We're turning today for Bible reading to Isaiah chapter 40. The book of Isaiah, the chapter 40. We're going to read from the commencement of the chapter, Isaiah chapter 40, and we'll read from verse 1. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, And every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth. But the word of our God shall stand forever. O Zion, that bring us good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain. O Jerusalem, that bring us good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength. Lift it up, be not afraid. Say on to the cities of Judah, behold your God. Behold, the Lord God will come with a strong hand, and his arms shall rule for him. Behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. Amen, and we'll end our reading at the 11th verse. Shall we unite in prayer? Let's pray. Our Father, we do bow before Thee. We bow before Thee, dear God, to acknowledge how weak we are when we come to preach Thy Word and to listen to Thy Word. We confess that at times we would leave this place, and if asked at the bottom step what was preached upon, we would be struggling, dear God, to at least give the outline of a message that had just been preached. Lord, we confess that our minds are prone to wander in the preaching. We confess, O God, that our hearts are dull, our ears are heavy. And Lord, we therefore need the help of God, the Holy Spirit, in this preaching place today. O God, that thou will come by thy spirit and fill this house with a sense of thy presence. Pray for the preacher that he might know enablement. Oh God, we confess this great subject matter. We confess our inability to unfold it. We realize, oh God, that we need God the Holy Spirit to lead and guide in our study. and then in the presentation of thy word and so come Lord come and meet with our souls as the word is opened we thank thee for the scriptures of truth we thank thee for the revelation of God therein Lord grant us to see him and to behold him whom our soul loveth and for the sinner who knows not Christ, who has yet not seen a beauty in him that they would desire him. O God, we pray that thou would remove the blinkers of sin, and Lord, that they would see him, the altogether lovely one. Lord, that their vision would be taken up with him, the one who bled and died and suffered, who lived for them, who died for them, who rose for them, who lives for them, even in heaven. and thank God those who trust in him is coming back forward. Dear God, answer prayer, close us in with thyself, and grant, O God, a deep sense of thine abiding presence. Be amongst us as, O God, thou wert among the candlesticks. Lord, answer prayer, be among us today, and grant, O God, the help of thy Spirit, for we offer this, our petition, in Jesus' precious and wondrous name. Amen and amen. Today I want to speak to you upon the greatest and the most significant subject matter that there has ever been in the entire created universe. Before we begin to even investigate into that subject matter, we'll have to hold up our hands and admit that the subject matter we'll be considering can never be fully exhausted or comprehended by the finite mind of any mortal being. When a student goes to study some subject matter, the end goal is for them to master that subject. But when we come to this subject matter, it is not that we will master the subject matter, but instead the subject matter will master us. I want our minds today to contemplate the loftiest being that exists in the entire universe. That being is God with a capital G. You know, today there are those in this world, and sad to say, those within the professing church who have an unbiblical concept of who God is and what God is like. I would have to agree with A. W. Tozer who said, Christianity at any given time is strong or weak depending upon her concept of God. The basic trouble with the church today is her unworthy conception of God. Our religion, he said, is little. because our God is little. Our religion is weak because our God is weak. Our religion is ignoble because our God we serve is ignoble. We do not see God as he is. And then he said this, a local church will only be as great as its conception of God. A local church will only be as great as its conception of God. With that in mind, and as I intimated a few weeks ago, I want to commence a series of messages on the doctrine of God. I've entitled that subject matter in that series, Behold Your God. It is a phrase that we have found recorded in Isaiah 40 in the verse number 9. O Jerusalem that bringeth good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength. Lift it up, be not afraid. Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God. as the weeks progress, we're going to behold our powerful God. We're going to behold our holy God. We're going to behold the God of infinite wisdom, our wise God. We're going to behold Him in all of His various attributes. In light of that subject matter, We ask ourselves the question, to where must we go to if we are to find and to know what God is like and who God is? Well, in our study on the revelation of God, we considered that there's only one place that the believer can behold their God, and that is within the scriptures of Holy Truth, God's special revelation of Himself to mankind. It is within the pages of Holy Truth that God reveals Himself to man. And the greatest manifestation of God is none other than the person of His own dear Son, because Christ is the expressed image of the Father. He is the replicate of the Father. He is the same in essence. He is the same in being. Every attribute that Christ possesses, so the Father and so the Holy Spirit possesses. Today, as I commence this series of messages, I'm not going to As it were, jump feet first into the deep end. Not going to launch into a study on the attributes of God. We're going to methodically make our way through them as God will guide us in the weeks ahead. But over