I wonder if you have given any thought to what makes our relationship with the Lord strong? What makes it durable when other relationships around us crumble stale bread?
These are questions that I believe the Israelites agonized, and wrestled with, over generations.
For while they cannot open their scriptures as we do today, we know that the Israelites gathered together in families to share God’s message. We know that they gathered as worshipping bodies and listened intently. We know that their ancestors told the stories of how God made a covenant with Father Abraham, how He was faithful to that covenant in the life of Joseph while he dwelt in Egypt even as the journey started off on a frightening path.
These same Hebrews shared their stories of walking on the dry ground of the Red Sea and how at the sound of the trumpets the walls of Jericho fell. The anointing of King David and promise of the Messiah to come… these are their stories of how the relationship with God was made and kept.
Time and again, God stepped in and acted as only God can in the lives of His people.
And I know that each of you know these stories—and many more just like them that bring color and passion to the relationship that you have with God. For like the Hebrews of old, you learned these stories of God’s faithfulness in Sunday School. They were taught to you as we taught them to the children at Bible School—passed on from generation to generation.
A faithful God who made and kept His promises to be with us always even if God’s very people chose unfaithfulness.
So as Isaiah 55 is read before these same people, people who lived in exile and wondered, “Where is God now?” or “When will God hear my prayers,” we can imagine that they wondered about the faithfulness of their God. They might even wonder, ‘Hasn’t this gone on long enough, Lord?’
For if you are so faithful, if you answer our prayers and preserve us, then why are we living in this moment? A question that I think we have also asked God a time or two in the life that each of us live. Perhaps Isaiah 55 offers us an answer to this relational question and struggle.
Move 1- relationships take time.
A first lesson that we can learn from Isaiah 55 as we seek to understand our relationship with God, and the promises that God makes and keeps, is that a relationship with the Lord takes time.
Humanity is not good at a patient, deliberate, practices. As we often witness, we want things to work out right now… in our way. But building a relationship with God, and nurturing it, takes time.
This time element that Isaiah references in his imagery is not the length of a past or a momentary inciting incident. But as God is ever-present, ever-faithful, the Lord is not burdened by our intense need to fix or to have everything right now.
Perhaps you are like me in this… for I like right now. If I am thirsty today, at any point in our service, I can reach under this pulpit and pick up my cup and get something to drink. This is an instantaneous response to my desire. Google works the same way, as does much of our shopping industry.
But when described a relationship with the Lord, it often feels as natural as a hand in a glove. It just fits. Our relationship with God can feel equally natural, relaxed, like it has always been in this moment—and always will be. Using Isaiah’s imagery consider the ever-present snow or rain that waters the earth and brings forth new life. We might get two or three inches of rain in a few minutes this summer, but for that water to sink in, do we need a soaker of a rain. A slow, methodical, consistent rain that pours down upon us for a long period of time.
In this way, the image reminds us that rain/snow is not an immediate response to a need.
Much like any fad or resolution that we see in our day. They come and they go. But I wonder how many of those ‘ice bucket challenges’ endure year after year? But God’s word endures always. God’s promises do. Our relationship with God will. The Lord made these promises, and God intends to honor and keep them. The scriptures testify to this fact.
The word Isaiah uses to support this idea is found in verse 11 where the prophet says, ‘so shall my word be that goes out.’ Isaiah attributes these words to God and not to himself or to another person.
“My Word.” This speaks directly to the idea of divine proclamation. Not human words that claims to speak for God or about God or reference God in the past. No, this is God speaking for Himself alone in a way that only can do. God’s word and voice are ever-present, and this very word that Isaiah writes was recorded all the way back in Genesis 11.
Elements of time invested in the relationship with the Lord and elements of God’s Word being spoken by God since the very beginning as a demonstration that God is doing His part to offer the relationship, we must reciprocate and patiently comes to the Lord.
Move 2- Relationships do not come back empty.
A second idea relates in verse 11 to the next thing that God says, “It [my word] shall not return to me empty.”
The idea of emptiness that God says here is in direct opposition to the very faithfulness of God—how God is and how God always will be. If I asked you to quantify the faithfulness of God, to tell me or someone else how big it is, now take the idea and completely reverse it. Flip it around. This is the meaning of empty here.
This then defines how deep God’s faith in us, and His commitment to a relationship with us is. Even if, and as, we wax and wane in our faithfulness to the Lord and to His Word, and even when we think how clever we are in the moments of our day as if by some miracle we have re-invented the relational wheel, God is so much more than we can conceive of. He will never be empty and always offer us more than we realize. Always and forever.
God Word shall not, will not, cannot be emptied by us.
Move 3- relationship bring out joy.
Finally, our relationship with God, and our acknowledgment of the faithful promises of God in His word, brings only one response: Joy.
This concept is written for us in verse 12 and following. Just are relationships take time to grow and reach what God intends for them. Joy can take time; joy take perspective. The perspective to look around and see that, even if we live in exile as the Israelites did, God made promises to be with us and the Lord is faithful and will not leave us behind.
Our relationship with the Lord will grow if we hold fast to His Word and to the promises that He made in it for us. the growth and maturity in that relationship takes place because it is founded in God’s faithfulness to us and not on what we bring to the table with God or how hard we work in an attempt to demonstrate a level of faithfulness that God is not looking for from us.
The Word of the Lord states this clearly. His promises, which have been written down and shared for so many generations stand as proof, reliable proof, and therefore the Lord’s will is accomplished as we, to use the image from last week, just accept the Yoke of the Lord and walk with Jesus consistently. Daily.
And because we make this choice we, to use the words of Romans 8, are no longer condemned. We are no longer outside of God. This is just another way to conceive of a broken relationship with God that is not durable and shows no evidence of the promises of God at work in our lives. We are welcomed into fellowship with the Lord. We are held secure by God and in His Word for we have invested the time, we have made the space, for God.
This then leads to the appropriate response which is the joyful sharing of promises of God into the lives of other people.
Even if we find ourselves in an exiled moment. Can we take the Word in our hands and bring to mind the place where, even if life seems to hard or difficult in the moment, God’s faithful presence shows through?
Conclusion
Our relationship with the Lord is durable, it is long lasting, because God won’t leave us behind. Instead, he made promises and kept them for us. I wonder, how you might take God’s word in your hand and help others build and sustain their own relationship with the Lord?
DM
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