And then if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Isaiah, chapter 40 tonight. Isaiah chapter 40, it's on page 599 of the Black Pew Bible. We've transitioned from Christmas to New Year. Our culture could make that transition faster.
It seems to me Christmas songs could be heard in stores as early as September and on the radio in November, but nowhere to my knowledge on December 26th. Full stop. You could get whiplash of the ears. The music stopped, so abruptly.
It seemed to me time moves on. Our culture moves on. In September, we are lingering as we did the Sunday after Christmas celebrations. And again, finally tonight, as we finish our study on the hope of the Messiah as promised in Isaiah.
In, we reach in Isaiah chapter 40, a significant transition point in Isaiah. Isaiah has pronounced chapter upon chapter, a series of judgments, prophecies of doom and destruction to the surrounding nations of Israel, but also on the northern kingdoms of Israel and on the southern kingdom of Judah. Things are going to get very ugly, very painful, very quickly for the people of Isaiah's day and that generation. Assyria is going to invade and decimate the northern kingdoms in the 700s, and then Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians are going to invade and decimate even the southern kingdom.
Lives are going to be wrapped. Communities ripped apart. Families split. People are going to die.
The bulk of the people are going to be exiled. Dreams are going to be crushed. And the kingdom of God on earth of God's believing people is going to be assaulted. So there's going to be great difficulty.
And the Lord knows exactly what his people need as they anticipate these events. He knows his people are suffering and might be given over to despondency. And so he gives them a word to encourage them. He sends Isaiah to preach to them both the warnings and tonight, consolation, so that they need not despair.
And we hear the constellations from Isaiah 41 to 11 and let me invite you to consider how the Lord consoles people who look to him. This is the word of God. 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 flowers fade 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. Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion herald of good news. Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news. Lift it up.
Fear not. Say to the cities of Judah, behold your God. Behold, the Lord God comes with a might and his arm rules for him. Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense before him.
He will tend his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms. He will carry them in his bosom and gently leaves those that are with young. Amen.
This is God's word. May he cut our hearts with it. Let's look to him in prayer. Our Father, we pray that you would write this word on our heart.
Grant us consolation and comfort and help through this word. From the glory of Christ and the good of our souls, we pray in Jesus name. Amen. The repeated verbs here, our verbal verbs, speak, cry.
Lift up your voice. Say, in other words, preaching is what the passage is about. The message of preaching. How does the God of comfort address the needs of people through preaching?
What you need is preaching. What kind of preaching do you need? Well, there's four paragraphs here. Let me outline for you the kind of preaching you need.
Verses 1 and 2, you need the preaching of God's forgiveness. Verses 3 to 5, you need the preaching of God's coming. Verses 6 to 8, you need the preaching of God's word and you need verses 9 to 11, the preaching of God's care. God's forgiveness is coming his word and his care.
Let me invite you to consider those four things with me this evening. In the first place verses 1 to you and I need the kind of preaching that concerns you. That consoles you with the comfort of God's forgiveness. There's consolation here.
There's an arm around the shoulder. A comfort, comfort, comfort my people says your God is how this begins. You must hear this, he's saying. You must take it in and receive the comfort being offered to you here.
And there's a tenderness here. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. It's speak to the heart. It's the way that the book of Ruth tells the story of the love of Boaz for Ruth.
Ruth describes the way that Boaz spoke to her with this word. He loved her and he spoke to her heart and tenderness. These are words of love here. This is what God is doing.
He's saying, speak to my people. And the words of intimacy here, comfort, comfort, comfort, comfort, my people say, your God, I am yours, you are mine. We're reconciled together. We belong to one another.
I want you to be comforted and consoled here. Now what's the content of the consolation here in the first two verses? What should be spoken? Three things.
One of which is very clear. The other two are less so. First of all, her warfare is ended. Declaring her that her warfare is ended.
Her term of service is over. Something that means, and this is likely the case, that it's predicting the end of the time in exile. And looking beyond that, Calvin here says, God does not want to harass his people endlessly, but to set a limit to their afflictions. They are to look ahead to the ending of this.
