Seeking The Lord Effectively

Isaiah says: "Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near."

We sang a song this morning taken from Psalm 18: "I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised. And I will be saved from my enemies." This song is the national anthem for those of us who are citizens of God's kingdom.

The religious term for calling on the Lord is prayer. You can say something like, "O God, please help me. I have made a mess of things." Or "God, if you're there, show yourself to me. I want to believe in you but I don't know how." Or "God, I have some major decisions to make. Give me direction and make me to choose the right things both for my good and for your purposes."

It doesn't take any special knowledge or special ability to pray. You don't need exhaustive knowledge of the Bible. All you have to do is talk to God. Tell him your desires and needs. Get still. Quiet the churning of your own heart. And He will find ways to communicate to you. Calling out to God is easier than calling on the phone.

It's much easier than email.

To seek the Lord simply means to call upon the Lord. This does not mean to manipulate Him to make sure He hears your cries. I was once in a prayer time with a father whose son was born with very serious lung problems. In his prayer that father offered to crawl across the city of Boston if God would just listen to him and answer his prayer. We can certainly understand his emotions. But God does not need such demonstrations. God longs to hear our cries and answer them. But He will not be manipulated by our pain.

"Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord." (Isaiah 31:1)

If Isaiah were writing to us today he might say, "Those of you who are investing all of your time and energy in your houses and your possessions, you're making a big mistake. If you think your savings account is the most important thing in your life, if you are depending on that and your stocks and insurance policies to secure your life, then you are in for a rude awakening. You need to trust God. He alone can make your life secure."

Quote from George Mueller
"I never remember in all my Christian course, a period now 69 years and four months, that I ever sincerely and patiently sought to know the will of God by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, through the instrumentality of the Word of God, but I have always been directed rightly. But if honesty of heart and uprightness before God were lacking, or if I did not patiently wait upon God for instruction, or if I preferred the counsel of my fellowmen to the declarations of the Word of the living God, I made great mistakes. (in Wesley Duewel, Let God Guide You Daily, p. 62)

Isaiah says, "Let the wicked forsake their ways."

We have heard the positive, which is to call on the Lord. We must also hear the negative, which is to forsake our wicked ways and our evil thoughts. The way of a person means their manner of living, their habits.

The Bible considers your relationship with God a love affair. At one point our connection to God is compared to a husband and wife. Imagine a husband leaving his wife to move in with another woman with whom he is having an affair. After a while, the new relationship grows stale and the husband remembers the good things about his marriage. Then something happens and he really needs his wife's help. Imagine him calling her on the phone. "Honey, I need your help. I am desperate." I think the first thing she would say is, "Have you left the other woman?"

You know what areas of your life need giving up. However, there are some specific habits that offend God, or wicked ways that deserve our attention because they consistently get the Bible's attention.

1.3.1 Your desire for control or your desire to run your own life is particularly offensive to God.

1.3.2 Any attention to astrology or the occult is offensive to God. In an earlier sermon, Isaiah said, "When people tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living." (Isaiah 8:19) Feng Shui. Horoscopes. Tarrot Cards.

1.3.3 Any ongoing sin is an offense to God. In a later sermon Isaiah says, "Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear you." (Isaiah 59:2)

We said the "way" of a person was their habits. The thoughts of a person means their purposes and their desires. Here Isaiah means

• your lusts,
• your desire to justify yourself and to protect yourself,
• your anger.

You must give these up to seek the Lord effectively.

This is a call to repentance, not to perfection. If you have been traveling west toward West Virginia and you realize you want to go east toward D. C., the first thing you must do is give up going west. Once you turn around you are still a long way from reaching D. C. but you are heading in the right direction. This is what it means to give up our habits and our thoughts. It is not to be perfect, but to recognize that we are headed the wrong way. To give our old way up and to look to God.

