Isaiah 55 one through nine come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money come, buy any. Come by 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, and delight yourselves in a rich food. Incline your ear and come to me.
Hear that your soul may live, and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. And behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know, and a nation that did not know. You shall run to because of the Lord your God, and of the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you. 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. 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. Everybody, good morning and welcome to Christ Community Chapel. I am so, so glad that you're here.
Thanks for coming. Welcome. Those of you that are East Service as well. All right. This is the fourth message of our five part series. We've been calling every Minute Matters. There are approximately 478,000 more minutes in 2025. We want to make every one of them count. Today we're looking at, Isaiah chapter 55. So if you have your Bibles, you can turn there.
If you have a phone or a tablet or if you want to use one of our Bibles, in the pew, it's on page 576, page 576, or you can just wait for it to come up on the screen. I love this passage. I've loved it for a long time. There are some passages in the Bible that strike my soul like a tuning fork. And, this is one of them. And I want to get right into it, because I want to make sure I. I leave you as many of your seven minutes as I can.
We have a a really full service is going to be a great service. We have, baptism today. We're baptizing 29 people throughout all the services, which is going to be really fun. But I want to give you your seven minutes because I love the way you're spending it. Some of you are coming up front to pray with the prayer team, or you're saying and little groups and visiting or out getting a cup of coffee and visiting.
The reason I like that so much is that the church isn't supposed to be like an audience, where it's like, you come in for a performance or a concert, you come in and then file out and you only talk to the person you came with. The church is the community, and that's why we have carved out, seven minutes at the end of the service for you just to take a breath and visit with each other. All right. Isaiah 55. You just had it read to you. Let me give you my three points to you know where I'm going.
If you're a note taker you can write these down. But I want to talk about the wonder of the invitation, the wonder of the invitation. Secondly, the responsibility of the mission. And third, the urgency of the moment. All right. First, the wonder of the invitation. Look at verses one through three.
You know, when I memorize this passage years ago, I memorized it in a version that said this, that started out saying how you who are thirsty come to the water, you who have no money come by wine and milk, without money and without cost. Why do you spend your money on what is not bread, and your wages, and what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good, and delight yourself in the abundance of fair.
I like how poetic that is, but I really like the way it begins, because it's the cry of God and it. It starts out whole. Like he's crying. Like he's yelling at somebody who's walking away from him. Not to him. He's gone. How you who are thirsty come to the waters? Because he really was crying out to Israel, and Israel was moving away, for Israel was in decline. They'd been disobeying God for a while.
One of the good things about the Old Testament is when you read about Israel, it's, it's a lot like, kind of getting insight into the way the human heart works writ large with a nation. It's kind of the way your heart works, the way my heart works. I think what Israel did was they started to disobey God some. And then your life started to get messy. And instead of running right back to God, they they went deeper into disobedience. The sting of a little bit of disobedience usually isn't enough.
To make me run back to God is probably not enough for you either. We're a little bit like people that, you know, are speeding. And then, you see the blue lights come on and you think to yourself, maybe I can make a run for it. You know, maybe I'm the only one who thinks that. Or maybe it's better. It's like if you catch a little, child, you know, obviously, you know, before they get good at lying and, you confront them with a lie, and instead of just fessing up, they they double down.
That's that's the human heart. That's part of what makes the this invitation so amazing, because Israel isn't coming back to God and begging to get connected with him again. God is calling out to them and say, and saying, aren't you hungry? Aren't you thirsty? You know the metaphors of eating and drinking, being hungry and thirsty because every one of us experiences that every day, every day you are hungry. Every day you are thirsty. This metaphor is supposed to connect to life itself.
You don't live very long without food and water, and that's what this is. That's why every person is looking for something to fill themselves up. You're looking for something to fill your soul up. I remember being in the Dominican Republic years ago. This is heartbreaking, by the way. But I was helping to build an orphanage, and I was taken to a little shack where there was a little boy who was going to be fed at the orphanage, and they were just introducing me to this little two year old.
