Let's look at Isaiah 55. Isaiah chapter 55. O everyone that thirsteth, come
ye to the waters, and he that hath no money Come ye, buy and
eat. Yea, come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price. Wherefore do you spend money
for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which
satisfies not? Hearken diligently unto me, and
eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for your word. I pray, Lord, that we've come
hungry and thirsty tonight, Lord, to hear from you. As David said,
as the heart panteth after the water brooks, may our souls pant
after the living God. Thank you, Lord, that we do,
by your grace, hunger and thirst after your righteousness. We
need righteousness, and we have none. Except the Lord Jesus Christ,
we need no other. The river that flows from the
throne of God, we drink by your grace and live. Help us to see
him tonight and praise him. In his name we ask, amen. That word ho is, of course, to
get attention. I thought about, when I was looking
at this, I thought about when Tommy whistles. Everybody looks,
don't they? It's so loud. And that's what
he's doing it for, to get your attention. Sometimes for me,
I'll get him to make everybody look. And here's the thing about
that, though, too. It not only means listen up,
it means attention. But it means you're not already
listening. If everybody in the room's already looking at Tommy,
he'd look kind of stupid, whistling. Everybody's already looking at
him. It means you're not looking, you're not listening, you're
not heeding what God says, you're not by nature interested in what
God said. Everybody's doing their own thing
in this world and they're just not looking to God. And so he
gets our attention with his word. In Zechariah chapter 2 verse
6 this same word is used twice. Ho, ho. And there it's used because
the people of God are told after that to get out of Babylon. God's
fixing to destroy Babylon. He says, ho, listen to me. You
better get out of there. I'm going to wipe them out. And
so that they would not be destroyed with the Babylonians. He got
their attention. It's urgent. And there's a qualification put
on this exhortation. There always is with God. Always. Everyone that thirsteth. Not
everybody's thirsty. If you're satisfied with the
way that you are, with what you've done, with your life and your
standing before God and all the things that are important, if
you're satisfied with where you're at, then God's not talking to
you here. He's just not. He's talking to
thirsty people. Revelation 22.1, He showed me
a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal. And this is
what we drink of now. Where is it at? It's proceeding
out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. And the Spirit and the Bride
say, Come. And let him that heareth say,
Come. and let him that is a thirst come and whosoever will let him
take the water of life freely that's uh... skip from verse
one i read verse one and then verse seventeen because when
he says everybody that's thirsty come what are you drinking of?
that river of pure water of life it's life and death hence the
urgency it's necessary Matthew 5 6 blessed are they
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall
be filled Those are the specific people That God's gonna satisfy. He's gonna give them what they
need now John 7 37 in the last day the Lord had The people had
gone to a great feast one of the religious Jewish feasts And
in the last day of that feast, that great day of the feast,
Jesus stood and cried saying, if any man thirst, let him come
unto me and drink. He is the pure river of water
of life. He is the water of life. He said,
the water I give you, you drink and you're not going to be thirsty
anymore. So again, there's that qualification if any man's thirsty
if you didn't get what you came for at this religious feast If
the if the trappings of man-made religion free will religion is
not cutting it Come to me Matthew 11 28 come unto me all you that
labor and are heavy laden And I'll give you rest. This is for
those who labor under the yoke of of the law to whom it's a
burden. That rich young ruler, he said,
I've kept all these from my youth. It didn't seem like a big deal
to him. I've always kept the law. But if you're not like that,
if you see God's law for what it is and you realize you're
not ever going to measure, you can't ever do enough. This is for you. If you understand that you're
never going to get the work done yourself, come to Christ who
finished salvation and rest in his accomplished work. If you're
the rich young ruler, then go your way. Go do what? Walk away
like he did. But this is good news for the
weary, the heavy laden. This is life to those who spent
all that they had and only grew worse. You remember Esau said,
I have enough. Esau and Jacob met on the road,
and they both were giving each other gifts. And Jacob said to
Esau, I don't need all this stuff. Take it back. I've got enough.
