That true comfort for God's people comes from understanding and focusing on God Himself, His Word, and His promises, rather than seeking superficial ease. Drawing from Isaiah 40, the message explains that comfort is found in recognizing God's immense power and sovereignty over nations and creation, contrasting this with the fleeting nature of human endeavors. It highlights that God's Word is eternal and dependable, offering a solid foundation in a world of shifting truths. Furthermore, the sermon points to the coming of God and His personal care for individuals, even amidst suffering and sin, as the ultimate source of solace. The core lesson is that by shifting our focus from our troubles to God's unchanging nature and promises, we can experience His profound comfort and be equipped to comfort others.
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I'd like to open your Bibles to the forty-th chapter of the Book of Isaiah. Isaiah chapter forty. The Book of Isaiah has been called a miniature Bible because it has sixty-six chapters, as the Bible has sixty-six books. The first thirty-nine chapters correspond very favorably with the Old Testament and the last twenty-seven with the New Testament, which is the exact number of books in each of these sections. And if this is true, the New Testament section begins with these wonderful words, Isaiah forty in verse one, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Say as your God, speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem.
The word comfortably is a translation of an idiomatic expression in the Hebrew language, which means literally speak to the hearts. They tell about two men who preached together in the last century in England. And these two men were as different as night and day. They were good friends, but they just had a different type of ministry. One was James G. Bellot, and the other one was J. and Darby. And one day Mr. Darby just got all he could take of Mr. Bellot's preaching, and he said to him, James, Don't forget that God's people have consciences.
He said, yes, that's right, Brother Darby, and we mustn't forget that God's people have hearts. I'm not going to forget that you have consciences. Anything I preach has got handles on it. Those of you who know me know that. And I don't expect to make you comfortable, but I do expect to speak to your heart. I do expect to comfort the people of God. I believe this is the ministry the Lord has given me for this week. It does not mean that you will only hear nice, gentle, soothing things. There's one hymn in our book that just bugs me.
I can hardly stand it. And they give it out every place I go. It's some kind of a conspiracy. I'm surprised I didn't sing it tonight. And the hymn is this. Speak to my soul, Lord Jesus. Speak now in tender tone. Don't wake me up. That's the theory. Let me now hear the whisper. That isn't what you needed. Oh, and you know it isn't. If the Lord never spoke in any other tones but those gentle ones to you, you'd go right back to sleep and you wouldn't amount to a hill of beans. You know that. But we sing that hymn because that's what we like. We hope that that's what's going to happen.
I preached to the place a while back and the man got up and told the Lord that I was there. And then he told the Lord that he hoped that I would give them something that would comfort them and wouldn't disturb them. Well, I'll leave you to imagine what happened. I want to comfort God's people, but I do not want God's people to go back to sleep. I don't think you do either. We need comfort, brothers and sisters. We need comfort. We're living in desperate days. And it isn't just those who have been through deep waters. It isn't just those who have lost loved ones.
It isn't just those whose families are a disappointment to them. It isn't just those whose health is broken. It isn't just those who are having financial problems of one kind or another, the pressures of business. It isn't just those. Every Christian seems to have problems today. The devil seems to have redoubled his efforts to make life miserable for those who belong to Christ. And I don't think there were ever days when God's people needed comfort more than we need today. Some of you remember old W.J. McClure. He was a great help to me. He was a doer buddy, I'll tell you. But he was a man who could give you some wonderful things.
And you know what I heard him say one day? In his heavy voice, he said, I would rather have written, dear Joseph Scribbin's hymn, what a friend we have in Jesus than to have written Darby's synopsis. Darby's synopsis is a masterpiece of teaching the Word of God. But Mr. McClure realized, and I realized, and you realized that what God's people are really helped by is not a synopsis, but something that attaches the heart to Christ himself. And this is what comfort does.
Our ministry, according to the first, to the fourteenth chapter of First Corinthians, may include, does include edification and exhortation and comfort. somebody said edification is like feeding the body and exhortation is like awaking the body and comfort is like soothing the body and you don't want to be soothed all the time or to change the simile it's like putting edification is like putting fuel on a fire and exhortation is like shaking the grate and stirring up the fire so to burn.
