My daughter is wrapping up a in interesting class right now on how to be an effective teacher for students with special needs. There are students who are disruptive. There are kids who struggle to focus, and learn. There are also kids who have disabilities, of one type or another. With these kids, teachers, the administration, and the parents need to work together to figure out what the students with disabilities can and can't do. And the goal is to include them with other students in as much as possible. Most of those students can't do pre-calc, or physics, but they can be a part of music classes, or PE. Teachers need to work with parents, and administration, and figure out what they can and can't do, and set them up to do as much as possible.
I've caught just bits and pieces of this from proofreading her papers, but I've found her class really helpful in a couple ways. First, you never say, "disabled people." You say, "people with disabilities." That sounds like word games, maybe. But a disability doesn't define you. You're a person, who has that thing. The second thing I found helpful, was just realizing how hard people work in the school system to include people with disabilities, as much as possible. The things they can do, we should make sure that they can do. And the things they can't do-- it is what is.
Our passage today is about people with disabilities, sort of. Yahweh is talking about a people who are blind and deaf. I've known blind people, and I've known nearly deaf people. If you have one disability, or the other, life is hard, and you need help. There are things you can and can't do. But if you have both, life is mostly about what you can't do. If a student is blind and deaf, a teacher will find that there's not much she can do without working one on one, and without a lot of extra training.
I say all of this as an introduction here, for two reasons. The first, is I find myself nervous talking about disabilities like I'm going to, just because of my daughter's class. And I just want to make it clear that I'm trying very hard to be sensitive to all of this.
The second, is that it's helpful to keep in mind from the start that every disability keeps from people from living a typical human life. There are things that people with disabilities can and can't do. And that's a key idea for today's passage.
The one last thing I want to say before diving in, is that this is the type of passage where it's easiest to understand it, if we pretend to be the original audience, and don't worry so much about ourselves for quite a while. So I'd just encourage you to put on your sandals and tunics, and imagine yourselves to be God's people, stuck in Babylonian exile.
Let's start by reading just Isaiah 43:8:
(8) Bring out a blind people, [Isaiah 42:16]
while eyes, they have,
and deaf,
while ears belong to them.
Our prophet opens this little section by a call, to some group (probably the divine council, but it's perhaps best to not make too much of that here), to bring out a blind and deaf people. Now, when we, God's exiled people in Babylon, hear this, we find ourselves thinking that the prophet is talking about us. Let's flip back to Isaiah 42:18-20, and remind ourselves how "we" have been talked about (NRSV updated no reason):
18 Listen, you who are deaf,
and you who are blind, look up and see!
19 Who is blind but my servant
or deaf like my messenger whom I send?
Who is blind like my dedicated one
or blind like the servant of the LORD?
20 He sees many things, but he does[c] not observe them;
his ears are open, but he does not hear.
So we've already heard that we are blind, even though we have eyes, and technically see things. And we are deaf, even though we have ears, and our ears are open. So when we hear this new prophetic word, back in 43:8, we probably find ourselves feeling a little attacked. We are almost certainly being talked about, but the way God describes us isn't how we want to see ourselves. At the same time, we can't be quite sure who this group is. It's open at this point, and that openness helps us to keep an open mind. Who is this group? What does God want with them?
So God calls out for the blind and deaf group of people to be brought out. And the reason they need to be brought out, instead of just drawing near, is because people who are blind and deaf-- people who have both disabilities-- are going to need a lot of help. They can't see where they are going, right? And they can't hear, to come toward a voice, or take directions. People can overcome blindness or deafness, but the combo is rough. We find ourselves thinking about Helen Keller.
At the same time here, we find ourselves thinking that perhaps things aren't hopeless from God's perspective. If you're blind because you had an eye gouged out, that would be an incredible miracle for God to give you sight. It feels like there's nothing that can be done. But if you have eyes, then there's perhaps a chance. This is something that can be healed. In the same way, if someone cuts off your ear, so that it's missing, and you lose all hearing, there's probably nothing that can be done, right? Who could possibly reattach the ear? But if you're just deaf, and everything is still intact, perhaps there's a chance. Maybe this is something that can be fixed.
So God calls for this group of blind and deaf people to be brought out. For what? What does God want, from a blind and deaf people?
This brings us to verse 9. Picture this like a movie. We've been zoomed in on God and this people, and now the camera pans out, to get the bigger picture:
(9) All the nations have assembled together,
and the peoples have gathered.
