Isaiah No.7 Tell my people I'm coming

The reading this morning is from the book of Isaiah, chapter 40. If you'd like to open your Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, maybe there's someone here who can share with you.

Isaiah, chapter 40, starting at verse 1. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling, in the desert prepare the way for the Lord.

Make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low. The rough ground shall become level.

The rugged places are plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

A voice says, cry out. And I said, what shall I cry? All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers, and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them.

Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever. You who bring good tidings to Zion, go up on a high mountain.

You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout. Lift it up. Do not be afraid.

Say to the towns of Judah, here is your God. See, the sovereign Lord comes with power, and his arm rules for him. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.

He tends his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arms, and carries them close to his heart. He gently leads those that have young.

Isaiah chapter 40, which Stephanie read to us. When you move out of the 39th chapter of Isaiah's prophecy and into the 40th, you take quite a historical leap, because now we find ourselves not centered geographically as far as the message is concerned from Judah, from southern Palestine. But the people of God who have been disobedient to God have been transplanted, and they've been placed in Babylon.

And from this 40th chapter to the end of the prophecy, that's basically what you find. But the predictions are that the people of God will return to the land that God gave to Abraham. Now, there are some people, and I won't go into the reasons for this, it's fairly tedious and boring, who believe that from the 40th chapter or from the 39th chapter onwards, you've got another writer, you've got another author, a man by the name of Jethro Isaiah.

Jethro actually wasn't his name, it's just what the scholars give because they got a problem as to how to work out how a man can accurately predict what will happen in the future. And because they're not too sure that they can concede that the predictive element was so accurate in the Old Testament and in this prophecy as would seem to be the case, instead of accepting Isaiah-anic authorship for the whole of the prophecy, they smuggle in the idea of another author. Well, I think you can leave that in the refuge bin and continue with the notion that the substance of what you find in the latter part of this prophecy flowed from the same mind that God inspired to give us the opening 39 chapters.

And when we move into this 40th chapter, you'll find that it divides into two and Tim backed off the idea of trying to expound in when he set this agenda, the whole of this chapter and rightly so because it's almost impossible, it's chock-a-block with such good things to be able to go through it in the course of 30 minutes plus or minus, generally plus. The 12th verse or rather the, yes, the 12th verse and onwards takes you into a sort of appeal of the prophet bearing in mind God's ability in nature, his creative handiwork, because God has done that, then God can do this. This being what you find in the first 11 verses, this predication, this idea that one day God's messenger, the Messiah, the extension of the Godhead will come back into this world and speak particularly though not exclusively to the Jewish nation, that before that happens, there will be a tremendous political upheaval and Babylon which has taken over from Assyria will be caused to release the Israelites so that they can move out of the land of bondage back into the land of promise.

How do you know, Isaiah? How do you know? And Isaiah smiles and he points to what God has done eons ago in history. He points to the greatness, the grandeur of creation and the finitude of man, the utter inability of man to control his own destiny and Isaiah in effect says, well, my confidence is based on this, the word of God, the God who acted in nature and brought into being out of nothing what now is, this God who is so great that you cannot compare even the wisest of men with Him. This God can achieve His purposes.

He can bring His people back from Babylon into the promised land. He can bring a disobedient gainsaying church back from its position of disobedience into an alignment with His will and fill the church again with His spirit so that it impacts society and that if you like is one of the spiritual applications that we can make from this particular chapter and especially these opening 11 or so verses. Well, if you want some consolation this morning because you've had a tough week, then this first verse of this chapter is gonna speak to you.

Notice it's double in the use of the verb. It doubles up. Comfort, comfort my people says your God.

The town where this prophecy comes from is Babylon. The time, that of exile. The topic, the return of the Jews.

And God speaks a message to the townspeople of Worthing and the topic is comfort. God wants you and me to enter into a state of peacefulness. He addresses His immediate hearers in such a wonderful, feelingful fashion.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. He personifies Jerusalem as though not just being a geographical center, it actually represents a large number of people as indeed it does. And when God speaks to this disobedient people, these displaced citizens of Jerusalem, He speaks a tender message.

