Isaiah 55:2
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Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 55. We will try to constrain ourselves to the first half of verse 2, but we will look at the other verses as well. Isaiah 55, 2a. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Well, this is our verse for tonight, And it could easily by itself, taken out of context, have turned into a sermon about how to use your finances wisely, or how to live your best life now.
We could continue the prosperity gospel we were talking about this morning. Just kidding, Greg did not preach the prosperity gospel. Go back and listen to that sermon, it was excellent. But only if you just knew how to handle your budget well, or handle your finances, you could save for retirement and enjoy your well-earned rest. No, that's not what this verse is about. Let's read it in context. Let's back up a little bit. Start back up in verse 1, and let's see what this verse is actually talking about. 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 so no we're not going to talk about how to use your finances wisely God is speaking here and he's not talking about physical bread he's not talking about satisfying your tummy. Look at verse 3 again. Incline your ear and come to me.
Hear that your soul may live. Verse 6. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. In context, it's clear that this satisfaction, our very life, is to be found in God. And yet, as verse 2 talks about and what we're going to focus on, we continually pursue other things that are less than God. We focus our attention on the here and now.
We search for life where it's not meant to be found. We keep going back to the same broken cisterns over and over again, and we find nothing. So here's our main idea for tonight. Stop your pursuit of idols and find life in Jesus Christ. Stop your pursuit of idols and find life in Jesus Christ. Point one, stop pursuing idols. What is idolatry?
Idols are not mentioned in this verse. What am I talking about? Well, idolatry is not merely worshiping little statues. It's worshiping anything or anyone other than God. We become idolaters when we put our faith, our trust, our reliance on anything and we put it in God's rightful place. Most of the time even an idol is not a bad thing. It's not evil. It can be a good thing. It could be a gift from God that he gave us. An idol is something so central to your life that if you were to lose it, it'd be hard to go on. You might even feel like your life would lose all meaning. We've been talking about one of the most popular idols today and throughout history over the last couple of weeks, money. Money and possessions, your stuff. Money and possessions are a good gift from God. They're meant to be enjoyed by his people. Money, in fact, is not the root of
all evil, like we often hear. No, it's the love of money that's the root of all evil. Did you hear that? Money is not the root of all evil. It's the love of money that's the root of all evil. So what's the bottom line here? Don't fall in love with your stuff. Jesus said you cannot serve God and your stuff. God very much cares how you relate to money. We talked about it this morning. So how do you know if your heart is subtly, quietly turning money into an idol?
ask yourself some serious questions. Where do you look for security and comfort? At the end of the day, when you lie awake at night, where do you look? Do you look to God, the creator of the universe, the sustainer of all things, the one who owns everything? Or do you look to your bank account or your retirement account or your next paycheck? be honest i'm tempted like you to look to money for comfort and safety but how foolish do we look when we hold up god and money side by side and we say i'm going to lean on money for my safety and security instead of the god of the universe that makes no sense how often do you think about getting more money you look at your accounts you look at your paycheck
and you think to yourself i need more are you greedy for more are you willing to sin to get more of it are you a miser greg usually gives us a word of the day in every morning sermon For the last few weeks, it's been the same word over and over again, shyster. Does anyone else notice this? Just say it with me, shyster. Greg loves this word.
Well, here's your word for the evening, miser. A miser is a person who hoards wealth and spends as little money as possible. So, you can think of Ebenezer Scrooge, or Scrooge McDuck, depending on how old you are. Do you hold on to your money and possessions with an iron fist like Scrooge? Is there a certain number in your bank account or your retirement account that gives you a sense of peace and comfort? Do you have an unquenchable thirst to get more and more money?
These are the questions you need to ask yourself. And you can ask your friends, you can ask your spouse, ask those who are close to you, am I preoccupied with money? And let them honestly answer. So how do we keep from falling in love with our stuff? We've been talking about it the last couple of weeks. Greg talked about it this morning. Give some of it away. Be generous. Keep your money in an opened hand, not a closed fist.
Don't be more concerned about your stuff and your possessions and the things that you're hoarding more so than you are the people who are in your life. Money and stuff, it's all temporary. It's all going to rot. But people, people live on forever. You can't take your stuff with you to heaven. Well, praise God, many of you are generous with your stuff. I've seen you do it. You give to the church, you give to the benevolence fund.
And I'd say to that, just keep going, brother and sister. Keep going. Do not let your heart make money an idol in your life. But of course, there's another idol mentioned in our verse tonight. If you look back at verse 2, let's talk about one more. It's another good gift that God has given to us. We often don't think of it that way, but it's a gift from God. But it can become an idol in our lives. Verse 2, what is it?
It's our labor or our work. The opportunities and responsibilities that God has given to us to manage. We often talk about money as the greatest resource. And obviously it is an important resource. But money is not the only resource. And it might not even be the most valuable resource that you have. Time is a resource. It's how you spend it. That's the resource. And time, it's limited.
It's finite. You cannot get more of it. You can get more money, but your time is running out. Once you spend it, you can't get it back. Some of us use our time to work at a job where we get paid. Some of us produce things. We sell those things to get money. Some of you work in a home. You manage your family. You manage your household. you raise your kids, some of you are full-time students, you're studying, some of you are retired, you worked hard earlier in life, and now you're enjoying the benefit of not having to work for money. But all of us have the same resource still, and it's time. So how do we spend our time?
In the same way that we talked about money and asked ourselves those questions, we can do this with labor as well. How we spend our time, that's our work. How do you spend your time? Are you generous with it? Greg talked about disciplined generosity this morning as it relates to money, but the same can be true for your time. Do you have disciplined generosity with your time and your schedule? Or do you fritter your time away? Do you get to the end of the day and you can barely remember what happened?
