Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT – REFORMATION COVENANT CHURCH
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

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is found in Isaiah 58:8-14. Isaiah 58:8-14. Please stand to hear the command word of our King. Isaiah 58:8-14.

Then shall thy light break forth in the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily, and thy righteousness shall go before thee. The glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward. Then shalt thou call and the Lord shall answer. Thou shalt cry and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger and speaking vanity.

And if thou draw thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day. And the Lord shall guide thee continually and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones. And thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places.

Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations, and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord honorable and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words. Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord.

And I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

Our subject this morning, or this afternoon rather, is fasting and victory. I was listening last night to a tape by R.J. Rushdoony. It’s the latest sermon tape talking on the consecration of the high priest, and Rushdoony quoted a man named George Rollinson speaking of the consecration rites of the high priest.

He said that all this consecration rite was an acted parable. An acted parable. Reverend Rushdoony quoting him in this tape said essentially that all worship, all biblical rituals that are things that God has told us to do in a specific fashion, a specific way—all biblical worship and rituals are in a sense acted parables. They picture something to us. They teach us something. We’ve been trying to discover last week and this week the biblical meaning of the acted parable, the ritual act of fasting that marks believers both in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

We gave references last week. We looked last week at fasting first as value correction. Specifically, we’re on this subject in reference to gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins. And it has obvious reference to value correction in terms of an undue sense of value in food instead of God. But fasting also has application to value correction to the balance of the seven deadly sins as well.

As is obvious, the root sin of the seven, of course, is pride, and pride is moved against by the ritual act of fasting being called in the book of Leviticus—which is initiated in terms of the old covenant ceremonial system—as the affliction of one’s soul, to humble or afflict one’s soul. Obviously, this is a corrective ritual that is an acted parable of us leaving our pride behind and moving toward true humility with God.

It acts our acknowledgment of our sin, our acknowledgement of the death penalty that those sins require. But it also seeks God’s gracious face for resurrection. We said that fasting is seeking God’s gracious presence to hear his word, receive guidance from him and counsel. And the end of all this is to affect personal obedience. Fasting is seen in the scriptures both as an individual act as well as a corporate act.

And so fasting acknowledges sin not just individually, but as part of the corporate or covenantal body as well. Fasting is a ritual act. The arising from the fasting is typical of resurrection and hence victory. Remember we said, from 2 Samuel 12 last week, David fasting for his son—mentioned three times in the course of the text that he was on the earth while he was fasting—and he was raised up from the earth. At the end of that time he arose from the earth. He washes himself. He anoints himself. He changes his apparel and comes into the house of the Lord and worships. Resurrection.

We said that the result of the proper fast will be demonstrated by works, specifically by the works of justice and grace or mercy. Micah 6 tells us that the three requirements of men are to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. Fasting humbles us. Fasting afflicts our soul so that we might do justice as defined by God’s command word, his law. And so that we might move outward from ourselves and our institutions—be they family, church, or community—that we might move outward with deeds of loving kindness and grace.

Our fast then is to bring us to be yoke breakers and grace dispensers, all to the glory of God.

Biblical fasting is value correction. It brings us back to the true source of all value, to the one who resides in a typical fashion within the walls of the temple—God—to the one who is the altar which sanctifies the food that’s placed upon it, that we then eat. It says that value resides in the one whose presence we seek in the fast, and he declares himself to be the one who brings justice with his law and loving kindness with his grace.

Got it? And over and over again in the scriptures—it’s said to dispense justice and grace. He feeds the hungry. He breaks yokes. True value is to be found in the Savior who met the just requirements of God’s law, provided gracious salvation to his people, and sends his Holy Spirit to write the law that brings freedom, justice, and peace on the believer’s heart.

All of this is important. But the instruction of the proper fast did not end with verse 7 from Isaiah 58.

Isaiah 58 continues on with seven more verses that we need to consider closely to understand all that the acted parable of fasting is meant to convey to us. The pertinence of the last half of Isaiah 58 to our views of fasting should be obvious then. But there is much more than this to Isaiah 58. Isaiah 58 closes with two verses used to open the synagogue services during the time of our Savior. Verses that we have used appropriately as a call to worship many a time in this church.

