40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 42:1-17 (Episode 483)

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

There is a chosen servant coming who is not like anyone who has come before Him. The work of Christ is the blazing glory of God. And get ready to sing a new song, because God is going to do something new. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Events Schedule 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education What's New from 1517: Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms by Chad Bird Remembering Your Baptism: A 40-Day Devotional by Kathryn Morales Sinner Saint by Luke Kjolhaug The Impossible Prize: A Theology of Addiction by Donavan Riley  More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing, all the articles, academies, you can sign up for an event. And of course, if you haven't ordered Chad's new book, you know, Untamed Prayers, it's a devotional on the Psalms. And so you want to get that. I've heard that that book is doing quite well. The reviews are very good. Don't be left out. You know, people everywhere are grabbing this thing and they have good things to say about it.

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thank you very much. Chad, we are in Isaiah chapter 42. we got we ended with uh you know some uh some positive stuff i mean uh we did get told that god was going to uh to send a preacher of good news i mean this is all in the context of uh how worthless idols are um which you know the old testament prophets will say a thing or two about uh the worthlessness of idols uh it's not uh it's like they can't say it enough uh it would seem it would seem that they this is something that they have to keep coming back to over and over and over again kind of like me telling my two-year-old like not to put things in her mouth

and uh and the same things uh the same things like i did like somehow i changed my mind since five minutes ago when i said yeah don't put that in your mouth uh this is how the prophets are. But there is a promise of a preacher while also saying that, hey, all of these idols are pretty worthless. Yeah. And that gets us right into chapter 42, which starts out, Behold My Servant, which is the first of the famous servant songs in Isaiah. So we'll have others of these coming up. So the typical four that we look at are this one in 42. Next one's in chapter 49. Next one's in chapter 50. And then the final one is mainly Isaiah 53. It really starts toward the tail end of Isaiah 52. So 42, 49, 50, and then 52 slash 53 are the four servant songs.

Is it a spoiler for me to just ask the question right now? Who's this servant, Chad? Like who are we talking about is this uh is this just like some guy um you know that god's gonna send to do some work yeah you know i my own suspicion is it's jesus yeah yeah no there's i was i was about to say so if you depending on how much you want to read like if you're a article or even a study bible or commentary kind of kind of person or maybe you listen to other podcasts besides besides hours you'll hear of course other explanations of this you know sometimes people will say well this servant it's not an individual it's like israel personified personification of israel which falls completely apart when you especially when you get to isaiah 53 well this this servant

is dying for israel so it can't be israel personified or they'll say it's uh sometimes well, it's actually, it's a remnant within Israel. Well, that doesn't work either because all Israel is indicted for being blind and rebellious and going astray. Sometimes you'll hear it's Cyrus, Cyrus, Cyrus, the Persian. Well, that doesn't fit either because Cyrus just, he's a Persian. He's not an Israelite who's heeding the word of God and bringing justice and all these things that are described. Plus he's certainly not bearing the iniquities of of the entire people so those are some typical explanations that you'll that you'll hear uh what makes the most sense is that this is the same individual that was talked about much earlier

in isaiah this king that we hear all about in those early chapters the one who's the son of david who comes from the root of jess who is the root of jesse who's coming from jesse's line and He's going to execute all of these divinely willed salvations and bring peace and all the things that are talked about, new creation, all the things that Isaiah talks about in those opening chapters. So now he's picking back up with the same promise of an individual. And of course, this individual is the Messiah, the King, the Son of God. He's all of what Isaiah is describing perfectly fits with the life and the ministry and the

suffering a death of jesus as the messiah and and jesus is sort of the only one man that you get to talk about is uh you know um a king but a servant i mean this is like who is it what kind of king is this who what king does this describe well this is there's only one king that fits that description this is a sort of servant king someone that's chosen someone in whom god's soul delights i mean I mean, come on. I don't know if you've looked at the history, but I feel like this is one guy. And then you have this, and I think, and I know we haven't read the text yet, but it's right here in the first verse as you read it. You have this calling forward, and I know that John the Baptist has come up a lot in our talking about Isaiah, But I have put my spirit upon him. And I mean, you can't, I don't, I mean, maybe you can, but I can't like hear that and not be like, well, who, where did, who did that happen to?

