An Invitation

...read in the evening. A guy by the name of Ray Ortlund took that, and kind of modernized some of the language while keeping Spurgeon's depth, and so it was a great book. Several years ago, for New Year's, we gave away the book called New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp to the church as a whole. I think you might still have copies of it. It's a great devotional book, but one I'm excited about, and I have not looked at or read, is one called Daily Strength, and it's written by a bunch of people. ...various authors who I have been blessed by. You know, I haven't read this one, and I think what grabbed me is sure to direct and grab a description. Right? Let's get in there. Let's get some Bible and redirect about it. And also for our young men, it's never too early to learn about and learn from Charles Spurgeon. So there is a book called God's Promises in the Baptist, and it's adapted from some of Spurgeon's reflections on faith.

So if you have any questions about that, have a word to let me know. I'll remind you again during our offering time. This summer, we're moving through a series where we look at how God refreshes us, how he restores us, and how he renews us. So let's go ahead and have a word of prayer. We're going to dive into Isaiah 55. Father in heaven, I'm so thankful for your word. I'm thankful for those who are fathers. I'm thankful for the Christian net that you have put in our congregation. So we just ask that we strengthen our hands for the good work that you have placed before us. Be with us as we look at your promises and hear these words with the deep emotion that they were given, these wonderful invitations that are repeated in different ways.

We don't listen very well in the first time. So help us as we seek to address our struggling hearts, and we address our wandering, as we address our skepticism in the first time. Probably most of us have heard or said the phrase, "There's good news or bad news." I was, at the age that my kids, oldest two kids were, are now when I discovered joke books, just books filled with jokes. The funny thing about joke books is they lose their humor when somebody is reading them to you, one after another, after another, after another. And I discovered in this joke book that I was reading, and it still sticks in my mind, and there's good news and bad news jokes, right? So the pilot comes out to the wife, and they're not really that funny, but you're going to bear with me.

The pilot comes out and the wife says, "Well, I've got good news and bad news, and the bad news is that your husband fell out of the plane. The good news is he was wearing a parachute. The bad news is the parachute didn't open, but the good news is the plane was still on the ground, right?" They're not really that funny. In fact, I thought they were funny when I was like eight years old, and I felt like I needed to share them with everybody. One of the great trials and tribulations of fatherhood that I am learning now is that what I did, my parents, my children are now doing to me, and I'm pretty sure my parents are saying, "Amen, keep going, keep going." So when we talk about good news and bad news, one of the things that we do is that we're trying to balance.

I've got good news, but I'm trying to balance out the bad news that I'm about to tell you. I'm trying to break it to you gently, maybe with some humor to try to soften the blow of the bad news. The reality of the world that we live in is that it's often filled with bad news. In fact, it seems that oftentimes that's all we hear is bad news after bad news. And the reality is, while it seems like it's filled with bad news, it really isn't. In fact, if you begin to read about the proportion of good news to bad news, it seems in many cases, in a lot of news outlets, it's pretty even. But the problem is, is that the bad news is always louder. It always is given to us in a way that draws our attention.

The fonts are bigger. The headlines are more terrifying. And so oftentimes, even though there is a lot of good news, the bad news is what grabs our attention, what sits center stage, and oftentimes drives more eyeballs to TV or more clicks on the internet. But also, in addition to that, our circle has gotten wider. So even 100 or 150 years ago, if you think about the area in which you were hearing bad news, was your locality, maybe your city, maybe your state, sometimes nationally, and in rare cases internationally, but now, right, we have news that is 24/7 spanning the whole globe, and oftentimes what drives the news is that news. And so we have all kinds of news in the world, and it all oftentimes is bad news. Now that reality of bad news brings us to the book of Isaiah.

And the book of Isaiah is fascinating because it's 66 chapters, and one of the remarkable things about those 66 chapters is in many ways sort of the divisions of Isaiah mirror the divisions of the Bible as a whole. The first 39 chapters of the book of Isaiah are primarily focused on law and judgment and what is coming because you have broken God's law. But then, the last 27 chapters are in many cases pictures of hope, the resurrection, the forgiveness of the suffering. Serving passage we read about Jesus taking away our sins, being the sheep who was led to slaughter in our place. The first 27 chapters. I want to zoom in a little more because we're in that second half, that passage of hope in Isaiah. And there's 15 chapters from Isaiah 40 to Isaiah 55.

There is a picture, and they sort of act as brackets, and specifically comforts. And so it's good news for people who are living in a bad news world. And look at how these brackets are set up. So Isaiah 40 begins like this, "Comfort, comfort my people," says your God. And a few moments later, the grass withers, the flower faith, but the Word of God will stand forever. So God comes to comfort, and one of the ways He does that is reminding us that everything in this world oftentimes withers and fades away, but His Word stands forever. Now the bracket on the other side of this in Isaiah 55 and 11 is this, "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there but the water of the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from a mountain, that shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed for the thing in which I have sinned." And so our text this morning finds itself in this section of comfort that is bracketed by the fact that the word of God both stands and helps us grow and does not return empty. I want you to hear the words of our text this morning, and then we'll dive into it. Come to everyone who thirsts. Come to the waters. He who has no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good.

Delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me. Hear that your soul may live and I will make with you an everlasting cover. My steadfast, sure love of thee. So have you ever had something and it wasn't what you truly, truly wanted? I was thinking about this the other day. Jesus speaks to the church at Laodicea in Revelation chapter 3. He says to them about water, you know, using this illustration from their town about lukewarm water. Either be hot or cold or I will spit you out of my mouth. That's very much how I feel about coffee, right? It either needs to be really, really hot or really, really cold, and if it's lukewarm I just want to spit it out of my mouth. So the other day I went and I got a cup of coffee. My coffee cup came out and there's like a little note written on the side of it.

I'm driving away, taking a sip of this coffee. I'm like, you'd only spent the time you had done writing the note on the side of my coffee cup on making the coffee that is within it to the way that I had ordered it. Like we would be in much better shape right now. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, this is not what I ordered. This is not what I want. I set the tone for the next 40 minutes of me being frustrated about my coffee. And the way we hear this text begin, and one of the threads that runs through it is that there is bad news. That everything we have been searching for and hoping for and trying to obtain for ourselves, all of these things that we are running after, all that we are spending our money and our labor and our energy on ultimately does not satisfy us.

This is the premise behind this entire text. The first people are hungry. And everything that you have worked so hard to labor on is coming up and forth. And it's interesting because Isaiah's audience is accustomed to that news. There's this very small word that's used throughout the book of Isaiah, and it's an interjection. When we say interjection, what we mean is a word that's like emotion or reaction, right? You get hurt and go, "Ouch!" Right? Or you say, "Wow!" Or our kids sometimes at dinner where it's like, "Ew!" Right? It's one of those words that just kind of gets thrown in. And there's a word like that that's used throughout the Old Testament. 51 times, but always, almost always, it's never used in a good way, but it's almost always used as a woe or a signal that judgment is coming.

And in the areas where it's not used as a signal that judgment is coming, it's used in the sense of a lapse of, for example, the king died. Isaiah uses this word more than any other prophet. In fact, 20 times it's used in Isaiah before this. It's used more than 20 times before the beginning of this text, where this interjection is used, and oftentimes it's not even translated, but it's all about judgment. If you would have heard this read, their reaction to this as the beginning would be that judgment is coming. Then you'd hear disembayance. So it's not really a text like judgment. It's a text showing that I'm sorrow and I'm happy. But I have offered you full of freshers and chores so that every Vietnam energy will have changed some things. This morning, those who have known the goodness of God, but all of their energy is devoted to pursuing what they think will bring them peace, but it doesn't actually happen.

That's the bad news that begins in this passage. The tone of this text is the emotion that God is pouring out in grief over the fact that we have run from those very things that save us. It is the text of the invitation. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. He who has no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money or price. And the good news in this text is that we're truly searching for. The problem that we have in our English treatment is that it's a struggle for us. Each verse contains an invitation, and each invitation is applied to a different area of our heart that we need to hear. So in Isaiah 55, verse 1 is the invitation. "Come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and come by wine and milk without money, without bread."

That word repeated over and over, "Come." It's an invitation, and it's a big invitation. Because you and I, when we hear good news, oftentimes there is skepticism in our hearts, right? We've been burned before. There's a big promise and it under-delivers. Or maybe we might say, "This might be true, but it's not true for me." And God knows our discouragement. He starts this text in a big way. Look at what he says. "This invitation is for everyone." And you know how I know that the invitation of this text is for everyone. Because it starts like this, "Come everyone." Right? It doesn't get much more clear than that. There's not an age limit. There's not a nationality limit. There's not the picture of this person that allows that person not to be in the picture. And it's not just big in terms of the scope, but it's big in terms of what it promises. Right?

"Free" means "free" in this text. "Come by wine and milk without money without price." It just means "free." And we use "free" in a lot of different ways, right? Buy one, get one free. It's not really free, I had to buy one. Or free with conditions, right? Open a new checking account, set up direct deposit. We'll just deposit this amount of money into your account. Buy a car from us, we'll give you free oil changes. Oil changes aren't really free because I had to buy a car in order to get them, right? We use "free" in a lot of ways that don't really mean "free." And look at what this invitation, this big invitation, to come, buy wine and milk, "Well, I don't have any money." And he says, "That's okay." Because it's without money and without price.

