Tidings of Comfort and Joy (Part 1 of 2)

Happy New Year from all of us here at Truth for Life. The beginning of a new year brings with it excitement and uncertainty.

What will 2022 bring? Well today we launch a new series titled Behold Your God. Alistair Begg reminds us that regardless of where we've been or what we'll face, God's message to us is a message of comfort and joy. And I invite you to turn with me in the Bible to the prophecy of Isaiah and to the fortieth chapter. Isaiah chapter 40, and we're going to read just the first five verses. Isaiah chapter 40, and reading from verse 1. 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. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Father, thank you for the wonder of these truths. And as we turn to the Bible now, help us both to speak and to listen, to understand, to believe, to trust, for your glory and for our salvation. For we pray in Christ's name.

Amen. Well, if you care to turn back to Isaiah chapter 40, you are at our text for this morning. You may come to this and say it's a strange text for the Sunday after Christmas, and I hope by the time we've finished it will not appear to be so strange. It was a text that came to my mind just really quite out of the blue as I was thinking about this Sunday. And the title for our study this morning comes from the line of the refrain of one of the earliest carols that I don't think we ever sing here, and that is God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Let Nothing You Dismay, Remember Christ Our Savior Was Born on Christmas Day to Save Us All from Satan's Power When We Had Gone Astray, O Tidings of Comfort and Joy, O Tidings of Comfort and Joy.

And it is that phrase, comfort and joy, or tidings of comfort and joy, that is our heading for this morning. Now, the carol, as I say, has been around for a long time. In Charles Dickens' day, which is the nineteenth century—Dickens, I think, died in about 1870—it was known even then. And those of you who are Dickens fans will know that that particular carol finds its way into Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol. And it is mentioned because not everybody regarded it as their favorite carol.

And in the book, it reads as follows. At the first sound of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Scrooge seized a ruler with such energy that the singer fled in terror. So Scrooge, of course, was Scrooge.

But he was not a fan of that. Interestingly, Scrooge's ear was not open to the message of the angel, a message of salvation. But his ear was open to the message of a ghost—Marley's ghost. And the ghost in that novel informs him, "'You will get no good news from me,' says Marley's ghost.

I have none to give. It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers." Well, I think that's very helpful, and we could preach from that entirely. If you will not listen to the message of salvation that comes via the angel, then you're gonna have to listen to some other story, and you go find yourself a ghost.

It might sound a little cold, but the fact is, the alternatives are just as stark. Now, long before the novel, long before the carol, an assignment was given by God to the messengers. And the assignment was very straightforward, and you have it there in the verses before you, Comfort, comfort my people, or Comfort ye, comfort ye, in the King James Version, and those of you who perhaps this Christmas have been enjoying again listening to the Messiah. Now, the message of comfort is extended to those people of God who find themselves in the doldrums.

The short background to it, because we come to the fortieth chapter with thirty-nine chapters preceding it, so the context is really fairly straightforward. God's people were in exile, they were isolated, they were oppressed, and they were despondent. And the reason they found themselves in that position was essentially because they had stopped listening to God. They had stopped listening to his servants, they had stopped trusting the word that they brought, and instead of obeying him, they decided that they would try it on their own.

And instead of acknowledging him, they rebelled against him. And in the middle of all of that, finding themselves in this predicament, they began to suggest that the problem did not lie in the fact that they were giving up on God, but no, no, no, they said, God must be giving up on us. And, you see, that's the significance of verse 27, if your Bible is open.

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel? What is it that the people are saying? They're saying, My way is hidden from the Lord. My right is disregarded by my God. That's what I find people say to me all the time. They say, You know, as far as I can make out, God has forgotten me. He doesn't seem to pay attention to me at all. It never once enters their heads that it may actually be the other way around, that they are the deserters, that they are the rebels, that they are the ones who are interested in listening to everyone and to everything else except the true Word of the living God.

Why do you say that? Why do you say God doesn't hear you? Well, the story is, of course, that God has not given up on them, and that is the basis of the comfort. Now, I have four points, and they're these. First of all, proclamation. Proclamation. You will see in your text there in verse 2, the verb that is used is the verb to cry. In the NIV, which I've spent most of my time since the King James Version in, the verb is proclaim. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her.

Proclaim to her. Now, you see, what is happening here is that God is not speaking, as it were, directly to the people. He is speaking through his messengers.

And comfort, comfort is a plural. Hence, in the King James, comfort ye. All you, all you messengers, all the messengers have the same responsibility to proclaim God's good news. Now, as you can see in verse 5, the real messenger is, of course, the Lord himself. The mouth of the Lord has spoken. So, you have this strange duality, this wonderful reality, that the message comes from God, ultimately the messenger is God, and yet God chooses to convey his message through human instruments. And you'll see that all the way through this in verse 3, a voice cries. In verse 6, a voice cries. In verse 9, it is the herald of good news.

