[AI translation] Dear Invisible Church!This passage that I have just read from the Bible culminates in this invitation: "Seek the Lord" (Is 55:6a) But this invitation is preceded by an invitation in the first verse: "All you who thirst, come" (Is 55:1a). And who is allowed to seek Him in the hope of finding Him? On the one hand, the Word says, without any qualification, to all; on the other hand, it immediately delimits it with the expression, "you who thirst! Everyone who is thirsty may seek the Lord without exception, but only those who are truly thirsty should seek the Lord! He who has no thirst in his soul, let him not seek Him, for he will not find Him! Thirst is a grievous thing. It is a strong sense of wanting that drives one to seek. So is spiritual thirst. It is a sense of lack that makes the search a matter of life and death.
In fact, we are all seeking God, even if we are often unaware of it. The longing for God is an ancient and deep longing in their souls. We have within us the unconscious memory of Paradise Lost, and therefore our deep spiritual instinct is to seek God. When the soul begins to feel that it is missing something in order to be truly peaceful and happy, it is in fact missing the Lord God. And when our souls are hungry for earthly goods, thirsty for glory, prestige, recognition, chasing after pleasures, or for whatever reason our hearts are restless and troubled, then in fact God is always missing from our lives. Blessed is the man whose soul is already conscious of this thirst - as Jesus says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." (Mt 5,6) To these is the invitation, "Seek the Lord." (Is 55,6a)
How is it with you, brother, who are listening to this call? Is there a thirst in you, and are you waiting for it to be quenched through the radio? Why are you listening to this sermon? For the sermon, or for the Lord? He who is truly thirsty, it makes no difference in what vessel he gets his water, whether in a golden bowl or in a wooden cup. It is not enough, then, to have a good-natured interest, a holy curiosity, a desire for spiritual enjoyment. Let those come, says the Word, who thirst. Let those seek the Lord, for whom it is a necessity of life to find Him, for without Him our souls will fail. This is the only serious search for God.
Besides thirst, you must then also clarify within yourself, are you really seeking the Lord? Satan tends to deceive us by making us seek divine moods, lofty religious feelings, or some gift or help from God instead of God. As you know, when he can no longer suppress the desire for God in someone, he gives such a barely perceptible turn in the direction of the search. Beware of this deception of Satan! Seek not lofty thoughts, Christian ideas or religious sentiments, but the Lord Himself, His holy person! Do not even seek His help, but Himself! We miss things if we seek Him because we want to ask Him for something in our great need, if we seek Him to give us something - because He does not want to give us something in the first place, but Himself. As long as you only want something from the Lord and not Him, you will not really receive Him, you will not find Him. He who seeks God only to help him in his troubles and difficulties is not really seeking the Lord, but himself. He does not seek Him well, nor can he find Him who does not seek Him himself.
"Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near" (Is 55:6). Let every soul that seeks God be encouraged, encouraged by the fact that God is found, for God is near. None of us need to travel a great distance to find the Lord, because He is equally close to each of us at every moment and in every situation. Surely you too have felt how close the Lord has been to you many times. Remember those precious moments in your life when you found that an invisible hand from above reached into the flow of your life and guided it gently, with great wisdom and love. He averted some peril, delivered you out of trouble, helped you out of some distress in a way that was so beyond reason that it was impossible not to notice how close the Lord was. Your life is full of such precious moments when His providential love surrounded you and saved you, isn't it? So, you have had precious experiences of being close to the Lord, but let me ask you: have you, who have been, or may be, so close to the Lord, have you found Him? For it makes a world of difference whether one is close to the Lord or has found Him! In fact, one can be very close to Him and still not have found Him.
I was so horrified to hear what a dying woman once told me as I stood at her bedside: I come from an Aaronic family, and I know how difficult it is to come to a living faith when you have been brought up in the shadow of the church. Even in close proximity to Jesus Christ, one can be lost forever! There was the rich young man of the Bible. We read of him that he was close to the kingdom of God, so close that Jesus himself said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God" (Mk 12:34b) - and yet he was left out of it. There is the older brother of the prodigal son. He was always at home, under the same roof with his father, and yet very far from him. Many of Noah's contemporaries were also close to the ark, and yet when the flood came, there, in the immediate vicinity of the ark, perhaps clinging to the very walls of the ark, they perished in the terrible judgment. So the Word urges us, "Seek him while he may be found, call upon him while he is near" (Is 55:6).
So the question is very important: how long is he to be found, how long is he near? The Word of God tells us that over there, in the world beyond death, there is a "great interposition", a great distance between the Lord and the souls who have not found Him in time, and that this distance is there forever unbridgeable. I might say, then, that the Lord is near, is near to you, as long as you are found, as long as the time of earthly existence lasts. And even here there are special occasions when He is more to be found than at other times. There are also missed opportunities. The rich young man was close to the kingdom of God not because he kept all the commandments that Jesus asked him to keep, but because Jesus was standing right there in front of him, salvation was offered to him, he had a great choice to make, all he had to do was say a firm yes. So this was the moment when the Lord was closest to him, he had only one step left to take to find the Lord, and he was afraid to take this last, decisive step, he could not bring himself to take it. And so the close encounter did not turn into a happy, salvific encounter. It is recorded of the young man that he went away thirsty.
Has it not happened to you that you have opened your Bible or the door of the church with an exalted desire, and have sought the Lord with a spirit of true longing for salvation, and yet nothing happens? You read the Bible in vain, you pray in vain, you listen to the preaching of the Word in vain - you do not find what you were looking for. Again you leave disappointed and discouraged. You may even feel how close you are, and yet you cannot meet. Why? Because you don't want to take that last step. So what is the last step to finding the Lord? Thus says our foundational hymn, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abound in forgiveness."
It is so wonderful that when one wants to meet with God, one must not soar upwards towards some sublime, glorious, divine world, but downwards towards a very dark abyss. It sounds strange, but it is true: never seek God above, but below, deep down! In the lowest place, the lowest point in the world: the cross. There is no depth of human sin that is not deeper than the cross. God is closest to you on the cross, on the cross of Calvary, and only there, on the cross, can he be found for you. And thou must descend thither: thou must go down so low in humiliation that thou mayest see thy own judgment in the cross of Christ.
Can you look with such horror on Jesus crucified that this is your punishment, that you deserve it, that the Lord has passed it on to Himself? Grace is only given to those who are condemned to death. Well then, can you condemn yourself, can you pronounce the death sentence on yourself, because if you can, God will not condemn you. If you can condemn yourself, then God will condemn you no more. When you can marvel that it is not you on the cross, but Jesus Christ instead of you, when you can marvel that you have been given grace, you who deserve the death penalty even according to your own judgment, then you have met God.
Have you found the Lord in this way? You can long for Him without Christ, you can experience His mighty help without Christ's intercession, you can feel the blessed nearness of His caring hand without Christ - but you can also be damned without realizing it in all this nearness to God. For you can only find Him who is near to you if you seek Him through the redeeming Jesus Christ, because He has come to you through the redeeming Jesus Christ, and He is seeking you through Christ!
Amen
Date: 8 January 1950.