Sermon Transcript
Isaiah 40, verses 1 through 11. 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 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. Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news. Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of great 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.
He will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those that are with young.
Thanks.
The birth of Jesus into the world, which of course is what we celebrate this time of year, is by nearly any measure the most significant event that has ever happened in all of history. I mean, we mark time by before Jesus arrived. Versus after he arrived. And today Christianity is the largest belief system in the world. About 30% of the planet, approximately 2.4 billion people profess the name of Jesus.
If all those people were in one country, it would be the most populated nation in the world. But of course, all those people are not in one country. In fact, the center of Christianity keeps moving to different places around the globe. Originally, the center of Christianity— and by center of Christianity, I mean the place where the highest number of Christians live— and so originally that was in the Middle East, obviously. Then when Rome embraced the faith, the center of Christianity moved into Europe and North America.
And now today, the center of Christianity is what is called— in what is called the Global South. Africa, South America. There are roughly the same number of African Christians as there are European and North American Christians combined, which means the appeal of Christianity has zero to do with ethnicity. Jesus has reached everyone, everywhere, every type of person, every type of economic status. He didn’t only influence one part of the world with people from one type of background.
He has influenced the entire world. Even if you don’t believe his divine claims, his impact is undeniable, and it’s really unprecedented. No one else has left such a mark on so many different cultures over such a long period of time. And this is the season of the year that we focus our attention on his birth, on what he came to do, on who he is, because his birth is the most significant event in all of history. We’re picking back up our series Christmas Prophecies where we are studying various passages from the Old Testament foretelling the birth of Christ, you know, what the Old Testament says about this one who would arrive.
And today we’re studying another such passage from the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is sometimes called the 5th Gospel because of how much and how often Isaiah talks about Jesus. Even though Isaiah wrote 700-plus years before Jesus was born, Isaiah has much to say about this Emmanuel, this God to come to earth. But if you read the book of Isaiah, and you should, you’ll notice another striking feature. In addition to how often Isaiah talks about Jesus, he even more so rebukes the people of his day.
Isaiah condemns their corruption, their injustice, how they treat the poor and the outcast. He condemns their infidelity to one another and to God. He condemns their immorality. He calls out their sin, and then he explains As a result of all of their unfaithfulness, Israel will go into exile. In fact, chapter 39, verses 6 and 7, which is the chapter immediately before our passage today, Isaiah tells the people, behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house and that which your fathers have stored up to this day, all of it shall be carried to Babylon.
Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your own sons who come from you, whom you will father, they shall be taken away. They shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. That’s how chapter 39 ends. It ends dark.
It ends bleak. Isaiah says Israel will be conquered, carried off into captivity, chapter 39. But then chapter 40, I mean, immediately after he says, everything you have will be carried off, the next words out of his mouth are this sudden and drastic change in tone. It’s a 180-degree shift from what he just said because chapter 40 begins with him saying, comfort, comfort my people, which had to have sounded confusing to his audience. Like, how could we possibly have comfort after what you just told us?
Like Isaiah, you just said, you know, our sons are going to be castrated and serve as slaves in another country, and now you’re saying comfort, comfort? Isaiah might have replied, exactly. Yes, your worst days are about to happen. Nothing you can do about that now. But even in your worst days, the worst days you’ve ever had, the worst days you ever will have, even then you can take heart because I have some good news for you.
You will be comforted. He actually says comfort twice, you know, comfort, comfort my people. And in Hebrew, when a word is repeated like that, it’s, it’s like saying very comfort, extra comfort, super comfort. It’s not only normal comfort’s on the way, it’s like mega comfort’s on the way. Comfort, comfort.
See why Jesus might have universal appeal into every culture? This is an important message, especially for any of us today who may need comfort, comfort. So as we dive into Isaiah’s prophecy, we will see he really gives 3 reasons why they can be comforted even in the dire circumstances that they are about to face. 3 reasons they can take heart even in these darkest days they will ever face. One, they are not abandoned.
Two, God will heal them and the world. And three, God will pardon. They are not abandoned. God will heal them and the world. And God will pardon.
