Isaiah 55:6-11
Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke“God’s Word Rains Down on Us”
Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
Sunday, July 16, 2023
“When it rains, it pours.” If you have said that, my guess would be it’s been in a context where challenging things were happening. And not just one or two, they were coming back-to-back and piling up. It felt like a rainstorm of trials dropping down on you. Your car broke down, then your child got sick, then you learned about the death of a loved one. The piling up of things gave you an exasperation and frustration was summed up with, “When it rains, it pours.”
But raining and pouring don’t have to be bad things. I would guess that many of you feel the way that I do. You know that it has been hot and dry in Tucson for a long time. You can feel in the morning that the humidity has crept up a bit. And you know what’s coming. It’s monsoon season. After no rain at all and plenty of heat, the monsoon storms absolutely dump water on us. Usually, in just a couple months, we receive as much as sixty percent of the rainfall we get for the entire year. When it rains, it pours. And that’s not a bad thing because we need that rain.
The reading that we are focusing on in our sermon today comes from just this sort of “when it rains it pours” situation for the people of Judah, the Southern Kingdom of the Israelites. God had been patient with his people for a time, actually for a long time. He had warned them repeatedly about their sins and the consequences of those sins. In particular, he had warned them not to forsake his ways and not to seek or worship or serve other gods—idols. At various times throughout their history, God had carried out punishments and chastisements. He had sent some sort of suffering with the intention of leading his people back to him. But the message that he sent with the prophet Isaiah was that even more was coming. The sufferings and punishments that sinful idolatry had deserved was soon to come raining down on them. Their cities would be destroyed. Their lives would be completely upended. And to top it all off, they would be carried off to captivity in the enemy nation of Babylon. When God’s judgment rained on them, it would pour.
But that’s not really the focus of our verses this morning. The section we are focusing on from Isaiah chapter 55 has a very positive note about what God was doing and what God would do for the people of Judah. He was raining his Word down on them. He had sent prophet after prophet after prophet, and at that time he was speaking to them through the prophet Isaiah. And don’t think that Isaiah’s prophecy was a little drizzle. It was a rainstorm. In our system of counting these things, Isaiah’s written prophecy extends for 66 chapters. You may even recall some of the good news moments that rain down from his pen and his tongue.
Of course, we’re not looking at these verses just to think about those Old Testament people and their circumstances and situations. We are looking at them because God is speaking to us in these words as well. He is telling us that God’s Word Rains Down on Us.
Seek the Lord while he may be found! Call on him while he is near! Let the wicked man abandon his way. Let an evil man abandon his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will show him mercy. Let him turn to our God, because he will abundantly pardon.
As God’s Word rains down on us, it does so to call us to repentance. These verses speak in glaring terms about wickedness and evil. That’s what sin is. Like the Old Testament people of Judah, we have sinful natures that have been a part of us from the very start. We had a default setting not in favor of God and his Word, but against it. We were his enemies. And every time we think impure thoughts or say mean words or act in unkind ways, we are taking what we know God wants us to do and throwing it aside for our momentary preferences and our personal decisions. We are doing evil. We are acting as wicked people. It may not seem like the same thing that the people of Judah did when they worshiped Baals and other gods, but it really is idolatry anytime we put anything or anyone above God in our hearts, and that’s what happens when we act in ways contrary to what he wants.
But God calls us back from that. Seek the Lord he says. Call on him when he is near. Perhaps the connection to his Word is not immediately obvious, but the Lord is near when he comes to us in his Word. God may be found when his Word is being preached and taught. We can’t discover God out in the world. We can’t figure out what he is like or what he has done for us except that he tells us. How many people in the world are wicked and evil but don’t even know it? How many don’t have an idea that there is a God who is concerned about them? But God’s Word has rained down on us to call us to repentance, to turn away from the wicked and the evil and to turn to him.
And God’s Word rains down on us to show us his ways. He says, “Certainly my plans are not your plans, and your ways are not my ways, declares the Lord. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my plans are higher than your plans.” God says this to the people who need to turn from their wicked and evil ways. God’s ways are better and higher. He wants people to see that their wicked ways are not in accord with God’s plans, but that following Gods ways is the way to go. But there is more to these words, too. There are many things that we cannot know about how God thinks or how God operates. That is who God is. He is as high above us as the heavens are above the earth. It is not even worth comparing our limited human capacity, especially as it is tainted by sin, to the almighty and allpresent and all-knowing Creator of the universe. But thanks be to God that he has revealed his ways. He has told us his plans. He has revealed to us what he feels and what he has done.
What he feels is love toward each of us in spite of our sins. What he has done is he sent his own eternal Son to be our Savior. What he has done is he walked in our shoes and lived in our world and has done so perfectly. What he has done is he sacrificed his perfect life so that our sins would be forgiven. What he has done is he has risen from death so that we, too, will live forever with him. And this is what he has done: he has taken that amazing message that we would never have thought of or considered, and he has rained down his Word on us and worked in our hearts to believe it.
And that is the way that God’s Word works. It accomplishes God’s purpose. That’s why he compares it to the rains. And you can very well think of the Holy Land in similar terms to our experience here in Tucson. The people there in Bible times were dependent on the seasonal rains coming at the right times and being sufficient for the crops. They saw the rain cause their crops to sprout and grow so that they had food for that season and seeds to sow the next time. They knew how valuable that rain was, just like we desert dwellers have an appreciation for it.
And God says, “My Word is like that. Every time I send it out it does what I send it out to do.” And we see that, too, as God calls people to faith through the good news of Jesus and his life and death and rising again. We see that as he builds us and others up to fight temptation and to love him more and more. Sure, there are times when God uses his Word to bring destruction or to show the depth of someone’s rejection and unbelief. It doesn’t always have the effects that we might want to see. So he reminds us that his ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Amazingly, he can use even what seems like the worst of situations, like a Babylonian Captivity or our own “when it rains it pours” moments, to direct us back to and give us an appreciation for his Word raining down on us.
If we have that appreciation, we will want to rejoice in that rainfall. Our sinful natures will still try to convince us that some church is enough, that we don’t need it every week. They will suggest that Bible study or Children’s Bible Hour is a waste of precious time. You will be tempted to set aside time at home in devotions and Bible reading because you have other pressing matters. Instead cherish every moment when God rains down his Word on you, even more than you appreciate the monsoon rain.
I was struck yesterday by how eagerly anticipated the rains are when I was watering cactuses in my yard. That’s right, the desert plants are so hot and dry that they needed some water from my hose. Even more than that, we need the rainwater of God’s Word. If we are to be Christians that are planted by the Word, to use the metaphor of our service theme and our other readings, we need God’s Word to rain down on us. It calls us to repent, it shows us God’s greatness, and it accomplishes his good purposes in our live. Thanks be to God that he rains it down on us.
The Text: Isaiah 55:6–11 (EHV)
6Seek the Lord while he may be found! Call on him while he is near!
7Let the wicked man abandon his way. Let an evil man abandon his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will show him mercy. Let him turn to our God, because he will abundantly pardon.
8Certainly my plans are not your plans, and your ways are not my ways, declares the Lord.
9Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my plans are higher than your plans.
10Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and do not return there unless they first water the earth, make it give birth, and cause it to sprout, so that it gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11in the same way my word that goes out from my mouth will not return to me empty. Rather, it will accomplish whatever I please, and it will succeed in the purpose for which I sent it.