Isaiah 55 (Palm Sunday 2025)
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
For all you swfities you may remember this
In 2020 Taylor Swift released the song Exile and it debued at number 6 on the top 100
As of today it has 3/4 of a Billion streams on Spotify
Why was it so popluar?
It gave language to an ache we all have
And it used an interesting word…Exile
It is an interesting word because it is one of the greatest themes in the bible
It is a word that gives language to the human experience we all know
The video to the song is of Swift clinging to a piano in a storm tossed sea
If we are honest life has always hit us and left us feeling like that
Tossed by the storms of life…longing for things to be how they are supposed to be
Exile and our return from it is one of God’s greatest themes he gives us for life east of Eden
And life in exile…and our longing for everything sad to come untrue is the ache of all of our hearts
Isaiah describes our exile and tells us why it is here
But it gives us hope in a promise of the palms Jesus fulfills
Palm Sunday is the global announcement our exile has an expiration date
That is the hope Palm Sunday pulls forward from the Passage we are in today
The Unimaginable Offer of Grace 1-5
The Unimaginable Offer of Grace 1-5
“Come, everyone who is thirsty,
come to the water;
and you without silver,
come, buy, and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without silver and without cost!
Why do you spend silver on what is not food,
and your wages on what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and you will enjoy the choicest of foods.
Pay attention and come to me;
listen, so that you will live.
I will make a permanent covenant with you
on the basis of the faithful kindnesses of David.
Since I have made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples,
so you will summon a nation you do not know,
and nations who do not know you will run to you.
For the Lord your God,
even the Holy One of Israel,
has glorified you.”
Lets first set the biblical context of where we are in Isaiah 55
Isaiah is a warning of what is coming because of living against God
It is the warning that Babylon is coming
It is the time leading up to Daniel being taken as a teenager into exile
The first 39 chapters are all about the reality that that feeling of exile is coming in all of our lives because of sin and regret and funerals
But the beauty of God is that he doesn’t leave us there when he had every right too
The message of chapters 40 -66 is the message that our exile will have an expiration date because the ultimate exile will come
Jesus is coming…hold fast in the storm of exile in this life
This chapter explodes in poetry and song to put language to our longing and the offer of hope God holds out through the Gospel
The language of thirst and hunger and poverty describe our exile in the human experience
We are bankrupt spiritually and desperate for something bigger then our fear and regret and emptiness
The turn of verse 2 is the reality everyone under the sun feels this way and longs for hope
The question is what are you clinging too for that hope at a graveside
What do you think will end the ache?
Not what you say you believe but the challenge …what is your functional savior?
God is saying you will feel the exile …but cling to me because nothing else will satisfy you
Nothing is willing to go as far as God is to end your exile and make you whole
That is what verse 3 is powerfully holding out
That scandalous offer of his scandalous acts to save messes like me
Pay attention and come to me;
listen, so that you will live.
I will make a permanent covenant with you
on the basis of the faithful kindnesses of David.
Pay attention to what you are functionally trusting as savior and turn to God as your only savior
Listen to his way of how to be whole
Do you want the ache to stop
Do you want your tears to have an expiration date?
He knows the way and he is holding it out in this opening explosion of verses
Seek Him Because He Is Worth It 6-11
Seek Him Because He Is Worth It 6-11
Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call to him while he is near.
Let the wicked one abandon his way
and the sinful one his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord,
so he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will freely forgive.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
and your ways are not my ways.”
This is the Lord’s declaration.
“For as heaven is higher than earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
For just as rain and snow fall from heaven
and do not return there
without saturating the earth
and making it germinate and sprout,
and providing seed to sow
and food to eat,
so my word that comes from my mouth
will not return to me empty,
but it will accomplish what I please
and will prosper in what I send it to do.”
He uses a specific Hebrew word for seek
It is not like looking for what is lost
It is the idea of committing to what you know is there
We aren’t grasping at straws feeling around in the dark for God in our exile
That isn’t what seek means
It means choosing from the causal core of who you are to cling to what you know is there
The bible is the revelation of who God is
As Chris said last week it is the revealing of His character so that we cling to it in the pain of this life
We know he is there…because he has said he is …and on this side of the cross we know he is there because he came and showed us in the flesh who he is and how far he is willing to go to end our exile
This is the language of being in a crowded room when you were a kid
You know mom is in there you just can’t find her so you look and look and look and then you see her and go running because you know you are safe with mom
But how do we come to Him in response to this scandalous offer of hope to end our exile?
We come as we are ….but don’t stay that way because of His great love for us
We come to him busted up and sinful and a mess
But there is no cheap grace described in the bible
Wicked means guilty before the law
That is how we all come to the cross
But we leave changed
The new testament picks up on this legal language
We are justified before the judge because of Christ’s faithfulness imputed to us
Isn’t that scandalous if you are honest with yourself and know what you have done?
When God the father looks at you when you are saved he doesn’t see your mistakes he sees the perfection of the son?
That is unreal
And that is the offer of the hope in exile
We are the undeserving and guilty in these verses….but God
Ephesians 2 should leave us in awe if you are honest with yourself and your life
Christian Standard Bible Chapter 2
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins 2 in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world….But God …
Christian Standard Bible Chapter 2
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, 5 made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!
His ways are not ours
He doesn’t treat us as we deserve the way we treat people
How does he act?