Not only for everyone, it's free. This invitation of investment skepticism of our hearts tells us it's for all circumstances. In these verses, there's sort of a grocery list, right? You've got water, you've got milk, you've got wine, there's bread mentioned in the next verse. In this verse, some of you talk about water, you talk about wine, you talk about milk. All three of these are important. We tend to take water for granted. If we turn on tap, we can get it, we can walk into the gas station, there's like 18 different brands of bottled water. Some that claim to do this, some that come from distant shores, some that are in glass, some that's from West Virginia, some that's from Virginia, some that's in an industrial park in New Jersey. Like, whatever kind of water you want, we can walk in, and we can...

Now, if you are living in this kind of area, and the background to your life, even though you're now in Babylon, is in Israel, water is a big deal. Remember, Israelites first, Israel's first complaint was the wilderness and the wilderness and the wilderness. Water and the gift of water. And so the picture of this big invitation, first of all, says it gives you what is necessary to survive, but the next thing is, it gives you what is necessary to celebrate. So come by and eat, come by wine. The picture of wine in Scripture is almost universally celebratory. If water goes, you're going to survive, wine says you're going to celebrate. In part, it pictures of people who are stable because you have to grow grapes and harvest them. But it's used in celebration to give God in some way more.

It turns out how it feels. It was present. These people are looking at their wife and saying, "No." Sometimes somebody will say, "Well, good morning." And it's like, "Well, what's good about it?" I don't often respond that way. I think that way. Many of these people are saying, "Well, what is good about my situation and my brokenness, my separation from my people? I'm in captivity." I feel like your life is unrooted and you're in the wrong direction. You're in the heart of the people. And then you're in the constitution of the promises. In fact, when Isaiah 25, we talk to the quarter and we stand on that mountain in the presence of God who takes away all our prayers. And thirdly, the covenant of Jesus is the covenant of God who will come by milk.

The covenant of Jesus to the Israelites from the promise of the name of milk and honey. It's almost always a testament to deliverance and inheritance. And here you are in captivity, in your homeland. The land of milk and honey is far away. Do you remember where Moses was when the first time he came? Exodus chapter 3, he's in exile. In the land of Midian, there's a burning bush. And God will say, "I'm going to promise to take these people to the land of milk and honey." And now here you are, hundreds of years later, in exile, and God is saying, "I'm bringing you to that land of milk." And so there is this picture here that's not just survival, but celebration. And in the midst of the sustaining and nourishing power of God running through it all.

Because this is the invitation. It's a big invitation. But if you qualify, it allows your clients' lapses. First of all, I want you to see this invitation is big. Second, I want you to see this invitation is honest. Listen to what is said. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread in your labor, for that which is not satisfied? Listen to the invitation to me. Eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food. The first thing this does is it's honest and showing us the truth of life. And one of the ways it does that is by confronting us. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread in your labor, for that which does not satisfy? It's a little accusatory. It confronts us, but it's a merciful confrontation.

See, you don't like making a front, and I've shared this story before, but it always just sticks with me when I think about merciful confrontation. The first house we lived in in Vermont was on a one-way road that looked through the entire view of the neighborhood. And we were out playing with the neighborhood kids one day. And this car comes by, and we start yelling at the car because the lady had her purse sitting right on top. Evidently, you know, she sets her purse on top, gets in the car, drives off. So all of us are yelling at her that her purse, and she just slams on the brakes. This was before Karen sort of thing, but she probably was. She comes storming out, "Boy, are you yelling at me!" She's a purge on top of the car.

Oh, okay. Right? Personal consultation. Nobody likes to be confronted. Then you find it wasn't a way to hurt you, but to save you. The God is doing this. He's killing us. Your priorities are in the wrong spot. Not to hurt us, but to save us. His invitation doesn't pretend that things are okay or flatter us twice. He shows his brokenness, but he lays records toward the wrong spot. You and I are skeptical of being invitations because they're too good to be true. And so when we hear something like this, it's easy to be skeptical. What are the conditions? What are the qualifications? Do you know the rules, the terms, the exclusions? Does this apply to me? Or this? What if it's junk? What if that free gift, right? Has anybody ever gotten a free gift?

Like, in terms of a promotion? And you're like, man, this is not nearly as cool as it looks like it's going to be Scripture. Free stuff is always the best. One of my nephews just got his voting license. And so as a joke, I've been like looking up decommissioned agentships and being like, "Hey, we should get this to fish out of this summer." So as a result, now my Facebook Marketplace is filled with like free votes. And almost all of them are like, "Ooh, free vote." And I'm like, "Ooh, yeah, look at this one." And the description that caught me this week was, "It's free, and there's a reason." Right? Not a good vote, right? It doesn't hold water. So we're skeptical when somebody says something, it's free. So we come to this with some skepticism.

