The sermon titled 'I Am God and There is No Other' by Scott Brown focuses on Isaiah 45, emphasizing the sovereignty and uniqueness of God. It highlights God's declaration that there is no other God besides Him, contrasting His omnipotence and righteousness with the ineffectiveness of idols and their makers. The sermon discusses the role of Cyrus, a pagan king, whom God uses to fulfill His purposes, illustrating God's control over history and political powers. It encourages individuals to recognize their own spiritual condition and the futility of idol worship, urging them to 'look unto God' for salvation. The sermon connects this message to the First Commandment and underscores the idea that God's declaration of His sovereignty is a call to worship and recognize Him as the sole source of salvation and righteousness. Through various examples, including the conversion story of Charles Spurgeon, the sermon illustrates the transformative power of looking to God and the importance of continual faith and reliance on Him.

Isaiah 45, starting in verse 14 through to the end. Thus says the Lord, the labor of Egypt and merchandise of Kush and of the civilians, men of stature, shall come over to you and they shall be yours. They shall walk behind you. They shall come over in chains and they shall bow down to you. They will make supplication to you saying, surely God is in you and there is no other.

There is no other God. Truly you are God, who hide yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior. And they shall be ashamed and also disgraced, all of them. They shall go in confusion together, who are makers of idols. But Israel shall be saved by the Lord with an everlasting salvation.

You shall not be ashamed or disgraced forever and ever. For thus, says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it who has established it who did not create it in vain who formed it to be inhabited I am the Lord and there is no other I have not spoken in secret in a dark place of the earth. I did not say to the seed of Jacob seek me in vain. I the Lord speak righteousness. I declare things that are right.

Assemble yourselves and come. Draw near together. You who have escaped from the nations they have no knowledge who carry the wood of their carved image and pray to a God that cannot save. Tell and bring forth your case. Yes, let them take counsel together.

Who has declared this from ancient time, who has told it from that time. Have not I the Lord and there is no other God besides me, a just God and a Savior. There is none besides me. Look to me and be saved all you ends of the earth for I am God and there is no other. I have sworn by myself The word has gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return.

That to me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall take an oath. He shall say, Surely in the Lord I have righteousness and strength. To him men shall come and all shall be ashamed who are incensed against him. In the Lord all the descendants of Israel shall be justified and shall glory." Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the text you've put before us today.

Lord, have mercy on our poor hearts that they might be opened up to the truths of your scripture. Lord help the preaching. Lord send your spirit that we might truly understand what you want from us. In Jesus' name, amen. Our understanding of God and his church, his flock, his people, is that God leads his people through the Word of God.

And so what that means is that among many things, is that when people come to hear the word of God, their soul is caught in a crossfire. The word of God is preached, and people's souls are in the way. And every person's soul is in a different condition when they come. We have many souls here in many different conditions. Some are hungry.

Some are like on the edge of their seats, others are asleep. Some are half asleep, some are totally asleep in this room today. Their souls are asleep! And will the Word of God pierce through the sleep and shake them and wake them up. And here we have a passage of scripture that is capable of shaking up every soul and the heart of the matter is God declaring, I am God and there is no other.

And of course this idea that's here in this passage of scripture forms the overall theme of this second half of Isaiah in chapters 40 through 66 the heart of the message is behold your God We encountered that phrase in chapter 40. And it really forms everything that Isaiah is going to be saying. Behold your God who saves. And Behold God who controls kings and kingdoms. Behold God who's nothing like the idols that you so cherish.

He rules, He makes peace, He makes calamity. And so in these chapters 40 through 66, God and his son Jesus Christ and his wells of salvation are explained in how he works in the world. This is so critical for us, particularly as our souls have found themselves in the crossfire of the Word of God here this morning and I just want to ask what is the condition of your soul? You know, where are you at today? What are you fixated on?

What is filling your mind? What's directing your life? Where do you get your advice? What's creating your emotions? What's driving you?

What's the operating system that's working, calculating in the background of everything that you do? What is that thing? Well, this passage meets you right there and says, I am God and there is no other. This is the heart of the matter here. We also see that God is declaring himself different compared to the idols and Throughout this entire chapter and the previous chapters, God has been saying this over and over again.

The idols are nothing. On the other hand, God is omniscient. He's omnipotent. He is sufficient. He is the creator.

