Isaiah 55:1-9, “Everyone who thirsts, come to the water!”
Today’s text, which comes from Isaiah 55:1-9, talks about people who are thirsty. Everyone who “thirsts” –the “thirsts” here can mean human desires or needs, like “bread” symbolizes something that satisfies our human needs or desires. Since humans are finite and limited, they have basic needs such as food, sleep, and other physical needs.
Some desires or needs that humans have lie beyond their reach. Among other human desires and needs, every human has the essential or foundational need to be connected to their maker, “the ground of human being.” We are restless and rootless without being connected to the true God, our Creator; we have a void in ourselves that only God can fill. Without being connected to God, people cannot find rest or peace with anyone around them or within themselves. The harder they try to fill their voids with the things of the world, the emptier they feel. It is like shipwrecked sailors, in desperation, drinking salt water, making them thirstier than ever. To these people, including us, today’s text says in verse 1, “Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
We must note “everyone” here. God does not exclude anyone when inviting them to “the waters.” God wants to quench everyone’s thirst, not just some people. God wants to restore God’s image in everyone, not just some people. I met a patient a couple of years ago who was transgender. She shared her story that she had surgery to change her gender from male to female at the age of 62, ten-something years ago. All her life up to that time, she felt so miserable being a male. She even attempted to commit suicide. After long years of consideration and consultations, she decided to have transgender surgery. She felt for the first time being natural after surgery. She did not choose the surgery for a sexual purpose. She had never been gay, she said. She didn’t feel natural to be male. The problem was her church kicked her out and declined sacraments, which had been very important to her. From that point on, she became resentful toward the church.
What do you think? Do you think God has excluded her from inviting to the waters? I believe God invites everyone, including her, to the waters. I told her that God loves everyone and wants to embrace everyone with God’s forgiving grace; if we recognize that we are sinners who need God’s forgiving grace, then we can come to God. I don’t believe that certain people cannot be Christians because they are “condemned” in the Bible. Do we know that Jesus called Zacchaeus, who was a tax collector who was condemned as a wretched sinner in Jewish society in Jesus’ time? Tax collectors and prostitutes were considered the worst kind of sinners who were condemned to hell in Jesus’ time in Judea. Yet Jesus called Zacchaeus sitting up on the sycamore tree, not only because he was short, but because he could not be among the crowds because people ostracized him. He was isolated from people. Before Zacchaeus repented, Jesus called him and said, “Zacchaeus, come down. For I must stay at your house.” You know what? When Jesus invited Zacchaeus to be his friend, Zacchaeus repented of his sins. Our job is not to drive certain people up to sycamore tree to be isolated. Our job is to invite everyone to Jesus even if they are still in sin, far from being perfect or meeting our “standards,” because that is what our God does, inviting everyone to quench their thirsts. Jesus did not come to call the righteous but sinners. If we think about it, who is righteous before God? If our church welcomes only the righteous, then I do not think anyone will be inside the church. We know the story of a woman who was caught in the act of adultery. How many people remained to stone her to death after Jesus wrote on the ground that only those people who had not sinned could stone her? None! If we stop people from entering our church at the door and check whether they sinned, I do not think we will have anyone in the church today. We are all in need of God’s forgiving grace, –not just some people only; we all are! We all need God and His forgiving grace.
Having said above, I must qualify what I said. We are to welcome everyone, not hinder anyone from coming to God. That does not mean, however, condones sins. We are to teach what is right based on the Bible from the pulpit. Everyone must be quenched by water and nourished with wine and milk, as is written in verse 1, “Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” What do water, wine, and milk symbolize here? Jeremiah 2 and 17 described God as “the spring of living water.” In the New Testament, “water” represents the Holy Spirit in John 4 and 7, and “wine” represents the blood of Jesus Christ. Do we see the triune God here in our text today? “Water” for God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, “wine” for God the Son. The “milk” represents the word of God. 1 Peter 2:2, “As newborn babies, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.” Without milk, the spiritual food for Christians, they might be misled or lost. How important is it for Christians to grow on spiritual milk, on the word of God, for their spiritual growth? If we do not grow up on the word of God, we cannot stand firm on the word of God. Without being rooted in the Bible, we might be confused by so many differing opinions of the world and the delusions of satan and be lost. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of studying the word of God, –reading, meditating, and listening to God through the word of God.
On judgment day, only God’s words count, not humans. That is why we must teach that “sin” is “sin” according to what is written in the Bible. The world says that we have to be more compassionate and more understanding. However, being compassionate doesn’t mean that we have to compromise God’s truth. God’s truth should be proclaimed out of love, teaching what sin is so that people will eventually come out of their sinful ways if they are living in sin to avoid God’s severe judgment.
Secondly, verse 2 speaks about food that is not real bread, which cannot satiate hunger but would eventually lead to death, yet some people eat and labor for what is not real. What kind of food would that be? The food that satan offers. If we recall Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, we notice that satan tempts Jesus to turn stone into bread to satiate his hunger. Stone, in essence, can never be food, no matter what we do with it. Even if we grind the stone into powder and make it into bread, it cannot satisfy our hunger because the stone is not food. Perhaps, momentarily, it might fill up. But we would still be hungry if not ultimately die if we ate something made of stone since stone is not real food. God gave humans fruits and vegetables to eat. God never intended humans to eat stone. It is Satan’s trick for us to believe that stone can be food. In this sense, Jesus replied to satan that stone cannot be food; he said he needed real food that God created with the words that came out of his mouth. He was saying that he would not go against God’s words by eating that is not food.
Jesus being hungry for food in the desert symbolizes all our fleshly needs in this world; we need to satisfy our fleshly needs with what God gives us, what God approves of, and what God sanctions us to satiate with. When we are hungry and thirsty for real food and water, then we need to drink water, not alcohol or drugs. When we are hungry for a relationship, we need to be in a relationship that God approves of, the God-sanctioned relationship, not in sexual perversions. When we need a sense of fulfillment, we need to engage in healthy labor, God-given labor, not in gambling or games. If we want to fill our hearts with happiness and joy, seek them from above instead of filling the void with the things of the world, with money, fame, or shopping. When it comes to satiating our hunger, we need the real thing God allows us to have, not the stone that will only lead to death.
Thirdly, vss. 6-7, we are to seek God “while he may be found” call upon him “while he is near.” In other words, we need to find God where God is, and we can have God’s audience when we are near him. When we forsake our wicked ways and thoughts, that is where we can find God and when God can hear our prayers. Without leaving our sinful ways and thoughts, God cannot save us. With our money or efforts, we cannot buy our salvation. We can buy our life and salvation with self-surrender, repenting our sins. That is all we need to do! Going back to the transgender I mentioned earlier, if she goes to hell later, it is not because she was transgender but because she did not repent of her sin of going against God’s creation order. I met her again at the hospital a couple of months ago; she said she didn’t believe in God any longer.
Let’s remember that repentance is the only way by which God can be found. That is the only way for us to seek God. Repentance is the only way God can hear us when we call on his name. Let us come to the waters to be united with Jesus in his death and resurrection. Amen!
2025-03-23
