Come to the Waters

Isaiah 55 (with John 7:37–39; Acts 13:32–39)

Before this session, read Isaiah 55, the great gospel invitation. Hear the free call to all who are thirsty: come, buy without money and without cost (55:1–2); the promise of an unconditional covenant, like the reliable promises made to David (55:3); the call to seek the Lord while He makes Himself available, and His free forgiveness (55:6–7); His plans and deeds higher than ours (55:8–9); and the word that goes out from Him and does not return having accomplished nothing (55:10–11).

Hey, all who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come! Buy and eat! Come! Buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

Isaiah 55:1

All Who Are Thirsty

After the deep and solemn ground of chapter 53, where we stood at the very foot of the cross, the prophet’s voice suddenly rings out like a market-crier’s, calling across a crowded square. Hey, all who are thirsty, come to the water! (55:1). “Hey!” It is a shout to seize the attention, the cry of a herald with good news that simply cannot wait. And it is addressed to everyone: all who are thirsty. Not the worthy, not the qualified, not the especially religious, but everyone who thirsts. The one and only qualification for this invitation is thirst itself: the sense of need, the parched awareness that one does not have what one most deeply needs. If you thirst, the cry is for you.

It is worth weighing what a strange door this is, with thirst for its only ticket. Most doors in this world open to those who have something: money, merit, credentials, a good name. This one opens to those who have nothing but a need. And that turns out to be the hardest qualification of all to meet, not because thirst is rare, but because we are so practiced at hiding it from ourselves. The truly dangerous condition is not to be thirsty; it is to be thirsty and not know it, to have talked ourselves into a comfortable numbness, telling ourselves we are fine, we have enough, we want for nothing. To such a settled soul the invitation sounds like an offer it does not need. So God’s first work with us is often simply to make us thirsty again: the hard work of His law, stripping away the false satisfactions until we feel, once more, the deep dryness that only He can slake. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” the Lord Jesus would say, “for they will be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6).

“Come to the water.” The thirsty are called to water, and what water is meant becomes plain when we hear the Lord Jesus take up this very invitation centuries later. On the last day of the feast, the greatest day, He stood up and shouted out, echoing Isaiah’s own call: If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink (John 7:37–38). The waters of chapter 55 flow from Himself: the living water He gives, which John tells us is the Spirit poured out on those who believe in Him (John 7:39), and which alone can quench the deep thirst of the soul. And the same invitation will be very nearly the last word of the whole Bible: let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wants it take the water of life free of charge (Revelation 22:17). From Isaiah to the final page of Revelation, the call has never changed: thirsty one, come and drink.

And now the strange, glad paradox that lies at the heart of the invitation. You who have no money, come! Buy and eat! Come! Buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Come and buy, but without money, without cost. How does anyone buy without paying? Only when someone else has already paid. The gospel is offered to people who have no money (no merit, no goodness, nothing whatever to bring), and it is given to them for nothing at all, because the price has already been paid in full. We have just come from chapter 53, where we watched the price being paid: the Servant wounded because of our rebellious deeds, His life given as an offering for sin. Because He paid everything, it costs us nothing. “Without money and without cost” is not a discount on the gospel; it is the gospel. Grace is free to us precisely because it was bought at infinite cost to Him.

There is something in us that resists this, oddly enough, something that would almost rather pay. We are comfortable with earning; we like to feel that we have contributed, that we have some small claim, that we are not simply charity cases. To be handed something of infinite worth for nothing wounds our pride; it leaves us with nothing to boast of, no part of the credit to keep back for ourselves. And that is precisely why the gospel must be free, and why our pride must be brought low before we can receive it at all. As long as we are still fumbling in our pockets for some coin to offer, we have not yet understood the invitation. The thirsty come empty-handed, or they do not come. God will not sell His salvation, not even cheaply, because to set any price on it at all would put it beyond the reach of the very people He means to save: those who have nothing. So He gives it away. Our part is only to stop trying to pay, and to drink.

