WORDS OF COMFORT FOR SHATTERED HEARTS
“Comfort my people.”
What brings you comfort? We speak of food as “comfort food”; food that reminds you of the growing up years when Mom filled the house with the fragrance of baking. For others comfort food is roast beef with potatoes smothered in gravy. Comfort can be a warm blanket on a cold day or a hug from a loved one with strong, tender arms. Comfort can come when timely words are shared that speak to your situation.
Comfort can come from strange sources too. One evening while Sharon and I were listening to a couple sharing their hurts the woman broke down in tears. Buddy, our Pug, was cuddled up beside me. When he heard the sobs he jumped off the couch, ran over to the woman and put his paws on her knee as if to say, “Pet me, I’ll feel better.” It was strange to see such compassion in an animal, even if his attitude was self-directed. “Pet me, I’ll feel better.”
What would you want to hear someone say if they were trying to comfort you? What words would soothe your shattered heart?
Judah was told that they were they going to be taken captive, brought to Babylon in exile. Their future was bleak. Tomorrow held no promise for them. All that they believed in and hoped in was going to be taken from them. God had pronounced judgment on them for their disobedience and they knew they had failed as a people. Hurting, broken, disillusioned, and feeling forsaken and depressed, life lost all of its zest for the people of God.
When you have been spanked by life’s misfortunes the last thing you want to hear is “you deserved this.” In some cases you know you did. What do children need to know after they have been spanked? They need to hear mom or dad say, “You know I still love you even though you did bad, right?” The right words of comfort can pick you up and move you on.
1. You are loved
There was no sense in Isaiah shaking a finger at the people and saying, “Didn’t I tell you this would happen?” The time for scolding was done. Now God wanted to send another message: “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” (vv. 1-2).
Comfort is not a pat on the back or the sympathy of a good friend. Not in this case. The word “comfort” comes from Latin and is actually two words: com fortis. Translated literally it means “with strength.” To comfort then is to give strength. God’s intention in giving comfort to his people is to give them strength to do what needs to be done. When that strength is given the sorrow of our shattered hearts is not as heavy and we can go on.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus begins with the Beatitudes. He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Mt. 5:3-4). We know that all the “blessed” people are one person. There is a progression in this passage. Those who are poor in spirit are those who have recognized their spiritual poverty, how lost they are without Jesus. Those who mourn are the same people who now realize how sad it is to be without Jesus. They will be comforted. Or in other words, they will be strengthened by God to keep going in the spiritual journey. They are blessed.
What the LORD wanted Judah to know was that just because he had to discipline them for their spiritual failure, he still loved them. Take comfort in this: You are loved.
When we have experienced the disappointments of life, a lost job, a broken relationship, death in the family, God wants you to know he still loves you. Nothing in this life can separate you from the love of God (Romans 8: 39).
2. Three Voices to Comfort You
The LORD said to Isaiah…comfort…speak…proclaim to Jerusalem that God loves his people. Words are sometimes necessary to comfort our sagging spirits. There are three voices that speak in verses 3-11 to give comfort.
a) Prepare the way – The first voice cries out, “In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God…” (v. 3).
There is an old Babylonian hymn that says: “Make Nabu’s way good, renew his road. Make straight his path, hew him out a track.” In the ancient world when a king would come to visit, the king’s men would start out months ahead of time to go through the wilderness and prepare the road. These men would remove obstacles, fill in dips in the road, and dig through small hills if necessary so that the king would not be hindered. For the privileged city the reward was to see the king coming in all his royal glory.
What did these words mean to Jerusalem? They took heart from them that their captivity would not be long. Their bondage would not last forever. The LORD would come to them and bring them home on this great road and they would see his glory.
To prepare the way for the LORD we must think of the continued meaning of these words. Where have we heard these words before? They were used of John the Baptist as a prophecy of his ministry. When the priests and Levites asked who he was, John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the desert, ’Make straight the way for the Lord” (Jn 1:23).
John preached a baptism of repentance to the people and said he baptized with water but one would come who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Repentance came first and that is how we make the road clear for Jesus to come.
When we think of repentance we are prone to think of our actions. Repentance can also mean turning from our unbelief. In hard times where we have experienced great heartache it is easy to forget God because we feel he has forgotten us. That is the unbelief we must deal with to see the glory of the LORD.
“And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken” (v. 5). When was this ever truer than when Jesus walked the earth?
b) Hear the eternal Word – The second voice speaks a further comfort. “A voice says, ‘Cry out.’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ ‘All men are like grass and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the LORD blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever” (vv. 6-8).
