Scripture: Isaiah 40:1-11
Listen here: https://www.lcepc.org/blogger
Comfort is many people’s major goal in life. It’s instinctive. We like comfortable beds, and chairs, comfort food, creature comforts, and a comfortable income to afford it all. People are like cats. Cats are connoisseurs of comfort. Our cat Noel apparently knew exactly what she was doing when she weaseled her way out of the cold December air and into our warm hearts, or more likely, our warm home. I don’t know if she cares about our hearts. I do know that she likes a soft bed. We have this small fleece blanket laid out at the foot of our bed, on the bed. That is where she sleeps now.
Part of her comfort is to sleep on her fleece, and part is to sleep near her people, I think to make sure we are not going anywhere. But I have learned her fleece is more important. One night we laid awake hoping our cat was ok, because she wasn’t sleeping on the foot of the bed. She wasn’t in her usual spot. Something might be wrong. Or she got stuck in the pantry again. We even took turns going to look for her. When we found her, she seemed ok.
The next morning, I figured it out. Her bed wasn’t made! Too much of the fleece was hanging off the edge and there was not enough on the bed for her to stretch out on! Our connoisseur of comfort just went and got comfortable somewhere else, leaving us with the uncomfortable feeling of having failed to take good care of a cat.
The people of Israel got comfortable with prosperity, and military allies they shouldn’t have trusted, and worst of all idolatry. God didn’t punish them right away like he used to do when his people were living 40 years in the desert before they entered the land of promise. There were no poison snakes sneaking around biting people, no sudden plagues killing them by the thousands, and the earth certainly never opened its mouth to swallow them again like it happened to Achan after Jericho. Remember all that?
So, since God seemed to be a lot more easy going these days, the people figured God didn’t really mind much. They figured they were the chosen people and God had a responsibility to keep it that way, for the sake of his own reputation as “most powerful God.” So, they could turn away from him and begin to ignore his commandments. They could doubt he even cared. And they could get busy making their lives as comfortable as they knew how, without depending on him. They got so used to that kind of comfort that they didn’t even believe the warnings of all the prophets God sent to tell them that he did care very much and that he would run out of patience one day.
Then Israel was attacked. Assyria ransacked the land, destroyed property and exported its people all over the world. The prophets were warning that Judah would be next. Isaiah 40 looks ahead to the later time, not too far ahead, but to the time that people in exile will really be wondering about God. He had really let them down. If God is so powerful and loving why did he let this happen to them? Were Babylon’s gods really stronger after all? Wasn’t God embarrassed by the defeat his people suffered? Or had God just given up on them and maybe he would start over with some new people?
In this text God answers all those questions with a resounding, “No.” And reminds his people that if anyone let anyone down, they had let Him down by ignoring his loving instructions that would have blessed them even better than what they got out of ignoring him. They were beginning to understand God’s pointed message, that they had brought all this suffering on themselves and they deserved it. They began to think that God would never want them back now.
But God’s love comforts them. Isaiah says, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” It’s a lot like what might happen in your home after you send a disobedient little child to have a time out. They sob, and they brood, and they think you don’t love them anymore. So, at the right time, you try to comfort them. But you don’t pretend that they had never done anything wrong. They still need to own up to that. They need to believe the part about, it was their sins that got them into this mess.
When God’s people were in the most uncomfortable of circumstances, exile, war famine, death and disease, all well-deserved as the result of their own sinful rebellion against the God who loves them, that God told them directly how to get comforted. Hosea 14:1-3 says, “Return, Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall! Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him: “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips. Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount warhorses. We will never again say ‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made, for in you the fatherless find compassion.”
And now, or soon, God will straighten everything out. There is “a voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
How will the glory of the Lord be revealed? First, in the short term, the repentant children of Israel will return from exile, back through the valleys and between the mountains. And God will make it smooth and easy for them. They won’t have to fight for it. They will be sent home. And that’s what happened at the end of the seventy years. King Cyrus was somehow moved to honor the God of the Israelites and actually wanted them to rebuild their temple so that they could worship the Lord God of Israel properly. But not everybody saw it that way, though it must have made the news back then.
Second, the greatest comfort of all happened when Jesus came, born as a baby, in a manger, and the angels called, “Glory to God in the highest!” He would walk right through the valley of the shadow of death and remove all the danger once found there. That’s one rough place that is made plain by his coming into our lives. We still die, but we know we survive it and we know the other side is far better.
