Isaiah 42 - Bible Study in 5 Minutes

Isaiah 42 Short Summary:

In the first half of Isaiah 42, Isaiah prophesied that God would send a servant who would establish a new covenant, bring justice, and uphold God’s law. This servant role was fulfilled by Jesus in the New Testament. The second half of the chapter is an admonition to Judah. They had abandoned faith in the God of Heaven. They were supposed to be God’s witnesses, but they had replaced Him with idols.

Isaiah 42 Bible Study

TIMELINE:

• The prophetic ministry of Isaiah spanned the reigns of King Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.

• Isaiah’s ministry is thought to span from 739-681 BC.

• Abraham lived around 2000 BC.

• Jesus was born around 4 BC, 700 years after Isaiah.

KEY CHARACTERS:

• Isaiah – The son of Amoz (1:1). God commissioned Isaiah as His prophet to Judah.

• Citizens of Judah – The prophecy in Isaiah 41 directly pertains to the future of the nation of Judah.

• The Servant of God – In the opening verses of Isaiah 42, Isaiah described a future servant who God would anoint with His Spirit. The New Testament reveals Jesus of Nazareth was the fulfillment of this prophecy (Mat 12:18-21).

DEFINITIONS:

• Coastlands (42:4) – Distant lands. Isaiah appears to use this term to describe foreign nations, the neighbors of Judah.

OUTLINE:

• THE LORD’S SPECIAL SERVANT (42:1-9):

  • Judah was God’s servant in a national sense, but God had another servant, a man, who He was planning to send in the future. Interestingly, this man was a descendant of Judah.

  • This servant is described in the opening of Isaiah 42, and unlike the man from the east in chapter 41, there is no question of his identity.

  • God’s Spirit would rest on this man (41:1).

  • He would be gentle but also a force for justice (42:3).

  • He would deliver a new law and covenant to the people (42:4, 6).

  • He would open the eyes of the blind and release prisoners bound in darkness (42:7).

  • God had set in order a plan to bring this servant through Judah. All that He had planned had come to pass, and now He was announcing future events before they happened. He was in control of the past, present, and future. This was emphasized to reiterate God’s superiority to idols and false gods (42:8-9).

  • Jesus is the servant described here in Isaiah 42. There can be no doubt of it, because Jesus quotes these words about Himself during His ministry (Mat 12:18-21).

• A SONG OF WORSHIP TO THE LORD (42:10-12):

  • Isaiah encouraged the nations to recognize God’s greatness and take up a “new song” of praise to the God of Heaven.

  • He was superior to their idols in every way.

• JUDAH’S FAILURE TO RECOGNIZE GOD’S GREATNESS (42:13-25):

  • While Isaiah encouraged foreigners to acknowledge the great God of Judah, His own people were failing to do so.

  • God had been patient with them, saying, “For a long time I have held my peace; I have kept still and restrained Myself” (42:14), but there was a day of judgement coming.

  • God was going to rise up in His power to help those who loved Him and to judge those who disrespected Him.

  • God’s servant, Judah, had failed to love Him like they should.

  • No nation was deafer than Judah. No nation was more blind than God’s own people.

  • Isaiah reminded his people that God had once poured out the heat of His anger on Israel and Judah, and He would do it again if they persisted in disrespecting Him.

APPLICATION:

• When we persist in repetitive and habitual sin, we’ve failed to learn a key lesson taught to us by Israel and Judah throughout the pages of the Old Testament.

• The Old Testament reveals that God is extremely patient, especially with people who are doing their best to live according to His principles and rid their lives of sin.

• But one of the things we see God getting most angry about in the Scriptures is when people don’t learn from their past mistakes, or the mistakes of their forefathers, and allow the same repetitive sins to reappear incessantly in their lives.

• For Judah, it was idolatry and neglect of God’s law.

• If we have sin in our lives that we’ve grown content to live with, or that we’re fighting but not really making a priority, that’s a dangerous place to be. We are testing God’s patience.

• If there’s one thing that makes God angry, its repeated sin that we’ve become apathetic about or that we’ve grown lazy about eliminating from our lives.

• If your life is marked by those kinds of sins, it’s time to move the eradication of those sins to the top of your priority list.