Isaiah 40:1-11

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. 3 A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. 5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” 6 A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 9 Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” 10 Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. 11 He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

Target Date: Sunday, 15 December 2024

Word Study/ Translation Notes:

Comfort - nâcham, naw-kham’; a prim. root; prop. to sigh, i.e. breathe strongly; by impl. to be sorry, i.e. (in a favorable sense) to pity, console or (refl.) rue; or (unfavorably) to avenge (oneself):— comfort (self), ease [one’s self], repent (-er,-ing, self).

All commentators I saw take this as a command to the prophets to speak comfortably to Jerusalem’s heart (the meaning of “tenderly” in v. 2).

The presence of the pity of God should not be overlooked here. It is that holy pity that works through grace to save His people in spite of the sin and rebellion that made His salvation necessary.

1 – says – the Hebrew verb is yiqtol (Imperfect), and connotes an ongoing or habitual action.

“Keeps saying” is a better translation than “says” and stresses the importance of this message.

2 – warfare - tsebâ˒âh, tseb-aw-aw’; from 6633; a mass of persons (or fig. things), espec. reg. organized for war (an army); by impl. a campaign, lit. or fig. (spec. hardship, worship):— appointed time, (+) army, (+) battle, company, host, service, soldiers, waiting upon, war (-fare).

7. military service > compulsory labour, service which one does not volunteer to do but is imposed from above (Elliger BK 11/1:14) Is 40:2 Jb 7:1 10:17 14:14,

Very common word denoting “hosts” (as in “The Lord of Hosts”), multitude, war, conquest, etc. 485 times in the OT.

Thoughts on the Passage:

Warfare – see above – the warfare is the fear and privations of the conflict that have been removed by the Lord.

Back when I was young, in the 1970’s, we were cleaning out an old desk. In it, we found my Mom’s retion book from WW2.

The warfare ends because the King has come:

He enters in triumph

He defeats His enemies

He preserves His people

He reigns in peace

2 – received double – for years, I read that to mean that the sin debt of Israel has been fully paid, even double. And while it does speak of the debt of sin, about the pardoning of sin and iniquity, what God has “given double” does not refer to the penance or the privations of Israel: it speaks of the abounding grace He has lavished on His sinful people.

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. - Romans 5:20–21

The grace of God does more than slide you into heaven on a technicality in His Law – it is the very POINT of His Law. For the believer, the Law is a true friend. It DECLARES you right before God because of its own provision of grace, and it is the means the Holy Spirit uses to make you more holy.

What is the great terror for the lost has become the great comfort to His people.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. - Hebrews 4:16

The Law, for the believer, is filled with hope.

God’s triumph is our hope.

Death, the great enemy of man, is swallowed up in victory.

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. - 1 Corinthians 15:54–57

All this leads us to hear and cry “Behold your God!”

NOTE the work ALL – ALL her sins.

2 – her iniquity is pardoned – alt. “her twisted perversity finds acceptance”

It is not her sin that finds God’s pleasure, but her visage twisted by sin, has found favor and acceptance by God.

Her beauty doesn’t cause God to love her; she is beautiful BECAUSE God’s love and favor is lavished on her.

Her blind eyes are healed.

Her lame legs will dance.

Her deaf ears will hear His tender words – words of comfort and consolation.

Her twisted form made beautiful and useful to God.

God is fully satisfied with the price paid for the sin of His people.

10 – Some of the fullness of the Lord’s final victory awaits the final day. The victory is won, but the triumph and reward awaits that final day.

“Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” - Revelation 22:12–13

But until that day, the victory is won,

We have been brought in,

The Lamb is slain,

The Blood is spread,

And the dark night of the Angel of Death rages outside, but we are safe in Him.

Our lives are sealed with hope,

gathered in hope,

and secured in hope.

We who are in Christ are the ones of our generation God has gathered to Himself in Christ.

We who follow are among the ones of our generation God has bestowed on His Son and who benefit from His Blood.

