An Invitation Like No Other

Come to the free banquet. Instead he says come by without money. Come by without cost even though you got nothing in your pocket. And the paradox highlights something that you need to hear. This feast of grace that God is inviting you to, over and over again, it's free and it's incredibly expensive. It's free and someone paid the ultimate price for this.

You're not just like, "Hey, come get the free food." You're coming at an incredible price tag. This is what the servant is doing. The servant is the one who's inviting us. Why do you think he puts it that way? Because he's paid for this. He's paid this incredible price so that we can come to the feast. He's taken what is poisonous and death to us so that we can come and eat on the fatness and be satisfied.

---

This is Christ the King Sermons. Christ the King Sermons is a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church located in Raleigh, North Carolina. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh.

Good morning. So good to see you all here this morning. Welcome. My name is Geoff Bradford. I'm senior pastor here. It's good to be with you after being sick last week. I was really grateful for Pastor Mike Parnell from Temple Baptist filling in for me last week, last minute. Like many of y'all, I've hit the flu season and I'm better but, man, it was rough this year. So really grateful for him.

Staff Transitions

Before we turn to God's word I have a couple of announcements that have to do with our staff. I want to announce two staff transitions that are happening the end of this month.

First is our intern, Ben Mitchell. Ben, where are you this morning? Are you here somewhere? Would you stand up? Yeah. Ben and Julia are moving to Pittsburgh early April, being relocated for work for her. Really happy for her for this provision. We're going to miss him. He's been part of our staff since this summer and he will be finishing out his internship the last couple of months through June, hopefully at a church there in Pittsburgh. So you can pray for them in their move and help them out if you like to pack boxes and those kinds of things too, I'm sure they would take the help.

The other transition, and I'm really happy sad about this, Cece Robinson who has served as our church administrator and served on staff for ten years is also transitioning and ending her time with us at the end of this month. We're really happy for Lee. He got a big job promotion. He's commuting to Chapel Hill. That means childcare makes this really hard for her to continue and she has been an incredible part of our church staff and you have no idea, I can promise you.

I'm so grateful for Cece, and the things that she's brought to our staff over the years have been this real sense of caring for people. People really matter to Cece and she's put together our HR policy, she's put together child protection policies, there's a lot of things that have happened kind of behind the scenes that are directly a result of her work and I really want to honor her. So if you would join me in giving thanks to Cece. Lee's great too, we love Lee, but if you will tell her kids how awesome she is, tell them that they have an awesome mom.

I'm going to pray for our staff. Times of transition in staff are hard on a church because it's a weird thing of: are you employed or are you part of a family? And I know that y'all feel that. That's what happens with church staff. And so I want to pray for both the Mitchells as they move and also give thanks for Cece.

Would you bow your heads with me?

Father, we thank you. Thank you for the staff that you've given our church. I thank you for amazing people that I get to work with every day. Lord, I want to lift up Ben and Julia. Thank you, Father, for his internship this year. We pray for them as they move to Pittsburgh that you would give them a great church home. We pray, Father, for them as she starts a new job, as he finishes out his internship. Lord, I pray for them, for his seminary studies. Lord, have your hand on them. Encourage them. Bless them. We pray that someday they would be back here and we thank you, Father, for them.

And Lord, we lift up Cece Robinson. Thank you, Father, for her, for her faithfulness to this church body, faithfulness to the staff here, the way that she has served in many ways behind the scenes and has really provided such a skeleton of health for our church. So many ways that it functions well because of Cece. Lord, we pray for her and Lee, thank you for this job promotion for Lee, thank you Father for their family. We pray that you would encourage them and bless them as they're in this new phase of life.

We pray, Father, all these things in Christ's name. Amen.

We're going to turn our attention to God's word.

We are in the book of Isaiah for Lent and we're looking at the last section of the book of Isaiah, which is often called the suffering servant songs: Isaiah 40 through 66. We're going to turn our attention to Isaiah chapter 55, verses one through three and six through 13. This is on page 635 if you follow along in the Bibles in the pew. Let's read God's word aloud together.

