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Nov 03, 2019

Finally and Fully Satisfied

Passage: Isaiah 55:1-13

Speaker: Brian Land

Series: Isaiah

Category: Grace Brevard

Keywords: hunger, satisfied, search, need, longing

We all aggressively pursue satisfaction in different places (vocation, relationships, accomplishments) and are willing to pay the necessary price (money, energy, time). But in the long run we get left emptier than we started; we lose the job, have relationship heartbreak and our accomplishments are overshadowed and forgotten. To this God-given hunger for satisfaction comes the pure offer of the Gospel, assuring us that Jesus paid the “necessary price” for us, giving us His imperishable and unfading Satisfaction, and the only price is admitting our utter poverty.

Order of Worship

CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 63:1-3,5,7

READING: John 4:13-14

MUSIC: 

PRAYER & GRATITUDE: Sustained

LEADER:  Gracious Savior, You have created and supported us. Saved and kept us.

ALL:  May we live by and for You. Fixing our eyes on Jesus. Never satisfied with progress but as we grow into the image of Christ. 

LEADER:  May Your love constrain us to holy obedience. Move us to good works. Sustained by Your Spirit.  

ALL: Renewed by your grace. Compelled by love with mercy for neighbors. Amen.

MESSAGE: Finally and Fully Satisfied

CENTRAL TEXT: Isaiah 55:1-13

ILLUSTRATION: Drama - FOMO Night

CONFESSION & ASSURANCE: CONFESSION: Confession of Sin:

ALL: Almighty God, you love us, but we have not loved you.

You call, but we have not listened.

God of grace, help us to admit our sin,

so that as you come to us in mercy,

we may repent, turn to you, and receive forgiveness;

Through Jesus Christ our Redeemer.

Assurance of Pardon: Psalm 103:10-12

LEADER: 10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. 11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; 12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.   

BENEDICTION: Ephesians 3:20-21 ESV

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • Deuteronomy 6:4-9
  • Genesis 3:6
  • Haggai 1:6
  • 1 Peter 1:3-5
  • Revelation 3:17-18

RELATED MEDIA

11.03.19 Album

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

This passage is the conclusion of Isaiah Part 2 where God is talking to the Israelites IN Exile (Isaiah 56 begins talking to the Israelites AFTER Exile). They had been enslaved for 70 years and were settling in, treating Babylon as their permanent home, forgetting their Real Home of the Promised Land.

  1. How do we all make the hear and now our hope and home?
    1. In doing this...honestly...in what are we finding our satisfaction?
  2. In the short run, there really is some of satisfaction (or we wouldn’t keep going there). How are each of these “satisfying” you?
    1. Job / School
    2. Relationships
    3. Quick pleasures (like...?)
    4. What else?
  3. What does this passage say about this type of food & satisfaction?
    1. How does this ring true to you (and where does it seem shallow?)
  4. God isn’t trying to deprive us of pleasure, he’s inviting us into the Greatest Delight (v. 2) that finally and fully satisfies.
  5. How do we act like God is trying to keep us from real happiness?
  6. What IS true satisfaction?
  7. What is True Satisfaction isn’t connected to my glory
  8. Despite the incredibly loud and convincing voice of the world, God’s “WORD” speaks truth, hope and satisfaction. Talk about how God’s truth and the world’s “truth” are in conflict (like in verse 8)?
    1. What does God’s “WORD” tell us?
    2. What if God actually knows more than we do
    3. How does this culminate in Jesus as “THE WORD” (John 1)
  9. Describe the satisfaction/fulfillment the Gospel offers
  10. Explain this: Because of the sacrifice of Jesus -- God is satisfied in us and therefore I can be fully satisfied in Him.
  11. Look at the verbs...HOW do we get this satisfaction?

QUOTES:

  • “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” - Augustine (400AD)
  • “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)
  • “The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)
  • There are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world - either by a demonstration of the world’s vanity, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or, by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to resign an old affection, which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one. - Thomas Chalmers (The Expulsive Power of a New Affection) 

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