Turn with me please to Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah chapter 40. And as we continue our Advent sermon series, we want to consider this morning, Isaiah chapter 40, verses one through five. This is the second Sunday of the Advent season. What does Advent mean? In my course of study this week, I came across a wonderful answer to this question from a man named James Stewart. He was an early 20th century Scottish pastor and seminary professor and a theologian and an author. And his definition of Advent is just beautiful. So I'd like to share it with you this morning as we prepare ourselves to worship on Advent, he asked the question, what does Advent mean? He said, it means the glory of the coming of the Lord. It means the breaking in of the divine into human history, of the supernatural into the natural. It means a sense of something great impending from heaven. The world is blundering in a morass of sin and sorrow. Men are groping in darkness and have lost hope completely. But here and there, some man, some group of men, some church stands listening and intent, for God is marching on. That is Advent. It is that great cry of the souls of men, which the church for 800 years has lifted up to heaven. Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel. You cannot sing it without seeing a multitude of hands stretched out to God and passionate pleading down the ages. O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lowly exile here until the Son of God appear, and then the great crashing chords of triumphant reassurance. Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. That is Advent. This is the thrill of Advent. And as I said last week, it is easy for us to get entangled in all that has become Christmas in our culture. And so arrive at Christmas largely unprepared for what we are celebrating. So last week I began an Advent sermon series with the hope and the prayer that we will see and experience again the thrill of Advent and we will celebrate with rejoicing and true joy this Christmas for what God has done for us. So this morning I wanna consider the Advent message delivered by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 40, verses one through 15. Let us read that passage. 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. A voice cries, in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low. The uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. To help us understand this advent message from the prophet Isaiah, it is important and necessary to have some background and some context of these verses. As we know, Isaiah was God's appointed prophet in Jerusalem. He ministered for more than 40 years from around 740 BC until sometime after 701 BC. So he was a man who had been taken hold of by the Holy Spirit of God. He was a man who was inspired and who was given a message from God. And it is such a great and wonderful message that anyone who truly realizes it cannot help but be gripped by it and moved by it. Now, Isaiah's immediate purpose was to give a message to the children of Israel. It had been given to him beforehand what was going to happen to that nation. That because of their sin and the rebellion against God, they would suffer and be conquered and carried away into captivity into a place called Babylon. And this message is the primary focus of the first 39 chapters of this book. The first half of the book ends with a prophecy of exile. Isaiah 39 verses five through seven. Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, hear the word of the Lord of hosts. Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house and that which your fathers have stored up till this day shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your own sons who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. So although Isaiah's audience was not in Babylonian captivity when he wrote these words and these chapters, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he looked ahead to the time when Jerusalem would fall and the people of the kingdom of Judah would indeed be captive in Babylon. But when you turn from the 39th chapter to the 40th chapter, It is as though Isaiah steps out of the darkness of judgment into the light of salvation. Beginning here in chapter 40, Isaiah is prophesying about the people of God in their Babylonian captivity. And he had a different message for them. which is that they will be rescued and delivered from their captivity, and they will be restored to their country and to their city of Jerusalem. One commentator said, Isaiah's approach in chapters 40 through 66 may be compared to an aging grandfather who writes a letter to his baby granddaughter and seals it with the words, to be opened on your wedding day. The grandfather knows he may not live to see his granddaughter's wedding, but he understands the challenges she will face as a wife and mother. He projects himself into the future and speaks to his granddaughter as if he were actually present on her wedding day. One can imagine the profound impact such a letter would have on the granddaughter as she recognized the foresight and wisdom contained within it and realized just how much her grandfather cared for her. When God's exiled people, living more than 150 