Live Like a Champion – Week 19
The Promise of Comfort!
Isaiah 66:13a (NAS95)
In this sermon series, we are learning how to live like a champion by learning how to live according to the victory of the promises of God. Our guiding image for this series is being a member of an NFL team who wins the Superbowl. We live like champions so that others will come to know the One who gave us His Victory—Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, and coming again!
“As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you.”
To comfort means to alleviate sorrow; to relieve distress; to give emotional strength to. To comfort someone is an activity of love from one person to another. I want you to hang on to this definition and understanding of comfort because while this is a divine promise of God, it is one that God incarnates to us and then between us, from one person to another!
A prime example of this is found in motherhood! The love of a mother is great and we celebrate such a love on this day—Mother’s Day! A special, heart-felt blessing over all of our moms.
PRAY OVER AND BLESS ALL THE MOMS, COMFORT THOSE WHO WANTED TO BE MOMS AND FOR THOSE WHO ARE TRYING, CALL FORTH SPIRITUAL MOTHERHOOD THROUGH MENTORSHIP/ADOPTION/FOSTER CARE, AND GRIEVE FOR THOSE MOMS WHO ARE NO LONGER WITH US OR WHO WERE ABSENT.
While we could spend this entire service testifying to the great comfort and sacrificial love of many women as moms, I want to return our eyes to God, the author of all comfort, who loves us with a perfect love.
In Isaiah 49:15-16a, God says His love is more powerful than even that of a mother’s love for her children: “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands…”
Can you imagine that? What love! What compassion!
I hope it is not lost on you that Isaiah, the prophet who was used by God to clearly communicate the coming Messiah, was also the prophet who spoke so convincingly of God’s comfort. Listen to two samples:
- Isaiah 12:1-2: “I will give thanks to You, O Lord; for although You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, and You comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation.”
- Isaiah 40:1-3: “Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God. “Speak kindly to Jerusalem; and call out to her, that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity has been removed, That she has received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.”
In both of these scriptures, we see that the comfort of God’s people is connected to their salvation and that salvation would come, of course, through the coming Messiah—the Christ—Jesus Christ.
Comfort is such a significant promise that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to fulfill it! As Jesus said in John 16:20-22,
Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will grieve, but your grief will be turned into joy. Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.
Listen to Paul declare God’s comfort through Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Savior of the World. This powerful promise of comfort is found in 2 Corinthians 1:3-7:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort.
It is with this scripture that we now move to the practice of the promise and the truth of our understanding of comfort—God incarnates His promise of comfort! The promise of comfort, like all the promises of God, is found in Jesus Christ. It is the gift of God to His people—this is God’s magnificent salvation to bring us the comfort Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 40.
If you do not yet understand the depth of comfort Jesus Christ has given us, please join me as I walk with a family through the death and dying process. What comfort there is to be found in the resurrection of Jesus Christ! As Jesus said in John 11:25-26, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”
We can be comforted because He lives! Because He lives, you can face tomorrow. Because He lives, all fear is gone. Because I know He holds the future and life is worth the living just because He lives.
This is the promise of the resurrection: He is Risen! Comfort comes from believing our own story!
The promise of comfort is so important in the lives of God’s people, especially when we face disease and death, darkness and despair, disappointment in this life and defeat at the hands of our enemies.
We need comfort when the scoreboard at halftime looks desperate, but there is still plenty of time to play!
We need light in this darkness; hope in this despair; healing from this disease, and deliverance from death!
Comfort allows us to play the game of life like champions by living according to the promises of God!
The promise of God’s comfort is found through the promise of the presence of God indwelling us in the person of the Holy Spirit. Just as God put on flesh to dwell with us, He now dwells in us!
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.”
Jesus Christ has brought comfort to all humanity through salvation. Our salvation is now to bring comfort to the nations through the same comfort He first gave us!
The Holy Spirit ministers this comfort by mediating the presence of God directly to us and through us.
We are now the ones who are to bring that same comfort to others. This is the practice of the promise—in the same way that you have been comforted, now comfort others!
- God reached from Heaven to earth through the incarnation of Jesus Christ to comfort you, now pick up the phone or send a card to comfort another.
- Jesus died on the Cross to comfort you, now make a meal and deliver it to someone to comfort them.
- Jesus defeated death in the resurrection to comfort you, now show up and visit someone to comfort them.
- Jesus has ascended to the right hand of the Father and is coming again to comfort us, now leave the comfort of your own home to help your neighbor or family or friend or fellow church member in need.
- The Holy Spirit comforts you as your constant companion, now you use words that comfort the clerks in stores and waitresses in restaurants and those who you interact with on a daily basis.
“But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.”
This is the gospel ministry of Jesus Christ through men and women, alike. We are to extend to one another the same nurture and love, the same compassion and mercy, the same gentleness and grace as a mother to her child.
We are to do for others what the three persons of the Triune God has done for us!
This is the love that God first gave us and this is the love that will transform the world.