Looking to Christ & Pleading with Sinners

Man, well, this is the second year in a row that we have done an evangelistic letter writing service.

I'll use this. That means that we are now it's now a Baptist tradition.

Right. So turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 45. I have a brief word of exhortation to us tonight and then some instructions and some prayer, and then we will commence our supper and the evangelistic letter writing.

Isaiah 45 verse 22. This was the day,

I believe it is January the 8th or it may be

January the 6th, but one of those two dates was a snowy day.

Spurgeon, the young Spurgeon, the 16 year old Spurgeon is on his way to church. He can't get to church where he's supposed to go.

He ends up going to this primitive Methodist church. A man gets up and preaches.

The pastor doesn't even show up. Right. That's how bad the snowstorm is. Man gets up and preaches this text and Charles Spurgeon is converted.

It's a beautiful story. I commend it to your research and reading. But I want to preach tonight briefly from Isaiah 45, 22.

Would you stand with me as we honor the reading of God's word? Look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the earth, for I am

God and there is none else. Father, would you bless the preaching of your word tonight?

Would you know how much grace I need? I pray that you would give grace to the preacher and to the listener. Help us to understand the great glory of this season and the gospel that you've given us.

Let us look to Christ and let us plead with sinners. We pray it all in Jesus name.

Amen. You may be seated. Three points here.

The first is we have in this text the object of salvation. I'm preaching it if you didn't notice from the

King James tonight, because most of your translations you're using,

I'm sure, have the word turn instead of the word look. You'll see later. I'm going to use a quote from Spurgeon and it goes along with the word look.

So the King James uses the word look in verse 22. But that's not the focus right now. The focus right now is the object of the looking and that is look unto me.

There is an exclusivity in this text. The only way for salvation is through whoever the me is referring to in the text.

Look unto me and be ye saved. All the ends of the earth for I am God and there is none else.

And we understand that the me in the text is Yahweh. This is what Yahweh is saying through the prophet

Isaiah. Look, look or turn or believe. That is the idea.

But there's an object here. He's not just saying have faith in faith or have belief in belief or look wherever you want or look inside yourself or that's what we have this time of year if you listen very closely.

Christmas is about finding the good in everyone and looking inside yourself and all those things. But that's not the

Christian gospel. The Christian gospel is that there is an exclusive way. Look unto Yahweh.

Look to Christ. Second, the means of salvation. The object of salvation is look unto me.

The means of salvation is look. Look unto me and be ye saved.

Now I'll read from Spurgeon's testimony. He speaks of the man that got up and preached.

He says that he wasn't a very good preacher. Basically everyone's looking around. Imagine we have a such a bad snowstorm.

Nobody shows up to church. Jacob and I can't even get to church. There's just a handful of us. A handful of you here.

You look around and one of the men gets up and says, well, I guess I'll have to give a message. And that's kind of how it was.

And Spurgeon says of this man, then he looked at me under the gallery. And I dare say with 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 always will 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.

Then lifting up his hands, he shouted as only a primitive Methodist could do. Young man, look to Jesus Christ.

Look, look, look. You have nothing to do but to look. Look and live.

I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said. I did not care much notice of it.

I did not take much notice of it. I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed.

So it was with me. I'd been waiting to do 50 things. But when I heard that one 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.

Of the precious blood of Christ and the simple faith which looks alone to him. Oh, that somebody had told me this before.

Trust Christ and you shall be saved. Friends, the object of salvation is

Christ. And the means of salvation is looking to him. You must look to Christ and be saved.

You need to have an understanding of your need for Christ. That you are an unworthy and poor and miserable sinner.

And yet Christ has come into the world to save sinners. You need to see your sin as what it is. An enslavement and wickedness.

And complete abandonment of all that God has and desires for you.

So leave your sin and look to Christ. See the God of the Bible as he is revealed in the scripture.

Not just the Santa Claus in the sky. But he's holy and sovereign and king of kings and lord of lords.

Look to this God and understand what he has done for us in Christ. That is, Christ is the promised one.

The one foretold. The one spoken of even in Genesis. He that will crush the seed of the serpent.

He is the one born of the Virgin Mary. He is the one who has fulfilled all righteousness. He is the one who has obeyed

God perfectly. He is the one who suffered for sinners. Oh, what a great love

God has for the world. That he would give his son. That those who would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life.

He rose again from the dead on the third day. And he reigns now in victory. This is the Christ who we're to look to.

