“Consolation”
[Isaiah 41:8-20]
After
calling out the coastlands – the Gentiles – the unbelievers – God turns back to
Jerusalem and continues to comfort her in this morning’s text.
First,
we see that God chose His people and does not cast them off.
“But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob,
whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; you whom I took from
the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, ‘You
are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off’;
God begins by telling Israel and
Jacob that they are His servants. They
have been given the glorious vocation of serving the One and Living God. They have been called into His service – the
service of the God Who created and sustains everything in all of existence.
And, He tells them that they are
servants. Their role – though special –
is a role of submission and humility. No
believer is to think himself better than God – above the Word of God in all
that God has said and required of us.
And this is true of every believer:
Paul writes, “If you put these things
before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained
in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed” (I
Timothy 4:6, ESV).
And John writes, “The revelation of
Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must
soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,” (Revelation
1:1, ESV).
All we believers are called servants
of our God and Savior. This is both a
high honor, and it shows who we are in distinction from God – which is
something we need to keep in mind in every aspect of our lives – God is God and
we are not. Our first thought in any
situation should be to consider what God’s role is and what our role is and to
humbly bow before Him and His Will.
Then God says they are His chosen and
the offspring of Abraham, His friend – literally, “the one who loved me.”
We will remember that Abraham was
called out of the land of Ur and out of pagan religion to be the father of the
nation of Israel and all those God has chosen to be His people.
As Peter writes, “But you are a
chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own
possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of
darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are
God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy”
(I Peter 2:9-10, ESV).
And Paul writes, “Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before
the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
In love” (Ephesians 1:3-4, ESV).
Just as God chose His people in
Israel, He chose all we who believe in Him from before the foundation of the
world to be His people – we are a people with Noah and Moses and Peter and
Paul, with Mary, and Deborah, and all the believers – all the chosen – from all
the corners of earth and in space and time – all those who have been chosen and
responded to their choosing by loving God.
And since God chose us and has chosen
us to be His servants – and the word “chosen” is given in the continuous sense
– that God has chosen us and will continue to choose us – His choice of us
never changes – God will never cast us away!
God will never get rid of us for our sin or His change of mind because
God chose us with all knowledge and His mind never changes. We are the sons and daughters of God now and
throughout eternity because He made us His servants and chose us and will never
cast us away.
Even as Jerusalem receives the word
of exile, God promises that they will remain His servants in captivity, they
will always be His chosen ones, and He will never cast them away. God has chosen a remnant and we are eternally
saved from before the foundations of the world, through the work of Jesus
Christ, and throughout all of eternity.
Be comforted in your exile. If you are God’s servant, if He has chosen
you, He will never cast you away – He is with you now and forever.
Second, God holds our hand and crushes
our enemies.
“’fear not, for I am with you; be not
dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will
uphold you with my righteous right hand.’
Fear
not, God is with you, chosen servants of God.
Be not dismayed, God Who chose you will never cast you aside. Rather, God will strengthen you in your captivity
– in your exile – in your quarantine. He will help you, and He will uphold you
with His power.
When
God speaks of His “righteous right hand,” He is not talking about the
righteousness of His people here, but of the power God has to hold on to His people
and never lose them, but bring them through their discipline and restore them
to where God would have them be.
As
Jesus prayed, “While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have
given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son
of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled” (John 17:12, ESV).
It
is impossible for anyone – even us – to take ourselves out of God’s Hand – to
break His grasp on us. God is the
Almighty, we are servants – we are weak, and He is strong.
As
we saw at the end of chapter 40:
“Have you not known? Have you not
heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He
does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power
to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths
shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait
for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like
eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah
40:28-31, ESV).
Because God is our Almighty Father,
Who chose us to be His – even through periods of discipline – He will give us
the strength we need to be His each day.
You and I always have enough to be and to do what God wants from us
today. Even if we are suffering in a
foreign land or under the specter of a foreign virus.
