In 'The Delightful Day,' Scott Brown discusses Isaiah 58:8-14, emphasizing that the true focus of the text is not on the external practices of fasting and Sabbath-keeping, but on the heart's condition and genuine delight in God. The sermon challenges listeners to examine their motives for religious duties, stressing the importance of compassion and authentic worship. Brown outlines the blessings promised in Isaiah 58, including light, healing, protection, and guidance, when one's heart is truly aligned with God's desires. The sermon highlights the transformative power of delight in God, suggesting that true joy and revival in the church and individual lives come from seeking God's pleasures over personal ones. The message concludes by linking the purpose of the gospel to the pursuit of everlasting delight and joy in God.

The sermon text is from Isaiah 58 verses 8 through the end. Then your light shall break forth like the morning. Your healing shall spring forth speedily, and your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard. Then you shall call and the Lord will answer.

You shall cry and he will say, Here I am. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, if you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as the Noonday. The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your soul in drought and strengthen your bones. You shall be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. Those from among you shall build the old waste places, you shall raise up the foundations of many generations, and you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.

If you turn away your fruit from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord, honorable, and shall honor him not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words. Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken. Let's pray. O Father, thank you that your mouth has opened, your word has gone forth, and Lord, that you have opened our ears to listen.

I pray Lord for those ears that are still blocked. Oh Lord would you open them today that the deaf may hear. Lord that the scales may fall off, that the blind may see, as your word is preached. For you have promised, Lord, that when we shall call, the Lord will answer. And you have said that when we cry, you will say, Here I am.

O Father, help us to cry out with genuine hearts to see you today. Oh Lord, may you be high and lifted up amongst us. Father, as your word is preached, may it come forth with power. Lord Phil, Scott Brown with your Holy Spirit, Father that we may truly hear from you now, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, as we're gathered here before Isaiah 58, we can see again how Isaiah's painting a picture.

He's drawing this situation that the people of God have found themselves in. It's the same situation that the people of God always find themselves in the midst of. He uses two examples in the picture of the main message. The examples are the examples of fasting, on the one hand, in the first part of the text. And then finally, at the end, he deals with the Sabbath.

And so what Isaiah is doing is he's using these two illustrations to illustrate something greater. And it would be a mistake to think that these passages are primarily about fasting and about the Sabbath. I don't think that that is the heart of the matter that the Lord is speaking to his people about. He's simply using what's happening regarding the Sabbath and the practice of fasting as illustrations. And what God is doing here is a number of things in this chapter.

I think first of all, he's declaring the love of God. God comes to his people, and he's diagnosing a virus. He's explaining something that's gone wrong. There's a sickness that exists in the church and as a result they feel it. There's a lack of blessing.

There's a lack of joy in their lives. You can see this in the very first part. They say it very clearly. Where's the joy in this? Where's the blessing in this?

They're doing all the things. They're going through all the motions, but it just isn't coming to anything. It isn't... There's just no blessing in it. So the Lord comes in His love and He catches His people to diagnose a problem.

And this is what God does for His people. God demonstrates His love for us. That he sends his son to speak to us, he sends prophets. And here God sent the prophet Isaiah to declare these things to his people so that his people in all ages would learn from that, so that they too would find themselves able to diagnose their own problems that they find in the church. So I think the first thing that is striking about this picture that Isaiah is painting, it's a picture of the love of God to rescue a people from a joyless deadness.

And then secondly, there's a focus on the heart of man. The message isn't primarily focused on these two duties of Christians. They are duties of Christians. God has commanded these things, fasting and the celebration of the Sabbath. These are godly practices.

But what Isaiah is actually doing, he's not really focusing on the duties themselves. And if you read it very carefully over and over again, what is the message that continues to come out? It's this message, the heart. What's going on in your heart? Why are you doing this really?

Why are you fasting? Are you fasting just to get your own way? Are you fasting for success? And why are you keeping the Sabbath? There's no delight in it.

Why? Why are you doing this? And so Isaiah is drilling down to the heart of the matter that exists in the midst of other duties. And so he's going for the heart here, primarily. And then thirdly, he's speaking of something that is so important to consider, and it's really an answer to a question.

