The Tender Words of God: Our Calling

The calling of someone to pastoral ministry is a confronting experience. It is a confronting experience. For some it might be a long process of hints and nudges of what easy winding road that brings you to a point of realising a calling on your life. At other times it can be a more abrupt, significant, poignant experience. I know of pastors who have experienced both but the reality is it is always confronting.

No matter how you experience it, it is always a confronting, not so comfortable moment. My story is marked with some very definitive points where God gripped me and altered the course of my life. If you know me, my story goes back a little bit to almost ten years ago where I was heading very much down the way of professional sport. And God completely changed me out of there. As I'm standing here I'm standing with swollen knees because I've been playing volleyball and I'm so glad God didn't send me down that way because I'd be in a lot of pain.

But God had a different plan for me. And so I stand here and God knew that I was somewhat very single-minded and He sees me as the person that I am that's on this set of train tracks. And He managed to get me to this point by flicking some very significant switches on those tracks that altered my course. One of these switches was a class in my final year of Bible college. I had determined that I would go to Bible college.

I felt a sense of calling to go and study God's word. But it was a day where I finally came to the point of realising that I wanted, I was called to take up pastoral ministry. It was a beautiful Queensland day, not too different to today. It was a Wednesday or a Thursday, some weekday. And we were coming into a class on the book of Isaiah.

The book of Isaiah. And we were about halfway through the series and the lecturer who is as dry as anything, is conservative, who is reformed, you know those sort of guys. He said to us, "Listen, we're gonna do something a little bit different on Isaiah 40. You're gonna take it, you're gonna go outside, you're gonna sit in the sun, and you're gonna read it. And we're gonna talk about calling."

"We're gonna talk about God calling individuals." Mind you we were sitting there and there were people that were just wanting to be at Bible college to understand God's word better. It wasn't a seminary at all. It wasn't people studying there to become ministers. And so he said that to us.

And that twenty, thirty minutes after that, afterwards we came back and we shared some of the stuff and there were people that said, "No, that didn't mean anything to me. That didn't mean anything to me." Those twenty, thirty minutes were some of the most significant times I've experienced in my life. And I'm gonna share a little bit with you on how I experienced Isaiah chapter 40. So if you have your Bibles with you, please let's turn it to Isaiah 40.

We're going to read the first eight verses. "Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way for the Lord. Make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low. The rough ground shall become level, the rugged plains, the rugged places are plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed. And all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

A voice says, 'Cry out.' And I said, 'What will I cry?' All men are like grass and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass.

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever." So far the reading. Isaiah chapter 40 marks a significant shift in the story that Isaiah's been telling. For the first 39 chapters, Isaiah has been preaching doom and gloom. Isaiah has been saying, "Turn back Israel from your idols, turn back from your idolatry, turn back from your rejection of God, and come back to God.

Otherwise, you'll be cast off and you will be punished. And this is what this punishment will look like. You will be exiled. You will lose your homeland." For 39 chapters, it's pretty heavy.

And then chapter 40 starts with the words "comfort, comfort". Scholars and literary critics agree that it is a huge, significant break. Something new is happening here. The gloom of the previous chapters rebuking Israel for their idolatry and unfaithfulness to God has changed into a message of hope. It's a new message.

"Comfort. Comfort my people," says your God. "Speak tenderly to Jerusalem." Literally, the Hebrew says, "speak to the hearts of Jerusalem". Speak to the most inward parts of my people.

The chapter begins with a command from God. "Comfort. Comfort my people." In the wake of the 39 chapters that have gone before, this is a significant thing. And God is giving Isaiah a different message.

No longer a message of calamity, of punishment, but one of hope and comfort. You see, God knew that His people would continue down this track. He knew that His people wouldn't turn around. Not all of them. Not enough.

They weren't going to listen to His prophets. He knew that they would be sent into the exile. That war and disaster would fall upon them. And so He sends His comfort, His servant despite that to comfort His people. Despite that.

The essence of this comforting message is that Israel's sin has been paid for. That is the reason. He says, "Comfort, comfort. Tell Jerusalem that her sins have been paid for. That she has received double for all that she has committed."

In God's thoughts and God's mind, Israel has been punished enough. He knew that there would come a time where enough was enough and He would have to bring Israel back. The prophecy continues and says that prophetic voice cries out in verse three: "A voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be raised up and every mountain and hill made low. The rough ground shall become level. The rugged places are plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed. And all mankind together will see it." In this message of hope, God promises that Israel is going to be reunited with Him.

Israel is going to be reunited with Him. They will no longer live with the punishment of their sin but they will have peace again with God. In light of this, Israel is to prepare a highway for the Lord. Israel is to prepare a highway for the Lord. Every valley shall be raised, every mountain shall be made low, every rough all the rough ground shall be made level.

If you know anything about engineering, you know that a good highway is a flat highway. And so when engineers build their highways, they use dynamite to break through mountains. Shane's shaking his head. He's studying engineering. He's being very intelligent.

They build bridges to cross huge valleys. They have to make it as level as possible. Israel is being told here that God is on His way and they have to prepare this highway for Him. Verse five says that He is coming with glory and that His glory will be revealed and all mankind together will see it. The promise here is that God is coming to fetch His people.