the next number of weeks, I want to again just set the platform and set the setting as we come into this great subject matter of beholding our God. Because today I want to, and God willing next week, I want to speak to you on what a beholding Or what a consideration of God will do in each of our lives. What benefit is such a study to us? What will be the outcome as we behold our God in the Scriptures of truth? What benefits will outflow from beholding our God as we sit on to the preached Word and as God by His Spirit, and it will only be by His Spirit that God by His Spirit will reveal Him to us through His Word. What will be produced in our lives? With that goal in mind, I want us to consider some instances in the Bible where men and individuals beheld their God, and what that beholding produced in their lives, and trust that such will be evident in our lives as we, through the Scriptures, behold that same God, because their God is our God, and He will be our guide even on to death. I want you to notice in the first place that a beholding of our God will produce comfort. It'll produce comfort in our lives. You know, the opening words of the chapter here allude to that very thought. It brings to our thought an injunction, a command that is given by God to His servant Isaiah. Notice the words, Isaiah 40 verse 1, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Now, let's see where the setting of these words are. The prophet of God has just spoken to the people of God concerning their future deportation into the land of Babylon. Captivity is coming for these people because of their sin, because of their forsaking of God, because of them following after other gods, their captivity into the land of Babylon is about to break forth, and they're about to be carried by deportation into that far and distant land. And so God desires his servant, along with the prophet Isaiah, the servants of God, to comfort his people. We asked ourselves the question, how does Isaiah set about comforting God's people? How does he lift up the hearts of these people after hearing the terrible fate that is about to befall them? And then how can any of God's servants, how can any of God's servants ever comfort the hearts of God's people that are so prone to get so quickly discouraged in this world of sin? Well, can I say that he does not comfort God's people by trying to give them a pep talk. like a football manager does on a half-time interval at a football match. That's not what Isaiah the prophet sets about to do. He doesn't comfort his people by trying to get them to think positively about themselves or their circumstances, something that you'll find prevalent if you turn on the God Channel or some other revelation television and you see these evangelists. Think positively about your future. Think positively about your circumstances. That is what Isaiah does not do. He doesn't comfort his people by trying to get them to sing some worship song over and over again in order to excite them and in order to bring them to a level that they start to feel good about themselves. That's what happens today in places of worship. The song goes on and on and on in order to try and encourage God's people. Isaiah doesn't start singing. What we find Isaiah doing is Isaiah causes the people to behold their God, to turn their eyes away from themselves and from every other confidence that they have in every other person and to look to God and to look to God alone. Verse number 9, say unto the cities of Judah, behold your God, behold your God. That is where the comfort was going to be found. a vision of God, a revelation of God. understanding and knowledge of the Almighty. It's as if God's servant is saying to the people of God, lift your eyes from off your circumstances, lift your eyes from the things of the earth, lift your eyes from men and all other confidence and look to heaven and look to God and there behold your omnipotent, your immutable, your Almighty God as he reigns and he rules in the affairs of man. And as you behold Him, it will bring comfort to your heart, even in your days of captivity in the land of Babylon, as you behold God. Now this beholding, this consideration of God, is not something that was unique to God's servant Isaiah in his attempt to bring comfort to the hearts of God's people that were so badly troubled at this particular moment. There are others within the Scriptures that practice this beholding of God in times of crisis, in times of great trouble within their own lives and within the lives of the nation. I'm thinking about King Jehoshaphat for one example. The children of Moab, the children of Ammon, the other beside the Ammonites have come against that king to battle. Jehoshaphat, he gives these words of counsel over in 2nd Chronicles chapter 20, the verse 12. Let me read them to you. Oh our God, he's found here in prayer, 2nd Chronicles 20 in the verse number 12. He says, O our God, wilt thou not judge them? For we have no might against this great company that cometh against us, neither know we what to do, but our eyes, our eyes are upon thee. Our eyes are upon thee. Lord, we're looking out at the circumstances, this great multitude that's come against us, and we don't even know what to do, but this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to lift my eyes to God. I'm going to behold my God. I'm going to trust God in this circumstance. I'm going to have a vision that's taken up with the greatness and the majesty and the power and the might of God. I think of John the Baptist. He encouraged his followers there in John 1 verse 29, Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. I think of the Apostle Paul, he writes to the Hebrew Christians who were suffering greatly. He speaks about them, the spoiling of their goods over there in the book of Hebrews, but we find him writing to encourage those saints of God who had suffered much because they had trusted in Christ as the