Understanding the Heart of Discipleship Isaiah 40:1-5 The more we understand God's plan, the easier and quicker it is to make progress.

The LORD in Isaiah 40:1-5 highlights the overall means by which He redeems and uses His people. These three stages perfectly correspond with the three New Testament teachings of Christian living. The Lord justifies, sanctifies and glorifies His people.

OVERVIEW OF OUR JOURNEY OF DISCIPLESHIP ISAIAH 40:1-5

Scripture	Summary	Application
A. True Comfort (Isaiah 4O:1-2) “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.” (Isaiah 40:1,2).	The covenant with God's people stands behind all His works with and in His people including judgment. Once God's purpose through discipline is accomplished, it is ceased. Here, then, they will find comfort and encouragement.	No matter how difficult the process, we are never to undermine God's work by asking, "Doesn't He love me?" His love is everlasting. God disciplines His children because of His love.
B. An Empty Room (Isaiah 40:3-4) "A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; And let the rough ground become a plain, And the rugged terrain a broad valley." (Isaiah 40:3,4).	God's purpose is to make room for Himself. He does this through lifting the valleys and lowering the mountains.	God helps us make room for Him in our lives. This is sanctification - setting apart to Himself. He does this in two chief ways: (1) He helps us overcome the lack of faith where we have given up hope, and (2) He helps us get rid of different manifestations of pride and self-confidence.
C. The Lord's Glory (Isaiah 40:5) "Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed, And all flesh will see it together; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:5).	God only receives glory when His work is made manifest in our lives.	We must strive as our life's goal to bring glory to His Name. This means we allow Him to do His work in and through us the way He desires. This begins now on earth but is perfected in His presence.

A. True Comfort (Isaiah 4O:1-2)

True forgiveness can be found only in true the true salvation of a person.

True comfort comes from the Lord when His people know that God's judgment has been effectively turned from them. Once His judgment is removed, we then need to learn and remember the great teachings of assurance of salvation, perseverance of the saints, God's everlasting love, election, holiness and adoption into His family.

God declares us righteous through Christ's work on the cross. God has prepared the work necessary for reconciliation. Our faith in Christ and His work effectively applies it. This is what justification by faith means. When we have become God's children, we see that the judgment has been fully placed on Christ thus setting us free to thrive within a wonderful relationship with the Lord.

Isaiah 40:1-2 refers to God's judgment upon His people for their wrong doing. This is a form of His discipline in which He uses difficult circumstances to bring His people back to Himself. This is true with God's covenant in the New Testament too. Without being part of His covenant, there is not discipline. There is no comfort. People just listlessly go along in the world until a final judgment.

Application: A clear understanding of salvation is important or we will waver back and forth under the subjectivity of our feelings our whole lives. When we can interpret our lives from the perspective of God's Word, we then can rightly understand the work of sanctification and glorification in our lives.

B. An Empty Room (Isaiah 40:3-4)

Every major construction effort requires a lot of planning. Fortunately, God has done this behind the scenes of each of our lives, as local churches, families and individuals. We should realize that the plans are done very carefully in love with the express purpose that we can share in His inheritance. These sanctification plans, though, require a lot of work in our lives and therefore a lot of inconveniences.

The goal is always the same: "Clear the way for the LORD." Jehovah Himself desires to live out His glorious self in our lives. The goal is not to just fill in the valleys and tear down the hills. The long term construction equipment and mess from this work might make us feel this, but it is not. Our lives are being transformed for the purpose of making room for the Lord. In essence then, this step can be summarized by a reshaping of our lives.

God works on two major projects as noted below. After this, there is always a long series of minor work characterized by the first two but on a much smaller scale. This work is never comfortable but always necessary. The goal for all projects will be to let God live out His glory in our lives.

Goal: Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
Major Project #1	Major Project #2	Minor Projects
Let every valley be lifted up	And every mountain and hill be made low	And let the rough ground become a plain, And the rugged terrain a broad valley.
The Lord heals our wounds. These are sins of deficiencies stemming from doubt in God and His good purposes for our lives. Some of these are: worry, stress, fears, indecision, self-hatred, depression, and suicide.	The Lord eliminates our pride. Self-confidence is the belief that one can manipulate circumstances to gain what we want. Some of the sins of self-confidence are: pride, anger, bitterness, looking down upon, immorality, stealing and lying.	Minor work is always needed. Discipleship is for life. The minor work is characterized by holes and ruts or rocks and obstructions. This rough ground still needs to be worked on as the major projects. God's work on our lives make us smoother and smoother. Humility of soul and dependence upon God are constantly needed to be God's effective servant.

