Isaiah chapter 40. The Grace
Gazette this week is on this passage. Chapter 40 verse 1 says,
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished,
that her iniquity is pardoned. For she hath received of the
Lord's hand double for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth
in the wilderness, prepare you 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 shall
be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the
rough places plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken it. The voice said, cry, and he said,
what shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the
goodness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth,
the flower fadeth, because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon
it. Surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower
fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever. O Zion,
that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain.
O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with
strength. Lift it up, be not afraid. Say
unto the cities of Judah, behold your God. Behold, the Lord will
come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him. Behold,
his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed
his flock, like a shepherd, he shall gather the lambs with his
arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that
are with young." Now this is a glorious passage of scripture.
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God, speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem. Now that passage, you could paraphrase
that by looking at the words where he says, speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem. As he is saying, breathe upon
her feelings. Speak ye comfortably. Now comfort
is something that we all desire. And we often are upset when we don't have comfort. I mean, the first thing that
happens when the power goes off and it's in the summertime is
we get to worrying about, well, the air conditioner is not going
to work. Oh, what a terrible thing. You know, we can't live without
air conditioning. So we desire the comforts of
the flesh. But this is not talking, of course,
about the comforts of the flesh. But it's rather speaking about
the comfort that comes to the people of God through the gospel. Now, except a man be born again,
he cannot see the kingdom of God. Except a man be born again,
he can't have any idea of what it is that I'm speaking about,
about being comforted by the gospel. Because the natural man,
it looks upon religious things. Natural men are not irreligious
by nature. Natural men are very religious
by nature. Now men in their wickedness,
they will war against any consideration of God And they will put that
out of their mind, but they cannot escape that, because as we've
said so many times, all they have to do is wake up in the
morning and look around them, and the glory of God is everywhere. You know, it cannot be hidden
from the natural man. The natural things cannot be
hidden from the natural man. But what the natural man cannot
see is the truth of who God is and a love for who God is. Now you can teach men that God
is an absolute sovereign and well we should because he is.
He doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among
the inhabitants of the earth. There's none that can stay his
hand of saying to him, what doest thou? He says, I am God, and
there is none else. He says, I am God, and there
is none like me. He says, I make peace, and I
create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things.
And so you can teach men this. I mean, you can drill it into
a child's mind until he can say those words back to you. But
only the Spirit of God can give him or her a love for that truth
because when the Spirit of God works in a man he will bring
him down to his upon his face before that Almighty God and
as the Lord opens his understanding he is overwhelmed with joy at
the consideration of the grandeur and majesty of this one of whom
he is being taught Oh, to be taught by the Spirit of God.
You know, the Lord said that He would do that. He said that
He would write His laws upon men's hearts. Now, He didn't
mean that He would get out a pen and write the Ten Commandments
there, but He meant that He would give men His people, those whom
He is pleased to awaken, a love for His truth. And the reason
that we love His truth is because it's His truth. See, men say,
well, I love the truth. Well, no, they really don't.
You know, all of these politicians and these judges and all of this,
they say, oh, we're just after the truth. We just want the truth. Well, no, they don't really want
the truth. What they want is what they understand the truth
to be. But see, when the Spirit of God
works in a man, he desires to know the truth, not the truth
that he thought. Because you see, the Apostle
Paul, or Saul, as he was on the road to Damascus, if you'd have
asked him if he believed the truth, he'd have said, absolutely.
He said, all I want is the truth. He said, what I'm doing is I'm
going out here to stamp out these people that are not speaking
the truth. Sounds a lot like the censorship
that we find every day around us of words that you can say
and words that you can't say and things that you shouldn't
speak and all of these things. The truth loves the light because
it's the truth. Nothing's hidden in the truth,
it is what it is. And it is what it is regardless
of whether men like it or not. And so the apostle Paul, when
he was on the road to Damascus, thinking that he loved the truth,
thinking that he knew the truth, when the Spirit of God smote
him, then he wanted to know the truth, did he not? He said, Lord,
who art thou? Now that's a strange request
for a Pharisee, is it not? Because from his youth, from
young days, he sat at the feet of Gamaliel and he learned the
truth, did he not? I mean, he learned who God was.
He knew, did he not? Yet here he is on the road to
Damascus saying, Lord, who art thou? Because you see, when the
Lord is pleased to awaken a man, he wants to know who art thou. Paul said, oh, that I might know
him. And the power is the resurrection.
