Is it such a fast that I have chosen?

Isaiah 58:1-14
¶ Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God. 3 ¶ Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. 4 Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. 5 Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to YHWH? 6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? 7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? 8 ¶ Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of YHWH shall be thy rereward. 9 Then shalt thou call, and YHWH shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; 10 And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: 11 And YHWH shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. 12 And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. 13 ¶ If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of YHWH, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: 14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in YHWH; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of YHWH hath spoken it.

Jan 15 (Reuters) - Palestinian health authorities say Israel's ground and air campaign in Gaza killed more than 46,600 people, with just over half of identified victims being women, children or older people.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a deal to halt the fighting in Gaza and exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, an official briefed on the deal told Reuters on Wednesday, opening the way to a possible end to a 15-month war that has inflamed the Middle East.

The latest round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict began on Oct. 7, 2023 when Hamas militants stormed across the border into Israeli communities. Israel says the militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took some 250 people into captivity in Gaza…

The official Palestinian Health Ministry count of more than 46,600 Palestinian dead amounts to more than 10 times its count of losses in all previous Gaza conflicts since 2008, according to a Reuters calculation…

Of the identified dead, about 55% are estimated to be women, children or elderly, according to a Reuters calculation based on Palestinian data released in January…

The numbers do not necessarily reflect all victims, as many are still under rubble, the Palestinian Health Ministry says. It estimates some 10,000 bodies were uncounted in this way…

The U.N. human rights office also says the Palestinian authorities' figure is probably an undercount. In past Gaza wars, the U.N. tally sometimes exceeded the Palestinian count…

Israel periodically estimates the number of Hamas fighters killed. Last year it put that figure at 17,000-18,000. Recent assessments put the number of Palestinian militant dead at 20,000. It says about one civilian was killed for every fighter, a ratio it blames on Hamas for using civilian facilities.

The Reuters News service

Since October 7th 2023, when Hamas militant terrorists attacked the state of Israel in one of the most brutal attacks witnessed since the formation of state of Israel, the war between Hamas and Israel that followed, has amassed an awful and indescribable violence on the Gaza Stirp, which Hamas attacked from, and millions of the Palestinian people were caught in middle of the war.

The reaction of the Israelis to the Hamas attack where 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 Israeli citizens were taken hostage, has resulted in a fierce retribution of brutal warfare and terrible tactics used by the Israeli state’s military the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) who amidst the targeting of Hamas operatives appears to have taken little care or regard for the civilian population in the densely populated Gaza Strip.

In addition to the retribution of the Israelis on Gaza, the Israelis have turned a blind eye to violence on Arabs and Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and regions of northern Samaria. Israeli settlers are annexing and forcibly taking land owned by Arabs forcing them out by violence and brutal means.

This settler violence, plus further military actions by the IDF in the West Bank have caused the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians.

The Israelis, both government officials, and settlers alike, seem to condone this using the words of the Old Testament as their authoritative right to take the land away from the Palestinians and annex more Arab territory.

Christians today should first realize that the Israeli Jews are not living within the Old Testament days, nor according to Old Testament Law, where once YHWH gave the land of Canaan for biblical Israel, we now live under the New Covenant YHWH made with the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Behold, the days come, saith YHWH, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: 32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith YHWH: 33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith YHWH, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know YHWH: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith YHWH: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

Jesus declared that New Covenant, and sealed the New Covenant on his cross in 33 A.D..

Matthew 26:28
For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

Mark 14:24
And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.

Luke 22:20
Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.

Therefore, the Israelis now and their Zionist ancestors who colonized the land of Palestine in 1948 to build a Jewish homeland for a Jewish people, likewise were in rebellion and violation of the law of the New Covenant, as of 33 A.D. was established in Christ’s blood sacrifice on the cross.

Matthew 5:21-22
¶ Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: 22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

Matthew 5:43-45
¶ Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

YHWH warned Israel not to pollute the land, and defile it by the shedding of innocent blood.

Numbers 35:33
So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.

Deuteronomy 19:10
That innocent blood be not shed in thy land, which YHWH thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and so blood be upon thee.

Likewise, YHWH warned Israel not to oppress the stranger.

Exodus 22:21
Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Exodus 23:9
Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

In 1948 the Zionist Jewish colonizers after pushing out the prior ruling British out of Palestine, ruthlessly pushed out the Arab inhabitants off the land where as over 800,000 Arabs were violently evicted from their homes and place of living communities by the Israeli military and entire communities were wiped out of their living conditions replaced by new military posts, barracks later turned into Jewish Israeli schools, colleges and hospitals, and Israeli communities built up on what once were Palestian Arab lands.

You see, before the Jewish Zionists came to Palestine in large numbers, the land was inhabited largely by Arabs, as well as a minority of Christians, and Traditional Jews, all who were forcibly taken over by newly largely Socialist Russian and Eastern European Jewish emigres and Zionist colonizers.

The Zionists settlers were not looking to assimilate with the overwhelming Arab Palestinian population, rather to take ownership of the land they believed belong to their ancestors of Old Covenant days.

