Immanuel, The Gift of His Presence: Comforting

My friends, the Word has spoken to us this morning.

Let us hear the word of the Lord.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen

his glory, the glory as of the only Son from the Father, full

of grace and truth. From Isaiah 43 But now thus says

Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O

Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed you.

I have called you by name, and you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and

through the rivers they will not overwhelm you.

When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, and the

flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the

Holy One of Israel. I am your Savior and this is the

word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Dear God, we do give you thanks and praise and ask once again

that you transform our lives through this word, change us,

mold us, shape us. We pray through Christ our Lord,

we ask Amen. Please be seated.

If you would grab your Bibles wherever you happen to be

worshipping with us today. Grab your Bibles and flick them

are open. Probably best to be to Isaiah

43, the passage we'll be spending most of our time with

today, Isaiah chapter 43. I want you to have an idealized

Isaiah 43 · chapter mention

picture of Christmas in your mind for a second and idealize a

romantic picture of Christmas in your mind.

I I freely understand that for a lot of people Christmas is not

romantic for Christmas is not ideal.

It is a time of great chaos. Chaos shopping wise chaos family

wise chaos lonely wise. I fully recognize this but for

purposes of this mental exercise, I want you to picture

for a second idealized or romanticized kind of a Christmas

moment. So here's here's mine I'm

sitting on the couch wrapped in a nice warm blanket.

The family has gathered around. We're looking at the Christmas

tree, as beautiful as it is. I've got hot cocoa in my mind,

in my hand. Everything is warm, everything

is wonderful. It is a time of great comfort.

It's a time of great comfort for me.

Now. Comfort and Christmas are

connected and they are connected for a reason in our minds.

I think it's not simply because it's winter out or it's cold and

therefore we get to be tucked in or that it's a family holiday or

something along those lines. But there's a connection, a

deeper connection between the comfort that we received from

God and Christmas, the coming of Jesus Christ.

And we're going to look at that a little bit today.

Over the past couple weeks, we have been looking at this idea

of Emmanuel, God with us, and the gifts that we receive

because of Emmanuel being with us.

And this is carried forward in on 1/14.

The verse we opened with the Word became flesh and dwelt

among us. We have seen His glory, the

glory of us, the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

A couple weeks ago we looked at the idea of dwelling.

What does it mean that God dwells with us?

And the impact of that word, it's not just a physical

description, it's actually a description of His desire and

His passion for us to dwell in our midst.

And last week we looked at the idea that God reveals himself

consistently through Jesus Christ and part of the gifts

that we receive because Christ came upon this earth.

Of course, the greatest one. And we're not trying to over

shadow that one. The greatest one is our

salvation and everything that the Lord has done on the cross.

And we will continue to be a community that emphasizes the

cross of Jesus Christ and the connection between Christ's

coming, his incarnation and his crucifixion and his

resurrection. But in the midst of that, there

are other gifts. There are other blessings that

we receive because God made it work this way.

And one of them is his revealing that he reveals himself.

And we looked at that last week. Today we're going to be looking

at this idea that God comforts us, the comforting work of the

Lord on our behalf. And we can see the importance of

that in the text that Jerry read for us.

If you have, if you remember in Second Corinthians chapter 1,

2 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

Paul writes, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus

Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.

Listen, just the way in which Paul spills out of himself

trying to talk about comfort here, the God of all comfort who

has comforted us in all of our afflictions so that we might

comfort those who have any affliction with the comfort that

we ourselves have received. When we are comforted by God,

there's this constant comfort idea that is being poured

forward. And I need to clarify a little

bit because while it is comforting to think of God

comforting us, comfort in the Scriptures means so much more

than just putting his arm around us and encouraging us

emotionally. That's I think overwhelmingly

what it means when I think of comfort, when I think, hey,

somebody comforted me or I want to comfort them in their

troubles. Overwhelmingly what I have in

mind is coming alongside them, putting my arm around them,

telling them of the good things of the Lord, encouraging them to

some extent what my idea of comfort is to support them

emotionally, spiritually, etcetera.

There's, there's little that I can do beyond provide that

emotional support. But comfort in the scriptures

means something else. It's something deeper, something

richer. The word comfort itself means to

thoroughly strengthen something, to thoroughly strengthen and to

empower and to enable. So when God comforts us, it's

not just that we are strengthened emotionally.

It's not just that we feel better about ourselves.

