Hard to Get

Let’s pray...

CONFLICT - upsetting the equilibrium (Is God hiding from us? Is he trustworthy?)

In our Gospel text, Jesus says,

Then the disciples came to him and said, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” He replied, “You have been given the opportunity to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but they have not.”

- Matt 13:10-11

He goes on to cite Isaiah 6 as prophetic justification for speaking cryptically.

Friends, why is Jesus hiding the truth of the kingdom through parables?

In our Isaiah 55 text, where we will spend the bulk of our time this morning, God says through the prophet:

For My plans are not your plans,

Nor are My ways your ways

—declares the LORD.

But as the heavens are high above the earth,

So are My ways high above your ways

And My plans above your plans.

- Isaiah 55:8-9

Gee God, are we supposed to take comfort in the fact that we are dumb compared to you?

Friends, does God delight in keeping us in the dark?

Is this one of his trump cards to keep us faithful when all indicators say we should go our own way?

Let me give an example of what I mean. We recently moved into a neighborhood that has a community pool. So, to help keep my kids motivated with chores or behaving, I sometimes use the, “if you don’t do ___, we won’t go to the pool” line.

Is this what God is doing when

he speaks in parables,

seems deaf to our desperate situations,

or casually reminds us of his incomprehensibility?

Exploring the incomprehensibility of God, Rich Mullins sings in his song, “Hard to Get,”

You who live in heaven Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth Who are afraid of being left by those we love And who get hardened by the hurt

Do you remember when You lived down here where we all scrape To find the faith to ask for daily bread Did You forget about us after You had flown away Well I memorized every word You said

Still I'm so scared I'm holding my breath While You're up there just playing hard to get

For some of us the gap between God and us might look something like these images of people shouting to heaven with a raised fist or arms spread wide in a posture of questioning.

Can you relate to this at all this morning?

For my whole life, I’ve read this passage as indicating how inaccessible God’s ways and thoughts are, and even used this against myself, so-to-speak, to encourage blind trust.

Now, I can say from personal experience that God is so good and trustworthy that He is worth trusting blindly.

Yet, this entirely misses the context in which the Good News of this passage streams forth.

While the remote and impenetrable mind of the gods is attested in some Ancient Near Eastern and Greek literature, as some scholars note,

Isaiah’s point is precisely the opposite here.

The text is not highlighting the impenetrable gap, it is emphasizing that despite that gap, God makes his ways known.

Where are you thirsting and hungering today?

How are you filling that thirst and hunger?

Whose ways are you walking in?

The good news, friends, is that

God makes his ways known to us and invites us to walk in them.

COMPLICATION - analyzing the discrepancy (in what way is God’s greatness a reason to trust Him?)

SHIFT – reversal (the explanatory why of the complication)

As Hule reminded us last week, Jesus invited all who are weary and burdend to come to him for rest.

This week, Isaiah 55 invites those of us who are thirsty and hungry to come to the Lord for what truly satisfies. He says,

Hey, all who are thirsty, come to the water!

You who have no money, come! Buy and eat!

Come! Buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

– Isa 55:1 (NET)

This is the call of the marketplace vendor.

At first blush, with a passage so positive, I was tempted to preach a feel-good message.

I mean, who here this morning or watching online doesn’t need deep satisfaction right now that’s free?

But that would be the fast-food message and that isn’t Isaiah’s point.

Yes, the invitation to come, drink, eat, and be truly satisfied is sincere, but this drink and this food is hard to acquire.

Not because it is inaccessible, but because it is costly.

Ah, but wait a minute, Isaiah said it was free! We can buy without money and without cost.

Isaiah’s point is not that this is the free kids school lunch program or the government stimulus check, for which we are deeply grateful.

He says that we still must buy, but that money won’t work because there is no price tag on what we need to buy!

And this is the first way that God’s ways are not like ours.

Isaiah’s audience, just like us, was embedded in a financial system that offered security, abundance, and joy.

When Isaiah asks,

Why pay money for something that will not nourish you?

Why spend your hard-earned money on something that will not satisfy?

-Isa 55:2-3 (NET)

he makes clear that they were actively trying to satisfy their deep longings through the means that they could produce.

God makes known his ways to them and to us, that his economy is not just quantitatively different, it is qualitatively different.

Our earthly ways of using money and unchecked patterns of consumption will never satisfy the deep cravings of the soul.

To be clear, God is not against money, the marketplace, or the enjoyment of life. But these things are entirely secondary to Him and His plans for us.

Neither the possession of wealth, nor the consumption of goods are an indicator of God’s favor, our security, or our walking in tune with His ways.

So, what exactly is God’s way? He exhorts,

Listen carefully to me and eat what is nourishing! Enjoy fine food.

