The Free Gift

Introduction

Ecclesiastes 7:14 reads, “In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other…” One of the themes that we find in Ecclesiastes is this idea of how we go about facing the perplexing, often times frustrating side of life. We are not always surrounded with rainbows and rose petals. We don’t have to look very far in our lives to find a time and place when we were or maybe are experiencing a day of adversity. In fact, many times we find ourselves wondering if anything else could possibly go wrong. Often times, we make our problems even worse by turning to worldly solutions that the world says will fulfill us and bring us peace. In turn, we are led more and more into ourselves which causes us to make ourselves more important than anything and everything else around us. Our individuality is praised above all other things as the answer to our troubled days so we search out everything that defines us as an individual. This only leads to more trouble as we get trapped in the never ending self-reflection that prompts us to do more, do better, be better, live up to the call on our lives, work harder, work smarter. The lies of the world and of the devil and of the flesh push us more and more into the corner of serving the masters of this world and pull us further and further away from serving the Master of Creation. Our days of adversity, as Ecclesiastes puts it, tend to drive us to our idols. We seek comfort and fulfillment from all of the various idols that we have created in our lives to help us make it through. We find out what is really important to us when the ships of our lives are sinking and we see what things we grab to save. This is true for us in ministry as well. When the day comes that the married couple you are counseling decides that they can’t do it anymore and their only option is divorce. When the membership numbers are dropping and the suggestion is made that the preaching could be a little more seeker friendly so it relates better. When the church plant that you have been working on for years reaches a point where it is no longer sustainable. When we feel gutted by the day of adversity that confronts us where do we turn? What is it that you grab onto to save? Better yet, what is it that you grab onto to give you comfort and strength for the day? Do we turn to the pleasures and trappings of this world and our idols or do we turn to God?

In Isaiah 55, we are faced with the answer to the question of where we should turn and we are given this answer by way of invitation. In fact, we are told that there is nothing we can or should do to indulge ourselves in this invitation. God offers us the free gift of fulfillment, joy, and peace from all our earthly problems as well as our eternal problems through salvation in Jesus Christ. We will see this in three points from this passage which are who is invited, how they should respond to the invitation, and why they are invited. So the simple outline is who, how, and why. In case you are wondering about that last point, why God chose you, the answer is yes, this passage will answer that for us so hang in there with me.

Isaiah is writing to a people who themselves are in the middle of a day that is very filled with adversity. The Israelites have been forcibly removed from their home in the land of Canaan, and the presence of God has been removed from them. These people watched their most precious capital city of Jerusalem be utterly destroyed to rubble. They have been placed under the rule of pagan kings and pagan nations who do not recognize Yahweh as the one, true God of all creation. In their exile from the land of Canaan, they have been treated like second class citizens and all of their traditions and all of the requirements of their ceremonial law have been stopped. Not only are they removed from the presence of God, they cannot worship Him as He has commanded them to worship. As if all of that were not enough, they have had to endure the hardships associated with relocating to a new country, the hardships of famines and pestilence, and the humiliation of being a conquered people. It really is hard for us to imagine the state that these people are in because very few Americans have ever lived like this in our lifetimes. When it comes to a day of adversity, the Israelites were there.

Looking back, we might say, well yes, all this is true but it happened because of their sin and they deserved what they were getting. God promised them that if they were going to be an adulterous people, He would cut them off, and He did. This is the result of those actions. Take note, though, here in Isaiah 55 that God is not continuing to scold them and He is not stomping their necks even harder while they are down, God is calling them into His presence as only a loving God could or would do. In these first five verses, we read of the invitation to come. In these verses, there are 12 imperatives, which are words that we read and say as commands. When you tell your child to, “Clean your room,” the word clean is an imperative. When a general tells his soldiers, “Ready, aim, Fire,” all three words are imperatives. They are commands that are given so that action will be taken. Additionally, imperatives are almost always given with the expectation that action will be happening immediately. I don’t know about all of your parents, but when my parents gave me an imperative, they expected the action to be completed right then, not later on or when I felt like it. So God is inviting the His people into a restored state with Him, but they are invited with the imperative “Come.” This imperative is actually used 5 times in these verses.

Take note here as well that this command to come is not limited to Israel. The invitation is to everyone. Everyone who is thirsty and hungry, Come. What we are seeing here is the inclusion of the whole world in God’s plan of salvation. This is nothing new to God and it shouldn’t be anything new to the Israelites. They have known that they were meant to be a blessing to all the nations all the way back to when God promised the Land of Canaan to Abraham. There Abraham was told that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed. This invitation is nothing more than God’s call to His sheep, who are lost and straying all over the world. This call, this invitation is for each and every one of us who hear His voice and know Him as our shepherd. He is saying to us Come to me so that I may satisfy you. Come to me that I may care for you. Come to me that I may guide you. Come to me that I may pour out my love and fellowship on you. Come to me that you may never again hunger or thirst for anything. In your day of adversity, God calls you over and over again to come to Him.