And Jacob said, I have everything. When enough is not enough for
you, come to Christ. You say, I have enough, like
Esau. Do you have everything? For some, enough is never going
to be enough, by God's grace. Solomon said that he had satisfied
every appetite of the flesh in the book of Ecclesiastes, and
it was all vanity and vexation of spirit. He had everything,
and it wasn't enough. He said, it's not anything. If
you don't have Christ, you don't have anything. Are you thirsty? Are you weary of trying to please
God in the flesh? And notice the next part. This
is salvation now. He's talking about salvation.
This is the gospel. There's another qualification. Just one more. There's only two. We just looked
at one of them. Are you thirsty? Do you need? What is thirst? It's a need. It's not just, well, it might
be nice if I got a drink. You're going to have to get a
drink. Sooner or later, you're going to have to have one, right?
Right now, see, you might say, well, a little water would be
nice. But when you get thirsty enough, it's not going to be
like that anymore. When you get truly thirsty, you're going to
have to have it. As I've said to you before, the world would
kill one another over that right there if it came down to it,
wouldn't it? It's life. It's life. That's what thirst is. You have
a need for something that you don't have. That's what thirst
is. Thirst is not indicative of a
luxury. It's the body telling you, I've
got to have some water. The soul needs something too.
You see verse 2, that word soul? Your soul gotta have something
to eat. But here's the second thing now.
And we're not talking about satisfying the flesh the soul needs Christ
Now we need him in fleshly matters too, but it's the soul. It's
the heart salvation is the heart It's not an option without him
we die we eternally death and There's one more qualification.
There's just to remember now first. You've got to have a need
and second you have to have no way of to fulfill that need on
your own. No money, no price, no resources, no ability,
no recourse. You see that there in the text?
The Lord Jesus said no man can come unto me except The father which has sent me
draw him and I will raise him up again at the last day now
if you can come to Christ on your own Then on the last day
you're gonna be on your own, too You'll be on your own But
if you can't Except he draw you and he does
draw you then he'll raise you up No money and again, this is
spiritual language and This is pictured by that woman with the
issue of blood that we mentioned. She spent all that she had on
doctors and grew only worse. Now she's out of money. She's
out of options. And then she came to Christ.
That's how it happens. First Corinthians 2 14, the natural
man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God for their
foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them because
they're spiritually discerned. We have no currency in spiritual
things. And when we realize that, then
we cry for mercy. We come without money, without
price, and buy. This is what our Lord was saying
in John 9 41. Remember he said to the Pharisees, if you were
blind You would have no sin. What an amazing thing to say.
If you were blind, you would be sinless. You'd be perfect.
You'd be spotless. No sin. You'd be justified before
God if you were just blind. What in the world is he talking
about? What does he mean by that? Well, the blind receive sight,
just like the penniless are able to buy. Only the blind can see. Only the penniless can pay. The
physician only heals those that are sick, not the whole. And
when you receive your sight, this is spiritual language. Don't
be confused by physical sight, physical money. If you were spiritually
blind, you'd have no sin, but now you
say we see. Therefore, your sin is on you. You see that? When we receive
our sight and see Christ, the sin offering, and only blind
people receive their sight from him. If you say, well, I can see fine.
I don't need you to give me sight. Then you're not getting it. But if you're blind and cry,
Lord, that I might receive my sight and he opens your eyes
and you see God's lamb slain for your sin, then you have no
sin. You see now because you were
blind. The world doesn't understand
that, do they? No way. So remember these two qualifications.
In our text, the gospel goes out to those who have a need.
Not an improvement they need to make, a need. Not a choice,
a need. If you have a choice, you're
in trouble. You've got to come to the place where you need Him. And it goes out to those, secondly,
who have no way of obtaining what they need. If you've got
any money, Not talking to you. Talking to bankrupt people. Talking
to thirsty, bankrupt people. It's simple, isn't it? It's not
complicated. You need the good Samaritan and
you need him to come where you are because you can't go where
he is. Let me read that story to you
again because it applies so beautifully to our text in Luke 10.30. Jesus
answering said a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho
and fell among thieves which stripped him of his raiment and
wounded him and departed leaving him half dead and by chance there
came down a certain priest that way and when he saw him he passed
by on the other side and likewise a Levite when he was at the place
came and looked on him and passed by on the other side but a certain
Samaritan As he journeyed. Now think about it, you're the
man laying in the ditch, bleeding out. You're already half dead.
