The Abundant Kindness of God

I wanna start by asking you, I wonder if you've ever had a time where you've misunderstood someone. Where you've ever had a time where you've made some assumptions about someone that ended up being untrue. Well, it's really important, the assumptions that we make about people, because it often affects the way we feel about them and the way that we approach them. And I want to share with you a story about one of my dad's friends. He was a great rugby player.

He played Australian schoolboys rugby. And he actually played alongside Ricky Stuart. I don't know if there's any NRL fans here this morning. But Ricky Stuart, he's a big deal in the community. He's the coach of the Canberra Raiders.

He played for the Australian Kangaroos. He even played, switched codes and played Rugby Union for the Wallabies. So he's a great player, great coach. And this friend of mine, he played rugby with Ricky, and he had a few interactions with him. And in these interactions, he came away thinking, this was in his words, he said, Ricky was about Ricky.

Ricky was about Ricky. He was kind of self absorbed, arrogant. That's the kind of impression that he got about Ricky, and that's the impression he carried with him into the later years. But maybe twenty or so years later, he went along to an NRL function where Ricky was the keynote speaker. And he was sitting on one side of the room, and he was watching Ricky, and he was the man of the hour.

People were surrounding him. There were cameras and reporters. He was up for a coaching position at the time. And he was just watching this going on, and as he's watching, he catches Ricky's eye for a moment. And Ricky kind of waves everyone off, and he walks, you know, 20 metres across the other side of the room, all the way up to my friend, calls him by his full name and says, Mate, how are you doing?

I haven't seen you for such a long time. And for the next forty minutes, he was waving off people that wanted to come and talk to him, said, I'm just catching up with an old friend, and they chatted family, they chatted footy, and they chatted a whole lot. And he even actually ended up giving his number to my friend at the end, saying, If you ever need anything, just let me know. Now, this absolutely turned out to be a different man to who my friend thought he was. Just from a few small interactions, he got a sense that Ricky was about Ricky.

But actually, he found out that he was actually one of the most down to earth and generous people he'd known. Later on, a few years later, Ricky's Raiders would come in to play the amazing Brisbane Broncos, who haven't been so amazing this year. And he texted Ricky and said, I'd love to catch up with you afterwards. And he said, I'll do you one better. I'll get you some tickets, bring your kids to the game, come to the sheds afterwards, you can meet the players.

And apparently, my friend still has Jared Croker's socks to this day, if you know Jared Croker. He's a great centre, great player. But sometimes, we completely misunderstand people. And our assumptions are powerful because they change the way we feel about someone, they change the way that we approach them. And our passage today is really going to break down some big misconceptions we often have about God.

Some misconceptions that are really prevalent out there amongst people of the world and even prevalent among people in the church. And so it's really important for us to think about who God is because if we do not really know God as He really is, it may change the way we respond to Him. We may carry emotional baggage about Him that really is untrue, and it may actually prevent us from seeking a relationship with Him altogether. So let's dive into our passage and see what it tells us about God. And there are three sections in our passage.

The first two sections talk about some of God's actions. And then the final section, God tells us something about His deepest heart, about who He is. So let's take a look at our first section in verses one to five, where we see the God who blesses. The God who blesses. Now, just before we get into it, we need to understand who Isaiah is speaking to.

Isaiah is speaking to Israelites who have been exiled from their homeland. They're now in Babylon and for good reason. Early on, when God established this relationship with Israel in Deuteronomy, He talked to them. He said, if you aren't faithful to me, He warned them, I will take you out of this land I'm giving to you and you will serve other nations. And over many generations and years and different kingdoms, Israel rebelled again and again and again.

It's just heartbreaking as you read through it. And finally, the judgment came. God sent Babylon, this ruthless nation, and they came and they ransacked the city. They humiliated their royalty, their elders, and they carried them off into Babylon. And so we've got these people in Babylon.

