came to my thoughts that what is necessary, what is required
when one stands before another is that we hear the word of God. We hear a message from the Lord. That's what we're about. That's
what we are aspiring to. We're coming here, we're dedicating
not merely an hour, our whole day has been directed towards
this hour. We have known from the earliest
morning when we've been beginning our day's labour and activity
that this is how we're going to end our day. And week by week,
as we anticipate the coming together, the gathering together, the fellowshipping
together of this group of people, it is with this desire upon our
heart that we might hear a word from God. And as I was thinking about that, I remembered that little verse
in Isaiah, in chapter 40 when the Lord spoke to the prophet
and he said to Isaiah, 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. Well, we've got a few weeks ahead
of us, up until towards the end of May,
and I trust that the Lord will give us this time to share in
fellowship together, but that is going to be the banner of
my approach to you. As I come week by week, it is
with the intention of comforting the Lord's people. Comforting
the Lord's people in the midst of their troubles and their trials
and their disappointments and their hardships. Comfort ye,
comfort ye my people, saith your God. I want to just take these
verses that we've read, the first two verses from the beginning
of Isaiah this evening. This is going to be as simple
a message as it gets. And I want just to maybe rehearse,
reread the lines of these verses. Say them over a few times in
our hearing. and just think about what it
is to comfort the Lord's people. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
saith your God. The first thing I want to draw
your attention to is that the people to be comforted are the
Lord's people. They are the Lord's people. Comfort
ye my people. saith your God. I'm sure it's a well understood
truth. in the company of which we are
a part this evening, that the Lord has a people in this world. But let us restate it as clearly
as we can. The Lord has a people in this
world, and it's not the Jews. And it's not the Roman Catholics. And it's not the Protestants
or the Lutherans or the Baptists. It's nothing to do with denominations. It's nothing to do with nationalities. It is to do with the fact that
in the eternal purpose of Almighty God, he who is answerable to
none laid his love unilaterally, unconditionally, upon a certain
particular segment of humankind. He identified individuals, not
for any good or bad within them, not for any richness or poverty,
not for any skills or inabilities, but merely because he loved them. He loved them and he said to
them, I love you. And God chose them for his own. Sometimes people say, well, that's
not fair. That's not right that God should
do that. We choose who we love, do we
not? We have those that we love. God has his people in this world. And he says of these people,
you are mine. I have chosen you. I have loved
you. I have desired you with an everlasting
desire. I have longed for your company. I have longed for your fellowship. This is God, Almighty God, and
God who says that He has identified these people whom He knows by
name from the beginning of the world to the end of the world,
throughout all the nations of the world, certain individuals
whom He has chosen and called to Himself. And these are the
Lord's people. So here's the first thing for
us to understand. that the people of whom the Lord
speaks are his very own chosen beloved people. And here's another
thing. Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people,
saith your God. God speaks. God has spoken. in the beginning was the word. Have you ever thought about how
much significance and emphasis is laid on the fact that God
is a speaking God? In Genesis it says, in the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without
form and void and God said, Why did he say, let there be
light? Why did he say it? Who was he
speaking to? Why did he say, let there be
light? Because he's the God who speaks. But it's more than that. That
in itself is an amazing thing that God, God who transcends
us, who is beyond our capacity to know him, who has to and has
had to reveal himself. God is a spirit, infinite, eternal,
unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness,
and truth. This is God. And yet he's come
to us and he's spoken to us. There are people who don't speak
to me, but God has spoken to me. There's
people who would walk past me in the street and not speak to
me, but God has spoken to me. God who speaks. These are two amazing things.
That here is a God who has spoken to his people and he has told
them that he has chosen them for himself. There's a third thing. Despite
these two incredible facts, the Lord's people still need
comforting. Despite the fact that he has
chosen them from eternity, the great glorious God and has spoken
to them in words of tenderness and has revealed himself like
a king speaking to an ant. I mean, how do you begin to conceive
of the fact that here is a channel of communication that has been
opened between the Almighty and we who are sinners, corrupt
in our nature, fallen in our highest capacity, and yet He
has crossed all the boundaries He has come through all of those
hurdles and difficulties and challenges in order to speak
personally to us. Two tremendous facts, but despite
of them both, he has a people who still need comforting. Why is that? They're hurt. and they're bruised,
and they're battered, and they're weary, and they're sad, and they're
confused, and they're compromised, and they're regretful, and they're
downcast, and they're self-condemning. Here is God who has chosen us
for his own and revealed himself to us. And yet this is how we
are in ourselves. This is how we are. And it appears
to be such a contradiction that here is God who has come to us
in so many wonderful ways and spoken to us. and taught us things
about himself, and yet, look at us. Now, no personal disrespect intended,
but we're pitiful. We are. At one moment, we're full of
ourselves, And at the next, we want to crawl under a stone and
never be seen again. We're filled with such contradictions. And, you know, we sometimes pride
ourselves in being able to assess people's character and, you know,
I'm a good judge, I'm a good judge of character. I can, I
can, I know. We don't even know ourselves. We don't know what's going on
in our own hearts. We don't know what's at the very
core of our being and we encounter all the troubles and the difficulties
in this life and it hobbles us. It just does. We get so anxious. We get so worried. We become
dubious and doubtful about the promises that we've heard about
the way in God that God has spoken about the things that he has
said. And there's such a contradiction and a confusion in our breasts. You know, we speak, I sometimes
have the opportunity of speaking to pastors and these pastors
are men in their own right to have got responsibilities for
congregations and some of them have spent many, many years in
the ministry and had to deal with circumstances in people's
lives that have been very difficult and very And then, as we speak,
it becomes obvious that those very pastors are subject to exactly
the same troubles and trials and problems that they're endeavouring
to the best of their meagre abilities to deal with in the lives of
their congregations. Right? Because they can't handle
their children. And they don't know what to do
about the things that are going on in their children's lives.
