The following teaching was presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, at the Friday Night Prayer and Pray Service held on February 4, 1983. The title is, Turn and Be Saved. 

I'd like you to turn to Isaiah 45, please. As I was in the Word of God and praying about tonight and thinking about what the Lord might have me share, I sensed a real guidance from Him, but then I began to have second thoughts because it seemed to me, Lord, that is so simple. That is so basic.

Surely we don't really need to hear that tonight. And this service has convinced me we need to hear this because every one of the witnesses and almost all of the prayers touched on the same theme. That's lovely when God does that, isn't it?

Karl Barth, who was one of the greatest intellects, one of the greatest theologians in the history of the church, tremendous towering scholar, giant of a scholar, came to the United States for a series of lectures many years ago at Princeton, and a reporter came up and he said, Dr. Barth, you know, the kind of question I'm going to ask Edna next week, Dr. Barth, could you share with us what is the most important, most profound thing that you know, that you have learned, that you have studied about God? And Karl Barth said, Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so.

So maybe we need to be reminded of some of the very simple, basic things once in a while. Isaiah 45, verse 18. For thus says the Lord who created the heavens, He is God who formed the earth and made it.

He established it. He did not create it a chaos. He formed it to be inhabited.

This is what he says, quote, I am the Lord and there is no other. I did not speak in secret in a land of darkness. I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, Seek me in chaos.

I, the Lord, speak the truth. I declare what is right. This is what he says.

The God who created us, the God who created the heavens and the earth, who formed them and made them, he says, I am the Lord, and there is no other. That is a refrain that reverberates through the whole of the Scriptures. It reverberates particularly through the whole of the Old Testament.

It reverberates most particularly through the prophecy of Isaiah. And if you look closely, it comes no less than eight times in this one chapter alone. That may be fairly important that we hear the message.

Verse 5, I am the Lord and there is no other. And then he repeats it in different words. Besides me there is no God.

Verse 14, the end of the verse. They will make supplication to you saying, God is with you only and there is no other. No God beside him.

End of verse 18 where we just read, I am the Lord and there is no other. Verse 21, end of the verse, And besides me there is no other God, a righteous God, a Savior, there is none beside me. Verse 22, Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other.

The Shema, which we find first in Deuteronomy 6, the only creed that Israel really ever had. I, the Lord your God, am the only Lord. The Lord our God is the only Lord.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord. And over and over and over, God also says, I will share my glory with none other. I will share my glory with nobody else.

I am the only God, and I will share my glory with nobody else. Just turn back to the 44th chapter. God contrasts His reality with the falsehood of all the other so-called gods, all the idols and all the pagan deities.

Verse 9 and following is really mockery here. This is heavy with irony. All who make idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit.

Their witnesses neither see nor know that they may be put to shame. Who fashions a god? Or casts an image that is profitable for nothing?

Behold, all his fellows shall be put to shame, and all the craftsmen are but men. Let them all assemble, let them stand forth. They shall be terrified.

They shall be put to shame together. The ironsmith fashions it and works it over the coals. He shapes it with his hammers.

He forges it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry and his strength fails. See him pounding away on this piece of metal.

He drinks no water and is faint. The carpenter stretches a line. He marks it out with a pencil.

He fashions it with planes. He marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man with the beauty of a man to dwell in a house.

He cuts down cedars and goes on and on and on. Down verse 16. Half of it he burns in the fire.

Over half he eats flesh. He roasts meat and is satisfied. He warms himself and says, Aha, I am warm. I have seen the fire.

And the other half he makes into a god. His idol, and he falls down to it and worships it. Can you imagine taking one hunk of wood, cutting it in half, burning half of it, and worshiping the other half of it?

And he prays to it and says, Deliver me, for thou art my God. And God mocks that. They know not.

Nor do they discern. He has shut their eyes so that they cannot see, in their minds, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is their knowledge or discernment, even to realize what they're saying.

Half of it I burned in the fire, and the other half of it I worship. Verse 20, he feeds on ashes. A deluded mind has led him astray.

He cannot deliver himself or say, is there not a lie in my right hand? All the gods, all the idols that men would worship are nothing. They're laughable.