It's not just that we feel better about the things that are

happening around us. Rather, God provides us the very

thing that we need in the moment of trial and difficulty,

whenever we are suffering, whenever we are dealing with at

that point in the game. Comfort from the Lord is exactly

that strength and empowerment that we need to move forward.

That's the biblical picture of comfort.

Now, the necessity of comfort or the reality of comfort comes for

a lot of different ways. Probably the biggest 1 is this

notion of fear. We need comfort from God because

of the reality of fear in our lives.

When I was in my late 20s, Kelly and I took a 2 month long

mission trip over to Bulgaria. This was right as soon as the

very soon after the wall came down.

Bulgaria, you might know, was a communist country and it

suffered greatly under the pressures of communism at that

time and while we were over there in Bulgaria and spent that

much time over there in Bulgaria, I have never seen a

more fearful society now. They were lovely people.

They were encouraging, they were wonderful in so many ways.

It was a great summer for Kelly and I and for the mission team

that we were working with, and there was lots of beauty and

lots of wonder that I can talk about Bulgaria.

But there was a consistency of fear that was present in

everything we did. Now, some of it was very similar

to what we had. They were afraid of death, they

were afraid of getting sick. They were afraid of their

families breaking down. They were afraid of the

struggles of of work and relationships, all the kind of

fears in which we'd associate with.

But on top of that, there was a fear that was inbred through

society. The communist government had

wrecked the economy in such a way that so many of those people

had a daily fear of starvation, a daily an actual concern of not

being able to eat that day. Be beyond that, the oppression

of the government, the political oppression, was such that the

people feared their neighbors, They feared their friends.

To some extent, they even feared their family members, and it was

a society that was dominated by this fear.

Into that place we came, bringing the gospel message.

And so a number of us would sing out.

We'd gather out on the street corner and we'd sing.

And in no time there be a gathering of people around.

They recognized right away that we were from the West.

They could pick it up from our clothing, fact that we had

colors, colors in our clothing, etcetera.

So there would no time be a gathering of people.

In my mind, there's hundreds and thousands of people.

There were probably 50 or so every time we did this, but we

would be gathering together. It was the first opportunity I

had to preach the gospel in an open air setting like this.

And so I would do a gospel presentation, start at the

beginning and work my way up into the cross.

And of course, as I got to the high point, Christ's death on

the cross, I'm getting all emotion excited, thinking about

what the Lord has done for me. And I talk about Christ's death

and sacrifice, and it's wonderful and glorious.

And there's murmurs of yeah, yeah, OK.

And I think darn, you know, not very encouraging for an upcoming

preacher, you know, has very little impact on the audience.

And then I thought, well, OK, just to wrap up the sermon, just

to wrap up the gospel message. I will mention that Jesus Christ

is coming again in the future to save us from this world and the

struggles of this world that there is a heaven that is

coming. There is a second coming of the

Lord Jesus Christ. And the place went nuts every

time this happened. The place after a while, I got

used to it and would get we're wind up for it, but the place

went crazy. They were so ecstatic because

the antidote for fear is not courage.

The antidote for fear is hope. And into these lives that are

shattered by fear came this massive expression of God's hope

that there was something else yet to come, that this wasn't

all that there was. But there is hope for something

greater, something better, something more wonderful yet to

come. And that was wrapped up in the

presence in the person of Jesus Christ and the blessing that

fell upon the Bulgarians from embracing and understanding that

hope was overwhelming. We can see this so clearly in

our text. If you look in Isaiah 43 verse

one towards the end of the verse one, it says fear not for I have

redeemed you. Fear not, do not fear.

And we've talked about this before that do not fear is the

most repeated command in the Scriptures, Old and New

Testaments. It is not love the Lord your

God. It is not treat others well.

It is not praise God. It is do not fear.

Do not fear. The Lord says over and over

again, why? Because I have redeemed you,

there is a hope that is held out for you, there is a future held

out for you, and it is that fear that you are to put aside

because of the hope of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ. Emmanuel brings the comfort of

hope, and it has to bring the comfort of hope into our lives

as well. I worry that the ease with which

most of us live our lives masks the fear that hope is the

antidote to, And consequently we don't appreciate the incarnation

of coming, the coming of Jesus Christ, because we have learned

to underplay and downplay the fear that is before us

consistently. But it's not just from fear that

Christ's coming saves us or redeems us.

It is also this idea of obscurity or meaninglessness.

I can't be the only one. I suspect that this is a

universal concern for people. What's my purpose in life?

Why was? Why was I created?

What am I doing here upon this world?

