Self-saving Schemes
get you nowhere
Scripture Reading: Isaiah 55:1-6
“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters…” is the opening line of Isaiah 53, the great invitation to come into the grace of salvation in Christ, the Servant who suffered for our sins. Verse two asks the heart-searching question: Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
The Lord is asking us to give a reasonable explanation for our schemes of self-saving. Inherent in the question are the arguments against these schemes. There are three that jump out at us. Self-saving schemes are costly. “Why do you spend your money?” Obviously, this is metaphorical. It is not necessarily speaking about actual currency, although that isn’t off the table either as many try to merit God’s favor through their altruism. Self-saving requires a lot of time and spiritual capital. And the return on investment is zero.
Because we have to exert so much energy into our self-saving schemes, they are ultimately exhausting. You “labor for that…” Salvation in Christ is free. Every other effort to save oneself requires exhausting and impossible levels of labor. Whether it is a religious ritual, a moral code, or a secular or anti-Christian methodology, there is always something more for you to do and, after you’ve done it, a lingering sense of never having done enough.
Self-saving efforts are not only costly and exhausting, but they are also unsatisfying. You spend and labor for that which does not satisfy. Jeremiah, also using the language of water to describe our need for and efforts to quench our spiritual thirst describes self-saving efforts as hewing out cisterns for [ourselves], broken cisterns that can hold no water.
The choice seems clear, doesn’t it? Either seek to meet the spiritual needs of your heart through made-up schemes of man and waste your resources, exhaust yourself, and end up none the better; or come to Christ, the Water of life, and drink freely and have your thirst quenched.
