Turn with me, if you would, to
Isaiah 55.1. I was reading Isaiah, and this
verse really struck me. I love this verse, and I had
a few thoughts concerning it, and we'll do that this afternoon. Isaiah 55.1 says, ho, everyone
who thirsts, come to the waters, and you who have no money, Come
buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without
money and without cost. We all know what a wonderful
verse this is for the fact of the sovereignty of God and the
payment already made for salvation for us, that we can't bring any
money or anything to buy God's favor, that it's freely given
through the grace of God. But the other thing that struck
me in this verse, just for some reason, is the thirst factor. And I started thinking about
thirst. And of course, the Bible uses
real life phenomenon to teach us things. And it teaches us
about spiritual hunger and thirst from our physical hunger and
thirst. And I started thinking, This is a wonderful added benefit
to this verse in the sovereignty of God because we don't generate
our own thirst and hunger. It happens not from anything
we do. And so God has to make a person
spiritually hungry or thirsty to come to him so that he can
buy this salvation without money. So it's a twofold sovereignty
of God here. He makes us thirsty for him,
and then he satisfies that thirst. So I'd like to think for a few
minutes with you about thirst mainly, hunger too, but thirst
was the thing that really struck me. Look at Psalm 42, one and
two. As the deer pants for the water
brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for
God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear
before God? So this is David saying that
as the deer pants or thirsts for the water brooks, David's
soul pants for God. Now, is this the general statement
that all humanity makes about God? Is it like so many Armenian
pastors seem to portray that, oh, the whole world is hungry
for God and they don't know exactly how to find him, we must tell
them. But is that true? Does every person born into this
world say this kind of a thing? They are born with a thirst and
a hunger for God. Well, no, it's not true. And
so I started thinking, How does this relate to Romans 1 and to
the general revelation of God? And to the fact that it says
in Romans 1, we all are born knowing there's a God, right?
We know that, and that's inherent in us. But that's not this. This is a thirst for God that
is totally different and only put there in the elect of God
to thirst for Him. I saw such a difference in those
two things all of a sudden. But anyway, turn also to Psalm
63.1. There's another one like this. Oh God, you are my God. I shall
seek you earnestly. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh
yearns for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So here again, he is saying,
my soul thirsts for you. So let's think about it. In the natural state of man,
no spiritual hunger or thirst. That's what I would think. in
our natural state as born, no matter what age we reach, on
our own there's going to be no spiritual hunger or thirst for
God. There may be, of course there
will be, an awareness of God, as described in Romans 1, through
his creation, through his power. If we don't, if mankind doesn't
send that away or scar that away, he or she knows there's God.
But there's no real thirst or hunger for God. There's no thirst
or hunger for righteousness. So how does it happen? Well,
God has to put it there. Do you drink water when you're
not thirsty? I've always, I don't know, there's something in my
makeup that I've always been very, very thirsty. As I get
older, it's less so, but I would drink tons of water, and I never
drank it because I didn't want to. I drank it because I was
thirsty, and I think we're all the same way. There was a period
of time in the last year or so where I wasn't drinking as much
water, and I thought, well, I need to do it. Men are supposed to
drink 10 glasses a day, women eight glasses a day. And so I
said to myself, well, I'm gonna make myself do it. So I tried,
I couldn't do it. I just, I didn't want to, so
I didn't. Well, it's the same thing spiritually. A person's not gonna be walking
down the street and just, you know, decide I'm gonna seek God. The only way that happens is
if God puts that desire in them, that thirst, that hunger. I looked
up the phenomenon of physical thirst in Wikipedia just for
kicks. And actually, I don't think they
know that much about it. But what they say in there is
when the water volume in your body, your cells have interstitial
water, the intercellular water inside the cells, and they have
the water between cells that's needed. And so when the water
volume in your body goes below a certain level, who knows what
that set point is, then when it goes below that certain threshold,
or there's a second means, when you have too much water in your
body, salt in your body, the salt concentration goes up, then
that's what makes the brain or the central nervous system crave
water. That's what we call thirst. So
there is a need in the body that's generated and then we become
thirsty. It seems to me that we all have
a spiritual need, of course, for God, but mankind does not
recognize that in the same way. And there is not a natural spiritual
thirst for God, but it has to be created by God. What about
physical hunger? Hunger is a very interesting
thing. And you have hunger contractions
in the stomach, usually 12 to 24 hours after
you last ate. They're 30 seconds long. They
last from 30 to 45 minutes, and then they subside for 30 to 150
minutes. There is a hormone. Then when
you eat, there's a hormone called leptin, which is released when
eating, and it reduces your appetite, takes you back to not being hungry
in most people. Then after the leptin, after
hours, it drops out, starts dropping out, and it kicks a second hormone
in called ghrelin, which causes hunger. And so, but there's an
interesting thing about hunger. I don't think this is true of
thirst. Maybe it is. But you can also actually maybe
get that ghrelin to release on your own by either looking at
food or certain foods or by stress. And you know about stress eating.