And notice what is actually on offer. Not bare survival, not a crust of bread to keep body and soul together, but wine and milk, the rich and festive fare of a banquet. God does not invite the thirsty merely to a cup of water and then send them on their way; He spreads a whole table, and sets out the very best on it. The gospel is not a grudging, minimal provision, doled out in mean little portions; it is abundance, satisfaction, gladness, a feast. The God who did not spare His own Son does not then ration out the salvation that Son purchased. He gives lavishly (wine and milk, fine food, a feast) to people who came with empty hands and nothing in the world to pay. That is the kind of host He is.

What Does Not Satisfy

Having issued the invitation, God asks a question that lands very close to home. Why pay money for something that will not nourish you? Why spend your hard-earned money on something that will not satisfy? (55:2). It is a question about how we are spending our lives. We spend our money, and our money is really our time, our effort, our days turned into wages (the NET’s “hard-earned money” says as much), on something that will not nourish, on things that cannot finally feed the soul. We labor and labor for what will not satisfy, and at the end of all the labor the soul is as hungry as it ever was. God is laying His finger on the deepest frustration of human life: that we pour ourselves out, year after year, for things that promise satisfaction and never quite deliver it.

Every human heart is thirsty, made with a thirst that God alone can satisfy; and the whole tragedy of fallen life is that we keep trying to slake that God-thirst with everything except God. We try money, and it is never quite enough. We try success, and the summit, once we reach it, turns out to be strangely empty. We try pleasure, romance, achievement, the approval of others; and each one, for a little while, seems as though it might be the thing at last, and each one leaves us thirsty again. Augustine said it once and for all: God has made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him. The thirst itself is real, and it is good; it is meant to drive us to the waters. The error lies only in where we keep taking it. We carry our God-shaped thirst to a thousand broken cisterns that hold no water, while the one true fountain stands open, and free, and ignored.

And it is worth saying that the things we run to are not always wicked things; very often they are good things, asked to do a work that no good thing can do. Money, family, work, love, a cause worth giving oneself to: these are gifts of God, and there is nothing whatever wrong with any of them in its place. The trouble comes when we ask them to be God to us, to give our lives the meaning, the security, the deep rest that God alone can give. A good gift bent into a god will always betray us in the end, not because it is bad, but because it was never built to bear that kind of weight. The man who makes his work his god will be crushed when the work fails him; the woman who makes a person her god will be devastated when that person proves, after all, merely human. The broken cistern leaks not because the water in it was poison, but because it was never meant to be the fountain. Enjoy the gifts, by all means; but take your thirst to the Giver.

And so God calls us back: Listen carefully to me and eat what is nourishing! Enjoy fine food (55:2). Stop spending on what will not nourish, He says; listen to Me, and eat what is actually good, and enjoy the richest fare, the kind of food (the Hebrew speaks of the soul itself delighting in it) that feeds your very soul and not merely your body. There is a real and a lasting satisfaction to be had, but it is found in one place only: in listening to God, in receiving what He gives, in feeding upon Him. The soul that has tried everything else and come up empty is invited, at long last, to the only table where the food never runs out and the hunger does not come creeping back. Only God satisfies the thirst that He Himself first put in us.

The Reliable Promises to David

The invitation continues, and now it tells us how the thirsty actually come and drink. Pay attention and come to me. Listen, so you can live. (55:3). The coming is, first of all, a coming of the ear (“pay attention” is, in the Hebrew, “incline your ear”), for the way the soul receives the living water is by hearing the word. “Listen, so you can live”: life comes through the word that is heard and believed. This is how it has always worked; faith comes from what is heard, and the soul that listens to God’s promise and trusts it is made alive. The thirsty do not climb up to the waters by some great effort of their own; they simply incline the ear, hear the good word, and live.

