise
up the foundations of many generations, and thou shalt be called the
repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in. If thou
turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my
holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord,
honourable, and shalt honour him not doing thine own ways,
nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words,
then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause
thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with
the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken it. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. I find it interesting to try
and imagine how God's people lived in times past, living their
lives throughout the ages in different places, in different
countries, exercising faith, I dare say, wrestling with lots
of things that they didn't understand, just like we do, facing temptation,
just like we do, battling the flesh as we must, and often feeling
doubts and fears as they clung to Christ. With perhaps limited light, that
they possessed in their day. In times past, some of the Lord's
people were too poor to own a Bible. And that's not very long ago.
Many of them probably couldn't read anyway. Some were so isolated
as to have no one else with whom to fellowship. Some were displaced
by war. Some were doubtless abused as
prisoners, became slaves in chains, were exploited by the rich and
powerful. And we take so much for granted
today insofar as the availability of the Gospel is concerned and
our access to the Scriptures. I've just said that there would
be people who didn't own a Bible. I've got so many Bibles in my
house. We have access to the scriptures,
we have freedom of worship that many generations could only have
dreamt about. We are embarrassingly blessed,
but it has not always been so. How did Joseph cope, I wonder? a slave and a prisoner in Egypt,
all on his own, just a boy, just a youngster really in so many
ways. Elijah the prophet, an older
man, a man who had experience of the Lord, he honestly believed
that he was the only believer in the whole world. And all he
wanted to do in his depressed state was lie down and die. I wonder with whom did that nameless
servant girl in Naaman's household share fellowship? How did Daniel
worship in Babylon in those early years of exile? I wonder if he
had access to Isaiah's prophecy or the writings of Moses or the
Psalms of David. How did the Ethiopian get on
when he got back home to Ethiopia? And these are a few, just a few
individuals from the Bible who were in dire straits, who were
lonely, who were isolated, who were young without any sort of
support structure, any sort of help as far as their spiritual
growth and development was concerned. But what about others from the
time even of the apostles? The Roman soldiers that heard
Paul preaching and were converted only to be posted to the edge
of the empire, a place like, I don't know, Germany or Britain. They carried some memory of the
Lord with them. but they didn't find a church
to go to when they got there? What about those believers in
monasteries that were attacked by the Vikings? What about the
Waldensians who were hounded by the soldiers of the Roman
Catholic Church, the Pope's soldiers in the Swiss Alps, and who froze
to death up on the mountains? Or the thousand other circumstances
that we don't know anything about of believers, our brothers and
sisters who were in these troubled times. How did they worship? How did they find fellowship?
How did they learn about the Lord when they didn't have churches
or pastors or the vast resources of scriptures and books and technology
that we have at our fingertips? And I ask this question because
I'd like us to examine our own state and see if there's a question
to be asked and answered from what Isaiah writes here in this
chapter. I'm sure that the Lord constantly
watches over his people, that he watched over this people to
whom Isaiah was writing, his elect, when they went into captivity
in Babylon, because this was written pre the exile. to help,
to prepare the remnant as they went into exile and anticipate
their return again in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah when they
would, and we'll see this towards the end, they would literally
be involved in rebuilding the city of Jerusalem and the temple. But the Lord would look after
them, no doubt. the little maid in Syria, every
illiterate, isolated servant girl or stable boy, whom the
Lord was pleased to save and call his own, would be cared
for and protected by him. Just as Hannah could say, the
Lord will keep the feet of his people, so the Lord preserved
and protected all of those. It's what God does. The promises
that we cherish today belong to all God's people of every
age. And maybe they never had a Bible.
