May 3

Isaiah 55

1 “Hey, all who are thirst, come to the water!

You who have no money, come!

Buy and eat!

Come! Buy wine and milk

without money and without cost.

2 Why pay money for something that will not nourish you?

Why spend your hard-earned money on something that will not satisfy?

Listen carefully to me and eat what is nourishing!

Enjoy fine food.

3 Pay attention and come to me.

Listen, so you can live.

Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you,

just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David.

4 Look, I made him a witness to nations,

a ruler and commander of nations.”

5 Look, you will summon nations you did not previously know;

nations that did not previously know you will run to you,

because of the LORD your God,

the Holy One of Israel,

for he bestows honour on you.

6 Seek the LORD while he makes himself available;

call to him while he is nearby!

7 The wicked need to abandon their lifestyle

and sinful people their plans.

They should return to the LORD, and he will show mercy to them,

and to their God, for he will freely forgive them.

8 “Indeed, my plans are not like your plans,

and my deeds are not like your deeds,” says the LORD,

9 “for just as the sky is higher than the earth,

so my deeds are superior to your deeds

and my plans superior to your plans.

10 The rain and snow fall from the sky

and do not return,

but instead water the earth

and make it produce and yield crops,

and provide seed for the planter and food for those who must eat.

11 In the same way, the promise that I make

does not return to me, having accomplished nothing.

No, it is realized as I desire

and is fulfilled as I intend.”

12 Indeed you will go out with joy;

you will be led along in peace;

the mountains and the hills will give a joyful shout before you,

and all the trees in the field will clap their hands.

13 Evergreens will grow in place of thornbushes;

firs will grow in place of nettles;

they will be a monument to the LORD,

a permanent reminder that will remain (Isaiah 55, NET).

The end of Isaiah’s prophetic writing is an extended sequence of short poems which all look forward to the full realization of a Messianic kingdom. What we now call chapters 55-66 of Isaiah comprise this sequence, and they really do reward an extended reading session where you work through the whole lot. I encourage you, if you’re wanting a deeper dive into the character of this promised Messianic kingdom in which we’re called to live, but which we also don’t yet fully see, the kingdom that Jesus declares is now in effect as he goes to the cross (Luke 22:69), take a bit of time to read through them. You’ll see that they have a lot of parallel constructions, a lot of rhymed ideas from one end to the other (using that ‘chiastic,’ X-shaped format where first and last are paralleled, second and penultimate are paralleled, and so forth).

This poem, then, is the opener, the invitation, to understanding, and in fact, indwelling, that kingdom: “Come to the water! Buy the wine and milk that are without cost!” We’ve not reflected on both Psalms 1 and 2, only Psalm 1, in this study, but I would also encourage you to read both of them together to help understand the different images that Isaiah is playing with in this poem. That image of coming to the water takes my mind back to the image of the tree in Psalm 1 that is planted by the stream of living water, whose roots are nourished by the stream. In Psalm 1, this image is used to show us that if we spend time with the Word of God, if we meditate upon it, make it the centre of our thinking and imagination, we become grounded, solid, rooted in our character against any of the wild winds of change or difficulty or what have you, able to make decisions determined by a deep faithfulness rather than just blown around like the chaff (to which the wicked are compared). Isaiah is extending that metaphor here and telling us that it’s not just water, but milk and wine (nourishment and celebration) that are offered, and that they’re freely offered at that.

The promise comes home in verse 7, right near the centre (which in many of the Hebrew-style, chiastically-shaped poems is the main idea – I’ll suggest that it is the main idea in this one) of this poem, as the nations, the wicked, are invited to return to the LORD. There is a suggestion that following the LORD, being in right relationship with him, is the default setting for humankind, but that the immoral rebellion, what Isaiah calls the “lifestyle” and the “sinful plans” of the wicked, can and should be abandoned. After all, God’s ways are greater than ours; why would we trust our ways? God’s plans are smarter than ours; why should I trust ours? I love the metaphor used to drive it home. As high as the heavens are above the earth, which is a definitional thing, the heavens are what is up there and the earth is what is down here, God’s ways are greater.

But this is a call to the nations, to the wicked. This image of ‘the nations’ is used in verse 4 and 5 in conjunction with that recollection of the way David was a first example of a king who was a blessing beyond the bounds of the children of Abraham. David’s kingdom isn’t just a conquering kingdom. You find many stories of outsiders, foreigners, resident aliens, who are incorporated into God’s covenant people through the story of David’s life, beginning with the story of his great-grandmother, the Moabite woman who has a whole book in the Old Testament named after her, Ruth.

When you look through the Old Testament though, you see that this embrace of Yahweh’s ‘higher ways’ is rare, not just among the other nations, but even among Israel. Isaiah gives us this prophetic call to humble ourselves and order our lives such that we plant next to the living water of God’s Word, that we are nourished by it, and that we orient our celebration not around our own greatness which is fleeting, but around God’s greatness which is higher and lasts forever.

The whole of Psalm 2 is concerned with ‘the nations.’ In that psalm, we see them ‘raging,’ conspiring against God, aggrandizing themselves. In Psalm 1, the psalmist warns us not to sit in the seat of mockers, setting ourselves over our fellow humans. In Psalm 2, we see who is allowed to sit in the seat of mockers. God looks at the nations’ moves to try to live without reference to Him, to gain power over each other, to inflict war and famine and taxation and all kinds of other suffering in their self-aggrandizement projects, and He laughs in scorn. Go read the rest of Psalm 2 to see how the Messianic answer is promised to that broken condition mankind finds itself in.

Here in Isaiah 55, we see that this isn’t the only response God has. To the one who humbles him or herself, God’s promises are realized. In verse 12 and 13 we see the one who embraces God’s call to live by His living waters experiencing peace and joy, and all of nature harmoniously joins in the praises of the one who has been forgiven much and who has humbled themselves to submit to the LORD’s higher ways.

My prayer for you this week comes from verse 13. If you started this plan at our calendar’s new year in January, right about now, it is Spring and everything is growing and lush. Nature is achieving its purpose of renewal and rebirth, and my prayer is that you’ll allow God’s faithfulness in giving us this yearly cycle of rebirth and renewal to bless you, that you’ll recognize the beauty you see growing, and you’ll have the perspective to recall that God’s promises are evergreen, that the Messianic kingdom to which you’re called will never perish and that one day, the death part of our cycle will be over and we’ll live into God’s eternal plans and purposes together forever. This is a vision and a calling that is higher than any I could have ever imagined.

Next week's text is Matthew 5.