As tender as the thoughts of Shechem to the daughter of Jacob, to whom reference is made in Genesis or perhaps more well known in terms of an illustration, as tender as Boaz in his reaction to Ruth. So God speaks to disobedient, undeserving people. So God speaks to you and to me right now.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Do you remember in medieval times when you were back at school and they were teaching you about the Middle Ages, how before the glad, happy day of the tabloids, news used to be promoted? Well, you had the town crier and he would come along and he would discharge a summary of what was happening in the immediate locality or indeed the news in general. Well, this is the concept.

The crier coming along and crying to the displaced people of Jerusalem that God has got a message of comfort and hope for them. And whenever you read of someone who is burdened with the message of the Lord, it's the idea of the town crier that's there. They've gone to the heavenly Jerusalem.

They have received news from the King of Kings and having stood in his presence, they then address the people to whom he has directed them and they are to bring not the cogitations of their own thinking. They are to discharge to the people what God himself has said. That is the essence of the preaching ministry.

That's why when the pulpit becomes a place where philosophical discourses or even worse, political speeches are made, it's a betrayal of the pulpit. The pulpit is here for a man, for a woman to come charged with a message from the Lord to explain that message, to cry it out and to do so with something of the tenderness and the compassion of the father heart of God as he directs his mercy to a disobedient and undeserving people. Comfort my people, says your God.

Do you get the impact to those personal pronouns? He loved me, he gave himself for me. Evangelical faith has always been by definition something that you enter into not by proxy but by a naked dynamic experience for yourself. Not your husband, not your wife, not your mother, not your father, not your kids, all this important but the prior importance is you and God.

My God, you are my people. Well, they're going to speak tenderly. These preachers to the people in Babylon, these ex-Jerusalemites, what are they to speak tenderly about? Well, three things.

The duress is discontinued. The hard service has been completed. The debt has been discharged.

Her sin has been paid for. The bounty has been bestowed. She has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

Duress, well, yes, they were suffering for the consequences of their sin but the time would come to an end. They would be released from Babylon. God has got the situation in his control.

As to the debt, well, only one sinned against can discharge the debt incurred. You remember that's the reason why with great perception the Pharisees took Jesus on one side and said in effect, you are claiming to be God because you reckon that you can forgive sins. They were correct in their conclusion.

They were wrong in the way that they abused their understanding of what our Lord was claiming. But you see here in this Old Testament book of Isaiah is a groping towards that great day when the suffering servant who you meet later on in this book shall have come into this world and on Calvary's cross he will take upon himself your sins and my sins and the debt of sin will be discharged and the prophet anticipates this. Duress discontinued.

Debt discharged. Listen to those glorious words. I was going to pass over them but it would be sinful, I think, at this stage for me not to remind you of what happened when our Lord died on the cross.

He poured out his life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors for he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. Duress discontinued. Debt discharged.

Here is bounty bestowed. She has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. It's difficult to know just how to interpret this.

There are a couple. I'll give you the one that I like best because of economy of time. When God saved me, he didn't just save me.

When God discharged my debt, he didn't just discharge my debt. He went beyond what he needed to do. He does not just pardon, says the psalmist, he abundantly pardons.

As far as the east is from the west, so far as he removed my iniquities from me. Be of sin the double cure. Isn't that Isaac Watts? Save me from its guilt and power.

When God deals with your sin, he deals with it properly. A double bounty bestowed. She has received from the Lord's hand double in terms of grace over against the sinfulness that she has committed.

Well, with such a great thought of God's comfort, needing in terms of a message to be proclaimed to the people, we're now introduced in the third verse to one of the preachers. And more than one comes central stage. Verse six, you get the second preacher and verse nine, the third preacher.

These are a triplet of priors who have been commissioned by God to bring his message to the people in exile. And isn't it interesting that when you find the opening preacher commencing his message, he does so as though it's just a human voice, a voice of one calling in the desert. But at the end of the message, verse five, he shows you the source of his preaching.

The mouth of the Lord has spoken. It was the old Puritans who said, preaching the word of God is the word of God. When God's word is accurately portrayed, when it is accurately placarded, then it becomes the now word of God to the congregation.

