128 God's Correct Fasting

The Lord looks at the ritual of fasting and tells the people through Isaiah that a true fast has nothing to do with denying one's self food. It has to do with actually just doing the will of God in obedience to His commands. One can dispense with the ritual and get on with actually doing something of merit instead of a showy display of an act of care. The Lord Jesus condemned the pharisees for this during His first advent. They were engaging in fasting to prove how religious they were. They also thought to use it as a device for making God do our will. Isaiah calls on his hearers to express their relationship to God in a way that is much more practical which will accomplish something good. If they want to deprive themselves, let them do it for the sake of the oppressed, the needy, and the helpless, not for the sake of their own piousness. God's nature is to give Himself away to those who can never repay Him. There is no clearer evidence of the presence of God in a person's life than a replication of that same behavior.