Pay attention and come to me! Listen, so you can live. - Isa 55:2 (NET)

This is Isaiah’s form of “people do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” in Deuteronomy (8:3).

The Hebrew word here, is שׁמע which means not only listen, but “obey.”

Isaiah’s message was for 8th century Jews in chapters 1-39, but the audience addressed in chapters 40-66 are 6th century Jews, those who had gone into Babylonian exile over 150 years after Isaiah’s death.

The Persian King Cyrus, referred to as “messiah” in Isaiah 45:1, was used by God to conquer Babylon and allow God’s people to return to the land of Israel.

The question is, would the people listen, leave their economic structures, step out in faith, and give up the comfort of Babylon?

That would be a costly decision. But it was backed by God’s covenant faithfulness to his people as he indicates in Isa 55:3-5.

In the parable of the soils, usually called the parable of the sower, Jesus also highlights conflict between the kingdom of God and worldly wealth. He warns in Matt 13:22,

The seed sown among thorns is the person who hears the word, but worldly cares and the seductiveness of wealth choke the word, so it produces nothing.

Walter Brueggemann’s observation regarding Isaiah is spot on with Jesus’s message in Matthew, in that

there is a divine intention for the future that transcends our plans, which are often conceived in fear or in anxiety (The Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible, 1061).

Where do you need to listen carefully to the Lord in your life this morning?

The good news, friends, is that

God makes his ways known to us and invites us to walk in them.

The second main indicator that God’s ways are accessible to us is found in the call of the preacher or prophet in Isa 55:6-7 (JPS).

Seek the Lord while He can be found, Call to Him while He is near.

Let the wicked give up his ways, The sinful man his plans; Let him turn back to the Lord, And He will pardon him; To our God, For he freely forgives.

As I reflected on this passage, I wrestled with these two questions:

(1) What does it mean to “seek the Lord”?

(2) Why should I have to seek the Lord?

On the one hand, it is clear that He is available, otherwise we would not be invited to seek him.

The way the Hebrew reads, God permits himself to be found.

The Greek translation emphasizes God’s availablily this way,

Seek God, and when you find him, call upon him

Is. 55:6 (NETS)

On the other hand, the command to seek God implies that He is not obviously present even though He is right there.

This is the same point Jesus makes in his interpretation of the parables and why he chooses to use them.

God’s kingdom is right here, but you refuse to see it. I am speaking it to you plainly but you can’t hear it.

The obstacles Jesus mentions are calloused heart, deaf ears, closed eyes, the work of the devil, trouble in life, persecution, worries about life, concerns about wealth.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t say I can relate to any of those things. (I’m being sarcastic, of course)

In all seriousness, the things Jesus mentioned are very close to the things Isaiah’s audience wrestled with and they are what impede us from seeking God and finding him right with us.

There is so much more I can and want to say about this text, but for the sake of time, I need to bring this to a close.

It is really important to see this:

when God says, my ways are not your ways, this is right after the wicked are invited to forsake their ways.

when he says your thoughts are not my thoughts, this is right after the unrighteous are called to forsake their thoughts.

God invites us to lay aside our ways and thoughts to take up his.

We can only do this if he has made them known to us.

Just as the sower, Jesus, makes know the good news of the Kingdom of God, so God rains and snows down his word on his people.

The question is, are we receptive soil for His word?

As many note, the word translated as “thoughts” in the NRSV can also mean “plans” or “intentions.”

Friends, I hope you realize that God’s intentions are for our good, our health, our well-being, our shalom.

They are based on his character of covenant faithfulness to us, his mercy, and forgiveness.

God’s ways are not like our ways and they do not manifest in ways we expect because our ways are corrupt and self-centered.

This past Sunday Hule, invited us to pay attention to how we are reopening, redefining, and rebuilding as a church.

Friends, we have a lot of work to do both as a church here in Wilmore and as the Church in our world that seems to be burning down as we speak.

Like probably all of you, I desperately want to be in a place of relaxation and life as normal.

Isaiah and Jesus are in harmony when they warn us that if we place our hope and security in the power, money, and methods of this world, we will be stuffing our faces but never satisfied.

The work we are called to, as Brueggemann puts it so well is this:

“Isaiah shows us that God is powerfully and decisively — though hiddenly— engaged everywhere in the reality of the world. Once we acknowledge this claim, then the work of our faith is to relinquish in life, personal and public, all that contradicts the reality and purpose of God and to receive from God what we cannot generate for ourselves” (The Renovaré Spiritual Formation Bible, 984).

Let us listen attentively to the word of the Lord.

Let us feast and satisfy the deep longings of our souls.

Let us forsake our ways and plans and embrace his.

The good news, friends, is that God has made known his ways to us. Will you walk in them today?

Amen!