Please remain standing for the reading of Holy Scripture. We will read first off our New Testament lesson from 2 Corinthians chapter one, verses three to seven. 2 Corinthians one and verse three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. who comforts us in all our tribulation that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ. Now, if we are afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effective for enduring the same sufferings which we also suffer. or if we are comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. And our hope for you is steadfast because we know that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so also you will partake of the consolation. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Turn now to our Old Testament reading and sermon text, Isaiah 40 and verse one. On the way here in our minivan, we listened to a few selections from Handel's Messiah, and after the overture, the very first text that is used is comfort. Comfort ye my people, saith your God. And so we will start with this text in our series, Isaiah 40 verse one. Comfort, yes, comfort, my people, says your God. Speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. May the Lord bless the reading and proclamation of his holy word, amen. You may be seated. The reason I'm starting this series of texts used in Handel's Messiah has to do in part with a peculiar relationship, and that is the relationship between George Friedrich Handel and John Newton. Now you might wonder, what does a German Baroque composer have to do with a slave ship captain turned pastor? Let's start by talking about Handel. Handel, the famous German composer, had a friend named Charles Jennings who arranged a libretto and asked Handel to set it to music. Jennings was an English landowner and he was a patron of the arts. He often collaborated with Handel on different pieces. And the other thing about Jennings is that he was a devout Anglican. And he was very concerned in his own day by the rise of deism, this view that he saw, especially in England, that God is merely an impersonal clockmaker who makes the cosmos, winds it up like a clock, and then lets it go, a kind of absentee landlord, a distant sovereign. And Jennings was also concerned that many of the deists denied the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he saw his libretto that he had written as a challenge to deism. He wanted to emphasize in his text the reality of fulfilled prophecy, the intervention of God in history, and above all, the incarnation of the Son of God. So there was an apologetic purpose to this text that he wanted Handel to set to music. And as Jennings put it together, he drew primarily from the authorized, or King James version of the Bible, as well as the Psalms that are found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. If you look at what eventually became the libretto for Handel's Messiah, there are 81 Bible verses from 14 different books of the Bible. 21 of those verses come from Isaiah, 15 from the Psalter, 10 from 1 Corinthians, 7 from Revelation, 6 from Luke, 5 from Romans, 4 from Matthew, 3 from Malachi, 2 from Haggai, 2 from Job, 2 from Zechariah, 2 from Hebrews, 1 from Lamentations, and 1 from John. So there's a lot of Bible. It's all Bible, and it's drawn from a large swath of Bible passages. If you look at this libretto, there's three sections. The first one's mostly about Jesus' incarnation. The second section is about his atonement. And then finally, it talks about his resurrection and victorious coming again. Interestingly, when Jennings put this together, he had Easter in mind. particularly, and when it premiered, it did so in April 1742 in Dublin, but historically, it has become a Christmas staple and is more associated with Christmas than with Easter. Well, regardless, when it comes to the music, Handel composed the music for Messiah in 24 days of frenetic activity. barely eating and barely sleeping as he worked on this piece. I don't know a whole lot about Handel's personal faith. It seems that he was a devout Lutheran. But while he was writing the Hallelujah Chorus, it is said that one of Handel's servants discovered him in tears. Later it was said that he claimed, I did think I did see all of heaven before me. and the great God himself seated on his throne with his company of angels. And like Bach, as we saw last week, at the end of the Messiah, Handel wrote SDG, soli deo gloria, to the glory of God alone. Interesting historical background. Now you might wonder, what does all of that have to do with John Newton, the famous slave ship captain and author of amazing grace. Well, over 40 years after the debut of Handel's Messiah, in the year 1785, after Handel was dead, there were several performances staged in England, particularly in London, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Handel's birth. And John Newton, at the time, was pastoring in a London congregation. And although Newton appreciated Handel's work. He feared that some of the people in London were going to the performances simply to hear the music, without really listening to the words, all of which are drawn from the scriptures. To quote the poet, they had the experience, but they missed the meaning. They heard the music, they missed the words. And in response, John Newton preached a sermon series on the texts used in Handel's Messiah. He actually preached 50 sermons in all. I'm not planning to preach 50 consecutive sermons over the next 