Where is your Christianity riding you? Where is it taking you? Because in this passage there's imagery that speaks about where you ride when your heart is turned toward the Lord in fasting and in keeping the Sabbath. And we should always be asking, you know, where is my heart taking me? Where is my culture taking me?

You know, where are my preferences riding me to? How are, where are they going to ride me? And, you know, we often ride on the high hills of our own passions. And the Lord is putting a finger in this wound and he's saying, do you realize where I want you to ride? Where am I taking you?

I'm taking you to the high hills of the earth. You will ride on the high hills of the earth." And so there's this whole imagery of riding. You can picture riding on a mountaintop, and you can see all over, and you're riding on the high hills of the earth. It's a beautiful scene and you're galloping across the landscape. That's the picture that he's painting here.

And the question is, where are your affections riding you, like for example on the Sabbath, or where are your affections riding you when you fast? Is it really just all about you? And here God desires to deliver us from ourselves, which as it turns out is a joyless, fruitless way of life. It's just filled with our own preferences, our own words, our own ways. We love ourselves so much, we want to have a self-congratulatory life and we don't want to replace ours with his.

That's really the problem. That's a heart problem. That is the problem. And then, and then fourthly, there are many blessings that are promised. I'm gonna try to mark out 14 of them that are in this text.

Blessings that are promised. And there's some possible overlap in one or two of them. But these are the blessings of seeking the pleasures of God and not your own pleasures. There's really no pleasure in your own pleasures, but there are pleasures. Pleasures in heaven in his presence is fullness of joy at his right hand.

Our pleasures forevermore. That's Psalm 16 and 11. And he's speaking of this matter of pleasure. And what he's saying is that if you want to do something wonderful with your fasting, If you want to do something wonderful with your celebrating the Sabbath or whatever you might do, you could put anything in this list, I think. Any religious duty can go in this list as a placeholder.

Because the question is, why are you doing this? What is happening to you as a result? And is it reflective of the pleasures of God? So if you want your life to make a difference, then make it a life full not of your own preferences, but God's. And if you're going to fast, don't make it for yourself.

Make it because you love people. Because social justice is something that God desires to accomplish through you and your fasting. And he does present justice as being accomplished by fasting and the keeping of the Sabbath. And so I think in our modern culture, we've lost a sense of the significance of fasting and the Sabbath and why God has given them to us. He's given them to us to do justly and love mercy and walk humbly, to change the world really.

But they're only any good when the heart is right. And when the heart is right, not right, The fasting is just drudgery and the Sabbath is a bore. You can always tell when the Sabbath is, why the Sabbath has become a bore to you and a drudgery. It's because there's no love in your heart for God. And This is one of the great things about the Sabbath because it does expose our lack of love for God and our lack of ability to worship Him all day long.

It just shows us our weakness and it should drive us to Him. So I want us to be really clear about this. My view of Isaiah 58 is that the message isn't, you need to fast more. The message isn't, You need to celebrate the Sabbath more. That's not the message.

The message is far deeper than that. And the message really is, you know, where is the culture of your own heart riding you? Is it riding you to what's truly delightful? Or is it just writing you to the things that they pass for delight, but they're not true delight? Okay, Let's go into the text here.

Verses 8 through 12 explain these blessings that are promised. There are four of them in verse 8. We'll start with verse 8. Then your light shall break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily, and your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard." Now I count four blessings that are listed here in verse 8 alone.

And, oh, these are my favorite passages. And the first is light, the second is healing, the third is righteousness going before you and the fourth is the protection as your rear guard by the glory of God Those are the four that are in this first verse. These are blessings that are the marks of the revival of true love in a heart toward a person. In other words, it's the mark of a person whose heart has been so revived that they are fasting not for themselves but for love. And I do believe that while you have the fasting part in the front end and the celebration of the Sabbath in the back end of the passage, everything in between are blessings, pretty much.

There's some diagnosis, but it's primarily blessings. My view of Isaiah 58 is Isaiah is lumping all of these things together. I think the blessings apply both to the Sabbath and to fasting. He's speaking of the life that results from the heart that is turned toward God, that is wanting to make a bigger deal of God in every part of his life, and particularly the Sabbath, that God is bigger and bigger and bigger on the Sabbath than he ever was, rather than smaller. And you are smaller and smaller and smaller as your life goes on.

