Isaiah 40.1-11
Sovereign and Shepherd
If you know Charles Dickens novel Little Dorritt you will remember that the story revolves around the experience of Amy Dorritt and her father who is living in Marshallsea prison. Like many people in Victorian England, Little Dorritt’s father had been sent to jail because he could not pay a debt of just £40. An experience that Dickens’ own father also went through and which is repeated in two other Dickens’ novels. Can anyone tell me which novels and who were the two prisoners? [others are David Copperfield – Mr Macawber – and Pickwick Papers – Mr Pickwick).
Part way through the novel, Mr Dorritt discovers that he is in fact heir to a fortune and therefore able to pay his way out of prison - and he goes back into society a rich man.
Now imagine for a moment the day that news of this fortune was discovered by Mr Dorritt in his prison cell. Can you imagine the joy, the celebrations, the amazement. His debt has been paid. He is a free man.
Well, our reading from Isaiah is a bit like that. The people of Judah have been suffering, overrun by the Assyrians, threatened by the Babylonians, the prospect of exile looming. But, now at last comes a message of real hope:
Read verses 1 and 2: Comfort, comfort etc..
Let’s just set the context. Isaiah was a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah in the closing years of the 8th Century BC. The great world power Assyria was running amok in Palestine. The northern kingdom of Israel had already been overrun and Judah’s capital Jerusalem was now threatened.
Isaiah has announced that Israel and Judah’s plight was just punishment from God for generations of idolatry and immorality (Isaiah 1.4). Just as God had warned when Israel first entered the Promised Land, persistent sin would eventually mean that they would forfeit their right to their inheritance and their temple.
God’s love for his people is an intolerant love. He will not tolerate persistent apostasy and sin, because he knows that it is not in our best interest. The punishment he had proscribed was a just punishment for a nation that had pushed God’s mercy beyond it limits.
At the end of chapter 39, Isaiah has a stark message for Judah’s king, Hezekiah:
39: 6,7: The time is surely coming .. says the Lord.
It is difficult to underestimate how devastating this news would be to a people conscious of their history and heritage. The land had been given to them by God. Jerusalem was their holy city, the place they met with God at the temple. Their kings were chosen by God. Now all this was being taken away. It was a moment of deep darkness.
So it is against this background - a nation living under the shadow of invasion and exile, under the shadow of judgement from the very God who had called them into being -that this message of hope comes: Comfort, comfort my people says your God.
It is often in the darkest moments of our lives that God’s light shines the brightest.
We are going to break our reading down into four sections:
1. Verses 1,2: Comfort is Possible because sin has been paid for
2. Verses 3-5: God is Coming to the Rescue
3. Verses 6-8: God will fulfil his promises
4. Verses 9-11: God is coming with power and tenderness
1. Comfort is Possible Because Sin has been Paid for
The key to understanding how a God who is threatening to send his people into exile can in the next breathe offer words of comfort is found in that phrase in verse 2: her sin has been paid for. In other words, the debt for sin has been paid and like Mr Dorritt God’s people can go free.
That little word ‘sin’ covers as we would say a multitude of sins. It covers all the many and various ways that the people of Israel and Judah failed to live up to their calling as God’s people. It includes their worship of foreign gods, their failure to keep God’s laws and commandments and their unwillingness to put their trust in God for their protection.
Listen to the summary of Judah’s failure and its consequences in 2 Kings 17.19.20: ‘Even Judah did not keep the commands of the Lord their God. They followed the practices that Israel had introduced. Therefore the Lord rejected all the people of Israel; he afflicted them and gave them into the hands of plunderers, until he thrust them from his presence.’ (2 Kings 17.19,20)
You see, at the heart of the human problem lies the problem of sin. Judah was a small nation, with a tiny army and limited manpower. It was no match for Assyria and would be no match for Babylon. But, with God on their side, as we see if we read back into chapter 37, deliverance was possible. On the other hand, with God withdrawing himself because of Judah’s sin, Judah lay at the mercy of the great powers. Unaided by God, they would be overrun and forced into exile.