Ho, 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? Hearken diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in fatness. 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. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have mercy on him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, says the Lord. For as high as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and return not thither but water the earth making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace. The mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress, instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle, and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial and for an everlasting sign which shall not be cut off. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. — Isaiah 55:1-3, 6-13

Would you pray with me? Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. Lord, you are our rock and our fortress and our redeemer. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

An Incredible Invitation

So in 2016, the Ibarra family posted an invitation on Facebook for their daughter's Quinceanera—fifteenth birthday party—in La Jolla, Mexico. Her name's Ruby, and Ruby's mom took a video of Ruby's dad saying everybody's welcome. Then he goes on to explain what the Quinceanera would be like. They have some bands playing, lots of food, there'd even be a horse race as part of this, which is part of the tradition of their family. But when Ruby's mom posted the invitation on Facebook, she accidentally made it public, and you can guess what happened. Overnight, the invitation went viral. 1.2 million people RSVP'd for Ruby's Quinceanera, and this became a big thing in Mexico. All these memes appeared, fake flyers appeared all over the town advertising giant bands that of course would never be there. Even local businesses got in on the act, and there was an ad campaign with one of Mexico's airlines, Interjet, asking, "Are you going to Ruby's Quinceanera?" and giving discount tickets to La Jolla, the state that she's from—30% off.

But rather than call it off, Mister Ibarra got on Facebook and said, "Look, we're going to accommodate anybody who comes." Twenty thousand people showed up. This was an incredible event. She's like a minor celebrity in Mexico.

That's a great invitation story, right? But that invitation story has nothing on this passage. This is the most famous invitation passage in the Bible. This is one of those—I feel like it's preaching through this gorgeous poetry of the Bible. It's some of the most warm, welcoming words from God toward people. An incredible invitation.

The Suffering Servant

So Isaiah 40 through 66, if you pick up your Bible, I want you to know what you're doing with this section. Isaiah 40 through 66 highlights the work and the words of this mysterious figure called the suffering servant. The servant appears over and over. There are four sections that are specifically about the servant, but all the words around all these sections are about God sending this mysterious figure who would come and make everything right, who would restore all these things.

The early church, right after the resurrection, immediately recognized this section and said, "All right, here. All of this is about Jesus." People didn't recognize what was happening, but Jesus steps into this role and fulfills all these words surrounding the suffering servant. So we're going to walk through these words, these kind of greatest hit passages.

I mean, baby Christians all over the world have underlined sections from Isaiah 40 through 66 because they're some of the most clear, some of the most beautiful, some of the most heartwarming and encouraging promises of all the Bible. And they're all fulfilled in Christ. So today, three headings really briefly. We're going to look at the invitation, the confrontation, and then the celebration. So let's look at God's beautiful invitation.

Did you notice the passage begins with the word "ho"? I know that's not a word we use regularly. We were in Philadelphia for a long time so "yo," that one's one we use a lot but that's kind of what's happening here. The suffering servant is like "yo, listen up." I remember years ago my boys were taking swim lessons and they had this swim instructor who had this little phrase he would drop all the time: "Yo, yo, yo, listen up, listen up!" And it was very effective. Like all the kids would be like, "Okay, yeah, you know whatever he has to say." That's what the suffering servant is here. Yo. Yo. Yo. Listen up. Listen up. And then he turns and says, come. Three times. Come. The invitation, come. Come to this feast. Come be satisfied. Come eat and drink. Come be filled. That phrase there about delighting yourself in fatness—I heard some of you laugh at that but in ancient times, fat was a luxury. I mean that's really important for you to survive and to thrive. So they look like, this is a picture of this abundant feast that God's inviting his people to. But they're written to a group of people who were starving.

The Context of Isaiah

We don't recognize sometimes when we open our Bibles what we're reading, the context. The book of Isaiah has basically two big sections. Chapters one through 39 and chapters 40 through 66 and they both correspond to essentially the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom of Israel. People don't remember this but after David, his son Solomon was king and then after that the kingdom split in two. It was like a civil war—there were 10 kingdoms up in the North and there were two tribes in the South and they never reunited.

So, the first half of this book, chapters one through 39, are all the words of Isaiah to the Northern Kingdom. They had abandoned God and he says, "The Assyrians, God is going to punish you. God is going to remove you," and in 722 BC, that's exactly what happened. So, the first half of this book is a complete downer. It's full of woe and warnings. But the second half of the book is written centuries later to another group of people, the Southern Kingdom.

The Southern Kingdom had been taken away in 586 BC by a different empire, the Babylonians—modern Iraq. Nebuchadnezzar and all that crew came in, wiped out the country, destroyed the temple, destroyed the walls, took the cream of the crop, all the leaders. This is what we read in the book of Daniel. Took them far away to Babylon in captivity—the whole nation under house arrest.

