Come, All Who Are Thirsty

A busy marketplace. Sellers shouting their prices. Water! Wine! Fresh milk! And then one voice rises above all the others with a very strange offer. Come and buy. But you don't need any money. It's free.

Isaiah chapter fifty-five comes right after the songs about God's suffering servant. God's people have been through terrible times: war, ruin and exile. Many of them had settled into life far from home and tried to make the best of it, working hard, earning money, buying what they could. But they were still empty inside. So God speaks to them the way a street seller calls out in the market, the kind of seller every listener knew. In the ancient world, nothing was free. You paid for water from the water-seller, for wine, for milk. But God's offer turns the market upside down.

“Hey! Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters! Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat! Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” No money? Come anyway. Then God asks a searching question. “Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which doesn't satisfy?” Why work so hard for things that never fill you up? “Listen diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in richness. Turn your ear, and come to me. Hear, and your soul will live.” The real food is listening to God. The real drink is coming to him.

And God makes a promise. “I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.” Remember the promise to King David, that his house and his throne would last forever? God says that faithful love has not run out. It is still sure. And through David's line, nations you do not know will come running to you, because of the Lord your God. Then the invitation becomes urgent. “Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him; to our God, for he will freely pardon.” Freely. Just like the free water and wine.

But, you may ask, how can God forgive so generously? God answers: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.” And then God gives a picture from the weather. “As the rain comes down and the snow from the sky, and doesn't return there, but waters the earth, and makes it grow and bud, and gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so is my word that goes out of my mouth: it will not return to me void.” God's word always does what he sends it to do. And the chapter ends with joy: you will go out with joy, and be led out with peace. The mountains and the hills will break out into singing, and all the trees of the fields will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn the cypress tree will grow. Centuries later, Jesus stood up at a festival in Jerusalem and cried out: If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.

Isaiah's picture of rain watering the earth would have meant a great deal to his listeners. In the land of Israel, almost all the rain falls in the winter months, roughly from October to April. The summers are long and completely dry. Farmers waited anxiously for the early rains in autumn, which softened the ground for ploughing, and the later rains in spring, which filled out the grain. The Bible calls them the former and the latter rain. Without them, there was no harvest.

Come, all who are thirsty. You'll find it in Isaiah chapter fifty-five. God's best gifts are free, his mercy is sure, and his word never comes back empty. So here is a question to carry with you. What are you spending your time and energy on that doesn't really satisfy, and how could you come to God instead?