He directs absolutely everything and you cannot get away from him so whether your soul is asleep or not today understand this whether the word of God is piercing you today recognize you cannot get away from being pierced Because this passage says every knee shall bow and every tongue confess you may be asleep today But there'll be a day that you will wake up So there's this whole idea that that that God is God and there is no other now if you if you read chapter 45 you'll hear this phrase over and over and over again. What is the theme of Isaiah 45? I am God and there is no other. You know, whenever you're reading the Bible and you're trying to understand what God is saying, which is what we always ought to do. Not what do I think or what do I feel, but what is God saying?

And then how should that make me feel and what should that make me think? That's the way we ought to approach it. But when we approach this passage, it's so clear that God is saying over and over again, I am God, and there is no other. And he's declaring that he's there. He's not silent, that he's accessible.

And this gift to mankind that the almighty, all-sufficient, all-wise God is available to mankind is the best news you could ever know. This passage of Scripture really is an illustration of the First Commandment. The First Commandment in Exodus 22 declares, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, you shall have no other gods before me." This passage is an illustration of the first commandment. This first commandment, which is the foundation of all the other commandments, that there is one God, there is no other, and he says, you shall have no other gods Before me and here in this passage. There's this beautiful picture of the Gentiles looking unto him They look to him in the midst of everything that they have.

And as we're here before this testimony of scripture today, think of everything that is in your hands, everything that is in your mind, all of your plans, whether you're asleep or half asleep or dead or alive and at the edge of your seat, whatever that means, and that might be, all of us have something in our hands. And the appeal that God brings to us today is, look unto me, look unto me and be saved. Look, look, look in the right place. The problem with our eyes is that they wander and they're distracted and they go to so many places where there is no salvation. We look to our idols, we pet them, we appreciate them, we study them, we spend time with them, We draw our friends into them.

And God says, no, look. Look unto me and be saved. Your idols cannot save you. Now, all the things that are addressed in chapter 45, in many different ways, declared this same message, look unto me from different angles. You have an outline in front of you and there are four different angles that this message is communicated.

First, that Cyrus demonstrates there's only one God and Savior in verses 13 and 14. Secondly, Isaiah declares that there's only one God and Savior in verses 15 to 17. And Thirdly, the Lord himself declares that there is only one God and Savior in verses 18 to 23. And fourthly and finally, all will declare that there is only one God and Savior in verses 24 and 25. So that's the basic logic of this passage the way that I understand it.

So let's begin with verse 13 and 14. We ended with verse 13 last week, but we'll just sort of bring it back up again. Cyrus demonstrates that there is only one God and Savior. Verse 13 says, I have raised him up in righteousness and I will direct all his ways he shall build my city and let my exiles go free not for price nor reward says the Lord of hosts this declares that God God raised up Cyrus and will direct him he literally aroused him from sleep that's what this word raised him up means it's as if God shook him up and it refers to the start of his career and it was God that launched Cyrus's career. By the way, that's true of all of you here as well.

It's God who launches the careers that are under his authority. And God calls Cyrus his servant earlier. He calls Israel his servant. We've said everything is his servant, but Cyrus doesn't really acknowledge God, and yet God uses him. This is just another declaration of the singular, absolute power of God to direct everything in the world.

We learned from history that Cyrus was a polytheist. He believed in many gods, as many as he could get his hands on. And he was kind of like the Romans, who thought, it just can't hurt to get another god. Let's attract, get the attention of whoever we can who's out there in space. But here we have a pagan king being used by God to do his own will.

And I think it should help us to sort of dissect a thought that we often have in our own minds, particularly in times like these when the political maneuvering seemed to be going so in the wrong direction. You know, we often think that everything would turn around if Christians ruled the government. And if Christians ruled the government, then God, poor God, could do whatever he wanted to do. If only he had a few Christians, history would go in the direction that he wants it. And that is completely false.

God takes history in the direction he desires. And he raises up even men, polytheists like Cyrus, to do his will. We should never fear what the government is doing. God is always manipulating the government. The governments are puppets of his holy wrath, of his holy love, of his name, of his perfect plans that he has for the whole world.

And we should always recognize that. But Cyrus religion was really kind of like the religion of modern America. All the gods are legitimate and don't say that any god is not legitimate. That's actually the greatest sin you can commit in this pluralistic society is to contradict someone's God. Now this chapter is not about Cyrus.