“’Behold,
all who are incensed against you shall be put to shame and confounded; those
who strive against you shall be as nothing and shall perish. You shall seek
those who contend with you, but you shall not find them; those who war against
you shall be as nothing at all. For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand;
it is I who say to you, ‘Fear not, I am the one who helps you.’
Even
though God uses the Assyrians and Babylonians and Medo-Persians – and others –
to discipline Israel and Judah and all we who believe – eventually, God will
turn against the unbelievers – those who will never believe – and God will fill
them with shame. God will confound
them. God will make them as nothing, and
they shall perish. When we look to fight
against them, they will not be found.
Those who physically attack us because we are believers and speak
violence against us because we are believers, will be destroyed and suffer the
Wrath of God at the judgment – if not sooner.
So,
we are not to be afraid, God is holding our right hand. God gives us His strength and His power to be
His people in a world that hates us for believing savingly in Jesus the
Savior. So, we have nothing to fear –
God is our helper. God will bring us
through our trials one way or another.
Job
says, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him;” (Job 13:15a, ESV).
Jesus
says, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather
fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold
for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your
Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore;
you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:28-31, ESV).
Understand
what God is actually saying here: God
tells Jerusalem and us that He will be with us, He will hold our hand, He will
give us strength for this day, He will give us the power we need to be and to do
exactly all God wants for this day, and He will (eventually) destroy His and
our enemies. However, God does not
promise that we will not suffer or that we will survive our exile. So, we need to trust God and pray for faith
and obedience to trust Him for whatever He knows will be for our greatest good
as those who love Him – as those who are His friends.
“’Fear
not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I am the one who helps you, declares
the LORD; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. Behold, I make of you a
threshing sledge, new, sharp, and having teeth; you shall thresh the mountains
and crush them, and you shall make the hills like chaff; you shall winnow them,
and the wind shall carry them away, and the tempest shall scatter them. And you
shall rejoice in the LORD; in the Holy One of Israel you shall glory.’
God
wails that His people are worms due to their sin and need for discipline, but
God still holds them tight and tells them not to fear the great conquerors who
are coming to take them into seventy years of captivity. All we who believe have nothing to boast of –
we are mere worms, who are deserving of all suffering and more than we can
possibly comprehend given the sinfulness of our sin.
Yet,
this is the Redeemer, the Lord Who helps us!
He is the Holy One of Israel. We
are nothing against our enemy and against the just punishment for our sin. We are worms that could easily be crushed by
the warrior’s boot. But the Lord is our
Redeemer Who helps us! The Holy God of
Israel chose to save and keep a people for Himself – to make us holy for His
sake and to His Glory!
In
the end – symbolically – God will transform we worms into threshing sleds with
many sharp teeth. These were the
instruments that farmers would use to break up the soil for planting. But God says He will turn us into threshing
sleds that – by the power and help of God – will tear down the mountains and
reduce them to dust! We succeed – we
live – we recover – we progress – because God takes us by His power and causes
it to happen. Our salvation has nothing
to do with us and everything to do with God Who saves us.
We
look forward – rightly – to the last day, thinking of what Jesus says, “Jesus
said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will
sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve
thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel’” (Matthew 19:28, ESV).
When
Jesus comes to judge the world – in some manner – He will judge the world
through all we who believe savingly in Him.
On that day, even the Creation – which is convulsing in the pains of
childbirth even now – will burst forth in recreation and restoration as the Eternal,
Holy Kingdom of God. And we will rejoice
in the Lord and give Him the glory!
Today,
and through our suffering for Jesus, and on the last day, God holds our hand
and will crush His and our enemies, pouring out His Wrath on them. And we, in thanksgiving, will rejoice and
give Him the glory.
Third,
God’s goal is self-revelation.
“When
the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched
with thirst, I the LORD will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake
them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the
valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs
of water.’