They're dejected. They're rebellious people, and we're coming to see what God will say to them. And you know, I wonder how you and I would have spoken to the exiles if we were in God's shoes. If we were talking to someone who had betrayed us again and again and again. By that point in the story, we may have given up on them, or at least if we had some amount of compassion left, we might have gone up and we might have been a bit smart about how we approached them.

Talking to them saying, Hey, I want to establish a relationship with you again, but maybe we need to put some boundaries in place. I need to build some trust. I need to make sure that you're serious about doing the right thing this time. You know, that might have been the kind of way that we would talk to someone who did this to us. But God is so different to us.

God isn't like us. Let's look at how He speaks to the exiles. Verses one to two, He says, come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. 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 and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food. Now, that sounds so counterintuitive. We know who these people were. We know how they had treated God, but apparently, God wasn't finished with them.

In fact, He just wants to bless them. He invites them to this beautiful feast and He tells them to come at no cost. I want you to imagine if Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corp, a billionaire, he's an Australian as well, so maybe he owns a mansion in the Gold Coast somewhere. Imagine he gave you an invitation to come to this feast at his home. And he's got all the best food laid out, everything, like, beautiful.

I was talking to a friend last night, he said, apparently, king lobster, he's a foodie. Said, king lobster goes for like a hundred and fifty pounds a slice or something. So Rupert Murdoch, he's got his king lobster there, and he's got everything there, and you go there and you enjoy yourself. And I think most of us would be thinking, you know, like, why me? This is kind of weird.

Like, what is he getting out of this? What is he? Is he playing some sort of trick? Is he stealing my information? Like, why am I here? Why is he being so generous?

Now, to take that illustration a bit further, imagine you'd personally betrayed Rupert Murdoch at one stage, and then he invites you to this feast. You think, okay, something really weird is going on. I'm not heading along to this thing. But that's exactly what God does with these people. These people who had betrayed Him again and again, they deserve to be forsaken as enemies.

But God just wants to bless them. He tells them to come to Him so He can shower them with good gifts. He's an overwhelmingly generous God. And as we read on, we find that God isn't finished making big promises. He says to them in verse three, incline your ear and come to me.

Hear that your soul may live, and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, My steadfast, sure love for David. Behold, I made Him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. Behold, you shall call a nation that you did not know, and a nation that did not know you shall run to you because of the Lord your God and of the holy one of Israel, for He has glorified you. So God keeps calling them to come to Him, and He wants to make an everlasting covenant with them. Now, some of us might know that word, but that's a big word, that's a biblical word.

And a covenant really just refers to an agreement. An agreement that's far more binding and strong than a mere promise, but far more loving and relational than a mere contract. It's this strong, relational, loving agreement. And it's a lot like marriage. And so God comes along and He wants to make this strong agreement with Israel and these exiles, and He wants to extend the blessings of a covenant He had made early with David to them.

So earlier on in the biblical story, in Second Samuel chapter seven, God made a covenant with David and He made some audacious promises in that. He promised him that he would have a son who would rule forever and ever and ever. I just want to read a little bit of it to you starting in verse thirteen of Second Samuel seven. I will establish the throne of His kingdom forever. I will be to Him a father and He shall be to me a son.

Skipping over to verse sixteen. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. Now, if we just jump back to the exiles for a moment, we remember that their kingdom has been destroyed, their royalty degraded, their people deported to Babylon. And they might have been wondering at times, what happened to this promise to David?

What's going on? He was promised a son, a king who would rule forever and ever, but here we are, a dejected, pitiful people in Babylon. And you see, God's word never fails. It is sure. And He reminds them that He has not forgotten the promises, and He wants to extend the blessings of this promise to David to them.

Now, it's not enough for us just to hear about these promises or for the exiles to hear them. God actually wants us to respond. And He calls us four times in these first few verses to come to Him. And then in verses six to seven, He gets right down on our eye level and He calls to the individual and says to repent and to forsake your wicked ways. That's what we see in the next section in the God who convicts.

