“He will speak peace” (Psalm 85)

 

I wonder how many of you, when you’re reading a book, take time to examine the copyright page or read through the backflap or the author’s bio. I have to admit that as often as not I am one of those people. When I’m reading a book I can often find it helpful to know a little bit about who wrote it and his or her life and ideas. But I admit that I have never really carried that principle into my reading of the psalms. Perhaps you’ve scarcely noticed that a great many of the psalms are preceded by little introductory notes. Generally they are fewer than a dozen words. And they are usually printed in a different font from the psalm itself. So we just skip over them as though they didn’t really matter.

By and large that is totally understandable. Because nearly half of the psalms, and many of the most familiar and beloved, feature the name of King David: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!” (Psalm 103) “O Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8) “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14) “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” (Psalm 19). And if there were a psalm hit list, the one that would come at the top: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” (Psalm 23)

In addition to naming the author or composer, many of the psalms are also preceded by what are called superscriptions: “For the memorial offering” (Psalm 38), “A Song for the Sabbath” (Psalm 92), or “A Prayer of Moses, the man of God” (Psalm 90). Some offer us a little bit of their context or an event underlying their composition: “A song at the dedication of the Temple”(Psalm 30), “A prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the Lord” (Psalm 102), or “A Psalm of David, when he fled from his son Absalom” (Psalm 3). Still others suggest a tune or other musical instruction: “For the flutes” (Psalm 5), “With stringed instruments” (Psalm 4), and one of my favourites, “According to the Dove on Far-off Terebinths” (Psalm 56).

By and large we just ignore those little introductions. It’s almost as if they didn’t exist. But in doing so we run the risk of missing out on some potentially valuable insights. And this morning’s psalm is a case in point. It begins: “To the choirmaster. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah”. And it is one of a dozen psalms that are preceded by this attribution.

A song of peace

So I find myself asking, who were the sons of Korah? For an answer to that question we need to turn to the book of Numbers. There we find a man named Korah assembling a gang of 250 powerful men to challenge the leadership and authority Moses. “You’ve gone too far!” he shouted at him. “Why do you act like you’re running the whole show? What right do you have to act as though you’re greater than anyone else?”

Korah’s attempt to overthrow God’s appointed leader very quickly proved disastrous, as the next day the judgement of God fell upon him and his co-conspirators. Suddenly the ground underneath their tents began to shake violently, until it split apart into a chasm and they all plunged to their doom, never to be seen or heard from again.[1]

Indeed for the next two hundred fifty years or so the Bible makes no mention of the family of Korah. But then suddenly they turn up during the reign of King David—not as contemptuous rebels this time, but as faithful leaders of the instrumental and choral music of the tabernacle. They were also the composers of eleven of the most beautiful psalms in the Bible.

A number of them you will recognize in some of the popular hymns and songs we sing in the church today, three thousand years later: “As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.” (Psalm 42) “My heart overflows with a pleasing theme… my tongue is like the pen of a ready writer.” (Psalm 45) “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46) “Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with songs of joy!” (Psalm 47) “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God!” (Psalm 48)

Far from any evidence of arrogance or rebellion, their songs express a deep devotion to God and a humble longing for his presence. And that is exactly what we find in this morning’s psalm.

No one is entirely sure when Psalm 85 was composed or what the events were that lay behind it. Could it have been the response to a series of disastrous crop failures? Could it have followed the invasion and subsequent withdrawal by an enemy army? It might very well have been either or both of these things—or something else altogether—that caused the sons of Korah to compose this psalm, as Judah’s history by and large was a continuous series of ups and downs.

Whatever the case, it looks as though the crisis has passed and a fragile hope is beginning to stir in the hearts of God’s people once more. “But will it last?” some are asking themselves. “Is it realistic to imagine that things have really turned around?” In the midst of their faint optimism they still have lingering doubts, and we hear an echoing plea to the Lord:

Restore us again, O God… Put away your indignation…
Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you prolong your anger to all generations?
Will you not revive us again…?