Being not conformable to the flesh, but being conformable
to Him. Now see, that's what it is to
desire the truth of God. It's to desire the truth of God
in the inward parts, not just to be taught some things. I mean,
I was taught a lot of things when I was growing up. Some that
took root and some that didn't. But only the Spirit of God can
teach a man the glory and the joy and the wonder that is found
in Jesus Christ. And these are those to whom the
prophet has been instructed to go to. Comfort ye, comfort ye. Who did he say? My people. Most people when they think about
preaching the gospel, they think of it in terms of converting
sinners. You know, well we need to go
over here to Africa and preach the gospel. We need to do this,
we need to put on this evangelistic meeting so we can preach the
gospel. And so in the minds of most people,
that's what they think of when they think about preaching the
gospel. It's going out there. You know, it's for those people. It's for those that have not
heard. You know, I remember growing up, one of the big questions
that always came up, well, what about those that haven't heard?
You know, what happens to them? They haven't heard. Well, the
scripture says they have heard. There's nobody that's in the
earth that's ignorant. Now, it is a true thing. There
may be some people somewhere who have not heard the gospel
preached, but they have indeed heard enough of the glory of
God that if they had a mind to seek after God, they would find
Him. The Ethiopian eunuch. He pondered
these things, did he not? He didn't know. I don't know
if he heard Peter speak on the day of Pentecost or not, but
regardless of that, he was in his chariot and he was seeking.
Now why was he seeking? I mean, did the Lord say, you
know, here's somebody that's riding along in a chariot and
he's seeking me. I think I'll see if I can find somebody that
can go over there and help him. And he went through his rolodex
and he said, well, Philip's available, I'll send him down there. Is that how it happened? Of course
it isn't how it happened. You see, the Lord knew the Ethiopian
eunuch when he left Ethiopia. He knew the Ethiopian eunuch
when he was a young boy. He knew the Ethiopian's journey
because he marked it out that he would go to where he went
and that he would go to where he was going. And he sent Philip to where he
was. Have you ever wondered about
that? That here's this man riding along in a chair, and it just
so happened. I mean it just, you know, just one of those strange
coincidences in life that Philip showed up. Right as the man was
reading from a passage of scripture and Philip overheard him. Isn't that amazing? Well, you
see, it's all because of the sovereign God of whom we speak.
He ordained these things to come to pass in His mercy and His
kindness, because this Ethiopian was no different than any other
Ethiopian apart from one thing, the grace of God, which visited
him before he ever knew it. See, when he was reading that
Bible and he was pondering these things, he had no idea that the
Spirit of God had moved him to do so. He just thought he was
curious about these things. But oh, you see, he said, as
Philip said, well, do you know what you're reading about? He
said, no. He says, how can I? Unless somebody should show me.
And Philip preached to him. What did he preach to him? Did
he get in there and say, now here it is. You need to keep
the Ten Commandments. You need to do good. No, the
scripture says he preached unto him Jesus. He preached unto him
the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. So fully and so
completely. That this Ethiopian, by the grace
of God, as the Spirit moved in him, he said, wait a minute.
He said, here's water. What doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, thou mayest,
if thou believest with all thy heart. He said, I believe that
Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And Philip immediately took him
down into the water and baptized him. Now, that's an amazing account,
but it's really no different than the account of every one
of God's people. The circumstances are changed,
but the work of God is the same. He opens a man's eyes to see
things that he could not see. He gives him a desire to seek
after him. For there's none that seeketh
after God, according to what Scripture says. There's nobody
by nature that's seeking God. Oh, they seek religion, they
seek higher learning, they seek, you know, to answer questions
that pop up in their mind, but they're not seeking God. In fact,
most of those who have high intellectual pursuits are seeking to go away
from God. They say, well, that can't be
true. I mean, you know, when you come to the Bible and you
read that, well, there's no need to go to the Bible. What you
need to do is go find some real learned scientist and listen
to what he's got to say, because he knows, does he not? I mean,
wouldn't it just make more sense that a guy that had been to some
college somewhere and had sat under all these great professors,
that he would know more about what the truth was than you could
find in some old dusty book that's been around for thousands of
years? I mean, how could that be? And
so men aren't seeking God. No, they're seeking to go away
from God. But you see, God's seeking His people. And he finds
them. Because they're right where he
left them. They're right where he put them. You know, when you
lose something, usually you find out, don't you, that it's right
where you put it. Sometimes I get upset with my wife, because I
think she moved something of mine. And then sheepishly, I
have to come to the place to see, well, I actually put it
there, and I forgot where I put it. Well, the Lord never forgets
where he put stuff. He knows them that are his. It's
like he knew the Ethiopian unit before he ever left Ethiopia.
