02 Can You Start Over After You've Gone Too Far? (Isaiah 40:1-11)

Speaker: Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta. Today we're looking at Isaiah chapter 40 versus 21. This is the second talk in our series on the servant songs from the old testament book of Isaiah. You can follow along with the lecture notes and find links to everything listed in the talk by going to our website. You'll find those notes on wednesdayintheword.com slash service on. Thanks so much for listening. There's a London musical by Andreloyd Weber called Whistle Down the Wind. It's a show about a poor family in a small Louisiana town just before Christmas in the 1950s. In the show, the oldest girl finds a stranger hiding in her barn and she mistakes him for Jesus because his hands and feet are wounded. Well she and the other children in the town, who of course immediately discover the secret, devotedly care for the man and nurse him back to health. Well it turns out that the man is an escaped convict. He's actually a murderer, and he got his wounds during the escape. Without giving too much of the plot away, the experience changes everyone, the children, the grown ups, and the man himself. About halfway through Act one, the man sings this song called Unsettled Scores. Through the devotion of the children, he has come to see himself for what he really is, and he sings this song about how there's no prayer that can change the nature of the beast. There's no prayer that can change who he is and he can't overcome it. So the song opens like this There's a prayer for the living and the dying, there's a prayer to soothe the savage sea. There's a prayer it seems for almost everything, but you haven't got a prayer for me, and I haven't got a prayer. Then the song finishes You can say a prayer for everyone you've known or you might see, say a prayer for all of these and more, but there's still no prayer for me. Say a prayer for every living thing, the unborn and deceased, but I haven't got a prayer. I know that's the nature of the beast. Well is he right? He's come to realize his own depravity and the fact that he can't change himself. Is he right that he hasn't got a prayer? As soon as he leaves his hiding place in the barn, he'll be recognized as a criminal, and he can't change that fact. He can't change the fact that he's an escaped murderer and a convict and he's done these awful things. He can't overcome the nature of the beast. He believes that he has no hope, that nothing he's done can ever be undone and he can never be forgiven, and that there's no hope for him. And that haunting question that's in the song is exactly the question we're going to address today. Can we start over? Can we change the nature of the beast? Is there any hope of making everything new again? Do we have any prayer of starting over and undoing all the awful things we've done? As we talked about last week, can we commit so many sins that we forfeit God's promises? That's the dilemma that Isaiah and the Jews of his day must face. At the time Isaiah wrote, in history, it had never been answered before. The nation of Judah was facing exile. They were facing the destruction of their land, their community, their temple, their religion, and their calling as God's people. The critical question before them was, have we gone too far? Have we forfeited the promises that God made to Abraham? Have we finally gone so far into rebellion that God has finished it with us? The northern kingdom was wiped off the map, it's about Judah is about to follow suit, they're about to be carted back to Babylon, and they're asking the question, is it over? Is it over? Have we finally gone too far? Well, we modern Christians with two thousand years more of history behind us know the answer, but at this point for Isaiah that was not a given. Perhaps the serious scribe or the zealous rabbi with a really thorough and careful reading of the Old Testament would know the answer, but it wasn't obvious in the way it will be after the exile. After all, God wiped out the world in Noah's day. Maybe he's had enough and he's going to wipe out the Jews of Isaiah's day. I suspect that most of us harbor the same kind of doubts. We may know theologically that God has forgiven all our sins, but we always have that dark corner in the back of our mind where we think, oh, I have this secret that I hope no one else ever discovers. Something maybe that you've said or you've done or you've left undone and now you know it was wrong and you wish you hadn't, and you're so ashamed of it. Maybe it drove you to God in the first place, and you just hope no one ever finds out because you think that that was just too much. Well we all have those windows into our soul where we see the depth of our selfishness and we wish we didn't see it, and it's at those moments we cry out like Isaiah in chapter six, woe is me, for I am ruined. There's that fleeting doubt that goes with it of what if God is really, really angry this time? What if I've gone too far? And like the convict in the song, we're confronted with this wretched path we've walked, and we face the question, can I start over? Can I overcome the nature of the beast? Is there any hope of restoration? Or as the song says, Is there a prayer for me? Well, Isaiah through this passage answers, yes. Be comforted, there is hope. Let me just review a little bit of what we talked about last week to set the stage for our passage. You'll recall that Isaiah was a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah during the time of the divided kingdom. After the death of David and Solomon, the kingdom goes into civil war and divides with ten tribes forming around one king or one of Solomon's sons in the north, and two southern tribes forming around a different one of Solomon's son, and they live for about 200 years as this divided kingdom. And Isaiah was a prophet to the southern kingdom during the reign of four kings, who are dated from about 740 to 680 BC. So his ministry spanned about 