Hope Worth Having: Four sermons at St Matthews Shenton Park for Advent 2015
- History’s Highest Hope: Isaiah 40.1-11
Next Sunday is Advent Sunday and we move towards Christmas. Advent is about hope: Israel’s hope, and our Christian hope. I think many must think that the world is a hopeless place. The Islamic State attacks on France last week reveal on one side a restlessness, a frustration, a hatred towards everything that the Western world regards as good and has struggled to create. On the other side it leaves a lot of people needing to be comforted. Which is what our Isaiah reading is about.
But who here needs comfort? Some of you probably do, but if I asked you to put up your hand you might feel shy to admit it. We can think of ourselves when we think of comfort, or someone close to us who has suffered a loss, but Isaiah is comforting a nation. As a nation at the moment we are mercifully shielded from the worst, and more comfortable than most, though the occasional fire or terror attack brings it home. But if we identify with the world. If we feel it as our world – if we grieve over what is happening in Syria as if it were ours – well, when Jesus said, “Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted,” he had this Scripture in mind and he was thinking firstly of Israel and the world, and only then about the individuals whose personal sufferings make up the whole.
But come back to hope. What future is there, if as fast as you try to create something good, someone else wants to tear it down? Is there any real long-term hope for the world? Is there light at the end of the tunnel, or is the whole human story a meaningless tragedy.
If we go back 100 years we would find that most people in the Christian world were very optimistic. They had experienced a century of progress and thought it would go on forever. In many minds scientific advances, the spread of Christianity, and enlightenment thinking were part of the evolution of mankind. The world was getting better and better. The future was bright. Then 101 years ago the first world war broke out and by its end in 1917 Europe had torn itself to pieces, 20 million were dead, and a lot of people needed comfort. The optimism was shattered…. But the world continues to turn and you must go on. Such a war must never happen again, so the League of Nations was born, with the hope that struggles between nations could be dealt with by international mediation. Twenty two years later the world was at war again. This time there were 60 million dead and lots more comfort needed.
I am here to replace your minister as he goes on long service leave. It reminds me of my own in 1989. Lorraine and I packed our four children and two sheep into the Hiace van and disappeared up to Lancelin to pretend being farmers for 3 months. We had no television, so the radio became very important. Each day we listened to the next instalment of the drama unfolding in Moscow: the collapse of the Soviet Communist system.
We had lived with it all our lives: the knowledge that if America and Russia used their bombs, this beautiful world could become a radioactive wasteland. It was hard to imagine America and Russia not being permanent. And then in a matter of months the USSR ceased to be a threat, the war ended in Angola, Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and the Berlin Wall came down. President George Bush Senior announced the beginning of a new world order.
But a mere four years on Samuel Huntingdon in an essay called “The Clash of Civilizations” warned the world that a new struggle was looming, this time between Islam and the West. Not many took him seriously. When I took John Azumah to the airport in Cape Town I was thinking his course on Islam at George Whitefield College was excellent except for what he saw as the threat of Islam, much exaggerated it seemed to me. John was raised a Muslim in Ghana, but is now a Christian, a lover of Muslims, and a world expert on Islam. He flew back to India and less than a week later. I was at the Church of England’s Synod in Muizenberg. The speaker, David Cook of Sydney Missionary Bible College, ran to me on the steps of the Pavilion and asked if I had a TV. We hurried to my house and we watched those planes flying into the World Trade Centre in New York City. It was just as John Azumah had said and marked the beginning of a new age of struggle. Who knows how many will be dead by its end. In the merciful providence of God not a single nuclear bomb was used in war in the 43 years of the Cold War; each nation knew it had too much to lose. Mutually assured destruction (MAD) was the buzz phrase. But we all know that the Islamic jihad has no borders, and with their anger, their disregard for human life, even their own people’s lives, if they could get their hands on a bomb, something really mad could happen.
The weird thing is that in the middle of all this struggle is the state of Israel, which brings us back to Isaiah.
The year is 721BC. Assyria’s army has annihilated the kingdom of Samaria and is marching south. One by one the cities of Judah are battered down until only Jerusalem is left. Imagine cowering behind the walls of this last city knowing that when a breach is made the Assyrians will pour in and kill everyone they can find. If there are any survivors they will be sold as slaves. Except that the prophet of God, Isaiah, is there and has said it will not happen. God will defend his city, and he did. In one mysterious night a large part of the Assyrian army died: one hundred and eighty thousand soldiers. The army withdrew and shortly after the king was assassinated. Assyria was broken. Jerusalem was intact. It was like the beginning of a new world order… except that Isaiah, who lived through all this, was already warning that Babylon would rise and that then even Jerusalem would be swept away. No one kept statistics on how many died in that holocaust.
