Our reading this morning will
come from the 42nd chapter of Isaiah in verses 1 through 16. It is amazing, though we ought not to be surprised,
that the Old Testament has such detail concerning what's going
to take place in the New Testament, particularly the death, the life,
the death of our Lord Jesus Christ and the shedding of his blood.
And you can trace in the gospel accounts, right here in this
very chapter, and learn a great deal that appears on the pages
of the four gospels. Isaiah 42 verse 1, Christ is spoken of as Jehovah's
servant. Behold my servant whom I uphold,
mine elect in whom my soul delights, I have put my spirit upon him
He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not
cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break,
and the smoking flax Shall he not quench until he shall bring
forth judgment? And for some reason I've written
justice in my margin unto truth. Justice unto truth. Now listen carefully. Verse 4. Speaking of our Lord
Jesus, over 700 years before he came into this world at Bethlehem,
we are told in the plainest of language, he shall not fail nor
be discouraged till he has set judgment in the earth and the
isles, the coast, shall wait for his law." So the Jesus of the Bible cannot
fail, he cannot be discouraged, he cannot achieve anything short
of what God's eternal purpose is concerning this world and
all its inhabitants and concerning you and concerning me. And for
a preacher to tell you that the Lord Jesus wants something from
you, but you won't give it to him, that's a lie. Plain and
simple, it's just a lie. I want to tell you what was on
a church sign recently. If you were here Wednesday night,
you've already heard it. On the billboard outside, University of financial peace. That's where religion, that's
how far it's fallen from what we've just read. Now you tell
me there's not a difference. Yes, it's a different God. And if you don't believe that,
if you don't know that, I don't know where you've been living,
but it ain't in these United States. Verse 5, thus says God the Lord,
He that created the heavens and stretched them out, He that spread
forth the earth and that which comes out of it, He that gives
breath unto the people upon it and spirit to them that walk
therein, I the Lord have called you in righteousness God the
Father speaking to God the Son, I the Lord have called you in
righteousness and will hold your hand and will keep you and give
you for a covenant of the people for a light of the Gentiles for
this purpose, to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners
from the prison And them that sit in darkness out of the prison
house." Now have we ever been a prisoner? Because if we ain't,
we ain't ever been saved either. We're still a prisoner. Verse 8, I am the Lord. That is my name. And my glory will I not give
to another, neither my praise to graven images, or any other
mental or physical misconception of who God is. Behold, the former things are
come to pass, And new things do I declare, before they spring
forth I tell you of them. Sing unto the Lord a new song,
and his praise from the end of the earth. You that go down to
the sea, and all that is therein, the isles, the coast, and the
inhabitants thereof, let the wilderness And the cities thereof
lift up their voice. The villages that Kedar, or darkness,
doth inhabit, let the inhabitants of the rock sing. Let them shout
from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the
Lord, the Lord God Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. and declare
his praise in the islands. The Lord shall go forth as a
mighty man. He shall stir up jealousy like
a man of war. He shall cry, yea, roar, he shall
prevail against his enemies. I have long time held my peace
I have been still and refrained myself. Now will I cry like a
travailing woman I will destroy and devour at once. I'll make waste mountains and
hills and dry up all their herbs and I'll make the rivers islands
and I'll dry up the pools and I'll bring the blind This is
our text for this morning, verse 16, speaking of what our Lord
Jesus is purposed to accomplish. And I will bring the blind by
a way that they knew not. There is no such thing as being
born into the human race and knowing the God of the Bible.
or knowing his Son, the Lord Jesus. I know Mama taught us
to sing, Oh How I Love Jesus, when we were still in diapers.
But I don't make it so. It is not so until we're born
again. We're prisoners to sin. I'll bring the blind by a way
that they know not. I will lead them in paths that
they have not known. I'll make darkness light before
them and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them
and not forsake them." Now let's take this 16th verse and carefully examine what is
in front of us. Let's ask the Lord to open this
text and this passage to give us by His grace in Christ and
understanding of it, to make me to know beyond a shadow of
a doubt if I'm in Christ or out of Christ, if I'm lost or saved. We are one or the other. We're
born lost. We're saved when we're born again.
