Lo, This Is Our God: Running to the God Who Ran to You

Isaiah looks down the long road of history and sees a day nobody on this earth has seen yet. Death is swallowed up. Every tear is wiped off every face. The shame of God’s people is taken away for good.

And then he tells you what people will say when that day comes.

“He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” (Isaiah 25:8-9)

Look at that one little word. Lo.

It is an exclamation. It belongs to somebody who cannot hold it in. Picture a man who has waited years for someone, and when that someone finally comes over the hill, he does not stroll down to meet him. He takes off running. As he goes, he shouts back over his shoulder to everybody behind him: Look! That’s Him! This is our God!

I stumbled across this passage several weeks ago while I was studying for a different message, and I could not get past that word. There is honor in it, and joy, and anticipation. It is the voice of a man who is proud to tell you who his God is.

It also leaves me with a question I would rather not answer.

When was the last time you were that excited about God?

When did you last run to meet Him?

If you are born again, you look forward to Isaiah’s day. Death swallowed up in victory, no more tears. What a day that is going to be.

But think about this morning. Think about yesterday. When did you last wake up so eager to be with the Lord that you could hardly wait to get alone with Him? Maybe your body cannot run anymore. That is not what I am asking. I am asking whether your heart still does, whether you wake up with a longing that says, I want to be with my God, and I want to give Him the first fruits of my day.

One word of caution here. I am telling you to run to your quiet time. I am not telling you to run through it. There are busy mornings when I rush to get alone with the Lord and then rush right back out again. Run to Him, and then stay there.

“I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.” (Psalms 119:32)

That is the man I want to be. He is excited to obey God and glad to serve Him. He does not drag his feet.

Too often we do drag our feet. We settle into the Christian life and coast. We are not against God. We are just not in any hurry for Him. But if your love for the Lord is what it ought to be, you will want to obey Him. You will not need to be dragged.

Here is the other side of it: run to God, but never run ahead of Him. There is a patience in this kind of running, and we will come to it. Eagerness is not permission to go where God has not sent you.

1. Run to God the way a child runs to the door

My children have reached the age where they come out to meet me when I get home from work. Anna steps outside, and the kids come running across the yard. I cannot tell you what that does to a father.

Yesterday I was upstairs in our room studying for this message, with the door closed. Anna had the kids downstairs. Somehow they escaped her. I heard their feet pounding up the stairs, the door slid open, and in they came, running to find me.

I love that moment. But I will be honest with you. For us humans, it is not always convenient. Sometimes I have work that has to get done. Sometimes I have to close the door and be by myself for a while. I should never be too busy for my children, but there are days when other things press in.

God is never like that.

He is never inconvenienced when you come running to Him. He is never bothered. He has never once had to say, I don’t have time for you right now. I have come running to Him in need, and I have come running to Him in trouble, and He has never turned me away.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalms 46:1)

I am limited. I can only be in one room at a time. God is not limited. He can help you, and the person beside you, and everybody else in the world, all at the same time and all equally. To God, you are the priority. That is what is amazing about our Father.

So be excited to meet Him, and be excited to tell others who He is. Lo, this is our God.

“O come, let us”: excitement is meant to spread

“O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.” (Psalms 95:1-2)

And then a few verses later:

“O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker. For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,” (Psalms 95:6-7)

Notice how the psalmist talks. O come. Let us. O come, let us worship. He is not satisfied to be excited about God by himself. He wants everybody else excited too.

That is your role and mine. Getting stirred up on your own is good, but your desire ought to be to stir up the person next to you. Encourage each other. Then go out into the world, bring people in, and show them how great our God is.

Is that desire in your heart today?

Be ready to run when He speaks

“I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.” (Habakkuk 2:1-2)

Before Habakkuk ever ran, he stood. He set himself on the watchtower and waited to hear what God would say, including what God would say to correct him.

Sometimes you have to hear the reproof before you can run. You may have to hear something hard. If you go charging off for God, arrogantly, in your own direction, when God has said, No, this is the way, He is not going to bless it. But if you will wait patiently and be willing to take the rebuke you need, then when God does speak, you can move.

That he may run that readeth it. That puts me in mind of the New Testament:

“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” (James 1:22)

When God speaks to you, are you ready to go? Do you want to obey Him right away?

The answer has to be more than a quick response. It also cannot be a forced one. When you serve God unwillingly, only because you feel you have to, there is no blessing in it. God is looking for the one who runs because he wants to, because he is genuinely excited to do what God said.

