“The Word Accomplishes God’s Desire” Isaiah 55:6-11

In C.S. Lewis’s book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he tells the tale of a prince of Narnia who goes in search of a group of knights who sailed east of Narnia and had not been seen since. The voyage takes them to strange places and amazing adventures before they get to the place where they can go no further.

In one of the adventures, the ship comes upon a place shrouded in darkness. Being courageous men, a group from the ship takes one of the landing craft and begins to row into the darkness. They are quickly surrounded by the darkness, where their light barely penetrates, and their ears hear strange noises.

They come upon a boat with a man in it. He’s half-crazed with fright, and it quickly becomes apparent that he is one of the missing knights. The crew asks him what’s ahead, and he tells them it is a land where all their dreams come true.

At first, this excites the crew and they begin to talk about rowing more quickly to this amazing island. But the long-lost knight stops them in their tracks when he reminds them that it is not the land of all their greatest wishes coming true, but the land of all their dreams coming true.

The crew considers what the knight has said, and then the full impact of his words takes hold. They remember the nightmares and the strange dreams, and it is immediately decided to row away as fast as possible from this evil land.

I think if given the chance almost everyone of us would welcome the chance to live in a place where all our daydreams and fantasies would come true, but the truth of the matter is we do not live in a place like that nor are we ever going to live in such a place. At least not in this lifetime.

But while our hopes and wishes may not always come to fruition here, we do live in a land and a time where God’s desires are always fulfilled. We live in a time and place where God’s desire is always at the front. And we can walk in confidence because we live in a place where God’s word is always accomplishing His desires.

Central Truth: Because the Word is consistent with God, it fulfills God’s desire.

The Word accomplishes God’s desire because:

1. It brings us to Him (6-7)

There are those who say, and perhaps you have heard this, that the God of the Old Testament is a God of judgment, while the God of the New Testament is a God of love. Maybe you believe it. After all, the Old Testament is filled with stories of God’s judgment raining down on the condemned people.

But look past that, and the love of God is also evident in the Old Testament. See the way He dealt with Adam and Eve; they were removed from the Garden of Eden not as a punishment, but as a precaution. God wanted them removed from the Tree of Life in order that they would not spend an eternity under the influence of sin.

And look at the way God showed great patience to the people of Israel as He brought them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. The warnings that were given through the various prophets were not words of doom and gloom, but efforts by God to bring His people to repentance and forgiveness. Look what happened at Nineveh when they heard the message from Jonah.

God’s love and grace is evident throughout the Old Testament. This passage has a shining example of that loving grace as we look at vs. 6-7. These verses are an invitation to the people to return to God, to repent and be saved. The promise of these verses is that if the people will genuinely seek the Lord with genuine repentance that they would receive mercy and pardon.

It should also be noted that the invitation is not open-ended. God does set an unspecified limit on the offer. Have you seen those TV ads that say if you call in within the next 15 minutes, they’ll give you not one but two of their products at no additional cost, except for postage and handling? And you see that same ad over a period of months, always with the same promise and enticement. We have to ask ourselves, what’s the rush in calling in within the next 15 minutes? The offer will be good again the next time the ad runs.

That’s not the case with God. He adds the qualifier “while He may be found, while He is near.” The implication is that God will not always be near—that the time to seek the Lord is not always available. There are two schools of thought on the unpardonable sin—the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Most agree that this sin is the rejection of the Spirit, of telling Him no when we come under conviction. The disagreement comes on when is it too late to repent? There are those who say we can only blaspheme the Holy Spirit when we die without repentance; others hold that the Spirit will not always convict, that there will come a time when the time to repent will pass. I hold to the latter belief. God sets a time for action, and we have the responsibility to respond to God during that time.

Look at the people of Israel as they waited to enter the Promised Land. They stood at Kadesh Barnea, listening to the report of the spies, and as they listened, they became frightened and angry. They were frightened at the report, and angry at Moses (and by extension God) for leading them to their doom. When the people stood at Kadesh Barnea, had the responded to Caleb and Joshua’s urging and gone into the land, they would have taken it by God’s grace and might. But they instead ignored God and rejected His promise. As a result, God condemned that generation to die out in the desert over the next 40 years.

Upon hearing this, the people repented and they went up to attack the first city. They expected God to honor His promise. Instead, the promise had been withdrawn to that generation, and they suffered a horrible drubbing at the hands of their enemies. The point? God has His time to do things; if we choose to ignore those times, then we suffer the consequences.

