Comforting His people doesn’t mean assuring them everything is going to be okay. To comfort His people is to share God’s heart for them, to remind them that He’s their God and that there is hope, and that there is only one hope, one life, one way, one truth.
And it’s not in their government, it’s not in their military, it’s not in their politics, it’s not in the United Nothing. It’s not in any of the world’s institutions. The hope of Israel is their Messiah. That’s the hope.
Isaiah 40:1-5
“Comfort, yes, comfort My people!” says your God. “Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.”
The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
In verses one and two of this beautiful passage we find the English word “comfort” three times. The first two times in verse one, the Hebrew word means “to console”. The Hebrew word for comfort in verse two is different. It means “the heart or the place of feelings and emotions”.
From this we can see that the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah to console the hearts of the people of Jerusalem, meaning the nation of Israel. The text then becomes prophetic and advances to the time of the end when war has finished, Israel’s iniquities are pardoned, and the way of the Lord has been prepared for His coming. The mountains and hills being brought low and the crooked places made straight and the rough places smooth clearly speaks of the time of Jacob’s trouble and the Millennium that follows.
Until that time we need to console the hearts of the Jews by reminding them that the King of the Jews died for the sins of the whole world, and that only through Him can one be saved. We need to remind them that while the IDF and IAF are formidable military forces, it is God who fights for Israel. We need to console their hearts with the fact that while the world may be against them, the Holy One of Israel is for them and is coming back to rule and reign from Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel.
Zechariah 14:4
And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a very large valley; half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the south.
Zechariah 14:8-9
And in that day it shall be that living waters shall flow from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the western sea; in both summer and winter it shall occur. And the LORD shall be King over all the earth. In that day it shall be— “The LORD is one,” and His name one.
Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus,