Gonna be reading from Isaiah 55, verses one through three and eight through 11. 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 labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligent 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. Verse eight, 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. For as the rain and the snow came down from heaven, and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and it shall succeed in the thing which I sent it. And from John 1 14. and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Pastor Bob asked me this morning what my sermon topic was and I said, I feel like it's Bob Weber, chapter two, the sequel. Very much continues the message that he gave us this morning, even some of the same verses. I guess that's one of the disadvantages of not knowing what you were preaching in the morning and I was in the evening. But actually, this sermon began with me and my interest in this, these verses in Isaiah, some time ago with a discussion I had with my parents, and I've talked about them often enough, they're very Catholic, we have some very, interesting discussions, disagreements on scripture. And one day in particular, we were having, I don't even know what we were talking about. I know I was trying to convince them of something from scripture. And almost in stereo, the words came out of my father's mouth in one room and my mother's in the other. But the Bible says, my ways are not your ways and your thoughts are not my thoughts. And I asked them what they meant about that, and they said, well, that's your interpretation of scripture, and God says his ways are not your ways. I didn't know what that meant, whether that meant my ways are not God's ways, and their ways were. I really didn't know, I had to look up the verse to see where it came from. And I found it in Isaiah 55. I don't know where they heard it. They had heard it somewhere recently because they both spouted it out so quickly. And not long after I went back to them and read them, what Isaiah 55 actually says, they used those words, my words, my ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. But they didn't explain what they meant by that. In Isaiah, God uses Isaiah to explain what he means by those words. And we're gonna take a look at some of that. 55 verse one. 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. God is speaking through Isaiah a little more than 700 years before the birth of Christ about something without a price, a gift, if you would. A gift that is available, he says, to anyone who's thirsty. And how many of us have been thirsty? We all have been thirsty. That gift is offered to all of us. And Isaiah is speaking about that gift. John chapter four, the woman at the well, one of my favorite passages, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, he says, everyone who drinks of this water, the water that was coming from Jacob's well, will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. And in verse two, why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and labor, for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food. Isaiah is talking about a gift that we do not have to labor for. We do not work for that gift. Ephesians chapter two, verse eight through nine. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Isaiah is talking about the free gift of salvation. If my parents would have went back and read Isaiah 55 and what God was actually talking about, I don't think they would have brought that verse up. Verse three, 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. As Isaiah says, come to me, it's a call for us to believe. It's a call for us to believe in that covenant, that steadfast love for David that God offers us. He uses the word hear. Romans 10 verse 17 says, faith must come through hearing. It's one of the gifts we are given through the word of God, that we hear what God's plans are. We hear who God is, who God has been through history, who his son is and who we are. Come to me and hear that your soul may live. Isaiah is not talking about water. He's not talking about bread. He's not talking about food. He's not talking about milk or wine. that our soul may live. He is talking about eternal life. He's talking about salvation. A little more than 700 years before Christ was born. Verses eight and nine, 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. Again, Isaiah is speaking of salvation. He's speaking of that gift of God, a free gift, a gift that is good and delightful and rich, rich beyond what we could imagine. Isaiah, is giving us these words because that is not what the people of Isaiah's time were looking for. They were looking for something else. This is not what the Jews at the time of Jesus were looking for. This is not what the disciples were looking for. And with the rest of the sermon, that is where we're gonna head. We're gonna look at how this applies to the Jews of Jesus' time, the words of Isaiah, and John 1, 14, the word becoming flesh, how those words were viewed by the disciples and how those words are viewed by us. Verse 11, Isaiah says, or, Let me back up 10. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, it do not return there, but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing which I sent it. And we'll get back to these two verses a little bit later. Over the last few years, through the course of my work, I've had the pleasure of making some good friends, people that I've met as patients that have become dear friends. This past summer, I was working with a dear friend. His name is Al. We have had many, many discussions. He is an Orthodox Jew. We would call each other brother. There were times when I left, he would tell me he loved me. I would tell him I loved him. It was that kind of a relationship. This past summer, Al lived in a high rise in Squirrel Hill, and he was having more and more difficulty getting around. He was very instrumental in getting a small synagogue going in the first floor of this apartment building. And every day, he went down for morning prayer. They did