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Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, hear the word of the Lord of hosts, behold, the days are
coming when all that is in your house and that which your fathers have stored up till
this day shall be carried to Babylon, nothing shall be left, says the Lord, and some of
your own sons who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away and they
shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.
Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, the word of the Lord that you have spoken is good, for
he thought there will be peace and security in my days.
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God, speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her
that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the
Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
A voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low.
The uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together, for the
mouth of the Lord has spoken.
A voice says, cry, and I said, what shall I cry?
All flesh is grass and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it.
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
May God add his blessing to this reading of his holy word.
Let’s pray for the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of the word.
Well Heavenly Father, in your sovereign grace, we beseech you to grant gospel comfort to
us today.
We pray that by your spirit you would cause this word from your inerrant scriptures to
find a lodging place in our souls and to bear much spiritual fruit, not only in our
individual lives and our family lives, but also in your church.
We pray that once again that you would set a guard over my lips.
May I speak only that which is faithful to your word.
We pray these things through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said, amen.
You may be seated.
So my sermon this morning is Comfort for God’s People.
This is part one.
Part two is this evening, so you’ll have to come back this evening for the second part.
But the key words that I’d encourage you to listen for in my sermon today are the words
comfort, divine, and gospel.
Speaking of comfort, children often need to be comforted, especially very small, very
young children.
Those of you who have ever parented or are parenting young children or those of you who
have had the opportunity to care for young children, you know this very well.
Little children face a big and uncertain world, and so they need much in the way of comfort.
And you know sometimes our children need to be comforted even when they’re not on their
best behavior and even when they’re not demonstrating the best attitude.
Let me give you a hypothetical example that probably resonates with real life.
Let’s say that you have a young son.
We’ll call him Little Simeon.
Let’s say Little Simeon has recently been acting a bit defiant.
One day Simeon is playing with his favorite toys.
He’s got his Lego set out on the living room ground, and he’s in his bare feet, of course.
He’s playing with his Legos, and you’re in the kitchen fixing dinner up.
So when it gets towards dinner time, you say to your son, Simeon, it’s time to clean up
your Legos.
Time to get ready for dinner.
Go wash your hands, and we’re going to have dinner.
But Simeon didn’t want to stop playing with his Legos.
Instead of respectfully obeying you, he starts to pout.
He starts to grumble.
He starts to whimper.
Now he starts cleaning up his Legos.
He throws them angrily back into the storage box.
Some of them land on the floor, of course, and not in the box.
But he makes it very, very clear that while he’s complying with your directive, he’s
not happy about it at all.
While on the outside, Simeon is obeying in the sense that he’s cleaning up his Legos.
The defiant, rebellious attitude that he is displaying is thick enough to cut with a knife.
And so in a stern voice, you say to him, Simeon, come here right now, so you know that this
attitude needs to be confronted and nipped in the bud.
So you direct him to come to you.
But instead of obeying and coming to you, what does little Simeon do?
He turns around and he runs the other way.
However, in the process of running away from you rather than coming towards you, he steps
on some Legos.
Again, he’s in his bare feet.
And if you’ve ever been in your bare feet and stepped on a Lego, you know that’s not
a very pleasant experience, is it?
And then he trips, hitting his little head with a loud thud on the corner of your coffee
table.
Now what happens next?
You know what happens next.
The strength of little Simeon’s lungs exert themselves as he begins crying so loud that
you wonder if the decibel level is going to shatter the windows in your home.
Now think about it.
Your son has been defiant.
He has been disobedient.
He has shown a disrespectful attitude toward you and toward your parental authority.
But in that particular moment, when your defiant son is in pain and he turns around and he
reaches out his little arms toward you for comfort and reassurance, what are you going
to do in that particular moment?
Do you say, ah, serves you right?
Do you chide him for his disobedience?
Or do you pick him up into your arms, embrace him, to comfort him, and to care for him?
My suspicion is that as a loving parent, your highest priority at that particular moment
would be to comfort your son and to tend to any wounds that he may have received in that
unfortunate incident.
And if he hasn’t learned his lesson at that point from the consequences that he suffered
from his actions, you can leave the chiding and correction for later on.
Well, dear ones, in Isaiah’s time, the professed people of God on the whole were like little
Simeon in my illustration.
The people of God in Isaiah’s time were defiant.
