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0:45The title of this sermon is Come to the Waters. Isaiah 55, 1 through 7. I'll go ahead and read. 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 ever. 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. 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. Pray with me.

2:12Dear Lord, thank you for this body of people here. Thank you for Emmanuel Baptist Church and the people that you have brought to salvation and brought to fellowship with each other, God. Thank you for the blessing that it is tonight to gather to sing praises to you, to declare the wonders of your character, who you are, and what you've done for us, Lord. I pray that as we study this text tonight in the book of Isaiah, that we would humble ourselves and worship you as we seek to understand and obey your scripture. In Jesus' name, amen.

2:52Well, I am going to tell you a story. The story is about me when I was a young child. So I grew up in Cyprus, Texas. Not too far from here, the second oldest of four siblings. And growing up for me, Christmas season was the most exciting time of the year. I got to get out of school for two and a half weeks, got to eat a bunch of cookies, hang out with my family. Every once in a while, on the occasional Houston snow day, my brother and I would tackle each other in about a centimeter of snow out in the street. But the best part of all of it was Christmas Day morning. Now, if you're a kid in the story family, then on Christmas morning, what you do is as soon as you'd wake up, you'd sprint to the other rooms upstairs, wake up your siblings, gather together at the top of the stairs, and wait for mom and dad to call us on down to celebrate and open presents together. And growing up, the feeling that I had in that moment was one of the best feelings ever. My siblings and I knew that downstairs under the tree was a whole stack of presents. We were about to get to open up stockings by the fireplace. Everything was ready for us. And we were about to get to run down, open them all, and have the best day ever. And I don't know how often I wondered this. It's probably a question that I never wondered, but I should have asked myself: what did I do to deserve all this? What did I do to deserve all this? I didn't do any of the work, any of the shopping, any of the gift wrapping, and yet I'm about to receive an abundance of gifts and experience wonderful joy.

4:31Well, that feeling is the kind of feeling that I get when I read a passage like this, Isaiah chapter 55, verses 1 through 7, which is what we're going to study tonight. In Isaiah 55, 1-7, I want you to see God's free invitation to come to Him, so that you will continually come to Him and delight yourselves in His blessings. In this passage, we're going to find three messages from Yahweh. And if you're taking notes, this will serve as our outline for tonight. But the three messages from Yahweh are an invitation, a promise, and an instruction. An invitation, a promise, and an instruction. Well, one of my favorite professors at the seminary, at Shepherd Seminary, is Dr. Bookman. And if you've ever had the privilege of taking a class with Bookman or listening to one of his lectures, then you're probably familiar with what many of us like to call bookmanisms, right? These little sayings that, as often as they pop into his mind, he says them. And one bookmanism, one of my favorites, that he loves to say whenever he comes to a passage that he feels the preceding context is of particular importance, what he'll say is this: he'll say something like, Folks, the thing you ought to know about Matthew 13 is that it comes right after Matthew 12. And then he'd explain how often people carelessly and foolishly ignore preceding context like that. And how it totally affects how we understand the passage, what it's actually saying. And he's got several passages, several chapters that he loves to do that for. But tonight, I'm going to steal from Dr. Bookman and say, folks, the thing you ought to know about Isaiah 55 is that it comes right after Isaiah 53, or shortly after. Isaiah 53 and the suffering servant is probably one of the more memorable passages from the Old Testament for most of us. But before we even look at chapter 53, I think it'd be a good idea to take a moment and discuss the basic gist of the book of Isaiah as a whole and work our way up to the point that we're at tonight for our passage in chapter 55. So, if you remember, after the reign of King Saul, the kingdom of Israel split between the northern and the southern kingdom. And the prophet Isaiah ministered late in the 8th century BC, around the time of the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to Assyria. But the majority of his prophecies are directed toward Judah, the southern kingdom. And throughout the book, there are many warnings of judgment and predictions of the Babylonian exile that's soon to come. But most of the final chapters of Isaiah are messages of hope and comfort. In chapters 49 to 55, he begins the theme of God's salvation. In chapter 49, we find this conversation between Yahweh and this individual that's called the servant, in which Yahweh tells the servant in verse 6 of chapter 49 that he will be a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. He continues to talk about the restoration of Israel in chapter 49. Then in 50 through 51, there's more discussion about this servant character, and God declares that his ransom people will return to Zion with singing and with everlasting joy. Then in chapter 52, verse 7, Isaiah says this: He says, How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation. So here Isaiah introduces this wonderful news of the salvation of God and comfort for God's people. And then what follows is one of the most vivid passages in all of Scripture of the substitutionary atonement, the suffering servant. In 53, it says, His appearance was so marred beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind. It says, He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb led to the slaughter.

