Today’s piece of Isaiah, chapter 55, tackles the big question: What is really worth my living and striving for?
It starts with God crying out to us: `Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!` (`No money`, because someone else paid for what God is going to give us; see last week’s amazing chapter 53!) Then comes the big challenge, v2: `Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy?`
Here’s the starting point if we really want to find what’s worth living for: thirst, the serious desire to find it, and not to quietly accept its absence. Here’s the issue: we’re built for relationship with God; so if we live for anything else we’ll find we’re like – no, we’ll find we are – the idolator of 44:20, who `feeds on ashes`. So what then is worth living for, spending our strength, gifts and efforts on?
Well: doesn’t life teach us how one alternative after another is `not quite it`? Work: it’s a great gift from God if we have a job we love (I do!) – but if it becomes our life’s centre, instead of satisfying us, we may well find it Ieads into the slavery of workaholism. Romance? Again what a huge gift from God – but somehow if that drive becomes our absolute centre, we may just get hurt – or put expectations on it so high that we ruin it. `Why spend your labour on what doesn’t satisfy?` Just to look good? – but alas that’s transient (anyway the Instagram posing can feel so shallow) – besides which, if looking good becomes our idol, things like anorexia may beckon. Success and the things that come with success? Do they really make people happy? (Freddy Mercury: `You can have everything in the world, and still be the loneliest man.’) Holidays – often good, thankyou Lord, but – that’s not quite it either… The arts, beauty, music? Postmodernism has shown (I’m convinced) that these too end in futility if they’re just for themselves: the arts and beauty are given us as embodiments of something else, the beauty and glory of God…
Why can’t these things bear the weight of `being the centre`? For one of four reasons. Some are just never sufficient, and if they become our `centre` we’ll always need more: more achievements if achievements are our centre, or more reasons to think we’re popular if that’s it. Others can‘t finally satisfy because we know they’re transient and that we, therefore, are vulnerable: one day the looks we’re proud of will decay, the work we value so highly will end, our years of expertise will just mean we’re outdated, our precious kids will move on; the successes our drivenness bought us will recede into the past, our possessions and status symbols will decay or become outdated. Yet other `wrong centres` too easily lead us to slavery: living so that others will like or want us does that; so does packing our schedules so that life will feel meaningful… And yet others can’t bear that weight, because putting them in that central `God position` distorts and destroys them. No partner, and no child, can be everything we want for us, and demanding that they should be is a huge weight for any relationship to carry. Or think of sport: when `winning is not the main thing, it’s the only thing’, the simple pleasure we began with starts to be destroyed. In the end, nothing but God (and we Christians need to remember this too) is big enough to bear the weight of being our centre… And so God’s voice comes here: `Why are you spending your labour on what cannot (ultimately) satisfy?` `Thou hast made us for Thyself`, said Augustine poignantly centuries ago — `and never will our hearts find rest, until they find their rest in Thee…’
What God is saying is this: when we seek and find Him, we also find what’s worth labouring for, the life we’re made for, the purpose and destiny that really do satisfy. The specific example for Israel in the darkness of exile comes in vv3-5, where God says: `I want you to be part of the climax of history.` The Servant, Christ, will come back, the world will finally flourish under His kingship; and God says to them, and us, I made you to `summon nations` to be part of that — to be involved in the transformation of the whole lost world, caught up missionally in Jesus’ love for it; and, as we grow in that life-direction, calling people into God’s truth and love wherever we can, we’ll find something truly worthwhile to live for…
How then do we find our joyful destiny? V6 is clear where we start: `Seek the LORD, while He may be found; call on Him, while He is near!` There’s a big `while` here – Paul begs his readers in 2 Corinthians 6 not to encounter God’s offer of salvation in vain, because (he quotes Isaiah) `Now is the day of salvation`. If we keep saying `Not yet` to God, that’s actually saying, `God it’s my life, and I’ll do with it what I choose, when I choose`. But one day God may respond to this rejection by stopping calling us; and that’s the worst thing in the world. How then, `while He is near`, must we respond? Isaiah presents the same vital `double doors` to heaven that we’ll recognize from Jesus’ words, and Paul’s: (1) repentance, and (2) faith (v7, cf Mark 1:15, Acts 20:21). `Let the wicked forsake their ways` – that’s repentance: recognizing that by God’s holy standards I’m `wicked`, needing forgiving, but now I’m determined to turn and, by His power, live His way. And then faith – `Let them turn… to our God, for He will freely pardon` – faith that there is forgiveness, pardon, because of everything ch53 (last week!) revealed about the cross…
Then comes a striking note in vv8-9: `”My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are… my thoughts higher than your thoughts…”` As Paul says, the true gospel may seem like foolishness; but life comes (and comes only) as we surrender to it, to God doing things His way. And then God says something else about this Word, these `thoughts`, that He’s calling us to trust. Like the rain that comes from heaven and brings life to the earth, He says beautifully (v10), `so is my Word!`; it will achieve everything God planned, `the purpose for which I sent it`, and that purpose is huge transformation:
` You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush [see Genesis 3:18] will grow the juniper;
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the LORD’s renown…` (vv12-13 NIV)
It’s like Paul says: we’re not just in this for individual salvation, but one day the entire creation `will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God`; and we’re called to be the bridgehead! So the implication is clear: trust God’s life-bringing Word, and join in your destiny, join in its spread… In Acts Luke’s way of saying the church grew is to say that the `Word continued to increase and spread`; this Word brings people to heaven and heaven into people, and it transforms cultures, bringing an end (as it has) to things like slavery once it starts to be taken seriously; transformation now, and one day Christ’s Word will bring far greater transformation still. And, remarkably, we have that Word, embodied in Scripture: so our fantastic calling is to get the maximum of it into us, and spread the maximum of it out….
So then: for what shall we spend our strengths? `Why spend your labour on what does not satisfy?` (Am I?) There’s just one truly satisfying goal – the one that will make every other goal meaningful, by setting each one in their right place – Jesus help me grasp this! – and that is, in every dimension of life, to live `for the LORD’s renown` (v15). If we’ll face up to being `thirsty`, here is the destiny that will give us life! And it’s `without cost` (v1): as ch53 showed us, Jesus died to open the way for all this glory for us. So now we can `seek Him while He may be found`: `forsaking our way` and turning in repentance to His; trusting Him that he will `freely pardon`, but then give us far, far more; because (this is Paul quoting Isaiah nine chapters later) `No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has
prepared for those who love Him…`
`For this is what the high and exalted One says—
He who lives forever, whose name is holy:
“I live in a high and holy place,
but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite…
I have seen their ways, but I will heal them…
creating praise on their lips!
Peace, peace, to those far and near,”
says the LORD, “and I will heal them!”` (Isa 57:15-19 NIV).
Hallelujah!