Cyrus is an illustration, he's a type. It's about God. Cyrus is mentioned over 30 times in the Bible and he ruled in the place where modern-day Iran was. This is a prophecy 150 years before his birth. Now we know that God is raising up Cyrus for a particular reason.

Look at verse, at the end of verse 3, you'll see the exact reason God was raising up Cyrus. "...that you may know that I, the Lord, who called you by your name, am the God of Israel." So God raised up Cyrus to show his people that he was God. That's the purpose of Cyrus' reign. God says that he will build my city. He didn't build it directly.

My understanding of this is it would be rebuilt indirectly. He did not do it himself. He was instrumental in releasing the people, and they rose up and they rebuilt the city with some help from other kings like Artaxerxes I, who gave permission to rebuild the walls. But God appointed Cyrus to preserve his name in this city, to begin this process of rescuing his people who were at bondage. And Cyrus would let the exiles go free not for price nor reward Says the Lord of hosts as it says here in this verse what?

Here's here's the essence of verse 13 and 14 what Cyrus started physically in the release of the Jews from bondage the Lord Jesus Christ Does spiritually for his people? I think that's a critical interpretive principle about about Cyrus Cyrus is God's servant to Fortel the work of redemption of Jesus Christ, his servant. And then we read this in verse 14, that Egypt and Cush and the Sabeans will bring their wealth. Thus says the Lord, the labor of Egypt and the merchandise of Kush and the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over to you and they shall be yours. They shall walk behind you, they shall come over in chains, and they shall bow down to you.

They will make supplication to you, saying, surely God is in you and there is no other. And God is declaring here that the resources or the labor of Egypt is going to come to Cyrus and then be used as a mechanism to build the people of God. Egypt and Ethiopia were subjects of the king of Persia. And so I believe that's why he says the labor of Egypt and the merchandise of Kush and so forth will come to you Cyrus and therefore will be a benefit to you the people of God. This has to do with how God uses the wealth of the world to bless his people.

Well, that's happening right here in this room right now. The very reason we are able to meet is because God has saved sinners out of the world and they brought their resources together. They brought their wealth together in order to do the things of God together. What's happening here in this very room is an illustration of this very verse. God saves people and they bring their labor, they bring their wealth, and they bring it into the kingdom of God, and it's put to use in order to spread the gospel.

Notice their submission. Their submission is real. They shall be yours. Notice their humility and submission. They will walk behind.

They shall bow down. This is a picture of people coming and bringing what they have to God. And they will make supplication as it says here and they will say surely God is in you and there is no other. There is no other God. They'll say that thing that the true Christian can say.

There's no other God and I don't want any other of those other gods that are out there that are fake. And Here's a picture of God acquiring followers, servants, and slaves, and they bring what they have and they walk with him. This is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ's church and the resources that God brings into the church. They labor, they work with their hands, they're not satisfied to live a subsistence life and they bring their labor into the church. So here this Cyrus is demonstrating that there is only one God and Savior And this is really the only hope of the soul caught in a crossfire of these words, that you must know that there is one God and there is no other.

And then Isaiah declares that there's only one God and Savior in verses 15 through 17. There are many elements, by the way, of the doctrine of God. If you study theology, the study of God or the doctrine of God, you'll recognize various elements, some of them complex, of the doctrine of God. And the first is found in verse 15. And it's the hiddenness of God.

Truly you are God who hide yourself. O God of Israel, the Savior. Here we learn that God hides himself. While the heavens declare his glory, there's also a way that he hides himself. And In the midst of the commotion of the political situations, in the midst of the jumble and the tumble of your life and all the things going on around you, God hides himself.

God's ways are hidden from the eyes of man, but God is always working you think he's not there you can't see him you don't feel him you think he's not there but he's always working he never stops working. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I and my Father are working. They never stop working. And while you may not see that he is working because of the dullness of your understanding of what God is doing, which is our condition. He is working.

He is hiding his ways. It seems that only man is working. It seems that man is central, but it's not true. God is always working. And we have to recognize that if we're going to understand God, and if we understand this principle that he is God, and there is no other.

And so Isaiah turns his words away from God after this phrase to the makers of the idols and he speaks of the shame and the reputation of the unbeliever in verse 16 and they shall be ashamed and also disgraced all of them They shall go in confusion together who are makers of idols. And here Isaiah is contrasting again the greatness and the beauty and the majesty of God and the degradation of those who do not follow him. He's revealing the disappointments of the unbeliever and his rejection of God, loving himself, promoting himself, making an idol out of himself, pursuing his own ways, only to find out that it wasn't anything of value that he had, it was only an idol. And he got no praise for it, he only got darkness and cursing for it. He only got shame and disgrace from it.

