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Topic:Turn To Me and Be Saved
Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, What are you making? Does your work say, The potter has no hands?
Isaiah 45:9
It would be ridiculous if clay were to say to the potter, I don’t like the way you’re doing this. This design does not appeal to me at all. Listen to the irony of this passage: Woe to him who says to a father, What are you begetting? or to a woman, With what are you in travail? (Isaiah 45:10 RSV). This is the God with whom we have to deal. How incredibly arrogant of man to criticize the workings of a God like that! This passage is designed to humble man in his proud confidence and to show him how dependent he is upon the God whom he dares to criticize. C.S. Lewis once argued that to contend with God is to contend with the very One who makes it possible for us to contend in the first place, and how foolish we are to attempt that!
From this passage we learn that human folly takes many forms: either self-sufficiency—man imagining that he is God and that he can run the world—or idolatry, where man trusts something else as god other than the true God. Either one, according to this account and as confirmed by history, results in slavery and tragedy. This is what is behind the rise of totalitarianism in our day.
God’s answer is found in Verses 22-23: Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. (Isaiah 45:22-23 RSV). How hopeless it is for man to find his own way out of the morass which he has made for himself! The Spirit of God used this verse to speak to the heart of a fifteen-year-old boy in England in the last century. That boy, Charles Hadden Spurgeon, took shelter in a little Methodist chapel on a cold and snowy day in 1850. As there was no preacher, the deacon read the text, Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, and seeing a lonely boy sitting in the back, the deacon (who could not speak very well) addressed Spurgeon, directly telling him to look unto God and he would be saved. Spurgeon later said that he then looked, and he was saved. He went on to become one of the great preachers of the English church.
But this is the out which God offers to mankind: Look to me. Do not look to science, or to technology. These are fine in themselves, they give certain creature comforts, but they cannot deliver you. They cannot satisfy you or meet your need. If you pursue them they will turn to ashes. God is the only Deliverer from human hurt and failure.
Thank you, Father, for this precious promise. How beautifully it has been fulfilled in so many lives, and through all the ages of time. May I recognize how foolish it is to trust in anything else but your presence in my life.
Life Application
When we as Christians claim Jesus is Lord, do we then surrender willingly to the process of becoming Christ-like? Are we being transformed by the renewing of our minds?
