God’s Pleasure in Magnifying His Law

Isaiah’s Deafness, Blindness, and the Reading of God’s Word

Isaiah 42, continuing in this passage, which, like many passages in Isaiah, talk about the people of Israel's deafness and blindness. When you have Isaiah 42, please stand for the reading of God's Word.

I'll begin in verse 18. 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. The Lord was pleased for his righteousness' sake to magnify his law and to make it glorious. But this is of 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. It burned him up, but he did not take it to heart. Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You again for Your Word. We ask that it would open our eyes, that we would be able to see.

We know, as we learned last week, that often Your Word has the effect of blinding people's eyes further as they reject Your Word. But we ask that we would have our eyes opened, that we would see, and that You would magnify Your law in us.

In Jesus' name, amen. God is pleased to magnify His law. This is a truth that here in this passage shows the distinction in God's disposition towards His justice and His display of His justice and His disposition towards His display of mercy.

It is important to understand His pleasure in making His law glorious, to understand His good intentions toward mankind, and especially His good intentions toward His people. When we find ourselves afflicted by the discipline of the Lord, it is not due to a lack of God's mercy.

It is not due to a lack of His desire to make His law glorious by making His own people glorious, that He would have a people who obey His law that He would uphold and demonstrate to be excellent through His law itself being excellent, because He desires to glorify His law.

Instead, when His people find themselves under the hand of discipline, it is not because God is lacking in mercy. It is because those who claim to be His people, or even are His people, or even those who are not His people at all, simply do not obey His Word.

Mercy, Justice, and the Simplicity of God

Here in verse 20, it says, excuse me, here in verse 21, it says, the Lord was pleased for His righteousness' sake to magnify His law and to make it glorious. Of course, this all comes down to what does it mean for Him to magnify His law?

On one hand, the talk of people being looted and plundered gives the image that maybe His magnification of His law is His judgments based on that law, that as people disobey His law, His law is magnified, His law is glorified as people come under the judgment of their failure to uphold that law.

However, you can tell that the translators here have not agreed with that. They say, but this is a people plundered and looted. I believe the translators are correct because, you see here, there's none to say restore.

This is in contrast with the notion of mercy. This people's plundering, this people's being handed over to enemies is all standing in contrast to mercy. Verse 21 is talking about God's intentions in mercy, that He desires to magnify His law and make it glorious through people who follow His law, that He is merciful to, demonstrates His glory, and as they are fearers of the Lord and upheld by Him, Him making His way glorious.

If you imagine there are many different peoples in the earth, they all follow different laws, they follow different gods, and if God is to glorify Himself, He is to glorify His own law, what would that look like?

Would it look like every single nation, including the people who follow after Him, all suffering judgment as they all disobey Him? No, it would look like one people being held up above the others as a people who are following after God's law, His law being made glorious by His demonstration of mercy to those people who are following after His ways.

But this is a people plundered and looted, they are all of them trapped in holes and hidden in prisons. They have all become plunder with none to rescue, spoil with none to say restore. Now, once again, this has come, this prophecy has come soon after they have been saved from Assyria, but prophecy has given that they will be taken off into Babylon.

It is spoken in anticipation of the people being trapped in Babylonian exile that because of their own sin, and particularly because of Hezekiah's pride and showing off what God has done to the Babylonian envoys as being his own work, God would take the people away into Babylon.

There they are trapped in holes and hidden in prisons. But as we have frequently seen in these passages, this alludes to our own condition, our own Babylonian exile, our own captivity, people being trapped in their own sin without anyone to say restore.

Verse 23 says, "...who among you will give ear to this, will attend and listen for the time to come?". The implicit answer is there may be no one. Perhaps no one can. He has just spoken of a people who are too deaf to hear, too blind to see.

When He asks the question, "...who among you will give ear to this, and will attend for the time to come?". The answer is implicitly no one, unless there is some special intervention of God. The servant of the Lord is deaf.

The servant of the Lord is blind. Who is blind but my servant, or deaf as my messenger? The only cure for all of this is the servant of the Lord that we read of at the beginning of the chapter. It is Jesus Christ.

God’s Justice in Service of His Mercy

Focusing in on the idea of God being pleased to magnify His law, there are many ways that you could consider the relationship between justice and mercy. Perhaps as you study God's Word, you would be inclined to think that His justice is preeminent over His mercy.

