Isaiah chapter 40 begins with
a double statement to God's preachers, comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
saith your God. I would like to be able to comfort
the people of God this morning, but know this, words of comfort
from this portion of scripture are written only for the children
of the Most High God. There is no comfort, there is
no peace, there is no rest, saith my God to the wicked. There's
nothing that I can say to you who are unbelievers. To you here
in the congregation, should there be those who are unbelievers,
there's nothing I can say to those who are watching, perhaps,
and they don't know the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no words
of comfort I can give you except this, to run by faith to the
Lord Jesus Christ and find in him a fountain for cleansing
and for forgiveness. The only words I can offer to
those who are unbelievers is, our Lord Jesus Christ still saves
sinners. Paul wrote and said, this is
a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I'm chief. I would point your attention,
point the eyes of your soul to him whom to know is indeed to
know God. Our Lord Jesus, in John chapter
17, He said, For this is life eternal, that they might know
Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast
sent. O that the Son of God, by His
mighty arm of power and grace, would move into someone's heart
this morning, and by His might, may He be pleased to give you
life, spiritual life, everlasting life, eternal life, so that you
may have the assurance of your salvation based upon the doing
and the dying of the dear Redeemer. And then you will be able to
say, I'm one of His people too. I'm one of His lambs. I'm one
of His sheep. The Lord tells Isaiah, comfort
ye, comfort ye, my people, my people. God's always had a people. These people were chosen in grace
before the world ever began. These people were purchased by
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. He paid the sin debt for these
people. He paid their ransom. All of
God's people, though we were chosen in grace, yet we were
born sinners through Adam's transgression. We have distanced ourselves from
God. There is no drawing nigh to God
in our condition. Thank God He sent His Son, and
through Him we draw near. Our Lord said, comfort ye, comfort
ye my people. That's very personal. And I'll
tell you, unto God Almighty, his people are precious to him. And I know he's precious to us.
But we know we're not, he's not nearly as precious to us as he
ought to be and as he's going to be. But He's nowhere near
as precious, or we're nowhere near as precious to Him as we
are precious to our God. I may have said that backwards
there, but you get what I'm trying to say. I mean, He gave His best
for us. He gave His Son. Love, John said, not that we
love God, but that he loved us and gave his son to be the propitiation
for our sins, the satisfaction for our sins. We're his people.
We're his people by covenant grace, by covenant love and mercy. And we're his people by purchase.
And then we're his people by effectual calling. Effectual
means it got the job done. One day the Spirit of God crossed
our paths with the gospel of free grace. And for the very
first time in our lives, maybe with our natural ears, we had
heard the gospel before, but for the first time in our life,
our physical life, we heard with understanding. We heard with
the power of the Spirit. We heard so as to believe the
message. That's the divine call of God. He draws us. He's able to draw
us to Christ Jesus. Oh, that God the Spirit would
work in every soul, in every heart who's listening to the
sound of my voice, and that the Spirit of God would woo you by
sovereign, almighty grace to the Savior, and that you would
say in your own heart, this is the one I must have. This is
the Redeemer for me. I'm wayward. I've gone astray. I need this very Savior. Lord, I know that I am in and
of myself unworthy of the least of your mercies." Jacob said
that. And I say, I agree with you,
Jacob, not only on your score, on your hand, but for myself
as well. I'm not worthy of the very least
of God's mercies. But in Christ Jesus, we have
all covenant mercies in Him. There is no mercy, there is no
grace, there is no blessing that God ever prohibits His people
from having. For we were blessed with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We're
God's people by covenant love, sovereign election, special purchase,
effectual grace, and we're His by unique relationship. And so John says, now are we
the sons of God. Now are we the children of God.
you will be later. Not when you get to heaven's
everlasting glory, then you can say, I'm one of the children
of God. We have that privilege to say
now. Now are we the sons of God. We
who have received the Lord Jesus Christ. We have an understanding
that the spirit of God has given us. And we understand that by
adoption we're the children of God. And it doth not yet appear
what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear we
shall be like Him. There's the dawn of the eternal
day that will soon appear for all of God's people. either by
way of death or the second coming of our Lord Jesus. And we shall
see Him face to face and we shall be like Him. And what will it
be then, O people of God, what will it be then when we have
no more sin, no more sickness, no more disease, no more weakness,
no more frailty, no more tears, no more death, To be with Him and to be like
Him forever and ever. Surely that is heaven's everlasting
glory. To see the Savior face to face. For you who believe the Lord,
you're His people. And I'm here to comfort you.
