Commands We Delight to Obey

So, when we come to these songs, we want to make it very clear. There are bookends. There are commands, and the command is the same—look. Now, when God tells us to look at him, to look at his servant, the look is more than just kind of a casual glance.

It's even more than studying a passage. We might think of it as a curious glance. Let me give you two Ds. There is a look of dependence or hope. There is a sense in which we are looking away from ourselves and anything that we might be able to do, and we're looking out the window of our soul, and we're looking to him to see if there's any hope for us in him.

There is a look of dependence. Second D, there is a look of desire, a longing, you know, a heartache, a lovesickness. We are looking away from all that has promised to give us real love, and we look away from all of that, look out the window of my soul, and look away from the world, and I want to see my beloved.

Looking to the Servant with Dependence and Desire

So, looking to him. These are the bookends of the four songs. If you don't understand that, and you think of this as just kind of a sweet phrase, and it's easy to do that. When you think of the commands of God, there are some commands that you know are not optional, but there are some commands that are so sweet, like, look at my son, or look to me, that you might think that they're extra, kind of like dessert at the end of a good meal.

You don't have to have it. It's just a nice extra. If you think of looking at Christ as something that is extra, if you think that in these songs, beholding the servant is so pleasant, and it's so obviously geared for your good, that maybe it's dessert, then you will miss out on so much that Christ has called us to do.

There are aspects of the Christian life which you will never understand and never live. There are aspects that a church will never, you know, parts of the path we will never reach unless we are determined to take very seriously the command in chapter 42 and all the way through chapter 53 that we look and behold the servant.

Looking Unto Jesus in Hebrews 12

But actually, there is another place that you have to look before you can look at Christ, and it is essential, and it too is not optional. We find this spiritual principle in Hebrews chapter 12. You remember that the opening of chapter 12 talks about the great author and finisher of our faith, and it talks about you, Christian, running a race that God has set before you.

How am I to live unto Him, by Him, and for Him in the common things of today? And the answer is found in verse 1 and 2, looking unto Jesus you run. The Greek phrase there that we translate looking unto Jesus is actually made up of three words.

First, there is the prefix away from, then the verb looking, and then the suffix to. So think of it as three words kind of brought together. Away from, looking toward. In the book of Isaac Ambrose that is entitled Looking Unto Jesus, there is a 40-page introduction, and it is worth the price of the book.

Ambrose spends his entire time talking about this issue. You must look away from certain things if you are going to make room in the soul for looking toward Christ. So he talks about looking away from sin, looking away from sin's enticements, looking away from sin's dreadful threatenings, you know, the fears that we feel.

But even looking away from good things, even gifts that God has given us, work that God is doing within us, perhaps, or through us, and determining that we will not look at anything for our hope, our determination, our dependence, our desire, we look away from everything and we turn our hearts to Christ.

If we don't do that, the simple fact is there just isn't enough room in your heart to look at all the other things, bad things, good things, and make room for looking at Christ. Thanks for watching the clip.

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