That's why some of the older preachers, when they walked into the pulpit and opened the word of God, they would say, the word of God to which I draw your attention today is. Now there is a sense, of course, that the whole of scripture is the word of God, but that word which is preached becomes the word of God to the contemporary, to the present situation, to that group of God's people. A voice of one calling in the wilderness.

Yes, an anonymous voice because the preacher is not important. You see, this is one of the things that we've forgotten in our modern evangelicalism, where sometimes if you read our magazines, it seems as though we've taken the Beverly Hills, Hollywood approach to preachers as though they're celebrities. The messenger wants to hide behind the message.

And all that the true preacher worth his salt who dares to grace a pulpit can do is to hope that when he's been forgotten, the message will remain. So here is this anonymous preacher and he speaks to this immediate context. Here is Babylon, here is Jerusalem.

What distinguishes Babylon and Jerusalem? A large tract of land and communications are impossible. You've got the Arabian desert and whatever communications there were on the fringes of the desert, well, they've been overgrown with weed and bramble and so on and so forth because, well, these people, they've been exiled for a long time. You go to the Congo today or Zaire, try and move around in Northeast Zaire, you're in difficulty, why? Well, you see, it's 20, 30, 40 years since the Belgians pulled out of Zaire.

And since then, hardly anything has been done in terms of road maintenance. It's the reason for the Missionary Aviation Fellowship and its vital work there in Northeast Zaire. Do pray for the MAF.

You see, when you've displaced the people or when a people are negligent in terms of the communication possibilities by maintaining roads and so on and so forth, then you've got a great problem that eventually emerges. So here is this prophet and he's speaking, this anonymous crier, in the desert, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Why? Well, God will come back to the promised land in a remarkable fashion.

And every mountain shall be lowered. Every valley shall be raised up. Why? Well, you see, it's not just the town crier, it's the herald.

I remember on one occasion traveling in Tanzania and the president was coming down the road. It's incredible the way these African countries esteem their leaders. When the president is in his car, all the rest of the cars stop.

And he had come down the middle of the road in his limousine and outflanking him. And in front of him, there will be the men on motorcycles and they will have the enzyme of the president. And woe betide the Tanzanian driver or in Kenya, the Kenyan driver who does not pull into the side if Daniel Moi of Kenya is going down the main highway.

You see, when the chief comes, you clear the road. Do you remember John the Baptist? You see, he is the fulfillment, the future fulfillment of what the town crier here is referring to. Oh, historically, he's got in mind, doubtless Cyrus, the one who allows under the sovereignty of God, the Hebrews to return from Babylon.

But that is just a minor fulfillment. The long-term, the incredible fulfillment will be when John the Baptist starts his ministry on the shores of the Jordan, on the banks of the Jordan. And what does he do? He prepares the way.

For whom? For Jesus, for the Lord Jesus Christ. Prepares the way, clears the way, and then gets out of the way. He shall increase, but I must decrease.

A highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain made low. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed.

You see, men will be astonished when immediately these Jews come out of the captivity of Babylon. Why so astonished? Well, because of the prophetic word. All this had been born into the mind, into the conviction of Isaiah decades ago.

And it comes to pass. One of the great evidences for the authority of scripture is the way that the prophetic element in the Old Testament invariably came to pass. And when our Lord was on earth, well, how do you understand him? This carpenter from Nazareth, when he starts to move into his ministry, the eloquence that pours from his lips, the power that there is in his body, he walks on the water, he heals the lame, he can multiply loaves and fishes.

We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. But years ago, Isaiah saw it, and it became a message of immediate and ultimate comfort to these exiles. Yes, you will come back, but not just that.

Also in your trail, so to speak, will come the messenger par excellence from the throne room itself. And he will speak on behalf of God. So let's prepare the way for him.

The first voice speaks of the glory of the Lord. The second voice from the sixth verse to the eighth speaks of the word of God. Look again, it's almost a repetition of the point which was obvious to be made earlier.

The sixth voice is cry out. This is the divine voice, this is Yahweh's voice. This is the Lord commissioning the crier.

I said, what shall I cry? You see, I make the point again. The man who speaks on behalf of God must go to God for the message. This is why old John Bunyan, that great man from Bedford, on one occasion when they were asking him about the emotion in his voice and the passion of his preaching, he said unblushingly, I preached what I did feel, what I did smartingly feel.

