Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

MERCY- forgiveness or withholding punishment

1. Turning our eyes upon Jesus leads to an ascension

Psalm 123:1 “To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!”

2. Ascension leads to dependence

Psalm 123:2 “Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he has mercy upon us.”

3. Dependence leads to requests

Psalm 123:3 “Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt.”

4. Requests lead to an observation of a life of turning our eyes away from Jesus.

Psalm 123:4 “Our soul has had more than enough of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.”

Nehemiah 1:3 “And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.”

Nehemiah 2:19 “But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us and said, “What is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?””

Song: Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

The words and music were by Helen Howarth Lemmel. In 1918, she saw these words in a pamphlet entitled, focused by a missionary, Lillias Trotter: "So then, turn your eyes upon HIM. Look full into His face and you will find that the things of earth will acquire a strange, new dimness." Mrs. Lemmel continued: "Suddenly, as if commanded to stop and listen, I stood still, and, singing in my soul and spirit was the chorus, with not one conscious moment of putting word to word to make rhyme, or note to note to make melody... The verses were written... the same week, after the usual manner of composition, but none the less dictated by the Holy Spirit." This hymn was first published in a pamphlet by C.C. Birchard in London, England. In 1922, the National Sunday School Union of London included it in Glad Songs, a collection of 67 numbers by Mrs. Lemmel. It became popular through its use that same year at the Keswick Convention in northern England. It first appeared in the United States in Gospel Truth in Song, No.2 published by Harry D. Clarke in 1924 in Chicago.