Isaiah 58-9b to 14. If you remember 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 rise in darkness, and your gloom will become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and

satisfy your desire and 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 raise up an age-old foundations,

and you will be called the repair of the breach, the restorer of the streets in which to

dwell.

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 speaking your own pleasure, and speaking your

own word, then you will take the light in the Lord.

And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth, 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.

One of the greatest preachers of the first thousand years of the church was a man named John Christestum. He was the Bishop of Constantinople in the fourth century and

the reason I mention him is because he fasted a lot and he said some great things about fasting.

He was an ascetic. You know that word means that your heart on your body and you do a lot of rigorous things and his lifestyle was such that he offended the Emperor of the Eastern part of the Empire named Arcadius and his wife

Eudoxia a lot so much so that near the end of his life which shouldn't have been near the end of his life, which shouldn't have been near the end of his life, they

banished him out of Constantinople and he died on a rigorous journey to where they were sending him in

4.07 a.D.

The reason I mention him is just so that I can quote for you one of the most

remarkable tributes to fasting that I've ever read probably is the most remarkable that I've read.

And it goes like this.

...