So, here's a people. These words in Isaiah 55 are written to a people under house arrest, far away from home. They are far from their gardens, their livestock, their vineyards. They have no control over what they eat. This is a people who are probably malnourished. They are under the bidding and control of the Babylonians. And can you imagine these words? "Come and eat. Come and be satisfied. Come to this rich banquet that God is laying out to you." And you know these people are like, "Yeah. I'm starving."

You ever been in class or in a meeting on a Zoom call and you're sitting there and your stomach starts to rumble? It's one of the more embarrassing things. But it starts to rumble and it's a sign you're hungry or your stomach's upset. Well, the ancient Greeks had a great word for this. It's an onomatopoeia. You ready? It's borbargmus. B-O-R-B-A-R-Y-G-M-U-S. Borbargmus. Can you say that? It sounds like what it is. Your stomach is going borbargmus. Right? Yeah, that's what it's doing.

Spiritually speaking, we are people whose lives are characterized by borbargmus. And we're starving. And so often we don't know it. We're hungry but do we even really know sometimes what we're hungry for? I mean, you ever go to the fridge and you open it up and you look around, you close it, you're like, "There's nothing in there." Well, there was stuff in there but you don't know what you're hungry for, and spiritually speaking that is us. What would slake our thirst? What would give us delight? What would fill us? People have no idea.

That's why these words from God are so powerful:

Why do you spend your money on what isn't bread and your labor on what doesn't satisfy? — Isaiah 55:2

You're starving but you don't even know what you're hungry for.

Gene Peterson, in his version called The Message, puts it this way: "Why do you spend your money on junk food? Your hard earned money on cotton candy? Listen to me, listen well, eat only the best, fill yourself with the finest."

Do you know there are 14,000 different varieties of mushrooms and counting? Of those, only a few dozen types are edible. You can go out in the woods and find lots of mushrooms, but I don't recommend eating them. The danger is, unless you're very well trained, distinguishing between what is good for you and a delicacy and what will kill you is often nearly impossible—they look almost identical.

Good mushrooms add to a meal. I know some of you don't like them, but they're the best, right? Good mushrooms add this richness of flavor. Poisonous mushrooms? Not so much.

God is saying to his people: Can you discern? Can you discern what is good and a delicacy and what's poisonous to you? Do you have any idea what will satisfy? What will fill your soul? Unless—this is what God is saying—unless it's me. Unless your life is filled up with me, unless you're delighting yourself in me, you're going to starve to death. You're going to continue to take in poison. There are going to be things that you're hungry for that will hurt you. And of course I'm not talking about food. All kinds of things we take in in this life that don't satisfy. Empty calories, junk food, not filling you, not satisfying you.

And here's the suffering servant saying: "Yo, yo, yo, listen up, listen up. Come. This is what God has for you. This is the abundance of the feast that God has for you."

But notice there's something weird about this feast. There's a paradox to it. Do you notice that? It's weird how this is stated. The servant says, "Come, buy food but without money. You buy without money. Buy wine and milk even though you're penniless." It's a contradiction. It doesn't make any sense.

It's a true story, though. The reason I may be a Presbyterian pastor is because of free food. When I was a freshman in college, there was a country church outside of Davidson called Shearer Presbyterian, halfway between Davidson and Mooresville, and they had a potluck once a month. As a college kid in exile, I was starving, right? And it's all this home cooked food, and I was there every time. I was at the front of the line, I'll be honest. I may be a Presbyterian pastor because of free food.

But that's not what this is talking about. Isaiah 55 isn't about free food. It's something bizarre. The servant could say, "Yo, yo, come to the free banquet." Instead he says, "Come, buy without money. Come, buy without cost even though you got nothing in your pocket." And the paradox highlights something that you need to hear: This feast of grace that God is inviting you to, over and over again, it's free and it's incredibly expensive. It's free and someone paid the ultimate price for this.

You're not just like, "Hey, come get the free food." You're coming at an incredible price tag. This is what the servant is doing. The servant is the one who's inviting us. Why do you think he puts it that way? Because he's paid for this. He's paid this incredible price so that we can come to the feast. He's taken what is poisonous and death to us so that we can come and eat on the fatness and be satisfied.

You know, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, there's this scene where Harry and Dumbledore, his mentor, are going to figure out how to defeat the bad guy, Lord Voldemort, who is destroying everything and is all about death and destruction. Voldemort has put parts of his own soul in all these little places called Horcruxes. They've got to go destroy each one. So they go to this island, and as they're crossing the water, the water is filled with zombies. They come to this creepy cave in the middle of the Black Lake. There's a little stand filled with clear liquid and a cup.