8:44I won't read the whole song, but as Isaiah continues to prophesy in the following chapters, I think that it's safe to assume that the words of chapter 53 and the suffering servant are still ringing in the ears of his audience. So, why is that important? Well, when we read chapters 54 and 55 with this in view, I believe it sheds a whole new light on the truths that are being revealed. In fact, I believe you can only understand the verses that we're going to look at tonight in chapter 55 if you see them in light of what just happened in 53.

9:22Right after 53, in chapter 54, it speaks of a restored nation of Israel living in prosperity and abundance and with the everlasting peace of God upon them. And what I think is being indicated by this is that this, those blessings, that prosperity for Israel, is what the suffering servant has won for them by offering up his own life. So, as we look through the context that leads up to our passage for tonight, we can begin to trace Isaiah's flow of thought, right? In chapter 52, he announces the good news of the salvation of God. In 53, he tells of the suffering servant, the suffering of an innocent one who will bear the iniquities of the guilty. In 54, he describes rich blessings that are now available. And having just described all those blessings in chapter 54, we hear these words at the beginning of chapter 55. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. So, let's look now to the first message from Yahweh, an invitation. I'll go ahead and read. Read verses 1 through 3. It says, 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.

11:08Well, in this passage, in some of the most beautiful language in all of Scripture, we find an invitation to come. And having looked at the context and traced through Isaiah's flow of thought leading up to this passage, we can see now that this invitation is from God and that the invitation is to come and partake in the riches that the Messiah has won. At the end of chapter 53, God had said, I will divide him a portion with the many. This is speaking of the suffering servant. I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong. So Isaiah's message here in 55 then is that there's been a great victory, right? The servant of Yahweh has won a marvelous victory, so go and share in the spoil. Take part in the reward. And you can come completely free of charge.

12:00The reason that this open invitation is without price is because the price has already been paid. It's been paid by the suffering servant. His suffering is what made this available. What God's saying is that because of the work of his Messiah, his servant, there are blessings beyond measure to be claimed. And they belong to any who will come to him. Now, when we read scripture, especially Old Testament passages and prophecies like this one, what we don't want to do is come to a text like this and say that the prophet is speaking directly to me today, right now, right? That the prophet Isaiah had Josh's story in mind whenever he wrote this prophecy. That is not what we want to do as faithful handlers of the word of God. But what we do want to do is take a passage like this in its context, acknowledging who the original audience is and what the message is that's being communicated to them, what it's saying to them. And when we do that, what we find here is that, unlike many times in the Old Testament, this passage here actually does seem to include an audience that's greater and wider than simply the nation of Israel. If we step back and look at chapter 42, verse 6 of Isaiah, God says this, speaking to the servant, the servant of chapter 53. He says to the servant, I am the Lord. I have called you in righteousness. I will take you by the hand and keep you. I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations. So this is not just Israel that's being affected by this. It says again in chapter 49, verse 6, God says this to the servant, he says, It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel. I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. So in this section of Isaiah's prophecies, it's clear that the recipients of the blessings that the servant of God will bring about are more than just the nation of Israel. God seems to have people from the whole world in mind. So this invitation in verses 1 through 3 to share in the blessings that the Messiah has won is not just limited to the people of Israel. Isaiah says that the suffering of the Messiah will be for the nations, for salvation to the end of the earth. So the invitation then to come to the waters is given to all people at all times throughout history. And I believe it certainly applies to us here today. It's given to everyone who thirsts. So what does it mean to come to the waters? Well, as we continue reading in these verses, we can probably be pretty certain that he's not just talking about physical food or physical drink. In verse 2, the ones that are being invited are chided for Paying for food that doesn't satisfy.