So first, they are not abandoned. Even in exile, God is coming for them. This language in this passage, you know, make straight the way, that sounds familiar to us. That was actually also a common announcement before in ancient times before any king arrived in any area. You can think about the movie Aladdin.
You know, Aladdin meets the genie, he gets his wish, and he heads to Agrabah, right? And Aladdin on his way there, he has this parade before him with all the people with swords and the elephants and the dancing, everything, right? They’re going before him and they’re announcing his arrival. It’s like, makes straight the way. It was common for ancient kings.
But in this case, the king who Isaiah says is coming isn’t just a king. He’s the King, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. Isaiah says, verse 3, prepare the way of the Lord, a highway for our God. Then verses 9 and 10, say to the cities of Judah, behold your God, behold the Lord comes with might. So, the King who will arrive is God Himself.
That’s who’s coming. If you remember at the beginning of the series we said a common refrain in Christmas prophecies is that Jesus is God. The one to come into the world isn’t just a man, He is God Himself. And here it is again, God is coming. And Isaiah says that God is coming immediately after He says that Israel will go into exile, which means even in exile they are not abandoned.
God is not casting them out forever. He is not leaving them or forsaking them. Yes, they will go into the worst situation they will ever face, but they are not going alone. God himself is going to arrive in their midst one day. It’s, it’s, it’s like the story, you know, of a king who comes for his bride after she’s been captured by the dragon.
It’s a story like that. It’s an elemental story. It resonates down to just a molecular level for us because it’s a story that we need most. Our beloved has not forsaken us. He is coming for us.
And that is the story Isaiah begins to tell these Israelites. God’s coming for you, even in exile. That’s their first comfort. Now, question, what’s God going to do when he arrives? That is a great question.
Brings us to the second comfort. When God arrives, God will heal them and the world. All wrongs will be set right when God arrives. This phrase, make straight the way, that a king’s entourage would declare before a king’s arrival, that phrase did not only mean like clear the debris off the road for the elephants and guys with swords and singers and dancers to come through. It was not only an announcement that a king was coming, although it was that, it was also a promise of what the king himself would do.
When this king arrives, he will make straight the way. He will make everything better. Isaiah indicates that message several different images in this passage, that God will make everything better. First, Isaiah says, there will be highways through the desert. And simultaneously mountains will be made low, valleys will be raised up, which mountains and valleys and deserts in those times were often, and even still today, are barren places where almost no one lives.
But when the King comes, those unlivable places will become livable. It was dangerous to travel across the mountains, and you certainly wouldn’t want to venture too far out into the desert, but now because of this King we’re going to have a highway in the desert. Similarly, valleys, those were a vulnerable military position. Valleys, you know, those were the low ground in war, but this king is going to raise those up. He’s going to bring life to lifeless places.
And notice Isaiah’s promise here isn’t just that this king’s going to, you know, like build a road over the mountain or cut switchbacks down into a valley. It’s more than that. It’s more than just hard places will become accessible. That’s not the promise. The promise is not you’ll be able to survive in a difficult place.
The promise is the place won’t be difficult anymore. The mountains will be flattened, gone. The valleys will be raised, gone. He says, verse 4, the uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plain. His flowers are going to bloom in the desert.
It won’t be a desert anymore. It’s going to be an entirely new world when this King arrives. It’s all the problems solved. No more bumps in the road ever. Smooth sailing for all our days.
That’s one image of how this King is going to set right all the wrongs. Second image, verse 2, all wars will end. They will have total and absolute peace forever because of this King. And for Isaiah’s listeners, who, you know, these people in the very near future, they’re going to see their city destroyed, see their citizens taken captive, they’re going to spend 70 years in exile where generations are going to come and go. The only thing some generations will know is exile.
It’ll be easy for people like that to believe we will never have peace again. Exile, captivity, defeat— it’s the only thing that there will ever be. It’d be easy for them to think that. And I’m sure that’s similar, you know, to the countries today who are at war and have been at war for years. I’m sure people in those conflicts have got to wonder, will it ever end?
Will it ever be any different? Will I ever need to stop worrying about bombs? Will I ever need to stop— will I ever be able to stop stressing, you know, that my kids might be taken captive and forced into the service of the enemy? They feel desperate and dejected, and Isaiah comes in and tells people like that, there will be peace. This captivity, this defeat, it won’t last forever because God is coming.