Remember that the only commanded fast of the Old Testament system, the affliction of the soul, was to occur on the great Day of Atonement. This was a fast day, but this was also a Sabbath, a day of rest and convocation. What we learn then from Isaiah 58 relative to the fast and its proper meaning is also relevant to the Sabbath and its proper meaning. Isaiah 58 closes with an admonition to keep the Sabbath correctly.

These passages, as we shall see, are passages filled with illusions to victory, to an optimistic faith, to a view of the future that is bright for those who delight in God. The fasting passages in the Bible also help us understand the nature and effect of the atonement and the resurrection being linked to them in Leviticus. And hence we see our understanding of the value of the fasting and of atonement is corrected through what we talked about last week.

And our understanding of the purpose and the victorious aspect of atonement is corrected by the last seven verses of Isaiah 58.

Now, fasting is in numerous places in scripture—apart from Isaiah 58—linked to victory. Remember we looked last week and the week before at Zechariah 7 and 8, a kind of parallel passage. Zechariah says, look back, what the former prophet said. Isaiah is one of the former prophets. Zechariah 7 says, when you fast, you didn’t fast to me, and so you’re not doing well.

Zechariah 8 goes on to tell about the effects of the proper fast. Remember, God says that you turn these four fasts that they were doing ritually. These fasts shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness and cheerful feasts. So he turns fasts into feasts when the fasts are corrected and brought with him—his script, his word—to seek his counsel and word to obey it.

The Zechariah 7 and 8 conclude this correction on an improper fast and improper eating. In Zechariah 8, that chapter concludes by promising global blessings to emanate from God’s people, not as a cloistered few holding on to the true faith, but rather as the source of global blessings. Verse 23 of Zechariah 8 says that ten men from other nations will hold on to or grab onto every Jew and say, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.” The end of the proper fast then is global blessing.

Remember when we talked about Joel 2 and 3—the three books that comprise the minor prophet of Joel had a particular form: a call for a holy convocation, a call for a fast. To what end? Joel 3 ends when God brings all the nations to the valley of decision. Remember that from our Christmas sermons at the end of last year. God tells the nations to prepare for war. His humble people—humbled through fasting ritual and brought back to justice and loving kindness through that ritual fast—become the victorious members of God’s army.

Victory is implied in the text very strongly in 2 Chronicles 20:3 and following. When enemies come upon the people of Israel when Jehoshaphat is ruling, Jehoshaphat becomes fearful and he sets himself to seek the Lord. Remember to seek the gracious presence of God and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. God’s response—and by the way, if you look at the wording on that, he uses wording that hearkens back to Solomon’s prayer of dedication to the temple.

They met for that fast before the temple to seek God’s presence and God’s grace and God’s victory. And the response of God to Jehoshaphat was indeed that he would deliver Jehoshaphat and the people, and he would do that miraculously.

If the church has failed to understand the need to approach fasting to obtain guidance from God’s command word, his law, it has failed in an even greater sense in America—and failing to see the biblical connection between fasting and victory.

For most of this afternoon, then, I want us to see from this central text in Isaiah 58 on fasting and the Sabbath—this central text of religious ritual, so to speak—I want us to see that there are many evidences of victory that God promises us if we obey his chosen fast.

So, let’s turn to Isaiah 58. Now, if you have your Bibles there ahead of you, in front of you rather, pick them up, turn to Isaiah 58. We’re going to do a quick overview of these last seven verses from Isaiah 58.

Isaiah 58, the last eight verses result in a “then” statement. Verse 8 starts with saying, “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning. Thine health shall spring forth speedily. Thy righteousness shall go before thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward.” And really when I began this talk, I really wanted to focus the scriptures on those three themes.

Three things will happen as a result of the correct fast of God. Remember, the correct fast is to do justice, to love, and to do loving kindness. Three things will happen. First, guidance in a dark world. Your light shall break forth as the morning. Second, wholeness or satiation, satisfaction in a hungry world. Said your light will break forth this morning. Thine health shall spring forth speedily.

