Tidings of Comfort and Joy (Part 2 of 2)

Music playing Now, I have four points and they're these. First of all, proclamation. 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. 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. 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 dryness, to the emptiness. Yes, to the silence. To the silence. Wherein will we hear from God?

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 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. Not a very nice place, 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? Well, 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. Well, in verse 4, we move from the part that the messengers can play to the part that only God can play. I had a hard time with verse 4.

I'm not sure I've got a hold of it even now. What do we do with this? Every valley shall be lifted up, every mountain and hill be made low. Well, in other words, when God comes, he's going to deal with the obstacles.

At least we can say that, can't we? What are the obstacles that stood in the way? Well, all the obstacles that were present then are present still today—the obstacles of unbelief, the obstacle of just natural skepticism.

In our case, of relativism, of pluralism—there's no one way, there's no one truth, and so on. And the people of God were just tempted to succumb to the alternative explanations of their existence. Why would we be surprised by that?

Why would we wonder at the way in which they looked on the idols and they said, you know, maybe we should try these idols? Because remember verse 27, why has God stopped listening to us? Why is our way being disregarded by God?

You've got it upside down. God has not stopped listening to you. God loves you.

God comes to comfort you. No, you're the ones that decided to carry these idols around, despite the fact that you know that they are absolutely useless to you. They know nothing. They understand nothing. You say, Well, that's so long I've gone far away.

No, it is absolutely not. The Times, October 20, this year, I read an article about some lady who's called an Internet starlet. I don't know how you would become one of them.

It's not something I think I need to worry about particularly. The lady's name we can leave aside for now. But she's a self-help guide, and she has millions and millions of followers on the Internet who are looking for—guess what?—comfort and joy.

Well, not everybody is a fan of this starlet. Another lady, whose name can stay out because it's rather unpronounceable, from Paris, interacting with this, she said, YouTube stars are false prophets offering false well-being. And then she said, We have got rid of religion but created idols that are worse than anything that went before. Now, you shouldn't understand that she's saying, We've got rid of religion, and she's sorry about it.

No, no. She's happy about it. She wanted to get rid of religion. But now she acknowledges, We're even worse off with this new collection than we were with what was on offer before. Because having rejected that which is God's manifestation of himself to us in Jesus, we don't then believe nothing.

We start to believe everything and anything. Now, here's the problem as a preacher. These challenges seem insurmountable. Now, people say to me all the time, Well, how are you going to argue against that? How are you going to be able to convince them? How are you going to be able to break down all these barriers—the disinterest of people, the decline of religion in America, the fact that people don't want to listen to sermons, the fact that this and this and this and this?

How are you going to do this? The answer is, I'm not. And neither is anyone else. Only God is able to break down the hindrances. Only God is the one who is able to make a straight, at-the-level path. Read history. 19th century, 18th century England was a disaster zone.

Who would ever be able to see a Reformation and a Revelation in that context? And then a baby is born, and another baby is born, and one is called Wesley and one is called Whitefield, and the rest, as they say, is history. Who were these people?

Well, we know they're great now, but they weren't regarded as great then. When Whitefield preached in North America in the eighteenth-century awakenings, people laughed at him in the street when he rode his horse on the east coaster down into Richmond. They shouted out, Ho!

Ho! The boy preacher! The boy preacher!

He wasn't regarded as anything at all. We know how significant he was now. What was God doing? Well, he just raised up a messenger. And the messenger told the truth, and God did the rest.

Let me personalize it before I go to my final point. What about the hindrances in our own lives? What about the idea that we are unable personally to deal with the mountains, with the heights, with the heights of our pride, with the heights of our self-assertion, with the heights of our self-esteem? When I was waiting in the prompt care, the television was on, and there was a lady there, and she was explaining about yoga. And I listened for a little time and saw some of the exercises which looked downright scary to me, but she was explaining that the thing about yoga is, it is for absolutely everyone. Yoga is about just the love of everyone, no matter of your gender, no matter your size, no matter your intelligence, no matter your thing. And so, this is it.

Come to yoga. And then the camera focuses in on her, and they said, So what is it that makes this so special? She said, What makes this so special is that we're able to say to ourselves, I am wonderful. I am awesome. I am. I am.

Well, only one is able to say, I am. Go. And what shall I say to the people, said Moses, when they asked me? What will I say to Pharaoh? Pharaoh is mighty. He's a mountain that cannot be brought down. What shall I say to him?

Tell him that I AM sent you. You see, when we understand the I AM who provides to us the comfort for which we long, then our own little I AM is not irrelevant. It's just diminished to the point of helpfulness. Yeah, but someone says, Well, I don't have a problem with self-esteem. I have a problem with discouragement. I was listening to somebody's testament the other day, and she said, I tried my best to be a wife. I wanted so desperately to be a good wife.

I thought I was a lousy wife. And my husband went off to work, and I used to cry, How can I be better? I'm so hopeless," and so on. And she was in the valley—in the valley of failure, in the valley of despondency.

How did you get out of that valley? Well, you see, God gets us out of the valley. Because then she suddenly realized—somebody, a friend told her, a messenger told her, You know, you should read the Bible. And as she read the Bible, she discovered that God's people look to God to accomplish his purposes.