It is clear that these people are still feeling a lingering pain. The crisis may have passed, but their wounds have not yet healed. And so in the midst of their sorrow and confusion, through their hesitation and doubts, the psalm encourages the people to stop and to listen: “Let me hear what the Lord God will speak…” And what is it that the Lord God will speak? The answer comes in the very next words: “He will speak peace to his people.”

The nature of peace

It is the psalmist’s unflinching conviction that peace, true peace, is God’s desire for each and every one of his people. That is the abiding message that we hear again and again through the Scriptures. It was the message of the angels announcing Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace…!” (Luke 2:14) It was among Jesus’ words of assurance to his disciples on the fateful night before his crucifixion: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27) It was Jesus’ first word to his disciples following his resurrection: “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19) And it was while he was languishing in prison that the apostle Paul could write about the peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7).

One of the challenges for Christians in our day and age is that when the Bible speaks about peace, it is pointing to something distinctly different from what is popularly regarded as peace in our contemporary society. Today when many people think about peace, what comes into their minds? In my observation, as often as not their ideas are suffused with vague notions drawn from Eastern religions or pantheistic philosophies. Here is one definition I pulled off the internet:

Peace … is a profound sense of well-being and contentment that arises from an intimate connection with the divine or spiritual essence within and around us.

It all sounds very lovely, but definitions like that miss the mark by a wide margin.

I remember years ago attending a seminar focusing on how Christians can benefit from Eastern meditation techniques. My recollection may be a little vague, but I seem to recall that much of our day was spent trying to maintain a relaxed posture with our eyes closed and echoing the monosyllabic “Om, om…” again and again. I can’t say that I ended up feeling any more peaceful at the close of the session. (Perhaps a little more wound up would be closer to the truth!)

Now it’s not my intention to put down other religions. But what I do want to say emphatically is that that is not what the Bible means by peace. Shalom is, in essence, how things are meant to be. It is a slice of heaven. Peace—true peace—is not something we can ever drum up within ourselves, no matter how hard we may try. No, if we take what the Bible teaches seriously, peace is God’s gift. And that is the conviction that underlies Psalm 85.

Let’s take a look at it again. What does the psalmist say in verse 8? Not, “Let’s all take a few deep breaths and try to focus our minds on peace.” No, it’s “Let me hear what the Lord God will speak, for he will speak peace to his people…”

So what does the Bible mean when it uses the word peace? When it comes down to it, there is no single English term that can fully translate the Hebrew shalom. It means much more than the mere absence of conflict. Shalom carries within it the notion of fulfilment—of entering into a state of wholeness and unity, of restored relationships. Ideas of completeness and harmony are closer to its real meaning. In nearly two-thirds of its occurrences, shalom describes the state of fulfilment which is the result of God’s presence.[2]

It is generally agreed that the fullest and most eloquent expression of what shalom means was given to us by Moses’ brother Aaron in the book of Numbers: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)

So we don’t look inside ourselves for peace. Because we’ll never find it there. No, with the sons of Korah we look instead to the Giver of peace. And we affirm with the apostle Paul, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…” (Romans 5:1) God is the one who will speak peace to his people.

The gift of peace

But the sons of Korah are not finished. They have more to sing about peace. And we find it coming up in verses 10 and 11:

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet;
righteousness and peace kiss each other.
Faithfulness springs up from the ground,
and righteousness looks down from the sky.
Yes, the Lord will give what is good,
and our land will yield its increase.

Do you see the picture they are painting for us here? It may have been a challenge for the people to imagine, as they looked around and saw nothing but ruin and destruction. But what we have is the promise of the near approach of spring. The nation had lived through calamitous times, but now they could look forward to something better. Don’t let discouragement bring you down, the psalmists are singing to the people. It may seem like winter now, but spring will surely come.

I wonder if the sons of Korah could have imagined that their psalm would find its true fulfilment not in the temporary relief of a season of peace, but in a person—in the one whom the prophet Isaiah would hail as the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6)?