If you're retired, how are you spending your time? Do you feel like you have more time than ever? more time to give. I think a lot of times people can avoid discipleship relationships because they think discipleship must happen in 60-minute increments over a cup of coffee. Have you ever thought that way about discipleship? That's not true. Discipleship can look different sometimes, especially if you're at the point in life where you're particularly busy.
No, students, I'm not talking to you. You have no idea what busy looks like. Just wait. No, you can disciple someone simply by inviting them into your life and let them be there while you go on with your life. It can be discipleship. Are you a stay-at-home mom? Maybe invite a single woman over to hang out with you while you parent your children. Do you play golf or some other recreational sport? Don't just do it by yourself, although that can be fun, invite someone else. Get to know them. Disciple people as you live your life. You can disciple people along the way. Believe it or not, discipleship actually happens outside of the walls of a coffee shop. Amen. Do you spend an inordinate amount of time working at your job? Some of you are probably in that season of life, so these questions could hit home, and I love you. You're
working hard, praise God, but ask yourself these questions. If you have a family, are you able to see them? Or do you work so many hours in the day that you're not able to be with your spouse or your children? Sometimes we might even say that person or, you know, we're making a sacrifice on behalf of our family. Depending on the situation, though, it might be the other way around. Are you sacrificing time with your family for the sake of your job?
Even that language that we use when we talk about that, sacrifice, it evokes the idea of worship, something to consider. What about your co-workers? How do you interact with those who are there with you at work all day, or your children, or whoever it is that you're with all day? How do you treat those who are below you in some way? your employees, your children, people who are younger than you, people who don't have as much as you, do you treat them like your servant, like a tool to be used to further your own career?
Are you constantly looking for things that they do wrong in order to just keep them down an extra peg, keep them a little lower? Or do you lead in a way that it serves them and raises them up? How about those who are above you in some way? How do you interact with your boss at work? Bosses can be good, bosses can be bad. Is your heart constantly questioning your boss's motive and actions? Are you secretly thinking that you could do better if you had their job?
If only I were in charge, I would do it the right way. Are there any students in here tonight? Of course, there are students in here tonight. you're working hard, you're finishing up the semester, you're trying to get good grades, and you say to yourself, it's for the glory of God. You're studying hard, and if you're in seminary, you're even studying to learn more about God himself. But do you really need to get all A's to glorify God? Or is it possible that secretly or not so secretly, you're competing with the other students in your class. Maybe to make yourself look a little bit smarter. Get the edge.
Maybe impress somebody. And all of this while you might even be neglecting church life, family life, or even spiritual life at times. The preacher from Ecclesiastes has a good reminder for us about our work. In Ecclesiastes 2, he says this, what has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night, his heart does not rest. Some of you are in that season. This also is vanity. There's nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him, who can eat or have enjoyment? Paul sums up how we're supposed to view our work and how we're supposed to keep our work
from becoming an idol in Colossians 3. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. Whatever you do, you should view yourself as working for the Lord. Notice also it was the preacher and Paul, they both mentioned the same thing. Paul said heartily, but the preacher said joyfully, there's joy, there's joy, there's satisfaction in work, but only if you view yourself as working for the Lord. Obviously, this rules out any job that is inherently sinful. For instance, there's no such thing as a Christian drug dealer, except, of course, if you're a pharmacist like my wife was. But those were legal drugs, okay? No, every good gift, every resource that you have is from God. And if you keep it in its rightful place, then it can be enjoyed. But without God,
all of these things are meaningless. It's a striving after the wind, as the preacher says. When we look to our possessions and our work for satisfaction and life, we're left with nothing and emptiness. Which brings us to our second point, more briefly, life in Christ, our life in Christ. Well, how do we get to Jesus from our verse tonight? Do we just take a beeline, take a shortcut, and just say, Sunday school answer, Jesus? No. Look at verse 3. It's right here.
Incline your ear and come to me. Hear that your soul may live, and I will make an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. God made a promise to David back in 2 Samuel 7 that one of his descendants one of David's descendants would be on the throne forever and God promised that that descendant would rule not just over Israel but over the whole world Isaiah 49 it's 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. The servant of God came to give his life as a ransom, not just for Israel, but for anyone who would put their trust in Jesus. And when you do that, you become united with him. Your life is bound up with his. God made an unbreakable promise
to his son. And here in Isaiah 55, God is promising to make an everlasting covenant with you that will never be broken. If you're united to Christ, then he cannot cast you off any more than he can cast off his son. Are you thirsty for life? Have you been searching for satisfaction in all the wrong places and come up empty over and over again? Are you hungry for life? Do you have a desire to be satisfied, to find purpose?
Well, that's good. Listen to Jesus' words. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on him God the Father has set his seal. Jesus said, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me. Your search can end tonight. You can stop looking now. Jesus is the answer. He is what you've been looking for. He will quench your thirst and your hunger. One last thing. Did you notice in verse 1? 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. It's free. It's a free gift to you, but it was very costly to God. He gave us his only son, and it was costly to Jesus who gave up his life. You can't buy it. You can't earn it. It's a free gift. All you have to do is listen to the voice of God and believe. Isaiah 55, 6, and 7. 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. Do you want the good life? You want to be satisfied? Stop looking in all the wrong places. Come to Jesus. Eat and drink and be satisfied. I promise you it won't be easy but you will find that satisfaction that you're looking for in Jesus alone. Let's pray. our father in heaven we pray to you tonight and ask lord that you would take away our idols lord help us to live life with an open hand not greedy not wanting more and more but looking for ways to give to be generous father we pray that jesus christ would be our satisfaction, that he would delight our hearts, that we would find our rest in him. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.