Isaiah 40:1-11
Amen. Turn to Isaiah 40. Tonight
we’ll be looking at verses one through 11. Isaiah 41 through 11 should be very familiar
to you. We just read in Mark chapter
one, the quotation from Isaiah 40 that appears in Mark’s gospel
with the the arrival of John the Baptist to prepare the way
of the Lord. Isaiah 40, beginning at verse
one, comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 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. A voice cries in the wilderness,
prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a
highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted
up, and every mountain and hill be made very low. The uneven
ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And
the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall
see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. 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. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath
of the Lord blows on it. Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God
will stand forever. Get you 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. Behold, the Lord God comes
with might. His arm rules for him. Behold,
his reward is with him and his recompense before him. 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. Amen, God’s great
and mighty word. One other place where these words
should be familiar is if you have listened to Handel’s Messiah.
If you haven’t, shame on you, but you should get a good recording
of it and listen to it. All right, got a little trivia
question for you. What is the significance of 39
and 26? Just think on it a sec. I knew that that’s what you would
say. There’s 39 and 27. See, I gotcha. But I figured it was so close
I would get you. The significance of 39 and 26 are the two parts
of Isaiah. We’ve just gone through since
what, February or March? We’ve just gone through 39 chapters
of doom and gloom. And now we get to go through
chapters 40 through 66, comfort and gospel and joy. And we get all the way to the
new heavens and the new earth. So what is the significance of
39 and 26? You could say the new Testament.
Yes. And the old, cause that’s what Isaiah is about, but no,
it’s about Isaiah’s two parts. So tonight in chapter 40, we
come We come to a transition in the ministry or the book,
as we have it, of Isaiah. We’ve been going through, suffering
through, you might say, and I think it’s fair to say I’ve been suffering
through it too. 39 chapters of doom and gloom
and this nation is bad and that nation is bad and this nation
is going to get it and that nation is going to get it. Big picture,
Assyria has carried off the northern kingdom. Assyria also has been
a threat to Judah and Jerusalem. Hezekiah prayed and God sent
them away, thankfully, but Babylon is coming. Babylon is coming
to destroy them, to carry them off and to exile them. And so God’s heavy chastisement
has been on his covenant breaking people. Remember when he formed
them as a nation, if you obey me, it’s going to go well. Grapes
and grandkids. Right? If you don’t obey, it’s
not going to go well and you’re going to end up in Babylon. Well,
they didn’t get grapes and grandkids. They got Babylon. And so God
is chastising them for breaking the covenant that he made with
them a nation. But now he’s setting up for them the glorious gospel,
the good news, the hope. And this passage tonight sort
of begins the rest of the book and speaks of comfort, tells
of tenderness, gives assurance. It’s a word of encouragement.
It reminds them of their chastisement. It tells them of the grace that
is to come and there’s much of it. And so tonight, as we look
at one through 11, you’re going to see several of the themes,
just little glimpses of them that are going to come in the
rest of the book of Isaiah. Maybe as we get into spring,
just as, you know, flowers are budding and trees are getting
leaves again, the grass is green. Maybe Isaiah will get brighter
and brighter as we come towards spring, something like that.
Let’s hope so, at least. So tonight we want to think of
a big picture, these words of comfort, but there’s three voices.
And I don’t know if you caught it, but three times, verse three,
a voice cries, voice six, a voice says cry. And then up to chapter,
I’m sorry, verse nine, you have a herald is instructed to go
tell about the greatness and goodness of Almighty God. So
first, think about the comfort. Anytime in the scripture you
have a word repeated twice, that’s for emphasis, comfort. Comfort
my people says your God speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry
to her that her warfare is ended. That’s the first thing Her iniquity
is pardoned. That’s the second and that she
has received from the Lord the Lord’s hand double for her us
for her sin. These are the things that set
up the good news that comes from the three voices. The first,
the warfare has ended. We read in the New Testament
that we now have peace with God through the cross. Every service
we begin with an apostolic greeting, something like grace to you and
peace. Lord Jesus Christ through the
fellowship of the spirit. It takes Trinitarian love. It
takes Trinitarian redemptive work to bring peace with sinners
and to reconcile us to a Holy God. So the warfare has ended.
