Good evening, brethren. We should
get started. I'm gonna read our, I'm gonna
open with reading our text this evening, which is found in Isaiah
chapter 40. And Lord willing, we'll get through
the first eight verses of the chapter. Isaiah 40, verses one
through eight. 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 ye 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
goodliness 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. Let's pray to the Lord. Our gracious
Lord, Father, we thank you for your mercy to gather your people
this evening to hear your gospel. And Lord, we thank you for this
because we know that it is of your hand and it's for the purpose
of teaching your people, of comforting your people. Lord, you and your
infinite wisdom know perfectly how to strip every one of us. You know perfectly how to bring
every one of us down from our high mountain and exalted views
of self. And Lord, you know what we have
need of, Lord, and how desperate we are for your grace. for your
mercy and that it continue, Lord, to us. Father, we are thankful
that we can pray to you that you have brought us out of darkness,
made us to know these things about ourselves, how insufficient
we are and unable we are to save ourselves, to work righteousness,
to do anything that is pleasing to you in and of this flesh. And that's why, Lord, we're so
thankful for the salvation that you've provided in your Son,
Jesus Christ, that it is full, complete, accomplished in Him. And Father, we pray that you
would now bless this hour with your people, that you would walk
among us, and that your voice would be heard, and that you
would cause this gospel word to be made effectual in the hearts
of your people, that they would be comforted, and that sinners
would be called out of darkness, and out of confusion, and out
of the crooked way, and from the rough places, Lord, that
you would make all things plain to your people in the simplicity
of Jesus Christ. Lord, we ask that you would indeed
do this now for us. because we have nothing in ourselves
and we have no hope of ourselves. And Lord, if you be not with
us, if you go not with us, Lord, then our work and our walk and
our words are in vain. And so Lord, we pray concerning
the need that we have as a body here in this part of Missouri,
that you would provide a public meeting place for your people,
that we would be allowed to gather together again in a building
that we have more control over and are able to meet regularly. Lord, that you would bless it,
that you would indeed open a door, that you would cause us to find
this place and to be able to secure it, and that you would
provide for us that we may continue in it as long as you have us
there. And Lord, we pray that you would
establish this body here. We hear of those that have been
home and quarantined for a long time and desire to be gathered
with your people and meet with them, to meet the brethren and
to hear the word preached. And they look forward to that.
So Lord, we ask that you would do this for us, that you would
gather your people together strengthen and nourish us in the gospel
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And Lord, those of us
that are sick or weary or troubled or afflicted and need your guidance
and your comfort, Lord, we ask that you would comfort your people,
that you would minister to them, that you would help your people,
that you would heal your people and that you would provide for
them in Jesus Christ. Help us, Lord, to love our brethren,
to be mindful of them and thoughtful of one another, and to be helpers
of their joy in the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us in this time
when the love of many grows cold and that anger is stirred in
the hearts. and fear in the minds and foolish
things are said and thought. Father, have mercy upon us and
help us to be ministers of light, ministers of the gospel, ambassadors
for Christ, that we would remember the purpose for which you have
put us here, that we would be a light in the darkness, declaring
Christ our Savior and his glory Father, bless this word now to
the hearts and minds of your people. Remember the lost, Lord,
that you would indeed deliver them from bondage, that we would
see them gathered into your kingdom. For it's in Christ's name that
we pray these things, trusting that you are able and willing
to do them. Amen. Okay, brethren, so our text is
Isaiah 40, and we'll be looking at verses one through eight.