As we have our days or moments of adversity, where do we go? We have a loving Father who remembers His promises, even to a sinful and wicked generation, and He says Come with the expectation that we will.

I mentioned that there are 12 imperatives in these first five verses and it is important to take note of the rest of them as well. After all, these are the commands of the Lord to His people. Three times we are told to listen, twice we are told to buy, twice we are told to eat, and once we are commanded to delight or enjoy ourselves. We are told to listen diligently, incline our ear, and hear, that our souls may live. It is almost as though a parent is telling a child to, “Come here” and when the child doesn’t react fast enough, the parent says, “Now listen to me, I’ve got something for you. Come here.” This something that the Lord has for His people is not just a small treat though. We are told that it is for the life of our souls. We are told that it is water, wine, milk, bread, and food. These are the elements of nourishment to sustain life. And this is not meager rations that are just enough to get by on. They aren’t survival rations, they are rich food and because of this, we are commanded to delight in this provision, or enjoy what we are given and delight in the resulting life it gives. All of this sounds amazing to us and we are inclined, even excited to come and take what the Lord offers but with all of this extravagance and supply, surely there must be a cost. No! We are commanded to buy without money and without price. It is hard to buy something if you don’t have any money and if the object you are after has no price tag. Yet the Lord commands us to partake in what He has provided.

As we come and listen to our Lord and take what He is offering, He tells us in verse 3 that He will make with us an everlasting covenant just as He promised to make with David, who He called as a witness to the peoples and a leader and commander for the peoples. This verse is translated that God will make a covenant “with” us which is a fitting way to describe a covenant since typically it is between two parties and thus would be made with the parties. The Hebrew here though can more literally be translated as God will make a covenant “for” us. On our behalf God makes and keeps the covenant promises that He made to David because of the love He has for David. Here we see a picture and a promise of the coming Messiah. The promise to David was that there would always be a king on the throne from the line of David. Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is the fulfillment of the promise and here God is telling His people that He loves them so much that He is giving them all they need for life and life abundant and He also remembers that He has promised to provide a leader for them from David’s line. Now you can imagine that as an exiled Jew, living in a foreign land how much comfort and peace that would bring. You have been removed from your land but you will be brought back. You have been put through trial after trial. You have been hungry and thirsty and gone through famine and neglect but God is promising to give you the sustenance of abundant life. You have been under the rule and authority of pagan kings and pagan nations but God has not forgotten His promise of a ruler who will sit on David’s throne for eternity. This is incredible news for those Israelites.

Brothers, it is incredible news for us as well. Yahweh, the God and Father of Creation, says come to me. I will give you the food and drink of life. Listen to me and I will make a new covenant unto life for you. Take ownership of what I am giving you, eat of it, drink of it, be filled with it and delight in the life I give to you. Our heavenly Father gives us a specific task, come, a specific place, to Him, and a specific result which is life abundant. Ignore the noise of this world and focus on the voice of God. In all of life’s busyness and chaos and adversity, God is calling you to come, listen, believe, and have life at no cost to you.

In verses 6 and 7 we are told how we should respond to this call of God which is our second point. We are also reminded of the urgency that is required. In verse 6 we read, “Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near.” For the Israelites who are living in a world of exile, there is an important message here. God is saying, “Realize that your only solution is to return to Me. I have everything you need. I have already covenanted with you that I will restore everything through David. In fact, My plan is to not only restore you, but also use you to draw the nations to Me. Restoration and revitalization in your soul start with seeking Me as your solution and calling upon Me to help.” He is reminding the Israelites that His promises are true and that He remembers them but also that access to those promises and living in the fulfillment of those promises comes when they seek the Lord, call upon Him, and forsake and turn from their ways. Israel’s day of adversity has been brought about by their own actions and God is telling them that He is calling and will provide, and they should seek and call upon Him in response. The world that they are in is one that they will be swallowed up by if they do not seek God with all of their beings.

Additionally, the Israelites are being told that they should repent of their ways. In verse 7 we read, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” God is yet again offering forgiveness if they will but confess and repent of their ways. This should be obvious to them as it is how they got into the whole exile situation to begin with. In order to enter again into a relationship with God, they would most certainly have to forsake their ways and turn back to God. We see here that God’s invitation, all those commands to come, buy, eat, enjoy require the response of the one being called, to seek, call out for, forsake, and turn. Seeking is to come with diligence to where the Lord may be found. To call is to acknowledge God in worship and appeal to Him in need. Forsake and turn are the two sides of repentance. Leave the sin and turn and go the other way.

