Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “Comfort My People”. A good treatise on Isaiah 40. Please read carefully and ponder the chapter. It is for all God’s people (that’s all of us) for all time. Not just for Judah at the time of Isaiah. God’s promises are sure. So let’s look at Isaiah 40 verse 1 and 2.
“Speak” says the Lord. And when He speaks, He speaks to your heart. Only He who has shared the same experience as the sufferer can speak to your heart. And so it is our Lord who has carried us, lo these many years, who speaks. To your heart. It may be that you think you are not one of the Lord’s people, but He has never cast you off; He claims you as His own. Look at Isaiah chapter 1. The comfort offered is to those who are “laden with iniquity”. So all may take this message as personal. To me.
“Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). There are no exceptions listed here. God in Christ is Himself the Comforter. But comfort is not always smooth rhetoric and doting words. The surgeon may wield the scalpel. And for a time, add to our pain before we have relief and healing. So when the “Comforter” comes, the very first thing he does is reprove us of sin. He comes with conviction. In this way He causes pain where there was only numbness and insensibility before. Are you disturbed by this? Leprosy, a good symbol of sin, leads the victim to be insensible to the normal feeling of pain. And yet the body is being overcome by deadly wounds and infections that the victim does not even recognize. Or when someone is freezing to death they fall into an insensibility to the cold. As if falling into a wonderful sleep. But it is the sleep of death. And when rescued, and when life flows through those frozen appendages, the pain is intense. So let us never forget that the conviction of sin in our heart, which seems to be discomfort, is really the comfort from our loving “Comforter”. God is not angry with the magnitude of our sin. He convicts us, because He loves us.
Always remember that conviction is not condemnation. Conviction is the truth spoken to encourage us… to put us back on our feet. Condemnation is the truth spoken to discourage us… to beat us down. Conviction is but the first and necessary step towards our freedom from sin. We must know and acknowledge the sin before we will accept the remedy for it. It is by the revelation of God that the “Comforter” convicts of sin. Not one of us becomes convicted of sin by looking at our sin. It is by looking at the love, holiness and truth about our God that we become conscious of the fact we are sinners. Dissatisfaction with one’s condition comes only with the knowledge of something better. God produces this dissatisfaction with our sinful condition by revealing to us His own perfect character.
But what about the “double” we are to receive? We have received double salvation at our Lord’s hand. Grace abounds over sin. He has so much grace and love… He gives “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over” (Luke 6:38). “And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace” (John 1:16). Let us then accept it and rejoice. Has God already pardoned my sin? Yes. Assuredly. He says so. Is it so strange that our God who is Love should forgive our sins without being asked, and is longing for us to come and accept the reconciliation? Christ, “who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness; by whose stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). So accept it, for it is a fact. But woe to us if we turn our back on so gracious a gift. Let us turn away from self and turn to Him and be healed, is my prayer for us all.
With brotherly love,
Jim