Look. And then thirdly, the subject of salvation. Look unto me. And be saved.

Oh, what a blessed command. By the way, it's a command, right? Look unto me and be saved.

All the ends of the earth. Praise God.

That some, oh, this is 750 years before Christ. So we do the math. Some 2 ,800 years ago almost.

That God spoke through the prophet Isaiah. In a little isolated place in the

Middle East. And yet he said salvation was not just there. But for the ends of the earth.

That whoever would look to the son of God and faith. Will be saved.

This is the subject of salvation. All the ends of the earth. Look unto me.

And be saved. All the ends of the earth. That brings us into what we're doing tonight.

Tonight we're here because we believe this text. Look unto me and be saved.

All the ends of the earth. For I am God and there is no other. So there's a outline in addition to that outline.

And the first question we have is what? What are we doing tonight? Well, in one sense, we are doing evangelism.

What is evangelism? Evangelism is sharing the gospel. So as we write these cards and letters tonight.

We are sharing Christ. We're not saying merely Merry Christmas.

Happy holidays. Hope you had a good year. Here's how our family's doing. Those cards and letters have their time and place.

Praise God for those. Some of you will write those this year. I love getting those from friends and family and reading about how their year has been.

Their plans for the new year. That's great. But what we're doing tonight is evangelism. We're articulating the gospel of Christ.

What is the gospel? Well, there's a short outline here. God, man, Jesus response. That is

God made us in his image. Mankind has rebelled. We've sent God sent

Christ, the son of God. Eternal son of God, born the Virgin Mary, fulfilling all righteousness, dying on the cross for sinners, raising again.

And the response to that, the necessary response is repentance from sin and looking to Christ in faith.

That's just a brief outline, but we share that. Secondly, why do we do this? Three reasons.

One, it's like outlines within outlines. One, God told us. That's all we need.

We could stop there. God told us to share the gospel, so we should do it. But secondly, Christ is worthy.

Jesus is worthy. When you articulate, when you write this letter tonight and you tell about what Jesus has done, you know, sometimes there's such thing as anonymous donors.

So you hear things in the church and stuff like that. And like this was an anonymous donor. And that's OK. There's nothing wrong with that.

And sometimes with anonymous donors, they want to specifically make sure that they don't get any glory. They want all the glory to be the

Lord. It's OK to be an anonymous donor. It's OK to not be an anonymous donor. But however, I want to say this about God.

He's not an anonymous donor, right? It's not like, oh, here's Christ, but don't tell anybody. No, no, no.

When we share what God has done for us, we extol the name of Christ. And so we share the gospel because God told us because Christ is worthy.

And then don't forget this one. Sinners are perishing. The person you get your haircut from is perishing.

The person you buy groceries from or hay from or firewood from or whatever the case may be.

The person you work with, the person who is your supervisor, the person who you supervise, whatever the case may be, sinners are perishing.

And I'm going to tell you, I'm so tired of hearing this kind of language from evangelicals.

But I guarantee you, because I've had questions like this before about door to door and stuff like that.

Some people are going to ask at times, does that work? Does evangelistic letter writing, does it work?

That's not the question that we want to ask. We're not asking what works. We're talking about our duty.

That is, we are to obey. God told us to do it. We're to do it. We're talking about our desire.

That is, Christ is worthy and we want to extol him. And we're talking about our disposition. We should have a heart of compassion and kindness and brokenheartedness toward lost, poor, needy sinners.

Like what are we doing if we have this message of hope and salvation for the world and we're not actively sharing it with others?

Thirdly, how? So what evangelism? Why? God told us Christ is worthy. Sinners are perishing.

Thirdly, how? Well, in this instant, we're going to do these cards and letters. Why are we doing this?

Well, we're just kind of trying to take advantage of this season. So we're trying to use the opportunity that is afforded to us by Providence to give people cards and letters.

Most people that you write a Christmas card or Christmas letter to, they're going to read it, right?

That's what you do during Christmastime. You could do this at any time of the year, by the way, and we should.

There's some ideas that you could use throughout the year. But in this instance, we want to use these cards and letters in this season to our advantage.

So let me encourage you and if you have any questions here in a minute, we can talk about it. But let me encourage you to articulate the gospel.

The full gospel. It's not just about Christmas is not only about Jesus's birth.

Yes, God became man. That's important. That's crucial. But the manger precedes the cross.

