Prepare a way for Jesus

Isaiah 40: 1-8 & Isaiah 52: 7-10

“A voice of one calling: “In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.” (Isaiah 40:3).

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!” (Isaiah 52:7).

When things are going wrong it really is very difficult to hold onto faith!

Jerusalem had fallen; Israel was decimated. The enemies of Assyria and Babylon had triumphed.

The worship of God has turned into lament - The five poems or prayers that comprise the book of Lamentations tell us what people were thinking in the aftermath of that event. The prophet Jeremiah says in Lamentations 1:2, looking at Israel in ruins, personifying Jerusalem to have a voice for herself — She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has none to comfort her.  (Verse 16) For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for a comforter is far from me……Zion stretches out her hands, but there is none to comfort her. They begin with a repeated lament about Jerusalem, the abandoned woman who “has none to comfort her,” a lament repeated 5 times. They end with the thought, “unless you have utterly rejected us; you’re so very wrathful with us …”  

And here in Isaiah 40 God now responds to that wondering and that lament, first with the commission to “comfort, comfort my people.” The prophet doesn’t say who the comforters are. They might include the prophet, but the verb is plural; it doesn’t just refer to him. Perhaps he doesn’t know who they are; he simply hears God commissioning them.

The point lies in the fact that some comforting is commissioned.

Before we get into our text, a little about teh context of Isaiah would be helpful:

Isaiah chs 1–39, emphasize judgment. Isaiah chapters 40-66, emphasize comfort and restoration.

Chapters 40-66 can be broken into 3sections of 9 chapters each (chs 40–48; 49–57; 58–66). The first two sections each conclude with the statement, “There is no peace for the wicked” (48:22; 57:21).

The first section focuses on the theme of the deliverance of God’s people through the instrumentality of Cyrus - chs 40–48

The second on the theme of the Suffering Servant and the glory of Zion - chs 49–57

The third and concluding section summarizes the future blessed condition of the true Israel in contrast with the doom and miserable condition of apostates - chs 58-66

Isaiah 40 & 52 which is in view today, reveal to us a God who is no longer our Judge but our Creator and Redeemer:

To achieve this God will raise up Cyrus, his shepherd, from the east to deliver his people from Babylon. (Fulfilled just over a Century later)

He would raise up “a voice crying in the wilderness to herald the coming of the Lord” - a prophecy concerning John the Baptist (fulfilled nearly 700 years later!)

He would also raise up a perfect Servant, the Suffering Servant, Jesus the Messiah by whose “wounds you are healed”(Isaiah 53).

Only the absolute sovereignty of God could predict and bring such things to pass! Nothing can thrawt His purposes or frustrate the Lord’s sovereign plans!

“It is remarkable that the word of doom (39:5–7) and the word of comfort (40:1) lie side by side. No sooner is just judgment pronounced than (an equally) just comfort is heralded. Indeed, while one voice speaks the word of doom (39:5ff.), the plural imperatives of 40:1 summon a company of comforters out of which three voices are heard speaking (40:3, 6, 9) so that the comfort is more abundant than the condemnation. And not only so, but while judgment comes on one sinful nation (39:5ff.), the consolation, as we shall see, spreads out to embrace the whole world.”(J.A. Motyer).

GOD IS A GOD WHO CALLS:

Both chapter 40 and Chapter 52 speak of God’s call!

Isaiah 40:3 identifed God calling via a messenger of Good news to a people in a desperate trait in the “wilderness” (where they had been before and would be ain!). It is to these people that God is calling: “a voice crying in the wilderness to herald the coming of the Lord”

Isaiah 52:7 evokes a response to the coming messengers of good news who announce the inbreaking of the rule of God. “Proclaims Peace” - the picture is news from the battle, but the reality is the end of God’s wrath (Isaiah 51:17–23), the city awaking to holiness (Isaiah 52:1), the status of its people as priests and kings (Isaiah 52:1, 2), redemption without cost (Isaiah 52:3)—in a word, peace with God.