Now, if you remember, in the previous chapter, the church
was told that she's going to go into captivity by the Babylonians. She's going to be taken away
into captivity. She's heard this. Look there
at Isaiah 39. And we'll start in verse five
and then look at verse six. Then said Isaiah to Hezekiah,
hear the word of the Lord of hosts. Behold, the days come
that all that is in thine house and that which thy fathers have
laid up in store until this day shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, saith
the Lord. Now, We're familiar with these
words. We're familiar because we understand
that the Lord brings judgment upon the inhabitants of the earth. We understand that there's a
time when the Lord judges. There's a pattern of judgment
that we see where the wicked are judged for their sin. And the world hears this. They've
been hearing this for a long time, but they easily forget
how that the Lord has brought these judgments to pass. We know
that there's been many times throughout history, we see it
in the history of the church. such as them going into captivity
in Babylon. And we know in history that there
are simply times of great stress and times of great change and overturning of things, a time
of judgment, a time of hardship, a time of the removal of things
and the setting up of new things. And the world, they hear this.
They know, they've heard that there's a culmination of all
these things. There will be a consumption of
these things. There will be an end to the work
of God here on earth. And yet, they scoff at it. They
jeer this truth. They make fun of us. They accuse
us of having tinfoil hats and being guilty of some conspiracy
theory about God judging the earth. And while it's true that
we can fall into any number of conspiracy theories because we
don't know how things are going to play out and they typically
don't play out the way we think they will, but we know that God
has a purpose and that according to his word, when Christ returns,
he shall bring to judgment the wicked and raise his people and
bring them to himself. All right, we know this to be
so. And so the people of God, they hear of the warning of God. They hear this word that they're
going into captivity and they are made tender. by the Lord. They're made to hear the word
of the Lord, and they believe the Lord. They trust that the
Lord will do what he says, and so they are made humble. and they humble themselves because
they are made humble by the Lord, and they humble themselves under
the mighty hand of God, because we know that it's only God who
can provide for us, and care for us, and take care of our
needs that are going to be there in times of judgment upon the
wicked. And so we can be sure that our
God will provide, though the wicked be judged, that judgment
isn't for us, it's for the wicked. And so the righteous shall be
provided for, even though we go through paths and times of
difficulty. And so we'll see that the Spirit
in his mysterious, beautiful way that he does it, he'll provide
and he'll minister to the people and we'll see and know the hand
of our God providing for us, even if things are different
for us than maybe they are for us today. We understand these judgments
are falling upon the inhabitants of the earth to judge their works
and their sin, but it always proves to be a blessing for the
people of God. When our Lord was speaking of
judgment, and he was quoting from Daniel chapter 12, the last
chapter of Daniel, he spoke of the fiery judgment that shall
come upon the inhabitants of the earth, and he said in Matthew
13, 43, Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the
kingdom of their father. Who hath ears to hear, let him
hear." And if you look, that's very similar language to what
the Lord told Daniel himself. He said, go your way, Daniel. You shall have rest. You shall
rest with your fathers. You go your way. And it's a word
of comfort to the people of God to know that God has provided
all things for you. And so we've seen this pattern
now multiple times in Isaiah, where the wicked must be judged,
but the Lord always provides richly for his people. Some through
deliverance, some are delivered, we know in the history of the
church, and some are willing not to be delivered, but are
given grace and great faith and great strength to endure, to
suffer for the name of Christ. We read this in Hebrews 11, 35, this is just one verse in that
great chapter, that women received their dead, raised to life again,
and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they
might obtain a better resurrection. So, in all these things, we know
that the Lord's will shall be done. The Lord's will is going
to be done in the earth, and grace grace shall be given to
his people. And so this is the message of
comfort that we're sent to preach. We're to declare the truth that
men are sinners, that men cannot save themselves. They will not.
They will not change. They will not save themselves
and they will not turn from their wicked ways. They're going to
be brought into judgment. And the people of God will be
brought out of the darkness, brought out of the prison and
comforted in the salvation of their God. And so I've titled
this message, The Comfort of God's People. The Comfort of
God's People. And I want to open with the comforting
words that God gives to the prophet to speak to you, his people.
