[0:00] And ordinarily what we do is we work our way through books of the Bible. So we just finished up walking through the book of Titus together. Last week, if you remember, we spent nine weeks together walking through the book of Titus, passage by passage by passage.
[0:15] And if you are wondering how long is it going to take us to work our way through 66 chapters of Isaiah, I have good news for you. Don't fear. We're not going from chapter 1 all the way through to chapter 66.
[0:28] We're just going to focus in on one chapter. For six weeks, we're going to be spending our time in chapter 55 of Isaiah, this one beautiful chapter in this Old Testament prophecy, Isaiah chapter 55.
[0:44] So if you would, go ahead and open up your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 55. And we're going to look at verses 1 through 3 this morning. If you're using the pew Bibles there in front of you, if you don't have your own Bible, you can find that on page 576 of the pew Bibles there in front of you.
[1:00] Either way, you'll want to have a Bible open because that's what I'm going to be reading and preaching from. And I would like for your eyes to be there on God's word. Isaiah 55 verses 1 through 3.
[1:12] Follow along with me as I read. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And he who has no money, come, buy and eat.
[1:27] 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?
[1:38] 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.
[1:51] Let's pray once more. God, this invitation is beyond our greatest imagination. Father, that we would be invited to come and to delight ourselves in you and be satisfied.
[2:05] I pray, Father, that as this word is opened and preached, even now, God, would you give us appetite for you and your glory. We pray this in Christ's name.
[2:18] Amen. One of my favorite movies growing up was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. And it's amazing how when you look back on these themes of certain movies from a Christian perspective, how much they rob, how much they steal from the story, the gospel.
[2:41] You remember the story? Charlie Bucket is a poor boy who lives on the outskirts of town with about 100 of his family members who apparently all share one bed for some reason.
[2:52] They're just dirt poor. And every day on the way to and from school, Charlie Bucket passes by Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. This ginormous, mysterious chocolate factory has been closed down to the public.
[3:07] Nobody knows exactly what is going on in there. Until one day, Willy Wonka decided to run a contest. And, of course, as you know, he hid five golden tickets, tucked them away inside the candy wrappers of the chocolate bars.
[3:23] And whoever bought the right bar, whoever got the golden ticket, would be welcome. They could come join him in his chocolate factory, not only for a guided tour of the factory by Mr. Wonka himself, but they would also receive a lifetime supply of Willy Wonka chocolate products.
[3:43] As every kid's dream, right? A lifetime supply, full access to feast on whatever candy you want, whenever you wanted, brought to you by the candy maker himself.
[3:55] Well, what they didn't know was that Wonka was not just giving away chocolate. He had planned, secretly, he had planned to give away the whole factory to the right child, including his prized possession.
[4:10] You remember what it was? The everlasting gobstopper. As this one piece of candy that would last forever, never lose its taste, never lose its flavor, it would change flavors, change color, never lose its luster.
[4:22] It was always satisfying. And you can imagine how for a poor boy like Charlie, something like this was almost unimaginable.
[4:34] While other children bought up as many chocolate bars as they could find, poor Charlie buckets couldn't afford much, he'd be lucky just to get his hands on one. And you know the story, he miraculously found a piece of money in a snowbank, ran to the store, bought a chocolate bar, and rips it open, and there it is, the last golden ticket.
[4:57] It's his invitation to the chocolate factory. And this was his access, his invitation to a world of never-ending delight in this magical world of chocolate and mystery.
[5:11] A poor, desperate boy is invited to everlasting joy beyond his wildest dreams. This is the gospel according to Wonka.
[5:23] Well, as we come to Isaiah chapter 55 this morning, we see the gospel according to Isaiah. This book is an Old Testament prophecy.
[5:38] It was written to Old Testament Israel while they were in exile. It was written about 700 years before Jesus Christ ever stepped foot on earth. But did you know it's commonly referred to as the fifth gospel?
[5:53] The fifth gospel. There's Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and all the way back here is Isaiah. In fact, if you only read your New Testament, never even opened up your Old Testament, which I don't recommend that you do, if you ignored your Old Testament entirely, only read your New Testament, you would still be pretty familiar with the book of Isaiah.
[6:16] And depending on who you ask and how you add it up, some say that out of the New Testament's 260 chapters, over 90% contain some reference to this fifth gospel, some allusion, some reference, some direct quote from the book of Isaiah.
