His Perfect Love

Matt VanderVen: Here is the good news ahead of us today on His Perfect Love. No matter how great the sin, God is so eager to forgive you. No matter the greatness of the sin, no matter how deep, no matter the chasm and the depth of which you find yourself swimming in difficult decisions and poor decisions that have been made and maybe drug addiction, alcohol, all kinds of things. Look, fill in the blank. Everybody's got a different story, a different testimony and a different life.

And everybody's coming through something. And God is making it clear. He's saying, look, no matter what the depths of your sin, he is even more eager to save you. Even more eager to pull you up out of that miry clay and set you on a firm foundation.

Guest (Male): At a well in Samaria, Jesus told a woman that drinking the water from that well will result in her being thirsty again. But he offered her water that would quench her thirst forever. You're listening to His Perfect Love. We've been going through the book of Isaiah with Pastor Matt VanderVen and we'll be studying chapter 55 where the prophet writes about food that is good for our soul. We wouldn't last very long without food in our bodies. Likewise, the Bible teaches that we'll ultimately perish without our soul food.

Matt VanderVen: Look at chapter 55 here, we'll just keep going. Oh, everyone who thirsts come to the waters. And you who have no money, come buy and eat. Yes, come buy wine and milk, without money and without price. What's he saying? He's going to give to you freely. You can't earn it, it's out of reach. And that's exactly what the picture of salvation is in Jesus. Isn't that beautiful? It's what we become. It's what's on the menu. You want to know what's on the menu? Have you thought about it? What's on the menu? Hold your finger here. Some of you know this passage. Turn to Ephesians chapter one. You want to know what's on the menu? Look at Ephesians one. That's what's on the menu.

For those redeemed in Christ Jesus, Paul writes this to the church of Ephesus, a church he spent three years at, very close to many of the elders in this church. So much so that they wept and cried when Paul was leaving to head back to Jerusalem and Paul also wept and cried, not wanting to leave them, knowing that he would probably never see them again. Paul an apostle, Ephesians chapter one, verse one. Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God to the hagios, the saints who were in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us. Here it is, are you ready? You're going to get your socks blessed off. Get ready. With every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ. Every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ.

Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. That's part of your pedigree. Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will. He's so madly in love with you, he knew it before you were even born and before the foundations of the world, he knew he was going to be with you and your picture was already on his fridge. To the praise of the glory of his grace by which he made us accepted in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.

Which he made to abound in us or us in all wisdom, prudence, having made known to us the mystery of his will. He's told us his will. According to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in him. In him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory.

In him you also trusted after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation in whom you also having believed, you were what? Sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of his glory, until you receive your glorified body. Therefore I also heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for the fellow saints or for your saints. Do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers. Paul talking a pastor's heart here. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all glory may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.

The eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of his glory and his inheritance in the saints. And what is exceeding greatness of his power towards us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that is which to come. And he put all things under his feet and he gave him Jesus to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. I mean, that's the menu for the Christian. It's blessing upon blessing, love upon love, goodness upon good. I mean it doesn't end.

You can turn back to Isaiah 55, but see when he tells you look, he says come. When's the last time somebody said to you come to the waters, you have no money, come and buy and eat? How are you going to buy? Because he paid for it all. But he says come buy. When you think you come by, it makes you think you're going to be dishing out the money, but you don't have the money. He has the spiritual currency and he has bought all that we need. We only need to come unto him to receive. And it's without price, without money. He gives you something you couldn't buy. Why do you spend money for what is not bread? Verse two, and your wages for what does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to me, eat what is good and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Just think about what he's saying here. This is a really big deal. Why? Because he's writing to a people in Judah that are living where? In the middle of a desert. And yet he gives this picture of this great feast and this water and coming and buying and having this great feast and it's all pointing to the greatness of salvation through Messiah Jesus Christ. He wants us to have life abundantly. He really does. He doesn't want us walking around grimacing or, "oh it's so tough being a Christian, woe is me." No, he doesn't want us walking around like that. He wants us walking around full of the joy of the Spirit.

He wants us walking with joy because we can focus so much on all the things that aren't going right in our lives. Or we can take a moment to take our eyes off ourselves and look at all that God is doing around us because he is doing so much every day. Miracles, hearts being transformed and conformed into his image, meeting the needs of widows and orphans and coming to those that are lonely and have in some ways been forgotten by society, but not to the Lord. No, he's very mindful and he's reminding us no, the Christian life is the abundant life. You have found the abundant life. That's what he's telling you here. He wants you to know it. Incline your ears and come to me. Hear and your soul shall live and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, the sure mercies of David. Indeed, I have given him as a witness to the people, a leader and a commander for the people.