They're pitiable. But the Lord God who is the only God. The idols cannot see, cannot hear, cannot understand, cannot answer, certainly cannot do anything to save.

But I, the Lord, am the only God. And I will share my glory with nobody else. Verse 21.

Declare and present your case, he says. Let them take counsel together. Who told this long ago?

Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God beside me, a righteous God and a Savior, there is none beside me.

This is what I've been declaring to you from the very foundation of the world, he says. This is it. This is what it is about.

This is all it's about. I'm the only God. There is none other.

I am God and Lord and Savior and I share my glory with nobody else. and then look at the next two verses turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth for I am God and there is no other by myself I have sworn from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return you remember elsewhere it says in the prophecy of Isaiah no word that issues from the mouth of God shall return to him without accomplishing his purpose. He says, this will not return to me empty.

To me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear. Does that ring a bell? Where else do we hear that being said?

Philippians chapter 2. I want you to notice something. This is really incredible.

Eight times in this one chapter, I am the only Lord. Over and over and over throughout the whole book, I will share my glory with nobody else. I am God and Lord and Savior.

To me, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that I am God. That's all there is. There ain't no more.

And the book of Philippians says, because Jesus Christ has been obedient and humbled himself to the Father, he who was in the form of God counted equality with God a thing not to be grasped, but He emptied Himself, He humbled Himself, He was born among us, He lived the life of a servant, He died the death of a criminal. Therefore, God has also highly exalted Him and given Him a name above every name that is to be named, that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. To what?

To the glory of God the Father. The thing that God has just said over and over and over and over and over again is exclusively, uniquely true of Him. He then declares is equally true of Jesus.

Do you catch that? And it's to His glory, to the glory of the Father, that we would confess that Jesus is Lord. That we would bow our knee before Him and declare it.

The God unto whom every knee shall bow commands us to bow our knee to Jesus. The God who will share his glory with no one else now shares his glory with Jesus. The God who declares that every tongue will confess me Lord now requires that every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.

The God who says, I am your Savior, sends Jesus to be our Savior. Jesus says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I and the Father are one.

Martin Luther one time put it this way, maybe you've heard me say this, that in the Old Testament, men were forbidden to look at the face of God. To look in the face of God would be death. Moses and the children of Israel saw the back side of God, whatever in the world that means.

but Luther says in the New Testament God has come among us in human form and he invites us to walk around him and look him squarely in the face now that's the first thing we need to see that everything that is true of the Father is true of the Son the Christian is one who bets his life that God is going to turn out to be like Jesus. That's what you're doing. You are betting your life for time and eternity that God is, in fact, in Jesus, that Jesus is, in fact, in God, that as we confess him Lord, it's to the glory of the Father.

You follow that? But now the other thing that I want you to see is we've just slipped right past it. In verse 22.

Turn to me and be saved. Turn to me and be saved. Now I want to suggest something to you.

I do not think that is turn to me and then you will be saved. That is turn to me and in the very process of turning you discover salvation. Some of you were here the night that Lang Spell was talking, and God really gave him a revelation.

You know, the business about as far as the east is from the west, will I remove your sins from you? And Lang said, I discovered how far the east is from the west. It's as far as turning around.

If you're going east, you can keep going east forever until you turn around, and instantly you're going west. as far as the east is from the west. How far is that?

As far as turning around. In the moment of turning around, we're separating ourselves. Do you see that?

The word repentance means literally to turn around. You say, I want to come to Jesus, but I don't know where repentance fits in. There is no way to come to Jesus, but by repentance you turn around and come to Jesus.

In the process of turning around, we discover His salvation. King James translates it, look unto me and be saved. Look unto me.

In the process of looking. There's a passage back in the book of Numbers, you may be familiar with it, where the children of Israel rebel against God. They just rebel and rebel and rebel.

And God finally, in order to discipline them, and in fact to punish them, sends fiery serpents into their midst. And these serpents begin biting people, and they're getting sick, and they're beginning to die. Scores are dying.

Hundreds are dying. Thousands are dying. And God says to Moses, now here's what I want you to do.

I want you to make a snake out of bronze and hang it on a pole. What a weird thing to do. And he says, everybody who looks at the snake will live.