He declares there in verse one, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
saith your God. What should strike us right there
is that holy God, the one who created all things, has a people,
a peculiar people whom he loves and is determined to provide
comfort to them. All right, understand that. He's
speaking words of comfort to you. All right, now this church
had just heard of them going into Babylon, and he's providing
comfort to the church. All right, so these are the people
of his choosing, and he will have them comforted. And so this is a people who will
hear the Lord. We're gonna hear it, and we're
not gonna pretend like it's not true. We're not gonna pretend
like this thing isn't happening. we're going to believe the Lord
because we're going to be made by the Lord to hear it and to
stand at the ready to serve Him and to minister the gospel in
His kingdom. And the comfort is that He's
going to see to it. He's going to see to it that
what we have need of hearing, we shall hear it and we shall
receive it and believe it. We're gonna believe it and receive
that word of the Lord to the salvation of our souls, because
it's all His work. And this is what the Lord our
God says to His chosen people here, verse two. Speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem and cry unto her, and here's three things, that
her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned,
and that she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all
her sins." And so the comfort we understand Today now, with
the mystery of God and salvation revealed to his people, we understand
that this comfort is found and realized in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the salvation of his people. He is the salvation that God
has provided and all things are made ready by him. Just look
at this. The word in here says in verse
one and two, comfort ye, comfort ye my people, speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem and cry unto her. So that's three times that the
Lord says to comfort his church. He means to comfort you. He means
to comfort you, that you be comforted by this, that you be not troubled.
that you be not troubled by the coming judgment upon the wicked,
but that you be comforted, knowing that your God loves you, and
that he chose you, and that he's speaking these words of comfort
to your ears, to your heart, that you should hear them and
believe him, believe him, hope in him, trust in him, believe
his word. And so, the Lord is is constantly
providing us with the gospel. He's made this our chief purpose,
is to preach the glory of his name, to preach the salvation
of his people, to continually declare these words to the people
of God, because we understand that just through the course
of a week, right? When we are the, exposed to the
sin of the world and the foolishness of the world and our hearts and
minds taken up with the passing follies of this world, not to
mention the evil in our own heart, the evil of our own flesh, the
hardness and the stubbornness and the willingness to be deceived
in the flesh. We are, if left to ourselves
just like Esau, who would sell his birthright for a measly pot
of red stew. And that's what, we know it's
true, that that's what we would do. If left to ourselves, we
would go off into that folly. And so, with the pride of our
heart, and all the various trials and afflictions, sorrows and
sufferings, all the things that we go through, the things that
make us weary in the way, and cause us to despair in the way,
and cause us to count ourselves unclean and the forgetfulness
of what we have heard and learned and how quick we are to despair
of things that are going on and to forget the beautiful, comforting
words of the gospel of our God. And so what our God does is he
sends ministers, ministers to preach to comfort his people
over and over and over again with the gospel so that we hear
it and are refreshed and renewed again by the spirit of the Lord
in his word, in the words that he would have us to hear and
to believe. And so we're thankful, right? When we are brought to see again
and again how the Lord has done this, we're made to delight in
the kindness and the grace of our God, who, though we've forgotten
of Him, He's not forgotten us. Though we've grown hard toward
Him, He's not grown hard toward us. Though we've walked in paths
we ought not to walk, He's walked graciously toward us, and He
turns us from going to the left or the right, and he puts us
on the highway in the desert place, the highway which is Christ,
and he causes us to go onward to Zion, marching onward to Zion,
trusting him, believing him, comforted in him. This gospel
is the substance of our very comfort in the Son of God. Now,
he tells his church here that her warfare is accomplished. Her warfare is accomplished. Again, this is speaking of our
salvation. In other words, our God has already
made for us all things ready. Everything that needed to be
done is accomplished. It's already been made complete
and secured by the Lord Jesus Christ himself. He said, I go
to prepare a place for you. He's made all things ready for
you, even now, brethren. And so this is the salvation
which he's accomplished for us in his death, his burial, and
his resurrection. And so what the Lord's saying
to us is that he's not waiting for man to do something. He's not waiting for us to do
something that merits his favor before he will do something for
