Isaiah chapter 40. And I want us to look first of
all at the first two verses of this wonderful chapter of Scripture. We read this from the Old Testament,
but you can find so much of what is said in this chapter in the
New Testament. But here is the prophet who is
the mouthpiece of God, who is led by the Spirit of God. And
he 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." These are wonderful words at any time, but they come
on the end of some bad news. And what has gone before was
the bad news of their captivity to Babylon. But some of us were
mentioning Brother Scott Richardson before the service. And one thing
I always remember hearing him say is that in order for there
to be good news, there has to be bad news. And these people
have just received some bad news. And when we read these words,
we read them, and we ought to read them remembering something
about who God really is. He's holy, and He's just, and
He's righteous. But you and I, every one of us,
are nothing but sin. We are sinners. And so all of
God's people, just like everybody else, they went into a captivity
a long time ago. They went into a captivity in
Adam. And just like these people, they
remain in that captivity until the Lord is pleased to deliver
them from their bondage." They are said to have been taken captive
by the devil at his will. But almost before the words that
Isaiah has spoken, almost before the words stop ringing of this
bad news that was to happen. God causes him to speak in the
following words, good news, good news, consolation. And there is a continual command
from God to all of his ministers, all his servants, to continually
speak, and to cry out, and to comfort." He says, comfort ye,
comfort ye. And it's something like this,
O ye prophets, prophesy comforts concerning my people. or speak ye comfortably, or speak
to the heart of my Jerusalem." And this word comfort here in
the Hebrew means something like to cause to breathe again. They've just heard news that
has taken their breath. And so the Lord speaks to us. if we be His, these words of
comfort, and He causes us to breathe again. And it's a sad
thing that preachers are so very often the ones who are guilty
of doing just the opposite. They're like Job's friends, miserable,
comforters." Job said, I have heard many such things, miserable
comforters are you all. And people hear men preach, and
they go away, and rather than being comforted, they're confused. And rather than being comforted,
they're criticized. or rather than being comforted
in the finding out of what has been done for them, they're told
to do something. Miserable comforters. But one thing I want us to notice
first of all, and we have to know this if we have been even
a slight student of the Scriptures. Certainly, if we have been, as
John said, taught of God, if we have learned of the Father,
if we've been born again, there's one thing that we have to see
in this immediately, and that is, God has a people. He really does. He has a people. And He describes them here and
so many places as My people. My people. They are a spiritual
people of which this earthly people were a type and a shadow. And they are, as He says in this
book, they are His particular treasure. And He is the One who
chose them unto Himself in Christ in what is called the everlasting
covenant. He put them in that covenant. They have been in that covenant
since that time before the world. They are always going to be in
this covenant. It's an everlasting covenant. And in doing so, the Scriptures
say that He gave them to Christ. You just read John 17, and hear
our Lord talk about this people. He speaks to the Father and speaks
of those that the Father gave Him. And Christ, in obedience
to that covenant, He redeemed them, every one, by His blood
and death. They're His people. And it is
His will. And it is His promise that they
shall be comforted. You mean they won't have any
troubles? Oh, they'll have troubles. But they're going to have comfort
high above their troubles. They'll have sorrows. But they'll
have comfort that exceeds those sorrows. They'll have trials
and troubles They'll hear bad news, but they'll have comfort
that exceeds all these things. They'll have special comfort
because they're His people. The book of Numbers says, "'For
from the top of the rocks I see Him, and from the hills I behold
Him, Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned
among the nations." They're a separated people. And as He described this
nation of people, when He described them naturally, He describes
His people spiritually. He said through Moses, "...for
thou art an holy people, unto the Lord thy God. The Lord thy
God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto Himself above all
people that are upon the face of the earth." Can you imagine
that? The God of glory looked down
on this earth. And He calls one here and there
until they make up that holy nation He describes in the New
Testament as My people. That's who He addresses here,
My people. And He is the one who says to
His Son through the psalmist in Psalm 110, Thy people shall
be willing in the day of Thy power. You can say, what if,
all you want to. But He says, thy people shall
be willing in the day of thy power. And our Lord, as the Savior
of this people, is and always has been their successful Savior. Because the angel says to Joseph
and to Mary, Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall
save His people from their sins. The apostle Peter, he describes
them as a peculiar people. The Lord Jesus in John 10, He
describes them as My sheep. Another of the apostles describes
them as those elect strangers scattered abroad. They are here
and elsewhere many times called that Jerusalem which is above. And they are the gospel church. They are the body of Christ. And they are set in contrast
to Mount Sinai, because the Apostle in Hebrews 12 says, "...but ye
are come unto Mount Sinai, and unto the city of the living God,
the heavenly Jerusalem." and to an innumerable company of
