Isaiah 42:8

God says,

I am the Lord, that is my name

, because God alone is worthy of his name, the Lord. God says,

my glory I give to no other.

But we are born spiritually blind and often give glory to things other than God. God says,

nor my praise to carved idols.

He promises that he, the Lord, will reclaim his praise from the carved idols. So now let's turn to think about God's name.

God's name is eternal

What is the significance of his name? Well, in our English Bibles, God's name is written as the Lord in all caps. It's because Israel used the word Adonai, which means Lord, as a reverent substitute for God's covenant name, which in Hebrew is Yahweh. God revealed this name most fully to Moses in Exodus 3 because Moses asked God how to name the God who is sending him to bring his fellow Israelites out of Egypt.

In Exodus 3, verses 13 and 14, God answers Moses,

I am who I am. Say this to the people of Israel. I am has sent me to you. The Lord Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you.

God says,

this is my name forever. And thus I am to be remembered for all generations.

God is telling Moses how he is to be remembered forever. God says, I am. And he is the only one who can say that truly, unconditionally, with no qualifications. He alone is the preexistent, self-sufficient being.

When we introduce ourselves, our names tell others about where we came from. My last name is Sun. That might tell you that I'm of Chinese descent. And my first name is James. That might tell you I was not born in China. So my name gives you context using things outside of myself.

But God's name is eternal. His identity does not rely on anything outside of himself because nothing comes before him or after him. He transcends the very bounds of time and space. Then God declares to Moses, I am who I am, which can also be translated as

I will be who I will be.

There's nothing outside of God that contributes to his identity. There's no one who can challenge God's identity. There's no one other than God who can define who God is or who he will be.

Then later, in Exodus chapter 33, Moses asks God again, this time to see his glory. But God responds,

I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name, the Lord. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.

So God's name carries the authority of his character.

God is good. God is gracious. God is merciful. because that is who he is. There are no external standards of these attributes by which God is measured. No one demands grace and mercy from God, but God displays it freely because that's who he is. God himself is the moral standard of character, and we only know what grace and mercy is, what love and righteousness are, by knowing who God is. Let's return to Isaiah chapter 42 and look at verse five.

Thus says God, the Lord Yahweh, 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.

God's name carries the power of creation. The heavens and the earth are stretched out before our eyes so that we may behold the glory of his name. God gave us breath so that we might call upon his name. God gave us a spirit so that we might walk with him, bear his image, and live by his name. How could we use our breath to praise any other name?

How could we devote our spirit to anything other than the Lord, our God? When God says,

I am the Lord, that is my name

, he is saying no one else can lay claim to that name. No one else can declare, I am, but at best we can say, I am who God created me to be. And yet even in that, we have been corrupted. Our own sin twists our identity away from who God created us to be.

Israel's spiritual condition

Let's drop down to verses 18 to 25 to see Israel's spiritual condition. God says,

hear you deaf and look you blind that you may see. Who is blind but my servant or deaf as my messenger whom I send? Who is blind as my dedicated one or blind as a servant of the Lord? He sees many things but does not observe them. His ears are open but he does not hear.

Why is this servant of the Lord deaf and blind? What does he fail to observe and hear? Let's continue.

The Lord was pleased for his righteousness' sake to magnify his law and make it glorious. 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.

So this servant is not a single person, but a people, a whole nation that has failed to observe the glorious righteousness of the Lord.

And we see in verse 24 who this nation is.

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?

It was the people of Israel, God's own beloved nation, whom he had plucked out from among all the nations to be holy unto himself. And yet it was their own sin that blinded them. God magnified his law before their eyes, but they turned their eyes away and mocked God's law. To quote Paul from the first chapter of Romans,

they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man.

