1. Title: Thirsty?
2. Text: Isaiah 55; John 4:1-15; 7:37-39, Matthew 5:6; Psalm 84; Psalm 42; et al
3. Audience: Villa Heights Christian Church, AM crowd, April 24, 2005
4. Objectives:
-for the people to understand the importance of longing for a closeness to God and to understand how to better achieve it
-for the people to feel a longing, a yearning to be satisfied by a closeness with God beyond all other things
-for the people to speak of their longing to God, regularly, and to identify in their own lives the cheap substitutes that leave them unsatisfied
5. When I finish my sermon I want my audience to better understand what drives them and to more deliberately pursue a closeness with God like never before
6. Type: textual
7. Dominant Thought: The only thing that will satisfy our deepest longings in life is to receive the free offer of a right relationship with God
8. Outline:
Intro - I was in Jr. High. Our youth group was visiting Artesia Christian College in NM at a summer program they had started. We got to do a lot of neat activities. One that stands out was the day we hiked across the Chihuahuan Desert. It’s a part of what’s called the Guadalupe mountains. We didn’t carry water. We walked along a trail, not off of it. It was safer to stay out of the shade because the rattlesnakes hang out in the shade. It’s also safer because most of the cactus was off the trail. I remember one particularly nasty kind that grows about 8” tall and aims a bunch of spikes right at your ankles. Needless to say, after 1 hour of this, when the buzzards began to circle, we were beginning to question the point of it. “We’re going to a neat place” they kept telling us. It was somewhere around 100 degrees. I was having flashbacks of old westerns I’d seen where the guy stumbles across the desert and starts to see mirages. 2 hours passed. Still not neat. Then, almost 3. Suddenly, there was a greener-looking spot. Sure enough, it was all covered over with short trees and different smells. Then, there it was – pools of beautiful, cold water; swimming holes! And a waterfall - Sitting Bull Falls, they call it. Right out in the middle of the desert, fed by a spring from the ground, there’s this beautiful, cool, refreshing stop. It was also nice because they had some drinks and our lunch there for us too. Boy it felt good to drink a big water and then go stand under a waterfall!
To really appreciate having water, you have to go without it for a while.
I remember Gary Zustiak, talking about some of the things he has learned in traveling overseas. He had a glass of water in front of him and he said, “One thing I learned is that I’ll never take that for granted again. Just a simple glass of water. We’re so fortunate that we have safe water available to us.” He’s right.
We’re down in Haiti last month, and in Gonaives it hasn’t rained since last October. The dust is horrible, and there are 2 seasons in Haiti – Hot and hotter. But the water’s not safe to use. You dare not even rinse your toothbrush in water from a faucet. So, right away, I found myself frequently longing for bottled water. When I did get one, it was gone pretty quickly. It wasn’t always the most comfortable place to be in, because I couldn’t just go get a drink anytime I wanted to.
But, in the Ancient Middle East, you don’t have the inconvenience of having to wait till you can find some place that sells bottled water. In that culture, water is life. People who own wells are people of means. Come to a place where the water is bad or there is no well, and you don’t bother living there. Water is life.
Remember the recent probes on Mars? They’re hoping to establish if there is or was any form of life at all on Mars – and what’s the thing they keep looking for? Evidence of water – because water is life.
It’s to a culture that understands the value of water that God sends the words we read today in Is 55:
Isaiah 55:1
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
I. Everyone Is Thirsty
Isaiah was giving God’s message to a thirsty nation – not because they lived in the Middle East, but because there was something in their lives that was missing. They had a craving, and didn’t even realize they had it. He says to them in v2 “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?” They understood that food and even water cost them money. God sends this message to a nation that needs more than just water and food, though. They needed a real relationship with God Himself.
Ill – There’s an eating disorder called pica. Over the years, doctors have reported cases of people with pica eating dirt, chalk, clay, paste, paint chips, paper, cardboard, ice chips, and Styrofoam. In one case, a 22-year-old woman showed up in the emergency room with undigested pieces of socks in her stomach. Many of these weird cravings are all caused by the same thing: a lack of iron in the diet. In other words, the body craves iron, and people try to satisfy that craving by eating all these other things, which, by the way, don’t contain iron. Think of it – an inner, unidentified need prompting people to eat all sorts of weird stuff. Even though they crave them, they’ll never satisfy the real need that the body has, which is iron. Once these people start getting enough iron, the cravings go away.
Take a look around you. Everyone is thirsty. They’re hungry. They’re craving something. Only, instead of confronting what they’re soul is really craving, they’re trying to satisfy it with everything else. To them I’d say, why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Why do you buy up clothes? Why do you buy up gadgets? Why do you watch those infomercials and get convinced that you just won’t be satisfied until you own the set of Microwave Miracle Dishes? Why do you get the latest exercise equipment? Why do you go after another car? Why do you chase after women or why do you feel like you’re not complete unless you have a boyfriend? It’s because deep down inside of every person there really is a thirst – a craving. But most people are trying to satisfy it with things that never will. That’s why Mick Jagger “can’t get no satisfaction.”