In this Advent time we remember the long centuries through which God’s people faithfully awaited his coming. And we ourselves look forward to our celebration of the fulfilment of their hope in the birth of a tiny child in Bethlehem. And to hearing once again the hymn of the angelic chorus:

Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased! (Luke 2:14)

With the apostle Paul and with our fellow believers down through the ages and around the world we can joyfully proclaim, “He is our peace…” (Ephesians 2:14). Yet we must not allow the serene innocence of the manger scene in Bethlehem blind us to the fact that the peace that Jesus came to bring came at a cost—and it would be nothing less than his life’s blood, shed on the cross (Colossians 1:20). It was there at the cross that, in the words of our psalm this morning, God’s perfect righteousness and God’s perfect peace finally and forever would kiss each other. The hope of Advent finds its fulfilment in the sacrifice of the cross.

It wasn’t the sons of Korah, but another Israelite, the prophet Isaiah, who wrote the beautiful words:

You will keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you… (Isaiah 26:3)

We have just over two weeks till we celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace. Amid the glitz and glitter, amid all the sales hype and the incessant message to “Spend, spend, spend!” may we intentionally keep our hearts and minds focused on our gracious God. And may you allow him to speak peace to your heart and to kiss you with his peace.

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[1]     See Numbers 16

[2]     See “shalom” in the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 931

“An Everlasting Love” (Jeremiah 31:2-6)

 

About a third of the way through the letter “J” in my dictionary you will come across the word “jeremiad”. And what, you ask, is a jeremiad? Well, a jeremiad is defined as (and I quote) “a long literary work, in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society's imminent downfall”.

With a long definition like that, it is clear to anyone who knows their Bible where the word “jeremiad” originates: from the book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament—fifty-two chapters of almost uninterrupted gloom and doom. And if that weren’t enough, Jeremiah wrote an equally doleful sequel: the book of Lamentations—five more chapters of melancholy and woe!

Many years ago, when I was in my late teens, I remember coming across a book entitled, Are You Joking, Jeremiah? I don’t think it was the author’s intention to turn Jeremiah into a kind of seventh-century BC stand-up comedian. A humorist Jeremiah certainly was not. What the author was really trying to do was to ask the question, “Jeremiah, can things really be that bad? Are the circumstances really as dire as you want us to believe?” And I have no doubt that Jeremiah’s answer would have been an unequivocal “Yes”. Or maybe, “Worse!”

For the past few months I’ve been working my way through Jeremiah as a part of my daily quiet time. And it hasn’t been easy reading. Jeremiah lived in the late years of the seventh and the early years of the sixth century BC. He proclaimed the message that the Lord had entrusted to him over a period of forty years, spanning the reigns of the last four of Judah’s kings: Josiah (640-609 BC), Jehoiakim (609-598 BC), Jehoiachin (598-597 BC) and Zedekiah (597-586 BC).

As he wrote, all that was left of the once-great nation of Israel were just two of the original twelve tribes, Benjamin and Judah, clustered around the capital city of Jerusalem. Now their existence too was being threatened with the expansion of the Babylonian Empire to the north and the rapid advance of its seemingly invincible armies. What were the people of Judah to do?

Much of the leadership were urging that they form an alliance with the Egyptian Empire to the south—indeed, if worse came to worst, to abandon Judah altogether and flee to Egypt. Imagine the irony, though, of going back to the very place where their ancestors had escaped from slavery five hundred years before—to the land from which God himself had intervened to rescue them with miracles on a scale never witnessed before or since!

A Message of Warning

To Jeremiah the notion of turning to Egypt was unthinkable. God’s words through him to the people and their leaders were these: “If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up” (42:10). Again and again with words like these Jeremiah urged the people of Judah to remain in their land.

Yes, the Babylonian army would attack and enslave them. Yes, those who survived would be lucky to escape with their lives. And all of this, said Jeremiah, was not just that Judah happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, what was unfolding around them was the due punishment that they had brought upon themselves—retribution for the countless ways in which they had blithely abandoned God and his laws, to adopt pagan practices and to oppress the poor.