Maybe they didn't have a systematic theology or a copy of Gadsby's
hymns or an online concordance to refer to when they wanted
to find a Bible verse. And yet these people were pearls
of great price. These were the Lord's jewels
whom he treasured, his little flock. And they worshipped him
in spirit and in truth with the light that they had and the knowledge
that he had given them. And down through the years, God
preserved these souls. And we will meet them in heaven. But this chapter tells us that
Isaiah is to confront God's people of his day with their sins. And some people think that these
people were false professors, but I doubt that and that's not
the way I'm going to interpret this chapter. I suspect rather
that these were true believers who had become complacent in
the riches of their religious privileges. Dare I say, a little
bit like us today. These people in Isaiah's day
lived in Jerusalem. They had the temple, they had
Solomon's temple. They had the sacrifices. They
had the feasts. They had the scriptures. They
had a godly king in Hezekiah. And they had a prophet, Isaiah,
preaching to them of the things of God. They had doctrine, they
had history, they had tradition, they had structured religion
and the luxury of making sure that everything in their worship
was just so. They enjoyed going to the temple,
they enjoyed hearing the prophet, they enjoyed practising their
feasts and their fasting. and they even argued amongst
themselves about who was doing it right and who was doing it
wrong. And as they did their daily readings
and they studied their doctrine and they lived uprightly, they
never missed an ordinance. They were careful, they were
precise in worshipping just right. It delighted them to worship
God. It delighted them. That's what
the Lord says. These people were delighted to
worship the Lord. And yet the Lord said something
is wrong. Something is amiss. Something
is missing. These people had become cold
in their worship. They had become detached from
that intimate relationship with the Lord. The worship itself,
the process, had become the object. They had the right words. They
had the right actions. They went through the right forms,
even the right motives. But somewhere along the way,
they'd lost sight of the Lord. Like the church at Ephesus in
Revelation chapter 2, they had lost their first love and become
so taken up with the process that they had missed the person
of the Lord. And Isaiah presents the sin of
this people in the terms of fasting. He's describing it as a fasting.
He's saying you're fasting, this is what you're doing. And he
uses the same, or the Lord uses the same argument actually in
Matthew chapter six. So that the whole of the worship
of the people here is symbolised or signified by the process of
fasting. They were getting it right. They
were doing everything meticulously as they felt that they needed
to. The fast that these people offered was precise. It was sound.
It was scripturally orthodox. And yet their worship had lost
something. It had lost the warmth. It had
lost the spirit. It had lost the energy of the
relationship with Christ. It was missing. Like Sardis,
they had a name that they lived, but they were dead, or all but
dead. So let us be clear. The Lord
no more values thoughtless Christian worship, be it ever so exact,
than he accepted the ritualized performance of the Old Testament
sacrifice. and all it symbolised that was
offered if it was offered without care, if it was offered without
thought, if it was offered without understanding. We have an obligation
in coming into the presence of the Lord to bring our offerings
to the Lord, to bring our worship to the Lord with care and thought
and understanding. The Lord seeks heart worship. He seeks such as will worship
him in spirit and in truth. In spirit and in truth. He seeks more than mere talk
of loving God and loving our neighbour. Faith reveals an outward evidence
of an inward transformation that God has worked in the lives of
his people. If we are the Lord's, then there
will be evidence in the way that we live and this is what Isaiah
was instructed and commanded to confront the people of his
day with. What is then true worship for
the Lord's people? Well, we're told in verses six
to nine. Here we're being told what is
true worship. It isn't something, to start
off with a negative, it isn't something that is confined to
our religious activities or measured by some kind of denominational
slide rule. True worship is worked out in
our daily lives. It is how the little servant
maid worshipped in her heart when going about her tasks in
the presence of her mistress, Naaman's wife. It's the worship
of the kitchen, it's the worship of the workplace, it's the worship
that we We live out daily in the communities in which we live,
in any day and in any age, in any place. So that all of those
people down through the ages who didn't have, perhaps, access
to the scriptures, access to the resources, didn't have the
structured religion or the groups with which to fellowship or the
direction that we benefit from and yet still they worship the
Lord in their hearts and still the Lord drew forth from them
worship because they serve the Lord in their daily lives. It's how we treat people. It's
having a warm heart for those in need, for the poor, for Christ's
sake. True worship is caring to feed