And they don't know how to deal with the problems of their wives.
Or they're having difficulty with their finances, or they're
having issues about their feelings towards other people. And this
is the reality of our humanity. We are a whole bundle, a whole
bag full of contradictions and troubles. And that is why the
Lord has said that His people need to be comforted. Because
despite the fact that He is who He is and He's done what He's
done, we have so much trouble laying hold upon these things
and we are subject to the trials and the difficulties of this
life. Here's another thing. Amazingly, these verses tell
us that the task of comforting falls to the Lord's prophet. Now, it is true, we have a comforter. The Lord Jesus Christ said when
he was leaving and returning to his father's presence, he
said, I've got to go, but when I go, I will send another. I
will send a comforter to you. We have a comforter. God the
Holy Spirit is expressly, specifically called the comforter. And we're
not detracting from that in any way. Nevertheless, let us not imagine,
as some do, that because we've got the Holy Spirit, that we're
not going to have any troubles, or we're not going to have any
problems, or that we can name that problem and claim its solution. Or that we can set it down and
we can pray it out of existence. Or that we can deal with all
these hardships if we've just got the strength of faith to
do it. And that every time one of these
things gets us down, it's because we don't have sufficient faith
to deal with the problem. That's not anything to do with
the ministry of God the Holy Spirit. Listen. The Lord God
did not say to Isaiah, comfort ye, comfort ye my people, Holy
Spirit. He said to the prophet, saith
your God. It was the responsibility of
the preacher, the fourth teller, because that's what a prophet
is. A prophet was not In the beginning, certainly, one who
necessarily told future events. The Prophet was the one who told
forth. It's forth-telling, not fore-telling. There's a difference there. Forth-telling
is the work of the Prophet. Foretelling was part of that,
where a revelation had been given, but it was declaring who God
is, the foretelling. And it is this one. He is the one that is to bring
the comfort to the people of God, the foreteller. Now in Zion, Wondrous things
of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God. We've been singing,
thinking about Zion. Zion is the church of God. And
for that Zion, that people of God, to hear the word of God
at the lips of the preacher is the means by which comfort is
to be dispensed. It's the preacher's job in the
midst of the congregation to comfort the Lord's people. He
does that as he gives words of help, words of encouragement. It is the Holy Spirit within
each of us that takes those words and applies them spiritually
helping, nurturing, sustaining, maintaining, edifying, refreshing,
building up. It is the Holy Spirit that takes
and makes the words, the vocabulary, the things that are declared
spiritual to our souls. I can't do that. No preacher
can make spiritual change in an individual. It is the work
of the Holy Spirit, but God has chosen to use means, and the
means he has chosen is these earthen vessels that we speak
words one to another. We speak man to man. We speak man to mankind. And as we speak these words,
then there is comfort dispensed amongst the Lord's own people. And I want to mention just in
passing here that that is the importance both of preaching
and of fellowshipping where preaching is want to be made. That's why we have a responsibility
in this world, the Lord's people, to hear the preaching of the
gospel. This is where our comfort will
be drawn from. Let's not imagine that we're
going to get it anywhere else. We just won't. Now you might
have the best library that money can buy. You might have all the
reformed literature that you can get. You might be downloading
it by The second load from the internet, there's loads and loads
and loads, the best Puritan writers, all of the reformers, all of
the Baptist fathers, all of the church fathers, they're all there. But that's not going to comfort
your soul. We can mix. We can engage, we
can do whatever we like outside of the gathering together of
the Lord's people, but we're not going to get comfort for
our soul. This is where the Lord meets
his people. Matthew 18, 20. Where two or
three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst
of them. John 14, 18. I will not leave
you comfortless. I will come to you. It is when
the preacher declares the Lord Jesus Christ that the comfort
is distilled and dispensed in the souls of the Lord's people. Here's another thing. The things
that comfort God's people are not the things that comfort the
world. They're not the things that comfort
the natural man. Now the natural man, he receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God, they're foolishness unto
him. The natural man would come into
a situation like this and he would find what we're doing here
this evening quite ludicrous. foolish. He would say, how on
earth is this going to do any good to those people sitting
there? How on earth is this going to
make any difference to the trouble that they've got with their children,
or the problems that they've got at their work, or the trials
that they're having in their life, or all of the problems
that are part and parcel of this world? How is there going to
be any help given to them by this guy standing up at the front? But you see, he doesn't have
the Holy Spirit. He doesn't have the Comforter.
