Isaiah 42:18-25
Amen. Some of y’all are wondering
the method to our madness. Usually, most often, the hymn
we sing after prayer time is also the hymn we sing after the
creed in the morning. I didn’t realize when we moved
out of the sanctuary in August that we’d be so long away from
our Psalter hymnal, and I miss it. But I was digging through
this week and found that, which is one of the doxologies we used
to sing about, I think. So I found it. So if we’re in
here a couple more months, we’ll sing it again. Turn, if you will,
to Isaiah 42. Last week we did 1 through 13,
and tonight we’ll do 14 to the end. Our focus will be on 18 to the
end, but we’ll read again 14 on. So remember in our study
of Isaiah, the first 39 chapters was God yelling at a bunch of
nations, Judah, definitely, Jerusalem. but also Israel or Samaria and
all the surrounding bad, evil, wicked nations. So he was yelling
at his own people, but also Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Philistia,
all the rest. So yelling at them, you’re bad,
telling them they’re going to get it, judgment. And then we
get to chapter 40 through 66, and it’s more positive. So last
week we saw the First of the servant songs, God’s servant
is Jesus, and Jesus comes to do what we fail to do. He does
what Adam fails to do, but he also is God’s faithful son. So catch this. All the things
God says of Israel, you’re my son, you’re my servant, you’re
my messenger, you’re my dedicated one. All the things God says
of Israel as a nation, and they stink at, right? He yells at
them for it, suffers for it. Jesus comes and does. He’s the
faithful servant. He’s the faithful messenger.
He’s the dedicated one. And what we fail to do, what
Israel fails to do, he does completely. And so there’s that connection.
Incidentally, if you’re reading through the Bible, maybe the
last week or two, you’ve been maybe reading through Matthew.
And why does Jesus go to Egypt? as a baby, you think it’s to
escape Herod and it is, but it’s to fulfill the prophecy of Hosea
out of Egypt, I have called my son. So if God brought Israel,
the nation out of Egypt, what does he also need to do? If Jesus
is parallel, he needs to bring him out of Egypt. So he goes
to Egypt to escape Herod, but it also fulfills the prophecy.
So anytime you see these words, these little thematic words,
remember they just connect all over the Bible. So it’s really
good for you to read your whole Bible and read it through and
do it. bunch because these things really
are fun to see and connect. So Isaiah 42, I’m going to pick
up at verse 14. It says, for a long time, I’ve
held my peace. I have kept still. I have restrained
myself. This is God. Now I’ll cry out
like a woman in pain. I will gasp and I will pant. I will lay waste mountains and
hills and dry up all their vegetation. I will turn the rivers into islands
and dry up the pools, and I will lead the blind in a way that
they do not know, in paths that they have not known. I will guide
them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough
places into level ground. These are the things I do, and
I do not forsake them. They are turned back and utterly
put to shame, who trust in carved idols, who say to metal images,
you are gods.” So he’s speaking judgment to the bad ones, you
know, disobedient, but he’s saying for those faithful ones, level
places, good things. All right. Now he’s going to
speak to Israel as a nation, as a whole. This is why you’re
in bad shape. This is why. You’re in hot water. He says, 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? Remember, he’s not talking about
Jesus. He’s a good messenger, good servant. 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. The Lord was pleased for his
righteousness sake to magnify his law and make it glorious.
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. 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. Was it not the Lord against whom
we have sinned and whose ways they would not walk and whose
law they would not obey? 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. Amen. The word of the living
God. If you’ve read the book of Hebrews,
and I hope you have, it says, I think I mentioned this this
morning, it says over and over and over, Jesus is better. Jesus
better than angels. Jesus better than Moses. Jesus
better than the Aaronic priesthood. Jesus better than all the sacrifices,
all the rest. Fix your eyes on Jesus. He’s
the author and perfecter of the faith. Put your faith and hope
and trust in the full blessings of God and his grace that come
in Christ. Don’t go back to Judaism. Don’t
go back to the old covenant stuff. Don’t regress back to things
that were appropriate for a point in time, but are now no longer
needed, useful, or beneficial because Jesus has come. And the
thing that the writer of Hebrews says when he gets to chapter
10 is, Kind of what Jesus has been saying to Israel. You’re
boneheaded. You’re not listening. You’re
meat headed. Right? You’re not hearing, you’re not
seeing, you’re not believing. And so in chapter 10 of the book
of Hebrews, there’s a, well, I guess you could say a terrible
Bible verse, not terrible in the way we would use it. You
know, like those beans were terrible. That meant they were yucky, right?
