Isaiah 55:1-9; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

From the Hebrew Traditions today we read that God’s welcome is for all who have need for what God has. Let’s just reflect on that for a moment: what is it that you need that God does not have: if God doesn’t have it then you probably don’t need it. If God does have it and you don’t have it, why don’t you have it? Come, everyone who is thirsty…and eat, The LORD invites in Isaiah 55:1 (Christian Standard Bible). This is more than just welfare for you without silver to buy…without cost; look at Isaiah 55:3 where God invites all who hear to pay attention and come to me; listen so that you will live. When we pay attention to God we are engaged in living a better life.

God is again saying to Israel that the fruit of their trust is their obedience, and because they obey and allow themselves to be led well, the other nations will come to them, in Jacob’s homeland, to find the source of their wisdom and prosperity. Seek the LORD while he may be found; call to him while he is near, encourages the prophet in Isaiah 55:6; stop doing sin and start paying attention to God who is wise and gracious, generous and loving. Trust God; understand that since God is God and that none of us is, that the one who is God is the one who is wise and best placed to see the big picture, and know the best instruction to bring about the best result. Listen to what God says, follow what God says, and accomplish with God what God desires because you know that what God desires is the best possible outcome.

Now, you already know that; that what God desires is even better than what you desire. That even though you are wise, that God is wiser; and that what God directs will be even better than what you would come up with on your own, even with sixty years on the land, or six years in the University of Divinity. God has what we need, and what we need the most of God has in abundance. However, according to Isaiah (and God) what we need most we don’t have, even though God has lots of it. So what are we missing? Anyone, anyone? Okay, the answer I was looking for is “forgiveness.” The Jews in Isaiah’s day were trying to meet their need for grace with other stuff; shiny stuff and sugary stuff, stuff what is not food and…what does not satisfy (Isaiah 55:2).

Do you know anyone like that in our day? Are you anyone like that? Yep, sigh! And this passage is clearly directed at you, and me, the ones whose ways of being and thinking are falling short of what God intends. Sad and true the world is not flocking to see the Christians shine; because our shine (if we have any) is the gaudiness of tinsel. We are not shining with the glory of God. As Church we should be glorious, reflecting The Father’s glory and attracting lost souls to Christ like a beacon on a headland showing the way into the safe harbour. As Church we are not glorious right now, not here anyway. (Not in many places I fear, but it’s only here that you and I have responsibility). Our ways are not God’s ways, and our foolishness in the light of the things of God is not attractive to the world in its need.

God, you are my God; I eagerly seek you. I thirst for you; my body faints for you in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water. In Psalm 63:1 we read some context for the passage from Isaiah 55; the situation of the whole nation of God in exile is also the situation of an individual soul seeking refreshing in the only place it can be found, only in God…my God. As we read on we find that this is a song of praise and celebration, and not so much of desperation. This is not “OMG it is like a desert here, what am I to do now?” it is “I know where to go when the well gets dry and the road gets dusty and stony; even when things are good I continue to look to God.” I follow close to you, says the psalmist in Psalm 63:8, your right hand holds on to me. God has oversupplied for the needs of the one asking (Psalm 63:5) and holds him/her in strength and protection. When you have a need go to God, go directly to God who loves you and will protect you in the shadow of [God’s] wings if you turn to God with hope and trust. This is a message the people in Isaiah’s day had forgotten, and they sought comfort and reassurance in other places. We have already said that this is also true of our day: when we run to the sugary and the shiny in place of the glorious we are always left unfilled, we are left empty.

Our reading from the Christian Traditions today, from 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 as it is found in the Christian Standard Bible has a sub-heading “warnings from Israel’s past”. Now I do not want you to be unaware brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, begins Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:1, writing about the Exodus event and the pillar that guided the nation through the wilderness. So yeah, there was that, but in 1 Corinthians 10:5 we read, nevertheless God was not pleased with most of them. Paul goes on to list idolatry, and sexual immorality, and whinging as sins to be avoided. “Learn from these sinful Hebrew people,” says Paul, “they are dead”. If you don’t want to be dead under the cloud, then don’t do what they did under the cloud.

I would hope, as your pastor, that I don’t actually have to warn you against idolatry and sexual immorality, at least so far as the actual fashioning of golden calves or drunken carousing in each other’s tents. Maybe some instruction on how we can turn our self-centred sulking into intercessory lamentation might be in order, but for the most part you don’t strike me as a particularly pessimistic or whining bunch of Christians even with the world in the state it is now. We need not be disheartened, even as many of us are tired right now, and we have not given up. I am going to continue to proclaim the faithfulness of God to you, in season and out of season, because only God is worthy of our trust and of our obedience.

When we think of the community with Moses, the ones who were under the cloud, we need to remember that that was a good place to be. They were not under a cloud, as in it was a rainy day and a bad-hair day to match; they were under the cloud which is to say they were inside the display of God’s presence on Earth. They were in the glory of God, yet still they were deliberately ignorant of God, acting as if they knew better or that they had persevered enough and that God owed them a break in the clouds(!!) to let their hair down. People in God’s crowd, inside God’s cloud, who were literally walking behind Moses behind the pillar of fire on the way to God’s promise mistrusted God so much that tens of thousands of them died under the cloud. Clearly no-one is above the need for grace and wise instruction, no one is immune from making stupid and tragic mistakes, even those who serve God under the cloud; even leaders of God’s congregations. This is what Paul was saying, and it is what Isaiah was saying as well.

So what do we do? Well we trust. We learn to trust and we give God our doubts in the expectation that God will be proven faithful toward us under the cloud. We decide to follow God and not lead God, setting out on our own paths in the hope that God will catch up and join us, or that God will go ahead of us on the road of our choosing and make our road straight. No, we go on God’s road with God; we listen and we go in the way that God sends us even if we go with God behind us. We do not rely on what we remember (and think we know) from years of experience about the road ahead, we trust in The LORD whom we have known.

I have four university degrees, two of them in ministry and theology, one in education (for teaching) and one in language. I know how to lead and build a congregation. I know how to do public speaking, and more so to preach for renewal. I know how to issue a call to intercessory and warfare prayer: March has been a month of weekly prayer meetings here at St Matthew’s and there has been an abundance of personal and paired prayer besides. I know how to engage in these things and not just encourage others to engage with them; I am a pray-er as well as a preacher and 2025 has been a year of weekly prayer meetings here at St Matthew’s and there has been an abundance of personal and paired prayer besides. I know how to lead and I know how to follow. But I’ve never done any of these things during a world war. As a University educated lay pastor I do know what I’m doing, and as someone with decades of experience as a preacher and an elder, let alone a minister, I know how to do it. Still I will listen for God at every step, and I will follow God’s instructions even when my ideas are better than God’s, because I suspect they won’t be. With all of your experience of prayer and worship, and leadership and management, and the physical and social landscape of Stawell city and the Grampians, and with all that you have read in books and the Bible, and heard at conferences in Melbourne or on Vision Radio or various podcasts, or seen on Hillsong TV or a Joyce Meyer DVD, and the things I know you learned in the 1990s and 2000s because I have seen your books in the library in the hall and heard your stories of “those days”, are you ready to stop and listen to God? Are you the one to take God as the Word? Are you willing to hear God direct you toward a “now thing”; to try the old thing for the eleventy-hundred and first time, or a new thing never done outside Heaven for the first time in this place?

Do you trust God? Open your ears, and your arms.

Amen.