15:03And it's unlikely that what these people are doing is actually going around and spending money for food that's not actually nourishing their bodies, right? In fact, verse 3 makes clear that it's less about their physical bodies and more about their soul. It says that the benefit of receiving the invitation is that your soul may live. So the invitation to come to the waters seems to be an invitation to come to the Lord with your soul. And to come to God means to trust in Him, to entrust yourself to Him, to attach yourself to God. What God ultimately desires is our trust. And to take a moment of application, as Christians today, it's pretty easy to say that we trust in God, right? To declare with our lips that the Lord is our trust, He is our hope. And yet oftentimes it's also easy to, in our hearts, think to ourselves, you know, as long as this happens, then it'll be okay. As long as I get this job, then everything will be all right. As long as this interview goes well, it'll be okay. As long as she says yes, it'll be okay. We put all these circumstances, we put so much of our trust into these circumstances that we've devised on our own that at the end of the day, these objects of our trust are other than Where our trust should be, which is in God. God ultimately desires us to put all of our trust in Him, to come to Him. He wants us to put all of our hope and all of our dependence in Him. And when we do that, we will receive His blessings when we come to Him. It's important that we know what these blessings are, right? They're contrasted with things that don't satisfy. In verse 2, He asks, Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? What God seems to be saying here is that all these things that you're going after, whether it be food, money, success, a great name, none of these things will satisfy you. You're laboring in vain. So stop wearing yourselves out and come to me.

17:21Think of who Isaiah's audience might be. It could be people who are externally following the law, the Mosaic law, but are trying to do so as a means to earn God's favor, which case that labor will not satisfy them. It could be people that are chasing after idols or pagan gods, which case their efforts to appease those gods certainly will not satisfy them. But think about your life today. Even as Christians, how often do we chase after worthless things? How often do we stress out over matters of insignificance? How often do we put all of our focus and all of our attention?

18:00Into things that at the end of the day are of temporal value: the approval of men, the adoration of our peers, physical comfort. And here you have God gently and lovingly calling His people to release whatever vain pursuit it is that's holding their attention and to come to Him. He is the ultimate treasure. The waters, the wine, the milk, the rich food, all of these blessings that God describes are followed by this statement in verse 3: Come to me.

18:34The invitation is to come to God. The commands that God gives are to listen diligently, incline your ear, hear. So to come to the Lord, you have to be attentive to his invitation. And the command to incline your ear, to incline your ear. When he says that, you know, you can imagine what that might look like. If you're anything like me, you know, growing up in school, you're sitting in class, you might be zoning out, kind of dozing off, and the teacher's talking. But then, as soon as the teacher says that this will be on the test, you perk up, hone in with all of your attention, right? You incline your ear. And that's kind of what this might look like, right? It's called a synecdoche in literature, whenever a part of something refers to a whole. So it's not just your ear, but all of your attention is what's being meant here. To listen carefully with all of your focus. And if you do listen carefully, And if you do come to the Lord, then this is what will happen. God says in verse 3, I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.

19:43This is the ultimate prize of Yahweh's invitation, to enter into a covenant, everlasting covenant relationship with him and to find eternal delight and satisfaction in the person of God, free of charge. The mention of David here is astonishing. We know from 2 Samuel 7 and other passages in the Old Testament that God made an eternal covenant with King David, in which he swore by his holiness that he would not remove his steadfast love from him. David himself says this about God's steadfast love. In Psalm 36, he writes, How precious is your steadfast love, O God. The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life.

20:38David is someone who has come to the waters. If anyone knows what it's like to be in a special covenant relationship with Yahweh and to experience his steadfast love, it's David, the man after God's own heart. And yet what's astounding is that this is the same kind of relationship that God is inviting all people to come into freely. God wants people to look to him, to come to him, to know him intimately. He wants you to come to him.

