This is a video transcription about fasting mentioned in the Bible. the speaker is Mike Mazzalongo

1. The True Fast By Mike Mazzalongo
Video Transcription
You know, the recent Easter weekend just went by. Brought many reminders of when I was a young boy
growing up in Quebec, Canada, French Quebec. A Catholic place, when I was a boy, over 90%of the
population there were Roman Catholic and I grew up as a Roman Catholic and we had a thing called Lent
during that time, during the Easter season, Lent, it was called, and during Lent I would give up candy for
Lent.
In the Roman Catholic religious calendar, Lent was a period of 40 days between Ash Wednesday and the
eve of Easter Sunday commemorating the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert as Dayton alluded to, in
the desert fasting and praying and as I grew up, as people in my family and of that particular time did,
people would fast during this period of Lent and they'd give up, if they were smokers, they'd give up
cigarettes for Lent or if they ate meat, they wouldn't eat meat for that period of time, just fish and
vegetables, things like that, or if they were people who used alcohol, if they were social drinkers .
If you wish, well, they would forgo drinking any type of wine or beer or any type of alcohol during the
time of Lent, they called that a time of fasting and then after Easter of course they would perhaps go

2. back to their normal practices, I remember I was allowed to eat candy, you know, wow, Lent is over, I
can go back and buy some candy at the time.
Now although there were probably good intentions here, most folks at the time missed the point about
fasting and what God was actually requiring, of course, God didn't require anybody to fast during Lent,
that was simply a church idea or Catholic church idea, but even so, the idea behind it wasn't all bad, but
a lot of people just didn't get exactly what fasting was about, certainly what God was talking about in
the Bible .
When He talked about fasting and I think this may be true to an extent, the denial of food for a time is
only a small part of what fasting is all about, because when we fast, if we decide to fast one day or a
week or whatever, it’s always about the food, oh boy food, when can I eat again and oh, I'm craving
food, it’s really not about the food and so I want us to look at chapter 58 in the Book of Isaiah.
The prophet in the book, in this particular chapter explains to the Jews what God requires when they
fast and what a true fast is all about. Now in this chapter, Isaiah the prophet speaks about the Jews and
their misunderstanding not only about God’s requirements for a fast, but also about their ignorance
concerning those things that really please God, the things that they could do that would be pleasing in
his sight, so let's begin in chapter 58 verse one, the prophet says, cry loudly, do not hold back, raise your
voice like a trumpet and declare to my people their transgression and to the house of Jacob their sins.
And so the chapter begins as Isaiah quotes God, as He is speaking directly to His people and He's telling
them certain things through the prophet. He's saying first of all that they're sinners; secondly, He's
saying that they need to know what their sins are. Now Isaiah has spoken repeatedly to them about this
but they ignore him and they go about their religious practices without noticing his words against him or
against them, rather, so he continues in verse two, it says, yet they seek me day by day and delight to
know my ways as a nation that has done righteousness and has not forsaken the ordinance of their God.
They ask me for just decisions, they delight in the nearness of God and so here he says despite this
wickedness, God says that they continually seek Him to reward them with spiritual blessings. They act
just like a people who actually obey Him.
They're not hypocrites, they're just clueless. They're just clueless, they keep asking for things and asking
for God to bless them and yet they're not acting in any way that would allow God or permit God or
encourage God to bless them, they don't even see what they're doing so in verse three, he says, why
have we fasted and thou dost not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and thou dost not notice?
Behold, on the day of your fast, you find your desire and drive hard your workers. So in this verse, God
mocks them by repeating their own words to Him as a kind of a dialog.
In the discussion, they complain that they fast and yet God doesn't reward their fasting in some way.
You know, and God answers that well, they fast externally, perhaps some type of ceremonial fasting, but
He says, their inner person is not changed in any way and the proof is that they still treat others and
here He mentions their slaves and their workers with contempt in the pursuit of profit.

