Isaiah 40
We are a comfort-seeking people. Those who market products to us know that anything that can save us the slightest exertion will be worth some money to us. We are also interested in the avoidance of all disappointment and sadness. How well would we do if we were the targets of the divine statements of judgment that have taken up much of the first sections of this book of prophesy?
But now with the fortieth chapter we enter a new section of Isaiah. While God will continue to correct His people, His word from this point forward is filled with much comfort. But what kind of comfort is it? Is it the comfort that allows us the soul equivalent of a comfy couch, or is it the deeper comfort that comes to us at a great cost and demands our careful attention?
God commands that His servants will speak tenderly to
The Lord is so amazing! How could He actually come and speak to man face to face? He is the eternal and everlasting God. We live in the world of the perishing. Like the grass of the field even we ourselves come and then we are gone even in the blinking of an eye. How can God visit us here in this place of the temporary? The word stands forever, and it will be the Word who will come and speak to us. The voice of the Lord can break the cedars of Lebanon, and that voice will come as a servant of the Lord, a servant who is to be announced by this voice crying in the wilderness. The voice of God will come in the flesh, and He will shepherd His flock as a mighty protector. He knows the wonders of creation, for He was the voice of God over the tumultuous waters. He does not consider the great nations of the world as weighty. They are all part of the emptiness of this passing world, but He is forever, and He has won for us a new creation that will never fade away.
What will this voice of God be like when He comes? He is nothing like the idols of men, which can do nothing. Have you not heard of the God who is the great transcendent one, that He is also imminent in His love for His people? He made all things visible and invisible. The most impressive rulers do not make God afraid. He can bring any person to nothing, and He can also raise up the poorest slave to make Him sit with princes. He will correct us, but with any necessary correction, He commands of those who would speak for Him that He would be presented to His people as the God of all comfort. This despite the fact that our days here are numbered, yet we need not be filled with resentment or envy. We can rest in the fact that the Sovereign God reigns. He knows the stars by name, and He has not forgotten you.
Why would we want to hide our ways from Him? He has sent His son to be the atoning sacrifice for us, and we would do well to approach Him with all personal honesty, but yet we think we can hide in our sin. This is what the people of
Let us, then, be diligent to seek the Lord and find Him before the day of His mercy has passed. Let us flee to the great Lover of our souls, who gave His blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Let us see that the comforts that we need the most cannot be found merely in the laziness of the most inviting couch. Let us see the love of God in Christ for us, and be suitably moved by the greatest love ever experienced.
posted by Pastor Magee @ 7:00 AM
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