And then third, dominion work in a decaying or destructive world. And it says in that last clause of verse 8, thy righteousness shall go forth before thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward. You’re marching forward to work. And so he promises guidance and light. He promises health and fatness. And we’ll see that a little in the text, and he promises forward march in victory.

And that really is how the passage kind of shakes out for the next few verses. And we’ll look at that.

Now, verse 9 goes on to talk about if you call this way. Remember earlier in Isaiah 58, from last week, he said, “Is this how you’re going to call on high, to be heard on high, to fast the way you guys are fasting, not according to my scriptures?” No. He says, “If you do fast correctly—remember we said correctly is to do justice, love loving kindness—you hear, get God’s also for the point of obeying.

If you do that, then he says in verse 9, I will hear. You’ll call and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’ So he promises his presence to them in verse 9. And then he says, “If you take away the midst of thee, the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity.” Those verses are talking about justice, doing justice again, to break the yoke. Remember he said the proper way of fasting is to break every yoke and not to speak falsely, not to slander your neighbor.

And Zechariah 8 talks about that same injunction, and, reinterpreting Isaiah for the people of Zechariah, he says don’t slander each other in court. Okay. So again, he says, “Here’s what I’m going to hear you. If you first of all do justice,” and then the first few clauses of verse 10: “If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry,” to draw out thy soul—Luther interpreted that as saying, if thou will let the hungry find thine heart, you let the hungry find your heart, if you extend grace and compassion, if you draw out your soul to the hungry, to satisfy the afflicted soul, then these blessings will come upon you—is what he’s saying in verse 10.

When he says to satisfy the afflicted soul, it’s worth mentioning there. Remember, that’s what the fast is all about according to Leviticus and according to verses 3 and 5 from this chapter as well. The fast is to afflict our own souls. And one of the reasons for that is that we might be sensitive to those with afflicted souls, the poor who don’t have enough food to eat. And so he says you should satisfy the afflicted soul.

Instead, you know, they were just focusing on themselves instead of focusing outward. And so he reminds them in very clear language here that one of the requirements to achieve blessing is to do his fast, to do justice, to loose every yoke, and then to love loving kindness, to minister to the poor, and to help those who are afflicted in themselves.

And he says, if you do that, then if you humble yourself before God at the fast, if you do justice, if you love mercy, then these blessings that we’re going to talk about here for most the rest of the time are attached to it.

God puts out before the people here a reward for proper fasting, and it’s a reward to encourage us to fast correctly. Goes on to say, as we said in verse 9, you will be heard. And then, going back to verse 10b, now he says, if you do these things—if you feed the hungry, etc.—then. Same repetitive word. Then. If. Then if you do these things correctly, then your light will rise in obscurity. Thy darkness be as the noon day.

He will give you vision. He will give you guidance. The Lord shall guide thee continually. So you have three clauses. Your light rises in obscurity. Your darkness will be as the noon day. And the Lord shall guide thee continually.

Sight is synonymous in scripture with guidance from God. So he gives people guidance as a blessing. The victory of guidance. He gives them the victory of good health. He says, he makes fat your bones. You’ll be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters fail not.

Now, I think from this text, the fast that he was talking about was probably a total fast—both from food and water—because he says he’s going to feed them, going to make fat their bones. And he’s going to also give them water. And he says you’ll be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters fail not. Water, water, water, water, water everywhere, and all of it for you.

See, because you’ve done the fast correctly and you receive blessing and victory from God. So, health. And then finally, reconstruction.

Verse 12. Then these shall be those that rebuild the old waste places, raise the foundations, etc. To build up, to raise, to repair, and to restore are the blessings that God holds out in front of us if we fast correctly—to do justice, to love mercy, to seek his law word, to look for his counsel for the purpose of obeying it.

That all these things flow forth from God’s throne to us as blessings.

Lots of water, lots of fatness to our bones, health, guidance, light, reconstruction. Then the last two verses are a summary statement of this again. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, let me just stop there. What he’s saying—I think what he’s saying here in terms of the direct context—is if you stop treading upon my Sabbath.