us. That's how the world's religion teaches it. It's a constant focus
on what you need to do. God's done all he can do, but
he can't do no more. No, the Lord says our warfare
is accomplished. We have a warfare in us. There
is a raging war. You that believe, there is a
warfare. And we see terrifying sights
when we see what we are our heart and in our minds when left to
ourselves, but the Lord promises us that that warfare is accomplished. The battle's already won. He's
done the work so that the works were finished before the foundation
of the world, right? They're finished in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And so our God is telling us
that everything necessary, Is faith necessary? Absolutely faith
is necessary. And it's God who reveals faith
in the sinner. It's our God who bears the fruit
of faith in his children. It's God who bears the fruits
of righteousness. whereby we trust Him and look
to Him and continue in Him, hope in Him, believe in Him, serve
Him and serve one another. Our God does these things, and
so it's a comfort for us not to sit back and say, well then,
God's going to do everything. It's a comfort to us to continue
to fight and to strive against sin, to fight the good fight,
to continue on in the warfare knowing that the victory, the
battle, is won, that Christ has the victory in you. You shall
overcome because he's already overcome the world. And so that's
a comfort, a comfort, not for us to be lazy and indifferent
then to things, but to trust him and to believe him and to
press on in his truth, Then he says that her iniquity is pardoned. Her iniquity is pardoned. This
is because sin must be pardoned. The love that God has for his
people doesn't mean that he just pretends their sin was never
committed and just lets them go for that. That sin was paid
for. That debt that we owed was paid
for by the Lord Jesus Christ himself. He bore the burden of
our sin. He took on the debt that we owed
to God for perfect righteousness. He took on the penalty of our
sin, paying the penalty by bearing the wrath and the judgment of
God. which was due to us. It had to be paid and Christ
bore that debt for us. He bore that penalty of our sin
so that now our God tells us plainly that he is satisfied
that the law which was against us and contrary to us because
of the weakness of our flesh is satisfied. It's been fulfilled,
complete. Christ, the righteous, has obtained
righteousness and redemption for his people. We're told that
the law has nothing more to say to us because we have died to
the law. We're told in Romans 6, 6, our
old man is crucified with him. This flesh is crucified even
now with Christ, so that we're dead to the law, that we should
be married to another, even Christ, by whom we bear his seed and
bring forth spiritual fruits unto God, of Christ our husband,
of Christ our husband. And so it's affirmed to us in
2 Corinthians 5.21, that God hath made him to be sin for us,
who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him." And so, brethren, Christ has reconciled sinners
to God. And He tells us that all who
believe Him, they shall find. And that day, even now, when
we stand in this flesh, even now we know we have received
the remission of our sins. That's our hope which He has
revealed in us in His Son. And all who believe on Him shall
find remission of their sins." And you know what that word remission
is? It means that we are set free from the penalty of sin. We go free from the penalty of
of sin because Christ, the Lamb of God, our Shorty, the one who
came to be our sacrifice, stood in the place and took that penalty. He died our death that we should
go free of the penalty of that sin and that we should know the
true living God. And so to the church, he says,
she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. And I understand that to be there
that Christ our husband, for his church, who was betrothed
to him by the Father in eternity past, Christ our husband has
put away the sin of his bride, just as we described before,
and and He's given her the beauty of His holiness, and He's adorned
her with His righteousness, so that we stand before the Father
faultless, before His throne, accepted of Him, a bride adorned,
beloved of the Father, even as He loves the Son. And in Him
we are adopted and brought into the family of God. And He's comforting
us, He's comforting us with these words even now. And not only
that. but the double portion is that
he's made this known to us. Not only did he accomplish this
for us, but he's made it known to us by taking us from that
prison and that bondage of the flesh and bondage of sin and
death and delivered us from the strong man's house that we might
have fellowship with him and fellowship with the saints and
are made partakers even now. of His glory and of the comfort
of our God that He has done this for us. We might stand ever looking
to Him, waiting for the return of our Savior, and in the meantime,
serving Him and serving His people. All right, now, the next point
here is the work of the preacher. And so the message of comfort
must be preached. It must be preached, and it's
preached to the sinner saved, and it's preached to the sinner
saved repeatedly. over and over, we are to hear
this word of comfort. And the reason that it remains
such a comfort to us is because by the power and the glory of
God in his word, he is able and does strip us of the pride and