Isaiah 40 follows directly on Isaiah’s prediction of the Babylonian tragedy. What a contrast: catastrophe and comfort.
Is. 40.1 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2 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.
There are three kinds of comfort.
- Sweet words of sympathy: it is a terrible thing you are going through, but I am beside you and will help you. Don’t knock it! Most comfort is like this. There is nothing I can do about your suffering, but I am there and I care.
- The end of the suffering. The comfort of knowing that it’s all over. The cancer was diagnosed, surgery followed, then three rounds of chemotherapy and radium treatment, and scans, and at last the doctor tells you there is no trace of cancer left in your body. That is the ultimate comfort.
- The third kind of comfort is being told that that time will come; you can look forward to when the suffering will be over. That too is comfort.
Which kind of comfort does Isaiah speak of? The second and the third, I think. He has just prophesied an unthinkable disaster against his nation, something which when it comes will bring the survivors close to despair. But even before the trouble he tells them what lies in the future beyond, and that is God’s comfort. And knowing that it is coming is comfort in the time of suffering before it comes.
So then – has it come? 2700 years later has Israel’s comfort come? It must be a great comfort to the few who remember the sufferings of Nazi concentration camps to know that they are now safe in their own land: a Jewish state for the first time since the holocaust of AD 70. But is their warfare ended, are their iniquities pardoned, have they yet received double for all their sins? We know they are at the very epicenter of the clash of civilizations, and that their hearts are still far removed from the Prince of Peace. Who knows what still lies in the future? So, no! Isaiah’s prophecy has not yet come true.
And yet, as we read on we will see that in some sense it has, and that in another sense it is in the midst of being fulfilled. Far from being an unfulfilled prophecy, a broken promise, we are dealing here with the very meaning of history.
Is. 40.3 A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 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. 5 And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
What is the big comfort with which God is going to comfort his people? What can Isaiah see as he gazes beyond the holocausts into the distant future? It is the coming of God to his people: the glory of God is going to appear. Israel’s God, who divorced them and sent them into exile (and they are still in exile) is returning, and the whole world is going to see it.
Now fast forward with me 700 years. Babylon came and did what Isaiah said they would. Then came Persia, and Greece and Rome. They are a people much in need of comfort. And now it is AD27 and John the Baptizer is preaching to crowds down at the Jordan River. He is calling them to return to God, turn away from their sins, convert, be baptized. And the authorities in Jerusalem have come to check him out. They ask him whether he is Messiah.
“No,” he says.
“Are you the prophet?”
“No!”
“Elijah?”
“No!”
“Who then do you say you are?”
“I am the Voice,” says John – “the voice of one calling in the wilderness; prepare the way for the Lord.”
So John plugs himself into this very prophecy of Isaiah. His voice is the one Isaiah heard 700 years earlier calling for the construction of a road suitable for God to return to his people on. Of course, John understood that was to be a highway through human hearts. Prepare the way for the Lord. God is coming! That is Israel’s great final comfort.
And now Isaiah hears the voice of God. “Cry out!” it says, not to John, but to Isaiah himself.
Is. 40.6 A voice says, “Cry!”
And I said, “What shall I cry? All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass.
What is he to say in the midst of the rise and fall of nations, of factions and intrigues, of plots and massacres and assassinations? I have just returned from South Sudan. It has been at war off and on for 70 years. They say there are more generals in South Sudan than in the USA. There are more guns than people. They want peace. The western world wants peace for them. But how can there be peace amidst such brokenness, so many jealousies and so many conflicting visions? Isaiah feels that. What can words do? Human frailty will tear apart any attempt to create a truly good world.
But the prophets thoughts do not stop there. “Yes, the grass withers, the flower fades… but the word of our God will stand forever.”
I was teaching a first year class how to preach. They took it in turns to tell their story. Thulani, a Zulu, told how men had come to his parent’s kraal and asked where his father was. He pointed to a shed at the bottom of their farm and the men went to find him. A little while later Thulani heard gunshots. He ran to the shed and found his father dying in a pool of blood. He told us in his deep slow Zulu voice, ““That day I learned, that everything in this world passes away. Only the Word of God stands for ever. That was when I decided I would be a preacher.”
What God says he will do. God’s comfort will come, and knowing that it will come is comfort now. This is no empty word of sympathy.