50 to 60 years. The first section of the book, chapters 1 through 35, is set against the background of the Assyrian Empire. So the Assyrians were the dominant world power. They were scourging both the northern and the southern kingdoms, and most of the prophecies in the early section of the book deal with that time period up to when the Assyria conquers the northern kingdom and then a little bit after. Then the last section of the book, chapters 40 through 66, is the section we're going to be looking at, and that is set against the Babylonian captivity. So this section is the prophecies are primarily addressed to a group of people who live about 120 to 140 years after Isaiah did. So it is set against the exile when Judah is taken into exile, but at the time that Isaiah is writing these, the exile has not yet happened. But he's writing to the people who will be in exile, even though they're not yet in exile. So he's a unique prophet that way. He not only prophesied to his contemporaries, but he also prophesied to a generation that would come after him. We're going to be starting in chapter 40, but chapters 38 and 9 are kind of a prelude to the section of the book that we're going to be looking at. The interesting thing, I think, is that Isaiah pulls them out of chronological order to put them right before this section. So the events recorded in chapters 38 and 39 predate the events of chapters 36 and 37. And the question is why would he put them out of order? What is it I think he's trying he's juxtaposing them with chapter 40 for a reason. So 38 and 39 cover an incident from the life of King Hezekiah. We discuss this briefly in an introduction, but I want to look at it a bit more closely today. Hezekiah was one of the most human kings we meet in Scripture. He was generally a good king, and we see his heart usually primarily move toward God, but he was also fickle. When the pressures of being king and the temptations of life strike him, he often fails. Chapter thirty eight opens with Hezekiah becoming ill and Isaiah telling him that this is a mortal illness, that he will not survive. And his first thought is basically for himself. He says, I don't want to die. Isaiah thirty eight, one through three. In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill, and Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amos, came to him and said to him, Thus says the Lord, set your house in order, for you shall die and not live. Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, and said, Remember now, O Lord, I beseech you how I have walked before you in truth with a whole heart and have done what is good in your sight. And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Notice that Hezekiah is approaching God with an appeal to his good record. He says, Remember all the things I've done before you, remember how I walked before you in truth with a whole heart, and I did all these good things in your in your eyes. But when God answers him, God says, I heard your tears. Look at this is thirty eight, four through six. Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying, Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of your father David, I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears. Behold, I will have fifteen years to your life, I will deliver you and the city from the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend the city. So God answers his prayer, not because Hezekiah was such a great person or such a good king, but because God is faithful. God made promises to Hezekiah's father, King David, and God intends to keep them. God not only gives Hezekiah his word and his healing, but he also gives the king a sign. And the rest of the chapter then records the king's personal thoughts about these events. We don't have time to go through them, but I'll summarize them for you. In this Psalm of Sorts we learn that Hezekiah was fully aware that he was under wrath and that without he was without hope, and his sins need to be forgiven, and he also acknowledges that he was saved by God's divine response and mercy. But now he's tested. Two men from Babylon come and invite Hezekiah to join them in rebellion against Assyria. Hezekiah receives them gladly, and then he goes beyond call of duty to show them all the resources at his disposal, and Isaiah is not pleased. This is chapter thirty nine verses one through eight. At the time Meridoch Baladin, son of Baladin, King of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah, for he heard that he had been sick and had recovered. Hezekiah was pleased and showed them all his treasure house, the silver and the gold and the spices and the precious oil and his whole armory, and all that was found in his treasuries. There was nothing in his house nor in all his dominion that Hezekiah did not show them. Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah and said to him, What did these men say, and from where have they come to you? And Hezekiah said, They have come to me from a far country, from Babylon. He said, What have they seen in your house? So Hezekiah answered, They have seen all that is in my house. There is nothing among my treasuries that I have not shown them. Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, Hear the word of the Lord of hosts. Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and all that your fathers have laid up and store to this day will be carried to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. And some of your sons who will issue from you, whom you will beget will be taken away, and they will become officials in the palace of the king of Babylon. Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, The word of the Lord which you have spoken is good, for he thought, for there will be peace and truth in my days. So the men from Babylon come with an agenda. They're basically asking, Will you join us in rebellion against Assyria? And Hezekiah's willingness to show them all that he has is his complicit agreement because he's showing off all the resources he has which he can use to wage war. And when Isaiah hears of it, he basically says, Well, if you love Babylon so much, you'll be glad to know that everything you have is going there. So in spite of the assurances he just had in chapter 38 that he received from the Lord, Hezekiah turns right around and throws his lot in with Babylon rather than trusting God to deliver them from Assyria. Now, why would Isaiah pull those incidents out of chronological order to frame this next section? I think because they raise the question we've been asking. This is a good king who failed. This is a basically good king who follows God at times, but then he fails at times. And like the rest of his people he rebelled. And his story is an example of what the whole nation was doing. They were hedging their bets. They were saying, Oh yeah, we trust God on one side, but let's keep all our options open just in case. Chapter thirty nine then ends with this devastating announcement in thirty-nine six, behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house and all that your fathers have laid up in store to this day will be carried to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. And there's that question, nothing is left. Is it over? Is this the end of the history of the people of God? Have we finally gone so far that there is no prayer left and no hope for restoration? Well the very next voice we hear then is God's comfort. This is where chapter forty starts. Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God, speak kindly to Jerusalem and call out to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity has been removed, that she has received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. Listen to the tenderness in the Father's voice. He says the days of estrangement are over. This is God speaking as a loving father, eager to woo his disobedient child. No longer does he call them this people, he says my people. It's not just God, it's your God. So the nature of their comfort is restoration. There will be a restoration of their relationship to God and the end of the exile. The word comfort is used twice for emphasis, so comfort, comfort is like good, better. He's emphasizing it, it's urgency. In earlier chapters of Isaiah, we see this repeated imperative of listen, listen, or see, or behold, calling them to wake up and recognize their situation, recognize their sinfulness before it's too late. But now in chapter 40, it shifts to comfort, comfort. And that word means deep compassion and repentance. It's a turning away from suffering. It's used of God's deep compassion when he judges his people and then offers them mercy. And notice he says through the prophets, speak to the heart of this people, give them an invitation, call out to them that their relationship is restored, their exile is over, there is a brand new beginning. Their rebellion and their sin led to their exile. And in the NASB it says her iniquity has been removed. I think the idea is it's her hard labor, the service, the payment for the crime has been removed. It's been paid, so the exile is over. And what we're going to see is the payment for their sinfulness is the work of the servant. Their punishment is a direct result of their rebellion, but their punishment, their discipline from God, doesn't earn their forgiveness. Instead, it makes Israel ready to receive grace, but the payment comes from the work of the servant. So God withdrew to show Israel that she needed him, but what buys her forgiveness, what redeems her, is the work of the servant. How can we have achieve restoration? How is it possible that we can start over? Well, the basis for their comfort and their restoration is that the past has been fully dealt with. When God called Israel to be his people, he gave them the law, and he made promises to them and required their obedience. One of the requirements was that as a holy nation, Israel was to set aside one year in every seven to give the land a rest, a sabbatical year. Israel was in the land for about 490 years, and as far as we can tell, not once did she obey the Lord and give the land a rest. At least there's no record of it. And God said, If you rebel, I'm going to scatter you among the nations. Your land will become desolate, and I will give it its sabbatical rest. So if you won't take time off and trust me, I will make you take time off. He sends them into exile in the land of Babylon. The land gets 70 years' rest while they're in exile. Now, the refusal to take a sabbatical rest was a symptom of their overall lack of trust and their rebellion against God. So it's not that that was the one thing that caused their exile. It was this just part of the general pattern of rebellion that they had. He sends them back to Babylon because that's where Abraham was called out of. He was called from Ur of the Chaldees, and that's the same geographic region as Babylon. So he's sending them back where it all started. He's starting over, starting from the same place, and I think that's kind of symbolic of a clean slate of starting over. But in order to start over, the past has to be settled. And true comfort comes from facing your guilt and its consequences before a holy God. You can't have a future until you do that. Just as we saw last week with Isaiah 6, you have to face into the fact that we are sinners before a holy God. And we don't find hope or peace or forgiveness until we recognize that we stand guilty and that we need a savior. That's the starting point of saving faith. Realizing the depth of our sinfulness and our inability to do anything about it. So just as Isaiah stood before the throne of God, as we saw in chapter 6 last time, and said, Woe is me, I am ruined, so Israel must stand before God at the end of her exile and say, We did not trust our God, we rebelled, we deserved it. Israel has to come to a point, the nation has to come to a point where they where she sees her need for God before she can receive