Getting Ready For Comfort, Isaiah 40:1-2

1. Read Isaiah 40 together. You can read it all at once or break it up and ask questions throughout it. Either way, allow yourselves to sit in it.
2. Where have you experienced "comfort resistance" in the past, or where might you be experiencing it now?
3. Is anyone willing to share the particulars of a current struggle?
4. How much of your pain is self-inflicted and how much of it is circumstantial?
5. What do you think God wants to say to you right now, in this season?

Practice: Pray through Isaiah 40 this week. What does God want you to see and hear through this series and in this season? Journal your thoughts and share with at least one other person in your group this week.

Over the last month I’ve been collecting articles about the forecasting this year being hotter than the average summer.

The Guardian is projecting global heating over the next decade with global issues. There’s a professor that says such high temperatures have been connected to adverse pregnancy outcomes, increased conflict, decreased crop yields, etc. It also creates migration issues as people try to get out.

I thought we could spend the summer trying to beat the heat, spiritually speaking.

It’s very possible that your summer is already here and you’re just hoping to survive the summer and beyond. It’s very likely there are things in your life in and out of your control where the temps are rising. You’re not sure you’re going to make it or are going to be spiritually productive. Maybe it’s creating conflict in your life. Or maybe you just see it coming.

You feel your vulnerability. Your beliefs get a little shaken, God may seem absent, and you may not see a way through. This is exactly how God’s people felt in the Old Testament. God was looking at the people of Israel and forecasting a blistering heat for them. Much of it was their own doing.

The prophet Isaiah speaks to it and tells them they’re about to have a desert experience. He says their water will dry up and shade will not be found.

In the first part, God describes what’s coming for Israel and that God was going to bring it on them for the number of ways they were neglecting God’s command.

A bit of background on this. The nation had deteriorated at a number of levels. There was a lot of political intrigue with kings, nations, national issues. They were in trouble with the nations around them and they could feel the pressure coming.

At the time, Israel was divided into two parts. The northern part was the kingdom of Israel, and the southern part was the kingdom of Judah. Assyria attacks both of them and Israel goes into captivity around 722 B.C. Judah had just fought off Assyria and they knew more was coming.

Some people describe Isaiah as repeating the book of Deuteronomy where God tells them if they don’t follow him they will be in trouble. You can read about it in Deuteronomy 28. It says, In the morning, you will wish it was evening, and in the evening, you’ll wish it was morning.

They know they’ll be exiled. Babylon will eventually come into Judah and take them over in 586 B.C.

We can’t experience this exactly how they did. It would be utter destruction of their lives. And God is about to tell them that he’s the one causing it. When Isaiah is writing what we’re reading, it’s 100 years before it happens. God is saying, I see the heat coming. And he paints this picture when you read the book as if they were already in it and feeling the heat.

Right at the end of chapter 39, their king was Hezekiah, one of their greatest kings. At one point, he almost died and prayed for more time and God gives him 15 more years.

He was a bit smug, though. Babylon heard Hezekiah got more time, so the king sent a gift to form an alliance. Their kingdom was nothing much at that point. They were networking. Hezekiah walks them through the kingdom and shows them everything they have. He was smug. Isaiah says, what did you do? Did you show them stuff? And Hezekiah says, no, I showed them everything. Then Isaiah tells him, you let the enemy in your house and they’re going to carry it all away.

Israel is going to feel like we would feel in these moments. Is there any hope? Are we done?

Then we get Isaiah 40 where God tells them they’re not done.

God is showing them how to process their pain. What does divine therapy look like?

What happens between these verses is what God would tell you in the middle of the mess. Maybe it’s because of mistakes and maybe it’s just your circumstances.

Isaiah 40 has this image of renewal.

I was told I’ll need a knee replacement. They said I’ll never run again. Spiritually speaking, you might be saying you can never imagine yourself running again, let alone flying.

Usually in these circumstances, you don’t even know what you need. God is about to swoop in and say, I know exactly what you need.

God is asking, do you really want my counsel? God can get you there, but are you ready to listen? Are you ready to hear what God wants you to hear?

God says in Isaiah 35, “For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.”

Isaiah is split up into different parts. The heat is coming, God shows he’s coming into the circumstances to help, then the last 10 chapters show that God is going into the world to fix, not just their problem, but everything in the whole world.

They call it Deutero-Isaiah because it sounds like two different writers. When you get to Isaiah 40, some scholars believe it can’t even be the same guy because of the hope that it brings.

The repetition “Comfort, comfort,” God has to say it twice, because there’s been no comfort for 39 chapters. You know when you’re in a real mess and you can’t even hear encouragement.

The tense of “says your God” that God keeps saying. This whole chapter is voices. You don’t know who is speaking most of the time. God is just saying, I need you to hear me. Just hear the message.

