THE GOD OF ALL COMFORT
Isaiah 40
“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.”
Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, coined the phrase, The God of All Comfort: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God” telling us that compassion and comfort originates from God himself.
Isaiah shows us a God who feels the pain of his people undergoing the wrath of his judgement. This is something that we need to grasp to truly understand and appreciate the God whom we worship: Judgement and wrath are necessary aspects of God, keeping and maintaining the purity of God’s nature and character. Compassion and love is who he chooses to be. John tells us that God did not send his Son to condemn the world but to save the world.
However, as Isaiah points out, people are not worthy of God’s compassion and love. Even their profession of love and faithfulness are just fleeting expressions of beauty, like flowers in the field. “What shall I say?” Isaiah asks.
The only answer is that the answer must come from God. Only God’s Word will endure.
“Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.”