grace. The good news, as we'll see coming up, is that the servant served our sentence in full and God is satisfied with his work. If you're a believer, you can look at your past and say, it's been dealt with. The sentence has been served, the cross paid the price in full, and now there is comfort and a new beginning. There is a way to start over. But notice not only has the price been paid, it's been paid double. When I first studied this passage, I thought it meant that Israel served twice the punishments for the sin she deserved. But then I realized what he's saying in that first verse is, or the second verse is that grace is twice the sin. She's receiving double the grace, double the pardon. That word double means abundance. It's a word that means to fold over double, like you take a blanket or cloth and you fold it in half and now it's twice as thick as it was before. That's the idea of this doubling. The idea here is that grace is twice over or double the sin. But notice the basis of the comfort is not on anything we've done. The basis of our comfort is that God has forgiven us. Their guilt has been removed, the payment for their iniquity is satisfactory, and as we will see as we go through these passages, that payment is the suffering of the servant, and that makes the difference. Now we see the birth of the new kingdom. Having announced that there is a new kingdom coming in one and two, in verses three through five, he we see the birth of the new kingdom because the king is coming. So having announced this new beginning, this restoration and comfort, what are we to do? We're invited to go into the wilderness and meet the king. Look at three through five. A voice is calling, clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness, make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low, and let the rough ground become a plain and the rugged terrain a broad valley. Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Well, in earlier chapters of Isaiah, he used the image of a highway to talk about the people going back to the land. Now he's using this image of a highway as the place where God God will come and meet his people. In Assyria, when the king would travel from one country to another, a large crew would go before him and prepare the way. So an advanced party would go out and remove all the obstacles and smooth the road so that when he came with his chariot it would be unobstructed. He could travel smoothly. And that's the image here that Isaiah is to prepare the highway, prepare the roadway to meet her God, to meet her king. And they're to remove all those obstacles. I think that image of the highway would have been very significant to the Babylonian exiles because Babylon was laid out around a great processional highway that went through the center of the city. And the Babylonians believed that this was the place where they met their gods, where the gods met the kings. And the function of the highway was to allow this great procession that would display the power and the majesty of their god and their kings. The highway was forty to fifty feet wide and was paved with stones, and each stone held the inscription, I am Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. I paved the road of Babylon with mountain stones for the prof for the procession of the might of Lord Marduk. May Marduk my Lord grant me eternal life. So as the exiles walked this highway, they would read those words over and over again that this highway was dedicated to a pagan king and his pagan god. The Babylonians had hymns about this highway. They sang about their gods coming down from heaven to meet them there. I think that's why we see the Babylonians taunting the Jews and asking the exiled, captured Jews, why don't they sing about their God? Psalm 137 records their answer, by the rivers of Babylon we laid down and wept. We remember thee in Zion. So the Jews say, How can we sing when we're here in Babylon and our God is in Jerusalem and it looks like he's been defeated? Now Isaiah is saying to them metaphorically, God is not defeated, he will demonstrate his power, but not in the idolatry of paved stones on a highway. You won't see God's majesty and power in the parade of wealth and earthly treasures. The highway of the Lord is the highway he will use to bring his people home. He is the one, the Lord who controls history, and he's going to defeat Babylon. The highway made through the desert is the highway on which Yahweh will prove his majesty and his glory and his sovereignty with this entering into history and bringing his people home. So you won't see his majesty in a parade, but his actions in history. And then the invitation is come and meet him there on that highway. So verse 4, the idea of lifting up the valleys and lowering the mountains is to remove the obstacles, make the way straight and level and free of obstacles. God will arrive without fail, and he will travel without difficulty, and he will not be delayed by any hindrance. Everyone will see it. His glory and majesty will be obvious to all. And Israel is to respond by going there into the wilderness to meet her God. And of course, you know where these words were fulfilled. John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins, and Israel was to go out into the wilderness and repent and prepare to meet her coming king. The minute we open the New Testament, we read of a voice crying in the wilderness, make ready for the way of the Lord. Now Matthew quotes this section with reference to John the Baptist, but there's a slight variation in the in his translation. The Hebrew Bible reads of Isaiah 43, a voice cries, quote, In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. So in the Hebrew text, the wilderness is the place where the highway is prepared. When this verse was translated into Greek, in the translation we call the Septuagint, which was done around the third century BC, it got changed slightly. And the Septuagint, the Greek version reads, In the