What shall I cry? Well, tell them about the impermanence of man and talk them about the durability of the word of God. Tell them about the grass, tell them about the spirit and tell them about flesh. As for the grass, well, the flowers of the field, the latter part of verse six.

The grass withers, verse seven, the flowers fall. And then the repetition of the teaching, verse eight, the grass withers and the flowers fall. You know that, don't you? You bought your loved ones some roses for Valentine's day? Knock, knock, you didn't? Well, you meant to.

You're going to do it this week. How long will they last? Not very long. The flowers fade.

Men and women in their flesh, they're frail. Their lifespan, well, longer than flowers, but not that long. You ask our 70-year-olds, our 80-year-olds, does your life seem a long one? And they tell you, it's just gone like this.

I can't believe that two decades have gone by since I first came into this ball pit. I feel younger now than I did then. You say you're fooling yourself, all right.

Let me be a fool. The fact of the matter is that as the flowers and the grasses fade, so men and women are frail. And what then do you place your trust? That which is impermanent, that which is permanent.

And that is the word of our God. It stands forever. Here is the Apostle James, and he's repeating exactly the same lesson because the New Testament writers cribbed a lot of their stuff from the Old Testament.

It wasn't plagiarism, they were inspired by the Spirit, as I will tell Charles Spurgeon when I see him one day about some of my sermons approximating fairly closely to his. James 1, verse 10, the one who is rich should take pride in his low position because he will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant.

It blossoms, falls, and its beauty is destroyed in the same way the rich man will fade away. You see the frailty? But here's our beloved Lord, and he's speaking to us in the sermon, we call these Sermon on the Mount, and he's referring to his word. What about his word? Well, he says, I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear.

Heaven and earth may pass away. My word will not pass away. And this is the word that has to be cried.

It has to be preached, not only to Israel in the days of the exile, not only to the Jerusalemites when they've returned from the land of bondage, but it needs to be proclaimed around our world today. You remember how one of our great hymns that is sometimes sung at football matches, abide with me, fast falls the even tide. Change and decay in all around I see.

All thou that changest not, abide with me. Well, it's all here. There's change, there's decay, there's nothing that's permanent in this life.

Even that little boy Harry, first time at the tab, Harry Cloak came because the apostle Paul says, bring my cloak and it's good to have a, it's good to follow the apostle's injunctions. Even that little lad, eventually they will be the marks of decay. But the word of God, it lasts forever.

Therefore it needs to be broadcasted. And this is what the second message is all about. And it's repeated if you want to look on in the 55th chapter and the 10th and 11th verses.

But let's move to the third preacher because the first one you remember has preached about the glory of the Lord. The second about the word of our God. And the third preacher, well, his substance, the substance of his message is that what the Jerusalemites having returned to Zion have received in terms of God's communication, they are now to transmit to others.

Look at verse nine. You who bring good tidings to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout.

Lift it up. Do not be afraid. Say to the towns of Judah, here is your God.

When you have received the message of the Lord, then you have the responsibility to communicate that message to others. So you've got in the Hebrew, I can't pronounce the Hebrew on this one. You've got in the Hebrew, the equivalent that gives us in the New Testament, the word evangelize.

Bring good tidings. You who have brought evangelism to Zion, now you go up to a high mountain to the most public pulpit that you can find, lift up your voice with a shout. Did you hear? Lift it up.

He repeats it again because he wants to accentuate the importance of getting this message across. Do you hear? Third time, here is, or lift up again, your God, the message of God. And what are we to tell people about God? Well, verse 10.

See, the sovereign Lord, Adonai, comes with power. The idea is that, well, the Assyrians who'd caused so much problems to the Hebrews in the first part of this prophecy, and the Babylonians who were a terror to the Hebrews as well, they are really quite insignificant when contrasted with the power of the sovereign God. You see, here is the Assyrian emperor, and he's been drawn to the dust.

Here is the king of Babylon, and he too is just a man. He's just an ordinary man. These political powers, they're like the fine dust of the balance, and God blows.

They change. Empires come and empires fall. Charismatic figures take the spotlight in human history for a while, but then they go.

But the sovereign Lord, he remains invulnerable. His power, without qualification. Behold your God.