Messiah. Hebrews 12 verse 2 and 3. consider Christ, and in doing so, thank God, you'll find comfort. Let me say that a beholding of God will bring comfort to you, the sinner. It will bring comfort to you, the sinner, today, if you would turn your eyes upon Jesus. The sinner is encouraged by God to look to him alone for salvation. Isaiah 45 verse 22, Look on to me, God said, and be ye saved all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else. What does a sinner find when they look to God and to God alone? Well, thank God they see. They find there, as they look to God, that there's one that is able, one that is ready, one that is willing to save them from their sin. They find, as they look to God, that there's one who's able. to blot out their transgressions, and there's one who's willing to welcome them into his very family. Is that not comforting for you to know, sinner? With all of your sin, with all of your transgressions, with all of your offenses against God, but a look to Christ, a look of faith, will have those sins blotted out, that record cleansed and set clear. Oh, what a blessing it is. And I tell you, it's even more comforting to experience than just to know it within your head. Sinner, God would say to you then today, look unto me and be ye seen. Look to Christ. Behold him with the eye of faith, sinner. Behold him by the eye of faith. See him as the Lamb, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Look to him alone. as your only hope of heaven. Look to Him for life, look to Him for pardon, look to Him for righteousness, look to Him alone for peace. Look on to Him by looking off from every other object of your confidence, from every other vain deceitful hope that you have invented for yourself and place your entire, place your unbinded trust in the merits of Christ and His cross. Look to Christ And if today you would do that, I tell you, you would enjoy the comfort of sins forgiven. Sinner, look and live, and you'll find such a view of Christ and a view of your God. Looking on to Him as the author and finisher of faith, you'll find great comfort if you would look by faith to Christ today. Ah, but can I say there, a beholding of God will bring comfort to the backslider here today. What did the prodigal son see? What did he behold as he made his way to the father's house in Luke chapter 15? Did he see a father with a large stick in his hand going to, and we'll use a county antrum and Ulsterism, wheel him all the way home? Did he find that? Did he look? Did he find that in the father's hand? Did he behold that? No. Rather, he saw a father. He beheld a father running, running to him. keen, so keen to have fellowship restored again, running to meet him and to embrace him and to kiss him and to rope him and to welcome him into the family of God. That's what the backslider, that's what the prodigal son beheld as he looked to his father. Ah, but backslider, it's no different. It's no different for you today, because as you look to your God, you'll find a loving heavenly Father who waits He waits to welcome you into fellowship again, to have that fellowship restored again with His dear child. And so I would encourage you today to return on to your God. Return to that place of departure and He'll restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten because fellowship, fellowship can be restored in your repentance. Behold your loving and your forgiving God, Backslider. But what about beholding the comfort that it brings to the Christian? Is it not the fact that as we behold our God, we draw comfort from the fact that we are now at peace with God, the Father, through the work of God, the Son, whilst we are continually knowing the comfort of the leading and the guiding of God, the Holy Spirit? What a comfort that is for the child of God. As we come contemplate the second person of the Trinity, let's just take Him. As we consider the Lord Jesus Christ, how do we see Him? We behold Him as our Redeemer. We behold Him as our Savior, our Advocate, our Refuge, our Mediator, our Intercessor, our Friend, our Hope, our righteousness, our peace, our hiding place, our shepherd, our rock, our bridegroom, our surety, our great high priest, our sacrifice, our propitiation, our substitute. We behold Him as our King. Take any of those roles that I've just mentioned. Take any of those offices that Christ fulfills on behalf of His believing people. And you just meditate upon them this afternoon, and I believe that if you would do so, it would supply sufficient comfort for even the most downcast saint of God today to think that this God is my God. He's my Savior. He's my friend. He's my hope. He's my righteousness. He's my surety. He's my substitute. Think of those comforts that it would bring to your heart. Behold Him as He reigns. Behold Him as He rules. Behold Him as He prays. Behold Him as He subdues all of His and our enemies. Behold Him as He saves. O believer, behold your God today. James Smith said, look at His goodness. It runs in an endless circuit, supplying millions and supporting all created existences. Look at His grace, saving innumerable multitudes from hell. Look at His judgments. If we could look into hell or listen at a moment at the door of the bottomless pit, how dreadful would His judgments appear. Look at His power, He speaks a world into existence, sustains it and supports every creature upon it. Look at His wisdom, it is infinite. Look at His holiness, it is so bright that no normal eye has seen or can see in its unveiled glory. Look at His mercy, it is a boundless ocean without bottom, bank or shore. Behold your God today, Turn away your eyes from everyone and everything else. And know that today, if your vision would only be taken up with your God, then I believe that it would bring comfort to your heart and your mind. And so beholding God, it brings, first of all, to our hearts comfort. But not only that, beholding our God will produce in our lives