angels." And so what he shows us here, this message, is to
be continually preached throughout all the gospel dispensation. And by that I simply mean it
is to be preached from the coming of John the Baptist all the way
to the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He calls it, through
this same prophet, the acceptable year of the Lord. And John the
Baptist, if you'll notice here in verse 3, immediately we hear
the mention of John the Baptist. It says, "...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." Not only is John
the forerunner of the Lord Jesus Christ, the forerunner of the
Messiah, but he comes with this message announcing this word
of comfort. When you come to John 1, you
read this very thing. in that first chapter. He, that
is John the Baptist said, I am the voice of one crying in the
wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord as said the prophet
Isaiah. And he says, every obstacle shall
be removed or overcome by God to bring this to pass. Look down
in verse 4. 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. Nothing will
hinder the proclamation of this comfort 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." First of all, what is the glory of the Lord? Well, according
to what he says to Moses, the glory of the Lord is His free
and sovereign grace in the Lord Jesus Christ." Or as Paul said,
the glory of God is in the face or in the person of Jesus Christ. And here we are in a race of
people who look for glory of one kind or another, and yet
there is only one glory of God, and that's in Christ. And then
he says, he will be revealed. You can't see this glory naturally,
but it will be revealed to these people. And not only that, he
says, all flesh, meaning Jew and Gentile, a people from Jew
and Gentile, they'll see it. And the reason why is because
the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. That's the final say. That's the decree of God. This
is going to happen. There are some people who through
this message, they're going to be comforted and they're going
to see the glory of God. And if you notice here, and I
think we miss this so many times, we get caught up in the fleshly
sensations that are natural to us, but his people will be comforted
and they'll see the glory of God through something that is
spoken to them. They're going to see this glory,
they're going to find this comfort in reality, in a message that
is from God, and that is to be proclaimed by these he sends. I had to deal last night with
those situations which I mostly dread above all of us. I had
to find a man dead last night, I had to seek to comfort and
console his family? And every time I come into that
situation, I realize how miserably weak and how impossible it is
to really console the heart of someone who just lost a loved
one. So it comes on me, I just imagine
sometimes, Almost a mistake it seems like
to me for God to have ever appointed me to go out into this world
and do anything that will bring comfort to somebody. But it's
in the message. Not in my ability to comfort
you, it's not in my ability to convince you. It's not in my
genius I have none. It's not in my charismatic gifts
I have none of them. It's in this message. And until
God gives us an ear to hear this message of the gospel of Jesus
Christ, we'll never be comforted. So what are His servants to cry?
That's what I want to know. What are His servants to cry
out that will bring a comfort to His people? We'll look at
verse 2. He says, "...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." described the phrasing on that
verse as amounting to something like this, that he is saying
that you speak to his people and tell them that accepted has
been her punishment. You say, accepted? Here we are
living in this world. Here we are facing eternity. Here we are going out to meet
God the righteous Judge. And we are as sinners that have
nothing in ourselves to offer, no way of doing anything that
would appease His wrath. The message is, you tell my people,
that I've already accepted their punishment." And actually what
this seems to mean is that God is saying to His people that
because of Christ, He's already satisfied. His justice has already
been satisfied. His wrath has already been appeased,
their sins have already been dealt with in a just manner,
and this is good news to those that He makes themselves to know
they're a sinner." In other words, God has reconciled us to Himself. I remember reading a long time
ago, about a discovery in an island in the Pacific somewhere,
where they discovered a Japanese soldier. And he had been hiding
on that island, the only one of his company left. He had been
hiding in a cave on that island years after the end of the war. He didn't know the battles were
over. He didn't know the war was over. And it would seem though that
it would come to him in the one part as bad news that his side
in one sense lost. But on the other hand, it'd be
good news. It's all over. It's all done. It's all finished. And you see,
that's the way the gospel is. If the gospel was a message whereby
God told you to do some things to be saved, or told you that
there was anything in you, if you improved it, that He'd accept
it, that would not be good news to us. When you go over to Romans
chapter 3 and listen to God describe us, You say you're a miserable
comforter preacher. It says there's none righteous,
there's none that doeth good, there's none that seeketh after
God. It goes on in a description so
as to describe men in their totality of their being, and it says there's
none good, none that doeth good, none righteous. No, not one. But if you went to the doctor
tomorrow morning, And the doctor honestly, truly, based on real
tests, based on real scientific examination, if he told you that
you had a dread disease, and he didn't sugarcoat it, he didn't
say, take two aspirins and call me next week, But He told you
the truth. That's the first part in helping
