The Lord Commands His Heralds to Comfort Jerusalem
Advent 3| Isaiah 40:1-8| Pastor James Preus| Trinity Lutheran Church| December 14, 2025
“Comfort, comfort ye My people,
Speak ye peace,” thus saith our God;
“Comfort those who sit in darkness,
Mourning ’neath their sorrows’ load.
Speak ye to Jerusalem
Of the peace that waits for them;
Tell her that her sins I cover
And her warfare now is over.”
“Comfort, comfort my people.” That is a command. God commands His heralds to comfort His people. Do you kids know what a herald is? I’m not talking about guys named Harold. A herald is a messenger, who proclaims something on behalf of a king, often announcing the arrival of a king. The Christmas hymn, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” means, “Listen to the proclaiming angels sing.” God’s heralds are sometimes angels from heaven. More often they are prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, and Elisha. Yet, here, Isaiah predicts the rise of a new class of heralds, those of the New Testament, the first and greatest being John the Baptist, followed by the Apostles and the pastors in the Office of the Ministry after them.
These heralds are commanded to preach to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the Holy Christian Church, the people of God with whom God dwells. The true people of God have always been those who had faith in God. The city where God promises to dwell for all eternity is His Holy Christian Church, the city of which all Christians are citizens.
And the content of the heralds’ message to Jerusalem, as Isaiah records, is comfort. Comfort is always the predominant message, the goal of the heralds’ preaching. Here God commands His heralds to preach comfort, peace, and forgiveness for Christ’s sake to His people whom He loves. But why does the Lord command His heralds to comfort Jerusalem? The Lord commands His heralds to comfort Jerusalem, because they have sinned against Him and they deserve His wrath.
The city Jerusalem in which King Hezekiah ruled and into which Jesus centuries later entered, prefigured the heavenly Jerusalem, the Holy Christian Church to which all true Christians belong. Now, that city had been in desperate need of comfort when Isaiah wrote these words. It had been besieged by the Assyrians and was brought the brink of ruin. Her king Hezekiah had lay sick at the point of death, weeping to God for mercy. And Isaiah had just recently prophesied that all the king’s sons and Jerusalem’s treasures would be carried into captivity by Babylon. Jerusalem needed comfort.
Yet, God does not send His heralds to pronounce the comfort of a military victory or security in her treasures or even good health to her king. Rather, God sends His heralds to proclaim the comfort of the forgiveness of sins, not peace with the nations, but peace with God. And this is the lesson we need to learn if we are to be members of the heavenly Jerusalem. The comfort we need from God is the forgiveness of our trespasses. Our greatest problem is God’s wrath against our sins, which we justly deserve.
Yes, Jerusalem had suffered much. She needed comfort. But all the suffering she endured was a symptom of her true problem, which was her sin. The same is for us today. People are often blind to the comfort God offers through His heralds, because they are focusing on what they think are their true problems. But all suffering and crosses we bear in this life are not our greatest problems, but they are chastisements and disciplines from the Lord, so that we recognize that our sin and God’s wrath on account of our sin is our greatest problem.
God has transferred all punishment of sin to His beloved Son Jesus Christ, who bore the iniquities of all people upon the cross. For this reason, God does not punish us for our sins, that is, we do not pay the just reward for our sins, because Christ paid it for us. Yet, as a good father, our Lord does chastise us, that is, He disciplines us. He lets us suffer and bear a cross, suffer loss and temporal consequences for our sins. He does this to humble us, to curb our sinful impulses, to bring us to realize our foolishness, to bring us to repentance. This is what God did to Jerusalem. Were God to punish Jerusalem, that is, if God were to do to Jerusalem what she deserved, He would have utterly wiped her out, killed every inhabitant, reduced every building to ashes, snuffed out the king and his royal lineage forever. Instead, God stored up all that wrath and justice and transferred it to Jesus Christ. All the sufferings Jerusalem endured were God’s chastisements, so that she would turn from her sin and receive the comfort which Christ would win for her.
And this explains the content of the Herald of Comfort’s sermon. As our hymn of the day paraphrases:
Hark, the herald’s voice is crying
In the desert far and near,
Calling sinners to repentance,
Since the Kingdom now is here.
O that warning cry obey!
Now prepare for God away;
Let the valleys rise to meet Him
And the hills bow down to greet Him.