They fixed their whole hopes on these temporary accomplishments and all they found was nothing at the end of the rainbow. And there are three realities that every unbeliever will face. First, they'll be ashamed. That means that there's something you will feel yourself. This is internal.

You will feel shame. Second, you will be disgraced. That's something that comes from outside. You will be disgraced. Every good voice will disgrace you.

And then finally you will be confused. This is something that you have in your own mind, your own thinking. It's internal. You will be confused. This is why Isaiah constantly speaks of those who trust in their idols that they will be embarrassed.

Notice it says all of them. All of them. No one, no one who rejects Jesus Christ as Lord will be able to escape this. He says all of them. Do you see those words there?

Your idols cannot save you. They're just breath, they're wind, they're a vapor. But then in verse 17 you see a different picture. It's like the light dawns. The sun comes out.

But Israel shall be saved by the Lord with an everlasting salvation. You shall not be ashamed or disgraced forever and ever. So this is the the difference, the satisfaction that the believer has in his reputation and what from internally and externally things are very, very different. He feels something very, very different in his heart. And those on the outside look at him differently.

And he says that they will be saved with an everlasting salvation Salvation is everlasting. It's it's not taken away. It's fixed. You cannot lose it The Lord Jesus Christ said no one can snatch them out of his hand if they're if you're saved you're saved forever and the reason the reason that can be true is because you're saved not on your own reputation or upon your own works, but you're saved upon Jesus Christ's reputation and Jesus Christ's works. And He is, was, and will be perfectly pure he sacrificed his life he became sin for us he never broke the law.

We broke the law. Our salvation is everlasting because He is everlastingly pure. And we are resurrected with Christ. We are with Him. We are in Him.

Our sinful bodies are washed clean. We are baptized by illustration going into the water. And we are raised up like with Him. We are raised up with Him. Intricately, inseparably connected to him and his righteousness we are raised because of his righteousness not our own that's why it's an everlasting salvation that cannot be broken it's fixed It is his salvation and our bodies literally become part of his body and his body is part of our bodies.

This is the whole doctrine of salvation. And he takes us to heaven in righteousness forever and ever. In righteousness forever and ever. This is why this passage makes it so clear that your only hope is to know something deep in your heart and that is he is God and there is no other. He is God and there is no other.

He is God and there is no other. And then, thirdly, the Lord Himself declares that there's only one God. After God is using Cyrus to demonstrate there's only one God, and then Isaiah declares it as the counselor of the kings and the people of Judah. Now the Lord Himself declares it. Verses 18 through 23, and he declares it using very, very dense language about who he is verse 18 is such a brilliant example of it for thus says the Lord who created the heavens who is God who formed the earth and made it, who has established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited.

I am the Lord and there is no other." This is another one of these great summary statements that exists in chapter 45. Isaiah has been arguing that there's only one God and there is no other in the midst of the idols of the world. And then He says, thus says the Lord, and he's proving his lordship by the things that he does. He's distinguishing himself from the idols and the idol makers, declaring his power in creation and forming everything that there is. And it says here that he created the world for a purpose.

He created it to be inhabited. He created it so that people would bring glory to him. That the summation of all of life in the inhabited world would be that Jesus Christ is Lord. This is why God created the world. This is why God caused you to be born so that he would declare through your life that Jesus Christ is Lord and he's either going to declare that he is Lord because he caused you to bow your knee to him or he is going to declare that he is Lord because he will throw you into eternal fire for all eternity because God is going to declare in his inhabited world that there is only one God and he and there is no other and he is completely different compared to the other other gods.

He created the world for a purpose so that it would be inhabited. You know it's amazing to think about what that means. You know my father likes to talk about this. Many times he's spoken to me about, well Scott you know if the earth was just a few degrees this way or that you know that human life couldn't be sustained here and he has all these illustrations of this but you know what complexity in creation must there be to support one human being? Think about that for a minute.

It's astonishing to consider it. What is necessary to create the life of one human being? And yet God created a planet so that it could be inhabited, so that he would save sinners, so that he would declare how merciful he is to sinners. And he would seek and he would find sinners. And he would take the most despicable people with the worst baggage and the most terrible patterns and thoughts and relationships and he would save them.