21:08God says, come to the waters, come to me, and delight yourself in my steadfast love. So the first message from Yahweh is an invitation. Then in verses 4 through 5, we have somewhat of a new thought, and we come to the second message from Yahweh, a promise. So verses 4 through 5 say this, 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. Okay, so the first question we need to answer in this section of verses here is, who is the hymn in verse 4?

21:53Well, verse 3 ends with God talking about his steadfast, sure love for David. So the obvious answer would be that the hymn in verse 4 refers to the historical David. Now, there are many who hold the view that the name David here is really a reference to the Messiah, to the ultimate David, Jesus Christ. We see other prophets like Ezekiel use his name in this way. And that could be the case, but I think we have good reason here to take verse 4 as a reference to the historical David. It says, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. This description that we get would certainly be true of the David we know of as recorded in the Old Testament, right? We can read through 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles and find times where the scriptures say that God gave him victory everywhere that he went. His kingdom was enlarging, was greater than it ever had been under the reign of Saul. The surrounding nations were becoming subject to King David. So David certainly influenced peoples outside of just the nation of Israel, not only through his power, his military might and success and his law. But think about the Psalms, right? David's psalms of praise to his God, like the one that we just read in Psalm 36, even, those Psalms certainly would have served as a witness to the peoples during his reign. So it seems best then to take verse 4 here to be talking about the historical David. But then we have a change in verse 5. So God had said, I made him a witness to the peoples. But now 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.

23:47So many people interpret the you in this verse to be the nation of Israel collectively. And this could be the case, but it's important to note that the you in verse 5 is singular, which is in contrast. To the plural imperatives we saw in verses 1 through 3 in the invitation. So here it seems that God is speaking to an individual. And if you recall Isaiah's flow of thought in this section of chapters, what he's doing is he's speaking about the salvation of God, a salvation which is said to extend to the ends of the earth, a salvation that God said would be brought by his own arm. And so far, the main character in this series of salvific prophecies has been this individual that's called the servant. He's addressed as the suffering servant in chapter 53. He's called a covenant for the people in chapter 42. So it seems most fitting then that the servant is also the one that's being addressed here in verse 5. So if that's the case, if we step back, what's happening is that God has invited people to come to him and to receive the same steadfast love that he showed to David. And then he says, By the way, look what I did through David, how I used him as a witness to the nations for my glory. And now look what I will do through my servant the Messiah. Just as I used David as a witness to the nations, so will I now use my servant, the descendant of David, the one whom I have glorified, to be my light to the world. People will come to him because of me, and I will glorify him. This is God's promise regarding the servant. When it says that he'll call a nation, it's indicating his Dominion over them. In other passages in Isaiah, God says to the servant that kings of nations will bow down to you. So this is the promise. And it's a promise I believe God made to the servant, to the Messiah. And there's application for us here today regarding this promise, right? Two specific applications that I want to bring our attention to are: number one, in response to this promise from God to believe it, right? It's a promise of God. We should believe that God will use his Messiah for His global purposes. So, number one, we should believe it, but secondly, we should rejoice in this promise, right? We are a people that previously did not know God. I think that we often take this for granted, but as far as I know, most of us in this room here tonight are Gentiles, right? And our salvation comes from the God of Israel. So, praise the Lord that He uses His servant, the Messiah, as a light for the world. What God's promising here is that because of the servant, a Gentile people will see the glory of God, hear his call to come, and they will come running. This is God's promise to the servant, and it's the second message of Yahweh. Well, the third and final message in our passage today is one of instruction. Look at verses 6 and 7 with me. It says, 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.