Verse 13 is not written to people who are not coming to Sabbath observances. It was written to those who were coming, who were supposedly fasting but not doing it correctly. You fast for your own pleasure. You exact labors from your workers. They were saying, “Hey, we fast all the time.” And he was saying that if all you focus on is the ritual instead of it as an acted parable, instead of receiving instruction, what I’ve told you to do and amending your ways, it’s not blessing.

It’s like the Jeremiah 7 passage we’ve used for a couple of months now as a call to worship. You come forward, you see the temple of the Lord. We’re at church. We’re coming into God’s presence. And the prophet says, “No, no. If you don’t amend your ways, you don’t get in.” The ritual does not affect blessing. He says that what they’ve been doing is trampling upon his fast and his fast is a Sabbath—was the day of atonement—was a day of Sabbath rest.

And so that was the typical element. You’re trampling upon the Sabbath to do these things. You are afflicting my Sabbath as a result of me—God says—instead of your own soul. So stop doing that. Stop fasting incorrectly. Stop going to church incorrectly. Stop doing your own pleasure on your holy day, on my holy day, and instead call the Sabbath a delight. The holy of the Lord honorable. Those words mean weighty.

The holy of the Lord—set apart to God, honorable—having weight or substance. Give weight or substance to this act. It’s not a light thing. It’s not something you do ritualistically without thinking about it. It is an acted parable. If you honor him, and again he repeats, by not doing your own ways nor finding your own pleasure nor speaking thine own words, then the blessings are summed up.

In verse 14, the summary statement of the chapter, the result of all that is you shall delight yourself in God. And God then causes us to ride upon the high places of the earth and we’re fed with the heritage of Jacob thy father.

Okay, that’s quick overview. Now we’re going to go back and look at seven aspects of this text that speaks specifically of a victory orientation and a victory goal out in front of us as we biblically fast to God.

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Fasting and Sabbathkeeping. Remember the correlation because of Leviticus and because of Isaiah 58. Seeing these things together, fasting and Sabbathkeeping move God’s people first from the defeat of decreative darkness to the victory of recreative light.

Guidance is obvious from the text that we just referred to. It says in verse 8, “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning.” Verses 10b and 11 says, “Then shalt thy light rise in obscurity. Thy darkness be as the noon day. The Lord shall guide thee continually.”

Fasting is to achieve guidance. We talked about that last week. Remember in Genesis 24, Abram’s servant goes to look for a wife for Abram’s son, and he says continually that the Lord led him. There are indications in the text that he fasted. Fasting produced guidance, and guidance is part of what’s going on here. But there’s more than that to these verses from Isaiah 58.

He says the first term for darkness he uses is obscurity. And that’s the same term that’s used in Genesis 1:2 and 4 to speak on the darkness that was upon the face of the deep before God spoke light into existence. So light springing forth from darkness is to be reminded—we’re thinking in our minds as God’s creative act, recreation in this sense.

In Exodus 10:21-23, Moses brings the curse to the land of Egypt, and the particular curse he brings in those verses is darkness upon the land. Same word, darkness. God puts Egypt back to the confusion and disorder before the Holy Spirit moves upon the waters, before he says, “Let there be light.” He takes them back to decreation in a sense, back to the void, as it were.

Verse 22 of Exodus 10: Moses stretches out his hand toward heaven. There was a thick darkness, a dark darkness, black darkness, gloomy darkness. Two words—those two words are the same words that are used in verse 10: your light will rise from obscurity, your darkness will be as the noon day. Obscurity and darkness are these same two terms used in Exodus 10:22. Those are terms of judgment upon people that reject God. In this case, Egypt.

But not simply the non-believers. Deuteronomy 28 tells us that darkness is part of the curse of God. “You shall grope at noonday as the blind groweth in darkness”—is one of the curses to the covenant people who reject God’s law. Darkness and light springing forth from darkness is a picture here to us. It is an acted parable, as it were.