Your wars will cease. It’s the second image of all wrongs set right. Then third image, when God comes He will, to us, be like a shepherd is with a little lamb. Verse 11, he will gather us in his arms. He will carry us near his chest.
He will gently lead us as if we were the youngest and most vulnerable. Those are the pictures Isaiah paints of what this king will do. Roads made level, peace from war, tenderly caring for a flock of sheep. That’s what God’s going to do. All those images are ones of healing, rest, setting right what has gone wrong.
He’s a special King. He won’t just heal. He will heal everything.
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which if you’ve been here, you know I often use that series of novel illustrations, but I haven’t used an illustration from there in like a year, okay? So I don’t have to put a dollar in the jar. In the final book, Return of the King, okay, the people have been decimated by war. They’ve been almost entirely destroyed by this terrible and evil enemy Sauron, right?
But the tide is turning. The rightful king, Aragorn, he’s won some battles. Aragorn’s advancing against the evil Sauron. And as Aragorn walks through these war-torn areas that are broken and defeated, he meets people in the towns and military ranks, and they’re hurting and they’re discouraged and they’re frightened. And he tends to them.
He lifts their spirits. He even binds up their wounds. He knows how to mix together some medicinal plants that provide relief. And the phrase Tolkien uses to describe Aragorn is, the king’s hands bring healing, or the hands of the king bring healing. Aragorn heals.
And since it’s a fantasy novel, it’s easy to think, you know, like Tolkien means that the king has some magical powers. Which kind of seems to be the case there in Middle-earth. Aragorn can physically heal people, but Tolkien means more than that.
He’s alluding to the fact that good leadership is a type of healing, whether it’s in a country or a family or a work team. It’s good leadership, it stabilizes, it encourages. It’s the hands of the king bring healing. Good leaders heal, where bad leaders bring devastation. Corruption in government hurts everyone.
It makes everything harder. In the Lord of the Rings novels, of course, Middle-earth has been increasingly dominated, decimated by the evil Sauron. Sauron’s army is made up of these disgusting orc creatures who destroy and burn everything in their path. They have infighting with one another. Seems like the only rule of their ranks is eat or be eaten.
It’s survival of the fittest and good luck. It’s fear and tyranny on Sauron’s side. And under that kind of leadership, everything gets worse. And then Tolkien contrasts that evil leadership of Sauron to the good healing leadership of Aragorn. Aragorn does not seek glory for himself.
He denies quick paths to power. He cares for the smallest creatures he encounters. He puts himself in danger for the sake of others. And Tolkien says, the hands of the king bring healing.
See, it means more than Aragorn knows how to, you know, properly apply some medicinal leaves. Healing means more than that. It means everything he touches becomes better. He heals the land. He sets wrongs right.
People no longer live in fear. It’s every valley shall be brought up, every mountain made low. That’s the kind of healing that Isaiah’s King brings. It’s total restoration of all things to how they should be. Now finally, the 3rd comfort Isaiah gives these people, God will pardon them from their wrongdoing.
We’re going to spend some time on this because pardon is not as simple as it sounds, but it is better than it sounds. There is a dilemma with God pardoning inequity as Isaiah says in verse 2. Here’s the problem. If God is a good king, and he is a good king, why would he lift up every valley and lower every mountain for this wicked group of people? And the people Isaiah is speaking to are wicked.
Isaiah just told them, chapter 39, their unfaithfulness is so extreme it’s going to send them into exile and captivity. They are bad. But now Isaiah says the Lord is going to make everything okay for you, which should make us question, what? Like, good kings don’t smooth out every path for the wicked. Aragorn doesn’t make everything okay for orcs.
We don’t want them to have peace. We want them to get the sword. So why do they have peace? How’s he going to make everything okay for them? See, that doesn’t sound right, does it?
The good king is going to heal everything for the very people that messed everything up? That’s not typically how it works. In fact, Isaiah’s change of tone between 39 and 40 is so unusual that some people— they’re not correct— but some people believe that Isaiah was not written by one guy. Instead, they believe that Isaiah was written by a few different people over a long period of time. Some people actually believe Isaiah— that 5 different Isaiahs wrote the book of Isaiah.