So it was that Jeremiah went through the streets of Jerusalem, confronting prophets and priests, generals, landowners, leaders, merchants and kings—anyone he could find—with his message of warning. And he didn’t fear to mince his words!

I have seen your abominations,
your adulteries and neighings, your lewd whorings,
on the hills in the field.
Woe to you, Jerusalem!
How long will it be before you are made clean? (13:27)

Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness,
and his upper rooms by injustice,
who makes his neighbour serve him for nothing
and does not give him his wages… (22:13)

Behold, the storm of the Lord!
Wrath has gone forth,
a whirling tempest;
it will burst upon the head of the wicked.
The anger of the Lord will not turn back
 until he has executed and accomplished
 the intents of his heart. (23:19-20)

Needless to say, Jeremiah and his constant warnings of doom did not meet with a positive response. On one occasion his prophecies were cut up and torn to shreds by the king himself. On another he was arrested on charges of treachery and locked away in a dungeon. And on still another he was tossed into a cistern and would have died of starvation in the mud had he not been rescued. Yet none of this halted Jeremiah’s determination to issue the warnings that God had given him.

Their little kingdom was doomed. But the Lord would restore them—if only they would turn from evil and injustice, and be faithful to him once again.

The Message of God’s Love

Now it’s not as though Jeremiah was just an angry old man (or an angry young man for that matter!). Beneath all his words of woe and retribution and judgement (as with all the prophets) was the unquenchable conviction of God’s undying love for his people.

So it is that in today’s passage we come across some of the most beautiful and moving words in all of Scripture. There through Jeremiah God addresses his wayward people: “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

Now this was not some new-fangled idea that Jeremiah had come up with. He was not inventing anything. The everlasting, undying love of God is a thread that weaves its way through the whole of the Bible, from beginning to end.

It takes us all the way back to that unforgettable scene in the Garden of Eden, where God takes the creature that he has created in his own image—that he has formed from the dust of the ground—and tenderly breathes into him the breath of life. We witness it as Adam and Eve are banished from the garden for their disobedience. Yet in his fatherly care for them the Lord will not see them go cold and naked, but caringly provides them with garments of animal skins.

It thunders from Mount Sinai as the mighty God proclaims to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin…” (Exodus 34:6-7). Later on, as they near the Promised Land, Moses proclaims once again the Lord’s message to the people of Israel, “The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession… It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you…” (Deuteronomy 7:6-8a)

As we move farther through the Bible, the chorus of God’s love rings through the psalms as well. Psalm 33, for example, reminds us that, “the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord” (5b). But most notably it is in Psalm 136, where we are invited to sing, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his love endures forever.” But not just once! In each of the twenty-five verses that follow, the psalmist calls upon us to repeat the chorus, “for his steadfast love endures forever.”

But one of the most moving pictures of God’s inexhaustible love comes to us in the book of Hosea. I suspect many of you are familiar with Hosea’s unrelenting devotion to his wife Gomer. Perhaps we could blame Hosea for making a poor choice of a wife in the first place, since Gomer already had a reputation for promiscuity long before he took her in marriage. Yet God had a plan in it all. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Gomer has not given up her adulterous lifestyle. Although forced to divorce her, Hosea continues to love Gomer in spite of her unfaithfulness, to the point where later he finds her living as a slave and purchases her freedom, giving us in the process a profound, real-life parable of God’s love for his people.

The Message Made Flesh

So it is that God could instruct Jeremiah to write, even to a people who had rejected him, “I have loved you with an everlasting love…” That love is a theme that weaves its way through the whole of Scripture (as I’ve attempted to point out) from the beginning to the end. And so it is on this fourth Sunday in Advent, with Christmas just around the corner, that we focus on God’s love.

The poet Christina Rossetti put it to rhyme in a little poem that later became a Christmas carol:

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas;
Star and angels gave the sign.

