Isaiah 45:22–24: “‘Turn to Me so you can be delivered, all you who live in the earth’s remote regions. For I am God, and I have no peer. I solemnly make this oath: what I say is true and reliable. Surely every knee will bow to Me, every tongue will solemnly affirm. They will say about Me, “Yes, the Lord is a powerful deliverer.” All who are angry at Him will cower before Him.’”

You can notice something here that you see in Philippians 2, which Paul applies directly to Jesus: “Every knee will bow… every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10–11). Here in Isaiah, He is talking about the destiny of the Lord to command the attention of everyone as Master, as Lord.

Look at the extent of His dominion: “Turn to Me so you can be delivered, all you who live in the earth’s remote regions.” All you—it does not matter what is happening to you now, how you are thinking about it now—all should turn to Jesus. Everyone to the ends of the earth. There is not one religion for this person and another for that person, one way for this people group and another for that other people group. There are not “many ways” leading to God. “Turn to Me.”

The fact that you have to turn means that wherever you have set your eyes is the wrong place. So you turn. That is a call to repentance. That is “repent”: turn.

In the book of John, Jesus said, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life” (John 3:14–15; compare Numbers 21:8–9). It is the evangelistic call. It is a call. It is not an explanation. It is not an argument. It is a call. A call that has gone out.

Look at this call here: “Turn to Me.” Not “try to explain Me,” not “argue about Me,” not “figure it all out first.” Turn to Me. There is no problem with asking questions, trying to understand, trying to get details right, trying to find out which is the way. But when all is said and done, you turn to Him. You turn to Him. You move away from everything else, and He takes it over from there. He takes it over from there, because you cannot deliver yourself. He says, “Turn to Me so you can be delivered.”

When He spoke to the people in John’s Gospel, He said, “If the Son sets you free, you will be really free” (John 8:36). They wondered, “Why are You telling us that we are in bondage?” That is what this verse is talking about: “so you can be delivered.” They thought He was talking about servitude, physical bondage, a social status of being slaves. He told them, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). And no one can deny that. The whole Levitical system of sacrifices reinforces the fact that you are a sinner; that is the point of the system.

He is not saying, “Look to the sacrifices you have been making, that your forefathers have been making.” He says, “I am the One who will set you free. The one the Son sets free is free indeed.” And what was Jesus named? He was called “Jesus” because “He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).

There are many things you think you need to be saved from, but we may not have had it impressed on us enough that what we really need saving from is sin—not just salvation from the consequence of sin, but from bondage to sin. That is why, even once you become a Christian and you have been saved from damnation, you still need to come to Him. You still need that turning to Him. You still need to be retrained to turn to Him.

We still have, in us, that stronghold of self‑sufficiency—that tendency to think we are self‑sufficient and that we know how to do things. We need that idol of self‑sufficiency squashed, so that we turn to Him as the Savior and become recipients of His grace again, and again, and again.

The writer of Hebrews says, “Let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). In that context he is talking about the power of temptation and the weakness of our flesh, and how Christ as High Priest helps us (Hebrews 4:14–15).

So: turn to Him and you will be delivered—and keep turning to Him.

God bless you. See you later.