November 27, 2005am Real Help is on the Way! Isaiah 64:1-9
By Ronald E.
George Jr. at the Fayetteville Baptist Church
Hope, Peace, Joy, Love, Christmas.
Do you have any diseases that need to be healed? Do you have any problems that need to be solved? Do you have any Hope? We are held captive by the world and the nature of things. Sin has taken its toll on all that is in the world including us.
One family faces a funeral of a young son who took his own life. A young mother faces chemo after undergoing a double mastectomy. Someone is trying to overcome a chemical dependency. Today someone goes home to an empty house and loneliness is an everyday event. A family faces the inevitable death of their mother.
The Problem is…
What are some of the problems that we face? What are yours?
We have problems in our lives that our beyond our control. Do you need help in your life? Do you want help with the situations you are facing? Do you need help on the job? Do you need strength to lift the load you are trying to carry? Do you need help with problems in your job, family, and school? Do you need help with you? We all do need help, but do we recognize that our help can only come from the Lord? In all of the world where is the one place that we can find help that will give us some hope?
Scripture Text:
Isaiah 64:1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the
mountains would tremble before you! 2 As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes
water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the
nations to quake before you! 3 For when you did awesome things that we did not
expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. 4 Since ancient
times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides
you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. 5 You come to the help
of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued
to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? 6 All of us have
become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. 7 No
one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your
face from us and made us waste away because of our sins. 8 Yet, O LORD, you are
our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your
hand. 9 Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD; do not remember our sins
forever. Oh, look upon us, we pray, for we are all your people.
Problems are opportunities for God to work.
There is hope because Real help is on the way.
1. What kind of help do you want? Think about it. The help we want isn’t always the help we need.
2. What kind of help do we need?
a. We need help hearing the truth. The truth is that God is our only source of real help.
b. We need help seeing the right way. By seeing the right way we have opportunity to go the right way. Going the right way can be the beginning of solving many of our problems we face.
c. We need
to be saved.
d. We need to be saved from our sin that sweeps us away like a leaf blown by the wind.
e. We need to be saved from our pride. We don’t want help, because we know what to do to make things in our lives better. We can do it on our own.
f. We need
to be saved in life and then we can be saved in death.
g. We need to have Hope! There is an alternative. There is a preferred future.
We need a Father who is like the potter. We need to put our lives in the hands of the potter who is the great father. Our hope is on the way. He came to give us Hope in life and death. Do you have hope? Do you have the Lord? Have you recognized the help and hope He wants to give.
h. We need to ask for help from the Lord. Will you ask for the Lord to come down into your life? V.7, No one calls on your Name. We need help and hope, but we don’t ask. So, then we say that you have flew the coop. We believe that you have turned away from us, but in reality we have turned from you.