The God Who Pursues Prisoners

Three week series, I guess you could call it, on Advent, the preparation of our hearts. This is sort of in terms of the old church calendar where we start focusing on Christmas. We're gonna be looking at a passage in the Old Testament, in fact, where a lot of this Advent expectation is found, and that is in the book of Isaiah. We know very famously Isaiah 9, you know, that there would be a God who would be sent, Emmanuel, God amongst us, and He would be called Wonderful Counsellor, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. So we are going to, however, this morning look at Isaiah 40.

It's a wonderful part of scripture. A lot of us will know it very well. Isaiah 40, we're gonna read the first eight verses. Isaiah 40, verse one. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

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. A voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 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.

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. 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. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it.

Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. So far our reading. Well, on our road to Christmas, we hear these words that are in fact a promise of something remarkable that God will do. We believe as Christians on this side of the cross that this is in part a prophecy of the arrival of Jesus Christ.

But what was God saying and intending in the first case when He wrote this to a people seven hundred years before Christ, who were living in a foreign land in the land of Babylon? What was God writing to them and saying to them at this stage? Well, if you know the book of Isaiah, you know that chapter 40 is a significant shift from the previous 39 chapters. So far, Isaiah had been explaining to the people the reason why they would be taken into captivity. This was a prophecy before they would eventually head to Babylon.

But here in Isaiah 40, there is a significant change from this story, this message that has been proclaimed. Something new is starting to be said here. The doom and the gloom of the previous chapters that rebuked Israel for their idolatry, that rebuked Israel for their unfaithfulness to God, here is changed to a message of hope. It begins with the words comfort. God says, speak tenderly to Jerusalem, to the capital of the Israelite nation.

Literally, the Hebrew, in fact, says, speak to the heart of Jerusalem. Tell her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for. So the chapter, this massive change from the previous 39 chapters begins with a command from God, comfort, comfort my people. You see, God already knew that Israel would not be listening to their prophets, even as God instructs Isaiah to bring this word of comfort. God knows that His people would be punished for their rejection of Him.

God knows that they would be sent into exile. The war and the disaster that would fall upon them, He has already foretold. And yet, He sends this comforter, this messenger of comfort to His people. The essence of this message is found, however, in verse two. This is why comfort can be found, and that is that Israel's sin is paid for.

In fact, God will say that He has paid double for their sin. Now what does that mean? Well, it means that their ransom, the thing that has caused them to be taken away, and the thing that needs to be paid for them to be reconciled, that ransom has been abundantly paid for, double has been paid for it. There has been a huge price for His people, and God has paid more than enough for them. He adds in that the nature of this payment, the result of this sin, He says, their warfare has ended.

The message of hope is that the struggle of God's people against the ravages of their sin is over. God's righteous anger at sin is not going to lead them to be abandoned forever. But it's not a message that is spoken of or spoken at Israel from a distance. This is the wonderful insight I want us to hear this morning. God Himself is coming to restore these people.

This is what we hear from the following verses. As God's spirit continues to speak through Isaiah, He says that the people must ready themselves for His arrival. They must prepare in the wilderness, in the desert, a great salvation that is going to arrive. And the image here is of God who is on a warpath, God who is a general riding in the front of His army. The people are to prepare the highway for Him.

Now, it's an interesting fact that scholars point out that where Israel had been taken captive in their exile in Mesopotamia, in Babylon, and where Israel was located, well, there was a lot of desert between the two. There was a lot of wilderness to cover between those two nations. And it's as if God is portraying that He is coming from His residence in Israel, and He's coming all the way to Babylon across the wilderness to come and fetch them. Verse three, the messenger says that someone will come, a voice will cry from that desert that God is on His way. And so in the wilderness, verse three says, prepare the way of the Lord.

Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. But there's something surprising that is being said here about God's rescue. This announcement isn't made from the lofty balconies of the palace. This announcement is not discovered in the mysterious tome in some ancient library by a scholar. The message will come from a person or a people in the wilderness.

This forgiveness and reunification with God is pronounced by a voice that is from left field. It is an outsider. Perhaps someone who would not be suspected to be the messenger of God. And in light of this unexpected messenger, Israel is to prepare for themselves a highway for the Lord. Verse four says, every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill will be made low.

The uneven ground will become level, the rough places like a plain. I know nothing about engineering. I'll put my hand up. But I know that when people build roads, especially highways, they make roads level. So at places, and I'm sure we've driven through them, one instance in my mind is coming towards Sydney, if you were to take the M1 all the way down, near the Hawkesbury River, I think.