Yes, the glory of the Lord was revealed there, by the angels worshipping out in the fields with the shepherds, and by the shepherds talking about all that they had seen. A little later, the glory of God was revealed again by the star of Bethlehem, by the wise men who came from far away to welcome the new born king, and even by the scribes who knew the prophets’ writings well enough to send those wise men on to Bethlehem.
But that was still not the fullest revelation of God’s glory. Amazingly, the scribes, who knew what they were talking about, didn’t go see it for themselves! Herod certainly didn’t respect it and thought he could snuff it out. So, the prophecy’s fullest fulfillment is still yet to come.
Now we are the ones who are comforted by God’s love with his promises of ultimate victory over sin and death and hell. But are we really comforted by God’s love? Is that really what really comforts us? We have to be careful that we do not really, and mostly, derive our comfort from the creature comforts of our own reasonably good behavior, or our soft theology that God is love and because he forgives sins I don’t have to change, or our regular church attendance, or even “the way we have always done things.” Traditions, even Christian ones, can be a powerful source of false comfort that is derived from the things we do, rather than from the God we serve. That kind of comfort cannot save our souls and it can cause us to lose sight of the God who calls us to the “dangerous” mission of preaching the gospel and reaching out to save more souls.
One way of describing the preacher’s ministry that I have heard, and take to heart, is that I am called to afflict the comforted, and comfort the afflicted. In that order. How does that work? Matthew 5:4 says, “God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” James 4:9-10 says, “Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”
We will be comforted by the love of God after we are feeling the affliction of our sin. After we understand how grievous our sin is in the sight of God, then the gospel of salvation through faith in Jesus’ shed blood is the most comforting thing in the world! That message, all by itself comforts the afflicted with the message of God‘s forgiving love. It also offends and afflicts those who are comfortable in their lives and would prefer to not be reminded of their sins and their need of grace. That’s one of the big reasons that the Pharisees crucified Jesus. They didn’t like the way he talked about them! After all, they were the most religious people they knew!
Well, this comforting passage of Isaiah 40 has some words in it that may not seem so comforting. All people are like grass? Really? How does that make you feel? Love comforts, and God’s love comforts like no other love can. But true comfort begins with reality. God affirms that people are like grass, withering and fragile. They are weak and powerless against the enemy that would tear them away from the land. Babylon is going to “mow ‘em down” as easily as a John Deere tractor does your back yard. Many will die for the sins of Israel. Some might deserve it. But many, such as children, will be considered innocent victims of Babylon’s tyranny. This is comfort? The comfort comes from trusting that God is still in charge and even Babylon is just serving God’s ultimate purposes.
But we have to agree. Human nature is really as bad as God says it is. This is why Jesus came into the world. Jesus died a cruel death to save the world. In the words of a poet named Thomas Kelly, this is how bad it is. The picture and location in the mind of the poet is at the foot of the cross, looking upon Jesus, the perfect lamb, horribly disfigured and cruelly killed
"You who think of sin but lightly nor suppose the evil great, here may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimate. Mark the sacrifice appointed. See who bears the awful load; 'Tis the Word, the Lord's Anointed, Son of Man, and Son of God." (Thomas Kelly)
Jesus, the perfect man, the son of God, the most precious, most perfect human life that ever lived, God’s own son, divine human, so unworthy of such treatment willingly undertook this cruel death to save your soul. You could say that he became ultimately uncomfortable on earth, so that all of us could be made ultimately comfortable in heaven.
Two points of good news, one, he came as weak and vulnerable, to set the stage and make the way for your redemption. Two, He’s coming again! As strong and victorious, to put a final end to all evil, and usher us into Heaven’s glories! That’s the true comfort that comforts you.
This is good news! You who bring good news to Zion, the Lord says, “Go tell it in the mountain! go up on a high mountain.” We have a sing about that. Go tell it in the mountain! “You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, “Here is your God!” Say to everyone in Lake City wo will listen, “We Have the best news about who God really is!”
“See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power,” not power to tyrannize and destroy but power to save and bring life! “He rules with a mighty arm.” Not to rule over us with anger and cruelty but to rule over satan and put an end to his evil ways. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. We are his reward! He loves us and he did all this on the cross to win us back into hos loving arms! We are his recompense. We are what he wants most out of life!
He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young. He is Jesus, the Good Shepherd, come to comfort all the lost who turn to him for forgiveness. This is love! Come to Him again today! He will not turn away anyone who comes to him with their needs and heartaches, with their sins and their faults and flaws. He is love. And he adores you! O Come. Let us adore him! Amen.