Before this work is discussed in more detail, we need to understand that we are not spiritualizing these words. Instead we are applying these words to clear New Testament instructions. This theme is more pronounced than most of us realize.

John the Baptist clearly was the voice crying out in the wilderness (Isaiah 40:3). Jesus Christ was the glory of God that was proclaimed. Jesus "manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him." (John 2:11). The importance and priority of this work is seen in how Isaiah 40:3 is quoted in each Gospel.

Matthew 3:3	For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet, saying, “THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT!’”
Mark 1:3	THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.’”
Luke 3:4	as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.
John 1:23	He said, “I am A VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE STRAIGHT THE WAY OF THE LORD,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”

This prophecy was fulfilled by Christ's coming. God's glory was fully revealed in Christ (cf. John 1:14-18). It was fulfilled in the sense that John the Baptist preached repentance and forgiveness and the people found their ways to the waters of the Jordan seeking baptism. He knew he was not the Way. He only made a way for the Lord.

”It is He who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” (John 1:27).

”This is He on behalf of whom I said, ‘After me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’ (John 1:30).

This goal has not changed. We are to make a way for Christ by preaching the gospel of the kingdom. We are first to be affected by repentance and then call others to be follow Christ. This is exactly what we see in the synoptic gospels. The preparation comes by rightly responding to God in our lives and then encouraging others to do so. Let's read the way the synoptic gospels summarize the Great Commission.

"And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20).

"And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned. (Mark 16:15)

"And that repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem." (Luke 24:47)

Like John we are to humble ourselves to God's standards, be baptized and preach the Gospel of repentance. The message of repentance must first affect our own lives. We have to be ready to admit where we have failed and turn to Christ for forgiveness and imitate His life. Remember that this humbling of heart is to be permanent. Many Christians think that it is but during the point one is saved. Maturity in Christ comes as we regularly and continually recognize our emptiness and making room for Christ to fill us all and all.

2) Removing the Mountains - Misdirected Faith: Humbling and Redirecting of our Trust

The second major construction work takes place when God takes down the mountains and hills in our lives. Where the first group had a major problem of doubt or lack of faith, these have problems with trust in the wrong thing. They have a misdirected faith. Indeed, we acknowledge that their 'faith' does keep them from the sins mentioned above, they are nevertheless horribly sinful and selfish.

Confidence can be in a number of areas including religion, philosophy, experience or self. In every case pride is associated with this confidence. Their pride gives them the feeling that they are right and do not need to subject what they believe to cross examination. Pride blinds themselves to certain areas of life and therefore is the opposite to humbling. A humble person admits they were wrong and is very open to God's solution.

There is plenty of hope for our areas of defeat and healing for our anger and pride. My son once asked when we were traveling the hilly roads of West Virginia, "Why is it that they need bridges in the mountains?" I pointed out the goal. If you are here and you want to travel there, what is the best way? If you do not have a bridge, how are you going to get there? You have to go up and down those steep slopes. Isn't it much better, I explained, that there is a bridge that makes everything flat and smooth?!

There is a third construction. It is not major but minor. However, this minor construction is ongoing. He doesn't speak of deep valleys or deep mountains but things that get in the way. They characterize problems and temptations that we will face all our lives. Examples including wasting time and money on self, willingness for interpersonal relationships to be troubled, and plain old laziness. God works on these areas too!

”And let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; (Isaiah 40:4b).

Summary: God will be disrupting the lives of His people until Christ returns. This is what He is doing. We need to understand what work He is doing in our lives so that we can work along with Him. Some people because they do not understand this, remain stubborn so their lives need to go through bigger and more troublesome construction. In all of this, we need to carefully distinguish the reason God is doing these things. God has a goal higher than making us feel troubled. This is discussed further in the third point.

C. Smoothing the Road -Refining our Faith: The Lord's Glory (Isaiah 40:5)

"Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed, And all flesh will see it together; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:5)

The goal of our faith is to bring glory to God. There is clearly no higher call than to glorify His Name by recognizing what He wants and in order to please Him complete it. Construction sites have their purposes and goals. They always have something greater in mind than the project itself. A person might have a building or a road built. They are elated when the project is finished on time and within budget constraints. But they are more eager to see the building or the road to be actually properly used. There is no sense in having an empty building or deserted road!

So it is with God's construction in our lives. We find that the goal of forming a level road is important, but it is not the end goal. The larger end purpose is that the glory of God might be revealed. His revealed presence is what makes all the construction hassles, detours and waits worth it all.

