Light offers hope

Introduction/Scripture

Isaiah 40:1–5 NIV

1 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. 3 A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. 5 And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Pray.

Can I tell you about the best and worst day of my life? A day when I had to learn about hope?

What do you do when everything seems to fall apart around you? What is the word of hope that God gives when tragedy takes place or hardship arises.

Thursday October 4, 2018

I picked up my little guy, Luke, from Mother’s Day Out program at the church. So nice having him there at the church and there were ways for lauren to work and us to be flexible about schedules in ways. So this day was mine to take him home while Lauren worked late.....

Tell the story....

(Picture)

Scariest thing we have ever experienced. Then the diagnosis....we did not know what we were doing with a child to begin with but now to learn all of this and the responsibility of managing, advocating, and navigating everything with this. What do you do when exile sets in, and more importantly what is God’s word in the middle of it?

What do you do when you find yourself in exile?

Well let’s see when exile literally falls on the people of Israel.

2 things I need to do to set the scene:

Prophets

The book of Isaiah

Prophets:

Prophet and the covenant:

Accusation

Repentance

The Day of the Lord

Focus would be How God would bring Justice

Daniel and Hosea.... apocalyptic.... you want me to talk about that.

Day of Lord was talking about a return to the rebuilt Jerusalem.

Isaiah

This is a massive book and we simply don’t have time to even give a detailed overview of what is going on but I think there is some that is necessary.

66 chapters

Isaiah 1-39 The Former things: Israel’s sin and impending Judgment

Isaiah 40-66 The Latter things: Israel’s hope for restoration.

Things are seemingly great in the context of the book. Bank accounts have money, kids are in college…Isaiah is preaching prophetic words from God through the first half of the book trying to draw Israel’s attention that things are not as luxiourous as they appear. They are headed towards something problematic. The Northern Kingdom is already in captivity and Judah (Southern Kingdom) is stuck in idolatry, sin has ravaged the land. And even when reform comes about in the last couple of chapters…not many good kings, but Hezekiah comes along. (38-39) it is too little too late.

Chapter 39 ends with the babalonyian empire taking over. Things are really oppressive and hopeless in this exile. Temple is torn down Jerusalem is desecrated over 2 years. Then they take all of the leadership and important people and drag them to exile leaving only the destitute in the ruins.

As bad as the physical damage was it was probably a spiritual gut punch. It meant that their God wasn’t as strong.

State of hoplessness. This is the context.

I wonder how many in this place have felt this kind of hopelessness…it doesn’t take exile at the hands of the Babylonians or a natural disaster taking away everything we have…

Broken Marriages

Loss of a loved one

Illness

Loss of a job, or work situation

Debt up to your eye balls

Or think about our country

Racial injustice, the civil rights movement still has moving to do

Human trafficking

Political world

Threats from other countries

With three young children. If church and ministry is already challenging for me…what new challenges will my family have to face in the future?

It does not take much for us to consider the state of a nation.

But the problem is this, Israel, is truly God’s nation, mouthpiece to the world. What is the deal? How did we get here?

That is where chapter 40 comes into play. It is the book of Isaiah’s transition into a new message. A promise of hope, restoration, of rescue. Even whole books can have purpose in their structure.

Write this down:

The structure of the book of Isaiah reminds us that when tragedy strikes, the first word is always hope.

For the Christian: Where tragedy is, hope closely follows tragedy. It is a perpetual and enduring power.

And here is why....

Hope is the insertion of the power of God back into the equation.

Text: I want to bring out a few things from this text here. The very first 4 verses tell the story....

1. Comfort

Remember, when tragedy strikes…the first word is hope and the beginning peace of that from a loving God is comfort. Look at first verse.

Isaiah 40:1 NIV

1 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

The very first word in the midst of tragedy, is comfort. The first word to the people of Israel in the middle of exile, is God sees you and he knows your plight. The Hebrew word for comfort (and I wont pronounce it out loud, because speaking hebrew requires a little spit and that is frowned upon ) means to encourage, to strengthen, to stiffen. This is a message that God knows your plight, he sees you. Hold on.

How good is that?!

That’s the first message to someone that thinks everything is crashing down around them….Your God is not just way up there…but your God knows what you are facing, and is with you. Comfort my people.

Bleeding woman (Mat 9),

Zaccaeus in the tree (Luke 19),

the mourning mother at the gate of nain….(Luke 7)

(John’s Gospel) Jesus before he ever gets to the tomb of Lazarus, he meets with Mary and Martha.