Isaiah 52:8 then calls attention to the watchmen announcing “the Lord returns to Zion”. which leads in Isaiah 52:9-10 to all Jerusalem singing a song of praise because God “has comforted his people. He has redeemed Jerusalem. (cf. 40:1) and all the world will see his salvation.

(a). God calls us through Preaching!

There are at least 2 messengers in this chapter and they are commissioned by God to declare His word! They CALL by echoing His CALL!

Notice this by observing that this passage opens with a human voice (“someone shouting”; 40:3) but it ends with a word from the Lord (40:5). This shows that ultimately the words of the preacher are only effective as they echo the word of God - this is what every preacher ought to desire to speak - “And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.”(1 Cor 2:1-5)

And here, the Preacher is having o be heard as he, like an eagle soars to the top of a mountain higher than Zion itself, higher than the Judean mountains, a perspective from which he can see God coming along that highway. The herald shouts from the mountaintops to tell Jerusalem and the towns of Judah the good news that, “Your God is coming” (40:9) and that he will rule “with a powerful arm” (40:10)

Powerful stuff! - That’s what preaching is to do; to signpost; to grab attention; to help prepare and to warn of the danger of neglecting or ignoring the message. Preaching allow us to soar above human horizons which limit and see the infinite possibilities that are avaalable to us as we walk with God and rest upon His promises.

(b). God calls us in the Wilderness:

We experience the wilderness in all sorts of situations. 

Maybe it’s a circumstance that you’re walking through right now - a job situation; a financial crisis; a medical uncertainty! -  You’re not sure how you got here and your’e not sure how you are going to get out of it

Maybe it’s relational and there’s a seed of bitterness you just can’t seem to stamp out.  - breakdown of relationship; difficult people that you just can’t seem to get on with; wayward children; difficult parents! What do you do to negotiate your way through these relational difficulties?

Maybe it’s emotional - you find yourself anxious; depressed; moodya nd irritable. Youre in an emotional wilderness and you are not sure why or how to get out of it, and you are not an easy peron to be around; and not really open to let anyone in either!

Maybe it’s spiritual - You’ve wandered from God and He is it seems distant and he severything feels dry and routine. “God where are you?” is a common lament in the wilderness - Psalm 42 and Psalm 63:1-4.

Whether it a circumstance; a relational; emotiomnal or spiritual problem that has left you isolated in the Wilderness, you despearetly need to ehar God’s call to you and to experience His comfort -   'Comfort, comfort my people” says the Lord! - Lamentations 1:16-17 reads like this:  For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for a comforter is far from me, one to revive my spirit; my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed.  Zion stretches out her hands, but there is none to comfort her; the Lord has commanded against Jacob that his neighbors should be his foes; Jerusalem has become a filthy thing among them.   There’s none to comfort her BUT THEN GOD CALLS — Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. - Good news! God is not only a GOD WHO CALLS, He is a GOD WHO COMFORTS!

2. GOD IS A GOD WHO COMFORTS:

(a). God comforts us in the Wilderness:

God not only CALLS us in the Wilderness, He also COMFORTS His people whilst they are in the WILDERNESS!

God meets us where we are! That’s the message of ADVENT, God meets us where we are! God comes to us in our sin and mess and encounters us, so graphically and wonderfully illustrated as we find EMMANUEL in a STABLE in Bethelehem!

The wilderness may be an uncomfortable palce and God knows we don’t like uncomfortable places but it’s often in the wilderness that we reach out for a Comforter because nothing is comfortable. It is at such times in our lives when nothing is comfortable that we cry out to God. He does not waith until we come out of the Wilderness; He meets us there and comforts us there!

What amazing grace and amazing kindness as God comes to comfort His people!

(b), God comforts us by promising not to abandon His people:

God would not simply abandon Israel as “not-my-people.” God is saying now that the moment of comfort has come.

