This Is Spiritually Better Than Fasting!

Zechariah 7:8 –And the word of the LORD came again to Zechariah:(NIV)

Zechariah 7:9 – “This is what the LORD Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.(NIV)

Zechariah 7:10 – Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’(NIV)

Something is spiritually better if it pleases God because God is the object of worship. If God is not pleased by what we are doing, then whatever it is, it is null and void. According to our text of consideration today, there is something better than fasting!

Something is spiritually better if it helps us grow spiritually. If we are not growing spiritually, then the activity is useless. There is an activity that is spiritually better than fasting!

Something is spiritually better if it demonstrates to God and the world that our commitment to God is unquestionable. If we are not spiritually better then the exercise is not worth it. If an activity doesn’t testify our commitment to God, then we should immediately abandon it. there is an activity that is better than fasting!

Matthew 4:2 – After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

Fasting is denying your self comforts of life for religious purposes. We may deny ourselves food and water for a limited period of time for religious purposes. We may even deny ourselves intimate relations for a limited period of time for religious purposes.

1 Corinthians 7:4 – The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.

1 Corinthians 7:5 – Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Fasting may include denying ourselves access to social media or other forms of entertainment for a limited period of time. Fasting may include secluding ourselves from our regular company and regular crowd for a limited period of time. Fasting has to do with us making a choice that is not medical or economic but spiritual, to deny ourselves what we would otherwise use to make our life bearable.

It is a difficult decision to deny ourselves what would make us comfortable. It therefore comes natural to us to honor those who fast. The longer they fast the greater the honor. Yet God tells us there is something of better spiritual benefits than fasting!

Better than fasting means fasting is good and still recommended. Better than fasting means fasting has not been dismissed as being useless, only that there is something better. We fast and still engage in what God has recommended as being better than fasting!

Zechariah chapter seven tells us that Israelites went to inquire from God if they should still fast in memory of captivity. Since the time of Babylonian captivity, Israelites fasted in commemoration of that sad event. It was now seventy years later and they wanted to know if they should continue fasting.

Zechariah 7:3 – by asking the priests of the house of the LORD Almighty and the prophets, “Should I mourn and fast in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?”

Zechariah 7: 4-5, – (4) Then the word of the LORD Almighty came to me: (5) “Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?

Zechariah 7:6 – And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves?

God dismissed their fasting and commemorative worship. God tells them that they were doing it for themselves. Even when they had feasts to celebrate by eating and drinking, God tells them that they were doing it for themselves. God tells them that what He had said in the past still holds water. God had told them there is something better than fasting!

Zechariah 7:8 – Then this message came to Zechariah from the LORD:(NLV)

Zechariah 7:9 – “This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies says: Judge fairly, and show mercy and kindness to one another.(NLV)

Zechariah 7:10 – Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor. And do not scheme against each other.(NLV)

God tells Israelites that how they treat each other is more important spiritually than fasting. Their conduct between each other attracts God more than painful unprecedented great fasting. Treat each other well first!

God is not touched by the strenuous fasting and suffering during fasting. God is touched by how we treat the poor, the weak and unfortunate. God will quickly notice how we treat one another and the disadvantaged.

Zechariah 7:7 – Are these not the words the LORD proclaimed through the earlier prophets when Jerusalem and its surrounding towns were at rest and prosperous, and the Negev and the western foothills were settled?’”

God tells Zechariah and the people that this is not the first time He has told them that there is something more important than fasting. This is not the first time God is telling them that how they treat each other is more important than fasting. God had spoken the same thing through Prophet Isaiah over 70 years earlier.

Isaiah 58:6 – “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

Isaiah 58:7 – Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter — when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

How we treat each other and how we treat those who are disadvantaged is more important to God than any type of fasting. Our fasting is quickly nullified if we have unresolved issues between us. Our fasting will lack potency if we are threatening and demeaning the disadvantaged people around us.

There are people who will be denied eternal life because of how they treat each other and the disadvantaged in their homes and workplace and even in school. Hell will be full of people who fasted in outstanding ways but couldn’t treat people around them well and felt bet the r than the disadvantaged around them. God wants us to relate well before trying to impress Him with fasting!

Dear God fasting is easier than treating people well, help us to treat each other well. Help us to treat the disadvantaged as equals and as we would want to be treated. Help us in this matter, in Jesus’s name, Amen!

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