Comfort in God’s coming to deliver

Sermon for Midweek of Advent 1

Isaiah 40:1-14

By God’s grace, we successfully walked through the whole book of Revelation in the last Church Year. This year, I’ve chosen to walk with you through the book of the prophet Isaiah. Not the whole book, but the last 27 chapters, chapters 40-66. Those 27 chapters form a tightly knit unit, a beautiful work of divinely inspired prophecy and poetry. The 27 chapters are thematically divided into three main triads or subunits of 9 chapters each, with each set of 9 chapters divided into three smaller sections or discourses. On Sunday, we’ll take a look at that general outline in Bible class. For now, what we need to understand from the beginning is that the three 9-chapter triads of Isaiah 40-66 have three main messages of deliverance: (1) Deliverance from Babylon, where Isaiah foresees the Jews sitting in captivity; (2) Deliverance from the guilt of sin; and (3)  Deliverance in the new Church made up of Jews and Gentiles. In all three instances of deliverance, there are literal prophecies mixed with spiritual prophecies, earthly prophecies mixed with heavenly prophecies, and types of Christ and of His Church throughout. We’ll do our best to unpack as much as we can during our Wednesday Vespers, not just to understand it better, but to take to heart God’s message throughout, which is both for the Old Testament Church as well as the New Testament Church: Repent and believe the Gospel!

This evening, we begin that first major section, chapters 40-48, focusing on the deliverance God promised Israel from Babylon. As we’ll see, it’s not just about that already-accomplished deliverance. There is also a message here to the Church about the coming Christ and about deliverance from the spiritual Babylon—the antichristian forces that threaten the Church till the end of the world. So let’s begin our walk through Isaiah with those words that overflow with the spirit of Advent: Comfort, comfort my people!

“Comfort, yes, comfort My people!” Says your God. “Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, That her warfare is ended, That her iniquity is pardoned; For she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.”

Remember, Isaiah lived about 700 years before Jesus was born. He lived and preached in the Southern kingdom, the kingdom of Judah. His main work took place soon after the Assyrians came in and destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C. Isaiah was dead almost a hundred years by the time the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and took the Jews captive to Babylon. In fact, Isaiah died about 75 years before the Babylonians even became a world power. And yet, his whole prophecy in this part of his book deals with the time after the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. It’s as if he’s been transported 170 years into the future. He is writing to a people not yet born, with the future landscape of a Jerusalem lying in ruins and the people of God having sat in captivity in Babylon for nearly 70 years.

Now he begins with this abrupt command from Jerusalem’s God: Comfort My people! God is calling out poetically and prophetically to all prophets, including the prophet Isaiah. The people of Jerusalem had suffered greatly because of their idolatry and rejection of God’s Word—the Word that Moses had given them originally and the Word that the prophets had brought to them time and time again. Most of Jerusalem had become impenitent unbelievers. But even the small number of faithful Israelites had had to suffer this exile. But now God calls out earnestly for them to be comforted!

Comforted for three reasons: First, “her warfare is ended.” Her time in captivity is about to come to an end. Take comfort in the end of your exile! Your war with men is over! And, more importantly, your war with God is over, because, second, “Her iniquity is pardoned.” The reason for the afflictions the Jews had suffered was their sin, their iniquity. But God speaks of a coming atonement for that iniquity. That would be a better translation, actually. Her iniquity is atoned for. He’s pointing them all the way forward to the future atonement that the Christ would make, not only for the sins of the Jews that earned them the punishment of exile in Babylon, but of all the sins of all men. Take comfort in the atonement that the Lord Himself will provide for you! And third, “She has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” In other words, God caused the people of Jerusalem to suffer for a time, but the deliverance He was going to bring about for them was worth twice as much as that suffering was, because, not only was He going to restore them to their homes; He was going to prepare for them a heavenly home of perfect peace and rest and safety. Take comfort in the restoration God will bring about in the new heavens and the new earth!