3. And so it continues in verse four, behold, you fast for contention and strife and to strike with a wicked
fist, you do not fast like you do today to make your voice heard on high and so God describes the results
of their so called fast and tells them that it will not produce what they want. It won't reach heaven, their
prayers won't be heard, He says, it won't produce a more spiritual person.
In fact, the way that they do it only increases their wickedness in God's eyes so Isaiah continues verse
five, is it a fast like this which I choose? A day for a man to humble himself? Is it for bowing one's head
like a reed and for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed? Will you call this a fast? Even an
acceptable day to the Lord? And so God questions them on the externals that they meticulously
followed as far as their fasting is concerned, you know, to bow the head in prayer and humility, that's
the external signor to dress humbly with raft garments and they would sprinkle ashes on their head as a
sign of sorrow and pain.
These externals were to represent a humble and a contrite heart because of sin. Because of failure,
because of trial, because of sorrow, a little bit like we see Job is doing, Job, he was bending his head in
sorrow, he was putting ashes on his head, to exemplify the suffering that he was going through. It
signifies a person's need for God and the salvation that God and only God can bring.
Well, in the following verses, God will describe not just ceremonial fasting that represented a contrite
heart but He will also describe those actions which proved that the fasting was actually sincere. Not just
the externals, not just the ceremonial, but the true fasting that God was looking for and He mentions
three things that were directed towards the people of Isaiah's day but can also be applied to every
generation of God's people who seek a true fast before the Lord.
So in these verses he also describes the rewards that come with what Isaiah calls a true fast or what God
calls a true fast. So the first external sign of a true fast, He says, is mercy, mercy, let's keep reading. In
verses six, seven, eight and nine, He says, is this not the fast which I choose to loosen the bonds of
wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke and to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke? Is it
not to divide your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into the house? When you see
the naked, to cover him and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then your light will break out like
the dawn and your recovery will speedily spring forth and your righteousness will go before you.
The glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry
and he will say, here I am. And so here, Isaiah says, a true fast will produce godly qualities like mercy,
that in Jewish society showed itself in the freeing of those who are enslaved in one way or another or
care for those who are in physical need, the hungry, the naked, those that had no place to stay or no
clothing to speak of.
The support of one's own family, one's own flesh, one’s own family and this quality, he says, will be
rewarded, if you're having a true fast and it shows itself in mercy, and then there'll be a reward.
Something will come back to you, he says, mercy provides a great witness of one's faith and God
promises to heal the sadness of the soul. You know, depression and anxiety, mercy is a great antidote to
depression, I mean, Isaiah writes this some 600 years before Christ, 26 centuries ago, he's writing this
that showing mercy is an antidote to one's sadness of soul and today, you'll hear psychologists say, you

4. know, wow, all the research that we have, the new discoveries that we have in dealing with depression,
we try to encourage people to stop looking inward and to start looking outward.
Maybe you should start focusing on someone else's needs and it'll help you with your depression and
your sadness, wow, like a new concept, this is exactly what Isaiah is saying here, that one of the results
of showing mercy is that it also lifts the sadness from your own shoulders. And he says, the merciful
become acceptable to God.
That's how they share his glory and their prayers, he said, will be answered, those are some of the
rewards that come with being merciful and so a true fast produces a merciful and compassionate heart
which God rewards in a variety of ways, secondly, he says, a true fast produces truth. Produces truth,
keep going in verse nine, this time in verse 9B, he says, if you remove the yoke from your midst, the
pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the
desire of the afflicted, then your light will riisein darkness and your gloom will become like midday and
the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places and give strength to your
bones and you will be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail and
those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins.
You will rise up the age old foundations and you will be called repairer of the breach, the restorer of the
streets in which to dwell. You know, a sign that one's heart is turning towards God is the greater desire
to be truthful. One begins speaking with the purpose of healing and nourishing others, you know, what's
understood here is the speaking of the truth in love, this is what nourishes a hungry soul, and the Jews
hated the Gentiles and anyone not in their social class or in their families.
