Waiting with God in Days of Pandemic, Part 2

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Isaiah 58:6

Isaiah 58:1–14 – ... with God in Days of Pandemic
Fourth Sunday of Easter – May 3, 2020 (am)
   

We’ve said that this season is like a God-appointed fast. We haven’t voluntarily set aside something precious and needful to us, like food. But many things that are precious and needful to us have been taken away from us under the sovereign hand of God. We could easily fall into the pattern of complaining and grieving our losses. Or we could recognize this season as a unique opportunity.

That’s what we talked about last Sunday. And it was a new idea to many of us—receiving this season as a God-appointed fast complete with all the benefits of a fast: sharpening our affections for God, our dependence upon Him for all things, even for the basics of food, drink, and clothing (Mat.6:25-34), tuning our eyes and ears to the needs of others who are always living without the things that we’re lacking only during this season.

This idea is easy enough to understand. But it’s still new enough that it could be challenging for us to grasp, to act on it in one hearing. So, I’ve decided to stay with it for one more week.

For some, the biggest challenge comes with the thought that fasting could be joyful at all. Surely Jesus’ teaching in the passage we read last week gives evidence of why: when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others (Mat.6:16a). Surely the only benefit of fasting is for others to see that you’re doing it and to think you’re more righteous and godly than they are! So, the facial expression that fits fasting best in that case is obvious: gloomy and [disfigured], twisted and tortured! We all know how to think about fasting: we’re afflicted by it! (cf. Lev.16:29)

But Isa.58 gives a completely different impression of the value, the outcome, the reward (Mat.6:16, 18) of fasting. You heard it read a few moments ago. At the end of the day of fasting pursued in a manner worthy of God, in a manner pleasing to Him: 8 Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer…. 10 [I]f you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. No gloomy, [disfigured] faces, they will shine like the sun! 14 [T]hen you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth….

There’s a joyful, triumphant, life-giving engagement with God to be experienced by His people when they fast. There’s an engagement with God in which we may begin to feel a bit of the ache in His heart for the pitifully fallen state of this world, and also to share in His heart of generous mercy and grace toward those on whom this fallenness has landed with greatest force, trapping them in poverty, oppression, and need.

It’s not that we don’t already feel the fallenness of the world along with them. But I think we know that some feel it worse than others for reasons known only to God. Here at GCD we are saddened and even grieved by the present restrictions on our meeting together. But that just presses us into a deeper fellowship with our brothers and sisters in countries like North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan for whom this lack is not just the usual state of their lives, but along with it come actual expressions of cruel persecution for their faith. All of this just fuels our prayers for them, our giving to their needs, and our longing for heaven right along with them.

But this season of lack doesn’t just deepen our fellowship with the church around the world, it deepens our fellowship with Jesus Himself. This, I believe, is the kind of thing Paul was talking about in Phi.3:10 when he spoke of [sharing Jesus’] sufferings—seeing the fallenness of this world through Jesus’ eyes, feeling it with His heart such that, in Him, we die to this world, to our fleshly desires and designs, to the temptations of our enemy to the point where we want nothing but Jesus and the life His death enables us to inherit and to live!

As God’s people are being addressed here in Isa.58, we can see that the trouble they’re having with fasting is not rooted in spiritual apathy or coldness of heart. 2 Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. Their hearts are warm toward God. So, what’s the problem in their fasting?

They ask that very question of God: 3 Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ And God answers: Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.

It sounds like they just stopped eating because that’s what they were supposed to do. They weren’t fasting to know and understand and engage and imitate the heart of God!

4 Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting brought out the worst in them! How do you feel when you’re hungry and hanging out with selfish people? (cf. Motyr 408) Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Fasting that doesn’t press you into your relationship with God toward gaining His outlook on this fallen world and grasping His heart for those who are crumbling under its weight does not flow forth as intercession that reaches the heart of God, or moves His hand.