I know an explicit story where I feel like that happened to somebody. yeah there's all those details in chapter 42 49 50 52 53 i mean you get these cumulatively and you look at them you're like well this first of all is certainly an individual and everything being described here fits with everything else we've been told about him in isaiah as well as the old testament in general and then you put that all alongside the gospels like oh well yeah of course he's he's the messiah everything is like his entire ministry and mission and biography are laid out in the old testament so that when you begin to look at what he does and what he says in the gospels it's like well yeah this is this is the one that we've been

waiting for. So let me read the first four verses. Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights. I put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street. A bruised reed he will not break in a faintly burning wick he will not quench he will faithfully bring forth justice he will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for his torah or as it's usually translated for for his law let me start at the end because i think that's a an important point to keep in mind when you're hearing this so three different times we hear about he's going to bring forth justice, going to faithfully bring forth

justice. He's going to establish justice in the earth. So Hebrew word for justice is mishpat. But this is a much broader category than we think about. You know what? Dan and I are having some problems. We're neighbors. And so I'm going to bring him to the court and I'm going to get justice, right? This is a much larger category than what we usually associate with litigation. this is basically the establishment of god's will on earth so the established this is the way that god wants things to be and so when that happens you have established justice and notice how it ends the coastlands wait for his torah now that's in parallel to god establishing justice in the earth. So how does the servant establish or bring forth justice to the nations? Well, through his

word, through the Torah, which is the Torah just means teaching. So through the teaching of the word of God, which the servant is going to do, therefore, thereby justice is established. That is God's will for people is going to be done. So that, that the way verse four ends, I think it's important for kind of understanding everything that precedes it how's the servant going to bring about all these things well he's gonna he's gonna preach he's going to bring forth god's word he's gonna do do god's word as we know from john's gospel he's actually going to be that word incarnate yeah and if you if you had any doubt honestly about about this assuming you you know take the New Testament seriously as well. I mean, you know, Matthew will say in Matthew 12 that

Jesus explicitly fulfills this, right? So in Matthew 12, this is, oh, the disciples are eating heads of grain, you know, on the Sabbath. And so, you know, the Pharisees don't like that. And they got real questions about that. And then Jesus, you know, tells them like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm going to keep doing that. And then I'm also, I'm, I'm going to do other good things on the Sabbath, just so you know. So he's healing people. I think it's the man with the withered hand that he heals there. And then, um, and then it says like, he's just starting to heal all kinds of people on the Sabbath. So Jesus is using the Sabbath to do all kinds of good things. And then Matthew says like, this was done to fulfill what was written in the prophet Isaiah

and in quotes, this whole thing about like the bruised reed and the, the, the flickering wick and all this so matthew for what it's worth for sure says this is jesus jesus fulfills this exact thing that isaiah said in his ministry yeah yeah and there's uh there's echoes of other stuff of course from the new testament these verses too as you've already pointed out the uh i put my spirit upon him well that's what happened at the baptism of jesus i'll always love these uh these these trinitarian statements to in the old testament sometimes you just kind of read right past it but if you stop you're like wait what did i just say there's in one line i spirit i spirit him so the father is going to put his spirit upon his son there you go and just a few few short words

you've got the trinity trinity mentioned there and uh and also i i would argue that that opening half verse, my servant and my uphold, my chosen in whom I sold the lights is echoed at the transfiguration when God, the father says, you know, this is my son in whom I delight with whom I'm well pleased. Listen to him. Well, where do we have in the old Testament, God being pleased with his son right here? This is the one in whom his, his soul delights. There's a, it's kind of hard to bring forth in translation. I've actually tried, but I can't think of good words to accurately portray this. But Isaiah does a kind of a wordplay or contrast here between the bruised reed and the faintly burning wick. So he's describing, of course, people who

are beat up, beat down, like this faintly burning wick about to go out, this bruised reed. So those kind of people, the Messiah, the sermon of the Lord, he's not going to break, he's not going to put them out. And then you switch to the next verse, which is verse four. And Isaiah uses those exact same two Hebrew words to describe the Messiah. but in contrast, where it says he will not grow faint, that's the same word he uses for faintly burning wick. And then when he says he will not be discouraged, that's the same word he used in verse three for bruised. So it might say he will not grow faint or be bruised in the sense that he himself is going to be the strength for those who are weak. He's going to be the health for those who are sick he's going to be the one who doesn't break for those who are nearly broken so that's the contrast that he's setting up here he's basically pointing toward the servant as the