God has hung up his bow. The warfare has ended or the
weight or the burden that we could not rid ourselves of, were
it not for the Lord Jesus Christ. I think of an old movie, probably
from the seventies or eighties called The Mission. And I forget
how the movie goes, but I remember in one scene, they’re making
a guy climb a waterfall, weighed down with a bunch of stuff. If
I remember right, it’s a bunch of cans and rattly and heavy
things. And he climbs up the waterfall
and he’s struggling and slipping and struggling and slipping.
And that’s what life is like when we don’t cast our burden
on the Lord, when we don’t take up the burden of the Lord or
cast our burdens on Jesus and take up his yoke, which is easy
and his burden, which is light. So comfort, comfort, the warfare
has ended. Now comfort, comfort, your iniquity
has been pardoned. What does Israel know about the
pardoning? that God does for iniquity. Well, they know that
it takes a sacrifice. All the way back to Adam and
Eve, something had to die to cover their nakedness, shame,
and sin. And then very quickly, we see
Cain and Abel making offerings. We see Noah and his family making
offerings. We see Abraham making offerings,
even being willing by faith to offer up his own son, Isaac. but a ram in the thicket acts
as a substitute. And all these substitutes point
to the coming of Jesus, even the Passover lamb, that’s Jesus
Christ. All the covenant rituals, old
covenant rituals under the Levitical laws, we’ve been thinking through
those on Wednesday nights a bit. The only way for iniquity to
be pardoned is ultimately through the substitutionary death and
sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. God’s justice has to be served. His wrath has to be appeased. His mercy, His love can only
be met in the meeting of the law and the meeting of His righteousness.
And that through a sacrifice, that through a substitute, that
through a redeemer. We speak of, we speak of justification. And we speak of the substitution
of being a penal substitution. We think of our penal system,
our justice system in America. And if there is an infraction,
it must be paid for by the person that committed it. And how wonderful
it is that Jesus took our sins. He who knew no sin became sin
in order that we might become the righteousness. So comfort,
comfort. There’s peace with God. Comfort,
comfort. Your iniquity has been pardoned.
The only way that happens is through the blood of Jesus at
the cross. And then comfort, comfort. You
have received twice from God or double from God your portion
of obedience. Maybe some of y’all remember
back to your childhood. You know, we all say we got whoopings
we didn’t deserve. But then we figure it made up
for one we deserve but didn’t get. And then probably you remember
one or two where, you know, it was probably worse than it ought
to have been, but probably what you did was pretty bad. You know,
maybe you stole something or broke something or whatever.
Well, that’s kind of the idea here. Comfort, comfort. You’ve
had it pretty rough from God. Now, there’s two ways to look
at this. You could look at this and say they’ve been in Babylon
or in the future, they will have been in Babylon. The 70 years
runs its course. And, you know, as Daniel prays,
God, you promised to bring us back. So maybe they have suffered
long enough in Babylon. They’ve been in exile long enough.
And now it’s time to go back. That could be it, you know, getting
hauled off from your city. And every time you look back
at your homeland, you see it’s going up in flames. That could
be the double portion, yes. But I think also in light of
the book of Isaiah and chapter 40 on coming to the suffering
servant, Think of Isaiah 53, he was wounded for our transgressions.
He was chastised, punished for our iniquity. By his stripes,
we are healed. We think of the double portion
of God’s wrath that will be poured out on Jesus. There’s a real
sense where we’ve never really suffered for our sin. I mean,
yes, the curses, yes, the temporal pains and judgments for sin,
but we’ve not had to bear the wrath of God. but the Lord Jesus
did. And so comfort, comfort, you’ve
received double for your sins, for the punishment. Now to the
three voices. The first voice in verses three
to five says, a voice cries, in the wilderness prepare the
way of the Lord, make straight the desert a highway for God,
every valley shall be lifted up. Every mountain and hill shall
be made low. And see, a little pause here.