50 weeks or year, but we'll at least touch on a few of them. So with this venerable precedent in mind, I think it would be fitting for us to follow a similar course that Newton did for at least a couple reasons. You're going to hear Handel's Messiah on the radio or using Amazon music or Apple music. You're going to hear it this time of year, and it would be good for us to listen to the words even as we enjoy the music. But second and most importantly, it would be eminently fitting for us to prepare our hearts to focus on and celebrate the incarnation of the Son of God, the entry of Christ into the world. So with that rather lengthy introduction and rationale in mind, we're going to look at our text this evening. The first three texts of Handel's Messiah following the overture come from Isaiah 40. Isaiah 40, which is where we will begin tonight with a message of comfort for an afflicted people. Comforts, yes, comfort my people, says your God. Speak comfort to Jerusalem. Tonight, we're gonna talk about comfort. And that theme never grows old because as a people living in a state of sin and misery, we need to be comforted. Yes, we need to be challenged. the hammer of God's convicting word, but we also need the balm of Gilead. We need the gospel to bind up broken wounds. And so tonight we're gonna look at comfort through Isaiah, comfort in Jesus, and then finally, comfort for you. So comfort through Isaiah, in Jesus, for you. Before jumping into the text, I wanna set it in a little bit of context that will serve us well in the coming weeks as we As we remain in Isaiah 40 for a little bit of time, Isaiah, 66 books, a large prophetic book, is a vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Isaiah the prophet was a son of Amos. His dates are roughly 740 BC to 680 BC. As we saw, he was a contemporary of Micah. We just looked at Micah's prophecy. They lived about the same time. He also overlapped with Hosea, Amos, and Jonah, the prophet who went into the belly of the fish. Those are some of his contemporaries. It's sometimes called the fifth gospel or the gospel according to Isaiah. And even a cursory reading of this book shows you that that's a fitting label. the gospel according to Isaiah. I don't want to get too much into the weeds, but just to give you something of the larger scale structure of the book, it has a seven-fold sequence, kind of like the creation days, and I'm drawing this from Michael Bull's helpful work In the Shape of Isaiah. You have chapters one to 12. That's prophecies regarding Judah and Jerusalem. Then you have chapters 13 to 27, prophecies against the nations, Then you have chapters 28 to 35, a collection of warnings and promises. 36 to 39, the king's deliverance. 40 to 48, the redemption of Israel promised. 49 to 57, redemption provided, the suffering Messiah. And then 58 to 66, the glory and ministry of Israel among the nations. So it's got roughly Basically, depending on how you cut up the pie, there's seven major sections. And if you look closely, it's actually what we would call a chiasm. It's a kind of literary structure where the dead center of the book is the key to everything else. And so you have this pattern where it comes into the dead center, then it works its way out again. At the very center of Isaiah is the historical narrative of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem and the delivery of King Hezekiah from the hand of Sennacherib by the angel of the Lord. That was a theme that figured prominently in the book of Micah, and it's at the very center of this prophecy. It's the one historical account, and it's right in the middle of the book. Our passage comes just after the center point. And another way of looking at this book is that chapters 1 to 39 are mostly about judgment, about going into exile. And then with chapter 40, we reach something of a turning point. Salvation from sin, hope beyond the exile. E.J. Young, whose commentary on Isaiah I can't recommend more highly, says this, when one turns from the 39th to the 40th chapter, it is as though he steps out of the darkness of judgment into the light of salvation. The contrast, Young says, is great, and yet it is evident that 39 is a preparation for 40. At the dead center of the book, you have the deliverance of King Hezekiah from Sennacherib, but right after that, it becomes clear that although God has rescued Hezekiah, his descendants will go into exile in Babylon. That's on the horizon. The shadow of Babylon falls upon the end of chapter 39. And many of you perhaps feel something of the shadow of just the hostility toward the church in our present cultural moments. We feel a sense of being marginalized or even exiled. Well, chapter 40 is the turning point for Isaiah and it's also the turning point for us. As Young says, chapters 40 and following serve to answer the dark picture that the 39th chapter had created. This is the key shift right after the center of the book. And it comes to us as a commission or a charge, a commission for service, and it's put in general terms in verse one. Comfort, yes, comfort, my people, says your God. This is clearly a commission to the prophet, I want you to say something, I want you to do something. Similar to Isaiah chapter six, where God called Isaiah to a ministry of speaking judgment to the people. And Isaiah said, here am I, send me. He was commissioned. Well here is a second commission, but this time he's not telling Isaiah to speak judgment, he's telling Isaiah to speak