2 Corinthians 1.3 says, God is the God of comfort. He's a God
of a strong consolation. Perhaps I'm speaking to someone
this morning whose heart is heavy and troubled. Perhaps you have,
I don't know, financial troubles. Perhaps you have physical troubles.
Perhaps you have family troubles. Here's the strong consolation
that you have from the word of God. God says you're my people. That ought to help you right
there. You're the beloved of God. In the second verse, he
says, speak comfortably to my people. That is, speak from the
heart. Speak to them in a tender way. Speak to them in a loving way. I know there's a time for rebuke.
There's no question about that. There's time for correction.
There's time for reproof. But there's never a time when
the people of God don't need to be comforted, when the people
of God don't need a strong consolation. How can I speak comfortably to
Jerusalem, that is to the people of God? And what shall I cry
unto her? I shall cry unto her, to you
who are the Lord's people, your warfare is accomplished. Your
warfare with Satan is accomplished. Christ has bruised his head.
He did that at the cross. Your warfare with sins has been
accomplished by the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ because
He buried your sins in the depths of the deepest sea. God said,
I've hidden your iniquities behind my back. And here's a covenant
promise from God. Your sins and your iniquities
will I remember no more. No more. Hear and believe and
be comforted from the Word of God. I suspect if I asked you
to think of some glaring sin in your life, you'd probably
be able to come up with several. I don't know. There may have
been outward sins, inward sins, sins of the mind, sins of action,
I don't know. But we remember our sins and
we grieve over them. But listen, grieve no more over
past iniquities because God has forgiven them all. You stand
guiltless in His sight. Do you hear that? You're innocent
before God. In fact, you have a positive
righteousness freely imputed to you, and it's the righteousness
of the Son of God. So weep no more. There's a time
to weep over sin. I understand that. There's a time to be repentant.
But after you have voiced from your heart your sorrow over sin,
rejoice, your sins are gone. Christ took them away. They're
never going to show up against you again. Not in the judgment. Not in the judgment. There is therefore now no condemnation,
no judgment, no damnation to those who are in Christ Jesus,
who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. No condemnation
to the people of God. Your warfare is accomplished.
Satan has been whipped. Your sins have been put away.
You say, oh Jim, but death. Well now hang on a minute. Death
has been conquered. The penalty for sin has been
borne by our Savior. The people of God shall not die. Did you hear me? The people of
God shall not die. Yes, so Jim, we've been to the
cemetery many times. We've had many services in here.
Funerals have been conducted. But the soul can't die. And even the body, when the body
ceases to live, our Lord Jesus referred to that as sleep. When
Lazarus and John 11 had died, our Lord said to his disciples,
our friend Lazarus sleepeth. And they thought, well, that's
good. He'd been sick. He needs a good rest. And then
the Holy Spirit through John tells us very plainly, Lazarus
died. But really his body just went
to sleep to be awakened in the last resurrection. And the soul
of the believer never loses consciousness at death because it enters into
the very presence of our God. Warfare is accomplished and then
it says an iniquity is pardoned. What does iniquity mean? Iniquity
means not equal to. Not equal to what? Not equal
to perfection. There is an inequity. We're all guilty of numerous
inequities against God. God says, be ye holy for I am
holy, be ye perfect, and we can't be. But all of our iniquity has been
pardoned. For she hath received of the
Lord's hand double for all of her sins. Not only are our sins
pardoned, but everlasting righteousness has been brought in for the Lord's
people. In verses three through six,
the Lord leads Isaiah to write concerning the ministry of John
the Baptist. And of course, I preached a little
bit about John the Baptist last week when we dealt with our Savior's
baptism. You know, When they asked John,
John the Baptist, who are you? Are you the Messiah? Are you
the anointed one? He identified himself this way,
I'm a voice. I'm just a voice. He didn't say,
you know, I'm the subject of Old Testament prophecy. Don't
you know I'm somebody? I was sent here to announce the
coming, the appearance of the Messiah, but instead he just
said, I'm a voice. I'm a voice crying in the wilderness. And he says, prepare you the
way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our
God. Oh, may God enable us to be prepared to receive the Son
of God. Wherein 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 then
the glory of the Lord shall be seen, shall be revealed, and
all flesh shall see it together. For the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken it. Now look at verse six. This voice. There's a voice that spoke to
Isaiah, and the voice said to Isaiah, cry. And the word cry
means proclaim or preach. Tell it out. Preach. And he said, Isaiah said, what
shall I cry? Well, that's a good question. What shall I preach? What shall
I proclaim? And I'll be quite honest with
you, three times a week, I essentially ask this question
to our God, what shall I preach? That's the title of the message.