If y’all have been listening to Handel’s Messiah, you would
be singing this in your head. And you’re also thankful that
I’m not. Every valley shall be lifted up. Every mountain and
hill be made low. The uneven ground shall become
level and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall
be revealed and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth
of the Lord. has spoken. So God is saying
here that, or this person is supposed to cry, make ready a
way for the Lord. You think about a king who comes
to visit his people, they clean up the trash. You know, we’ve
watched our presidents in recent years, they’ll go to a sanctuary
city and what do they do? They clean up the homeless camps.
They clean up all the mess. They make the streets nice and
pristine. Everything gets pressure washed and put away. And as soon
as he leaves, it’s back to normal. They pick up all the crack needles
and whatever else. And that’s the idea here. But
also you can think of road construction. Ronnie, you probably remember
this back in the days when 321 from Hickory went up to Blowing
Rock. That was a pretty hairpin road.
And somewhere about 15 years ago, they decided to straighten
it out. Blowing Rock is a pretty big destination, Boone a pretty
big destination, and so all the valleys and all the turns and
hairpins and the dips and the climbs, they straightened them
out. They would fill and they would dynamite and they would
do all kinds of things to straighten out this highway that went from
Hickory at I-40 all the way up to Blowing Rock just near Boone. And what God is saying here to
this voice, this herald, is cry aloud. It’s what John the Baptist
does. Jesus is coming. We sing at Christmas, lift up
your gates, lift up your heads, ye mighty gates, that the King
of glory may come in, open wide your heart. We sing in joy to
the world. I forget which Christmas song
it is. We make room for Christ to enter in. I think we sing
that in two or three of our Christmas songs. And so what’s the way
to get ready for the visitation of God? It’s to repent. It’s
to turn from your sins. It’s to, in your mind, understand
the law of God, the wrath of God, the judgment of God, and
then the provision of God to make atonement for sin. And He
enters into our hearts. Remember, after the temple finally
torn down in A.D. 70, we read over and over in
the scriptures, There is no need for a temple on earth for we
are all living stones being built up into the house of God and
then we’ll of course be in the new heavens and the new earth
where God is and where the new Jerusalem the new temple is but
we Our vessels, we are households where God can live. He dwells
in our hearts. He dwells in our lives, we love
to say. And so we’ve got to get cleaned
up for his visitation is what Isaiah is saying. And it’s what
John the baptizer does. Remember, he goes out in the
wilderness. Maybe symbolic of the Exodus. He goes out in the
wilderness and preaches, repent for the kingdom of God is at
hand. The kingdom of heaven is at hand.
And so the challenge for us with this voice is to open wide our
hearts continually for the Lord. The second voice, verses six
through eight, a voice says, cry, and this is Isaiah, what
shall I cry? All flesh is grass. And all its
beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers,
the flower fades. When the breath of the Lord blows
on it, surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the
flower fades, but the word of our God will stand. forever. The message of this voice is
that when God speaks, it is trustworthy. When God declares something,
it is true. When he prophesies something, it will come to pass.
