Comfort for God's people

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.

A voice of one calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness 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 mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

A voice says, "Cry out." And I said, "What shall I cry?" "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the LORD blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever."

You who bring good tidings to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good tidings 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!"

See, the Sovereign LORD comes with power, and his arm rules for him. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. 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 (Isaiah 40:1-11).

Comfort, comfort ye My people. This is the command that God gave to His prophet Isaiah, to go and give comfort to God’s holy people. What a wonderful command—to be told to announce Good News to those who faithfully wait on God for His blessings. This was a command that Isaiah was happy to follow. This is a command that every preacher of God’s holy Word enjoys carrying out.

God’s people need to hear words of comfort. Our world bombards us constantly with bad news. Pick up a newspaper—more likely than not, the largest headline is bad news. Turn on the radio and television, and you will soon get a newsbreak—and newsbreaks rarely feature good news. There are some radio stations and cable networks that even specialize in 24 hour-a-day news; if you want to get depressed, just leave these kinds of programs on all day long.

But you don’t have to turn to the media for bad news; bad news comes right into your house whenever the kids come home from school, your spouse gets home from work, or you get a phone call from a friend. There’s a bully at school. The business is losing money. Your best friend from high school is getting a divorce. This bad news is personal.

The non-Christian blames bad news on bad luck, but we children of God know that there is no such thing as luck. God created the universe, and He is at work every day to keep it running. Jesus said, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working" (John 5:17). Jesus also said, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father" (Matthew 10:29). Even the brilliant Albert Einstein said, "God does not shoot dice." Because we know that God is in control, the bad news in our lives makes us wonder: is this happening because I have made God mad? Is God punishing me for something?" Bad news makes us worry. We worry how we are going to deal with our bad news, and we worry if God will allow us to escape from our troubles? If God has sent bad news into our lives as a punishment, what hope can we have that tomorrow will be better?

It is natural for us to fear God’s anger. In the Garden of Eden, as soon as Adam and Eve had sinned, the first thing that they did was to hide from God. They hid from Him because they feared His anger at their disobedience in eating from the forbidden tree. Ever since then, people have been afraid of God's anger. We have been afraid because all of us have disobeyed God’s commands and have earned His rightful punishment. And when we read the Old Testament, we see what God did to the nation of Israel, His nation, when they repeatedly disobeyed Him—He allowed foreign nations to defeat their armies, destroy their cities, and force the people to work in foreign lands. God hates sin, and when things go badly in our lives, we begin to fear that He hates us.

But God told Isaiah to announce comfort to His people. The reason that they can be comforted is that their sin has been paid for. By the power of God, Isaiah is given a look at the future, and what a future it will be! God will send someone to pay the debt that our sins have incurred before God. Later, in chapter 53 of Isaiah, the prophet speaks as if Jesus had already lived, died, and rose again: he says, "Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all."

What a comforting message! We do not have to fear God’s anger, because all of His anger was taken out on His Son Jesus who came to be punished in our place! Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, the fires of hell can be avoided; all that is asked of us is that we welcome Jesus into our hearts as our Lord and Savior and ask His help in rejecting our desire to do evil. Jesus shows us the heart of God—powerful yes, so powerful that He could escape the grip of death itself. But Jesus does not use that power to bully us into leading respectable lives, He doesn’t drive His sheep before Him with angry blows from His staff. No, Jesus uses His power to clear a safe path for us so that He can lead us to heaven—and when the way is long and difficult, He picks us up in His arms and tenderly carries us close to His heart. Jesus is a loving shepherd to His sheep.

This message of comfort forces us to look at the bad news in our lives in a different light. Since Jesus loves us and forgives us, the bad news that we experience must not be the result of God’s anger. Indeed, King David wrote in Psalm 130: "Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD; O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins." David reminds us that no one could survive God’s anger at human sin; If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? The reason that bad things happen is not because God is punishing us for our sins; bad things happen because the world is full of sinful people who are doing sinful things. The very ground itself was cursed because of mankind’s sin; God told Adam, "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return" (Genesis 3:17-19). Sin caused there to be weeds. Sin caused there to be floods and droughts and pestilence. Sin brought disease and death into a world that God had made perfect.

So why doesn’t God shield His children from the sin that surrounds us? He does—to a certain degree. Saint Paul tells us, "God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it" (1 Corinthians 10:13). But God does not completely shield us from the effects of sin. Sometimes our Lord allows hard times to come upon us to test our faith and to strengthen our relationship with Him; the entire book of Job serves as an example. Through the prophet Zechariah God said, "I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, `They are my people,' and they will say, `The LORD is our God' " (Zechariah 13:9). Other times, God allows bad news to trouble us to get our attention; when Jonah resisted going to preach to the Ninevites by setting sail in the opposite direction, God put a storm in his path and used a huge fish to start Jonah going in the correct direction again. It was the same with the Israelite nation; when they turned their backs on God, God did not destroy them—their captivity in Babylon was a wake-up call, a call to repent and return to God’s loving leadership.

So we have this comfort: Jesus has paid off our debt of sin to God, and because of this we know that whatever troubles we experience in life only serve to draw us closer to God, to depend on Him more. But the comfort goes beyond even this. Through Isaiah God says, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the LORD blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever." Nothing in this sin-corrupted world is permanent, but God is. No one can be depended upon to always be there when we need them, but God can. The word of our God stands forever. Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away" (Matthew 24:35). Those words are words of promise; those words are words of power. Those words are words of comfort and assurance, words like: "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die" (John 11:25-26). We have the comfort of knowing that our Lord Jesus can be depended on to always be there for us, no matter what is happening in our lives.

And finally, we have this comfort: through Isaiah God said: the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. That glory of God was made visible to us in the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. Saint John tells us, "No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known" (John 1:18). Jesus has made our invisible God visible to us. Jesus has made our untouchable God touchable, as He took little children in His arms and blessed them. Jesus has made our holy, unapproachable God approachable to us, by being born as a lowly baby in a lowly stable attached to a lowly traveler’s inn. Jesus revealed the glory of God to us, and God’s glory is this: that His love for us is so perfect that He would do anything—even send His Son to die—so that we could live free from the fear of sin and its curse of eternal punishment.

Now that’s comfort!