June 10, 2026, Isaiah 42:18-25

June 10, 2026, Isaiah 42:18-25

¹⁸ Hear, you deaf,
    and look, you blind, that you may see!
¹⁹ Who is blind but my servant,
    or deaf as my messenger whom I send?
Who is blind as my dedicated one,
    or blind as the servant of the Lord?
²⁰ He sees many things, but does not observe them;
    his ears are open, but he does not hear.
²¹ The Lord was pleased, for his righteousness' sake,
    to magnify his law and make it glorious.
²² But this is a people plundered and looted;
    they are all of them trapped in holes
    and hidden in prisons;
they have become plunder with none to rescue,
    spoil with none to say, “Restore!”
²³ Who among you will give ear to this,
    will attend and listen for the time to come?
²⁴ Who gave up Jacob to the looter,
    and Israel to the plunderers?
Was it not the Lord, against whom we have sinned,
    in whose ways they would not walk,
    and whose law they would not obey?
²⁵ So he poured on him the heat of his anger
    and the might of battle;
it set him on fire all around, but he did not understand;
    it burned him up, but he did not take it to heart.

Isaiah 42:18–25 serves as a sobering warning that spiritual blindness and deafness—refusing to see God’s hand or listen to His instructions—can cause us to miss the lessons of our trials, trapping us in cycles of suffering even when the truth is right in front of us.

 

Your ears may be open to podcasts, music, and sermons, but are they open to the quiet prompting of the Holy Spirit? In what area of your life are you currently suffering from "selective hearing" when it comes to God’s word?

 

When everything goes wrong, Hezekiah (in chapter 38) turned to God, but Israel here blames everyone but themselves. When you face structural or relational breakdowns, do you immediately look to blame external circumstances, or do you examine your own alignment with God's ways?

Robin Adams