Oakbrook Evangelical Free Church

Isaiah 55:6-9 ““Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; “let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” ESV

Introduction:
We are free and responsible to make choices.
Choices (used 8/27/00)
“The implications of our choices carry over into what we call lifestyles. Individually they may seem to be insignificant, but when the mind-set of a whole culture is altered in accordance with those choices, the ramifications are staggering.” Ravi Zacharias

There is a sense in which no one seeks after God.
If we are not hungry no one can make us eat.

Romans 3:10-11 “as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; “no one understands; no one seeks for God.” ESV

The story of a non-seeker:

John 6:44-45 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. “It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—” ESV

John 7:37-38 “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ”” ESV

There is a work of God in our hearts that begins to stir in us an awareness of God and a desire to know God that even we can’t explain.
1. WHAT DOES IT MEANS TO SEEK THE LORD?
A. Call on Him
If you set yourself to seek the Lord this morning, or in the stillness of the night, when you are alone or when you are in a crowd of people. The first thing you will do is call on the Lord. The religious word for this is “pray”.

Psalm 63:1-3 “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. “So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. “Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.” ESV

Psalm 73:25-26 “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

Psalm 88:1-2 “O Lord, God of my salvation; I cry out day and night before you. “Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry!” ESV

Psalm 42:1-2 “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” ESV

Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” ESV

1 Samuel 1:10-11 “She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.

Psalm 18:6 “In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.” ESV

Psalm 34:6 “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.” ESV

Psalm 88:1 “O Lord, God of my salvation; I cry out day and night before you.” ESV

“O God, help me!”
“God, if you are really there, show me!”
“O God, I need you, come and save me, forgive me, make me new.” “Father, I need your guidance, show me the way to go.”

God is not pushy. He gives us the power to put him out of mind. “Today if you hear His voice do not harden your heart”

But if you want him you have to seek him.

B. To Seek the Lord means to turn to Him away from sin and anything that hinders our pursuit of God.

Isaiah 55:7 “let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” ESV

If we take seriously the wonderful truth that seeking God means that we can call on Him any time, any place and he will answer us, then

We have to take seriously the negative side of turning away from the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that offend him. We can’t seek God and plan sin at the same time.

Sometimes there is an incongruence or disharmony between what you say you desire and what you are doing in your heart and behavior.

The engine that pulls us toward walking with God is the Spirit of God. Phil 2:11-12

Seeking God means making many decisions over and over to do what you have to do to let go of sin in order to turn to God.

1 Thessalonians 1:9 “For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God,” ESV

2 Corinthians 3:16-17 “But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” ESV

One of the things that hinders us from seeking the Lord is what others think and say and do.

Romans 2:21-24 “you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? “You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? “You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. “For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”” ESV

Matthew 20:29-34 “And as they went out of Jericho, a great crowd followed him. “And behold, there were two blind men sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” “The crowd rebuked them, telling them to be silent, but they cried out all the more, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” “And stopping, Jesus called them and said, “What do you want me to do for you?” “They said to him, “Lord, let our eyes be opened.” “And Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him.” ESV

There are underlying patterns in our personalities of which we are so often unaware.

Some people are “controllers” who look for guarentees against ridicule. They feel a need to control situations so that they will not be made fun of or humiliated.

Others aim to please and want to avoid rejection by seeking approval and acceptance. Out of fear of not being liked they will do almost anything to be accepted.

This man was desperate enough he didn’t care what others thought.
Their pressure to conform did not shut him up.

1 Peter 4:3-4 “The time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. “With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you;” ESV

Thinking outside the box is difficult.
Groups pool their ideas. But they tend to get into a line of thinking.
Once the line of thinking and discussion has been established it is
People are cautious to express a different idea. Self censorship
And the more radical the idea the riskier it is to say it.

But what happens when the group’s influence hinders smart decisions? = Group think.
“when the way of thinking becomes dominate in a cohesive in-group that it tends to close out other ideas or shut up people with different points of view or courses of action.”
Titan – four aversive opinions
The Nic at night show – John 3
The hometown mentality of Matthew 13

“Culture is the glue that holds our common values together.” Ravi Zacharias

Culture - gaining a perspective
“An old Chinese proverb says if you want to know what water is don’t ask the fish. The fish does not know any other kind of life because it is submerged in the monotony and single vision of a watery existence. To the fish, no other existence is possible; hence, it can conceive of nothing by which to measure its own existence.
Similarly, it is important for those immersed in a culture to recognize that proximity does not necessarily guarantee an accurate perspective. Proximity does not guarantee understanding. Sometimes a culture can so imperceptibly absorb and transmit ideas into its consciousness that it is hard for those within it to be objective about its practices…” Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil, .18-19

Culture - How it affects us
“A medical doctor suffered a serious heart attack while still in his thirties. He described the pain of that event as different from any other pain he had ever felt. He had always experienced every prior injury or hurt, whether a broken arm or a sore knee, as a hurt to a part of his body. In some measure he could separate himself from the pain. “But during my heart attack,” he said, “I was in the pain. There is no other way to describe it.” The very organ that should have been pumping life was instead disseminating pain.

Culture is like that. It has an all-consuming hold on us. It becomes the source of thinking and feeling in its members. So engulfing is this power that we cannot discuss the essential theme of our culture at its crossroads without being locked into it ourselves. We are in the culture, and we are hard pressed to find a fulcrum outside of it with which to leverage a shift…Bearing in mind that we are…in it is the first step of diagnosis.” Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil, .18, 21
Suggestions:
1. Focus on yourself. You are the only one you can control.
2. Be humble, gracious and kind.
3. Consciously embrace the hometown mentality of the New Community. We are to actively be part of the counter culture no matter where we live.
4. That means actively pursuing the Mind of Christ.

C. To seek the Lord means to ask Him for guidance and trust him rather than human wisdom

Isaiah 31:1 “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help …, But they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the Lord! ” NASB95

How many times have we faced decisions and made them without seeking the Lord’s counsel at all. Seeking the Lord means pausing before we make a decision and looking to God in your heart and waiting to see how he might lead.

James 1:5-8 “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. “But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. “For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, “being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. ”

Psalm 84:5 “How blessed is the man whose strength is in You, In whose heart are the highways to Zion! ” NASB95

D. To seek the Lord means to make an effort to transform our thinking

Romans 12:1-2 “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.” NLT

Seeking God means seeking to become like Christ in our thinking and doing.

Psalm 16:8 “I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.” ESV

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,” ESV

Beans illustration!

II. WHY SHOULD YOU WANT TO SEEK THE LORD?

A. Because His ways are higher

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” ESV

Many things are a mystery to us.
Many things confuse and surprise and grieve and discourage us.

But there is a bigger picture.

Romans 8:28

And it is only as we seek Him that our we can close the gap between what we think and feel toward the mind of Christ.

We do not think like God.
We do not act like God.

B. To find mercy and grace and pardon
Romans 10:13 “for “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” ” NASB95

1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ”

C. To find Him while He may be found
There is a window of opportunity. And you do not know when it will shut. It is open this morning. We know it is because the the Word of God is being heard. And the Spirit is here in answer to many prayers.