Who among them was declaring this?,
while the first things was causing us to hear?
May they bring their witnesses,
that they may be vindicated,
that they may hear,
that they may say, "True!."
What we are hearing here, sounds a bit like a huge U.N. meeting. (really, what I'm thinking about are the scenes in Star Wars where the nations are gathered together https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBdVTXJtvGk ).
God has this blind and deaf people who have been led into this U.N. meeting. And God invites all these nations (NIV makes it into an invitation to "gods," but the "gods" are deliberately not named here, and not the direct focus) to explain... what? In the third line of verse 9, God says, "Who among them was declaring THIS."
What is "this"? What are the "first things"?
Probably, the events God is describing here are the ones about the Mystery Dude from the east. There is a powerful ruler rising up east of Babylon, who is conquering cities, and winning war after war. He's a massive threat to the superpower. He looks like he's going to flip the world upside down.
Who foretold Mystery Dude's rise? Who can explain, theologically, what's happening?
So God invites this global assembly to produce witnesses who can explain this. Which of them can point to their gods, and to their prophets, and say, "Prophet So-and-so foretold Mystery Dude's rise. All of this is expected."
God here is incredibly gracious, and open-minded. He invites them to step forward, and explain what's going on in the newspapers.
And what's our role, at this point? We are the audience, right? We are the spectators, who see all of it-- God, the blind and deaf, and all the nations.
Now, do we find ourselves knowing the answer to God's question? Who foretold this?
If we've been paying attention to this prophet standing in front of us, we know the answer. Yahweh, the Creator God, the God of Israel, foretold this. Yahweh did this through the prophet who is standing in front of you. He announced that Mystery Dude was rising up, and that God would use him to bring his people back home. That's Isaiah 40, and 42.
Probably, we find ourselves in a good spot here, if we take this prophet seriously. We are the kids in Sunday school who can raise our hands, and give the right answer.
In verse 10, Yahweh (through his prophet) turns to address us directly:
(10) You (plural) [are] my witnesses, utterance of Yahweh,
while my servants whom I have chosen,
in order that you may acknowledge,
that you may have faith/confidence in/toward me,
that you may understand
that I [am] He.
Before me, no god ["el"] was formed,
while after me, there will not be. [the verb and tense that "Yahweh" comes from ???????? ]
So God has invited all the nations to produce witnesses who can explain all of these current world events. And they can't. None of them know what's going on. Do you?
God thinks you don't. God thinks that you, his servants, are blind and deaf. You are the people with disabilities who God had brought into the room.
At the same time, God has this hope for you, that you'd somehow be able to be witnesses to what God is doing. Now, just stop and think about that. A witness, by definition, is someone who heard or saw something. Imagine that your apartment neighbor was killed, and you heard the sounds of a struggle. You heard the gun shot at 7:05 pm. And you saw someone run out of the building. That would make you a great witness.
From God's perspective, that's not the situation here. You are blind and deaf. But God's hoping, despite your blindness and deafness, that you are somehow able to witness about him, and tell the nations about him. After all, you have eyes, so perhaps you saw something. And you have ears, so perhaps you heard something.
So God chose you to be his servants, and witnesses, and this choosing has three main goals. Verse 10 has three verbs, three goals:
The first, is that you would "acknowledge." Many translations here will have, that you may "know," and the verb often that sense. But what God is chasing here, isn't an information upload. God wants a type of knowing that involves the attitude, and the will. An acknowledgement (the nuance I'm aiming for, I think, is the difference between the first half of Romans 1:21, and the second half. It's not just "knowing God" that God is after, but an "acknowledgement" that includes things like honoring him and thanking him). Of what? Lots of things, probably, but two in particular. (1) He wants you to acknowledge that He, Yahweh, reigns above all other idols and gods. (2) He wants you to acknowledge the reality that He is fighting for you, and working to bring you home.
The second thing that God picked you out for, was that you would have faith, or confidence, toward Him. Here again, some translations might have, that you would believe God, and that's okay. But there's a little something more again here. What God is seeking is trust, and confidence, and faith from you. This again is an attitude. A choice of your will. God wants you to be confident that He will be a good God to you (and that's not what "you" think; Isaiah 40:27).
The third thing that God picked you out for, was that you would understand that "I am He." If God was using a modern idiom, here He'd say, that you would understand that I'm the Man. Yahweh preexisted before any other spiritual beings. He alone wasn't created. And after him, there will not be. Yahweh is He Who Remains.