In our hard times, be they minutes, hours, days, weeks, or years of adversity, how do we respond to God’s invitation to come? Many times, the last place we tend to go is to God and the trouble has to be great in order for us to go there. What this means is that we neglect seeking Him in His word. We neglect seeking Him in prayer. We negelct seeking Him in worship and in the communion of the saints. Instead, we turn to Google to find the answer. Or maybe we turn to the latest self-help book that guarantees us a new and better life. Most of us just naturally push our noses harder into the grindstone and work harder on our projects and on ourselves to fix the problems. Brothers, God is calling to each and everyone of us who are His children and our response should be to seek Him out, call upon His name, and repent of our sinful ways. You know, there is hardly a more repeated theme in the New Testament than that of confession and repentance. 1 John 1:9 reminds us, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This is a word of incredible comfort and assurance for us. In the middle of the storms of life, we have this constant to hold onto, God is there inviting us into the fulfillment, joy, and peace of being filled with the very best blessings by Him. We are meant to enjoy what He provides for us and we enjoy it by responding to Him so that ultimately, we grow closer and closer to Him. We do this through engaging with His word which is God’s description of Himself. We do this through prayer where we rely on His guiding hand. We do this through worship where we remove the focus from ourselves and our problems and place our focus on Him and in doing this, all our burdens are placed on Him as well.

This invitation and response just seems too good to be true though. We can’t help but be left with question of why would a holy God do this, and this is our third point. God calls His own and accepts their response because He loves you. You were given to His son, Jesus Christ before the world began, and in Jesus you are made spotless before our Father in heaven and He loves you as His own child.

To consider why this is possible, we can look at verses 8 and 9 which tell us exactly why it is possible that everything God is saying and offering seems too good to be true. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways, declares the Lord. For as high as the heavens are higher than the earth, so far are God’s ways higher than our ways and God’s thoughts than our thoughts. It is God’s plan and has been from before the foundation of the earth. Our understanding is not the measure of what God can do. Our customs, traditions, and expectations do not contain the Maker of all things. We are reminded by Isaiah that God is thinking His own thoughts and pursuing his own road. Paul reminds us of this in Romans 9 when he writes, “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Job is reminded of this when the Lord answers him and asks, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding.” The Lord goes on for three more chapters reminding Job of all that He is and has done.

We often try to define God and define His ways. In many ways, we are called to this because we should read God’s word and learn more and more about who He is so that we can become more and more like Him. What we have to remember, even in those days of adversity is that this is God’s plan, not our plan and verses 10 and 11 tell us exactly how God accomplishes this plan of salvation unto eternal life for His people. As sure as the rain and snow water the earth when they fall, as sure as the rain and the snow bring forth life in the plants of the earth that bring about seed and bread to the hungry man, God’s word just as surely accomplishes everything that it is intended by God to accomplish. Without water, death upon death mounts up without the life giving rains and snows given by God. This is something that we can see in our own experiences even. Across the country, there are places where there has been no rain and we have drought. Nothing grows without water. As soon as the rain and snows fall though, life springs forth. It is a sure thing that you and I have seen over and over and over again in our lives. This illustration could not be any clearer to us and it would have been incredibly effective with the Israelites as well, who were all too familiar with drought and famine in their land and history.

God’s word, though, goes forth and brings death back to life. God’s word is this very scripture that we are all holding in our hands right now and His Word is also the Creator, Sustainer, and Savior of the universe, Jesus Christ. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” God accomplishes His plan through Jesus Christ, the Suffering Servant. All of this calling and forgiveness and relationship with God that we look on that seems to good to be true because it is free to us was bought and paid for by God Himself through Jesus Christ bearing God’s wrath on the cross and paying the price for us. Isaiah is reminding us that God sent His son, the Word, and His son has accomplished everything He was sent for. He has accomplished paying the price for our sin.

To what end though? The last two verses of Isaiah 55 paint a picture for us of the renewed heaven and the renewed earth. This is life everlasting. This is heaven. We know this because in verse 13 we are reminded that the thorns and thistles are replaced with fir trees and myrtles. Thorns and thistles are pictures of death. They are pictures of the curse that was set on the earth way back in the garden when Adam and Eve rebelled against God. The fir trees or cypress and the myrtle are evergreens that never die back. They are pictures of life everlasting which is our eternal home. We go out in joy and are led forth in peace by our faithful Savior and even the mountains and trees rejoice, all of creation rejoices at its renewal because this is an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. The answer to why are we invited to respond is that God loves us and wants the best that can be had for His children.

Brothers, where are you looking for your comfort, joy, and peace? Are you looking to this world with all of its many ways to reach fulfillment? Are you trying to figure out what to buy or how much you have to pay or how much you have to give up so that you can accomplish joy and peace? Are we who are faithful believers in the promises of God stuck serving the idols of this world in the hope that we will be fulfilled? Are we constantly trying to figure out what else we need to do to make sure that we are right with God? Do we try to solve our problems and overcome our adversities by turning more to the world and ourselves who caused them to start with? Listen to Isaiah as he prophesies to the Israelites and listen as God talks to you through this scripture today. Come to God, Listen to His word, take the banquet that He is offering to you, His child. He has more than an abundance to fulfill you. Seek Him, call upon Him, and forsake the ways of this world turning away from the sin that separates you and God. Here you will find peace and joy everlasting. You can only do this through faith in Jesus Christ and your reward is eternity where there will be no more days of adversity. This reward cost God His only begotten son. This reward cost Jesus Christ the wrath of God on Him. This reward, this gift given to you which is eternity in heaven, costs you nothing at all. Amen.