[6:39] Our chapter this morning, chapter 55 of the book of Isaiah, our chapter that we'll be studying for the next several weeks, is towards the end of a section of scripture that is just overflowing with the message of the gospel.
[6:56] Chapter 53, you might know chapter 53 of Isaiah. It's one of the most popular, well-known passages in the Old Testament. Chapter 53 showed the suffering servant, dying in the place of sinners, bearing the sins of many.
[7:13] Chapter 4 portrayed a renewed creation, with renewed joy, renewed relationship with God, on the basis of that servant's work. And now chapter 55 is an invitation to come.
[7:28] It's an invitation to come and to feast. It's an invitation to enter into true and lasting satisfaction for your soul.
[7:40] So this morning, we begin our study in Isaiah 55, with this invitation to come and feast. And what we'll see this morning is three parts of the gospel according to Isaiah.
[7:53] Three parts of the gospel according to Isaiah. If you're taking notes, I encourage you to do so, and help you follow along. Three parts of the gospel according to Isaiah.
[8:04] Isaiah, we are needy, we are invited, and God alone can satisfy forever. I'll say that again.
[8:17] We are needy, we are invited, and God alone can satisfy forever. Well, clearly this chapter is an invitation to a feast.
[8:33] Fresh water, fresh milk, wine, and bread, rich food, a satisfying food, as much as you can handle. But there's a prerequisite there, isn't there?
[8:44] And there's a requirement here. In order to come and eat, you must be hungry. In order to come drink, you must be thirsty.
[8:57] He says, in order to buy a ticket, guess what? You must be broke. You must be poor. You must be needy. Look there to verse 1 with me. He says, Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.
[9:13] And he who has no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk, without money, and without price. Price. Now this is an invitation to the world's greatest feast.
[9:25] And when we hear that, our ears, our mind, immediately goes to cost. How much does it cost? What's the price of admission? Or at the very least, what can I bring to the table?
[9:37] Can I bring something to contribute? But we have to see here in verse 1, a prerequisite of us coming to this feast is that we bring nothing with us.
[9:48] In fact, we couldn't afford it if we tried. Church, this is the bad news that must come before the good news of the gospel.
[10:00] This is what the gospel tells us. It tells us that we are, in and of ourselves, every one of us, apart from the grace of God, spiritually broke.
[10:10] We are bankrupt. We are incapable of bringing anything good to the table. We have nothing to offer.
[10:23] And Ephesians tells us, Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 2, before God saved us in Christ, we were dead in our trespasses and sins in which we once walked.
[10:33] Dead in our trespasses and sins. Dead men don't eat. Dead men don't cook. Dead men don't bring anything to the table. They are dead. We have to understand this before we get too far into this chapter that he's making the point we cannot buy our way.
[10:52] We cannot earn our way. We cannot work our way into this feast. And that is exactly the point. This feast is not for those who are well-fed and rich.
[11:06] It's not for those who are satisfied already. It is for those who realize by the grace of God that they are poor and needy.
[11:17] We don't like to think of ourselves this way. Do we? We like to think of ourselves as capable, as worthy, as respectable, not needy.
[11:33] But those put together, well-resourced, well-fed people, it's clear they cannot come. They do not meet the qualifications. The fact that they think they are qualified makes them, in fact, unqualified to come.
[11:48] The Bible is clear. It does not matter how materially rich you are, how well-respected, how prosperous you are. Spiritually speaking, every one of us is broke.
[12:02] And it is broken, poor, desperately needy people that Jesus came to save.
[12:13] Amen? Amen? Amen. This is what drove the Pharisees crazy, isn't it? The Pharisees, you might remember, they were the religious elite in Jesus' day.
[12:24] They were the teachers of the law. They were masters of the word of God. They were well-respected, and they made sure that they were well-respected. And they could not stand that when Jesus came, he didn't really care too much for their resumes.
[12:39] He was not impressed by their knowledge. Instead, what Jesus did was he went out to the fringes. He went out to the poor and to the marginalized. He went to the rejected.
[12:50] He went to the needy. He spent his time with them. And so he says things like what Pete read for us earlier. He says things like, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
[13:07] That sounds an awful lot like Isaiah 55, doesn't it? Those who are tired, those who are weary, those who are weak, those who are needy, come to me.