In fact, His justice is necessary while His mercy is not in the sense of its display to mankind. God could be perfectly just. He could judge everyone, show absolutely no one mercy, and that would be perfectly consistent with God's character in the sense of He had done no wrong.

He does not owe anyone mercy, and so He could do that if He so chose. That is within His right to do. Yet, He could not overlook everyone's sins and simply let the sinner go away scot-free without any kind of punishment for sin, with any kind of penalty.

He would be mocked in that case if He did not demonstrate His justice as mankind sins. And so, you could look at that situation. You could say, well, God's justice then must be preeminent over His mercy.

Or, you could take a more theological approach to this and recognize, well, God is simple. That's a term meaning that He is not complex. He's not made of parts. There is not a love part to Him, a wrath part to Him, a different part to Him, etc.

There's not a justice part to Him and a mercy part to Him. So, He is love. Likewise, the Bible says that He doesn't swear by anything higher than Himself, and it says that He swears by His holiness. What does that mean?

God is His holiness. He is His love. Likewise, we can say He is His justice. He is His mercy. And so, as you contemplate the simplicity of God that He is not composed of parts, you could say, well, His justice and mercy can't be pitted against each other, and so it would be wrong to do so.

And there's something right in that as well. So, okay, so that first stance was, well, God's demonstration of His justice in a world with sin is necessary where His mercy is not. So, justice higher than mercy.

Or, you could say, okay, well, these can't be pitted against each other because God is not made of parts. He is His mercy. He is His justice. And so, these are the same. Both of these have truths to them, but yet what this passage is telling us is that God instead is inclined toward mercy, that He desires to magnify His law.

He desires to demonstrate His goodness towards His people, and that is something that is higher in some sense than His desire to demonstrate His justice in punishment. In fact, His demonstration of His justice in punishment toward mankind is in service to His demonstration of His mercy.

This is set dated throughout Scripture. Many of you are familiar with Romans 9 where you see there that God's demonstration of His wrath is in service to His demonstration of His mercy. Just to give you a few more passages that may be less familiar, so that you can think about this a little bit more, that God's demonstration of His justice in judgments is in service of His demonstration of His mercy, Isaiah 28 -21, which we have already read in this series in Isaiah, He speaks of His punishment and He describes it as His deed, His strange deed, and His work, His alien work.

This is describing God's demonstration of His justice in judgments as being something alien, something strange, something other than His primary intention in mankind. Ezekiel 18 -23, perhaps a familiar verse, "'Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked?' declares the Lord God, and not rather that He should turn from His way and live.".

This is stated three times throughout Ezekiel, that He does not have pleasure in the death of the wicked. Yet we hear things in Psalm 2 that He stands in heaven, He mocks, He laughs at those who would rise up against Him.

So, there is some sense in which He takes pleasure in doing what is just, but this passage in saying that He does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked is letting us know that that is not His primary intention.

Lamentations 3 -33 says, "'For He does not afflict from His heart or grieve the children of men.'". God does not afflict from His heart. What is that letting you know? It's difficult to describe the actions of God, to describe the being of God.

He is not like anything in His creation. But in expressing Himself to us, He has stated this, that He does not afflict from His heart. This is not His primary intention. Jeremiah 32 -41, same author as Lamentations, says, "'I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness with all my heart and soul.'".

Describes God's good towards His people being with all His heart, but His affliction not coming from the heart. Once again, God is simple. He does not have a heart part to Him and a different part to Him or anything like that.

But in describing the order of His intentions, His judgments exist in service to the demonstration of His mercy. Why is it that He has permitted sin to come into the world? Is it not so that He could demonstrate His mercy in Jesus Christ?

If there had been no sin, if there had been no fall, there would not be a need for the mercy of God. God's demonstration of His judgments exist in service to the demonstration of His mercy. What does this mean for us as we see in this passage?

It means that those who find themselves afflicted under either the hand of punishment or the hand of discipline, it is not because God is lacking in mercy. It is not because He is not lacking in His goodness, His desire to elevate mankind and make His law glorious as man walks in His ways.