humility, humility, As we behold this eternal, infinite, Immutable, transcendent, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, holy being that is God, and then consider ourselves as time-constrained, finite, mutable, minute, ignorant, blind, weak, sinful creatures. The only emotion that will fill our hearts is that of humility. Humility. Recall to your minds those biblical characters who were given the clearest views of God, and you will find that those people God also gave at that moment the fullest sight and knowledge of their own sinfulness and nothingness. It led them to think humbly about themselves. I'm thinking about people like Abraham. Abraham, as he stands there in the plains, And he starts to intercede on behalf of his nephew Lot. Over there in Genesis 18 verse 27, he accounted himself before God as nothing. How does he refer to himself on that occasion? As the father of the faithful? No. As the friend of God? No. How does he refer to himself? He refers to himself as dust and ashes. Dust and ashes before the God of heaven. That's how he saw himself. Think of Job who said concerning God over there in Job 42 verses 5 and 6, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee. What's his response? Wherefore I abhor myself and I repent in dust and ashes. Think of Isaiah. After seeing the Lord high and lifted up within the temple, what does he say? Woe is me, for I am undone, I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. In that same chapter, Isaiah 6, we see the holy unfallen angels, their cherubim, They stand before God, those burning ones, and what do they do? They veal their faces in humility and reverence before the thrice holy God. When Peter saw the great miraculous draft of fish wrought by Jesus Christ, he cries out with respect to his own sinfulness, sensible of his own weakness and sinfulness, depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. John, after seeing a vision of the glorified Christ in Revelation chapter 1, gave this testimony in verse 17, and when I saw him I fell as at his feet as dead. We get a view of God, and I'm speaking, brethren and sisters, I'm speaking about the God of the Bible. When we get a view of this God, that view will humble the proudest of individuals. Listen to these wise words from some saints of old. C. H. Spurgeon, he said, there is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the divinity. It is a subject, he said, so vast. that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity, so deep that our pride is drowned in its infinity. He said, no subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind than thoughts of God. The reformer John Calvin said, man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty. The Puritan John Flavell said, they that know God will be humble, and they that know themselves cannot be proud. One final quote, and I smiled at this one. It is a man by the name of William Jenkin. He was a 17th century nonconformist English clergyman. If you suffer from pride, and which one of us doesn't, this quote is well worth remembering. William Jenkin, he reminds us that our father was Adam. Our grandfather was dust. Our great-grandfather, nothing. What are we to be proud of if that's where we've come from? Our father was Adam. Our grandfather was dust. That's where God made Adam out of. and God made the dust out of nothing. What a humbling thought. Of times we display the attitude of Nebuchadnezzar, we boast in our own greatness, whereas we ought to display the most profound humility and self-abasement when we approach on to the divine being. Why is there such pride? Why is there such pride in the hearts of God's people? Why is there a drive for self-exaltation and self-promotion within the church? Why? And I ask myself the question, why are ministers more preeminent in God's work than the master? Why? It's because we have a view of God that is wholly unbiblical. And we have a view of ourselves that is wholly unscriptural. That is why. The beholding of our God, I believe, will eradicate pride in all of our hearts and will cause us to be consumed with a passion to make Christ preeminent within the church once again. Humility. Comfort. But there is a third thing that is produced whenever we behold our God, and it's this. Worship. Worship. Turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 95. Psalm 95, we'll read from the verse three and we'll take a pause at the end of the verse five. The Psalm is said by inspiration, for the Lord, speaking of Jehovah, for Jehovah is a great God and a great king above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth. His strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his and he made it and his hands formed the dry land. In those verses we see, we see the psalmist, he gets a view of his God, he gets a sight of the greatness of God as he views the Creator's handiwork in the created universe. Now note, note the response of the psalmist after beholding his God. His response is what? It's a call to worship. Verse 6, Let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our maker, having saw his God." What is the response? Worship. Worship. Beholding his God was the stimulus that promoted and encouraged worship to flow out of his heart to the very throne of God. As he saw God, creation and such should be our testimony as we behold God not only in creation we not only behold him in redemption but also as we behold him in history because God is the God of history God steps into history we behold God, as we see him working on behalf of his people down through the Bible ages and now into this generation and found through church history, that which should flow of out of our hearts is nothing less than worship. Worship. It's over a month ago since we remembered the incarnation of Jesus Christ. God became flesh and dwelt among men. Let me remind you of the response of those wise men when they saw the Christ in that home. Matthew 