May 17

Comfort, Comfort My People

Isaiah 40:1-11

Sun May 17 2026 00:00:00 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time) · Isaiah Series 2026

Introduction

1.1 I want to begin this morning with something personal which is a dream I had when I was a university student. A dream about two moments from my childhood that I have never been able to forget. The first memory is from when I was in sixth grade. My parents fought and it happened almost every day. And when they fought, something always broke. That day, something my mother threw struck me on the forehead. I was bleeding. I didn't know what to do. So I walked outside and sat alone on the steps, pressing my hand against my forehead, trying to stop the blood.

1.2 The second memory is from when I was in second grade. As I mentioned briefly last week — my mother, when she disciplined me, could not stop once she started. Her anger overtook her. That day, she stripped off all my clothes and threw me outside. People walking by laughed. It was a different time that was considered normal. I stood there, pressing myself against the wall outside our home, trying to cover myself, with nowhere to go.

1.3 These were the scenes that came back to me in that dream. But in the dream, something was different. In the first scene I was still sitting on those steps, still bleeding. But someone was sitting beside me. Someone was pressing their hand over my wound alongside mine. I looked at the hand. It had holes in it.

1.4 In the second scene I was still standing against that wall, still exposed, still ashamed. But someone came and wrapped around me, covering me. I could see his back. It was marked with the scars of a whip. And then he spoke to me. “Was it hard? Did it hurt? I'm sorry that you had to be in the middle of all of that. I couldn't stop it. But I was there. I was there with you."

1.5 I had no counselling for those memories. No therapy. No healing process. But those words that one dream gave me a comfort that nothing else ever had. So before we open Isaiah 40 together, I want to ask you something. When you hear the word comfort, what do you picture? What do you expect? What are you hoping for?

1.6 Hold that image for a moment. Because this morning, I think the God of Isaiah 40 may have something to say to us and it may not look the way we expected. Let us read Isaiah 40, verses 1 through 11.

Isaiah 40:1–11 ESV

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?”

All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news;

lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

Background

2.1 Before we read Isaiah 40 and its message of comfort, we need to understand its background and context. Isaiah 40 starts with one of the most beautiful lines in the Bible: "Comfort, comfort, my people," says your God. When most of us hear that word, we assume we know what kind of moment this is. The crisis is over. The storm has passed. God is speaking comfort because things are finally getting better. But that's not the situation in Israel when these words are received.

2.2 Chapter 40 of Isaiah marks an important change in the book. Up to that point, the prophet has been warning Israel about coming judgment. And that judgment came. Jerusalem fell. The temple, the place where God was thought to be present and the center of everything the Israelites understood about themselves, was destroyed. Completely. And the people were taken away. They were taken away from their homes and carried to Babylon, which was hundreds of miles away. They were like refugees in a foreign country.

2.3 Think about what that meant. It's not just a political issue. It's not just about where they are. Theologically. For Israel, the land was a sign of God's promise. The temple was the place God had promised to live. And now they were both gone. Many people in Israel must have been asking a question that went far deeper than "when do we go home?" They were asking, "Has God left us alone?" Did we misunderstand everything? Is he still our God?

2.4 God speaks at that exact moment. It's not after the moment is over, or once the problem is solved. It's right in the middle of it. "Comfort, comfort, my people." The exile is not over. The city has not been rebuilt. The people are not home yet. Nothing has changed on the outside. But God offers comfort. Now. Here. It's in the middle of it.

2.5 That should be enough to stop us. If comfort only comes when things get better, then this word should not be here yet. But it is. This means that the comfort God offers is not based on changed circumstances. It is connected to something else entirely. Now, let's talk about the word itself. The Hebrew word for "comfort" here is nacham, and it will change how we understand everything that follows.

Isaiah 40:1–2 NLT

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and her sins are pardoned. Yes, the Lord has punished her twice over for all her sins.”

Meaning of Nacham

3.1 As we dealt with last week, the Hebrew word nacham is one of the richest, and most physical words in the Old Testament. It is not a word that describes comfort from a distance. In its root meaning, nacham carries the sense of a deep breath, a sigh that comes from somewhere in the chest. It is the kind of sound you make when you see someone you love in pain and you feel it with them. Not just sympathy. Something closer to being shaken. Being moved at the core.

3.2 In fact, nacham is sometimes translated not as "comfort" but as "to grieve," or "to be sorry," or even "to repent" because all of those share the same root movement. Something inside shifts. Something is felt so deeply that it changes how you act. When God says nacham over his people, he is not offering a word of sympathy from far away. He is saying:

I feel this. This matters to me. I am moved by what you are going through.

3.3 And then look at what follows in verse 2. "Speak tenderly to Jerusalem." The Hebrew there is literally

"speak to the heart of Jerusalem."

Not to the mind. Not to the situation. To the heart. God is not sending a memo. He is not issuing a press release. He is drawing close, leaning in, and speaking directly to the broken place.