Comfort, he actually uses that word twice. Comfort, yes, comforts. Now who's called to comfort? Actually, the verbs here are in the plural. So it's not just a charge for Isaiah, it's a charge to all the godly prophets, the men of God who speak on God's behalf. And by extension, this is a commission to all gospel ministers up to the present day. Ministers of the gospel are being charged. I am one of them to comfort God's people. Indeed, that's who's being comforted, my people. And this is remarkable. At the end of chapter 39, God has prophesied through Isaiah that the children of Israel in Judah are going to go into Babylonian exile. They're going to be cast off because of their sins. And yet, how does God talk to them? my people. He hasn't disowned them. When you fall into deep sin and you are chastened at the hands of the Lord and God brings you through discipline, We sometimes miss the grace of discipline because he's still calling you my child. That's why he's disciplining you. That's why his love won't let you go because he's saying, this is my people. These are my children. I'm disciplining them so that I can bring them back. My people, indeed, my people says your God. And even when ministers have to say hard things to their congregations, They need to be careful that they continue to call out to the congregation as God's people, so says your God. God has not cast his people off forever. Well, this is a commission to comfort, and you might wonder, how is Isaiah supposed to do that? What does this comfort look like? Well, God spells out in more specific detail this charge or commission in verse two. Speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. Comfort my people. How? By speaking comfort to them. Comfort by speaking comfort. In other words, I want you to comfort my people through the foolishness of preaching. I don't want you to give them a TED Talk. I don't want you to give them bread and circuses. No, I want you to proclaim a message from heaven to God's people on earth through the foolishness of preaching. And it's interesting to note that God, in his wise providence, does not typically comfort his people directly. He does so through a human minister. He sends an ambassador to his people with a message from the courts of heaven through a minister of the gospel. Speak comfort, literally. The Hebrew reads, speak upon the heart of Jerusalem. King James says, speak comfortably. The New King James says, speak comfort, and those are good translations, but literally, speak upon her heart. Speak upon her heart. One commentator says, like gentle rain falling upon the ground. Speak to her heart. to her heart. Now, what does this mean? E.J. Young, I think, is helpful. I'm gonna quote him multiple times tonight. I found him very useful in the preparation of this sermon. He says, to speak to the heart is to speak the things the heart desires to hear, and to speak so as to affect the heart by bringing to it a message of comfort. Speak tenderly to her. Speak in such a way that you will stir her up, that you will actually comfort her in her inner being. And this is tender, yes, but it's also a bold proclamation. And we know it's bold because he parallels this with cry out, proclaim, herald a message of good news. And he doesn't even leave any doubts about the content of this sermon. Isaiah and others are called to preach. The sermon I'm called to preach as a minister of the gospel. He tells him the content of his sermon. It's got three points. That her warfare has ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. The preposition three times is used by Isaiah, the same preposition. It can be sometimes translated as for, which would mean the reason for this proclamation. But I think a better way of understanding it is that, as the contents of the proclamation. Speak comfort that this is true. that this is true, that this is true. Speak upon her heart three truth statements, what has been called a threefold comfort. Let's unpack each component of this comforting message. First, that her warfare is ended. Speak to Jerusalem's heart and tell her that the warfare is over. that this period of intense misery has come to an end. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city of peace, is at war. And God has announced that peace is at hand. Warfare is over. Second, comfort is that her iniquity is pardoned. Jerusalem has sinned. She's become idolatrous. She's worshiped other gods. She's broken the Sabbath. She's put the prophets to execution. She's done terrible things, wicked things. The leaders down to the lowest servants have all sinned. And yet God is saying that part of the comforting message is that there is the promise of forgiveness to those who repent of their sins. Tell her, speak to her heart that her iniquity is pardoned. And then finally, this could be translated for she has received, but since it's the same Hebrew preposition, I think it's better to keep it parallel with the first two. Tell her that she has received from Jehovah's hand double for all her sins. A double payment. Now what does that mean? And honestly, commentators are a little bit divided on what this verse means, it could mean a double punishment or a double blessing. Either the idea is that her discipline has been hard, but it's now sufficient. She's gone through this period and it's time to remove it, or it's speaking to the double blessing, the abundance of the restoration. Again, quoting E.J. Young, From the Lord's hand, Jerusalem had received a cup of wrath, which had been poured out. Now, from that same hand, the same hand that poured out the wrath, from that same hand, she has received double blessing. I love that imagery. The same hand that disciplined is the hand that restores. The same hand that predicts Peter's failure is the same hand that restores Peter on the beach. Peter, you're gonna deny me three times. Peter, do you love me? Peter, do you love me? Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep, feed my sheep, feed my sheep. It's the same hand, it's the same God. In Old Testament and in New Testament, the same God of justice is also a God of mercy. The same God of holiness is also a God of love. The same God that chastens his children does so that he can restore them to fellowship. And I think this idea that she has received Melora's hand double surely speaks not merely to her discipline, but also to the abundance of the restoration. The just as Job lost everything and received in the Lord's hand a double portion, so Jerusalem has. Even as Elisha received a double portion of Elijah's spirit, even so Jerusalem has. She's received double blessing. She's gone through great trials, but you have to wonder, as we think about this comfort coming through Isaiah in its initial, immediate context, you have to wonder, is this period of discipline enough to satisfy God's strict justice? Well, obviously not. Israel hasn't paid enough. She could never pay enough for her sins. And more than that, not only has she been in political bondage to Babylon or other empires, we know that the real problem Israel has is that she's in spiritual bondage. Her main issue is not just that the Medes and the Persians are gonna put her in chains. The big problem is that she's already enslaved to sin. And so, although this message is certainly comforting, this commission to Isaiah, this message of grace coming through the prophet is certainly comforting, you have to think that in some measure it comes up short because the people are still on their sins. It's not just political, it's spiritual bondage. I mean, who can really deliver them from this kind of enslavement? Well, if we keep reading through Isaiah, Isaiah himself gives us the answer because right after this passage in the subsequent chapters, he starts to talk about the servant of the Lord. He starts to sing the servant songs. And in Isaiah 53, he tells us that one is coming a suffering servant who will bear the reproach of God's people, and it will please Jehovah to crush him. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all with his stripes. We are healed. And so, Isaiah himself forces us to go beyond the comfort that came through Isaiah. He forces us to consider, second of all, the comfort that comes in Jesus. Isaiah's pointing us. He's prefiguring one to come. And truly, when Jesus arrived, When Jesus, the son of God, became flesh and dwelt among us, when he was born of a woman, born under the law, Jesus came, and as he did so, he went to war against the powers of the age. That's what Jesus did in his life, in his ministry. He was casting out demons, and they said, the spirit of God, the kingdom of God has come. He was waging warfare against the powers of this age. And that culminated in the cosmic battle of the cross where Jesus was lifted up and he put the powers of this age to open shame. He defeated them with the victory cry, it is finished. He has done it. Jesus has won. A victory shouts that Jerusalem's warfare is ended, definitively, finally ended. Not only that, but on the cross, Jesus endured God's wrath against sin. Not just discipline for a disobedient people, but divine punishments. Strict justice meted out upon the sin bearer, upon the Messiah, upon the representative of God's people who stood alone, the one for the many, as a vicarious, a substitutionary sacrifice. That's what we need. There's no good news apart from a vicarious, substitutionary sacrifice, apart from a Savior who takes your place. Because like Jerusalem of old, like Judah and all the rest of the tribes, If God should mark iniquities, who could stand? But there is one who was holy, harmless, undefiled, who was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, who endured God's wrath for you, who fulfills Isaiah's words of comfort. Her iniquity is pardoned in history. The blood of bulls and goats could not atone for sin, but what the law could not do, Jesus has done. These words of comfort, however glorious in Isaiah's time, did not come to fruition until Jesus paid it all on the cross with his blood. And finally, we know that on the cross, Jesus paid the penalty for sins with a ransom price of his own blood, indeed we could say a double payment for sins, that there might be a double outpouring of blessing for sinners. Jesus went to the cross and he took it all on himself at his own cost. He swore to his own hurt and he did not change. A double payment, a double blessing. Because not only did Jesus rise again from the tomb on the third day, not only after 40 days did he ascend into heaven and sit down at the right hand of the majesty on high, but on that great day of Pentecost, when the Jews remembered the giving of the law at Sinai, from the great heavenly mountain, the Son of Man poured out the Holy Spirit upon the church. You talk about a double blessing. You talk about abundance beyond compare. He poured out the glory spirit upon all flesh. We have received double from the hand of the Lord. We've received the