And what happens to you? These blessings that are here in the midsection of the passage. Now, some may object to my interpretive grid on this passage. I would concede it's possible that the first part only exclusively applies to the things of fasting and the second part only exclusively applies to things of keeping a Sabbath. I'm not sure that's true.

It's a debatable matter. Well, the first blessing is that the light shall break forth. The light shall break forth. Light is representative of the presence of God, and God shines his light as a result of fasting and the celebrating of the Sabbath for the love of God and for the love of God alone. And it makes the church the light of the world.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the light of the world and he is the light of his church. And so it causes the light to shine in the darkness when the hearts of the people are increasingly consumed with God when they fast and when they celebrate the Sabbath. And it says that it breaks forth and it's an interesting word that Isaiah uses here. It's the same word in Genesis 7-11 when the waters erupted like a flood to flood the earth. This gigantic, cataclysmic eruption of water that came out of the crevices of the earth.

And he says this is what happens, light shines, it shows up. And then the second blessing is healing. I think this is at least, at minimum, it's personal healing. Your healing shall spring forth speedily. And the word that he uses here is the painting of another word picture and it's the picture of new flesh growing over a wound.

Have you ever had the severe wound and then the flesh began to grow over it? It happens slowly. It's one of the beautiful miracles that God has built into the world that wounds heal. And he uses this picture of a physical wound to speak of the spiritual woundedness of the people. And what happens, you know, we get so wounded in this world by sin, and yet God in His kindness, He gives us His healing Sabbath.

And this celebration of the Sabbath and this fasting for love brings forth healing. This is the result of the love of God being poured out in the heart. And The good thing about this is that you never stop healing. I feel like I'm old enough and qualified to know that, that God's not done healing. What a blessing it is.

Then the third blessing is protection, or maybe you might call it security. And righteousness goes before you and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard." So God, as a result of his true worship, he provides a protection in front of you and behind you. And you have something on the front and the back. This is very much reflective of the way that God led the children of Israel out of Egypt. They were caught in the abusive jaws of Pharaoh, the great abuser of the souls.

And when they escaped, Pharaoh was chasing them down. And what was their protection? They were protected from the rear and from the front, by a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire. And this is what God does, He protects you. I'm particularly interested in the protection from the rear, you know.

The enemy likes to attack from the rear. And what this means is that you can move forward. You don't need to worry about being attacked from behind. This is an illustration that every military commander has very vividly etched in his mind, how do you protect your troops from the rear? Your protection from the rear has to be just as, or maybe even more powerful than your protection from the front.

And he says that it's the glory of the Lord that is your rear guard. The glory of God produces fear in the hearts of unbelievers. It produces fear. The word that he uses here is this word for glory that occurs all over the Word of God. And you know, when you think about protection, you know, And what you might do to protect your family.

You know, what would a man do to protect his family? What would be the rear guard of your family? What would be the rear guard of your church? What would be the rear guard of your whole society? It's the glory of God.

This is why when the church gathers, her chief obsession ought to be the glory of God, to see God, to hear from God, to read the word of God, to sing the praises of God, to have God and God alone. And this is one of the great tragedies that takes place in churches, where God is not the center of the church, something else is. Some other interesting thing is, coolness or entertainment or whatever, or maybe even a family integrated church. Maybe that would be something cooler than God to someone. And yet God says that his glory is your rear guard.

It's not the glory of man. It's not the glory of your ideas, it's not the glory of your thoughts and meditations, your words, your ways, your goals, your objectives, your success plan from your fasting. It's none of that. It's the glory of God. And so when we gather together, this should be the thing that we ought to find dearest in our hearts.

It's the most healing thing. It's the most protective thing we can do. And then the fourth blessing is the presence of the Lord. Now when he speaks of the presence of the Lord being a blessing here, he couches it in a conditional promise. In other words, there are conditions.

They are not just granted automatically. There are only certain conditions where His presence is found. And He says this, if you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and the speaking of wickedness, if this happens. In other words, if you remove sin, if you remove abuse, and if you remove slander from you. And he's repeating verse 6, the breaking of every yoke.

And at this time, you know, they were binding heavy burdens upon the people, the priests were, as it was in the days of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were saying, you know, I fast and pray, I am superior. They were binding heavy burdens on the people in a lot of different ways. And there are three kinds of behavior that he lists here as conditions of the blessings from his presence. The first condition is the first thing that we must put off.

