Text: Isaiah 1:30- A garden that hath no water.
The book of Isaiah is impressive.
Why? Well, it was written over 700 years before Jesus was born on that
Bethlehem night over 2000 years ago, yet it contains clear and accurate
prophecies concerning His birth, life, and
death. Due to this precise revelation
about the coming Messiah, it has often been called ‘the 5th gospel’. To back
this up, the New Testament contains sixty-six direct quotes from the book of
Isaiah and twenty of the twenty-seven books include
a quote from Isaiah.
The Book of Isaiah is one of the most important books of the
Old Testament. While little is known of the personal life of the prophet, he is
one of the greatest of them all.
The book is a collection of oracles, prophecies, and reports;
but the common theme is the message of salvation. There was, according to these
writings, no hope in anything that was made by people. The northern kingdom of
Israel had been carried into captivity (722 B.C.), and the kingdom of Judah was in the middle of idolatry
and evil. The kingdom of Assyria had dominated the Middle East and posed a significant threat to both kingdoms, and the kingdom of Babylon was gaining power and would replace Assyria as
the dominant threat. In view of the fast-changing international scene, the
people of Israel would be concerned about their lot in life—what would become
of the promises of God? How could the chosen people survive, let alone be a
theocracy again? And must the remnant of the righteous also suffer with the
nation that for all purposes was pagan?
These are questions that are being asked today about the conditions for
Christians in the Middle East.
The messenger of the message of salvation is the prophet
Isaiah, whose name means “salvation of Yahweh,” or “Yah saves.”
Here is something interesting about Isaiah, you may or may
not know, the book of Isaiah is split into two main sections:
·
The
first section encompasses chapters 1-39, and
the general theme is the judgement of God.
·
The
second section, from chapter 40-66 presents a different theme of God’s grace
and comfort through the coming of the Messiah.
There are some more interesting facts about Isaiah:
·
First
how many chapters are there in the book of Isaiah? Easy you say 66. That’s correct.
·
And
how are those 66 chapters divided up? Well, I told you already that the first
39 chapters focus on judgement and the last 27 chapters
focus on the coming Messiah and the grace of God.
·
So
now comes the easy bit... How many books
are there in the Bible and how is the Bible split up?
·
The
Bible has 66 books. The first 39 books focus on the law and judgement whereas
the last 27 books focus on Jesus and the grace of God.
Can you see how the book of Isaiah is a picture of the whole
Bible?
This morning I would like to look at the greatness of Christ
in our life. I have often been in
conversations with people who after I have made a statement about the judgment
of God on sin or that God cannot accept sin in any form, have said to me, My
God would never do that. You must serve
the Old Testament God. They are not
talking about the God of the Bible; rather
they are talking about a god they have created for themselves. God is the great I AM. He is not the I am whosoever you want me to
be. God is far greater than we can ever imagine.
This morning I want to look at the greatness of Christ in our
life.
Isaiah 1:30- A garden
that hath no water.
Have you ever looked at your garden after a long spell of
hot, dry weather? The ground is baked
and parched with seams and cracks; the plants droop their weary heads. You grab the garden hose and do your best to
revive them, but if you happened to live in a place like Laverna and I lived in
the early 70’s where the water supply is limited, and you have to carry your water from a hydrant three miles away,
then you are wanting the rains to come.
One spring I decided to have a garden. I had the garden plowed we bought the corn
and beans, and I planted them. I was sure that I could use the water from
the canal that ran through the property since it was only about twenty feet
away. What I didn’t know was that you had
to have a permit to get water from the canal.
We didn’t have the money to buy the permit. So, the corn and beans either did not come up
or they came up and struggled, and others
just died.
One morning we got up, and
the entire garden was flooded from the canal.
What happened was someone downstream shut a gate and the water backed
up. I thought, what a blessing. The problem was quickly resolved, and the dry, barren land was refreshed with water. I
was going to have at least some beans.
I had one bean plant that survived, and it was growing. Since we lived on open range cattle and
horses were always coming on our property. I wasn’t too concerned when we had
over one hundred cows invade our property.
Until I remembered the one lonely
bean plant in the garden. After all the
cows were gone, I went to the garden to
see what was left of my solitary bean
plant. It was gone.
In the East where Isaiah lived,
they were dependent on water for their gardens.
The sunshine is much hotter, and they have more extended periods of when the rain does not fall. Can you imagine what a terribly dreary thing
plants in the garden would be with no means of getting water?
There are types of
gardens without water I want look at for a few minutes this morning.
The first is the garden of your soul. God has given to us the garden in it we can
have plants, flowers, herbs and yes even weeds.
Unless our garden is well watered everything will wilt, droop and
die. You know what is interesting about a garden, everything in it belong to us, but we
cannot make it grow. We cannot make the
rain fall. So, what can we do?
In Isaiah’s day sometimes, the rain only rained for a few
hours each year. Yet, they had gardens
that flourished. How? Miles away there were mountains that were
capped with snow. They brought the water
down from the mountains with canals and
in some cases pipes. They went to the
source of everlasting water. The mountains were so high and covered with snow
all year round and the melting snow gave the needed water to grow their food.
The canal that ran
through our property was from a reservoir at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The mountain that supplied the reservoir was over ten thousand feet high and
covered with snow. It was a constant
source of water.
