Look To Life Series

Pastor Allan Kircher

Shell Point Baptist Church

November 25, 2012

“Looking for Life”

"Look unto me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is no other."—Isaiah 45:22.

This/simply one of/blessed text/Lord gives us for our conversion.

I plan to refine and dissect and take apart this text in an effort for some of us to be able to see it in a way we haven’t previously perceived its preciousness and power.

• The great sin of man, ever since he has fallen

• Has been that of idolatry.

• He is ever seeking to get away from God.

• Whom he cannot see.

So he makes for himself a god, which is an idol, and it pleases him because he can gaze upon it.

• That may be in the form of tv, cars, hobbies, work

• Or other carnal confidences in his life.

• So he looks to that something and expects good from it.

• So the mind of man gets derailed from God and His ways.

For a while, the idolater may delight himself in the idol which he has so delicately carved out for his purposes.

• He clings to it/the most precious commodity to him.

• He cries out in vain to the idol, hobby etc.,

• Then he discovers no answer comes to him.

In his disappointment and vexation of spirit, he is ready to lie down in despair.

• His idol cannot fulfill him.

• It must be so, more or less, with all of us.

• If we trust in anything but God

• we will be disappointed

Yet note the Lord's great patience even with those who are provoking him by the idolatry they create.

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If you had made men, and sustained them, and provided for them, yet they did not worship you, or serve you, or fear you, or trust you; but, instead, transferred their fear, or love, or trust, to mere idols would you not feel righteously angry?

• The Lord our God is a jealous God, and he has been, generation after generation

• Provoked by the idolatries of men.

God/always been provoked by us who profess to be his people.

We have continued to love other things more than we love him.

We all have something in our lives/take away our time/almighty.

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Some of us have actually trusted ourselves more than we have trusted the lord

• And sometimes, in the hour of trial

• We have fled/friend instead of trusting in the Lord alone.

• Yet how patient has God been with you in all this!

How blessedly does this chapter teach us/loving kindness/Lord!

• Here he admonishes his ancient people with great gentleness

• He also reasons with great force of argument.

• Tenderly he rebukes the wrongdoers

• Then he invites them to a better way of life.

God seems to say to them, “Be done with these idols once/for all.

• Can’t you see/come to trouble by looking at them?

• they can’t save you

• Turn away from them, look to me.

• Come and trust me just this once.

'Look to me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. "

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Listen to this divine message

• you who have forgotten your God

• in these gracious terms

• he bids you turn your eyes to him

• to let your expectations be from him.

This text teaches us first, that for salvation out of any trouble, we should look to God alone.

I will carry the principle into deeper spiritual matters by showing you, in the second place, that, for eternal salvation, we must assuredly look to God alone

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First, then, for salvation out of any trouble, we should look to god alone.

• There are troubles in which men do look to God alone.

• I have known the most profane, godless men turn to God.

• Men who have blasphemous language, ridicule religion

• they stagger like drunken men

• been at their wits’ end

• They have cried out to the Lord in their trouble.

Their knees never bent before God bent now in miserable terror

• Their hearts that never felt gracious before God

• Now begin to tremble at the majestic display of His power.

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This kind of experience has also been witnessed in ungodly men at the approach of their death.

• When the sweat drops on their brow

• when they know that life is almost over

• their soul is melting in their distress

• the dark gates of the grave stand wide open before them

• Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble.

Now, if men act this way out of compulsion of great calamity, why don’t they do so cheerfully/willingly/times/every trial/difficulty