Chris Taylor’s Sermon –12/7/08
Comfort, Comfort My People
Isaiah 40:1-11
When you were a child was there ever a time when you found yourself alone in your house? Maybe your mom or dad had left for just a half hour or hour or so to run a quick errand. Or maybe they were just really late getting back from some engagement. Whatever the cause, there you were alone, and if it was at night that house might have begun to feel a bit scary. It didn’t matter if you had lived there all your life; a house feels very different when there’s no one else around. It starts to feel strange and unfamiliar.
You begin to hear sounds that you had never heard before. Creaks in the floor that you are just sure is someone trying to sneak up the stairs. Every part of you is alert, sensitive to the slightest noise that might indicate something or someone unusual. The minutes drag by. You wonder how much longer it is going to be.
And then, finally, comes that moment when you hear the front door swinging open and the glad, familiar sound of your parent’s voices. And in that moment you know everything is going to be okay. Your parents are home. They’ll take care of everything. You don’t have to worry anymore.
It is something of that same feeling that meets us in our text this morning. The text opens with what has to be one of the most beautiful lines in all of Scripture: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term…”
The people of Jerusalem are in a pretty dark place. The city has fallen, its walls and temple destroyed. Everything these people had known, everything they had every counted on has been taken away from them. Now they are living in exile, captives in a foreign land. They have nothing to go back to; no real hope of ever seeing their home once more.
These are the people for whom this message of comfort is intended. They are the ones who most need to hear it. How were they supposed to interpret the events that had so overwhelmed them? Had God deserted them? Were the gods of the Babylonians somehow stronger?
Isaiah is clear on this point: the fault was their own. They had turned away from God, pursued their own wealth and comforts, and now they were simply experiencing the natural consequences of their choices. That’s what this talk of having served her term and paid her penalty in the second verse is all about.
But he is equally clear that God had never turned away. God is aware of everything that has happened to them, God has been near to them throughout their long journey into exile. And now, at this moment when the people are ready to turn back, God is right there – ready to receive them into his arms once more, v. 3,“A voice cries out, ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’” God is coming. God is going to meet them in their need. God is going to do for them what they could not do for themselves.
“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.”
This is not the stuff of wishful thinking or cheap promises. God isn’t saying that the path ahead is going to be easy or without great hardship. No, the promise here is much bigger than that. The promise is that God is drawing near to them and will be work, v.9, “Say to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’” God is right there! Like those parents coming through the front door, God is present. Their lives and their future now abide in God’s hands, and there is no better place for them to be.
There is no better place first of all, because God is all powerful, v. 10, “See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.” The gods of the Babylonians or of any other nation are no match for God. There is nothing that this God cannot do, no feat too great for him to accomplish. This God comes with might.
There is no better place second of all, because this God comes with great compassion, v. 11, “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” God cares for them with the same compassion, the same attention to each and every one of them that a shepherd shows to every member of his flock.
Just when everything seems lost, just when hope itself has been trampled under foot, here is God himself showing up. He comes in glory and power and triumph. The people can rest easy. Their lives are in God’s hands, and God will surely provide.
It is that same hope, that same promise that shapes our own life together. There are all kinds of things that we might be longing for as we gather here this morning; each longing specific to our own circumstances. The longings take all kinds of different forms: that our stocks might rebound to their former glory; that we will get that promotion we’ve been longing for and maybe (at this point) just keep our jobs; that our marriage might get better or that our grandchild might be cured. These are all good things, any one of them would be a blessing should they happen. But we live in the knowledge that they might not. There are no guarantees. Even more, we’ve learned through the years that life can throw us a curve-ball from time to time; that everything can change in a single, unexpected moment.
The hope offered here is something deeper, something far more sure and lasting. This is a hope grounded not in the fragile expectations of what might be, but grounded instead in the sure and certain promises of our Creator. Our hope is in God; in the promise that God is here and that God is at work. And if God is here, then we can rest secure knowing that our lives and our future abide in his infinitely capable hands.
Forty eight years after Jerusalem fell in 587 BC, something happened there in the mid-east that the people of Judah could never have imagined. A great king rose up in Persia and in 539 defeated the Babylonian Empire. Who would ever have thought that the mighty Babylonians might fall? A year later Cyrus of Persian issued an edict, setting all of Babylon’s captives free and encouraging them to return to their homes and to rebuild their places of worship. These people of Judah, in other words – a people who had lost everything and were utterly powerless to help themselves – found their greatest hope realized. The people of Judah were free to go home once more.
Comfort, comfort my people. Our lives rest in the hands of a loving God.
As you approach this table this morning, listen carefully. It is the front door of all eternity that is opening here. It is the welcome sound of God’s own voice that meets us in these elements of bread and cup. “I am here.”
No matter what is happening in your life right now, God is there beside you. No matter how frightening or uncertain your future may seem, it rests in the hands of our Creator – and there is simply no better place in all creation for your life to be.