They were rebellious.
They were disobedient to the Lord.
They had hearts of covenant breaking and disloyalty.
Through prophets like Isaiah, the Lord, Yahweh, had warned them repeatedly that if they did
not repent of their sins and return to him in faith, they would suffer some very unpleasant
consequences, namely, they would eventually be kicked out of the promised land and sent
away into exile, into the pagan land of Babylon.
In fact, in the context of the immediately preceding chapter, chapter 39, Isaiah predicted
to King Hezekiah, who had just received envoys from Babylon and shown them all that he owned
and so forth, Isaiah predicted to King Hezekiah that the exile was exactly what was going
to happen.
If you go back and look at chapter 39, let me just again read these verses, verse five
and following.
Isaiah said to Hezekiah, hear the word of the Lord of hosts, behold, the days are coming
when all that is in your house and that which your fathers have stored up till this day
shall be carried to Babylon.
That’s bad news enough, but then he goes on to say, nothing shall be left, says the Lord,
and some of your own sons who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken
away and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the King of Babylon.
And then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, the word of the Lord that you’ve spoken is good.
Hezekiah’s a little bit short-sighted, he’s thinking short-term, not long-term, because
it says, for he thought there will be peace and security in my days.
Friends, chapter 40 in Isaiah represents a major news section of this prophetic book.
In this chapter, the spirit of God, the spirit of inspiration, the spirit of prophecy leads
Isaiah to envision a future time when God’s exiled people, His people who will have at
that point experienced the effects of God’s word of judgment, now they are ready to hear
a word of comfort from the Lord who promises to deliver them out of their exile.
As Dr. Derek Kidner says of this new section of Isaiah as he comments on chapter 40, Dr.
Kidner says, we wake in this chapter, so to speak, on the far side of the disaster, impatient
for the end of captivity.
In chapters 40 through 48, liberation is in the air.
There is the persistent promise of a new exodus with God at its head.
There is the approach of a conqueror, eventually disclosed as Cyrus, to break Babylon open.
There is also a new theme unfolding to reveal the glory of the call to be a servant and
light to the nations.
And of course, this new theme of the servant of the Lord comes to its ultimate fulfillment
in that wonderful prophecy that we have of the promised Messiah Jesus as the suffering
servant in Isaiah chapter 53.
So as we turn our attention to our passage for this morning, and again, I’m going to
focus especially simply on the first two verses.
We first of all are confronted here, brothers and sisters, with our need for gospel comfort,
our need for gospel comfort.
Isaiah writes, comfort, comfort my people says your God.
Again, chapter 40, as I said, represents a great shift of theme and a radical change
in tone and mood.
The backdrop of these latter chapters of Isaiah is, of course, the first 39 chapters.
You’re not going to appreciate what the second section, the second half of Isaiah has to
say if you haven’t taken in the message of judgment and the holiness of God that’s revealed
in the first 39 chapters.
And as we have seen, brothers and sisters, in our sampling of these earlier chapters
of Isaiah, what is the prominent overarching theme of chapters 1 to 39?
Well, the overarching theme of those opening chapters was God’s judgment against his faithless
people.
Although as we’ve also seen, those judgment oracles are periodically interspersed and
interrupted with more cheerful oracles revealing the hope and salvation of the Messianic age.
But the point here, beloved, is that the cheerful tone and the hope-filled themes of comfort
and salvation for God’s people that we find throughout these latter chapters of Isaiah,
these have as their dark backdrop the reality of God’s judgment and chastisement against
the sin and rebellion of his professed people.
But again, Isaiah, by the spirit of inspiration, sees into the future, sees into a time when
the exile is about to end and when God says to his humbled exiled people, comfort, comfort,
my people, says, your God.
Or as the King James Version, I think, more accurately states it, more literally translates
it, comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.
You see, this command is a command that is in the plural.
It is a command that envisions not only Isaiah, the prophet, but prophets like him, that they
that the prophets are to speak gospel comfort to the humbled people of God.
Now remember that at the beginning of his prophetic ministry, Isaiah had received a
call from Yahweh, the Lord, to be a messenger of judgment.
Remember the opening vision of Isaiah’s call in Isaiah chapter 6.
Isaiah sees in visions of God the glory of the Lord and the train of his robe filling
the temple and Isaiah is overwhelmed with his own sinfulness.