God says to speak tenderly to Jerusalem.

The word is translated “tenderly” but it really just means to speak to their hearts. It’s something God wants to penetrate deeply into their hearts.

Remember when Joseph became the right-hand man in Egypt? The brothers have to come to Joseph for food. When their dad dies, the brothers think Joseph is going to destroy them.

What do you think your heart would need to hear if you were one of those brothers?

Speaking kindly to them means that God is speaking straight to their heart.

Their warfare, or hardship, means their exile or captivity. They’ve been carried off. Either you create these hardships or you tend to feel like you’ve been abandoned. It feels like exile.

In Job chapter 7, Job uses this phrase to describe life circumstances. You may deserve to be in exile, or you may not know how you got there at all.

God is saying he’s going to come into the desert and bring an end to that season and pardon your iniquity. He gives them double. It’s not that he punished them double. This is showing that his grace comes in and matches their iniquity. The term literally means to fold in half.

It’s from the Lord’s hand. God is going to forgive, but don’t think that God isn’t part of this season in your life. Some of what you get you deserve. Sometimes you deserve it and sometimes you don’t deserve it at all. But God is part of both. He’s part of getting you in there and he’s part of getting you out.

God is saying, I’ll put you in this mess so you can watch me get you out. God has us here, he’s behind it.

You’ll never soar, you’ll never run or walk again if you don’t hear this clear message come through. Anything that happens to you that teaches you the wonder of God’s grace is worth going through.

You’ve never really fully grasped God’s grace. The rest of your life will be learning lessons about how great that grace is. Nothing transforms like grace or gets us out of the desert like grace. God is just ok to you until you know you need his grace. Then he’s greater than you imagine.

Anything you go through that teaches the wonder of God’s grace has been good for you.

Psalm 66, David writes about this captivity.

You don’t get to abundance because you don’t understand grace. God will put you through hell to help you understand what grace is.

If you’re in the mess, this message is for you today.

You feel abandoned and uncared for in the mess. You feel like, you brought me here God and you left me. You can’t see anything good from the past or anything good for the future. If you haven’t been in that place, you aren’t human.

Donna Lively spoke for Mother’s Day. She said there will be times when you’re in this place and you don’t want to be comforted and you don’t want God’s counsel. That’s the scariest moment of the dark place.

Donna talked about some of the dark places in her life. She said, “I was inconsolable. There wasn’t a word I could hear that would give me hope. And I didn’t want to hear it.”

Somebody I read last week talked about a comfort resistance where you easily resist any kind of comfort in your life. You just compound guilt, shame, pain, and put it all together. It creates a hardness where you don’t even want to hear it. God wants us to know, he commissions three voices to break through that comfort resistance you have. You’re going to have to hear or you’ll never get to renewal, you’ll never fly again, unless you can hear it.

Our culture is training us to take whatever our circumstances are and make it our identity. You turn it into who you are. Like a statue, you just say, “That’s who I am and I don’t want anyone to break in.”

Have you taken on an identity of crisis? Do you cling to pain? Do you refuse forgiveness? Do you refuse counsel or encouragement? I get it. I’ve had it. You don’t ever want to be disappointed again. You’re tired of this feeling. You reject hope. That doesn’t keep you from seeking temporary comforts. You’ll find all sorts of diversions.

The only thing worse than the hell you’re going through is the shell you’ve built around yourself where you don’t even hear God anymore. That’s why God enlists all these voices in Isaiah.

He’s saying, I know exactly where you are and I know exactly how to get you out of here.

In any area of your life, the road to renewal is hard. There will be moments when it seems impossible and moments when you think you’ll never get there.

There are barriers that have to be removed. There will be realities that have to be faced. But God is saying that you can get out with his help.

So I’m asking today, are you even willing to hear what God has to say between verse three and the end of this chapter? Divine therapy.

Does any of this resonate with you? I’m not in a great place. I am losing my grip on reality. I am using my pain and my failure as a tool or weapon. I am believing lies. And I’m struggling to be open to God’s way through my nightmare.

God is going to tell us in Isaiah 40, your nightmare does not scare me. Your wilderness is not too scary. I can bring water to your desert. I can cut through that and speak deeply to your heart. I can bring healing. And I will act on your behalf.

Isaiah 53 prophesies about Jesus. He was acquainted with sorrows. He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. By his wounds we are healed. That’s what Christ has done for us.

God, break down our comfort resistance. Break through the shell we’ve created to keep from feeling hopeless. Any resistance, start breaking it down so we can hear what you have to say. We want to fly again. We want to run again. We’re tired of being tired. But you tell us we need to listen. So prepare our hearts over the coming weeks to hear you speak.