When we rise up from our fast to resurrection, we’re to think of darkness to light, recreation, recreation coming out of decreation. God’s bringing us back to blessing instead of curse. And the specific correlation is strongest made to Pharaoh and Egypt and a military victory of God over Pharaoh and leading his people forth from that land. And so light speaks of victory—the victory of coming out of disorder into the light and guidance of God’s world and into blessing and out of cursing.

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Secondly, these texts speak of the defeat of powerless flesh to the victory of armed bones. A proper fast, proper Sabbathkeeping moves us from the defeat of powerless flesh to the victory of armed bones.

In verse 8, the second phrase: your light breaks forth—his darkness to light and “thine health shall spring forth speedily.” And then in verse 11b, “I’ll satisfy your soul in drought. Make fat upon thy bones. Make fat thy bones.”

He says the picture is one that as you fasted and made weak your flesh. And we know that explicitly from Psalm 109:24 where we read, “My knees are weak through fasting, my flesh falleth off of fatness.” David says, “When I fast, my knees get weak. My flesh fails of fatness as a result of fast.” We’re getting value correction here. God says that he’ll put fatness on our bones. That we’re made whole. The heart is established. We’re established. Our strength is established—not by food, but by the God who gives us that food. This is his normative way to build nourishment into our bodies.

And so fasting is value correction. It makes fat our bones. Forget the flesh. You just have bone. God will put fatness on it. But there’s something else about this term “make fat thy bones” that’s very important for us to realize. The specific Hebrew word that’s translated “make fat thy bone” is overwhelmingly translated in most other places and is normally the word that’s used to arm a soldier or to arm somebody or prepare them for battle in a military sense.

And so God says he gives us health, but that health is to a purpose. That health is that we might have victory and be prepared to go forth conquering and to be good armed soldiers. Proper fasting, proper seeking God’s face, proper Sabbathkeeping in the same sense—to seek God’s guidance from his holy word—results in us being prepared, our bones being made fat. We’re now armed soldiers and ready for what we’re going to go out into.

And so victory is part of what’s going on here. In the same way as the high priest on the tape I was listening to yesterday—and this is one of the things that Rushdoony and this Rollinson fellow were pointing out—the high priest had a girdle about him. Why a girdle? Girdles were used to gird up your loins. And the same word to “make fat,” to arm soldiers, is also translated in other places to gird yourself up.

And so God girds us up for the battle that he’s going to take us into as the result of preparing us through the acted parable of fasting and Sabbathkeeping.

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Third, God moves his people through fasting and Sabbathkeeping from the defeat of the desert to the victory of the garden.

Passage of scripture says that God will make fat our bones and “you’ll be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters fail not.” Water, water, water in the garden. It’s obvious—if you’ve been at this church very long, you’ll know this—direct illusions of course, the garden of Eden. Sin creates and brings us into a position of wilderness. The howling wilderness judgment is always assumed, pictured by the thorns and thistles of the wilderness curses. Curses are pictured that way. Blessings are pictured as the garden and a well-watered garden at that.

Isaiah 51:3, in the same book of Isaiah, he wrote earlier in chapter 51. He says that God shall comfort Zion and her desert will be like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found there, in thanksgiving, in the voice of melody. “Hearken unto me my people, give ear unto me, oh my nations, for a law shall proceed from me and I will make my judgment to rest for a light of the people.”

See, really a restatement of what we’re looking at here. God says, “Seek me, hear me, obey my commandments and my laws, and my judgments then will result in light to my people, blessing. And you’ll be turned from a desert into the garden of the Lord.”

And so the people of God move from the desert—the defeat of the desert—to the victory of the garden as a result of proper fasting and seeking his face and proper Sabbathkeeping.

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Fourth, God moves his people from the defeat of blindness to the victory of marching with God.

God for and after. Back to verse 8, third clause: “Thy righteousness shall go before thee. The glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward.”

What’s he talking about here? J. Alexander, in his excellent commentary on the book of Isaiah, said that the two terms “before” and “rearward” are military terms familiar to the readers of the ancient books. Indeed, in Isaiah 52:12, a few chapters before this section, he said, “You shall not go in haste, nor go by flight, for the Lord will be with you. The Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rearward.”