They were originally chosen by God to speak the truth to the gentiles and live as a light unto them. The
Jews of Isaiah's time had failed miserably in this task. A true fast, he said, would see this truthful attitude
towards others returning and rewarded. Speaking the truth would do several things. Their nation would
be restored to greatness, not degraded and threatened as they were in Isaiah's day and as a people,
they would experience peace and joy in the Lord and their generation would be remembered as the one
that rebuilt the nation and returned it to faith in the Lord and so a true fast produces clarity of vision, an
ability to know and tell the truth which is the first criterion for personal or national greatness, what's the
problem that people keep saying in our country, we can't tell who's telling the truth.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to know that our leaders, our local leaders, our state leaders, our federal
leaders, wouldn’t it be wonderful to know that everything they said was actually true? Wouldn’t it be
wonderful if you didn't have to go online, you know, the president or one of the Republican candidates
says something and then you have to go online and do three checks of three different places to see how
did they spin it this way and which fact did they leave out to advantage themselves and how could they
say something that would make their opponent look bad and make them look good? Wouldn’t it be
wonderful to just have the truth? Wouldn’t that rise up this nation? People would be, I mean, a
candidate that would just tell the truth would be so wonderful.
That's the thing that's so discouraging. You just don't know who to believe. And so what do we do? We
end up not believing any one of them and we become cynical, right? We become cynical and are that

5. good, really? To be cynical is not a good thing. A cynical nation, you want a cynical nation? Go to Russia,
they're a cynical nation because their corruption is inbred into the government, absolutely part of it and
we know this because we've known people that come from that part of the country, people who've
become Christians and they'll tell you, oh, man, you can't believe anything that’s being said.
And so Isaiah is saying, part of a true fast is that it makes the individual truthful. It produces truth and
that truth not only builds up the individual but it builds up what the individual is building and then he
says a true fast produces holiness. Verse 13 and 14, Isaiah 58,he says if because of the Sabbath you turn
your foot from doing your own pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of
the Lord, honorable and shall honor it, desisting from your own ways, from seeking your own pleasure
and speaking your own word, then you will take delight in the Lord and I will make you ride on the
heights of the earth and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your father, for the mouth of the Lord
has spoken.
A true fast produces holiness. And it produces holiness because in that day, to truly keep the Sabbath
meant that the individual sincerely gave himself over to the worship of the Lardon the Sabbath, the idea
was to rest from worldly activity in order to spend it with the Lord. The Jews, however, of that time had
created all kinds of loopholes to permit Sabbath keeping but still do what they wanted to do and much
of what they did was sinful, even on the Sabbath.
A true fast, however, would produce a sincere and acceptable worship and this in turn would be blessed
by the Lord, again, notice he talks about the condition of a true fast, what that is, but he always explains
and this is God Himself, God always explains the rewards that come back from the true fast. He says,
first of all, they would actually get something out of the worship; they would actually get to know the
Lord, get to experience the Lord and to delight in their fellowship with Him, what a reward that would
be. He says that their worship would yield wisdom to know how to live a godlier life. That idea of a vision
of higher places, that higher place is a godly life. If you have a true fast, one of the rewards is that you
will really see what godly living is all about and then he says, God would feed them, He would satisfy
them with the promise of a savior.
This was the heritage from Jacob. The heritage from Jacob was the promise, he said, I will guarantee
you that you will have that promise fulfilled. And so a true fast draws one nearer to God and from that
fellowship comes the taste of eternal life with God and the courage to live faithfully until that time
comes. Anybody who has tasted, anybody who has tasted eternal life, you know what I'm talking about.
Anybody who has tasted eternal life, there is no going back.
Peter tasted eternal life and they said, you better stop talking about that Jesus or we're going to kill you
and what did he say? Hey, kill me, do what you want, I know what I know. I've seen what I've seen, I
have tasted, I have tasted eternal life and I couldn't go back even if I wanted to. Isn't that what Jesus
said to him, are you going to leave me too now that it's getting difficult and what does Peter say, Lord,
you know, where do we go? You have the words of eternal life.
