1. Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word on this 4th Sunday in Lent is taken from Isaiah 42.14-21, it’s entitled, “Jesus Gives Us Eyes to See,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. When people travel to Israel, a tour guide often tells the groups that he guides, that after decades of leading tours, one of the most repeated reasons he heard for people wanting to return to Israel for a second visit was “to see it without the camera lens.” Many new tourists, it turns out, were so captivated at seeing the Holy Land for the first time that they ended up taking too many pictures. So, by the end of the visit, they felt they’d spent far too much time behind the lens of the camera. Many of them wanted to come back and see everything all over again, only this time they wanted to take it all in as it really looks.
3. In our text today from Isaiah 42, God’s people have been seeing things only through their own lens—missing what God had wanted them to see. The only correction for that is Christ, and Jesus gives us eyes to see with the sight of faith.
4. God’s people have been looking at things all wrong! We were conceived in sin and born into the darkness of this world. Our eyes do not work the way they should (physical blindness, deterioration with age). We have the desire to look at things we shouldn’t (whether it is pornography on our phones, or we covet our neighbor’s husband or wife, his car or house, and other possessions). We’re not able to see the things of God for what they truly are. In the sacraments we may see just plain water in baptism, and bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper. We may only see suffering (this was the disciples’ mistake, Jn 9:1–2 where it says, “As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” All of this wrongful seeing stems from idolatry. Is 42:17 says, “They are turned back and utterly put to shame, who trust in carved idols, who say to metal images, “You are our gods.”
5. God is deeply affected by our looking at things the wrong way. He has been holding his peace and restraining himself “for a long time” (Isaiah 42:14). He is now like a woman in labor, crying out, gasping, and panting (Isaiah 42:14). God is profoundly affected by our sin. But this also pictures a new life for his people about to emerge. God is making ready the way for his own visitation (lowering the high places, for example. Isaiah 42:15 says, “I will lay waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their vegetation; I will turn the rivers into islands, and dry up the pools.”
6. God’s people were intended to look at things in a much better way. Isaiah reiterates the special status of Israel as “the servant of the Lord.” God’s chosen people were called to be a blessing for all nations. Gen 12:1–3 recounts God’s call to Abram where it says, “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” But the ideal servant of Is 42:1–4 has turned into the blind servant of our text (Isaiah 42:19). The blind servant is us! Our eyes see our Lord’s deeds (in creation, in his Word), but we do not pay attention to them as we should. Our ears hear our Lord’s words, but we do not observe them as we should.
7. There’s a story about Sherlock Holmes, the great detective of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, and his sidekick Dr. John Watson about a camping trip that they went on. After sharing a good meal and a bottle of wine, they retired to their tent for the night. At about 3 AM, Holmes nudges Watson and asks, "Watson, look up into the sky and tell me what you see?" Watson said, "I see millions of stars." Holmes then asks, "And, what does that tell you?" Watson then replied, "Astronomically, it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Theologically, it tells me that God is great and we are small and insignificant. Horologically, it tells me that it's about 3 AM. Meteorologically, it tells me that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you, Holmes?" Holmes retorts, "Someone stole our tent."
8. Have you ever had something like this happen to you? The problem that you were facing was staring you right in the face and you didn’t even notice it. It’s like when you lost your keys, and you search everywhere in your house for them only to find that they were lying on your desk or on your nightstand right where you last left them. Sometimes people have spiritual blind spots when it comes to seeing plainly what God wants to reveal to us in His Word. We see that in our Gospel reading for today from John chapter 9 and in our text from Isaiah 42.
9. God himself restores the way we see things. It begins with a call to repentance. Isaiah 42:18 says, “Hear, you deaf, and look, you blind, that you may see!” Before we can truly see, we must first admit that we can’t see (Confession). In today’s Gospel, the blind man admits his ignorance several times, while the Pharisees keep talking about how much they know. The blind man ends up seeing more and more clearly, while the Pharisees, who more than anyone else at the time should have been “seeing,” become blinder and blinder. “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind ” (Jn 9:39). St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
10. It continues with absolution through God’s Word and Sacraments. “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God,” Jesus says to Nicodemus in John 3:3. When our old selves are put to death, a new person—with new and improved vision—arises out of the water to which he sends us. Note how “Siloam” in Jn 9:7 means “sent” or “sent one.”) This giving of spiritual sight is entirely the Lord’s work (Is 42:16). The LORD God will continue to lead, guide, and be with us. In Isaiah 42:16 God says, “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, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them.”
11. God calls his people to look with the eyes of faith. Return again and again to the font of the “Sent One,” and you’ll see things with the eyes of faith, the Light of Christ that makes all the difference in the world. The ones who are truly blind are the ones who see things only with earthly eyes.
12. Jesus gives us eyes to see with faith that changes how we look at things. Baptism is more than simple water. Martin Luther reminds us in the Small Catechism that, “Baptism is not just plain water, but it is the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s word.” The Lord’s Supper is more than simple bread and wine. The Small Catechism teaches us that the Lord’s Supper, “is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ Himself for us Christians to eat and to drink.” Suffering is not simply punishment. It may be to display the works of God as we see in John 9:3. The theology of the cross means seeing our Lord hidden under the opposite. The cross is the greatest glory. Recall how darkness was over the land when our Lord Jesus, who is the light of the world, hung on the cross! The eyes of faith are a daily lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Is 42:21; Psalm 119:105).
13. Whether or not you’ve ever tried on a pair yourself, you’re likely aware that night-vision goggles were developed so we could see images of our surroundings even in complete darkness. As you may have noticed from movies or TV shows, these devices display images in shades of green, and I read recently that this color selection was far from accidental. It turns out that green was chosen quite deliberately because our eyes are far more sensitive to this color than to many others. Picking green for the display was yet another feature of these goggles that would help us see as naturally as possible the things that would otherwise remain shrouded in darkness.
14. Even at high noon on a clear day, this world is in total darkness to sin. All of creation is corrupted, and we ourselves are naturally unable to see the things of God. But, Jesus, has come to a people dwelling in darkness in order to be the light of the world, and in him we receive eyes to see the things of God as they truly are. When we look at our lives with the light of Christ, we have the kind of “night vision” that makes all the difference in the world (Is 42:16).
15. Whatever it is that weighs most heavily on your heart right now, look at it with the eyes of faith in Jesus Christ your Lord. This is a light that shines in the midst of family troubles, a light that depression can’t touch, and a light that your own doubts can’t put out. Whatever comes your way, see it through this lens first. There’s no darker place you can go where this light is not there before you. You have the light that nothing whatsoever—not even your own death—can overcome. And as much as the world, in the darkness of its blindness, wants to put it out, it still hasn’t, and it never will. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.
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