Isaiah 42:18-44:5, "Blind, Deaf Witnesses: Be to the Praise of His Glory"

God is. This is the central truth of the universe. But why is it important to our lives? It is important because this one truth has massive implications for our being, our identity, our purpose, and as we will see, every choice we make either moves us closer or farther from our own flourishing and wholeness.

If you were going to build this case, how would you do it? Our passage might be one way to do it. This passage continues the courtroom scene we started last week. God has summoned all the nations to His courtroom. He is building His case that their idols are nothing, He is everything, and their greatest joy can be found in knowing Him and making Him known.

In today’s passage, Yahweh is calling witnesses for His case. There’s only one catch. God’s main witness is blind and deaf. How can someone who cannot see or hear bear witness in a courtroom? It may depend on the case being made.

Let’s review the opening statement, which came with the first implication, that we read last week:

Isaiah 42:8 (ESV)

I am the Lord; that is my name;

my glory I give to no other,

nor my praise to carved idols.

This implication leads into the first point today.

(This is a good time to insert one point I left out last week. We are in the section of Isaiah that tells us about the Servant of the LORD. The Servant of the LORD in Isaiah can be one of three people. This can be Isaiah himself. It could also be Israel as a nation, sometimes called Jacob, who was the father of the nation. Then it could be the Messiah, the anointed one who serves God’s purposes for deliverance and ruling for God. And then Messiah could be one of several people, including King David, some other king, or the deliverer of Israel who will come in the family line of David to redeem His people and establish the kingdom of God and the worship of God on the earth.

When we read any passage in Isaiah, it could be one or more of these in any given passage. Last week, for instance, the servant of the LORD is Israel as a nation. But it’s also clear that the nation of Israel does not fulfill the prophecy because of their sin and failure. And so the greater fulfillment is the coming Messiah, the one faithful Israelite, who will accomplish what the nation could not do.

When we come to our passage this week, we see all of that complexity at play.)

Sin and Disobedience Plunders, Loots, Traps, and Imprisons

Our passage opens with a less than complimentary picture of the redeemed people of God.

Isaiah 42:18–20 (ESV)

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.

If the Servant of the LORD in any given passage can be Israel, King David or the Messiah who will come from His line, Isaiah himself, or sometimes two of these at once, the context helps us interpret.

Isaiah 42:21 (ESV)

The Lord was pleased, for his righteousness’ sake, to magnify his law and make it glorious.

The people of Israel were the people Yahweh redeemed from slavery in Egypt and to whom Yahweh revealed His word. The LORD's Torah (instructions/law) is glorious. He gave it to Israel that they may live fruitful lives in the promised land. Literally, He promises that if they obey His commandments their grain and wine and oil will multiply (Deuteronomy 11:13-14). But also that their own lives would be long and successful (Deuteronomy 11:22-25).

Isaiah 42:22 (ESV)

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!”

Isaiah 42:24 (ESV)

Who gave up Jacob to the looter, and Israel to the plunderers?

Was it not the Lord, against whom we have sinned, in whose ways they would not walk, and whose law they would not obey?

Isaiah 42:25 (ESV)

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.

Let’s see the implications here. If God is, and God is everything, then because God has spoken to us, then His words, instructions, laws and judgments are our fruitfulness and wholeness. Every choice you make to either obey or disobey is either a step toward wholeness and fruitful living or a step toward a wasted life. Idolatry, or any other sin, plunders, loots, entraps, and enslaves us.

And like any loving Father, He will allow us to experience His anger and the painful consequences of our sins in order to discipline us. For those who have become children of God by faith, there is this other implication. God is, which implies that God is everywhere, so...

God is With His People in the Fire

Isaiah 43:1–3 (ESV)

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

Just like in the Exodus, so in the Exile, God is with His redeemed people. You may be experiencing the painful consequences of sin. It may be the fires of conflict in your relationships. It may be the plundering of your time and energy. It may be a flood of guilt and shame. It may be exile. But if you are a child of God, you will not be destroyed, this is the loving hand of your Father purifying you to restore you.

You are precious in his eyes, and honored, and He loves you. In fact, He would trade whole nations for you to bring you home. This is what He told Israel through Isaiah:

Isaiah 43:3–5 (ESV)

I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you.

Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.

Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you.

Israel would go into exile for their sins. But God would redeem Israel once again. The same nations that had enslaved them would now be exchanged to bring Israel home. This is what God does for His redeemed people. When you are His child, He would give anything to restore you.

When you stack up the redeemed people of God against all the other nations, they may not compare in many ways. They aren’t as powerful or wise by worldly standards. They may not be influential. But they have this one thing going for them: they are a visible demonstration to the world of the invisible God who saves the lost sinner. So the other implications really build up to this one. 1. We are sinners, and our sins have plundered and enslaved us. 2. God will use the consequences of sin as discipline so that His children are not destroyed, but purified. 3.