Holy Spirit, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. If there was comfort through Isaiah, ultimately there is comfort in Jesus. Indeed, not only does he fulfill this in his work, but in his person, Jesus stood up and proclaimed to a lost and dying world, come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I will give rest to weary souls. Take your yoke upon me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. When Jesus came, in his person, in his work, in his message, he shouted, comforts, comforts for Jerusalem. And even when God's people rejected him, and even when the city of Jerusalem scorned him, and even when he was crucified outside the city, even when he knew that, as he wept over Jerusalem, the same city Isaiah was talking to, he said, how oft would I have gathered you, even as a hen gathers her chicks, but ye would not. He wept. over Jerusalem because he came to comfort God's people. He came to comfort God's people. Comfort through Isaiah, comfort in Jesus, and finally, comfort for you. Comfort for the congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, for you, brothers and sisters who sit here today in the full light and glory of the new covenant. We'll end with a couple applications for you today. First, hear comfort. I realize as your pastor that even in the last few weeks, some of the morning sermons have been hard-hitting. I think because the Bible is hard-hitting and we need to be convicted of sin, we need to test our consciences, and that's helpful and that's good, but I want to remind you that God's discipline is for your good. The same hand that convicts you of sin points you to the cross, points you to the Holy Spirit, points you to the gospel. The same hand that wields the law wields the gospel. It's the same Christ, it's the same God. And if you're going through a period of chastisement for sin right now, if you are experiencing something of God's fatherly displeasure, realize that that discipline is temporary, and it's meant to be transformative. It's for your good. And by the grace of God, as you repent of your sin, the rod of chastening becomes a rod of protection. There is comfort. for everybody here. No one is without comfort if they're not willing to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ. He has abundant forgiveness. He has overflowing mercies. Look to Jesus, look and live. He has comfort for weary souls. And if you're going through a difficult season, remember, even as Paul said in 2 Corinthians, there's a purpose in suffering. In that passage, Paul says that the reason that I'm going through affliction is so that I'll be better equipped to comfort other people. And realize, sometimes we have to get our eyes off of ourselves for a moment and realize that if I'm going through something that's very hard and challenging, maybe it's not just about me. Surely it is about you. It's about forcing you to depend upon the Lord It's knocking out all the crutches that you've propped yourself up with. It's bringing you to an end of yourself. So all you can do is look up and cry, God, help me. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. But beyond that, there's also a special purpose of God in bringing you through affliction so that you will be uniquely equipped to be an agent of grace in someone else's life. or because you've been brought through deep waters, someone else is going through deep waters. Maybe not today, maybe 20 years from now, but God in his providence, in his mysterious way of working, is equipping you to be just the right person, to say just the right thing at just the right time, to speak a word of comfort to somebody else. So I want you to hear comfort. And finally, with that in mind, speak comfort. Now again, this is primarily for Isaiah, secondarily for the prophets of old, and then in a tertiary manner, it's for all ministers of the gospel. But I would go beyond that and say there's application here for all of God's people. All of you, as those who speak the truth in love, as those who are equipped to do the work of the ministry, each of you is called in some manner according to your gifts, your graces, your circumstances, to speak comfort into someone else's life. So think about, even this Christmas season, as You're interacting with unsaved loved ones as you're talking to friends or coworkers or family members who are struggling or a spouse who's struggling or children who are struggling. Think about the ways in which you can fulfill this passage, in which you can answer the commission, the charge, and go forth to speak comfort to someone who needs it. Not just to speak comfort, but to speak upon their hearts. I love what E.J. Young says about this ministry of comforting among God's people. He says, true comfort consists in setting forth the entire truth concerning the people's tragic condition and in causing them to see God as their only hope. When the heinousness of sin is faced, then the announcement of deliverance may be made. In other words, Isaiah is not being told to gloss over the truth of the people's sin. No, this message of comfort comes, as God's word always comes, with law and gospel. Yes, the situation really is that bad. Actually, it's worse. And yes, God's grace is greater than your sin. because where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more. So congregation, speak the truth in love. Speak upon the hearts of those who are broken. Speak comfort as those who are united to God's Messiah. Let us pray.