Isaiah chapter 55, I'm going to read the first five verses, but if you have your Bibles you can open up there and we'll be looking at this great passage tonight. Isaiah chapter 55, and we'll pray that I can do justice to these wonderful words. Isaiah chapter 55 and verse 1, come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And he who has no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy 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 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. 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 you, because of the Lord your God and of the Holy One of Israel, for He has glorified you." Someone has said that these verses here are the most sublime gospel call in all the Bible. I don't know if that's true or not, but it is certainly a sublime call, isn't it? And Isaiah has been in chapter 53 and chapter 54, of course, talking about the Savior, the one who is coming, the suffering servant who would come and die for his people, to give his life as a ransom for many. Isaiah picks up on that and tells his people then, well, with this great message, spread out your stakes and extend because this gospel is a worldwide gospel. And here in chapter 55 then, it is the Lord himself who is speaking. If you think about this, there are probably three calls here that the Lord makes, two of them are earnest, pleased to come. One of them is a question. There's a sort of, I would call it a kind rebuke in the middle of it. That's in verse 2. And then we have these two behold statements. And I'm just going to go right through them as they come in our text. And so you can have your Bible out and just follow right along with me. So first, the Lord opens, and I say the Lord because it is His voice. This is the Lord speaking. This is not the prophet Isaiah. He's writing the words, but it's actually God who's speaking. It's a first person, singular. Those of you who are interested at all in grammar, it is the first person in the world the Lord, the one who is outside the world, who is now speaking to us who are in the world. And he says to us, come. Actually, the English translation is a little bit weak there. The first word is actually the word ho. In your older versions, you might have had in the King James Version, ho. And it's kind of like, it's sort of a Hebrew for what we would say, hey, hey, you, listen, listen. He's calling us and He's calling out into a world that has sort of run around with their fingers in their ears and He's saying to them, come, come, listen, hear, come. It's His call and it's a universal call. It's not a call to just this one, or that one, or this special people over here, this group over here. It's not a call to old people, or young people, or middle people. It's a call, isn't it? Everyone. It's universal. It's a call that comes out from God Himself. You know, in the New Testament, in John 3, 16, it says, God so loved the world. Well, if you want to know if God cares and thinks about you and I who live in this world, all you need to do is come to this passage. Because God speaks to us. He calls to us. And he says, you, hey, you, even you, come, everyone. It's absolutely universal, isn't it? And it's also absolutely free. Look at what he says. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the water. And he who has no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Now Isaiah is not really talking about food here. But he's using these terms of food, wine and milk and money. He's speaking to a people who are used to going to the market. And they're used to having to reach into their pockets and pull out their money and buy wine, buy milk, buy bread, buy water, take it home, and then they can serve and provide for their family. Samuel Rutherford calls this the poor man's market because he says to come to Christ and to have his salvation, full, free salvation, you don't need any money. You come absolutely penniless. There's nothing that you can procure. There's nothing that you can sort of pay to have God come down to you. This is God coming to us and speaking to us and saying, look, Everyone. Everyone. And particularly you who have nothing. You have nothing to give. You have nothing to offer. You ever think about that? We often think, you know, I want to do something for God. Well, we may. We may when God saves us and he calls us into his family and he calls us to do things for him. But let me tell you, his gospel is his and his alone. And it is his to give freely. That's what he's doing here. He's giving it freely. We spoke this morning about God being a giving God. This is the best gift that one can ever receive, is to have Jesus Christ himself as your own personal Savior. For you to come to Him, He's coming to you, and you to come to Him, and that transaction of knowing Him, and knowing that all is well between me and God, and He offers that. He says, come, come, without money, without price. Samuel Rutherford calls this the poor man's market, because you don't have to have any money for this market. Poor people are generally dependent upon the rich in many ways for welfare or benevolence or jobs or whatever. So the poor man goes to the rich man. It's not that way with God, not that way with the kingdom of heaven. He says to you, come just as you are. There's no, you don't have to get yourself all ready and try to do something that's going to please him. He's coming to you and he's saying, come to me. Absolutely free. Absolutely free. And you say, well, isn't there any kind of qualification here at all? Well, yes and no. There is nothing at all that you can do, but there is a qualification here. Do you notice in the very first word, he says, everyone who thirsts. Everyone who thirsts. Now this, of course, was originally written in Israel, a very desert-like place. And when you grow and live in places like that, there's sort of a perpetual thirst. You're sort of always thirsty. You can drink water as much as you want to, but because of the climate, it's just you're always thirsty. And Jesus is appealing to that. God is appealing to that thirst, that just sort of general thirst that is for everyone, everyone who thirsts. That's the qualification. The qualification, as the hymn says, is to feel your need of Him. That's the only qualification. Again, it's not what you've done, it's not what you've done in the past, not what you'll do in the present. It is to know you need Him. That's the only qualification at all, and to come. Come, come, come. See how often he says that word. Come, come to the waters. Come by wine and milk. And later he will say it again, come to me. That's the driving force of this whole passage, isn't it? He's speaking to you as an individual and he's saying to you, you, you, you, come, you come right now, come, come to me. Well, then he follows that with a kind of rebuke. It's a gentle rebuke, and it's a kind rebuke. You know how it is. You've probably heard your mom or dad say this to you. You've done something that's wrong, and they're not really mad at you, but they want what's good. They want what's best for you. And so they'll kind of say, why are you going there? Why are you doing that? Well, that's kind of what the Lord is doing here. He's saying, why do you spend your money? The key word is why. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? If there's ever a description of the way of lost man, this is it. There was a country song several decades ago, and I'm probably showing my age here, but the title of it was, Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places. And that's what we do as fallen men and women. We look for something. We look for satisfaction. We look for help. We look for love. We look for reconciliation or any of those things. But we tend to look at them in the very wrong places. Paul Tripp made a great point in a devotional a couple of weeks ago. He said, what sin has done to our fallen world, and sin has done this for every one of us. We have a sense that we have these fears about life, and one of them, he says, is rejection. We fear that if people really know us, they're not going to want us. They're not going to love us. They're not going to want to be close to us, once they really know us. It's a kind of fear of rejection. It's the reason I'm convinced that the gangs are so prolific in the big cities, because it's association. I don't believe it's so much the crime, it is, that drives it, but I think it's more I'm a part of something. I'm accepted here. And you may have to do some dastardly things to be accepted in that group. But that drive to be accepted, you know how it is. You go into a new place and, you know, a new school or a new group and the The friendships seem to already be settled there, and you've got to sort of find your place, and there's a sort of fear, am I going to fit in here? Am I going to be accepted? Am I going to be loved, we might say. Well, the gospel of Jesus Christ, though it deals directly with our sin, also has these effects of dealing with those fears. Because it is a story And the story of, that's one of the reasons why we like love stories so much. We like the happy endings of being accepted. Well, the gospel is a story about this God of love who places his love on people who don't deserve his love. And that this God sends the son of his love to make a sacrifice of love so his children, his people, can be welcomed into his arms of love and become a community of love that takes his love to those in desperate need of that love. Only Paul Tripp could say that. But it's true, isn't it? It's a story of love. Now, it's much more than that. But at least it is that, that God so loved the world. And that you coming to him will know, perhaps for the first time, someone who loves you and will love you until the end. It won't stop. You won't be able to sort of work your way out of his love, the way it happens sometimes with people, isn't it? We say, well, he's a close friend until I did this. And then we are no longer, you see. But God is not like that. When he loves, when he calls to come and you come, he loves you until the end. It's the great story. There's also another fear, I think, that we have that sin has done to us. And that is a fear that of shame, of being revealed and being judged. They won't like me if they find this out about me and I will be exposed. We have a fear of exposure and so we kind of cover it up and cover ourselves up and perhaps cover over the things about ourselves that are not presentable. The gospel takes care of that because the gospel is Jesus Christ coming into the world and saying, listen, I'm going to take your place. I'm going to take the judgment. I'm going to take the shame. I'm going to take it all on myself so that you can be free of it. and that judgment and shame will not fall upon you because I've taken it. This is the one who says, come, come. There's another fear too, I think, the fear that comes that somehow we won't be provided for, somehow we won't be secure. I think that's one that comes in our own day. Maybe things will just fall apart and I won't I won't be able to have the things that I need in life, kind of a fear of poverty. I think young people sometimes they're trying to make their way in the world and they don't know which way to go and if I take this step it might lead into kind of a disaster. And again, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a provision story. The Lord provides for his people. The God who has made everything, created everything, controls everything, owns everything, opens his vast storehouse of provision, the greatest being his own Son, to give you a life where there is no provision that is needed withheld. Isn't that an amazing thought? If I need it in God's kingdom, I have it. If I don't have it, it's because I don't really need it. But He has promised that He will provide for His people. Now, if you've been a Christian for very long, you might ask some of these older folks that there have been some times coming that have come where we've perhaps been on the edge of losing it all, or on the edge of what's going to happen next, what's going to be the next paycheck that's coming. And you know, something happens. I can remember many months coming to the end of the month and saying, Becky, how much do we have in the checking account? Forty-one cents or something like that. It's like, okay, well, hold your breath until the end of the month when the next paycheck comes. I'm serious. These are real problems. These are real fears that we have. Am I going to be provided for? And the gospel of Jesus Christ provides for our greatest need. Our greatest need is to have our sin taken care of and to be reconciled to God. But he does more than that. He makes these promises to us. He says, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I will provide for you. Now, he will say part of that provision is going to be you're working. You're going to have to work. You're going to have to work hard. But somehow, miraculously, he provides for his people. And his people, the psalm says, I've never seen one of his people begging bread. He provides for his people, sometimes in ways that are amazing. But the question, Why? Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread? Your labor for that which doesn't satisfy? And he's speaking to something else that sin does to us. What sin does is to say, I don't really believe that about you, God. I don't really believe you're all that great. all that you're cracked up to be and all that preacher says that you are. I'm gonna go over here and try to satisfy my longings, desires, fears with something else. I'm gonna go somewhere else. And in a sense, it's though the Lord is saying here, basically, has that really worked for you? Has that really done it for you? is going after the other things that you've spent your money for, and again, money might be figurative, maybe it's your talents, your time, whatever it is, and you've not been satisfied with it. I remember that as before, in the days before I became a Christian. It wasn't necessarily a sense of sin, It wasn't a fear of the wrath of God against judgment or for judgment. It was more a sense, this is not right. Isn't there something more, a kind of what the French call ennui, a sort of world weariness. Is this all there is? 35 years of living and this is what it amounts to, just this? Buying and selling, getting up, going to work, doing the things. Is this all there is? I remember having that sense. And this verse that says, why do you spend your money, came to me. Well, that's what I've been doing. I've been running after other things, hoping that they are somehow going to satisfy me, and they haven't. They haven't. They haven't done the trick. And the Bible tells us that that's, of course, true. The Bible says that in the book of Ecclesiastes that God has made us upright, that is, looking up to Him, but we have gone in many schemes. We've run away and we've gone after other things that God has said, no, that's not going to do it for you. Isaiah, we'll call him in An earlier chapter he calls these mirages. You know what a mirage is? You're out in the desert, again, written to a desert people, you're out in the desert, thirsty, you're almost in the crawling stage, and you look out on the horizon and you see what appears to be a lake. And you go, ah, boy, if I can just make it there, if I can just go after that, when I get there, man, it's going to be great. So you go, but something strange happens. The mirage keeps going further away. And the farther you go, the mirage keeps going away, because it is a mirage. It's not there. It's the sun beating down on the sand, and it appears to be a lake. That's a great description of what we do, what fallen man does. We go after things, and they keep sort of going. We go after this person, we go after this job, or we go after this activity, and we think, this is gonna do it for me. And it keeps receding in our grasp. Or maybe there's a sort of temporary kind of exaltation in the thing itself, but what happens? It fades. It fades. There's not a full and complete satisfaction. C.S. Lewis says, we were made for joy. We were made for joy. We were made to be satisfied in the God who has made us. and we've gone search of many streams. The gospel says that that mirage is not a mirage at all. Jesus Christ is the mirage that is actually a pool. The mirage shall become a pool. You go after Jesus Christ, I'm telling you, you will not be dissatisfied in him. You'll find him. Well, he goes on. He continues, listen diligently to me. Eat what is good. Delight yourselves in rich food. These are all metaphors of the gospel and of the satisfaction that we have in Christ. Incline your ear. I think that's important. Come to me, hear that your soul may live. How is it that God works? How is it that God saves? How is it that God comes to me where I am? Well, he comes through our ears, what we hear, or we might say voices. I think there's three voices, perhaps, in the way that God communicates to us. One is the voice that is inside of you. God has made you for himself, and sin really can't do away with that inner compunction or that inner voice, that inner thing we call conscience, that tells us, I'm wrong, but there is something that is right, But I don't have it, that inner voice that speaks to us, conscience, that speaks of God, really, that points to Him and points away from anything else in the world. And then there's a voice of other people, someone who speaks to you about Jesus Christ. Maybe your mom or your dad or a Sunday school teacher or a friend that you run into, and they speak to you about Jesus Christ. Maybe they've become a Christian. and their countenance is different, and they speak to you about what they have found. That really is another voice. It's their voice, but it is God who's actually speaking through them to you. I spoke a couple of weeks ago about when I was converted. I remembered a Sunday school teacher that I'd had decades before. And why he came to mind, I do not know. I had not thought of him in years, but almost as soon as I became a Christian, his face came right up into my memory. And I remembered this kind, older man speaking to me about Jesus Christ and just taking me through the verses of Scripture. And as a child, as a young boy, I really, I listened, I just kind of went on my way and did nothing. And yet the Lord used that man to plant seeds of belief that came to sprout years later. And God does that. He sends you people. He sends you voices and says, Listen, listen, I'm speaking to you. Then of course the other voice is the voice of God himself, but he says he doesn't speak now in audible voices, he speaks in his word. Whenever the word of God is opened up, you need to think God is speaking to me. God is speaking. Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians said that God saves through the foolishness of preaching. Why does he say foolishness? He's saying, how in the world would God accomplish some great supernatural thing from a man standing in front of people and speaking to them? Well, that's how God does it. Quite often that's how God does it. He speaks, and listening, we obey. You see? And he speaks through the word. You will not hear God speak to you in an audible voice. If you do, I want to talk to you about that in the pastor's study there. He speaks in his word. He's speaking tonight. He's saying to you, listen, listen, listen. Listen to me. Eat what is good. Incline your ear. Don't be like that man in Pilgrim's Progress who stuck his fingers in his ears. Or actually, it was the pilgrim who did that. The voices were coming from the world and he was going after Christ, you see. But it works either way, doesn't it? Incline your ear, hear that your soul may live. Well, two beholds very quickly. The first is sort of the end of verse three. He says, this is, you might say, is a real reason why you should come to the Lord. And there's two reasons for this, but the first one is this. He says, I'll make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. You go, what's he talking about with David there? Well, in the Old Testament, God raised up David as the king of Israel, and he made promises to David. actually made a covenant with David. And he told David that he was going to raise up in David's line the king who would be an eternal everlasting king who would rule over his people forever. And he would be a good king, a a king who was wise and understanding, a king who is full of glory, that would come to David. And so when Isaiah here is speaking about this steadfast, sure love for David, he's actually pointing forward to the one who would come in David's line. The New Testament calls him Great David's Greater Son. That's the Lord Jesus. And the promise that God had made through David was to Jesus Christ. And he says, if you come to Christ, the covenant is yours. You are wrapped up in this covenant with Jesus Christ. The great promise maker has made a promise to Christ and all who come to him that is absolutely sure. Now, how is it sure? How is it firm and complete? Well, again, what did Jesus do when he came to earth? He lived this perfect life that you and I can't live, and then he went to the cross and died. Why did he do that? Because he was dying, he was substituting himself for guilty sinners like us in order that we might be brought into this covenant with him. These covenant mercies or for all who believe in Jesus. It's as simple as that. And Isaiah makes a big deal out of it because he says, behold, he says, this is really something to check out. This is something to, a tremendous great reason for you to come. Because there's nothing else to be added. Jesus has come. He's accomplished perfect redemption. And you can be fully satisfied, fully safe, fully saved in Him. And you can be in that covenant of love that God has made with His Son, the Lord Jesus. And the Spirit ratifies that covenant that you come into. And then the second, behold, doesn't really have to do necessarily with us, though in reality it does. Verse 5, he says, "'Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know, and 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.'" I think he's speaking here to Israel. The chosen people, the chosen race, you know how God worked at first through Israel, this tiny, tiny nation. But when Jesus Christ came into the world and accomplished this glorious redemption, the glory of that redemption could not be contained in Israel. It had to go out into the whole world, and it did. And the reason that you're sitting in your seats today and hearing this proclamation is because of what Isaiah says here in verse 5. Because that gospel is going to go out into all the world. None of us, I don't think, are Jews. We're Gentiles. The gospel has come. It has come to us. It's come to you. A nation that did not know you shall run to you. In other words, there are people now all over the world who've sat in chairs just like you're sitting there, and they have heard the gospel, and they've come. They've come. In fact, our text says they ran. They did not delay. They ran to Jesus Christ. There are Christians all over the world. Did you know that? In every continent, nearly every country, there are some people groups, some language groups stuck way off in the mountains, that missionaries still need to go to and preach the word. And no doubt, when they do go and they preach this gospel that I'm preaching to you tonight, some of them that they preach to will come. That's God, you see. That's God. That's the behold. Isaiah is excited about that. Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know and a nation that did not know you shall run to you. Why? Because of the Lord your God and of the Holy One of Israel for He has glorified you. You see, that's a reason for you to believe because there's a whole bunch of other people from the time of Christ right up until this day, that have heard this same message and they've said, yes, yes, I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord has taken them to himself, wrapped his arms right around them, and taken them in to himself, satisfied them, forgiven them, granted them mercy upon mercy upon mercy, forgiven all their sins, giving them a beautiful inheritance, bringing them into a community that will love them. You see, that's what Jesus is calling. And he's saying to everyone, come. I think it's one of his most, must be one of his more favorite words that he speaks to us, is come, come. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Come, take my yoke upon you, learn from me, For I am gentle of heart, and kindly and humble of heart, and you, you, my friend, will find rest for your soul. That's true. That's the truth of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for this sublime gospel call that all of us can hear. Thank you for the mercies that are in Jesus Christ that He would in the first place come and that He would die for such as us in order that our sins might be forgiven, in order that we might be brought into that great story of His love, compassion, His mercy extended to people who do not deserve it, people just like us. Thank You for that, Lord. Thank You for this gospel. Thank You for this gospel call. Help us to believe it, to incline our ears to it, and to run to You when You call us. And I pray in Jesus' name, amen.