one who has everything that everyone else needs and he's going to give what he has to everyone through of course healing through showing mercy through preaching of the word of god through all these various ways that you read about in the gospels you know you know one of the things that's cool, too, that Matthew does when talking about this is, so he quotes this first part of Isaiah in reference to Jesus, and he does this bruised reed, it will not break, faintly burning wick, he will not quench. And when he does that, it changes after that, and it says, you know, here it says that he will faithfully bring forth justice, he will not grow faint or be discouraged until he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands wait for his law yeah right so

like you're like okay well matthew like summarizes that down into something different where he says the bruise we read will not break smaller with you will not quench until he brings justice to victory and in his name the gentiles will hope right which is like you're like oh is he like misquoting that i don't think so like i think what he's he's consolidating right yeah yeah yeah which new testament writers frequently do you know this and this is well you think about it this is what teachers this is what preachers do as well i mean how many times when we're explaining something from the scriptures we're not quoting it verbatim we're pulling together this and that you know we're summarizing things we're expressing it it's not like we're

misrepresenting scripture this is just the way that we commonly explain scripture and well the bible does that all over the place especially in the new testament where they will they'll bring together a whole string of passages paul does this when he's writing to the romans you you read through his description of the sinfulness of humanity and you think he's just quoting from like one particular psalm no he's got a whole string of quotes from all over the psalms as well as the rest of the old testament and uh you see this we before we hit record we were talking about uh steven's sermon in the book of acts and well he does that too you know it's not like he's just quoting word for word the exact hebrew text as he's preaching about the story

of israel no he's pulling from different places and just kind of putting it together so yeah matthew's doing that but also and i think too what's happening there is that so if you're reading this and uh so you have like the coastlands are waiting for his law and matthew doesn't include that and instead he just says that in him the gentiles will hope but what he what is there is that he will establish justice in the earth and now lest you be uh confused right where you'd be like well good finally all these enemies of israel are going to get it uh that's what we were waiting for uh matthew seems to think now uh like this this justice is for them as well it's not it's not justice against them right uh but that jesus is good news uh and the justice that he will bring

is good news for everybody yeah yeah which is a major isaiah theme too as you as you work your way through the rest of the book where the justice he brings to the nations is that is a good thing It's the hope. I mean, this is redemption, not just for Israel, but for the rest of the world. It's the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham that he's going to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. Yeah. And so if you try to take this as Israel personified and you kind of make it about them versus their oppressors or whatever, you've really, really scaled this down, then it's much, much bigger than that. yeah and i suspect that maybe it was part of the misunderstanding that some of his fellow jews had in the first century oh the messiah is here time to beat up on all the gentiles we're gonna have

some justice for the nations now no that's not what the messiah came to do no i did quite the opposite no the the hope of the gentiles is now here yeah which is great which is great news especially for us Gentiles. That's true. All right. So picking up with verse five, let's see what else. The servant song isn't over. So let's see what else he has to say. Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it. It's kind of a long introduction. So who is this God who's about to speak? He's the creator. He's the stretcher. He's the spreader. He's the breath giver. He's all these things get kind of given his pedigree before you actually record what he what he has to say. And of course, this is just simply asking you the fact that he alone is God.

He did all this work of creation. He's the one who gives life and breath and spirit to all people. So what does he say? He says in verse six, I am Yahweh. I have called you in righteousness. Now, this you is in reference to, this you is singular. So he's speaking to the servant here still. I have called you, the servant, in righteousness.

I will take you by the hand and keep you. I will give you, I love this part, I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations. So that accents our whole justice for the nations, right? Hope for the nations, a light for the nations. So God is going to do this. This is the father speaking to his son.

Yahweh speaking to his servant. So I've done this. I'm going to give you. And then what else is going to happen? Verse seven continues it to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon and from the prison, those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord. That's my name. My glory. I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. Behold, the former things have come to pass and new things. I now declare before they spring forth i tell you of them and that you at the end is plural i'll tell y'all of them so i love this section um got that great introduction to it and then you have the anytime

in the old testament you have the father speaking to the son i just love that it's just like so great you know when in the new testament we got some recorded speech like at the baptism you know where the father speaks to the son or transfiguration or that time in john's gospel where you have God speaking and people think it thundered, you know, you have those, those occasions, but man, you got it all over the place here, all over the place in the Old Testament where the father speaking to his son and he's saying, I called you, I'm going to take you by the hand, I'm going to keep you and I'm going to give you this, I'm going to make you, make you like this embodied covenant for the people and not just for Israel, but

for the nations. And then you're going to go around opening blind eyes and you're going to be liberating people left and right. And he says that I'm the Lord, that's my name. I'm not going to give my glory to another or to carved idols. And I think behind that, kind of the implication of that is when I'm giving my glory in you, you're not a carved image. You're not someone different than me you're my son sharing my very nature yeah and what you're going to do is something radically radically new at the very root of our existence of creation of the world it's it's new and before it happens before it springs forth i'm going to tell everyone so that when it does happen you can look back and say oh yeah god promised he was going to do this and now he's fulfilling his promise

