Isaiah 58:4

PERIODICAL FASTS

Isaiah 58:4. Ye shall not fast as ye do this day.

Periodical fasts, such as the Ritualists would have us keep in Lent, instead of being well pleasing in the sight of God, are offensive to Him.
I. THEY ARE BASED UPON A FALSE CONCEPTION OF THE CHARACTER OF GOD. Their promoters say: “This is to be a season of special religiousness; therefore it is to be a time of mortification, fasting, and gloom. This is a season in which to do special honour to God; therefore let His altars and priests be clad in sad vestments, and let His people weep and lament.” This view makes God find a pleasure in the self-inflicted grievance of His creatures. It implies that blessings which He has lavishly scattered around us are given rather as tests of our faith and self-denial; that they are here, not for us to rejoice in the works of His hands, but by renouncing them to show our love and loyalty to Him. How is such a view at all reconcilable with the love of the Divine Father? Is it thus that we should deal with our children! Is it credible that any parent, of true and loving heart, would take a studious son into a library of books, every one of which were calling to him to come and enrich himself on its treasures; or a child with rich and cultured musical gifts into a room where were exquisite instruments from which he longed to draw forth strains of sweet melody; or a daughter with a passionate love of flowers into a garden which was one blaze of beauty, and then say, “These are yours; but you will please me best if you do not gratify the desire which would lead you to use them? It is not that you would thus impoverish me, for I could easily supply the place of any you might appropriate; but it will please me if you look at them, long for them, and yet abstain from them. I know it will be a great trial; I have little doubt it will make you miserable; but it is that which will please me.” No father, worthy of the name, would be guilty of such heartlessness. Yet it is just this which men ascribe to God, when they fancy that He is pleased if we afflict our souls, bow down our head like a bulrush, and spread sackcloth and ashes under us.
II. THEY ARE BASED UPON, AND PROMOTE FALSE VIEWS OF HUMAN DUTY.

1. Their evident tendency is to encourage the old notion of the sinfulness of the material world, the body, and all by which it is nourished and refreshed. It is true that in the New Testament “the flesh” is represented as the natural and deadly foe of the spirit; but “the flesh” denotes not the bodily nature, but the passions and lusts of an unrenewed heart. No doubt these are inflamed by the bodily senses; and if a man finds that fasting helps him to subdue them, let him fast. But to fast under the idea that the body is sinful, and that the more we can mortify it the better—to fast at the cost of physical health and energy is something more than a mistake; it is a sin to sacrifice that health which is one of God’s most precious gifts, and which is so essential to enable us to do the service in the world which He requires at our hands.

2. They lead to a substitution of an outward and bodily for an inward and spiritual service. Bodily fasting is put in the place of that spirit of moderation, self-conquest, and self-sacrifice, which the prophet describes as the true fast. To their selfishness, passion, and worldly pride, the misguided religionists add the pride of self-righteousness, and so their last state is worse than the first. Let us use all aids which can advance us in likeness to Christ, and remember that all religious services which have not this result, whatever else they may have to recommend them, are but as “sounding brass and a tinkling cymbol.”—J. G. Rogers, B.A.: Christian World Pulpit, ii. 145–148.