Listen here: https://www.lcepc.org/blogger
Comfort is many people’s major goal in life. It’s instinctive. We like comfortable beds, and chairs, comfort food, creature comforts, and a comfortable income to afford it all. People are like cats. Cats are connoisseurs of comfort. Our cat Noel apparently knew exactly what she was doing when she weaseled her way out of the cold December air and into our warm hearts, or more likely, our warm home. I don’t know if she cares about our hearts. I do know that she likes a soft bed. We have this small fleece blanket laid out at the foot of our bed, on the bed. That is where she sleeps now.
Part of her comfort is to sleep on her fleece, and part is to sleep near her people, I think to make sure we are not going anywhere. But I have learned her fleece is more important. One night we laid awake hoping our cat was ok, because she wasn’t sleeping on the foot of the bed. She wasn’t in her usual spot. Something might be wrong. Or she got stuck in the pantry again. We even took turns going to look for her. When we found her, she seemed ok.
The next morning, I figured it out. Her bed wasn’t made! Too much of the fleece was hanging off the edge and there was not enough on the bed for her to stretch out on! Our connoisseur of comfort just went and got comfortable somewhere else, leaving us with the uncomfortable feeling of having failed to take good care of a cat.
The people of Israel got comfortable with prosperity, and military allies they shouldn’t have trusted, and worst of all idolatry. God didn’t punish them right away like he used to do when his people were living 40 years in the desert before they entered the land of promise. There were no poison snakes sneaking around biting people, no sudden plagues killing them by the thousands, and the earth certainly never opened its mouth to swallow them again like it happened to Achan after Jericho. Remember all that?
So, since God seemed to be a lot more easy going these days, the people figured God didn’t really mind much. They figured they were the chosen people and God had a responsibility to keep it that way, for the sake of his own reputation as “most powerful God.” So, they could turn away from him and begin to ignore his commandments. They could doubt he even cared. And they could get busy making their lives as comfortable as they knew how, without depending on him. They got so used to that kind of comfort that they didn’t even believe the warnings of all the prophets God sent to tell them that he did care very much and that he would run out of patience one day.
Then Israel was attacked. Assyria ransacked the land, destroyed property and exported its people all over the world. The prophets were warning that Judah would be next. Isaiah 40 looks ahead to the later time, not too far ahead, but to the time that people in exile will really be wondering about God. He had really let them down. If God is so powerful and loving why did he let this happen to them? Were Babylon’s gods really stronger after all? Wasn’t God embarrassed by the defeat his people suffered? Or had God just given up on them and maybe he would start over with some new people?
In this text God answers all those questions with a resounding, “No.” And reminds his people that if anyone let anyone down, they had let Him down by ignoring his loving instructions that would have blessed them even better than what they got out of ignoring him. They were beginning to understand God’s pointed message, that they had brought all this suffering on themselves and they deserved it. They began to think that God would never want them back now.
But God’s love comforts them. Isaiah says, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” It’s a lot like what might happen in your home after you send a disobedient little child to have a time out. They sob, and they brood, and they think you don’t love them anymore. So, at the right time, you try to comfort them. But you don’t pretend that they had never done anything wrong. They still need to own up to that. They need to believe the part about, it was their sins that got them into this mess.
When God’s people were in the most uncomfortable of circumstances, exile, war famine, death and disease, all well-deserved as the result of their own sinful rebellion against the God who loves them, that God told them directly how to get comforted. Hosea 14:1-3 says, “Return, Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall! Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him: “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips. Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount warhorses. We will never again say ‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made, for in you the fatherless find compassion.”
And now, or soon, God will straighten everything out. There is “a voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
How will the glory of the Lord be revealed? First, in the short term, the repentant children of Israel will return from exile, back through the valleys and between the mountains. And God will make it smooth and easy for them. They won’t have to fight for it. They will be sent home. And that’s what happened at the end of the seventy years. King Cyrus was somehow moved to honor the God of the Israelites and actually wanted them to rebuild their temple so that they could worship the Lord God of Israel properly. But not everybody saw it that way, though it must have made the news back then.
Second, the greatest comfort of all happened when Jesus came, born as a baby, in a manger, and the angels called, “Glory to God in the highest!” He would walk right through the valley of the shadow of death and remove all the danger once found there. That’s one rough place that is made plain by his coming into our lives. We still die, but we know we survive it and we know the other side is far better.
