The beautiful invitation from Jesus — Isaiah 55

Introduction

I want to tell you about a childhood memory of mine. It is Mother’s Day, and so let me tell you just a great memory I have with my mom. In our family, birthdays were a big deal, and I’m the youngest of five, and so that means that I was the favorite child as well, of course. My parents would organize amazing birthday parties for me, and my fifth birthday party, a classic place for a fifth birthday party, was at a winery out in Mulawa because they had a Thomas the Tank Engine train that you could ride on.

From my sixth birthday onward, all my parties were at home, and they were usually theme parties, dress-up parties. We had a pirate party, a medieval party, that kind of thing. There was also birthday cakes, and this is the best birthday cake anyone has ever had ever. This is Trogdor the Burninator. He is a dragon with a beefy arm, and my sister made this cake for me, and birthdays were just a big deal at our house.

One of the great memories I have with my mom is that for my birthday parties, she would help me set me up to make the invitation, to design it on Microsoft Publisher. My mom, she was the chief editor of a local newspaper, and so she was pretty good at design, so she would set me up and get me started, and then I’d have a go with word art and clip art, and I’d be bullied by the Microsoft paperclip. After a while, my mom would come and help me, and she’d fix my errors and do some tweaking, and then it was done, and we’d print them and guillotine them and handwrite all the names, and I can just remember that real feeling of excitement holding that pile of invitations ready to hand out to my friends the next day.

I really wanted to show you one of the invitations that I designed when I was a kid, and so I spent a good hour this week looking through my childhood memory boxes and all that kind of stuff, but of course, they’re not there because we gave them out to all my friends. That’s the whole point of an invitation, to give it away so that my friends would have the details, the time, the date, the address, you got to dress up like this, and then they can decide whether or not to accept the invitation.

The part of the Bible that we’re looking at this morning is an invitation. It’s an invitation for everyone here, for me and for you, to consider or perhaps reconsider and then to either accept or reject. Maybe you’re here, and you’ve already accepted a different invitation today. You were invited to church this morning for Mother’s Day, and even though that’s not really where you’d usually be on a Sunday, if that’s you, you are so welcome here. This is the best place for you to be on a Sunday, and I’d love for you to consider or reconsider the invitation from God to follow Jesus.

Or maybe you’re here, and you’re already a follower of Jesus. If that’s you, then this invitation is still for you, for you to continue to accept, for you to renew and recalibrate and recharge. Martin Luther, one of the leaders of the Reformation, said, “We need to hear the gospel every day because we forget it every day.” Whoever you are, whatever you think about God, Jesus, life, purpose, all the things, whatever season of life you’re in, whatever faith looks like for you, this invitation is for me and for you to consider or reconsider and then to either accept or reject it.

Grant’s going to come up now, and so grab your Bibles and turn to Isaiah 55. “Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink! Even if you have no money, come, take your choice of wine or milk; it’s all free! Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength? Why pay for food that does you no good? Listen to me, and you will eat what is good; you will enjoy the finest food. Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life. I will make an everlasting covenant with you. I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David. See how I used them to display my power among the peoples. I made him a leader among the nations. You will also command nations you do not know, and peoples unknown to you will come running to obey because I, the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, have made you glorious. Seek the Lord while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near. Let the wicked change their ways and banish the very thought of doing wrong. Let them turn to the Lord that he may have mercy on them. Yes, turn to our God, for he will forgive generously. My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts, says the Lord, and my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry. It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it. You will live in joy and peace. The mountains and hills will burst into song, and the trees of the field will clap their hands. Where once there were thorns, cypress trees will grow. Where nettles grew, myrtles will sprout up. These events will bring great honor to the Lord’s name. They will be an everlasting sign of his power and love.”

Thanks, Grant. It would be good if you actually kept your Bibles open. There’s lots of scanning for you to do today, and so it’d be helpful if you have it there so you can see what we’re talking about. The book of Isaiah introduces us to this character, the servant, and this servant is going to die and then somehow be alive later, and then his sacrifice is going to somehow save God’s people. Looking at that with our New Testament glasses on, we can know that that is Jesus. Jesus is this servant, and Isaiah 55 is an invitation from the servant, from Jesus, to the best birthday party ever.