But now, Israel tells them, good news - their sin has been paid for. In some mysterious way, the debt is paid. They can go free.
But who has paid the debt and what has made their freedom possible. From this passage we don’t know. We might surmise that it is simply their own suffering has paid the debt. That they have paid their own debt, if you like. But 70 years in exile is never going to pay for generations of idolatry and apostasy. Someone else must have paid the debt for them.
To discover how this is possible we need to turn on a few chapters, to chapters 52 and 53 and the well-known passage about the suffering servant. And the key is there in 53.5, where we read of one who was ‘pierced for our transgressions’ and ‘crushed for our iniquities’. And where we read that ‘the punishment that brought us peace was upon him.’
The price of our peace, of our comfort, was paid by someone else.
It will take several hundred years before the full identity of this one who bears our sin and brings us comfort and peace is revealed.
Around 30 AD, by the banks of the river Jordan, John the Baptist points to a young man walking with his disciples and says, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1.29).
And three years later, in a locked room in Jerusalem, returning from the Cross and the grave, Jesus says to his astonished disciples, ‘Peace be with you’.
The central purpose of the Old Testament – from Genesis to Malachi - is to point us forward to Jesus and his cross. And the book of Isaiah is the supreme example of this.
Words of comfort then from a holy God who knows that the sins of his people have been paid for: ‘Your term of hard service has been completed. You have received from the Lord’s hand double for all your sins.’
Before we move on, it is worth pausing for moment to consider the implications for us of what we have been saying. You see Isaiah’s message has a relevance to 21st century AD Britain just as it had for 8th century BC Judah.
Our sin has been paid for – by Christ on the Cross. Isaiah pointed forward to that event which lay seven centuries in the future. And we can look back to it, as the basis of our peace with God and as the foundation of our life with him. God speaks tenderly to us with words of comfort. The question is: are we listening?
2. God is coming to rescue his people (3-5)
Having announced that day of deliverance is coming, when God’s people will see an end to their hard service, Isaiah then tells them who it is will deliver them. It is the Lord himself.
Read verses 3-5: A voice of one etc
The people are summoned to prepare a way for God to come to them through the desert.
As we were thinking a few weeks ago, the desert has a particular place in the Bible as a place of testing, refinement and preparation for the people of God. It is a place of new beginnings.
The picture in our passage is of God coming across the desert to deliver his people from their enemies and to restore them to the Promised Land after their years of exile. And this work of rescue would reveal God’s glory not just to Israel but to the world: read verse 5
When I was young I used to love cowboy films. And the climax of the film always featured the beleaguered remnant of some remote outpost surrounded by marauding Indians. When suddenly on the horizon appeared the US cavalry coming to their rescue.
Well, here is God announcing that he is coming to rescue his people. It won’t happen immediately, but it will happen eventually.
As we have said, in the world of 8th century Middle Eastern geopolitics, Israel was a bit player, subject to the whims of the great powers of Assyria, Egypt and Babylon. But, with God on their side, things looked rather different. There was nothing they could do to escape God’s punishment and there is nothing they need to do to experience God’s rescue.
In 539BC, the Persian king Cyrus who had defeated Babylon issued a decree which allowed captive peoples to return to their homeland. And so the great trek back to Jerusalem began.
God’s glory was in a way seen in that return. But a greater glory would be revealed hundreds of years later. When the apostle John declared: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us
. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1.14).
And will be seen in even greater measure when he returns: For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, (Matthew 16.7)
Do you need to know God as one who rescues today?
3. God Will Fulfil His Promises (v 6-8)
Then, in verses 6-8 we have this little interlude which underlines the reliability of God’s word. Through Isaiah, God was delivering a pretty amazing message to the people of Judah. He was telling this tiny beleaguered nation that, even while the great nations were circling around them - like vultures around a wounded deer, God was going in due time to deliver them, to restore them to their land and to deal once and for all with their sin.