It's one of the key central concepts of any worldview,

answering the question, Why am I here?

What is this world all about? What's the meaning of life?

What is the meaning of life? Leo.

Toy Story. Tolstoy, the famous Russian

author, described meaninglessness this way.

He said it's like suddenly waking up, realizing that you're

lost in the woods, and you know that you're lost.

And the panic comes upon you, and you start moving quickly

from one spot to the next, realizing that everywhere you

go, no matter how fast you move, you're getting yourself more and

more lost. But you can't stop yourself from

continuing to move around. And so you have this aimless

panic, the jumping from one spot to the next.

That's the emotions of meaninglessness.

That's the emotions that Christ claims to repair in our lives.

And so we have looking closely at verse one.

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who

formed you, O Israel, O Jacob and O Israel.

Just think of that in terms of the people of God.

He who created you, O people of God, he who formed you, O people

of God. Realize this.

There's a slight nuance in in the biblical use of the word

created and formed. Created is the idea that we are

created out of nothing, that God is the one who shaped us and

molded us. All that's true.

Formed is the direction is the the idea that you you're just

not made by God, but you are pointed in a certain direction.

And for each one of us, the comfort of the Lord, the comfort

that comes through Jesus Christ, is also a purpose.

It is a meaningfulness. We are told here that because

the Lord created us, because He fashioned us, because he molded

us, we have been created with a purpose.

We have been created with an intent.

We've been created. You have a goal in life.

You have a purpose for your existence.

This is not just a random. You are not a random collection

of things that just happened to come together that forms you

along the way. That is a ungodly understanding

and ungodly and unbiblical understanding of the gospel

message. The gospel message holds that

each one of us have been shaped and molded by the Lord with a

purpose, with an intent, and with a goal in mind.

This is the comfort. This is is the strengthening the

to be thoroughly strengthened by the Lord that he provides

through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ Emmanuel brings the

comfort of purpose into our lives when there's a fear of

purposelessness or meaninglessness.

If you wonder why, the answer is in Jesus Christ and the coming

of Christ alone. But that's not the only reason

why we need to look to Christ for comfort.

We also have the comfort from loneliness.

Now statistically, this is really easy to demonstrate in

the modern day America, the fact that we are in a crisis of

loneliness. The statistics are horrific if

you've ever seen them. Gallup just did a poll last year

that found that 20% of adults, and please notice this is this

is adults, This is not kids or youth where you would think the

numbers would be worse. The 20% of adults daily have

feel a debilitating effect of loneliness daily.

That's one in five. Look around this room.

If we're statistically normal, one in five of us daily not just

a momentary expression of loneliness, but daily feel

lonely in such a way that it affects the way in which they

live their lives. We know some of the social

impacts of this. We've seen the shootings and the

mass casualty events and things like that, that it so frequently

are traced back to isolation and to loneliness.

And you have that cultural expression, cultural reality.

In the midst of social media and all the ways in which we're

supposed to leave so much more connected, we have this epidemic

of loneliness that is attacking our society and undercutting our

world. And the solution to that is not

a technological solution. It's not even a sociological

solution. The solution to that is what it

always has been. It is the coming of our Lord

Jesus Christ. Take a look for instance, at the

end of verse one. Fear not, for I have redeemed

you. I have called you by name and

you are mine. I have called you by name before

we look at that. Loneliness has physical health

issues. This one study that I read this

week said that it is more damaging to your health to be

chronically lonely than it is to smoke 15 cigarettes a day.

Now, I'm not a smoker. I there's not a lot of that in

my background. But by all accounts, 15

cigarettes a day is a lot of smoking, and we all know the

damaging effects of that. We all go kind of bonkers about

the dangers of smoking like that, and yet loneliness is

worse. Chronic loneliness is worse than

smoking 15 cigarettes a day. So what do we do?

The Lord here says fear not, for I have redeemed you.

I have called you by name. Now, this is the Lord

identifying something. This is not the fact that the

Lord knows each of us by name and can identify and can

distinguish Joe from Sally and Henry and Bonnie and those kind

of things. It's not that the Lord knows us

by name. Like he has the intellectual

capabilities of this. The name is your character.

The name is, is the summary of who you are as a as an essence

and as a person, not in today's use of the word name, but in the

biblical use. When when Isaiah says God knows

us by name, he's not saying that God has a great capability of

distinguishing individuals from one another by by their name.

What he's saying is that God knows who we are.

He knows the essence of who we are, and yet he has called you

by name. He knows you who you truly are.

