The spiritually blind and the deaf

So often when we think of spiritually blind and deaf people, we think of non-Christians. And that they certainly are. But here we see something shocking.

Isaiah says,

Hear, you deaf; look, you blind, and see! 

Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send?  Who is blind like the one committed to me, blind like the servant of the Lord? 

You have seen many things, but have paid no attention; your ears are open, but you hear nothing.”  (Isaiah 42:18-20)

Who were the blind?  The people who were to be God’s servants.  The ones who were “committed to him.” 

Who were the deaf?  The people who were supposed to be God’s messengers. 

They saw what God had done, but somehow what they saw didn’t register in their brain.  They heard what God had said, but somehow it slipped in one ear and out the other.

What was the result?  The Israelites were,

plundered and looted, all of them trapped in pits or hidden away in prisons.

They have become plunder, with no one to rescue them; they have been made loot, with no one to say, “Send them back.”  (22)

And yet despite all the hardships God allowed as discipline for their sin, the Israelites still failed to repent. (24-25)

All in all, it was a sad situation. For the people God had called to be a light to the nations had joined in their darkness.

The Jews had become just as deaf and blind as the nations around them.

What do we get from this?

Even we, as God’s people can become spiritually blind and deaf.

How does that happen? We stop listening to God and his Word and start doing things our own way. We stop paying attention to what God’s doing around us and instead focus solely on our own agendas.

God has called us to be light to a dying world. But how can we be light when we are just as deaf and blind as the world is? Let us not be that way.

Let us keep our eyes and ears open to our heavenly Father, as Jesus did. Let us always look at what God is doing in us and around us and put our hands in his, joining him in his work.

In short, let us not join the blind and the deaf, but let us go out to them, bringing them out of darkness into God’s light.