Isaiah 40:1 Comfort you, comfort you my people, said your God. 1. Living in the midst of sorrow, and himself personally its victim, the Christian has need of comfort. Whatever form the affliction may take, it is hard for flesh and blood to bear; it runs contrary to all the tastes and desires of the natural man. Often under its pressure, especially when long continued and severe, is he tempted to faint and despond; it may be, even to repine and murmur; to doubt the faith. fulness of God; to ask, in bitterness of heart, why such woe is appointed to man? 2. With what power, then, do words like these reach him in the midst of his sorrow, coming from God Himself, "Comfort ye, comfort ye My people!" No sooner are they heard than hope revives, and the assurance of Divine sympathy at once soothes his trouble, and allays his fears. (1) Here is the first light from heaven which breaks upon human sorrow, and which removes from it, for the Christian, its keenest sting. God knows your suffering and thinks of it, and seeks to comfort you under it. You are not the sport of inexorable fate, or blind and reckless chance; still less are your afflictions proof that God has abandoned you in wrath. (2) How sweet is the solace of human sympathy! But here we have Divine sympathy; sympathy from One both able and willing to deliver, — from the God of all comfort. (3) Not afar off, does the voice of God reach us, from an inaccessible heaven, telling us we are His people and that He cares for us. He has come and made us His people, by taking our nature, and being born and living as a man. (J. N. Bennie, LL. B.) Parallel Verses KJV: Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. |
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