Then it says at the end, they're going to receive double for all her sins. And the question is what does that mean? Some have thought maybe it means, well, like she's not just one portion, but twice as much of what she deserves she's going to get. But we write that off as unsatisfactory.
That would mean that God was doing some kind of injustice here, but God would never give more than is just, and he never gives more to his children, even children he disciplines than what they deserve. It could mean that what it means here by double is actually the flip of judgment and discipline. Double grace for all her sins. I say that because the word for here, double for her sins, is a preposition that can mean in place of, give her double in the place of her sins.
This is the language of the Apostle Paul saying God's grace is greater than all our sin. So it might mean that it is a little ambiguity here, but what is clear is the middle thing that her iniquity is pardoned or paid for. The iniquity, and I'd be here as sin, but it's not quite the same word, iniquity here, is met with a satisfactory and a sufficient, substitutionary atonement. The word here is the word used in Leviticus chapter 1 verse 4.
It's that whole section on all the different kinds of atonement offerings that need to be made here. And it's the word that's picked up here, that a sufficient and satisfactory, substitutionary atonement has been offered and that pays for all her sins. For all the sins of the offer, a blood sacrifice that makes atonement has come. Isaiah here doesn't tell you who's going to make this payment or exactly how this payment is going to be made, just that it's going to be made.
And of course you have to turn to Isaiah chapter 53 to see the suffering servant hanging upon a cross and your New Testament spells it out for you. But she's going to be forgiven is the point here. I told you, some of you previously, that one of my favorite stories about the atonement is an illustration about a civilian at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. He was drafted to fight in the army and so he went down to the registration office and he told them that he had previously been drafted and had hired a substitute to go fight in his place, which is actually in the history of warfare, something that's been common in various places.
And that substitute had in fact been paid for, gone to war and been killed and they had even written in this civilian's name next to his name in the book of registration died in the person of his substitute on the battlefield of the Holy. And so they said, you're right, you've already served your term, you're free to go. This is what has happened for us in Christ. Christ has served the term of service and satisfied the authorities as it were God himself in our place.
This is what God is promising to his people and we can hear the kind of preaching just as Judea and Israel did that comforts us with this kind of forgiveness, this kind of free blotting out of our sins and releasing us from what we deserve. There's a Scotsman named Donald Cargill who in 1647 was roughly 20 years old. He was going around Glasgow with his family visiting relatives, but he was under internal anguish. Internally he was torn up, he was under conviction of sin, he was under the fear of the judgment of God and he was an anguish about that.
He was convinced. In fact he became a despair, he was convinced that he did not deserve to live, that what he really deserved was hell and he was going to get it. And he determined in his despair to do away with himself. So he walked down to the river and every time he was going to try to throw himself in somebody walked by and he didn't have a kind of privacy to do what he had come to do.
And so then he realized that he was in a coal mining area and there were all kinds of empty and unprotected coal shafts. So he decided to go to one of those and throw himself in. And so very early one morning he made his way to one of them and he very thoughtfully removed his outer clothing which was new to him and he was going to leave behind and be used by somebody else. And so he was just preparing to leap into the coal mine.
There came a voice clear and unmistakable, son be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven. Now those words are exactly out of Matthew chapter 9 verse 2 when Jesus says to the paralytic brought by his friends to Jesus just those words. And I don't know and Kargil didn't know where these words came from, who said them, what said them, how? But we don't have to explain all that.
But son be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven. He said that brought comfort and assurance to him for the rest of his life. And you may say I don't have the experience of Kargil. We don't want you to have the experience of Kargil, that kind of despair.
You don't have to have this kind of, I don't know where the voice came from but there it is. But you know every week at Redeemer we gather in a new worship and we confess our sins and do you know what we hear every time we do so? We hear the words of assurance, of pardon, of forgiveness by God to all who come to him in Christ. Free pardon in Jesus every week.
Just pay attention to the word and believe the promise. Sometimes we hear Ephesians 1 verse 7 in Jesus we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins. Sometimes we hear what we did tonight, John 10, Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one can snatch them out of my hand. We are to take comfort in this and what you need is the consolation of the comfort of God's forgiveness.