The only problem is that, with all the charming pictures of sheep and oxen and shepherds, we run the risk of romanticizing that love—turning it into something that is cute and cuddly like the little baby gazing innocently up from the manger. (Let’s not forget the smell of the sheep and the oxen! And let’s not forget that those crusty shepherds were terrified—scared out of their wits—at the sight of the angels!)

No, the love that entered the world at Christmas was a fierce love, a costly love. And it would be forty days after that first Christmas that old Simeon would draw attention to that truth, when Mary and Joseph brought their newborn son to be presented in the Temple in Jerusalem. As he stared down on the little infant, Simeon’s words to Mary were bone-chilling: “This child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed, and a sword will pierce through your own soul also...” (Luke 2:34-35)

Simeon could not have been aware of it. But with the advantage of hindsight we know that what he was pointing to would ultimately lead to the cross. And looking back on it years later from the other side, the apostle John could write, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) If we want to catch a vision of the love of God in all its fullness, it is not to the manger that we must look, but past the manger, to Calvary, to the one who, in the Apostle Paul’s words, loved us and gave himself for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).

And so today you and I come together on this final Sunday in Advent, this Sunday of love. In a few minutes that fourth candle, the love candle, will be extinguished. But let us never lose sight of the fact that the love that you and I celebrate this Christmas season is a love that will never falter or fail. For we come together in the presence of the God who says to us, as he said to Jeremiah centuries ago, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

“Comfort for God’s People” (Isaiah 40:1-11)

Thomas Cranmer was one of the greatest liturgical geniuses ever to walk the face of the earth. That is why his Book of Common Prayer of 1549 and 1552 continues to be the well from which liturgical scholars and worship leaders draw for wisdom and inspiration—and not just Anglican, but people from all kinds of backgrounds, from Roman Catholic to the emergent church movement. If you take a good look at our 1979 Book of Common Prayer, you will find the words and phrases of Thomas Cranmer popping up again and again.

One element of Cranmer’s Communion service that has disappeared from our contemporary forms of worship is what were called the Comfortable Words. They followed the confession and absolution and went like this:

Hear what comfortable words our Savior Christ saith unto all that truly turn to him:
Come unto me all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.
So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Hear also what Saint Paul saith.
This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
Hear also what Saint John saith.
If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins.

The Comfortable Words were a brilliant addition to the service. Coming immediately after the priest’s absolution, they assured the congregation that the forgiveness they were receiving was not just from the man dressed in robes at the front of the church, but from God himself and testified by his own word in Scripture.

My suspicion is that people in Cranmer’s day took sin and its consequences with considerably greater seriousness than the average Christian in our own. They worried about hell and damnation in a way that most of us simply do not. So it was that they needed these words of comfort—and hearing them every time they presented themselves for Holy Communion meant that they quickly became embedded in their hearts.

The same could be said to be true of the people of Isaiah’s time. They needed good news. They needed encouragement. They needed comfortable words. The previous chapter of Isaiah contains his prophecy to King Hezekiah of the complete destruction of Jerusalem:

Hear the word of the Lord of hosts: Days are coming when all that is in your house, and that which your ancestors have stored up until this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, says the Lord. Some of your own sons who are born to you shall be taken away; they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. (Isaiah 39:5-7)

It was a devastating foretelling of Judah’s future. Worse still, in the end it was exactly what happened, not during Hezekiah’s reign, not during Isaiah’s lifetime, but a century later. Jerusalem would fall. Its walls would be left a heap of rubble, its beloved Temple a burned-out ruin; and many of its leading citizens would be carried off into a lonely captivity in Babylon. It is from that period that some of the Old Testament’s most poignant literature arises. Here is an example, from the pen of Jeremiah:

How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become a vassal…

The roads to Zion mourn,
for no one comes to the festivals;
all her gates are desolate,
her priests groan;
her young girls grieve,
and her lot is bitter…

Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look and see
if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
which was brought upon me,
which the Lord inflicted
on the day of his fierce anger. (Lamentations 1:1,4,12)

The Message of Comfort

So it was that the Lord called Isaiah to speak a message of encouragement—comfortable words—to his downtrodden and disconsolate people. “ ‘Comfort, comfort my people,’ says your God.” The word in Hebrew is nacham. It is exactly the same as we find in the twenty-third psalm: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me” (verse 4). At its root it has to do with breathing deeply or sighing, and so it carries with it the strong sense of sorrow and compassion.  