He would pick them up. He would snatch them out of the raging waters they could not rescue themselves from. They were just washing downstream, headed for the waterfall. And God created the inhabited world for one reason to declare the glory of his mercy to demonstrate his love and then he would he would rescue sinners and then he would pour out his love he would justify them he would declare them righteous He would sacrifice his life for them. He would become their righteousness.

And all their life long they would be aware how unrighteous they are. And they would be astonished that they could be called righteous that they that they would not be disgraced before him and then in verse 19 this the same idea supporting the the primary theme God speaks the things that are right. Verse 19 says, I have not spoken in secret in a dark place in the earth. I did not say to the seed of Jacob, seek me in vain. I, the Lord, speak righteousness.

I declare things that are right." Here we have a picture of a God who speaks. He proclaims his name in the world in various ways And he does not do it in secret. He invites the nations to come and be saved. He goes to every culture All of the various corrupt bankrupt cultures of the world and he calls the nations to come to him And there's no culture that is beyond his mercy or his love. There's no culture that is not redeemable.

There's no people who is not redeemable. Here is this picture of God. He speaks to the whole world and he calls the world to come. And he does not do it in secret. You know, I believe it's true that 98% of the people in the world can hear a Bible in their own language.

Now, it's that 2% that forms still a lot of people that don't have the Bible in their own language and have no way to access it. But most of the people in the world are close enough to a language that they know enough to read the Bible. God has not made it secret. Psalm 19 says their voice has gone out to the end of the earth, to the end of the world. What this is about is that God is going to proclaim His name throughout the whole world and He's going to gather worshipers from every tongue and tribe and nation.

What God is saying is that if you seek Me, you'll find Me. I'll speak. If you seek Me, you'll find Me. I have spoken clearly. This is what the Lord Jesus Christ said in John 18 with the high priest asked Jesus about his disciples and Jesus said to the high priest I spoke openly to the world I always taught in the synagogues and in the temple where the Jews always met and in secret I have said nothing.

In other words, Jesus Christ is saying I said it. I said it out in the world. This is what God has done. And this is what Isaiah is speaking of, is Jesus Christ who speaks throughout the whole world, His Word. Matthew chapter 10, the Lord Jesus Christ actually ordered his disciples to take the things that they heard in private and to speak it on the housetops.

In Matthew 10, 27, he said, Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light. And what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul But rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell In other words the Lord Jesus Christ is saying the things that I've told you the things that you know speak to them in the world regardless of the consequences. This is what God has done. This is an offer.

It's really a promise. If you come, I will receive you. If we seek Him in accordance with His will and According to what he has revealed, he will take us. Take him at his word. He has spoken, take him at his word.

He's saying, come to me, believe in me. And he doesn't reject those who take him at his word. He doesn't really treat us like puppets in that sense. But he declares what is right. There's a way that you can be redeemed.

He declares the way that you can be redeemed. And He declares the right way that you can be redeemed. And so He has spoken in the light, and if you embrace it, you'll be clothed at the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And then God commands his people to assemble and testify in verse 20. Assemble yourselves and come, draw near together, you who have escaped from the nations." Remember this is God speaking.

The Lord Himself is declaring that He's the only God and Savior. And now He calls for an assembly and they assemble and what do they do? They recognize how foolish they were. They tell of the hopelessness of their idols and the new hope that's within them. They tell of their days bowing down to the idols and praying to a God that could not save.

And they're summoned together to convince the world of the stupidity of following after idols and to cry out to God. And their former life is described at the end of verse 23, they have no knowledge who carry wood of their carved images, carved image, and pray to a God that cannot save. And then what else do they do when they assemble? Verse 21. God calls them to make their case.

Again, we have one of these remarkable scenes where the people are gathering together and they're they're telling of the glory of God and God tells them to to bring forth their case He says yes, let them take counsel the other in other words talk about it Talk about it you church talk about what it was like. Do you remember how bankrupt and unprofitable it was to follow your idols? And then he says, who has declared this from ancient time or who has told it from that time? Have not I, the Lord, and there is no other God beside me, a just God and a Savior, there is none beside me." And of course here Isaiah is proclaiming again, he's already done it previously, that he's making it plain that the idols, by the way, don't prophesy. Okay?

