Be the Reed: Stay Thirsty - Audio
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and we are continuing our series, Be the Reed. I'm Tom lead pastor here at coast. We are super glad you are with us. And this is week five in our summer series. It's in Isaiah 54 to 55. And it's about how it is that we live in a way where God is the one doing everything. And yet we are participating in that. And we've been taking our cue from the story, the ASOPs fable actually, of the oak and the reed. And in this fable, ASOP tells about an oak that's standing tall and mighty, and then a bunch of little reeds that are below the oak. And the oak makes fun of the reeds saying, you're weak and bendy. I am strong and upright. I am tall. I am wide. Look how awesome I am. And the reeds don't say anything. And in the breeze, they just kind of bow. They're bowing as the breeze pushes them over. And then what happens is a hurricane whips up, a strong wind that turns into a hurricane. And at the beginning, the oak is excited and fine. Like, yes, I get to flex my muscles. But pretty soon, the wind is too powerful, catches the oak, up roots it completely and smashes it on the ground. In the midst of this, the reeds continue to simply blow. They simply continue to bow and the strong winds end up taking the seeds from the reeds and scattering them everywhere so that reeds will actually multiply and grow. In the midst of that hurricane, of that tempest, they remain thriving. And then we've seen in Isaiah 54 to 55 that God is promising eventually at a certain point a life in which we don't do anything. And yet God lavishes on us all of the things that we desire, the stuff, the deep needs that we have. And to be fair, that won't happen in its fullness until the end of days. And yet we've seen the Holy Spirit now in the person of Jesus is welling that up, causing it to be real in the here and now. And so today, I want us to think a little bit about the nature of the reed. And the first thing to think about is where it is that reeds thrive. Okay, where it is that reeds thrive. That's going to be really important as we look at our text today. But if you think about where you see the reeds, they're always near water. Reeds are incredibly hardy as we hear from the story. They blow through it. We also, by the way, saw that in Isaiah 42. When Messiah comes, he will not uproot or break the reeds. In fact, the reeds will thrive in the midst of that. They're hardy. They can withstand a lot. But in order to do that, they stay planted. They stay thriving next to the water. The reeds are thirsty all the time. And that, I want you to keep in mind as we hear what the prophet says, as God speaks to the prophet to us about what life is meant to be like compared to what it is. And so here's Isaiah 55 verses 1 and 2. Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters. And you have no money. Come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk. We just spoke a little bit about the wine in communion, right? Wine representing the richest, the fullness of life. Come by the richest and fullness of life without money, without cost. Why spend money on what's not bread and your labor, your work on what doesn't satisfy? Listen, listen to me and eat what is good and you will delight in the richest of fair. Well, what does this mean? This clearly there's a metaphor here because we're not thirsty, typically, most of us. Although that's not necessarily the case in the ancient world. And so the first thing to think about is the original audience or the place where this was spoken. It was probably spoken in the time of what's called the exile. So there were a bunch of Jewish people who had been displaced and taken to a far away land where they were poor, where they were rejected, they ignored. And they were literally quite thirsty. They literally had very little money. They were the people who didn't have the stuff that we need to live the lives that we think we ought to live. In fact, the lives for them that you can't live without. Which is odd for us. And so when God says you who are thirsty, he's talking about people who are literally thirsty, but he's also talking about people who have a thirst that goes beyond just the need for regular water. And the way we know that, the way we know that is because the people who were being talked to were not literally starving. They did eat, they had a community. It was poor, it was weak. But it was, they weren't out of water. They weren't out of food. They were surviving. And yet there was something else going on. Now that's odd for us because we are people who do not actually experience real thirst or real hunger. We're people who actually don't experience the lack of money. Now I know that there's a lot of people who are like, oh no, I definitely lack money. And I hear what you're saying. I do. I really do. But there is a categorical difference between what we experience here and now and what people in the ancient world experience. And I want to show that to you with just a couple of facts to think about thirst, to think about food, to think about money. And here's the first thing. We live in a utopia by ancient world standards. How is that the case? Well, it turns out that 40% of Americans, including myself, are obese. Including 42% of those in this country who live in poverty. The rate of obesity in this country is actually higher for the poor than it is for the rich. It's the first time, by the way, in history that this has been the case. This has never happened before. It's only happened in the United States, really only the western world. It's especially the United States. But it's really only happened in the last 50 years. So for the first time, in all of human history,
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Coast Bible Church, PastorTom Bennett, San Juan Capistrano, CA, www.coastbible.org