the arrogancy of this flesh. He strips us of that self-righteousness
which rises up in the flesh when we have gained some bit of knowledge,
especially a knowledge in the things of God, and we think we
know something, and we think we know something that others
don't know, and that others need to understand the way we understand
them. And so we grow in confidence and in knowledge and in pride,
and it's the Spirit of God that brings us down to see that we've
not done this for ourselves, but our God has done this for
us in his grace and mercy. And so the Lord sends ministers
to comfort, to do the stripping and the comforting through the
preaching of the word. And so to illustrate this here,
we have the foretelling of John the Baptist. Isaiah 40, verse
three. the voice of him that crieth
in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight
in the desert a highway for our God." And so John here is ascribed
as being the voice, the voice, showing the singularity of his
purpose. The purpose of John is to declare
the coming of the Lord. He's to prepare the way of the
Lord. And so John was a prophet, who
proclaimed the coming of Jesus Christ. And he's proclaiming
that Christ is coming to a people whose hearts are but a desert. And just like a desert, they're
not bearing any food that we would find edible, right? What's
crawling around in deserts? But creeping things, things that
are unclean and sinful, you know, a picture of sin and darkness,
and that which is to be rejected and not eaten and not partaken
of. It's dry and barren. It's fallow. It's fallow ground,
meaning it's hard ground. And so John is sent to preach
the Word, and his preaching breaks up that hard and stony ground
that they should be made ready for the coming of the Lord, for
the Lord to come and to declare His Word and speak his word into
the heart of his people. All right, and so this is why
John is sent, and that's what gospel preachers are sent to
do as well. We're sent to preach the gospel. to preach the gospel, to declare
what God himself has done for sinners, to declare that God
shall judge the world for their sin and their iniquity, but that
he in mercy has provided salvation in his son Jesus Christ, to tell
you to flee to the salvation of God, look to Christ, Look
to him, cry out to him for mercy and grace because Christ in Christ
alone is the one who saves his people. And so here we see the
effect then of John's ministry. Isaiah 40 verse four. 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 Now, in
one sense here, the Lord is speaking of the leveling of all people. He's going to level all people.
In other words, none of us is exalted or less than another. We're all sinners, guilty of
sin and have nothing to boast in before God. And so all the
hiding places are All the valleys that man will sink to and scurry
away into to try and hide himself from God, these things shall
be removed. And all the mountains and the
hills, the high places of our self-righteousness and our self-worth
will all be brought down to nothing before the true and living God.
And everything that's been turned
out of the way by the course of sin will be laid bare. and
be brought for us to see and to know that what we've done
is wrong. What we've done is wicked in
the sight of holy God. And Paul describes this work
when he was writing to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 10, he said
in verse four and five, that the weapons of our warfare are
not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. casting down imaginations and
every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge
of God, and bringing into captivity every thought, every sinking
thought that we have to the obedience of Christ. That's done through
the preaching of the gospel, attended to by the power of the
Spirit of God to make it effectual in the hearts of His people. But we also see how this speaks
to the work of the Lord who separates the precious from the vile, right? Those sinners who are cast down,
who are cast out as the off-scouring of the people, the sinners and
publicans in the time when Christ walked the earth, those whose
practices are deemed too filthy, too vile, too dark, for the Lord
to forgive them, these souls, they're cast down into the valley. and they are made to think there
is no hope, there is no salvation from them, but the Lord says,
these shall be exalted. And we saw that, we saw that
when Christ was on the earth, so that publicans and whores
and drunkards and murderers went into the kingdom of heaven before
the self-righteous went into the kingdom of heaven. Many Pharisees
heard and should have known and never entered into the kingdom
and yet the worst of the worst went into the kingdom before
they did and found comfort of the Lord. And so there's nothing
the Lord says, there's nothing that his blood is not able to
cleanse and no stain that his blood is not able to remove. He is able, He is able to cleanse
from all sin. All who come to Him shall find
remission of sins. But those that do not believe,
they will not come. They will not come to Christ
that they might have life of Him. Then we see that those who
are deemed mighty and wonderful in the eyes of man, those that
were teachers and so heady and so knowledgeable about things,
When they heard Christ, they were offended, because it didn't
line up with what they thought. He didn't speak well of them,
He didn't speak well of their works, and so they were offended.