Yes, the glory of the Lord was revealed there, by the angels worshipping out in the fields with the shepherds, and by the shepherds talking about all that they had seen. A little later, the glory of God was revealed again by the star of Bethlehem, by the wise men who came from far away to welcome the new born king, and even by the scribes who knew the prophets’ writings well enough to send those wise men on to Bethlehem.
But that was still not the fullest revelation of God’s glory. Amazingly, the scribes, who knew what they were talking about, didn’t go see it for themselves! Herod certainly didn’t respect it and thought he could snuff it out. So, the prophecy’s fullest fulfillment is still yet to come.
Now we are the ones who are comforted by God’s love with his promises of ultimate victory over sin and death and hell. But are we really comforted by God’s love? Is that really what really comforts us? We have to be careful that we do not really, and mostly, derive our comfort from the creature comforts of our own reasonably good behavior, or our soft theology that God is love and because he forgives sins I don’t have to change, or our regular church attendance, or even “the way we have always done things.” Traditions, even Christian ones, can be a powerful source of false comfort that is derived from the things we do, rather than from the God we serve. That kind of comfort cannot save our souls and it can cause us to lose sight of the God who calls us to the “dangerous” mission of preaching the gospel and reaching out to save more souls.
One way of describing the preacher’s ministry that I have heard, and take to heart, is that I am called to afflict the comforted, and comfort the afflicted. In that order. How does that work? Matthew 5:4 says, “God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” James 4:9-10 says, “Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”
We will be comforted by the love of God after we are feeling the affliction of our sin. After we understand how grievous our sin is in the sight of God, then the gospel of salvation through faith in Jesus’ shed blood is the most comforting thing in the world! That message, all by itself comforts the afflicted with the message of God‘s forgiving love. It also offends and afflicts those who are comfortable in their lives and would prefer to not be reminded of their sins and their need of grace. That’s one of the big reasons that the Pharisees crucified Jesus. They didn’t like the way he talked about them! After all, they were the most religious people they knew!
Well, this comforting passage of Isaiah 40 has some words in it that may not seem so comforting. All people are like grass? Really? How does that make you feel? Love comforts, and God’s love comforts like no other love can. But true comfort begins with reality. God affirms that people are like grass, withering and fragile. They are weak and powerless against the enemy that would tear them away from the land. Babylon is going to “mow ‘em down” as easily as a John Deere tractor does your back yard. Many will die for the sins of Israel. Some might deserve it. But many, such as children, will be considered innocent victims of Babylon’s tyranny. This is comfort? The comfort comes from trusting that God is still in charge and even Babylon is just serving God’s ultimate purposes.
But we have to agree. Human nature is really as bad as God says it is. This is why Jesus came into the world. Jesus died a cruel death to save the world. In the words of a poet named Thomas Kelly, this is how bad it is. The picture and location in the mind of the poet is at the foot of the cross, looking upon Jesus, the perfect lamb, horribly disfigured and cruelly killed
"You who think of sin but lightly nor suppose the evil great, here may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimate. Mark the sacrifice appointed. See who bears the awful load; 'Tis the Word, the Lord's Anointed, Son of Man, and Son of God." (Thomas Kelly)
Jesus, the perfect man, the son of God, the most precious, most perfect human life that ever lived, God’s own son, divine human, so unworthy of such treatment willingly undertook this cruel death to save your soul. You could say that he became ultimately uncomfortable on earth, so that all of us could be made ultimately comfortable in heaven.
Two points of good news, one, he came as weak and vulnerable, to set the stage and make the way for your redemption. Two, He’s coming again! As strong and victorious, to put a final end to all evil, and usher us into Heaven’s glories! That’s the true comfort that comforts you.
This is good news! You who bring good news to Zion, the Lord says, “Go tell it in the mountain! go up on a high mountain.” We have a sing about that. Go tell it in the mountain! “You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, “Here is your God!” Say to everyone in Lake City wo will listen, “We Have the best news about who God really is!”
“See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power,” not power to tyrannize and destroy but power to save and bring life! “He rules with a mighty arm.” Not to rule over us with anger and cruelty but to rule over satan and put an end to his evil ways. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. We are his reward! He loves us and he did all this on the cross to win us back into hos loving arms! We are his recompense. We are what he wants most out of life!
He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young. He is Jesus, the Good Shepherd, come to comfort all the lost who turn to him for forgiveness. This is love! Come to Him again today! He will not turn away anyone who comes to him with their needs and heartaches, with their sins and their faults and flaws. He is love. And he adores you! O Come. Let us adore him! Amen.
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