And comfort is like getting around it so you can enjoy it. Now, you can't get around it and enjoy it if you don't do the other thing. You can see that. People of God have to be taught. The people of God need to be exhorted. But the reason for it ultimately should lead to our personal attachment and enjoyment of the Lord Jesus himself. And so he says in verse two, Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. That's one of the ways you comfort people. For she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. The voice of him that triumphs in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord.
This was John the Baptist. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hills shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. This is what comforts God's people, getting our hearts attached to Him, getting our eyes on Him, getting to know Him better. John the Baptist only had one thing to do. He was the signpost. You couldn't even get him to give His name. Can you imagine any of these high-powered preachers of our day being like that? They had to ask you, well, tell us something. We've got to tell the people who you are. Where's your press agent?
Who are you anyway? He said, I'm a voice. He didn't want to be anything else. He just wanted to be a finger post pointing to the Lord Jesus. And he said, there's one coming after me. He's the one you need to get your eyes on. And that's what this points to. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. The voice said, cry. And he said, what shall I cry? All flesh is as grass. This is another thing that will comfort us. You don't think this. You don't like this. But you need this. Because when you get the flesh down where it belongs, you get the Lord up where he belongs.
Am I right? You get self where it belongs. You get Christ where he belongs. Self wants to take Christ's place. This is a heritage which is inherited from the devil himself. Satan's sin was that he was going to be like God. He was going to take God's place. And the evil nature within us follows in that same path. And if we aren't careful, we will be self-exalting and Christ will be nothing. But when we become nothing and Christ is exalted, there will be comfort for God's people. And so he tells about this grass. All the goodliness there offers is the flower of grass. The grass withereth, the flower fated, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it.
Surely the people is grass. The grass withers, the flower fated, but the Word of our God shall stand forever. And this is the third thing we need at comfort. We need His Word. We need to appreciate His Word. We need to know the eternality of His Word. We need to know the dependability of His Word. We need to know that in these days when there are no blacks and whites that are all grays, In these days when nobody dares to say this is true and that is untrue, when in college it is no longer considered to be kosher, to teach people facts, but instead of that you present a varied views and say you can take your choice of some of these.
They don't even call them, they don't even call it teaching anymore, they don't even call them subjects, they call them disciplines. You're supposed to discipline your own mind by these various studies. Thank God we've got something that is solid, something that is dependable. We can go back to the Word of God and say, this is what comforts my soul, because God says that it is so. This is what's the matter of so many young people today. We're not showing them where the fences are. They have no security. because we have not said you'll go that far and you don't go any farther. If you do, you're going to get burned. They want to be told where the fence is up.
And the Word of God tells us we need the dependability of the Word of God. O Zion that bring us good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain. O Jerusalem that bring us good tidings, lift up thy voiceless strength, lift it up. Be not afraid. Stay under the cities of Judah. Behold your God. Behold, the Lord God will come. And this is the fourth thing for our comfort. He's coming. The Old Testament said he's coming. And the Gospels say he has come. And the rest of the New Testament say he's coming again. And this is our comfort. You can't be comforted if you aren't looking for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
They were looking for his first coming. We're looking for his second coming. Tell the people that he's coming. Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him. Behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. Then he proceeds to tell us about the greatness of God. Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span? We've just been thinking about the great exploits of men who have gone a quarter of a million miles from the earth and have been able to land reasonably close to the spot that they've picked out and do the things that they plan to do.
And while we don't want to take anything from the honor and glory due to these men, let's not forget that these men have simply been able to step foot on the little bit of the creation which God says he measures with a span. He measures with a span. His hand reaches across from one end to the other. The greatness of our God. He comprehends the dust of the earth in a measure and weigheth the mountains and scales and the hills and the balance. Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counselor, has taught him? with whom took he counsel and who instructed him and taught him the path of judgment and taught him knowledge and showed to him the way of understanding.
Behold, the nations are a drop in the bucket and are counted as the small dust of the balance. I spent many years in the jewelry business, and we had a very delicate scale, which we used for weighing diamonds. It was so delicate that... you could put a piece of tissue paper on the scale and weigh it, and then you could put a short pencil mark on the scale, and you could weigh that. It was that accurate. We could tell exactly what everything weighed, and in order to be accurate, you had to be sure that you blew the dust off the balance before you started the way, because it would even weigh the dust. Now, the dust of the balance, God says, these are all the nations of the earth.
