Are you content? Are you glad?
You tour the zoo along with your daughter and peer into the glass with the gorilla. You stare on the gorilla; he stares again. Are your lives all that totally different? He lives one outdoor-time to the following, one feeding to the following — what’s a jungle? You reside one leisure to the following, one chunk of sin to the following — what’s true happiness? It’s as if you reside exterior of your pleasure’s pure habitat.
But you’re a man and never an ape; you’ll be able to take into account your cage, the jail of your personal selections. However if you cease to consider life, you sink — is that this actually it? Maybe life was brighter if you have been youthful. Maybe you and the future-you have been as soon as finest pals, however now you discuss with much less and fewer pleasure. He doesn’t know what you’re looking for both, and also you each are working out of guesses.
Are you content? Are you glad? No? Then why proceed to look in useless?
Why?
This isn’t my query however God’s:
Why do you spend your cash for that which isn’t bread,
and your labor for that which doesn’t fulfill? (Isaiah 55:2)
God interprets your sighs: You might be spending cash for what will not be bread, laboring for what doesn’t fulfill. You chew on gravel; you reap the wind. A lot power, a lot time, a lot dedication to what isn’t working. You make dangerous purchases, consuming the undigestible. The God of heaven and earth asks you: Why?
Why do you insist on digging the desert for water? Why enter into the cave for mild? Why the senseless dwelling, the infinite scrolling, the watching till your eyes damage — have these ever flooded your soul with happiness? What are you getting from this life you’ve chosen for your self?
Your choices go away behind dry lips, a thirst making ready you for God’s invitation:
Come, everybody who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no cash,
come, purchase and eat!
Come, purchase wine and milk
with out cash and with out value. (Isaiah 55:1)
Come, be glad. Come, be made joyful. Come, God summons you. Merely come.
Needed
The God of heaven hears your lifetime of little whimpers and responds, Cease filling your mouth with sand; come to the waters. Cease intoxicating your coronary heart with the world; come gladden it with my wine. Why labor for what leaves you hungrier? Will you not have actual bread and water, wine and milk without spending a dime? Pleasure, life, substance, goal — do these not curiosity you?
“Why will males not be joyful?” we are able to nearly hear one angel ask one other. Why does the department run from the tree, the egg from the nest, the fish from the water? You’ll be able to reply from expertise: you didn’t need this happiness if it’s only present in God. Learn the phrases fastidiously:
Hear diligently to me, and eat what is nice,
and delight yourselves in wealthy meals.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul might reside. . . .
Search the Lord whereas he could also be discovered. (Isaiah 55:2–3, 6)
God will be your Uber driver and ship the meal, but when it requires consuming with him, nicely, you will note what you’ve got at the back of the fridge. Pleasure speaks, Higher king over your personal unhappiness than a contented servant of your Creator. You’ll not “enter into the Grasp’s pleasure” since you can’t abide that phrase — “Grasp.” You can find one other manner again to Eden. You allow no low-cost pleasure untried, and but, a heaven stands open earlier than you and you’ll not enter as a result of the doorway is as little as a bow and as heavy as a cross.
In different phrases, We’re sinners. God’s provide will not be merely to the unhappy; it’s to the unrighteous.
Search the Lord whereas he could also be discovered;
name upon him whereas he’s close to;
let the depraved forsake his manner,
and the unrighteous man his ideas;
let him return to the Lord, that he might have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he’ll abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:6–7)
We don’t simply want higher pleasures; we’d like plentiful pardon. Justice, not simply your coronary heart, wants satisfaction. The gospel addresses not merely your discontent in happiness aside from God, however your disobedience in searching for happiness aside from God. The Lord Jesus doesn’t simply lengthen without end ecstasies; he stays closing executions. We’re creatures not simply wanting however needed.
Genius
What does your previous (or current) lifetime of fornication, mendacity, gossip, anger, or drunkenness must do along with your seek for happiness? Every thing. Alone, you don’t have any proper to this blessedness. Justice disallows sinners from the inheritance of the righteous. Must you who’ve sown hell reap heaven? Ought to God be mocked? How can God make you content? His mercy, not his wrath, begs for rationalization within the subsequent verses.
For my ideas should not your ideas,
neither are your methods my methods, declares the Lord.
For because the heavens are increased than the earth,
so are my methods increased than your methods
and my ideas than your ideas. (Isaiah 55:8–9)
Your ideas of grace and mercy inch upon the forest flooring; God’s ideas of grace dwell far above the heads of the seraphim. His gospel methods of pity and pardon grasp above us from crossbeams of rugged wooden upon a hill. In different phrases, the gospel will not be man’s genius however God’s. We had no clue how justice and mercy may kiss. Man couldn’t fathom a manner for his personal forgiveness; he couldn’t dream the best way to be adopted into God’s household. The happiness in God we by no means sought was given to us via a plan we couldn’t have imagined.
Pleasure
God’s plan options God’s Son. He would ship his solely Son to tackle human flesh, reside the proper life you didn’t, die your dying, and rise out of your grave. He suffered the wrath you deserved so you can have the heaven Christ deserved.
God welcomed again a banished folks via covenant, foretelling, “I’ll make with you an eternal covenant, my steadfast, positive love for David” (Isaiah 55:3). And amid the promise, he turns to a different and says,
Behold, you shall name a nation that you just have no idea,
and a nation that didn’t know you shall run to you,
due to the Lord your God, and of the Holy Certainly one of Israel,
for he has glorified you. (Isaiah 55:5)
A whole lot of years later, one man rises to his toes to reissue God’s invitation to the thirsty:
On the final day of the feast, the nice day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anybody thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, because the Scripture has stated, ‘Out of his coronary heart will circulate rivers of dwelling water.’” (John 7:37–38)
Jesus invitations all who will to return to him. He’s the Lamb who was slain for the sins of the world. He’s the person who, when lifted up by his Father, attracts sinners to himself.
Whether or not you settle for Christ’s joyful phrases of give up, the promised bliss for God’s folks will arrive. His phrase is not going to return to him empty (Isaiah 55:11). The consummation of this eternal covenant will spill over creation. Mountains and hills shall sing for his saints; the forest and the bushes applaud us. The curse of thorn and thistle shall be overturned, displaced by the fertile inexperienced of blessing (Isaiah 55:12). And the happiness of his folks in a brand new heaven and a brand new earth will “make a reputation for the Lord” as an “eternal signal that shall not be reduce off” (Isaiah 55:13).
Do you thirst? Come to the waters. He guarantees to forgive you, fulfill you, undertake you as his personal treasured possession. Go away behind the pornography, the dwelling in your personal title, your unsatisfying affair with the world, and let the Lord usher you into fullness of pleasures forevermore in his presence. Your pleasure, to his glory, without end.
