"His Ways are not our Ways"

Good Morning, if you have your Bibles turn with me to Isaiah Chapter 55. The title of our message today is, “God’s Ways are not our Ways.” Has there ever come a time where you have said these words. God’s Ways are not my ways. His thoughts are not my thoughts? In other words, we are acknowledging that God is not like us. In fact, he is different in many ways and let’s be honest aren’t we thankful for that? Amen and Amen. So we as humans can typically use this phrase after something difficult happens. I think many people used this phrase when 911 happened or at the beginning of our Pandemic. I hear people use this phrase when God is working in their lives with a particular job and then switches things up. God shows us a different set of plans, a different set of ways.

What can often rise to be a problem is that we see or view God a certain way. We want God to do something or be something that He is not. In fact, here is what the great theologian John Calvin said about this problem. “There is nothing that troubles our consciences more than when we think that God is like ourselves.” HE IS NOT! I can assure you of that.

What we see here in the opening verses of our passage today is that this first part of the passage tells us what to do, and the second part tells us why. Let’s jump into verses 6 and 7.

Isaiah 55:6–7 ESV

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; 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.

1. What we are to do.

The Lord comes near to His people. In other words, what we need to really understand here is that God is ready to be found. Unfortunately often the sheep tend to wonder away from the Shepherd. God has a desire to comfort those who despair, He has a desire to forgive those who have sinned, He desires to deliver those who are bound to the shackles of sin. (So often, we think the exact opposite) God doesn’t love me, He doesn’t want to help me or forgive me.

But what exactly is blocking this from happening? Here in these verses we see what we need to do.

-We are to seek the Lord!

-We are to call out to Him.

-We are to give up our wicked ways and thoughts. (Repentance)

-And we are to return to God, from where we have been. We are to seek the presence of God and His ways for our life.

What we see here in just these 2 verses is a clear Old Testament call to salvation. What this does, is give us a clear understanding of how people in the Old Testament came to be saved. Again remember that this was before Christ humbly came and offered up his life as a sacrifice for sin. Salvation, grace and mercy were available to those who would seek God and call out to Him while He was still there to be found. This type of faith and trusting in God would be followed up by repentance and forsaking their ungodly ways and thoughts.

A sinner must come believing in God, recognizing his or her sin, and desiring forgiveness and deliverance from that sin. The sinner cannot save themselves so they run to God and cast their life on God’s mercy.

Isaiah reminds us exactly what it takes for us to really seek the Lord. We turn away from our wicked ways and the root problem which is sin, and we turn to God.

Today we can place our faith in Christ believing that our sin has been covered by his blood. Again this is faith and trust in God and not ourselves.

The word “forsake” here in verse 7 is extremely important because it helps us to understand that there must come a time where we forsake and turn away from our sin. We don’t hold onto it or play around with it as we are custom to do. We must have a desire to say NO I am not going back to that life or that sin any longer. Jesus is my Lord and Savior and I am going to follow Him from here on. His word tells me that this is wrong and so I am choosing to live for him and not my self.

When we forsake our ways and follow God we are met with His compassion and His abundant pardon. We are going to look at this in just a moment. But, this can only happen because of the finished work of Christ.

So, the main problem that we see here is that of human rebellion. We as humans naturally want to rebel against God and His good ways. But there is a way to be found.

Turn around from your rebellion.

Confess your sin today to God. Admit your a sinner.

Accept your sin offering in that of Christ. He alone can restore us to a holy and righteous God. Christ’s sacrifice made a way. Do this today!

2. What God will do:

Now, let’s look at the back part of verse 7. I want us to see the Lord’s response to us as sinners. One thing that I want you to keep in mind is that God does not have to do this, but because He loves us He so chooses to do several things here. Let’s take a look.

Isaiah 55:7 ESV

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.

-The first thing we see is that God will have compassion on us.

-And the Second thing we see here is that He will abundantly pardon us.

Dane Ortlund, in his book Gentle and Lowly says that, “this response by God is a profound consolation for us as we find ourselves time and time again wandering away from the Father, looking for soul calm anywhere but in his embrace and instruction.” We should return to God in fresh contrition, however ashamed and disgusted with our sin, and then God will not tepidly pardon us, HE WILL ABUNDANTLY PARDON US!!! He does not merely accept us, He sweeps us up in his arms again.