years after Isaiah's time, heard this message to them, they should have realized that God had foreseen their circumstances and that he cared enough for them to encourage them with a message of renewed hope. This is what Isaiah does beginning here in verse 40, or chapter 40. And the Lord did not have to make this promise, but he did so in his grace. Israel would have a glorious future and not because of, but in spite of herself. So when you read Isaiah's prophecy, in one sense, it was an immediate prophecy. It was a relevant, timely and immediate message to the nation of Judah itself. But in another and greater sense, it was a prophecy that would remain unfulfilled for nearly eight centuries. Beyond the immediate prophecy of their deliverance from the bondage of Babylon, Isaiah prophesied of Israel's ultimate salvation in the future through a coming servant and savior. This prophecy, this greater prophecy is interwoven throughout the book of Isaiah. We read those wonderful passages about this coming servant and savior in Isaiah chapter seven. And chapter nine, and chapter 11, and 12, here in chapter 40, and later in chapter 42, and 52, and 53. And Isaiah says that this servant and savior will be born of a virgin, bring justice to the nations, establish Israel in a new covenant with the Lord, become a light to the Gentiles, and will suffer and die to take away the sins of his people. He will suffer willingly to achieve these victories and God will reward and vindicate him. This is that greater prophecy of Isaiah. And if you are familiar at all with your New Testament scriptures, you know that several verses in this Old Testament book, including verses from chapter 40, are quoted in the first three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And you know that the gospels plainly and clearly identify the servant and savior prophesied of by Isaiah as Jesus Christ. the incarnate God. As we read this morning, his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means Christ, which means God with us. So what we have here in, beginning here in Isaiah chapter 40, is a marvelous foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus Christ and of his gospel. It is anticipating the advent of the one whom Isaiah calls here in Isaiah chapter 40, verse three, the Lord, and whom he calls at the end of verse three, our God. And the one who he says in verse five will reveal the glory of the Lord. This is Jesus Christ. So what we have here is an advent message delivered by a prophet some 800 years before his advent. This Advent message came to a people who had not yet experienced the Babylonian captivity, the slaughter that would go along with it. So all of this blessed revelation was given in anticipation of their captivity. It is this Advent message then that I want us to consider this morning. And it is my prayer that as we read it and as we study it, that you will receive it, that it will grip you and it will move you so that you will celebrate this Christmas season with rejoicing and true joy. So Isaiah's advent message for God's people is summed up in verse one of chapter 40. He says, comfort, comfort my people says your God. The advent message is a message of comfort for God's people. We ought to be comforted when we read about and meditate upon and contemplate the advent of Christ. In Jerusalem, certainly needed a word of comfort. And God had comfort to give them. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1, verse 3, he speaks of our Lord as the God of all comfort. And God's comfort is not a hollow, shallow, positive thinking, there's a silver lining behind every cloud kind of message. God always gives his people real reasons to be comforted. And notice that the word comfort here is repeated. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. This double imperative suggests an urgency. It suggests the importance of this message. God wants them to be doubly assured of their comfort. And this message of comfort to be spoken is to be spoken tenderly. Verse two, speak tenderly to Jerusalem. What a beautiful word it speaks. This Hebrew word is translated from a Hebrew expression which means speak to the heart. Isaiah was to have a heart to heart with the people of Israel. He was to speak to their heart so as to persuade them. So the Advent message is not merely on the intellectual level. It is a message that goes right to our heart, that persuades our hearts, that is designed to thrill us and to move us to rejoice in the Lord. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. This Hebrew word translated comfort is nahem, and it means to draw the breath forcibly. It means to sigh. It refers here to taking a big sigh of relief. It is the picture of someone who is all knotted up who is holding his or her breath because something terrible is about to happen. And suddenly they see that what was about to happen didn't happen at all. In fact, the opposite of it happened. Something terrible that I thought was coming, it ends up being very, very good. And they let out a breath, a sigh of relief. This is what the Advent message does to lost sinners in bondage of their sin. They can breathe a sigh of relief because of what this Christ came to do. And the ground of God's interposition on their behalf and of their receiving comfort is God's covenant relation with his people. Notice again in verse one, comfort, comfort, my people says your God. My people says your God. This is covenant language. Jeremiah chapter 31, we read this in verses 31 through 33, speaking of this new covenant. this covenant of grace. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." These people belong to God, for he has chosen them, and he is in covenant with them. So even though they had forsaken him, he would not forsake them. Even though they had abandoned him, he would not abandon them, but rather he would comfort them and he would bless them. You see, it was necessary that God chastise and discipline his people through the judgment of the exile because of their rebellion But at the same time, because God is a covenant, faithful God, because God is good and kind and gracious and merciful and long-suffering, because of that, at the same time, He will not, He will never forsake His own. Comfort, comfort my people says your God. This is really the keynote of the Advent message. Comfort comes from the salvation and governing blessings associated with the promised coming of the Messiah. We see that in verses three through five. There is one coming. There is a great king coming and they are to prepare the way for him. They are to make every road straight. They are to pave all the new roads so that this king can come. The Lord, our God, the one who reveals the glory of the Lord, he is coming. And comfort comes because of that. The sovereign God of creation and history sends his promised suffering servant to redeem his people from the judgment they face with the anticipation of entering into the future glory of the messianic kingdom. This is the advent message. This is the message where God says, comfort my people, comfort my people. And we really cannot appreciate this Advent message unless we can identify with the depths of darkness of misery and bondage. And this is the second essential element of the Advent message. Notice the condition of those to whom the message is addressed. To whom does God send this message? This message of comfort. The answer is put before us here very graphically in verse two. The advent message of comfort is for those who are living a troubled life. Verse two, cry to her that her warfare is ended. Warfare. Saba is the Hebrew word. and it means literally hard service. Daniel uses this word in Daniel chapter 10, verse one, and it is translated there as a great conflict. It speaks therefore of the hard service and the conflict of a troubled life. And that is the state of fallen humanity. People today are living troubled lives. It is perpetual warfare today. There is no peace. There is no rest. There is no quiet. Millions of people are struggling, defeated, Wretched, unhappy, and miserable. Outwardly, they may appear to be doing okay. In fact, they may appear to be doing well. They may have good jobs. They may have large bank accounts. They may have nice homes and families and seem to enjoy all the good things that this world has to offer. But inwardly, they're troubled. Inwardly, they're in a state of war. They are troubled within, and there is a great conflict. They have nothing that they can rest on within themselves. There is no peace in their soul. They are not at peace with God. And those in such a sad state have no peace either with anybody else in any other personal relationships. They're at war with their parents. They're at war with their children. They're at war with their spouse. They're at war with people with whom they work and among whom they live. In all their associations of life, they are at war. In all of life, within and without, there is fighting, struggling, and conflict. People are living troubled lives. And why is this? Why is there this perpetual warfare? Why is there no peace, and there's no rest, and there's no quiet? There are two words here in verse two that answer that question. And these two words are closely connected in meaning. The first word is iniquity. Her iniquity. And the second is sins. Sins and iniquity is the reason why there is perpetual warfare. In its most basic sense, sin is an offense against God. Sin is anything we say or do or even think that goes against what God commands. This is the heart of what sin is. James 4.17 tells us that sin is knowing the right thing to do according to God's law but failing not to do it. The word sin, whether it is in the Hebrew or the Greek, it actually means to miss the mark, to miss the mark of God's righteousness, of God's righteous standard that is spelled out for us in his moral law. The picture is of someone shooting an arrow at a target, but failing every time to hit the bullseye. All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. The glory of God is the bullseye, and we all miss it. And sin is something that we should never, ever take lightly. I know, I understand what people mean when they say this, but there really is no small sin. There really is no little sin. There are no white lies. Sin is cosmic treason, as R.C. Sproul called it, and it is therefore deadly serious with eternal consequences. Paul says in Romans 6.23 that the wages of sin is death. There's sins and then there