He says, if you take away the yoke from your midst, what does that mean? What does it mean to take away the yoke from your midst? I think it has to do with stopping the abusive and harsh behavior toward your neighbor. If you say that you love God and hate your neighbor, you're a liar. And the second condition, the second thing we must put off is the pointing of the finger.

The pointing of the finger is the upwelling of the heart of contempt toward your brothers and sisters, mocking them. There's nothing that will expose the condition of a person's heart before God like their attitudes towards other people, where there's harsh judgment. This pointing of the finger is a condemning kind of action. The condemning of another person in the church. If you want to destroy the worship of the church, then just have a church full of people who are pointing their fingers at each other.

This is very different than what Isaiah was speaking of at the beginning. When he says, cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet, tell my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins. That's not what he's talking about. He's not talking about declaring the truth in love in a strong way and to declare it. He's not talking about that.

He's talking about the wagging of the finger, the judgmental, harsh finger of condemnation toward a brother. You know, a thought crosses your mind and That thought causes you to point your finger in in revulsion towards someone in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ The third condition the third thing we put off is the speaking of wickedness I Think this can manifest itself in a lot of different ways speaking of wickedness Now what he's saying is if you cease from these things then God will do something He will draw near verse 9. Do you see it there? This is the result. After the conditional clause, verse 9 continues, then you shall call and the Lord will answer.

You shall cry and he will say, here I am. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness. So you call and he hears. This is the presence of God. God will be among his people when his people cast away their unloving finger pointing.

And the presence And the presence of God is known. And the sixth blessing, verse 10, light will dawn. If you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness and your darkness shall be as the noonday." In other words, if you're fasting for love, if you're fasting for someone else, not just to be more successful in your life, to put the other person in his place, fasting in prayer as brutality, right, toward other people. If you're fasting rather to extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light will dawn in the darkness and your darkness shall be as the noon day. Now, what does it mean to extend your soul to the hungry?

Now, you would have thought that he would have said, if you extend your food to the hungry, he didn't say the food, you would have thought it would be more reasonable or more expected for him to say if you extend your cash, your assistance, your help, you know, the things that you have. But that's not what he says. He says if you extend your soul to the hungry, That's the very first thing that he identifies as happening. What does it mean to extend your soul to the hungry? It has to do with compassion.

It's what comes first. The money doesn't come first. See when you think, when you're fasting and giving for yourself, it's the money that's the first thing. It's the front runner. You gave your money.

Congratulations. But here there's something deeper and more beautiful that precedes the gift. Your soul. Your compassion. Your love.

Because giving to the poor doesn't mean anything without love. That's what the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13, if I give away all my treasures and have not love, I'm nothing. And you might as well have given nothing. And so he begins with the heart of the matter, your soul, extending your soul to the hungry. Your tender heartedness precedes the gift.

The gift is actually the result of love. Not of trying to become known as a giver, but only out of tender hearted compassion. And so you cannot, you cannot just give a gift and have it be a praise to God unless you first have compassion. You know, you find this very same pattern in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ where, you know, there's so many places where He healed the multitudes. It's so astonishing how often He healed.

And that should tell us something about who Jesus Christ is. He is the healer. But when he healed the crowds, the gospel writers, over and over again, tell us what actually preceded the healing. He had compassion on them. That's why he fed the 5, 000.

He had compassion. It was the compassion that was first. And so Isaiah is coming to this great malady that is always troublesome to the church where you think about the giving first and the compassion second. You congratulate yourself for the compassion, but you really just gave the gift without compassion. That's the problem.

And He's speaking to us about activity without love, keeping the Sabbath without the true delight in Him, giving something to someone without compassion. Maybe it's easy to give something to someone who's poor but have the wagging finger as well at the same time. So in the New Testament we're taught that God loves a cheerful giver and now in Isaiah 58 we learn that the cheerful giver is first of all a compassionate giver. The next blessing is guidance. The Lord will guide you continually.

This phrase is so helpful and it speaks about how the Lord leads us through the confusion of life, the difficulty of life as we see it. He says here that he will guide us, that he is a good shepherd, and that we can say, you know, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He will guide you. This is one thing that you can count on.