Now, we recognize this, don't we? That the real issue is the message that is conveyed, not the messengers. Even when we come to John the Baptist in a moment or two, when they ask John the Baptist, Who are you? What is your significance? he actually says, I am a voice. I am a voice. Because the true messenger of God recognizes the privilege that he or she is given to convey the message, but it is the message itself that is significant. Now, what is it that is to be conveyed that is the basis of the comfort?

Well, you can see it here. Tell her that her warfare or her hard service is ended or is completed, that her iniquity or her sin is pardoned, and that she has received from the Lord's hand all the suffering that is necessary. In other words, what God is saying is, this exile-wandering, this exile-reality, this sense of failure and disappointment and despondency that has come about as a result of your attitude towards me, God says, that has gone on long enough. Now, this is a prophetic word, and the reality of it still lies in the future. They had sinned, they had suffered for it, but that is not the end of the story.

Now, let me just pause on that for a minute and say, let's personalize this. Because some of us will be here on the final Sunday of this year. And if the truth were told of us, it's time for us to come home. That our lives have been marked by patterns that are not pleasing to God. We have found ourselves saying, Perhaps God has disregarded me.

Perhaps he's taken me off his list, as it were. And what is the message of God to the person who comes to that kind of conclusion? I have sinned. I have suffered for it.

Yes, but it's not the end of the story. Because as you read, for example, around this section in Isaiah, the message comes again and again. This is chapter 43 and verse 25. God says, I am he who blots out your transgression for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. In 44, same thing. 44, 22, I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like a mist.

Now, of course, how was this to work? How do we understand such a statement in these chapters in the 40s of Isaiah? The answer is, we understand them in light of what is about to come in the 53rd chapter. How is it that God would then forgive sin? How is it that God would no longer remember his people's rebellion against him and so on? And that is because there was one who was coming, the one who has borne our sins and carried our sorrows—the one who in himself is the basis of comfort and joy.

Well, we could spend much longer on that, but we won't. That is essentially what is to be conveyed. What is to be proclaimed is just that. How is it to be proclaimed?

Well, look at how it's to be proclaimed. There is to be a tenderness in the tone. Comfort—comfort, my people, says God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.

What does it mean? To speak to a city? No, Jerusalem personifies the people of God. In the same way, you can say, I came to speak to Cleveland. What do you mean to speak to Cleveland?

You stand in front of the terminal tower and say, Hello, Cleveland? No, we understand. So comfort, my people. Speak tenderly to them. Because it is important that they hear this message, especially because they're in exile, especially because they're beginning to feel that they're at the end of the line.

Now, let's not misunderstand this. Comfort—comfort. What does that make you feel like? I tell you what, immediately when I read that Comfort—Comfort, I said to myself, There, there. And then I said to myself, What in the world is there, there? You know, you fall and skin your knee, and your grandmother picks you up and says to you, There, there. You know what I mean? There, there. In fact, you've got There, there, and you've got My, my, and you've got Well, well, and we've got Now, now.

And nobody really knows what all that stuff is about. But comfort, comfort, we can get that. Comfort. Discouraged by our enemies, ashamed of our rebellions, tempted to believe that we've passed the point of no return, and God sends his messengers out, and he says, This is what I want you to say to my people.

Say, Comfort them, comfort them. Oh, for the wonderful love he has promised, promised to you and to me. It's an important thing to remember that God's kindness does not lead us to indulgence but leads us to repentance. The fact that he is kind and, when we deserve punishment, he extends comfort, should not cause the person who grasps it to go out and say, Well, then that's good.

I should just do as bad as I possibly can. After all, he's such a comforting God. No. When the comfort of God is made available to us, it doesn't create indulgence. It causes us to say sorry. Well, there you have it.

That's the first point. Proclamation. Speak to them. Cry to them. Proclaim to them.

And then, the next part is the task of preparation. Now, one of these messengers' voices is now heard. Verse 3. A voice cries.

One of the messengers. In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD. Now, it wasn't so much that these people were in the wilderness as it was that their lives had actually become a barren landscape.

You could almost say that they were themselves the wilderness, where the shoots and twigs and beauty of God's endearing love towards them had now sort of begun to fade and fall. The messengers are now to speak, to prepare a way. Now, you will notice—I hope you do—that the pathway is not a pathway for them to go out, but it is a pathway for God to come in. In the wilderness of your lives, prepare the way for the LORD. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. I think that's very, very important. I think it would be very possible for us to misunderstand this entirely.