Have your Bibles there, you can scan down verses 1 and 2, spiritual thirst and hunger will be satisfied. Verse 3, you’ll find life and an eternal promise of love. Verse 5, that you will be given glory. Verse 7, mercy and forgiveness. Verses 10 and 11, certainty. Verse 12, joy and peace. Verse 13, curse will be replaced by blessing. This is a utopia. This is paradise. This is satisfaction. This is too good to be true, right? Humanly speaking, this is too good to be true. Humanity is not on a trajectory toward utopia. That’s not what we’re like. We’re not even always moving upward towards human flourishing. We’re going all over the place.

My newspaper of choice is the Sydney Morning Herald because best cryptic crosswords I’ve found, but for better or for worse, it’s also my go-to news source, and there is basically always one article, at least one article, on the front page that is devastating or disappointing or depressing. Our world is broken. Humanity is not always moving up toward human flourishing, and the Sydney Morning Herald, they don’t know what’s going on in here. There’s devastation and disappointment and depression in our own lives, and so with that in mind, how much sweeter does Isaiah 55 sound? The contrast between the picture that it paints and the picture that we face in our lives makes Isaiah 55 all the more desirable. Isaiah 55 is a KFC zinger box in a world of coriander, and Jesus is Colonel Sanders, and he is the servant. He’s inviting us to come and join the party.

Four Aspects of Jesus’s Invitation

Here’s where we’re going. Here’s the structure of what we’re looking at today. I want to show you four aspects of Jesus’s invitation. His invitation is inclusive, it’s rational, it’s compassionate, and it’s transcendent.

Jesus’s Invitation is Inclusive

When I was in year nine at school, I tried out for the school rugby union team, which makes sense. My cousin Stuart, he played rugby union for Scotland, the international Scottish team, and in year nine, I was pretty tall, I was pretty fast, I was pretty fit. I’d never played rugby before, and it really showed. I did not make the team because I wasn’t very good at tackling people, and I wasn’t very good at being tackled. Basically, I was just a bit of a wuss, and so the coach, he made a right decision to not let me join the team because to join the rugby team, you need to be able to tackle other people, and you need to be able to handle being tackled by others.

The invitation to join Jesus’s team is not like that. It’s not like that at all. His invitation is open to anyone, to everyone. No one is excluded. It’s an inclusive invitation, but that word has maybe quite a lot of cultural baggage right now, but it’s just the right word. It’s exactly what it means. Anyone can join Jesus’s team. Have a look at verse one, “Is anyone thirsty? If so, come and drink! Even if you have no money, come and drink wine and milk; it’s all free!” This is a picture of spiritual thirst, and in verse two, spiritual hunger. Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows that all people have a deep spiritual hunger and thirst that can only be satisfied, can only be quenched by drawing near to him.

Look at verse two, how can we eat what is good? In what way does our body receive and enjoy this good food? It’s by listening to Jesus. This is spiritual hunger and spiritual thirst. We all have a Jesus-shaped hole in our hearts. All humanity does, and if we try and plug it with other things and try and jam other things in there, they won’t fit. They won’t fill, but the hole that we all have is the very thing that qualifies us to come to the one who can fill it. Anyone can accept this invitation. Anyone can come to the party, and just to make sure that the invitation is clear, this servant, Jesus, he clarifies. Verse one says that even if you have no money, even if you are spiritually poor, spiritually bankrupt, you have nothing to give, you’re still welcome.

It’s not just the spiritually bankrupt who are welcome. Even the morally bankrupt are welcome. Verse 7 says that this invitation is even for the wicked. It really is for anyone. Jesus’s invitation is inclusive. It’s not narrow, withheld, circumstantial, but it’s abundant. It’s unrestricted. Jesus’s invitation is not reserved only for some but extended to all. That’s the first aspect of Jesus’s invitation. It’s inclusive.

Jesus’s Invitation is Rational

Last week, we had Alpha, and it was so good. I had a great time being there, and in the first week of Alpha, one part of the video that we watch is a story about a guy called Francis Collins, and he tells the story about how he started to follow Jesus. Francis Collins, he’s a famous American scientist. He led the human genome project. The plan for him and his team was to map out, create a blueprint of human DNA, like 3 billionish DNA pairs, and it was a success, and it had particularly huge implications on understanding diseases and revolutionizing medicine.

This is an amazing guy. He tells the story that one day he’s at the hospital working as a doctor, and he’s with an elderly woman, and she turns to him and says, “What do you believe?” And he doesn’t know what to say, and so ultimately that takes him on a quest to go and look at Jesus and to find Jesus’s invitation for himself, and then he starts following him. Jesus didn’t demand that Francis Collins needed to give up his scientific career and reject his academic background to follow Jesus. Jesus doesn’t expect you to toss away reason to cover your eyes and cover your ears and just stumble toward him. It’s actually the opposite. Jesus’s invitation insists on thoughtfulness.