The God who convicts. Verses six and seven, it says, seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake His way and the unrighteous man His thoughts. You see, even after all the exiles had been through, even after all the judgment that they had experienced, there was still a need for them to repent.

It's kind of like they still hadn't learned their lesson. And I think that's really insightful about our human condition. We're all broken, sinful, fallen people. We do and think things that we would never want played on this screen behind me. And so just as the exiles needed to repent, we need to keep repenting today.

And I don't know where God wants to press in on your heart this morning, if there's a place in your life where you know isn't right with God. But maybe for you, it's a hidden form of anger. And it just wells up when people disrespect you. And in private moments, it comes out. Perhaps it comes out with your family or kids.

Maybe for you, it's a secret fantasy world. And you think about people sometimes who do not belong to you, or you visit websites that you know are not good for you. Maybe for you, it's pride. Now, the proud person never knows that they're proud. But what do you think about others who are different to you?

Who you find to be a little bit different, maybe weird? Do you judge them? Do you avoid them? Do you laugh about them later with your mates, make comments about them? How is it that you treat others who are different?

Because in Proverbs six, it says that there are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to Him. And the first of those is haughty eyes, eyes that look above others and exalt themselves and think that they're better than other people. Where is it that God wants to press in on your heart this morning. The New Testament is real about our brokenness. James says in chapter three of his letter, we all stumble in many ways, all of us.

And I love that James acknowledges that because the beautiful thing about the church is that it's a community where we can be honest. The Bible is clear that we are all in this one together. First John one verse eight says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. So of all places on earth, the church is a community where we can be honest, where we can be real about our brokenness, and we can confess our failures to one another. Because we don't just worship a God who convicts, who judges, who calls out what is wrong, but we worship a God who promises to abundantly pardon us.

And this is exactly what God sets out to reassure us of in the next section of our passage, the final section, which we call the God of abundant kindness. The God of abundant kindness. The rest of verse seven says, let him return to the Lord that He may have compassion on him and to our God for He will abundantly pardon. Now, I love that. That's good news.

And I love the Hebrew phrase behind those words, abundantly pardon. The Hebrew word for abundantly is the word ravar, ravar. And it means to make great, to increase, to do something frequently, copiously, continually. And it's as if God is calling on the exiles and us this morning and saying, if you will come to me, I will increase forgiveness. I will multiply it.

I will continually forgive. The solution to our brokenness and to the human issue is not to downplay it. It's not to pretend it's not there. It's not to cover over it. But God actually minces no words in calling it wicked.

He speaks truth to us. He convicts us, but then He floods us with mercy and kindness and grace and forgiveness. And many of us find that hard to believe, especially in the wake of our own moments of sin. And I suppose it's because we don't operate like that. If someone betrayed us as much as Israel betrayed God, I think, well, I would have shut them out hundreds of years earlier.

It would just be too painful. And we form relationships with one another usually on a mutual basis. If both sides are doing their part to be kind, to make effort, we'll maintain the relationship. But if the other side doesn't do enough, sometimes we walk away from that relationship. When we're really being immature, we're tit for tat, someone hurts us, we think of a just judgment that we need to give to them to equalise the relationship.

We love this idea of equal treatment in our world. If someone wrongs us, we equalise it. We love the idea of people getting what they deserve, what they earn, what they merit. But then we slap this idea onto God. And it's no wonder that so many of us want to avoid Him, and so many people out there want to avoid Him.

But God is not like us. He's abundantly kind, abundantly gracious. I thank God that He doesn't give me what I deserve because I deserve hell. But I've received grace and forgiveness and love from my Father. He will abundantly pardon and He explains why in verses eight and nine.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. I love those verses. And oftentimes, I think we quote them when we're trying to explain something, a difficult situation to someone. They don't understand why something has happened and we say, well, God's ways are higher than our ways.