The manger happens because the cross happens. Jesus was laid in a bed of wood to be nailed later in his life to a cross of wood.

And to resurrect on the third day. So we articulate the gospel. And another thing important articulate is the response required.

The required response to the gospel is repentance and faith. It's not asking

Jesus into your heart. It's not getting baptized or whatever, taking the

Lord's Supper. It's our friends and family must know their duty before God is to look to look to Christ, to repent, believe the gospel.

And then fourthly, and finally. Who? So what evangelism? Why God told us

Christ is worthy. Sinners are perishing. How we're going to do these cards and letters. Fourthly, who?

Who? This doesn't have to be. Overly complicated.

I know some of you would wrestle with like, who, who, who is it going to be? You know, we sound like a bunch of owls, right?

Who, who, who? Who are we going to give these letters and cards to? Well, maybe someone's on your heart right now, a family member.

Maybe they're in another state. Maybe it's a neighbor. Maybe it's someone you live right next to.

You don't have to know this person that well to write the letter. You can just say, hey, I've lived next to you for 10 years, 10 months, 10 days, 10 seconds.

It could be someone that you've noticed around town. It could be the person that checks your water meter. It could be the person that you normally go get your hair cut from or you take your kids to get their hair cut.

It could be your kid's pediatrician. It could be your doctor. I mean, it literally could be anyone. Why do

I say it could be anyone? Because our text says, look unto me and be saved all the ends of the earth. It could be someone at your school, students.

It could be, it could be, it could be anyone. The possibilities are endless, right?

God has put us in providential areas. And I think about Pastor Jacob and myself. This is the beauty of evangelism in the whole church.

God has put you in places that he hasn't put Pastor Jacob and I. And he's put you in specific places of areas of influence or just contact where you can write letters to people that Jacob and I can't.

So consider this. And then let me add this when we think about who. Last year

I did this. And it's kind of hard. It hurts your hand to write too many of these. So maybe only do a couple. But last year

I just wrote generic Christmas cards. And I just wrote, hey, Merry Christmas.

And I gave the gospel and I called people to repent and believe. And there was a couple times in the

Christmas, I don't remember exactly how many times I did it, but I know it was like maybe a handful of times. I just randomly saw a random person and I did it like a track.

I was like, hey, can I give you a Christmas card? And you know what they said? Yes. Why?

I don't know very many people who reject Christmas cards. So if you want, you could also write a couple of just generic ones and just give them out.

What is it that we're trying to do here? We're trying to share the hope of Christ this Christmas.

We're trying to be intentional about this. We're trying to say, you know what? We take seriously that Christ is worthy, that he's commanded us to go and that sinners are perishing.

And we want people to know about the good news of Jesus. So don't make this about you tonight. Oh, oh, it just makes me feel too awkward.

Oh, it's just, it's just hard. It's just hard for me to do. No, no. All we're doing is articulating what

Jesus has told us to articulate. And that is the good news of Christ. Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

This is who we're proclaiming. So do this, do this with joy. We'll pray about it.

And hopefully tonight, each one of us can at least write one letter or one card. All the resources are available to you.

There's two tracks. There's several tracks, but there's two tracks I want to draw your attention to. And then we're going to pray in just a moment.

But two tracks. One is a generic church track. And if you're sending this out of the county, if you're sending this out of central

Arkansas, we say use this track. If you're sending or giving to someone in close, use this track, the one with the manger on it.

And that is because it invites, also gives them information about our Christmas Eve service. So it's kind of another thing.

And this one's more Christmas focused, but we only have so many of these. So if you're sending one far away, you can just use our generic track.

Now, we also have some generic Christmas tracks, but they have our our old church name on them.

But still, they most importantly, they have the gospel. So I'm I'm fine with that. So you can send that out.

They can still find us through that. What I want to do is

I'm going to pray and we're going to we're going to end our live stream here. I'm going to pray and then

I'll take questions or comment anything you want to say. And then we're going to eat.

And then we are going to then we're going to do this together. So let's pray. Father, we thank you for the gospel.

We thank you for what Christ has done. And we pray, Lord, that you would bless our efforts tonight.

Let this not be about ourselves. Let this be about Christ. Bring to our minds and hearts even now those you would have us share the gospel with.

We pray, Lord, that we'd be faithful. We thank you for. What you've done in Christ and the grace you've shown us.

We pray, Lord, for the food that we're going to eat. Thank you for those who helped prepare it and who brought food.