He knows those who belong to him. And these are those to whom
he sends Isaiah and says, comfort ye my people. He said, breathe
upon their feelings. Because you see, God's people
can be touched with the word of the Lord. The world cannot. The unbelieving world, apart
from the grace of God, cannot. But God's people can. They are
comforted by the truth of God. They're comforted by the bread
and the wine that He's given us. Not because it's some religious
thing that we go through. And we feel good because, well,
we did that. But because we see it as the
blood and the righteousness of Christ laid to our account. And
that's a glorious thing. And it's comforting to us. He
said, cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity
is pardoned, that she's received double. She's received of the
Lord's hand double for all her sins. That used to cause me a
lot of consternation as I read that. Well, she's received of
the Lord's hand double for all her sins. Well, if I received
from the Lord's hands double for all my sins, I would certainly
be destroyed. I mean, in the sense in which
I would think of it, you know, when I first read that. If I
received double for my sins, then would I not be destroyed?
Because I mean, one reception from the Lord for my sin would
destroy me, let alone two times. Well, what does he mean? Well,
it means it's totally the opposite of what we ought to have. You see, we've received double. When we should have received
the curse of God, we've received his blessing. You remember when
Benjamin, when he sat down to eat, when the sons of Jacob had
come over to Egypt. And when he sat down to eat,
he had double what all the rest of them had. And they all looked
at him and they thought, well, what's going on here? And then when he sent him back,
he put double. He had put His money back in
His case. That's what it means. It means
He gave us back more than what we deserved. See, when we deserve
destruction, He has made us sons, heirs of God, joint heirs with
Jesus Christ. He has given us what we did not
deserve. Oh, what a glorious thing. Now
that can only be received and rejoiced in by those who've been
awakened and made knowledgeable that they are sinners in God's
sight. Because most people think they deserve something from God,
do they not? I mean they get mad when things
don't turn out like they want them to. They say, well why God,
why did this happen to me? The child of God. Now even in
the flesh, we might sometimes say such a thing as that. But
when we've had time to reflect upon it, and the Spirit of God
has wrought His work in our mind and heart, we know better. And
we say, oh Lord, you should have destroyed us, but you didn't.
And so how could any setback, whatever it might be in this
world, cause us to turn away from Him? Those who are born
again, they can't. They might say, think in their
flesh for a moment. Remember Job's wife, she told
him, curse God and die. He said, why? I mean, shall we
receive good from the hand of the Lord and not evil? I mean,
all things the Lord has ordained for our good. And that can only
be received by those that rejoice in the goodness of God. having
an understanding, comfort ye, comfort ye my people, they've
received double for all their sins. Every valley shall be exalted,
every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked
shall be made straight, and the rough places plain, and the glory
of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Oh, what a glorious
thing it is to realize that the sons of God are knit together
in bonds of love and see the things of God together. Now you
see, I've often said this, the Lord puts us together for a good
reason. Because every one of you at some
point in time during the course of your life or even in the course
of a week, you've decided You're gonna quit. You've decided I
can't, you know, I don't even know if what I'm thinking here
is true or not. I mean, doubts and fears come
into your mind. It's the way of the flesh. But
the Lord brings us together and we come together and we see Brother
John sitting over there and we say, well, you know, John, he
hadn't quit. I wanted to quit, but I can't because I'm seeing
him. And I'm encouraged by him. We're made to help one another,
to bear one another's burden, to strengthen one another, to
cause one another to rejoice in the things of God, to comfort
one another with the gospel. And so, As we think about the
gospel, and like I said when I started off, many people think
of the gospel as going out there. We gotta go, you know, we're
gonna send missionaries. We're gonna do all these different
things. We're gonna have this campaign. We're gonna go out
there and win those people. Well, brethren, the gospel's
for the people of God. It's for those whom God is pleased
to awaken to hear it. It's a saver of life to them.
It's that which is beneficial to them. It's the saver of death
to those who don't have ears to hear it. They don't care anything
about it. It's water off of a duck's back. It doesn't mean anything
to them. But he said, comfort ye my people. Speak ye comfortably to who?
Jerusalem. Jerusalem, they're my people. He said, speak comfortably to
them, tell them. that I have won their battles.
I have pardoned their iniquity. I have triumphed. Do we not read
the book of the Revelation and we read about him who's on the
white horse? Now, a lot of people, they read
the book of the Revelation and they say, oh, he's gonna ride
on the white horse. Well, let me tell you something.
He's already rode the white horse because he went forth conquering
and to conquer. And there's nothing left for
him to conquer. He has triumphed gloriously.
