Scripture: Isaiah 40:1-11
I want to begin by describing one of my favorite childhood rituals of Christmastime, which I scrupulously observed between the ages of about 7 and 13. Sometime around the middle of December, Christmas presents would begin magically appearing under the tree when I got home from school—as my mom bought and wrapped them. I certainly didn’t care about presents that were addressed to my older sisters. But I cared passionately about those presents that had my name on them.
And Mom, of course, didn’t mind if her kids reached under the tree, picked up each wrapped present, shook them, took stock of how large or small they were—how heavy or light—and wondered aloud what they were. My sisters and I would all do that. That was all perfectly legal behavior.
But the next part of Operation Christmas Present required more delicacy, more secrecy. Because I didn’t want to get caught. But I would wait until no one else was around—usually when my parents were out for the evening, and no one was in the den, where the Christmas tree was. And I would take each present into the kitchen, where we had a bright desk lamp. And I would hold each present under the bright light, hoping that I could catch a glimpse of the words or pictures underneath the wrapping paper… looking for clues to indicate what the gift underneath was!
And of course I loved when Mom bought the cheap wrapping paper, because it would be thin. You know? The thinner the paper, the more transparent. And the lighter the color paper, the more transparent.
All of my friends did this. And we would debrief the next day at school. “I am pretty sure I saw the word ‘Atari.’” Or “I think I made out the words, ‘Mattel Electronics.’” Or “I think it must be that Millennium Falcon that I wanted.” My friends and I typically wanted the same toys. We just wanted to know in advance that our parents had secured the most important items on our lists. Of course, Santa brought us the biggest and best presents on Christmas morning… And Santa did not wrap those gifts. I’m only talking about the presents from Mom and Dad, which were placed in advance under the tree.
But my point is, my friends and I would breathe a sigh of relief if we knew in advance what we were getting. And it enabled us to wait more patiently—it helped us to endure the many childhood Christmas chores that we did not like: For instance, the seemingly endless shopping with Mom, the waiting in long lines at the mall, being on our best behavior at the mall—or what about this? Being forced to endure Christmas parties at the houses of my parents’ friends—friends who didn’t even have kids our age to play with! That was boring!
Knowing in advance that something really good was coming… That made the waiting easier.
And something like that is going on in today’s scripture. The people of Israel, specifically the southern kingdom of Israel—Judah—needed to know that something incredibly good was awaiting them in their future. They needed some good news to help them endure difficult times. This sermon is about that good news and how we respond to it. And I want to make three points: Point Number One: God pardons us. Point Number Two: God is with us. And Point Number Three: God makes us wait.
We’re going to read the Book of Isaiah as part our Journey Through the Bible series in the new year. For now, I want to talk briefly about the context of today’s scripture…
In chapter 40, Isaiah prophesies about where God’s people will be 200 years into the future… Isaiah has spent the first 39 chapters of the book painting a pretty bleak and depressing picture of Israel’s future… For instance, Isaiah has prophesied about the future downfall of the northern kingdom of Israel—on account of their idolatry, their faithlessness… But not only the northern kingdom: the southern kingdom, too! In the previous chapter, in fact, in chapter 39, he’s just warned Judah’s King Hezekiah—an otherwise pretty righteous king—that because of Hezekiah’s sin, alongside the many sins of his people, the southern kingdom of Israel was also going to fall—and that the Jews will be taken into captivity in Babylon.
So, at the beginning of today’s scripture, that’s where most of Israel is: in exile in Babylon, a long way from home… and seemingly even farther away from their God. God will punish them for their sins, as Isaiah has said many times already.
But now in today’s scripture, Isaiah is drastically changing his tone:
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.
By the way, the old King James makes verse 1 clearer: It reads, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith the Lord.” That word “ye” means y’all. In other words, God is speaking to a group of people in the future. And he’s saying, “Y’all comfort my people.”
And who are the y’all to whom God is speaking? They are messengers or preachers sharing good news with God’s dejected, depressed, and despondent people. And verses 3 to 11 give the content of the good news that God wants these messengers to share.
But this is Bible prophecy, which means the prophet isn’t only talking about God rescuing Israel from captivity in Babylon… something in the near term. He’s also talking about God rescuing the world from its captivity to sin through his Son Jesus… in the long term. So the prophet is speaking both to the people of Judah in exile—and to all sinners everywhere and for all time. Which means that he is of course speaking to us Christians today.