you. You've got a dread disease. You're like these Israelites. You're going into captivity. But there's coming a cure. Would
that comfort you? You've got a dread disease. But
I've been to school, I've learned from other doctors who have been
confronted with this same disease. There's a medicine, there's a
remedy for it. Do you know that's what the Lord
calls salvation in Christ? A remedy. A remedy. And the message is that God has
reconciled us to Himself. We were the ones fighting against
God, described by Paul as enemies in our minds, but He was always
loving this people. He was always blessing this people. He was always saving this people. He was always keeping this people. Can you just for a minute imagine
that? You and I who fell in Adam, who
come forth from the womb speaking lies, who in us dwells no good
thing, who cannot in any way commend ourselves to God, and
have never all our days in our minds, if not outwardly and openly,
in our minds, we've been rebels against God. And all through
this, before we ever were, before we ever were born, before we
ever fell in Adam, in the midst of all our rebellion, all the
days of our lives, in the midst of our wicked thoughts, in the
midst of our acts of sin and blatant ungodly, through every
bit of that, without any response from us in any way or any acknowledging
of Him, and even as our God, He loved us and viewed us at
every instant as His people. You see, the message is that
the Christ has come. I remember when the Lord brought
that verse, I can't remember exactly which one it is, in one
of the epistles to Timothy or Titus. When he brought that to
my mind in a message that Brother Tim James brought in Tennessee
one time, and I was just listening to it and just rejoicing in it
all, and then he came to that verse and he said, now notice
what it says there. It says, He hath saved us and
called us. Not backwards. Not, He's calling
to us, and if we respond, He'll save us. No, He has saved us
and called us. That's the comfort. That's the
comfort. Paul writing to the Corinthians,
he said, "...and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us
to Himself by Jesus Christ." He, in an act of His own will
and sovereignty in His own Son to a people who belong to Him
anyway, He hath reconciled us unto Himself by Christ Jesus. And we've been accepted by God.
We've already been accepted by God. There never been a time
when His people were not loved by God. He put all the responsibility
of our salvation on our Savior. But the problem is, you and I
of ourselves are dead in trespasses and sins. That means we're dead
to everything that has to do with truth and God and Christ
and salvation. But He attends this message.
If you remember, in Ezekiel's day, he came to Ezekiel, and
he took Ezekiel out into what is described there as a valley
that is full of dry bones, a graveyard, a cemetery if you will. And his
words to Ezekiel are amazing in light of the condition of
these dry bones, which represent corpses that have laid there
in deadness for years after years, and they've been reduced down
to nothing but chalky, dead, dry bones. And God says to Ezekiel,
preach this message to them. Preach this same message. Prophesy
to them. Speak this comfortable message
to them. Well, it won't do any good. They're dead. And I always like
what Ezekiel says there. God says, Ezekiel, O son of man,
can these bones live? And Ezekiel says, Lord, you know. And it's as if he says, well,
if it's up to me, they don't. He said, preach to them. Preach
this message of comfort to them. And so Ezekiel began to preach
this message to a bunch of dead, dry bones. And this is a spiritual
picture. And he said as he preached, the
wind, which is always a type of the Spirit of God, the wind
blew on him. You can just see that dusty scene,
the wind whipping across those bones laying there in a sandy,
dead, dry, desert place. And it says, "...and bone began
to join to bone." That can't happen, can it? It's impossible
to man, but it's possible to God. And bone began to join to
bone, and sinew to sinew, it says, until there stood up an
exceeding great army." What did God use to raise up a bunch of
dead bones like that? What does He use to raise up
a spiritual life in a person? This message of what He has done
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And He says, all of our sins
He has made an end of, and He has finished the work of salvation
on their behalf, and He has gotten the victory over death and all
their iniquities. are forgiven. You say, really,
all our iniquities, all our sins of commission, omission, whatever
way you want to express it, the most wicked thing that we did
in our life that still haunts us to this very day, every wicked
thought, every wicked word, every ungodly motive, every self-interested
act, everything. You say, well, preacher, you
tell people that, they'll just run to sin. Well, the problem
is, they're already running to sin. And he says here, you tell
this message to my people, that her warfare is accomplished,
that all her iniquities are pardoned, and she's received of the Lord's
hand double for all her sins. Now, you know that God cannot
be just and require double payment in the matter of our sins. And
it either means one of two things in my mind. I'm fairly shallow,
but in my mind it means one of two things here. One being that
that expression in the Hebrew means that greatly sufficient
has been done in the matter of our sin. That which was necessary
to satisfy God, it's already been done. Or on the other hand,
it could mean this, double, meaning that not only has God put away
our sins, but He has also at the same time, as He says there
in Corinthians, He has at the same time made us the righteousness
of God in His Son. Not under fear of a curse anymore. Not only has God saved us of
all that was lost in Adam, but He has given us in Christ much
more. He has delivered us in every
way, saved us on every part, and cried out before heaven and
earth in Christ, it's finished. But it's kind of strange here.