Yeah. One of the things that's great about this is, so you hear this and you're like, I'm the Lord, that is my name. My glory, I'm not giving it to anyone else. And I'm certainly not going to share it with some carved bird or whatever. I'm not doing that. um and then you have uh the apostles will say stuff like you're you're a partaker of his glory or like that you do share in his glory so you're like oh what's what's that about exactly like how is it that god won't share his glory with you but yet we're told explicitly that we do share in his glory and and the the answer to that question is that when you when you hear glory um you might naturally think like the wrong thing. And so what God is talking about here, and most of the time when he's talking about, when God is ultimately talking about his glory or the things, and here he combines it with praise, what is it that you would praise him for?

What he's talking about is his work of salvation. And he will not share that work with, he will not let someone else participate in that work. He's certainly not going to have you praising someone else for that work. Now, he will share it with you once it's done. And this is why the scripture will talk about the salvation of the Lord, but then also talk about your salvation, because both of these things are true, where he's done it and he's given it to you. But as far as the work itself, which of course is what is being described here is like the work of Christ. Yeah, he's not sharing that with anybody. He does not share that glory. And so the cross is the sort of theologians that have said, like, the cross is the blazing center of the glory of

God. And he goes up there alone. He's not letting you climb up there with him. That's his work, and he doesn't share it with anyone, which is good news. So God not sharing his glory with anyone uh with with his ultimate glory being his purpose of salvation is great news uh because it's it's a work that of course that only he can do um the other thing that's that's you were talking about god like the father speaking to the son and it is cool when you get that because you do assume that this is a regular occurrence since jesus says hey you know how many things i do without talking to the father about it none right yeah i i love your what you'd said about uh glory and salvation too that's such a refreshing change i think a perspective from what you'll usually hear

god's not going to share his glory with anybody else yeah you know you really usually hear that and it's just kind of a very uh militant monotheism and i mean it's true yeah i mean god God is not going to share his glory with any pseudo divinity, but it's much more than that. This is all about his, his work is our savior. Salvation belongs to the Lord, right? It doesn't belong. It's not a common property. It's not, yeah, I've got some salvation. I got to share in that salvation. It's partly mine. No, it's all God's. Yeah. Thank goodness. Because if God had come to me and said, Chad, I'm going to, I'm going to need you to, I really need you to help me with this whole salvation thing. Well, I had the anti-Midas touch. So everything I touch turns

to not gold, but something much worse. So I would have messed it all up. So thank God that he did it all. He did it all for us. Yeah. I mean the, the, um, I think I, yeah, the, the glory of God, like in the cross of christ it is definitely unintuitive but this i mean this is i mean paul will say this like almost explicitly like this is like the glory of god revealed right is the work of christ on behalf of the ungodly yeah yeah anytime man anytime i read about the crucifixion or you know see some depiction of it i think and i think of that this is the uh revelation of the glory of god you know just what a seeming contradiction that is uh but that's the way that's the way god works he works in these backward sorts of ways so he hides himself behind

that i'm sure i i don't know i i think i've probably said this before when we were getting genesis maybe not exodus sorry but um wait i even think that and i'm speculating here but i like it And I think that even when, you know, Moses asked to see God, and God's like, oh, yeah, that's not probably a good idea. But what I will do is I'll, like, hide you in, like, the cleft of the rock, and I'll let my goodness pass by you. And then this hair that Moses sees, you know, sees the back of God. He sees the back of him. Now, I know I've said, like, you know, if God has a back, it belongs to Jesus. you know like that's how that works um so yeah so you could be like yeah i think you saw jesus

like and that's fine i'll go a step further and uh uh and say i think that the i think what moses probably saw was something like the scourged back of god uh because this is what the goodness of god looks like why why is god like i'll show you what my goodness looks like it's not like it's not what you think. It's not what you would expect. And I have a feeling that that was a scourged back of God that Moses saw pass before him, which I'm sure was nothing like what he expected to see when God said to him, you want to know what goodness looks like? I'll show you. I'll show you. That's something pretty easily missed too when you're reading through that, when he says, I will make all my goodness pass before you. Yeah. Moses wants to see God's glory.

