Isaiah 58 - Bible Study in 5 Minutes

Isaiah 58 Short Summary:

Isaiah is instructed to rebuke Judah and “not hold back,” due to their hypocritical lifestyle. Some in Judah started observing extra fast days. They fasted from food as a spiritual discipline, but God didn’t care about their avoidance of food. God called them to fast from wickedness, abuse of their neighbors, sinful pleasures, and disregard for the downcast.

Isaiah 58 Bible Study

TIMELINE:

• The prophetic ministry of Isaiah spanned the reigns of King Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.

• Isaiah’s ministry is thought to span from 739-681 BC.

KEY CHARACTERS:

• Isaiah – The son of Amoz (1:1). God commissioned Isaiah as His prophet to Judah.

• The People of Judah – Isaiah rebuked them for their empty fasting and neglect of God’s law.

DEFINITIONS:

• Sackcloth (58:5) - A very rough and uncomfortable fabric. It was worn by people who were publicly mourning.

OUTLINE:

• SURFACE RELIGION WITH DEEPER PROBLEMS (58:1-14):

  • The previous chapter discussed Judah’s love for idolatry. This chapter discusses their surface level religion and hypocrisy in ritualistic spirituality.

  • Judah had a façade of godliness. If an outsider came Jerusalem, he would see a veneer of righteousness, faith, and love for God’s law. The citizens of Judah pretended justice was important to them, and they had an appearance of drawing near to God.

  • One of the ways they supported this godly front was by fasting.

  • But God saw through their disguise and called them out for hypocrisy.

  • They fasted from food, pretending to be humble and spiritual, but avoiding food was the least of their spiritual needs.

  • They were practicing extra fasting instead of purging their lives of evil.

  • The fast that God really wanted was a fast from sinful pleasure, abuse, quarrelling, violence, and idolatry.

  • He would rather them eat than fast. He said, “share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked… cover him…” (58:7).

  • If they would do these things, God’s light would shine of them.

  • “If 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” (58:10).

  • God promised to restore Judah and rebuild them from ruins if they would restore true godliness in their country and start observing His Sabbath days.  

APPLICATION:

• If my reading of the Law of Moses is correct, there was only one day a year that the people of God were commanded to fast, the Day of Atonement.

• The people in Judah were going beyond that instruction, implementing more frequent fasting because evidently, they believed it was beneficial or a sign of holiness.

• Indeed, fasting is presented in the Bible as a godly discipline.

• But they were implementing this extra fasting when they weren’t even practicing the basics of God’s law.

• They were on step 5 when they should have been on step 1.

• This can happen to modern Christians and modern churches.

• We can start adding disciplines of “extra holiness” before we do the basics.

• We can fail to apply the basics while thinking ourselves spiritual by parsing out and binding the unstated implications of fine points of doctrine.

• We judge ourselves righteous because we honor step 5, but we give little attention to steps 1-4.

• Many Christians and churches can give you a 5,000 word doctrinal statement explaining their positions on ecclesiology, eschatology, liturgy, the fine details of the nature of God, the limits of providence, the workings of angels and demons, a commentary on Romans 8-11, why they believe Penal Substitutionary Atonement is superior to Christus Victor, and they are ready to point the finger of heretical accusation at anyone who disagrees with them.

• But these same Christians and Churches don’t evangelize, they aren’t hospitable, their churches aren’t tightknit families, they have idols of addiction in their lives, they mistreat others, they lose 75% of their children to the world, and they would rather delve into 2nd and 3rd level doctrinal debates than mirror Jesus in their community through simple gospel inspired work.

• God wanted His people to do the basics, to apply the simple principles of His word. Their fasting was honorable, but it meant nothing because they skipped the 1st step.

• Our devotion to step 5 is honorable, but it means nothing if we aren’t equally, if not more, devoted to the basics.

• Generally, when we see God getting upset in the Old Testament, it wasn’t because two people were trying to discern through a complex point of the Law and one came to a wrong conclusion, its when people failed to practice the basic, understandable, and simple instructions that were the foundation of the Law.