No, we mean terrible like as in awful. Well, awful. We misuse
that one too, don’t we? Well, we mean, It’s a, it’s a,
it’s a terrifying thing, right? A dreadful thing, an awful thing,
not yucky, but, but scary. Hebrews 10, I think it’s 31 says,
it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living
God. It is a fearful thing to abandon
our profession. And the writer of Hebrews says
there is no sacrifice that will save you from abandoning your
profession. You can expect and fearfully
expect judgment. The fury of fire will consume
you because it will consume all of God’s adversaries. And it
gives a comparison. Old covenant people set aside
the law of Moses. Well, now you know a lot about
the law of Moses that we could have said a lot more today, but
we didn’t because we’d still be here. But you know a lot about
the law of Moses. It’s to show us our sin. It’s
to lead us to the altar and the blood of Jesus. And it’s to give
us a guide to live a faithful life before the living God and
before the watching world. But what happens when a person
sets aside the law of God? The writer of Hebrews in chapter
10 says they die. Well, how much more if you spurn
the son of God? I mean, it’s one thing to say,
yeah, Moses, whatever. But what if you spurn the son
of God? What if you profane the blood of the covenant? You outrage
the spirit of grace. That’s sort of the trifecta that
the writer of Hebrews gives in chapter 10. You spurn the son
of God, you profane the blood of the covenant and you outrage
the spirit of grace. That’s where the passage then
says, vengeance is mine, says the Lord, the Lord will judge. And then the writer of Hebrews
just lays it out there. It is a terrible thing, a fearful
thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Well, when
you get to Isaiah 42, the section we read, what does God say? I’ve
had enough. I’ve held my peace, but now it’s
time for the fury of my fire. And the vengeance that is the
Lord has come upon Israel. The Lord will judge his people. Now it is still future. Babylon
is still a ways off from destroying Samaria. are from destroying
Judah and Jerusalem. But you, you know, the, the whole
story of the book of Isaiah, he prophesies in the 700s and
Israel or Samaria, the Northern part of Israel, they’re going
to get hauled off by the Assyrians, you know, the fish hooks in the
mouth and hauled off. And then the land is going to
get repatriated with what are the Samaritans. Remember they,
in Jesus day, the parable of the good Samaritan, You know,
you’re supposed to think, oh, the priest would help the person
robbed. The Levite would help the person robbed. But no, it
was the good Samaritan. Remember? And we hate Samaritans,
right? Because they’re a different race. That was the whole idea
of Jesus’ story is surprise. It’s the person we hate that
actually helps. So there’s the Assyrians that haul off the northern
tribe, but then Judah is going to get destroyed by the Babylonians. And so that’s the big picture
of Isaiah. You don’t obey God. You cast
aside the law of Moses. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.
You’re going to get judgment. You’re going to get his justice.
For Samaria or the northern tribes, it was the Assyrians. And then
for Judah, Jerusalem, it was the Babylonians. And so the heat
of God’s anger, the might of his battle, Samaria and Judah
are set on fire. They are burned up. Now, ordinarily,
and maybe it’s a bit untimely, but maybe somewhat timely, you
know, we’ve been watching the wildfires and California. And, you know, we’ve seen little
snippets of who set the fires or, you know, so-and-so busted
carrying a blowtorch around trying to start some more fires and
those hundred mile an hour winds, whatever the Santa Ana winds. When we find evidence of an arsonist,
usually we arrest them. We put them on trial. We hold
them responsible for setting the fire, but here it’s God setting
the fire. Israel, Judah, Jerusalem, you’ve
been bad. I told you, if you’re bad, you’re
going to get it. And here it comes through Assyria and Babylon. So God is the arson. God is the
judge, the just judge. the justice giver, and he does
it through arson. He does it through fire. But
also think about this. If you were in a position in
your nation to have information that would help the enemy invade
or beat you or have victory over you, and you gave that information,
we would call you a traitor. And in the old days, you get
hung by the neck till dead. And I don’t know what they do now.
I think they give you a peace prize or something, a presidential
medal of freedom. Freeman. We missed him today.
That’s where that came out. But traitors let the enemy in.
Well, here it is. It’s God. He’s the arson and
the traitor. Why? Why did God do this? Well, his
nation was to be on mission. They were to make the invisible
realities of heaven visible. That’s what we’re to do as a
church. They were to be a light to the world. Sounds familiar,
doesn’t it? And Abraham was their first convert.
Remember Abraham, who was worshiping idols in Ur of the Chaldeans.