But here, He's saying this to emphasise how abundantly gracious and willing to forgive He is compared to us. He's emphasising the moral difference between Him and us. He's saying, my ways are gracious, full of kindness and goodness. And one of my favourite writers at the moment, Dane Ortland, he writes this about these verses. He says, our lethargic apprehensions of the uproarious joy of divine pardoning lower the ceiling on whom we perceive God to be.

But they do not limit who God in fact is. And then he goes on to quote John Calvin. He says, God is infinitely compassionate and infinitely ready to forgive, so that it ought to be ascribed exclusively to our unbelief if we do not obtain pardon from Him. So what's stopping you from coming to God this morning? Maybe you've joined us for the first time online this morning and you're checking things out.

And I wanna ask you what's stopping you from coming to Jesus? What's stopping you from coming to God? He's told us in this passage that He will bless and He does convict, but He offers abundant forgiveness to sinners. So many people reject God because they do not realise who He really is. They do not see just how wonderful and magnificent and glorious and attractive and gracious He is.

We're kinda like my friend with Ricky Stuart. We have the wrong idea of Him until we actually find it, get it clarified later on. And Isaiah 55 wants to correct that misconception this morning. And not only does our passage contain God's words about His heart, He reassures us that way, but He also reassures us by telling us His plan to work in human history to reveal Himself. Let's go back to verse three for a moment.

Now, this verse is a little tricky to interpret, but it contains a plan, a prophecy of something to come. And I'm just gonna read it for us again. It says, incline your ear and come to me, hear that your soul may live. And I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. Now, that final line, my steadfast, sure love for David, it's very tricky to translate that from the original Hebrew into English.

Like, it's kind of a little odd that the ESV has said love in the singular there, because it's actually a plural word. And I think the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible, translates it best. If you've got a different translation, it's probably different for you. But this is what they translate it as, and I think they get it right. They say this is how they translate it.

I will make a permanent covenant with you on the basis of the faithful kindnesses of David. On the basis of the faithful kindnesses of David. So essentially, God's saying, I wanna make this amazing agreement with you based on the faithful deeds of David. Now, if you know your Bibles well, you think, okay, well, David was great in some ways, but he was also pretty horrendous. I mean, he took another man's wife and got him killed.

Like, how can it be based on the faithful deeds of David? How could he have possibly secured such a great promise for us? He was an imperfect man. Well, the thing is, while this verse does glance back at the covenant with David, it's actually looking forward to a future David, a type of David who is still to come. It's a future promise.

And why do I know this? Well, Isaiah has been building up this idea throughout His book. If we go back to Isaiah chapter nine, He prophesies forward about a mysterious figure. This is what He says about him in verse seven. He says, of the increase of His government and of peace, there will be no end on the throne of David and over His kingdom.

Now, when we hear about David, we should immediately be thinking back to Second Samuel seven, the covenant. Okay. This sounds like the king whose throne will never end. Jump forward two chapters into Isaiah eleven verses one to two and we read, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse. Okay.

So there's some picture language going on there. We've got a stump, and there's a shoot that's going to come out of it. It's called the stump of Jesse. Now, please, you're welcome to answer me back here. This isn't a rhetorical question.

Does anyone know who Jesse is? Anyone know who Jesse is? Yep. Yep. David's David's father.

Exactly. Thank you so much. So David's father. So when it says the stump of Jesse, this commentator, I think, is great, Alec Motyer, he says this, the reference to Jesse indicates that the shoot is not just another king in David's line, but rather another David. Another David.

And it goes on to say in those verses, and I'll just read it fully. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from His roots shall bear fruit, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him. So clearly, throughout this book, Isaiah has been building up an expectation for a future king, a greater David. So when God says in our verse, I will make a permanent covenant with you on the basis of the faithful kindnesses of David, we should be thinking of a future king, a future David. But who would this be?

Who would be that good? Who would be that faithful? Who would be that obedient to God that they could secure such a good and eternal covenant for these rebellious exiles and for people like us today? Well, the New Testament opens up with Matthew one verse one. The book of the genealogy of Jesus the Christ, the Son of David.

