Intended For Joy | Isaiah 55

Amen.

Amen.

There we go.

You guys can remain standing just out of honor and gratitude for the reading of God's Word.

This morning, our text is going to be out of Isaiah 55.

So if you guys have your Bibles, you can go ahead and turn there.

Isaiah 55, starting in verse 1.

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money, come, buy and eat.

Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen diligently to me and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

Incline your ear and come to me, hear that your soul may live, and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast love, sure love for David.

Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and a commander for the peoples.

Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know, and a nation that did not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, and of the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

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 that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

For my thoughts are your not are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

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 and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my words be that goes out of my mouth.

It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace.

The mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and the and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn shall come the cypress.

Instead of the briar shall come the myrtle, and it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Let's pray.

Oh merciful Father that has declared to us his glory from his word.

We pray that as we have read your word together, that your Holy Spirit would illuminate it in our hearts and in our minds, God, that these words would become our delight, Father, that these words would spur within us great affections, so that we would not just be hearers of your word, but doers.

God, give us ears to hear that we might obey, give us eyes to see that we might seek after the lost, Lord.

And give us hearts ready to delight in you that we might express your love through the proclamation of the gospel.

It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

Have you ever stopped to think about what keeps that giant pyramid from sinking into the banks of the Mississippi?

You know, we don't admire foundations very much, do we?

We usually don't even pay attention to the thought of them being there until they fail, until the doors don't close right and the walls begin to crack and the building begins to crumble.

And then suddenly you realize that the foundation, it may not be the most beautiful part of the building, but it certainly is the most important part of the building.

That the strength of everything that you can see is actually determined by something that you can't see.

I think that really gets to exactly where we are right now as a church.

You know, this month actually marks my first year as being your lead pastor.

And man, that's so kind.

The Lord has given us a good year.

He's given us a good year.

We have seen people come to faith in Jesus.

We have seen people, it feels like baptizing more and more people every single week.

We've seen more people join and become members of the fellowship here.

We've seen a 21% increase in attendance.

But even more than that, the Lord has allowed us to grow together in ways that only He's able to accomplish.

And I can't even begin to tell and articulate to you how deeply grateful and thankful that I am for the way that you've received me and my family, for the way the Lord has shined his face down upon us.

But you know, before we spend the next several years thinking about how we're gonna build higher, and we are going to build higher, I believe the Lord is gonna do some great works through us here at the orchard.

I wish to take a few weeks to go down deeper.

The goal here at the orchard is never to grow attendance.

You just need to hear me say that.

That's just not something that we think about very often.

That's not what we're aiming at.

The goal here is to build an institution of mercy and grace that lasts generations and proclaims the good news, not just right now in the mid-south, but for generations to come to people who won't even know our names.

And that means that if that's the vision, if that's what we're aiming at, if our goal is not just to swell by a few people right now or to have a really exciting crowd right now, but to have something that endures for generations, then that what that means is that our foundation is the most important thing that we could possibly focus on.

So for the next five weeks, what we're gonna do is we're gonna dig down to bedrock.

We're gonna talk about the foundational convictions that by God's grace we intend to build this institution on so that it is enabled to be able to last for generations to proclaim the good news of Jesus.

And so we're calling this the five foundations of the orchard.

This morning we're gonna start with what we would consider to be the most foundational foundation, the foundation beneath all of the other foundations.

And it is that God intends to be enjoyed.

God intends to be enjoyed.

And I do ask that you forgive my voice this morning, and it's not, it's holding on by a band-aid in a prayer this morning.

That is our most foundational conviction is that joy in God is the engine that drives everything else that we're about.

That we're passionate about community and we're passionate about missions and we're passionate about adoption and we're passionate about theology.

But the reason that we're passionate about theology and community and missions and adoption is because we are passionate about people enjoying who God is as He has revealed Himself.

And so this becomes the driving force beneath the passion behind all of the gospel endeavors that we're going to pursue together in the years ahead.