It is worth pausing on the fact that it is the ear God appeals to here, and not the hand or the eye. He does not say, “set your hand to work, so you can live,” nor “see a sign, so you can live,” but “listen, so you can live.” This is the consistent pattern of how God deals with us. Faith comes from what is heard, Paul would later write, and what is heard comes through the preached word of Christ (Romans 10:17). The living water reaches the thirsty soul down the channel of the ear: through the word preached, the word read, the word spoken by one believer to another across a kitchen table. This is why a Lutheran will not let the preaching of the word be crowded out or treated as a mere warm-up to the real business of the hour; the word is the real business, the very means by which the soul is given its life. Incline your ear, God says. The fountain flows toward those who will listen.

And God binds the invitation to a promise that can never fail: Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you, just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David. An unconditional covenant (the Hebrew calls it an everlasting one): not a temporary arrangement, not a bargain that might one day lapse, but an everlasting bond. And it rests upon the reliable promises made to David: the steadfast, dependable covenant love that God had sworn to David, the promise that David would have a Son whose throne would stand forever. Those promises are reliable: certain, guaranteed, beyond all doubt. The free invitation to the thirsty is not built on sand; it is built on a covenant God secured by His own oath, the reliable promises made to the house of David.

And the New Testament tells us exactly where those promises to David at last came to rest. Preaching in a synagogue, Paul declared that God had fulfilled the promise made to the fathers by raising the Lord Jesus from the dead, and he quoted this very verse: I will give you the holy and trustworthy promises made to David (Acts 13:34). The promises to David are made sure in the resurrection of David’s greater Son. A dead king’s promises die along with him; but the Son of David is not dead. He is risen, and reigns, and His throne stands forever, exactly as God once swore to David that it would. So when God invites the thirsty into an everlasting covenant grounded in His reliable promises to David, He is grounding it in the risen and reigning Lord Jesus, whose life beyond the grave is the very guarantee that the covenant will never fail. And it is no longer for one nation alone: nations that did not previously know Him, the chapter says, will run to Him (55:4–5). The Son of David draws the whole thirsty world.

Seek the LORD While He Is Available

The invitation now takes on a note of urgency. Seek the LORD while he makes himself available; call to him while he is nearby! (55:6). “While he makes himself available … while he is nearby”: there is a window, and it stands open now. The words do not say that God can never be found, or will not always be near; but they press the present moment upon us with great seriousness. Now He makes Himself available; now He is near; now is the time to seek and to call upon Him. There is a real danger in delay: the danger that a heart which puts it off, and puts it off again, may slowly grow hard; that a day of grace freely offered may be quietly let slip. The God who is near today calls us to seek Him today, and not at some more convenient season that, for all we know, may never come at all.

There is a real kindness in that urgency, though it can sound at first like a threat. God presses the present moment upon us not because He is impatient to slam the door, but because He knows something about the human heart that we are slow to admit: that it can grow hard. A heart that hears the invitation and puts it off does not simply stay exactly where it was; it grows a little more settled in its delay, a little more deaf, a little less moved by the call the next time it comes around. Oh, that today you would listen as he speaks! Do not harden your hearts, says the psalm, as the letter to the Hebrews quotes it (Hebrews 3:7–8). The warning is itself a mercy, the warning of a God who would not have us trifle our way past an open door, forever telling ourselves there will be a better time to come in. The door is open now. The voice is calling now. And the only safe answer to “seek the LORD while he makes himself available” is to seek Him today, while it is still today.

And the seeking takes a definite and concrete shape: The wicked need to abandon their lifestyle and sinful people their plans. They should return to the LORD (55:7). To seek the Lord is to turn: to abandon the old way and the old plans, the self-chosen path of chapter 53’s straying sheep, and to return to the God we wandered away from. This is repentance, and it is not first of all a matter of feeling but of direction: a turning of the whole self away from the way that leads nowhere, and back toward home. The thirsty who have spent all their money on what will not nourish are called to stop, to turn around, and to come home at last.

And what is waiting for the one who turns? Not a wary, grudging, probationary sort of acceptance, but this: and he will show mercy to them, and to their God, for he will freely forgive them (55:7). He will freely forgive. The Hebrew says, more literally, that He will multiply pardon: forgive lavishly, pour out mercy without measure and without stint. The wicked man who abandons his way and returns does not find God reluctant, arms folded, demanding to see a good long stretch of evidence before He will so much as consider forgiveness. He finds God already running out to meet him, pardon overflowing, mercy multiplied beyond all reckoning. This is the welcome the prodigal found when at last he turned for home: not a lecture and a probation, but a father running down the road, and a feast already being prepared. The God of this chapter does not pardon stingily. He abundantly pardons.

