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We hope you enjoy this week's message.

Church, I would like to share with you a message today that will be called God's chosen fast.

As with all of our messages, the notes for messages are on your U-Version Bible app

that you can just download straight into your computer or they will be available in whatever

people will be consuming and re-watching that. If you have your Bible, let's go to Isaiah chapter 58

and verse 3. Why have we fasted, they say, and you have not seen? Why have we afflicted our souls and

you did not take notice? And if we go a little bit further, we see that in fact, in the day of your

fast, you find pleasure and you exploit all of your laborers. Indeed, you fast for strive and debate and to strike with the fist of wickedness.

You will not fast as you do this day to make your voice heard on high. And then God begins to kind of again correct the issue of fasting.

So I'm going to share with you today about the way God sees a fast. I will be very honest. My first confession will be this is that I avoided this chapter. I did not like this chapter when I was fasting because it almost felt like God was dissing on fasting. The same way as this this quote that is going around if you're fasting and gossiping, then go ahead and eat, you know. And of course that quote quote is said by people who are not fasting. And anybody who shares, it usually doesn't fast. So just, so, you know, when you hear stuff like that, you're like, for those of you who are not fast, like, yeah, that's right, all of you fasting people, you just punch a religious more, you know, like crazy people. And so when I read this, I'll be honest with you. I was like, it's almost like God is like, you know, you're fasting.

I don't care about it because you're not good enough. That's how I've read it before. And so today what I'm going to do is I'm going to, as I've been reading for the last few weeks during this fast, I'm actually going to dive into the context of what this means. I have two short points. one will be about the requirement of God's fast and the other one will be about the reward of God's fast

but before we die into that, God rebukes Israel and he says, you're saying, we fasted and you didn't hear us. We fasted, you did not notice us. And God responds and he's like, you're right. So that tells us not every

fast is created equal. Can I say that again for the people on the back? Not every fast is created equal.

That means that just because you forego food and the church is doing it, it does not mean that it

actually pleases God.

Now, it's not wrong.

God is not going to strike you or punish you for that.

You might lose some pounds and actually feel better afterwards.

There's health benefits, but the fast that God expects or God honors is the fast that has to honor God.

God ignores the fast that ignores him. Now, Israel was given

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