March 3, 2002 Isaiah 42:14-21
“For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant. 15 I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation; I will turn rivers into islands and dry up the pools.
16 I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them. 17 But those who trust in idols, who say to images, ‘You are our gods,’ will be turned back in utter shame.
18 “Hear, you deaf; look, you blind, and see! 19 Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one committed to me, blind like the servant of the LORD? 20 You have seen many things, but have paid no attention; your ears are open, but you hear nothing.” 21 It pleased the LORD for the sake of his righteousness to make his law great and glorious.
Most of you are probably familiar with the Helen Keller story. Helen was both blind and deaf. On top of that, she was a little brat. She would often smash dishes and lamps and terrorize the whole household with her screaming and temper tantrums. She would eat the food off of other people’s plates at the dinner table. Relatives regarded her as a monster and thought she should be put into an institution. But really, what could you do if you were the family? Yell at her?
Pure logic would seem obvious that it won’t do any good to yell at something that can’t hear. But how often don’t we try it? Did you ever try to yell at a weed wacker when it won’t start? One lady told me that when she spoke with someone who didn’t know English she would just speak louder. Imagine going to a doctor and telling him you are losing your eyesight to have him say, “come on! Look! Don’t be blind!” It seems rather foolish to tell a blind person to see. But the same thing happens today, as Isaiah calls out,
Look, You Blind, and See!
I. The reason for blindness
There are different reasons for blindness. Several years ago now, a pastor within our district - Pastor Russow - had a son who suddenly started losing his eyesight. Finally he was declared “legally blind.” His boy was already in college, and the doctors couldn’t find a cure. It was the strangest thing. With Helen Keller, when she was nineteen months old, she fell ill. It may have been scarlet fever or meningitis. Whatever the illness, Helen was, for many days, expected to die. But when the fever subsided, Helen’s mother soon noticed how her daughter was failing to respond when the dinner bell was rang or when she passed her hand in front of her daughter’s eyes. They then knew that Helen’s illness had left her both completely blind and deaf.
Blind and deaf. That’s the way God described the Israelites in today’s text by referring to them as “God’s servant”. Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one committed to me, blind like the servant of the LORD? Just as there are different degrees of physical blindness and deafness, God says the same thing spiritually. Isaiah was in fact saying, “nobody is as blind and deaf as the Israelites!” What made them so blind and deaf? You have seen many things, but have paid no attention; your ears are open, but you hear nothing. It wasn’t the fact that they COULDN’T hear or see, but that they WOULDN’T see or hear.
My wife claims I have the same problem. And I think I must have passed it on to my children - at least in a physical aspect. Whenever they are watching the TV, I can say their name loud and clear so that I know they can hear me, but they don’t respond. The same goes true of me. Think of this in spiritual terms then. The Israelites were blind and deaf because they didn’t pay attention to God’s blessings. I think the most glaring example of this is when they were in the Desert. They had seen God miraculously take care of them - over 2 million people with a miraculous manna that came from heaven every morning. They had seen God destroy the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. They had at least heard the stories of how God sent 10 plagues on the Egyptians to let them go. But when they were faced with a shortage of water, what did they say to Moses? “If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the LORD! 4 Why did you bring the LORD’s community into this desert, that we and our livestock should die here? 5 Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!” (Numbers 20) Instead of looking at all of their past blessings and God’s promises to provide for them, they only saw that they had no water. They only heard the complaints of their bodies and those around them. They were totally blind!
This continually happened throughout the Israelites life. Even up to the time they were in the Promised Land, they continually ignored how God had blessed them and only looked at what he didn’t give them. Isn’t that the same sin that God has to deal with today? I’ll never forget talking with a woman who had been given two children, a nice home to live in, a Christian husband and a steady income. As far as the basics of this life were concerned, she had everything she needed. Sure, there were problems with communication and finances. But I was almost dumbfounded that when she found out that her sister in law was pregnant, she started crying. Why? Because she wasn’t sure she would be able to have any more children, and because her parents didn’t seem as happy when she told them she was having her children. Instead of looking at the blessings that were right in front of her face, she was only focusing on what she thought she didn’t have! A part of me wanted to say to her, “what are you looking at? Are you blind? How can you complain and be angry about your brother having a baby when you already have TWO?”
Maybe it would have been good for her. Maybe it would also be good for us to get a good tongue lashing. How much of our sadness and problems come in our lives because of just plain selective blindness - because we are focusing on the wrong things in life? Our children are taught from little on that pre-marital sex and drunkenness is wrong. But they end up doing it anyway. Spouses are told to honor each other, but we ignore what we know is right. Fathers are told to train their children in God’s Word - but they seldom listen.
So God’s Word to us says, “pay attention to my Word.” If we would put our focus on God’s Word - and keep our hearts focused on God’s love - everything else would seem to fall in place. A job raise or a health problem would seem much more minute if we only kept reading God’s Word on a regular basis. How can you expect to learn anything from a sermon if you don’t concentrate? How can you expect to get any comfort from an absolution if your mind is a million miles away? Should it surprise you that you “aren’t getting anything” out of worship if you aren’t thinking about the words or listening? How can you expect to grow in godly living if you don’t read your Bible. The problem is that we aren’t paying attention. Like the Israelites, we practice selective hearing. We only see what we WANT to see. - we’re blind. We only hear what we WANT to hear.
II. The cure for blindness
Thankfully, there’s a cure. For Helen Keller, the cure came in a peculiar way. For the first seven years of her life Helen continued in her blindness and refused to learn. When her teacher, Anne Sullivan, led her to the water pump, all that was about to change. Anne pumped the water over Helen’s hand. As she did this, Anne spelled out the word water in the girl’s free hand. Something about this explained the meaning of words within Helen, and Anne could immediately see in her face that she finally understood. Helen later recounted the incident:
"As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me."