Direct illusion to Egypt, of course, when God went before his people at the pillar in the fire, went before them, went behind them, leading, guarding us behind, leading us forward—not in haste now, but leisurely, because God’s bringing us great blessing, a greater blessing than Jesus Christ, who after all is the source of the light.

He is the light that shines in the darkness that no man in the darkness cannot comprehend or stop it. He’s the one that leads us forward. It says, “Thy righteousness shall go before thee.” Well, what’s our righteousness? Our righteousness is Jesus Christ. He is our imputed righteousness. He’s the one that leads us forward like Joshua led the people into the land of Canaan.

So Jesus leads us into all the world, going before us. And “the glory of the Lord shall be our rearward.” We’re protected from behind as well. A military term used here to indicate a marching toward victory, moving away from blindness and lack of guidance that we have and curse to the victory of marching with God both before and behind us.

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Fifth, the people of God move from the defeat of waste places, wasted places rather, to the victory of a reconstructed world.

Verse 12: “They shall be of thee, they shall build the old waste places, shall raise up the foundations of many generations, and thou shalt be called the repair of the breach, the restore of paths to dwell in.” Result again of moving from defeat and curse to victory and blessing. We rebuild the waste places.

Speaking on verse 12, J. Alexander says a more proper translation than what the King James has. The King James says, “They that shall be of thee shall build.” Alexander rephrases it: “they shall build from thee the ruins of the captivity.” And Alexander comments thusly:

But as the Hebrew word properly means “from thee,” it denotes something more than mere connection and must be taken to signify a going forth from Israel into other lands. A going forth from Israel into other lands. Going out, in other words. Thus understood, the clause—Alexander said—agrees exactly with the work assigned to Isaiah and to Israel, or by Isaiah to Israel, in chapters 43 and 57. That is, the task of reclaiming the apostate nations and building the waste of a desolated world.

That’s the job that we’ve been given. And God says we’re to be blessed in that task as we fast correctly and go through these enacted parables to teach us who we are, the purpose of seeking God’s face.

Leviticus 26 again says that to be in a waste place is part of God’s curse. Leviticus 26:30: “I’ll destroy your high places, cut down your images, cast your carcass upon the carcasses of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you, and I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors.”

And God’s people turn their back on him and his law and his grace, and he moves them into waste cities. And if we have wasted cities in America today, it is directly a result of Leviticus 26 and God’s curse.

And as we humble ourselves and seek God’s face and turn from our wicked ways and do justice and love mercy, then he said—says that those waste cities and the entire world will be rebuilt by his people.

Isaiah 61—our Savior preached from this text. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has appointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them which were bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God, and to comfort all that mourn.”

What’s he doing? He’s breaking the yokes. He’s dishing out compassion and grace to those who need it. And he goes on to say, “To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes. Your fast, your death is turned into beauty and resurrection. The oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Afflict our souls. God gives us garments of praise that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting garden terms of the Lord, that he might be glorified. And they shall build the old ways. They shall raise up the former desolations and they shall repair the wasted cities, the desolation of many generations.”

We find ourselves in desolate times. And we want to be reconstructive. We want to be rebuilders. Isaiah 58 points out clearly that’s just what God has in store for us. That’s just what fasting is—a preparation for victory. God moves us from the defeat of wasted cities to the victory of reconstructed worlds.

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And then sixth, God moves his people from the defeat of delighting in ourselves to the victory of delighting in God and inheriting the earth.

Remember, they had said—he had mockingly said that they had said, “You delight to know my ways.” Supposedly. Back in verse two, earlier in Isaiah 55, he says, “Why do you spend money for that which is not bread? And you labor for that which satisfieth not. Hearken diligently unto me and ye eat that which is good and let your soul delight itself in fatness.”

What’s he telling him? He’s saying, “Correct your values. Quit pouring your money into possessions that will give you no satisfaction. Instead, invest in me. Do deeds of kindness. Do deeds of justice and attempt to influence the culture around you. Seek God and his calling and he will give us fatness.”

He says, “Incline your ear, and come unto me. Hear, and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.”

