The True Fast (Isaiah 58:6-9)
Morning Lent Prayer, Day 5
Introduction
There is a moment in every spiritual season when God shifts the conversation. We enter Lent with familiar disciplines, fasting from food, simplifying our schedules, spending more time in prayer, and we assume these acts alone please God. But on Day 5 of our journey, the prophet Isaiah brings us a word that stops us in our tracks.
Isaiah 58 opens with a people who are fasting and yet frustrated. They cry out to God, wondering why He does not respond to their religious effort. "Why have we fasted, and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?" (Isaiah 58:3, NIV). God's answer is both honest and searching. He tells them their fasting has turned inward. It serves their rituals, not their neighbors. It produces religious appearance, not transformed lives.
Then God reframes everything. He asks a question that reshapes what fasting means: "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen?" (Isaiah 58:6, NIV). What follows in verses 6 through 9 is one of the most direct descriptions in all of Scripture of what God considers genuine worship. It is not a rejection of prayer or fasting. It is a redirection. God is saying that the disciplines of Lent must flow outward into the world or they remain incomplete.
This sermon walks through three movements drawn from Isaiah 58:6-9. Each one builds on the last, and together they describe a fast that God both sees and responds to.
1. Breaking the Chains of Injustice
"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?" (Isaiah 58:6, NIV)
The first thing God names is injustice. Not poverty in the abstract, not suffering at a distance, but the specific systems and situations that bind people and keep them from living with dignity. The language here is physical and deliberate. Chains. Cords. Yokes. These are not accidental conditions. They are imposed. And God calls His people to work against them.
This is not a new instruction. God said the same thing centuries before through the same prophet: "Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow." (Isaiah 1:17, NIV). Notice the verbs. Learn. Seek. Defend. Take up. Plead. These are active postures. Justice does not happen to you. You pursue it.
In the New Testament, James echoes this directly. "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (James 1:27, NIV). Pure religion has a social address. It finds the people who have been overlooked and shows up for them.
So what does this mean for Lent? It means that fasting from food while ignoring the neighbor who cannot afford food is not the fast God has chosen. It means that forty days of personal devotion must include an honest examination of where injustice exists in your community, your city, and your own habits of looking away. The fast God chooses requires your attention, your voice, and your willingness to be inconvenienced by someone else's need.
Ask yourself honestly: whose yoke are you positioned to loosen this season? You do not need to solve systemic injustice today. But you are called to take one step toward someone who is bound, because that step, taken in faith, is itself an act of worship.
2. Sharing Our Bread with the Hungry
"Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter, when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?" (Isaiah 58:7, NIV)
The second movement is intensely practical. God does not speak in generalities here. He names four specific acts: share your food, provide shelter, clothe the naked, and do not turn away from your own family. Each one requires proximity. You have to be close enough to someone to see their hunger, their homelessness, their bare shoulders in the cold.
Jesus made this same point in Matthew 25, and the weight of His words is unmistakable. "For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger, and you invited me in." (Matthew 25:35, NIV). When the disciples ask when they ever saw the Lord hungry or thirsty or a stranger, He answers plainly: "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." (Matthew 25:40, NIV).
This is theology made visible. Every act of tangible generosity toward a person in need is an act of service rendered to Christ Himself. Fasting, in this light, is not primarily about what you deny yourself. It is about what you release toward others. When you skip a meal, the question becomes: what do you do with what you saved? When you simplify your spending, the question becomes: where does that margin go?
Isaiah 58:7 also includes a phrase worth sitting with: "not to turn away from your own flesh and blood." This is a reminder that charity begins with the people nearest to you. Family members who are struggling, neighbors you see regularly, people in your church community who are quietly in need. The impulse to give to distant causes while overlooking nearby need is real, and God addresses it directly.
Lent is a season to audit your generosity. Not to perform it, but to examine whether it is actually happening. Are you giving in ways that cost you something? Are you close enough to need to see it? Are you treating the practical care of others as a spiritual discipline, not as an optional add-on to your faith?
3. Becoming a Light in the Dark
"Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard." (Isaiah 58:8, NIV)
The third movement is God's response to the first two. When you pursue justice and give generously, something changes. Not just in the world around you, but in you. Your light breaks forth. Your healing appears. Your righteousness leads the way, and God Himself guards your back.
This is a promise built on a condition. The condition is the life described in Isaiah 58:6 and 7. The promise is the transformation described in Isaiah 58:8. And Isaiah returns to this promise in Isaiah 58:10 to make sure we do not miss it: "If you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday." (Isaiah 58:10, NIV). The phrase "spend yourselves" is significant. It is not about writing a check from a safe distance. It is about personal investment, giving your time, your attention, your presence, your energy on behalf of someone else.
Jesus makes the same connection in the Sermon on the Mount. "In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:16, NIV). Notice what produces the light. Good deeds. Not good intentions. Not correct theology alone, though that matters. The light that others see comes from actions that serve people and reflect God's character.
There is a Lenten depth to this promise. We often approach this season focused on what we will give up, what we will feel, how our inner life will be refined. And those things are real and worthwhile. But Isaiah 58 adds a dimension we sometimes neglect. The light that breaks forth in you is connected to the service you pour out for others. Your healing is tied to your generosity. Your spiritual formation during Lent is inseparable from your engagement with the needs around you.
The image of God as your "rear guard" in Isaiah 58:8 is one of the most striking in this passage. A rear guard protects from behind, from the attack you do not see coming, from the vulnerability of moving forward. God is saying: when you live this way, I cover your back. You do not need to protect yourself from the cost of generosity. I will guard what you cannot guard. Step forward in faithfulness and trust me to secure what is behind you.
Conclusion
Isaiah 58:6-9 does not diminish the spiritual disciplines of Lent. It completes them. Prayer is essential. Fasting is meaningful. Scripture reading shapes us. But God is clear that these inward practices must produce outward movement. The fast He has chosen involves loosening what is bound, feeding who is hungry, and living in a way that lets light pass through you to the people around you.
Day 5 of Lent is an invitation to close the gap between your devotional life and your daily life. The person you become in the quiet place of prayer is meant to show up at the food pantry, at the conversation with a struggling family member, at the moment you choose to act when it would be easier to look away.
God's promise in this passage is not vague. It is specific: your light will break forth, your healing will appear, your righteousness will lead you, and the glory of the Lord will guard you. That is not a poetic flourish. It is a covenant word from a God who responds to the kind of fast He has chosen.
So press into this season with both dimensions open. Go deep in prayer. And go wide in service. Let Lent shape you from the inside, and let that shaping spill out into the lives of people who need to see that God is real and that His people are paying attention to them.
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Blessings,
Pastor JM Raja Lawrence
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
email: lawrencejmr@gmail.com
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