And God comes to Abram and says, go up from this land, leave your
father’s house, take your family and your possessions and go and
sojourn in the land I will show you. didn’t even give them a
map. I’m just going to tell you when
you’re there. So he goes to the promised land and he builds an
altar. He calls on the name of the Lord.
He walks before God and he is blameless. And God says, you’ll
be blessed to be a blessing. And that’s the picture of Israel,
especially as they come into the promised land under Joshua.
And then they get through that ratty period called the judges
where everybody does what’s right in their eyes. Remember they
asked for a king after that, they get Saul, he’s rotten. Then they
get David and, you know, he’s a man after God’s own heart,
though he does boneheaded things. Welcome to the Christian life,
right? And then there’s Solomon and the period of David and Solomon
was really the zenith, the high point of Israel. Their border
stretched as far as they could. They had rest from their enemies
and they built the palace. They built the temple and they
were this little bitty nation, but all the other nations around,
even big ones, would send people and say, go up there and see
what it’s all about. Well, what was it all about?
It was all about Yahweh. And it was all about the realities
of heaven that you can’t see being made visible in the life
and the living of Israel. Kind of the way it’s supposed
to be with Christians as we are gathered and equipped, we’re
scattered into the world to be a light. And we should display
a bit of the heavenly realities that are unseen, but can be made
manifest through us. And as Peter says, we’ll give
an account. We are to give an account of the hope that is within
us. Well, the zenith, the high point of all this under David
and Solomon really arrives when the Queen of Sheba comes. One
of my favorite pieces of music is from Handel’s Solomon, and
it’s the arrival of the Queen of Sheba, a very interesting
piece of music. And Handel, as he does in the
Messiah, as he does in Israel and Egypt and several other of
his pieces, he captures the grandeur of what it must have been. Can
you imagine another king, another nation or a queen coming to little
bitty puny Israel? I mean, it’s like saying, I’m
going to go to Rhode Island because they’re doing something right
up there. I mean, Rhode Island, when’s the last time you heard
that mentioned? In a little while. Well, they’re going to come from
all these nations and see what’s so grand and great. And that’s
a high point in the life of Israel. And honestly, the life of Israel
has been pretty dark. There’s the period of the judges.
There’s the stretch of Saul and other bad kings who did what
displeased God. But there’ve been some bright
spots like Rahab who had faith in the God that she heard. routed
Egypt and the Egyptians and opened up the sea where they could cross.
She believed that God was going to give Jericho to the Israelites.
So there was Rahab and there’s Ruth, the Moabitess, who marries
into the faith and she marries Boaz and she’s the grandmother
of Jesus. And then there’s Bathsheba. David
wickedly coveted her and took her and committed adultery with
her, had her husband killed and lied about it and the whole big
bad business that it was. And yet you read the genealogy
of Jesus and there’s Rahab the prostitute, there’s Ruth the
Moabitess and there’s Bathsheba. In fact, it doesn’t say, it doesn’t
call her Bathsheba. It says the child that David
had from the wife, of Uriah the Hittite. It just plain says adultery
right then and there in the lineage of Jesus. Well, there are these
bright spots along the way. And we think about the Christian
life. We think about the history of God’s people. He calls us
here in this passage, his messengers. We got a message. We got to tell
it. He calls us his servant. We’re supposed to serve him on
earth. He calls us his dedicated one. We’re supposed to consecrate
ourselves and be steadfast in the ministry of the gospel. And then we think about Matthew
28, where Jesus, after his death and resurrection, after he spent
40 days with his disciples and his apostles, he gives them the
Great Commission, go into all the world. preaching the gospel,
baptizing and making disciples. And he says, I’ll be with you
even to the end of the age. And so where Israel was supposed
to come in and be a nation that people looked in on, we’re now
scattered into the nations and into the world and we’re to be
a bright light in all the places we go. I wonder if you think
about Israel, but also think about God’s people in the church
today and You know, when has been the Zenith, like it was
with David and Solomon, the arrival of the Queen of Sheba, or when
has been the Zenith of the church where missionary efforts were
greatest or revival was taking place or the church was doing
so well? Well, what begins to happen is
God’s people get deaf. What begins to happen, God’s
people get blind and they put God’s law behind their backs. They cast it aside and live their
own ways. I love how this passage says
God magnified his law. He did it for his righteousness
sake, but he also magnified the law and made it glorious. You
know, sometimes we think the Ten Commandments, the law of
God, oh, it’s burdensome, a bunch of rules. Can’t do anything,
can’t have fun, no drinking, no smoking, no dancing, right?