And we think of the scripture, now that we have the whole Bible,
we think of Paul’s words to Timothy. You remember from your youth,
Timothy, all that you’ve learned and how the scriptures, and here
he’s speaking of the Old Testament, how the scriptures can lead you
to salvation. And that’s how Timothy came to
faith. His mother and grandmother taught him the scriptures. And
then he goes on to say the familiar part, all scripture is breathed
out by God and is useful for teaching and rebuking and correcting
and for training the man of God, fully furnishing him, we might
say, to do the will of God, the work. of God. Holy men of old,
Peter says, were carried along by the spirit and wrote down
the scriptures. And Paul will say to the Corinthians,
all the promises of God, all the scriptures of God are yes
and amen. And Jesus, the living and the true word, God’s scripture
is true. God’s word is sufficient. It
is trustworthy. And still, The people of Judah
and Jerusalem faced the whole Babylonian siege and captivity. And perhaps we have things around
us that just seem, I don’t know, unbearable, unfixable, undoable. And what’s the one thing we can
remember when the world falls apart? Oh, I got a stock market
account. No, that’s not it. Oh, my house
is made of brick and stone. No, that’s not it. Oh, I’ve got
good looks and charm. No, that’s not it. It’s the word
of God. He says all flesh, all flesh is grass and it’s beauty
like the flower of the field. Some of you maybe put your yard
to bed for winter. You know, our pretty peonies
that came out last April, May, about a month ago, Patrick and
I cut them all down and bound them up and threw their dried
out stems in the trash, the yard waste can, and covered it up
with pine needles. And so what did have a beautiful
stand of peonies is now this just lump. And that’s our lives,
isn’t it? We come, we flower, and we fade. God breathes his breath in us,
gives us life. He breathes his breath on us, and we wither away. But that’s not the case with
God’s word, his word abides, it lasts forever. A lot of churches,
when God’s word is read, will do a little call and response.
The grass withers, the flower fades, the congregation responds,
but the word of our God will stand forever. And that’s a big
encouragement because we live in a world of lies. I’ll be there. I’ll be there on time. I’ll never
leave you or forsake you, we might even say to somebody. And
then there’s our divorce rate. There’s our, you know, getting
stood up record. And on we go. But when we hear
the word of God, we can believe the word of God. And of course,
as we sang in that song a little bit ago, as a living sacrifice,
we obey. Well, there’s a third voice and
that’s in 9 through 11. And this is perhaps the gospel. Gets you up to a high mountain,
O Zion. Herald of good news, that’s the
gospel word, isn’t it? 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. Behold, the Lord God comes
with might and his arm rules for him. Behold, his reward is
with him and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like
a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his
arms and he will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those
that are with young. And I think when Jesus came and
was about to have his triumphal entry, the disciples forgot to
read verse 11. They only read verses, well,
really verse 10, the Lord comes with might. What did they think
of Jesus? They thought he was kind of the
sheriff, you know, walking tall and carrying a big stick. They
thought he was going to come and knock heads. They thought he
was going to come. And here he comes in the city
on a little coat with like eight people cheering for him, right?
Small, small potatoes, small things. But the gospel really
comes to us in verse 11. Yes, God comes with strength.
Yes, God comes with might. But remember the rest of Isaiah,
he’s the suffering servant. Yes, he will be the king. Yes,
he will be the mighty one. And yes, next time he comes,
it’s going to be on a horse and with a stick or, well, actually
with a sword. But he comes as a shepherd to
tend his flock and to gather his lambs. Remember his compassion
over Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I would
have gathered you like a a chicken, like a mother hen gathers her
little chicks, but you would not. You haven’t listened to
the prophets. You haven’t listened to the word
of God, but our shepherd comes and he is gentle. And we know
that this side of the gospel, don’t we? He’s the good shepherd.
He lays down his life for his sheep. So what will strengthen
the people of God? What will strengthen you? What
will firm you up? It’s simply this, and maybe it’s
not bright and shiny and packaged all audio visual bright and smoke
machines, but it’s better than that. The covenant keeping God
is your God. If you are in Christ, you are
in covenant with God through the covenant keeping son. And
you can sing extra loud, leaning on the everlasting arms. That’s
a great thing to remember when all around you, things seem to
be weak. Things seem to be standing still
or not moving, not getting redeemed or fixed. We can remember the
firm and strong and mighty everlasting arms of our covenant God. Let’s
go to him now in prayer. Lord, if we think about everything
in our lives, the contingencies, the future, the people we worry
about, the salvation of loved ones, if we think about maybe
our finances or the world we live in or what will happen to
our children or grandchildren or where’s our nation headed?
What about war over in this place or that place? It could really
overwhelm us. And those are things for you
to worry about. So we cast ourselves on you,
our burdens on you. And we take up the yoke of Christ.
We lean on the everlasting arms. Make it so we pray in Christ’s
gracious and mighty name. Amen.