Making straight a highway in the desert and lowering all the mountains into a plain means to bring hearts to repentance. But why does the Herald of Comfort preach repentance? Because there can be no comfort if you do not know that you need to be comforted or for what you need comfort. If you think your greatest problem is the Assyrian or Babylonian army, then you will not take comfort in the forgiveness of sins, unless you first learn that God raised up the Assyrians to make you aware of your sin. If Hezekiah thought that his infected boil was his worst problem, he would not find comfort in the message of forgiveness. So, the prophet needed to teach him that God brought him to the brink of death so that he would become aware of his sins. If you think that your greatest problem is anxiety or your lack of money, or your physical sickness, or fill-in-the-blank, and not your sin, then the comfort that God does not count your iniquities against you will not comfort you.
And so, John the Baptist preaches repentance. He calls hypocrites brood of vipers. He tells tax-collectors and soldiers to stop stealing and prostitutes to live chaste lives (even rebukes King Herod for his unlawful divorce and incestuous marriage). And so, your pastor preaches to you the Ten Commandments, tells you to stop skipping church, despising God’s preaching and Word, to put God first, to honor your parents and other authorities, to love your neighbor, to live chaste and descent lives and avoid sexual immorality of every kind, to be content with what God has given you, to speak the truth. Stop doing evil, apologize to God for what you have done wrong. Your sin is your worst problem. It doesn’t matter whether you have cancer or are broke or in chronic pain or depressed, if you are dying. None of those problems are as great as your sin, which warrants for you God’s wrath, death, and eternal hell. In fact, God permits all these bad things to come upon you in order to humble you, so that you recognize your greatest problem.
Yet, if you have the forgiveness of sins, then none of your other problems can touch you. What can cancer or death do to you if you have peace with God? Does He not promise you an eternal mansion prepared by Christ? What need do you lack if God did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up to save you? What cross can’t you patiently bear if you know that God has not forsaken you, but forgives you and will give you glories to which your sufferings aren’t worth comparing? So, John the Baptist, the Apostles, and all faithful pastors preach repentance, they call their hearers to be humble and to mourn their sins before their God, so that they may comfort them with the greatest comfort.
If you don’t think your sin is a problem, if you do not fear God’s wrath and punishment, then you care nothing about these words. But if your heart has been brought down low, because God’s herald has made you realize your sins against God and the punishment you deserve, then these words are the greatest solace and comfort: 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.”
What does it mean that she has received from the LORD double for all her sins? Some think that it means that Jerusalem had been punished double what she deserved for her sins. But that is not true. She deserved much more for her sins. Rather, God has placed the punishment of Jerusalem and indeed the whole world upon Christ Jesus. What it means that she has received double for all her sins is that Christ Jesus has not only paid the price for her sins by being punished in her stead, but that He also showers her with His righteousness, so that she stands before God without blemish (Ephesians 5). This is the great exchange. We give Christ the guilt of our sin. Christ gives us the righteousness of His obedience (1 Peter 3:8; Romans 5:18-19). Christ Jesus has paid such an inexhaustible price for the sins of Jerusalem, that she can be comforted that her iniquities always will be pardoned.
When the LORD commands His heralds to comfort Jerusalem, He commands them to preach Christ Jesus. The purpose of preaching repentance is so that you can preach forgiveness for Christ’s sake. All flesh is grass and all its beauty fades like the flower in the scorching wind. And so, John the Baptists, the foretold Herald of Comfort, should not have been surprised that he faded away in King Herod’s prison. That prison too has faded away as did Herod, but the words of comfort that John preached remain to this day: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) Jesus Christ is the Word of God incarnate. That means that He is the source of God’s Word. All God’s Words come through Him. That means that as Christ is risen from the dead and stands at the Father’s right hand forever as our Redeemer and Comforter, so does His word of comfort remain ever true.
All your problems will pass away. They’ll fade away like grass or at least, you’ll fade away so that they can’t bother you anymore. But the words of comfort, of peace with God, of abiding forgiveness won by Christ will remain, because the only problem you had that could trouble you eternally has been taken away by Jesus when He washed away your sins. As surely as Jesus came as the prophets foretold, so will Christ come again as His word promises. And because He lives and reigns forever, so your comfort will never pass away.
The whole world needs this comfort, because the whole world is full of sin. Only Jesus can save us from our sins. That is why the herald of comfort must center his message on Christ. And so, God has made His Holy Christian Church a herald of comfort to the whole word, as Isaiah writes:
Get you 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!” (Isaiah 40:9)
Our God is Christ Jesus, who has come to win for us eternal comfort through the forgiveness of sins. It is this God whom the Church will preach until He comes. May our hearts be ready to welcome Him. Amen.
Make ye straight what long was crooked;
Make the rougher places plain.
Let your hearts be true and humble,
As befits His holy reign.
For the glory of the Lord
Now o’er earth is shed abroad,
And all flesh shall see the token
That His Word is never broken. Amen.