All those little rules we make up. He magnifies the law. He says
it’s glorious because it reflects his character. And if we live
the law, guess what? We reflect his character, but
they’ve cast the law behind their backs. They’ve cast God’s righteousness
aside and said, we prefer unrighteousness. The passage of scripture says
they would not walk in God’s ways. Jeremiah says we get to
a point where we no longer blush. Nothing shames us. Remember chapters
one through 39, God’s yelling at his people and the surrounding
nations because they’ve lived against his word. And what happens? They get plundered, they get
looted, they get trapped in holes and hidden in prisons. They get
taken away as spoil and plunder, and there is no rescue and there
is no restoration. Remember, it is a terrible thing.
It is an awful thing. It is a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of an angry God. And so if we cast aside the law
of Moses, that’s bad. But if we spurn the blood of
Jesus, if we spurn and cast aside the blood of the covenant, and
we say, buzz off, as it were, to the Holy Spirit, that’s a
terrible thing. So question, are you still hearing? Are you still seeing? And he
means spiritually. Our little, I shouldn’t say little,
he’s a fat dog now because it’s been cold and he’s not been going
on walks, but he hears the word cookie. All right, Jack, you
want a cookie? Oh, he is attentive, sits, looks
up at you longingly. But we take him out at night,
the last call, as it were, about 10 o’clock, and he disappears. He’s on the hunt for, there’s
a dead squirrel over in the neighbor’s yard, and he thinks that he should
have it. And you can call his name. You can use a sweet voice. You can use a loud voice. And
if he’s on the trail of that squirrel, he’s not coming back.
And so what I have to do is go out there in the cold and it’s
been nasty lately. So your, you know, your anger,
maybe like God’s anger rises as you go after this, you know,
this animal you once loved. Um, and you get up right beside
him and all of a sudden he realizes you’re there and guess what he,
he hears, but you can call and call and call and he is not going
to hear you. And we call that selective hearing,
right? You know, you’re, Get called
to supper. Boy, you’re going to run. Take
out the trash. You know, I didn’t hear that.
Got selective hearing. We’re like the dog. No, we’re
like the Israelites. Stubborn, stiff necked. And so
think about this for a moment. Where are you not listening?
You know, I don’t have to listen to sermons. I have to give them
and I don’t know which is worse, but it’s really hard to sit and
listen these days. We all have TikTok brain, right? Even if you don’t have TikTok,
we all have digital brain where our attention span is like a
rabbit. right? Or a dog in a field of rabbits.
We just don’t have an attention span. And so it’s hard, it’s
hard to listen, but that’s how God feeds us. Or maybe you’re
already 10 days, 11, 12 days into the new year. And that Bible
reading plan is already slipping. That’s a way you maybe aren’t
listening to the Lord. Or maybe as you ride around in
the car, you’ve always got the radio on. Or as you’re in the
house, you’ve always got the TV on. There’s just constant noise. And so you don’t have time to
think. You don’t have time to ponder. You don’t have time for the spirit
to be at work in you. Or maybe you read your Bible
and it’s quick. I got to get out the door. You don’t have
time for it to sink in and settle in, even for the Spirit to convict
you of sin or to convince you of something righteous that you
ought to do. Or perhaps, and this would be
the worst, you are harboring a sin, and that little sin is
something you love dearly, though it is contrary to God’s law.
That sin is something you will protect, it is something you
will nourish, it is something you will even say I have the
right to do it. And you do that, you become deaf
and become blind. These are times where we should
stop and think because what is our little saying? It is a terrible
thing to fall into the hands of an angry God. Now, if you’re
in Christ, you will… still be rescued and redeemed
and brought to heaven. But, but this would be a good
time to say, Lord, I’m, I’m really caught. I’m really stuck. I need
you to clean out my ears. I need you to take the scales
off my eyes. Cause this is, this is no way
to live. I need your light. I need your
grace. One last thing to think of, if God says his servant,
Israel, his servant, his people, have failed to be faithful messengers,
faithful servants, faithful dedicated ones, all that has been no good.
Remember this, Jesus is the faithful one. We’ll see some more servant
psalms. There’s three more to go. But
we also remember his fidelity to the covenant of redemption,
the covenant of of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit
to come and do the mission. So we may fail the mission. We
may be poor witnesses. We may bear dim light. We may
cast aside God’s commandments for a while and not be great
emissaries of God’s goodness, but Jesus never fails. And that’s
something to give us confidence. And always remember, pray with
me. Lord, bless us as we think tonight about how we can be better
hearers and better seers. But it takes you, the sight giver,
and you, the hearing giver, to make this work. So by your Spirit’s
grace, help us to see and to hear and to believe and to live
for you. We pray in Christ’s great and mighty name. Amen.