What do you think Isaiah / the Lord has in mind when h/He speaks of ‘Comfort’? How you answer this question might prove more revealing than you would think! We need to be careful to let the passage tell us what it means, rather than impose on the word what we might hope it means. God has a very specific idea of the kind of pain and suffering into which he wants to pour His comfort. To understand Is.40, it helps to see how this passage is picked up in Lk.3:4-6.
We have almost certainly recognised these words as referring to John the Baptist, who in an unprecedented way was sent to prepare a people ready to meet with God. What does that look like? … to be a people ready / prepare to meet with God. The word we most naturally associate with John’s ministry is the call to ‘Repent’ (Matt.3:2; Lk.3:3 etc.). Essentially, that is what it means to be a prepared people – it is to be a repenting people.
Such repentance is born out of a grief and sorrow at the ongoing reality of our sin. It is born out of a godly and appropriate frustration at our lack of Christlikeness. It is born out of a desperation to turn away from a way of life shaped by this word, and its passing desires and priorities. It is a grief born of the psychological and emotional impact of our sin. I’m broken-hearted because I’m not like Jesus (II Cor.7:10).
And it is in response to that experience of sorrow, grief and trauma that the Lord speaks these words of ‘comfort’. It is those who are undergoing the struggle and pain of repentance and of fleeing sin that Jesus tends and gathers and carries and gently leads (40:11). Blessed are those who mourn, for the shall be comforted (Matt.5:4).
This dynamic is part of authentic Christian spirituality. It is something that is consistently part of or drawing near to God, and of His drawing near to us. Historically the Church has spoken variously of ‘a perfect agony of conviction’, ‘penitential pain’ and ‘distress of soul’. The traumatic sound of such language often raises concerns in our own generation about how ‘healthy’ repentance might be. But our desire is for a total re-envisioning of life as God desires it, and for my heart to desire that rather than ‘the fleeting pleasures of sin’.
Questions:
Are there other passages you can think of that do suggest God’s comfort for us in other situations and circumstances of life?
What is your experience of the conviction of sin?
How would you explain repentance to someone who wasn’t familiar with the idea?
Why, in Is.40:2, is Isaiah told to proclaim that ‘she has received from the Lord’s had double for all her sins? Wouldn’t that be unjust?
How does Is.40:3-5 correspond to the ministry of John the Baptist?
Would you say MIE was a Church characterised by ‘repentance’? What does a repentant Church look like? How would it prepare us to meet with the Lord?
What does it look like when the ‘glory of the Lord’ is revealed (Is.40:5)? What did it look like after the ministry of John? What would it look like today?
Why is repentance particularly necessary in the light of Is.40:6-8? Why does Isaiah contrast ‘all people’ and ‘the word of our God’ in the way he does in these verses?
Why is it good news that the ‘sovereign LORD comes with power’ (Is.40:10)? What is His reward and His recompense?
What event does Isaiah 40:11 refer to?