those who are hungry. It is having compassion on the
lonely. It is a lively relationship with
the Lord that is manifested in the way that we live amongst
those that the Lord has placed us amongst. It is founded on
a sense of gratitude to God for all his provision to us. It's charity towards the oppressed
because we have known the love of God towards us. It is endeavouring
to take God's mercy and be merciful in our lives. It's caring for
the trapped. because we have found liberty
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And if we can't find a need that
we can assist, then perhaps it's because we're not looking hard
enough. These people to whom Isaiah wrote, they had decided
what was suitable worship. They decided what suitable worship
was. But the Lord's reply to them
was, is this the fast that I have chosen? This is the worship I
desire. This is the response that I would
have. It is not that we are trying
to belittle the assembling of ourselves together or to deny
the privileges that we have been given in the possession of the
Word of God and in the hearing of sound ministry and in the
praying and the fellowship that we have together. These are all
important things. But it is to say that the essence
of all our worship must be a vital personal relationship with Christ. and a burden to show our gratitude
for the grace that we have received in the manner that he desires. Let us not become preoccupied
with the structures and the systems. Maybe, maybe this prophecy, this
sermon from Isaiah was intended to give his readers, his hearers a jolt
to give them a bit of a shaking out of their complacency and
prepare them for the hardships that lay ahead. Isaiah knew that
Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. He knew that this people, this
generation and the generation coming up behind them and the
generation behind them, he knew that they would suffer greatly
at the hands of their heathen enemies, idolatrous people. That
Judah was going to fall, that Jerusalem would be destroyed,
its walls would be torn down, its temple would be destroyed,
and the people would be taken, carried away into exile. So perhaps Isaiah was speaking
to these well-endowed, these blessed people who had the temple,
who had the sacrifices, who had the holy king, or a God-honouring
king, and who had the prophet amongst them, and telling them,
you need to be ready because all of these things are going
to be taken from you. And what will you have left after
that? There were hardships ahead when
Solomon's temple would be destroyed and the sacrifices would be stopped
and the great deportation of the Jews as they would be forced
from their homes and caused to reassess their personal relationship
with the Lord. and that had to be founded in
a much more personal, heartfelt and practical way. Then, when
the sacrifices were gone and the temple was destroyed and
they were grieving at the things that they had lost and they were
isolated and alone and they didn't have a preacher and they didn't
have a prophet, then they would learn that true worship was not
in the exactness of the form, but in the earnestness of the
offering made and the service performed. A starving man gives
thanks for daily bread in a much more mindfully and sincerely
way than a man who has much and can eat at will. It may be that
the true church, God's little flock here in our own age will
yet be required to face hardship and endured persecution like
that experienced in past generations. So may the Lord prepare us as he graciously prepared these
Old Testament saints by his prophet and equip us for the days that
are yet to come. And is this not actually our
own experience, brothers and sisters? Do we not get complacent
when life is easy? And do not our prayers reflect
that? It's when we get sick, or when
a loved one gets ill, or when we lose our job, or when some
trial arises that our prayers get earnest and our pleas before
God become serious, even forceful. And our dependence upon the Lord
gets more intense and our sensitivity to the needs of others increases
when we have tasted the bitterness that they are going through.
None of us like the feeling of trials but they definitely drive
us closer to the Lord and that we have to acknowledge is a good
thing. Why does it take an emergency
to make our prayers real? Our Saviour spoke a lot about
loving our neighbour and caring for the weak and the helpless
and the needy and such activity does not merit God's blessing
but it does reveal the presence of Christ in a believer's life.
Christ is the light in our soul that breaks forth as the morning. Christ is the source and the
evidence of our spiritual health. He is the inward grace in the
heart of a believer. that cannot be hid and it will
out, it will be seen in the life and heart of a believer. Supposing
the Lord has to shake us and break us in order to bring us
into that place where we can be useful to him and we will
be of service and we will worship him aright. Christ is our pattern
and Christ is our example and all of those who are formed and
made in his likeness will reveal the gifts and the graces that
are so characteristic of our Saviour. The Lord is looking
for a fast that doesn't make us look lean and sad and gaunt. He actually talks of a fast that
makes us fat. The fast that the Jews were offering
They looked miserable when they were doing it. Purposely so.