The “my people” and “your God” language reminds us of a contemporary 8th Century prophet to Isaiah, Hosea who came from the south and ministered to the northern kingdom of Israel saying, “You are no longer my people and I am no longer your God.” To get a sense of how relieving this comfort is consider that Hosea was commanded by God to marry a prostitiute by the name of Gomer, wife of Hosea. She bore him 3 children - a son called Jezreel, whose name means “God sows” in connection to a fertile valley by the same name in which Jehu carried out a massacre of the house of Ahab. Then he had a daughter called Lo-Ruhamah meaning “not loved” and then another son Lo-Ammi.when she bore a second son - “Name him—‘Not my people’—for Israel is not my people, and I am not their God.” BUT THEN HE SAID - “Yet the time will come when Israel’s people will be like the sands of the seashore—too many to count! Then, at the place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ it will be said, ‘You are children of the living God.”(Hos 1:8-10). This is an acted parable in which God’s appears to be pronoucing His death knell for Israel but in fact, God was not abandoning Israel forever, as God also promised through Hosea that the moment would when He would again say you are “my people” and “your God.”

Why? Because Isaiah 40:2 reveals the heart of God to comfort - “Comfort, comfort: the verbs are plural imperatives commanding an unnamed band to bring comfort to those whom the Lord still calls my people. They have abandoned him but he has not rejected them. Like tiny children they have stumbled in the uncertain paths of the world and will be bruised by their fall, but they have a God rushing to pick them up in his arms.”(J.A. Motyer)

When he directs the messenger to “speak tenderly” which literally means, “speak to the heart. - ‘speak to the heart’, like a young man wooing his girl (Gen. 34:3), someone bringing reassurance (Ruth 2:13), a deserted husband seeking to win his wife back (Hos. 2:14).(Motyer). “Speak kindly” (NASB, REB, NCV, CEV), and “encourage” (TEV) is how other versions render it. It speaks of an expression of encouragement, reassurance, and renewed hope. Indeed, 5 occurrences of the word describe a lover wooing his beloved.

The comfort comes from their God and is based on their relationship to him. This moment has arrived prophetically in Christ! The beginning of a new age in which salvation would not only come to the Gentiles but in the future to Israel - Romans 11:25-28 “I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.” As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.”

(c). God comforts us in Christ, our Shepherd-Saviour

God comnforts us in Christ by calling upn his messenger to “make way”!

Indeed, a highway to prepare for God’s return must be built and its built not by road contractors but by a prophetic voice and it is a way that will ensure an easy route and a cewrtainty of the Lord’s arrival

This, as the NT reveals is the voice of John the Bazptist who announces the coming of Jesus! - John 1:26-34 “Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.” They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.” Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ ” Now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing. The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.” Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”

John was pointing to Jesus “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”. This is the fulfilment of Isaiah 40 and indeed it is the souce of our comfort - 1 John 1:9-2:4 and this is the message the preacher must declare!

Jesus is the bringer of God’s comfort.

The prophet captures the tenderness of God in Isaiah 52:10 11 “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.” God cares and comforts as a shepherd cares for the most vulnerable of his flock of sheep. God has the compassion and the strengh to carry them “close to His heart”.

And Jesus captured this in John 10, calling Himself “the Good Shepherd” with all the echoes of this passage, deliberately in mind. He promises that as out Shepherd we will never perish and none shall pluck us from His hand -“He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.”

Those verses also remind us that God’s tenderness arises from our human frailty - “A voice says, “Cry out.” And I said, “What shall I cry?” “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall”(Isa 40:6-8) - Flesh is frail and mortal but God is Almighty and Immortal. Flesh on its own is no good, but if you combine mortal flesh with the Immortality and Omnipotence of Almighty God, wow, How powerful would that be? Would He be!

And that is what the Incarnation is all about! Immotal God, took upon Himself mortal flesh - “the Word became flesh and dwelt for a while among us”(Jn 1:14). This is the Advent story; the Advent mystery. The Advent glory! God meets us in our spiritual WIlderness in the person of Jesus Christ, God in human flesh!

But Isaiah takes us even furthe in this Wilderness encounter with Jesus, He shares with us the GOOD NEWS that our sins have been paid for and our debt wiped out!