And rather than understand why He didn't speak well of their
works, they stumbled over the very stone that God had appointed
for the salvation of His people. they stumbled over that stumbling
stone, the chief stone, the one that God chose himself to save
his people. And so they were made low. And so in this manner, through
the exaltation of Christ and the abasement of the sinner,
through the preaching of God's grace and the salvation of sinners,
we see the work of our God to make all things right, to level
things the way they are to be leveled, to draw out his people
into the light of salvation and to show that man loves darkness
because his deeds are evil and he will not come into the light
lest his deeds should be exposed. but that the power and the glory
of God is to save sinners, trophies of his grace from every walk,
every tribe, every tongue, every people, every nation, as it pleases
him to shut the mouth of man so that we have nothing to boast
of and we can't stand and say, God, why have you made me like
this? But we are brought to see, Lord, you do all things well. And what can I say to you? You
are perfect and right. And so, those crooked practices,
right, those crooked practices whereby we were thought that
these things were right when we practiced dead letter, man-made
religion, those crooked places are made straight in the Gospel,
aren't they? All that stuff that clouded and
confused and got in the way is made straight through the gospel
of Jesus Christ. And then those rough places,
those rough passages, and those hard to understand things, they're
made plain in the preaching of the simplicity of Jesus Christ. Are they not? Right? Everything
that's confusing. When you don't know what it's
saying, the one thing you do know is that it's speaking of
Christ. And it's declaring how Christ
himself saves his people fully and perfectly and securely. And so the gospel, brethren,
strips man of every false notion, which are borne up under just
the foolishness of man and his dead religion without the Spirit
of God. And the voice of the preacher
joins with the voice of the Spirit of God, who makes it effectual
in the hearts of his people. When we speak the truth, God,
God, when it's appointed of Him, we declare the truth and He attends
that word and makes it effectual in His people. So that Isaiah
40, verse five, we see the glory of the Lord shall be revealed
and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken it. And so when Christ came, because
it's speaking to John the Baptist who spoke, to prepare the way
of the Lord. When Christ came, sinners were
abased, they were brought low, and He was exalted, and the eyes
of His people and all flesh saw it together." Now this brings
us to our final point in which we see the salvation of the Lord. And so the Lord reminds his people
here that because of the hardness of our hearts and the dullness
of our hearing, right? Because we will not hear it,
we don't like to hear it, we'd rather be doing anything else
but hearing the truth of God and Jesus Christ, right? We see
that because of the dullness of our hearing. We see it witnessed
in the countless numbers of different denominations all speaking to
the works of man rather than glorifying God before man by
showing that God is able to save and that God does all things
well. They speak of man's works and what he's wrought and what
he needs to do. But our God turns us from that
and shows us that no, no, we cannot save ourselves, we are
not able to work the salvation, we depend upon Him to do it. And that's what we see here in
verse 6, Isaiah 40 verse 6. The voice said, cry, and he said,
what shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the
goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. Now, this
is why sinners who are made to know what they are in themselves
rejoice in the comforting words of what we heard in verse two,
that our warfare is accomplished, that our iniquity is pardoned,
and that we've received double for all our sins. Because the
Lord makes us to know that we are but grass, unable to work
a righteousness for ourselves. That man, God says, is but a
weak blade of grass that is nothing but a flimsy thing that gets
stepped on and pushed over and brought to nothing. Dries up
in the heat of the sun, right, and is there for a little time,
gets mowed down by whatever it is that comes over it. And so,
man is weak. And the best of men are but a
flower. We have a day lily in the backyard
now and it just started to bloom and it comes up in the morning
looking all beautiful and glorious and by the next morning it's
a shriveled up thing that's dead and there's another flower next
to it that's risen up and it thinks it's all that and more
and it's looking all glorious but it'll be dead the next day
itself. And so that's really what man
is. He's just here today and gone tomorrow incapable of sustaining
its glory and its legacy and things of that. Man forgets about
them because he thinks in his own heart that he's so much better.