Grass symbolizes a type of transience. A green lush lawn is a difficult thing to attain if you don’t know how fertilizer works. You can kill your grass if you spread it too thick. It crunches beneath your feet after the sun has browned it and sapped it of all life.
People are like grass and flowers. They don’t last forever. Their glory like flowers can be so short; only for a season. This symbolizes the spiritual failure of people to recognize the supremacy of God.
For Jerusalem these words were a comfort. They meant that like Assyria before them, Babylon would not last forever. They are like grass and they will fade away from power. Babylon seemed so powerful and so confident. That was their downfall as we read in Daniel 5 where the prophet told the king that he did not acknowledge God but set himself up as superior. That night the king, Balshazar was assassinated and Babylon was finished.
Trouble is for a time but the Word is forever. I have gone through some rough patches in the last two years. There were some health issues that needed to be dealt with. On the really bad days I would comfort myself with the belief that this will not last forever. And it didn’t. Sometimes the next week was even better. Our troubles are not forever.
God’s Word is eternal. Some have declared “God is dead.” Some say the Church and Christianity are irrelevant. Well these so-called experts have been saying this for centuries. Communism is dying; empires rise and fall; one disease replaces another as the leading killer, but the Word of God maintains the same comforting message it has always proclaimed: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it” (John 1:1-5).
Hear this word: God loves you and gave his Son for you so that sin would not hold you and that you would have life in Jesus.
c) Behold the Strength of God – The third voice proclaims a very present truth that God is here and he is powerful. “You who bring good tidings to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout, lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’” (v. 9).
We have two images of God that follow. The first is of the great ruler, the sovereign God who has the power and might to rule the Universe. He is the rightful King of Israel and every Jew knew it.
The second image of God is of a shepherd. “He tends his flock like a shepherd; he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young” (v. 11). How do these two very contrasting images combine to bring comfort? The transition from ruler to shepherd is not as abrupt as it sounds if you think of King David. The LORD is not a powerless monarch but a King with great strength in his actions. And he is as intimately loving as a shepherd. Those strong ruling arms are the same arms that reach down to carry you in your pain. He carries us close to his heart and tenderly listens to our hearts.
Isn’t this Jesus? Absolutely! Isaiah has shown us again and again prophecies of the Messiah that reflect the Davidic reign. Jesus is the Shepherd-King. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep…I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me…” (John 10:11&14).
The paradox of the great ruler as a shepherd, of the Almighty as a comforter, of God as a man, is climaxed in the power of God visibly displayed on the Cross. “Here is your God!” suffering for you on the Cross. Isaiah 53 tells us in greater detail what this means for us.
For now, take comfort in the strength of God as he carries you close to his heart. We may like the Psalmist wonder, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps. 8:3-4). The answer is astounding. God values us above all creation and loves us incredibly.
3. You are significant to God
Isaiah makes a powerful argument for the LORD in verses 12-26 and I encourage you to read it. Now I want to draw our attention to the conclusion in v. 27.
Isaiah asks, “Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the LORD; my cause is disregarded by my God’?” (v. 27). The people complained that their captivity was evidence that God no longer cared for them. Trouble clouded their vision so that it seemed that God had abandoned them.
The first question is theological: If our way is hidden from God, how can he be God? Is there anything about us God does not know? The second question is experiential: Why doesn’t God answer my prayers? Such was the grief of people with shattered hearts.
Isaiah responds, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.” (v. 28). You do know this; you have heard this! We may conclude that God is too great sitting on the throne of the universe to care about our tiny little problems. The truth is that he is too great not to care. His greatness is that he does care and he does not abandon his purposes, that is, to care for us his sheep. His capacity to care is beyond our imaginations.
This is the comfort we spoke of earlier: the LORD gives strength to us to keep on going. “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and now grow weary, they will walk and not faint” (29-31).
Even young men like Sidney Crosby fall to high ankle sprains. Those who hope in the LORD, that is, those who wait – rest – and trust in the LORD will renew their strength.
These are words of comfort to shattered hearts. The LORD loves you and he is coming to reveal his glory to you in your situation. Have you prepared the way? Is your heart ready for the comfort he brings? Do you trust his eternal word? If you are not the owner of a broken heart right now you may be able to share these words with someone who is. You may be able to help them mount up with wings like eagles. AMEN
2 Corinthians 1:3-5
3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 5For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