10 – reward - Reward” does not here denote what is due to merits, but the justice of God, by which he testifies that he is a rewarder to all who truly and sincerely call upon him. (Heb. 11:6.) That this is the signification of the word שכר (sāchār) is known to all who are moderately acquainted with the Hebrew language. The meaning may be thus summed up: “God will not come to be beheld by us as unemployed, but to display his power, and to make us feel it;” and thus, instead of the word “work,” the word “effect” would not be inapplicable.

Sermon Text:

Let’s open our Bibles together to look at the first eleven verses of Isaiah 40.

If the Lord is willing, over the next few weeks, we will look at some parts of Isaiah that point directly to the Advent of the Messiah as we prepare for this Christmas season.

This morning, I would like to show you how God, through His prophet, has given us an amazing description of the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

In eleven verses He gives us the gospel of His grace, described 700 years before the events of Bethlehem we celebrate at this time of year.

This passage is so central to the gospel that when George Handel and Charles Jennens wrote their magnificent work “Messiah” in 1742, four of the songs in it came from these eleven verses.

We see how it begins: Comfort My people.

And who is saying it? Says YOUR God.

The same holy God of the vision in chapter 6.

The same sovereign God over all the nations of chapters 13-36.

Comfort MY people.

This is a message for YOU, for His people.

For those who follow the True God by faith in Jesus Christ.

This time of year people talk about the “spirit of Christmas”.

There is no such thing in the Bible as the spirit of Christmas;

Some general feeling of goodwill and plentiful spending.

There is only the Spirit of Christ.

And He speaks comfort to HIS people.

But what is this “comfort” He is speaking to us?

Surely it is not meaning that we are all expecting to be “comfortably well-off”, to never have worries over money or houses or clothes or food.

If that had been the case, Jesus would have sent His disciples out in pairs accompanied by a wagon carrying their great wealth.

Instead of telling them: And he said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics. 4 And whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart. 5 And wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them.” - Luke 9:3–5

I could spend time showing you from Scripture many things people falsely think this comfort is , but let’s get to the root of it.

The comfort here is consolation, even pity.

It is the comfort of someone enduring tremendous grief and then having a friend come and hold them closely.

They may speak comforting words; they may just weep along with you in near silence.

We don’t like that word “pity”, though.

We tell people, “I don’t need anybody’s pity!”

My friend – you NEED this pity.

This pity, this comfort, is the very thing that has brought God’s grace to you.

Those tender words, spoken to the heart of His people:

Your warfare is ended; your iniquity is pardoned!

Your warfare isn’t just the fights you have had;

The pains and privations of warfare aren’t just borne by the soldiers on the battlefield.

Those who never raised a weapon pay heavy tolls in times of war, particularly when the battlefield comes to them.

It might be the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians, the Battle of Britain in WW2 when the population was attacked from the air, or the atrocities of the ethnic cleansing in eastern Europe or Africa in our day.

Those who are a long way away from being soldiers still feel the pain of the war.

I remember in the 1970’s discovering a 30-year-old book of stamps in an old desk.

It was a ration book that belonged to my mother.

She had been born in mid-1945, and at that time, every person in the United States had to have a stamp to buy basic items: flour, sugar, butter, gasoline.

It didn’t matter how much money you had, without a ration stamp showing you had the right to purchase a bag of flour, the stores wouldn’t sell it to you.

The rationing was because of WW2, a war that never reached U.S. shores, but still affected the entire nation.

The reason she still had those stamps was because her parents had gotten the book only a month or so before the end of the war.

And when the war ended, the rationing ended.

The restrictions on their freedoms ended in many cases.

CRY to her that her warfare is ended!

God’s great pity on you has freed you.

But then, look at what He says next: your iniquity is pardoned.

We are really familiar with the idea of having our sins forgiven through Jesus Christ, and we should be.

But sometimes I have found myself singing hymns like “Amazing Grace” and enjoying it because it is a beautiful song;

And then I realize I completely forgot to allow the words to penetrate my heart:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me…

So think about what He is saying that your iniquity is pardoned.

