Isaiah 58:6 English Standard Version (ESV) “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

Isaiah 58 is God’s Word on true and false fasting. Let us in this moment endure the Word of the Lord to change our thinking about the nature of a fast. Here is Isaiah 58:6 we find no reference to food, nor of abstinence.

Think rather of the ancient requirements of a “hold fast”. It was a place where a people under attack could withdraw and resists their oppressors. This idea is more in tune with this scripture.

Colossians 3:3 English Standard Version (ESV) For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Christ is our “hold fast”. In Him we fend off the attacks of our oppressor. Who is our oppressor?

John 10:10 English Standard Version (ESV) The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

So often we are taught that Satan is the thief but John 10:1 does not call Satan the thief.

John 10:1 English Standard Version (ESV) “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.”

Every man who enters by any way other than by the door is a thief and our oppressor. This is what Vine’s Expository Dictionary says about every man:  “every one” of the class denoted by the noun connected with pas, e.g., Matthew 3:10, “every tree;” Mark 9:49, “every sacrifice;”

This leads us back once again to the tree of knowledge of good and evil where original sin cast us out of our original “hold fast”, Eden. It is sin that cast us out and sin that oppresses us.

Do not be deceived by the liar, Satan, his voice is nothing but a scoffer against the Word of God. He would rather have us blame himself than to accept the truth, we choose to sin, and that is our fault.

Genesis 1:26a English Standard Version (ESV) Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”

Some have different expressions of what God meant when He declared His desire to create mankind. Perhaps it is in His creative process that we want to see the need for our relationship with God. Let us revisit that moment one more time,

God said let us, meaning God was the Trinity, all three in one form, one purpose, united in the creative process. Man became a focal point for the outpouring of all that God is in purpose and character. Beyond creator, His secondary expression is love. Love wants an object to pour itself out upon, like casting a light.

But why the image of His likeness? Why that expression?

The Hebrew word for image here is tseh’-lem; from an unused root meaning to shade; a phantom, i.e. (figuratively) illusion, resemblance; hence, a representative figure, especially an idol:—image, vain shew.

Light shines on an object and creates a shadow. The shadow is cast upon the ground. The object of affection is not the source of light, nor the source of love, but the shadow is a sign that the light, the love, has been cast upon man.

Look to the last description, a vain show. Once again we turn to scripture to explain scripture.

Romans 8:20-21 English Standard Version

²⁰ For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

God subjected us to futility, that vain show, in order that some of us might obtain the freedom we gave up when man gave in to sin.