And if somebody doesn't help you, you're all dead. That's
us by nature. We're spiritually dead. And we're
about to be all dead if we don't have him. Once you're all dead,
it's over. But this Samaritan came by as
he journeyed and came where he was. That's the key to that whole
text right there. There's salvation right there.
When a sinner and the Savior are in the same spot. That's when salvation happens
right there. And how does that happen? He came where He was. I know the gospel call is coming
to me. Coming to me. But I'll tell you when you're
going to come to Him. When He comes where you are. You love Him because He first
loved you. And you're going to come to him because he first
came to you, I guarantee you. Or you're not going to. He came where he was and when
he saw him, he had compassion on him. And went to him and bound
up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine and set him on his own
beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him. In other
words, he did everything. He did everything. And on the
morrow when he departed, he took out two pence and gave them to
the host and said, take care of him and whatsoever thou spendest
more when I come again, I will repay thee. So you see the language in our
text, come without money and without price. You've got to
have the need, you've got to be thirsty and you've got to
have no way to meet it. Or God's not talking to you. When he's talking to you, that's
where you'll be. No money, and notice this. Come
without any money and buy. He didn't just come and say come
and take. That's what we saw in Revelation.
That is true. You come and take it freely. There's a sense in
which it's free. But there's also a sense in which
he says come bankrupt and buy. This teaches us something else
about this. Why doesn't it just say take here? It says, buy without
any money. That's the Gospel. The Gospel
command is for the sinner to do the one thing he can never
do. If all I know about you is that you don't have any money,
then the one thing I know about you is you can't buy anything. The Gospel command is for the
sinner to do the one thing that he'll never do. He said to that man with a withered
hand, stretch forth your hand. If he'd have said to him, swim
the sea of Galilee, he'd have figured out a way to do it, wouldn't
he? You go to heaven when you die. Swim the sea of Galilee,
you go to heaven. He would have worked out and
made his legs and his other arms strong. And he would have gotten
across that sea. I guarantee you he would have
done it. To get to heaven he would have done it. But you know
what he ain't fixing to do? He ain't fixing to stretch out
that hand. Unless God tells him to. That's the gospel. Come without money and buy. Stretch forth thy hand. What's
the gospel command? Come to Christ. Look unto me. But the Lord said in John 644,
no man can come to me. But he didn't stop there. It
doesn't say nobody can come to Christ. It says nobody can come
except. And so the command goes forth.
Nobody with a withered hand can stretch out that hand except. With God, all things are possible
now. And why does God do it that way? Because salvation is of
the Lord and everybody's going to know it. Everybody's gonna
know it. That's the point of every knee
bowing and every tongue confessing that Jesus Savior is Lord. Jesus Messiah is Lord to the
glory of the Father. He saves whom he will, when he
will, the way he will, and everybody is gonna know it. And they're
gonna praise him for it. Sooner or later. Not of works, lest any man should
boast. Why doesn't he want any man boasted?
Because all the glory is his. It's evil to boast in anything. If you're going to glory in something,
glory in this, that you know him. And that's his glory still, isn't
it? Because he's the one that showed us. And then he asked
a question. Wherefore do you spend money
for that which is not bread? And it's important that we understand.