My Plans Are Not Like Your Plans

We come now to one of the most quoted verses in all of Isaiah, and one of the most often misquoted. “Indeed, my plans are not like your plans, and my deeds are not like your deeds,” says the LORD, “for just as the sky is higher than the earth, so my deeds are superior to your deeds and my plans superior to your plans” (55:8–9). We usually hear this verse pulled out all on its own, as a general statement that God’s ways are mysterious and far beyond us; and so, of course, they are. But that is not quite what it means here, in its own place. We must read it where it actually stands, and where it stands is directly after the promise that God will freely forgive. The higher plans Isaiah has in view here are, very specifically, higher plans of mercy.

Here is the point, and it is a deeply healing one. When God says that His plans are higher than ours, He is answering the doubt that rises in every guilty heart: surely God could not forgive so freely, so completely, so abundantly as all that; surely there must be more to it, some penance to perform first, some probation to endure, some hidden limit to the pardon. We think that way because that is exactly how we forgive. Our forgiveness is grudging, partial, slow, hedged about with conditions; we forgive a little, and we remember for a long time. And we quietly assume that God must be the same. But He is not. His plans of mercy are higher than ours as the very sky is higher than the earth. He pardons more freely than we can imagine pardoning, more abundantly than we ourselves would ever pardon, more completely than we dare to believe. The sinner who cannot quite bring himself to believe he could be forgiven so easily is being told, gently: do not measure God’s mercy by your own. His is higher, immeasurably higher, as high as the sky above the earth.

The Scriptures are full of evidence that it is so. A thief, justly condemned and dying for his crimes, turns to the Lord Jesus in his very last hour with nothing to offer but a dying breath, and hears, that same day, the promise of paradise. A man who had hunted Christians to their deaths is stopped on the Damascus road and made an apostle who labored more than all the rest (1 Corinthians 15:9–10). A king who had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood and crowded it with idols is carried off in chains to Babylon, repents at last, and is forgiven (2 Chronicles 33:10–13). Again and again God pardons exactly the people we would have quietly written off, and pardons them freely, fully, at the last possible moment, on no strength of their own at all. If we had been keeping the books, the accounts would have stayed firmly closed; but God’s plans of mercy run far higher than our careful bookkeeping. The height of His grace is not a doctrine only; it is a long, glad record of sinners forgiven beyond every human expectation.

So the verse, rightly read in its place, is not a closed door but an open one. It does not say, “God’s ways are too mysterious for you ever to understand His grace”; it says, “God’s grace is far greater than your small and cramped ideas of grace.” We are forever tempted to drag God down to our own level: to assume He forgives the way we forgive, loves the way we love, keeps a careful score the way we keep score. He does not. When the gospel sounds too good to be true (too free, too abundant, too utterly unconditional), that is not a reason to doubt it; it is exactly what we ought to expect from a God whose plans of mercy are as far above ours as the sky is above the ground. The sheer freeness of the invitation in this chapter is not a mistake to be quietly corrected by adding a few conditions of our own. It is the height of God’s plans, immeasurably higher than ours.

It Does Not Return Empty

How can God be so certain that His invitation will not be wasted, that His word of pardon will actually accomplish something out in the world? He tells us, with an image drawn from the sky. The rain and snow fall from the sky and do not return, but instead water the earth and make it produce and yield crops … In the same way, the promise that I make does not return to me, having accomplished nothing. No, it is realized as I desire and is fulfilled as I intend (55:10–11). Rain and snow do not fall and then evaporate uselessly back up to the clouds, having done nothing; they come down, soak deep into the ground, and the ground yields its seed and its bread. They accomplish the very thing they were sent down to do. And so, God says, does His word (the Hebrew is simply “my word,” which the NET renders “the promise that I make”).