And just to be clear, the human heart will never produce this sort of fasting. 3 Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Because you’ve not truly fasted. Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it? Because you have not truly humbled [yourselves]. You’ve not truly fasted in a manner worthy of God. You haven’t fasted in the way He has appointed. This word choose here (5, 6), is the same word used in Israel’s election from among the nations (Deu.7:7; Psa.135:4), and so for our election unto salvation.

There is a fast that enjoys God’s favor. It’s the fast that reflects His heart. It’s the fast that aligns with His will and purpose and plan in this world (Smith 579). It’s the fast that leads God’s people to pour out their hearts for those in need and to take up the cause of the oppressed in this world with the sovereign priorities of God intact.

It’s the fast that I believe we’re seeing among us right now as a church body, the fast we want to encourage. It’s the fast that receives the God-imposed lack that we’re experiencing right now and uses it to refine our vision and refresh our hearts for Him and for those in need, just like Isaiah describes here. It’s the fast that…

·      … sends our people out in caroling caravans to encourage many in front of their homes.

·      … produces mounds of food donations for our community food pantry.

·      … gathers a cheering crowd to welcome Dani Dyba home from her final chemo treatment.

·      … encourages our Church leaders with affirmation upon affirmation of prayer support.

·      … just keeps on imagining new ways to uplift the discouraged among us, and strengthen the weak.

·      … is willing to receive this very unusual time as a fallow season with no crops in the field, yet still remember that such is the normal cycle of life.

·      … is determined to press on in faith, trusting in the lavish promises of God even in times of leanness.

Sixty-two times in Scripture the question is posed: How long? And its asked by a wide range of people in an equally wide range of circumstances. When Nehemiah wanted to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls, King Artaxerxes asked him (Neh.2:6)): How long will you be gone? When Eli the priest saw Hannah praying fervently at the tabernacle and thought she was intoxicated, he asked (1Sa.1:14): How long will you go on being drunk? When Pharaoh and his officials wearied of Moses visits to the court, they asked the king (Exo.10:7): How long shall this man be a snare to us? But the dialogue that pulses at the heart of this question in Scripture is the one that bounces back and forth between God and His people. When Israel doubted Him at the Red Sea, Num.14:11 … the Lord said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? And when David struggled with the seeming absence of God in his time of great need, he cried: Psa.13:1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

How long is the cry of lack, of absence, of need. God calls out to His wayward people, and they call back to Him from their lostness. That is our circumstance in this world. That is the problem we face. It’s the unavoidable experiential reality we’ve entered because of our sin. And we fast to remind ourselves that it’s real, it’s present, and we’re trapped in the oppression of it. But there is a God who saves us out of all this! He’s met us in the midst of it through the incarnation of His Son, Who then conquered every expression of it through His sinless life, sacrificial death, victorious resurrection, and promised return!

The only way we experience the fast that [He chooses] (5, 6) is by receiving the salvation He provided. The only way we exhibit His character in our seasons of lack is by trusting in the Provision He has made through the saving work of His Son. And the only way we are saved from this mess of a world—the size of which we haven’t fully realized, or at least remembered, until this strange season of time—is by looking to the God of Isa.58 for our salvation, waiting on Him to provide it fully and finally when He is done with this world, and living in it until that day only by faith in Him and the instruction of His Word. This God is so great and glorious, so gracious and merciful, that not only is He attentive to you and me in the midst of our greatest need, but when we turn to Him in faith, the reward He bestows upon is us to make us like Himself, to the extent that we actually look to others in their greatest need!

And, He is doing just that among us during these days of lack! Let’s not grieve them. Let’s not lament them. Let’s enter into them and see the very character of God reproduced and manifested among us right in the midst of them! 8 Then shall [our] light break forth like the dawn, and [our] healing shall spring up speedily; [our] righteousness shall go before [us]; and the glory of the Lord shall be [our] rear guard. 9 Then [we] shall call, and the Lord will answer…. And what more could we hope for than this?