My friends, the Word has spoken to us this morning.
Let us hear the word of the Lord.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen
his glory, the glory as of the only Son from the Father, full
of grace and truth. From Isaiah 43 But now thus says
Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O
Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you.
I have called you by name, and you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and
through the rivers they will not overwhelm you.
When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, and the
flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the
Holy One of Israel. I am your Savior and this is the
word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Dear God, we do give you thanks and praise and ask once again
that you transform our lives through this word, change us,
mold us, shape us. We pray through Christ our Lord,
we ask Amen. Please be seated.
If you would grab your Bibles wherever you happen to be
worshipping with us today. Grab your Bibles and flick them
are open. Probably best to be to Isaiah
43, the passage we'll be spending most of our time with
today, Isaiah chapter 43. I want you to have an idealized
picture of Christmas in your mind for a second and idealize a
romantic picture of Christmas in your mind.
I I freely understand that for a lot of people Christmas is not
romantic for Christmas is not ideal.
It is a time of great chaos. Chaos shopping wise chaos family
wise chaos lonely wise. I fully recognize this but for
purposes of this mental exercise, I want you to picture
for a second idealized or romanticized kind of a Christmas
moment. So here's here's mine I'm
sitting on the couch wrapped in a nice warm blanket.
The family has gathered around. We're looking at the Christmas
tree, as beautiful as it is. I've got hot cocoa in my mind,
in my hand. Everything is warm, everything
is wonderful. It is a time of great comfort.
It's a time of great comfort for me.
Now. Comfort and Christmas are
connected and they are connected for a reason in our minds.
I think it's not simply because it's winter out or it's cold and
therefore we get to be tucked in or that it's a family holiday or
something along those lines. But there's a connection, a
deeper connection between the comfort that we received from
God and Christmas, the coming of Jesus Christ.
And we're going to look at that a little bit today.
Over the past couple weeks, we have been looking at this idea
of Emmanuel, God with us, and the gifts that we receive
because of Emmanuel being with us.
And this is carried forward in on 1/14.
The verse we opened with the Word became flesh and dwelt
among us. We have seen His glory, the
glory of us, the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
A couple weeks ago we looked at the idea of dwelling.
What does it mean that God dwells with us?
And the impact of that word, it's not just a physical
description, it's actually a description of His desire and
His passion for us to dwell in our midst.
And last week we looked at the idea that God reveals himself
consistently through Jesus Christ and part of the gifts
that we receive because Christ came upon this earth.
Of course, the greatest one. And we're not trying to over
shadow that one. The greatest one is our
salvation and everything that the Lord has done on the cross.
And we will continue to be a community that emphasizes the
cross of Jesus Christ and the connection between Christ's
coming, his incarnation and his crucifixion and his
resurrection. But in the midst of that, there
are other gifts. There are other blessings that
we receive because God made it work this way.
And one of them is his revealing that he reveals himself.
And we looked at that last week. Today we're going to be looking
at this idea that God comforts us, the comforting work of the
Lord on our behalf. And we can see the importance of
that in the text that Jerry read for us.
If you have, if you remember in Second Corinthians chapter 1,
Paul writes, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.
Listen, just the way in which Paul spills out of himself
trying to talk about comfort here, the God of all comfort who
has comforted us in all of our afflictions so that we might
comfort those who have any affliction with the comfort that
we ourselves have received. When we are comforted by God,
there's this constant comfort idea that is being poured
forward. And I need to clarify a little
bit because while it is comforting to think of God
comforting us, comfort in the Scriptures means so much more
than just putting his arm around us and encouraging us
emotionally. That's I think overwhelmingly
what it means when I think of comfort, when I think, hey,
somebody comforted me or I want to comfort them in their
troubles. Overwhelmingly what I have in
mind is coming alongside them, putting my arm around them,
telling them of the good things of the Lord, encouraging them to
some extent what my idea of comfort is to support them
emotionally, spiritually, etcetera.
There's, there's little that I can do beyond provide that
emotional support. But comfort in the scriptures
means something else. It's something deeper, something
richer. The word comfort itself means to
thoroughly strengthen something, to thoroughly strengthen and to
empower and to enable. So when God comforts us, it's
not just that we are strengthened emotionally.
It's not just that we feel better about ourselves.
It's not just that we feel better about the things that are
happening around us. Rather, God provides us the very
thing that we need in the moment of trial and difficulty,
whenever we are suffering, whenever we are dealing with at
that point in the game. Comfort from the Lord is exactly
that strength and empowerment that we need to move forward.