And that makes Isaiah 55, I really believe, the perfect place for us to go this morning.

The first 39 chapters of Isaiah are really God pronouncing his discipline over his people, pronouncing his judgment that's going to come because of their sin against him.

And so he's going to use this judgment to cause their hearts to long for him.

But because God is a good and gracious father, like the father who lovingly disciplines his children, chapter 40 begins this pivot point when the Lord begins to change his tone so that he actually comforts the very people that he just spent 39 chapters afflicting.

That he wants them to know that he himself, he himself is going to come and he is going to be the bomb to their souls.

He is going to be their own deliverer from his wrath.

Isaiah 53 tells us how he's going to do that.

That he's going to send a suffering servant, and that suffering servant will be pierced for our transgressions.

He will be crushed for our iniquities.

That servant will bear our judgment so that we can rightly receive God's salvation as his people.

And then, when you get to our passage this morning in chapter 55, he's showing us what the salvation that is purchased in chapter 53 produces, what it brings about.

That God isn't just saving his people, he isn't just saving you, that you would be forgiven.

That God is saving you, not just that you would be forgiven, but that you would be in him satisfied.

Satisfied.

Enjoy.

At peace, content.

So you'll see the way that this will frame up here in Isaiah 55 is that there are two invitations.

And these two invitations actually come together to reveal God's ultimate intention that he be enjoyed.

The first invitation that I want you to see is that we are invited to be satisfied.

We're invited to be satisfied.

I grew up with an inordinate fear of salt water.

Let me explain.

So I remember vividly, you know you just have these strange core memories as a child, right?

I remember vividly walking through the living room.

My mom worked second shift at this time, and my dad was in there and he was watching a movie, and it was a movie in which there were a group of people and they were lost at sea.

And so they were out on this raft, and on this raft they became parsed and dehydrated, and they needed something to drink more than they needed their next breath.

And so eventually, they just start, they just start guzzling all of this ocean water, and they just go nuts.

I mean, they just go nuts.

And eventually they end up drowning themselves.

And so I asked my dad why what happened ended up happening.

And my dad explained to me that this is what happens when people drink salt water.

That salt water makes us crazy because salt water is actually a poison to us.

And this just formed a core memory in me.

I mean, it made quite an impression.

And so sometime later, my mom wanted me to gargle my throat with salt water.

I thought the woman was trying to take me out, man.

I thought she was trying, I thought she was trying to kill me.

And so I began to fight her and make sure that I wouldn't.

But I think that metaphor helps us to understand the tension that we find here in Isaiah 55.

It helps us understand the problem that's beneath Judah's sin and the problem that's beneath all of our sin.

You see, there's an assumption here in Isaiah 55 of thirst, isn't there?

There's an assumption of thirst.

That we've all been created and designed from the factory thirsty.

But the problem with Judah, and the problem with you, and the problem with me, is that we're trying always to satisfy this thirst by drinking salt water.

And so here in the text, he's asking, why?

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread?

Why do you keep trying to drink that which cannot satisfy you?

That the problem is that we keep drinking and trying to satisfy ourselves on that which poisons us, that which only makes us really thirstier, less satisfied, not more satisfied.

What Isaiah 55 calls thirst is what we more commonly refer to as the pursuit of happiness.

It's the longing to feel satisfied.

It's the longing to feel at peace.

Throughout Isaiah, what you discover is that Judah has basically tried every flavor of salt water that is possibly available.

They've tried political alliances with Egypt and Assyria, they've tried other gods and other idols, they've tried uh religious performance, they've tried every sinful pleasure and indulgence that you could possibly conceive of.

But what they recognize eventually is that no matter the flavor, all of it was just salt water.

All of it left them thirstier, all of it left them less satisfied, not more satisfied.

You know, I find it true that we're tempted to try the same flavors.

We're tempted to go to the same salty wells.

We we try financial security and political hope, but we're just thirstier, aren't we?

