Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. I'd like to welcome you to our
program today. I'm so glad you could join us. If you'd like
to follow along in your Bibles, I'll be preaching from the book
of Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament, chapter
55. Isaiah 55, and the title of the
message is Water for the Thirsty. Water for the Thirsty. Now, oftentimes
in Scripture, Salvation for sinners is described with the metaphor
of drinking the water of life, or in the realm of hunger, eating
the bread of life. And so what we see in the Bible
is that when the Holy Spirit comes to a sinner and gives that
person life, spiritual life, One of the ways we can describe
his work is he makes a sinner thirsty and hungry for that salvation
that God has freely and fully provided in his word according
to the gospel. And that's a salvation by grace
Salvation is by grace, not by works. We read all the time,
I quote all the time, Ephesians 2, 8, for by grace are you saved,
through faith, and that not even the faith is of yourselves, it's
the gift of God. Faith is the gift of God. It's
not something you have within yourself. It's not a spark of
goodness within. We have no spark of goodness.
But that not of yourselves, it's the gift of God, not of works,
lest any man should boast. And so when we speak of the work
of the Spirit within, as Christ sends forth the Spirit to give
life in the new birth, to regenerate a sinner, and to convert that
sinner under the preaching of the gospel, it's described in
different ways. It's called a convincing or a conviction. But it's also,
you could use the metaphor of thirsty. He makes us thirsty
for righteousness. hungry for righteousness. In
fact, over in Matthew chapter five in the Beatitudes, one of
the Beatitudes goes like this. It says in verse six, blessed
are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for
they shall be filled. Now, what you have to understand
about that though, and this is why I want you to go to Isaiah
55 here, is that to be hungry and thirsty after righteousness
doesn't mean that you're only hungry and thirsty after religious
activity or hungry and thirsty after morality. You see, a person who is trying
to work their way into God's favor by their works, to make
themselves righteous by their works, They may seem like they're
hungry and thirsty after righteousness, but they're not. And the reason
is, is this, they don't even know what righteousness is. You
see, if you wanna know what righteousness is, you've got to look at Christ
in his obedience unto death on the cross. He went to the cross
to establish righteousness, perfect satisfaction to God's law and
justice. We can't do that by our best
efforts. That's why he had to come and
die. to bring forth righteousness, to finish the work of righteousness.
The Bible says over in Daniel that when he would come, he would
make an end of sin, he would finish the transgression, he
would bring in everlasting righteousness, something that we cannot do even
by our best. I'm telling you, this is how,
if you don't understand this, you don't understand the Bible.
You can pick the best persons that have ever lived on earth
in the history of mankind, And if God judges them based upon
their best thoughts, their best efforts, their best works, they
deserve nothing but damnation. Now if you don't believe that,
you don't know the Bible. The Bible says there's none righteous,
no not one. There's none good, no not one.
So when the Holy Spirit makes you hungry and thirsty after
righteousness so that you'll be filled, he leaves you that
you will find no righteousness to fill your hunger or to quench
your thirst except in Christ. You will only find the perfection
of righteousness that God requires in the person and work of Christ.
Now if you find it anywhere else, you're shooting too low. Now
that's what I'm telling you. Christ is the only way. Now that's
what Isaiah 55 is about when he talks about water for the
thirsty. This water. He says in verse
one, now look at it. He says, ho, that means here.
Listen, everyone that thirsteth. Now are you thirsty after righteousness? No, I'm not talking about human
morality, human religion, human endeavors. I'm talking about
Christ. Do you see yourself as a sinner
who has absolutely nothing to recommend himself unto God? Again,
that if God were to judge you based upon your best efforts
to be good, to be righteous, to be holy, you would be damned
forever. If you've seen that, then the
Holy Spirit has made you thirsty. And the only one's gonna quench
that thirst, look at, ho everyone that thirsteth. Come ye to the
waters, the waters. Now, where are the waters? Well,
you remember when Christ confronted the woman at the well, Jacob's
well in Samaria, the Samaritan woman who came to draw water. And he said, if you only knew the
gift of God, you would ask me and I would give you living waters.
What's he talking about? He's talking about the water
that he provides by his spirit that causes a sinner to look
to him and follow him. I am the water of life, he said.