Next Christians today must realize that as brutal as the events of October 7th were with Hamas attack on Israel, it is but a blip in history of the larger ongoing conflict which has gone on for more than 77 years.

This present bloody war did not happen inside a vacuum, as the Israelis may want you to believe the trouble started with Hamas on October 7th.

For more than 77 years, since the first establishment of the Zionist state of Israel, the remaining Arabs have been treated as less than second class citizens, they have been treated with most cruel and inhumane forms of abuse, and an equally abusive violent military occupation, and even comparable to the apartheid system of racist white South Afrikaners and their mistreatment of the native African population of the former racist South Africa state.

Living under Israeli apartheid and occupation, caused the Arab Palestinians to protest, react, and rebel against their Jewish oppressors; this is where the violent conflicts erupted and the rise of Islamic militant groups such the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) or later Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas were born.

When peaceful protest was failing, and politics through international laws ignored, violence filled the vacuum, and with it also terrorism.

Political Zionism is a racist form of Jewish supremacy, imposing oppressive laws and treatment on the remnant Palestinian Arab population.

Prior to the events of October 7th 2023, the Gaza Strip was not only under occupation, but enclosed and operated as walled in open air prison, the inhabitants Gaza were so poor that without several hundreds of trucks of food and material humanitarian aid daily entering the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian people would be a dire situation due to strict Israeli embargos and the restrictive military occupation.

After October 7th the Israelis prevented food trucks from entering to the same degree as before the new war. The Israelis not only turned away food trucks, but badly needed medical supplies and medicine, anesthesia, medical equipment, and humanitarian aid shipments. All these were denied and curtailed, even Israeli citizens came out to block and protest aid trucks from entering the Gaza strip early in the war.

The Israeli IDF, to add to the misery of lack of medical supplies withheld, targeted, and destroyed many Palestinian places of medical treatment centers, and hospitals, and targets ambulances, making it very difficult to next to impossible for Palestinian medical crews to work on patients with hardly any hygiene, or anesthesia, or medicines, and bandages, to perform operations on the wounded.

To date, (2-10-2025) more than 48,200 Arab Palestinians have been killed, over 55% includes women and children and elderly, and of the injured, over 111,000 are estimated to be numbered. Over 20,000 of the number dead are Hamas, or Islamic militants.

The great numbers of Arab Palestinian deaths have to do with the brutal warfare techniques the Israelis have ruthlessly employed in fighting the terrorist Hamas militants.

Many Christians are not aware of use of by Israeli IDF of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, which they have used to target the Hamas terrorists.

The first military AI program used to target individual terrorist operatives in buildings, to target the building, is an AI targeting program codenamed in English as “The Gospel.”

Wait a minute! What????

Why would the Israelis name their military targeting software a codename such as “The Gospel?”

This disturbing fact should be very concerning to all Christians.

At the very least it shows a full disdain by the Israelis to the Gospel of Jesus Christ which most people around the world would associate to the words ’The Gospel’ or good news.

The second AI military software targets individual terrorist operatives is called by the codename “Lavender” and the last of three IDF AI software is disgustingly codenamed “Where’s Daddy.”

“Where’s Daddy” targets the individual terrorist along with his family members!

The use of all three AI programs by Israelis has resulted in indiscriminate targeting of the Arab Palestinian civilian populations, where by entire apartment building complexes, schools, hospitals, United Nations residences are taken out and demolished, destroyed in missile attacks and non-precision bombs so to kill one, or a handful, or many Hamas terrorists such as the target may be.

According to the Israeli-Arab news media named +972 Magazine working with other Israeli and Arab media exposing Israel’s tactics reported the following:

“The Lavender machine joins another AI system, “The Gospel,” about which information was revealed in a previous investigation by +972 and Local Call in November 2023, as well as in the Israeli military’s own publications. A fundamental difference between the two systems is in the definition of the target: whereas The Gospel marks buildings and structures that the army claims militants operate from, Lavender marks people — and puts them on a kill list.”
+972 Magazine

In + 972 Magazine November issue it exposed “The Gospel”

“According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.””

+972 Magazine

The IDF and Israeli spokespersons repeatedly assert that their actions are of a “moral war” of “defense,” and that the IDF is the “most moral army of the world,” disputing the notion that they are indiscriminately targeting civilians, or their buildings, hospitals, schools, and media personnel, and ambulances.

All this evidence shows the brutal nature of the Israeli IDF toward the besieged Gaza strip, West Bank, and its Arab inhabitants.

Christians must ask themselves, in light of the New Covenant, how can the Israelis morally do what they are doing and their mistreatment of the Arab Palestinian peoples?

Why is it that the modern Church is largely silent when it comes to rebuking or voicing any opinion about what is going on with the war in the so called “holy land?”

If we look at Isaiah 58, we see that biblical Israel sinned greatly against God, though they thought they were living righteous before God. This is much the same way the Israeli Jews today think they have moral high ground and authoritative right to annex Arab lands based on the words of the Old Testament and a promise and gift made to Abraham.

