The issue is on the one side there's a list of religious activities and feelings, and on the other side is a list of ethical, moral, relational realities.

And these become the test of the authenticity of these.

Not our warm fuzzies on Sunday morning.

Hi, I'm your host, Dan Kroover.

What demonstrates the authenticity of our worship?

In this episode of Light and Truth,

John Piper opens Isaiah 58 verses 1 to 12

to expose the false comfort of religious performance

and call us to a faith that bears fruit every day of the week.

This message was originally delivered at Bethlehem Baptist Church on February 12, 1995.

One of the greatest preachers of the first thousand years of the church was a man named John Chrysostom.

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 you're hard 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, they banished him out of Constantinople and he died on a rigorous journey to where they were

sending him in 407 AD. 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 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.

...