The Compassion of the Lord – A Messianic Prophecy

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.  Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?  Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.  Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.” –Isaiah 55:1-4 (ESV).

Beginning with Isaiah 54 and continuing through Isaiah 55, the prophet changes focus from the Suffering Servant and the vicarious sufferer, both of which the Lord Christ became in His life. Chapter 54 declares the eternal covenant of peace, with the invitation:  “Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back”:  lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes” (Isaiah 54:2).  He also told of the splendor of the kingdom and its domains:  “I will set your stones in antimony, and lay your foundations with sapphires.  I will make your pinnacles of agate, and your gates of carbuncles, and all your wall of precious stones”(Isaiah 54:11b-12).  Many, in anticipating the coming of the Ruling Messiah, saw this prophecy as His ushering in an age of prosperity and wealth.  Since they had endured much at the hands of oppressing nations, they would welcome restoration, with their holy city of Jerusalem rebuilt with the finest materials available.  But was God meaning a literal restoration of the kingdom of Israel, or did He intend this as a glimpse into the eternal city prepared in the heavens for the faithful?

The invitation that opens Isaiah 53 is all inclusive:  “Come, everyone who thirsts…”  God invites everyone to enter into His blessings  Who doesn’t have need for water?  Thirsting is a universal condition.  God’s invitation, therefore, is to everyone.  Urgent in tone and universal in scope, it leads to the need for an immediate decision to come to the Lord, as expressed in Isaiah 55:6-7:  “Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near; let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that He may have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”  When Jesus came to earth, he was moved with compassion on the crowds that followed him.  The miracle of  feeding the five thousand (recorded in all four gospels: Matthew 14:15, Mark 6:35, Luke 9:12, and John 6:1) and the four thousand (as recorded in Matthew 15:32 and Mark 8:1) led people to come to Jesus for the wrong causes, to expect a constant hand-out without working for what they received.  When the crowd followed Jesus, still expecting the miraculous feedings, he rebuked them for their motives, saying, “You seek me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loves, and were filled.  Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you, for on Him the Father, even God, has set his seal” (John 6-26-27, NAS).  Asking how they might do the works of God, Jesus answered, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (John 6:29).  Jesus’ word to them was a direct fulfillment of the invitation prophecy given by Isaiah.  Note the strong verbs in Isaiah’s invitation:  Come, come, come, listen, incline (your ear), hear!  And all of these are actions prior to receiving “the food which endures to eternal life” which the Messiah gives to us.  We must come, first; then listen diligently, then hear and accept!  The actions  demanded by these verbs also precede a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy in 54:13:  “All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.”

Prayer:  Lord, especially at Christmas time when we are prone to join in the secular rush of the season, help us to hear Your plea to “Come…take of the water of life.”  Let us “hear, that our soul may live!”Amen.

Jesus: The Bread of Life

“Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” –John 6:35 (ESV).

Jesus made seven “I Am…” statements that defined His identity and His work.  “I am the bread of life” is the first of the seven.   It follows closely in time after His miraculous feeding the five thousand with five barley loaves and two fish.  The crowd followed Him to the other side of the lake the next day, no doubt expecting to be fed again.  When no food service was provided that day, the crowd began to disperse and many who at first seemed to follow as disciples also turned away from Him.  Jesus is the “Bread of Life” in that He nourishes people spiritually and satisfies the deep spiritual longings of their souls.  The manna provided from heaven to the Israelites during the forty years of their wilderness wanderings was physical food.  We might say it also provided some spiritual food as well, for the provision of it demonstrated that God wanted them to live and that He was giving them sustenance under extremely hard circumstances.  The provision also freed the Israelites from worry about where their next meal would come from.  They often complained about the manna, but as long as they followed God’s directions, they had adequate food for each day.  But Jesus was a new kind of manna come down from the Father.  He provided for a deep spiritual hunger to know God and to have that spiritual hunger satisfied.  The “Bread” Jesus gives is His flesh (John 6:51), with reference to His death on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of all mankind.  Jesus often taught by using literal objects to represent or be symbols of spiritual truth.  When the Bread (Jesus Himself) is our spiritual food, He is all-sufficient for our spiritual hunger.  We need not look any further to be filled.  To partake of the Bread He offers satisfies the inborn spiritual hunger that we as humans have.  As St. Augustine stated, “Thou, O God, Hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”  And as Jesus taught us:  “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.  I am the bread of life” (John 6:47-48).  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever” (John 6;51).