Genesis 17:3-8
And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, 4 ¶ As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. 5 Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. 6 And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. 7 ¶ And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. 8 And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

Let us look at Isaiah 58 to see what Israel sinfully did and what God demands from his people.

Notice that the Israelites claim to fast for God, appealing to God afflicting themselves by ritual fasting and with sackcloth and ashes, yet God’s prophet Isaiah says that they fast falsely, and hypocritically as sinful people, seeming righteous, acting as though that are doing God’s good will.

YHWH clearly does not accept their fasting and postures of self-righteousness. YHWH recognized them for their evil hearts of strife, debate, and violence.

In the next scriptures we will see that YHWH demands a different kind of fast.

Isaiah 58:6-7
Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? 7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

The fast YHWH choses, and delights in, is one where man treats his fellow man with undoing wickedness, removing heavy burdens, letting the oppressed go free, breaking every yoke, or burdens off one’s shoulders. To deal bread to the hungry and poor, and to clothe the naked.

Clearly the Israelis today have ignored YHWH’s fast and do not treat their fellow Arab neighbors with respect. Instead, they have oppressed, they have laid upon the Arab people’s heavy burdens. The Israelis have recently denied bread, or food to enter Gaza to feed the hungry, the now poor, the now homeless, the now wounded, the now naked Gazan peoples.

The Israelis state politicians feel no obligation to repair what they have broken, or the damage they have inflicted, leaving millions of destitute Gazans to live in the demolished ruins from the Israelis AI weapons bombing spree. They feel they do not need to take responsibility for the rebuilding of Gaza.

In the next Scripture we see that if one does what YHWH wishes of his people then YHWH will bless his people, Israel.

Isaiah 58:8-12
¶ Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of YHWH shall be thy rereward. 9 Then shalt thou call, and YHWH shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; 10 And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: 11 And YHWH shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. 12 And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.

Clearly if one treats his fellow human being with respect, honor and humanely showing mercy and that which satisfies the afflicted soul, that YHWH will bless that person, or people.

Lastly YHWH speaks of those who delight in God’s holy sabbath. The Jews today claim to keep the sabbath, but in claiming so they have put many heavy burdens on those who partake of their so called sabbath and sabbath laws.

The truth is no one on earth keeps perfectly the biblical Sabbath of YHWH and biblical Israel and the Jews today are no different.

Isaiah 58:13-14
¶ If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of YHWH, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: 14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in YHWH; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of YHWH hath spoken it.

What point is the Jews keeping God’s sabbath and maintain self-righteousness when they full of iniquity, and wickedness, by their own sinful actions, lack of mercy, but full of strife, violence, and false corrupt ritual worship.

Christians must realize that the Jews in the Israeli state, and their merciless treatment of the Palestinian Gazans, and those of Arab of the Occupied West Bank, and parts of Arab populated Jerusalem, are guilty under the New Testament law of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said this warning to the Jewish Pharisees of his day:

Matthew 23:23
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

The same principal of YHWH’s words in Isaiah 58 are mentioned in Jesus’ statement to the Jews in Matthew 25.

Matthew 25:31-45
¶ When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

God seeks righteousness, mercy, compassion, faith, judgment, and justice from his people.

Its also clear the Israelis lack much mercy, much faith, and much justice in the way they treat their fellow human Arab neighbors. For this reason, “the holy land” is defiled from shedding of blood and the fast of the Jewish people and all their ritualistic prayers and religious behavior is for naught before YHWH’s eyes.

Instead of God blessing the Israelis with peace, they have war, continual strife, and reap what they have sown in their unrighteousness, and their wickedness, and sin, and rebellion by their Judaism.

Only God can remove their sin, through Jesus the Christ the Son of God who died for the sins of Israel and all peoples, the sin of the world.

Truly the Israelis lack much faith in God, by their actions they have denied YHWH, as well as by their denial of his Son, JESUS, for if one does not have the Son, one does not know the Father.

John 14:6
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

1st John 2:23
Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: (but) he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.

Christians should have a lot of ‘soul searching’ when it comes to how they view the conflict, and war in Middle East, and how they react to the Israelis and their state’s mistreatment of the Palestinian people.

Only Jesus can save the people of Israel from their sins, he died on the cross for that purpose, and only Jesus is the answer for the Palestinian people to find true peace, not ‘world peace,’ but the true spiritual peace of God, to partake of his Sabbath of rest, and his promise of inheritance of the promised land with the New Jerusalem.

Clearly the Church has failed to speak truth to the Israeli and the Palestian people, and judgment will start at the Church when it stands before Jesus, and Almighty God.

Do you know Jesus?

He died and bled his blood and gave his life for your sins.

Won’t you repent to God of your sins today.

Will you be baptized in his saving name?

I thank God for his final Judgement that all men will give an accounting of their lives before Almighty God and that God is holy and righteous and his judgements are true.

Hallelujah!

Praise you YHWH! Praise you Jesus! You are worthy of all the praise!

(Please pray for the people of Israel and the Palestinians in besieged Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere around the world.)