This is one of the great truths that a Lutheran loves to dwell upon: that God’s word is not weak, not empty, not dependent upon us to lend it its power. The word that God speaks does the very thing it says. When God says, “Let there be light,” there is light; when the Lord Jesus says, “Son, your sins are forgiven,” they are forgiven; when the gospel word goes out into the world, it does not return to Him having accomplished nothing, but carries out His saving purpose. The Word is God’s own working tool, the chosen means by which He creates faith and gives life (listen, so you can live, as this very chapter has already said). We do not have to make the Word effective by our cleverness or our eloquence or the force of our personality; the Word carries its own power within it, because it is God’s word, and it will be fulfilled as He intends.

And God has been pleased to attach that powerful word to ordinary, humble things, so that we always know exactly where to find it. He joins it to water, and there is Baptism; He joins it to the bread and the cup, and there is the Supper; He puts it in the mouth of a preacher, or a parent, or a friend, and there is the word that creates faith. It does not look like much: a little water, a little bread, a sip from the cup, a few plain sentences from an ordinary voice. But the power is not in the water or the bread or the eloquence; the power is in the word God has joined to them, the same word that will not return to Him empty. And this is a great relief, for it means we always know where to go to find the living water. We do not have to wait about for some extraordinary experience or some inner voice in the night; we go to where God has promised His word will be, and there, in the plainest of means, the fountain flows.

And there is great comfort in this for everyone who scatters the seed of that word and sees, for the present, very little fruit: the parent patiently teaching a child, the worn-out Sunday school teacher, the lay preacher who wonders whether anyone at all is really listening, the friend who keeps speaking a gentle word of Christ into a hard and unresponsive heart. The promise is simply that the word will not return empty. We are not finally responsible to make it bear its fruit; we are responsible only to sow it, and the sowing of it is never once wasted. The rain takes its own time; the seed lies hidden away in the dark ground a long while before ever the first green shows. But the word of God, like the rain, will accomplish what God sent it out to do. So keep on scattering it. It does not come back empty.

And the chapter ends with a picture of where all of this is finally going. Indeed you will go out with joy; you will be led along in peace; the mountains and hills will give a joyful shout before you, and all the trees in the field will clap their hands. Evergreens will grow in place of thorn bushes, firs will grow in place of nettles (55:12–13). The thirsty who came and drank go out with joy; creation itself breaks into song; and then comes the deepest reversal of all: “in place of thorn bushes … in place of nettles.” Thorns and thistles were the very signs of the curse, sprung up out of the ground when Adam fell and the earth was cursed for his sake (Genesis 3:17–18). Here they are replaced, evergreens and firs growing up where the thorn bushes and nettles had been. The gospel does not end with forgiven sinners still stranded in a cursed and thorny world; it ends with the curse itself undone, creation healed, the thorns gone for good. The Servant wore a crown of thorns to take that curse upon Himself; and the day is surely coming when the last thorn will be gone from the earth, and only the evergreen and the fir will remain, a permanent reminder (55:13) of what the grace of God has done.

Gathering the Threads

Chapter 55 is the great open door of the book, flung wide right after the cross. It calls every thirsty soul to come, without money and without cost, because the price was paid in full by the Servant, and to drink the living water and feast on wine and milk. It exposes the futility of all our spending on what will not nourish, and calls us back to the only food that ever satisfies. It grounds its invitation in an everlasting covenant, the reliable promises made to David, made sure forever in the resurrection of David’s greater Son. It urges us to seek the Lord while He makes Himself available, and promises that the one who abandons his way and returns will find, not a grudging welcome, but abundant pardon. It tells us that God’s plans of mercy are higher than ours (far higher), so that the gospel which sounds too good to be true is simply, gloriously true. And it assures us that the word carrying all these promises will not return empty, but will accomplish everything God sent it to do, until the very thorns of the curse are gone, and all creation sings.