We saw in verse one, Jesus has just said, “Anyone who is thirsty come to me.” And then in verse two, it’s almost like he realizes what he’s said sounds too good to be true, and so he slows down and helps us to think through what he’s just offered. Have a look at verse two. He asks a question, “Why invest your money on food that doesn’t give real strength, on food that is temporary?” Why invest your resources, your time, your energy, your whole life into that other thing that won’t actually fill the Jesus-shaped hole in your heart? He’s encouraging you to consider, to look in the mirror at your own life and just to notice that the career or the relationship or the portfolio or the achievement or the holiday, they cannot truly quench, they cannot truly satisfy. They’re all good things, but compared to knowing Jesus, they are temporary, and they are shallow. Jesus insists on thoughtfulness.

Notice the image in verse three. Jesus says, “Come to me with your ears wide open.” Wide open ears hear everyone. Jesus is so confident that even if you hear Satan’s words and the words that come out of your own heart and the words of those from other religions or the words of tradies or politicians or teachers or the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, whoever, if after all that you listen to Jesus with the same open ears, you incline your ears to him, you will discover that his words are full of truth and love and that his words have the power to stand above, to cut through the rest, and you will find life and an eternal promise to receive all of God’s unfailing love. If you listen to Jesus with open ears, you’ll find life and an eternal promise for all of God’s unfailing love. That’s a lot of love for you.

Jesus’s invitation is rational, not clouding, blindfolding, gaslighting, but reasonable, open to scrutiny. The details are on display. If Jesus sat a maths exam, he would get full marks every time because he get all the right answers, and he would show all of his working. Jesus’s invitation is not emotionally manipulative, but it insists on thoughtfulness. That’s aspect number two. It’s rational.

Jesus’s Invitation is Compassionate

In 2017, about 500 people flew to the island of the Bahamas, and on top of their flights, they had already spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on tickets for a luxury celebrity-filled influencer advertised professionally catered music festival, and when they turned up, they were met with mattresses in wet tents, cheese on bread, and most frustratingly, none of the promised major music artists. This is the Fire Festival that happened in 2017, the infamous Fire Festival. It was perhaps the biggest festival disaster/scam of all time because on top of the 500 people who actually made it there, there were another 4 and a half thousand that actually bought tickets, and so much of their money was lost and never paid back, and the festival organizer, Billy McFarland, he was arrested, and he was convicted of fraud, and he was sentenced to six years in prison. He was guilty of exploiting people.

People don’t like being exploited. Well, apparently some people like being exploited because May 2025, in a few weeks, Fire Festival 2 is happening, same concept, organized by the same guy. He’s out of prison now. It was meant to be May 2025, but I think just a few weeks ago, it got postponed, and so if you got tickets, uh-oh. Most people don’t like to be exploited, and yet our world is just full of it, full of exploitation, of taking advantage of others and using fear and anxiety as a weapon motivated by personal gain for money and power and fulfilling desire, all that stuff.

When it comes to Jesus’s invitation, it’s just a very reasonable question to ask, what’s his motivation? Why is he doing this? Look at verse six, “Seek the Lord while you can find him.” Is Jesus trying to scare us so that we submit to him and he feels powerful? Does he just want more and more people to bow down and worship him? No, because in all of this, he’s motivated by compassion. It’s true, verse six is a warning. The invitation to follow Jesus will not always be available to you. If you die or Jesus returns before you’ve accepted it, then it’ll be too late, but also from that verse, you can find God. He is near, and what happens when you find him? What happens when you draw near? It answers in the second half of verse 7, mercy and generous forgiveness. That’s what you get when we find God, when we draw near to God.

However ashamed we are, however disgusted and embarrassed and wanting to hide, he won’t reluctantly forgive. He forgives generously. He doesn’t merely accept us. He pulls us in for embrace, a prodigal son or daughter who has finally come home. The motivation behind Jesus’s invitation is compassion, and just in case we’re not fully convinced, we only need to look forward in the Bible from Isaiah to the Gospels where we can see Jesus winning this generous forgiveness for us on the cross with us in mind. Jesus’s invitation is compassionate, not taking advantage, not targeting our weakness, but kind and tender and generous. Jesus’s invitation is not to exploit or to gain power but motivated by compassion.