are iniquities. There is iniquity. Iniquity is perverseness. It is depravity. It is a moral evil. And this Hebrew word is used more often in scripture to refer to the guilt worthy of punishment, the guilt of iniquity. Iniquity is sin, but it is continuing and escalating sin. One sin leads to another until that becomes our lifestyle. We harden our hearts and our conscience is seared, and we go deeper and deeper into sin until that sin enslaves us and defines us. Iniquity is the practice of sinning, which is lawlessness according to 1 John 3, 4. This is what the word iniquity means, whether it's the Hebrew word or the Greek word. The condition without wall. It means contempt and transgression of the wall. And does not our world today paint this picture of iniquity? Galatians 5. verses 19 and 21 and 1 Corinthians 6 verses 9 and 10. In those passages, Paul gives us a partial list of iniquities and they are works of the flesh, sexual immorality, adultery, homosexuality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these, Paul says. And the Bible tells us that sin and iniquity are the cause of the warfare in this world. It is the cause of the warfare within people. This is why people are the way they are. This is why the world is the way it is. And it is to people in that condition, in that state of warfare because of their iniquity, because of their sin, because of their foolishness and their rebellion against God, It is to such rebels and miserable people that this comforting message of Advent comes. This message is the proclamation of the greatest and the most astounding good news that has ever come into this world. And what is this good news? Here it is in two verses in Isaiah 40. Verses one and two. 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. This is the good news. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ that brings comfort to the heart of sinners. The comforting message of the advent is that our warfare has ended. We're no longer at war. It is over. There is a change in our condition. We are taken out of that awful state in which we were and are transferred into an entirely different state. We have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear son. And whereas we were in a perpetual state of war, now we are in a perpetual state of peace. Peace with God. Peace in our hearts and peace among men. And this is because of what is announced next. The comforting message of the Advent is that our iniquity is pardoned. Our iniquity is pardoned. Pardoned means to be pleased with, specifically to satisfy a debt. The debt owed to a creditor has been paid in full, therefore the creditor is satisfied. The Hebrew expresses that our iniquity is so expiated that God now delights in forgiving us and restoring us. His justice is satisfied. His wrath is appeased. He is satisfied with the payment made for our iniquities. This phrase, this beautiful phrase, our iniquity is pardoned, is just another way of telling us what happened nearly 2,000 years ago on a cross, on a hill called Calvary, just outside Jerusalem. Paul states it like this in Titus 2.14. Christ gave himself for us. that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people. There is the Son of God nailed to a cross, beaten beyond recognition. And there I hear him cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And then I hear him say, it is finished. The most glorious word ever spoken in human history, it is finished. What is finished? It is this, our iniquity has been dealt with God punished it in the person of his only begotten son and he is satisfied. His justice is satisfied completely. Our warfare has ended. Our sins have been dealt with. They have been taken away by the blood of Jesus. The thing that estranged us from God was dealt with. The way to God is open again and we are reconciled to Him in Jesus Christ, His Son. And it is because of this that God says, comfort, comfort my people and cry out to her that her warfare is ended and her iniquity is pardoned. This is the comforting message of the advent. And there is no greater comfort than this. To be a sinner, a guilty, condemned sinner. One having iniquity. One who is sinning against the holy God, knowing that our iniquity is pardoned. And now we are at peace with God. What a wonderful message. But there's one more thing in this comforting message of Advent. Notice the end of verse two, God says, comfort my people, speak tenderly and cry to her that she has received double for all of her sins. What does this mean? Double for all of her sins. This expression may mean that Christ has given sufficient payment for our sins and our iniquities and therefore we are pardoned. Our punishment, our debt has been paid in full. This word double, tephel, means a folding over, a folding in half. When something is folded over, each half corresponds exactly with the other half. And this would yield the thought of exact correspondence between sin and payment. And certainly that is true. But I think these words mean even more. The blessings we receive from the work of Christ does not simply balance our sin. Our blessings are doubled. Isaiah uses the double blessing image in Isaiah 61 verse seven. Job uses this word. In Job 11 verse six, where he says, God