Isaiah 51:12
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
As is true of many of you in this room, Friday night, we're sitting there, you know, pizza and movie night, and hear the loud bang, Moana, gone, lights, gone, everything, gone, kids, gone, you know, just chaos. What complicates it a little more for us is that in our basement, we have two-week-old chicks. Now, if you know anything about chicks, when they're really little, they basically, their whole lives revolve around three things.
Food, water, and heat. So they have this big heat lamp, and it kind of hovers over their house, or whatever you want to call it. And they just sit under it. They just sit under it, and they love it, and it's their whole life. Well, about an hour after our power went out, it occurred to me that our chicks didn't have their heat lamp. So I go downstairs, and they're all just kind of huddled together. A few of them are just kind of hopping around aimlessly. They have no idea what to do.
They're just completely hopeless and just chirping up a storm. So I went, and I filled up this container with hot water, and I stuck it in the middle of their brooder, and they all just go right up to it, And they're just snuggling, you know, right up into the heat and all is well with their lives for a little bit. They were given that source of comfort that they longed for.
In our passage tonight, we find Isaiah prophesying to Israel about a time when they too will seek comfort in the midst of immense suffering and difficulty. So let's look at the passage together. It's on the front of your bulletin, or page 612 on the Red Bibles. Let me read it. I, I am he who comforts you. Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass? So when we look at this verse, the first thing that seems kind of a weird contrast here to me is this idea of God being the one who comforts Judah, who comforts Israel, and this idea of the fear of man. So what is Isaiah doing here? I think it's a pretty simple idea. It comes down to this.
We find comfort in that which we put our faith, our hope, our trust in. That's the thing that we find comfort in. And Isaiah, well, the Lord is telling us here that we cannot find our comfort in anything that is on earth, that is fleeting, we can only find our comfort in God. God is the only true comforter. And that's the main idea of the text tonight. Only God can truly comfort his people. Only God can truly comfort his people. But we know this, right? I think if we all think about it for a while, we know this. We can think about even good things that God gives us.
We can think about friends, we can think about family, we can think about ice cream, okay? And we think about these three things. You know, friends, friends are people. They're going to let us down. They're going to disappoint us at times, right? Our family, they're not always going to be there. They're going to be times where they're uncaring. Ice cream, you know, you could wake up one morning and you could be lactose intolerant and your ice cream becomes a source of discomfort instead of a source of comfort, right? These are all, to a varying degree, fleeting things in this world.
But isn't it true that when we look at it, when we think about it, we find that God is the only thing that is eternal. God is the only one who is unchanging. God is the only one who can offer us true comfort. So, you might agree with this idea. You might understand this idea. The question is, what do we do now? It's kind of a nebulous thing floating in the sky. How do we respond to that? How do we find comfort in God?
And how do we offer that comfort to others? So what we're going to look at is three things. We're going to look at these three things to find comfort in God. One is we look to the past. The second thing is we look to the future. And then the third thing is we look to the present. And Isaiah kind of lays that out in this chapter. So first, we look to the past. So verse 10 of this chapter says this, Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?
So Isaiah is calling to mind, for the people of Israel, their salvation out of slavery to Egypt. He's calling to mind the exodus. And we too can look to God's saving work in our lives if you're one who trusts in Jesus when God feels far off when we are suffering when we're afflicted when we're tempted to believe that God is not near us we can look back to this we can know that while we were still sinners Christ died for us God acted in time and space to save us to send his son into this world I think even more another exercise we can do is get even more specific.
How, what did Jesus do? What did Jesus have to do to save us? We can take something specific in our lives that we're struggling with and apply that to Jesus' work on our behalf. So let's walk through just one exercise or example of that. Suffering can feel incredibly lonely. Maybe you've lost a family member. a relationship that you held dear. Maybe you just haven't been supported by someone as you wish that they would support you.