He says, woe is me, I’m a man of unclean lips and I dwell amongst the people of unclean
lips and the Lord graciously forgives him with a coal from the altar directing that
his lips be touched, his sin is atoned for.
And then what does Isaiah do?
He says, I’m going to go, Lord.
The Lord says, whom shall I send?
He says, let me go.
But then we read this discouraging charge that he’s given.
If you go back to Isaiah chapter 6, let me just read verses 8 to 13 of Isaiah chapter
6.
This call to Isaiah says, and I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send
and who will go for us?
Then I said, here I am, send me.
And he said, go and say to this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand.
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.
Make the hearts of this people dull and their ears heavy and blind their eyes, lest they
see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn
and be healed.
Oh, I can just picture Isaiah, he’s eager, having experienced God’s gracious forgiveness,
he’s eager to proclaim God’s word, but then God gives him a word of judgment, a word that’s
going to have the effect of hardening the people, not softening them.
And so Isaiah says in verse 11 of chapter 6, then I said, how long, oh Lord?
And he said, until cities lie waste without inhabitant and houses without people and the
land is a desolate waste and the Lord removes people far away and the forsaken places are
many in the midst of the land.
And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again like a tarabinth or an oak whose
stump remains when it is felled.
The holy seed is its stump.
There’s a little glimmer of hope there.
But nevertheless, up to this point in his prophetic ministry, Isaiah has primarily been
a prophet of judgment.
But now in our passage for today, it’s as if he receives another commission or a recommission
in his office as prophet.
For again, here the Lord in chapter 40 commissions Isaiah and other prophets like him to declare
to God’s chastened, humbled people, not a message of further judgment and chastisement
and chiding, but a message of comfort, a message of salvation, a message of restoration.
This command to declare comfort to God’s people is repeated.
He doesn’t just say, comfort ye my people once, he says, comfort ye, comfort ye my people
for emphasis.
And there’s such repetition in scripture, it’s often for emphasis.
And also, I believe it’s there to underscore the significance of this command and the richness
of the comfort, the gospel comfort being offered to God’s chastened and humbled people.
This opening word of comfort repeated twice for emphasis also serves to underscore the
thematic trajectory for the remainder of Isaiah’s prophecy, as on the whole, the remainder
of Isaiah is going to be filled with oracles of salvation rather than oracles of judgment.
But to whom are these oracles addressed?
Comfort comfort whom?
My people.
And who are the my people here?
Well, verse three helps to spell that out a little more clearly.
Speak tenderly to whom?
To Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was the capital city of the southern kingdom where the temple of God was, where
God’s special covenantal royal presence dwelt in the midst of his people.
And Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem came to represent the elect people of God, the
true people of God, the elect remnant.
And he goes on to say, speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her and so forth.
Now a couple of takeaways, a couple of points of application from what we’ve considered
thus far.
First of all, as Dr. E.J.
Young points out in his commentary, he says, as the subsequent chapters show, true comfort
consists in setting forth the entire truth concerning the people’s tragic condition
and in causing them to see God as their only hope.
The people needed to be humbled by exile.
They needed to for the Lord’s judgment and chastisement to come upon them so that they
would see their desperate need for God’s mercy.
Dr. Young writes, when the heinousness of sin is faced, then the announcement of deliverance
may be made.
For the reception of these words of grace, the people have already been prepared through
the earlier announcement of judgment to come.
Dear ones, I would suggest to you that what was true in the ancient context in which Isaiah
ministered is just as true today.
If you ever had gospel conversations with unbelievers, and we were talking about this
in Isaiah’s excellent evangelism class this morning, how sometimes you’re talking to
unbelievers and you try to share about Jesus and they just don’t seem to get, you know,
what the big deal is.
I don’t need a savior.
I’m okay.
I’m not perfect, but I’m okay, right?
See, people will not see their need for gospel comfort, for the comforts offered by the gospel
of Jesus Christ unless they first see themselves as sinners under the righteous and holy wrath
of an infinitely holy God.
This is a cloudy part of the country, especially this time of year, and if you want to go outside
and see the magnificence of the stars in the bright night sky, then you’ll need to probably
go somewhere else at this point in time, but friends, we see the brightness of the stars
most clearly against the black backdrop of a clear night sky.