God knows when enough is enough. God knows when it is time to relent of His wrath and to show mercy - “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.”(Isa 40:2)

“Hard service” - the word ṣābā’ means ‘army/host’ (Judg. 8:6), but extends its meaning to cover a fixed period of service (Num. 4:3) or the fixed duration of life (Job 7:1),. This has been an appointed period of hardship. The severity of the hardship - first the Assyrians then the Babylonians - It’s been tough and the punishment harsh - “These double calamities have come upon you—who can comfort you?—ruin and destruction, famine and sword—who can console you? (Isaiah 51:19) but now it is about to change. Now there will be comfort.

“Her sin has been paid for” - the God who comforts does not ignore the need for justice. The God of judgment, revealed in Isaiah 39 becomes the God of pardon? He does this, not just by willing it but by paying for their Sin (Heb: ‘awōn - iniquity - the inner reality of the warped, sinful nature (Isaiah 1:4; 6:7). God has been pleased to pay for ths! ’(Heb raza, ‘to be favourable’, used of the Lord’s ‘pleasure’ - 1 Chr. 28:4). This acceptance of the Lord accords to atoning sacrifices (Lev. 1:4; 22:27). The sacrifice is offered to cover the sin committed and it satisfies the requirements of our holy God.

The price is paid to deal with sin so Isaiah can say she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”(Isa 40:2) . The word “double” (Heb kāpal) means ‘to fold over, fold in half’ (Exod. 26:9); the noun, as here (kiplayim), occurs only in Job 11:6, where divine wisdom is said to have ‘two-sides’ in the sense that it always includes hidden realities beyond the reach of the human mind.

So the atoning sacrifice made has two sides - it meets the demand for Justice from a holy God and it meets the need for forgiveness and atonement on behalf of mankind. It is a free gift, offered! It is to be ‘taken’; the donor and agent is the Lord - Hand symbolizes His personal agency. And it has been paid for by God’s own suffering servant - Isa. 53:6, 10, Jesus, upon whom “the Lord has laid, the inquities of us all.”

What a calling the preacher has and at times he can’t imagine preaching.

How can he preach to people who are like plants withered by the hot desert wind? He is of course right that the people are like plants withered by the desert wind. - but then he remembers “the word of our God stands forever.” - God makes the difference. God calls and when He calls, God comforts witha word of promsie that our sins are forgiven; our debt is paid for and we are accepted as His people! Amazing love; amazing sacrifice; amazing God!

Where would we be without the comfort of the promises of Scripture? - Romans 14:4-5 “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

III. GOD IS A GOD WHO CHANGES:

GOD CALLS US TO COMFORT US. We don’t have to leave the wilderness to encounter your God because when GOD CALLS and COMFORTS, He CHANGES things!

He builds a highway to meet you in the Wilderness. In all the desolation and barrenness of your desert experience, with all your regret, pain and failure, .God comes to us! This is the glory of Advent - “Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken...See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and his arm rules for him. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.”(Isa 40:4,5,10).

“Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes. Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.”(Isaiah 52:8-10).

(a). God changes us in the Wilderness:

This passage reminds us that God uses the wilderness to transform our barren lives into a fruitful field. When God visits is things change. When God calls us out to Him; when He comforts us, things change for the better!

Remember that in Isaiah 40:9, the picture is of a messenger that returns from a battle scene to an anxious people to annouce peace - good news. This is echoed once again here - see also 1 Sam 4:17; 2 Sam 18:26).

The fourfold message of Isaiah 52:7 mirrors the fourfold ground of rejoicing in Isaiah 52:9-10. The cityis bursting with joy and dramatically Isaiah brings us to the very moment when the ‘awake, awake’ (Isiah 52:1) sounds in Zion’s ears as a messenger comes over the hills to announce salvation and proclaim a sovereign God (Isaiah 52:7). Zion’s watchmen cannot contain themselves (Isaiah 52:8), and the joy spreads that the Lord Himself has acted to save (Isaiah 52: 9–10).

