“All Who Thirst”
CCCAG, 1-15-23
Scripture: Isaiah 55:1-5
Introduction
How many people wonder why some people do the things they do?
Maybe it’s a horrible financial decision.
Maybe a face or neck tattoo, or a piercing that most of society would consider at least odd.
Maybe it’s watching them make the same bad decision over and over again, but expecting that somehow this time it will turn out ok…but it never does.
Personally, I’m fascinated by human behavior, and why people do the things that they do.
Some of my favorite classes in nursing school were those that dealt with psychology. Psychology is the study of human behavior- why people do what they do obviously from a secular, non-spiritual aspect.
One of the people I studied, Sigmund Freud kind of agreed with Christianity in that people are a three part being, although he didn’t recognize the spiritual side of it.
Instead of saying humanity is body, soul, and spirit, Freud said that the human psyche is made up of three parts- the id, which he would say is the selfish, animalistic or what we would call the sinful nature, the ego- which was the main part of our being that we call the soul, and the superego, which represented our spiritual or good side that was constantly fighting with the id for control of the ego.
Obviously, Freud didn’t have it all right, but he was the father of modern psychology and was an early theorist on human behavior, and we have come a long way in our understanding since he wrote his books and papers.
One of the things he did say though has always intrigued me. He once said that the driving thrust in all of our lives is the avoidance of pain. He said the ego, or as we would call it, the soul will go to great lengths of avoid feeling uncomfortable, even doing things that in the end are very destructive to us in the long run.
An extreme example of this is that recently we have had a run of people overdosing in Western Wisconsin. Apparently, the drugs in our area, particularly the methamphetamine has been tainted with high levels of fentanyl, causing numerous overdoses some of which have led to death.
People use these drugs to try and avoid feeling bad, or to avoid emotional, spiritual, or physical pain.
It’s easy to look down on a person who uses drugs if you never have, so let’s look at another way people try to avoid pain-
The idea of self improvement.
Human self improvement, whether through books, conferences, or seminars is a very profitable business to be in.
In 2021, the self improvement industry made over 48 BILLION dollars.
In fact, I see this making huge leaps into the church.
I listen to a lot of sermons on a weekly basis- in the car, sitting in my office, or just listening to sermon snippets.
You see it in some of the huge mega-church’s- Suddenly a lot of pastors are spending more time boosting up their members self-esteem or self-worth than preaching the Gospel.
The problem is- boosting self-esteem doesn’t fix the problem.
Because-Despite all of this, suicide rates continue to climb.
Anti-depressant usage is at an all-time high.
Mental health conditions continue to plague our country. But many times, if not most times we are diagnosing mental health disorders, it’s roots lie in a spiritual disorder… called sin. Sin is simply separation from God and doing, thinking, or concentrating on things that are not of God or His nature.
What is sin? Sin is a promise of fulfillment that can never be obtained.
Sin tells us, “Just fill yourself up with me, and you will be satisfied”.
Unfortunately, what those who commit sin don’t realize is that while sin is pouring into you, it has also rotted out the bottom of your spiritual container and it’s leaking right back out of you, needing more and more of the sin to make you feel whole.
All of this lead back to this central point I want to talk about this morning-
Humanity was created with a perpetual thirst for something outside of ourselves.
The problem is we try to fulfill or quench that thirst with things that were never intended to bring satisfaction to us.
According to the original design, we were to quench that thirst by being connected to our Father God.
Attempting to quench that thirst apart from Father God is why humanity has been in such a mess throughout history.
Today we are going to look at God’s solution to this problem, and it’s found in the Old Testament Book of Isaiah, chapter 55-
Isa 55:1-5
"Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
3 Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.
(Stop There)
Prayer
Premise-
These verses were written about 500 years before Jesus was born. God was giving HIS Prophet a glimpse of the Gospel that was to come, because as you read these verses, you see the entire Gospel foretold in 3 short verses. Let’s break it down this morning because it’s not only important to see as far as our salvation, but to see how God has provided a way for us to live an abundant life in HIM.
The first thing we see is that there is a call.
I. The call- Verse 1
A. Come
Father God calls to us and says come. There are three different tenses of this word used in the first verse, and the first time God says to come- it’s an emphatic declaration.
In other words, a direct order. It’s not like a friend saying, “Hey, we are having a few friends over on Friday, if you feel like it, feel free to stop by.”
It's more like your boss saying, “I want you in my office at 8am sharp to discuss a huge raise, a possible promotion and your future with this company!”
You’re not going to show up at 830, wearing sweat pants, a dirty tshirt, and flip flops. You’re going to be dressed appropriately, at least 10 minutes early, looking sharp and ready to meet with the boss.
God is commanding us to come to HIM.
Why? Why does He care.
The same reason the engineers of whatever vehicle you are driving set a maintenance calendar for your vehicle. Oil change every 2-3000 miles. Tire rotations, bulb replacements, batteries checked, belts replaced- they are all on a calendar determined by a chief engineer within the company to ensure that the vehicle would last as long as possible.
In fact, my dad was an ACE master mechanic and he told me that barring any mistakes made during the assembly of the vehicle, if people followed their maintenance plans, most repair garages would go out of business. It’s because most people don’t take the vehicle to the mechanic until something goes wrong.