Is that comforting? It is to me. I don't get very disturbed over conditions in the world when I remember it. As far as God is concerned, all of the vaunted power of the iron curtain in other curtain countries is just the small dust of the bow. And when God gets ready, He'll just blow them away. He taketh up the aisles of a very little thing. Lebanon is not sufficient to burn. That was where the great forests were. nor the beast thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before him are as nothing, and they are counted to him less than nothing and vanity.
To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness will you compare to him? The workman melds at the grave an image, and the goldsmith spread his it over with gold, and cast the silver chain. He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooses a tree that will not rot. He seeketh unto him a cunning workman to prepare a grave and image that shall not be moved. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Have it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundation of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth. That's just as modern as any modern science we have today. God said, long before man had discovered that this earth was not a pancake sitting on the backs of four elephants who were in turn riding on the back of a gigantic turtle.
That's what they used to believe in India. Before man had discovered what the earth really was, God put down in his book that the Lord Himself sitteth upon the circle of the earth and the inhabitants thereof as grasshoppers That stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. That bringeth the princes to nothing. He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. Yea, they shall not be planted. They shall not be shown. Yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth. And he also shall blow upon them, and they shall wither. And the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. To whom then, when do you liken me, or shall I be equal, saith the Holy One?
Lift up your eyes on high, and behold, who hath created these things that bringeth out their hosts by number? He calls them all by names of the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power, not one failure. Why saith thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, my way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Why do you say God doesn't care? Why do you say God doesn't see? You see, this is the fifth reason for our comfort. This great God who's been talking about cares about me personally. A scientist said that the telescope took God away from him, and the microscope gave him back.
He said, when I looked through the telescope, I saw how huge this universe is, and I said, who am I but just a little speck on this earth, which is just a little speck? in the great universe. How could God possibly think about me? And he said, I lost God through the telescope. Then he said, I began to study through the microscope, and I saw that God cared enough about a fly to give him a thousand facets on his eye. He cared enough about the most minute creation to give them exactly what they needed. And then I knew that God who cared enough to see that a butterfly's wing was not made out of skin, but was made out of many little frameworks so that the blue of the butterfly's wing is really the reflection of little prisms, a God who cared enough to give the detail to that construction.
cared about the hairs of my head being numbered. God cares. God knows. Why do you say my way is hid from him? My judgments passed over. Why do you say this? Don't you know this? Hest thou not known? Hest thou not heard that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faintest not, neither is weary, There is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might, he increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall.
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not hang. Comfort my people. comfort them with thoughts of myself. Tell them about me. Tell them about my word. Tell them about my love and care. And my people will be comforted. Second Corinthians, the first chapter. After the salutation, we read in verse three, Blessed be God.
This is an expression of praise, an expression of adoration, an expression of thankfulness. Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comforts. I suppose you've noticed the genitive forms in the New Testament, the God of grace, the God of mercy, the God of peace. And here he's called the God of all comfort. This means that he's the source of it. He's the supply of it. He's the ones to whom you look for this. He's the God of all comfort. He is characterized by this. This is his very personality.
God is a God of all comfort. Who comforted us in all our tribulations. And don't ever ask the Lord to take tribulation away from you, brother and sister. You know where this word comes from, don't you? Did you study Latin in school? Tribulin? Remember that word? It means a flail, you know, like they used to have a stick with a leathery thumb connecting it to a flat board, and they flipped this over their heads, and the flail snapped down on the grain and knocked the grain out of the head, you know? And then they tossed it into the air with a shovel and the wind blew the chaff away.
That's a tribulation. Every smack from that hurts, but you need it. That's because you're still full of chaff. You know you are. So he said, God comforts us in our tribulation. God sends us these things because we need them. And then in the process, he draws very near to us to tell us that he really cares. He really loves it. He's really doing the best thing for us. I traveled for eight and a half years with dear brother O'Brien, who's a very godly man. Some of the older ones can remember if you came, you better not tell anybody. I know you're pretty old. Mr.