Surely you shall call a nation you do not know, and nations who do not know you shall run to you. They were to be a witness to the surrounding nations, right? Israel was to be a witness. And aren't we to be a witness to the surrounding cities and communities around us? Because of the Lord your God and the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you. Seek the Lord while he may be found. That's important. Call upon him while he's near. There is a time expiration, right? The gift of salvation is only available while you're alive on this earth, right? Today, as I've said last week, is your guarantee. Tomorrow is not guaranteed.

You have no idea whether any of you, and I don't desire this for you, I love you and I want to see you again selfishly, but there's no guarantee that tonight any one of you will close your eyes and tomorrow morning your eyes will not open on this earth but open in paradise with Jesus. And while we will be very excited for you because you left us all for a better man and you beat us there, on this side of eternity we'll miss you. And there's a reality that the decisions you make today or don't make today have consequences. And that's what he's talking about. 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 and he will have mercy on him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon, right? No matter, he doesn't say here if it's these kind of things, he doesn't qualify it. No matter how great the sin, God is so eager to forgive you.

No matter the greatness of the sin, no matter how deep, no matter the chasm and the depth of which you find yourself swimming in difficult decisions and poor decisions that have been made and maybe you look behind you and just a wake of pain, drug addiction, alcohol, all kinds of things. Look, fill in the blank. Everybody's got a different story, a different testimony and a different life. And everybody's coming through something. And God is making it clear. He's saying look, no matter what the depths of your sin, he is even more eager to save you. Even more eager to pull you up out of that miry clay and set you on a firm foundation. It's his heart's desire.

You know, Psalm 37 says when you seek the purpose of God in your heart in all ways, that he will give you what? The desires of your heart. He says that, that's right. Psalm 37, it's one of probably most of our favorite psalms. We like that. We're like, yeah Lord, we want the desires of our heart. That sounds good. But it's all according to his will, right? That's the point of that psalm, right? We don't want to miss that. But I just want you to think about that, the desire of God's heart is you. You're his desire. He loves you, he desires you.

I mean, the creator of all heaven and earth and everything in between desires you and wants to have fellowship with you and spend time with you and hold you very close and tender. Restore you, take what the cankerworm has eaten and tried to destroy and deplete and remove it from you and rebuild you and strengthen you. Don't forget our God's a God that can take a withered arm and make it whole again. Our God's a God that can take a messed up leg and make it new. Our God can do anything and everything. But are we looking for it and expecting it? Are we praying according to God's will and are we recognizing that our God wants to bless, wants to do these things so often I think we forget that he's abundant to pardon. That he desires to pardon us that way no matter what great sin is in a person's life including born again believers as well as unbelievers.

And he explains why. He understands us. He says in verse eight and it makes sense because this is the context. So many times people take verse eight and nine and they almost try to create an artificial conflict. There's a conflict that exists here. But what he's trying to set up in verse eight and nine is he just talked about how the depths of the sin and how he is desiring to abundantly pardon and he's saying look, I understand his creation. He knows who we are. He knows what we're capable of. He knows our thoughts. And where does he begin? He doesn't begin with the outward action. That's way too easy for God. Hey, when you were in the second grade or when you were in seventh grade or when you were in high school or when you were in college or hey, when you were at the job yesterday and you did this or said this to that person. Oh no, anybody can turn around and play back the video and say was that really Christ-like? Was that the way Jesus would have wanted to respond, right? Remember everybody was wearing the what would Jesus do bracelets? Yeah, that lasted like a year.

And everybody's like, "oh he wouldn't do any of those things." No, where does he begin? God says for my thoughts are not your thoughts. It's the same thing he did on the Sermon on the Mount with the discipleship boot camp with the boys. He began reinterpreting the scripture so that people could understand that everything begins with the heart and mind. Our thought life, our prayer life. He tells us this is where everything begins, our thought life and our prayer life. All of our insecurities begin in our thought life before they're ever manifested outwardly. Is that just crazy? So where does he start? He starts right at the beginning. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. He explains for 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 comes down and the snow from heaven and do not return there but water the earth and make it bring forth the bud that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. This is his word, right? It can't be stopped. No one can stop it. He says so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me what? Void. Now that makes sense in context. God's word does never return void. We say that, but now within context when we read it, how much richer it actually is in what he's saying, how much more magnified it is than simply the spoken word of God doesn't return void.

He is saying look, as far as the heavens to the earth. I mean oh my, and then he goes on to say and my word for going forth from my mouth because this is God-breathed, he says not only will it not return void, but he says the purpose of it is it satisfies everything. Even when the word goes forward, all of the downstream of God's creation is blessed from it. Go back and look at that in verse ten. For as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven and do not return there. In other words they don't go back up, but water the earth. It serves a purpose. Even and it's like a ripple. Have you ever taken the stones and skip them in a body of water? You ever do that in like a lake or river, you skip some stone and you see the ripple? He says that's what the word of God does.