God will guide you. If you love Him, if your heart is toward Him, He will guide you. He'll see to it. He'll see to it that you get to the place that you ought to get to. It's a promise of guidance.

I hope that's a comfort, you know. We're always seeking guidance for something, but here this is a promise. The Lord will guide you. How often? Off and on?

Just every other week? Continually. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. And the next blessing is satisfaction. He will satisfy your soul in drought.

In other words, no matter what's happening around you, God is your refreshment. Even in times of drought. He sustains you even when there doesn't seem to be that much around to sustain you. Drought causes all kinds of problems. The water dries up and when the water dries up, in most places, the opportunity is gone.

The growth is gone. Work is not as fruitful as it used to be because there just isn't that much being produced. And so there are fewer resources always in times of drought. And what he's saying is even though you'll be in a season where you're deprived of resources, you won't have as much as you had before. Even in those times, He'll sustain you through the drought.

He's not actually, in this verse anyway, protecting you from the drought. He's protecting you through the drought. We saw this earlier in Isaiah where he says, when you walk through the fire you will not be burned. Well, he doesn't keep you from the fire. He just cares for you and protects you while you're in the fire.

So you should not expect a life without drought, and you should not expect a life without fire. But you can expect that He will satisfy your soul in the drought and He'll keep you from being consumed in the fire. The ninth blessing is strength and strength to your bones. This has to do with health. God, out of the overflowing heart of a genuine person who loves to delight in God, something happens.

What do you get for all this delight? Health. Strength in your bones. I take this to be physical health. I think that it can be both figurative and literal.

You know, the medical community understands really well that most people who are sick are heart sick. That there are other things causing their problems. I've had doctors tell me, you know, 60 to 75 percent of the people that come in, they don't need medicine. They need peace. They need peace with God.

And they're so stressed out, and they're so full of fear. And anxiety has just overcome them. And they're just running themselves ragged. They have no rest. They have no hope.

And they're just running themselves from one drug or one pill to another to keep themselves jacked up enough to keep moving. And there's no health there. But when you rest on the Sabbath, when you fast for love, you'll have health. Something will happen in your heart. And you'll have strength in your bones.

You know, This should give us some insight on how harmful formalistic religion is. It's just not that good for you. If you're just going through the motions, it's like one of my redneck neighbors says, you know, he says, it just don't hit no much. Don't hit no much. In other words, it just doesn't, it doesn't help.

Worldliness doesn't help at all. The 10th blessing, growth. You shall be like a watered garden. I love this terminology. And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.

This is refreshment from the outside. This doesn't come from within you, it comes from without. The water comes up around you. This is the waters of life from God. You know, Isaiah loves to use this imagery of the watered garden and the rivers and refreshments.

He uses it in chapter 34, 35, all over the place and he always casts it, well maybe not always, most of the time he casts this picture of the watered garden as first of all a desert and you have this desert and you have the jackals and the ostriches and all these undesirable animals are in the bombed out houses. There's nothing there. They're among the ruins. The jackals are among the ruins. And it's a picture of life without God.

And there you are, your life is ruined, you're in the desert. There's nothing there. And all you have around you are the ruins that you actually participated in creating. Because your life has been so harmed by sin and then something happens the water comes and and there then you have these jackals and these hyenas and these owls you know and now there's there's a garden around them There's something to eat, there's something to drink, and the owls and the ostriches, you know, we the Gentiles are there now, being healed, being nourished, being fed. And there's water.

You shall be like a watered garden and then he's and you shall be like that in other words this happens to you and then you are like that. You are a water garden. You become a spring of water. You know, welling up to eternal life. You know, the Lord Jesus Christ said in John 737, they were celebrating the feast.

And it says that the Lord Jesus Christ stood up and he cried, if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture says, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. You find yourself around the water. The water nourishes you. And then you become a spring of water of life.

That's the picture that we have here. You can read about this in Psalm 63 verses 1 through 5. You can read about it all over the Bible, of the rivers of living water. And then there's rebuilding. This is the 11th blessing, verse 12.

Those from among you shall build the old waste places. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations. And you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in. Here you find that this is the the waste places are being rebuilt and he says those from among you And I believe he's speaking about those true believers who continue the work of God for many generations. They keep building the foundations for many generations.