Saturday services there. It was real important to him. But this past summer, he was having more difficulty getting around. He got a brand new scooter through the VA, a little battery-powered thing. So for a couple of sessions, we were practicing him getting in and out of the bathroom and all those things. And one day, I said, hey, Al, let's go downstairs. I want to see how you get into the elevators. And we went in the elevator, and we went downstairs. They said, let's go down the hall. Let's go into the synagogue. And his eyes lit up. And we went in the synagogue, and it was empty. It was a fairly small room, maybe 20 chairs on one side. Because it's orthodox, there was a divider in the middle with about 20 chairs on the other side. They separated the men from the women during a service. And we went in and he was just delighted. And he said, go to the back, or in the front of the room, was a big, wooden, beautiful, hand-carved cabinet, probably five feet wide, seven feet tall, two panels on the front that had hand-carved tablets. with Hebrew lettering on it. And he said, you know what that is? And I said, I don't, I can't read Hebrew, but I'm gonna guess that's the 10 commandments. And you're right, you're right. Those are the numbers, you know? He said, nobody's here. Open it up, open it up. I said, I'm not gonna, go ahead, open it up. So I opened the door and inside were three scrolls, probably this high, beautiful. wooden handles over the scrolls were what's called a Torah mantle. They're coverings. They were deep, deep blue, almost purple velvet. And they had gold lettering on there. Some of it was in Hebrew, some was in English. And one of the scrolls was dedicated in his honor. It was something donated by his family. He was very proud of that. And he says, go ahead, go ahead, touch it. You can touch, no, I don't want to touch it. Hanging from one of the scrolls was a silver rod about that long, about the width of a pencil. And on the very end of it was a silver hand with a finger pointing like that. I think it's called a yad. He was tickled pink that I got to see all that. They hold the Word of God in very, very high esteem. You don't touch the scroll with your bare hands. You use the yad. They follow it along. They're very, very prescribed rules about what kind of paper it is on, what kind of ink it's used, who copies that. They're all hand copied in Hebrew, very expensive. But he was very proud of that. Al spoke Hebrew and when I had Hebrew questions when I was preparing to teach Sunday school or I just had my own questions, I would always ask him and he would always give me an answer, he could pronounce Hebrew. They have not a high holiday, I guess you would call it a low holiday, Purim, in which they celebrate the book of Esther. And I don't know much about the book of Esther. And I asked him a question and he didn't have the answer. And he said, you know, we always read in service in Hebrew. He said, I don't know the story, Esther. He said, would you print that off for me in English? So the next time I went back to see him, I had it printed off in English and he loved it. He read the story of Esther, a story which he had heard in Hebrew for 90 years, but never heard the story of Esther. It's almost as if they worship the paper. They worship the ink. You don't touch that. That was how they stay holy. And there were all kinds of prescribed ways that that synagogue and those Torahs, the word of God, as they would see it, would be made unclean, would be made unholy. I believe by the time of the second temple, the time when Christ walked the earth, They'd come up with 613 mitzvahs or laws, ways that you are to please God according to their interpretations. And I had asked a number of people, why 613? And it took me quite a few people to get the answer. The answer was in Hebrew, there are 613 characters in the 10 commandments, in the law. So they came up with 613 laws that helped them keep those 10 commandments. And some of those laws are pretty silly. But to Al, that's what the word of God was. It was those scrolls that were in that ark under that mantle that you don't touch or it's unholy. And John 1.14 tells us, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And what did that mean to the Jews of Christ's time? This kind of flesh, this kind of God that became flesh was offensive to those Jews. Flesh that was conceived by an unwed mother and born in a manger was scandalous and embarrassing to the Jews. Flesh that lived a simple life as the uneducated son of a carpenter was nothing less than uninspiring. Flesh that overturned the money tables in the temple was outrageous. Flesh that would travel to Samaria and speak with a Samaritan woman alone, a woman who lived a notoriously immoral life. That kind of flesh, as we see in John chapter four, was offensive. Flesh that healed a paralytic man on the Sabbath. John chapter five, that kind of flesh was unlawful. Flesh that sat and ate with tax collectors and called one of them to be his disciples was defiling, John chapter two. Flesh that was touched by a woman who wanted to be healed of a discharge of blood was defiling, as we see in John chapter five. Leviticus chapter 15 spells out that such a woman would have been disqualified from religious life. She was not permitted to enter the synagogue. She would have made that synagogue unclean. That type of woman never could have been married in those days. No man could lie with her, no man could consummate a marriage with her and not be unclean and put out of the synagogue himself. That type of woman lived a very difficult life without a husband in those days and no means to support herself. Flesh that allowed that woman to touch his cloak was unclean to the Jews of this time. Flesh that had his feet washed by the tears of and dried by the hair of and anointed with oil by and kissed by a sinner, a woman of the city, most likely a prostitute, was unclean to the Jews. Flesh that touched the dead body of a little girl to raise her from the dead was defiling. Three weeks after I took Al into the synagogue, Al died. And