Not only is it echoing through this church, this body of Christ gathered here, but when you leave it continues to reverberate and it bounces off of you into others. And then it reverberates there and continues to go and water, it just keeps watering and planting and watering. Paul talked about that, didn't he? He said some water, right? Some plant but all glory be unto the Lord, right? That was the idea of what he was saying there. Isn't that what God's saying right here through the prophet Isaiah? He says it'll bring forth bud, fruit, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater. It's far more than just the spoken word doesn't return void. It's so much more than how we use it in that simple context. It means so much more.

He says but it shall accomplish what I please. In other words, God is telling us and he gives us a promise here that not only is it not return void, but those ripples I was describing, it finds its way right to that individual. This blew me away, I remember years and years ago when I learned this, when I 20 plus years ago when I started really digging into the word of God and I remember the words of Jesus in the gospel where he describes how he went out to meet the woman in the middle of the day which by the way is in the Gentile country and we know that Jesus Christ on many occasions had said I come to the Jews, those are the people I'd come, that was his ministry. And he had come to them and yet he kept finding himself out in places with the Gentiles and giving the gospel.

Where there was this woman, as you know, the woman at the well and she's out there and no woman would have been out at the Caleb, one of our elders here, loves to share that he went on a missions trip and he talks about how in the country he was in nobody ever goes to the well at noon. It's just too hot. It's just too hot, you can't survive it. You just don't do it for just safety reasons. It's just that hot. And so you start to think about in the context that woman going out, she was so afraid of being ashamed that she would literally risk her life of overheating and having hyperthermia that she would turn around and her elevated body temperature and everything get real sick. She would willingly risk that every day just not to be seen by anybody else. That's how much shame this woman carried in her heart.

And Jesus went all the way from a foreign country, you know, because he was in Judah, he was in Israel, he was in that whole area. He goes all the way to the Gentile area and he goes in there and he meets her. By the way, he didn't turn around and have to run to get there. He didn't have to slow down. Perfectly he arrives at the well. The disciples are on a walkabout and he literally arrives at the very same time she happens to just walk there. And he knew that she went there every day and he began to just gently and respectfully speak to her which nobody else would have done.

Do you see the providence of God? That even like he takes that stone and it ripples, he takes and he ripples it and it goes all around and it finds all of the places where God wants that word to go, to do its perfect work. That's what he's talking about when it says it shall not return void. It's so much more than how we just use that in Christianese. It's far more powerful as Isaiah's giving it to us here. It is rippling, it is moving, it is going different directions and God says it's going to go here and it's going to go here and oh by the way Andrew, you're going to go over here and Pastor Bill, you're going to be over here and Todd, you're going to be over here with the college and career.

And oh by the way, somebody's just going to walk in and John you're going to see somebody down the street tomorrow and by the way you're going to turn around and meanwhile we just thought well gosh, you know, we got a little late start this morning we kind of a little bit overslept. No. Every single bit of it was ordained and lined up by God so that at that very moment when you cross path with that individual, there was the ripple. There was the ripple. The word was not returning void. That just boom.

Verse 11, right? Boom. But it shall accomplish what I please and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out with joy and be led out with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. That's kind of scary. Instead of the thorn shall come up and the cypress tree, if you ever see that, run. And instead of the brier that shall come up the myrtle tree, it shall be to the Lord for a name. For an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. What a promise is given to Israel here, right? Who will find themselves in captivity and will need the depth of this very promise. Much is given, much is required. What's poured in should always be ready to have be poured out. Amen.

Guest (Male): This is His Perfect Love. Pastor Matt VanderVen is leading a study of Isaiah right now, and if you enjoyed today's message, we'd like to know. Email us at our website hisperfectlove.org. Be sure to include your prayer requests. And while you're there, you'll notice a place to listen to Pastor Matt's sermons, including all of Isaiah. That's hisperfectlove.org. You can also listen to us at oneplace.com or wherever you get your podcasts. And we also have a free mobile app. Now this is a convenient way to listen to Pastor Matt on your mobile devices. Go to hisperfectlove.org for more information about that.

And if you'd like to support this ministry with a one-time gift or ongoing monthly support, you can do so through the website at hisperfectlove.org. Thank you in advance. We want all of our listeners to have access to the word of God. So if you're in need of a Bible, we'd like to get one into your hands. Just email us through our website and ask for the free Bible offer. Here's our web address again, hisperfectlove.org. Are you looking for a Christian school that offers a quality education and a nurturing environment for your children? If so, you might be interested in Calvary Chapel Christian Academy, a ministry of Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.

Calvary Chapel Christian Academy is a non-denominational Christian school that serves students from kindergarten to 12th grade. The Academy's mission is to provide a Christ-centered education that equips students to love God, love others, and serve the world. The Academy offers a rigorous academic curriculum, a variety of extracurricular activities, and a caring and supportive staff. The Academy is located at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, PA. For more information, please visit our website at ccharrisburg.org/academy. That's ccharrisburg.org/academy. There's much more to come in Isaiah. This has been His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt VanderVen. His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.