In Revelation, in the last verses of Revelation, it speaks of the
waters, the rivers of waters. That's Christ. And what it's
talking about, it's all a metaphor for hungering and thirsting after
righteousness that can be filled only in Christ. Come ye to the
waters. Come ye to Christ. You want the
forgiveness of sin? Are you thirsty for it? Come
to Christ. It's by his blood. You want righteousness? Come to Christ. He's the only
righteousness that any person can have before God. Any fallen
sinner can have before God. You'll quench that thirst. And
listen to what he says here. Here's the nature of what's happening
here. And he that hath no money, Come
ye buy and eat. Yea, come buy wine and milk without
money and without price. Don't bring your works. That's what he's saying there.
Don't bring the things you highly esteem that you think are worth
something because in God's sight, they're worth nothing. In God's
sight, we are totally without money and the gift is without
price to us. It cost Christ everything. There
was a price, but Christ paid the price. He paid the debt.
So when we come to God, as we're inspired by the Holy Spirit to
drink at the fountain of the living waters, we don't bring
our works, our efforts, our own goodness, our own wills. We bring
nothing but begging for mercy. We're mercy beggars, as one old
boy said. He says, buy wine. Wine is a symbol of joy. And by milk. Milk is a symbol
of health. So there's joy here and there's
health here spiritually and without money and without price. Salvation
is by grace through Christ. Salvation is the mercy of God
based upon the obedience unto death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Salvation, the gospel, is the
preaching of the righteousness not of you or me or of any man,
but the righteousness of God. And the righteousness of God
is the righteousness that Christ worked out in His obedience unto
death that is imputed, charged, accounted to His people, and
which He sends the Holy Spirit to give them life, make them
thirsty, whereby they receive Christ as our righteousness by
faith. That's what it's all about. Verse
two. Now here's the problem. He says, wherefore, or why, do
you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor
for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and
eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself
in fatness. Why are you going about trying
to establish a righteousness of your own? Why are you giving
your time, your money, your efforts, your thoughts in false religion
that makes salvation a matter of a sinner's works, or a sinner's
decisions, or makes salvation a matter of a sinner's efforts
to make himself righteous? Salvation conditioned on sinners.
Why are you spending your money on things that don't satisfy. They don't satisfy the justice
of God. Only Christ can satisfy, that's
a propitiation. Satisfaction, that's Christ.
But all of these efforts that people put forth in false religion,
they don't satisfy. He says, eat ye that which is
good. Eat the bread of life. Blessed
are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, they shall
be filled. Do you hunger after righteousness? Look to Christ,
eat that. Eating him, you remember he said,
drink my blood and eat my flesh. He's not talking about cannibalism
there. He's not talking about the Catholic
heresy of transubstantiation. He's simply saying, believe in
me. Find your fullness in me. Quench your thirst with the fountain
of living waters. Eat that which is good. And when
he says, delight yourself in fatness, now fatness there is
not what we think of fatness today. We think of fatness as
being unhealthy and people need to lose weight. Well, fatness
here means health, fullness. That's what it's talking about.
Look at verse three. Now he puts it in perspective
here. He says, incline your ear. Listen, ho everyone that thirsteth. Incline your ear and come unto
me. God through Christ said, come unto me, all ye that are
laboring or heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. You'll find
peace and rest for your souls. He says, I will make an everlasting
covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Now, what is
that covenant? What are the sure mercies of
David? Well, the covenant is the covenant of grace. And it's the new covenant as
fulfilled in Christ. It's the gospel covenant. Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. Fulfill your
hunger. Feed your hunger with the bread
of life. Quench your thirst with the water
of life. Find righteousness complete in
Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily and you're complete in Him." That's what
he's talking about. That's the gospel covenant. When
sinners are brought by God to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
and to rest in Him and to repent of their dead works, they enter
into that everlasting covenant and that's called the sure mercies
of David. Now David himself, the king of
Israel, was a sinner saved by grace, and he begged for mercy. On his deathbed in 2 Samuel,
he said, although my house be not so with God, he hath made
a covenant with me that is ordered in all things and sure, and this
is all my salvation and all my desire. David was a sinner saved
by grace, and the mercy that David found was in Christ, the
mercy seat. He knew, King David knew, that
he had no hope of salvation, no hope of forgiveness, no hope
of righteousness except by the grace of God in the promised
Messiah. And so Christ himself is the
sure mercies of David. Now David also was a type of
Christ. Christ is the eternal King. He's
the that shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh come. He was
made of the seed of David according to the flesh, but as far as the
eternal kingdom of God, he is the eternal David, called the
son of David. So all mercies, all grace, all
salvation are in Christ. That's the only way they could
be made sure. You see, if salvation, if my
salvation were conditioned on me, then I can tell you what
would be sure. It would be sure to fail, because
I'm a sinner. And it's the same with you, whether
you admit it or not. And if you won't admit that,
you think too highly of yourself. That's the problem. But the only
way that it can be sure is the sure mercies of David in Christ,
who is called the surety of his people. You know what a surety
is? A surety is one who takes responsibility
to pay the debt of another. Christ is called the surety of
the covenant. God chose a people before the
foundation of the world. gave them to Christ, put all
of the responsibility of their complete salvation upon Christ,
and Christ willingly accepted that responsibility. Their sins
were imputed to Him, and His righteousness is imputed to them.