wilderness a voice cries, quote, prepare the way of the Lord. So in the Septuagint, the place where the voice is crying is the wilderness, not necessarily the place where the roadway was prepared. And Matthew quotes the Septuagint, which would have been the version his audience was familiar with. This is Matthew 3, verses 1 through 3. In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. So when God comes, someone's calling out, prepare the way of the coming king, and that's the role we know John the Baptist played. Now Matthew quotes the Septuagint because it was the translation his readers would have been most familiar with. Just like I might quote the NIV or the New American Standard or the ESV, even if there are places where I might disagree with the way the text is translated. The point is that this is one of those places critics like to point to and go, oh, look, it's an error, but it's not an error. Matthew is simply quoting a different translation, and a translation his audience would be familiar with. It doesn't mean that he made a mistake. We can decide that the translators of the Septuagint were right, or we can decide they're wrong, but it doesn't really change the meaning. His point is there's a voice crying, prepare the way of the Lord. Now when I look at the parallelism, I tend to think the Hebrew text is more accurate, and maybe the Septuagint messed it up, but I'm really no expert. In either way, the point is before the Lord comes, a voice will call out, prepare the way for the coming king, and that is the role that John the Baptist played. Notice that the voice in Isaiah is vague, obscure, almost unnoticeable. It doesn't call attention to itself. He doesn't identify the speaker, because the message is more important than the messenger. What God wants them to pay attention to is the content of the message, not the voice of the one saying it. John the Baptist, even though Jesus calls him the greatest prophet ever born, is given no real title or designation because the important point is what the voice is saying, not who it is. I think the idea that is that when the new king comes, his glory is so great that no other name needs to be mentioned next to his. John the Baptist is like the best man at the wedding. He has a vital function he needs to perform, but he's not there to call attention to himself, and he most certainly should not go on the honeymoon. So Israel is to go into the wilderness in repentance to meet her God. Why the wilderness? Well, geographically, the wilderness separated the nation of Israel from their homeland, and it's a great metaphor for where they were vulnerable, where they have no support, no safety net, where they can't cope. In the wilderness, they have to rely on God's grace for their very survival, and that gives us a metaphor of faith. To meet God, we have to recognize his voice, stop trusting in our own resources, stop trusting in our good works, our looks, our health, our education, the power of our hand or whatever, and cast ourselves totally on God. So we remove all those obstacles to repentance and we go to meet him. So I think that's the metaphor behind leveling the mountains and the valleys. It's this description of removing all the idols and the stumbling blocks and the things that would keep you from coming to God. So give up everything that keeps you from trusting him and run to him with faith and humility. Now the revelation of the king will be universal and it will be certain. The whole world will see it. As Klaus Westermann writes, a vanquished God of a vanquished people, fulfilling his word and restoring his chosen people to the land of their ancestors. Now in six to eight he turns to the establishment of the kingdom, because the obvious question is, how do we know that's going to work? Okay, I make this highway, I remove all my obstacles, I give up all my safety nets, I humble myself, I come before my God. Will it work? Will he take me back? So look at six through eight. A voice says, Call out, then he answered, What shall I call out? All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows upon it. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Forty verse six is reminiscent of Isaiah's original call from chapter six, which we looked at in the last session. And we have that same kind of interaction between the prophet and God, suggesting almost a second commission. The first call was to warn them that disaster was coming. This call is to tell them the good news that God will fulfill his promises. But the kingdom will not be established by human effort, which is weak and temporary. The best that humanity can put forward has all the stability of grass and flowers. The beauty of it's like the flower, it lasts but a brief moment. If you have a plant in the desert, it only takes one hot wind to blow on it, and the plant is going to wither and die. And that's his metaphor. It's just, there's no stability, there's nothing lasting to it. What all our efforts, all our human effort is just as stable and as long lasting as grass. Think about that for the Jews who were in exile. They're being held captive in Babylon. Well, why can't they leave? Because Babylon is this huge, unlimited, powerful nation. It was a huge empire. At this point in history, they're the world superpower. They have the best military, they have all the power in the world. How could tiny little Judah ever hope to defeat Babylon and make it back to her homeland? How could they hope to survive against a Babylonian assault? And yet Isaiah is saying all the power of Babylon is as lasting as the flower in the grass. In fact, all the power of all mankind is as fragile as a plant in the wilderness, one puff of breath from the Lord and its dust. But by contrast, the word of the Lord will stand forever. God's promises will happen and nothing will stand in their way. No empire, no human effort, nothing can stop God from keeping his word. The kingdom of God will be established by word and spirit, which is