Sermon Text: Isaiah 55:6-11
Date: July 16, 2023
Event: The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year A [Proper 10]
Isaiah 55:6-11 (EHV)
Seek the Lord while he may be found!
Call on him while he is near!
7Let the wicked man abandon his way.
Let an evil man abandon his thoughts.
Let him turn to the Lord,
and he will show him mercy.
Let him turn to our God,
because he will abundantly pardon.
8Certainly my plans are not your plans,
and your ways are not my ways, declares the Lord.
9Just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways,
and my plans are higher than your plans.
10Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky
and do not return there
unless they first water the earth, make it give birth, and cause it to sprout,
so that it gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11in the same way my word that goes out from my mouth
will not return to me empty.
Rather, it will accomplish whatever I please,
and it will succeed in the purpose for which I sent it.
Where Do We Find the Lord?
Have you ever had that moment where you need to find something, and you remember seeing it… somewhere? Perhaps you saw it sitting somewhere and even thought, “Well, that’s a weird place for that thing to be. I would never find that there; I should move that to a more logical place,” but then you didn’t? And then, the next time you were looking for that item, you could remember that you saw it in a place that didn’t make any sense, but you can’t remember where that place was?
Maybe you’ve had that experience or maybe it’s just me. Regardless, I can assure you that it’s not a great feeling. Trying to hunt something down that you know is around but is in a place you’re unlikely to come up with is frustrating, even if it’s basically in plain sight. Why were my keys on the bookshelf anyway??
If you’re looking for something, you want to know where to find it. That may be why you always put your car keys in the same place at home each time you return. Maybe that’s why you invested in a little tracking device to put in your wallet or on something else valuable and important so that if you can’t find it, you can hunt it down relatively quickly. Maybe that’s why you store those important documents like birth certificates or Social Security cards in that fire-resistant safe; you know where they are, and they are protected.
But, as important as your keys or wallet or documents may be, there are things that are more important than those. Chief among them is your God. Your relationship with God—or maybe more importantly, his attitude toward you—is what is going to determine not just a day or week or year, but eternity. Will you be in hell as just punishment for your disobedience toward him or will you be in heaven with him in unending joy and peace? And how do you know?
This is comfort and knowledge that we cannot have on our own. We can’t look around us and determine how God thinks about us. We can’t do some deep soul-searching and decide what our status with God is. We can make things up, we can tell ourselves stories, but we will always know that that is all those are—creations of our own minds. So, if we want certainty, we need to go to the source. If we want to know God’s heart, he has to reveal that to us. How do we do that? Where do we go? Where do we find the Lord?
Through the prophet Isaiah, God calls on people to act: Seek the Lord while he may be found! Call on him while he is near! Isaiah’s ministry took place at a very fraught time in Israel’s history. After King Solomon, David’s son, died, the nation split into two pieces, roughly 10 tribes in the Northern Kingdom and two tribes in the Southern Kingdom. Isaiah was sent as a prophet to the Southern Kingdom.
In both kingdoms, the leaders’ and people’s faithfulness to the true God was very poor. They often worshiped false gods in the hope of blessings that the true God was not giving or simply because the false gods’ worship was more “fun” and less strict than the law God gave his people. It had gotten so bad that during Isaiah’s ministry, God used the nation of Assyria to come and exile the Northern Kingdom, whom we never hear from as a unified group again. Assyria harassed and conquered cities in the Southern Kingdom as well, but God saved them from the Assyrian army before they could conquer the capital of Jerusalem.
But all this temporal chastisement came because the people had wandered so far away from God. They weren’t listening to him, they weren’t looking for him, they didn’t care about him. God didn’t want them to be destroyed eternally so he uses earthly barbs to wake them up. But he couples that pain and discomfort with calls through his prophets to return to him. So, it is in this context that God sends Isaiah to plead with his people, “Seek the Lord while he may be found! Call on him while he is near! Let the wicked man abandon his way. Let an evil man abandon his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will show him mercy. Let him turn to our God, because he will abundantly pardon.”