The instruction is repeated in the second verse: “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem…” Literally translated, the words are, “Speak to the heart of Jerusalem…” Again, we find this expression elsewhere in the Old Testament. It comes to us in the story of Dinah in Genesis. Shechem, one of the local Canaanite princes, found himself smitten by her. The Bible tells us, “And his soul was drawn to Dinah the daughter of Jacob; he loved the girl and spoke tenderly to her,” that is, literally, “He spoke to her heart” (Genesis 34:3). What we have here in Isaiah, then, is the language of romance, the language of love. God’s desire is to woo his people, to draw them from their loneliness and fear, their sorrow and distress, back to himself.

So, as we move farther through the chapter, the cry goes out, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Now the day would come when the people of Judah would return to Judah and Jerusalem would be rebuilt. Yet that is not what this prophecy is all about. When they returned to their homeland, it would not be by a straight road. To get from Babylon to Jerusalem required a long, curved route, north and west and south again, hundreds of miles, around the arid desert lands of northern Arabia. No, what this prophecy looked to was not the people returning to their beloved capital, but of God himself returning to his people. And when that happened, there would be no barrier that would stand in his way.

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.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together.

The Means of Comfort

God coming to his people: It should not surprise us then that we find Isaiah’s words being taken up at the beginning of each of the four gospels—in the ministry of John the Baptist. From the banks of the Jordan we hear him shout, “… the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’ ” Through his powerful message of repentance and baptism, John challenged people to a renewed relationship with God. Yet John’s primary emphasis was not on the people’s need to come to God (important and essential as that is) but on the stupendous truth that God was coming to them. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

This is what makes the gospel good news. We can summon people to a greater commitment. We can call them to a deeper life of faith. We can challenge them to fuller obedience. That is all good advice. No doubt about it. But it is not good news. The real good news, the good tidings that ought to echo from the mountaintops, is that God comes to us: that he has done so in the person of his Son, that he continues to do so in the person of the Holy Spirit. This is good news.

The message of comfort that Isaiah proclaimed was not just that God looks down from heaven and says to us, “There, there.” It is that God comes to us to us, that he actually enters our human sphere. And we know that that great vision has been fulfilled in Jesus. He has shared all that it means to be human—in Paul’s words, “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7,8). The Letter to the Hebrews (4:15) adds, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.”

God has come to us not only in Jesus. He comes to us again in the Holy Spirit. So we should not see it as a coincidence that in the New Testament Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as “the Comforter” at the Last Supper. “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, to be with you forever” (John 14:16). “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away the Comforter will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). “The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything” (John 14:26). The Greek word in the New Testament is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew that we find in Isaiah.

It is the Holy Spirit who comes into in our lives who mediates the love of the Father and the Son, who makes them realities for us.

The Ministry of Comfort

As we come to the third section of this morning’s passage, we find that Isaiah was given good news to announce to Jerusalem not only to bring them comfort, but also so that they could in turn pass it on to the whole of the nation. So too, God has come to us in Jesus, he has given us his Holy Spirit, not just so that we might have an unshakeable hope within us, but even more so that we might bring comfort and encouragement to others. This is what Paul was seeking to get across to the Christians in Corinth when he wrote to them in these words:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. (2 Corinthians 1:3,4)

Again and again in the course of my own Christian life, it has been those seemingly most in need of comfort who have ministered most deeply to me: a man in his thirties diagnosed with terminal leukemia, an Inter-Varsity staff worker who suffered from chronic depression, a woman confined to bed for years with back pain, and the list could go on and on.