Now think of the spiritual because he's not saying here, don't waste
your money on that, save up your resources and spend them on something
real. He just got through saying you
don't have any resources. So where are you getting the
money to spend on that which isn't bread? He's talking about
two different things. Spiritually we have no recourse,
no resources, nothing to obtain anything with. What we do have
is earthly temporal resources and we're spending every one
of them on that which is killing us. Time, actual money, physical strength, mental capacity,
Ambition all every bit of it is directed toward and spent
on that which can never satisfy the soul It's going to destroy
us and So of course he's asking good question in it. Why are
you wasting every resource that you do have? physical resources
mental resources earthly resources You're wasting it On that which
is not what you think it is. There's a lot of ways you can
say it's not bread, and that's one of them. You think it's bread. You think it's meat in the knee,
it's filling your knee. It's not. It's not. So God says, listen intently
to me. That's what he's saying. Hearken
unto me. And this is a lifetime occupation,
isn't it? To hearken unto God. Just like
the metaphor suggests, you have to eat. And then, you know, I've
eaten meals and I've said, I'm never going to eat again. I'm
never going to be hungry again. You ever done that? Never going
to be hungry again. This buffet, that's it. I'll
never have to eat anything ever again. But you will. And it'll
be sooner than you think. You got to keep on eating, don't
you? You got to keep on eating. And
we've got to always be hearkening unto God and listening, hearing
what He has to say. We don't know anything. We can't
do anything. We don't have anything. Without
Him, we've got to hear from Him constantly. Now when He said,
that he's that bread that came down from heaven and if you eat,
you'll never hunger again. That doesn't mean that you just,
you know, you get saved or whatever and then you don't, you know,
you're just fine from then on. It's not that you eat once and
you're never eating again. What he says there, you're never
going to hunger again because you're always satisfied with
him. You're always feasting on him.
He never will withhold. No good thing will he withhold
from them that love him. And the good thing is Himself. Never stop coming to Him. Never
stop hearing Him. Never stop believing on Him.
Never stop worshiping Him. Always finding in Him everything
that we need. And then He says this, Harken
now, wherefore do you spend money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently
unto me and eat. This is such a simple metaphor. Eat. John 6.54, whoso eateth my flesh
and drinketh my blood hath eternal life. In some religion, you know,
they come up with this bizarre idea that earthly bread and wine
somehow magically transforms into the body and blood of Christ.
Eating his physical body and blood, what good would that do?
What is that going to do? This is faith. This is partaking
of Christ by faith. And the reason it speaks of His
body and His blood is His person and His work. That's what the
elements of the table represent. This is my body which is broken
for you. This is Christ Himself made under the law to redeem
them that were under the law. It behooved Him to be made like
unto His brethren. A body thou hast prepared for
me." All the scripture we can think of just off the top of
our head. God became flesh. And this is my blood. This blood
is the new covenant. It's what he did. The covenant
has conditions, but not for you. Why? Because he fulfilled them.
He fulfilled, this is his work, his work, his accomplishment.
Salvation accomplished. So the body and blood, we preach,
what did Paul say? We preach Christ, who he is.
Crucified, what he did. It's very simple. And we feed upon him continually. Notice again that it says soul.
I want to stress that one more time. the flesh is a whole other
matter now that which is born of the flesh is flesh that which
is born of the spirit is spirit and it says eat ye that which is good and let
your soul delight itself I read Matthew 11 28 while ago let me
read it again with verse 29 this time come unto me all you that
labor and are heavy laden and all these different metaphors
or illustrations, whatever you want to call them, of being tired
and needing rest, laboring and never able to accomplish what
needs to be accomplished. I can't get it done. What am
I going to do? I'm going to go to Him and I'm going to lay down.