Despite all the negative things that the people were enduring, there is so much gospel in these words. First of all, it is not too late—the people could still seek after God. He is near to them and ready to be found. For all that they had done wrong—for all their sins that brought down God’s eternal punishment—there was mercy and pardon available from God. He would forgive their sins. He loved them.
We may think it would have been wise for God to clearly set up shop on earth at this time. That is, that God should have just made himself visible to all the people. The messages he had to share should have come right from his mouth and he should have made it inescapable if he really wanted people to listen. That’s a whole lot of “shoulds” coming from people who don’t have God’s perspective and wisdom. And it seems that God anticipated this line of argument. God continues through Isaiah’s pen: Certainly my plans are not your plans, and your ways are not my ways, declares the Lord. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my plans are higher than your plans.
God rarely speaks directly to people. As you read through the Bible, it might appear that God was talking to everyone all the time during the time the events of the Bible were happening. The truth is, only a very tiny number of people have ever had a direct conversation with God—even considering those who spoke with Jesus during his earthly ministry. Instead, God has chosen to communicate through his Word, verbally recounted and written down throughout the ages. In what was probably a parable, Jesus recounts a rich man in hell begging Abraham to send the poor man, Lazarus, who had died, back to speak to his brothers. While this wouldn’t be God speaking directly, it would be a miracle that would hopefully cause those on Earth to stand up and take notice. Our natural sense is probably agrees with the rich man’s logic, but the words that Jesus put into Abraham’s mouth are alarming to us as we nod along with the damned man’s reasoning, “They have Moses and the Prophets. Let them listen to them…. If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:29, 31).
God has always worked through his Word primarily shared through human messengers rather than through direct contact. So, if we’re looking for the Lord, if we are seeking to return to him, we need to look for him where he has chosen to reveal himself. As such, we will not find him in nature, we will not find him through pure meditation and introspection, and if we’re waiting for God to have a nice chat with us over a cup of coffee, we will probably be waiting our whole lives without it ever happening.
Where do we find the Lord? You may not find him in nature alone, but in his Word, you will learn the details of how he created the universe we call home. You may not find him through an emptying-of-your-mind meditation, but meditation that centers on the promises and truths of God’s Word will be productive. And no, God may not sit down with you at the café for a warm drink, but if you bring a devotion book with you or perhaps enjoy a beverage while sitting in Bible Study with your fellow Christians, there is where God will be found.
Word of God is not just sounds voiced into the air or scratches of ink on a piece of paper. God attaches promises and power to his Word—as unassuming and unimpressive as it might be at first glance: Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and do not return there unless they first water the earth, make it give birth, and cause it to sprout, so that it gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater, in the same way my word that goes out from my mouth will not return to me empty. Rather, it will accomplish whatever I please, and it will succeed in the purpose for which I sent it.
The Holy Spirit works through his Word to create faith in our hearts and to sustain it. When the Israelites were separated from God’s Word and promises, they were distancing themselves from the God who loved them so dearly. When you and I seek to fill our spiritual needs with things that do not include God’s Word, we do the same thing.
But, when we dig into his Word here at church, in our homes, even in our cars or as we go for a walk, as we read or listen to that truth, to those promises, there the Spirit builds us up; there faith is maintained and grows; there alone do we find return and remaining with our Savior God. Because there in that Word we hear God’s clear condemnation of our sins and his complete forgiveness in Jesus’ death in our place. We cannot learn about Jesus’ salvation apart from God’s Word. That’s where he’s chosen to reveal these eternally-important truths; that’s where we find the Lord.
So, my sisters and brothers, “Seek the Lord while he may be found! Call on him while he is near!” Where do we find him? Where he has chosen to reveal himself, in that Word that will not return to him empty. Value it. Cherish it. Use it, now and until that day when our Lord calls us home to himself in heaven! Till the soil of your hearts so that this Word, planted like seed, may grow and flourish into faith that trusts God’s forgiveness for eternity. Amen.