That's the biblical picture of comfort.
Now, the necessity of comfort or the reality of comfort comes for
a lot of different ways. Probably the biggest 1 is this
notion of fear. We need comfort from God because
of the reality of fear in our lives.
When I was in my late 20s, Kelly and I took a 2 month long
mission trip over to Bulgaria. This was right as soon as the
very soon after the wall came down.
Bulgaria, you might know, was a communist country and it
suffered greatly under the pressures of communism at that
time and while we were over there in Bulgaria and spent that
much time over there in Bulgaria, I have never seen a
more fearful society now. They were lovely people.
They were encouraging, they were wonderful in so many ways.
It was a great summer for Kelly and I and for the mission team
that we were working with, and there was lots of beauty and
lots of wonder that I can talk about Bulgaria.
But there was a consistency of fear that was present in
everything we did. Now, some of it was very similar
to what we had. They were afraid of death, they
were afraid of getting sick. They were afraid of their
families breaking down. They were afraid of the
struggles of of work and relationships, all the kind of
fears in which we'd associate with.
But on top of that, there was a fear that was inbred through
society. The communist government had
wrecked the economy in such a way that so many of those people
had a daily fear of starvation, a daily an actual concern of not
being able to eat that day. Be beyond that, the oppression
of the government, the political oppression, was such that the
people feared their neighbors, They feared their friends.
To some extent, they even feared their family members, and it was
a society that was dominated by this fear.
Into that place we came, bringing the gospel message.
And so a number of us would sing out.
We'd gather out on the street corner and we'd sing.
And in no time there be a gathering of people around.
They recognized right away that we were from the West.
They could pick it up from our clothing, fact that we had
colors, colors in our clothing, etcetera.
So there would no time be a gathering of people.
In my mind, there's hundreds and thousands of people.
There were probably 50 or so every time we did this, but we
would be gathering together. It was the first opportunity I
had to preach the gospel in an open air setting like this.
And so I would do a gospel presentation, start at the
beginning and work my way up into the cross.
And of course, as I got to the high point, Christ's death on
the cross, I'm getting all emotion excited, thinking about
what the Lord has done for me. And I talk about Christ's death
and sacrifice, and it's wonderful and glorious.
And there's murmurs of yeah, yeah, OK.
And I think darn, you know, not very encouraging for an upcoming
preacher, you know, has very little impact on the audience.
And then I thought, well, OK, just to wrap up the sermon, just
to wrap up the gospel message. I will mention that Jesus Christ
is coming again in the future to save us from this world and the
struggles of this world that there is a heaven that is
coming. There is a second coming of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And the place went nuts every
time this happened. The place after a while, I got
used to it and would get we're wind up for it, but the place
went crazy. They were so ecstatic because
the antidote for fear is not courage.
The antidote for fear is hope. And into these lives that are
shattered by fear came this massive expression of God's hope
that there was something else yet to come, that this wasn't
all that there was. But there is hope for something
greater, something better, something more wonderful yet to
come. And that was wrapped up in the
presence in the person of Jesus Christ and the blessing that
fell upon the Bulgarians from embracing and understanding that
hope was overwhelming. We can see this so clearly in
our text. If you look in Isaiah 43 verse
one towards the end of the verse one, it says fear not for I have
redeemed you. Fear not, do not fear.
And we've talked about this before that do not fear is the
most repeated command in the Scriptures, Old and New
Testaments. It is not love the Lord your
God. It is not treat others well.
It is not praise God. It is do not fear.
Do not fear. The Lord says over and over
again, why? Because I have redeemed you,
there is a hope that is held out for you, there is a future held
out for you, and it is that fear that you are to put aside
because of the hope of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Emmanuel brings the comfort of
hope, and it has to bring the comfort of hope into our lives
as well. I worry that the ease with which
most of us live our lives masks the fear that hope is the
antidote to, And consequently we don't appreciate the incarnation
of coming, the coming of Jesus Christ, because we have learned
to underplay and downplay the fear that is before us
consistently. But it's not just from fear that
Christ's coming saves us or redeems us.
It is also this idea of obscurity or meaninglessness.
I can't be the only one. I suspect that this is a
universal concern for people. What's my purpose in life?
Why was? Why was I created?
What am I doing here upon this world?
It's one of the key central concepts of any worldview,
answering the question, Why am I here?
