December 5, 2025
The Comforts
of Faith
"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."
I S A I A H 4 0 : 1 - 8
We often refer to “the comforts of home,” when we are weary,
homesick, or navigating life’s trials. Home is where we are most
ourselves - where we rest, dwell with those who know and love
us, and create cherished memories. In times of suffering, what we
wouldn’t give for the comforts of home.
The Protestant Reformers referred to faith in a similar way.
They believed faith in God’s promises (fulfilled through Christ)
“comforts the terrified mind and brings it peace.”1 Just as we return home - at the end of a long day or during the holidays - Christians return to God’s promises as our consolation from sin, death,
and the devil.
This is why in Isaiah 40, when the prophet opens the second half of his book “dancing with promises,”2 as Martin Luther
says, he first sets the stage with nothing other than comfort itself.
Comfort which springs forth from peace, forgiveness, and God’s
unreasonable grace (v. 2). What greater consolation to the terrors
of our consciences than the unbelievable promise that through
Christ, we receive double for all our sins.
You might know a bit of what this is like if you consider how
your mom, despite slaving away all day to cook a Christmas feast
(which you didn’t help with at all), gives you a double portion of
your favorite side dish. Or despite that large fight you had about
putting together the kids Christmas toys, your spouse stays up
twice as long as you on Christmas Eve to make sure everything
is ready.
Just like these comforts of home, God’s promises defy our
understanding and yet he still gives them in abundance through
Christ.
His gospel is our comfort, and therefore it is our home.
DEAR HEAVENLY FATHER, THANK YOU FOR THE COMFORT YOU OFFER
YOUR PEOPLE THROUGH YOUR SURE AND
STEADY PROMISES DELIVERED THROUGH
YOUR BELOVED SON. AMEN.
1 Philip Melanchthon and Charles Leander Hill, The Loci communes of Philip Melanchthon, trans.
Charles Leander Hill (Boston: Meador, 1944), 154.
2 Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 17: Lectures on Isaiah: Chapters 40-66, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan,
Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 17 (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House,
1999), 3.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be
translated in whole or in part into any other language.
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Coming Home for Christmas: Advent in Isaiah © 2025 1517
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