I know that there are many in the congregation this morning who need comfort, who have endured pain, bereavement, unemployment, sickness, loneliness and depression. May Isaiah’s words speak to you this morning. May you know that Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, has shared in your suffering. May you also know the healing presence of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, on a daily basis in your life. At the same time, especially as we celebrate this Advent season and as we celebrate Jesus’ coming to us, may we never keep that comfort to ourselves, but allow the Holy Spirit use even our weakness to bring comfort and encouragement to others.

“O that you would rend the heavens” (Isaiah 64:1-9)

What this country needs, what the church needs, is a restoration of the vision of the Most High God… The honor of God has been lost to men. And the God of today’s Christianity is a weakling. He is a little, cheap palsied “god” that you can pal around with. He’s the “Man upstairs”. He’s the fellow that will help you in difficulty and not bother you too much when you’re not.[1]

Those are the words of the great Chicago preacher, A.W. Tozer. I believe they are truer today when he first spoke them to his congregation two or three generations ago. The “god” that Tozer describes is certainly not the God of the prophet Isaiah, from whom we will be reading throughout the four Sundays of this season of Advent. But first we need to say a little bit about Isaiah himself.

In fact Isaiah reveals very few details about his personal life. His name means, “The Lord is salvation”. He tells us in the opening verse of his prophecy that his father was called Amoz and that his ministry extended from the end of the reign of King Uzziah of Judah into the reign of Hezekiah, which adds up to a period of about forty years. Although we don’t know his wife’s name, we do know that he was married and that they had two sons, who bore two of the most unwieldy names in all of Scripture: Shearjashub and Maher-shalal-hash-baz.

According to tradition, Isaiah was of noble blood. There is also a tradition that he was martyred by order of the evil king Manasseh, by being sawn asunder. Thus when the author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes of saints of the past who were sawn in two, this may just be a reference to a tradition about Isaiah.

Far more important than any of these details is the fact that Isaiah’s prophecy sprang out of a profound experience of the presence of God. There is hardly a more arresting passage in all the Bible than Isaiah’s description of God’s call to him as he worshiped in the Temple: the hem of God’s garment filling the whole of that vast structure, the flying seraphim each with their six wings crying aloud, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!” and the prophet himself falling on his face and protesting, “Woe is me! I am lost… for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

The Lord

It is this astounding vision of God that permeates and dominates the whole sixty-six chapters of Isaiah’s prophecy, not least the chapter that we have before us this morning. The nine verses that we have read fall in fact towards the end of a longer poem, which begins in verse 7 of the previous chapter. There, Isaiah begins, “I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord…” He takes his listeners back to the time when the Lord revealed himself to his people on Mount Sinai. There, Isaiah tells us, “he became their Savior”. He did not send an angel to rescue them but led them himself.

The sad truth was, however, that the people quickly forgot about what the Lord had done for them. Their life-changing experience had faded to less than a dim shadow their memory. And what had been true of the nation of Israel in Moses’ time continued to be true in Isaiah’s time as well. For them God was like an absentee landlord, little more than a vague concept. As chapter 63 draws to a close, Isaiah laments, “We have long been like those whom you do not rule, like those not called by your name.”

So it is that as our passage opens this morning Isaiah cries out, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down…” We find that verb which our Bibles translate “tear open” numerous times in the Old Testament. In most instances it has to do with people tearing apart their garments much like the Incredible Hulk does as he rips off his shirt. In those days, however, it was a sign of deep sorrow, of repentance and mourning. People would tear off what they were wearing and then clothe themselves in sackcloth. In the same way, Isaiah begs the Lord to tear apart the heavens, to rip open the clouds and to be undeniably, unmistakably present with his people as he had been in the days of Sinai. “That the mountains would quake at your presence…, that the nations might tremble at your presence!”

Isaiah’s dream, Isaiah’s fervent desire, was that God should reveal himself to his people with power as he had done with Moses at Mount Sinai. The words that Moses had heard that day were these: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty…” (Exodus 34:6,7).