They had him in their arms and he had a distended belly, and he had that, the thinning brown hair that showed that he was malnourished. But they also brought out, this piece of foam that he had been sleeping on in the corner of the shack. It was dirtier than this piece of foam, but there were big pieces, chunks that were ripped out of the foam.
And they said at night, this little boy had been tearing off parts of the foam and eating it because he was so hungry and his belly was full, but he was starving. That's what God is saying. God is saying, why do you spend your money and what is not bread? Why do you spend your wages and what does not satisfy? What he's saying is that, listen, we're all filling our trying to fill ourselves up, our souls up with some semblance really seems really good.
Like, we we try to fill ourselves up with family and friends and our marriage, our children, our career, or our health. But what God is saying here is, if it's not me that then you're starving. You just don't know it yet. And God is inviting us to say, here come, I will make myself what you really hunger for, what you are really thirsty for. I will give it to you in abundance. But he's not just offering the banquet, he's offering rest because he's saying, I will lay it all out.
All you have to come to do is come and eat. And this is one of the ways that, you know, you're trying to fill yourself up with something else is that you're just exhausted. It can grind you to powder, trying to be the perfect parent, trying to climb the ladder at work or whatever it is. And God is saying, come to me. That's why Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Rest. That's the first thing, the wonder of the invitation. The second thing is the responsibility of the mission. What he says in verses four and five, he says, behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. Behold, you shall call a nation. You do not know. In a nation that did not know, you shall run to you because of the Lord your God and of the Holy One of Israel. For he has glorified you.
What it says is, God says, if you come and you begin to enjoy the banquet, you have true bread. You have pure water for your soul. Then he says, you become a witness. You tell other people, you we I think we gonna we can all bunch up about being, about witnessing, about Jesus. And I don't think it's as hard as we make it out to be, I think. I think being a witness comes pretty naturally for most. I think it does for me.
Like if I find something that that helps me, I am always ready to share it with somebody. Like if I find something that helps me sleep when you get to be my age, that's one of the major things you think about and talk about with people my age. But, if I find something that helps me sleep, I. And I hear somebody talking about struggling with sleep, I'll say, hey, have you tried magnesium that help me something, right? If I eat, at a really good restaurant and I have.
And I enjoy myself, and I hear somebody talking about going out to eat, I say, have you tried this place? I love that place. Right? And what what God is saying is, if you found true nourishment for your soul, you need to know everybody around you is is hungry and thirsty. They're filling themselves up with stuff that does not still of them, does not feed them. Then you should just tell them about Jesus. Right? But he says this to it verse verse five, behold, you shall call a nation.
You do not know. And a nation that did not know you shall run to you because of the Lord your God and the Holy One of Israel, for he is glorified. You.
What he's saying is the whole nation of Israel was supposed to be a witness, whereas a whole group of people who had found that God had provided nourishment, real food for their souls, so that if somebody came from another nation this way, it was supposed to work, they were supposed to cross the border into Israel and just just kind of sense that something was different here. That's what the church is supposed to be. That's what this church is supposed to be like.
That's what we want it to be like. What have we? A place where in all the craziness of the world, you can tell your neighbors or your coworkers, listen, if you if you ever want to go to a place and see how people can really act, how people can really care for each other. You ever want to bring your kids to a place where they can learn and love and be loved, and you should bring them to my church.
If you ever want to be involved in a sports program where people don't scream at the refs or getting fights after the game, right? And the reason that people do that is because it has become way too important. They're trying to fill their souls up with something else. But you say you you should come and be a part of what my church is doing. We want to be like an oasis in a desert where if somebody comes into this church, they can just sense that something's different here.
That's what it means to be a witness. And then the third thing is the urgency of the moment. So what he says in verse six and seven, 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.