2 and the verse 11 we read this, and when they were coming to the house, speaking of those wise men, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down and worshipped him. They saw him, what was the immediate response? Worship. Worship. When the Savior was taken up into the temple in Jerusalem 40 days after his birth, Simeon and Anna beheld God in the face of Jesus Christ and their responses were the same. They both offered praise and worship to God as they beheld the Messiah. Notice what it says concerning Simeon, Luke 1 verse 28, with Christ in his arms, this is what he said, blessed or praise God, that's what he said. What did Anna say? That she gave thanks likewise unto the Lord and spake of him to all that looked for the redemption in Israel. She gave thanks unto God. Worship. Worship. In each of these examples, a sight of God, a beholding of the Almighty provoked the response of worship from the beholder. No, brethren and sisters, could it be that our worship is not what it ought to be? It's not what it ought to be because we have failed to see the Lord that we actually worship. Now when I'm speaking about seeing the Lord, I'm not talking about seeing him with our physical eyes. I'm speaking about seeing him by the eye of faith. Maybe you've come to this place of worship today and this is a place of worship. You have maybe come into this place of worship today and other things have taken up your vision, your view. Maybe there's a set of exams ahead. And you're worried about them and you're thinking about how you're going to get through them. Or maybe it's some personal trial that you're going through and as you sit in this house, that's all that's going through your mind. And you're actually even thinking today, why did I even bother coming to God's house? Or maybe there's some medical procedure on the horizon. And you're thinking about, how am I going to cope with being out of action? And how is the rehabilitation process going to take place within my life? Or maybe there's some difficulty in your family, in your marriage, in your workplace, maybe in your place of employment, in your relationships, in your finances. And coming to church brings no relief, no relief whatsoever with respect to thinking about such things. know these and many other things can cloud our view. These things can obscure our vision and they can hinder us from beholding our God and so we need to pray. We need to pray that God will clear the vision, that he will anoint our eyes with eye salve and And that our cry would be as we come to this series of messages and every time that we come to God's house, Sir, we would see Jesus. I would see Jesus. If God would be pleased to take of his truth and apply it to our hearts in this study, then I believe that our worship, whether that be in private, in our homes, or whether that be public, will be radically transformed. The indifference and the coldness that often marks our worship, I believe, will be replaced with a fresh interest and a warmth that has been lacking, and sinners will see it. And they'll know it. When they cross the threshold of this door, these are a people to behold their God. And in beholding Him, they worship Him because He is worthy of our worship. Remember the word worship, worth ship. He's worth it. He's worthy of our worship. But that is if you've got a view and a vision that is taken up with God and not the things of this world. Lift our eyes, Lord. Lift our eyes higher. May God be pleased to do so. We have other things to say about this matter. Other things outflow. from beholding God. We want to bring to you the benefit of this study before we actually get into it. What benefit will it be for me to be in God's house, Lord's day after Lord's day? What will the benefits be to my soul? We've only thought of a number of them. There are many more. I want to try, in the will of God, to close that out next Lord's Day and bring to you some other thoughts, but thank God there's comfort for us. Comfort as we behold Him, as we see Him working in the lives of the saints of old. This God can work in my life. He can work in my situation. He can turn my rivers into dry places where my feet can trot upon. He can provide for me as He did for manna from heaven. He can do that for me. There's comfort. Thank God there's worship that will be produced. Many other things. May God be pleased to help us then see our God. Behold him of all of his power and majesty. May God be pleased to bless his study to every heart. Let's seek the Lord in prayer. Let's pray. our Heavenly Father. We thank Thee for these benefits that come to us as we behold God in the face of Jesus Christ, as we behold Him in all of His persons. We thank Thee for the comfort that it brings to our hearts. But then Lord, we realize that it humbles us were humbled in my presence. Lord, we pray, therefore, as we behold him, O God, that worship will arise from our hearts. This is our God. This is the one that I love. This is the one that I'm savingly united to. And, O God, that our worship would be enlivened by that. We realize that many will try to cause their worship to be excited and to be filled with a sense of good feeling, O God, by the singing again and again of words within some hymn or some chorus. But we realize that worship, O God, true biblical worship, will be stimulated by a view of God. Oh, let us see Him, and let us desire to see Him. Let every other thing that has taken up our view and vision of Him, let such things be driven out from our hearts and from our minds. May we be taken up with God not only in the Lord's day, but every day of the week. Lord, grant it, we pray. May this, O God, blessing, may the Word be a blessing to every waiting soul. May the blessing of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit rest and remain upon thy believing people until the day that Christ comes or calls. We pray these things in Jesus' most precious and worthy name. Amen.