"Israel, the Blind" Sermon: Isaiah 42:18-25 (manuscript)

“Israel, the Blind”

[Isaiah 42:18:25]

July 5, 2020 YouTube

            After showing that idols are unworthy of worship and explaining that all the world will praise God in the end – when He punishes those who worship idols and never believe in the Servant Savior, God now turns to Jerusalem’s present condition and her impending conquest and exile into Babylon.

            God tells Jerusalem why she is going into exile.

            And we see, first, the Lord made His Law glorious.

            “Hear, you deaf, and look, you blind, that you may see!  Who is blind but my servant, or deaf as my messenger whom I send? Who is blind as my dedicated one, or blind as the servant of the LORD? He sees many things, but does not observe them; his ears are open, but he does not hear.”

            God accuses Israel and Jerusalem of having their eyes open and not seeing and their ears unblocked and not hearing.  And here the servant is obviously Israel, because the servant is a sinner – one who has sinned against the revealed Word of God.  They hear and see the Word of God, and they say they understand – that they have taken it in, but then when it comes time to act on God’s Word, they are completely oblivious – they don’t know what God or the prophets are talking about.

            You may have children and when you explain something to them – and their eyes are open and their ears are unblocked, but when you finish speaking and they say they understood, you ask them to say what you said, and they cannot say a word.  They are blind with seeing eyes and deaf with hearing ears.

            If you are a teacher, you may explain certain things to your students, only to have them say you never explained the thing or never told them about it at all.

            I know I have people tell me I never say on which day of the week our Christmas Eve service will be – among other things.

            Of course, this is more serious, because God gave His Word to His people and told them to observe and obey it.  We are told to know the Word of God and to obey it – and we don’t.

            Understand, all mere humans are sinners, that’s not what we are saying here.  The point is that they and we tend to ignore the Word of God.  We come to worship and hear the Word of God read, and then we never have any contact with it during the week, and we forget and do not practice what we hear in worship.

            The answer, of course, if we do believe that the Bible is the Word of God, is to be in the Word during the week – every day reading something – meditating on it – discussing it with others, and seeking to live out whatever God’s Word says to do.  We are a people who believe that right doctrine leads to right action, so if we are not doing what is right – as a habit – then we don’t understand or haven’t actually heard the right doctrine that has been put before us.

            Israel had the prophets and the priests.  Attending worship was a regular part of life.  They memorized God’s Word because they didn’t have Bibles to carry around.  But it didn’t sink in – it didn’t change them.

            In Malachi’s day, Israel was similarly condemned for their not internalizing and obeying God’s Word:

            “For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts” (Malachi 2:7, ESV).

            Isaiah continues:

“The LORD was pleased, for his righteousness' sake, to magnify his law and make it glorious.“

God’s Word – His Law – should never be understood to be a heavy burden – to be onerous.  Rather, for the sake of God’s Righteousness, He made His Law beautiful and revelatory of Who He is.

David writes about this in Psalm 19:

“The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure,             enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward” (Psalm 19: 7-11, ESV).

We should never read God’s Word and come away saying, “Aww!  You’re ruining my fun!”  If we feel like that, our sin has been exposed, and we should repent and obey what God has said.  God gave us the Law for our good – and, if we look at it carefully, it all points to the Savior, Jesus.

We were created to enjoy God – why else would He have created such a pleasurable world?  But we were also created to obey God.  Yet, we do not obey God as slaves, but as sons and daughters who will inherit the Kingdom at the end of the age.

Paul explains:

“So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:12-17, ESV).

God does not mean that we must perfectly keep the Law to be saved by Jesus – Jesus came because it is not possible for us to keep the whole Law before He saves us.  No, one of the reasons God gave the Law is to show us that we are unable to save ourselves.  (Those who say that the Jews are saved through the keeping of the Law have misunderstood the point of the Law and Original Sin.)

Now, however, as believers, we are to keep God’s moral Law and we are able to keep the moral Law, because God the Holy Spirit lives in us and enables us to do the good works that God requires of us.

And, as we read God’s Word and obey it, we should be able to see Jesus in it.

We read: “And he said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:25-27, ESV).

Jesus explains to the men on the road to Emmaus how all of the Scripture – all of God’s Law – points to Jesus and His work in one way or another.  Sometimes it will be obvious.  Sometimes it may take some work to understand how the Scripture relates to Jesus.

As Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17, ESV).

However, the people did not know God’s Word or keep it – they brought their discipline and exile upon themselves:

“But this is a people plundered and looted; they are all of them trapped in holes and hidden in prisons; they have become plunder with none to rescue, spoil with none to say, ‘Restore!’”

In and of themselves, Jerusalem had no hope.  But we know their hope and our hope is in Jesus.