And we delight in ourselves and our own ways. That’s wrong. Now, people have messed this up. Some have said in the past that means the Sabbath is a day of no joy. And that is not the point. The point is don’t delight in your own thing. Delight in what God has told you to do. That doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with joy or delight. Just the reverse. He says you’re supposed to delight in him. You’re supposed to delight yourself in the fatness that he provides—not in our own ways.

Psalm 1 speaks of the two ways. “Blessed is the man who what? Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, doesn’t stand in the way of sinners, doesn’t sit in the way of the scornful. But what is his delight? His delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law does he meditate day and night. That’s where he spends his time and that’s where he spends his energies.

And he shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water”—the well-watered garden again. “Not so the ungodly, they’re cut off.” Those who delight in themselves and their ways end up not delighting or being satisfied at all. God says the delight that we have is complete satisfaction, satiation, as it were. Complete delight that God gives to us.

Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” Many of us know that verse. But the psalm goes on in verse 10 to go on to say, “For yet a little while, the wicked shall not be. Yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be, but the meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.”

Proper fasting, proper Sabbath observance, proper attention to the acted parables, the rituals that God calls us to perform, moves us from the defeat of delighting in ourselves—knowing nothing else—to the victory of delighting in the Lord and inheriting the earth. The wicked are taken off the earth, and we are placed in it. We inherit the world.

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And then finally, we move from the defeat of loneliness to the victory of riding on high.

“Then if you do these things, you’ll delight yourselves in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee the heritage of Jacob thy father.” To ride upon the high places of the earth.

Who rides? Rulers ride. Judges 5 tells us so. We read there, “My heart is toward the governors of Israel, that offer themselves willingly among the people. Bless ye the Lord. Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit in judgment, and walk by the way.” The ones that render judgment were those that rode. To ride on an ass, on a donkey, is seen to be a glorious thing in the scriptures. When you ride—several in our church, I think, do occasionally ride. You should think about that. What a great privilege it is to ride on a horse, to ride on a donkey, or even to ride in a car and get conveyed about in fast speeds. God says that’s a sign of good things. It’s governance. God wants us to associate that riding with governance and judging in the earth with victory over the pagan.

J. Alexander said that this whole phrase “ride in the high places” is descriptive not of a mere return to Palestine—the highest of all lands, as some say—nor of security from enemies by being placed beyond their reach, but rather it speaks of conquest and triumphant possession, as in Deuteronomy 32.

Deuteronomy 32 says: “He made him ride in the high places of the earth that he might eat the increase of the fields. And he made him to suck honey out of the rock and oil out of the flinty rock, butter of kind, and milk of sheep, fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats with the fats of kidneys of wheat, and thou didst drink the pure blood of the great.”

Deuteronomy 33:26: “There is none like unto the God of heaven. He rides upon the heavens to thy help.” Verse 27 of Deuteronomy 33 says: “The eternal God is thy refuge. He shall thrust out the enemy from before thee.”

God rides on the heavens for the purpose of thrusting out the enemies of his people, to drive them as chaff before his wind. Verse 29 says, “Happy art thou, oh Israel. Verse 29 of Deuteronomy 33: ‘Who is like unto thee, oh people,’ saith the Lord, ‘the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency, and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee, and thou shalt tread upon their high places.’”

And God says in Isaiah 58 that we have moved to a position of riding upon the high places of the earth. He’s alluding back to Deuteronomy 33, where that riding is conquest, possession, and victory. We are riding in judgment. We are treading upon the high places of the pagans. We are dispossessing the ungodly who give not God the honor and who do not humble themselves before him.

Psalm 45: “Gird thy sword upon high, oh most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty, and in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and rightness and righteousness. And thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies, for the people fall under you.” Again, God rides. We’re riding with God, and the enemies fall.

Finally, Psalm 18:33 and 34: Verse 33 we’re pretty familiar with. “He maketh my feet like hinds’ feet and setteth me upon high places.” Popular passage. But the very next verse helps us understand what’s being talked about. “He teacheth my hands to war so that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms.” God sets us upon hind’s feet, makes our feet like hind’s feet, puts us upon high places—not as escape from conflicts in the world, but rather as victorious in those conflicts.

