Comfort My People

God is a covenant making, covenant keeping God. Sadly, God’s covenant receiving people are not always covenant keeping people. Therefore, the prophets of the Lord often served as covenant prosecutors of the terms of God’s covenant. In that role Isaiah, one of the greatest prophets, is summoned before the great throne of God in Isaiah 6. He is called there to become a messenger sent from the Lord’s heavenly court to Jerusalem’s earthly court. To his dismay God’s message to Israel was not initially to speak about salvation but to harden their impenitent hearts. Isaiah presented the Lord’s complaint against God’s people. Israel had lost the vision of God’s holiness.

Faithful to God’s Word, Isaiah pronounced the judgment of God that would come upon Israel by their enemies the Assyrians and Babylonians. He names names and foretells events that would take place long after he died. For thirty-nine chapters Isaiah declares that Israel will receive “from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” But even in His judgment God was merciful in limiting their captivity. Jeremiah the prophet set the time limit at 70 years for this Babylonian captivity of God’s people. Then in chapter 40 comes the consolation of Israel. One theologian writes, “when one turns from the thirty-ninth to the fortieth chapter it is as though he steps out of the darkness of judgment and into the light of salvation.” In chapter 40, in a manner similar to chapter 6, Isaiah is called again to the Lord’s heavenly court. There Isaiah overhears God sending messengers announcing that judgment is coming to an end and that Israel’s sins have been paid for.

With most prophesy there is a near and far fulfillment. The near fulfillment of Isaiah's prophesy was accomplished in history through the exile, deliverance, and a return to earthly Jerusalem of God’s people. The far fulfillment would come 700 years later in Christ, who would save His people out of the captivity of sin, restore them to himself, and forever call them His own. But God’s Word to Isaiah reaches farther than the first coming of Christ. The Reformation Bible says: “Isaiah’s vision of God’s kingdom is great, because it includes the history of redemption from his day until the fullness of redemption. It embraces the exile, the return of the Jews from exile, the mission, ministry, and kingdom of Jesus Christ, the mission and hope of the church, Jesus’ present rule over this world, and the restoration of all things in holiness and righteousness.”

This is best described by Jeremiah as the New Covenant. “Behold the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah – not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD; I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. . . . for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jer. 31:31-34).

“When spiritual comfort is sent to you by God, take it humbly and give thanks meekly for it. But know for certain that it is the great goodness of God that sends it to you, and not because you deserve it.” Thomas a’ Kempis

Consider yourselves in bondage, held captive by a power greater than Babylon. This is the power of sin that results in death, hell and the grave. You have no hope of deliverance and no way of escape. And then God speaks “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 . . ..” This is good news!