[13:19] Those who are thirsty, come to me. Those who are hungry, come to me. Those who are poor, come to me. He says things like, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[13:36] Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be what? Satisfied.
[13:48] He doesn't say, blessed are those who have it all together already. Blessed are those who are full of themselves. Blessed are those who don't need anything.
[14:01] This bothered the Pharisees. Because they were blind to their own spiritual poverty. And it really bothered them when Jesus started spending so much time with sinners.
[14:14] I mean, how could he do this? How could he go and spend time with them? You may remember the story of when Jesus met a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax booth.
[14:26] Now there's a lot in the Bible that doesn't exactly correlate with our day and our time, but one thing that hasn't changed is people back then hated paying taxes as much as people now hate paying taxes.
[14:38] Levi was a tax collector. People hated tax collectors. These men would come take your money and often they would help themselves to a little bit extra, a little bit off the top, so they would be rich and they made sure everybody else was not as rich as them.
[14:53] They were not well-received people. And so when Jesus came to the tax collector Levi in Luke chapter 5, this righteous teacher and this sinful thief, and Jesus looked at him and simply said, come follow me.
[15:09] What did Levi do? He left everything and followed him. The Pharisees didn't like this. But apparently Levi went and told all his friends because Luke 5 29, it says, Levi made him a great feast in his house and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them.
[15:33] And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? And Jesus answered them, hear this, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.
[15:59] I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners? Why would Jesus come into the home of a sinful man and associate with his rabble of sinful people?
[16:13] Why would he feast with sinners? If only the Pharisees had studied Isaiah 55, a little more closely, they might have understood they are the only ones invited.
[16:29] Jesus did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. sins. Now of course, the Pharisees were just as sinful as anybody else.
[16:41] They were plenty sinful just like us. The only difference between them and these other sinners was that they didn't think so. They were blinded to their sin. They didn't realize their thirst.
[16:53] They didn't realize their hunger. They didn't realize their poverty. And so Jesus says, before you come and feast with me, God says, before you come and feast on me, you must recognize your need.
[17:07] You are a sinner in great need of a Savior. One more example from the book of Luke. Chapter 18. Chapter 18. The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
[17:23] Luke says in verse 9, chapter 18. Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated other people with contempt.
[17:35] Okay, so you see the audience here. And he goes on to tell this parable of two men going to the temple to pray. One of them was a Pharisee, this religious elite.
[17:45] The other was a tax collector, a clear sinner. And it says, the Pharisee prayed like this, God, I thank you that I am not like other men. extortioners, unjust, adulterers, even like this tax collector.
[18:02] And he pulls out his resume for God to read. He says, I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get. God, aren't I just awesome? But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
[18:27] Now here's the most striking part of this story. Jesus says in verse 14, I tell you, this man, this man, the sinner, the tax collector, this man, went down to his house justified rather than the other.
[18:45] For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. Church, which one are we more like?
[18:59] Before we step foot into this great feast of God portrayed in Isaiah 55, our hearts must be humbled. We must recognize our need and our poverty.
[19:13] Do you see yourself as righteous, as more deserving of the grace of God than anybody else, more deserving of the presence of God than anybody else? The bad news of the gospel is we are desperately sinful.
[19:29] We bring nothing good to the table. Sinful beyond our wildest imagination, but the good news of the gospel is that that is exactly who Christ came to save.
[19:40] which is the second part of the gospel according to Isaiah this morning. The second part of the gospel according to Isaiah.
[19:52] We are invited. We are invited. The good news of the gospel for sinners like us is that we are invited to come.
[20:05] Four times in these three verses we hear this gospel invitation, don't we? It says, come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. He who has no money, come buy and eat.
[20:18] And down in verse 3 he says, incline your ear and come to me. Hear that your soul may live. Because, chapter 53, because he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
[20:32] Because he was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. Because of the work of Christ on the cross, we are invited to come and live.
[20:46] This is what we call the general call of the gospel. The general call of the gospel. The gospel message is a promise of eternal life.
[21:00] It's a promise of forgiveness of sins, everlasting joy in the presence of God on the basis of the work of Christ, his life, his death, his resurrection received by grace through faith.
[21:13] It costs you nothing because he has already paid the price of admission. We simply must receive it by faith as a gift by turning from our sin, by trusting in our Savior.
