Isaiah 55 versus 1 through 3.

Oh, 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 and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Harken diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves and fatness.

Incline your ear and come to me.

Here that your soul may live, and I will make with you

an everlasting covenant my steadfast sure love for David.

My own sense of things is that the Lord is moving among us at Bethlehem in some fresh ways,

especially in this area of boldness and personal witness to neighbors and acquaintances and family members and business

associates and fellow students.

For many of us, it's kind of a new venture and power is beginning to flow.

So when I came back from vacation a couple of weeks ago, I had three goals rambling around in my head with regard to preaching in August, July in August.

One, I wanted to stoke these flames that I sense flickering with the word. Two, I wanted to get into the Old Testament

because I had felt it was time to go back and hear the word of the Lord from the Old Testament for a while.

Three, I felt constrained to do some continuous exposition in a longer passage rather than picking a verse here and there to talk about.

Putting all that together and praying and reading, I felt very strongly led to Isaiah 55.

And so I'm going to preach through this chapter in five messages

and call it the Great Invitation, which it happens to be called

in my revised standard version in the little margin.

That's a good title for it. The Great Invitation.

And the first point that I want to make is that God is a very, very inviting God.

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