Dear Friends in Christ,
Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 42 about the Servant of the LORD. That is clear as we witness our Savior give sight to the “man blind from birth.” There is so much more here than the mere, although praiseworthy, result that “the man went and washed, and came home seeing.”
The Lord Jesus gives us a hint in his comparison of darkness to light. The LORD God makes exactly that comparison in Isaiah about his coming Servant. Same God, same illustration. It all fits together so perfectly.
From eternity, through Creation, after the Fall into sin, God watched people turn away from him to false gods. Those false gods included self. Aren’t the Bible’s pictures of Adam and Eve the ultimate “selfies?” Those idols included the golden calves the pilgrims escaping Egypt had Aaron mold. In Isaiah’s day, other false gods had taken over the LORD’s peoples’ hearts and minds.
Now was the time and place to speak up about it and to do something. The LORD Will Hold His Peace No Longer. Through the prophet, God the LORD says that He will lay waste his enemies. He will bring about a total radical change.
It was not, of course, that God had missed seeing man relegate him to equality with the surrounding idols, or could not have done something earlier. We must take God’s words and actions in the larger context of his prior promises and providence. God used a startling comparison to describe his speaking out about the stubborn rebellion and apostasy he had been witnessing. “But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant.”
The LORD cried out a reveille to war. God would express his great love toward us. He will lay waste his enemies. His enemies are all the wicked who set up their own kingdoms in opposition to the kingdom of God. God’s enemies are those who hurt and harm his people especially leading us away from him. The time for action had come. It was as if the LORD had long been pregnant with these plans and now it was time he gives birth.
The LORD will hold his peace no longer. In this great chapter in Isaiah, God was no longer quiet. He no longer held himself back. He spoke about the day the Servant of the LORD would come to lay waste to his enemies. That Servant of the LORD is our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
The devastation will be complete. In wonderfully poetic form, the Spirit speaks through Isaiah. “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 LORD’s actions will be so complete that things will become the opposite. He will turn mountains and hills into plains. He will turn those verdant plains into lifeless deserts. He will dry up the rivers so only the dry land islands will form the riverbed. Pools of water that had been a blessing to man will become useless sand pits.
We note that the emphasis is on God’s activity. This devastation is God’s work not man’s. In vivid picture language, our God lays out his plans to lay waste his enemies, our enemies. Those plans see action when God humbles the proud. He will not share his glory with idols. The closing verse of our text speaks about the judgment of idolaters. “But those who trust in idols, who say to images, ‘You are our gods,’ will be turned back to utter shame.” No doubt, the LORD’s words apply particularly to the final judgment.
The LORD’s words through Isaiah do not speak only of judgment. They speak also of redemption. The LORD will hold his peace no longer. He says he will bring about a total radical change. We behold that change as the Light of the world dispels the darkness of unbelief, and puts his power and love in visible terms by giving sight to the man blind from birth.
Jesus showed that he is the Servant of the LORD Isaiah wrote about. He said in Matthew 10, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Jesus is the one who has come to lay waste to his enemies. At the same time, he has come to bring total radical change to our hearts. We were blind but now we see. Jesus came to bring the light of faith through the Spirit.
We were living in the darkness of unbelief although most of us cannot remember that day. Or, maybe we can remember such a day during our lives when we foolishly left our father’s house, wasted our inheritance, then returned to receive only our Father’s unconditional love in Christ. That unconditional love also preserves us faith so that we escape the LORD’s judgment he spoke about in earlier verses.
The LORD’s words through Isaiah do not apply only to Israel’s spiritual blindness in his day or their return from exile. The LORD is speaking about that total radical change the Servant of the LORD would bring about. “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.”
The man born blind now enjoyed an experience and reality so far removed from what had been his life. Can we even imagine the joy in his voice when he told the Pharisees, “I washed and now I see.” The fact that he now can act in a way completely opposite to what he had previously is a condition due entirely to God’s work. God had removed his darkness so that it was light. He had smoothed out the rough places in his life so they were level.
The magnitude of God’s work is impossible for us to believe by nature. Yet we believe. We were spiritually blind but now we see. The Light of Jesus’ glory as God shines out in his miracles. The Light of the world shines out his glory from the darkness of men’s rejection of him and his crucifixion. The gospel shines out our forgiveness and salvation. God has accomplished these things for us in Christ. The LORD will hold his peace no longer. Now in the fulfillment of all his promises in his Son, Jesus, the LORD brings about a total radical change in our hearts.
God has saved his people just as he said. He has washed away our blindness with the Word connected to simple water in Holy Baptism. Even if we were not old enough to understand what happened in baptism, by the power of the Word, we could hold our peace no longer, and our hearts cried out for all to hear, “I washed and now I see.” Amen. <SDG>