He doesn't know what Christ has done. And therefore, these words
that are spoken, which truly do comfort the Lord's people,
are comfortless to him, because they're foolishness. But the
Lord's people, they respond. They respond in an unnatural
way. They respond in a spiritual way. There's a spirit ministering
to a spirit. There's a calling forth and a
drawing out. There's a union that takes place.
There's a meaningfulness that engages together and fits together
when the Lord Jesus Christ is lifted up before his people. And they understand the troubles
of their lives in a proper context. They see the difficulties and
it doesn't give them a solution. It doesn't give them an answer
to invariably the problems that are imponderable. They are unanswerable. I don't know what you've to do
as far as your children are concerned. I don't know what you've to do
as far as your relationships are concerned or your work is
concerned or your troubles or your problems or your trials.
I don't have the answers, but I can show you the Lord Jesus
Christ. I can show you what he has done.
I can bring before you those things which he has spoken and
in a quite illogical way, there will be an entering in
in the deepness of your soul to a peace and a comfort and
a calmness that will transcend all the problems that crowd in
upon us day by day in this flesh. Salvation is to be spoken of
amongst the Lord's people. The blessings that Christ has
accomplished and achieved are to be spoken of. Comfort ye,
comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to
Jerusalem. that is the holy city, that is
Zion, that is the church of God, 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. Friends, I couldn't
begin to give you a pastoral answer for all your troubles. I couldn't begin to counsel you
through all your particular and peculiar problems, but I can
tell you this, that your victory has been won. that your battle
is over, that though you have in some way, and again, I find
it difficult to explain, but you have to fight a rearguard
action. There has to be, yet a skirmishing
goes on, but the battle's won. Christ has been there. He's done
that. You're still in the flesh. And as you're still in the flesh,
so these fleshy problems will beset you. You're still in your
nature a sinner. And that old man will still rise
up against you. But believe me, because the word
of God says it, the battle is won. The warfare is accomplished. Your iniquity is pardoned. our sins are gone. Those sins are real but they
have been removed from our account because the Lord Jesus Christ
has taken them away. Those sins, those acts of disobedience,
that That rebellion which is part of the old man's constant
struggle against the new man, which is part and parcel of our
everyday experience, which is the battle that we all fight
day by day. It's real, but the sin has been
destroyed. The judge, the offended one,
He has spoken and he has declared, I forgive you. I pardon you. More he says, look at verse two
again. She hath received of the Lord's
hand double for all her sins. Double for her sins is more than
justice. What she should have had was
condemnation. She has had that condemnation
taken away and more besides given to her. Where she was a debtor,
not only has her debt been paid, but she has been enriched. And
these riches are a double portion of the Lord, from the Lord. Paul says, we read it together
in Romans 5, where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound. In your life, no matter how bad
the sin has been, no matter how great the rebellion has been,
no matter how opposite and antagonistic you have been to the things of
God. God has both dealt with that
sin and given you much more besides. He has given double. And what
is the source of that grace and what is the source of that blessing?
It is the Lord's own hand. She hath received of the Lord's
hand Double for all her sins. The Lord's own hand. The hand that was pierced. The Lord's own hand. From the
Lord's own pierced hands. His grace has flowed to the people
of His choice, the people that He loves. From the Lord's own
pierced hands, He has given blessing upon blessing, grace upon grace,
mercy upon mercy, double portions to enrich and to bless and to
provide, that even in the midst of our confusion and difficulties
and trials, Yet there is an abiding strength provided to us and for
us, which comes to us from the very hands of Christ himself. I like the idea of the double
portion, and I like the fact that the Lord God doubled up
the comfort in the opening verse. He says, Comfort ye, comfort
ye my people, saith your God. He could have said, comfort ye
my people, saith your God. And we would have read it exactly
the same way, but he said it twice. Comfort ye, comfort ye
my people. That's because he knows we need
it more often. It needs to be repeated. It needs
to be reinforced. Double blessing is double comfort. And so he comforts his people.
This is a message which is to be cried aloud. Speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem and cry unto her. It is to be cried aloud in the
church. The Lord Jesus Christ is to be
lifted up, the one who has solved the problem, the one who has
fought the battle, the one who has established the way of escape,
the one who has redeemed his people from their sins. He is
to be lifted up, he is to be declared, he is to be spoken
of and in the speaking of Christ the church will be comforted
and the people of God will be blessed. So that's my job for
the weeks ahead. to comfort the Lord's people
by declaring to them Jesus Christ crucified, by bringing to your
attention once again, not an answer to all the individual
vagaries of your lives, but to show you where your strength
truly lies, where your victory finds its source, what has been
done for you by the Lord God, the King of all creation, and
that He has a love for you, and that He has spoken to you words
of comfort, and He has accomplished for you a way of salvation and
redemption and peace, and to show us that soon, very soon,
all these troubles will disappear, all these trials will be removed,
all this confusion will be answered, and we will see him and we will
know him and we will enter into his presence eternally. 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. Amen.