Isaiah 40:1,2 - Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary

Reader! do not fail to remark the Lord's gracious commands for comforting his people; he doubles it. Not that we are to suppose there was any reluctancy on the part of Isaiah to perform this blessed service; but certain it is, that the most forward of God's servants, in becoming sons of consolation, are not half so earnest in this employment as the Lord is. And do not to remark yet further, that, let the world say what they please, there is a people whom the Lord owns, and whom he will have comforted; yea, and he will be himself their comfort. And must it not be a blessed service, to be the ministers and instruments, in the Lord's hand, to this, the Lord's employment? And will not the Reader be anxious to remark how, and with what comfortable words, the Lord commands his people to be comforted? Let him pause over what is here said, and read the words again. Jerusalem, the guilty city, the bloody city, yea, the city of slaughter, where the butchery of all the prophets took place, and where the Lord of the prophets should, in after-ages, die upon the cross; this place, this people, shall have her sins pardoned! And, agreeably to this, immediately upon the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus, when he gave his final commission to his disciples, to go forth with the offer of salvation to all the world; Jesus commanded them to begin at Jerusalem, Luke 24:47. One should have thought, (speaking after the manner of men) that Jerusalem would have been excepted in the general grant; and that there, if anywhere, the Lord would have said, Go not. But, the Lord's thoughts are not our thoughts, neither his ways our ways. One thought more on this most blessed passage: what doth the Lord mean by Jerusalem having received double for all her sins? Surely it means, what is literally true, that in the person of her Lord, the atonement he made for sin was of such infinite value, that it not only compensated for all the evil done by sin, but, over and above, left such a redundancy of merit, as might be well called double, and such as will never be accounted for in the blessings of pardon, peace, and glory, and happiness to all eternity. Reader! I beseech you, often, yea, very often, turn to this sweet scripture, and think of Jesus!