They quickly realize somebody is going to have to drink the poison so we can get to the bottom of this water. And so Dumbledore begins to take cup after cup. He's in anguish. You can tell it's killing him. He's drinking pure poison. And it's immediately having an effect. He's dehydrated. He's writhing in anguish and full of pain. He's desperately thirsty even as he comes to the bottom and takes all the poison for us. For Harry.

This is really a picture of what Jesus does for us. Jesus comes.

This is why we can come to the feast of grace because Jesus comes and in the Garden of Gethsemane, the last night of his life, he begs his father, "Lord, Father, let this cup pass from me, but not what I will but you will." What cup is he talking about? He's not talking about communion. There is, over and over, pictured for us in the Old Testament a picture of God's wrath as an overflowing cup of poison. And what happens in the garden is Jesus makes that decision to submit himself to the will of the father and drink that cup of wrath for sin to the dregs—to take every bit of it.

You can see this the next day on the cross. Jesus is writhing in agony and he cries out, "I thirst." And he's taking into himself the poison of this world, the sin, the death, the wrath of God. And so what is left for you is to come to a feast. It's been paid for. You're invited to come to the banquet of grace. Come and delight and fill yourself because he has taken away all, extracted all the poison. And what's left for you is God's abundance, God's kindness, God's goodness. That's the invitation.

The Flip Side: Confrontation

But closely related to this, and on the flip side, is God's confrontation. Did you notice how this passage shifts very quickly from "come, yo, yo, yo, come" to this challenge? These words of challenge, these words of confrontation.

You know we sing this song in our church regularly. It's "Come Ye Sinners." It was written by a pastor, Joseph Hart, in the seventeen hundreds in London. And he kind of captures this whole passage in words that we sing regularly:

Come ye needy, come and welcome,
God's free bounty glorify,
True belief and true repentance
Every grace that brings you nigh
Without money, without money
Come to Jesus Christ and buy.

It's from Isaiah 55. It's an invitation—come. And yet it also has an underside to it. Did you hear that? True belief and true repentance. There's something about coming to this invitation that also means confrontation—confrontation of what's wrong on the inside of me and what's wrong on the inside of you.

It gives way in verses one through five to these verses in six through nine:

Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked man forsake his way, the unrighteous one his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have mercy on him and our God that he will abundantly pardon. For your my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. As heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts than your thoughts. — Isaiah 55:6-9

This season of the church calendar, Lent, is a time where Christians all throughout the world look inward. We take time, we sort of pause. We've been doing this for years in our church—we did seven deadly sins years ago. We take time during the season and think about our hearts. We look on the inside and we begin to think about why do I do the things that I do? What's really ruling me? And what often comes out are things that we don't want to see.

I claim to love God. I don't really love God that much. I claim to love the things of God. I don't really. I don't love to pray. I don't love to worship. I don't love to serve the Lord. There's things in us that are wrong.

We used in our confession this morning part of a line from the English Book of Common Prayer, and it talks about two types of sin: "I haven't done the things I should have done, and I've done the things I know I shouldn't have done." The passive things that I didn't do and the active things that I did do that were wrong.

But in the English Book of Common Prayer, it adds one more line, and it's a hard one. It goes like this: "and there is no health in us."

There's something about confessing that that's really stark to say: "there is no health in us." How do you hear those words? Do those sound offensive to you? I mean, they should. I think most people feel like "there's no health in us"—that's kind of overstated. I mean, I know some things in my life need to be tweaked. Like, nobody's perfect, right? Yeah, sure, there's some areas for improvement. But this statement—like I'm that far off that there's no health in us? But this is the posture that the servant calls us to.

Seek the Lord where he may be found. Draw near to him. Look inside. Be honest about what's really real inside of you. I don't do the things I should do. I do the things I shouldn't do, and there's no health in me. This is an invitation to repentance, to come. It's the confrontation of God. Come. Hear what God has to say about what's really wrong with us on the inside. Come to the banquet, but also hear the confrontation.

I saw this interview several years ago with a comedian who's living in New York at the time. He adopted this 75-pound dog and lived in a tiny apartment. So he takes the dog to the vet. The dog kind of checks out, but the vet says, "You got to be careful with this breed."

This breed, if it eats chocolate, it's dead. There's not much time. So if this dog ingests chocolate, you need to get some hydrogen peroxide and get the dog to drink the hydrogen peroxide really quickly before it digests the chocolate and you'll have a chance.