His beloved people were created in perfection, innocent, and supremely pleasing to the all-good God.

But then we rebelled, we fell.

We became twisted in our hearts, warped in our affections.

The image of God in us became mangled, corrupted, perverted.

That twisted, perverted shape is what the word “iniquity” means.

John Newton was not far off with the word “wretch”.

There is nothing about us in our nature that is un-ruined by our sinful rebellion.

Nothing unwarped, un-marred, or lovely to look at for our holy God.

But then we come to the word “pardoned”.

When we think of “pardoned” today, we think of what the president did for his son, declaring his crimes to be forgiven and wiped away.

And while this word does have that effect, it is so much more:

It means to have affection for, to fully accept, even to love.

So what we find is that when God beholds the twisted monsters we have become in sin, He looks on us in love and pity.

He looks at the mockery of life we have been twisted into by sin, and He reaches out, gazes with love on us, and embraces us.

Amazing grace indeed!

that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

For years I thought this meant that the people of Jerusalem had paid sufficiently for their sin, but that isn’t really true, is it?

Do we REALLY think the Scripture teaches that WE can pay the price for sin, even national sins like the nation of Judah?

Anyone who believes that seriously underestimates the amount of offense we have given before God.

It would be like the bank coming to demand your mortgage to be paid in full, and you offering a couple of carrots out of the fridge.

Or two aluminum cans from the trash can.

When God says that His people have received DOUBLE for ALL her sins (ALL of them),

What He is saying is that He has given twice as much GRACE than is needed to forgive the sin.

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. - Romans 5:20–21

And please understand, even as Isaiah is saying this, God’s grace through Jesus Christ is what saves everyone WHO HAS EVER BEEN SAVED – not just since Jesus walked the earth - everyone.

So why DOUBLE?

Because for sin, we need a DOUBLE CURE:

We must be forgiven for our sin.

AND we must be restored to innocence.

And that is what that baby was born in Bethlehem to do with His life:

To take on Himself the penalty for our sin and pay it fully.

And to put onto us His righteousness and perfect obedience, so we would have His innocence.

So then, very quickly, we see in the next verses the forerunner of the Messiah and his message: Prepare the way of the Lord.

We know from all four gospels that this man was John the Baptist.

But what does it mean to prepare the way of the Lord? What is needed before the gospel, the good news?

We need exactly what John provided: the condemnation of the Law.

We need to understand the depth of our sin and our profound need of God’s grace.

What did John preach? REPENT, turn from your sin and wickedness.

But repentance is the necessary prelude to faith, but it is not everything.

Esau tried to repent, but it didn’t help him.

Judas Iscariot was sorry for betraying Jesus to the chief priests, but it didn’t help him.

So knowing our sin PREPARES us for the gospel of Jesus Christ to come in and save us by grace through faith.

It removes our self-righteousness, our self-sufficiency when we come face to face with how twisted we are at our core.

Adam thought he could cover his guilt with a fig leaf;

But there aren’t enough fig leaves in the world to cover our sin.

God showed them that blood had to be shed for sin, and we must be clothed in a foreign righteousness to be saved.

All leading to when He would provide His own Lamb to take away the sin of His people.

Because God’s judgment is sure:

[vv.6-8]

Only God’s guaranteed sacrifice will endure.

And not surprisingly, He is called in the first chapter of John “The Word”.

Finally, vv. 9-10: I would suggest to you this is the declartion not just OF the Messiah, but the words made BY the Messiah.

Behold your God!

The One who is fully God and fully man can alone declare this in His flesh – Behold your God!

The Emmanuel – God with us – is the only one who is worthy to declare this about Himself.

Only the Lamb who was slain and lives is worthy to break the seals and open the scrolls of God’s judgement.

And He reigns right now, and He will reign forever.

And even His return is promised: His reward is with Him.

Rev. 22

And of the increase of His government in peace there will be no end:

v.11