One generation comes and another goes and Each new generation of believers has the same work to do, and that is to rebuild, to rebuild the old waste places, to find the things that have been wasted by sin and rebuild them. This is what Christians do in the world. We're rebuilders. And the 12th blessing, And I'll just sort of expand on the first, the waste places. I want us to focus on this.

And it opens up a vision for what has been ruined, what has been wasted. This is a question that Christians should always ask, what around me has been wasted? You know, what has experienced collapse in my culture, in my church, in my heart, in my life. You know, what needs to be rebuilt? And here God is the one who puts all these things back together.

God comes to us in the midst of the waste places, and he rebuilds our lives. And he has been so kind to say that I will never leave you or forsake you. And he'll keep on rebuilding. You know, what is it that causes the waste places? Well, it's very simple.

It's always sin that defiles the nation. It's always sin that destroys the cities, harms the families, and wounds the individuals. It's always sin. So this is why God would say in His kindness, come take an entire day and saturate your whole life and mind on the living waters. Because I want to take care of you from the top to the bottom.

I want to rebuild the old waste places. And I'm giving you fasting to rebuild the old waste places and I'm giving you the Sabbath to build the old waste places. The next blessing, the foundations are raised up. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations. We should always ask what foundations have been damaged for many generations.

Now whenever you raise up foundations that have been gone for many generations, it looks strange. That's why Christians are always strange looking in the culture, because they're building foundations that nobody's seen for a long time. And when you see them, they look strange to you. And you can think of the things that have been destroyed that need that need to be brought back and they they haven't been seen for a very long time and as a result they look odd when you when you restore according to the Word of God it looks odd to the culture because it's a foundation nobody's seen before. Like for many generations, they haven't seen it.

And God uses the fasting and the Sabbath to restore the foundation, to rebuild your thinking, to change your whole understanding of life. Why would God give an entire day to meditate upon Him? To wash your mind, to bring you to a place to replace your own thoughts with His so that it would be like a watered garden, a fountain flowing of living waters throughout the rest of your life. You know there are many foundations that have been taken down. The foundation of the gospel.

You know for a half a century I believe the gospel was pretty much lost in American Christianity. And the gospel became a profession with no fruit. It became a decision, not a life that was changed. The foundations of family life have so obviously been destroyed over the last 100 years in America. We're trying to rebuild some of those foundations and you know what when you start doing it, it looks weird to people.

It looks so strange. But I'm grateful to know so many people around this country, they want to restore their family life to look something like what God has described. They're rebuilding foundations, but when they start rebuilding those foundations, people look at it and they say, that's odd, because they haven't been seen for many generations. The foundations of manhood and womanhood are like that. The foundation of the principle that man has made in the image of God, these are foundations that have been destroyed and rebuilding those is something that every generation is given a responsibility to build.

The next blessing focuses on the breach. And you shall be called the repairer of the breach. What's a breach? A breach is something that's now missing. If you've ever seen a dam break and there's a breach now, there's an opening and the water has flooded out and there's nothing to contain it.

There's no protection for those downstream and But it's gone. When a breach is gone, it makes the city vulnerable. And again, I think he's speaking of this language of putting things back that are gone, that need to be put back. And then the restorer of the streets to dwell in. Isn't that beautiful language?

The restorer of the streets. To restore the streets is to turn something back to what it once was. That's what restoration does. The pathways by which we make our way through life, the streets, the streets that people walk in, the way that we move our way through life, to restore it to something to what it ought to be and maybe what it was. It has to do with the ways that people go through life.

You know, the Bible says that there's a way that seems right to a man, but it's not the right way. In Proverbs 12-28, he says, in the way of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death. And this is why David cried out in Psalm 119, make me to know the paths of your commands. Because this is how you become a restorer of the streets. You start walking the way that God would have you walk.

And you conduct the culture of your heart the way that God would have it. You change your mind so that you think his thoughts, your mind is renewed as it says in Romans 12.1. Your family life is changed. It's on a different pathway. The way that you work is a different pathway.

It's the pathway of God and you become the restorer of the streets. And then he speaks of delight next after all these blessings, after speaking of fasting in a wrong way and and really and God you know commanding his prophets to cry aloud to his people, to say to his people, no, no, no. Then he turns to the Sabbath. And he says, if you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day. And call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord, honorable, and shall honor him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words." This is the condition of the blessing that comes in verse 14.