And one reason why they think that is because things like 39 and 40 don’t go together, or don’t seem to go together on the surface. How could it be that God would pardon the wicked? That’s the question. And we might think the answer is— we might think the answer is where Isaiah says, speak tenderly to Jerusalem, tell her her warfare has ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for her sins. We might read she’s received double for her sins and assume incorrectly— we might assume the reason she is pardoned is because God has punished her double for her sins, and so now she doesn’t need to worry about punishment anymore, as if she served her time, so now she can go free.
She’s pardoned. Hey, take comfort, right? We might assume that’s how God pardoned her, but that cannot be the case. It cannot be the case that Israel was punished double and therefore she is pardoned. Can’t be the case.
For at least 3 reasons. Reason number 1, first and most obviously, is it doesn’t say that. Isaiah does not say Israel is in the clear because she received double punishment from the Lord. That’s not what it says. You go read it.
It says, her iniquity is pardoned. She has received double from the Lord. She has received from the Lord’s hand double for her sins. There is no mention of punishment in those verses. It says she received double of something from the Lord’s hand, but it doesn’t say punishment.
So, if you think Isaiah means Israel is pardoned because she’s been punished twice already, if you think that’s what it says, you’ve added that in there. That’s not what it says. Okay, that was the first reason. Second reason, we know God wouldn’t punish her double because throughout the Bible God calls Himself righteous. He’s the perfect judge.
He administers perfect justice. He’s flawless in all his ways. He would never unfairly punish someone. He especially wouldn’t punish someone double what they deserve. That would be wrong.
You know, for instance, if the law says, you know, if the law says a crime deserves 5 years in prison, but the judge says, you know what, instead of 5 years, I I’m going to give you 10 just because I feel like it, to stay in there for a decade. If a judge said that, that’s unjust. The criminal, if sentenced to 2x the appropriate penalty, that criminal would have a legitimate appeal because the judge would be wrong levying such an extreme sentence. The punishment must match the crime, and if it’s too much, especially actually double too much, the judge is at fault. The judge is wrong.
So back to our text, we know Isaiah cannot mean, he cannot mean that Israel is in the clear because God is wrong. You know, God punished you too much, so take comfort because he won’t do that anymore. It can’t be that.
That was the second reason. Third reason we know Israel’s freedom you know, from her guilt cannot be because she already paid double for her sins is because Isaiah uses the word pardon. Verse 2, her iniquity is pardoned. Some verses may say paid for. It also means forgiven.
It means released from a debt, right? So pardon is a good word. And when criminals are pardoned, it means they did not pay the time for their crime. It means they did not serve their sentence. They certainly didn’t serve a double sentence.
That’s not what pardon means. You know, we in our society, we know this because the last few years in our country, you know, presidential pardons have been in the news. Both the current and previous president pardoned some unsavory characters. And you may be in favor of those pardons, you may not, but here’s the point. Because they were pardoned, they didn’t serve the sentence.
If they had served the sentence and then received the pardon, the pardon’s pretty pointless at that moment. I mean, if somebody’s already been in jail for 50 years on a 50-year sentence and then the president contacts the warden and says, hey, warden, I think I’m going to pardon that prisoner, the warden would say, well, you know, Mr. President, okay, Yes, sir, I’ll release him, but it’s not going to do much good now. I mean, I guess a pardon clears his record so he can go get a job or something, but he’s already served the sentence. If someone was going to pardon them, they should have done it before time was served, not after. So whatever Isaiah means by Israel has received double for her sins, it cannot mean that she already paid for it herself 2 times over.
That’s the whole point of being pardoned is you don’t pay. So we can be very confident Israel is not free because she has been punished twice. We know that for sure, beyond a doubt, that’s not it.
And now that we know what it doesn’t mean, what in the world does Isaiah mean when he says Israel has received from the Lord double her sins? What’s the double? She gets one thing and then another. So what are those? Here it is.
It’s in the text, actually. First, she received pardon for her sins. Second, she was rewarded as if she didn’t sin. That’s the double. One, her punishment is taken away, pardon.
