The Consolation of Israel

In Luke chapter 2, Jesus is called by what I think is one of His most tender names: the Consolation of Israel.

Luke 2:25

"And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him."

The Messiah that the Jews long expected was often referred to as the The Consolation of Israel, or simply as the Consolation. Which I find fascinating, because it seems that the nature of the consolation they expected to receive was completely off the mark. You see, the Jews were expecting a great military leader, a man like the mighty warrior-king David, to come and avenge them of their enemies and destroy the Roman rulers of their day. What they got instead was Jesus, a man who willingly died a humiliating death on the cross, beaten, betrayed, mocked and scorned, spit upon and crucified.

It doesn't seem to make sense. How was a willing death on the cross supposed to console anyone?

The problem is not that Jesus failed to live up to the Jewish expectations of the Messiah. The problem was that the Jews were expecting the wrong kind of consolation.

Jesus death on the cross and His subsequent resurrection from the grave do indeed provide powerful consolation, to the proper kind of mourning. The kind that I am thinking of, and the kind that Jesus was utterly effective at providing comfort for, is the mourning that we must do over our seperation and alienation from God. And that alienation from God is caused by our sin; our great, inescapable, with-us-from-birth, sinfulness.

I've sort of written about this topic before, but I'm pretty sure it's an old enough post that most of you have never read it. There is an excellent example of the kind of mourning I am referring to in the book of Nehemiah. In Nehemiah's day, the Jews have just recently returned from an exile in Babylon. Because the temple was destroyed when they were taken into captivity, they have not been participating in regular worship services. There is a specific scene in which the people gather together and the Book of the Law of Moses (God's Word) is read out loud to them.

An amazing thing happens. In Nehemiah 8:9, we are told, "all the people wept, when they heard the words of the Law." You see, when they heard God's perfect law read out loud, they were peirced with the reality of their great sin. When they were confronted by what God required of them, they saw their great "missing of the mark." And it affected them so deeply that they wept. They wept so dramatically in fact, that the priests had to tell them, "This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn nor weep." (Nehemiah 8:9) And again in verse 10, "Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord, Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength." (emphasis mine)

That is exactly the kind of mourning for which Jesus is the Consolation. Because He died on the cross, bearing our sins in His flesh, we are comforted. Because He rose again from the dead, defeating the sting of death, we are comforted. Because He reconciled us to a holy and perfect God, whose very presence we could not enter without the atoning work which Jesus completed on the cross, we are comforted.

To be sure, there are many other ways in which Jesus is the consolation of us, His people, in our day to day lives. But it is the work that Jesus did on the cross, the work which reconciles us, who are desperate sinners, to a God who is holy beyond our wildest imaginations, which is the greatest consolation of all. Jesus is The Consolation of Isreal, the comforter of those who mourn.

Isaiah 40:1-2

"'Comfort, yes, comfort My people!'
Says your God.
'Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her,
That her warfare is ended,
That her iniquity is pardoned;'"