eternal. So he's building this new kingdom, and it's a kingdom not built by human hands, but by his spirit and his word, and it will stand forever. So the new kingdom that God is building through his servant is permanent. As Peter writes in his first letter, verse 120, chapter 1, verse 23, you have been born again, not of the seed which is perishable, but imperishable, that is through the living, abiding word of God. So you can go meet your God in the wilderness, and will it work? Absolutely. It will far outlast anything the world has to offer. Now he turns to welcoming the king in verses 9 through eleven. So how do we respond to this message of comfort, this new kingdom, and the king who is coming with joy. 40 verse 9 Get yourself up on a high mountain, O Zion, bearer of good news. Lift up your voice mightily, O Jerusalem, bearer of good news. Lift it up, do not fear. Say to the cities of Judah, here is your God. So the response to this message of comfort to this king who is coming is be a messenger of good news. There's so much joy there to tell it to the world, there to go to the highest point in the city and announce the coming king. In fact, we get the word gospel from these words, this bearer of good news. The messenger comes into the city announcing the king is coming, and he's going to make all things new, and we are to respond with joy and spread the word. Notice the progress we've made through the chapter. First, there's comfort because your past has been dealt with. As we'll see, the servant has paid the price for our sins on the cross, and we know that to be Jesus. He restores our relationship with God, and the penalty is paid, our past is forgiven. In response, we're to humble ourselves, remove the obstacles from our hearts, and prepare to meet our King and our Lord. So we leave off trusting ourselves and we humbly meet God. And we go with confidence because His word stands forever. All our greatest accomplishments will fall before the Lord like dandelion seeds scatter in a puff of wind. But God's word is enduring and permanent, and it is the basis for this new kingdom. So we can meet God with confidence, crying the good news from the rooftops, Here is your God. And that's what the Jews are crying, Here is your God. Say to the cities of Judah, here is your God. And I think this is a hint of the incarnation. The work of salvation is so great that God won't entrust it to anybody but himself. And the idea is lift up your voice, do not fear, because God Himself is bringing about salvation, and his word stands forever. Then he tells us what kind of king is coming. Look at ten and eleven. Behold, the Lord God will come with might, with his arm ruling for him. Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense before him. Like a shepherd he will tend his flock, in his arm he will gather the lambs and carry them in his bosom. He will gently lead the nursing ewes. So he uses two different metaphors here to describe the coming king. First, the king is coming in power like a judge, that he's he will come with might, his arm ruling before him. God is coming like a judge, as in the Exodus. His revealing will be majestic and powerful and mighty and will overthrow his enemies. So what God did to Pharaoh, he will again do to Babylon and he will set his people free. Then ultimately, with the coming of Christ, he will defeat his enemies once and for all, securing our salvation and adoption into his kingdom. So his arm is symbolic of the strength and the authority that he has, of the might. And second, he's coming in meekness like a shepherd to gather his people. So he's not only coming like a judge, he is also coming like a shepherd. In his arm he will also gather and feed and gently lead his sheep. He's coming both to judge and to gather. To some he will bring judgment and ruling, and to others he will gently lead and gather them. And the real question is what is he bringing you? Sadly, some of the Jews heard this message and stayed in Babylon rather than return to the Jerusalem. And we can do the same. We can hear the words of comfort, forgiveness, restoration, the sureness of our salvation, and we can continue to cling to our idols. If we do that, then when God comes again, he will bring judgment. But to those who humbly meet Him, recognizing their sinfulness, their need for a salvation, and trusting in the cross of Jesus Christ, there is mercy and compassion. And for those, he will gent he will lead as gently nursing use. So restoration is solely and entirely the work of God. He is coming, but not as a victor coming to take prisoners. He's a victor coming to set the prisoners free, caring for each and every one of them. So what would we say to that convict hiding in the barn in the show whistled down the wind? Can he start over? Well the answer is yes, but not because he deserves it, and not because he's done anything worthwhile, but because of the servant, as we'll see coming up, he can be forgiven. Even he has a prayer, because the Lord has promised to change the nature of the beast because of the servant. If we are truly broken and humbled, like Isaiah saying, Woe is me, like the Israelites called to remove all the obstacles and meet their God where they're most vulnerable, then we can start over. We can receive double grace and pardon for all we have done. The only question is, when God comes, which side are you on? Will he come for you like a king and judgment or like a shepherd who will gently gather you into his heart? Thank you for joining me today for Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what the passage means, but also shows you how to figure that out. If you've been blessed by this podcast, would you do me a favor and please take two words and a reading or review on Apple Podcasts? Reviews really do help people find the podcast Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates of Heartfeltmusic.org. And you can hear more or listen to previous episodes on Wednesday and in the words of documents.