Your Salvation is Yahweh’s Proclamation that He is God

The LORD finally calls His witness, who may seem less than adequate. But what we will see is that Yahweh uses that very inadequacy to demonstrate that He is and that He is God.

Isaiah 43:8–10 (ESV)

Bring out the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears!

All the nations gather together, and the peoples assemble.

Who among them can declare this, and show us the former things?

Let them bring their witnesses to prove them right, and let them hear and say, It is true.

“You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.

Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.

Isaiah 43:11 (ESV)

I, I am the Lord (YHWH), and besides me there is no savior.

He points back to the time of Abraham.

Isaiah 43:12 (ESV)

I declared and saved and proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you; and you are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and I am God.

Then He points forward to the promise of return from exile in Babylon

Isaiah 43:14–15 (ESV)

Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:

“For your sake I send to Babylon and bring them all down as fugitives, even the Chaldeans, in the ships in which they rejoice.

I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.”

He points back again to the Exodus in verses 16-17, but then says,

Isaiah 43:18–19 (ESV)

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

The people could testify to God’s deliverance through water and fire, but ultimately, all they bring to the table is their sins,

Isaiah 43:24 (ESV)

You have not bought me sweet cane with money, or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices.

But you have burdened me with your sins; you have wearied me with your iniquities.

They had disqualified themselves over and over again, and God had delivered them and restored them over and over again. And this is where we see the point God is making. He can use a witness who is blind and deaf, because He doesn’t need the witness to testify to what they have seen or heard. He doesn’t need a perfect person to testify for Him. He only needs the witness to be present, alive, saved. The existence of the redeemed people of God is His proclamation that what He declared, He has done. He said He would redeem a people for Himself, and He has done it.

One final implication comes in verse 13

Isaiah 43:13 (ESV)

Also henceforth I am he; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work, and who can turn it back?”

When God saves, no one can turn it back. The work is complete and irrevocable. Even when we sin, God is...

Isaiah 43:25 (ESV)

“I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

He saves us, forgives us, cleanses us, and chooses to not remember our sins for His own sake. Not because we deserve it, but because He is...

Exodus 34:6–7 (ESV)

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

And the result is that the fruitful lives God intended for His redeemed people that their sin had robbed from them, He would restore.

Isaiah 44:1–5 (ESV)

“But now hear, O Jacob my servant, Israel whom I have chosen!

Thus says the Lord who made you, who formed you from the womb and will help you: Fear not, O Jacob my servant, Jeshurun whom I have chosen.

For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.

They shall spring up among the grass like willows by flowing streams.

This one will say, ‘I am the Lord’s,’ another will call on the name of Jacob, and another will write on his hand, ‘The Lord’s,’ and name himself by the name of Israel.”

The LORD returns to this theme of Isaiah’s prophecies. God will make His people fruitful once again. When someone belongs to the LORD, they are promised a glorious, beautiful growing life. Not free from hardship, but growing. like a willow by flowing streams.

Here are some massive implications, and this is where we find Jesus. Jesus came and magnified the Torah instructions and law (Is 42:21) by fulfilling it in His life and teaching. Then He bore the fire of God’s wrath upon Himself on the cross for our sin, disobedience, idolatry. And He was raised to free us and restore us from sin and death.

Here are the implications: When you are in Christ Jesus the Redeemer, you belong to the LORD God. There is nothing you can do or say or think that will separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. But you also have the Spirit of God poured out upon you, and living in you as your blessing and inheritance.

As Christians, we get really caught up in worrying about saying the right thing when we testify to others about our salvation in Jesus Christ. But we see so many times in scripture, even when we don’t say anything, our very existence is testimony enough.

Ephesians 1:11–12 (ESV)

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,

so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

You don’t have to do anything or say anything to praise His glory. Your being a person saved by God through the redemption we have in the blood of Jesus is praise enough for God.

But when you are united to Jesus by faith, you are a branch connected to the vine that gives life to your mortal body by His Spirit who lives in you, and you will bear fruit. When you forgive the unforgivable, when you give sacrificially, when you love your enemy, when you bless after you’ve been cursed, when you grow in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, you are bearing fruit that is a testimony to the world that God is, that God redeems, and God restores our wasted lives to fruitful wholeness.

Communion

Questions for Discussion

Have you ever been to court or given testimony in a case? What makes someone a good witness in court?

What is the main difference between a good witness in a human court and the witness God uses to declare His reality to the world?

What do we learn about God from this passage?

What are some implications of these truths that we learn about God for our lives?

What do we learn about people and ourselves from this passage?

What makes it difficult to bear witness for God and how does this passage help us overcome those obstacles?