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A voice says, “Cry out.”
    And I said, “What shall I cry?”

“All people are like grass,
    and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
⁷ The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
    Surely the people are grass.
⁸ The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    but the word of our God endures forever.”

I seem to remember a book belonging to one (or both) of my parents, entitled ‘What shall I tell them?’ I think it was a volume of ideas for sermons or Bible class talks- something of that nature. Maybe it was about preaching.

As I was coming towards the end of the series on ‘Hebrews’, I said to my wife, Jilly, ‘I have no idea where I am going next with these daily thoughts!’ (But I was, of course, praying about it.) ‘You’ll know,’ she said. I think it was that very same day that Isaiah 40 was impressed upon me. I still believe that ‘What shall I tell them?’ is an important starting point for every preacher (if He hasn’t already shown you!).

Have you noticed the emphasis, in the first part of chapter 40, on God speaking, and then people speaking what He has spoken? Look at verses 1,2,3,5,6-8,9-11. But don’t miss the priority of God’s Word. His speaking comes first.

‘What shall I tell them?’

The message in these verses concerns the transience of people and the permanence of God’s Word.

I remember exactly where I was when I first heard Sting’s song, ‘How fragile we are’. I was driving through Harehills, in Leeds, one dark morning, on my way to meet a friend for a run in Roundhay Park. Back then, in my mid-30’s, I already understood something of how frail we humans are, but today, in my mid-60’s, I know, and feel, it all the more.

James 4:14 says, ”What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

‘How fragile we are.’

But the good news is:

‘For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. ²⁴ For,

“All people are like grass,
    and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
²⁵     but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

And this is the word that was preached to you.‘ (1 Peter 1:23-25).

The ”word” (i.e. the gospel) is no longer merely contrasted with our transience, but is, in fact, its cure.

”…whoever does the will of God lives forever.” (1 John 2:17).

There are eternal consequences when we are born anew by ”the living and enduring word of God.” We can never truly die (John 11:25,26).

PRAYER: Thank you Lord for how your Word has changed, and is changing, my life. Thank you for your eternal life invading and filling mine.

A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
    the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert
    a highway for our God.
⁴ Every valley shall be raised up,
    every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
    the rugged places a plain.
⁵ And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
    and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Sometimes, or so it seems to me, God says, ‘Prepare’, and yet He doesn’t give detailed information about what exactly it is we are to prepare for. We just recognise that we are in a season of preparation for something that a.) God is going to do, and b.) we are to be in some way involved. So we wait – prayerfully- preparing ourselves as best we know how, until the Lord gives another piece of the puzzle.

One thing is for sure, if God decrees a matter, it will happen:

”For the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (5b). That sounds final! It is final!! One day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. All people will see God’s glory. If God says it, that settles it. Our call is to believe it.

The reference to ”the wilderness” (3) reminds us that God can do remarkable work in unpromising contexts; He can do the most unexpected things amid difficult terrain. Of course, it provides an echo of the ‘exodus’ story’, and anticipates a second one: this time the Lord will lead His people home, through the desert, from Babylon.

Returning to reflect on this text earlier today, the word ”one” grabbed my attention. ‘One with God is a majority.’ John the Baptist was such a one. He was to appear many centuries after this prophecy was delivered. His own humble estimate of himself, when interrogated as to his identity, was: ”I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ ” (John 1:23). Jesus ”was the Word” (John 1:1), but John the Baptist was ”the voice” to proclaim the Word. His ministry was costly. Jesus said of him: ”John was a lamp that burned and gave light…” (John 5:35), and the idea is that he ‘burned up’. But how God used him!

Does Jesus have your ”voice”?

Derek Kidner points out that Hosea 2:14 describes the desert as a place of repentance and renewal, then he adds:

‘John the Baptist, with prophetic symbolism, used the literal wilderness for this very work (cf. Mt.3:1-3). But God’s coming (cf. Mt.3:13-17) and the ‘exodus’ that he was to accomplish (cf. Lk.9:31) were to take a wholly unexpected form.’ (‘New Bible Commentary’, p.655).

This underlines the point that Old Testament prophecy can often be likened to a range of hills, which appear to be close together, one behind the other. But in reality they may be separated by huge valleys (i.e. long periods of time)

Comfort, comfort my people,
    says your God.
² 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.

In 2 Corinthians 1:3-7 Paul writes:

 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, ⁴ who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. ⁵ For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. ⁶ If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. ⁷ And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

Clearly, Paul knew a very real God who could, and did, give very real comfort. He was regularly in need of it, and he knew its reality.

If God speaks, it happens. His Word is His work. If He speaks ”Comfort” over, or into, a situation, there will be comfort. People will be comforted. He may even use us to bring the comforting word.