And so fasting is linked to victory very clearly in Isaiah 58. All these victorious pictures are given to us that we might delight in the victory of God.

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Fasting is an acted parable. It is a ritual, and it is a ritual of preparation. Fasting is preparation for life, for combat, and for victory.

Again quoting from Reverend Rushdoony from his tape, recent tape on the consecration of the high priest, he said that soldiers drill for battle ritually to prepare themselves, to discipline themselves for the battles they will eventually find themselves in. Biblical rituals of worship, including fasting and Sabbaths, prepare the believer for action in the world.

He noted that pagan rituals affirm the order that exists, the world as it is. But notice that the biblical ritual of fasting, as all biblical rituals do, has an eschatological dimension or element to it. It is forward-looking. It has a forward-looking aspect that the church has ignored in America for far too long. The consequences have been disastrous.

But Isaiah 58 and the passages we’ve made reference to and other references to God’s chosen fast indicate clearly that preparation for battle and victory is part of biblical fasting.

Rushdoony said in that tape that biblical ritual equals, quote, “give us a mandate for renewal in terms of our sovereign Lord marked by an awareness of our sins and the sins in our institutions and it invokes God’s grace to restore God’s order. It invokes God’s grace to restore God’s order.” It is not static. We are not happy with America in 1990 or in 1950. We move on to righteousness. We invoke God’s grace to restore God’s order.

Fasting then reminds us—it is an acted parable that reminds us of the warfare that is real today as we live in a world of God despisers and God haters. That reminds us that we are not to be content with our own lives, nor the lives of our institutions. No, we are to engage in personal warfare to root out sin. And as we’ve gone through twenty-five messages now on the seven deadly sins, it’s important that you take time in your life to think through these things, to engage in acts of fasting and prayer, and understand that God would have us do this to root out, to do warfare in our own souls, to root out these sins from our lives.

They infect us far too easily. It also moves us—with God’s grace—to conform their lives to his command word. And fasting reminds us that we are at war with the world around us, that we are to go forth from our fast as we go forth from our Sabbath with God’s benediction upon us, his blessing, his empowerment for battle. We go forth optimistically, knowing that he will indeed grant his victory. His kingdom shall increasingly be manifested on earth as it is in heaven.

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Psalm 82 verse 5 says that in that particular time there were people that knew not, they didn’t understand. They walked on in darkness, but all the foundations of the earth are out of course. Isaiah 8:22 described a time in which they would look upon the earth and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish, and they shall be driven to darkness.

But we live in a time in America when the foundations of the earth are out of course, when darkness—God’s judgment—is upon the land. And we live in a time in which we should, as Jehoshaphat did, implore God’s grace that we might have victory over those who would put God’s people out of existence. Jehoshaphat was told that God would indeed bless him. And indeed, in verse 24 of that passage, Jehoshaphat’s people come up. They look out upon their enemies, and they find that the armies that come against them were all dead, all corpses, lying on the ground. Not one head escape—the text tells us very explicitly.

And it took them over three days to remove the plunder from off the bodies of God’s enemies who had been killed without Jehoshaphat and his men lifting a hand. We have people today, demon-possessed, apparently, sodomites, radical homosexuals. And I think in response to some people’s prayers and some people’s fasting, we can look out over the lands today and also see God’s enemies dying without God’s people lifting a hand.

Jesus said that of some demons that they come out only through prayer and fasting. The disciples had forgotten that God had given them ritual acts to prepare them for battle. That certain demonic forces were apparently tougher to battle than others, required more preparation, more drilling, as it were.

Well, I think that if you understand the nature of America today, the demonic activity has been being unleashed across this country. The god-hating, the god-despising that goes on a regular basis, day by day, in our nation’s capitals. This last week—well, Barney Frank received the lightest censure the house had to offer for having a homosexual prostitute work out of his own office, fixing traffic, etc. These are demonic things. They’re anti-good, obviously, and anti-God’s people. I think that we need to remember that. And God told them, and Jesus told his [disciples]…