She left her waterpot behind

You know the story of the woman at the well. Jesus meets her, she gets saved, and then this happens:

“The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her? The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” (John 4:25-29)

I have a suspicion she did not stroll back to town. She left her waterpot sitting at the well, the very thing she had come for. I think she went in a hurry, because she could not wait to tell them who this Jesus was and what He had done for her.

How is your excitement to go and tell?

I will be the first to admit I am guilty here. I have dragged my feet in witnessing. I have delayed, and I have made excuses, and I am ashamed of that.

If you and I truly understand who He is and what He has done for us, and if our hearts are right with Him, we will be excited to share Him with the world, not only to worship Him.

Run with patience, and keep your eyes on Jesus

So we are to run. Hebrews tells us how to run.

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)

First, run because He is worth it. He is worth running to, running for, and being excited about.

Second, run with patience, because the race is long. Life will not always be easy. It will not always be convenient to be excited about God. Your flesh will get you down. You will go through trials and hard times. Some stretches of this race are easy and some are brutal. If you stay faithful and keep running, it will be worth it.

Third, the race gets run one way: looking unto Jesus. You do not run because you are a good runner. You run because your eye is on the goal, on the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. There will be days when you do not have the strength. He gives it. He is the one who gives the motivation and the encouragement to keep going when the race is beyond you.

Look to Jesus, because that is where your strength comes from.

2. The Father ran to you first

Here is where God really dealt with me as I studied. Amazed does not begin to describe it.

He is high and holy. We are low and sinful. None of us is worthy of Christ dying for us. And yet:

“We love him, because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

You ought to run to Him, because He ran to you first. Look at the prodigal son:

“And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” (Luke 15:17-20)

When I read that, I am overwhelmed by what my Father would do for me.

You were a great way off

A great way off. That was every one of us before we were saved. We were so far from God that there was no road back. No distance we could run on our own would get us home. He had to come for us. Christ had to come and die on the cross to pay for our sin. That was the only way we could be redeemed.

“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

His father saw him. Isn’t it amazing that when you come to the place where you are willing to turn from yourself and turn to God, He sees you? It does not matter how far you have wandered or how backslidden you have gotten. It does not matter how deep into the flesh you have fallen. There is no distance so great that God will not see you coming back. As the old saying goes, there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.

He is holy, and He is in heaven, and yet He looks down at a worm such as I. When I turn to Him, He comes for me.

He had compassion on an empty-handed son

Look closely at had compassion. The father was not moved because his son was bringing the money back. The boy had nothing. He had spent it all.

God does not have compassion on you because you are bringing Him something. He does not forgive you because you can live a perfect life or because you have some special offering in your hands. God has compassion on you when you come back empty. You come back spent, with nothing to show for yourself but Lord, I was wrong. I was lost. I was undone. I never should have left.

There is nothing you can give God to earn His forgiveness or His favor. You can only come empty, with a broken heart, saying what the prodigal said: I am no more worthy to be called thy son.

Not one person in this world is worthy to be called a son of God. Not one. And yet God is willing to make a child of God out of anyone who will come to Him.

I can only imagine that prodigal son after he was reconciled with his father, telling his friends and neighbors about it. He was surely ashamed of what he had done, and he may have felt it the rest of his life. But he could always magnify his father. My father took me back. I wasted everything he gave me. I despised him and all he had given me. And he took me back.

How great is our God. Lo, this is our God.

And notice the verb one more time: ran. The father did not walk. Every time I read that, it breaks me. God does not take His time when a wandering child turns home. He comes running. He is glad. He will run to the lost sinner who repents.

Will you run to Him?

He still runs to your cry

What is even more amazing is that He does not stop running after you are saved. Salvation is not the last time. God will run to you for whatever you need when you call on Him.

“Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.” (Hebrews 2:17-18)

Succour. That word carries the idea of running to a cry. Whatever trial you are in today, whatever temptation is pulling at you, He is able to run to your cry and meet you in it, because He has been through it Himself.

He is not a God who sits in heaven untouched by what you feel.

“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16)

Lo, this is our God. Is He yours?

I keep thinking about that door upstairs sliding open, and the sound of my children running in to find me.

Your Father has never closed His door on you. He saw you a great way off, and He ran. He is still running toward your cry today.

One day you will stand in Isaiah’s morning, with death swallowed up and the tears wiped away, and you will say it out loud: Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him.

Why wait until then to be glad?

Is He your God?

When did you last run to Him?

Will you run to Him now?

Adapted from a message preached from Isaiah 25:8-9.