What is this world all about? What's the meaning of life?
What is the meaning of life? Leo.
Toy Story. Tolstoy, the famous Russian
author, described meaninglessness this way.
He said it's like suddenly waking up, realizing that you're
lost in the woods, and you know that you're lost.
And the panic comes upon you, and you start moving quickly
from one spot to the next, realizing that everywhere you
go, no matter how fast you move, you're getting yourself more and
more lost. But you can't stop yourself from
continuing to move around. And so you have this aimless
panic, the jumping from one spot to the next.
That's the emotions of meaninglessness.
That's the emotions that Christ claims to repair in our lives.
And so we have looking closely at verse one.
But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who
formed you, O Israel, O Jacob and O Israel.
Just think of that in terms of the people of God.
He who created you, O people of God, he who formed you, O people
of God. Realize this.
There's a slight nuance in in the biblical use of the word
created and formed. Created is the idea that we are
created out of nothing, that God is the one who shaped us and
molded us. All that's true.
Formed is the direction is the the idea that you you're just
not made by God, but you are pointed in a certain direction.
And for each one of us, the comfort of the Lord, the comfort
that comes through Jesus Christ, is also a purpose.
It is a meaningfulness. We are told here that because
the Lord created us, because He fashioned us, because he molded
us, we have been created with a purpose.
We have been created with an intent.
We've been created. You have a goal in life.
You have a purpose for your existence.
This is not just a random. You are not a random collection
of things that just happened to come together that forms you
along the way. That is a ungodly understanding
and ungodly and unbiblical understanding of the gospel
message. The gospel message holds that
each one of us have been shaped and molded by the Lord with a
purpose, with an intent, and with a goal in mind.
This is the comfort. This is is the strengthening the
to be thoroughly strengthened by the Lord that he provides
through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ Emmanuel brings the
comfort of purpose into our lives when there's a fear of
purposelessness or meaninglessness.
If you wonder why, the answer is in Jesus Christ and the coming
of Christ alone. But that's not the only reason
why we need to look to Christ for comfort.
We also have the comfort from loneliness.
Now statistically, this is really easy to demonstrate in
the modern day America, the fact that we are in a crisis of
loneliness. The statistics are horrific if
you've ever seen them. Gallup just did a poll last year
that found that 20% of adults, and please notice this is this
is adults, This is not kids or youth where you would think the
numbers would be worse. The 20% of adults daily have
feel a debilitating effect of loneliness daily.
That's one in five. Look around this room.
If we're statistically normal, one in five of us daily not just
a momentary expression of loneliness, but daily feel
lonely in such a way that it affects the way in which they
live their lives. We know some of the social
impacts of this. We've seen the shootings and the
mass casualty events and things like that, that it so frequently
are traced back to isolation and to loneliness.
And you have that cultural expression, cultural reality.
In the midst of social media and all the ways in which we're
supposed to leave so much more connected, we have this epidemic
of loneliness that is attacking our society and undercutting our
world. And the solution to that is not
a technological solution. It's not even a sociological
solution. The solution to that is what it
always has been. It is the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Take a look for instance, at the
end of verse one. Fear not, for I have redeemed
you. I have called you by name and
you are mine. I have called you by name before
we look at that. Loneliness has physical health
issues. This one study that I read this
week said that it is more damaging to your health to be
chronically lonely than it is to smoke 15 cigarettes a day.
Now, I'm not a smoker. I there's not a lot of that in
my background. But by all accounts, 15
cigarettes a day is a lot of smoking, and we all know the
damaging effects of that. We all go kind of bonkers about
the dangers of smoking like that, and yet loneliness is
worse. Chronic loneliness is worse than
smoking 15 cigarettes a day. So what do we do?
The Lord here says fear not, for I have redeemed you.
I have called you by name. Now, this is the Lord
identifying something. This is not the fact that the
Lord knows each of us by name and can identify and can
distinguish Joe from Sally and Henry and Bonnie and those kind
of things. It's not that the Lord knows us
by name. Like he has the intellectual
capabilities of this. The name is your character.
The name is, is the summary of who you are as a as an essence
and as a person, not in today's use of the word name, but in the
biblical use. When when Isaiah says God knows
us by name, he's not saying that God has a great capability of
distinguishing individuals from one another by by their name.
What he's saying is that God knows who we are.
He knows the essence of who we are, and yet he has called you
by name. He knows you who you truly are.