What shall I preach? Where do I go in this book? What
shall I say? What shall I say to eternity
bound people? And I know, and you know, that
we're all headed for the grave unless the Lord comes back pretty
soon. And I know, and you know, that
we all must face Him someday. And being very much aware of
that, I hear the Lord say to me through the inspired prophet
Isaiah, cry, preach, herald forth, proclaim. And I say, Lord, Lord,
what shall I preach? What shall I preach? And then the Lord gives him the
subject matter. And the first thing he says to
deal with, to cry out, it has to concern, it's concerned with
the condition of men. What shall I preach? What shall
I cry? Watch it. All flesh is grass,
and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.
The grass withereth, the flower faded, because the Spirit of
the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people is grass. The
grass withereth, and the flower faded. And so in response, here's the
answer to the question, what shall I preach? It is first of
all this, tell people what they are. We're like grass that has been
mown, it's been cut down, and it withers. We're like a flower
that has faded, it's lost its beauty. It's good for nothing
except the fire. Tell people what they are and
what they deserve. We're all like withered grass
before God in our natural condition. That's our sinfulness. And there's
more here than just a reference to the physical demise of the
body, the deterioration of the body. Certainly that's here,
but there's more than that. He's talking about our spiritual
worthlessness, our spiritual inabilities. What are we good for? We're like grass that's been
cut. What are we good for? We're like
the flower that has faded and the petals have dropped off.
And the whole thing just bends over and withers. It's dead.
We're like that spiritually. Tell people what they are. Let
me make known this to you. You will never cry out for mercy
until you find out you're a spiritually dead sinner. You will never look to the great
physician for spiritual healing unless you ever see your spiritual
diseases. Thank God Christ came and died
for our spiritual diseases. And so Isaiah writes again in
chapter 53, with his stripes we're healed. There's healing,
there's healing for us lost ruins sinners. You'll never seek for
a clothing until God strips you of your self-righteousness and
you're ashamed before God. Oh, the shame of sin. Look what
sin has done to us. Physically. Oh, when we're younger, the ladies
have their beauty. Men have their handsomeness. We have our strength. And then,
as we get older, These things slowly evaporate. It's like when Naomi, when she
left Bethlehem, she went out beautiful. And when she came
back, they said, is this Naomi? She's all wrinkled, withered,
old. Well, that's what sin does to
us. But much more than that, what sin has done to us spiritually,
it's left us in a terrible condition. We're lost and don't even know
it. We're ruined and have no idea
of that. We have no righteousness, to
be presented to God. We're diseased. It's the spiritual
disease of leprosy. When we find out what we are
by nature, we'll be somewhat like the lepers of old who put
a cloth in front of their mouths and said, unclean, unclean. That's me. Have you ever been
there? The Lord ever showed that to you, you're unclean? Somebody said to me the other
day, talking about a certain person, they said, yeah, she's
a good woman. And I said, well, compared with
other women who have not lived up to their potential and not
been chaste in their living and hadn't been pure in their living,
Compared to others, I think you could use the word good. But
compared with God, the Bible says there's none good. No, not
even one. No matter who you are, and you
may be a very upstanding person in your outward life, and I hope
you are. And others may think well of
you, and I hope they do. And you may be a good neighbor,
a good worker, a good boss, and I hope you are. But you see,
the comparison in the last day, in the day of judgment, is not
how do you stand compared with others, but how do you stand
compared with the Lord Jesus Christ. And so many in that day will
hear what Belshazzar heard when Daniel spoke to him and interpreted
his dream, not his dream, what was written on the wall, the
hand that wrote without a body attached, mene, mene, tekel,
ufarsin. He said, what does that mean?
All the soothsayers are all scratching their heads saying, well, that's
a language we don't understand. What does that mean? Well, bring
Daniel in, he'll tell you. And Belshazzar said, what in
the world does that mean? I don't understand that language.
No, because a natural man doesn't understand the language of God. Well, what does it mean, Daniel?
Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting. You've been weighed against the
righteousness of the Son of God. You don't even budge the scale. And that's all of us. So the voice said, cry. What
shall I cry? Tell people what they are. If
they get offended, so be it. But maybe God will break their
hearts with it. And then tell them this, the
end of verse eight. Surely, I'm sorry, verse eight,
I was at verse seven. Verse 8 says, The grass withereth,
the flower fadeth. Tell them this, but the word
of our God shall stand forever. Tell them what the word of God
says, and it stands forever. Preach the word of God to them.