[21:25] That's the gospel. That's the gospel message. And that invitation to come to the Father is broadly cast out, generally, broadly, into the ears of any who would hear it.
[21:38] Come. Come to Christ. Turn from your sin and live. Turn from your sin. Trust in your Savior. Come. Have your sins forgiven. Come. Listen that your soul may live.
[21:51] But not everybody comes, do they? Only those who are effectively called will, in fact, come to the Lord.
[22:05] And that effectual call where through the preaching of the gospel, through the extending broadly of this invitation, through our personal evangelism, sinners hear the good news of the gospel and are spiritually reborn again of His Spirit.
[22:24] Regenerated. Born again. It is extended to all, but sadly, it is not received by all. And that's where our statement of faith, we confess, concerning the freeness of salvation.
[22:39] It reads like this. We believe that salvation is offered freely to all in the gospel and that it is the immediate duty of all to accept the gospel by a humble, repentant, and obedient faith.
[22:56] Hear this. There is nothing that prevents the salvation of the greatest sinner on earth but His own depravity and voluntary rejection of the gospel which results in just condemnation.
[23:14] Jesus told another parable in Matthew chapter 22. of a rich king who wanted to throw a banquet.
[23:26] He wanted to throw a wedding feast for his son. And so he sent out servants out into the streets to call those who were invited to come to the feast.
[23:37] But they would not come. So he sent more servants out into the streets and sent out the call, the invitation, come, come celebrate, come enjoy the food, come enjoy the wine.
[23:49] My son is getting married, everything's ready, come on, come to the feast. But again, they paid no attention and went off about their business.
[24:00] They were too busy to come. In fact, some were so bothered by hearing this invitation over and over and over again that they treated the servants shamefully and killed them.
[24:11] So he says, the king executed judgment. He says, he destroyed those murderers and burned their city. And then he sent his servants again.
[24:24] Go therefore into the roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you can find. And the servants went out into the road and gathered all they could, both good and bad, so that the wedding hall was filled with guests.
[24:40] Here's the sad reality, church. You can hear the general call of the gospel time after time after time after time.
[24:58] You can know it inside and out. You can come to church every week from the time you're one to the time you're 101 and never actually come.
[25:10] to Christ. You must hear the good news in order to believe it, but only hearing this general call of the gospel will not save you.
[25:26] You must come to Christ. So Jesus concludes this parable by saying, many are called generally, but few are chosen effectively.
[25:42] You must come. How do we do that? How do we come and feast, accept this invitation to come and delight ourselves in the Lord?
[25:58] He tells us, doesn't He? Isaiah. In Isaiah 55. It's by listening and trusting the Word of God. By listening and trusting the Word of God.
[26:14] It's not just to hear, it's to listen. Verse 2, Isaiah 55, verse 2. He says, listen diligently to me and eat what is good.
[26:26] Verse 3, incline your ear and come to me here that your soul may live. So how do we come to the Lord? It's by listening diligently to the Word of God.
[26:38] How do we come into the presence of God? How do we enter into His presence so that we might satisfy our soul? It is by feasting on the Word of God.
[26:50] What does Jesus say? Man does not live by bread alone but by every what? Word. From the mouth of God. Are any of you spiritually dry?
[27:04] Are any of you spiritually hungry? You're invited to come and to feast on the Word of God. Are you weary?
[27:14] Are you thirsty? Are you poor? Are you needy? Come and hear God speak. Come that your soul might live. Do you want to know God more? Come and listen to His Word.
[27:26] Do you want to grow as a disciple of Christ? Do you want to grow in your love for God as His child? Open up the book and read. But don't just hear it.
[27:37] Church, listen diligently. Listen to your Father speak life-giving words. faith. And then go out into the streets and invite others to come feast with us.
[27:58] Faith comes through hearing and hearing through the Word of God. What does Paul say in Romans? How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard?
[28:11] And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? Church, we have been sent. Jesus Christ commanded us, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you and lo, I am with you always, even to the uttermost ends of the earth.
[28:37] We have been commissioned to go out into the streets as His servants and invite as many as we could find to come feast their souls on the Word of God.
[28:50] Our privilege, church, as God's ambassadors is to be the mouthpiece of this invitation. This invitation in Isaiah 55. We don't know who the Lord will call effectively unto salvation, but we do know how they will come.
[29:07] It's through the proclamation of the gospel. It is through the church effectively going out and obeying this great commission.
