Scripture
Isaiah
28 sermons
The Freeness of the Priceless Feast, Part 2
Isaiah 55:3–13 unfolds in three movements: the ground of the gospel summons, the required response, and the guarantee attached to it. The ground is the covenant of grace itself — the sure mercies of David fulfilled in the person and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the covenant champion who secures abundant pardon for abundant sinners. The response calls for active, whole-souled seeking, calling, forsaking, and returning to the Lord while He may still be found. The passage closes with the guarantee that God's word never returns void and that Christ's saving work reverses the curses of Genesis 3, replacing thorns with cypress, expulsion with joyful leading out, and cosmic groaning with cosmic praise.
The Freeness of the Priceless Feast, Part 1
Isaiah 55:1–2 opens with a single attention-grabbing word — 'Ho' — that God employs as an imperatival invitation, commanding sinners to come and feast without money and without price upon the abundant provision of the covenant. The freeness of the offer rests on three realities: the goodness of God, the infinite worth of the things offered, and the infinite payment already made by the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. Water, wine, milk, and bread are not bare metaphors but point to Christ himself — the personification of every element of the feast — who alone satisfies the restless soul that the world's marketplace of false substitutes can never fill. Hearers are called to cease the squandering madness of spending wages on what is not bread and to believe on Christ, receiving the feast he secured at infinite cost and now offers entirely free.