It's very hilly. And they have cut through the mountains there in a beautiful way. See these massive cliffs that they have dug into to keep that highway straight as an arrow. This is the image here. God is going to level mountains, cut through mountains.

He's going to fill in valleys and creeks. He's going to build bridges across rivers because He is on His warpath. Because God is coming to Israel. And yet, as the image goes, the general himself wasn't usually the one that built these highways, he had servants do the work. And the encouragement here, the message here to Isaiah and the people is that they are the ones that will prepare.

They are the ones that will get this ready, this highway for the Lord. But what is this preparation for? It's the promise that God is going to fetch His people and bring them home. In Isaiah's time, the Jewish people had been held captive in the land of Babylon for no other reason than God was punishing them for rejecting Him. God is saying to them that their sin has been paid for now.

If they had lived under any delusion that they had been there as a result of poor political alliances, or that they had just been captured incidentally by a human force, no. They are there at the will of God, and God is the one who will restore them. God is saying, their sin that has put them there has been paid for, and now they must prepare a highway for His arrival. And it continues this passage to say that His arrival and His salvation is going to be successful.

He is going to be victorious, and there is no doubt about it. God is coming with authority. That's why verse five says, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed in this, and all flesh, all humanity will see it together. In this act of rescue, the glory, the power, the might of God is going to be revealed not only to Israel, but to all flesh. The world will see the glory of God.

Every eye shall see how God has saved His people, and no one will miss it. The rescue of His people will be the mark of God's glory among the earth. Finally, in verses six to eight, God compares His glory with the glory of His enemies. It says, all men are like grass, and their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers, the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.

For people like Israel who had been brought so low, their armies obliterated, their young and brightest taken into far off foreign lands, their houses ransacked. It seems like their enemies have a terrifying strength. They are overwhelmed by this enemy. And yet, the message of Isaiah is comfort, comfort.

Well, that comfort finds its application when the people hear that man's glory will come to an end. That is where the comfort lies. Man's glory comes to an end like grass. Even the biggest superpower of its day, Babylon, the empire of Mesopotamia will wither and die. Like flowers, impressive though for a moment, their splendour will end.

And Israel's enemies, have become God's enemies now, will not rule forever. Meanwhile, God says, the salvation that will take place now, this act will establish among the world's eyes, the nations, the glory of God forever. And in order to authenticate this, to secure this news, God gives this guarantee. Verse six, the grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of God stands forever. God is saying that on His honour, on His integrity, on the nature of Him who is truth, He is coming to rescue.

And what God says will happen will surely happen. He is not going to grow weary in accomplishing this. And so that is Isaiah 40. Now, this is a wonderful insight for us as we start preparing our hearts for Christmas. Because what we see here is not only a wonderful act that God would do for Israel.

What we see here is the nature of our God's heart. We find a God that runs towards His people. A God that pursues His people, who will travel through the wilderness to reach them. And He will do this despite their sin, despite their rejection of Him. He is inclined towards them.

He, in fact, abundantly covers their sin. He pays double for it. And this is the amazing thing that I really want us to understand. God is not squeamish about our sin. God is not squeamish about our dirtiness.

He doesn't remain aloof from us because of our weakness. He has set His mind on riding in front of His army to rescue His people Israel, and He will bring them home. This is the truth I want us to believe this morning. Sometimes we think that God is like some passive, Buddha like figure who sits in some golden and white palace on a throne, and we approach Him in cowering fear because of our weakness, because of our sin. That He passively waits for us to come to Him, that we must be careful of approaching Him with dragging too much of our mud into His presence.

Isaiah says, God has come to us. God comes to us. In his book, Pursuing God, Joshua Ryan Butler highlights one of the common thoughts that Christians can sometimes have when we talk about God's holiness and our sin. And I'm not downplaying God's holiness or the horror of our sin, but this is what he writes. When I hear people say, God can't stand the presence of sin, I imagine God as a nineteen fifties housewife shrieking and pulling up her checkered skirt to clamp herself atop a kitchen table when sin enters like a spider.

God can't stand sin is, as a statement, usually followed by this advice. So you better stay away from sin or He will stay away from you. He says, I get the logic. God is holy, sin is ugly, and the holiness of God must be protected from the horror of sin. But ask yourself, can sin taint God?