We come to this one. We see it's for everybody. But what about me? How can you speak for me? I'm rebellious. Maybe I don't know enough. Maybe I get it. I'm kind of like, "What do you want me to do?" I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how God responds to all of our sacrifices. From the terms and qualifications to whether we qualify to whether this is good. He says this, "Listen diligently." The first thing that God says to us about our sacrifices is, "Actually listen to what I am saying." Don't just hear the words. I'm not going to pass over you, but let it sink down deep into the center of your life. And then He says, "Eat what is good." I hear "good." I'll say something like, "Well, that's good enough for government work."

We can do good in what a way to do good. Respectful. Genuinely. That's good. The first thing God says, "Eat what is good." If you're skeptical, try to eat what is good. And look at what you're trying. Listen diligently. Even if you try this, it's down to this. Delight yourselves. Enrich me. Enrich me. Enrich me. When we give presents as adults, sometimes we often try to play it cool. What I love is when little kids, they haven't figured out that they need to try to be cool, and they get something they're so excited for, and their life just overflows with joy. That's the picture of the life. And while God says to our skepticism, "If you're willing to listen deeply, to try what I'm offering you, you will find yourself delighted in what I've found."

We go unbroken. Nobody's been in the head above water. It's a communication. He's made too good. The claims are too great. There has to be some fine print. And what we hear. Let's try. We're going to play. We're going to play. Or if you've ever watched Game of Tiger, you've got to try new food, because it might be good. We think that. If we think that at all, then we feel sick of it. Our kids are going to be, like, 19 years old, and we're going to be doing that. That's a promise. Secondly, it addresses our skepticism and courage. Find your ear. Now make it an everlasting covenant that fast leads your love. We give invitations in our mail, junk mail. It's the Remember to Remember sales event. It's the Toyota bar, right? All kinds of general invitations to the residents.

Sometimes they're invitations to us specifically. Sometimes we give or receive invitations out of obligation. Well, I guess they're families, so I have to invite them. Look closely at this invitation. This is what God says. "On your ear, come to me, hear your soul, and I will make with you an everlasting covenant." He's not saying they're rebellious and ignorant. Those are really keeping their heads out of water. And He is saying, "Come to me." And I want to put this just in the context of the one who is saying it. He's the incomparable Creator. In Isaiah 40, it says, "Who has measured the heavens with the span? Who has held the waters in the palm of His hand? Who weighs the mountains on the balance? The everlasting God does not grow weary. He neither slumbers or sleeps.

And those who weighed on Him will renew their strength. He is the sovereign Lord of all history, who raises up kings and brings them down, who declares the enemy from the beginning and the things not yet done. That God, who is so big and so mighty and sovereign over all things, who looks at you and says, "Listen, dear, I will come to you." You curse me. The invitation is big, it's honest, but it's also personal. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. He who has no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money, without price. Why do you save your money for that which is not good? In your labor for that which does not satisfy. Listen diligently to me and do what he's doing. Delight yourself and rich from you.

Decline your ear, come to me. Hear that your soul can live, and I will make you an everlasting covenant. Mature and steadfast love. But how is this possible? You've heard the praise. There's things for free lunch. You've been in one of those situations where you have been invited to something or you thought you were and it wasn't for you. I read an account the other day of a guy talking about this embarrassing moment where he was like, "Yeah, I was in the park and I hear this lady going, 'Hey, come get your ice cream.'" He's like, "So I run over there to get some ice cream." And it turned out it was just for a grandkid, right? There's a 40-year-old guy going, "Where's my ice cream?" Right? That embarrassing moment. And so we come with this baggage, right?

There's no such thing as a free lunch. How could this be for me? How could the invitation this big and this honest and this personal, from the God who is incomparable, everlasting, and the sovereign Lord of all history? How could this be for me? What are the reasons why this would be for me? This would be for me. Thank you. That's Isaiah 55, Acts 17, Acts 13, Peter. He's preaching, and he goes through all of salvation history, in just a few minutes, from like the Patriarchs to Egypt, the Wilderness Judges, Saul, David, and he'll say, "This man, about David, this man's offspring, God has brought to Israel, the Savior, Jesus. He died, and ultimately he rose again." The center of Paul's resurrection argument is the sure and steadfast mercy of God in the financy of his life. God promises about David, David has died, and he's married, and he's descended, and he came, and died from a place for our sin, and he goes again and continues to reign. And therefore, this Jesus is the one who…

Let it be known to you, therefore, brothers, that you dismay in Jesus from the givenness of sin is proclaimed. And by him, everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed under the law of Moses. Those who are broken, rebellious, those barely keeping their head above water. Come and see. But, you can find the strength of it to be freed among the commons of the children. And that is common. And the revelation is that the one who is here, say, "Come." And let the one who is thirsty come, and let the one who desires take of the water. Take of the water out of the body. And help the pipes. Father, I thank you for your grace. Thank you for these words. God is so obedient, struggling people in exile. Thank you for this invitation of promise. Thank you for this invitation of promise. Lord, help us to hear. Help us to taste and hope.