Your idols can't tell you where you've been, where you are, or where you're going. How about that? And this is people are testifying to that. Not from ancient time or from the from or about the future. On the other hand, God's words are true.

They all come to pass as as it says in 1st Samuel 3 19 none of the words of God fall to the ground. None of them. Not one single word of God will fall to the ground. This is why we need to be so attentive to the Word of God. Every single word of God is true.

It's pure, it's perfect, and it is what we need to pierce our souls. And we know that the Word of God works visibly and sometimes invisibly, But the Word of God is true and it will not return void. And then when we come to verse 22, we come to these words, look to me and be saved. All you ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other. This is the heart of Isaiah chapter 45.

Look to me and be saved. I am God and there is no other. This is the central matter here. It's an imperative. Look, look where?

To me. Look to me. You know, this is a verse that was used of the Lord to save Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon was 14 years old. He was on the way to church.

He got lost in a storm. It was a terrible storm, and he stumbled into a church. By the way, Spurgeon is, the way I understand it, the most published Christian author in the history of publishing. More people still buy, have bought and still buy Spurgeon's resources than any other Christian author in history. And the story of Spurgeon's conversion is widely known, but I would like to read it to you.

I'm gonna take his own testimony of his conversion because his conversion story so brings out the truth of verse 22. So if you'll just relax for a minute, I'm going to read his story out of his own mouth. It's going to take a little while. So I usually don't read long sections like this in the preaching, but I'm going to do it now. He says this, I sometimes think I might have been in the darkness and despair until now had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning.

While I was going to a certain place of worship, I turned down a side street and came to a little primitive Methodist church. In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people. I had heard of the primitive Methodists, how they sang so loudly that they made people's heads ache, but that did not matter to me. I wanted to know how I might be saved. The minister did not come that morning.

He was snowed up, I suppose. At last, a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker or a tailor or something of that sort, went up to the pulpit to preach. Now it is well that preachers be instructed, but this man was really stupid. He was obliged to stick to his text for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was, look unto me and be saved all the ends of the earth.

He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimmer of hope for me in that text. The preacher began thus. This is a very simple text indeed. It says, look.

Now looking don't take a great deal of pain. It ain't lifting your foot or your finger. It's just look. Well, a man needn't go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look.

A man needn't be worth a thousand a year to look. Anyone can look, even a child can look. But then the text says, look unto me, I, he said in broad Essex. Many on ye are looking to yourselves, but it's no use looking there. You'll never find any comfort in yourselves.

Some say, look to God the Father. No, look to Him and By Jesus Christ who says, look to me, some of you may say, we must wait for the spirits working. You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ, the text says, look unto me. Then the good man followed up his text in this way.

Look unto me. I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto me. I'm hanging on the cross. Look unto me, I'm dead and buried.

Look unto me, I rise again. Look unto me, I ascend to heaven. Look unto me, I'm sitting at the Father's right hand. Oh, poor sinner, look unto me. Look, look unto me." When he had managed to spin out about ten minutes or so of that, he was at the end of his tether.

Then he looked at me under the gallery and I dare say was so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. Just fixing his eyes on me as if he knew all my heart, He said, young man, you look very miserable. Well, I did. But I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home, he continued, and you will always be miserable, miserable in life and miserable in death if you don't obey my text.

But if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved." And then lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a primitive Methodist can do, Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look, look, look. You have nothing to do but look and live." I saw it once, the way of salvation. I know not what else he said. I did not take much notice of it.

I was so possessed with that one thought. I had been waiting to do 50 things, but when I heard that word, look, what a charming word it seemed to me. Oh, I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun, and I could have risen that instant and sung with the most enthusiastic of them. Oh, the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him.

Oh, that some day He had told me this. Oh, that somebody had told me this before. Trust Christ and you will be saved. Yes, it was, no doubt, all wisely ordered. And now I can say, ever since by faith I saw the stream, thy flowing wounds supply.

Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die." That happy day when I found the Savior and learned to cling to His dear feet was a day never to be forgotten by me. I listened to the Word of God, and that precious text led me to the cross of Christ. I can testify that the joy of that day was utterly indescribable. I could have leaped, I could have danced, there was no expression, however fanatical, which could have been out of keeping with the joy of that hour. Many days of Christian experience have passed since then, but there never has been one which has had the full exhilaration, the sparkling delight which that first day had.