And the first and most important thing he’s saying is, God is going to do something to make the forgiveness of sins possible: The message that these future preachers are supposed to preach to God’s people is that her “warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” “Double for all her sins” doesn’t mean that sinners have been punished twice as much as they should have been punished.
No, it’s simply a way of assuring us that the debt that we owe to God because of our sin has been fully paid for.
And how has this debt been paid? Isaiah tells us later on in chapter 53. There, he refers to someone called the “Servant of the Lord”—which is the Isaiah’s way of referring to God’s Son Jesus. Verses 5 and 6—words that are familiar to much of the world because of Handel’s Messiah—tell us precisely how this debt has been paid:
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
Because of what Christ will do through his atoning death on the cross, Isaiah assures us, our iniquities will be pardoned, our sins forgiven. And that’s Point Number One… God pardons us… as we believe in his Son Jesus. God pardons us.
Give yourself the very best Christmas present ever and receive the good news of what God has done through his Son Jesus to give us eternal life. Don’t wait another day! “But if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9.
Point Number Two… God is with us…
For this point, I need to emphasize words from verse 1: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.”
Notice those words: “my people”… “your God.”
Who could blame the people of Judah for doubting that God still claimed his people as his own after all their sin—which led them to being conquered by Babylon and sent into exile in the first place. Who could blame them for thinking that God had abandoned them.
So this was incredibly good news: “You are my people; I am your God.”
And that’s good news for the rest of us. Because of what Christ did on the cross—and as we receive God’s pardon of our sins through faith in Christ—we become God’s people. We now belong to God. He possesses us. We are his precious treasure, paid for by the blood of his Son Jesus.
Or, as Isaiah has already told us back in Isaiah chapter 7, the fact that we are now God’s people means that God is with us… with us in a way that our sin prevented us from being with him before. And this is exactly what the angel told Joseph, the adoptive father of Jesus, in Matthew’s version of the Christmas story: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).” 1
If we are in Christ, God is now with us!
Sometimes, I’m afraid, that when we preachers preach about God being with us, we speak as if he’s merely present with us… Like a coach, God is watching us from the sidelines—having coached us up, having taught us the plays, having walked us through scrimmages—but now it’s up to us. The only thing God is doing is cheering us on from the sidelines. God is with us of course, but he’s over there… He’s not really doing anything for us.
To say the least, that’s not at all what “Immanuel,” God with us, means!
Second Chronicles chapter 13 sheds some light on what it means that God is with us. There, Judah’s King Abijah appears to be in trouble. He is about to go to war against Israel’s evil king Jeroboam. And guess what? Abijah’s army is outnumbered by enemy troops two to one! 2 Chronicles 13:3: “Judah, led by King Abijah, fielded 400,000 select warriors, while Jeroboam mustered 800,000 select troops from Israel.” The odds are not in Judah’s favor, you’ve got to admit.
But not to worry: King Abijah has a plan. He is going to preach a sermon to the mighty troops that make up the army of his enemy, the northern kingdom of Israel. He stands on a mountain and reminds these enemy soldiers that they have abandoned faith in their God Yahweh, and instead have trusted false gods… Their worship is idolatry. “But as for us,” Abijah tells them in verse 10, “the Lord is our God, and we have not abandoned him.” And, oh by the way, while King Abijah is preaching this sermon, Jeroboam sends his troops to ambush Judah’s army from behind. So, in addition to badly outnumbering Judah, the enemy also has superior military strategy on its side, along with the element of surprise.
You’ve got to admit, from a strictly secular perspective, Abijah’s plan seems pretty foolhardy.
I mean, what does Abijah have going for him?
Only one thing… his faith in God. That’s the only thing he has. That’s the only thing this army of Judah has…
Dear brothers and sisters at Toccoa First Methodist Church, faith in God is not only one thing… Faith in God is everything!Do you believe it? Faith in God isn’t only one thing… Faith in God is everything! The Bible says that we’re supposed to live by faith alone. 2 And faith is enough! Faith is everything!
And I almost wish that weren’t the case, because guess why? Faith in God is usually hard. Have you noticed?
I find it far easier, for example, to trust in the equivalent of Jeroboam’s army of “800,000 chosen mighty warriors.” It’s often far easier to trust in large numbers—numbers, for instance, next to presidents’ faces on legal tender—especially Benjamin Franklin’s face—the hundred dollar bill is currently the largest denomination of currency in the U.S.; but I’m tempted to trust in large numbers in bank accounts; numbers in salaries… In my particular line of work, I’m tempted to trust in large numbers in offering plates; large numbers on church rolls; large numbers joining the church; large numbers signing up for programs and church activities…
Oh how I love large numbers!