Jesus’s Invitation is Transcendent

In 1949, there was an article that was posted in the American Nebraska State Journal, and it was an article that was describing pioneer life, going out into the frontier with all the uncultivated land and trying to resettle your family there, trying to work the ground, all that kind of stuff, and here’s a quote from the article, “New land is harsh and vigorous and sturdy. It scorns evidence of weakness. There is nothing of sham or hypocrisy in it. It is what it is without apology.” That there is the first recorded use of the saying, “It is what it is.” The circumstances, they are what they are, and nothing will change it, so I’ll just deal with it. “It is what it is.”

For a long time, followers of Jesus have used a similar phrase which actually comes out of our passage, out of verse 8, when life for a fellow Christian is challenging, the line is, “His ways are not our ways,” which is saying God’s divine will is mysterious, and we can trust him, and it is what it is. There’s some truth to that saying, but the problem is that’s not what Isaiah chapter 55:8 is about at all. It’s about something completely different. Here at church, we use the NLT translation of the Bible. It is excellent, particularly good for people with English as their second language, but in simplifying some of the words, every now and then it misses a key word, and there’s a word missing from verse 8 that’s very important. It’s a word right at the very start of the verse, and the word is “for.” It’s there in the Hebrew text, and what it means is it’s a connecting word. Verse 8 is explaining verse 7. Verse 8 isn’t a standalone verse about God’s mysterious divine will. It’s an expansion. It’s further detail on the generous mercy and forgiveness of God that we see in verse 7.

God knows that even when we hear of his generous forgiveness, we latch onto that promised with a diminished view of the heart from which that generous forgiveness flows. When we hear the words generous forgiveness, we don’t get it. We have a diminished view. It’s a picture just too beautiful for us to imagine. It’s an amount too infinite to comprehend. It’s transcendent. God’s ways and thoughts are different from our ways and our thoughts because his ways of forgiveness and his thoughts of mercy stretch beyond our human mind, and it’s not like we’re close to being able to figure it out, to be able to comprehend his generous forgiveness because in verse 9 it says, “For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” Those first few words in verse 9, that’s just like the classic Hebrew way of saying infinity, and so whatever we think of when it comes to God’s mercy and forgiveness, whatever feelings are drawn up, whatever words we use to articulate it with, we are misunderstanding and underappreciating by an order of infinity.

Whatever words we try and use to describe, to explain, to conjure up God’s mercy and forgiveness, we are misunderstanding and we are underappreciating by an order of infinity. God’s heart of compassion confounds our intuitive predelections about how he loves to respond to his people if they would but dump in his lap the ruin and wreckage of their lives. He isn’t like you. Even the most intense of human love is but the faintest echo of heaven’s cascading abundance. His heartfelt thoughts for you outstrip what you can conceive. He intends to restore you into the radiant respplendance for which you were created, and that is dependent not on you keeping yourself clean but on you taking your mess to him. He doesn’t limit himself to working with the unspoiled parts of us that remain after a lifetime of sinning. His power runs so deep that he’s able to redeem the very worst parts of our past into the most radiant parts of our future, but we need to take those dark miseries to him.

Jesus’s invitation is transcendent, not merely amazing, not almost imaginable, but infinitely underappreciated, bursting past our mental horizons. Jesus’s invitation is not bound to human understanding but explodes into divine infinity. That’s number four. Jesus’ invitation is transcendent.

There they are. That’s what the invitation for you is. His invitation is inclusive, it’s rational, it’s compassionate, it’s transcendent, and so if you’re here and you already follow Jesus, will you reaccept it? Will you renew and recalibrate and recharge? If you don’t yet follow Jesus, will you accept this, or will you reject it? Let me lead us in prayer.

Heavenly Father, for just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so your ways are higher than our ways and your thoughts higher than our thoughts. Father, thank you for Jesus’s invitation. Thank you for his invitation to come and eat and drink and listen. Thank you for his invitation to receive the eternal promise of all your love, to find mercy and generous forgiveness, to find joy and peace, to reverse the curse. Father, thank you that his invitation is inclusive, that it is rational, that it is compassionate, that it is transcendent, and Father, would you help us all to respond by accepting this invitation and moving toward you? Would you renew us? Would you recalibrate us? Would you recharge us that we might live lives that bring honor to Jesus. Amen.