WWUTT 2049 Yahweh’s Chosen Servant (Isaiah 42:1-25)

Every single one of us have, at some point, been an idol worshiper. We have exalted in our hearts something to the place of God and honored that instead of the

Lord. Thank God that He is merciful when we understand the text. This is

When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature

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Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Isaiah, we're up to chapter 42 this week, where God addresses

His chosen servant and then He turns to address blind and deaf Israel.

So let me begin here by reading verses 1 through 9 of Isaiah 42 out of the

Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. Behold my servant whom

I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul is well pleased. I have put my spirit upon him.

He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry out or raise his voice, nor make his voice heard in the street.

A crushed reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not extinguish. He will bring forth justice in truth.

He will not be faint or crushed until he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands will wait expectantly for his law.

Thus says the God, Yahweh, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and its offspring, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it.

I am Yahweh. I have called you in righteousness. I will also take hold of you by the hand and guard you, and I will give you as a covenant to the people and as a light to the nations.

To open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon and those who inhabit darkness from the prison,

I am Yahweh, that is my name. I will not give my glory to another nor my praise to graven images.

Behold, the former things have come to pass. Now I declare new things.

Before they spring forth, I cause you to hear them. So this is about this is a prophecy concerning the coming of Christ.

And you might have picked that up at the beginning of chapter 42 because we read that very section chapter 42 verses one through four when we were in Matthew 12.

So Matthew shows that Christ is the fulfillment of this prophecy concerning the chosen servant at the start of Isaiah 42.

So we have this chapter broken down in this way. You have verses one through four, which describe the chosen servant.

Then God addresses his servant in five through nine and really 10 through 13 are included in that.

And then God is going to address blind and deaf Israel in verses 14 to 25.

So we just had we just heard from Yahweh who said, I declare new things and before they spring forth,

I cause you to hear them. So then addressing Israel that has become blind and deaf in the latter half of this particular chapter.

So coming back to 42 one through four, behold, my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul is well pleased.

I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations.

Now, remember the context in which we're reading this, the Israelites, the

Jews have been exiled into Babylonian captivity and they're not going to stay there.

God will restore them. He still has a plan for the Jews and it is through the Jews that he is going to bring about this servant, this righteous one who is going to redeem his people and bring justice to the land.

Now, the way that justice is brought is through his atoning sacrifice that we might be justified through the precious blood of Jesus.

Those who do not have faith in him and are not justified, remain condemned and they will perish in his judgment.

When we stand before the great white throne of judgment, when the nations are gathered before him as described in Matthew 25, when he will put the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left, the sheep will enter into eternal life and the goats will go to eternal punishment.

Everyone on that day receives justice. No one receives injustice.

If you are in Christ, the justice that you will receive is the justice that Christ paid for by his blood with his death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave.

For as Romans 4 .25 tells us, he was raised for our justification. So the justice that we receive in Christ is that he paid our penalty for us, that we may stand before God as righteous because of what

Christ has done for us. The justice that the unbelieving will receive will be the penalty that is due to them for their sins, a penalty they will never be able to pay back.

They will spend eternity in hell, separated from God in eternal punishment, exactly as Jesus said, because they did not trust

Christ. They did not obey his gospel. That's the word of Paul in second Thessalonians chapter one.

So this is how justice is brought to the earth by Christ. The apostle

Paul at the Areopagus in Acts chapter 17 said that God will judge the world in righteousness and he is shown by whom he will judge the world by raising him from the dead.

Jesus is the one who will enforce justice in the earth, who does justice and implements judgment in the last things.

So we go on in Isaiah 42 verse two to read, he will not cry out or raise his voice nor make his voice heard in the street, a crushed reed he will not break and a faintly burning wick he will not extinguish.

He will bring forth justice in truth. So just as verse one ended.

So versus two and three in the same way, he will bring forth justice to the nations.

He will bring forth justice in truth. And this is justice for those who are humble, those who know that they are nothing.

That's that's the description of the crushed reed and the faintly burning wick. These are those who are broken or crushed, but they are not entirely broken off.

They are weighed down by the burden of their sin and they're, they're conscious of their sin.

They are weighed down by calamity or by their circumstances or by affliction of some kind.

This is why they are faint and weak, but Jesus does not come to crush them.

