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.