They made themselves look miserable when they were fasting. That's
what the Lord says as well. He says anoint your head and
wash your face when you're fasting. Don't show the world what you're
doing. That's the wrong way to think about this. The Jews were
doing it in Isaiah's day and they were still doing it when
the Lord had to warn against it in his own day. They expected
the Lord to honour their efforts. and instead the Lord says that
he will bless and prosper those who fast as the Lord would have
us fast, or worship as the Lord would have us worship, serving
one another as the Lord would have us serve, living to encourage
and comfort and bless one another, ready to sacrifice on one another's
behalf, ready to uphold one another and care for one another. And
so he tells us in verse 10, he says, draw out thy soul to the
hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul. Then shall thy light rise
in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday. And the Lord
shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought,
and make fat thy bones. and thou shalt be like a watered
garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. Yes, we can see the Lord Jesus
Christ in this passage. He is the one who has fulfilled
all these things for us. But that does not mean that we
abrogate our responsibility to be like him. And there will be
a fruitfulness, there will be a refreshing dimension to the
lives of believers individually and to our congregations, to
our churches, as we emulate the pattern of the Lord to us. Here
the Lord says as much as his people, tells his people that
they are to serve one another, and he will enable us and he
will prosper our souls and the souls of those with whom we share. We shall never be losers for
giving to the Lord and giving to one another for the Lord's
sake. Christ's church is thereby made
fertile and fruitful in the service of our King. And Isaiah is going
on to speak about that fertility and fruitfulness. The believers
of Isaiah's age were shown a time yet to come, a time in the future.
It was probably 700, 800 years before this time that Isaiah
was speaking here. But they were shown this time
to come when the church would grow and be enlarged. Now, I am sure that when the
Lord talks here about opening up the way and building up the
walls and laying the foundations, that there is an element of the
post-exile rebuilding of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the second
temple. Certainly, I'm not denying that.
But there is a gospel dimension to this as well. And it's that,
because the temple was built and it's done and it's had its
day. but there is an ongoing spiritual dimension here that
we should understand and, I trust, apply. The gospel was taken by
the apostles, who are the successors of these Old Testament saints
to whom Isaiah was writing. The apostles, they would build
the old waste places. They would raise up the foundations
of many generations. by the preaching of the Gospel
and the declaring of the Word of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. And just as the Saviour is the
repairer of the breach that occurred at the fall of the Lord Jesus
Christ, took that place on the cross and died in our place and
made up the wall and repaired the breach that had been made
by reconciling us to God. Just as the Lord Jesus Christ
restored the way and opened the door back into the presence of
God for his people, so the church serves in a similar way. and the gospel as it is carried
in the preaching of the word unites the body of Christ, brings
us together by gathering in the Lord's people through the preaching
of the word, by opening up the way of life through the preaching
of the word. We stand on the shoulders of
past generations who have laboured in the providence of God to give
us the privileges that we now take for granted. This Bible
that we hold in our hands, men lived and died to give us this
Bible. They were imprisoned for translating
the Bible into our own languages. We are so blessed because there
were men and women just like us who gave of themselves in
order to provide us, to put into our hands the privileges that
we have today. Shame on us when we take these
privileges for granted. We are riding on the high places
built by men and women who laboured and worked to bring Christ to
the waste places of this world and to raise up the foundations
by which we received the truth and learned the gospel. This
is the true apostolic succession. This is the way that the Lord
carries on. It's like a race that is run
and there is a baton to be passed, a relay race that is run, a baton
to be passed from generation to generation. And we are the
runners in this race. We have taken the baton from
a previous generation and we must hand it on to our next generation,
to those young men and women who are coming up behind us.
It is our privilege to pass on the good that we have received
to the next generation as the Lord enables us. So let me say
this in closing. I mentioned it yesterday, calling
the Sabbath a delight is not an advert for Sabbath day observance
as some would have it. We've seen already, I think,
in previous chapters that Isaiah used Sabbath day keeping as a
shorthand for honouring and observing the whole law. Well believers
do delight in the Sabbath, we delight in the law, the law of
God as it is fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour
because we understand and recognise that in Christ the law is glorified. Outside of Christ, we cannot
delight in the law because it is a rod, because it is a curse. But we see the law for what it
is. We see its beauty, we see its
purpose, we understand its usefulness in the hand of Christ. He honoured
and satisfied all its demands, proving himself worthy to represent
his people. Our service now, our worship
now in the new covenant is not a legal obligation, but an expression
of gratitude and the manifestation of grace in our lives. We honour the Lord by faith,
not by what we do. We trust in the one whose obedience
at the cross redeemed our souls and reconciled us to God. Every
debt has been paid, every obligation has been satisfied by our great
substitute and surety. Nevertheless, the indwelling,
converting and transformative presence of the Lord in a believer's
life is marked by spiritual worship, a desire for righteousness and
a willingness to serve Christ's cause and God's church in this
world. May he give us grace to do so. Amen.