Jesus gave us a symbolic way of remembering that He is the Bread of Life.  Each time we participate in the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, we are recalling that the bread represents His body that was given as a sacrifice for our sins on the cross.  The wine is symbolic of His blood that was spilled, for “without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22b).  When Jesus says He is “the Bread of Life” he is using bread, a familiar and necessary material object, to teach a deep spiritual truth.  We receive bread into our bodies and it helps to sustain life because it nourishes our need for food.  Receiving Jesus into our life gives us both eternal life hereafter  and abundant life while still upon earth.  Comparing the manna which the children of Israel received in the wilderness to Jesus, the Bread of life we see by contrast how Jesus was the ultimate manna, the true Bread of Life:  Manna met a physical need; Jesus meets spiritual needs eternally.  Manna sustained physical life; Jesus gives eternal life.  Manna was for one nation, Israel; Jesus is for the whole world, “whoever believes.”  Manna lasted during the wilderness wanderings; the Bread of Life is from Adam to the end of time and beyond.  Manna came at no cost; Jesus paid the supreme price, giving His very life.  Manna delayed physical death; Jesus conquered spiritual death.  God sent a gift of daily sustenance; God sent the perfect gift to be the perfect sacrifice.  As we eat our daily bread and especially as we partake of the Lord’s Supper when we observe it at church, let us thank God for Jesus, the Bread of Life, and how He meets and satisfies our deepest spiritual hunger.  He can do this because He is the Bread of Life.

The True Foundation for Building a Life

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been found on the rock.  And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.  And the rain fell , and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.  And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at His teachings, for He was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.” –Matthew 7:24-29 (ESV).

In completing the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave a memorable parable of building on the right foundation to tell His hearers that those who heard and heeded His words would have a firm base for living a good and righteous life.  The evidence of whether one is truly a believer is the way he practices the teachings of Jesus.  The bedrock on which to build a life is the teachings of the Lord.  To illustrate and draw His point to a memorable close, Jesus gave the parable of the wise man building a house on a rock.  Whatever came to buffet that house, it still stood because it was erected on a solid foundation.  But if the building is not on a solid foundation, if it is built upon the sand, it will shift about and fall in the storms.  If a believer follows unsound doctrine and does not build on solid foundations, he cannot stand when pounded about by various “isms” and faulty religious beliefs.

The sandy soil around the Sea of Galilee was solid on the surface, but it was not good for building upon unless the builder dug down until he struck bedrock to set his foundation.  Only then could he erect a building that would withstand the strong winds and storm squalls that came erratically across the waters and beat upon whatever was built upon the land.  Likewise, in building a framework for our belief system, we must not build upon superficial pretense and unstable religious foundations.  Only the bedrock of truth will suffice to weather our faith through all sorts of stormy life situations.  Again we are reminded of Jesus’ firm statement: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no man comes to the Father except through me”  (John 14:6).  When some who had been following Jesus turned away and followed Him no longer, He asked the twelve, “Will you also go away?”  Peter said:  “”Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68-69). 

Notice something unusual as we end our thoughts on the Sermon on the Mount.  As he began this teaching, Jesus took his disciples apart from the crowds and began to teach them (we assume, the twelve).  But recorded here as He ends the discourse, Matthew tells us that as He concludes these sayings, “the crowds were astonished for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.”  Evidently others, “crowds,” joined that inner circle as Jesus continued through His teachings that we call the “Sermon on the Mount.”  Is that not indicative of how the truth of the gospel attracts people?  And as we live out the gospel in our own lives, as our foundation is established firmly and we build our own lives upon it, people are attracted to what we have as our stabilizing influence and they will ask us what we have.  We can then say:  “Come to Jesus and learn of Him.  What He has given to me, He wants to give to you, likewise.”