The first word is comfort.

2. Forgiveness

The second word to Israel is you are forgiven. This is a crazy word here. When we think of someone stuck in tragedy or hurting from something difficult it feels wrong to think of God coming to the hurting and one of the first things is your sin is forgiven. Like a parent coming to a hurting child…hey I forgive you for everything you have done…but there is something deeper beneath the surface. Look at the second verse.

Isaiah 40:2 NIV

2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

When tragedy strikes, when chaos comes about sometimes God opens our eyes to the places in our life where we have not loved him with everything, where we have not given him our whole heart.

The promise of the covenant relationship is the second word from God…

In your faithlessness, I am faithful. That is hope.

3. Promise

The third thing God proclaims to the people of Israel and to us today is a promise. A reminder that even when things are tough....He is with us.

Isaiah 40:3 NIV

3 A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

In my darkest moment years ago. Jail. Thrown in on a late Saturday night. Scared to call my parents, so i didnt for a while. Tried to think of another way out. About the time someone in the room took by little mattress and another person took my sad little lunch. I thought, I better get out of here.

My dad did not lecture me.

He said, I am coming.

In the midst of THE WILDERNESS, a voice calling….make a path, I AM COMING.

The promise to Israel is that God is going to reinsert himself into their story.

Even in their faithlessness and even in their hopelessness….he will not leave them to their own despair.

And if you think that is powerful and full of hope…think about these words. Who uses these words? John the Baptist. Prepare the way, because someone is coming and he will baptize with fire. John the Baptist sees this scripture to be a reference for what God is about to do.

King Jesus rules even today....

4. Future

Finally God points to the future: He challenges them to raise their eyes off the circumstances and look beyond them. Turn on their imagination.

Isaiah 40:4 NIV

4 Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.

As Israel considers the physical, emotional, spiritual ruin that is now almost too great to overcome, as they feel like all is lost…God says I am going to restore you. I am going to bring you out of this. I want you to pick your head up out of the circumstances that you find yourself in and I want you to dream again!

Church, I think we have lost our ability to dream.

Look forward.

These words from Isaiah 40:4 are quoted in one of the greatest sermons….Martin Luther King Jr. when he dreams of a time when his kids could hang out with people that look like me. As he dreams of a time when injustice will be defeated by God. And listen even though MLK’s dream STILL has a way to go and things are still not where they should be. As a Christian man he can look forward and dream because he worships a God that will make all things new. A future hope that cannot be defeated. He can dream a dream and participate in what God will do.

All of this to say:

The restoration that Israel is about to experience is not the product of human endeavor but originates in God’s gracious reentry into the life of the outcast nation. See this is where Christian hope is transcendent and cannot be taken away…it is not a human creation.

What does hope look like to you in the middle of difficulty? How has God helped you to endure?

God reinserted himself into our story....or maybe the better theological perspective is reminded us he never left us.

Our story

The first morning after the long night of telling the story over and over again. Lauren and I had a sort of shotgun prayer. Just asking for strength and I remember asking God, please help us, please show us you’re in the middle of this.

In walks this doctor....it was so refreshing as he knew all the details. He encouraged my wife for the first time. Reminded her she was a great mom and she did nothing wrong and everything right. Then he looked at me and said, John did you say you are a pastor....I hadn’t said that to him, not sure how that information made it to him. I answered, “yes.”

I am a pastor’s kid like Luke, I am a Type 1 Diabetic like Luke, I am an endocrinologist and feel called to this work, and I would like to be Luke’s doctor.

(Show window picture).

This was the reminder of hope in the exile. It was comfort, it was the reminder that God is faithful, it the promise, and it was the invitation to see a new future full of God-sized possibilities.

(Show wagon picture)

We knew we were on a journey now but it was not absent of God’s guidance and redemption. To this day the doctor is one of the greatest gifts my family has ever been given. And we have since learned he is definitely one of the best in the medical world with research and well respected in the country.

Listen, Luke will live a very normal life.

The hope of God endures…and we must be reminded of that in this season. It may not be the way we would script it but we must remember that this hope is sealed and cannot be taken away. It is the hope that endures because it is rooted in the character of God, the person of Jesus Christ and it is flowing through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Closing: look at the end result:

Isaiah 40:5 NIV

5 And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”