[29:19] We have been entrusted as servants of the King with the task to go into the streets and invite them to come. Everyone who thirsts, everyone who hungers, everyone who's poor, everyone who's needy, come to the waters and drink.
[29:38] One thing that we keep talking about is personal evangelism. Have you heard me mention that before? One area that we want to see this group of people, this church, grow in in the years to come is personal evangelism.
[29:55] Our strategy for reaching the lost in all in all, for reaching our community, for ministering to our community, our strategy for the growth of this church, our strategy for the growth of every one of you is that we would share the gospel, that we would be equipped personally, every one of us to share the good news of the gospel.
[30:19] So who do you know that needs to be invited to come? Who do you know that is spiritually thirsty?
[30:30] And maybe that's you this morning. And maybe you've realized now by the grace of God you've heard this invitation, you've heard this message time and time again, you recognize your need but you've never actually come.
[30:44] Friend, you're invited now to come and to listen and to put your trust in Christ. but what's the point? What's so great about this feast that we come back to it time and time again?
[31:02] Friend, the gospel invites you not only to forgiveness which is wonderful, not only to peace with God which is wonderful, not only to escape from judgment and condemnation and hell, the good news of the gospel is that we are invited to be satisfied in God forever.
[31:29] This is the third part of the gospel according to Isaiah. Third, God alone will satisfy. God alone will satisfy.
[31:44] If we don't believe this, we will never come. If we don't genuinely believe that God alone can satisfy the needs of our soul, we will never come to the Father.
[32:03] Do you know the reason why so many don't come? When we look at what God is offering in this feast, this water that gives life, this milk that nourishes and gives strength, this wine that gives joy, bread that satisfies our hunger and nourishes our soul, why would anybody not come?
[32:25] He tells us in verse 2, Isaiah 55 verse 2, it's because verse 2, we spend our money for that which is not bread and we labor for that which does not satisfy.
[32:43] In other words, we don't come to the feast because we have filled ourselves already, or so we think, we're not hungry because we've been snacking on empty calories no less.
[33:00] This is a sad depiction of our pursuit of pleasure, our pursuit of joy, our pursuit of satisfaction in anything other than God himself.
[33:13] Isaiah tells us we are desperately poor, yet we continue to spend ourselves for that which is not bread and that which will not satisfy.
[33:25] Jeremiah the prophet, he had something to say about this. God spoke through Jeremiah the prophet to his people in Israel in exile again and he says in Jeremiah chapter 2 verse 13, he says this, my people have committed two evils.
[33:44] They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and they have hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.
[33:57] You see these two evils, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, the all satisfying fountain of living waters, this fountain of life and joy, but not only that, they have also just tried to create their own cisterns and they're broken cisterns that can hold no water and of course all of us are guilty of this type of idolatry.
[34:21] We turn from the fountain of life and joy and peace and satisfaction and we try to find it ourselves in other things. That's what idolatry is.
[34:31] We try to find that satisfaction in money, in success, in a relationship, in sex, in a child, in respect.
[34:42] Every one of us, whether we realize it or not, we worship idols. Idols are anything that we turn to for the satisfaction that only God can provide.
[34:56] Jeremiah says they are broken cisterns. They can't hold water and yet we form them and we trust them. and we turn to them and we rely on them to quench our thirst but they never will.
[35:13] Sadly, they are broken. Several weeks ago, you might remember we talked about the lawsuit that was filed against Red Bull.
[35:28] You remember that? And their slogan, it'll give you wings. consumers claimed it was false advertising. They'd been drinking Red Bull for years and never once had they grown a pair of wings.
[35:42] And they won the lawsuit, believe it or not. Well, in 2016, there was yet another food-related lawsuit. This time, it was against company against company, two food companies.
[35:55] Hungry Man versus Heinz. Hungry Man, the frozen meal company, it had a slogan. Anybody remember what it was? Satisfy your craving.
[36:08] Hungry Man will satisfy your craving. They had trademarked it and everything. They were the only frozen food company who could say that their frozen meals would satisfy your craving.
[36:20] But the marketing geniuses over at Heinz got together and they came up with Devour Foods. It was their own frozen food line and they drafted up their own unique slogan.
[36:32] Devour Foods will satisfy your cravings. There's an S. It's plural. More than one. There's an S at the end of it. And of course, the good people over at Hungry Man took issue with this because they were the only ones who could satisfy your craving.