So now we hear another voice. The first voice tells Israel to prepare. The second voice tells the prophet to cry out – and to trust that what he cries will come true, because it is the word of God. The third voice is the voice of heaven’s herald. And this is special.
Something great is about to happen, and the way it will happen is this: God’s herald will announce it and it will happen. Actually, God’s herald will announce that is has happened, and it will be there. This is not a prophecy, nor of preparation. The herald announces the actual arrival of what prophets have foretold, and John the Baptist prepared people for. This herald has a special name, and that is why I say this is special. He is called the “Gospeller”, and his announcement is the gospel. It is Isaiah who gave this word to Christianity.
What is this gospel – which Jerusalem is to hear and to pass on to the cities of Judah?
Is. 40.9 Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of the gospel; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of the gospel; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”
God is coming! No, that was John the Baptist’s message. The gospel announces that God has come! Beyond the holocausts Isaiah hears a voice announcing that God has come. Comfort indeed!
Actually it is not one hundred percent clear from Isaiah who this Gospeller is. Is it Zion who announces that God has come, or someone who proclaims the gospel to Zion? It hardly matters, because the moment anyone hears the gospel they pass it on. Jerusalem hears; she tells the cities of Judah. There is a chain reaction; soon the whole world will hear.
But how will God come? How will the almighty, everlasting, infinite, invisible God come to this little world? When they read this prophecy the Jews must have wondered how God would come. Isaiah makes it clear.
Isaiah 40.10 Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. 11 He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.
Here is God, and look, he is a shepherd king, the Good Shepherd, no less.
It is an easy mistake to think that this herald of good tidings must be John the Baptist. But, no, what the New Testament makes clear is that the heavenly herald who inaugurated the kingdom of God with his gospel proclamation was the Lord Jesus Christ himself. In the synagogue of his hometown, Nazareth, Jesus took the scroll of Isaiah and read these words from what we know as chapter 61.
Luke 4.18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me. To announce the gospel to the poor he has sent me; to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus gospels the kingdom and its king. He is the one who tends God’s flock. He is the shepherd God who carries the lambs in his arms and gently leads those who have young.
So let me return to my question: has Israel’s comfort come? And what about us?
God has come. Isaiah’s promise came true in Jesus. It is no longer prophecy, but history. But Israel still is still surrounded by trouble and the world with her. How is this? Has the promise of God failed? This is a question Paul asked, and he pointed to Isaiah for the answer.
For Isaiah also says of the gospel, “Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” I am quoting from Isaiah 53 and Romans 10. God told Isaiah that when he came in the form of a servant he would not be recognized by his people; he would be killed, no less.
Israel failed to hear the gospel, but someone heard. God also says through Isaiah, “I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.” This is from Isaiah 65 and Romans 10 again. And brothers and sisters, this is us, when we behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus.
Isaiah 40.5 The glory of the LORD shall be revealed, says Isaiah, and all mankind shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
The whole of mankind has not yet seen it, but we have, and wherever the gospel story is told throughout the world others are seeing it and bowing to Jesus as Lord and God. I often tell my mother’s story. At the age of fourteen she suffered the divorce and shame of her missionary parents. Her firstborn child lived for only two days. As her second child I never went short of love, but my mother was not a happy person: an angry agnostic until I was fourteen. One night late she came to the end of herself. She threw the Bible open and said, “OK God, if you are really there, what do you have for me?” The Bible fell open at the words which Handel’s Messiah weaves together with the words of Isaiah 40: “Say unto the cities of Judah, ‘Arise, shine for thy light has come – and the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee.’” (Isaiah 60) She made her peace with the Lord Jesus and found the comfort Isaiah promised Israel. Bitterness gave way to joy. That is how it is when God and Jesus comes into our life in the person of the Holy Spirit. Jesus called the Holy Spirit the Comforter.
But still we live in the midst of conflict. Our comfort is a mixture of knowing that the king has come and experiencing his presence, and knowing that the day is coming when his presence will be visible and total and everything will be made new.
Isaiah 40 is an Advent scripture to meditate on and take to heart. In 700BC a prophet looks forward and hears the last of the Old Testament’s prophets, the Voice, who cries out to Israel to prepare the way for the Lord. He also hears the voice of God calling him to prophesy, and then the voice of the Gospel-herald himself, announcing the arrival of God, who comes as a shepherd king to gather and care for his flock. This is the comfort of Israel. They may not understand it yet, but they will, because God has promised it, and unlike the fading flower of human endeavor, the Word of the Lord endures forever.