Helen immediately asked Anne for the name of the pump to be spelt on her hand and then the name of the trellis. All the way back to the house Helen learned the name of everything she touched and also asked for Anne’s name. Anne spelled the name "Teacher" on Helen’s hand. Within the next few hours Helen learnt the spelling of thirty new words. Helen’s progress from then on was astonishing. It wasn’t long before Anne was teaching Helen to read, firstly with raised letters and later with braille, and to write with both ordinary and braille typewriters. How good it must have felt for Helen to be given a different kind of sight and a different kind of ability to hear.
In a more miraculous way, Pastor Russow’s son was also given his eyesight - back to nearly 100%. Somehow, miraculously - even the doctors said, - his son completely regained his vision. He and his parents were overjoyed.
If you remember, in today’s text, Isaiah was describing the Israelites - who were blind - selectively blind. God had not designed them to be blind. He had visibly displayed his power and presence to the Israelites - giving them eyesight, and they in turn took his glasses off. God could not sit idly by and allow his children to live in blindness. So, if you remember your Israelite history, God sent them into captivity - made them suffer - so that maybe they would start looking to HIM again instead of their idols and their riches. For 70 years God sent them into this captivity. Now, God didn’t like seeing heathens keep his people captive. And so, God said through Isaiah
“For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back.
But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant.
15 I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation;
I will turn rivers into islands and dry up the pools.
The picture that God draws here just brings memories back to when Logan was born. We had gone in early in the morning so Bekah could be induced. But as we were waiting for the Petosin to kick in, two other ladies came in in the meantime. And, oh boy, they were not having fun. Here we were waiting for Bekah to start going into labor, and these ladies were screaming at the top of their lungs. I thought, “oh, what an aweful sound.” Now, I don’t know if the women were trying to sound that way. But the worse the pain got, they had no choice. That’s how God describes what he was going through in waiting for that 70 years to end. He “cried out, gasped, and panted.” Each term adds the intensity - the difficulty that God had seeing his people go through this captivity. But finally, God promised that we would “dry up their vegetation and turn their rivers into islands.” He would bring his people back from captivity.
I almost was dumbfounded when I read the way Babylon fell, because that’s exactly what God did to Babylon according to Herodotus the historian. The city was surrounded by a huge and indestructible wall. However, the Euphrates river went straight through it - and the wall was built over the river. Herodotus recorded that when Cyrus attacked Babylon, he diverted the Euphrates by a canal into a previously made basin. When the river was lowered, the Persians were waiting by the river-side, and entered the stream, which had now sunk so as to reach about midway up a man’s thigh, and thus got into the town. By drying up their river Babylon was defeated - just as Isaiah seemed to be hinting at.
And what did God promise to do then? I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them. Even though they were blind and had chosen to live in darkness, God would not forsake them. He would bring them back to the light - reigniting their faith and leading a remnant back to the Promised Land. Why would God do this? Because it pleased the LORD for the sake of his righteousness to do this. It had nothing to do with the worthiness of the Israelites or because they were more righteous than the Babylonian. God only did it for the sake of HIS righteousness. God only did it because of His righteousness - because He was and is a righteous and holy God. That’s it.
Don’t you find great comfort in this? We aren’t dealing with a politician who changes parties - who promises one thing and then does another. We aren’t dealing with a parent who doesn’t always do what is right. We aren’t dealing with a teacher or a coach who shows favoritism. We are dealing with a FAITHFUL LORD who does what he does because that is what HE IS. He’s a righteous and holy God. As unfaithful as the Israelites were, he was going to stay faithful to His promise. As unfaithful as we have been - as deaf as we have been, God’s promise of forgiveness and eternal life through Christ still stand. No matter how much we ignored God’s Word in our past, he still beckons us to come back. No matter where our eyes have strayed, God continues to post in big and bold letters - forgiveness through the blood of Christ. As deaf as we seem to be, God keeps on telling us anyway, “I love you and I forgive you.” His forgiveness and His salvation have nothing to do with how righteous we are. They are only based on HIS righteousness - the fact that Christ lived and died for all people of all time. What a great comfort this is!
How does God do this? How did Isaiah do it? “Hear, you deaf; look, you blind, and see! It seems strange to hear Isaiah tell deaf people to hear. It may have seemed strange for Jesus to tell a dead man to rise as well - but he did raise from the dead. We might even call it rude and insensitive. However, not for God. Why? Because the Word was used. Just as God created the world through His powerful Word - so God creates faith and brings eyesight through the message of His Word. He brings us to repentance and opens our ears by calling us to hear. As He used a lack of water to overthrow Babylon and used water to deliver Noah, so he uses water and the Word to save us in baptism. (1 Peter 3:21) all of this shows us that his law (is) great and glorious. That Word for “law” is used in the Bible to refer to all of God’s revelation - His Word. When the Holy Spirit works through the great and glorious Word of God - miracles happen - the deaf hear, the blind hear, and the dead are raised.
When my child is watching TV and I am trying to get her attention, I will say, “Rylee, Rylee, Rylee, RYLEE!” Now, she knows I’m calling her. She just doesn’t feel that my voice is worth listening to - or not as important as her show. It gets irritating after a while, but the only way I can get her attention is by yelling at her. The Israelites practiced the same selective hearing, and so have we. It also angers our LORD. But thankfully we have a LORD who is a righteous God - who wants to see us in heaven. And so he keeps us calling to us, “Look, You Blind, and See!” Can you hear his voice beckoning you today? Is it knocking on your heart? If you’ve been ignoring what you know what God’s Word says, it’s not too late. Listen to his call. “Look, You Blind, and See!” See the Lord loves you. See that Jesus died for you. See that God wants to lead you home. Amen.