It is rather because of our own failing, those judgments fall upon our own head. Man cannot say that he has done the best that he can and God has just curled towards him, that God's intentions are just to beat man down and show His glory primarily in judgment, because those are not God's primary intentions.

And so, this fact that His judgments exist for the purpose of demonstrating His mercy show us that man is especially guilty in his opposition of God, in his sad estate of having fallen into sin, because it is man's own situation, not in a relationship to a neutral God who does not care either way, but to a God who desires to glorify His law, to magnify His law and make it glorious.

But 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. So people are when they are in sin. They are trapped in their sin.

They are plundered with none to rescue, with none to, say, restore, not because God is not good towards mankind, but rather because mankind is evil toward Him. So, God desires to glorify His law. He's pleased to glorify His law.

And this shows that man's lack of glory, man having fallen short of the glory of God, Romans chapter 3, man having fallen short of the glory of God, is a demonstration of man's wickedness rather than God's lack of kind intention.

It asks in verse 23, who among you will give ear to this? Who will attend and listen for the time to come? Who? Who will listen? If the servant is deaf, how can his ear be opened? The answer, once again, just as last week, the servant of the Lord who is deaf, we must have standing in our place the servant of the Lord whose ear is perfectly open.

The Perfect Servant of the Lord in Isaiah 42

Isaiah 42, verse 1, behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street.

A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for his law.

What does Jesus Christ demonstrate? He is the one who continues while the coastlands wait for his law. He is the one who is spreading forth the law of God in which God desires to glorify Himself, to magnify His law.

Christ in His glory, His own exaltation, is a demonstration that God indeed does desire to glorify mankind. God hasn't put mankind here just to languish, just to wither away and die. Rather, as Christ, the perfect servant of the Lord, obeys and is exalted high above the heavens, it is a demonstration that God's intentions toward mankind are primarily to make His law glorious in mankind.

Mankind walks in those ways. It's worth considering that man was made in a special way, that he could follow God's law in a special way. God's law comes from His own heart. He does not, He gives us positive laws in addition to those laws that are simply from His character.

For example, as I mentioned this morning, eating of the tree of the knowledge in good and evil, that's an additional positive law that's not inherent. If Adam had walked across that tree and God had never given him that command, it would not be wrong to eat of the tree.

Yet, there are other things that come directly from God's character, from God's nature. Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not commit adultery. God being truth does not permit lies.

God being good and kind does not permit murder. God has made man in a particular way with body and soul so that the demonstration of His law can be more manifest in creation. The Ten Commandments are all coming from the nature of God.

One who breaks one breaks them all. What that is showing you is they, like Him, are simple. They, like Him, aren't really composed in parts, even though we can talk about ten different commandments. But because God is one, anyone who breaks one breaks them all.

What I'm getting at here, man having a body and soul is equipped in a way of demonstrating the goodness of God's law in a way that other creatures are not. For example, the angels who having no body. How do the angels demonstrate the goodness of God's law in the seventh commandment?

Perhaps in their faithfulness to Him they do, whereas those who have been rebellious towards Him, those who have not been faithful to Him, do not. Even as in the Old Testament, it frequently describes serving idols as being whoredom or prostitution.

So, perhaps the angels demonstrate the seventh commandment in their faithfulness to the Lord, yet we are given additional ways to make God's law glorious, us being able to uphold the seventh commandment even in marriage, something not given to the angels.

Now, there are various ways that we, as created material beings with particular capacities, are able to magnify God's law. And as man falls, you might think that God's purposes in man were to put him low or maybe His purposes were neutral, but rather in Jesus Christ being raised up high above the angels, Him being for a little while made lower than the angels, the demonstration that God is making is that His desire with mankind making this particular kind of creature was to demonstrate the glory of Himself in the glory of His law, man being able to walk in the ways of God's law in special ways, being that kind of special being.

And Christ in the incarnation demonstrates this most completely, Him being the perfect servant of the Lord who is raised high, raised high above the angels, as He has perfectly walked in the law of God.

And He, in doing so, standing in place of His people, forgives us for our sins that we might be counted righteous as Him, righteous as one who is listened to the law of God, righteous as one who has seen what God has given Him to see, people who are no longer plundered and looted, but ones who have been told, restore, ones who have been raised up because Christ has spoken to us.