God’s heart of compassion cofounds are thinking many times over. What I mean by this is that it’s hard to believe that God can choose to actually love us if we his people would just give him our wrecked and messed up life. I think so often we feel as if we must get our lives cleaned up first before we come to God. So, this idea of us just running to Him first and letting Him deal with the mess and cleaning us up and changing our lives into something beautiful can be hard to make sense of right? We can never keep ourselves clean church, however we can take our lives to God and let Him alone restore us and pardon us.

When Christ pardons us, he declares us not guilty. What is so amazing about that is that we are guilty because of our sin. We are all guilty of death and Hell. But, because of the sacrifice Christ made on our behalf we have been declared not guilty, set free, and pardoned. Christ helps us understand that we have been declared righteous before God. And it doesn’t stop there. Not only does God pardon us as penitent, He has determined to bring us as His people into a future so glorious. Someday we will have an eternal future with him forever, what a glorious day that will be.

3. Who God is:

Isaiah 55:8–9 ESV

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

God’s ways and thoughts are of upmost importance here so I want to make sense on why this is, and what this shows us about God.

When we take a look into a persons life one of the things that we know to be true is that our ways make up our behaviors, and those behaviors have to be changed if we are to ever live for God and truly follow Him. Wether we realize it or not, God has good ways for us to live our lives and He shows us that by having faith in Him.

So, a change in behavior means a change of values.

-We change the way we think. Our mind.

-We change the way we talk and act.

-We change our attitude toward sin, because we cannot continue to live independently from God.

What verses 8-9 show us here is that we as humans should seek God and turn from our ways because those are not God’s ways or thoughts.

Proverbs 16:1–3 ESV

The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit. Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.

Our ways may seem right but ultimately they have been perverted by original sin, and it is only when we turn to God and His mercy that we can ever have peace with Him and live lives that will be productive.

Now there have been some scholars who have debated that this passage is talking about the restoration of God’s people back to their land of Israel, and has nothing to do with sin and repentance. Most of these scholars just delete all together verse 7 or gloss over it very quickly because they don’t want to address the main problem or are trying to be culturally relevant.

So, we cannot miss the problem here of sin and the importance of repentance however I would be amiss If we also did not mention that once we see the need to repent of our sin we will be met with compassion and a pardon of sin that is a result of God’s divine action.

-Turn from your sin today.

-Turn or return to the ways and thoughts of God.

-His thoughts are not our thoughts.

-His ways are not our ways.

God’s grace is far beyond our human comprehension. Again we see this play out in so many things in this life.

-Being called into ministry.

-To tragic things down through history.

-To good things that we have, that we don’t deserve.

God ways are not our ways.

Verse 8 shows us here that His ways and ours are very different. But how much different? Well, verse 9 shows us more specifically what that looks like. Verse 9 tells us, “for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God in heaven is infinitely wiser and higher than we are. He has a plan and purpose for us that sometimes we don’t see or understand. So many times we can wonder why God does something and yet here we see that His ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts. This verse is taken from David in Psalm 103. In fact, I want to go back to this Psalm to help us see its meaning. Let’s begin in verse 10.

Psalm 103:10–13 ESV

He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

1.First God does not deal with us according to our sins. Some of us deal rather harshly when someone sins against us. But God chooses to forgive us if we go to him and seek forgiveness.

2. God doesn’t repay us or pay us back for our sin. How often do we respond by trying to get back at someone or holding on to a grudge? Yeah we do this all the time. God doesn’t work that way.

3. He removes our transgressions or sins.

4. He shows compassion on us. I mean how often do we choose not to show compassion when someone does wrong against us? I want you to see that God’s ways are not our ways. God doesn’t respond the same way you and I do. He is gracious, loving, and forgiving. Aren’t we thankful for that today church???

I want to close this morning with another verse found a few chapters later in Isaiah.

Isaiah 57:15 ESV

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

I want us to see here that God has a heart for the lowly and humble. When Christ showed up 700 hundred years after Isaiah prophesied, He showed us that He had a heart for the gentle and lowly, for the downcast. Christ was proving once and for all that He came to seek and to save sinners. It is what He does, it is who He is. His ways are not our ways, and today I hope we are thankful for that Good News.