27:17So the third message from Yahweh is an instruction. And specifically, the instruction is to repent. In these two verses, the speaker returns to the original invitation that we saw in verses 1 through 3, and he adds further instruction. In these final two verses of our passage for today, the prophet Isaiah gives what is arguably the clearest Old Testament instruction for how to be saved as an individual. And the verses don't require all that much exposition. They're very plain. The instruction is to come to God and to turn away from your sin. And to be more accurate, Isaiah is not necessarily giving two separate pieces of instruction. Number one, to seek the Lord, and number two, to forsake your wickedness. Rather, what he's saying is that to seek the Lord is to forsake your wickedness. This is what it means to come to the Lord. It means to stop going toward your own sinful inclinations and turn toward him.

28:22The only direction away from sin is toward God. And the only direction toward God is away from sin. Your sin. So, to seek the Lord, the one that is seeking him must have a desire for the Lord, which means to have a disgust toward the things that which the Lord disgusts in. It's important to notice what the prophet says in verse 6. In verse 6, he says, Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. So, the apparent implication then is that there will be a time when the Lord is no longer able to be found, when he no longer will be near, and he cannot be called upon. And the prophet is not here given the authority to define exactly how long this window will last while the invitation to come to the Lord is available. And yet, this theme is seen throughout all of Scripture: the call to come to the Lord is one of urgency. And though the invitation to come is free, there is a price to be paid for rejecting that invitation.

29:34Well, in the closure of this final message of instruction, we see an amazing characteristic of Yahweh put on full display, and it's his compassion, the compassion of Yahweh. It says, Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Now, there's a reasonable question that a Jew in Isaiah's day might ask and respond. To this, the question is: How can this be? How can a wicked person be pardoned by a just God? Isn't Yahweh a God of justice? We know that clearly from Old Testament scripture, that God is a God of justice. So, how can He simply sweep the sins of the wicked under a rug?

30:20Well, the answer to that question is once again found in chapter 53 with the suffering servant. The truth is that no sin in the history of mankind has ever been, nor ever will be, swept under a rug. From where you and I stand in history today, every sin either has been or will be paid for in full. Every sin was either laid on Christ on Calvary or it will be punished eternally in separation from God. So the only sins that God can pardon are the ones that He laid on the Lamb. And He did punish those sins, but He punished them in the body of the innocent one. And because of that, because the innocent servant of Yahweh, the righteous one, took our sins upon Himself in His body, because of that, God does have compassion on the one who turns to Him. And God does abundantly pardon the guilty who come to Him for forgiveness. Think about who is being addressed here: it's the wicked and the unrighteous.

31:31Centuries after this prophecy, when the Messiah came to earth, he said in Luke 10:10, that the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. In Mark 2:17, he said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Everything that we've read today in our passage of Isaiah 55 is directed toward those who are helpless. The invitation in the first few verses is to the one who is thirsty, hungry, has no money, and has no satisfaction. Here the call is to the wicked, the unrighteous one, who is in need of a pardoning.

32:14One of the ways that God displays his glory is by helping people who cannot help themselves. By saving people who can't save themselves, he uses his power to deliver the powerless. And when the powerless call upon God and God saves them, God is glorified. In Psalm 50, verse 15, God says, Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me. So the one in need is being saved by God. And in that, God gets the glory. Well, the message of this entire text tonight is God saying that you are in great need, and you cannot help yourself. You cannot satisfy yourself. So stop trying. Let go of every futile attempt to find satisfaction your own way. Turn from that and come to me, where you will find true satisfaction, and I will give you my steadfast love. And when you do, don't worry about bringing a sacrifice. I've already provided one. Simply come to me and forsake everything else. Well, this is what repentance is. This is God's instruction to all people. We often look at a passage like this one as a gospel call, right, to, for the first time, come into a saving relationship with the Lord, to put our faith in God for the first time. And it's good that we look at it that way, right? I think that's how we should understand this. But for application, think about our lives today, right? For those of us here who have been born again, even as Christians, we should continually be obeying this instruction. We should continually be repenting from any known sin in our lives and seeking the Lord's forgiveness. We should be praying Psalm 51 regularly to God from our hearts. You and I know from New Testament truths that if you are in Christ, then we can never be separated from his love. And yet we also know that from Scripture and from personal experience that even as Christians, when we choose to walk in sin, it does hinder us. From experiencing and from fully enjoying God's love.