God's like, no, no, I got something better. I'm going to show you my goodness. And you're right. I mean, where do you, we still call it Good Friday, right? Yeah. It's where you see the goodness of God displayed in all the badness of the horror of crucifixion. Yeah. God hides behind his opposite.

That's the way he's always worked. I know if I was making a movie of that scene, that's how I would shoot it. Yeah. We'll put it that way. Definitely. Definitely. one more thing here uh i guess we can move on but this came to my mind when i was reading this line about i'm going to give you a covenant for the people a light light for the nations and i

mentioned how christ is like an embodied covenant which is so it's perfectly fitting with what happens on the night in which he's betrayed you know because he speaks of this is my blood of the covenant and it's his body. So, I mean, he actually is the embodiment of, of the covenant. He is it. So he's the, uh, the flesh and blood covenant that God makes for us. And this is, so this would be Isaiah's version of speaking of the new covenant that of course is made explicit in Jeremiah. And I can't think of the chapter, but Ezekiel has his own kind of version of a, of a new covenant promise. So it's not just, not just Jeremiah, even though that's what the author of Hebrews quotes when he's talking about the new covenant. Jeremiah talks about it, Ezekiel talks

about it, Isaiah talks about it here, and there's probably other sections of the Old Testament as well. But they were always looking forward to a new and a better covenant in the Old Testament, because obviously the first one was insufficient because it was broken all the time. It had to wait for something better as the author of hebrews would say and that better thing is the the messiah himself yeah i mean like verse nine you got some real like uh new wine kind of talk to like where you're the the former things like there's other they they've come to pass uh but there's a new thing and it's gonna be a declarative thing right a new a new thing i now declare and I got a new word, right?

And I'm going to tell you about it now before it actually comes forth, right? But I'm going to hint at it that there is going to be a new word spoken and that's pretty great. And speaking of new words, just as a segue into the next verses, first thing we're going to hear about

is a new song. So we usually associate that language with some of the Psalms. Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song. So Isaiah and the Psalms both speak of this new song. And I think a lot of times we hear that. It's just kind of like,

hey, you know, I wrote a new song. You should hear this. I just came out this morning. I was just sitting around with my guitar, strumming some chords. And what do you think of this one? And I wrote it down. What do you think of this one?

It's a new song I wrote. So when you hear a new song, maybe just switch it around and hear a song about newness or a song about something new. It's the best way to understand those words. It's not just an original work of art that just came out. This is a song about newness, about this new thing that God is doing. So verse 10 begins,

Sing to the Lord a new song, His praise from the end of the earth. You who go down to the sea and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants. Let the desert and its cities lift up their voice. The villages that Kadar inhabits, that's a part of Arabia where you have some nomadic descendants of good old Ishmael, Abraham's first son, they're living. So the villages that Kadar inhabits, they're going to be singing. And also the inhabitants of Selah, which is a place in kind of the border, the Amorite territory. So he's just drawing from names that people would have been familiar with.

The villages that Kadar inhabit, let the inhabitants of Selah sing for joy, let them shout from the top of the mountains. So he's, you know, everywhere. You know, you got people in the sea, around the sea, coastlands, deserts, Kadar, Selah, mountaintops, this universal song of praise. let them give glory to the lord and declare his praise in the coastlands the lord this is verse 13 the lord goes out like a mighty man like a man of war he stirs up his zeal he cries out he shouts aloud he shows himself mighty against his foes so this is a we've kind of left behind the

whole servant song section and we're it's not unconnected to that but it's a it's a new section here and this is a song about newness that's going to be sung all over the place all these various places that isaiah isaiah mentions and it's a it's a song about god who uh is basically going to war he's he's gonna he's gonna go and do what he often does for for his people in fact that same phrase, man of war, first occurs in Exodus 15, 3. That's the song at the crossing of the Red Sea. They cross in chapter 14. In chapter 15, they sing the song of the sea. Verse 3 says, the Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. So this is God being sung to by people all over the place because he is stirring up a zeal crying aloud showing himself mighty against his foes as

he as he goes forth yeah i mean all the time you hear uh songs be well the times that songs appear particularly in the old testament like there'll be like some god will do something you know some act of salvation or deliverance this kind of thing and uh people will sing a song and you'll have that song recorded and so a new song would uh imply that god's about to do a new one of those things right yeah right um and so uh when there are instances in scripture of new songs being written uh but they are when god does something new and uh and so yeah here isaiah says hey uh get the band together get the instruments tuned because you're going to need to write another You're going to need to write a song here very shortly because God's up to something.