O'Brien was telling about a man who got away from the Lord, and this man had a trouble with his foot. When he walked, he slapped one foot down, and he was having so much difficulty that he just that quit praying. And he was walking the street, looking for a job, and wondering why so many things were going wrong in his life. And the verse came to him, Whom the Lord loveth he chastened. And as he walked down the street, he said, Whom the Lord loveth he chastened. Whom the Lord loveth he chastened. Whom the Lord loveth he chastened. He said, Wait a minute, I'm out of bed. Whom the Lord loveth he chastened.
Whom the Lord loveth he chastened You see, you miss the whole thing if you think of only about the chastening. The chastening, the tribulation, the difficulties, the problems are all for the purpose of making us more like himself. And in all of this, he comforts us. Sometimes we miss the real meaning here when we think tribulation simply means things that happen to us. But things don't happen to God's children. They don't happen to us. They're sent. They're permitted. The devil may be the one who instigated it, as in the case of Job, but it was God who allowed it. And you know, when Job said, there's a hedge all the way around Job, you know how he knew, don't you?
He'd been all the way around looking for a hole in it. And God wouldn't let him at his servant until he was ready. And when God said, all right, you can go in now. It was only then that the devil was allowed to bring trouble into the life of Job. And Job needed it because he was a proud man. He had too much chast. But in all of this, God comforted us in all our tribulation that we may be able to be comfortable. Oh, brother and sister, this is what's the matter with too many Christians. They say, Oh, Lord, make us comfortable. And that doesn't what he promised. That isn't what he wants to do. He wants to comfort in order. that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounded by Christ. The God of all comforts. An attitude of loving concern. We're so self-centered. We're so self-occupied that we're not much comfort and help to other people. I made a mistake recently when a friend of mine said to me, well, how are you feeling, John? I said, not so very well. I'm having a lot of trouble with these migraines again. He said, that's fine. He turned around so he can to the next fellow and asked him how he felt.
And I stood there and looked at him and I thought, well, I had it coming to me. I had it coming to me. That isn't why he asked at all. I might have known that this is just an expression. How are you? You know, the same as how do you do? Who cares how you do? In China they ask you, in China they ask you if you've had your rice. They don't intend to give you any if you haven't had any. It's just a polite expression. That's all. But God isn't like that. Brother and sister, God isn't like that. God does care. God does have a loving concern about you. And if there isn't anybody else, don't judge him by the way other people do. Martha said, Lord, dost thou not care?
That was an awful thing to say to the Lord Jesus. Hadn't he proved to Martha many times that he did care? Hasn't he proven to you many times that he does care? God, who spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? God commended his love toward us, or proved his love toward us, and then while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Does he care? Yes, he's the God of all comfort. I know we're not worthy of it. I know that better about myself than you'll ever know it. And you know it better about yourself than I'll ever know it.
That has nothing to do with us. It's to do with this subject. Who and I are not worthy? But God knew this when he began to love us. All of his dealings with us are in grace, and so he comforts us. Now there are several reasons why we need to be comforted. First of all, we need to be comforted because of sin in our lives. Don't misunderstand me. God does not comfort you in your sins. but he comforts you by taking away your sin. It's sin that has brought discomfort into the lives of human beings. It's because of sin that our world is filled with misery. I was glad to see that at a recent national meeting of the Association of Psychologists in the United States, that the presiding person, he's whoever he was, president or chairman, or whoever he was at the conference, said, in his opening address, there are many problems which beset the human race.
He said, some of these we can explain, some we cannot. He said, although this has been considered a bad word among psychologists, we just have to admit that there are some things which must be called seen. Isn't that wonderful? I knew that, of course, when I was nine years old, but I think it's wonderful that the great doctor learned that. I'm glad he found out that there are some things which just have to be called sin. Do you know why most of us have problems? Sin. Not Adam's sin, either. Not Adam's sin, yours. Not your mother-in-law, yours.
