Isaiah 40:1-8

“Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God.  “Speak kindly to Jerusalem; and call out to her, that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity has been removed, that she has received of the LORD'S hand double for all her sins.”  

A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.  Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; then the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

A voice says, “Call out.”  Then he answered, “What shall I call out?”  All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.  The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass.  The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever”

Sermon for 3rd SIA                                                            12/11/22

The Message Is Still the Same

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

Isaiah was an active prophet from about 750 B.C.  He was announcing, among other things, the release from captivity of the people of Jerusalem and Judah – from a captivity that wasn’t going to begin for nearly two hundred years after the prophet spoke.  The captivity was then to last seventy years, and then they would be released, and the words of comfort proclaimed in our Old Testament lesson today would finally apply.  Imagine that, God proclaiming forgiveness - redemption and comfort over two hundred years before the situation would arise for which they would actually apply.  And those words still mean the same thing for us two thousand and nine hundred years later.  Our theme, this morning, is The Message Is Still the Same.”

The message of the prophet is comfort.  Judah in the eighth century B.C. was a formerly great nation, now fallen on more difficult times.  Assyria was dominating the area militarily, and during the time of ministry of Isaiah, the northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed.  These were difficult and frightening times for the people of Judah.  The words of comfort in our text were not primarily for them, however.  They were aimed at the people who survived the destruction of Jerusalem two centuries later, and even more so for those who returned to Jerusalem seventy years after that.  God is calling to them that their sins have been punished and that He is now at peace with them.

How were the people to know that this message was not aimed at them during the time of Isaiah?  Frankly, because they may not have heard it.  There is no setting for the proclamation noted in the text.  Isaiah may have simply written these prophecies.  But even if he proclaimed them to the people at the time he wrote them, the nation of Judah was a corrupt and unbelieving nation.  Many of the people who heard Isaiah would not have believed anything he said.  Their long national decline was still going on, and there were nations around them making war on them from time to time throughout the life of Isaiah.  They would not have heard the word that their warfare has ended.  It hadn’t yet.

No, the message was written down and stored up for the time when the people of Judah returned to Jerusalem and read it, and understood that their captivity had been part of the punishment for their sins as a nation, as a people, and now it had been accomplished, and God was with them for blessing again.  We know that it was written, and taken with them even on the captivity, because the Bible tells us that later prophecies of the prophet Isaiah, naming Cyrus as the liberator of Israel, were shown to Cyrus during their captivity.  The fullness of the message of comfort was for those who returned after their exile.

When we read those words today, the message is still the same.  God calls to us through these words of Isaiah to comfort us and tell us that our sins have been punished, and we are now at peace with Him through Jesus Christ.  The message of God to His faithful people is always, Comfort!

The next few words of the passage speak to us today in particular because John the Baptist used them when he was asked who he was, by the Priests and the Levites in our Gospel this morning.  A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.   This is an Advent prophecy.  Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; then the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

The voice crying in the wilderness was John.  He came to prepare the way for the Lord, but not in the sense of landscaping, as the prophecy sounds.  He came to proclaim the Law of God and call men – all men – to humility and repentance.  He was doing what the Apostle Paul described in Romans 3, Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.

Only when we have been humbled by the Law, and repent, can we see the glory of the Lord, which is the grace of God in Jesus Christ, bringing us forgiveness, life, and salvation.  Just as the people alive at the time of Isaiah could not hear the message or find the comfort Isaiah was proclaiming in his prophecy, the heart today that is comfortable and secure in sin cannot really understand the message of forgiveness, and can see or sense no glory in it whatsoever.

Isaiah ends that particular word of prophecy with the words, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.  Those words mean something more than “This is a prophecy!”  They are the guarantee of the validity and permanence of the promise of the glory of God which we know “is in the face of Christ Jesus.”  I know that because Isaiah continues in our text with yet another word of prophecy:  A voice says, "Call out."  Then he answered, "What shall I call out?"  All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.  The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass.  The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever."

This final word from Isaiah in our text this morning tells us in a very picturesque way that God’s Word and His promises are utterly reliable.  The prophecy begins with comparing flesh to grass.  We all experience the thing about grass that the prophet speaks of, it comes and it goes.  It grows, blooms, withers and dies.  We see it every year.  The prophet is comparing us to the grass.  The grass grows, it blooms, and the blooms fade.  Our loveliness is like the bloom of the grass, he says.  We grow up, and we are young and beautiful for a time, but time marches on and we grow old, if we manage to live that long.  And eventually we wither and die, just like the grass, only at our own pace – much more slowly than the grass.  But like the grass, it happens inevitably to us.  But the Word of God endures forever.

It never fails.  It never withers.  We come and go, but God’s Word stands forever – utterly reliable.  We may not see it all happen in one of our lifetimes, but we are like grass, short-lived and temporary.  But the promise of the prophecy is that God’s Word is true and permanent.  So, when the promise is made of the grace of God, and that we shall see the glory of God, the prophet says it is a permanent promise, and it shall happen.

The comfort of the prophecy is real and true and everlasting.  Our sins have been paid for.  We have received double from the hand of God – only it wasn’t us, personally.  It was Christ.  He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows.  He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.  His stripes are the stripes that heal us of the sickness of sin and death.  All of those familiar phrases are also from the mouth and pen of Isaiah.  We, like Judah of old, have forgiveness.  The lesson is an Advent lesson because it is the prophecy quoted by John in the Gospel for the third Sunday in Advent.

But the message is still the same.  God’s Word simply does not change.  His mercy is everlasting.  His love is everlasting.  His grace is everlasting.  We are temporary, but He is not and he intends to keep His Word.  He spoke of it in the Old Testament, and He fulfilled it in Jesus Christ.  And it is still true today.  Just as much today as back then, God wants you to take comfort in Christ, and take comfort in His promise of salvation.  It may seem like it is taking a long time, but we are oh-so-short-lived in this world.  But God is not, and His Word stands forever.

So, take comfort.  Your iniquity, like that of Jerusalem, has been removed - paid for and then some.  You have the promise that you will see the glory of the Lord, for God promises that all flesh will see it together.  That refers to the day of the resurrection of all flesh.  You will be there, and it is truly coming.  And no matter how long it seems to you, the promise is sure.  God will not forget.  The word of Our God stands forever.  Twenty-nine hundred years later, The message is still the same!

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)