Those words at the beginning of this section in Isaiah, comfort, comfort my people, Christ has spoken to us, comfort, comfort, He has spoken, restore. This is not just about being trapped in Babylon. In Isaiah 14, describing the king of Babylon, it had said, is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms?

This is describing Him descending into Sheol, Him descending into hell, who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, did He not, who did not let His prisoners go home? The king of Babylon is described as one who never lets his prisoners go home.

This is one of the essences of the king of Babylon. And here it describes him in Isaiah 42 as being one who does not let his prisoners go home, yet Christ restores. The people were restored out of Babylon by the hand of a mighty God.

That king of Babylon ultimately represents our enemy, the devil. It is from that passage that I just quoted about the king of Babylon not letting any of the prisoners go home that the name Lucifer comes from.

In that passage, it speaks of the king of Babylon giving him the title Lucifer. Now, Christians throughout the centuries, throughout the millennia, have recognized that that passage is not ultimately talking about the king of Babylon, even though it's using him as a figure.

It is ultimately talking about our great enemy, the devil, that he is that Lucifer. He is that one who imprisons, accuses, does not let any of his prisoners go. Who can hear to be saved out of him? Who can see in order to be let free from his grasp?

Only the one who has standing in his place, the perfect servant of the Lord. We, as servants called to obey apart from the perfect servant of the Lord, have no hope. But in him, the perfect servant of the Lord, we are set free to see, to hear, to be free from bondage, and to glorify God's law in a way that man cannot without Jesus Christ, in a way that angels cannot, not having been made men.

Mercy Revealed in Christ, Not Mere Judgment

God's desire is to glorify His law. He is pleased to glorify His law, and His disposition towards us is one that is not primarily one of seeking to destroy man and demonstrate His glory by judgment, though He does demonstrate His glory by judgment.

But those demonstrations of His glory by judgment serve to demonstrate His glory in His mercy to His people. This is highlighted in Luke chapter 1, when Mary says, my soul magnifies the Lord. This is known as the magnificat.

It's the Latin word for magnify. My soul magnifies the Lord. She glories in God. Why? Verse 50, and His mercy is for those who fear Him from generation to generation. Why is God magnified? God is most magnified in His mercy towards those who fear Him.

Those who have trusted in Jesus Christ are magnifying the glory of the Lord in a way that judgment on its own could never do. That judgment exists for the purpose of demonstrating mercy. John 3, 17, this is right after John 3, 16, for God so loved the world, etc.

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Now, on one hand, Christ did come to condemn the world. He came to judge. He came to judge in righteousness.

He wields a sword, and He will destroy many on the last day. But His primary purpose, His primary purpose was not to condemn the world, it was rather to save. And so, if you in your relationship to God are inclined to think of Him as neutral towards you, or you are inclined to think Him as being set against you and against mankind, perhaps you are a child of wrath and you have not turned the Lord, and in such cases He is set against you.

But He does not have to be. His primary desire is to make His law glorious. His primary desire is to uphold mankind high above the angels, seated with Jesus Christ. I would implore you, if you are opposed to Jesus Christ, if you find yourself at odds with God, turn to Him in mercy.

His disposition towards you is one of mercy. If you turn to Jesus Christ, asking for salvation, pleading with Him, He will give. He always gives mercy. And if you are one who already knows the Lord Jesus Christ, and you feel that God is set against you, there are so many promises that tell us that He is not, that tell us that if He has given us His Son, how much more will He give us all things?

The Lord is for me, I will not fear what can man do to me. But let this be one more verse, one more truth in your bag of encouragements to let you know that God's disposition towards you is one of mercy, that He does not afflict from the heart, rather He returns His people to the land with all His heart.

God is pleased for His righteousness sake to magnify His law and make it glorious. And His desire for you is to magnify His law in you and make it glorious in you through the ultimate servant of the Lord, Jesus Christ, who has perfectly obeyed and by His Spirit works in His people to obey the law and to be lifted up as sanctified people and ultimately one day glorified people in Jesus Christ.

Amen. Dear Heavenly Father, we ask that this truth of your purposes and your mercy and how that relates to your purposes and your judgment would be embraced by us in such a way that would fill us with a great confidence, it would cast out fear, it would be full of confidence, courage, being perfected in your love.

In Jesus' name, amen.