is manifold in his wisdom and understanding. Manifold is multiple. So it means that the grace and the love of God in and through his son are overwhelmingly greater than our sin. Terrible though that is. Listen to Paul saying that in Romans 5.20, where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Since receiving double for all of our sins, speaks of the abounding measure of the Lord's grace. It is grace that is greater than all of our sin. In John chapter one, verse 16, John says, from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. We have received an inexhaustible supply of grace. God's grace in Christ to his people is continuous. It is never exhausted. It knows no interruption and it has no limit. In his letter to the Ephesians, in Ephesians chapter three, verse eight, Paul says he is a preacher of the gospel and it was his privilege to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. Unsearchable riches of Christ. What does that mean? Well, no one can ever answer that question fully. but it means some of the things brought out in this text. It means that your warfare has ended. You find yourself to be a new man. You have a new nature and a new mind, a new outlook and new desires. And not only that, you will be given strength. You will find that you will be able to resist the temptations that have always gotten you down. You will be able to conquer where you have always failed. You will find that the very hairs of your head are numbered. You will find comforts and consolations that you have never known before. You will begin to pray and know God. And when you are bereaved and sorrowing, you will know that you are not left to yourself. You will know that he will never leave you nor forsake you. You will know as written in Proverbs 18, 24, he is a friend that sticks closer than a brother. And you will begin to understand that this is a mere foretaste of what God has prepared for you. God has prepared for you, as Peter says in 1 Peter 1, 4, an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you. You will begin to see that life in this world is merely a short pilgrimage to that great and glorious life that is coming. And death will lose its tailor. You will realize that it is simply the little stream you have to cross in order to enter an amazing glory. and be with Christ out of the struggle and the warfare of this world, a place of peace and bliss and glory. This is the comfort of the Advent message. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what it means. It is God telling you and me, speaking to us just as we are in our sins and our failures, in our desperation. It is God not telling us that we have to pick ourself up by the bootstraps and save ourselves, because we cannot do that. But it is God telling us that he has sent his son down to save us from our sins. He has sent his son down to raise us up. He is telling us that his son has borne our iniquity and our sin and all the punishment attached to it. And that he has given us in his own life all the riches of his grace. He has given us double for all of our sins. The message of the Advent is the great announcement that your warfare has ended, that your iniquity is pardoned, and above all, that there are great blessings awaiting you, infinitely more than all the guilt of our sin and all the punishment that we so richly deserve. This is the great proclamation of Advent. In this passage here in verses three through five, shows us that the blessings of salvation only come to us in and through the person of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. They do not and they cannot come to us apart from Christ. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. He has come and salvation is only in and through him. There is no salvation apart from him. I close with the words of our responsive reading this morning, Matthew chapter 11. The words of Jesus, the words of comfort. Come to me. all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. This is the call to you, this Advent season, this morning, to come unto Christ by faith alone, and you will receive this comfort. Your troubled life will be over. The warfare in your heart will be accomplished and done. Your iniquity and your sins will be pardoned. You have forgiveness of sin. You will receive grace upon grace in the person of God. So come unto Christ, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and he will give you rest. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, I pray and ask that you would send this Advent message of comfort into the heart and soul of everyone here today. Father, may we hear this message. May we receive it. May we be moved by it. Speak to our heart, O Heavenly Father. We thank you. You did not leave us in this sad condition. You did not leave us in our warfare. You did not leave us in the guilt and the shame and the punishment of our sins and our iniquities. But Father, you showered upon us blessings by sending your son to pardon our sins, to wash them all away. so that in him, we have eternal life. We have peace with God. Father, I pray that you will speak to us this day and throughout the rest of this day and this Advent season of this comforting message of Jesus Christ. And I pray this in his name, amen.