34:35Being a Christian who's in a season of walking in sin is like this. Imagine sitting down to eat the most delicious meal you could ever imagine, right? I think I heard recently that Emmanuel does an annual chili-making competition, I'm pretty sure. I think it's Annual. So imagine you sit down, you're at the chili bowl-making competition, and you sit down to eat the first-place-winning bowl of chili, right? It's the best bowl of chili Emmanuel Baptist Church has to offer, right? You sit down to take a bite of this delicious bowl of chili, and yet when you do, you've lost your taste buds, right? You're no longer able to taste. That is sort of what it's like for a Christian who's currently walking in sin. If you've been born again, God's love is not removed from you when you sin, but your sin is removing you from the ability to enjoy and appreciate God's love.

35:32So if that is you, and when that is you, well, then this instruction is for you to forsake your sin and to seek the Lord once more. And I promise you that when you do that, then like the father of the prodigal son, our father will forgive you freely, will rejoice over you gladly, and he will embrace you with his loving and compassionate arms. He will give us back our taste buds. So we can eat the chili.

36:03I'm someone who knows what it's like to lose my taste buds spiritually, to live in a season of sin in which God is longing for me to return to Him and to come to Him and to enjoy His love, but I'm blinded from that love because of my sin. I'm going off spending all my money and all my toil on food that I can't even taste. And to the believer that's in that state, God says, Come to me. Come delight yourself in rich food. Turn from your helplessness and come to the waters. Well, the third message from Yahweh is an instruction, an instruction on how we are to come to Him. So, in these seven verses of Isaiah 55, God invites guilty sinners to turn from their wickedness and to come to Him, where they will find forgiveness and eternal satisfaction for their souls. Because of what Yahweh's servant suffered on behalf of humanity, there's an invitation, a promise, and an instruction. An invitation to respond to, a promise to believe and rejoice in, and an instruction to follow carefully and continually. Because indeed there has been a victory. Yahweh's servant has won a marvelous victory, and forgiven sinners like you and me can share in the spoil and take part in the reward that He has. Has won. And this is the message of Isaiah 55. And is this not the message of the entire Christian faith? The task of every preacher of the gospel is to point to Christ and to say, look what he did. And he did it on your behalf. So go to him. Come to Christ. Come to God, the loving, the compassionate, the forgiving God. And when you do, you need not bring any money, any sacrifice, any payment, any righteousness. All has been accomplished on your behalf by the Lamb of God. The arrangements have been made. The gifts are there. So come and delight yourself in the blessings of God.

38:17One of the amazing things about being on this side of the cross in history is that we can understand with clarity this truth, that the prophesied servant Messiah was not only to be the provision of our salvation, but also the prize of our salvation. Jesus Christ is not only the offering for our sin, but is also the treasure of our hearts and the end goal of our faith. Centuries after the words of Isaiah 55 were written, the servant, the Messiah, Jesus himself, would give a similar invitation, saying, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Rest. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

39:18For us to come to Christ is to come to God and to enjoy his steadfast love. And if you've done this, and if you are in Christ, and if you've even begun to scratch the surface of understanding how blessed you are to be in Christ, well then, like little Josh on Christmas Day morning, all you can say is, What did I do to deserve this? And the answer, of course, is nothing. And that's the point. It's our loving Savior who's done it all. He loved us. He suffered for us. He saved us. And he provided for us rich blessings and the everlasting love of God. So come to him. Come to the waters. Let's pray.

40:12Dear Lord, thank you for these sweet truths that you've put in your scripture for us to meditate on. God, thank you that we still have these promises, these instructions, Lord, these commands, these invitations, Lord. Thank you that your word is eternally true and that we have access to it, God. As your children, Lord, you've invited us into a relationship of love and commitment and steadfastness, God. I pray that each of us here tonight would hear this invitation, Lord, and receive it. Coming to you, delighting in your love, God. Would we not chase after the things that this world has to offer, the things that our flesh desires, Lord? But would we satisfy ourselves in you?

41:05In Jesus' name, amen.