We try biohacks to reverse our aging, but we age anyway, don't we?

We try to micromanage every circumstance in our lives so that we can produce all of the outcomes that we want, as though we have some motocrum of autonomy.

But the reality is that life still happens to us.

We try hobbies, entertainment, we try every possible uh self-medication, we try religious performance the same way that Judah does, but we've discover the same thing that Judah ultimately discovers.

They're all salt water, they're all poison, they all leave us thirstier than when we even started.

The problem isn't that we want to be happy.

This is the design, this is the intention.

We're created thirsty.

In fact, we know that this isn't a dishonorable pursuit because it's actually the pursuit that lies behind the imploring, pleading invitation that God is here offering to his people.

That God doesn't go to his people and say, Stop being thirsty, does he?

No, no, no, no, no.

What does he say?

He says, Come to me and drink.

Come to me and drink.

C.S.

Lewis, I have it there at the bottom of your screen.

C.

S.

Lewis says, We're half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition.

When infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.

We are far too easily pleased that our problem isn't that we want to be satisfied.

Our problem is that we're content to keep on trying salt water to satisfy ourselves.

So you hear the grace in the invitation that's being extended, don't you?

Come.

Drink, eat.

He says, Come and what?

Delight yourselves that your soul may live.

That God's invitation here is an expression of his intent.

That he has created us with a deep thirst, with a deep longing to be satisfied because we are meant to be thirsty, to be hungry, to find our satisfaction in him.

In him.

That grace is everywhere that we look in this passage, if you think about it.

Grace is found in who is invited.

Who's invited?

Anyone who thirsts.

Who's invited?

Those who have no money, those who have nothing to bring to the table, those who have nothing themselves to contribute.

That's grace.

Grace is found in what you're invited to, isn't it?

It's not just some invitation, it's a good invitation.

That you are invited to do what?

To come and to eat the rich food.

You're to come and eat what is good, that which is the best wine and the best milk.

You're invited to come in and to indulge yourself, not just to kind of partially satisfy your thirst, but to be fully, totally, and totally and satisfied with who God has made you to be, to delight yourself with a complete fill.

And grace is found in what you pay.

What do you pay?

Without money, without price.

Now, it's not free because it's cheap.

It's not free because it's low grade or low quality.

He's already told us this is wine.

This is this is the rich food.

No, it's free because it's already been purchased.

It's free because it's already been paid for.

The culminating point is that you get to enjoy what he calls to be an everlasting covenant, steadfast, this from the son of David, because who?

Isaiah 53, the suffering servant, is the son of David who will be sent to the cross.

Then what we're seeing here at Isaiah 55 is actually a fulfillment of a promise that is made in Isaiah 53.

That after it talks about him being crushed for your iniquities, after it talks about him being pierced for your transgressions, listen to what it says.

It says, out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied.

By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous.

Oh, it's free to you because grace has already paid the price, man.

Grace has already paid the wage, grace has already paid off the debt.

Grace is here, and because he is satisfied in God, he has made the way so that now you can come and you can be satisfied in God.

I wonder, I wonder how many of us are like Judah.

I wonder how many of us are like Judah.

You've kept trying all the different flavors from all the different fountains, but you keep on realizing that you're not satisfied.

You keep on recognizing that it's the same old salt water that just keeps leaving you thirsty.

The question that's here to be asked of you this morning is how long will you keep trying to be satisfied the same ways that always failed to satisfy you?

How many times will you keep going to the well of salt water, the fountain of salt water, only to realize that you're just thirstier when you leave?

Let yourself this morning actually hear the invitation of God here in Isaiah 55.

Come.

It's not try harder, not clean yourself up, not pay me back.

It's simply come, come broken, come weary, come thirsty, come guilty, come ashamed, come empty.

As a matter of fact, don't you know?

Don't you know that it's empty hands?

Empty hands that are open and ready to receive grace.

It's empty hands that can receive grace.

This is the good news, y'all.