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the LORD; Make straight in the desert A highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted And every mountain and hill brought low; The crooked places shall be made straight And the rough places smooth; The glory of the LORD shall be revealed, And all flesh shall see it together; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

You probably recognize these verses from the New Testament, where they’re applied directly to John the Baptist as the “voice crying out.” But they don’t only apply to John. They apply to every faithful prophet, before and after John, whom God has sent to prepare the way for His coming: His coming to deliver His people from Babylon, His coming in the Person of Christ, to deliver people from their sins, and His coming at the end of the world to deliver His Church from all their enemies. In every case, it was and is essential that God’s people prepare themselves for God’s coming with repentance.

That’s what it means to “make the way straight,” to “exalt the valleys,” to “bring the mountains low,” to “make the crooked places straight and the rough places smooth.” Wherever there is unrepented sin, it serves as an obstacle to the Lord’s coming for deliverance. So, remove it! Repent of it! Turn from it so that the Lord may come to you with salvation and not with judgment. We’ll talk more about these verses on the Fourth Sunday in Advent.

The voice said, “Cry out!” And he said, “What shall I cry?” “All flesh is grass, And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, Because the breath of the LORD blows upon it; Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.”

Part of the prophets’ message is this somewhat depressing reality: all flesh is grass. All people are here today, gone tomorrow. They thrive and flourish for a short time, and then the Lord brings that time to an end. That’s the result of sin for the human race. But even though we are dust and will return to dust, the Word of God stands forever. And that includes His Word of deliverance, even from death, His Word that promises comfort and a future even to those who are dying, because of the work of the coming Christ. His Word of deliverance cannot fail.

O Zion, You who bring good tidings, Get up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, You who bring good tidings, Lift up your voice with strength, Lift it up, be not afraid; Say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”

God first calls His Church in exile, His Church in general, “Jerusalem,” and He has His prophets speak good news to Jerusalem. Now He calls on Jerusalem, the Church in general, to become the herald of good news to the “cities of Judah,” to spread the word to all the individual members of the Church. “Behold, your God!” God seemed to have been absent during Jerusalem’s destruction and during their 70 year captivity. At least, He wasn’t present to save them from that destruction and exile. But now He wants His believers to know, He’s here! He’s here to help and deliver!

Behold, the Lord GOD shall come with a strong hand, And His arm shall rule for Him; Behold, His reward is with Him, And His work before Him. He will feed His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs with His arm, And carry them in His bosom, And gently lead those who are with young.

The Lord God will come! Again, He’ll come to deliver His people from Babylon. He’ll come to deliver them from sin, death, and the devil. And He’ll come, at last, to deliver His people from every evil when He comes at the Last Day. This image of God coming as a Shepherd to His flock of sheep, is exactly the image that Jesus applied directly to Himself as the Good Shepherd and to His Christians as His dear sheep.

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, Measured heaven with a span And calculated the dust of the earth in a measure? Weighed the mountains in scales And the hills in a balance? Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, Or as His counselor has taught Him? With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him, And taught Him in the path of justice? Who taught Him knowledge, And showed Him the way of understanding?

The answer to all these questions is, no one. No one can fathom the immensity or the complexity of the creation God put together all by Himself. No one can comprehend the power involved in God’s reshaping of the earth at the time of the flood to bring the mountains up and to create the canyons in all their splendor. No man was there to teach God how to do all these things. And in the same way, no man should dare imagine that he knows better than God how to rule this earth, how to carry out judgment on the earth, or how to bring about deliverance for people. No matter what the Lord says He will do, He knows how to fulfill it, how to bring it about, even if you don’t, even if it seems impossible to you.

So the Lord promised, through the prophet Isaiah, to come, to come for those three purposes we’ve been discussing. The first two comings have essentially been fulfilled, at least in their literal fulfillment. The third was fulfilled only partially in the physical descendants of Israel. These promises to “come” make this part of the book of Isaiah perfect for Advent, but also for Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and the entire Trinity season, too. May God bless our meditations on the Book of Isaiah throughout this coming year. And may you all receive again this evening the comfort that comes from God’s promise to come and deliver His people from every evil that threatens us. Amen.