So the chapter ends the only way it could: with the invitation still ringing in the air. If you are thirsty tonight (and every honest soul is), the waters are open, and the price has already been paid. You need bring no money, for you have none that would count for anything; you need only bring your thirst. Do not stand off at a distance, measuring God’s mercy by your own small mercies and concluding that the offer cannot really be so free. It is exactly that free. His plans are higher than yours. Incline your ear, and come, and listen, so you can live; for He will abundantly pardon, and His word will not return empty, and the One who calls you is the risen Son of David, whose promises are sure forever. All who are thirsty, come to the water.

For Discussion

These questions are for the group or for your own reflection. They press at the text, at the law and gospel it teaches, and at the Christ it shows forth. Keep your Bible open as you work through them.

1. The invitation is to buy wine and milk without money and without cost (55:1). How can one buy without paying, and what does it mean that the price was already paid by the Servant of chapter 53? Why is “without cost” not a discount but the very heart of the gospel?

2. God asks why we pay money for something that will not nourish and spend our hard-earned money on something that will not satisfy (55:2). What are the “broken cisterns” people try to satisfy their thirst with today? Why does only God finally satisfy the thirst He Himself put in us?

3. The everlasting covenant rests on the reliable covenantal promises I made to David (55:3), which Paul ties to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus (Acts 13:34). Why does it matter that the covenant is grounded in the risen Son of David rather than in our own faithfulness?

4. The one who abandons his way and returns finds that God will freely forgive (55:7). What is the difference between God’s abundant pardon and the grudging, conditional forgiveness we so often imagine? How is this the welcome the prodigal found?

5. My plans are not like your plans (55:8–9) is often quoted as a general statement about God’s mysteriousness. In its own context, what are the “higher plans” actually about? How does reading this verse as being about God’s mercy change its meaning for a guilty conscience?

6. God promises that His word does not return to me, having accomplished nothing (55:11). What comfort is there in this for someone who keeps speaking God’s word and sees little fruit? Why do we not have to make the word effective ourselves?

Looking Ahead

From the wide-open invitation of chapter 55, the book moves into a stretch of chapters (56 through 59) that gather several threads together. We will hear God throw the doors of His house open even wider than we might have expected: to the foreigner and the outcast, even to those the old law had kept at a careful distance, for, He says, my temple will be known as a temple where all nations may pray (56:7), the very words the Lord Jesus would one day quote when He cleansed the temple. We will meet the high and exalted God who, astonishingly, makes His home not only in an exalted and holy place, but also with the discouraged and humiliated (57:15), the crushed and lowly in spirit. We will hear God describe the fast He actually wants: not empty ritual, but the removing of sinful chains and the feeding of the hungry (chapter 58). And we will come to a sober reckoning with sin: that our sinful acts have alienated us from our God (59:2). And then, when it is plain that no one can bridge the gap, comes the promise that God Himself will: that seeing there was no one to intervene, His own arm brought salvation, and the Redeemer came to Zion (59:16–20).

Before the next session, read Isaiah 56 through 59. Notice the house of prayer thrown open to the foreigner and the outcast (56:3–8); the high and holy One who dwells with the crushed and lowly in spirit (57:15); the fast God actually wants: to remove the sinful chains and feed the hungry (58:6–7); the sins that separate us from God (59:1–2); and the Redeemer who comes when God sees that there is no one to save (59:16–20).

Closing Prayer

O God our Father, we thank You for the open door of Your gospel, and for the cry that still goes out to every thirsty soul: come, without money and without cost. We confess that we have spent so much of our money on what does not nourish, and our labor on what does not satisfy, carrying our thirst everywhere on earth but to You. Forgive us, and draw us at last to the waters.

We bless You that the price was paid in full by Your Servant, so that the feast is altogether free to us; that the covenant is made sure forever in the resurrection of David’s Son; and that Your plans of mercy are higher than ours, so that You abundantly pardon all who turn to You. Help us to believe that the gospel really is as free as You have said, and not to measure Your grace by the smallness of our own. Let Your word, going out among us, not return to You empty, but accomplish all that You intend, until the last thorn of the curse is gone, and all creation sings; through Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the living water and the risen Son of David, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.