Isaiah 42:14-25
14 "I have held My peace a long time,
I have been still and restrained Myself.
Now I will cry like a woman in labor,
I will pant and gasp at once.
15 I will lay waste the mountains and hills,
And dry up all their vegetation;
I will make the rivers coastlands,
And I will dry up the pools.
16 I will bring the blind by a way they did not know;
I will lead them in paths they have not known.
I will make darkness light before them,
And crooked places straight.
These things I will do for them,
And not forsake them.
17 They shall be turned back,
They shall be greatly ashamed,
Who trust in carved images,
Who say to the molded images,
'You are our gods.'
18 "Hear, you deaf;
And look, you blind, that you may see.
19 Who is blind but My servant,
Or deaf as My messenger whom I send?
Who is blind as he who is perfect,
And blind as the LORD's servant?
20 Seeing many things, but you do not observe;
Opening the ears, but he does not hear."
21 The LORD is well pleased for His righteousness' sake;
He will exalt the law and make it honorable.
22 But this is a people robbed and plundered;
All of them are snared in holes,
And they are hidden in prison houses;
They are for prey, and no one delivers;
For plunder, and no one says, "Restore!"
23 Who among you will give ear to this?
Who will listen and hear for the time to come?
24 Who gave Jacob for plunder, and Israel to the robbers?
Was it not the LORD,
He against whom we have sinned?
For they would not walk in His ways,
Nor were they obedient to His law.
25 Therefore He has poured on him the fury of His anger
And the strength of battle;
It has set him on fire all around,
Yet he did not know;
And it burned him,
Yet he did not take it to heart.
Amidst the promises of the LORD's merciful grace we see Israel’s continuing and willful disobedience, not unlike in our own times. People turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the good grace of God’s forgiveness and continue to rebel in order to seek their own passing pleasures and pointless reasoning to justify themselves. God gave them over to them seek other gods for a time, but then He broke His peace and spoke again to give light to the blind to guide them and made the crooked ways straight for them to journey rightly along, out of darkness and into light. This is a picture of our salvation where God calls us out of the darkness where we cannot see Him into the light of His truth and deliverance from sin (Psalm 107:14, Isaiah 29:18, 42:7, 2 Corinthians 4:6, 1 Peter 2:9). Then those who trust in false gods of the work of their own hands will be turned back in repentance by God’s hand and be ashamed at ever having worshipped another besides Him, whether an idol of stone or wood or any other thing more important than Him. May we not be so blind as to not see Him or deaf as to stop hearing His word to us as we once all were! For the Lord’s sake of His righteousness He has exalted His word to us (John 1:1, 14, Philippians 2:9) as He did for His people in Isaiah’s time, the ones who willfully and obstinately rejected in disobedience. Therefore, He gave them over to the plunderers and robbers because of their willful and continuing sin. They refused to live accordingly to His word and suffered the consequences with His wrath remaining on them (John 3:18-19, 36). Oh, that men and women would take God’s word to heart and escape the righteous wrath of God due to them! May they find merciful grace and not continue in willful disobedience when hearing the truth of His word, the gospel of our salvation, and not imitate Israel’s disobedience.
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