Gods
says that when the poor and needy seek water – when Jerusalem seeks water –
when you and I seek water – and we find none – when there is only desert, God
will provide water. God will cause
rivers to flow down the mountains, God will cause fountains to spring up in the
valleys. God will make the wilderness a pool.
God will make the deserts springs of water.
When
there is absolutely no way that we can get ourselves out of the difficulty we
are in – when we are exiled in a foreign land and not allowed to leave – when
we are locked down in our homes because there is a virus that we cannot cure –
this is the perfect time for God to display His Power and reveal Himself.
That
doesn’t mean God always will step in and reveal Himself and save us from every
ill – He told Jerusalem they will suffer for seventy years before God saves
them – we are told we will suffer and even die for Christ, but rejoice! No, the point is that when God does pull us
out of a place that we didn’t think it was possible to come back from, this is
God revealing Himself, and we ought not to be prideful about getting back or be
drawing attention to ourselves, but point to God and praise Him for what He has
done.
When
there is no way with humans, it is the perfect time for God to act. And He may or He may not. Here, God gives Jerusalem the promise that they
will be freed after seventy years, and it will be the righteous right Hand of
God that delivers them – just as it was when God delivered Israel out of the
land of Egypt.
God
tells Israel, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has
no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without
price” (Isaiah 55:1, ESV).
God
promises that He will provide for His people, and we will not give God anything
to earn what He freely gives us. So, God
cares for us and will care for us and reveals Who He is and His Character as He
does so.
“’I
will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive. I
will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together,’
Again,
we see that God Himself will cause trees to grow in the wilderness where it is
not fertile enough for them to grow. But
what we may not recognize is that the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, the olive ,
the cyrpress, the plane, and the pine tree never grow together – they require
different environments and nutrients.
God performs another miraculous action in causing these trees to grow
together – drawing the attention to Him and Who He is!
Is
this not a picture of the radical salvation that God performs for His people,
as well? Here what John records:
“After
this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from
every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the
throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their
hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits
on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9-10, ESV).
God
has chosen a people – a remnant – for Himself, and they are people from every tribe,
and nation and language – like that crop of tress that would not normally grow
together, we will be gathered together in the Kingdom – one people of God –
even though we come from everywhere in Creation.
“’that they may see and know, may
consider and understand together, that the hand of the LORD has done this, the
Holy One of Israel has created it.’”
And here is the explanation for all
that God does: God acts in such a way
that humans will see God, that humans will know God, that humans will consider
God, that humans will understand God – that we will be turned from our sin and
turned from our self-absorption and turn our eyes and hearts and minds and
souls to witness and carefully think through and to believe with our hearts and
minds that God is Who He has revealed Himself to be in Nature and in His Word –
and His Salvation – the salvation that God accomplishes for Jerusalem and every
believer – is something God does by Himself and for Himself in accordance with
His Character and promises.
Is this not a wonderful consolation
for Jerusalem as she prepares the generations for exile? Isn’t this wonderful news for us as we live
our lives and live through Covid and whatever else might come our way in which
we can witness the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world?
God has chosen a people for Himself,
and He will never cast us away. We are
His forever, bought by Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
God holds our hand as we endure evil
for His Sake through this life, and, in the end, God will crush all of His
enemies and ours.
And God’s goal in all the wonderful
and miraculous things He has done – especially in choosing and saving a remnant
out of humanity to be His forever in the Kingdom – is His Own self-revelation. In everything that happens throughout all of
time and space, God is revealing Himself, so we would know that His Word is
True, and Jesus is God the Only Savior.
Let us pray:
Almighty God, we thank You for the
witness of the impending exile of Jerusalem and how You comforted them and show
us that we should be comforted as well in whatever we endure for Your
Sake. Help us to trust You and hope in
You and not give up in times of persecution or extraordinary circumstances. God is not shaken by what we are going through,
and Jesus remains our Eternal Shepherd.
And we pray this in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
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