May we pray. Lord, as we have read and heard
read the statements that make up these first 16 verses in Isaiah
42, we are amazed at how many years
many of us carried a Bible, claimed to believe it from cover to cover,
and never knew such statements as this existed. We avoided these
places like the plague. And now, after long years of religious
darkness, you've been pleased to open to us this book. Our purpose this morning in coming
to this text is that for any who are gathered
with us in this place who have not truly bowed to the
kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ to the necessity of his blood
being shed for my sin, and for his earning and imputing to me
a righteousness that can never fade away. Oh, how we beg that your blessing
would rest upon your word. We dare not trust in ourselves. We tried that for many, many
years. But Lord, unless you speak, hearing a preacher's voice is
to no avail. Help us, we beg. Lift up your
Son, the only Savior for sinners. We pray in his dear name. Amen. All right, let's work on this
verse. The title of this message, if
you're interested, is The Spiritually Blind. Spurgeon has an excellent illustration
of this blindness. There are actually four kinds
of blindness. Four kinds. He said that when you left the
tabernacle in London, going in a certain direction, the first
street to the left was St. George's Road. And when you got
to the end of that road, there were three asylums. One on the right, one on the
left, and one in the middle. The one on the right. was for
the physically blind. That's one kind of blindness.
That's not what this chapter is talking about. On the left-hand
side of that street, there's another asylum, and it's for
the, I believe he called it the mentally blind. You know, people
who don't have all they need up here. Your elevator doesn't
go all the way up or something, you know, how we use all kinds
of terms to speak of things like this. But those are two kinds
of blindness, physical and mental. And then in the middle was St. George's Catholic Cathedral,
and those people were spiritually blind. Spiritually blind. Now that's the state in which
all of us are born. And just so you know, I'm not
picking on the Catholics. There's Baptists, Methodists,
every other kind of religion you can name. Every religion
on the face of this earth, except the one in which Christ is everything,
is lost. Spiritually dead in trespasses
and sins, and therefore spiritually blind. But the question is, am
I blind spiritually? And if the answer is no, then
I'd be tickled to death to know it if you hadn't told me previously.
But I'll have to ask you one other question. When did the blindness leave
you? When did the scales fall off
our eyes? I know for me it was a long,
long, long time. I thought I was doing something
for God, and I didn't even know Him. Did not know Him. Alright, let's look at this. My first point is, who are these
blind people that our Lord is speaking of
in this chapter? These are people who know that
they are spiritually blind. We won't have time to look it
up. I don't think we will. I may, but I don't want to risk
it. I'll just cite you something in 1 Timothy 1 at about verse
13. When Paul is describing himself
in that same famous chapter that says, this is a... What kind of saying, Craig? Huh? This is a faithful saying? worthy
of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners and Paul adds, of whom I'm chief. Well, in that
same passage leading up to that verse, he uses this specific
language. I was before a blasphemer, a
persecutor, and so forth. So what I'm trying to ask you
is, were you ever blind spiritually? If the answer is no, we're still
blind. You don't get rid of blindness
just by making up your mind that you're going to try to do better,
you're going to straighten up and fly right and all this kind
of stuff. That's not true religion. That's man-made religion. That's
all it is. People who do not have a before,
cannot have an after. Now that's simple enough, isn't
it? Most of us are people who thought
that our old religion was sight. You know, the Baptist religion
gave us sight. Oh, how awfully, awfully disappointed
we are. Who are these blind people? They
are people Now listen carefully, whose hope is an unseen Christ. Now you understand that to see
Christ with natural eyes, it just ain't worth talking about.
There's nothing to it. Just nothing to it. The blind
man in John chapter 9, after he was born blind and our Lord
gave him sight, And he saw the Lord Jesus, and our Savior asked
him, Do you believe on the Son of God? And here he is, face
to face with Him. And he said, Who is He, Lord,
that I might believe on Him? And our Savior, in only the second
time that I know of in the Bible, besides the Samaritan woman and
now the man born blind in John chapter 9, the Lord said, I that
speak unto you am He. And he said, Lord, I believe. But now he knew him by physical
sight before he knew him by spiritual sight. I don't doubt you might
have read the Bible forever, but that doesn't turn the light
on. This is a miracle of God's grace.