Two, she is rewarded. How is she rewarded? We’ve already said it. Valleys raised up, mountains made low. She’ll be able to thrive in places where she couldn’t before.
All wrongs set right. She’s rewarded.
We don’t need to guess what the double is that she receives from the Lord because it’s right there in the text. She’s pardoned and she’s rewarded. That’s the double for her sins. Now that we got that cleared up, we’re back to our original dilemma. How in the world can or even should the Lord do that for people who are so sinful?
Why would a good king pardon the worst offenders and also, in addition to pardoning them, reward them? If a king did that for criminals, we probably wouldn’t call the king good. We’d probably call the king corrupt. So how can God do it and still call himself good?
Answer: that’s what the cross is about. Someone was punished for Israel’s sins. Someone was punished. When Israel was pardoned by God, it’s not like these presidential pardons where the person is released and just nothing happens. You know, the person who deserved 50 years in prison is now, um, set free and no one ever paid anything.
That’s how presidential pardons work. That’s not how God pardons. When God pardons, he pays what the person owes. In the example of a king pardoning the criminal, with God’s pardon it is the king who serves the sentence in the criminal’s place. On the cross Jesus paid for every sin.
He paid for your sin. He paid for my sin so we could be free, which means— which is why, you know, in your version of the Bible, however it translates this word, if it’s pardoned or paid for, Both of those are correct. We are pardoned because he paid for it, so justice is served. The penalty was paid. God is not unjust.
He did the time for our crime. But that’s not all that happened on the cross. If that’s all that happened, if we were only pardoned, we would say Israel received single for her sins. And this says she received double, which means more than forgiving us Jesus gives us everything that he deserves. He rewards us with valleys high, mountains low, as if we were him.
It’s 2 Corinthians 5:21. God made him who knew no sin to be sin. Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21. It’s not only that Jesus took our sin.
It’s that he gave us his righteousness. We get his reward, his inheritance. It’s both. It’s pardon and reward. We switch places with Jesus.
Christians can sometimes make the mistake that what Jesus did on the cross only took away our penalty, as if he gave us a blank slate and that’s it, like our— we have an empty record. But he did a lot more than that. He gave us his slate. We don’t have a blank slate. We have a full slate.
It’s full of his righteousness. It’s full of his perfection. We have Christ’s record. We have his goodness. That’s what’s on our slate.
That is credited to us. And that’s how God can reward us. That’s how he can raise valleys, lower the mountains for us as criminals because our record is not criminal anymore. And our record isn’t empty as if we’ve done nothing. It’s— our record isn’t blank.
Our record is perfect righteousness because Christ gave us his. If you are in him, God sees you, treats you as if you are him. In terms of your record. So Christianity gives you the confidence you are way more than just okay with God. You are blessed and highly favored by God.
He will raise the valleys, he will lower the mountains for you, not because of what you’ve done, not because you earned it, because he earned it for you. He lowered himself so you could be raised. The highest one went to the very bottom so that we at the very bottom could go to the very top. When you see that Jesus did that for you, not only does it empower you to do the same for others, but it gives you the peace. No matter how low or dark your valley is right now, or no matter how high the mountain is that seems like you can never cross it, you have the peace he will make it smooth.
If he stepped off his throne so that you could be seated on a throne in the heavenly realms, if he gave up his power so you could be empowered, if the mighty God did that for you, it’s all going to be okay. It will really all be okay. In the end, not today, maybe today, but in the end, he wipes away every tear from every eye. In the end, he rebuilds what is broken. In the end, not today, but someday, there will be streams in the desert, no matter how barren it looks right now.
He will remake the world without the mess that we brought into it. So whatever bump is in your road right now, it won’t always be there. He’s got you. He’s coming.
Make straight the pathway for the Lord. Let’s pray. Father, you are good.
Our world is not. We are not. But you are good, and you love us, and you love our world. And you’ve proven you will do whatever it takes to set the wrongs right. You’ve paid the ultimate price to set the wrongs right.
So, whatever our darkness is, Lord, that we’re facing right now, I pray that we turn to you and see your light and your hope, the goodness that you bring, how you will one day heal everything. ‘Cause you’ve swallowed up every evil that’s in this world, and then you rose in victory over it. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