So that's interesting. Anyway, the physical phenomenon
of hunger and thirst is just, we experience it all the time.
And it just really struck me. that there's nothing we do, and
I camped on thirst for some reason, there's nothing that I do or
can do to create thirst in me physically. Likewise, there's
nothing that mankind can do to create a spiritual thirst in
them. God has to cause it. So let's just look at a few of
the verses. That's really all I basically
wanted to relay to you. And we'll look at a few verses
about who will solve that thirstiness. So God's sovereignty is required
for the creation of hunger and thirst. And let's look at Luke
1.53. Using this metaphor in the New
Testament, it's quite prominent. In Luke 1.53, we have, he has
filled the hungry with good things and sent away the rich empty-handed. This is Mary when she went to
visit Elizabeth when she was pregnant. And this was her prayer
to God. She says, he has filled the hungry
with good things. Talking about God being the one
who satisfies our spiritual hunger. And then look in John 4, 13 to
15. And of course, this is the Lord
Jesus with the Samaritan woman. And he says, Jesus answered and
said to her, and they were at the well, you know, so this is
the picture he's portraying. Everyone who drinks of this water
will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will
give him shall never thirst, but the water that I will give
him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal
life. And so he, in another passage,
it tells us that what he's really talking about there is the phenomenon
of the Holy Spirit coming into our lives when we become Christians,
and that's an eternal spring inside us satisfying this thirst
for God. So that's the answer to the whole
thing about spiritual thirst is the Lord Jesus. In John 6,
35, Jesus said to them, I am the
bread of life. He who comes to me will not hunger,
and he who believes in me will never thirst. So he portrays
himself in both the thirst and the hunger categories. He is
the water of life to satisfy the thirst, and he is the bread
of life to satisfy the spiritual hunger in us that he creates.
John 7, 37 through 39. Now on the last day, the great
day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, if anyone
is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. See, you won't come
to Christ if you're not thirsty. You just won't do it. We have
people all around us who are not doing that because they're
not thirsty. Just like you're not going to
drink water in your life without being thirsty. He who believes
in me As the scriptures said, from his innermost being will
flow rivers of living water. That same way of saying it again. But this he spoke of the spirit,
whom those who believe in him were to receive. For the spirit
was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified. So those of us who are Christians
understand that we understand the deep meaning of life. and
we have this thirst satisfied in us, and this is the reason
why. Then to Revelation for three
verses. Revelation 7, 16. They will hunger no longer, nor
thirst anymore, nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any
heat. For the lamb in the center of
the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs
of the water of life, and God will wipe every tear from their
eyes." In Revelation 21.6, Then he said to me, it is done. I am the alpha and the omega,
the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts
from the spring of the water of life without cost. And he
said to everyone, everyone who thirsts and comes to him, he
will save, he will satisfy that thirst. But the whole deal is
you've got to thirst. Revelation 22, 17. The spirit and the bride say,
come, and let the one who hears say, come, and let the one who
is thirsty come. Let the one who wishes take the
water of life without cost, which brings us back to Isaiah 55 again,
doesn't it? Isn't it great? So this is a
significant verse. So both the spirit and the bride
are saying, or the church are saying, come, and let the one
who hears say come, so it seems to be a general invitation, but
let the one who is thirsty come. Nobody's gonna come to that invitation
except they're thirsty. Let the one who wishes, who wants
to, in other words, take the water of life without cost. So,
in conclusion, just turn over to Romans 1 with me for a second.
I just wanna point this one thing out again. So in Romans 1, it says that, where is it? Because, okay, verse 19. Because
that which is known about God is evident within them, for God
made it evident to them. For since the creation of the
world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine
nature have been clearly seen being understood through what
has been made so that they are without excuse. For even though
they knew God, now that doesn't mean knew him in a salvation
way, it just means they knew about God. They did not honor
him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations
and their foolish heart was darkened and so on. So Romans 1 teaches
us that everyone in the world, without exception, starts off
knowing about God innately. But I would submit to you this
afternoon that that is not equal to the hunger and thirst for
God. That's completely different.
And that the hunger and thirst is created in his elect to make
them come to Him. It's the same as drawing, when
he talks about drawing people to Christ. This is the hunger
and thirst he puts there for people to want righteousness,
like the pastor was talking about this morning. Righteousness is
the same root word, dikaiosune, as justified. So it's all wrapped
up together. To want righteousness, or to
want, is to want to be justified, because when you want righteousness,
you realize how far you fall short. And so that's wanting
to be justified. Wanting righteousness, wanting
to be justified, wanting to be declared righteous, it's all
the same thing. And that happens because of the
thirst and hunger God puts in us by his grace.