So, let us love the Word of God and see Him in it and rejoice and be filled with joy as we pray that God the Holy Spirit will enable us to do all that God calls us to do as His people.

Second, the Lord disciplines His people.

            When something bad or painful happens, we tend to ask “why?”

            And there is a natural tendency to do that – to think of life as a quid pro quo – a phrase we all now understand.  We want to know what we did to deserve this or that, or why something we do not think we deserve is happening to us.  “Why is this happening to me?”

            “Why did I get cancer?  Why did I lose my job?  Why did I get mugged?”

            But God says that is the wrong question – what we should be asking is “Who is doing this to me?  Who is ultimately behind what is happening to me?”

“Who among you will give ear to this, will attend and listen for the time to come? Who gave up Jacob to the looter, and Israel to the plunderers?”

God asks Jerusalem if she is willing to listen – to hear the Lord out.  And He asks her, Who gave you up to the looters and plunderers?  Who allowed them to conquer you and destroy the nation and take you into captivity?

God answers this way, “Was it not the LORD, against whom we have sinned, in whose ways they would not walk, and whose law they would not obey?”

Who allowed the Covid virus to travel around the world and kill millions and destroy economies and business and individual lives?

Ultimately, God.  Why is another question.  But as for Who – if we believe that God is absolutely sovereign, as the Scripture tells us:

“all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:35, ESV).

So, looking at everything that happens throughout time and space, we can say that everything is occurring according to the Plan of God.  However, we must hold that in tension with the fact that God cannot sin or do evil.

So, when Joseph confronts his brothers, speaking of their selling him into slavery, he can say, “you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”  In other words, God sovereignly ordained that Joseph would be sold into slavery to achieve the good result of saving millions of lives.  Joseph’s brothers freely chose to sin against Joseph and do evil, but God used that act to achieve His good plan.

I recently listened to a sermon by Dr. Joel Beeke, and in it, he used an example of an elder in his church who needed to have a knee replacement.  After the knee replacement was over, it got infected, and they had to do surgery again.  And they sent him home, but his knee got infected again, so he went back into surgery.  And they told him if it got infected again, they would have to take his leg,  The knee did get infected and they did take his leg, and when Dr. Beeke went to visit him, unsure of what to say, he met the man in good spirits, and the man told him, “My Father must have something to teach me.”

I don’t know why that happened to this man, but he got the question right – he looked beyond his circumstances to God Who is sovereign over everything that happens.  Nothing can happen to us that God does not do or permit.  And that should be a comfort to us. 

Now, we think of discipline – God is disciplining Jerusalem by allowing the evil Babylonians to do evil and conquer Jerusalem to achieve the good discipline that God desires to have happen.  And we all know that no one likes discipline:

“And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? ‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.’

“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:5-11, ESV).

The question becomes, do we receive the discipline and grow from it – become the men and women that God wants us to be – or do we become angry and worsen under the Hand of God?

Jerusalem worsens.

“So he poured on him the heat of his anger and the might of battle; it set him on fire all around, but he did not understand; it burned him up, but he did not take it to heart.”

God says He poured out His Wrath on Jerusalem and disciplined her in war and actually set her on fire, but she still wouldn’t listen.  She wouldn’t repent.  She wouldn’t take the discipline to heart.

What is the point of discipline?  Restoration.  If there is no restoration after discipline taken to heart, all you have is abuse.  Discipline is given by One Who wants us to return – to become conformed to the Image of His Son.

That doesn’t make it easy or enjoyable – the author of Hebrews has already said that.  But once you are spanked or given your time-out, you should return more obedient and to the arms of those who love you.

This is the judgment that hangs over the whole world – God has given His Law for us to love and to see Jesus in and to obey – and if we do not, He disciplines us in whatever way He deems best.  And if we do not respond by being repentant and striving to better follow God – ultimately, if we shake our fist at God and say that Jesus is not the Savior, He will give us over to the fire for all of eternity.

So, let us remember that God disciplines His people because He loves us and wants us to be restored and to progress in the holiness we are called to. 

When we suffer, let us turn to the One Who is Sovereign over all and seek His face for wisdom and endurance and for growth.

Let us not resent our discipline but be thankful when we are restored and become more the man or woman God has called us to be.

Let us pray:

Almighty God, as we look at our text this morning, we find two things that we do not naturally believe:  Your Law is good and beautiful, and Your discipline is good and for our restoration and growth.  Help us to learn and to obey all that You have said and help us to respond rightly when You Fatherly Hand disciplines us.  Help us to have hope and joy by knowing that You are Sovereign over all of history – even our very lives – nothing escapes You, and nothing is out of Your control.  In Jesus’ Name, Amen.