This is the good news.

He doesn't invite you to earn anything, he invites you to come in and eat.

He doesn't invite you to perform, he invites you to delight.

He doesn't merely just promise you forgiveness, he promises you satisfaction.

The God who created you and created your thirst and created your appetites and created your longings and created your desire to fit, he knows, he knows exactly how to satisfy it.

You have been created for him because he intends to be enjoyed.

Come to the waters, come by and eat, delight yourself in rich food that you might live.

Come and drink this morning, and you will be satisfied.

We're invited to be satisfied.

We're invited to be satisfied, and then we're invited to come home.

We're invited to come home.

You'll notice that the first invitation was to thirsty people.

Come and be satisfied.

You'll notice that the second invitation is to guilty people.

Come home.

Come home.

And that's really what repentance is.

Repentance is not groveling before some reluctant God, hoping that in some way, somehow, maybe he'll notice you, maybe he'll overlook it, maybe, maybe he'll forget all of the great offenses that you've brought against him.

No, repentance is returning to the Father whose mercy is greater than you could have possibly imagined.

He says, seek the Lord while he may be found.

Call upon him while he is near.

You'll see that there is urgency here.

That we don't presume upon grace.

He says, seek the Lord while he may be found.

We don't take grace for granted.

We don't assume we're always gonna have a beat in our chest and a conscience soft enough to hear and to respond to the pleas of the gospel.

So don't delay repentance.

Don't treat his invitation lightly.

Go, go while he may.

Be found.

But it's not just an invitation that's urgent.

It's an invitation that's tender.

That's tender.

The Lord is not far away.

The Lord is near.

He's close.

He's drawing near.

He's got his eye on you.

He's looking out for you.

He's wanting you.

He's calling you home.

But to come home means for you the same thing that it meant for Judah all those years ago.

It means that you have to leave behind the exile that you have chosen instead of him.

It's abandoning the foreign land that you were convinced would ultimately make you happier than what it's made you.

It's to abandon the way of life that you thought would satisfy you, but has only left you thirstier still.

So you can't keep drinking salt water and enjoy living water at the same time.

That's why he says, let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts.

That repentance is a turning away from that which leaves you thirsty and returning to God because you recognize that it's God and God alone who can satisfy you.

Notice what happens when you return.

He says that when you return, that he may have compassion on him, that he will abundantly pardon.

Isn't that beautiful?

Verses six and seven call us to repentance, and they call us to repentance because we tend to think too lightly of our sin.

But then verses eight and nine call us to trust in God's mercy because we tend to think too lightly of how good and merciful God's heart actually is.

And this gets to the meaning of those famous words from Isaiah 55, the ones that you probably had memorized and didn't even know what chapter of the Bible that they came from.

That his thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways.

Typically, typically, when we think about those verses, what are we saying?

We're typically talking about the mystery of his providence, aren't we?

We're typically talking about that his plan for our life is very different from our plan for our life.

And that's that's certainly true.

But the actual impact and meaning of these verses is so much more powerful and so much more beautiful than that, that this isn't some statement about God's generally mysterious providence.

This is instead a statement about his staggering, extravagant mercy.

That God is saying, you don't think and pardon the way that I think and pardon.

You don't imagine mercy the way that I imagine mercy, as high as the heavens are above the earth.

So far is my compassion above your compassion.

See, shame.

Shame is always whispering lies into our ears, isn't it?

It always is.

The shame is always whispering lies that keep us from the enjoyment of God.

It it whispers into our ears that you've gone too, you're too far gone, that you've blown it too badly.

It whispers into your ear that maybe, maybe God would forgive somebody like them, but God would never forgive somebody like you.

And these are the verbs, these are the lies that Isaiah 55 is here talking back to.

These are the lies that it's giving you the ammunition so that you can talk back to the devil in your life, so that you can talk back to that lying, whispering, oppressing, shameful conscience.

But the truth is, is you wouldn't forgive you, but God will.