It’s interesting that ”Speak tenderly” literally means ‘speak to the heart.’ Oh how wonderful it is when God’s love is ‘shed abroad’ in our hearts, so that we not only believe He loves us, but we actually feel His strong embrace, by the Holy Spirit.

As I began to meditate on these two beautiful verses, I got a picture in my mind of a very naughty child, who has been severely disciplined, but who is now sitting on the parent’s knee, enfolded in loving arms and feeling a father’s, or mother’s, tenderness.

This passage is about Judah and Jerusalem. God’s people had endured long years of chastening through their Babylonian exile. But it was about to come to an end. The Lord wanted them to know they were loved and forgiven. There is no comfort like that of realising all our sins have been forgiven by Almighty God. (By the way, there is no sense here of earning salvation, just the assurance that Jerusalem’s sentence has already been more than served.)

Now, in these New Testament days, we understand in a deeper, richer, fuller way that our ”sin has been paid for” by Jesus. This puts a new song into our hearts and upon our lips:

‘My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought,

My sin not in part, but the whole,

Is nailed to His Cross and I bear it no more.

Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, O my soul.’

(See Psalm 32:1-5).

PRAYER: Maybe you have someone on your mind today, and you realise it would be good to pray that God will speak His comfort into their situation? Why not take time to do this. Maybe even let them know, if appropriate?

Having spent a long time in one of the BIG New Testament letters (i.e. Hebrews), we are now going to turn to one of the BIG Old Testament books: Isaiah. But we are going to focus our attention on the third, and final, section of this major prophetic book, and study chapters 40-66.

In preparation for getting into the text, here is an introduction from Tom Hale’s ‘Applied Old Testament Commentary’ – a book I often turn to for its clear explanations. This quote will help set things in context for us:

‘The first thirty-five chapters of Isaiah are written against the backdrop of Assyrian domination. Assyria had conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and was now threatening Judah and Jerusalem. Then, in chapters 36-39 (repeated in 2 Kings chapters 18-20), Isaiah records the failure of the Assyrians to capture Jerusalem, and he predicts that Babylon will rise and become Judah’s main enemy (see 2 Kings 20:16-18; Isaiah 39:5-7). Now, in Chapters 40-48, Isaiah’s vision leaps ahead 150 years: the Jews are nearing the end of their exile in Babylon and are about to return to Jerusalem led by the Lord Himself. Thus chapters 40-48 constitute an extended prophecy about the restoration of Judah (the faithful remnant of Israel) following the exile in Babylon’ (p.1037).

In the ‘New Bible Commentary’, Derek Kidner writes beautifully:

‘…we emerge in 40:1 in a different world from Hezekiah’s, immersed in the situation foretold in 39:5-8, which he was so thankful to escape. Nothing is said of the intervening century and a half; we wake, so to speak, on the far side of the disaster, impatient for the end of captivity. In chs.40-48 liberation is in the air; there is the persistent promise of a new exodus, with God at its head; there is the approach of a conqueror, eventually disclosed as Cyrus, to break Babylon open; there is also a new theme unfolding, to reveal the glory of the call to be a servant and a light to the nations. All this is expressed with a soaring, exultant eloquence, in a style heard only fitfully hitherto…but now sustained so as to give its distinctive tone to the remaining chapters of the book’ (p.655).

PRAYER: Lord, I marvel again at the magnificent variety in your Word. I want to give you my time and attention, and pray that I will hear you speaking to me through what you spoke to your people centuries ago. Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.

 Brothers and sisters, I urge you to bear with my word of exhortation, for in fact I have written to you quite briefly.

²³ I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released. If he arrives soon, I will come with him to see you.

²⁴ Greet all your leaders and all the Lord’s people. Those from Italy send you their greetings.

²⁵ Grace be with you all.

I recently read an article bemoaning the lost (or rapidly disappearing) art of letter writing. When we stumble across old letters, we may see things in them that seem trivial to us, but they were not to the writer or the recipient. Here, in the closing words of ‘Hebrews’, we find some of the commonplaces and conventions of ancient letter-writing. We have seen this type of format elsewhere in the New Testament. (Mind you, this is the only place we read that Timothy had a spell in prison).

In the midst of his concluding remarks, however, the writer says he has written ”quite briefly” (22). This strikes me as somewhat ironic. Hebrews is one of the towering mountain peaks of New Testament theology. Thereby lies another irony, because the writer calls it a ”word of exhortation” (22). But the fact of the matter is that Christian doctrine is to be lived; it is to change our lives.

The ”exhortation” of Hebrews, to press on and not go back, is as needful now as it was when the letter was first composed. The anti-Christian pressures, within our culture, are on the increase, and the devil is out to steal the faith from us. May God’s ”grace” be with us (25), to keep us from capitulating in the face of antagonism and hostility.