But this sovereign is not a sort of celestial figure or a celestial version of Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian ruler. He's not a celestial version of Napoleon. You see, this God with all his power, who comes into this world in the person of his son, bearing a reward for those who have put their trust in him, he is to be seen, verse 11, like a shepherd.

He is to be seen as one who gathers his lambs in his arms. He is to be understood as one who takes a little child to his heart as a mother takes her infant to her breast and gently leads those that are young. You see, the message of this preacher is incredible.

He is in effect saying, let me give you an illustration. I don't know if this happens down in the South, but in the north of England, if you want to look as though you're busy, you always roll up your sleeves. You know, it nearly broke our marriage in the opening years that whenever my wife brought me a pullover with long sleeves I would always push them up, the sleeves.

I mean, it was part of the tribal practices in Yorkshire. You always did this, because if you got your arms, your sleeves rolled up, it looked as though you were ready for business. You get the first introduction here to the idea of the arm of God in Isaiah.

There are several other references. See, the sovereign Lord comes with power and his arm rules for him. The arm of the Lord, the bed arm of God, God ready for action, but not just as an unfeeling sovereign power, like a shepherd gathering the lambs, having a concern for those who are immature, the sheep that are expecting their young, dealing gently with them, carrying all close to his heart.

This is the Lord. This is the shepherd God of Israel. And these preachers, they've been commissioned to tell the Israelites about the nature of their God.

And brothers and sisters, their God is our God. And the wisest man, the wisest woman in the world is one who realizes that the most important thing is the relationship that they have with this God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has made it possible for the discharging of all that has been, in terms of penalty for sin, that you rest discontinued in their life. This God has made it possible for debts to be forgiven.

This God comes with an incredible bounty and he wants to be stored upon you. Now don't listen because you've heard me. My name, and this is not a false attempt at being humble, my name counts for nothing.

It is utterly unimportant. But this message is of great importance. Three anonymous preachers speaking of the glory of God and the word of the Lord and the concern to present the evangel to all who will listen.

Respond to those ancient anonymous preachers. Return to the Lord. Receive the bounty of his forgiveness.

Base your life upon the permanent revelation of God in scripture. And having discovered his salvation, then take that message to as many people as you possibly can as you find your own pulpit and you sound out the message of salvation. And may God bless you as you do it for his glory.

Amen. Amen. ♪ Jesus shall reign forever, son ♪ ♪ But his son said, sin shall be done ♪ ♪ His kingdom spread from shore to shore ♪ ♪ The good shall rise and set no more ♪ ♪ The good shall end as prayer be laid ♪ ♪ And grace shall start to crown his head ♪ ♪ His name might say, the good shall rise ♪ ♪ With every morning's sacrifice ♪ ♪ The eagle and pharaohs of every time ♪ ♪ Sing of his sweetest song ♪ ♪ And eagle voices shall proclaim ♪ ♪ Their early blessings of this day ♪ ♪ Blessings of many brains ♪ ♪ The prince of leaves to loose his chains ♪ ♪ The weary heart eternal rest ♪ ♪ And all the sons of God's harvest ♪ ♪ Rich shall rise and bring the highest honors to the king ♪ ♪ Angels descend with songs again ♪ ♪ La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la ♪ ♪ Great is the darkness that covers the earth ♪ ♪ Oppression, injustice, and pain ♪ ♪ Nations are sleeping in hopeless despair ♪ Many have come in your name Watching while sanity dies Touched by the madness and lies Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus Pour out your Spirit, we pray Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus Pour out your Spirit on us, we pray May now your Church rise with power and love This glorious Gospel proclaim In every nation, salvation will come To those who believe in your name Help us bring light to this world That we might speed your return Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus Pour out your Spirit, we pray Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus Pour out your Spirit on us, we pray Celebration on that final day When out of the heavens you come Darkness will vanish, all sorrow will end And rulers will bow at your throne A great commission complete Then face to face we will meet Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus Pour out your Spirit, we pray Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus Pour out your Spirit on us, we pray And we sing, Come, Lord Jesus Glorify your name And we sing, Come, Lord Jesus Glorify your name And we sing, Come, Lord Jesus Glorify your name And we sing, Come, Lord Jesus Glorify your name . .