But our Lord says in verse 7, the grass withereth, the flower
fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely
the people is grass. And so to those sinners that
are passed by God, and this is a fearful thing, to those that
are just passed by God, the Lord has shown us that He raises up
some for the purpose of doing certain things in the earth,
right? It's their heart to do wickedly,
and so the Lord will have them do what they would do so long
as it glorifies Him and brings to pass His will. He raises up
some, He hardens some, and He does with them what He will,
but they eventually die out and they stand before God and shall
go off into everlasting habitations where they shall suffer and bear
the penalty of their sin. But the sinners saved by the
true and living God, His Spirit also bloweth upon them. His Spirit bloweth upon them,
and this is done through the preaching, the preaching as you're
hearing even now, where the glory of man is made to fade away before
the sight of the living God, right, so that we hear the sound,
not the sound of a man who is no better than our own, the sound
of our own voice, but the sound of our Savior who is speaking
to us, making us to hear that which we have need of hearing,
that we should not grow confident in ourselves and fix our hopes
and attention on this world which has already come under the judgment
of God, that this would not be our hope but that we would look
to Jesus, Christ our Lord and Savior, that we would look to
Him and trust Him, believe Him, understanding that He is our
inheritance and that we wait for Him, knowing that He has
accomplished our salvation perfectly, sufficiently, and fully, so that,
verse 8, the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word
of our God shall stand forever. And it stands because it's by
the power of God that He does this. And we are born by the
power of God, by His Spirit, made new in Christ, not the old
thing of Adam. That's not reformed or improved. That is moved aside. That's taken
out of the way. That's been crucified with Christ,
and we are made made new. We are born again, spiritually
born, spiritually wrought of the precious incorruptible seed
of Jesus Christ. Peter declares it in 1 Peter
1.23. Speaking of us, he says we are
born again, being born again, not of corruptible seed but of
incorruptible by the Word of God which liveth and abideth
forever. For all flesh is as grass, and
all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth,
and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord
endureth forever." And this is the word, right? Declaring and
exalting Jesus Christ, the word of God, the salvation of his
people, which by the gospel word is preached unto you. and it's by His power and glory
that it's made effectual in your heart, so that you are delivered
from the entangling sins, you are healed of the killing wound
of sin, you are made whole by Christ and comforted by Him,
and brought into the family of God by His grace and mercy. So
I'm thankful for the comforting words of our God and to know
what He has accomplished for us, that He has put away the
sin of His people, that there's nothing left for you and I to
do, but let us fight the good fight, let us continue in the
warfare knowing that it's accomplished, knowing that our God is doing
all things well for the glory of His name and the comfort and
salvation of His people. So I pray the Lord will bless
that word to your hearts. Amen. All right, now we're gonna
pray and be dismissed. Our gracious Lord, we thank you,
Father, for your word of comfort. Lord, help us to hear it. You
know the dullness of our flesh, the dullness of our hearing,
the hardness of our hearts, but Lord, we depend upon you. We trust in your mercy and grace
to break through the hardness, to deliver us from the deceitfulness
of sin, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the deceitfulness
of self-righteousness, Lord, that you would be exalted in
our hearts, and that we would indeed be called sons of God,
that we would be peacemakers, Lord, declaring the peace that
our God has with us in his Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray for
your will to be done here on the earth, and that your kingdom
be established, that you would be long-suffering to your people
who are yet in darkness, and that you would cause them, Lord,
to be delivered through the gospel of your Son, Jesus Christ, that
you might come again soon, Lord, and take us home to be with you.
It's in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that
we pray this, amen.