For some reason, we do the same thing with our Father God.
We don’t pray, we don’t fast, we don’t read our owner’s manual called the bible until something starts going wrong in our lives.
Instead, we go to the world, to treat a spiritual problem with a physical solution.
I was helping my grandfather fix something on his boat once and I had a bolt that just wouldn’t budge. I started smacking it with a ratchet to try to loosen it and got yelled at for using the wrong tool for the wrong job.
Well, how often do we do the same thing in our lives?
How often are we using a wrench instead of a hammer?
How often are we trying to turn a screw with a dime because we won’t want to look for a screwdriver?
How often do we turn the radio up in the car to block out the weird sound coming out from under the hood?
How often do we suppress the pain in our hearts and souls with food…or tobacco, or alcohol, or drugs?
Instead we should be going to our Father who is COMMANDING us to come to HIM first, so we don’t do damage to ourselves using the wrong tools for the wrong job.
This is summed up in earlier in Isaiah 30:15 when God HIMself proclaims that
“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.
How true is that in our lives today?
In fact, our Father points out something else to us that may keep us from coming to HIM, and that is-
B. The cost
Maybe we are worried about how much this will cost us?
You remember the parable of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19. He comes to Jesus and askes him “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus tells him, “Obey the commandments”
The rich young ruler askes, “Which ones, there are 613 of them!”
Jesus just gives him 3- “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, love your neighbor as yourself-“ probably the three the young ruler struggled with.
Rich young ruler replies, “All of these I have kept (paraphrase the next part) “I still feel like I am lacking something”
The rich young ruler knew something in his heart and spirit was not yet whole, and it was because of what Jesus said next-
Matt 19:21
"If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
Look at the response-
When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
That’s the problem, isn’t it?
We trust in our wisdom
We trust in the world’s solutions to spiritual problems
We covet and hold onto the things of this earth more than we do the things of God.
“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.
Unfortunately, sometimes the church is more of a roadblock than a help in this area. Depending on which faith system or denomination you ascribe to, they can tell you to do, instead of just to trust.
Pray this prayer
Light this candle
Fast
Give money
Do spiritual service
All of these are good things, if you first understand that you are not adding anything to a salvation that was bought and paid for by Jesus on the cross.
All those things do is strengthen the Kingdom and mature you as you serve the King of Kings.
But, we would rather do, then be.
We would rather work, then rest in God
We would rather pull ourselves up by our own spiritual bootstraps rather than depend on Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
That’s why the Father continues in verse 2 where HE identifies the problem
II. The problem Verse 2
A. Human rebellion
I’m going to illustrate this using something that recently happened to me-
I recently had my one year review as a nurse. It was mostly positive, but where I got marked down was in the area of asking for help, also known as delegation and time management.
In nursing school, we have a whole class about this where they teach you as an RN to delegate tasks to other nurses, LPN’s, techs, and aides that are within their knowledge and skill level so you can concentrate on things they cannot do.
This is actually common among new nurses- we want to do it all ourselves, but we end up falling really behind in the care we can give, especially having multiple patients with multiple orders and needs that we can’t possibly do no matter how fast we go.
Fortunately, I’m now learning to delegate more, and am able to handle 5-6 patient’s at a time during the busy times.
But I think we all to some degree have that kind of unwillingness to ask other people for help.
WE want to be self-sufficient, and do it ourselves.
I have a 35-40 minute commute to work where I think of everything that went right or wrong on the shift during the drive home. I was thinking about ways of being better at delegating and not wanting to do it all myself and it occurred to me that this is exactly what caused Adam and Eve to fall in the Garden of Eden.
See, they wanted to be like God- not having to rely on anyone including HIM and they saw the way to that through believing satan’s lies over God’s truth.
Is that what we do today? We want to earn it, not have things given to us.
And that is where we see the -
III. The solution Verse 2-3
"Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
3 Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.
Jesus paid it all, all to HIM I owe,
Sin had left it’s crimson stain
But JESUS washed it white as snow!
Jesus paid the price to bring us back into the presence of God-
Two events you can read and hold onto that will cement this truth in your soul-
The first is in
Matt 27:51- Jesus had just died and completed the work God sent HIM to do- pay the penalty for our sin.
Look what happens next-right as Jesus exhales his last breath-
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
The curtain in the temple represented the barrier that existed between sinful humanity and a Holy God.
Paul explains the significance of this barrier in the book of Ephesians-
Eph 2:14-18
For he (Jesus) himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
Listen to me- the only thing separating you from God, is you.
I was thinking of the tearing the temple curtain once while I was driving somewhere, and it occurred to me that within hours, someone had gotten up on a ladder and sewn it back together again.
Don’t do that in your life- learn to live in the freedom that Christ Jesus has already paid for.
Trust in God for your needs, your wants, and your desires. He wants to hear about all of them, even if you think they are dumb.
Allow the thing that separates you from God to remain torn in half.
Let His love and presence be the thing you hunger and thirst for in life, and all of those problems,
All of those worries
All of the schemes of the evil one
Will all fall away in the overwhelming presence of the Father God who loves you.
Prayer
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