3.4 Now do you see what kind of comfort this is? It is not comfort that arrives after the pain is gone. It is comfort that enters the pain. It does not wait for things to improve before it speaks. It speaks now into the exile, into the ruin, into the silence where the temple used to be.

3.5 That is exactly what I saw in that dream. He did not appear after the bleeding stopped. He was already there, sitting beside me on the steps, pressing his hand over my wound. Holes in his hands. Scars on his back. A God who already knew what it was to suffer, and who chose to be present in mine.

3.6 This is not just my dream. This is the testimony of the New Testament. The writer of Hebrews tells us;

Hebrews 4:15 NKJV

For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

3.7 He was not a high priest who watched from a safe distance. He entered it. He took on flesh, took on hunger, took on grief, took on the kind of pain that leaves marks. When God says nacham over his broken people, the New Testament shows us what that looks like in a human face — a face that wept, a body that bore wounds, a God who did not consider our suffering beneath him. This is why the comfort of Isaiah 40 is not a promise about the future only. It is a declaration about who God already is, and what he has already done.

Exegesis

4.1 From verse 3, the passage opens into a wide landscape.

Isaiah 40:3 NIV

A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Notice where the road is being built. Not around the wilderness. Not on the other side of it, once the hard part is over. In the wilderness. Through the desert. The path God prepares does not bypass the difficult place, it runs straight through the middle of it.

4.2 For Israel, the wilderness was not an abstract image. It was memory. It was the Sinai desert — forty years of wandering, hunger, confusion, years that felt lost. And it is exactly there that God says:

I am making a road. Not someday. Not somewhere easier. Here. In this. Through this.

4.3 And then the vision in verses 9 through 11 does something remarkable. It zooms out to the largest possible scale — the Lord God comes with might, his arm rules for him, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

Isaiah 40:9–11 ESV

Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

This is cosmic. This is the God who stretches out the heavens, who weighs the mountains in scales.

4.4 And then — verse 11. The same God. And the image becomes this:

"He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young."

The God who commands the cosmos, picks up a lamb. Holds it against his chest. And slows his pace for the ones who cannot keep up. The Hebrew behind "gently lead" describes a shepherd who adjusts his stride for the nursing mothers, the ones who are exhausted, fragile, not yet ready to run. He does not push them. He walks at their pace.

4.5 This is the same God. The one who fills the universe, and the one who slows down for you. The comfort of Isaiah 40 is not rescue from above. It is a shepherd who comes close, who gets low, who carries what you cannot carry.

Reflection

5.1 Do you remember the question from the beginning? When you hear the word comfort, what do you picture? Most of us, if we are honest, picture comfort as the ending of something hard. Relief. Things finally getting easier. God stepping in and making the pain stop. And I do not want to dismiss that longing; it is real, it is human, and God does not dismiss it either.

5.2 But Isaiah 40 offers us something deeper. It offers us the possibility that comfort is not the absence of pain, it is the discovery that we were never alone inside it. That is what changed for me in that dream. The two memories did not disappear. They are still there. But something shifted when I saw those hands, when I heard those words. The pain did not leave. But it was no longer just mine. He had been in it. He knew it from the inside.

5.3 There may be someone here today who is still in the middle of something hard. Still waiting. Still carrying something that has not been resolved. Still asking why God has not fixed it yet. Isaiah 40 does not tell you that the wilderness ends today. But it does tell you this:

The wilderness is not where God is absent. It is where he builds roads. It is where he walks slowly. It is where he gathers what has fallen and carries it close.

And one day — the same way he spoke to a people still in exile, still far from home — he will speak to you. Not when everything is fixed. But now. Here. In the middle of it.

To be comforted by God is not to have your pain removed.

It is to discover that he was already there — inside it, beside you —

and that he has never stopped being there.

5.4 And Paul tells us something even more remarkable about this comfort. In his second letter to the Corinthians, he writes;

2 Corinthians 1:3–4 NLT

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.

5.5 The comfort God gives is not meant to stop with you. It moves. It travels. The very comfort that found you in your wilderness, the same nacham that entered your pain and sat beside you, becomes the comfort you carry into someone else's. God does not waste suffering. He redeems it. He turns what he met you in into what he sends you out with.

5.6 So this morning, perhaps the question is not only have you received this comfort? But also who in your life is still sitting on the steps, still pressing their hand against a wound, still standing against a wall with nowhere to go? Because the God of Isaiah 40 tends to work exactly that way. He comforts us, so that we become comfort.

Reflection Questions — Comfort, Comfort My People

1. When you hear the word comfort, what image comes to mind? What have you been hoping comfort would look like — and how does that compare to what Isaiah 40 describes?

2. Is there a place in your life — past or present — where you have struggled to believe that God was present? What would it mean for you to hear nacham spoken into that specific place?

3. The shepherd in Isaiah 40:11 slows his pace for the ones who are exhausted and not yet ready to run. Where in your life do you need God to walk at your pace rather than push you forward?

4. Paul writes that we are comforted so that we can comfort others. Who in your life is still sitting on the steps, still pressing their hand against a wound? What might it look like for you to bring the nacham you have received into their story?