Your problem, and my problem is that we don't behave ourselves. And God wants to do something about that. Think of the good Samaritan coming to the man that was half dead. Think of his pouring in the oil and wine. Think of his lifting him up and putting him on his own beast. Think of his taking him to the inn and caring for him and then paying the man to care for him further and promising to come back. Isn't that what the Lord's done for us? Poor, miserable sinners. He cares about it. And then we need his comfort because we live in a very troubled world.
You know, in the book of Job, I think it's the fifth chapter, the book of Job, he says, Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. I don't try to escape that. Don't try to kid yourself. You're going to have your share of it, just like everybody else. And don't pray for me that I won't have any of it, because I need it. And you need it. Just pray that God will help you through that problem to learn what you need to learn. That's the point of the whole thing. That's why we have so many troubles.
We need them. We live in a world of troubles. I don't remember coming into this world, but I'm sure that I came into this world just as my children came into this world. I saw both of my boys born. And the first thing they did was to cry. One of them hadn't planned to, but the doctor smacked him and made him do it. He said, that's the way you have to start him up. That's the way you come into this world. Everybody needs to come into this world with tears. That's the way we'll go out. is a world which is called a veil of sorrow.
The eighty-fourth psalm calls it the Valley of Baka. Now don't look up the Valley of Baka on your map because it isn't there. The Valley of Baka is not on the map. The Valley of Baka is in your experience. The word Baka means mulberry trees. And the Jews call the mulberry trees the weeping trees. If you ever had a mulberry in your yard, you know why. They're always dropping all over everything. They just make a mess everywhere. You can't walk anywhere but you get a purple spot on your white shirt. They're the weeping trees. He said, this is the valley of mulberry trees we live in, the valley of weeping. You shed a lot of tears. You're going to shed a lot more unless the Lord comes tonight. And David said, Thou hast put all my tears in my bottle.
Isn't that nice? I was put all my tears in my bottle. God looks at them as something precious. He knows how much sorrow you had. Nobody else knows, and don't waste your time trying to inform them. They don't really want to know. They're too busy with their own tears. We live in a world of sorrow. That's why we need a God of comfort. I think the third reason is because it is human nature to be disturbed. It is human nature to worry. It isn't spiritual, but it's natural. Why do we worry? Unbelieve. If you'd call it what it is, you'd get rid of it.
But you don't call it what it is. You call it a weakness. You say, well, I inherited this from grandma. Grandma is like that. Grandma was a regular worry wart, and I guess I always will be too. All right, that's what you made up your mind to. That's probably what you always will be to. But you don't need to be. If you would say, worry is a sin. It is an absolute sin against God for me to worry. And I'm not going to do it anymore. By His grace, I'm going to take these problems to Him. The Lord said, let not your heart be troubled. He wouldn't have said that if they weren't troubled. And he wouldn't have said that if it were not possible for them to be untroubled.
But it is possible. How can it be possible? Do you remember what the Lord said to us through Peter, First Peter chapter five, casting all your care upon him for or because He careth instead of you. That's literally what it says. Because he careth instead of you. I know you're both of you doing it. There was a man who owed another man a lot of money. And at four o'clock in the morning he called him up and he said, I just can't sleep for thinking about that money that I owe you. Well, a man said, why in the world did you call me at this time in the morning now?
I won't be able to sleep. Well, he said, fine, you worry about it then and I'll sleep the rest of the night. Now that sounds kind of silly, but exactly, this is exactly what the Lord is asking us to do. Why should you be concerned about your problems when God is concerned about them for you? Casting all your care upon him, for he caret instead of you. He knows about your weaknesses. He knows your problems. He knows exactly what you need. and he offers to take your word. He offers to take your trouble.
He offers to comfort you. Now we've seen five ways at least in the forty of Isaiah how the Lord comforts us. Brother and sister, don't look in the wrong place for this. I could give you a list of things that I have found for myself and the Bible. Maybe I will one day while we're here. Things which do not comfort. And yet these are the things that Christians are turning to constantly. We think if I just had this, I'd be comfortable. We want a thumb in her mouth and a nice warm blanket to lean on. If I just had this, I'd be happy. You wouldn't. And you know you wouldn't. Because there are hundreds of people in the world that are trying these fantasies and they don't work.
God has given us in this fortieth chapter of Isaiah exactly what will comfort you. and help you as a child of God. The Lord bless these two remarks.