When we find the garden of our soul drying up, we need to go to the source of our water
which we find in Jesus Christ.
It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to
the well to get some water, and Jesus asked her, “Please give me a drink.” This
happened while his disciples were in town buying some food.
The woman says, “I am surprised that you ask
me for a drink! You are a Jew, and I am a
Samaritan woman!” (Jews have nothing to do with Samaritans and men were
permitted to talk with women in public.)
Jesus says to her, “You don’t know what God
can give you. And you don’t know who I am, the one who asked you for a drink.
If you knew, you would have asked me, and I would have given you living water.”
The woman says, “Sir, where will you get that
living water? The well is very deep, and
you have nothing to get water with. Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob? He
is the one who gave us this well. He drank from it himself, and his sons and
all his animals drank from it too.”
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who
drinks this water will be thirsty again. But anyone who drinks
the water I give will never be thirsty again. The water I give people will be
like a spring flowing inside them. It will bring them eternal life.” John
4:5:14
That was over 2000 years ago, and you
know what, He is still waiting at the well, ready to give you the water of
everlasting life. Those who the LORD has
given this water He has marked as His own.
In the 66th chapter the
LORD said, I will put a mark on some of the people. I will send some of these
saved people to the nations of Tarshish, Libya, Lud (the land of archers),
Tubal, Greece, and all the faraway lands. Those people have never heard my
teachings. They have never seen my Glory. So, the saved people will tell the
nations about my glory. And they will bring all your brothers
and sisters from those other nations to my holy mountain Jerusalem
as an offering to the Lord. I will
also choose some of these people to be priests and Levites.” The Lord himself said this.
The Lord says, “I will make a new world—new
heavens and a new earth—that will last forever. In the same way, your names and
your children will always be with me. Everyone will come to
worship me on every worship day; they will come
every Sabbath and every first day of the month. This is what I, the Lord, have said.
There are those who have gone to the
source of everlasting water and are sharing that water with others. Who have
you shared the water of life with?
This
brings us to the next type of garden.
The
other kind of garden is dehydrated, it is
the thirsty garden of other people’s lives. Some people have their gardens
dried up from want of a kind word or the lack of somebody to love them; so,
they become hard, and bitter and disagreeable.
There are no delicate flowers in
their garden it is filled with bitter herbs and weeds.
The
LORD wants us to lead them to the source of everlasting water, to water the
parched garden of their life. You may
not like to work in a dry, dusty garden
that is filled with bitter herbs and weeds.
It is so much more refreshing to work with a fresh, beautiful garden, but if you know where the source of everlasting
water is to be found, you must show them
the way. It is their choice to accept
the water; it is yours to show them where
to find the source. If the garden of
your soul is dry and dusty and it looks like there is no hope, accept the water
of everlasting life.
The final garden that is parched and dead.
This
garden looks fresh, green, and everything perfect. However, with a closer inspection, we find everything is
artificial. There is no real life. There is a form of godliness but no power or life.
The LORD’s condemnation of this garden is strong:
·
Once
you were like pure silver, but now you are like the impurities that people throw
away when the silver is purified.
·
You
are like good wine that has been weakened with water. Your
rulers are rebels and friends of thieves. They demand bribes and accept money
for doing wrong. They take money to cheat people, and they don’t speak up for
widows and orphans. They will not even listen to their cries for help.
In the future,
you will be ashamed of the oak trees and special
gardens you chose to worship
because you will be like an oak tree whose leaves are dying. You will be like a garden dying without water. Powerful people will be like small, dry pieces
of wood, and what they did will be like the sparks that start a fire. These
people and their works will both burn up, and no one will be able to put out
that fire.
This
is the judgment of the LORD on a people who have denied the everlasting source of water- JESUS CHRIST.
In
Isaiah 65 we hear the words of the LORD,
“I helped people who had not come to me for
advice. Those who found me were not looking for me. I spoke to a nation that
does not use my name. I said, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ “All day long I stood ready to accept those
who turned against me. But they kept doing whatever they wanted to do, and all
they did was wrong. They keep doing things, right in front of me, that makes me
angry. They offer sacrifices and burn incense in their special gardens. They
sit among the graves, waiting to get messages from the dead. They eat the meat
of pigs, and their pots are full of soup made from unclean meat. But they tell
others, ‘Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me because I am holy!’ They are like
smoke in my eyes, and their fire burns all the time.”
These people have
allowed their garden to fill with bitter herbs and poisonous weeds. They have convinced themselves they do not
need the Water of Everlasting Life- Jesus Christ. They are burning noxious weeds that is
sending the smoke of abomination into the eyes of the LORD. The LORD has told us time and time again to
repent and He would heal us, make us whole, give us the water of Life.
What type of
garden are you tending, one watered from the everlasting
source of life? Or are you one who has
been led to the source of everlasting water but has not made the decision
to accept the water and change the bitter herbs and weeds to a beautiful
garden? Or are you denying the everlasting
source of water and burning the incense of noxious weeds from evil of an
artificial garden into the eyes of the LORD.
Christ is ready
to bring you the salvation needed to change the garden of your life if you only
accept the source of everlasting water.
Don’t let your life be like a garden dying without water. Accept the offer of Jesus Christ to give you a spring flowing inside that will
bring you eternal life.
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