“Because if I don’t have large numbers, what good am I? If I don’t have large numbers to show for myself, I’m a failure!”
Or so I’m tempted to think…
What about you?
What are you trusting in right now… other than God?
My mother was a collector of Lladró porcelain figurines. They were these beautiful, delicate knickknacks that she put on a shelf behind glass in a hutch in the “living room”—which was an ironic name for it—living room—since no one lived in the living room. We lived in the den of our home. We lived in the kitchen of our home. We lived in our bedrooms. We only ventured into the “living room” once or twice year!
No one was allowed in the living room unless we were entertaining King Charles or something!
But my point is, Mom’s Lladró figurines were for decoration only; they weren’t action figures, for instance. Even though, to a four- or five-year-old kid, they looked deceptively like action figures. And if I played with them—which is to say, if I actually used them—I got into big trouble. They were not to be used; they were to be put on a shelf, where they looked pretty and collected dust.
I confess that I often want my Christian faith to be like these Lladró figurines. I want to possess faith—like Mom wanted to possess these precious heirlooms. I’m glad that faith is there if I need it… But mostly I don’t want to need it. Mostly, I’d rather have the equivalent of 800,000 chosen mighty warriors on my side. Something I can see and feel and hear and touch. Something I can count. Something that gives me stature and security in this world. Something that other people can look at and say, “Brent is really amazing.” How about you?
The Word of God, by contrast, tells us that faith in God is enough for us. It was enough for King Abijah, for instance. Second Chronicles 13:18 tells us, “The men of Judah prevailed, because they relied on the Lord, the God of their fathers.”
If you are in a saving relationship with God through his Son Jesus, you will prevail as you trust in the Lord.
And by the way, there is no challenge, no problem, no big scary enemy facing the new Toccoa First Methodist Church over which we won’t prevail as we trust in the Lord… The Lord is enough for us… God is enough for us… Jesus is enough for us…
I can’t wait to see what powerful things that God is going to do at God’s new Toccoa First Methodist Church as his people here—the people of Toccoa First Methodist—put their faith in action… and they put their faith not in people, or property, or the past, or prosperity, or programs, or pastors… but they put their faith in almighty God, who is always with us… who is always more than enough for us… who is always able to make us prevail as we trust in him.
And that’s Point Number Two… God is with us.
Point Number Three… While we’re trusting in God, we need patience… We need patience because, like it or not, God is going to make us wait…
Each of the gospel writers identifies John the Baptist as that voice in verses 3 to 5. In fact, John the Baptist describes himself that way in John 1:23. When religious leaders ask John who he thinks he is—is he the Messiah? Is he Elijah? John says, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.” The point of the ministry of John the Baptist is to prepare the world for the coming of Jesus Christ.
We’re going to look more at the ministry of John in next week’s sermon. For now, I just want us to consider that the people of Israel—not to mention the rest of the world—were going to have to wait another 800 years before this prophecy was going to be fulfilled through John the Baptist and then through Jesus Christ himself. And that includes waiting 70 years in captivity in Babylon.
I’ve said this before: It’s not simply that God’s timing isn’t our timing. We all know that’s true—but the problem goes deeper than that. Our problem isn’t simply that God’s timing isn’t our timing; it’s that, from our human perspective, God’s timing is never early. Never ever! Have you noticed this? When was the last time you said or thought, “God answered my prayer more quickly than I expected!” “God showed up more quickly than I expected!” “God worked in a powerful way in my life more quickly than I expected!” No, God usually makes us wait longer than we expect or hope… Certainly a lot longer than we want to!
But it’s not like God hasn’t given us plenty of examples in scripture of God’s people waiting on him!
Even in the Christmas story. Think of poor Joseph in Matthew chapter 1. His fiancée, Mary, tells him the unexpected and hard to believe story of the angel Gabriel coming to her and announcing to her that she would give birth to the Messiah and Son of God. “But how will this be? I’ve never been with a man.” Mary knows the facts of life as much as anyone: It takes both a man and woman to get pregnant and have a child.