Six months go by, he's sort of forgotten about this. He has some guests in his apartment. He comes in one day and finds a wrapper on the floor—it's for a bar of chocolate—and realizes, oh no, my dog has found a bar of chocolate that one of my guests left somewhere low enough and he's eaten the whole thing.

So he runs and grabs the leash. The dog's excited—we're going on a walk, right? And he heads out the apartment, goes down the street to the CVS, ties the dog up outside, runs in, and gets hydrogen peroxide. And it comes out and it's like, wait, how do I get a dog to drink hydrogen peroxide? So he starts pouring the hydrogen peroxide on the dog's mouth, which sneezes and pushes him away. Then he realizes, oh, I've gotta hold the dog down. So he puts the dog in a headlock and he's trying to pour it. The dog is snarling and biting at him. There's a crowd of people gathering. He begins to punch his dog to try to get the dog to open up. And he finally does save the dog's life. The hydrogen peroxide goes in, the dog's okay.

But I think about that story. I thought it was hilarious at the time, but I wonder what that story was like from the perspective of the dog. Like, I've had a great day. I had chocolate. We're going for a walk. I mean, he's really excited. We're running down the sidewalk, and then suddenly I'm getting beaten up by my owner. He is holding me down and punching me and forcing me to drink something.

Or think about that perspective from the vantage point of people all around him. They're like, what is this guy doing? He's trying to kill his dog. This man is trying to drown a dog. But in reality, what is this man doing? He's trying to save his dog's life.

I wonder sometimes if the Lord, in his kindness, when he exposes things in our lives—if they don't feel to us like violence, like God is against me, God is trying to hurt me, God is not being kind to me in this moment. We see what's on the inside. The confrontation with what's within is something nobody wants. And yet God in his kindness is like, I know what you need. If you continue on this pathway, that's the way to death. This is the way to life. And it's going to involve repentance. It's going to involve something that's hard. My ways are not like your ways. My ways are way higher than your ways.

I want you to think about this this morning. Seek the Lord. The invitation from this: seek the Lord while he may be found. It's the kindness of God when he invites us to repent.

I'm guessing that there are things in our lives right now that we're taking into ourselves unthinking, and they're death. They are not good for us. They are not promoting life in us. They're empty calories or at worst, they're poison and they're hurting us. And we're like, well, there are some things that need to be tweaked. I can improve in some ways. But God's like, no. I want to give you life. I want to produce health in you.

What's keeping you from coming to the Lord this morning? This invitation is such an incredible invitation, and it's new every day—to come, feast on grace, seek the Lord while he may be found.

Celebration

Last here is celebration. The end of this passage is glorious—all these pictures of God bringing wholeness and healing in a place where there was death before.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and return not thither but water the earth and make it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread theither, so my word will be. It goes forth from my mouth. It shall not accomplish, return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose.

This picture of fruitfulness. It's also a picture of joy.

You'll go out in joy and be led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills before you will break into singing. The trees of the field shall clap their hands.

This picture of all creation rejoicing and thriving.

Instead of the thorns shall come up the cypress. Instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle. It shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign which shall not be cut off.

All these briars and thorns removed and this beauty springing up in its place. This is what God is inviting us to. What's going to keep you from coming to the party this morning?

Think back to Ruby and her quinceanera. A lot of people saw that online—one point two million people, of course, this is a joke. But what did the father say? Remember what Ruby's father said?

He invited anybody who came. He's like, we will accommodate anybody who comes. Twenty people out of 1.2 million showed up. I wonder if we hear sometimes coming into church and you hear the words about God's goodness, his forgiveness, his love, his cleansing, and you're like, yeah, it's too good to be true. Overstated, not for me. Don't discount that this morning. If Ruby's dad meant it, how much more your heavenly father? Come and receive. The abundance of grace is yours and it's renewed every day. You'll never run out of it.

Let's pray together. Father, we pray this morning for boldness to take you at your word about how good you are, how much you love your people, how desperately you want to give us this banquet of joy, of celebration. Lord, we also pray for courage this day to look within and see where there is no health in us. Father, help us to repent, to let go of things that are destroying us, that are poisoning us. Father, we pray that we would come with open hands this morning and receive again your goodness, your graciousness, your provision for your people. Come cleanse us. Lord, come during this time when we come around this table. Renew in us the joy of our salvation. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.