Isaiah 55:6-11 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Seventh Sunday After Pentecost Sunday, July 16, 2023 “God’s Word Rains Down on Us”
“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.