Being a faithful servant, from God's perspective, begins?/revolves around? these three things: acknowledgement, faith, and understanding. If these three qualities define the type of servant you are, you won't be blind or deaf. You will be the type of servant who can do everything God wants. He can call you out into the nations, and you can witness to the truth about Yahweh, Creator of the world, Ruler over all.
Verse 11-12:
(11) I, I, [am] Yahweh, ???????
and there isn't apart from me a Savior/Deliverer.
(12) I have declared,
and/that I have saved,
and/that I have caused to hear,
and there isn't among you a stranger [Yahweh isn't an unknown God?],
while you [are] my witnesses. -Utterance of Yahweh--
while I [am] God ("El").
(13) What's more, from this day, I [am] He,
and there isn't, from my hand, one who delivers/snatches away.
I will act,
and who can change it back?
Yahweh is the One who foretold everything that's happening. You should expect Mystery Dude from east to keep successfully pushing back the Babylonian empire, until it falls. You should expect God to pave a road for you to return to Jerusalem. And you should expect all the Babylonian gods to fail to stop Yahweh. No one can turn history back, to the time when the superpower looked permanent, and powerful.
So Yahweh has "spoken" all of this. He's doing all of this. He's caused everyone to hear. And He's doing all of this, as the God who has been committed to you for centuries. Yahweh is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's no stranger. This isn't like when Yahweh used Moses to free Israel from Egypt, and Moses is like, "Who should I say is sending me?" and Yahweh gives his name. They know his name.
So there is a total clarity to this situation. It's all clearly visible, without any haze or darkness. It's all clearly heard, without any distortion.
But the question remains, what kind of witness will you choose to be? Will you let God open your eyes and ears through his prophet, or will you remain blind and deaf? At this point, the main thing that still needs fixing, is you. You are God's witnesses, but will you be the kind that proclaim the truth about God to the nations? Or will you be the kind that willfully remains ignorant, and stubborn?
Verse 13-15:
(14) Thus has said Yahweh your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
"For your sake I have sent to Babylon,
that/and I have brought down bars, all of them--
while the Chaldeans, into lamentation, their rejoicing [Hebrew unclear].
(15) I [am] Yahweh, your Holy One, The Creator of Israel, Your King."
Here, we have the first open reference to Babylon, in a verse that honestly has impossible Hebrew. Nothing I can say about verse 14 is a sure thing. But possibly, the idea is that God is going to bring down all the city gates in Babylon. The city will be captured. And the Babylonians, when they move from being top dog to nothing, will turn from rejoicing to lamentation.
God then wraps up this prophetic word (probably-- determining the edges of this prophetic oracle is tricky), with a statement about himself. He is Yahweh. He is "Holy," which means that He is committed/consecrated to you. He is the Creator, not just of the world, but of Israel. And He is your King.
So that's our little prophetic word, Isaiah 43:8-15. I tried to consistently help you hear it as the prophet's first audience. But what do we do with it now, as we move back to our own horizon (hermeneutically)?
I think we'd all agree that God has chosen us to be his servants, and his witnesses. God's vision for us, the church, looks a lot like his vision for his OT people. I think it's also true, that the success of that vision depends in part on us. There are things that God wants from us, and the question is, "Will God gets those things, or not?"
One of the things I find attractive about this passage is the way it describes what God wants in a different way than we are used to. It's a different perspective, with slightly different verbs.
So what does God want from his servant, from his witnesses?
The starting point (?), is that He wants us to "acknowledge." It's easy to get sucked into lifestyle that's focused on getting stuff done. Every day is a To-Do list. My wife last Sunday night said to me, "We survived the weekend." And she's not wrong. But we both had to sort of laugh about that. We can get so focused on what's in front of us, on earthly things, that we lose sight of God. We think our success, and prosperity, depends on us, or on some other god. We tend to forget that we are God's servants.
What God wants for us, instead, is that we acknowledge him. I think if that's our struggle, there are two pretty easy things we can do to fix that. The first, is being more intentional about thanking God. We should thank God before every meal, acknowledging his faithfulness. We should thank him when He rescues us in big or little ways. The other thing that's simple, but might completely change your life, is to start praying the Lord's prayer near the start of every day. The Lord's prayer is an acknowledgement that food, forgiveness, and protection are found in God. And it shifts your mindset, so that you find yourself focused on God's will, and God's kingdom, and God's honor. Pray that, and I suspect you'll find that you live in a way that acknowledges that God is God, and that we are his servants.
