The reading now is on the back of the hem sheets. There's two readings. One is from Luke, chapter 1, verses 26 through to 45, and then just one verse from Hebrews 9.

So firstly, in Luke chapter 1. And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail thou that art highly favoured, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this could be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age. And this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

And Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste into a city of Judah, and entered into the house of Zacharias and saluted Elizabeth. It came to pass that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leapt in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost. And she spoke out with a loud voice and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For though as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the babe leapt in my womb for joy, and blessed is she that believed. for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.

And then from Hebrews 9 verse 28, So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

Now the word that I want to speak to you on is on the front of the sheet there, looking for him. We had there at the end of the reading that unto them that look for him. So it's really based on verse in Hebrews. And I want to divide what I say this afternoon into three headings. Firstly, I'll tell you what they are, then we'll look at them more closely.

Firstly, they looked for His first coming. So I want to think of the they, those in the Old Testament that looked for Christ's first coming.

And then secondly, we looked for Him to save us, that is coming to ourselves, to our own hearts.

And then thirdly, we look, not look this time, but look for Him to come and take us home, or His second coming. What it says in our text there in Hebrews 9, 28, we pray that, look for Him, shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation. that we, in these Gospel days, we have the record of all of those, through the 4,000 years of the history of the world, from the first promise of Christ, the seed of the woman, they looked for Him, they expected Him to come. In fact, when Eve bore Cain, she said, I have borne a man-child from the Lord, and I think she had that expectation that that child maybe would have been what was promised, but of course he ended up a murderer, he slew Abel, and right down through the history there was a looking for the one that was to come.

Peter in his epistle, he says in chapter 1 verse 10 and 11 of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow." So those prophets, they were looking forward to Christ's coming and for his death, his sufferings, his rising again.

When Solomon dedicated the temple, which was a type of Christ, remember when Christ was on earth, he said, destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days. They thought he meant the literal temple, he was speaking of the temple of his body. But when Solomon dedicated that temple, he says, but will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how much less this house that I have builded. And of course, we know that God did dwell on the earth, Immanuel, God with us.

We think of that long list in Hebrews 11, where we have those that lived and died in faith. And there is a list of those things that some of them did, like Noah building an ark, but there is one section from verse 13 to 16 that it speaks of the faith of all of God's people. And it says this, these all died in faith, not having received the promises. Now what is meant is that they didn't receive the fulfillment, they didn't see Christ come, they didn't see what their faith was actually looking towards, like we do, or like those that were on the earth when Christ came. But having seen them afar off, were persuaded of them and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth, For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city. And it's a full verse summary of the faith of those Old Testament saints that were looking for Christ.

Then we have Moses. Now Moses said this to the children of Israel in Deuteronomy 18, verses 15 to 19, and it's also quoted in Acts 3 and Acts 7. Stephen, when he gave his dying testimony before he stoned to death, he quoted it in Acts 7. And that is what Moses says here, the Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me, and to him ye shall hearken. And so, and there's many more verses that follow that in Deuteronomy 18, but those Old Testament saints, they were persuaded through the promises, through the words of the prophets, through the types and the shadows, the Ark of the Covenant, through the sacrifices made, that God would bring this about. In fact, they died in faith that their sins would be put away on Calvary's tree, that the Lord would indeed come. We have, now in this Gospel day, we look back to the Old Testament, to all of those that lived, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all of those, and we say, they looked for His first coming.

So then secondly, I want to think of, we looked for Him to save us, and I hope this is true of all of us here, and if it is not, then to change this, instead of, we looked, to put it in this way, we are looking. Because the word of God is very clear. Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord.

And it is a vital thing, the world itself will say, and as we come into this world, depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. We don't seek unto God, we don't read his word, we don't pray, we don't meet with God's people, we don't worship with them, we do not have the Lord in our hearts, we've never looked for him.

But I hope there are those of you here, there's been a time, even if it's going back when you were a child, where you first looked for the Lord. You look for Him when you read the Word of God. Where is Christ in this chapter? Where is He that is the Saviour, the Redeemer? You look for Him to speak to your heart. The Lord says in John 10 that my sheep, they hear my voice and they follow me. It's one mark of God's sheep to hear the voice of the Lord.

We think of the Lord telling the parables and after each parable he said, He that hath an ear, let him hear. And each of the seven letters to the churches in Asia all finished with, He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. It is vital that everyone that is saved that they seek the Lord that they look for Him, that they find Him, that they are blessed with faith in Him, and that they hold Him fast, to be able to say, I have been a seeker.

The Lord says, ask, and it shall be given thee. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. We think of those when Christ was upon earth, that sought Him, the woman with the daughter with the issue, her devil had her daughter and she comes to him and Lord help me and the Lord helped her. We think of the Greeks that came, soon as we would see Jesus we would think of the eunuch who was reading in Isaiah 53, he wanted to know who was the prophet speaking of and Philip he began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus.

And as on the way to Emmaus the Lord came and spoke in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And so may we be able to see a time in our lives when we looked for Jesus. We are not like we once were, we are not like the world that is thinking of Christmas and they're going about maybe using today for all of their shopping and not thinking at all about the Lord or the things of God. And they observe Christmas but they don't know the Lord. They don't know Him in their hearts. They don't read Him every day. They don't know the Word of God. It doesn't dwell in them richly. They're not looking for another city. They're not looking for heaven. They have their heaven here.

So may it be In this word, we looked for Him to save us, and He did come, and He saved us, and He blessed us. The last one is, we look for Him to come and take us home. Especially, I hope this is so with you as you get near to the end of your lives and the even time of your lives. Because with the Thessalonians, where they received the Word of God not in word only, But in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, there were three things that they did. They became followers of the Lord and of the Apostles, and they waited for His Son from Heaven. Those three things. And it's a good thing for us to be as well, to remember if the Word is true with us, if we're really saved, we'll follow the Lord, we'll look for Him, and we'll follow The apostles who follow God's people and of course with the Lord will follow him in his word, but we'll be looking for his second coming.

With many of us, his second coming equivalent will be when we die. The Lord said, I will come again and receive you unto myself and absent from the Lord, absent from the body, sorry, present with the Lord. And it's lovely when that is on the uppermost of your minds.

I still always remember, referred to it several times, preaching here, and I had Ron Bishop sitting there, and I didn't know him before, I didn't know who he was, but he paid attention as I preached, and afterwards I said to him, who are you, and are you in for convalescence, or are you in permanently in here? Now he said permanently, And then suddenly his face changed, and it lit up. And he pointed up, he said, but this is not my home. He said, that's my home. I'm heading for heaven, that's my eternal home.

And just the change in his face, you could see he really longed for it and loved the thought that he had a heavenly home. And you know, he was only in this home about three months, if that, and the Lord took him home. But it was a wonderful testimony, and I hope so that we are looking as well, that we have an ending view.

The Apostle says, let us run the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus. So we look for Him as well. And may that be true of us.