Many people have not at all thought about the purpose God has in mind for their lives. They are thinking what they want of their lives. What a shame they miss out on the fulfillment of their lives! Let's try to better understand this concept of God's glory in our lives from the New Testament.

"Through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God." (Romans 5:2).

"And if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him". (Romans 8:17).

"And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory," (Romans 9:23).

"To the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, be the glory forever. Amen." (Romans 16:27)

God's goals for our lives are life long, but they have immediate implications.

Many other verses share with us the way the glory of God wishes to operate in our lives. He chooses to exert His glory in our humble and broken vessels.

We must then come down from our neatly planned thrones. Allow God to build one that is great for Him. From what I understand, this means our original dreams and visions will need to die in the dirt of time before His more glorious plans can be built. His plans will come into being as we live in humble obedience before Him. In this way, He gets the glory. The more you humble yourselves, the more room you make for Him. If you want to keep pushing your way, your knowledge, your experience, your wealth, your abilities, then you will have yourself. Not much glory there. Man's glory is nothing (Isaiah 40:6-8). We are like a withering piece of grass there for a day. But if we can gain an eternal glory in these frail vessels, then we will be forever awed.

"Everyone who is called by My name, And whom I have created for My glory, Whom I have formed, even whom I have made.” (Isaiah 43:7, NASB).

I have chosen to deny myself. I choose to work myself hard in denying myself and seeking God's presence in my life. I have no greater good to work for than to have God live in me. There are costs but by His abundant graciousness, I will bear them.

But think a moment. If we can trade in that which has little or no value for that which is eternal and glorious, will you do it? When we fix these goals clear in our heart, God will work with us in yet a more special way. He is looking for that man to stand in the gap. He is looking for that man who will live uprightly. Will you be that man?

”For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His. You have acted foolishly in this. Indeed, from now on you will surely have wars.” (2 Chronicles 16:9).

“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.”

What words are Isaiah told to tell to His people? In what frame of heart is he to speak them? Three times the word 'that' or 'because' is used in Isaiah 40:2. These are the three reasons he is told to say what he is suppose to say. What are the three reasons for this promised comfort?

Explain each of these three reasons. Remember that Isaiah is in true prophetic style stating that the words from Isaiah 39 will come true but as it happens, His people will realize it has a purpose and a time limit. In other words God is watching over them. Apply this to the discipline God conducts with His people in the New Testament. Give verses to support your view. Again apply this to the discipline given by a parent. Give verses to support your views.

The word 'salvation' refers to both the time when we are rescued from the world into God's covenant people, but also as His people when we are rescued from difficult times we were facing. What is true in these verses? How does this relate to the way God deals with you?

B. An Empty Room (Isaiah 40:3-4)

"A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; And let the rough ground become a plain, And the rugged terrain a broad valley."
(Isaiah 40:3,4).

Who do you suppose it is calling out? What does the voice cry out? What is the purpose for all this major construction? In what ways does he make the way clear for the Lord? Where else is this mentioned in scripture? How does the above description describe these three major works? Can you think of any other way to describe them? If so, write them down and support them with scripture.

What is true repentance?

"Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed, And all flesh will see it together; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:5).

What happens as a result of clearing the way for the LORD? What will be revealed? What does this mean? Does God desire that His glory be shone? Do you think that the Lord will make sure this spiritual principles always works out? Can you trust Him during your broken times for a closer experience with Him? What is your purpose in life? How much do you want His glory in your life? What might He do through your life if His glory shines?

 

Book of Isaiah: Plan and Outline Overview of the Book of Isaiah Discussion on Ten Sections of Isaiah Outline of Isaiah Graphical Redemptive Chart of Isaiah Light & Dark Illustrative Diagram Background of the Book of Isaiah A Historical Timeline of Isaiah Isaiah and Judah's Chronology Assyria's Relationship with Israel/Judah Section Introduction & Background Isaiah 1- 6 Isaiah 7-12 Isaiah 13-23 Isaiah 24-27 Isaiah 28-33 Isaiah 34-35 Isaiah 36-39 Isaiah 40-66

Isaiah Expository Studies: A Living Commentary Isaiah 6:1-12 Righteous Living Isaiah 9:6-7 Names of Yahweh Isaiah 11:1-5 Spirit-Dependent Isaiah 11:6-16 Christ's Rule Isaiah 29-32 Waiting & Planning Isaiah 38 Waiting On God Isaiah 40:1-5 Discipleship Isaiah 50:4-5 Heart of Discipleship Isaiah 53 Making of Godly Leader Isaiah 60:1-5 Shining Light Isaiah 66:18-22 Declare His Glory

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