Again, in an earlier sermon Isaiah reminded his listeners that God Himself had struck them. "Arameans from the east and Philistines from the west have devoured Israel with open mouth. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised. But the people have not returned to him who struck them, nor have they sought the Lord Almighty." (Isaiah 9:12-13)

Isaiah rebukes them for not returning to the God who struck them. Their defeat was at the hand of the Arameans and Philistines but God's hand was behind it. So why should Israel return to a God who has struck them? The Bible's answer is clear. God strikes us to get our attention. When we continually turn our back on Him, He unleashes his fury. "So it is not hard to understand that when we seek the Lord what we are doing is seeking refuge in God from the wrath of God. I don't think it is possible to fully seek the Lord until we come to terms with the justice of his anger against our sins. We seek his face to escape his fury." (John Piper)

"Let the wicked forsake their ways and the evil person their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on that person."

Mercy means we don't get what we deserve. In other words, we get a major break. When we deserve something bad, mercy means we get something good instead.

God could hold a grudge against us. He has every right. He could punish us forever. But that is not his desire. He wants people who have broken their relationship with him and who have damaged their own lives to come to him. This great sermon from Isaiah begins with this word from God: "Come, all who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost." And then he adds this word that was written specifically for people in Northern Virginia. "Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good and your soul will delight in the richest of fare." Jesus told us that he came to reach sinners, not those who were righteous. No one is too bad to come to God. There is no pit too low for God's mercy. The first benefit in seeking God is that finding God means finding mercy and we all need mercy.

"Let the wicked forsake their ways and the evil person their thoughts .. and turn to our God, for he will freely pardon."

This is a specific outflow of God's mercy. God longs to pardon us. He longs to set us free from the burden of our disobedience and our guilt. And He pardons freely. He is not provoked or forced to pardon. He does it because He longs to show mercy to people who seek Him.

We are the kind of people who need to feel the freedom of God's pardon. We do not have to earn it. We do not have to crawl the streets of our neighborhood to make up for what we have done. God delights in forgiving us and showing us mercy. This is available for all who seek Him.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "For as high as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

This section is often quoted to show that circumstances that puzzle us are not puzzling to God. His ways are higher than our ways. That, of course, is wonderfully true. But it misses the point of this text.

Verse 7 talks about the habits and purposes of human beings. These tend to be self-centered and ultimately offensive to God's standards. God's habits and purposes are not like that. They are not wicked and not unrighteous. In fact, there is no comparison. Imagine two points at the greatest possible distance from one another. That's how different our habits and purposes are from God's. That's why we need to seek Him.

Only when we seek God can we overcome the Grand Canyon of separation between the Lord's ways and His thoughts and our ways and thoughts. Until we seek God, we cannot act like God or think like God. This does not come natural to us. We are naturally so very, very different from Him.

God makes this abundantly clear. "Seek the Lord while he may be found."

God has made himself known to many of you. He has made himself findable. You have felt Him in songs. You have sensed him in prayer. You have heard him in the words of friends or in sermons. He has spoken to a few of you. You have not found God because you are clever. You have found Him because He made himself findable.

Some of you have been discovering God in a new way over the last few weeks. This is because God wants to show you His love for you. He wants to show you mercy. He has many wonderful things to offer you and show you if you seek Him fully. You are finding God because he has made himself findable. Some of you are not so sure. Some of you tend to deny that God exists or to deny that we can know one way or another anything about God. This is a belief I used to hold myself ? but to deny God is to reject the testimony of millions of people before you and alongside you. To deny God is to believe that the overwhelming majority of all the people who have ever lived are all deluded, or are lying to themselves or they are lying to you.

Seek the Lord. Call upon him today because He really may be found.

"Call on him while he is near."

Isaiah is not suggesting that God is a local God who moves about from place to place at will. This is just a powerful way of calling us to respond. God is truly findable and he is near. Today is the day of salvation. There is a window of opportunity. And you do not know when it will shut. It is open this morning. We know this because God has drawn us here, because the Word of God is being heard, and because we have prayed and invited His presence. Won't you respond?