Can you imagine? You've been bitten by a poisonous snake. And that venom is coursing through your body.

And you can feel your extremities growing cold. And your heart is beginning to beat in a weird pattern. And your breath is coming short.

And Moses says, look at the snake! And you say, what in the world good is that going to do me? And in the moment of looking, they're healed.

In the moment of looking, they're healed. It's not they looked and then they got well later. In the moment of looking, they were healed.

You can check that out. It's Numbers 21. Read it for yourself.

In John chapter 3, when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus, he uses that as an illustration. He says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And whoever looks upon him will be saved.

In the process of looking, we turn around, you see. we separate ourselves as far as the east is from the west we repent in the process not just a casual glance in the process of allowing him to fill our mind and our heart and our vision I don't know what you heard tonight but that's what I heard lots of people bearing witness to Bob said when he failed to let Jesus fill his mourning the whole day was rotten it's like getting the top button wrong you know and all the other buttons are wrong do you ever notice that get the first button wrong they're all wrong you don't let Jesus fill your mind your heart your vision from the very outset everything else is wrong we have that old song turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face.

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and His grace. Do you see what's being said? Here you are and all these terrible things are happening to you.

it's been a terrible day and this has gone wrong and that has gone wrong and I don't know how in the world I'm ever going to solve that and where am I going to get the $20,000? And the circumstances don't change but the perspective changes. We turn, we deliberately turn our eyes upon Jesus and we allow him to block out everything else by filling our vision with himself.

Everything else grows strangely dim in the light of who he is and suddenly we discover that the circumstances are totally changed. Now I think those are the two points of this passage. That number one, I am the Lord your God.

There is nobody else but me. And therefore, turn your eyes upon me. Look upon me.

And in the process of looking, you'll discover salvation. I think that applies both to the person who has never yet come to grips with God and in an initial way needs to respond to the gospel. I wonder if there's anybody here like that tonight.

I mean, maybe you've been playing church for 30, 40, 50 years. But if the truth be known, God is not a reality to you. And he says, look to me.

Let me fill your horizons. Let me fill your vision. Let me fill your perspective.

And I'm going to change your life. Tonight. Right now.

You walk out of here a different person than you came in. And some of you have known him for years and years and years. and yet the cares of this life have grown up like the thorns to choke the good seed, right?

Anybody identify with that? And it's exactly the same thing. Salvation in that initial sense and salvation from whatever it is that is hassling me right now.

What is the solution? It's not, oh God, change my circumstances. Not first.

First, oh God, fill my mind, my heart, my vision, my perspective. Everything else will fall into place. It's pretty basic, friends.

Let's bow our heads together. If you've never come to the point of inviting Jesus Christ to be your Lord in a personal way, if you've never genuinely responded to the gift of His love and His forgiveness, I'd like you to just picture yourself alone with Him for a minute. And just picture Him walking slowly toward you, and the closer he gets the more his face blots out everything else can you see him reaching out to you and saying to you I love you I love you just the way you are I love you I died for you.

I would willingly die for you all over again if I had to. Can you trust me tonight to be your Lord? I want to wash away your sins.

I want to forgive you and make you a new person. I wonder if there's anybody here. You don't need to give any outward sign of it, but if you know that I'm speaking to you, I wonder if just quietly in your heart you'd like to pray this prayer with me.

Lord Jesus Christ thank you for loving me thank you for dying for me This night I want to receive the gift of your love, your forgiveness, and new life from God. I invite you to fill my mind, my heart, my life with yourself. And I ask you to make me a new person, a member of your family.

come into my heart Lord Jesus give me your spirit that I might follow you all the days of my life thank you Lord bless you Lord let's now the rest of us pray together Lord Jesus I get so distracted I find that there are serpents coming among us again Lord we'd lift up our eyes tonight we would look unto you tonight and know again Your salvation. Lord Jesus, fill my vision tonight. Let there be no room left for anything other than of You.

Lord, I just want to fall in love with You all over again tonight. I give myself to You again this night. Refresh me and renew me by Your Spirit.

Fill me with Your joy. For Your great name's sake. Amen.

Amen.