And similarly, we see the brightness and the glory of gospel comfort only against the
only against the backdrop of our own sin, our own wretchedness, and the fact that God is holy
and we’re not, but are in fact under his judgment.
And that, friends, that’s why in our gospel conversations with unbelievers, it’s often
best to focus first on explaining God’s holy character and explaining the demands of God’s
holy law before explaining the comforts of the gospel.
Now, it is a good impulse to want to go straight to Jesus when we’re sharing with unbelievers
and take them to the cross and talk about the resurrection and what Jesus did in dying for
our sins, but we need to lay the foundation.
They need to understand why Jesus had to go to the cross to save sinners like you and
like me and like them as well.
For we sinners will not understand or appreciate our need for gospel comfort unless we first
understand the fact that we are, in fact, sinners.
We are not just merely slightly imperfect people.
We are rebels against our creator.
That is our natural fallen condition in Adam.
We are rebel sinners who cannot lift a finger to save ourselves and who therefore desperately
need a sinless Savior.
And that sinless Savior is none other than our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
And friends, we need to know that Jesus is our only hope and we need Jesus to be more
than just a moral example, more than just a life coach, more than just a half Savior
who helps us save ourselves.
No, we need a Jesus who will be our rescuer from beginning to end.
And it’s only as you understand that that these words of gospel comfort will resonate
in your soul.
Another takeaway from this passage is that I would suggest to you is that while ordained
ministers of the gospel and evangelists today obviously don’t have the spirit of inspiration
like the prophets and apostles of old did, one inference from this passage is that ministers
of the word share this command to preach gospel comfort.
My main job as your pastor is not to tell you how to vote, not to tell you how to think
about your job and so forth other than giving you biblical principles.
My main job is to preach gospel comfort.
That is the minister’s job and to declare glad tidings of great joy.
So let us pray that our Lord would continue to raise up gifted men to go forth into his
harvest field both in this country and throughout the world and proclaim gospel comfort to lost
sinners.
So we see friends gospel comfort here but we also see in this passage a divine word
of comfort as it says, comfort, comfort my people says your God speak tenderly to Jerusalem
and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has
received double from the Lord’s hand, double for all her sins.
We see here a divine word.
This message of comfort is a divine word, comfort, comfort my people says whom?
Says Isaiah?
No, says your God.
You see these words of comfort, this is not ultimately Isaiah’s word, it is God’s word.
Yes, Isaiah was the human author, the instrument through which God breathed out his scriptures
and had it recorded and inscripturated here but nevertheless this is God’s word not Isaiah’s.
The message of gospel comfort for humbled repentant sinners is of divine origin,
it’s not a pipe dream, it’s not a mere wish.
It is a revelation of God’s mercy in Christ to sinners like me and you.
It is also a covenantal word as we see reflected here in the language being used.
God says comfort, comfort what?
My people says your God, that’s covenantal language and we see that kind of covenantal
language throughout the scriptures and I just want to give you two brief samples,
one from the Old Testament and the other from the New.
If you go back to Deuteronomy chapter 7 and look at verses, Deuteronomy 7 verses 6 through 8,
we read these words as Moses is preaching to the children of Israel as they’re preparing
to go in to conquer the promised land, he says this, for you, he’s addressing the Israelites,
you are a people holy that is set apart to the Lord your God.
The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the
peoples who are on the face of the earth.
It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his
love on you and chose you for you were the fewest of all peoples but it is because the
Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers that the Lord has brought
you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of
Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast
love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations and so
forth.
He is the faithful covenant making covenant keeping God.
So this word of comfort, it is a divine word and it is a covenantal word.
God in his grace binds himself in covenant to his people in Christ and this is what we call
the covenant of grace.
And what is the ultimate end and goal and promise, the crowning promise of the covenant of grace?
Well we find that revealed in the book of Revelation and many other places as well but
if you go to Revelation 21 verse 3 we read these words.
Speaking of the new heavens and the new earth it says this John writes,
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
Behold the dwelling place of God is with man.
He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as
their God.
That’s the ultimate reunion beloved.
So this is a divine word of comfort.
It’s also a tender word as it says in verse 2,
Speak tenderly or it could be translated kindly.
Speak tenderly, speak kindly to Jerusalem.
