Lord, Open Our Eyes!

3rd Sunday in Lent, 3/15/20
Isaiah 42:14-21


Lord, Open Our Eyes!
I. To the reality of your judgment
II. To our self-imposed blindness
III. To your glorious, saving gospel


I was surprised recently by an article in the e-newsletter of the famed Mayo Clinic (April, 2017) entitled “Denial: When it helps, when it hurts.” I had always considered living in a state of denial to be a negative thing. But, according to this article, initial short-term denial can be a good thing, giving you some time to adjust to a painful or stressful issue. It gives your mind the opportunity to absorb shocking or distressing information at a pace that won’t send you into a psychological tailspin.

But if denial persists and prevents you from taking appropriate action, then it becomes harmful.

I can think of quite a few physical situations in which the above statements about denial are helpful. For instance, you get a shocking diagnosis. A little bit of denial can help you process it and then start moving on.But I can’t think of a spiritual situation in which the denial of a problem, even for a short time, can be a good thing. And prolonged spiritual denial can have consequences that are eternally disastrous.

How thankful we can be, then, that our God shares with us the spiritual truth about ourselves. The spiritual truth is that we come into this world spiritually blind and our sinful tendency is to remain that way. The spiritual fact is that only our God’s truth can enlighten us.

By God’s grace, we are people who have been spiritually enlightened. We know the truth about our Savior, Jesus Christ. That’s why we’re in this building this morning to worship him. But our natural sinful default is to close our eyes to God’s enlightening truth. So, let’s realize that and pray, “Lord, open our eyes.” Here in Isaiah 42 he speaks to us about why that’s so necessary for us and what he does to enlighten us.

Part I.

If you didn’t spend a single moment this past week thinking about the Coronavirus, you better check your pulse. It’s on all our minds, and rightly so. Our health and government officials are giving us this consistent information: The virus is going to be bad; we just don’t know how bad. So, we need to use our heads and take reasonable steps to prevent it from spreading as much as possible. It won’t do any good to ignore or cover up the truth.

In dealing with his wayward, idolatrous people—the Children of Israel—the Lord didn’t keep any information back from them or covered up. He laid it all out. He told them his patience with them had ended and that the Babylonians were going to be his instrument of his judgment on them. You would think that his people would immediately begin taking corrective measures to mitigate the disaster.

But you’d be wrong. The Lord, through Isaiah and other prophets, told them exactly what was coming, but by and large it did no good. Some of the Jews refused to believe it. Others declared that God’s prophets were lying. Still other Jews felt that God simply wouldn’t allow such a terrible thing to happen to his people. After all, they were God’s chosen nation, descendants of Abraham.

But the Lord was serious, dead serious. Listen to his description of what he was going to do, “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. 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.” Birth pains in a pregnant woman indicate something is going to happen soon. God used that picture to indicate to the Jews that something inevitable was about to come upon them—his judgment. It was absolutely going to happen whether the people believed it or not. And later, as the Bible recounts, God’s judgment on them through the Babylonians took place.

That fulfillment of judgment so long ago reminds us of another that’s coming—sooner or later. Jesus has promised to return on the Last Day and judge all people. Millions of people know that’s what Jesus said, but refuse to believe it. Others know he will return but won’t accept the truth that he will come in judgment. They live in denial—blindness to the truth. But that doesn’t change what will inevitably happen.

Lord, open our eyes to the reality of your judgment.

There’s so much information and misinformation floating around in our modern world that sometimes it’s hard to know what’s true and what’s false. And some people use that situation to mess with the minds of others. But our God is not like that. He warns that his judgment is coming and he’s not fabricating a story simply to manipulate us. He’s serious—dead serious. And it won’t do us or anyone else any good to close our eyes to that truth. God is serious about his judgment. Lord, open our eyes!

Part II.

At this very moment, we’re all taking reasonable measures to stay healthy. You would rightly be concerned about a loved one who didn’t do so. And you’d consider it crazy if a person intentionally chose to become ill.

So, wouldn’t you say the same thing about someone who chose spiritual blindness? And yet that’s exactly what the Lord speaks about here in Isaiah 42. Listen once again, “But those who trust in idols, who say to images, ‘You are our gods,’ will be turned back in utter shame. Hear, you deaf; look, you blind, and see! 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? You have seen many things, but have paid no attention; your ears are open, but you hear nothing.”

In his grace the Lord had enlightened his people to the truth—that he was the God of their salvation and the only true God. He also told them that he was making them into his special nation through whom he would send a Savior for all people. He had a glorious, saving purpose for them. And for a time, his people believed that.

But it wasn’t long before they began bowing down to idols made of wood and stone and precious metals. At the same time, they began oppressing the poor and abusing the defenseless. Violence and murder filled their streets. They had become everything the Lord had forbidden. They rejected the light of his word. They chose to return to spiritual blindness. That’s not just ridiculous; it’s spiritually tragic.

May the same never happen to us! And so, we pray, “Lord, open our eyes to see our self-imposed blindness.”

And it’s only by the grace of God that we don’t make ourselves completely spiritually blind. Because the truth is that so often, we know God’s purposes for our lives just as the Jews did. We know how he wants us to glorify him by what we say and do. We know he has made us to be the salt and light of the earth at a time when our world desperately needs us. But we flirt with spiritual blindness. We fail to trust our God to take care of all things for us. We see what needs to be done, but we convince ourselves we won’t be able to make a difference anyway, so we do nothing. We choose to ignore God’s truth. Lord, open our eyes!

Part III.

And he does, because his love for us is astounding. Listen to what the Lord in his love did for his Old Testament people, “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.”

Though we may forsake him, he won’t forsake us. The fact that our God is speaking his word to us this morning is evidence of his faithfulness to us. He continues to enlighten us with his word, revealing our blind sinfulness and our need for Jesus, the Light of the World, and then revealing our Savior to us.

His goal is to continue leading us in the truth of his word, until he ultimately leads us into glory with him in heaven. Even though we stumble and stray, he calls us back to himself and forgives us, and then takes our hand in his own once again and leads us.

But why would he continue to do that in light of our blind waywardness? Because of who he is. The Lord says it like this, “It pleased the LORD for the sake of his righteousness to make his law great and glorious.” Our God wants nothing more than to share his righteousness with us. He is glorified when we realize that we can’t make ourselves holy in his sight; instead, he does that for us through the life and death of Jesus. He shares the truth about our Savior, Jesus in his gospel, his good news for sinners.

So, may our daily prayer be, “Lord, open our eyes to your glorious, saving gospel.”

About 700 years after Isaiah wrote these words, Jesus was born. In spite of the rampant spiritual blindness during Isaiah’s time, God still kept a remnant of the Jewish people faithful to him for seven centuries and fulfilled his greatest promise of all—to send the world a Savior from sin.

Just look what your God has done for you in your lifetime! At some point he shared the light of his salvation with you and brought you to saving faith in Jesus. Through the years—often for decades—God has kept you in the faith through his saving light. If your God does nothing else for you during your entire lifetime, he has done what you need most of all. And none of it is due to what you have done or can do. He’s done it all for you by grace, in spite of the times in our lives when we’ve decided to be momentarily blind to his truth or have decided for a time that his saving light was less important to us than something else. And yet he remains faithful to us. So, let your daily prayer be this: Lord, open my eyes today that I may see, believe and appreciate your glorious, saving gospel. Amen.