He goes on and says in verse 6, cry this, 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
withers, 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. Somebody
comes along, and I've heard this so many times, and they just
cry out, grace, free grace, sovereign grace, we're saved by grace,
and then all they can talk about is improving the flesh. I can tell you this from personal
experience. There's no comfort there. You
see, God has to keep reminding us of this. All flesh is grass. It was before He saved us. My friends, it is after He saves
us. That which is born of the flesh
is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. What God, by His Spirit, reveals
to us in the Gospel is the only thing that God, at any point,
would ever accept, ever bless, all flesh. And it sounds like
to me here, if your flesh gets to standing too high, He'll send
the wind and blow upon it, and you'll watch it wither. Because
the whole deal, from beginning to end, if the Lord saves you
in young age, which I hope He does, but every day of your life,
every step of this way, No matter what you learn, no matter whatever
you experience of His grace in your experience, don't you ever
trust your flesh. It's grass. It's grass. All flesh is grass. Male flesh,
female flesh. Young flesh, old flesh. No matter
what nation, no matter what ethnic, all flesh is grass. And that's all that our own imagined
righteousness and works and goodness is. And Peter quotes that very
thing in his epistle. Paul, contrary to the desires
of a lot of preachers throughout the ages, he does not say, for
I know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing."
He said, O wretched man that I am. They want that he said,
I was. He said, O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank
God. through Jesus Christ the Lord. I know that in me, that is in
my flesh, dwells no good thing. I know that today about myself. I'm afraid I prove it more times
than I would ever want to. But I know that in me, that is
in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. It's just grass. And then
lastly, notice what he says in verse 9. Behold, or rather, 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, and be not afraid, and say unto the
cities of Judah, Behold your God. Any but one way you'd ever
want to behold God, and that's as the Savior God. And that's
in the person of Jesus Christ. That's what He's saying here.
Behold God come in the flesh. Behold God our Savior. Behold the Lord God our Righteousness. Keep looking to Him. Keep being
reminded of Him and what He has wrought in our behalf as God
our Savior. Remember our God. Compare Him
with the gods of men. Consider Him as the One able
to fulfill all His promises, able to save us and keep us,
able to accomplish our every deliverance, able to save us
to the uttermost glorious above all. Blessed be God, even the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, the God
of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that
we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the
comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. Comfort. If we were comforted
in every area of our life, we're comfortable in our jobs, comfortable
in our families, comforted in our health and all these things,
we still wouldn't be comforted. Because the matter of our sins
would hang over our head like a black cloud that clouded the
very brightest of our days. Because we're living souls. He
calls this comfort, good tidings. Glad tidings. Good tidings of
comfort. for a bunch of poor sinners who
have been blessed by God and who will be comforted with this
particular comfort. I pray He'll open our ears to
hear it. I pray He'll give us an attentiveness
to think on these things. And I pray that He'll give us
an eye to behold what He's done in the Lord Jesus. Then we'll
be comforted, but not till then. Our Father, this day we give
praise in the name of Thy Son, the Lord Jesus. We know that
when He departed this world, it was with the promise that
He would send the Spirit of Truth that One who is called the Divine
Paraclete, or One who is the Comforter. Lord, we pray that
You would bless Your Word to comfort Your people, enabling
them to look to the Lord Jesus Christ, that they might be comforted. through that message of good
news and glad tidings in Him. We thank you and we praise you.
In Christ's name, Amen.