The previous section has finished by saying: the mouth of the Lord has spoken (verse 5). In other words, Isaiah’s words are not his own but God’s. And to underline the reliability of what God has said, Isaiah draws a contrast between human powers and the power of God’s word.
Read verses 6-8:
A voice says, ‘Cry out.’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
‘All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
7 The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures for ever.’
We recently had a little celebration in our house for our son and daughter in law who have returned to the UK from Africa. To decorate the house we bought some colourful roses and placed them around the house. Even after the celebration for a few days they continued to look lovely, but it was not long before the petals began to whither and fall off and the stems began to bend.
‘All people are like grass.’ The great nations may look powerful. They may appear to be dictating the course of history. Just like we might think America or China or Russia is dictating the course of history today. But it just takes a breath from the Lord and they are blown away.
And what is true of nations is true of individual people, like King Sennacherib or the ruler of Babylon. They may appear to be in control of events. But again, a breath from the Lord and they are gone. Which is exactly what happened to King Sennacherib.
‘All people are like grass.’ Is that something that you need to hear? Is there someone in your life who you think is in control – in an unhelpful way? That person too is like grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
In contrast, ‘the word of our God endures for ever’. Notice that it is God’s word, not God himself that is said to endure here. Of course God endures for ever. In verse 40.28 he is described as the ‘everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.’
But God’s word also stands forever. It cannot be revoked or changed. And what he has promised to do will be accomplished.
And if God has said that his glory will be revealed and all people will see it, it will certainly happen.
According to Tim Keller, Christian faith is "thinking and acting on the basis of the word and promises of God."
We can have faith in the word and promises of God. And when we do that, we know that God’s purposes will be fulfilled in us and for us, because the word of our God endures for ever.
Two weeks ago, when Vera was here, she said this to us: Dig deep into His word. Don’t let sin begin growing in you. Don’t settle for a normal life. Immerse yourself in God's word to renew your covenant with God.
Have you taken that challenge seriously? Has it made a difference to your attitude to God’s word? And to your priorities in life?
We believe that God is doing a new thing here at St Giles. And what he is doing will be in accordance with his word. The more we know that word that more we will be in tune with what he wants to do.
4. God is Coming with Power and Tenderness
After the parenthesis about the word of God, Isaiah returns to his great theme of the coming of God, and notice how he comes with power and tenderness. (Verses 10-11):
10 See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm.
See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.
11 He tends his flock like a shepherd: he gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.
Here is good news, here is news worth shouting about from the mountain tops. God is coming to rescue his people!
What is particularly striking about this passage is how it describes God as both powerful and tender.
He comes with power; he rules with a mighty arm. The great armies of Assyria and Babylon are nothing in comparison with him. He has the power to accomplish all that he desires. Nothing can withstand his might.
On the other hand, as we have already been thinking this morning, ‘He tends his flock like a shepherd: he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.’
He treats his own people tenderly, like a shepherd with his sheep.
It is this combination of great power and great tenderness that makes the God we worship so attractive once you know him. And it does not require a great deal of bible knowledge to recognise in this a description of the Lord Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who knows his sheep and lays down his life for them.
Which aspect of God do you need to know in your life right now? Do you need to know him as one who ‘comes with power’, and ‘rules with a mighty arm’? Or do you need to know him as the one who ‘gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart’; who ‘gently leads those that have young’?
Conclusion
To a people then who appear to be staring into the abyss of defeat and exile, Isaiah comes with words to comfort - to tell them that God has not abandoned them. That he will come in great power and with great tenderness to rescue them and to restore them. That at the heart of his rescue mission will be his all sufficient payment for their sin. And that through the coming dark days they can rely on the fact that God’s word will endure and his promises will be fulfilled.
This is indeed good news, news worth shouting about from the mountain tops. Have you heard it yet? Have you responded yet? Do you know the one who comes with power and tenderness to rescue us from our sin? If you do, is it news you are ready to share?
