A changed mind, a full heart
Preacher: Revd Scott McRoberts, St Columba Church of Scotland, Inverness
Readings: Isaiah 55:1-9; 1 Cor. 10:1-13
When I was a university student, I remember being hungry much of the time. And it turned out that pot noodles or beans on toast only went so far to helping out. A fair amount of the time, I bought what was quick and easy to eat, not to mention cheap. And funnily enough, ‘convenient’ was not the same as ‘filling’. I remember families in the church I went to at the time inviting us students in. ‘Come and have lunch at our house.’ And to my shame, I remember one particular couple offering me lunch, and me saying, ‘no thanks, I’ve got plans today.’ In truth, I had no plans that day, I was just nervous about experiencing the unknown host. Eventually, when they asked again another week, I said yes. And I remember the welcome, the hospitality – the being fed full, and told to feel free to snooze on the sofa afterwards. In those homes of invitation, we found fulness and satisfaction that eluded us the rest of the week! In all of the passages we’ve read today, we find the theme of God satisfying the hunger and thirst of the human heart. The Bible sings of the satisfaction that God brings to human beings as they find their fullness of life in Him. But it doesn’t just ‘happen’ to human beings. What we find, especially in Isaiah 55:1-9, is that to have a full heart, we need a changed mind. A mind that decides on accepting God’s invitation. That stops fearing God as an unknown host in our lives, and starts trusting Him. A mind that’s set on God and His ways. We’ll come to Isaiah 55 in a moment. In Psalm 63 v1, David sings, ‘My soul thirsts for you…’ But by v.5, he is singing, ‘my soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods.’ What is it that comes in between the two, that feeds the human soul so completely? It’s the worship of God. In these verses, David experiences God’s presence and power worshipping in the sanctuary, and going to bed at night. He’s singing about God; he’s singing to God. Singing of how God’s love is better than life itself. It is what we were made to do. David knew many of the experiences of life that people know now – family strife, the trials of leadership, the experience of war, living as a refugee, facing imminent death, betrayal, success, failure, 1 personal and national sin, saying goodbye to close friends, knocking down giants, and ambitions disappearing into future generations – through all of that, what David was most consumed with, that filled his heart and life, was the worship of God. I am told by a Christian friend who worked in Mariupol, Ukraine for many years that this is the experience of believers in Jesus there that he knows. That, in the face of tyranny and invasion, their defining experience that sustains them now, and indeed forever, is the worship of God. Rather than consuming the things of the world and finding them a bit light in the end; David is instead consumed with a worshipping love for God that actually fills and satisfies his very heart. As David puts it in vv.7 and 8, we sing to God, and we cling to God. Therein lies life in all its fullness, and nowhere else. In Isaiah 55:1-9, we hear the invitation of God. Like those families in my student church, God says, ‘Come to me, fill up, be refreshed.’ Like 150,000 homes in the UK signing up to host refugees, God says, ‘Come, you are welcome with me.’ ‘Come,’ God repeats through His prophet, in vv.1-3. ‘Seek Him; call on Him’ v.6 tells us. This is the God who wants to give freely to all who will come to Him. The God who wants to fill and satisfy us. Who delights in mercy and compassion, giving us new starts and welcoming us even after we’ve walked away from Him. Isaiah says you don’t need money to purchase what God wants to freely give you. You just need to come to Him. To come to God, there is no earning – but there is a turning. vv.7-9 call the ‘wicked’ to forsake their way, and the ‘evil man’ to forsake their thoughts. Isaiah has already spent 54 chapters explaining that the wicked are those who reject the God who made them and His ways. And the people who do no more than pay lip service to God whilst they live lives of injustice and selfishness quite out of step with the heart of God. All of us need to turn to the God who invites us. But of course, so many do not. 2 The turning that’s called for is from something and to something. It’s from our ‘thoughts and ways’ (v.7); and it’s to God’s ‘thoughts and ways’ (vv.8-9). So this is about a change of mind and of map. It’s to change our minds to align with what God thinks. That’s an ongoing, lifelong process for