And there's that great ending of that verse.

Of course we are His. We belong to Him, we belong to

Him. The coming of our Lord Jesus

Christ, Emmanuel, brings the comfort of belonging, of

acceptance. I said earlier that there's one

in five of us that might suffer if we're statistically common,

that one of five of us will might suffer from loneliness.

Brothers and sisters, that cannot be in this fellowship.

It cannot be. If we do that, we are absolutely

rejecting the essence of the gospel message.

Realize that you might be sitting next to somebody that

suffers from chronic loneliness and realize that this is not a

sociological problem. It's not a personality problem.

It is a gospel. Problem because of the coming of

Jesus Christ brings the comfort of belonging and acceptance into

our lives. But of course, when we talk

about comfort, my guess is that for most of us, it's not a

question of overriding fear. It's not a question of

debilitating loneliness. It's not the crushing weight of

meaninglessness. My guess is that for most of us,

it's just the everyday trials that we all go through, the

difficulties of everyday life. Sure, some things are huge.

Cancer in the family, breakdown of a marriage.

We realize the difficulties of that.

And frankly, most of us are somewhat good at leaning into

the Lord when those difficult times come, when those

overwhelming things happen, most of us know that nothing more we

can do but trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But that's for the everyday, the common when you're stuck in a

snow bank, when you're late for work, when your kids are driving

you nuts, when you're fearful of the family coming over, when

you're struggling financially. The everyday aspects of life,

the everyday trials of life. We want the comfort of what we

want, the comfort of what we want.

The comfort of hearing God say it's going to be OK, it's going

to be OK. I'm here for you.

I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.

Now, the problem is that a lot of our trials are brought on by

ourself. I lose my temper.

I say things that I shouldn't say.

I look at somebody the wrong way.

I act out in a way that I shouldn't do.

And I think that excludes me from God's comfort.

It never does. Or we're the victim of something

random, this disease that just happens to hit us at this

particular moment. And what can you say?

Oh well, it's just no, that's never the case.

It is always the reality for us that our God brings the comfort

of His assurance and confidence into our lives.

There is every moment that we are dealing with the everyday

struggles and trials of being a parent.

Being a mom overwhelmed with one more dirty diaper, being a

father that needs the clean of the household up, the being a

breadwinner that can't make the payments.

All of our everyday struggles in life are consistently covered

under the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, where He says so

clearly to us that He brings the comfort of His assurance and His

confidence. He will never leave you.

He will never forsake you. Yes, it will be OK.

It may not be OK in this world, but it will be OK and you will

see it and you will praise the Lord because of it.

Now we shouldn't miss the underlying point of all of this.

By the way, did we look at the text where it said that?

Look at verse 2. When you pass through the

waters, Not if, but when. When you pass through the

waters, what is God's answer? I will be with you.

When you pass through the rivers, they will not overwhelm

you. When you pass through the fire,

you shall not be burned. That is God's promise to every

one of us. God's presence brings the

comfort, the strengthening, the thorough strengthening that we

need in order to survive. And we should never be fooled

about the source of this comfort.

Look in verse 3, the source of discomfort.

Because you are such a lovable person, I am doing this no.

Because you belong to the right political party, I am doing

this. No, because your parents were in

the right church, I am doing this, for I am the Lord your

God, the Holy One of Israel. I am your Savior.

Why does the Lord do all this? He does all this because of

Emmanuel, God with us, God coming to earth, being present

with us and blessing us with His presence now and forevermore.

The presence that chases away the fear because it brings hope

into our lives. The presence that chases away

the meaninglessness because it reveals God's purpose in your

creation. The presence of God that chases

away the loneliness because you belong to Him.

He has called you as his own child.

And ultimately, that presence that chases away the struggles

of every trial because of the assurance that we belong to God,

that we are, that he is with us now and forever.

Let's pray together. Lord God, we do thank you again

for blessing us with your presence, with the struggles in

which we go through daily, for the fears that overwhelm us at

times, for the loneliness that drags us down, for the

meaninglessness, the fear of meaninglessness, the concern

that we have for that and all things.

Lord, in all of these ways and in so much more, we love the

comfort that you bring, the thorough strengthening that we

need to continue on in our way, serving and and honoring you and

pleasing you in all that we do. Lord, we pray that you would

hear us now as we pray the way that our Lord taught us to pray.

Our Father who aren't in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy

Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day Our Daily Bread, and forgive us our debts,

as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not in temptation, but

deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom and the

power and the glory forever. Amen.