God wants us to seek Him and repent and find mercy and pardon. But He will not beg; He will not always extend the offer. God’s love is eternal, His patience is long. But God tells us He has limits to the offer. Today is the day to seek His favor; now is the time to respond to His calling.

The Word brings us to God, but we must respond as God instructs us to.

2. It reveals things we could never understand (8-9

Have you ever wondered what ants think about us? Consider the size of your average ant, and consider how much bigger we are than they. One of the things I enjoy doing is upsetting fire ant hives by stepping on them when I see them. I step and quickly move away but only far enough to watch them scurry around in a vain attempt to confront the one who has damaged their home.

Do the ants report to their queen, “I saw the whole thing. It was one of the giants that occasionally passes near us. He stepped on us and caused the havoc and harm we saw today.” Does the queen hear this and say to her followers, “Oh. Well, this was an act of the giant. It was the giant’s will.”

Or does she call to her advisers and ask them to explain what happened? Do the advisers give her all sorts of ant wisdom to explain away the damage and possible deaths that just happened? Do they explain away the person that stepped on their home? I know that none of them have asked me why I step on their homes. I’d tell them I don’t like them around my house or lawn and if they’d only move, I’d leave them alone.

Just as the fire ants are far below human reasoning and thought, so, too, are we beneath God’s thoughts and ideas. The difference is that God gives us His Word to tell us something of what He is thinking. God inspired Paul to write to the Corinthians that He gives us the Spirit to enable us to understand His ways (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:9-16). Just as He uses His Word to call us to Him, so He uses His Word to reveal His will to us.

There are many ways God shows us His will. He speaks to us as we pray, as we seek Him in prayer. He speaks to us through our brothers and sisters in Christ. He speaks to us through worship. And He speaks to us through the Scripture.

The important we need to keep in mind is that God is faithful, and by that I mean that God is consistent to Himself. He does not contradict Himself. If we sense God is speaking to us through friends, prayer or worship, we can verify it by the Bible. If what we believe God is telling us to do runs counter to what we find in Scripture, then we need to refigure what we believe He is saying.

I’m reminded of a story of a woman who left church and, as she got to her car, realized she had left her purse behind in the pew. She hurried back into the church to where she had been sitting, only to find the purse was missing. She finally found it in the hands of one of the ministers in the church. She explained the purse was hers and thanked him for holding her purse for her. As he returned it to her, he told her he saw the purse and removed it lest someone misinterpret the purse as an answer to their prayer.

Sometimes, we think God is telling us to do something because it’s what we want. Listen to the voice of God, read His Word and leave it in His hands. If it’s God’s will, He will direct our path and He will confirm His message to us.

3. God knows the Word’s purpose (10-11)

God uses a vivid image to remind us that His Word accomplishes its purpose. He uses the idea of precipitation upon the ground, how that rain and snow bring moisture to the land and, with the moisture, plant life is able to grow and prosper. The growing plants eventually turn to food for the hungry, and so nourishes us.

God’s Word, like the rain and snow, is preached in our world and in our lives and it achieves His purpose.

I was told of a church in North Carolina that was preparing to have a revival service in their church. A group of deacons in the church wanted the revival to be successful, so they covenanted together to pray every day leading up and during the revival to gather and pray for the revival to have a deep effect on their community and state.

The revival came. The men were faithful in their prayers. At the end of the week of revival, only one person had come forward to be saved. He was a skinny, 16-year-old kid more interested in baseball than God up until that revival.

There are those who would say the men’s prayers went unanswered regarding that revival. That is, until you learn the name of that one teenager was Billy Graham.

You see, God sent out His Word into that church and community. He brought that faithful evangelist to the church, and He gave that evangelist the messages to speak. And He brought that boy into the church to hear the Word of the Lord. Because God had a plan. God knew He wanted to share His gospel all over the world, and He knew the person He had in mind. True, Billy Graham could have walked away, but God would have raised someone else up to tell the world of God’s great love through His Son Jesus Christ.

God’s Word achieves its purpose. It is a promise, and all God’s promises are Yes in Jesus Christ (cf. 2 Corinthians 1:20).

Conclusion

“In the beginning was the Word and was Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (cf. Deuteronomy 8:3). And God’s Word fulfills His purpose.

We can be like the wise man who hears and does the Word of the Lord. Such a person can withstand the storms of life that threaten to destroy us and our lives. We can be like the foolish man who only hears but doesn’t do the Word. Such a person has no secure ground upon which to stand, and when life’s storms inevitably come, their world crumbles and falls.

If we are smart, if we are wise, we will hear the Word and do it. Let God fulfill His purpose in us, as a church and as individuals.