God never actually suffers setbacks. He overcomes all the hindrances, he travels without difficulty, he always arrives without fail, and he's always on time. And that brings us to our final point, the proclamation that is the task of the messenger, the preparation that is ultimately there in this great messenger who goes before Jesus, the transformation in the bringing down of the mountains, whatever they might be, the raising up of the valleys, whatever they might be. And in it all the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. What does that mean, the glory of the Lord will be revealed? What is God's glory? God's glory is essentially his self-disclosure. It is his making known, all that he is—all that makes him the only true and living God. The revelation of the fact of his creation, the fact that he is a redeemer, that he is merciful, that he is gracious, that he is holy, that he is abounding in love and in steadfast mercy and in faithfulness—all of these things. And the prophet says, and this is what's going to happen, God's glory will be made known so that people will be able to see all flesh.

It doesn't matter where they come from. It's always fascinating to me that, for example, the message of God's unbelievable love to all, irrespective of gender and so on, which is the message of the lady, the yoga messenger. It's a falsehood, because there's nothing there. It takes you into yourself. And if you have been in yourself lately, you know that there is no reason to jump up and down and have a party about how significant or how good you are. Even the children that are here this morning, they know that sometimes they go in their bedrooms, and they say to themselves, I am a naughty boy. I am a naughty boy. My father said, I'm a naughty boy. I am a naughty boy. Well, you see, God loves naughty boys. He loves naughty girls. If he didn't, none of us could ever know him. If he only loved good boys and good girls and good moms and good dads, what chance would there be?

You know what my task is, ultimately? The task of my colleagues is, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to convince the listener of God's abounding love. Of God's abounding love. Calvin, in his Institutes, says this, No one will ever reverence God but he or she who is confident that God is favorable toward them. In other words, you are never going to run to God unless you are convinced that he is favorable toward you.

How can he be favorable towards the rebellious, the exiles, the oppressed, the ones who are saying it's God's fault? Well, because of his glory being finally revealed in Jesus. You see, it is in light of this that after all this time passes, once the exile is over, the silence descends, the darkness prevails, and then all of a sudden, on a routine night in the fields, the shepherd's fields around Bethlehem, the angel appeared, and the glory of the Lord shone around. And they went off, and they said, Let's go into Bethlehem and see this thing that we've been told about.

And what did they discover? Well, they discovered that the hopes and the fears of all the years had been met in this Jesus. When John writes about it in his program, as we had in one of our readings the other night—Friday night, was it?

No, Thursday, it must have been. Yeah. And we have beheld his glory. We've seen his glory. When the writer of the Hebrews puts it, he says that he is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature upholding the universe by the word of his power. In other words, Jesus is the full and definitive representation of God. All that may be known of God in human form is found in Jesus. You say, Well, let's stop.

I'm not going to stop now. Comfort. Comfort. Where is this comfort? In whom is this comfort?

The true answer to our deepest longings. Joy. Joy. What is joy? Joy is peace dancing.

Therefore—Bromance 5.2—"Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God." Record dealt with. Sin pardoned.

Coast clear. Relationship established. Well, let's dance. Joy is peace dancing. And peace is joy resting. Therefore, the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come with joy into Zion, and everlasting joy will be upon their heads. Everlasting joy. The day after Christmas is a tough day, isn't it?

You know, you've got your little thing, your socks, and, you know, and a book, and there we go. It's Christmas. Merry Christmas, Salister.

Nice Christmas. Plus, you have this as well, just to add to it. And it said, If this is where I'm getting joy from, I'm busted. If the source of comfort is simply in the relationships around me, no matter how meaningful they are—they are ephemeral.

All around us will go the way of all flesh. No, I don't want joy that lasts for five minutes. I don't want joy to get me through my teenage years. I don't want to get joy that simply gets me to the edge of eternity. I want everlasting joy—the everlasting joy that is found in the one who speaks to his rebellious people and says, My message to you is comfort.

It is comfort. Oh, did you hear that, Scrooge? Oh, tidings of comfort and joy. The good news each one of us needs to hear. That's Alistair Begg today on Truth for Life.

Please keep listening. Alistair will be back to close today's program with prayer in just a minute. If you are a regular Truth for Life listener on radio, did you realize you can access all of Alistair's teaching online? When you visit our website, you can search through hundreds of messages from many books of the Bible.

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Now, Isaiah chapter 40 is a passage we turn to often when we need encouragement or strength, and there's a book we're recommending today that can help you dig deeper into the many treasures that this chapter from the Bible holds. The book is titled The All-Sufficient God. It contains nine sermons preached by 20th century preacher Martin Lloyd-Jones. All of the sermons focus on the greatness and glory of God. If you're not familiar with Lloyd-Jones, it was often said that while others preached love or even preached Christ, Lloyd-Jones preached God. You can request your copy of The All-Sufficient God when you donate to Truth for Life.

You can tap the image you see in the app or visit us online at truthforlife.org slash donate. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. Well, Father, we thank you for the wonder of your love to us in Christ. We thank you that down through all these centuries, right up until today, the people have waited and wondered and hoped and longed, and as they opened, as it were, their Advent calendars through the years, until finally, this boy, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, would come dressed really strangely, preaching out in the desert and doing that, which is the task of the messenger to say, Prepare. Prepare yourself, for the Lord is coming. That's why he had a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Get yourself cleaned up, he said. God is coming. And then the one who came was the only one who could grant that cleansing and that forgiveness, because he is Lord. He is Lord. Oh, we thank you in Christ's name. Amen.

I'm Bob Lapeen. How will 2022 be different than 2021? That's a hard question to answer. Life changes quickly. Maybe a better question would be, what can you count on to stay the same in the new year? Join us tomorrow as Alistair brings a clear, unchanging reminder. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.