Sometimes.

Sometimes the greatest obstacle to us returning home to Christ is not our sin.

Sometimes it's our belief and suspicion that God doesn't actually want us there.

But praise God.

His thoughts are not our thoughts, his ways are not our ways.

His grace is not our grace, his mercy is not our mercy, it is far above, as high as the heavens are over the earth.

Are his thoughts, his ways, his mercy, his grace above ours?

So the mercy of God this morning is inviting you.

It's his kindness that's meant to draw you to repentance.

And it's here, and it's inviting you to come home, to come home and to rest in him.

And God's invitation is an expression of his intent.

What is his intent?

His intent is that you would enjoy him.

I know a mother, this is a true story.

I know a mother whose adult son completely abandoned her.

She was a good mom.

She wasn't a perfect mom, but she was a good mom.

And then one day he just stopped visiting.

Stopped calling her on Mother's Day, stopped coming home from Christ for Christmas.

She'd reach out to him, she'd call him, he wouldn't take her calls.

She'd text him, he wouldn't return her text.

She'd drive by his house, he wouldn't open the door.

She wrote letters.

She did everything that she could do.

She prayed and she prayed and she wept and she wept.

Eventually, I talked with her and I told her, I was, dear sister, as much as it pains for me to say it, you're probably gonna have to accept this and find some way to move on with your life.

But she couldn't accept it.

And she didn't accept it.

And she kept waiting and she kept praying.

But as much as she kept waiting and she kept praying, he kept choosing exile.

She wanted him to come home, but he kept living in the foreign land.

After enough time had passed, he eventually realized what he had done.

He eventually realized how badly he wanted to be able to go home, but but then shame told him that he was too far gone.

His shame convinced him that he had done, he had wounded his parents and wounded his mother so profoundly that they wouldn't pick up the call phone if he did call.

And how would he face them if he if they did?

Eventually he hit rock bottom, though.

And he didn't know who else to call, he didn't know where else to turn, so one day he does.

He picks up the phone and he calls them.

And on the other side, he didn't get a lecture.

On the other side, he didn't find reluctance.

On the other side, he found tears of joy as his mother wept, realizing that his repentance was really the answer to her prayer the whole time.

That he expected reluctance and hesitation, but he experienced reunion and joy.

Some of you are standing there this morning.

You're standing there this morning.

You want to come home.

You recognize how far from home you are, you recognize how badly you need the embrace of your father, but shame has convinced you that God may not tolerate you if you come calling back.

But here is Isaiah, and Isaiah is saying, No, no, no, no, no.

Come while the Lord is near, come while the Lord may be found.

Here is Jesus saying, Come to me if you are weary and heavy laden.

Come to me.

That your father, your father is not at home waiting to lecture you.

Your father is not at home waiting to increase your affliction.

Your father is sitting on the front porch waiting to embrace you, waiting to welcome you back to the dining room table.

He's not inviting you back as a servant, he's calling you home as a son or as a daughter.

Oh, this morning, don't keep choosing exile.

Don't keep choosing exile.

You come home broken and you'll leave whole.

You'll leave whole.

So we've seen two invitations.

You come thirsty and you'll be satisfied.

You come broken and you'll leave whole.

And these two invitations, one to come and be satisfied, the second to come and be at home, come together to reveal to us the intention that he's had for us all along.

And what is that intention?

Well, it's to enjoy him, to delight in him, to sing to him, to have a heart that overflows toward him.

You know, my granddad was really my dude growing up.

Everybody's kind of got their dude, right?

My granddad was my dude.

I used to love to go and work with him in his shop.

He could fix anything, and he had basically every tool imaginable.

This is the way country grandpaws are, okay?

He was just that guy.

And I remember one particular day I was with him in his shop, and I was sitting there and I was pretending to work on something while he was actually working on something.

And I went and I found this odd-shaped tool that I had never seen before.

I would tell you what it is, but I still have no stinking clue what it was.