I could see Peter panicking, don't send us away. Don't turn us away, there's nowhere else for us to go.
You're the only one that speaks of eternal life and 2000 years later, those of us who have tasted eternal

6. life and you know what I'm talking about, tasted of the Lord, and tasted of the spirit. Tasted of His word,
we've seen it.
There's no going back and long ago, Isaiah said those who know the Lord, those who have a true fast
and who know the Lord are rewarded how? They receive more knowledge of Him. They receive a clearer
vision of Him; they receive a taste of what is to come. If we were to read on in Isaiah and the Old
Testament, we would see that despite this admonition to offer God a true and sincere fast, the Jews
continued their hypocrisy and eventually they were crushed and taken into captivity by the Babylonian
army.
Now although it was written centuries ago to a people whose culture and history is very different from
ours, Isaiah's admonition fits our modern situation today just as it fit that situation back then. In many
ways, we play the same game with our religion while God waits for us to offer Him a true fast so that He
can bless us. By game, I mean we play at church many times. We go through the motions as Christians
but God still requires proof of an inward change.
Have you gotten the idea yet that this true fast is just another way of saying inward change? Not just
the externals, God says, Isaiah said, not just the bowing of the head and the wearing of the sackcloth
and the putting of the ashes on your head, not just the externals, God wants to see inward change, the
true fast. And nothing has changed today, yeah, we have technology, we have cars, we go to the moon,
whatever. God still is looking for the inward change. He still wants to see mercy. Is our faith making us
more merciful? Are we more forgiving, more tolerant, more willing to not take offense? Ask yourselves,
has anyone been on the receiving end of our mercy lately?
Unfortunately, half the work in the church and I speak from experience, is calming people down because
they're upset or offended at something somebody else said or did, or didn't do. Brother A is offended
because Brother B said something or did something or forgot to wish him happy birthday or whatever,
and half the work in church work is calming everybody down so they don't fight with each other. People
are ready to quit the church or quit the Lord because their feathers get ruffled.
A little more time focused on the cross, a little less time focused on our feelings, would cultivate that
idea of mercy in one's heart. That's what God wants, that's what he's looking for. God still wants to see
truth. You know, I've calculated since that I've been here, this time, since February 2010, between Marty
and I, certainly, we've taught over 200 sermons. Certainly two to 300 Bible classes, done countless
devotionals, personal studies. I'm thinking that by now, most of us should know the truth. I'm pretty
sure most of us know the truth.
We've certainly been taught the truth. The question is has anyone heard or seen the truth coming from
you? Knowing the truth is not enough. Sharing the truth is what pleases the Lord. That's the inward
change that He's looking for and God still wants to see holiness, is our religion some clean suit or dress
we put on for church service and then we leave in the closet when we go to work? The Jews were the
light to the Gentiles in the same way that Jesus says we are the light to the world, the question is has
our religious experience led us to be lights at work, at school, at home, at our family gatherings? If it
hasn't, then either our religion is wrong or we're not practicing it correctly.

7. You know, when I was in college, my preaching professors emphasized the idea that the preaching of
sermons and when you're doing that sooner or later you've got to get to the point. I remember Dr.
Beaver sitting there saying, and the point is, to some poor student who'd be flipping through his notes,
looking for the point. Because some minister preach and preach and preach but never get to it, not
wanting to fall into that error.
Here's the point. Let's not forget what our religion is really about. The true fast that Isaiah talked about
was the sincere expression of our religion. Not just the externals. Religious people then and now have to
always be careful to remember what their religion is really about. In Isaiah's book, God reminded the
Jews and by extension reminds us that our religion is about mercy. Our showing mercy to others in big
and little ways just as Christ shows us mercy in big and little ways. It's about mercy, it's about truth, our
sharing the truth with those outside the church building, not just hearing the truth preached to us twice
or three times a week.
My task is to teach you so you can teach others, not so you can judge how good or enjoyable my lessons
are. My success, Marty's success is not based on the fact that someone will walk up and say, boy, that
was a good sermon, you know, 10, eight, 7. 5. The measure of success is somehow the truth that has
been preached to you has found its way to someone else in your circle, and then there's success. It's
about truth. And our religion is about holiness.
