Isaiah 58 opens with a complaint. The people are doing everything right on the outside: they seek the Lord daily and fast faithfully. Then they ask, in effect, “We fasted, so why aren’t You noticing?” (v. 3). The Lord’s answer is blunt: on the day of your fast you chase your own interests, push your workers harder and pick fights (vv. 3–4). A fast is not about looking humble (v. 5). The fast He chooses loosens the bands of wickedness, lifts heavy burdens, frees the oppressed, feeds the hungry, houses the poor and clothes the naked (vv. 6–7).
Then come some of the best promises in scripture: your light will break forth like the morning, your health will spring up, you will call and the Lord will answer, “Here I am” (vv. 8–9), and He will make you “like a watered garden” (v. 11). Verses 13–14 turn to the Sabbath: stop “doing thy pleasure on my holy day” and “call the sabbath a delight,” and you will delight yourself in the Lord. The Church’s practice of fasting for two meals on fast Sunday and giving a generous fast offering to care for people in need grows straight out of this chapter.
Isaiah 61:1–3 describes the Anointed One who comes to bind up the brokenhearted, free captives and give “beauty for ashes.” In the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus stood, read this passage and said, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:16–21). When we fast to lift burdens, we join Him in exactly the work He said He came to do.
Fourteen- to sixteen-year-olds often experience fasting as “being hungry” and the Sabbath as “the day I can’t do stuff.” Don’t fight that with guilt. Isaiah’s own people felt the same way! For the Strength of Youth (“Love God, love your neighbor”) says that keeping the Sabbath holy shows God we’re willing to dedicate a day to Him, and that fasting and giving offerings show Him that His work matters more to us than material things. Let the youth wrestle honestly with real Sabbath dilemmas; your goal is a better question (“What does this choice say to God?”), not a rulebook.