Pastor Scott
Jonas
Comfort, Comfort my People
12/6/17
Advent, the beginning of the church
year, has a timeless quality to it. It
sees the past, present and future. We
remember those like Hezekiah and Isaiah, Old Testament people who waited for
the restoration of Israel. We remember
those like Mary and Simeon, New Testament people who waited for the restoration
of Israel. We remember Jesus’ words to
us, modern day people who wait for Jesus to return and fully restore his
people. God’s people have always
waited. But there will come a day in
which we will never wait again.
In our next three Wednesday night
Advent services we are going to remember the Prophet Isaiah’s words in chapter
40 of his book. By looking back before
Jesus we better understand what God was doing through the birth of his
Son. God says to Isaiah, “Comfort,
Comfort my people.” Why did God’s people
need comfort and how did Christmas bring that comfort?
Isaiah was a prophet for around the
year 750 B.C. He preached to four Kings
of Judah, including Hezekiah. This was
Judah’s situation. God’s people had long
ago clung to Kings for protection rather than the Lord. Kings were powerful, handsome and
wealthy. God was invisible. The people chose the seen over the
unseen. So the people followed the King
but who did the king follow? Some
followed the Lord of their forefathers.
Others followed other kings, those who led nations more dominant than
Judah. Instead of following their
covenant agreement with the Lord, they made surrender treaties with the biggest
country on the block. They were like pre
WW2 poland asking Germany for protection.
Meanwhile God knows this is a bad arrangement.
King Hezekiah was a slave to
Assyria. They were the most vicious
conquerors in the ancient world. When
you surrendered to them they would place leaders heads on stakes inside the
city gates as a warning against future uprisings. As long as you paid them a large percentage
of your economy, then there was peace.
It was a peace under the threat of violence. But no one else could attack you as long as
you surrendered to them. Even the King
of Judah was a slave but he was a safe slave.
Hezekiah prays to the Lord but he
trusts political alliances more. He
secretly invites representatives from the King of Babylon. He shows them his storehouses full gold,
spices, and armor. He convinces the King
of Babylon’s men to make friends with Judah.
God sees the road this leads towards: a war between the two superpowers
Assyria and Babylon. Judah would be in the
middle. They would not survive.
Isaiah sees the consequences of
Hezekiah’s actions. Without God, his
people are doomed. Ever feel that
way? That the world has made so many bad
decisions, that we aren’t going to survive.
Nations don’t care about God.
Leaders don’t care about the people.
The people are lost. We need
words from God. We need a word of
comfort. We need a word of peace. We need a word of tenderness. We need our creator to tell us that
everything is going to be O.K.
God steps in. Isaiah approaches Hezekiah, King of God’s
People, and says, “Hear the Word of the Lord, Behold the days are coming when
all that is in Judah’s house, and all that your forefathers stored up, shall be
carried away to the distant land of Babylon.
Nothing shall be left says the Lord. “
That didn’t sound very comforting.
Everything you own will be carried away to Babylon? That doesn’t sound very peaceful. There will be nothing left. That doesn’t sound very tender.
But King Hezekiah has a weird
reaction to the Words of the Lord. He
says to the Prophet Isaiah, “The word of the Lord you have spoken is
good.” For he thought, “At least there
will be peace and security while I’m alive.
My sons can deal with this mess.”
Sound like a modern day politician?
The Lord responds through Isaiah
saying, “Comfort, comfort my people.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and scream to her that her warfare has
ended. Her sin is pardoned.”
Imagine you are King Hezekiah and the
Prophet Isaiah. You hear these words ,
“Comfort, comfort my people. Speak
tenderly to Jerusalem, and scream to her that her warfare has ended. Her sin is pardoned.” They don’t make any sense. Hezekiah might be comforted that he will die
before all this happens but how are his people and their descendants supposed
to be comforted by this news. God is
going to take all of the wealth of Judah and send it to Babylon. I don’t imagine Isaiah cared about Judah’s
wealth but how does this restore God’s people.
It is just more pain, more poverty, more of the bad guys winning. You ever watch the news and feel more pain,
more poverty, more of the bad guys winning.
Isaiah must be even more confused
because not only is God promising comfort, he is promising double comfort. God repeats himself when he wants us to pay
attention. He told Moses, “I am who I
am.” He says to Jeremiah, “Oh earth,
earth hear the Word of the Lord.” Jesus
said to the crowd, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, why do you kill the prophets?” In the Gospel of John, Jesus says “Truly,
Truly I say to you.” When God repeats
himself it means pay attention, God is doing something extraordinary.
“Comfort, comfort my people” the Lord
says. Where is the comfort in Babylon
humiliating God’s people and the king going along with it? More than that. God says that through all this her sin will
be pardoned. That means that all of this
is part of God’s restoration plan. Not
only will they be comforted by the Lord but their sins will be forgiven through
this plan. Isaiah’s head is going to
explode. He repeats the words of the
Lord, but he has no way to understand them.
We look back to look forward. We remember what happened to our spiritual
forefathers so we don’t make the same mistakes.
Hezekiah couldn’t see the big picture so he just kind of gave up. Isaiah couldn’t make sense of God’s plan but
he trusted anyway.
We can read the Bible and make sense
out of it. Judah exchanged surrendering
to Assyria to surrendering with Babylon.
Generations later the Babylonians raided Judah stealing all of their
spices, gold and weapons. They also
looted another resource, intellectual capital.
Babylon stole all of the great minds of Judah, creating a brain drain. They were spread out all over the Babylonian
empire. Hundreds of years passed. Jerusalem was in ruins. The Temple was desecrated. But God’s plan for restoration was in motion.
Eventually God convinced the kign of
Babylon to allow some of his Jewish people to return and rebuild
Jerusalem. Under Nehemiah they rebuilt
the wall, the Temple and the city. Then
they waited. They waited for God to send
the Messiah who would fully restore Israel.
They listened for God’s voice. He
had been faithful in bringing them back to their homeland. Now they waited for his next words. Words of comfort, words of tenderness, words
that the warfare has ended. Words that
make sense out of their painful experiences.
The Lord did not speak through a
megaphone. He did not speak through a
scroll. He didn’t speak through a
whisper. He spoke through a Baby’s
scream. He sent a word of comfort
through the Word. The Word who was with
God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. He was with God’s people from the
beginning. Jesus was the comfort plan in
the garden, the comfort plan under the Kings, the comfort plan when the Jews
were exiled in Babylon. He was the
comfort plan on the cross. He is the
comfort plan for you today. Jesus, the
resurrection and the Life, can restore all things. As we sang in the song, “ Comfort, Comfort
Ye my people” , For the glory of the Lord Now o’er earth is shed abroad, And
all flesh shall see the token, that His word is never broken.”
After Jesus is born, his parents bring him to the
temple. There is a man named Simeon and
it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death
before he had seen the Lord's Christ. 27 And he came in the Spirit into the
temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him
according to the custom of the Law, 28 he took him up in his arms and blessed
God and said,
29 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your
word;
30 for my eyes have seen your salvation
31 that you have
prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.”
Hezekiah gave
up seeing the consolation of the Lord, everything to him seemed to be turning
to ruins. Simeon was promised the
consolation of the Lord so he trusted
even when he didn’t understand God’s plan. Through God’s word you have seen and heard
even more of God’s plan than the greatest prophets of the Bible. Don’t give up on God. He has a plan to bring comfort to you and the
church. That plan is codenamed Jesus.