That's what I'm going to do. And I'm hungry, I'm thirsty,
I'm dying, I'm starving. What am I going to do? I'm going
to come to Him and feast or take of that which I need. and be
satisfied. And that's what this is. Come
unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. And we learn a little bit more
about that now. Take my yoke upon you. It doesn't mean that
we don't do anything anymore, but it does mean that we're yoked
to Christ now. And learn of me, for I am meek
and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest." I've told you this
before, I've actually heard people take that passage of scripture
and preach how much we need to do for the Lord. You know what
He told you to do for Him? Quit doing stuff. That's what
He said to do. Stop it. Rest. Lay down. I always think
of the Garden of Gethsemane. Not only could they not accomplish
anything there, when the sins of all of God's people were being
laid upon the sin bearer, but they couldn't even watch Him
save them. And he said, it's enough. You're
doing absolutely nothing, and Him accomplishing salvation is
enough. My rent it says rest. It doesn't say do stuff. It says
rest in him When you're yoked to him, what
are you gonna do? Animals are yoked together to
share the burden. You know what our sharing it
is rest Let's close with this Let your
soul delight itself in fatness. Now, I'm cheating a little bit
tonight, because this is exactly the same point I made from one
of our other studies. I think it was in 2 Samuel. So
my last point tonight is something I've already said, but I'm not
sure all of you were here. And I'll tell you this, if you
weren't, you need to hear it again. I needed to hear it again, and
I got a feeling you do too. that your soul delight itself. Why do you eat? Well, I got to
live to eat. That's not why you eat. Not what
you do eat. No, that's not why you eat what
you eat. I know better because I'm just like you. We don't just
eat to survive. It's one of my favorite things,
isn't it you? What are you going to go home
and eat, you know? Some bread and water tonight? Maybe you've
got some MREs. I don't even know what an MRE
is. I've never eaten an MRE, but they don't sound good. I
bet you Dee's eaten a few of them. That'll keep you alive,
won't it? I'm not having that for dinner
tonight. That'll keep you alive, but that's
about all. What's that honey doing in your pantry? What's
that honey doing in there? You don't need that to live. I got a big old jug of it in
mine. What's that butter for? Listen to what David wrote in
Psalm 63. Turn over there with me. Let's close by looking at
this. Let your soul delight itself. We do need him to live, but he's
a lot more than that. He's a lot more than survival.
Psalm 63.3. Look, David said, because thy
loving kindness is better than life. It sound like David's just
getting by. My lips shall praise thee. Thus
will I bless thee while I live. I will lift up my hands in thy
name. My soul shall be satisfied as
with marrow and fatness. And my mouth shall praise thee
with joyful lips, when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate
on thee in the night watches. Because thou hast been my help,
therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. We're not just hunkering down
and getting by. We have every reason to rejoice. I know that's
hard to do. I preached a message one time
called The Forgotten Fruit. The fruit of the Spirit is joy. I look at y'all and I don't see
a whole lot of that all the time. We ought to be constantly rejoicing. How often did he say rejoice
in the Lord? How much? Over and over he said
it. Rejoice in the Lord. Paul and
Silas were in prison fully expecting to be You know what they did? They
sang praises unto the Lord. I don't know how you do that.
I've never been in that situation. But I still know how they did
it, don't you? I never have experienced that.
But I bet I know what they were singing
about. In the shadow of thy wings will
I rejoice. My soul followeth hard after
you. David said in another place,
surely God's goodness shall pursue me all the days
of my life. Thy goodness and thy mercy shall
pursue me all the days of my life. He pursued us and now we're
pursuing him. And we're still pursuing one
another. Paul said, I want to apprehend the one that apprehended
me. My soul followeth hard. There's
that word soul again. Thy right hand upholds me. Christ
is all we need. No question about that, but what
do you want? That's why he's able to say,
go thy way. You know, those who preach free
grace accuse believers of being antinomians. Antinomian means
no law. You don't believe that we're
supposed to keep the law. Well, I'll tell you this, it depends
on what you mean by supposed to keep the law. If you mean
by that that we're supposed to keep the law in order to satisfy
God, I sure hope we're not supposed to keep the law, because we're
all going to hell if we aren't. And that's what they mean, to
please God. Paul said, if you do one thing
to please God, Christ shall profit you nothing. If you ever do one
thing in order to please God, ever, Christ will profit you
nothing. God is pleased with his son and
us in his son. Now we want to honor him, but
that's different now, that's different. How do you honor him? By looking to Christ, that's
how. And a good work is a work of faith, and faith just has
one object, the Son of God. Christ is all we need and He's
all we want, by God's grace. You say, well Chris, you know,
we still want fleshly things, we still enjoy the things of
this world. Yeah, I'm not going to argue with that, I do too.
What are they without Christ? Answer me that. They're a curse without Him,
aren't they? It's all bound up in Him. He's all we want. We just enjoy Him in a lot of
ways, don't we? Now, let's pray tonight.