Transcript
So here's what you need to understand. God intentionally placed you in an amazingly multifaceted beautiful physical world. You just cannot live a day without bumping into the beauty of your world. And what you need to understand is all of that glory is not meant to be an end in itself. It's meant to be a means to an end that the glory of the physical world would point you to the glory of God who created it.
A World Formed to Reveal God
Now, that's not just happenstance. God intentionally formed His world in a way that it would reveal Him. I like to think of it this way. You can't get up in the morning without bumping into God because as Isaiah says, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with His glory."
And one of the places you see that creation-Creator connection is with food. Food really does preach the gospel to us. It's meant to do that. I love how much of the glory of God in creation is edible and so, the Bible gives us all kinds of food metaphors.
When you eat, it should produce in you worship, not just because God is such a wonderful provider of your physical needs, but because that food reminds you of the spiritual hunger that physical things can never satisfy. Let me read you one of the most beautiful passages about God's grace and listen to how God's grace is described.
Come, Everyone Who Thirsts
"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 or your labor for what does not satisfy? Listen and eat what is good and delight yourself in rich food."
Now, here's what's being said. It's the picture of food that when you're done with a meal doesn't satisfy you at all. Imagine a plate filled with food. You consume the whole thing. At the end of it, you're hungry. That's the picture. That wouldn't make any sense. And imagine if you paid a lot of money for that plate of food.
What the prophet Isaiah is saying in here in Isaiah 55 is that's what we tend to do. We tend, at great cost, to try to satisfy ourselves on created things that were never meant to satisfy us. You see, no thing in creation will satisfy the hunger of your heart. The things in creation are meant to point you to the One who will satisfy your heart.
The Ultimate Banquet Meal
Earth will never be our savior and so, what the beauty of Isaiah 55 is God says, "Look, there's the ultimate banquet meal that will satisfy your hunger. It'll quench your hunger that won't cost you anything. You don't have to work for it. You don't have to pay money for it. It's a free gift."
And you know, in that moment, Isaiah, through the vehicle food, is predicting the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, who would come and do what we couldn't do, and pay the price we should have paid in His death, so that we could sit at this table and eat and be full. Now that's a gospel of grace.
