Isaiah 40:1-31
As humans we face many situations that bring our lives into the pit of hopelessness and darkness. Hopelessness can come from choices we have made. Hopelessness can come from things we have little control over. Hopelessness can come out of what other people decide.
King Hezekiah received an envoy from Babylon that would bring into his life a feeling of hopelessness. “Hezekiah was delighted with the Babylonian envoys and he showed them everything in his treasure houses – the silver, the gold, the spices and the aromatic oils. He also took them to see his army and showed them everything in his royal treasures! There was nothing in his palace or kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them. Then Isaiah, the prophet, went to King Hezekiah and asked him, ‘What did these men want? Where were they from?’ Hezekiah replied, ‘They came from the land of Babylon.’ ‘What did they see in your palace?’, asked Isaiah. ‘They saw everything.’, Hezekiah replied. ‘I showed them everything I own – all the royal treasuries.’ Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah ‘Listen to this message from the Lord of heaven’s armies: The time is coming when everything in your palace – all the treasures stored up by our ancestors until now – will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. Some of your very own sons will be taken away into exile. They will become eunuchs who will serve in the palace of Babylon’s king.”
The message that Isaiah gave to King Hezekiah was one filled with hopelessness. In 589 the Babylonian army would destroy Jerusalem and make the people of Israel, and that included taking Hezekiah’s sons, to be slaves to the kings in Babylon. This hopelessness came out of King Hezekiah’s decision to show off his riches and the power he had as king to the people he did not know.
I met a banker late in his life that lived in the dark pit of hopelessness. He had become rich as he climbed the ladder of success in the banking world. He made a decision with three other men in banking to buy a bank. But hard times and economic down turns would cause his bank to fail. Now late in life, too old to make a comeback, he faced the hopelessness of his economic situation.
I knew a couple that were very successful in their careers. They had a nice home and two young children. They seemed to have it all. But one day his wife came home from work and told him she wanted a divorce. She packed some clothes and left. He came to my office that night trying to figure out what had gone wrong. On his face was the pain of hopelessness. How could he handle bring a single father with two small children to raise? How could he deal with the economic change that might force him to sale the home that the children were growing up in?
On December 7, 1941 our nation faced hopelessness with the surprise attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor. We had lost a large part of our navy and thousands of our military personnel was killed or wounded. That day we knew we did not have anything between our west coast and Japan. That was a day that would change our lives forever and we faced the dark pit of hopelessness. In the war years from December 1941 until August of 1945 we faced the pain of war and death.
Addictions create hopelessness in the lives of people. I never will forget a young twenty-two old woman coming into my office. She needed food. She was a walking death, for she was on Meth. The addiction had taken total control of her life. She had cut ties with her family and was sleeping in her car. She had wrecked her body with drugs and now was facing the fact that she was dying from the drugs she used. I offered to get her help, but she rejected my offer of help. I would never see her again after she left my office that day.
Where could King Hezekiah have found hope in his hopelessness? Where could the banker, the husband, the drug addict find hope in their hopelessness? The source of hope is in God, the person we meet in Jesus Christ.
Isaiah wrote about this source of hope. “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.’ Listen, it’s the voice of someone shouting, ‘Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord! Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God! Fill in the valleys, and level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves and smooth out the rough places. Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all people will see it together. The Lord has spoken!’
A Voice said, ‘Shout!’
I asked, ‘What should I shout?’
‘Shout that people are like the grass. Their beauty fades as quickly as the flowers in a field. The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord; and so it is with people. The grass withers and flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.”
This is the only source for us in our hopelessness. It is the word of God for us. It is the baby born in Bethlehem. It is in the life of Jesus. It is in his death on the cross. It is the living resurrected Jesus. This hope defeats all our hopelessness. Jesus offers us that hope. Believe and receive the lasting gift of hope. Hope is found in faith in Jesus Christ.