And this is what the minister of the gospel is commanded to
do. And I'll just tell you two things
here that we're commanded to preach concerning the Word of
God, the Word of God that stands forever, this book will never change. All other books change, they're
edited, go through different editions, and as new technology
is discovered, you know, things in books changed, some of the
medical remedies of years ago, you know, if you have a blood
problem, they don't bring in leeches anymore, you know, they
bring in a surgeon to help you with that. Things are continually
being updated and to some degree, to a large degree, that's good. But the Word of God stands forever
and it will never change because it's as valid It's as accurate
today, June the 2nd, 2024, as it was when Isaiah wrote this
back 250 years before our Lord Jesus Christ came. The Word of
God is sure. It's sure. And it stands forever. Forever. Like this passage that
God gave to Isaiah about comforting His people. And the Lord does
that. How long will this be on record?
You know, I'm so glad this is written, aren't you? I'm glad
that it's written that they comforted the people of God. I'm so glad this is written.
Tell them that their warfare is accomplished. Tell them that
iniquity is pardoned. Tell them you've received of
the Lord's hand double. You're righteous and your sins
are forgiven. I'm glad this is written. I'm
glad it's recorded. And I know this, this record
that God has left here for us, it will be there forever. You can't say that about any
other book. Preach the Word of God. that tells us of the glory
of God and the sinfulness of man and of salvation in the Lord
Jesus Christ. So tell them first of their sin. Tell them, preach to them. What
am I gonna preach, Lord? Preach to them that they're sinners
and preach to them that the word of God is forever. You see, the Bible is like the
one who inspired it to be written. It is beyond change, without
change. If you don't like something in
the word of God as you take it into its context, it won't be manipulated upon by God the Spirit. Now men may try to water it down,
and they have done that. But it's there forever. It stands
forever. And then the last thing that
he says, look in verse 9, what shall I preach? Preach about
sin. And preach about the Word of
God that always gives God the glory, And all this exposes man's
depravity. And one more thing, verse 9,
O Zion that bringeth good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain,
O Jerusalem that bringeth good tidings, lift up thy voice with
strength, lift it up, be not afraid. Say unto the citizens
of Judah, here's the third thing, behold your God, Not in defeat,
but in victory. Not in disappointment, but in
great satisfaction. Behold your God, not weak, not
unable to do His will, but mighty and powerful and strong to bring
to pass everything He's ever purposed. Behold your God. And when He says that, When He
says, Behold your God, He is not specifically saying, Behold
the Father, and He is not specifically saying, Behold the Holy Spirit.
There is only one that you can look up to and find in Him salvation
and acceptance with the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Behold your God is to behold the Son of God, the Lord Jesus
Christ. He alone is the Savior. Behold
Him. Watch this. He's coming, verse
10, with a strong hand. His arm's going to rule for Him,
and the voice is telling Isaiah what to preach. Tell Him, tell
Him my Son's coming. Tell Him the Son of God has come.
Behold God. Behold your God. His reward is
with Him and His work is before Him. His reward is salvation
and His work is before Him. Substitution, suffering, death, and then exaltation. Behold your God lifted up to
die. He will come. He will come. That's the message of all the
prophets. He will come. He will come. And finally Malachi in Malachi
chapter three, he's the next to the last prophet. He's the
last Old Testament prophet. As far as the scriptures are
concerned, Malachi said he shall come. And John the Baptist said,
he shall come. And then walking down by the
river Jordan one day, John saw him and he said, behold, behold
your God, behold the Lamb of God. Here it comes. Here it comes. Behold, the Lord God shall come.
He comes to save, not to convince. He even said that in John 3,
17. The Father didn't send me to condemn the world. The world's
condemned already. I came to save. That's why He
came. And then, behold Him in verse 11 as the shepherd, as
the shepherd of the sheep. He's the good shepherd who laid
down His life for us. And then in the rest of this,
it's behold Him as the mighty Son of God. Behold Him in great power, not
in weakness. Behold Him exalted. Behold Him
enthroned. Behold your King. Look and live. So often in the Bible, the word
behold is held forth to us. It's a command from God. Look
to my Son. and find salvation only in Him. What shall I preach? Preach about
sin. Preach about the Word of God.
Preach about the Son of God. Every time I'm preparing to preach,
that's my prayer. The Lord says, cry, proclaim,
What shall I proclaim? Sin, the scriptures. Behold the Son of God. We must
always finish our messages with something like this. Behold your
God. Tell people who to look to. We can preach the truth and tell
the truth But we've got to give forth the command of God. Behold
your God. Behold Christ Jesus. Well, let's
get our psalm books.