And Joseph knows the facts of life, too, which is why he doesn’t believe Mary’s story. He concludes what most reasonable people would conclude if given the news that Mary shared with him. That’s why, in Matthew 1:19, we’re told that Joseph “resolved to divorce her quietly.” Because he believes that Mary had been unfaithful to him.
Matthew doesn’t tell us how much time elapsed between Mary’s conversation with him… Can you imagine how that went down? “Joseph, I’m pregnant… But let me explain!” But he doesn’t tell us much time elapsed between Mary’s conversation and the moment when an angel came to Joseph in a dream… and put his fears to rest by explaining that the Holy Spirit had enabled her to conceive. It was at least days… but maybe weeks… or longer. Who knows? But the very fact that there was any time in between Mary’s conversation and the angel appearing to Joseph gave Joseph enough time to feel deeply hurt, betrayed, angry… enough time for Joseph to wonder why his fiancée didn’t love him… enough time to feel as if his future dreams were crushed.
Consider an easier alternative… God could have arranged events very differently: God could have sent Gabriel to appear to both of them at the same time. Gabriel could have explained to both of them what God was going to do in this miraculous conception and birth. And God could have prevented any confusion on Joseph’s part. Instead God made Joseph wait. And come to think of it, he also made Mary wait to see what her beloved fiancé would do.
God makes us wait. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that waiting is a characteristic feature of Christian faith.
Nearly every one of you has seen that classic Christmas TV special How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I’ve never seen the movie remakes. I’m only talking about the classic animated TV version. But you’ve seen it by now; it’s 60 years old, so I hope I’m not going to spoil the ending by talking about it right now! But you’ll recall that the Grinch hates the citizens of Whoville—because they’re just so darned happy all the time. And the Grinch is deeply unhappy, and like most unhappy people, he wants to make everyone else unhappy while he’s at it. So he tries to ruin the Christmas celebration in Whoville by doing what? By stealing all of the gifts that they purchased for one another… stealing all of their Christmas trees and ornaments and garland and decorations… even stealing the “roast beast” that they were going to eat together for Christmas dinner. He removes all the external trappings of Christmas.
By robbing the Whos of all these things, he’s convinced that he’s “stolen Christmas”—taken away their reasons for joy. So on early Christmas morning, from his mountaintop perch, the Grinch looks down into the valley below, down into Whoville… He cups his ear in anticipation of the weeping and wailing that he will surely hear when the people of Whoville wake up to discover that all of their Christmas stuff is gone—that there will be no Christmas this year.
Except, instead of misery and anger and disappointment, what does the Grinch see instead? He sees the citizens of Whoville circling up with smiles and Christmas cheer and interlocked hands, lifting up their voices and singing their Christmas anthem. Remember what the narrator says?
He puzzled and puzzed till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.
Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store.
Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more!
And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say
That the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day!
Only after he sees their joy does the Grinch return all their presents and decorations and food… And he gets invited to their celebration. The end.
And of course the point is, the Whos have a much deeper source of love and joy and comfort and peace than material possessions, than creature comforts, than favorable circumstances.
And perhaps Dr. Seuss would say that they have the “Christmas spirit,” but we know a source of joy that is much, much deeper than that!
In the Book of Habakkuk, the prophet complains to God because—like so many of us Christians today—he is unhappy because he perceives that God is taking too long to answer his prayers; too long to fulfill his promises; too long to show up and deliver his people from their trouble.
But then the prophet prays, reminding himself of the many powerful things that God has done for his people in the past, reminding himself of God’s character—of God’s love, mercy, and grace—reminding himself of God’s promises for the future.
Now listen to what the prophet says at the end of the book, in Habakkuk 3:16 to 19:
I will wait quietly for the coming day
when disaster will strike the people who invade us.
Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
and the cattle barns are empty,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
The Sovereign Lord is my strength!
He makes me as surefooted as a deer,
able to tread upon the heights.
Nothing about the prophet’s external circumstances have changed since he was complaining at the beginning of the book… nothing’s changed, not one iota. Except he knows a deeper joy than he had before—a joy that is much bigger and stronger than mere circumstances.
And that’s what I want for you… That’s what I want for us.
That joy is available in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ… [Invitation]
Good point about the waiting! Tough to do. Certainly going through that with my daughter Brianna (who just got married this past Sunday!), who will likely end up stopping her teaching job and have to look for work elsewhere (among other things, especially her lack of spiritual orientation right now).
(Don’t know if I hit the right buttons below to get a reply on my comment, so trying again with this one.)