[36:49] But Heinz over here, they said, well, you can satisfy a craving, but we satisfy cravings. We can do it all. And if I were bold enough, I would file a lawsuit against them both because as we all know, frozen food does not satisfy your cravings.
[37:05] Whether one or many, not for long at least. You may be satisfied for a moment, you heat it up, you eat it, your belly's full, but within a couple hours, you're hungry again, it doesn't last, and even the best meal of your life, I know Thanksgiving's coming up.
[37:26] We will feast and be satisfied temporarily. It doesn't satisfy forever. It's momentary, it's temporary, and Isaiah and Jeremiah show us that's how it is with our idols.
[37:42] We believe the advertisement that this job, this feeling, this accomplishment, this raise, this child, will satisfy the needs of my soul, but once you dig in and consume it, you get it, you realize it doesn't live up to the hype, and you're left hungry again.
[38:05] You have spent your money on not bread. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread? Why do you labor for that which does not satisfy?
[38:20] church, God invites us in Isaiah 55 to listen diligently to me and eat what is good.
[38:34] Delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me here that your soul may live.
[38:44] Here's what he's telling us. True joy and true life true lasting satisfaction is found in God and God alone.
[38:57] He alone can satisfy the desires, the cravings, the need of your soul, and he has no competitors. This is what we were made for. What is the chief end of man?
[39:11] The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. This is what we were made for. We were created to delight ourselves in God, to be satisfied in him.
[39:23] So every desire that we have for love, for joy, for acceptance, for pleasure, every craving for satisfaction is ultimately and only fulfilled in him.
[39:37] And this is what Christ came to do. We're told in 1 Peter 3 verse 18. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.
[39:55] The best part of the gospel is not forgiveness, it's not freedom from sin, it's not freedom from death or disease or suffering, it's not even that we might be reunited with our lost loved ones and family members.
[40:09] The best part of the gospel is that we get to feast forever on the goodness of God. And it will take all of eternity for us to explore the goodness of God.
[40:27] One commentator, J. Alec Motier, says this, The Lord himself is the feast. Just as true food restores the body debilitated by not bread, so the food of the Lord's word, brings the whole person to the life that is life indeed.
[40:48] Is your soul hungry? Do you hunger and thirst to be satisfied in God? You are invited to come to feast that your soul might live.
[41:07] God and Jesus told another parable in Luke chapter 15. You all know it as the parable of the prodigal son. A man had two sons of the younger dishonored his father by asking for his share of the inheritance early.
[41:26] While his father was still living, he basically said, you're as good as dead to me, just give me the money, because that's all I really want anyways. And the father gave it to him. And so the son went off and lived recklessly and spent all his money on things that would not satisfy.
[41:43] And suddenly there was a famine in the land, and he was hungry and thirsty and poor and needy. And so he said, I'll go back to my father and I'll ask for forgiveness.
[41:57] Maybe at least he'll let me be like one of his servants and I can get a good meal, I can work at his house and eat. But when he started on his way back home, the father saw him from a long way off.
[42:09] And Luke says he felt compassion on him. And he ran to him. And he embraced him. And he kissed him. And he wouldn't even let him finish his apology.
[42:20] He ordered that they bring out the best robe and put it on his back and a ring for his finger and shoes for his feet and to kill the fattened calf and prepare it so that they could feast and celebrate.
[42:35] For this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is now found. Can you imagine what a joy that must have been?
[42:49] For the son to come back home having nothing to offer whatsoever, broken and humbled and poor, not just to come back and enjoy a feast, not just to enjoy rich food and drink wine and to celebrate, but to be restored to his father and to be with him and to be embraced by him and to be welcomed back home.
[43:17] Friend, that is the call of Isaiah 55. Come ye sinners, poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore.
[43:28] Jesus ready stands to save you full of pity, love and power. Would you come? Would you come? Would you come? Let's pray.
[43:44] Lord, we thank you for your heart that's displayed in this passage that you would invite sinners like us to come and to be satisfied in you. Nothing else can satisfy the needs of our soul, but you and you alone.
[43:59] We thank you that through the work of Christ you have made a way for us to be forgiven and to be restored to our father. We pray that we would leave this place encouraged and with the good news of this invitation quick off of our lips to any who would hear.
[44:17] We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.