us. And to change our maps from plotting our own ‘ways’ to discovering and going the ‘ways’ that the LORD leads us. vv.8-9 are supposed to inspire awe in us. They do remind us that the mind and action of God is beyond what we can fathom; that there is an immeasurable mystery about the God we cannot contain and explain. That in itself ought to lead us to worship. They say that God’s ways are different to ours; and higher than ours. And that also offers us two more measurable things about a life turned towards God in worship. If God’s ways are different to ours, our lives will be visibly different as we worship Him to the kind of lives we would lead if we didn’t worship Him. And if God’s ways are higher than ours, then they are certainly better than ours. We trust that pursuing life in the way God reveals, in His Word and by His Spirit, is better by far than the life choices we would default to apart from God. In this turning to God, we resolve to turn our backs on chasing empty things that do not fill us, believing that God has more for us. So many people are spending their time chasing things that satisfy all too briefly, before they need something else. Isaiah 55:2 rather straightforwardly asks, ‘Why? What’s the point? Why waste your time, your life, pursuing the convenient fast fix that isn’t filling you up?’ Why chase instant noodles when God offers you a feast? People chase empty shadows from the slums to the corridors of power. Dreams of a better future draw the powerless into dark places run by evil exploiters. Paranoid nightmares lead dictators to cross the line and the border chasing power and security that will never, ever feel quite enough to satisfy them. And from the richest resident of this town to the most debt-ridden student, the world sells the lie that acquiring the next thing in front of you will fill you full. 3 To all human hearts, God calls, ‘Come! Change your mind and fill your heart! Turn from all that emptiness, and be filled full as you come to me.’ That takes humility before the God who is higher than us, the choice to change direction just however God shows us, and the willingness to worship in heat and soul and voice. In doing so, we receive all that God promises here – full hearts, vv.1-3 tell us. Soul-thirst quenched; heart-hunger satisfied. Mercy, pardon, welcome and compassion, v.7 tells us. The God we did not welcome now welcomes us as we turn His way. That was guaranteed to you at the cross of Jesus Christ. But it’s only a changed mind that leads to a full heart. To remain stubbornly independent of God is to suffer an insatiable life and to be destined for death. Digging in with our godless decisions leads to destruction. Vladimir Putin is playing that out tragically on the world stage. And so many other people are finding it out the hard way in their life stories. This is the warning of our final passage, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13. There, we were reading of people who experienced the presence and provision of God. People who knew their hunger satisfied and their thirst quenched, vv.1-4 say. They were people who knew the thoughts and the ways of the LORD. He revealed these to them at Mount Sinai. But these were people who did the opposite of what Isaiah called for in Isaiah 55. They turned from God’s thoughts and ways to their own thoughts and ways. That’s what succumbing to temptation is, which vv.11-13 deal with. To fall to temptation is to believe that departing from God’s way and going your own will bring you greater satisfaction. And since the Garden of Eden, humans have learned the hard way that what lies that way is death. This passage is a warning to us not to persist in departing from God and going our own way again. Not to assume that our presence in a church or a chapel community means ‘we’re alright with God.’ We’re invited to lives that pursue the worship and ways of God, and don’t drift from that. But when we do find ourselves turning away from God, as indeed we all do – the thing is, of course, to come back. To re-turn to God. To remember the invitation to ‘come and be filled,’ that came in Isaiah 55:7 with the promise of mercy and pardon when we do that. 4 During your life, there will likely be a turning point (in the most meaningful sense of that phrase) where you choose to turn from your own wisdom and wanderings, to the worship and ways of God. But there will also be many turning points for us – every time we realise we have fallen to temptation and need to come back. That in itself is a habit we must develop, so that we are people who continue to delight in worshipping a God who changes our minds and fills our hearts.