I thought I could have sprung from the seat which I sat and have called out with the wildest of those Methodist brethren, I'm forgiven, I'm forgiven. A monument of grace, a sinner saved by blood. My spirit saw its chains broken in pieces. I felt that I was an emancipated soul, an heir of heaven, a forgiven one accepted in Jesus Christ, plucked out of the miry clay and out of the horrible pit, with my feet set upon the rock and my goings established. Between half past 10 o'clock when I entered that chapel and half past 12 o'clock When I was back again at home, what a change had taken place in me.

Simply, by looking to Jesus, I had been delivered from despair, and I was brought into such a joyous state of mind that when they saw me at home, they said to me, something wonderful has happened to you. And I was eager to tell them all about it. Oh, there was joy in the household that day when all heard that the eldest son had found the Savior and knew himself to be forgiven. This is taken from Ian Murray's book, The Early Years. Look to me.

Look to me. This is the heart of the matter. Look to me. What do you have in your hand? Look to him.

What is in your heart? What is burning in you? What is killing you? What is hurting you? Look unto Him.

That's the heart of the matter. You know, we have so many examples of how disastrous it is to look away from Christ. I think there are two looks. There's the look to Christ that saves, and there's the constant looking, the looking day after day, moment by moment, looking to Him for everything. Seeing all of your hope in Him, seeing all of your words in Him, seeing all of your philosophy, all of your work, everything in him, seeing it all in him, those are the two different kinds of looks.

There's one look that saves, but there are a thousand looks that continue to save you all your life long. Remember how Solomon looked? Solomon looked in the wrong way. Solomon looked toward his wives and they turned his heart after other gods. He looked.

He looked in the wrong direction. This is the whole matter of looking away from our idols to turn away from the gods of this world and to turn to Christ. You know, Isaiah has been arguing with the children of Judah because they turned to the gods of Egypt and Assyria. They feared Sennacherib. But what are the gods of our day?

What are the gods of our own lives? The idols of our day, the relativism of our day, the sexual preferences of our day? We've got to look to God. That's the only hope really for any of us for our church. The Lord Jesus Christ says it, I am God and there is no other.

Look to me and be saved. And then finally fourth, all will declare there is only one God and Savior this is something that everyone should be aware of and that is there's no escaping the declaration that there is one God and there is no other. Verses 23-25, I have sworn by myself, the word has gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return, that to me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall take an oath. This is just a declaration that there will be a time when every person will acknowledge God and there there will be two types of knees that are bowed. Those who have bowed to Jesus Christ in his life in this life who've embraced him, who've trusted in his sacrifice, who have loved his righteousness and then have rested their souls upon it.

And then there are the knees of those who hated him. They were forced to acknowledge his authority. It's interesting that the apostle Paul uses this very same phrase in Romans 14. He uses the phrase to speak to the Christians in Rome that they would quit harshly and wrongly judging their brothers. In other words, stop judging your brothers.

Every knee shall bow. Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. It's another way of saying, you look to heaven and stop looking at your brother and critiquing him. Philippians 2, 5-10, the apostle Paul uses it in a very similar way. He uses this verse, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess, to remind of the humility that we ought to have toward one another in the church as we're working out our salvation in fear and trembling.

He uses the Lord Jesus Christ to speak of this. He says, let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bond servant, and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on the cross therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. And then he says, therefore my beloved, as you have always obeyed not as in my presence only but now more in my absence work out your own salvation with fear and trembling here the Apostle uses uses this verse every knee shall bow to remind to remind us how critical it is that we humble ourselves before God and we do our work, we work out our own salvation in fear and trembling.

Notice the oath that they take, verse 24, they shall say or he shall say, he shall say. You know, just a moment here. Isaiah does this all the time, and I love it when he does it. He tells you what people say. He tells you what happens in a person's heart and then they speak of it.

And it's very beautiful. And here's another one. Here you have a picture of someone. Something has happened to someone. Their knee has bowed.

Their tongue has confessed. And what did they do? And here's what they say, surely in the Lord I have righteousness and strength. In the Lord is my righteousness, not in myself. In the Lord I have strength, not of myself.

Why? Because I'm looking. I'm looking. I'm looking to him and I'm being saved. What a beautiful thing it is to be able to say that, to say that Jesus Christ is your righteousness, that you hunger for Jesus Christ's strength And you have it.

