Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
It seems too easy and simple to be true, but there it is in Isaiah 45:22. The Lord says, "Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other." Could we have misunderstood? Verse 21 confirms it: "There is no other God besides Me, a just God and a Savior." If He were only just, we would all perish; but He is also a Savior! And there is our hope.
Could the translation be wrong, it seems so simple? The Hebrew word panah means to "turn the face" and is translated as "look" over 40 times in the Old Testament, and the idea of "turn the face" over 50 times. It involves a choice to face reality, not merely a passing, involuntary glimpse. Is it possible that there is salvation in turning your face towards God? That's what Isaiah says!
In Numbers 21 we find the story of the snakes that bit the murmuring Israelites. The Lord told Moses to make a snake out of brass and lift it up on a pole so that those who looked at it earnestly would be healed. And Jesus tells us in John 3:14, 15 that Christ crucified on His cross is the fulfillment of that type. And in the familiar 16th verse He explains further, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish [from the bite of the serpent of sin] but have everlasting life." In other words, to "believe" and to "look" are the same--a choice to face reality.
In Ephesians 3:14-21 Paul explains that the looking and the believing are the same as "comprehending with all the saints" the grand dimensions of the love (agape) of Christ. This is true, because John says that God is agape (1 John 4:8).
So our text, "Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth" means, comprehend the amazing character of God, who could destroy us because of His justice, but who is our Savior because of His agape. Yes, comprehending that character of unearthly love will heal you of the poisonous bite of sin. It will change you, from the inside out. "Look!"
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: October 5, 1998.
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