Comfort, O comfort My people, says your God. Speak kindly to Jerusalem; and call out to her that her warfare has ended, that she has received for the Lord's hand double for all her sins.God's covenant faithfulness never ceases. It never dies or passes away. No matter how faithless or treacherous God's people have been, He never forgets His covenant bonds and His oaths. He turns to His people again and restores them. This wonderful reality is revealed repeatedly in the Scriptures, not more forcefully so than in Psalm 103: “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. He will not always strive with us; nor will He keep His anger forever.”
Isaiah 40: 1,2
The day of His anger and wrath most certainly will come to an end.
Now it is important to remember that God's wrath toward His people comes only and always because of their persistent and prolonged disobedience and rebellion. Moreover, His anger is both particular and general—it can be directed both to individuals or to the Church or His covenant people corporately. (The variation of messages, commendations, and warnings respectively to the seven churches in Revelation 1--3 shows both how how precise and detailed, yet how comprehensive the Lord's focus is.) It follows that a vitally important issue for the covenant people in any generation is to discern whether God's people as a whole are living in a time of His wrath towards them, or in a time of His good pleasure.
It is clearly the case that in times of anger towards His people as a whole, individual believers and families can yet know and experience the blessings of God, His mercy, His closeness, and His abiding lovingkindness. They can know the blessings of being in Christ. So Daniel, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel walked closely with the Lord and knew His blessings towards them—even as they experienced the consequences of His wrath towards the covenant people as a whole during the terrible days of Babylon's enmity.
So the question remains for every age: are we living amidst an age or generation where God's anger is upon His people as a whole? It is one of the most important questions to ask, for it affects greatly how we are to live and serve.
At the time of the Reformation, Martin Luther proclaimed that the Church in the West as a whole had been living under a Babylonian captivity. God had turned His back on an unfaithful people. It is our view that we, in the West, are likewise living in a time of the Lord's wrath towards His people, and that it has continued for over a hundred years. Collectively and corporately, the Church in the West turned its back upon God and His holy Word, and preferred the approbation of Unbelief to the blessing of God. We, like Luther, are living in a Babylonian captivity. (We will be blogging more on how this came about in coming days.)
Such periods can last several hundred years, as the time of the Judges attests. But the point is that such times always come to an end. The Lord does not hold His anger forever. He turns again to His people and restores them. Our text is one of the great affirmations of this most gracious and encouraging truth. The first half of Isaiah's prophecy is an account of the last days of the Kingdom of Judah before the captivity in Babylon. The second half opens with these glorious words, which announce that the time of the Lord's wrath had passed; Israel's warfare had ended.
The day will come that the Lord will apply the truth of this text to Jerusalem in the West. He will turn to us once again. It may not be in our lifetimes. It may be in the times of our children's children. But it will most certainly come, for “He will not keep His anger forever.”
It was during the time of the Babylonian captivity that one of the greatest revivals in the history of the Church occurred. Four things are critical to know of this period. Firstly, as a group, the hearts of the exiles in Babylon were initially as adamant stone against God and His holy Covenant. (You can read the account in Ezekiel 2.) Secondly, some time while in captivity, during the ministry of Ezekiel to them, the hearts of the exiles broke and they were repentant before the Lord. The dry bones began to live again. The Spirit of God came to them as Ezekiel prophesied over them. We are not told precisely when, where, or how. But we are told of its fruit. The famous lament, for example, of Psalm 137, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion,” is one of the fruits of this revival of true faith amongst the exiles.
Thirdly, the depth and extent of the reformation was breathtaking. It provided the impetus for a remnant to return and rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. It established such a faithful covenant community in Babylon to where it became one of the greatest halls and seats of service and learning for centuries. Most of the greatest and most famous rabbis came from Babylon, sent as a stream to Israel to keep them more faithful to the Word in the post-exilic period, right down through the period of the Maccabees, even to the days of our Lord. Moreover, from this time onwards, Israel was never again troubled with idolatry as it had been prior to the judgments of Assyria and Babylon. It seems that the punishment of the exile, and the subsequent revival had broken the hold of this sin in the heart of corporate Israel forever.
Finally, the restoration of the covenant community in exile was a significant step forward in redemptive history, for it established the pattern of living successfully and faithfully amongst the Gentiles, as a minority in Gentile lands which became the norm after the Day of the Lord at Pentecost.
The warfare was over. The Lord remembered again His covenant oaths and His people. Once again He lifted up the light of His countenance upon them, and blessed them. And so it will come to pass for us in the post-Christian West. Let us do all we can to prepare ourselves and our children and their children for the day when the Lord says once again, “Comfort, comfort ye my people; your warfare is over.”
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