We have already noted the impact at the Incarnation of Jesus - God is with us and things begin to hange; for the disciples; for the world!

Another fulfilment of this, particularly from Isaiah 52:7–10, the story goes beyond the Lord’s victorious action to the triumphal entry into Zion.

God is a God who changes! Gloriously changes! - "The glory of the Lord will be revealed” (Isaiah 40:5)

Glory (Heb: ḥesed) as used here the word used (e.g. Isa 54:8, 10) of the ‘ever-unchanging’ faithful love of the Lord for his people.

Christmas is an epiphany - God’s presence bringing about dramatic disruptions in nature - Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. Ancient Near Eastern monarchs would sometimes employ special agents to clear the roadways before their approach. This would include cutting trees, leveling and smoothing the road, and often much more. There are many examples of this practice of literally leveling hilly areas and filling in low areas to prepare the way for a dignitary. Even in modern road construction, the terms “level down” and “fill in” are used with reference to building roads through mountainous terrain.

Christmas is theophany - God’s appearance to reveal his will by speech - all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Christ is a theophany - the “central fulfillment lies in the coming of Christ, the effulgence of the glory of God (Heb 1:3), by whom we have knowledge of God (2 Cor 4:6)” (Ridderbos 1985:340).

John the Baptist claimed only to be the heralding voice (John 1:23) that introduced the one in whom the glory of God would be revealed, “the glory of the only Son of the Father” (John 1:14). God has come to us in Jesus and the call has gone out - “Awake O Zion”!

(b). God changes us as we respond to His call.

God is CALLING to us and offering us COMFORT and CHANGE us as we awake to His message and embrace JESUS as our Saviour and Lord and the source of our comfort!

“Awake, awake O Zion!” - Remember him as a boy in the Temple, asking questions and discussing His “Father’s buisness” Remember His call to reptentacne for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Remember his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey and His turning over of the tables of the moneychanger as He called upon Jerusalem to recognises that the Temple was intended to be a “House of Prayer for all nations”

Remember Jerusalem, His unjust trial; the mocking; the cursing; the beatings; His outstretched arms upon Golgotha; Remember Jerusalem the empty tomb and His personal appearances in th Garen of Gethsemane and around thecity as he appeared alive from teh dead.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 3Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”(Matthew 23:7-9)

How tragically after all that Isaiah prophesied, Jesus “approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”(Luke 19:41-44).

However there is GOOD NEWS yet! - Isaiah 52:7 is also quoted by Paul in Romans 10:15. The news that Israel would be released is good news indeed, and the lone runner shouts, “the God of Israel reigns” (cf. the familiar cry in Pss 93:1; 97:1; 99:1), as the “watchmen shout and sing with joy” (Isa 52:8) because the Lord has “demonstrated his holy power” (Isaiah 52:10). It will all turn out well for Jerusalem and the land of Israel in the end BUT listen - it will turn out well for us all! - Romans 11: 11 “Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring! 13 I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry 14 in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. 15 For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?.... 22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. 23 And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. 24 After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!...25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob. 27 And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.” 28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, 29 for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. 30 Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. 32 For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. 33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! 34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.

What a message ADVENT brings - God is CALLING to us and offering us COMFORT and CHANGE us as we awake to His message and embrace JESUS as our Saviour and Lord and the source of our comfort! Never lose sight of it or fail to apprecitate and sing of its joy! JOY TO THE WORLD THE LORD HAS COME!

O come, O come, Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.

O come, O Branch of Jesse's stem, unto your own and rescue them! From depths of hell your people save, and give them victory o'er the grave. Refrain

O come, O Key of David, come and open wide our heavenly home. Make safe for us the heavenward road and bar the way to death's abode. Refrain

O come, O Bright and Morning Star, and bring us comfort from afar! Dispel the shadows of the night and turn our darkness into light.

O come, O King of nations, bind in one the hearts of all mankind. Bid all our sad divisions cease and be yourself our King of Peace.

Rejoice, rejoice Immanuel;

Has come to Thee O Israel.