When sin steps into the room, does He bolt for the door? Is God afraid to get dirty? Here's the good news, he says. God's not afraid of our germs. God's not scared for His safety or backs away from the mess that we have made.

He's not the one running. We are. The gospel proclaims that our core problem is not that God can't stand to be in the presence of sin, it's the opposite. Sin can't stand to be in the presence of God. I love that thought.

God is the one that runs towards us. And our sin can't stand to be in that presence when He comes. Our sin is destroyed by His holiness. But the problem is, of course, that this sin is a part of us. And so if it is a part of us, and it can't stand God, what happens to us?

And what about Israel? What happened with this great rescue that God promised them? Well, history will show us that God indeed did return Israel. History proves that. Israel came back from Babylon, a tiny nation so many nations that were just consumed by Babylon, disappeared forever.

Israel comes back. God does have compassion on His people. He does bring them home. However, the rescue of Israel, as amazing as it was, does not stack up to the glory, it seems, that is being spoken of here in these verses. This glorious, permanent power of God that every eye will see.

Question is, has God failed? Did He perhaps exaggerate this salvation? Well, a few hundred years after this return, a man entered the scene by the name of John the Baptist, and he came to a nation called Israel. And in the wilderness of Judea, he preaches a message that says this: repent and prepare your hearts for the kingdom of heaven is near. The writer of the gospel of Matthew says this of him: this is he of whom was spoken through the prophet Isaiah, a voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths for him.

A man arrived on the scene and he brought Isaiah's message again, afresh to the people. God is coming to fetch His people, but they're already home. God is coming to fetch His people, and He will pay double for their sin. Friends, we know that in Jesus, God would do this. God is fetching His people in Jesus, but this time, the work is no longer a physical rescue of a geopolitical nation called the Jewish people.

The work of Jesus will be far bigger. God is going to deal once and for all with the problem at the core of the human heart. Yes, Jesus will fetch His people, but it's a rescue from the exile, the existential threat to us all of sin and death. Yes, Jesus is coming to bring exiles home, but it would be the fact that they would be able to dwell with God now.

That God who has pursued them so vigorously. So when we read Isaiah 40, firstly, we understand that it is applied to the Jewish rescue, but now, in a more intense and broader way, the promise is for us all. The target of God's pursuit is different, but the glorious method is the same. God will pay double for our sins. God would pay abundantly through the death of Jesus Christ on our behalf.

And so as we head towards Christmas, where hearts and minds become focused on the actions of a God who stepped into our world, Isaiah 40 fits perfectly. It is the God who pursues His people. He is a pursuing God. And so in this time, we are reminded that God arrived and He said to us that the waiting is over. Comfort, comfort my people.

Why do the herald angels sing peace be on earth? Because comfort has arrived. God is guaranteeing that our sin has been crushed by His holiness in the work of Jesus Christ. Our glorious hope, however, is also found in Isaiah 40, where it says that though the grass withers, the flowers fade. And remember, this is referring to us, this is referring to our thinking, wisdom, and our human history.

Although these things come and go, this remains forever the word of God. And the promise that was as real for Israel three thousand years ago, that they would be saved, and they were, is as real for us about the work of Jesus Christ, proclaimed afresh, pointed to by John the Baptist. There he is, he said, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This word, this promise stands forever. It will not fail.

So friends, this is what we hear this morning. God is the God who is fetching His people in order to rescue them. He pursues us and isn't afraid of our sinfulness. Number two, that we must prepare our hearts for the Lord's salvation, that we are to make straight paths for Him, so that our hearts may be gripped by this news. And thirdly, the Lord's rescue is so immense.

The freedom is so liberating that the glory that God receives now, and ultimately, the future glory He will one day receive, the glory that no one will ever be able to deny. That glory, every eye will see, and every tongue will confess when they see that Jesus Christ is the Lord of this glory. And all honour and all power belongs to Him. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we thank you for this wonderful, wonderful news that comfort is ours.

That whatever is on our hearts that will seek to overthrow our peace, Lord, that that is like withering grass, that is like flower petals that fall to the earth. Here today, gone tomorrow. But Your word, this promise stands forever. Lord, we thank you that you have come for us. We thank you that you are the pursuing God, and we will see that in wonderful display again at Christmas.

Lord, we honour you. We thank you for Your grace, and we thank you for the abundant salvation. Not simply the adequate salvation, the abundant salvation that we have received, that You have paid double for our sin. Lord, confirm this to our hearts. Help us to rejoice in it.

Help us to find the freedom that You want to give us through it. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.