That's the kind of preaching. Now the second kind of preaching you need, verses 3 to 5 is this, you need the kind of preaching that consoles you with the coming of the Lord. Verse 3 of voice cries in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. There's a preparation that needs to be made like in our own day when roads are bad, they have to be prepared.
But when a visiting dignitary came for them, well you had to get the community to turn out and remove every rock and obstacle and fill in the low spots with dirt because you wanted as welcoming and as easy a ride as it were to honor appropriately the dignitary who was on his way. And here it is, who's coming to his people, the Lord himself, Yahweh or Jehovah, some of you know the name by that. This is who's coming and in Luke chapter 3, Luke tells you, he speaks very specifically here. In Luke chapter 3 verses 3 to 4, you might turn there sometime.
The preparation that is to be made is repentance. He speaks of John the Baptist who went into all the region preaching in the wilderness. And what did he preach? He proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
And then he quotes this passage from Isaiah, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. That's me John the Baptist to say, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked shall become straight, rough places shall become level, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.
And how do you prepare the way? Repentance, John says. And so prepare yourself to receive the God of glory who's coming to his people. The glory of the Lord is about to be revealed to his people and all flesh shall see it.
What's that glory? It's the radiant splendor of God. As Algomatir says, it's the Lord in all his glory coming to his people. And when do we see that?
Well certainly we see it at the second coming of the Lord Jesus. In the last chapter of chapter 2 verse 13 says, we are waiting in fact for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. But we also have that glory and it comes to us when? Luke chapter 3 verses 3 and 4.
The glory of God revealed in the first coming. The first coming of Jesus. Maybe that glory was veiled a bit. It was not always on display to the eyes of man, veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hailed in carnit deity.
John chapter 1 says, in the beginning was the word. We read this and the word was with God and the word was God and the word became flesh and dwelt or tabernacle or pitched his tent among us. And we gazed on his glory. We beheld the glory John says.
The glory of the only son from the Father who's full of grace and truth. And so what John and the New Testament is saying is that in seeing Jesus we see God in his glory. We see his true identity. There's a fascinating story.
His spy stuff is always interesting to me. In World War II the Allies were trying to track down German agents. And there was such a thing as a micro dot. It looked about like a punctuation mark, even a period.
And so it was easy to simply miss. Your eyes expecting to see it on an envelope or in a letter. But if you pry it in often, you magnified it several hundred times. It wouldn't be just a punctuation mark, but it would be a full letter giving instructions to German agents.
It's all packed into that little micro dot. You barely notice as it appears on a letter. But it's all there. It may be veiled.
But it's all there. And that's the sense we have in the first coming of Christ. Colossians 2 verse 9. In Jesus the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.
His glory in concentrate. The whole fullness of deity dwells bodily form. Whether you can perceive that or not. The visitor from Europe came to the White House in the early 1800s.
And he saw a bald headed man with watery eyes and a dirty seer sucker suit. And a dirty waistband that was spotted with all kinds of ink blotches and he had slippers on his feet. And the visitor was appalled that the president would employ such a slovenly clerk at the White House until he realized that it was actually President James Monroe. He didn't look presidential.
But it was in fact the president. You may not see the splendor of Jesus, but don't let that throw you off. Don't let the feeding trough and the swaddling cloth throw you off. Don't let the humiliation and the mockery and the scorning and the rejection and the beating and the crucifixion of Jesus throw you off.
Jesus is all the fullness of the deity dwelling bodily. And he is the glory of God. Vailed as it were for a time. Unveiled to every eye unmistakably at his second coming.
But he has come. And we need the kind of preaching that comforts us with the reality of the coming of the Lord. The third kind of preaching we need is that which consoles us with the constancy of God's Word. And you see that verses 6 to 8.
Versa 6 to 8 has been variously understood in the history of Christianity. And the reason being in biblical literature there aren't punctuation marks actually in the original languages. There are quotation marks. So that when a quotation actually begins and when it actually ends is well, frankly, not usually difficult to see.