He says that while we were still sinners Christ died for us
God through Christ bridged the gap we never could to get to us and kill the dragon to get us home
And it changes everything
That is the power of the language he uses when he says in verse 10
The rain..the hope he offers us through the Gospel provides the seed and furnishes the bread
He means this as Tim Keller said- the Gospel is not the ABC’s of the christian life it is the A-Z
We never move on from the gospel because it is more then a get out of hell free card
He wills and turns our wayward hearts to himself….and he gives us a new heart through the holy spirit to live in our new found freedom
We contribute nothing to our salvation other then the problem
No matter how far we run we cannot out run the grace of the Gospel
C.S. Lewis famously described God as "The Hound of Heaven" to illustrate his reluctant conversion to Christianity, emphasizing God's persistent pursuit of him, even when Lewis resisted
If you have been a mess like me you echo the words of Lewis
God is tenacious in saving sinners
Sinners in a world longing for an end to the exile we all feel
What Creation Longs For Is Here 12-13
What Creation Longs For Is Here 12-13
You will indeed go out with joy
and be peacefully guided;
the mountains and the hills will break into singing before you,
and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush, a cypress will come up,
and instead of the brier, a myrtle will come up;
this will stand as a monument for the Lord,
an everlasting sign that will not be destroyed.
What are His ways that are above ours?
What is His plan we cannot even imagine?
What can he do in our exile that is so unbelievable it makes us cling to Him
here is the secret we are being let in on…he is not out to simply end our pain in the moment he is out to make a new earth where it doesn’t even exist anymore
He wasn’t out to simply end a moment of our pain he went to war to kill the very place our pain comes from and promise a new earth where we won’t even remember its name anymore
Every inch of this earth is under a curse…even the leaves of the trees
For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.
All creation “groans”; that is, all created things suffer a common misery, being in a state of pain and disorder
Even the trees know their creator
Even the grass knows disorder in a world shattered by our exile from Eden
The promise of hope in Isaiah 55 is that when the creator comes
Christian Standard Bible Chapter 55
the mountains and the hills will break into singing before you,
and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thornbush, a cypress will come up,
and instead of the brier, a myrtle will come up
Does the language of thorns remind anyone of anything in Genesis?
It was the curse of sin that made them part of our life
In Genesis 3:18, God declares that the ground will produce thorns and thistles as a consequence of Adam and Eve's disobedience, signifying the hardship and toil humanity would face in obtaining sustenance.
Where else do we see thorns?
Easter
Why was it important for God to tell us it was a crown of thorns placed on Jesus’ head
Why that detail?
Because he wanted us to know in Christ the curse from the garden was broken
A new eden is coming because Christ came to kill what broke the first one
That is the promise and the hope of the palm branches being waved on Palm sunday 2000 years ago...and symbolically waved by millions today
We are all longing for the new Jerusalem to come
Isaiah wrote his book telling us the Jerusalem we live in is shattered with exile but to give us a hope that in the midst of it a better Jerusalem is coming
That is the promise of the Palms
And the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem was an explosion of fullfullment of passages like this one
The Promise in the Palms
The Promise in the Palms
The book of Mark says Jesus took on every Old Testament prophecy to fulfill and show He is God
Palm Sunday was saturated in His declaration that He is God
There were very specific things from specific places being fulfilled that day
They brought the colt to Jesus and threw their clothes on it, and he sat on it. Many people spread their clothes on the road, and others spread leafy branches cut from the fields.
There is another incredible prophecy about the King of Kings coming on a donkey
The scepter will not depart from Judah
or the staff from between his feet
until he whose right it is comes
and the obedience of the peoples belongs to him.
He ties his donkey to a vine,
and the colt of his donkey to the choice vine.
He washes his clothes in wine
and his robes in the blood of grapes.
The gentle King is declaring I am the one who alone has the right to the throne
He has tied his colt to make all things new
Thank God he didn’t shrink away from the pain he knew would come
Heres the hope of His taking his rightful place
Look at the last of Genesis 49
He washes His clothes in wine and His robes in the blood of grapes
What does that mean
What does that have to do with the hope Isaiah 55 assures us is coming
Wine was the symbol of joy
The promise here is that in His Kingdom joy will be so abundant we will be saturated in it
There will be no more regret, sadness, funerals, mistakes, unmet longings of the heart
YOUR PRESENT SUFFERING HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE!!!!!!!
That is the Kingdom and why we cry HOSANNA TO THIS KING
It is looking to him alone to bring his kingdom and make everything sad come untrue.
He is coming in Gentlesness to free us from the captivity of a world that isnt how its supposed to be
he came to end out exile
Isaiah shows us exactly what will happen when it comes in fullness
This is my favorite part of all of this
Why the palm branches?
Isaiah 55:12 (MY AMPLIFIED TRANSLATION)
For you will go out from a world that isnt how its supposed to be with saturating joy And be led forth BY THE LORD HIMSELF with gentleness; The mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, And all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
The palm branches are the taste of what is to come in the fullness of the kingdom
Isaiah 55 says even the trees will clap when God comes to win the war we cannot win
The New Testament tells us the King Isaiah was looking for came
Why the palms today?
Because God came 2000 years ago to win the war and get you home
Like I said in the beginning in Taylor Swifts video to her song Exile she is clinging to a piano tossed by the stormy ocean
She is looking for love to end her exile and quiet the storm
Her songs are right we are in exile…but they are wrong in how to be whole and end it
Christ is what you long for
And his victory to end your exile is what you long for
Look to Him to get you home
If you are the ones Isaiah is talking about cling to the King even the trees clap in the presence of
“Come, everyone who is thirsty,
come to the water;