‘I have decided to follow Jesus; no turning back, no turning back.’

PRAYER: Thank you Jesus that you are superior to anyone or anything I might trust in or give my life to. Help me to never turn back to any supposed substitute, but keep my eyes fixed on you

Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep…

When I was first in the ministry, I had a poster on a wall of my bed-sit in Southport. It read: ‘We are an Easter people and Hallelujah is our song.’

This wonderful blessing, with just a few words, enshrines the heart of the Easter message: Jesus died and rose again. (Tom Wright translates this: ”May the God of peace, who led up from the dead our Lord Jesus…”). Through Him, and His achievement, we may come into a covenant relationship with ”the God of peace” (and know the peace of God). We are also brought into the fold, where we live under the loving, Shepherding staff of Christ.

No wonder ‘Hallelujah is our song’!

 Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, ²¹ equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Having asked for the prayers of the Hebrew Christians the writer now prays for them.

In Ephesians 4:12, Paul says that leaders have been given to the church by Jesus ”to equip his people for works of service”. Yesterday, as I read this familiar blessing in Hebrews, I reflected on the thought that here is one important way church leaders fulfil their calling. It is by no means the only way, but we ”equip the saints for the work of the ministry” (as one translation puts it) by praying for them. It’s hard work at times, and it’s extremely important work.

What a privilege it is for us to know that God works in and through believers. The equipping comes from Him and the glory goes to Him. We need to work hard at our callings, but ultimately the work is His.

Reflect on these words, written by Paul to the Corinthians:

”For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” 1 Cor.15:9,10.

Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honourably in every way. ¹⁹ I particularly urge you to pray so that I may be restored to you soon.

In Ronald Dunn’s wonderful book: ‘Don’t just stand there, pray something’, he tells a story about a group of Sunday school children who wrote to a missionary along these lines:

‘Dear Rev Smith,

We are praying for you.

We are not expecting an answer.’

They were, of course, intimating that they didn’t need a reply. But how often do we pray without having any anticipation of anything changing?

According to our faith…??

In today’s passage I see a recognition of spiritual cause and effect. The writer seems to say, ‘You pray (cause), and something will happen in my circumstances (effect).’ As I have noted before, we don’t know that the Apostle Paul wrote Hebrews. It’s author is unknown. But this part of the letter feels Pauline. In Paul’s letters, he regularly requests his readers to pray for him, clearly believing their prayers will make a tangible difference.

In a book I have about spiritual leadership, the author emphasises how important it is that preachers should pray. He says, as I recall: before you preach, pray much about the service. Then when you run out of things to pray for the meeting, continue to pray about other things. It is so important, he argues, to enter the pulpit in a spirit of prayer.

PRAYER: Lord, cause us to be people of prayerful faith and faithful prayer.

THOUGHT: ‘Unprayed for, I feel like a diver at the bottom of a river, with no air to breathe; or like a fireman on a blazing building, with an empty hose.’ John Gilmour (Missionary to Mongolia).

Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.

‘There are people-more than a handful, I’d say-who find fault with me. Things I say, or don’t say, deeds I do, or don’t do, attitudes they detect in me or detect the absence of. Sometimes, I’m scorned or scolded for personality deficiencies, which-admittedly-I abound in. I am not warm and cuddly like pastor so-and-so. I am too bloody-minded, or-conversely-an incurable soft touch. I don’t preach a clear vision. I do preach a clear vision, but not a compelling one. I do preach a compelling vision, but compelling us towards the wrong ends. I talk too much about money from the pulpit. I don’t talk about it enough.’ Mark Buchanan: ‘Spiritual Rhythm’, p.79.

Just about every local church will be able to relate to the above comments. The calling can prove ever so demanding, and there are times when you feel you just can’t win. It’s interesting that the writer to the Hebrews takes a pragmatic approach here. He says, in effect, be the kind of supportive congregation your leaders will enjoy shepherding. It’s not particularly good for churches to have unhappy leaders. Those who have ”authority” over others, under God, carry an enormous responsibility, so help them all you can.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that church leaders can never be wrong, or go wrong, and there may be times when we need to challenge them in kindness and love. But if it has to be done, let it be carried out sensitively and thoughtfully. Gossiping about them, rather than going to them personally, is not the right way.

Think about how you would like to be corrected, and let this guide your approach.

PRAYER: Lord, I thank you for our leaders. I see they are your gifts to the church. Help them in their challenges and struggles today. I acknowledge that they may well be carrying burdens I know nothing about. Help me to love them, serve them, follow them and pray for them. I ask that I will be one who makes their ministry a joy.