And there's that great ending of that verse.
Of course we are His. We belong to Him, we belong to
Him. The coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ, Emmanuel, brings the comfort of belonging, of
acceptance. I said earlier that there's one
in five of us that might suffer if we're statistically common,
that one of five of us will might suffer from loneliness.
Brothers and sisters, that cannot be in this fellowship.
It cannot be. If we do that, we are absolutely
rejecting the essence of the gospel message.
Realize that you might be sitting next to somebody that
suffers from chronic loneliness and realize that this is not a
sociological problem. It's not a personality problem.
It is a gospel. Problem because of the coming of
Jesus Christ brings the comfort of belonging and acceptance into
our lives. But of course, when we talk
about comfort, my guess is that for most of us, it's not a
question of overriding fear. It's not a question of
debilitating loneliness. It's not the crushing weight of
meaninglessness. My guess is that for most of us,
it's just the everyday trials that we all go through, the
difficulties of everyday life. Sure, some things are huge.
Cancer in the family, breakdown of a marriage.
We realize the difficulties of that.
And frankly, most of us are somewhat good at leaning into
the Lord when those difficult times come, when those
overwhelming things happen, most of us know that nothing more we
can do but trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But that's for the everyday, the common when you're stuck in a
snow bank, when you're late for work, when your kids are driving
you nuts, when you're fearful of the family coming over, when
you're struggling financially. The everyday aspects of life,
the everyday trials of life. We want the comfort of what we
want, the comfort of what we want.
The comfort of hearing God say it's going to be OK, it's going
to be OK. I'm here for you.
I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.
Now, the problem is that a lot of our trials are brought on by
ourself. I lose my temper.
I say things that I shouldn't say.
I look at somebody the wrong way.
I act out in a way that I shouldn't do.
And I think that excludes me from God's comfort.
It never does. Or we're the victim of something
random, this disease that just happens to hit us at this
particular moment. And what can you say?
Oh well, it's just no, that's never the case.
It is always the reality for us that our God brings the comfort
of His assurance and confidence into our lives.
There is every moment that we are dealing with the everyday
struggles and trials of being a parent.
Being a mom overwhelmed with one more dirty diaper, being a
father that needs the clean of the household up, the being a
breadwinner that can't make the payments.
All of our everyday struggles in life are consistently covered
under the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, where He says so
clearly to us that He brings the comfort of His assurance and His
confidence. He will never leave you.
He will never forsake you. Yes, it will be OK.
It may not be OK in this world, but it will be OK and you will
see it and you will praise the Lord because of it.
Now we shouldn't miss the underlying point of all of this.
By the way, did we look at the text where it said that?
Look at verse 2. When you pass through the
waters, Not if, but when. When you pass through the
waters, what is God's answer? I will be with you.
When you pass through the rivers, they will not overwhelm
you. When you pass through the fire,
you shall not be burned. That is God's promise to every
one of us. God's presence brings the
comfort, the strengthening, the thorough strengthening that we
need in order to survive. And we should never be fooled
about the source of this comfort.
Look in verse 3, the source of discomfort.
Because you are such a lovable person, I am doing this no.
Because you belong to the right political party, I am doing
this. No, because your parents were in
the right church, I am doing this, for I am the Lord your
God, the Holy One of Israel. I am your Savior.
Why does the Lord do all this? He does all this because of
Emmanuel, God with us, God coming to earth, being present
with us and blessing us with His presence now and forevermore.
The presence that chases away the fear because it brings hope
into our lives. The presence that chases away
the meaninglessness because it reveals God's purpose in your
creation. The presence of God that chases
away the loneliness because you belong to Him.
He has called you as his own child.
And ultimately, that presence that chases away the struggles
of every trial because of the assurance that we belong to God,
that we are, that he is with us now and forever.
Let's pray together. Lord God, we do thank you again
for blessing us with your presence, with the struggles in
which we go through daily, for the fears that overwhelm us at
times, for the loneliness that drags us down, for the
meaninglessness, the fear of meaninglessness, the concern
that we have for that and all things.
Lord, in all of these ways and in so much more, we love the
comfort that you bring, the thorough strengthening that we
need to continue on in our way, serving and and honoring you and
pleasing you in all that we do. Lord, we pray that you would
hear us now as we pray the way that our Lord taught us to pray.
Our Father who aren't in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy
Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day Our Daily Bread, and forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not in temptation, but
deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom and the
power and the glory forever. Amen.