And you feel alone. You feel there's no one to turn to. And even the people that I have turned to have let me down. Well, you can think of the Son of God who, knowing that his death was near, went into a garden with his closest friends and then drew even closer his closest, closest friends and said to them, can you just, can you stay awake and can you pray for me? I am distraught.
Can you pray for me? And then you go and you pray to the Lord. And Jesus did this, right? And he cried out to God, if there's any other way, take this cup from me. Take the cup of God's wrath from me. And he came back and he found his friends sleeping sleeping and jesus has suffered in every way that we have he understands our suffering he acted to save us so connect what jesus has done and know god loves you god has saved you in the past god has worked in the past to save you and you might find yourself here tonight and you don't believe in Jesus. You don't trust Christ. You don't know this comfort. What I would encourage you to do is to take a look at Jesus. Read the book of Mark. Turn from your sins. Put
your faith in Christ and look to him for salvation. So we look to the past. The second thing we do is we look to the future. In verse 11 of this passage Isaiah says this and the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing. Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. To understanding to understand what kind of a miscomfort this would offer to the people of Israel we need to understand where they would be when Isaiah was prophesying this. And this is where they'd be at. They've been taken captive to Babylon. And in verse 18 and 19, Isaiah paints this picture. There is none to guide her among all the sons she is born. There is none to take her by the hand among all the sons she has brought up. These two things have happened to you. Who will console you? Devastation and destruction.
famine and sword who will comfort you the picture painted here is clear you're in jerusalem and everybody's gone everything's gone there's nobody to turn to there's no one that can console you there's no one that can take your hand there's no one who can offer you help as greg as greg said this morning um our church is in a difficult season we are going through a time that's difficult and for some of us we might hear the words devastation and destruction and we might look around and think I see that happening around me right now obviously it's not in the same way as Isaiah is talking about here but those words might ring truer than they've ever rung when it regards to this church in the past it may be that the pastor the home group leader the friend that you would go to for comfort when you were struggling is not here anymore,
is not around to offer you the support that you would normally get. And maybe you don't feel that way about how the last couple of months here at Third Avenue. But there are others of us here that are experiencing, facing death. We're facing the death of a loved one. The end of a relationship we'd put so much hope into. Some of us here have been diagnosed with disease that the outcome doesn't look so good. So in all these situations, the question is the same. Where do we turn to for comfort? I don't know what God is doing through all the things that have happen in the last month of our church, but I do know this. He is working to push us to find comfort in him. He is working to push us to tell others, like Greg talked about this morning, to find
comfort in him. So I would encourage you as a church to do that. Think back to the verse I read just a moment ago they shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away there's there's a day coming a reality it's as true as anything else is true and and that true reality is there is a day coming where there is going to be no more emergency members meetings no more broken relationships there's going to be no more death there's going to be no more tears and this is a reality this day is coming when we will see jesus and we will be like him in every respect god will dwell among us as a people and sin and sorrow will flee away find comfort in that day
where as one of my favorite songs Jerusalem my happy home where congregations ne'er break up and Sabbaths have no end look to that day that day is coming and it is real it is a reality so we look to the past we look to the future but we don't just serve a God who worked in the past or promises to work in the future We serve a God who is with us now. Just the word comfort, right?
The word comfort, it implies action. It's active. It's something, we serve a God who is working now. And my mind immediately goes to 2 Timothy 4, where Paul is standing before a tribunal. And he says, at my first defense, no one came to stand by me. all deserted me. But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me. Through God's Spirit, the Lord is with you. He's with you now. He's with you now. Look to him. Those baby chicks in my basement, they didn't have to go hopping around all over the basement looking for heat. I brought it to them and they gave it to them.
They just needed to run to it. They needed to go to it. So church, amidst suffering, amidst affliction, know God is the one who comforts you. Go to him and point others to him as well. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that you are the one who comforts us. We thank you that it is all of grace. And I pray that you would help us to look to the great salvation you've worked on our behalf and look towards your second coming. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Amen.