I went to his funeral, his shiva, and there's a sermon in that just in itself, what I experienced there. The service was conducted by an Orthodox rabbi. who believed he was a Kohen. He was a direct descendant of Aaron. He was part of the high priests. Now, the Shiva, the funeral, was conducted in the ground floor of this apartment building that most of the tenants there are Jews. But it's mixed. There are Orthodox Jews, there are Reform Jews, Conservative Jews. There was a battle because when the rabbi walked in, right away he wanted to separate the men from the women. Now picture a room with 150 people in it and half of them have walkers and wheelchairs. There was a commotion. He had to explain, somebody there had asked him why he was not at the gravesite for the funeral. And he said it's because he's a Cohen. He's not permitted to be within four cubits of a dead body. So he was there, he was in a car on the hill, but he would not step foot out of the car or he would be unclean. Jesus touched that little girl and raised her from the dead. To the Jews, that kind of flesh was unclean. Flesh that assumed the role of a slave and washed the feet of his disciples was offensive, even to some of his disciples, even to Peter, right? Peter was upset when Jesus wanted to wash his feet. Flesh that would be handed over to the Romans and ripped from his body with a whip was insulting to the Jews and unclean. Flesh that was nailed to a cross to the Jews was cursed. Galatians 3.13, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. God tells Isaiah to write to his people, my ways are not your ways, your thoughts are not my thoughts. His ways and his thoughts were not the ways and the thoughts of the Jews at the time of his birth and his life. To the disciples, anybody that has been coming to Christianity explored will recognize some of these thoughts. To his disciples, this kind of flesh, this kind of God was confusing. As we've been reading through Mark, the first few chapters, Christ picks his disciples, he performs miracles, raises the dead, casts out demons, heals the sick. And at one point, he's in a boat, I believe on the Sea of Galilee, and he's asleep, and a storm comes, and he's ready to overtake the boat, and his disciples awake him. And with a word, he calms the sea and he calms the wind. And the question his disciples had at that point was what kind of man is this? What kind of flesh is this? It's not until later, Mark chapter eight, verse 27 through 30, Jesus asked his disciples, Who do people say I am? Peter answers him, you are the Christ. Peter recognizes this is no man. He's no longer asking the question, what kind of man is this? What kind of flesh is this? He's asking, what kind of God is this? And he doesn't get it. He continues to ask that question. He continues to get it wrong. The very next verse, Christ rebukes him and tells him to stand behind me, Satan. Peter was present at the transfiguration when the glory of Jesus was revealed. And it wasn't the kind of God Peter thought. He didn't want to talk about Jesus predicting his death. He wanted to build tents right there. He wanted to keep him on that hillside. He wanted to worship God there. But Isaiah says, my ways are not your ways. Your thoughts are not my thoughts. Peter's ways, Peter's thoughts were not God's. They continue to ask, what kind of God is this? until in Acts chapter two, the Holy Spirit comes. And Peter goes out onto the balcony and proclaims the gospel for the first time boldly, and 3,000 souls come to the Lord. To us, this kind of God, this kind of flesh, What does it mean to us? That the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, would become flesh to us is saving. Quickly, it is a fulfillment of the promises of Isaiah. A fulfillment of Isaiah's Cry to his people, come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and labor for that which does not satisfy? Incline your ear and come to me here. Believe that your soul may live. John chapter 11, verse 25 to 26, Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. What kind of God was he that he would become flesh? He became flesh out of love for us. He humbled himself far below that which anybody would have expected. The first people to know of his birth were lowly shepherds. They were the outcasts of society. The first people present at his resurrection were women. That was not the norm of society at that time. Something that important, that significant, you would think, would have been witnessed first by men. He became flesh so that he could do what we never could do for ourselves. He paid the price for our sins. He became flesh like us, enabling us to be united to himself and therefore to be united to his father. Jesus becoming flesh is our salvation. There was no other way. To the rest of the world, this is still an offense. I was outside for a few minutes yesterday distant neighbor I haven't seen for a few years, was walking his dog and stopped to talk and got caught up on his children and my children. And as he left, I wished him a Merry Christmas. And he turned and he growled at me, Happy Holiday. It is very much in the news lately. It's very much in vogue. When a crisis happens, when a football player is injured, our prayers and our thoughts are with you. You hear it all the time. That's not the offense. Just don't pray in the name of Jesus. Don't refer to that flesh to the word of God becoming flesh. That is an offense to the world today. Look at all the commercials that are on TV, right? I think Target has one, family is the greatest gift. No, it's not. It's not a new Buick. It's not the latest toy, but we all get caught up in that. The greatest gift is that the eternal second person of the Trinity became flesh. He pierced time and space and took on flesh to do what we could not do because of his love for us. And as Bob alluded to this morning, 2 Corinthians chapter four, verses six, For God who said, let the light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen His glory. Glory as the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Let's pray.