A Loving God's Speaks to His People!

3rd Sunday in Lent, 3/27/11
Isaiah 42:14-21


A Loving God Speaks to His People!
I. He promises a gracious deliverance.
II. He condemns willful rejection.


I know that there are times when silence is golden, but I’m also aware that silence can also be a harsh form of retribution and condemnation. Just talk to the husband who knows he’s done something terribly wrong, he just doesn’t know what it is. And how does he know it? Because he’s getting the silent treatment from the one he has wronged, his wife. When she’s not talking to him anymore, he knows there’s a major problem and it feels like he just got punched in the gut.

We’ve come here this morning to hear our God speak to us in his word. Do you realize what an amazing thing that is? The eternal, almighty, all-knowing, holy God wants to speak to us, his lowly, sinful, wayward, thoughtless creatures. That’s amazing! And that fact is even more amazing when you realize that there’s nothing in it for him. He could just as well exist without any contact with us at all. He needs nothing from us to exist. And yet he speaks to us!

And if he ever stops speaking to us—if he ever gives us the silent treatment—then we should be mortified. I once had a seminary professor who told his class that the worst thing any sinner could ever hear from God is silence. Think about it. If our God ever stops sharing with us the truth about our sinfulness and the truth of our forgiveness and salvation in Jesus, then there’s no hope left for us. We’re condemned forever.

The Lord wasn’t at that point yet during the days of Isaiah the prophet. As sinfully stubborn as the Jews of Isaiah’s day were, God was still speaking to them through Isaiah. And he’s still speaking to us today. A loving God speaks to his people. Let’s take that as an amazing act of his grace and listen to what he has to say to us this morning.

Part I.

I imagine we’ve all had the experience of talking but no one is listening. The person we’re talking to might be looking right at us, but we can tell they aren’t listening to what we have to say. Their mind is elsewhere or we can tell by the expression on their face that they refuse to take to heart what we’re telling them. It’s aggravating, isn’t it? We wonder why we’re wasting our time.

God’s prophet Isaiah had that experience. The Book of Isaiah contains some of the most pointed messages from God to his people in all of the Old Testament. But the people weren’t listening. Instead, they were rank idol worshippers. They had exchanged the worship of the true and living God for the worship of false gods which their own hands had crafted out of wood or stone or precious metals. In another section of Isaiah the Lord blasts the Jews for their foolish idolatry. He describes how his people take a piece of wood and use half of it to make a fire and warm themselves and the other half to make a god and then bow down and pray to it. Ridiculous!

And the patience of the true God was at an end. He used Isaiah to announce to the Jews that soon the destruction of Jerusalem would occur and the Jews who survived it would be carried into exile in Babylon. But his people didn’t listen. They thought God was just blowing smoke. God’s people, forced out of the Holy Land which God had promised to the descendants of Abraham? Unthinkable! And at the hands of the Babylonians, who at this time were nothing as a nation? Preposterous! But that’s what God was telling his people. And that’s what happened.

But notice what God also told his people. “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.” God used the example of childbirth to describe his patience with his enemies. The Babylonians would be his instrument of judgment upon the Jews, but don’t think that the Babylonians would be exempt from God’s judgment. He was being patient with them, but the time would come for them to be held accountable to him.

And then he would bring the arrogant Babylonians down. He speaks about laying waste the mountains and drying up the vegetation. Again, that’s picture language for his judgment upon Babylon. In the blink of an eye, one of the greatest kingdoms of the world would be destroyed.

And Babylon’s destruction would mean deliverance for God’s people. He tells them, “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.” How unlikely! How amazing! Remember, these were people who were worshipping idols that their hands had made. God was not only still speaking to them, he was promising to be faithful to them and deliver them. He would bring a remnant of the people back to Jerusalem where they would re-establish the worship of the true God. He promises to do the exact opposite of what we would expect. But that’s who our God is.

A loving God speaks to his people. He promises a gracious deliverance.

As we sit and listen to our God speak to us this morning, we might be tempted to shake our heads and wave an accusing finger at God’s people in Isaiah’s day and condemningly state, “How could they?” But that would be rather self-righteous, wouldn’t it? A better question for us to ask is, “How could we?” No, we may not be bowing down to idols of wood and stone and precious metals, but we all have our own little idols in our lives. We bow before things such as recreation and our livelihood, or our relationships or family time or maybe just time for ourselves. All the while God wants to speak to us, but we’ve got other things to do or other things to listen to. In fact, every time we decide to do something against God’s will, we set up another idol and bow before it. Given the countless times we’ve done so, wouldn’t you expect the silent treatment from God? Would you be surprised if he had stopped speaking to us long ago? And yet here he is, once again this morning, speaking to us, reminding us of our sins, exposing us for the sinners that we are. But he also announces to us his gracious deliverance, not from some exile in Babylon, but from eternal death in hell. That deliverance was won for us by his Son, Jesus Christ. It cost Jesus his very life, sacrificed on Calvary’s cross. But in that sacrifice is our deliverance from sin and our assurance of eternal life with him. A loving God speaks to his people, promising a gracious deliverance.

Part II.

A few minutes ago I spoke about situations in which you’re talking but no one is listening. As annoying as that might be, there are situations in which there’s a good reason for it. It’s due to auditory fatigue. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. You become the victim of auditory fatigue when you can’t seem to get a person to stop talking to you. You’ve heard enough from them already. You have other things you need to do. You don’t want to hear another word.

It’s a terrible thing to say, but some of God’s people had auditory fatigue when it came to listening to God speaking to them. Listen to what God said to them. “Hear, you deaf; look, you blind, and see!” At first, these words might sound rather cruel. Deaf people can’t hear and blind people can’t see. Isn’t it cruel to expect them to do otherwise? Not when they brought it on themselves. You see, God’s people had heard much from the Lord—for centuries. He had given them Moses and after Moses came countless other prophets, all who spoke God’s word to them. They had God’s written word. But they chose to despise, ignore and reject it.

And if that weren’t enough, consider what his people had seen. Miracle after miracle. Sometimes it involved protection, as with the waters of the Red Sea crashing down on Pharaoh’s army. Sometimes those miracles involved providing for his people such as water from a rock and manna from heaven. Sometimes those miracles involved healing or fire or revelations of God’s holy glory. They had seen much, but chose to close their eyes to it.

In fact, they had heard and seen more than any nation on the face of the earth. God was more gracious to his people—the Jews—than to any other nation.

But they willfully chose deafness and blindness. The Lord says, “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?” How ironic to have a deaf messenger! They can’t hear the message to begin with and so can’t share a message with anyone. And a blind servant isn’t much good either. That’s not the way things had started. When God entered a covenant with the Jews at Mt. Sinai, they promised to be his people. But it didn’t take long and they had rejected the word of the Lord, turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to it.

So he allowed the Babylonians to plunder them and destroy their proud capital, Jerusalem, along with its glorious temple. He sent them into exile, far from the blessings they enjoyed in the Holy Land. The final verse of this chapter of Isaiah states, “So he poured out on them his burning anger, the violence of war. It enveloped them in flames, yet they did not understand; it consumed them, but they did not take it to heart” (42:25). And they had no one to blame but themselves.

A loving God speaks to his people. He condemns willful rejection.

May it never happen here! God graciously shares his saving word with us. He simply asks us to take the time to listen to it, believe it, and do what it says. As people who daily transgress his holy law and do not honor and love his word properly, may we ever find our comfort in that word’s forgiveness and our confidence in that word’s promise of eternal life through Jesus, who fulfilled the word of God by suffering and dying for us. A loving God is speaking. Listen! Amen.