And this is another promise of revival. If these things are happening in your life and in your heart, I'm promising you blessing." And that's verse 14. And there are many conditions. And the first is in the beginning of verse 13. It's turning toward delight.

If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your own pleasure on My Holy Day, you're turning away from trampling on the Sabbath. You're turning away from doing your own thing on the Sabbath. That's what that is. And in this context, it's turning away from celebrating the Sabbath without a heart of delight. In the same way that it was so unprofitable to fast and give to the poor without love.

So it's so unprofitable to celebrate the Sabbath without delight and turning away literally from your own delights. God wants to replace yours with His as an act of love to save you from yourself. The foot is turned away from the imposter of pleasure toward the true pleasure. In this command, he's turning us away from the imposters for pleasure. Doing what God wants you to do is always the greatest pleasure, always.

So God here, He's calling us to live very thoughtfully regarding the Sabbath, to be very careful, and that it's not a day to follow your heart. It's to follow God's heart. It's not a day to do your own ways. It's a day to, in a way like you don't do in any other day, seek his ways. Turning your foot toward true delight and true pleasure.

Turning your foot from your own pleasure On my holy day. Those words, those four words, my holy, on my holy day are important. And they bring together this whole structure of the teaching of the Sabbath in the Bible, that this is a day. God sanctified the day and then he commands that his children would sanctify the day to make it holy. And that means to make it like no other day.

It's not like any other day. There's nothing in it except that you're living and breathing in terms of the way that you position your thinking and and how you direct your life. It's completely different. It's special. It's the most special day of the week and it should be the most delightful.

And this is why he says, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable. In other words, to regard the Sabbath and the things that are commanded in it as a delight. Now, he uses the word delight, and that should stop us for a minute. Because in that one word, you'll find the essence of what God is driving about about the Sabbath and why God created man. God created man to taste of his holiness, the only way to find happiness.

And here, he's speaking of the very same thing. The only way to find delight is to find it in him. And the word that he uses is the word that it breathes of an exquisite delight. Like a very rich, delicious luxury. Maybe it's the most delectable chocolate cake you've ever had.

But it's a word that speaks of this kind of delight. It's something that is desirable, something that you love. It Makes your mouth water. It's something that you look forward to. You think about the delights of the bank.

You know, this happens to me often. You know, when I think about our fellowship meal after the service, Hey, I like it. I think it's fantastic. The food is so good. It's delightful.

I love that part of feasting together as a church. I absolutely delight in it. It's so neat. But it's delight in the things that God has defined that you ought to do and then finding such pleasure in those things. It's so reflective of the heart of David that you see in Psalm 122 verse 1 where he said, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.

I was glad. And then not just with delight but with honor the holy day of the Lord honorable and the word that he uses is a word for heavy something of substance it's the opposite of taking it lightly It's easy to take the Sabbath lightly. Don't take it lightly. Take it heavily. Take it as a big thing.

Take it as a gigantic gravitational force in your week. It should be the central gravitational force that defines everything, that informs everything, that feeds everything. That day of delight is designed to be something heavy. You know you have these these gigantic stars that are just massively powerful gravitational forces. Go look at Betelgeuse, this gigantic star.

It's absolutely astound, unthinkably huge. And its gravitational forces are just absolutely unbearable to try to grasp in your own mind. So make it heavy. Make it heavy. Not heavy in the wrong way, but heavy in terms of big and heavy in terms of a gravitational force in your life.

That's why you prepare for it. That's why you have this day of preparation. So that you prepare for this great day, this beautiful day, and then not your own ways. And he uses the word, the Hebrew word direct for journey or road or direction. It has to do with the journey, you know, not in the way of your own journey, but in the journeys of God in your life.

And then seeking your own pleasure. This has to do with the things that you're just normally attracted to in a normal day. And he's not castigating for the pleasures that you have in other days, but this day is designed to be set aside for one kind of pleasure and one kind of pleasure alone. Set all those aside. I don't think he's saying abandon all those.

I think he's saying set them aside for a greater pleasure. And then he says not speaking your own words. By the way, your own is not in the text. It's implied. Literally not speaking words.

