“God’s Priceless Gift”
Isaiah 55:1-3

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost—September 19, 2021

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Our text is today’s Old Testament Reading, in which we are invited to receive “God’s Priceless Gift.”

The city of Jerash, Jordan is one of the best preserved cities in the ancient lands of the Bible.  Like Pompeii, which was buried and preserved under volcanic ash, Jerash was apparently abandoned after an earthquake, and then buried and preserved by massive dunes of sand blowing in from the desert.  In the 1800’s archaeologists found the tops of hundreds of columns sticking just a few feet out of the ground, and began to dig.  What they found was an entire Roman city from the Biblical era, nearly perfectly preserved.

I’ve been fortunate to visit Jerash and stroll down the ancient main boulevard, a long, wide, paved street, with chariot ruts from so long ago worn into the stone, and beautiful, tall columns lining either side.  It reminds me of the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, because at Jerash and other ancient cities in Bible times, these streets and plazas served as their shopping mall, huge open air bazaars, where the residents and people from many miles around came to buy and sell.  Those columns lining either side of the street were like the storefronts at a mall.  Because, behind these columns were set up wooden structures and tents, stores and stalls for merchants and traders. It would have been just like a modern mall right before Christmas, packed with shoppers and sellers.

They didn’t have neon signs back then to get your attention, so the sellers hawked their wares to the passing shoppers like carnival barkers.  “Camels for sale!  A good beast at a low price!”  “Pomegranates, get your fresh pomegranates!”  “The best oil lamps, the lowest price in town!”

That’s the setting of our text: a marketplace, with you as the shopper, and many competing voices insistently demanding your attention. And, among them, God himself is crying out and inviting you, in our text: “Come, all you who are thirsty!  Come to the waters!  Come, buy and eat!  Come, buy wine and milk!  Give ear and come to me!”

This text is a sort of parable about YOU.  The marketplace is the world.  There are many different, competing voices in the world calling out to you to BUY INTO what they’re peddling, much like those advertisements that pop up on the internet.  Many different, competing voices, peddling different philosophies of life, all promising you happiness and fulfillment and satisfaction, if you will only buy into them. 

It might be MATERIALISM, centering your life around acquiring and possessing wealth and things; or HEDONISM, focusing your life on the sensual.  Another destructive “ism” is EGOISM, not caring about others, but putting yourself and what you want above all else and above all others.  And RELATIVISM, especially in matters of religion and morality, is actually looked on these days as a virtue; there’s really no right or wrong, it’s just a matter of opinion.

Materialism, hedonism, egoism, relativism; like carnival barkers and merchants hawking their wares, in the marketplace of the world these and other worldly voices are constantly calling out to you and trying drown out the call of God and lure you in. At times all of us have given in to their seductive allure and become sinfully enmeshed in the “isms” of this world.

But, trying to find happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction in the philosophies, and pleasures, and things of this world is like trying to live by eating the nardoo plant of Australia.  This plant tastes delicious and is very filling.  The early settlers made it a main part of their diet.  But, eventually, although their stomachs were full and they didn’t feel hungry, they would suffer severe malnourishment and die.  It wasn’t until years later that modern medicine figured out how the nardoo plant had fooled them. Although it is indeed very tasty and filling, it contains an enzyme that destroys the vital Vitamin B1, resulting in a form of fatal anemia called beriberi.  Because consuming green, leafy plants was thought to help, as the anemia developed and worsened they actually tried to cure it by eating more nardoo.  The very food they were eating to fill them up was slowly killing them.

In the same way, the philosophies, and pleasures, and things of this world may SEEM to fill up your life and give you happiness, and fulfillment, and satisfaction.  But, as French philosopher Pascal said, “There is a God-shaped void in each one of us that only GOD can fill.”  Attempting to fill that void with something else is like to trying to live off food that has no nutritional value, or is even poisonous to your soul. As the Lord asks in our text, “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?”

In the marketplace of the world here is one voice, and only one voice, crying out with the only way to true happiness, and fulfillment, and satisfaction:  “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters!”  The Bible often uses the imagery of thirst to symbolize our inner, spiritual longing, the God-shaped void in each one of us.  Psalm 42 says, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”  Psalm 143 says, “My soul thirsts for you like a parched land.”  And so Jesus promises in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters.”  God himself is crying out and inviting you.  “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me.”  You could paraphrase what God is saying this way: “If only you would listen to me for a change!  It seems like you’ll listen to anyone else, but me; it seems like you’ll try every way, except mine.  But can’t you see it isn’t working?  You’re still not happy and fulfilled and satisfied.  If only you would listen to ME.”  As Psalm 62 says, “Find rest, O my soul, in God alone.”

“Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.”  Like a merchant in a marketplace, God himself is crying out and inviting you.  And does God have a deal for you! “You who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.”

Everything else in the world costs something, but God’s mercy and love and grace and forgiveness is FREE.  Free, because the price has already been paid for you, by God’s own Son.  As Martin Luther explains in the Small Catechism, “[He] has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death, that I may be his own, and live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.”  Paul puts it this way in Romans, “You are justified freely by God’s grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.  God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!”  God’s mercy and love and grace and forgiveness is FREE, because the price has already been paid for you by God’s own Son. 

“Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.”  The free WATER God offers in our text symbolizes the fulfillment of your inner SPIRITUAL needs, filling the God shaped void within you.  But, God also promises to provide for all your other needs of this life, as Jesus said, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

WINE is often symbolic in the Bible of joy and happy celebration, as Psalm 104 says, “He gives wine that gladdens the heart of man.”  And so in addition to the free WATER that symbolizes God fulfilling your inner SPIRITUAL needs, the free WINE that God offers in our text symbolizes all your EMOTIONAL needs, joy, pleasure, happiness.  Finally, MILK is the most basic sustenance of life, and so the free MILK that God offers symbolizes all your MATERIAL needs, which he also will provide.

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.”  God is inviting you to find in him complete fulfillment, for your SPIRITUAL needs, your EMOTIONAL needs, and your MATERIAL needs.  Jesus put it this way: “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

“Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.  GIVE EAR and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.”  I am somewhat hard of hearing and so I understand the Hebrew for that last phrase.  In Hebrew the command “give ear” to me is literally “stretch” your ear to me. To turn toward God, so that you both listen to him, and you block out the other distracting voices which are competing against God for you to heed them instead. “Giving ear” to God and his Word is what you are doing here today.  That’s what you do in your own devotions and prayers and reading of God’s Word, and studying God’s Word together in Bible class. 

Martin Luther says that God concludes his invitation and plea to us in these verses with this phrase “Give ear to me” because old habits are hard to break, the old habits of giving ear to the voice of the world, instead of the voice of God. Luther paraphrases it this way: “You are always looking, listening, and going elsewhere. But I say to you, unless you turn your ear and come to me, you will die of starvation.”

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.  Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.”