And it was always sure and certain that Christ would come and pay
that debt by the price of His blood. That's what the Bible
says in 2 Corinthians 1.20. All the promises of God in him,
in Christ, are yea, and in him, amen. There was never any doubt
that Christ would come and do that work, and he did. And so
he says, the sure mercies of David. Look at verse four of
Isaiah 55. He says, behold, I have given
him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the
people. That's Christ. He is the witness
of God. He's the Word of God. The Bible
says in John 1. He is the living Word of God.
He is the incarnate Word of God. The Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us. He's the subject of the written
Word of God. He said, Moses wrote of me. He taught his disciples how to
preach Christ out of the Psalms, out of the books of the law,
and out of the prophets. This is all about him. He says,
he told the Pharisees, he says, you search the scriptures, in
them you think you have eternal life? They are they which testify
of me. This book is a book of Christ. And he is to be the subject,
the object, and the goal of the preached word, the uttered word. In other words, Paul said, I
preach Christ crucified and risen from the dead. It's all about
Christ. We don't preach ourselves, Paul
said, but we preach Christ Jesus. And when the Holy Spirit gives
a sinner life, he implants the word of God upon that sinner's
heart, his mind, his affections, his will. And Christ is their
leader and commander. In verse five, it says, behold,
thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not. Now what he's
doing here, he's showing that this gospel message, this preaching
of the water of life, that water that quenches the thirst, is
not just for Jewish people, it's for all people, and it is applied
to all who believe. It's to be preached there. Christ
said, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
Somebody asked me one time, well, if God's only gonna save the
elect, why preach the gospel to every creature? Because that's
how God draws out and brings his elect to himself out of the
world. They're sheep. They're lost sheep
until they find the way, until he finds them and they find the
way. And that's why Paul said he went all over preaching the
gospel, he said, and suffered and was persecuted. He said, I do it all for the
elect's sake. I know God has some people out there. And he's
gonna bring them out of this worldly mess, out from among
the world, and he's gonna bring them into his fold. And that's
why we do it. So he says, behold, thou shalt
call a nation that thou knowest not. He's gonna call them by
the gospel. Come ye to the waters and drink. And nations that knew thee not
shalt run unto thee because of the Lord thy God and for the
Holy One of Israel, for he hath glorified thee. The Holy One
of Israel, that's Christ. And he's gonna call them to Christ.
God has a people out of every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation,
Jew and Gentile, and He's gonna call them out by the power of
the Spirit. He chose them before the foundation
of the world. He gave them to Christ, they're
justified in Christ, they've been redeemed by His blood, they're
gonna be regenerated by the Spirit. Having been ruined by the fall,
they must be redeemed by the blood and regenerated by the
Spirit, and He's gonna call them unto Himself in the power of
the Spirit through the preaching of the gospel. That's how He
does it. Now, how are we to react to this
message? Knowing, knowing what we are,
sinners, who deserve nothing but death and hell, knowing that
we have no ability to save ourselves and no desire to come God's way,
and knowing that God has a people whom he chose and whom he justified
and redeemed by the blood of Christ and whom he's gonna redeem.