You see, Jesus was the greater David. He was a king, David's promised descendant. He is the fulfilment of Isaiah fifty-five verse three. And He is the ultimate revelation of God's kind and compassionate heart because He Himself is God in the flesh. And you see, God could offer to make an everlasting covenant with the exiles, and He can offer it to us today, not only because He tells us that He is so willing, not only because He tells us that His heart is full of compassion, but also because He has acted in human history to deal with our faithful faithlessness.

And that was done through the faithful life of Jesus Christ. You see, Jesus has rewritten the human story. It's the point that Romans five makes. Adam, in the Garden of Eden, he wrote a story of sin and rebellion and pain and suffering and death. But Jesus, the God man, wrote a story of faithfulness.

He stayed with God during His temptation in the wilderness. He rejected Satan's temptations. He moved towards the outcast of societies. He went and touched lepers and He healed them. He preached good news to people all across Israel.

He went and ate with the greatest sinners of society and laughed with them and taught them about God. And ultimately, He was that obedient to the will of the Father that He went to the cross to suffer in our place, to die in utter anguish, to put our sin to death, and to put our record right with God. God disproves our puny thoughts about Him by revealing His abundant kindness through Jesus. God disproves our lowly human puny thoughts about who He is by telling us of His abundant kindness and by working through human history in the person of Jesus to reveal His love at the cross. And Jesus is calling us to come to Him today.

His arms were opened up at the cross, and His arms remain open today for moral failures, for sinners like you and me. He offers us to come and to feast with Him at no cost because He has paid the cost. He's not frowning at you. Your sin only fills Him up with more compassion and more desire to pardon you if you will come to Him. He promised in John's gospel that He would never cast out anyone who came to Him.

If God's convicted you of something this morning, I wanna call on you in the words of Isaiah to return to the Lord that He may have compassion on you, to give it over to Him, to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. I remember when I first really came alive in my own faith in year eleven. I started going along to Brave Park Community Church, the church that I'm at right now. And I remember service after service, just feeling really convicted. Just feeling like God had revealed things to me that weren't right in my own life, feeling weighed down by them.

And I would often go to the prayer corner and I'd pray with one of our pastors and they would just remind me again and again of the gospel, of the good news of Jesus, that He died in my place for my sins. And that would just warm my heart. I would leave that place feeling set free, feeling light, feeling ready to walk in the newness of life that Jesus gives. And I think that's what we can do when we see who God is. He's a God who loves to pardon sinners who come to Him.

A.W. Tozer once said that what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. And I couldn't agree more. Wouldn't it be a tragedy if you dragged yourself through life with a crushing sense of shame because you didn't feel that God would be willing to forgive you? Wouldn't it be a tragedy if you were harsh to other people and their sin because you felt that attitude was pleasing to God? Isaiah 55 shows us that God, in His heart of hearts, is abundantly kind and compassionate and gracious.

That's the kind of God I wanna know, and I'm sure you do too. So let's get to know Him. I wanna finish with an invitation from Him, which comes from Revelation twenty-one verse six. This is what He says. I want you to hear this personally from Him this morning.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty, I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. Let's go to Him and drink from that water. Let's pray. Lord, we just come before you this morning, and we thank you for your precious word.

Because without it, we'd come up with all sorts of ideas about you that would not be true. And Lord, we are tempted to think that you could never forgive us in the wake of our own sin. We're tempted to judge others harshly. We're tempted to do all sorts of things, but Father, we just wanna acknowledge your kindness this morning. And we wanna thank you for your kindness.

And Jesus, we thank you that you left the throne in heaven to humble yourself, to become one of us, to suffer, to die on the cross in our place. And we wanna honour that sacrifice, honour what you did by coming to you. Lord, if there's anything on our hearts that's weighing on us, we confess that to you right now. And, Lord, we just bring ourselves to you. Please be gracious to us.

Please lead us in paths of life for your name's sake. We bless your name, and we pray this as your people in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.