And we say, Oh yes, I see what it is. We're supposed to try and get out of our problem, try and get out of here. Make a way to get out. Cut through the jungle and the underbrush of all our rebellion and all our stupidity. And if we can hack our way out of it, perhaps we can make a few New Year's resolutions and get on. No, nothing at all.

No. Make a way for God to come in. Make a way for God to come in to the sadness, to the emptiness—yes, to the silence.

To the silence. When will we hear from God? That's why I read at the beginning, from Isaiah 35, Say to those with fearful hearts, Be strong, do not fear, your God will come. Now, you can imagine people reading that in their day and say, Well, what will it mean that our God will come? When will he come? How will he come? How will we know when he comes? All those years, generations coming, generations going, silence. Will there ever be another voice? Will God ever speak to us again?

Will we ever hear from him? That's how they lived their lives, waiting and hoping. And do you see, it is then, and only then, that in coming to the text of the New Testament, we realize what a drama is contained. And in the story that Luke records for us, and how Zechariah, you remember, and his wife, he's old, his wife's advanced, and Gabriel comes and says, You know, you're going to have a child, and you know that story, how Zechariah ends up having to write on a tablet for a while, and he was completely overwhelmed by it all. And the people, when the news got out to them, they wondered about what was being said, and they said, Well, what will this child be?

What will he be? And the reason they said that is because clearly the hand of the Lord was with him. This is, of course, John the Baptist. Prepare the way for God to come. That was a message. What does John the Baptist do?

Exactly that! He prepares a way for God to come. It's quite wonderful when you read the prophecy of his father, of Zechariah, about his son.

I mean, everybody that has a son, it says, I wonder what my child will be. But Zechariah says, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people, and he has raised up for us a horn of salvation in the house of his servant David. He did all this, preparing us by the way of the prophets and so on. And then, listen, speaking to his own boy. And you, child, you will be called the prophet of the Most High. For you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God and so on.

That is what you're going to do. You read on a couple of chapters, and that is exactly what he does. People came to him from all around the region, out into the place where he was preaching, down in a miserable desert, about six hundred feet below sea level. Very, very hot, very inclement.

Not the kind of place where you would want to go for a service. And there he was. And what was he saying?

Prepare. God is coming. And someone said, Well, where is he?

And he said, Well, if you look over here, you will see him. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Well, you say, What has that got to do with me? I'll tell you what it's got to do with you.

And me too. There is a certain respect in which we are all in the line of John the Baptist. If you are a Christian today, you are a messenger. Whoever you are, and wherever you are, the significance of our task is not in the significance of our person but is in the wonder of our message. Prepare to meet God. That's an old sign, you know, from fundamentalist America, where you're driving on the freeway, you still see it in some of the southern states.

Prepare to meet thy God. It's become a figure of fun. People say, Oh, how strange is that? What an unbelievable thing for people to say.

No, no, it's the right thing to say. It's the role that is given to the messengers. Proclamation.

Comfort for those who don't deserve it. And prepare to meet God. We've been listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life in a message called Tidings of Comfort and Joy.

We'll hear part two of this message tomorrow. What we're all about here at Truth for Life is proclaiming the message of the gospel. Our goal is to teach the Bible in a way that is clear and relevant. When the scripture is taught, unbelievers become committed followers of Jesus. Believers are established in their faith, and pastors and members of local churches are encouraged and strengthened to proclaim the gospel message.

That's our mission, and that's how God works to change the lives of those who listen. All of the Bible teaching you here at Truth for Life comes to you by way of the ongoing prayers and faithful support that comes from your fellow listeners. We call them Truth Partners. Truth Partners give an amount they choose each month.

In fact, it's their giving that makes Alistair's online teaching library entirely free for anyone to access. We'd love to have you partner with us as we begin another year of ministry. When you join the Truth Partner team, you're able to request both of the featured books we offer each month for no additional donation.

It's our way of saying, thank you for helping to make Truth for Life possible. The book we're recommending today is a book that will take you deeper into Isaiah chapter 40, making it the perfect complement to Alistair's current series. The book is titled The All-Sufficient God, and it contains nine sermons preached by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. If you're not familiar with Martin Lloyd-Jones, he preached at Westminster Chapel in London for nearly 30 years during the 20th century. The doctor-turned-preacher is known for his thorough verse-by-verse teaching of scripture. The book The All-Sufficient God considers how Isaiah's Old Testament prophecy consistently points to God's wisdom and glory, and Lloyd-Jones' teaching gives a clear description of the gospel. You can request your copy when you sign up to become a Truth Partner at truthforlife.org slash truth partner, or request the book when you give a one-time donation at truthforlife.org slash donate. I'm Bob Lapine. There are times when good news is hard to come by. The headlines are often filled with tragedy and heartache. Tomorrow, Alistair Begg highlights the joy-filled message that God wants all of us to hear. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.