"Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; Awake as in the days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not You who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; Who made the depths of the sea a pathway for the redeemed to cross over? So the ransomed of the Lord will return and come with joyful shouting to Zion, and everlasting joy will be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
I, even I, am He who comforts you.
Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies and of the son of man who is made like grass.
That you have forgotten the Lord your Maker who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth.
That you fear continually all day long because of the fury of the oppressor, as he makes ready to destroy? But where is the fury of the oppressor?
The exile will soon be set free, and will not die in the dungeon, nor will his bread be lacking.
For I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea and its waves roar (the Lord of hosts is His name).
I have put My words in your mouth and have covered you with the shadow of My hand, to establish the heavens, to found the earth, and to say in Zion, 'You are my people'"
I, even I, am He who comforts you.
Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies and of the son of man who is made like grass.
I, even I, am He who comforts you.
We go through many long, hard, terrible difficulties in our lifetime. We lose friends, we lose family, we hurt them and are hurt by them, and from our first breath until our last in this life we are perpetrators and victims of the sin that has warped us in this very broken world. It is tragically undeniable that our lives cannot be entirely perfect happiness.
When I was younger, if I was injured I went to my parents for comfort. If I was scared, or sad, or just had a bad day overall, my parents, my friends, my family were usually able to provide some sort of comfort. But there are events in our lives in which the comfort of others falls very far short- life-altering, foundation-shaking events, like the loss of those parents who were that comfort, or the loss of the spouse who was half of your whole, or the great tragedies that are etched forever in our minds that happen around the world and close to home.
Who do we turn to in those times? An "I'm sorry" and "anything we can do to help" are good comfort, and are welcome from those we know and even those we don't. Yet, on the battlefield amid ten thousand flying possibilities of death, where the ground erupts death and the wind screams death and there is death on the faces of those around us, what is our comfort?
What is our only comfort in life and death?
Not that I am my own. Not that my gun, my hands, my brain, my emotions, my can-do attitude, my sales ability, or my instincts will save me. Those are all here today and gone tomorrow, grass in a furnace ready to be consumed and destroyed to make room for a new wave of ephemeral things, droplets in an ocean, significant and yet minute.
My muscles can only lift a couple hundred pounds. My mind can only process so many thoughts, invent so many reactions. My hands can only type so fast and work so hard.
No, our only comfort in life and death is that we are not our own, but belong both body and soul, in life and in death, to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ. That not a hair can fall from our head apart from His will. That ten thousand can fall at our side and yet we are preserved.
If a bomb went off in this very apartment right now, I *could* survive it unscathed. Men have walked out of hotter furnaces. If a hungry bear were to find me while I'm out in the woods, I could escape alive. Hungrier beasts have had their appetite quieted while the main course mocks from above. (Assuming, of course, no preceding insults toward passing prophets on my part)
There is NOTHING that can possibly happen between Heaven and Sheol apart from the knowledge of our Creator, the Lord God. He stretched out that expanse. He knows it intimately. He knows waterfalls and mountains and galaxies beyond all our knowing as well as He knows the depths of our hearts, our thoughts (hidden and unhidden), and the state of our souls. He knows His plans, who He will graft and who He will prune.
We KNOW that Christ is our great high priest, the perfect mediator who is without sin and yet *KNOWS* exactly what we go through when we are tempted. He *KNOWS* what it is to be tempted, and indeed has BEEN tempted far worse than any of us ever have.
He knows the tragedy of death and the grief of loss, and has shed tears when a loved one has moved on. He's even raised that loved one back to life.
We have every reason in the world, literally, to cast all our cares upon the Lord. We have *every* reason to rely on Him for everything, from each daily breath to the fact that our cities will not be covered in molten lava or a world-ending flood anytime soon. We must know, given the evidence, that those loved ones that pass on while believing in Him are only passing through the stable to travel further up and further in, onward flying joyously toward that endless summer holiday.
Yet, we would more often than not prefer to cast our cares upon...ourselves. To worry about tomorrow in spite of today's cares. To be clear, I am not saying that we should not store up our harvest in storehouses for the coming winter, nor that we should not be careful and stewardly and use the tools given us by God for the purpose of affecting the care of ourselves and those around us to do their God-given task. But I am saying that our every breath, our every effort, our every exertion and plan and thought and intent and deed, should be done in the knowledge that it is begun and carried through and finished by the God who made us able to do what we did. We must know that the cause of each action and its result is already known, a story written by the Author which we often only see after the words are written, while we're dithering about somewhere in the epilogue.
We MUST...be comforted.
“Who are you that you are afraid”
The imperative nature of this phrase strikes me because it runs very counter to the inclination of our natural instinct. We prefer to do it ourselves. We want to conquer the mountain on our own, win the medal, receive the accolades. Fix the problem. Heal the person. We prefer fruit over following.
I think that in Isaiah 51:17 God is reminding us that we MUST...be comforted. Taking comfort is not solely the action of a child, nor our very last resort after we’ve tried everything else. We MUST be comforted in the power and the majesty and the glory and the grace and the goodness of the Lord our God, He who is “I AM,” a name that requires no further explanation because He IS.
In this context while it is absolutely tragic and horrible when one’s children are all slain, one’s goods and servants all stolen, and one’s health degrades near to the point of the death, it is nevertheless absolutely critical that we are COMFORTED by the power of our God, and TRUST in Him. No amount of scraping and debate can change the facts of our utter downfall and loss. Only the Lord who formed our every cell and organ, who breathed into our lungs so that they beat, only He can return what is gone. Only he can heal what is diseased.
Only He can take us from the black despair of loss into the bright springtime sunlight of life renewed.
To be sure, it is no small thing to have that trust, to give up the ultimate end of the game knowing your dice simply cannot land on the right numbers. In the depths of our despair, in the midst of our great crises, we are akin to a child at the worst of his fever, when the whole world has gone dark and the sun cannot possibly rise again.
Yet it does rise. The winter breaks and flowers come again. Our lungs clear up and our heads cool down and life is renewed.
The tombstone rolls away and the dead once more live.
Our God is unimaginably great and powerful. Every single thing in the world is here as a result of His intent, His constant will that His words retain their form. And He loves us. He died for us, and has performed every single impossible thing we can possibly think of. Not one thing that we accomplish can ever compare to the weight of His glory and majesty. He does not need to give to us- we have given nothing so that He might owe us- and yet He DOES GIVE. He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all will surely with Him yet give us all things.
This is not prosperity gospel. This is not faith for funds. God is not our servant, and yet God *is* able to give His people all that He desires to give them, and He wants us to pray to Him, to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. He WILL add all the things we need unto us if we do so. As our works are committed to the Lord our thoughts ARE established.
We MUST trust Him.
We MUST serve Him.
We MUST be comforted by Him.
Oh what a comfort that the reason for our being is here, now, requiring our trust. Take His hand - He knows the way, and you will not stumble.
Have faith.
Romans 8.
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the Love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Excerpts of Job
"Have you ever in your life commanded the morning, and caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it?"
"Who has cleft a channel for the flood, or a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land without people, on a desert without a man in it, to satisfy the waste and desolate land and to make the seeds of grass to sprout?"
"Do you know the ordinances of the heavens, or fix their rule over the earth?"
"Will you really annul My judgment? Will you condemn me that you may be justified? Or do you have an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like His?"
"Who has given to me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine."
Then Job answered the Lord and said, "I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted."
Romans 11: Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to him that it might be paid back to Him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
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