Today’s words from God through the Prophet Isaiah to His people were meant to teach them when they were going through all kinds of religious routine. Fasting, participating in religious rituals, but they were ignoring the poor around them. They were oppressing people around them. Or ignoring the oppressed around them. And God says to them that’s not what I’ve called you to do. This is not what devotion to me looks like, like empty religious ritual disconnected from care for the poor and the oppressed in the world.
6 Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.” If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil…” Isaiah 58:6-9.
God calls us not merely to go through religious routines, but to show justice and mercy to those in need.
God has called us to love and care for those in need in the world. That’s when your light breaks forth like the dawn. And we experience all that God has designed for us. Not when we’re participating in religious ritual but when we’re showing God’s mercy, God’s love, God’s justice in the world around us. So pray we bring these words into our lives today. Think about your own heart, can you not sometimes get so consumed with doing religious activity? Now religious ritual is certainly a great gift from God, and so it is not bad. Just like Isaiah 58:6 says, fasting is not bad, but if we do that religious activity and yet we are not showing mercy and justice in the world, then we’re missing the point. We’re all missing the point if we’re not caring for the hungry and working on behalf of the oppressed. We recently buried Rosalynn Carter who, along with her husband, Jimmy Carter, showed us all for years their love for both religious traditions and rituals at their church in Georgia, and yet they worked tirelessly for the poor throughout the world. They showed mercy and justice to the least among them.
And so we need to be thinking in our life continually, to what does that look like to care for people with urgent, physical needs and urgent spiritual needs? And so I want to encourage you to think in the same way. Let’s not get in the routine of going through religious motions on a week by week basis and then we step back while God is saying to us, “where is your care for the hungry? What are you doing on behalf of the oppressed? To help the enslaved become free?”
This text from Isaiah encourages us to respond to the needs of others around us. So these are realities in the world around us. In the city where I live, in the city where you live, there are hungry. In the country where we live, there are people enslaved and oppressed. And then in the world around us, there’s massive hunger, massive slavery, massive oppression, and massive wars and human destruction. So what are we doing as God’s people about that?
Pray that God may help us, forgive us for our tendency to push back on showing mercy and justice. Just like the people in Isaiah’s day. God forgive us for our tendency to go through religious motions and to ignore massive, urgent physical, social, and spiritual needs around us.
God, we pray that you would use us as Your people to provide food for the hungry and freedom for the oppressed. I pray that you would help us to demonstrate Your justice and Your mercy and as we demonstrate Your character in these ways, to proclaim your gospel and your grace and your goodness to people around us. God, we pray that you would help us to be light in the world around us. We pray that righteousness would mark our lives, our families and our churches. Help us to realize what that means for us practically today. To care for the hungry and to works of the oppressed go free.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy win me a sinner.
From the Bible:
“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” Micah 6:8?
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others” Matthew 23:23.
“Bear with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgive each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” Colossians 3:13.
“The word of the Lord came to me: ‘What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge’? As I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die. ‘If a man is righteous and does what is just and right’ …” Ezekiel 18:1-32.
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