God wants us to be holy, not just act holy, well, during worship, if you don't like being holy, think of it
this way, if you don't like being holy, meaning purity, if you don't like purity, sexual purity, verbal purity,
if you don't like purity, if you don't like goodness, if you don't like sincerity, then you won't like heaven
cause that's all there is there. There's no sin there, there's just goodness there and purity and sincerity
and all of those things. There's only holiness in heaven so if holiness makes you uncomfortable here, you
won't like it in heaven’ cause that's all there is holiness.
To be a religious person, you must not be ashamed of your holiness because that's what separates you
from the world, I've said it myself, I am the first one, I admit it, I admit it to be guilty, but how many
times have we said, well, I don't want to come off like some holy roller, you know, holier than thou.
Well, certainly, I don't want to come off as a hypocrite, absolutely, but if I'm accused of being holy,
that's okay. If the guys that I'm with who normally curse and use bad language and tell bad stories and
so on and so forth, if they watch their tongues around me, that's okay. It's not my job to say, nah, go
ahead and curse and swear, don't mind me, I don't want to be overly holy around you, no, absolutely
not, if my holiness in some way affects you, well, that's a good thing.
That means somehow, the message, the holiness, the person of Christ, the Spirit, somehow is getting
through to you. Some Christians are embarrassed by their holiness because they still want to be
accepted by the world. And John says if you're a friend of the world, whose friend are you not? You’re
not a friend of Christ because remember, it’s the world that crucified Christ. You can't have it both ways,
either you belong to Christ or you don't.
You can fool the world, you can fool the church, but you can't fool the Lord, who will be the one to judge
us, so as I close, I want each person here, young and old, new Christian, experienced saint, to ask

8. yourself, is this sermon for me? I know that it isn't for everybody because there are many people here
who know what a true fast is. They understand that Christianity and they know what it's all about and
they're living their lives in a pleasing way before the Lord and they're being blessed for it.
They have a peaceful heart. Is there any reason why a Christian man or woman who is truly in Christ
should not have a peaceful heart? I know there are people here who possess a joyful attitude and a
hope for the future, regardless of what's taking place in their lives, whether it's poor health or financial
stressor whatever it is, you can tell, they have hope.
Nothing will shake their confidence in Christ. We have those people, we have people who enjoy fruitful
service, and I won't mention names. There are men and women in this congregation, I am absolutely
convinced, I could call them at any time and say, would you render me this service? And I don't bet, but
if I had to, if somebody said, you've got to put money on it, I am 100% sure that if I said would you
render this service for me, they would say, it would have to be illness, death, you know, something
holding them back, I can't say that for everybody, but there are some I know for sure.
That knows what joyful service is all about. On the other hand, if this lesson is speaking to you,
challenging your ways, then don't be like the Jews who heard Isaiah's message but they ignored him. Do
something to respond to God's admonition. Ministers don't want to take themselves seriously but they
do take the message that they preach seriously.
I believe that so long as I follow God's word and speak his word here and follow it as closely as possible,
that he speaks to you through me, through Marty, through the elders as they teach and they preach, as
they follow the word, if I have followed correctly what Isaiah is saying, if I am speaking to you in his spirit
and in the spirit of what it meant at the time, then you need to pay attention to the admonition. Get on
your knees at home and call on Him for help. Begin living your life in the way that you know God wants
you to live. You almost don't have to tell people what they have to do.
People always know what they have to do. It does not know what they have to do; it’s the doing of it
that's difficult. Usually the preaching is pushing you to do the thing. Or come forward, sometimes
coming forward is the answer to confess Christ and be baptized, to require the prayers of the saints,
whatever. Let's make sure that our religion is not just on the outside. Let's be absolutely sure that it's on
the inside as well. Then and only then will it really make its way to the outside of our character and out
into the community and the world, where it finally begins to glorify God and Christ and his church.
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