The horse and the rider hath he thrown into the sea. And he
is that one who leads his army clothed in white linen, made
pure and white, washed in the blood of the lamb. And he says,
these are my people. They belong to me. And I have
bled and died for their sake. And I have forgiven them. And
I have removed, listen to this, He has removed our sin as far
as the East is from the West. Now how far is the East from
the West? You know, you can go, He didn't
say as the North from the South, because you can go to the North
Pole and you can go to the South Pole and you can measure the
distance that it is from the North Pole to the South Pole.
But you can't measure how far it is from the east to the west.
He remembers it no more. It's gone, dear brethren. There's
therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. Now that's an important point,
is it not? Now a lot of people say, well,
you know, the Lord Jesus, he died for all men. He took away
the sin of everybody. Well, if that be the case, then
everybody's sin is taken away and all men are the children
of God, but that's not what the scripture teaches us. The Lord
Jesus paid the price for his people. And his people are known
only in one fashion, and that is because in his own time they
believed. I mean, how could a man believe
apart from the grace of God? You can't believe unless God
gives you grace to do so. But when he gives you grace to
do so, you can't do anything else. I mean, isn't that a glorious
thing? Isn't that a glorious thought? That he will not cast us off.
All that the Father giveth me shall come to me. In him that
cometh to me, I will know how it is cast out. He'll never cast
off one who has come to him. Oh, what a glorious God he is. Cry and say, what shall I cry?
All flesh is grass, and all the goodness thereof is as the flower
of the field. The grass withereth, the flower
fadeth, because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely
the people is grass. The wind bloweth where it listeth,
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it
cometh. So is every one that is born of the Spirit of God.
The Lord is that one who blows, and he withers the grass. Thank
God he does. The Apostle Paul, Saul of Tarsus,
he withered his grass, did he not? You know, one day Saul's
riding along, walking along the pathway, and his grass, his fields
are verdant green. And in a moment's time, they've
turned brown. And there's nothing there. That's
the mercy of God. Oh, when the Lord strips you
bare of all hope, that's the mercy of God. When the Lord strips
you bare and causes you to look to Christ, that's a glorious
time. And you have been blessed. And he is pleased to give you
the light. That's why we preach the gospel.
We don't preach the gospel in order to give men life. We preach the gospel in order
to give men light. Because the Lord's ordained the
gospel to bring life and immortality to light. But it's his spirit
that gives men ears to hear it, and hearing to believe it. Because
you see, everyone that hear it, by the grace of God, given an
ear to hear, he believes it. And he can't not believe it.
Peter, when you also go away, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou
hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that
thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. That's our
hope. And dear brethren, that's the
message that we preach to the people of God. and we seek to
comfort the people of God, even as when we take this supper.
That's the purpose. See, the Lord Jesus, he didn't
need for us to go through some ritual. Now, there are certain
religions and things that are designed by men where these things
become necessities to go through these rituals for some external
reason. These are not rituals. This is
the mercy of God visited upon us. He said, this do as often
as you do it in remembrance of me. Now why did he tell us to
do that? Same thing he told Isaiah, comfort ye, comfort ye my people. He says, I'm not gonna leave
you comfortless. He says, I'm gonna send a comforter.
And when he has come, he will testify of me. Now dear brethren,
what do we do when we eat this bread and drink this cup, but
we testify of Christ. How do we do that? Because the
Spirit of the living God has moved in us to do so. And we believe that the blood
of Jesus Christ taketh away our sin. And that's comforting. Oh, it's not make-believe. Some
people have a religion of make-believe. And they think that because they
have walked down a church aisle, signed a card, or been somewhere,
that that causes them to be united to Christ. Can't do it. But that which the spirit of
God does in a man causes him to delight in the things of God. Oh, that he might work in us
such a way. that he might comfort the people of God. And he will.
See, I have no doubt that he will. Because the gospel that
we preach is a saver of life unto life to some, it's a saver
of death to others. Have no regard to it. It goes
in one ear and out the other. They're not concerned at all.
God's people, however, desire the comfort that comes in the
gospel. And we preach the gospel for
the glory of God. Because you see, the people of
God, that's what they desire is the glory of God, is it not?
I mean, I don't want anybody to have glory, you know. And this is just a small thing,
and I don't mean anything by it. It's no big deal. I've often
been asked, well, why don't you put your name on the things that
you write? Because I don't care if anybody
knows who I am. I don't care if anybody knows
who wrote it. If it's the truth of God, I want the glory of God
to be seen. Oh, that he might be glorified
and magnified in all things.