Dr. Young writes of this terminology he says,
The comfort consists in the speaking of words that will fall upon the heart with pleasure,
comfort and refreshment to encourage and share the heart like gentle rain falling upon the ground.
So it is a divine word, a covenantal word, a tender word.
It is also a hopeful or hope-filled word.
Why?
Well listen to the content of it.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare has ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned.
Her iniquity and what gross iniquity that was and yet God has pardoned her.
That she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
My friends, the message, this message of gospel comfort brings sure and certain hope to the soul
because it is a word that promises peace, forgiveness and stability.
The gospel message is a message of genuine comfort for sinners because it is God’s word
of divine origin and not of mere human invention or wishful thinking.
It is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes as the apostle Paul
tells us in Romans 1, 16 and 17.
I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ for it is the power of God
unto salvation to everyone who believes, the Jew first and also to the Greek and so forth.
The point here, there’s nothing dear sinner, there’s nothing more comforting to the sinner
than the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And that brings us to my final point.
We see here in verse 2 the promises of gospel comfort as applied to the folks that Isaiah
is addressing and that applies to us as well.
The promises of gospel comfort.
There’s basically a threefold promise here.
First of all, promise number one is that warfare or hardship will be ended.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her.
Don’t just whisper to her.
Proclaim loudly.
Cry to her.
Declare.
Speak it out.
What are the preachers to cry?
What are the prophets to cry to the people of God that her warfare is ended?
The Jewish exiles in Babylon will have experienced the hardship of God’s stern
chastisement for their sins, which Isaiah figuratively compares to the hardship of warfare.
But now Isaiah anticipates a time when the hardship of their exile would come to an end.
This, of course, ultimately points to the Lord Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah.
For Christ is the victorious captain of our salvation.
And this points also to the consummation of his kingdom that he will usher in at his return.
But you know what?
This deliverance from hardship is experienced.
We experience a foretaste of that in this present age as we rest from our warfare against God,
as we rest in Christ in true faith and repentance.
I’m again reminded of those very familiar words in Matthew 11, 28 to 30.
Jesus says, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I’m gentle and lowly and hard,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
So the first promise is the ending of hardship.
The second promise, oh, so precious to us who know ourselves to be sinners,
is iniquity will be pardoned.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, cry to her that her warfare has ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned.
The language here is the language of satisfaction, atonement, in other words.
Here, Isaiah anticipates the suffering servant prophecy, especially, I would argue,
verses four through six of that chapter.
If you just skip ahead to Isaiah 53, let me read these familiar verses, Isaiah 53,
six through eight.
Surely, speaking of Christ, the suffering servant, surely, he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for what?
For our iniquities.
Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray, we’ve turned everyone to his own way,
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Praise be to God.
Again, this ultimately points to the atonement of Christ,
who paid the penalty for the sins of God’s people on the cross of Calvary.
So gospel comfort includes and encompasses the promise of warfare being ended,
the promise of iniquity being pardoned, but also the promise of chastisement being ended.
As well, for verse two ends with these words, that she, Jerusalem, God’s people,
has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
Now, it’s important not to misunderstand what’s being said here.
This is not saying that the sufferings of God’s people in their Babylonian exile
were somehow propitiatory, or they somehow atoned for their sins.
Instead, this language is pointing to the fact that God has
assessed that this is enough chastisement.
They’ve been humbled and chastised enough.
As one commentator puts it, the term double appears to be hyperbole,
used to impress on the people that the chastisement of the exile was really over.
And dear Christian friends, praise God.
One day, all of the trials, all of the tribulations,
all of the chastisements and persecutions and sufferings
that you and I experience in this present evil age,
one day it will all be over.
And we will enjoy the new creation forever in the new heavens and the new earth
wherein righteousness dwells.
Dear listener, do you have that gospel comfort?
If not, come to Jesus in faith and repentance as he’s offered to you in the gospel.
Rest in him and you will be able to sing from your heart.
It is well with my soul.
Amen.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you, O God, for the glory and preciousness of the gospel,
the good news.
We pray, Lord, that we would receive these words of gospel comfort
with hearts of faith and trust, that we would be bolstered, strengthened,
and encouraged in our faith that we might have a closer walk with you
and be faithful in our discipleship to Jesus our Lord.
For it is in his name that we pray.
And all of God’s people said, amen.
As we