But I picked it up and I thought, you know what, this will be good enough to hammer on whatever it was that I was hammering on, and so I went and I used it and I began to hammer on whatever it was I was hammering on, and I broke the handle off of it.

Now, something else you need to know about country grandpa's are a little rough around the edges.

All right, a little rough around the edges.

And so, in no uncertain terms, if you know what I'm saying, he made it clear to me that we only use tools for their intended purpose.

That hammers are for hammering.

His miracle specialty tool, not for hammering.

Alright?

You see, when you use something for a purpose that it was never designed for, you usually end up making a mess.

And very often you end up breaking it.

I think this is helps us to understand the struggle that we have in trying to understand ourselves.

That we live in a culture that's constantly telling us that we need to figure out who we are and do that by some kind of self-activation, by looking within ourselves.

But you can't understand what something is until you know what it was made for.

And that includes yourself.

That includes you.

Isaiah 55 is written to help us understand ourselves, to help us to know who we are.

In verses 1 through 5, God answers our deepest longing, that we were made to be satisfied.

In verses 6 through 9, God answers our deepest guilt.

We need mercy that'll bring us home.

And now in verses 10 through 13, God reveals our deepest purpose, that we were made to enjoy Him and to enjoy Him in such a way that makes Him known, that makes a name for the Lord.

That one of the ways that we can summarize the purpose that we have been put on this earth to do as we see it here in Isaiah 55, is we can summarize it as that we have been intended, created, purposed to sing.

To sing.

That's the significance of verses 10 and 11, if you'll look at those.

God says that his word is like rain and snow, that it comes down from the heavens, it waters the earth, and when it waters the earth, it brings forth the life that it was intended to bring forward.

It falls when God says that it should fall, and it accomplishes exactly what God says that it ought to accomplish.

So God says, So shall my word be.

So shall my word be.

That my word will come down from heaven, and my word will come to the earth, and my word will bring forth the harvest that it is meant to bring forth.

That my word will go forward, my word will fall upon my people, and my word will accomplish its purpose.

So the question becomes what's his purpose?

It's a good news purpose.

It's a good news purpose.

Verse 12 says that his purpose is for you shall go out, how?

In joy and be led forth how?

In peace.

That the purpose that God's word is accomplishing in the lives of his people is that he is increasing your joy and securing your peace.

That his redemption doesn't just produce forgiven people.

His redemption produces singing people, satisfied people, peace-filled people, joy-filled people.

Do you know why Christians sing?

Christians sing because we know a God that is so good, so great, so glorious, so gracious, so merciful that you can't just say it.

You gotta sing it.

You gotta sing it.

So the mark of the new covenant, the everlasting sign that we are the children of God is not a circumcision of flesh, but a circumcision of heart that is manifested by a peculiar joy and a peace without understanding.

That's the point.

And that's why Isaiah is showing us a universal choir here.

That's the purpose.

That's why the mountains are singing and the trees are clapping.

That would be a sign, wouldn't it?

That joy has become the ecosystem of the new covenant that makes it evident that this is the context in which we now live in his kingdom.

Thorns are replaced with cypress.

Briars are replaced with myrtle.

Do you remember the first place that we read about thorns and thistles in the scriptures?

We read about them in Genesis 3, don't we?

That sin didn't just come to make us guilty, it came and made us miserable.

So Romans 8 says that the whole creation groans.

But Christ hasn't just come to make us forgiven, Christ has come and to set us free from all of our miseries that we could persevere in joy to overthrow, overtake, and overcome every enemy to our joy.

That's the point.

That the misery of thorns is being displaced by an evergreen joy.

Right now, we still know thorns, don't we?

We still know thorns.

We still know briars.

We still know miseries.

We still get scratched and we still bleed.

We still wake up and bury people that we love and deal with the grief of it.

We still wake up to bad news, we go to jobs that frustrate us.

We live in marriages that are harder than we thought they would be.

We face health crises, economic crises, global crises.