How are we to react to this? Well, look at verse six. Here's
the command that God gives when the gospel is preached. Seek
ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is
near. Verse seven, let the wicked forsake
his way. Whatever way you're going, if
it's not through Christ as he is identified and distinguished
in the word of God, forsake it. Don't play with it. Let the wicked
forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts The man of iniquity,
that's who that is. What is his thoughts? Salvation
conditioned on himself in some way, to some degree, at some
stage. Let him return to the Lord. Pharaoh and Adam now return
to the Lord and he will have mercy upon him and to our God
for he will abundantly pardon. Somebody asked me one time about
this matter of election, said, well, you mean to tell me that
if I come to God and beg for salvation, God won't receive
me if I'm not elect? You're thinking wrong. Forsake
your thoughts, wicked man. That's what we need to do. First
of all, the only ones who are going to come and beg for mercy
God's way, through the Christ of the Bible or the elect. Christ said it this way in John
6, 37. Listen to this. He said, all that the Father
giveth me shall come to me. Well, how do I know that I was
given to him before the foundation? Well, listen to the rest of the
verse. And him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. I'll guarantee you, if you come
to Christ, if you come to God as a sinner begging for mercy,
seeking pardon by the blood of Christ and righteousness by His
obedience unto death, as He's identified in the gospel, the
true gospel, not a false gospel, but if you come to Him, you will
not be turned away. That's who God's elect are. And
you say, well, my thoughts aren't like that. Well, look at verse
eight of Isaiah 55. He said, for my thoughts are
not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways,
saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher
than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my
thoughts than your thoughts. He says in verse 10, listen to
this, for as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven
and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth and maketh
it bring forth in bud, that it may give seed to the sower and
bread to the eater. And then verse 15, so shall my
word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. "'It shall not return
unto me void, "'but it shall accomplish that which I please,
"'and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I send it.'" God's
gonna save, He's gonna call His people. And He doesn't leave
it up to them. You see, what God does when He
brings His people to the waters to drink, He makes them thirsty.
That's what He does. The water that quenches the thirst.
He makes them thirsty, not just for anything, but for the water
of life. You see, false religion will
take you to the mud puddle of false religion, the poison wells
of false religion. But the gospel will point you
to the water of life, to the bread of life, to Christ. And
that's what he does. Somebody said, well, does he
bring us against our will? No, he changes our will. How
does he do that? He makes us thirsty. You know,
if you're full of water and you're not thirsty at all, you'll walk
by several water fountains or water bottles. But boy, when
that thirst comes, you'll stop and get you a bottle of water
to drink, won't you? Or take a drink at the fountain.
And that's what God does. He says, my word in the power
of the Spirit shall go out of my mouth, it will not return
void. He's gonna send his word out,
his spirit out with the word to call his sheep to the water,
to the green pastures, to the water, to the living waters,
to the bread of life. And that's how he does it. He
says, it shall accomplish that which I please. God's purpose
is not gonna be thwarted by the will of man. That's what preachers
are telling you today. God can only save you if you're
letting. Christ will save you if you'll
just agree and cooperate. No, sir, that's not. No, God
says, my word goes forth in power and it shall not return void.
It will accomplish that for which I've sent it. It's the effectual,
invincible, powerful calling of the Holy Spirit under the
preaching of the gospel. Paul wrote this in Romans 1 16.
He said, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for
it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. Now,
how do I know that the gospel has been made the power of God
unto my salvation? It's to everyone that believeth,
to the Jew first and to the Greek or the Gentile also, And where
does that power come from? Romans 117. For therein is the
righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is
written, the just or the justified shall live by faith. And so how
do I know that it's been made the power of God to me, to myself?
Do I believe this gospel? Not just any gospel, and let
me caution you on that. Don't just walk away and say,
well, I know I believe the gospel. Find out what gospel you believe.
There are false gospels, friend. You need to understand that,
false gospels. And so he says, ho, everyone
that thirsteth. Everyone, are you thirsty? It's not everyone without exception.
It's everyone that thirsteth. Now, if you thirst after righteousness
and can only find it in Christ, it's God who made you thirsty.
Come ye to the waters. He that hath no money, you don't
have any righteousness, you don't have any good works, you don't
have anything to recommend you to God. Come, buy, eat. Yes,
come buy wine and milk without money, without price. Hope you'll
join us next week for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, Write us
at 1-1-0-2 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia 3-1-7-0-7. Contact us
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today and may the Lord be with you.