God's on the march. Yeah. He's going to do this new thing. So he starts out after that by saying, verse 14, for a long time, I've held my peace. I've kept still and restrained myself. This is kind of talking about all the long-suffering patience of God, especially with the Gentile world, but just his long-suffering patience in general. So he's kept quiet. And now things are going to change because the second half of the verse says, now I'm going to cry aloud like a woman in labor. I will gasp and pant. It's kind of an unexpected metaphor in application to God, but a very common biblical metaphor for either this, you know, deep suffering or pain someone's going through talking, you know, woman in labor. or on the vocal side of things, you know, the crying out of a woman in labor.

So God says, all right, the time of silence is over. You're going to hear from me. You're going to hear some loud noises from me. And then it is, I just love how the Bible will just do all this mixture of metaphor. We go from a pregnant woman gasping and panting metaphor to God laying waste mountains and hills, Which is what the very next verse says he's going to do I'm going to lay waste mountains and hills I'm going to dry up all the vegetation

I'm going to turn rivers into islands and dry up the pools So some reversal of creation happening there And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know In paths that they have not known I will guide them I will turn the darkness before them into light And the rough places into level ground These are the things I do

and I do not forsake them. And then he kind of wraps up this section by saying, they are turned back and utterly put to shame. I would say they, I would translate that first phrase, they fall back in shame. So they turn back, they utterly fall to shame. We might say they, I don't know, they have fallen backward or something like that. They turn back and utterly put to shame who who's turned back early put to shame those people who trust in carved idols who say to metal images you are our gods so god has put this off a long a long time and uh he's he's tired of waiting and so he's going to make some noise and he's a man of war he's he's marching and so he's about to lay waste some mountains and hills he's going to find the blind he's going to

lead them in paths they haven't known haven't known he's going to turn darkness into light he's going to level out the rough places and he's going to do this of course for his for his people and he's calling all people to be his people and not to be like those he describes at the very end those who are utterly put to shame who put their trust in in the the the last place they should put or trust in a piece of wood or gold or silver, these metal images of which they say, you are our gods. Yeah, there's some real hope for the Gentiles here. I think the implication here is that there are some people who should see that God has been patient with their eyes, but they are not seeing, so he's held his peace for a long time.

And then there's these, you know, these sort of like in the midst of all this, you're like, oh, gosh, like he's really going at it. He's going to lay these mountains to waste and islands are going to be dried up, all this stuff. And then he's like, I'm going to find some poor blind people and then I'm going to lead them around. And then I'm going to, you know, I'm going to turn darkness into light for them. I'm going to make sure there's nothing in their way and make sure the paths are all smooth. and so they both things going on here where uh i'm gonna have to find me some people that just don't know anything i mean they just haven't seen nothing man and like that's who i'm gonna work with those people and i do love this line i don't know why but it's just these are the things

i do okay this is what i do all right that's good it's such a great line you know you see Almost like a pause. God turns and looks at everyone, makes eye contact and says, these are the things I do. It is, it's a, it's a great, great summation. Yeah. You know, I, at the very end when he talks about putting your trust in carved idols and metal images and saying you are gods. I, I, I've been spending a lot of time. I'm getting ready for a, a, a trip I'm taking next year.

going to kind of footsteps of St. Paul. So I'm spending a lot of time reading about the Greco-Roman culture and the, you know, the cities of Ephesus and all that and how many gods they had, you know, how many temples they had just all over the place to the Pantheon and to the emperors. And then I picture Paul showing up in these places and preaching the gospel and then the church being founded and spreading. And when you look at the span of time after that, how all those carved idols and metal images and statues and temples were just torn down and fell into disuse because of the fulfillment of exactly what Isaiah describes here.

This is the spread of the kingdom of God. A lot of blind people up there that Paul's leading into the light. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See, you see Isaiah fulfilled in Acts and Paul's writings. Yeah. Well, we're out of time, but next episode, there is some deafness that, of course, I mean, you think that God's just going to speak this word and everyone's going to listen to it? No, that's not, that's not how it's going to work. So he's got to deal with some deaf ears coming up next episode, but I'll see you then, Chad. All right. See you then. We'll see you next time.