In fact, he is coming to raise them up. Verse four, he will not be faint or crushed until he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands will wait expectantly for his law.

And again, Matthew shows that Jesus is the fulfillment of this. Behold my servant whom

I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon him and he shall proclaim justice to the

Gentiles. He will not quarrel or cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.

A battered reed, he will not break off and a smoldering wick he will not put out until he leads justice to victory and in his name, the

Gentiles will hope. So we go on here in Isaiah 42 where God addresses this servant in verse five, thus says the

God Yahweh who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and its offspring who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it.

We may recognize that he is God. He is sovereign and in control of all things.

And he says to his servant, so God who sits enthroned over all addresses his servant so that you may know that the servant has received all that comes from the father.

I am Yahweh. I have called you in righteousness. I will also take hold of you by the hand and guard you.

And I will give you as a covenant to the people as a light to the nations to open blind eyes to bring out prisoners from the dungeon and those who inhabit darkness from the prison.

I am Yahweh. That is my name. I will not give my glory to another nor my praise to graven images.

Behold the former things have come to pass. Now I declare new things before they spring forth.

I cause you to hear them. And this is all in reference to Christ.

The new thing that God is doing is the new covenant that he is bringing forth in Christ Jesus and Jesus opens blind eyes.

He brings prisoners out from the dungeon and those who inhabit darkness from the prison.

We have seen Jesus literally open the eyes of the blind. But as we read in Matthew, these miracles that he does physically are to show that he has spiritual authority even to open the eyes of the blind, open the spiritual eyes of the blind, that they may see their sin and know that Christ is the righteous one who reigns and forgives and restores.

And because of this, we read then in verses 10 through 13, sing to Yahweh a new song.

Sing his praise from the end of the earth. You who go down to the sea as well as its fullness, you coastlands and those who inhabit them.

Now, what this is describing here is what we witness in the world. Even now, the world in which we live, we see that his justice has gone from one coast land to the other, that there are people everywhere in the land who believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ, who are justified by faith in him. Their sins are forgiven. It is happening all over the world.

Let the wilderness and its cities lift up their voices. The villages where Kidar inhabits, let the inhabitants of Sila sing aloud.

Let them shout for joy from the tops of the mountains. Let them give glory to Yahweh and declare his praise in the coastlands.

Yahweh will go forth like a warrior. He will awaken his zeal like a man of war.

He will make a loud shout. Indeed, he will raise a war cry. He will prevail against his enemies.

No one can stop. The message of the gospel from going forth into all of the land, as Jesus had said to his disciples in Matthew 16,

I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. So we have this message going out into all of the land and everyone who hears the gospel and believes it, who comes to faith is saved and has been added to this kingdom of God that he is expanding in the earth.

Now we have an address here to those who are deaf and blind. That's the next half of Isaiah 42, beginning in verse 14.

I have kept silent for a long time. I have kept still and restrained myself.

Now like a woman in labor, I will groan. I will both gasp and pant.

I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation.

I will make the rivers into coastlands and dry up the pools of waters.

I will lead the blind by a way they do not know in paths.

They do not know. I will guide them. I will make darkness into light before them and rugged places in the planes.

These are the things I will do and I will not forsake them. They will be turned back and be utterly put to shame, who trust in graven images, who say to molten images, you are our gods.

Now again, in context, we know that the immediate application of this is the

Jews. This is spoken to them, they who had worshiped false gods.

And so as punishment, God had exiled them to Babylonian captivity. Now all of this is being written before that happens, but when they come into that Babylonian captivity, they come back to the prophet

Isaiah and they read here of how God will not destroy them in exile, but plans to deliver them back into the land.

So all that's being said here is it is God's promise to them. Your eyes will be opened.

Your ears will be unstopped and I will lead you back to the land. You would be unable to do this on your own, but I'm the one who's going to lead you back so that when their eyes are open, they see it was not them who did it, but Yahweh who has been with them all the while.

I will not forsake them, God says. They will be turned back and be utterly put to shame, who trust in graven images, who say to molten images, you are our gods.

Perhaps these who had previously worshiped false gods will come back to the knowledge of the true

God, and that's what the Lord does for every one of us. When we hear the gospel and we believe it, we have turned from our false gods to the true

God. Everyone at some point has worshiped false gods. As John Calvin said, the human heart is an idol factory.