And it's not that big a problem. But there are occasions where it's not quite certain when that quotation begins and when it ends. And so you have two main schools of interpretation about what's being given here. One school says, verse 40 verse 6, a voice says cry.
And there's a response. What shall I cry? Keep going. Don't end the quotation.
What shall I cry? All flesh is grass and all its beauty is the flower in the field. The grass with the flower face. When the breath of the Lord blows on it's really people are grass with the flowers made the Word of God save forever.
That's one interpretation. The whole thing is the response. What shall I cry? Cry this.
But the other interpretation, this was given by J. Alexander who was an old seminary professor at Princeton in 1845. He suggested we should understand it this way. What shall I cry?
You might read it like this. When, in fact, all flesh is grass and all its beauty is like the flower in the field. And the grass with is in the flower face. When the breath of the Lord blows on it's surely the people are grass and quote.
What shall I cry? When people are temporary, they're just a mis- they're just a vapor. They're just mourning frost on the windshield. And then they're gone.
They're here. They're gone. What should I cry out? And the answer that is verse 8.
Yes, the grass with is. Sure, the flowers fade. That's all true. But the Word of our God stands forever.
I take it that way myself. That he's contrasting the transitory nature of man with the constancy of God's Word. And he's saying there is something that lasts forever. The Word of God will go on forever.
And what Word is that? Well, how about the gracious Word? He's just given it verse 2. That your debt has been paid.
And how about the glory Word of verses 3 to 5? The coming of the Lord in all his glory. These things are certain. And we can build the weight of our lives and of our families on this truth.
Donald Gray Barnhouse was pastor at 10th President's Philadelphia for years. He visited Spain. And he went to this place El Escoria, it was like a 16th century Augustinian monastery where they also had a king's burial place. And the king was magnificent, untold.
And an architect as they were constructing it built in arch. But the arch was kind of flat and the king said it's not going to hold. And he demanded that they put a column up under the middle of the arch. And the arch was assured him that it was going to hold.
And a column wasn't needed. A column wasn't necessary. The arch was safe. And the king's the king, of course.
And when he says, you must build a column, you build a column. And so the column was built. And eventually the king died. And the architect revealed that the column he built didn't actually support anything.
It was a full quarter inch short of the bottom of the arch. It looked like it reached the arch, but it never supported the arch at all. And the arch had never drooped. In fact, the tour guide in Donald Gray Barnhouse's day, 400 years later passed something between the arch and the top of that column.
It had still not even begun to droop because the arch was holding firm. And that's the way the word of God is. It holds firm. It's true.
You don't need to worry about it giving away. And it matters to have a kind of word like that. When so much today is in one ear out the other, so much today is just spoken to the air. It disappears like wind.
So much today is flippant and trivial. Cover stations about nothing. I do that all the time. TV about silliness and stupid things that will not last.
And I'm entertained by them. But I have to watch them again a year later because I basically forgotten what's in it. So much of that even the news is just flippant. But here is something substantial that never follows.
And we need a word like this. It's an old Anglican bishop named J.C. Ryle. He tells the story of a minister named Cecil who was at the deathbed of his own mother.
And he asked her, are you afraid to die? And she said no. And then he asked her this kind of older generation. So the way you put it was a little strange.
But he said, but why does the uncertainty of another state give you no concern? And she replied, because God has said, fear not. When you pass through the water, I will be with you. And when you pass through the rivers, they will not overflow.
Why do you not fear? Because God has said, I need not fear. He is always with me. And I'm safe in his arms.
We need to hear the kind of preaching that consoles us with the constancy of God's word. And the last thing is verses 9 to 11, we need the kind of preaching that consoles us with the care of the shepherd. Notice verses 9 to 11, it begins with verse 9, lift up your voice. Shout it from the top of the mountain proclaimed to Israel.
Perclaimed to Judah. Behold your God. Don't hold back. Lift it up.
Evangelize is the word. Preach good news. Behold your God. What kind of God is he?
Verses 10 and 11 is a summary statement. Two main things. One, he's strong. Verse 10, behold, the Lord comes with might and his arm rules for him.
Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense before him. So he says, notice how irresistible he is in power. How strong his arm is. We can't actually be entirely certain what is meant here by reward.
His reward is with him or his wages. What he's earned is with him. Some people think that refers to the saving benefits of Jesus that he gives to his people in association with pay their debt. Some people think that the reward is actually the people themselves, that he purchased as we know he did, a people for his own possession.
He went out and found his bride and rescued her and this is the reward that he has and she is with him. But notice here that it's his arm of strength that rules for him that guarantees this happens. But notice on the flip side, verse 11, his tenderness. He's not just strong but he's gentle.
He will, verse 11, tend his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms. He will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those who are with young. So he's the shepherd who cares and he cares for each one as each has need.
So if you're a little lamb and you can't keep up, he isn't so far out front that some get lost behind but he picks them up and carries them along. But if you're a you, a mother who's just given birth and you're a mom who's got little weak ones, little ones. He's right there in mist walking with you, making sure that he gently leads those who have young. The weak in his kingdom aren't treated like they're strong.
The immature aren't treated like they're mature. There's no condescension on his part in that way. He's not looking down at his nose at his weak people but he's being sure, like a loving, gentle, care and shepherd that not one of his little ones is lost. He's in the midst of the flock with them.
And so on the one hand, his arm rules for him and that's omnipotence. And on the other hand, his arm grabs and holds his lambs close to his heart. Upon his breast it says, we need both. We need both.
We need a shepherd like this. We can't get comfort from a God who has no strength and will get no comfort from a God who doesn't love us tenderly. We need someone who will fight for us with the arm of his power. My old summator professor tells the story of a young man in London in the 1860s in the east side of London.
The man himself was Samuel Stone. He was a minister and Anglican and he happened to hear a cry of a girl being attacked by three men. And so he rushed to the scene. Now Stone and his youth had trained as a boxer and he was a pretty good boxer.
In fact, a friend said of him that he had the muscles of a prize fighter and nerves like strings on a violin. And he took one uppercut at one guy and knocked him flat out cold. And then he began to pummel and beat the other one of the other men until that man was so badly beaten. He just cried out for mercy.
And the third guy ran away and Stone was said later that he'd give five pounds to get his hands on that fella's hide. My son and professor says he was a great minister. That's what the girl needed. Didn't she?
You know who Samuel Stone is? He wrote to him that church is one foundation. Is Jesus Christ her Lord? She is his new creation by water in the world from heaven.
He came and saw her to be his holy bride and with his blood. He bought her in for her life. He died. Says my professor Ralph Davis, isn't it marvelous that the fingers that wrote the lyrics to that find him belong to the fist that beat the snot out of those London thugs?
You might say he goes on to say that sounds awfully vicious. But I think it's glorious and I'm right. You think about that. You have to have a God who's strong enough to actually do something to help you and rescue you.
But you want a God who's tender enough to hold you close to his breast and his heart because he loves you. And that's the other side of it here. The shepherd picks up the lambs of his arms, holds them close. No one can snatch us out of his hands.
This is an unusual kind of leader. People in power often forget the people they're in power to serve. Historian Paul Johnson writes about Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin. He came to power in the Bolshevik Revolution.
Lenin never visited a factory, says Johnson, or a farm. But he was supposed to be concerned for the workers. He was never seen in the working class quarters of any town in which he visited. He was in the high class area.
And Johnson goes on to say it's okay to be theoretically concerned for the workers just as long as you don't have to get down there and live with it. But you don't have that with this shepherd. He's in the midst of the flock. He picks up the sheep.
He's not a pansy. But he's not a tyrant. And just as you are secure in his power, so you are warm in his pity because he cares for you. And that's the kind of preaching you need this year to.
May the Lord give us that kind of preaching. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we need Jesus to be the great shepherd, the chief shepherd of the sheep. We need his prophetic voice and his priestly in pastoral care and his keenly saving arm and strength and love and affection.
We pray that we would know these things in our lives for the glory of Christ and the good of our souls. In Jesus' name amen. Amen. Let's stand and sing praise to the Lord.