Ill – It’s like being stranded on an island, surrounded by an ocean, but having nothing to drink. You’d get thirsty. You could try sea water. It looks like water. It seems like it ought to help. At first, it may even seem to satisfy the person who drinks it. But, rather than quench thirst, it increases it. Keep drinking it, and soon the salt levels in your blood become toxic, you have seizures, and you die.
The opening lines of Is. 55 are for thirsty people; people who are craving some essential thing in life, but who may not even understand what it is they need.
Maybe that’s you this morning. Maybe this invitation really hits home with you, if you’ll be honest, because you’ve tried all kinds of things, and nothing has seemed to work.
There have been some writers of Scripture who were in tune with this craving. We’ve even sung their words at different times.
Psalm 42:1-2
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
(This one David wrote while he was out in the desert):
Psalm 63:1-2
O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
Psalm 143:6 I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.
Everyone is thirsty. The problem is that too many people know they’re thirsty but aren’t sure what they need.
Listen to the Lord’s invitation this morning…
II. Everyone Can Be Satisfied
Isaiah 55:1-3
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. 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.
There was a woman who was thirsty. She’d tried it all. You can tell by her conversation with Jesus in Jn 4 that she wasn’t satisfied in life. Incidentally, we call her “the woman at the well,” because we find her speaking to Jesus by Jacob’s well, and we don’t know her name. We do know that she was searching. She had had 5 husbands, and she was living with a man to whom she wasn’t married. She had some shallow knowledge, at least, about religion. And even though it was against social etiquette, she went ahead and had a conversation with this man by the well.
John 4:7-15
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?" Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
Here’s a woman who was THIRSTY. She didn’t know what for. Security? Sex? Welfare? She wanted for something to satisfy her, somehow. Hers is the cry of a thirsty, hungering world – not hungry for food or thirsty for water or anything material really, but for a spiritual craving that can be met only by God and a right relationship with Him. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.” To such a person Jesus says, “If you knew…you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
The neat feature of the story is that she began to realize her true need could be met only in Jesus, and she and many others became believers.
Ill - You know, a little baby can’t say what he wants. He doesn’t even understand what he wants. And he can’t satisfy himself on his own. He’s dependent on a loving parent to know, provide, and administer his need. That’s what we have in Jesus Christ! Someone Who knows what we really need, provides it for us, and Who even helps us to get it!
Revelation 21:5-6
He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.
That’s for everyone. Everyone can be satisfied. This invitation from God is for “all you who are thirsty.” Come, He says, and be satisfied.
And as you come, notice also that…
III. Everyone Most Come On the Same Terms
Ill - Ever hear one of those “free” offers that wasn’t really free? All you had to do to get your free offer was send 1$2.95 postage or give your credit card number or something like that. Free doesn’t sound so good when it’s not really free, does it?
Isaiah is speaking to a nation of people who think that by keeping the Law, by being good enough, they’re going to somehow pay their way into heaven. Let’s look again at God’s invitation to them, and give special attention to the terms, to the conditions they’ll have to meet:
Isaiah 55:1b-7
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. 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. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David. See, I have made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander of the peoples. Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations that do not know you will hasten to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor. Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
It’s obvious that all along, God hasn’t just been talking about satisfying some physical need. He’s talking about salvation. And the terms are the same for everyone. Years later, at the Feast of Tabernacles, on the big day when a procession would go to the pool of Siloam and they’d draw out some water and offer it before God, Jesus was on the scene…
John 7:37-39
On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
We get another glimpse of the conditions when Jesus tells us
Matthew 5:6 - Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
It’s not about paying our own way, but it does involve answering God’s invitation. “But that’s not right! that’s not how I’d do it!” That’s OK. V8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.
Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call on him while he is near. We need to learn to be thirsty for what we really need and stop trying to satisfy it with empty substitutes.
Psalm 84 - Of the Sons of Korah. A psalm. How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty! 2 My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. 3 Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young-- a place near your altar, O LORD Almighty, my King and my God. 4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you. 5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. 6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. 7 They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion. 8 Hear my prayer, O LORD God Almighty; listen to me, O God of Jacob. 9 Look upon our shield, O God; look with favor on your anointed one. 10 Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. 11 For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. 12 O LORD Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you.
Conclusion:
When Herod rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, there were inscriptions put in the stone of the walls of the courtyard. 2 of those stones are in existence today.
“No one of alien race is to enter within the barricade which surrounds the temple. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for the penalty of death that follows.”
Everyone who hears and fails to come will have themselves to blame.