And what he means by, obviously he's not speaking, talking about you can't open your mouth on the Sabbath. That contradicts so many other parts of Scripture so he can't mean that. He's talking about idle words. Just idle words that have no direction. They have no direction of the journeys of God or the ways of God.

But our words should be found in the ways of God. And then in verse 14 are the promises, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken." So this gives us again another sense of what God is interested in for his people. He's interested in delighting his people. He's interested in their drinking from his river of delights and he's pointing to what's truly delightful.

You thought something else was more delightful. He says no it's not really. Try me, test me, call it a delight, make it heavy and I'll show you. It is and it will delight you trust me try me and tell me if it's not true you know we learn here that God's not really impressed with our depriving ourselves on the Sabbath or in fasting. He's much more concerned about the delight that drives it all.

And then he says, I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth. And now we're back to this remarkable imagery. You know, where are your affections riding you? God wants His affections to ride you on the high hills of the earth. This has to do with earthly things.

They're figurative of heavenly things for sure. But He will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth. This has to do with earthly things. They're figurative of heavenly things for sure. But He will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth.

He's quoting Moses in the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32. He's also quoted by Habakkuk in chapter 3 verse 19. But then he says that you'll also be nourished. Not only are you going to ride, I mean I just want all the children in this church just to think a minute for what God wants to do with your life. He wants you to be riding on the high hills of the earth.

Picture that. How about that? I'm up for that. And then you're nourished and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. This is Abraham's promises being enjoyed and fulfilled.

The blessings, the blessings of God from one generation to the next. The heritage, the promises kept, experienced by you. He will feed you on the heritage of Jacob your Father. And then finally he speaks of the settled nature of it, the mouth of the Lord has spoken. The mouth of the Lord has spoken.

It's from the mouth of God, the one who made everything. He will do it. He cannot lie. He keeps all of his promises. He only speaks what he will do.

And so these promises are laid upon the integrity of his own name. And they will come to pass, you can guarantee it. But they won't come to pass if you have no true delight. They can't. And you'll never love the Sabbath.

You'll always think it abhor to talk about the things of God. But they will happen if you do delight in it, truly in your heart. And your fasting will be a beautiful thing in the world. It really will cause justice and mercy to flow. God as a result of the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart, you have compassion and you fast for love.

And you quit fasting for success or to make a name for yourself. And such healing takes place, such blessing, such strength, such health happens as a result. So the big question is you know What's going on in your heart during your fasting and your Sabbath keeping? And where is the culture of your heart riding you? Is it riding you to the high hills of the earth, to more and more delight in God.

Have you ever thought that perhaps it's true that the reason God sent his son was for delight? God sent his son to bring children into everlasting delight, everlasting joy, everlasting happiness. And this is the purpose and the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That a person's heart would actually turn and they wouldn't just be filling a seat and they wouldn't be scoffing at their neighbors but their hearts were really changed. And the result of that change is primarily marked by two things, compassion and delight, ever growing, ever expanding out into the world.

And this is the power of God and a church experiencing revival. And I just want to suggest that there will be no revival in this land unless there's a revival of true worship on the Sabbath. And often so many of the troubles that are in our homes, in our own hearts, in our society come down to the fact that we don't delight in the Lord on the Sabbath. And God in his providence has brought this passage to us to help us to turn our affections toward the things that truly delight. No one's ever kept the Sabbath perfectly.

You won't keep it perfectly today. But what can you have? You can have these promises as you genuinely from the heart seek to make the Lord your delight and the glory of God will be your rear guard and your righteousness will go before you. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm just going to read you finally to close with these words from Robert Murray McShane, speaking of the Sabbath.

It's a type of heaven when a believer lays aside his pen or loom brushes for in his worldly cares, leaving them behind him with his workday clothes and comes into the house of God. It is like the morning of the resurrection, the day when we shall come out of great tribulation into the presence of God and the Lamb, when the believer sits under the preached word and hears the voice of the shepherd leading and feeding his soul. And so We've just heard a message that's not really about the Sabbath. It's not really about fasting. It's about delight.

Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, We pray that you would give us these affections that you would create here in our hearts and in our church such a delight in you, making this such a holy day, a beautiful day, a feeding on what is truly delightful. Amen.