The second thing that God wants from his servants, is that we trust Him. This is one of those things that's easier said than done. There are times when we fear we will lose our jobs, or not pay the bills. There are times when life completely falls apart. And there are times when we wonder where in the world God is. What does it mean to trust God, in that situation? Let me start by saying what it doesn't mean. Trusting God doesn't mean passively believing that God is in control. It doesn't even mean passively having confidence that God is working things out for your good. What trusting God means, especially when your life is out of control, is that you turn to your God, calling out to him, and having confidence that He will help.
The third thing God wants from his servants, is that they understand that God "is" The One Who Was, and that God "is" He Who Remains.
There is an inevitability to God's victory, and at the end of time, He will be the one seated on the throne. From our perspective, it's not clear how God will pull this off. It's not always clear that God is winning. But God wins. And if we know this, and believe it, we will find ourselves serving well.
The last thing I want to touch on this morning is evangelism. In verse 10, Yahweh called his exilic people to be his servants, and his witnesses (and I'm not going to put a lot of focus on this, probably, but this is a typical example of how "calling," "election," is usually focused on ministry/service and not on salvation). So let's talk about the witnesses part.
God's goal throughout these chapters has been that Israel would teach the nations his desired way of life (misphat). His vision is that all peoples would have a chance to hear the truth about him, and what He wants. And Israel itself doesn't understand that. Israel is blind and deaf. Which puts God in kind of a tough spot, and that's the reason He's sent this prophet to try to fix that.
In most churches, the leadership of that church really wrestles hard with how to send you all out successfully. How you can be equipped, and motivated, to be God's witnesses? What makes this so hard?
We could answer this a million ways, but the contribution this passage makes to that question, is that God's people can't be effective witnesses unless they do three key verbs-- unless they acknowledge, trust, and believe that God is the One who was, and that God is He who remains. So if you find that talking to people about God, and Jesus, and the kingdom, is hard, I'd just encourage you to chew on that. Perhaps your struggle runs deeper, and the problem runs along the lines of those three verbs. Fix those things, and you'll be great servants and witnesses.
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The other direction I thought about taking this was reflecting on what it means to be a witness in a post-Christian society, where there are many religions and gods, and where many people think there is no god at all. We tend to think that evangelism basically revolves around telling people about Jesus. Jesus is the Messiah. But that makes assumptions that can no longer be made. Evangelism can't be overly focused solely on Jesus.
In a pluralistic society, Yahweh, the God of Christianity, needs proclaiming as well. God as the creator, as the one who keeps the world going, and provides for everyone, who gives the rain and sunshine. That God is the one who sent Jesus to die for our sins, so that we could be part of God's family, and have a relationship with him and with each other. Paul's argument in Acts 17:24ff. understands this and respects the different starting point, and witnesses needs to recognize the different starting point people have.
Translation:
(8) Bring out a blind people, [Isaiah 42:16]
while eyes, they have,
and deaf,
while ears belong to them.
(9) All the nations have assembled together,
and the peoples have gathered.
Who among them was declaring this?,
while the first things was causing us to hear?
May they bring their witnesses,
that they may be vindicated,
that they may hear,
that they may say, "True!."
(10) You (plural) [are] my witnesses, utterance of Yahweh,
while my servants whom I have chosen,
in order that you may know/acknowledge,
that you may have faith/confidence in/toward me,
that you may understand
that I [am] He.
Before me, no god ["el"] was formed,
while after me, there will not be. [the verb and tense that "Yahweh" comes from ???????? ]
(11) I, I, [am] Yahweh, ???????
and there isn't apart from me a Savior/Deliverer.
(12) I have declared,
and/that I have saved,
and/that I have caused to hear,
and there isn't among you a stranger [=an unknown god?],
while you [are] my witnesses. -Utterance of Yahweh--
while I [am] God ("El").
(13) What's more, from this day, I [am] He,
and there isn't, from my hand, one who delivers/snatches away.
I will act,
and who can change it back?
(14) Thus has said Yahweh your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
"For your sake I have sent to Babylon, [Isaiah 41:2]
that/and I have brought down bars, all of them--
while the Chaldeans, into lamentation, their rejoicing [Hebrew unclear].
(15) I [am] Yahweh, your Holy One, The Creator of Israel, Your King."