We still live in a world that is captivated by its miseries, but Isaiah says that this isn't the end of the story.

This isn't the end of the story.

God's word has come down from heaven, and God's word is going to accomplish exactly what God's word has come down to accomplish, that evergreen joy has sprouted in Christ, and someday soon it will come into full bloom.

That's the picture.

So right now, we sing by faith.

We sing by faith.

We sing because God has spoken and his word will accomplish his purposes.

We sing because Christ has purchased our joy and his resurrection has proven it.

We sing because mercy has welcomed us home.

We sing because one day every uh every thorn will give way to cypress, every briar will give way to myrtle, and every tear will give way to joy.

Church, our joy, our joy is as certain as Jesus' return is certain.

And we know that because God's word does not return void, and the resurrection has verified every bit of it.

And this is how verse 13 says God makes his name known in the way that it's meant to be known.

This is how God makes his name known in the way that it's meant to be known.

That God's word accomplishes joy in us, and our enjoyment of God puts on display how good he really is.

John Piper frames it up like this: that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

You know, it's joy.

It's joy that reveals worth.

We we know this intuitively and instinctively.

I've been in ministry, this is my 21st year, and I've had the opportunity to officiate a lot of weddings in 21 years.

And I've made an observation that very often, uh during the rehearsal, during all the pictures, during all the proceedings leading up to the wedding, grooms like to play it cool.

They like to be cool cats, right?

They show this stoicism that they're composed, they're not really worried.

But I'll tell you, most of them, most of them, when those back doors fling open and there stands their bride, most of them, their eyes begin to sweat a little bit.

Their eyes begin to sweat.

I've never had to coach a groom to smile at his bride when she comes down the aisle.

Why?

Because he is beaming with passion and beaming with affection.

It is the instinct in us to delight in our treasure and to find joy in that, in that which we most value and love and treasure.

And that is why joyless, reluctant, cold religion lies about God.

I wonder what your delight says about what God is worth.

No bride wants a husband who just does what he's supposed to do because he's supposed to do it.

She wants his delight.

No child wants their parents just to come to the game because they feel guilty if they don't.

They want their parents to light up when they come up to bat.

And God doesn't want his people just mechanically going through the motion.

He wants to captivate your heart, arrest your mind, to draw you in and delight your soul.

He wants to illuminate your life with passion and invigorate your mission with zeal.

That when the people of God delight in God, that's when we tell the truth about him.

That is when we make a name for him.

Because we're saying that he's not merely useful, he's beautiful.

He's not merely right, he's satisfying.

He's not just our duty, he's our delight.

This is the vision of Isaiah 55 for the people of God.

This is the vision that Christ was crucified to pay the price for as the suffering servant in Isaiah 53.

So, orchard, enjoy God is not some decorative slogan for our church that we think is kind of catchy.

It might draw a few people in.

It's our bedrock.

It's why we gather every single week and sing.

It's why we commit to share our lives with each other.

It's why we want to plant churches all over the Mid-South.

It's why we want to adopt more babies that don't have mamas and daddies.

It's why we are compelled to go to the nation because God intends to be enjoyed.

That we have discovered how the thirst can be satisfied, how the lost can find their way home.

We have found the source of true happiness and abiding joy.

We have discovered the enjoyment of God, and his name is worthy to be enjoyed by all peoples in all places at all times.

So it's not just an aspiration to build an institution of good news and grace here in the Mid-South.

It's our responsibility to do that.

That we do everything we do and everything we will do because God intends to be enjoyed.

Father, I pray that this would be the driving propulsion behind all of our lives.

That it would be the driving vision behind all that you've done in us and all that you will do in us.

I pray, oh Father, that you will build in us a lasting institution that will carry forward to all generations.

The good news is that those who are thirsty can come to you and be satisfied.

Those who are weary can come to you and rest.

Those who are filled with shame can come to you and be welcomed home.

Let us be people that spread the enjoyment of your name.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.