The prophet Isaiah spoke to the Israelites in their here and now circumstances but also prophesized of events in their near future, events that came true just as he predicted. Much of his prophecies included the coming of the Messiah and was written for then and now. His greatest prediction was that the perfect sacrifice of the Messiah would impact all the world for all mankind beyond the gracious salvation of His people. The earth itself would rejoice at God’s work of making a sinful people into His holy people without compromising His righteousness. The Salvation God provided us must impact everything and everyone, and if those who profess to be saved evidence no change in their lives at all, their profession is empty. That is the prophet’s essential point in Isaiah 58. Jesus sacrifice, His death on the cross, was meant to impact us beyond our salvation! When we really realize how much God the Father loved each one of us that caused Him to send His One and only Son as a living sacrifice for us, the people of God cannot just sit idle. Isaiah predicted we would have some difficulty understanding this, that we would go through the motions of fasting, worshipping, religious motions but not really mean it. He wrote, given the choice between fasting and not living out our salvation by loving our neighbors, God would rather we serve our neighbors and not fast. “Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; When you see the naked, that you cover him, And not hide yourself from your own flesh? Then your light shall break forth like the morning, Your healing shall spring forth speedily, And your righteousness shall go before you; The glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’” In reality true fasting should lead us to see our true dependence on God and His Word, and then eager to do His will. Isaiah means that fasting and other practices of ‘religion’ are worthless if we do not serve our Lord and neighbors, because a failure to love our neighbors proves our faith is false. Our good works do not get us into the kingdom of God, but they do evidence the authenticity of our faith, the trust in Christ alone. We need to distinguish faith and good works, but we cannot separate them. Faith always and necessarily gives birth to good works of gratitude. “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 10:19:13 +0000
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