We're constantly coming up with things that we would exalt to the place of God and worship that.

Even if it's the passions of our own flesh, we will go after those things that suit us rather than glorify

God. So when Christ comes, when the gospel comes and our hearts are brand new, the

Holy Spirit comes in, ransacks the place, smashes and destroys all of those false idols that we have lifted up and exalted instead of God, and the

Holy Spirit makes us brand new. That we hear the gospel of Christ proclaimed and we turn from our sin to Jesus.

We are clothed in his righteousness that we may now desire to do the holy thing, that which pleases the

Lord, rather than the godlessness that we were in before the gospel came to us.

This is what the Lord says to those who proclaim to these molten images, you are our gods.

Anything that we might, any faith that we might claim that we have is because God has done it.

Not by our will, but his will be done in our lives. He continues on verse 18, hear you deaf and look you blind that you may see.

Who is blind but my servant or so deaf as my messenger whom

I send? Who is so blind as he that is at peace with me or so blind as the servant of Yahweh?

Now that can be confusing because we just read about the servant at the beginning of chapter 42.

So who are we talking about here when God says that my servant is blind and he is deaf?

If that's talking about Christ, he can't be blind and deaf. No this is in reference specifically to Israel because remember

Israel was a servant of God and was to be a servant of God in the earth. But Israel turned away from the

Lord to false idols. Christ comes and accomplishes what

Israel could not do. And so Jesus becomes the trusted servant.

He's the righteous servant. Israel's the fallen servant. So we go on in verse 20, you have seen many things

Yahweh says to Israel, but you do not keep them. Your ears are open, but none hears.

Yahweh was pleased for his righteousness sake that he make the law great and majestic.

But this is a people plundered and pillaged as spoil. All of them are trapped in caves or are hidden away in prisons.

They have become a plunder with none to deliver them and a spoil with none to say, have them return.

I don't know if you can remember all the way back to Isaiah six, it's been a long time since we were at that point of the book.

But when God had first called Isaiah and told him to go out and proclaim to this people, he said, go on and tell this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand.

Keep on seeing, but do not know. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and return and be healed.

It was God's plan, his intention that this people would be judged because of their idolatry.

And so preach to them, but they're not going to be able to hear it here in here in chapter 42, we're seeing things starting to change.

You have seen many things, but you do not keep them. Your ears are open, but none hears.

Remember God is going to be the one that will restore their sight and restore their hearing so that they may know and believe those who come to faith.

Verse 23, who among you will give ear to this? Who will give heed and hear hereafter?

Who gave Jacob up for spoil and Israel to plunderers? Was it not Yahweh against whom we have sinned?

The we, the collective we there being Isaiah, including himself in that and in whose ways they were not willing to walk and whose law they did not obey.

So we poured out on him the heat of his anger and the fierceness of battle and it set him aflame all around.

Yet he did not know it and it burned him, but he did not set it upon his heart. Next week when we get to chapter 43, we'll read about the redemption of Israel.

That's where the turn will take place. That even though Israel was incapable of seeing, incapable of hearing, yet the

Lord showed mercy. Chapter 43 verse 1, but now thus says Yahweh, your creator, oh

Jacob, and he who formed you, oh Israel, do not fear for I have redeemed you.

I have called you by name. You are mine. And that'll be the chapter that we look at next week.

We are certainly deserving of God's judgment because all of us had gone astray.

We'll read that later on in, uh, in Isaiah 53, all of us like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, but the

Lord has laid on him on that chosen servant, the iniquity of us all so that by faith in Jesus, our sins are forgiven.

The blind are healed. Our eyes are open. The deaf can hear our ears have been unstopped that we may see and hear

Christ and know him and worship him. Heavenly father, thank you for what we've read here today.

These are reminders of who Christ is. The one who has been sent by he who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and its offspring, who gives breath to the people on it and, and spirit to those who walk in it.

You are holy. You are righteous. You sit in throne above all things. And because we have rebelled against you, what we deserve is destruction, but you have been so kind to us through the son whom you sent

Jesus Christ that in him, we, we may have life and have it abundantly teach us to walk in your ways today.

We ask in Jesus name, amen. This has been, when we understand the text of pastor

Gabriel Hughes, for all of our podcasts, episodes, videos, books, and more visit our website at www .utt

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