I think it's really interesting that he says, seek the Lord while he may be found, because that implies that there might be a time where he won't be able to be found. You know, I grew up a preacher's kid, and that means that, among other things, I was in church all the time. You know, when your dad gets paid for going to church, you go with him. And that's the way my kids grew up, too.
But, I didn't know what it was like to miss church for a couple of weeks in a row, or let alone a couple of months in a row until I went to college. And whenever I talk about the time when when I really fell in love with Jesus and felt like Jesus was in love with me, I always say that I went to the University of South Florida and I went on a like a 13 month moral freefall when I first got there.
And what I did was I was trying to fill myself up with everything that a college kid, that someone people told college kids that would fill them up. And what I it was just so much fun. And I found myself empty. And I jumped in my car and started the trip from Tampa to Orlando, where my parents lived. And I didn't even know it was God who was calling me, but was like this distant voice saying, oh, I, aren't you thirsty? Aren't you?
All I knew is that I was starving, and I asked God if I could come home. And the reason I'm in ministry right now is because at that moment, because I felt so filled, I was invited to this feast. And I thought if I could spend my life telling people about this, be a life well-lived, I don't know. Now, I say, I went on a 13 month moral freefall. I don't know how much longer I would have lasted. You know, when it says that, call upon the Lord while he may be found.
It may be may not be that that God makes himself scarce. It may be that you wait too long. You know, we were on vacation, years ago. We went out west with the family to look at the go to the national parks and everything, and we rented a van. So I wasn't very familiar with the van. And we were driving in Wyoming to get to one of the national parks. And there's a whole lot of nothing in Wyoming. And if you've ever been there.
But I was driving and I went by an exit and I saw the sign at the exit, and I read it just as I was driving by, the sign said, next gas 46 miles. And as I as I went, I saw that sign go by. My fuel light came on and I told the kids were turning off the air conditioning. We're not going to roll down the windows that causes drag. I was like trying to draft behind a truck. I was just desperate to try it. I didn't know if I was going to make it right. I made it.
When it says seek the Lord while he may be found, if you're in a desert, you walk by enough watering holes. You may not get to the next one. So that means if that's you, if you are here and you've been thinking, you know what? I'm kind of empty. You know what? I'm. I'm kind of thirsty. I'm hungry. This is your day, right? You came here for whatever reason, and God is shouting out. You say, hey, aren't you thirsty? Aren't you hungry? Would you come to me?
And I wanted to just tell you, don't put it off and listen. If you're here and you know what it's like to really have true bread in Jesus. Pure water. If there's a reason that Jesus calls himself the bread of life, there's a reason he calls himself living water. That metaphor, it goes all the way through the Bible. What he's saying is what you are desperate for is me. If you already know that, then you need to remember that every person you run into is hungry.
Every person you run into is thirsty. It's like, this invitation is wonderful. It's the greatest invitation that it's ever been given. It's better than any. This is what makes it better than any other religion by a long shot. Because God is shouting out to people who are far away. You can come home right? The responsibility of mission is ours to let people know where they can find true bread, where they can find pure water. And there's an urgency to the moment, right?
Because every minute matters. Everybody you know is hungry. Everybody you know is thirsty. Let them know about Jesus. Bring them here. We will tell them about Jesus. And if you know Jesus, then just enjoy the banquet and rest. Would you pray with me? Father in heaven. I love, love, love this passage. And I don't know if it's this passage that saved my life those many years ago, but thanks that you call out to everybody, no matter how far away they are. And you say, aren't you thirsty?
Aren't you hungry? Then come to me. I pray for anybody here who, feels kind of the the catching their throat, the tears behind their eyes, and they know that you are talking to them. I pray that this would be the day that they would, come and pray with somebody in the prayer team and just, come to the banquet that you have for them that you laid for them when you sent Jesus for all of us and for this church.
I pray that you'll make us a witness in such a way that anybody who comes to anything here will realize it's a little bit like an oasis in a desert. Recognize something's different. Thank you. Thanks for sending us such a wonderful savior. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.