Do you remember in John chapter 20 when Thomas had been absent
from our Lord's first resurrection appearance to the apostles. And
when they told John that Christ was alive from the dead, he laid
down certain conditions that he would not believe it until
he put his finger in the holes in his hand and put his hand
in his side. And the very next time our Lord
revealed himself to them, Thomas was present And just between
me and you, he was present the first time, they just couldn't
see him. He said, Thomas, come over here a minute. There's my
hand and there's my side. He said, until I do that, I will
not believe that he's alive from the dead. Now he falls on his
face. Oh my. I do want you to turn. I'm not
going to say this is the last one now, because I'm saving the
best one, if there is such a thing. Let's go to 1 Peter 1. Verse 8, speaking of Jesus Christ,
whom, having not seen, you love, in whom though now you see Him
not, yet believing. Believing without literally seeing. Believing spiritually without
physical sight. You rejoice with joy unspeakable
and full of glory. Full of glory. Given the time in which we live,
We have no other alternative except to believe a Christ whom
we cannot see. And the only events, I think
the only event that can change that is when our Lord returns.
And if I understand it, that brings the end and time is no
more. whom having not seen, we love."
My second question, what is this promise that is made to these
blind people? Look here in the first two parts
of verse 16 in Isaiah 42. Here's the first part of it,
and then there's a second. I'm going to include both of
them, and then we'll deal with the latter part of this verse
in just a bit. The first one in verse 16 of
Isaiah 42, and I'll bring the blind by a way that they knew
not. This is not some familiar path. We've never walked this way before. I will lead them in paths that
they have not known." Those are the first two things
that I want to deal with with this question. Alright? What promise is made to these
blind people? God Himself will be the guide
of His people when they are made to feel their blindness. And the precious Lord Jesus is
the light of the world. Now I want to deal with a string beginning in verse 14 and taking
us through the end of our text. I would like to point out some
things that have this language. God declaring that He will. Let's pick up, we won't read
the whole statement, we'll try to pick them up. In verse 14, Now will I cry,
so you can turn that around and say, I will cry like a prevailing
woman, a woman in labor, giving birth. I will destroy and devour
at once. Verse 15, And I will make waste
mountains and hills, and dry up their herbs, and I'll make
the rivers islands, and I'll dry up the pools. Now we slow
down. Verse 16. There's something like nine I
wills in just the short space of a few verses. Alright, verse
16. And I will bring the blind by
a way that they knew not. But preacher, what if a person
doesn't want to be drawn to Christ? Who do we think God is that He
can't give us a want-to? He can make the most delicious
food we've ever put on our tongue to be like poison to us. And
He could make His Son, the Lord Jesus, who is nothing in our
eyes, to be everything. Now, I understand that if salvation
is this way, salvation is of the Lord. You
should know that by now. I'll bring the blind by way that
they knew not. I'll lead them in paths that
they've not known. I'll make darkness light before
them." Make darkness light. What before was undiscernable
to me, I see now most clearly. Everything between God and a
sinner is in our Lord Jesus Christ. No place else. It ain't what
I do plus His. It's all Him. It's all Him. It has to be. Everything we touch
is contaminated with our sin. I'll make darkness, light, and
crooked things straight. These things will I, I will do
unto them, and not," add another one, "'I will not forsake them.'"
God never begins with us and then leaves us because we're
too stubborn, too this, too that, or too the other. I mean, we're talking about God.
