When they had sent unto the house of God Sherezer, and Regem-melech, and their men, to pray before the Lord, 3 And to speak unto the priests which were in the house of the Lord of hosts, and to the prophets, saying, Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself; as I have done these so many years? 4 Then came the word of the Lord of hosts unto me, saying, 5 Speak unto all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me? 6 And when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves? 7 Should ye not hear the words which the Lord hath cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, when men inhabited the south and the plain?
It appears from this enquiry, that the people were of the same complexion in those days as all days, willing to substitute anything for real godliness. The leaven of self-righteousness mingles up in all men's minds, more or less. The great enemy of souls, infused this deadly poison unto our nature at the fall, and it runs like blood through the veins of the whole race. Fasting, and the squalid thee, sackcloth, and the like, are in the preference of all men by nature, because these are offerings to our own shrine. But faith in Christ is such a self-emptying, self-loathing principle, that none but those taught of God the Holy Ghost ever can, or ever will be able to practise. Reader! do observe in what terms the Lord speaks of those humiliations which are of man's creating, and came not from the Lord. What communion had I with you in all these things, saith the Lord? It is plain from the manner of the Lord's speaking, there had been none. And unless this great object had been the main object; intended from such observances, surely they are so far from being acceptable, that they become offensive in the sight of God. Reader! the doctrine is the same in the Christian Church, as in the Jewish. If Christ, who is exalted as a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins, doth not give them; evidently there can be no real repentance in the soul. Acts 5:31. And if our days of fasting and humiliation, be not with an eye to the blood and righteousness of Christ; they are but so much mockery before the Lord. Isaiah 65:5. It is plain from what the Lord saith in the close of this paragraph, concerning the inattention of the people to the Prophets, that in the midst of all their pretended sanctity of fasting, there was a total disregard to the word of the Lord. What an awful delusion are men under that set up the form, while denying the power of godliness.