He's coming to fetch His people. His people that will be in exile, in Babylon, in Assyria. He will come to get them. Make your hearts ready. Prepare the way for Him to come.

God is coming with glory and power. And the image here is like a general of an army. In the old days, in the ancient times, the generals would send out engineers and workers to prepare a highway for the army to move. He's saying something big is happening here. Something huge is happening.

Get ready. Get ready. Hallelujah. God is coming for us. In this act of salvation, God's glory will be revealed to all mankind.

Every eye will see how God has saved His people and it will be glorious. Then finally in verses six to eight, it compares God's glory with the glory of mankind. It says, "All men are like grass. They are like the flowers of the field. They wither and they die.

God's glory lasts forever. His word, His promise stands forever." Remember, this is said to Israel that is on the verge of being taken into exile. They are on the verge of being taken away. They see these Babylonian armies, thousands and thousands and thousands of men standing there with shining armour.

And they're just little old Jerusalem, old Judea. Those armies looked glorious. They looked amazing. They looked impressive. Meanwhile, maybe 30 years later they would have been reading Isaiah hoping for this promise but they would still see the glorious Babylon with all its glory, with its huge temples, with its huge walls and they would have said this is glorious.

This is glorious. And the promise from God is it's all gonna wither. It's all gonna fall. These things don't last forever. God's promise lasts forever.

What God says will happen will happen. The promise is that He will not relent. He will not grow old. He will not grow weary. He will come for them.

He will fetch them. He will bring them home. Though the enemy seems so strong, a time is coming when they will be reduced to dry grass. They will shrivel up like petals of a flower. Hang in there.

Hang in there. God is coming to fetch us. This was God's calling on my life. This was God's calling on my life. "Comfort, comfort my people.

Speak to their hearts and proclaim to them that their hard service is completed. That their sin has been paid for." You see, many hundreds of years later, a man named John the Baptist was walking around Judea preaching and proclaiming that God's kingdom was about to arrive. The gospel of Matthew says this: "In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, 'Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near. This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah.

A voice of one calling in the desert. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight paths for him.' John's clothes were made of camel hair and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.

People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were being baptised by him in the Jordan River. John was saying that God was coming. And a man had arrived on this scene that proclaimed that God was coming to fetch His people. And then Jesus came.

Friends, the glory and the majesty and the greatness of God was manifested in the person of Jesus. No one knew it then, but Jesus was God coming to fetch His people. You see the history shows that Israel was delivered. Israel was brought back. They, the remnant brought back to rebuild Jerusalem.

They returned to their homeland after the exile. God did have compassion on His people and He did bring them home. But God was busy with a far greater rescue mission. God was going to deal with the problem of human sin and the rebellion that led His people to abandon Him once and for all. He was going to fetch His people but it was going to be back from an exile of sin and death.

In Jesus Christ, God would deal with the punishment that ultimately needed to be paid. You see, Israel's seventy years of exile was a bad time. It was a long time. But it could not cover what was done to God. It could not cover the rejection that God experienced.

It was an act of mercy that God had on them to bring them back. It was a disobedience which deserved eternal abandonment and eternal exile because they had taken all the good things that God had given them. They said, "Thank you very much." And they turned their backs on the one who had provided that for them. The King of all the earth had been rejected by the very ones that He had created and not even seventy years in exile could pay for that completely.

But the Bible says that God's heart was broken by the punishment He had brought upon His people. His heart was sad, the Bible says. And He relented and He brought them back home. But their betrayal still stood. The injustice of Israel still needed to be corrected.

The sin still needed to be paid for. That's why Jesus came. He came to set the captives free. He set that of Himself. He came to give sight to the blind.

He came to bring the exiles back home. He came to fetch those who feel the distance between themselves and God. He came to replace us as exiles because He became the exile for us. He became the captive. He was the one who became separated from God the Father.

Jesus became the exile on behalf of the exiles. So that particular sunny Queensland day, as I stood there reading this, realising the promise of this, I said, "There's nothing that makes more sense. There's nothing that makes more sense than to comfort God's people. To comfort the world with this message." Friends, I have the most joyful news.

I have the best job. I hate to be a car salesman because I don't, we don't always believe that they are the best thing that you can ever have. But this is an easy thing to sell. It's a very easy thing to sell. I thank God that He has tasked me with this responsibility.

More so than this friends, it's also the realisation that I am also just human. And those verses six to eight, the glory of man that withers and dies. I'm very well aware of that in my life. And it's very good when you see these beautiful things about KJ. The KJ's milk and the KJ's tea.

Bookmarks. And the bookmarks. It's very good to know that it is not dependent on me. And the ministry of Narang and the glory of Narang is God's glory, not mine.

It's very good to know that. Thank you all for your support, for your encouragement and for your prayers over the many years of training and preparation. I really look forward so much to what God has in store for us here at Narang. The plans, the challenges, the way forward for us here. My prayer is that it will convince us more and more each day of the absolute need we have of Him.

That we desperately desire Him above all things and that we in some way can become message bearers of this same message to everyone in our lives. Comfort. Comfort.