You know it. You know his strength and his righteousness is true. And you say it and what you said is true. To him men shall come and all shall be ashamed who are incensed against him. This is another thing They'll say that those who are incensed against god will be ashamed and then finally Verse 25 In the Lord all the descendants of Israel shall be justified and shall glory.

All the descendants of Israel shall be justified and shall glory. Again you have Isaiah keeping with the pattern of all of scripture. You have light and darkness. You have the broad road and the narrow road. Now you have the incensed and you have those who glory.

Those two kinds of people in the world. They're the ashamed and the incensed and the justified and the glorying. They shall be justified. In other words, They should be declared righteous by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And they shall glory.

That means that they will be happy. To glory is to praise and celebrate and to boast. This is what happens to the person who looks, who recognizes that he is God and there is no other, and they look, they look, they look once and are saved, and they look twice and thrice and thousands of times that they may continually be being saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me give you some applications here. This is a passage that should help us be delivered from ourselves, from a whole man-centered existence.

A man-centered existence is an existence of being offended and fretful and blaming other men rather than believing God. A man-centered existence really is just calibrating off of man. But here in this passage, there's this urgent plea to recognize, I am God and there is no other. Look to me and be saved and He will save you. You know, if you're frustrated and angry or if you're confused, you know, if you're on cruise control and you're not pressing toward the mark of the glory of God and for his service and for his work, then this is a man-centered kind of a life.

You know, you may be sitting next to that spouse of yours and you're insolent, or You might be a son or a daughter and you're insolent, or you might just be saying in your mind when you think of your father or mother, oh, whatever. Or you might be thinking, when is this preacher going to stop? He only has four minutes left and He's only on his first application. You need to recognize who you are when you think like that. You have a man-centered existence.

You know a church or a family that looks beyond this world, that looks to Christ, is such a treasure in the world. You know, a mind set on the world is always hard on a church, on a family, or an individual. When you're looking to yourself, or you're looking to the other people around you for your satisfaction, and your glory, and your happiness, there's always more pain there, there's always more dissatisfaction there, there's envy, there's unhappiness, there's covetousness, And people end up just perpetually disappointed. Enjoyment is so transitory, it just kind of goes from one fake moment to another. That's the result of a man-centered life, rather than looking, look, looking over and over again and be saved.

You know, these things are recovered by secret prayer, by meditation. You know, when we lose our secret prayer, we always lose our nearness to God. We lose a sense of the importance of eternal things. We become distressed and downcast, and It's really a result of losing a sense that I am God and there is no other. And what our lives are supposed to be here in this church is to be replicating the kingdom of heaven, to be bringing heaven down.

And the only way you can bring heaven down is by looking to heaven, by looking to Him, and having your whole soul absorbed in Him, making Him your greatest hope, your greatest desire, the greatest occupation that you have. To look to Him who is higher. One of the great marks of a true and beautiful church is a church that is looking unto heaven. When the church gathers it cares about God, it cares about His words, it cares about His love in the church. It cares about other worldly things being brought into the world.

In so many ways, we ought to be an other worldly church. A church that reflects the fact that we are looking to heaven and bringing heaven down. It's the essence of what the Lord Jesus told his disciples to pray when he said, pray thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It should be an otherworldly world here, a world where heaven comes down. You know, when people walk in here, they should see a really different world.

They shouldn't feel comfortable. They should be really different. But it should be different in the way that the people love one another. It should be different because there's a different kingdom and it's a beautiful kingdom. It is a kingdom of love.

It is a kingdom of happiness. It's a kingdom where the people glory. They're celebrating. They're so thankful for the mercy of God because their occupation, their obsession has shifted from themselves and it's looking to heaven. And everything that they are and have has come from heaven it's a picture of a glorious beautiful church this whole passage is a picture of the Gentiles coming into the church look to him in the morning My voice shall you hear in the morning, O Lord.

In the morning I will direct my prayer and will look up. Look up. Psalm 32 says, Behold the eyes of the servants look to the hand of their masters, and the eyes of the maid to the hand of her mistress. So our eyes look to the Lord our God until he has mercy on us. Isaiah spoke of looking to him for advice.

Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many, and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the Lord. Our only hope is to know something deep in our hearts that he is God and there is no other. Look, look to him and be saved. Would you pray with me? Would you pray with me?

Oh Father, I pray you would make it so with us. Amen. Thank you. Good night.