The God whom Isaiah worshiped and served was not only infinitely powerful. He is also holy: and therein lies the problem. He would not countenance the people’s sins. He would not tolerate their waywardness and rebellion, their apathy towards him on the one hand and their indifference towards their own sins on the other. Isaiah’s words for his people (and note how he includes himself: it is always “we” not “they”) are devastating. “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.” In fact, Isaiah’s term in the original Hebrew is considerably coarser than our English translations render it. It should really be a menstrual rag.

Our Father

Yet fortunately there is more to Isaiah’s message—and to Isaiah’s God—than that. We see in verse 8 that God who is the almighty and holy Lord is also our Father. To speak of God as Father is simply a given for us. Yet in the Old Testament it is a rarity. Psalm 68:5 speaks of God as the father of orphans. Yet that is more in the sense of a protector, a guardian. In the messianic Psalm 89, the coming king cries out, “You are my Father…” Aside from that there are a half dozen other references, but most of them are accounts of Israel’s failure to honor God as Father at all.

We have to wait for Jesus in the New Testament for God fully to be revealed as Father. There we find Jesus teaching his followers to address God not just as Father, but as Abba, “our Father”, “Papa”. It is a term of intimacy used only by family members. Against the background of the Old Testament you can see why all the religious people of his day, Pharisees and Sadducees alike, were shocked. To address the thrice-holy God in such a familiar manner was effrontery. Worse than that, it was blasphemy.

Yet we have the kernel of it here in Isaiah—not only here in verse 8, but twice in the preceding chapter as well. “For you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O Lord, are our Father; our Redeemer from of old is your name.” So it is that God comes to us not only as the mighty Lord, who causes the mountains to tremble, he comes to us also as a Father—our Father—in tenderness and compassion. “As a father has compassion for his children,” we read in another of those rare references in the Old Testament, “so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him” (Psalm 103:13).

Once again, it is Jesus who gives us the fullest picture of that, in the parable of the prodigal son. There the father patiently, expectantly, waits for his wayward son to return home. And when the son finally appears, the father’s legs cannot carry him down the road quickly enough to meet him. He wraps his arms around him, places a robe on his shoulders and a ring on his finger and brings him home again to celebrate. 

The Potter

We have only to move on a few words to find a third image that Isaiah gives us of God: the potter. “We are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” Isaiah is not the only prophet to use the image of the potter. You will find it in Jeremiah also. There, Jeremiah goes into the potter’s workshop and watches him as he works at his wheel. As he deftly moves his hands a vessel—a jug or a bowl—begins to take shape. But then something goes wrong and the potter reworks the soft, pliable clay into something entirely different. “Then,” Jeremiah says, “the word of the Lord came to me: ‘Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done?’ says the Lord. ‘Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.’ ”

Jeremiah’s emphasis was on the sovereign power of God to do as he wills with his creatures. Isaiah, however, uses the same imagery to underscore something quite different. I believe he is taking us back to the opening chapters of Genesis where God takes the dust of the earth (the word can mean literally a clod of clay) and molds it into a human being—Adam. And that lump of clay bears his image. Isaiah’s picture is of the care and the love that a potter or any artisan puts into each of his artifacts—to the point, I would want to add, where he etches his mark into the bottom of it so that it is identifiable as his work. We have a Creator who cares infinitely for each of his creatures, who has imprinted his own image into us, whose only desire is for our good.

So today, as we read Isaiah’s prophecy through the lens of the gospel, what do we see? That the day would come when the Potter would himself become the clay of his own making, to take on our form and flesh and become one of us. The day would come when the Father would run down to the road to draw his erring children back to himself. The day would come when the earth would indeed shudder. But this time it would not be the heavens that were rent apart, but the curtain of the Temple, as the Son of God cried aloud, “Why have you abandoned me?” Praise God that he has not abandoned us. Praise God that he has not remembered our iniquity forever. We are his people, bought with the blood of his Son.

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[1]     Fellowship of the Burning Heart, 28