We ain't talking about people. Now I want you to carefully, I'll say it out loud and you
just say it however you do it from your eyes to your brain
and to your heart, alright? Verse 16, Isaiah 42. I will bring
the blind, only the blind. only the spiritually blind. God will bring the blind by a
way, and just who is that way? Our Lord Jesus Christ is the
way, the truth, and the life. I'll bring the blind by a way
that they knew not. We'd have lived to be a thousand
years old. We would never figure it out. Salvation is by revelation. I will lead them in paths that
they have not known. If you told me About thirty-five, forty years ago,
if you'd have told me that I'd be preaching to a handful of
people like we have this morning, I wouldn't for a minute have
believed that God could be in such a thing. But I had rather
have ten of you than a thousand of the others. How preachers
keep from going insane, I do not know. There is something
all the time. All the time. These things, I will do unto
them. Now see if you can get a hold
of this one. Now, I'm adding the I will because
there's one I will for two little endings. This is the second ending. I will not forsake them. What about when Christians stumble
and fall? I will not forsake them. What
about this or that or the other? I'm telling you, there ain't
no way for a child of God to perish. There ain't no way. It cannot happen. Cannot happen. Now, let's turn to John chapter
9. I didn't mean to address your
attention to that text a little while ago, but I don't think
that will hurt anything. I've got it marked and I'm going
through here like I don't. There it is, John chapter 9. This blind man is lying at the
pool of Siloam And at certain periods, supposedly, angels came
and stirred up the water and the first person in the pool
was healed. This man has had this infirmity
some thirty-eight or nine years, I forget which. And every time
the angel comes and stirs the water, someone else beats him
in the pool. And so our Lord comes upon this scene. There's
a lot of folks here in bad shape. But our Lord directs his attention
to one person. One person. Salvation is not
done in mass. It's one at the time. One. And our Lord gave this man sight,
physical sight. And the Pharisees start questioning
him. At first he didn't even know
who it was that had made him whole. And then he found out,
and he thought the Pharisees wanted to know so they could
honor him, honor Christ or something, you know. Being very naive, the
man did not understand why they wanted to know, and so he went
and told them. And so they began then to quiz this man and to
do their best to change his story. And the old boy gets bolder as
time progresses in John chapter 9. It is amazing. He ain't backing
up for nothing or nobody. So they kicked him out of the
Jews' religion. It says they kicked him out of
the synagogue, and I'm pretty sure that means out of the temple
as well. But our Lord finds him. And that's how it is with you
and me. He finds us, and then we find Him. If He waits for
us to find Him, He'll wait in vain. So he says to this man in verse
35, Our Lord heard that they had cast him out, and when He
had found him, He said unto him, Do you believe on the Son of
God? And the man said, Who is He, Lord, that I might believe
on Him? What do you mean, who is he? You're looking at him.
He's talking to you. And our Lord said to him, you've
both seen him and it is he that talks with you. And the man said,
Lord, I believe. And he worshiped him. Now, starting
right here to the end of the chapter, remember what we're
talking about, the spiritually blind. The spiritually blind. And Jesus said, this is verse
39, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see
not might see, and that they which see might be made blind. Now boy, that's a wrinkle. People who claim to see are then
made judicially blind, permanently blind, by the way. And some of the Pharisees, verse
40, which were with him, heard these words and said unto him,
Are we blind also?" Now this was the Jewish religion's number
one group. These people were it. They had
all the answers. They had everything. Are we blind also? I wish you'd promise me that
today you'll re-read these verses at the end. I want to ask you
to read all of John 9, just starting at verse 35, and most especially
verse 40 and 41. Jesus said unto them, if you
were blind spiritually now, you wouldn't have any sin. You see? But now you say we see,
therefore your sin remains. Now if that isn't some strange
language, I don't know what is. But it ought to be plain as day
to us. These Pharisees believed. I mean to the bottom of their
shoes. That they knew just about everything
about God, and about the coming Messiah, about the kingdom, and
everything else in between. And they don't know anything.
Why? They think they can see, but
they're blind. But listen, if you're here, and
you think I'm talking to you, I probably am. But here's one
who's been there, exactly in that same shape, and so were
many of you. And God, by a miracle of His
grace in Christ, found us where we were and brought us to faith
in Christ, purely and only and altogether by grace. Now what
I'm trying to tell you is, that's how God works. That's how he
does business with sinners, and he never fails. The Lord Jesus,
remember, cannot fail. For that matter, he can't even
be discouraged or disappointed, because he's God. Let's see, the song is in the
chorus book.