Is that not what the world is doing today? Are we not making images resembling mortal man and glorifying them? Just look at the rising dominance of AI in our age. Whether it's politicians, CEOs, influencers, podcasters, everyone is talking about the power and promise of AI. The optimist would claim that ultimate goodness exists in humanity. We just have to extract it, distill it, purify it, and then cultivate it in a technological way. Then the pessimists, they claim that AI's growing power will leave humanity in the dust, and artificial intelligence will be the only intelligence that survives. Both positions, elevate AI to the forefront of our consciousness.

Both would rob God of His glory. But the truth is, God alone is the ultimate good, and He alone can purify us. God alone holds all the power, and it's His wisdom alone that will stand the test of time. Paul was absolutely right when he said,

claiming to be wise, we became fools, exchanging the truth about God for a lie, and worshiping and serving the creature rather than the creator.

Now, dear brothers and sisters, I know we're not literally holding worship services for any technology, but I ask you, when you face a sudden dilemma, Does your hand move towards the heavens or into your pocket? When you consider the future of your career, does your heart move to fear of the Lord or fear of AI taking our jobs? When your friend or family comes to you for help, do you show them the ways of the Lord or do you show them some newfangled technology that can get the job done? When you have questions about the scriptures, do you wait for the Holy Spirit to move within you, or do you have your favorite chatbot on speed dial? Brothers and sisters, let us not worship efficiency, expediency, or convenience. Let us not be blind like the world.

God will reclaim his praise

We cannot perfect the image of man, but God has already given us the perfect image of himself in the form of the man, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Lastly tonight, let's return to Isaiah 42 to see that God will reclaim his praise from carved idols. Humanity will not worship false gods forever. There will come a day when God destroys all idols along with those who worship them. God makes that promise in Isaiah 2. But in chapter 42, God makes us an even better promise to restore his own people to worship him truly and rightly.

In verse 1, God promises a servant who he upholds, delights in, and anoints with his spirit, chooses him to bring justice to the nations. How will God's chosen servant bring forth justice? Not by force, as with a loud cry, or breaking the bruised, or quenching the faint. We see in verse 7 that his justice is not here to take prisoners, but to free prisoners. Free them from the dark dungeon of their blindness, because he is the light. And who is to benefit from God's servant?

Not just Israel, but rather he will faithfully establish justice in all the earth. Verse three, even extending to the coastlands, to every corner of the world. This is truly a wonderful promise. In verse six, God makes his servant to be a covenant for all the nations. How could Israel trust and believe that God would do what he has promised?

Here we come to verse eight. God says,

I am the Lord, that is my name. My glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.

God is staking his whole identity and reputation on his promise. See verse nine,

behold the former things that have come to pass, and new things I now declare. Before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

God is saying to Israel, I am telling you ahead of time what I am going to do.

I am telling you my plan, and if I am not true to my word, then I tarnish my own name. If I don't fulfill my promises, then I am no more glorious than a man. If I fail to keep my covenant, then I forfeit my praise to created things, to carved idols. But that is not the God of the Bible.

Our God cannot sin. He will never fail. Whatever God desires, He wills it. Whatever God wills, He does it. That's from Isaiah 46 10. Whatever God does, He accomplishes it. Whatever God accomplishes, He completes it. And whatever He completes, He perfects it. That is our God, and He is awesome because He has done it.

His name is our hope

In Matthew's Gospel, chapter 12, Jesus reveals that He is that servant called by God in righteousness who has come full of the Spirit to fulfill this prophecy of Isaiah. And He has come for the sake of God's own name. Matthew 12, 21 says,

in His name the Gentiles will hope.

His name is our hope because He glorified the name of the Father by walking in perfect obedience and righteousness. And though he shared in the Father's glory from before creation, he veiled it in human flesh in order to die for our sins. And because of his suffering, he was lifted up to be glorified again at the right hand of the Father. Although we were steeped in idolatry due to our blindness, He comes to lead us. This is from verse 16.

He leads the blind in a way we do not know. He guides us in paths we have not known.

He turns the darkness into light and the rough places into level ground

so that we might turn back and put away our shameful trust in idols and instead call upon the name of the Lord. The only reason we are able to praise God is because Jesus has come to save us from death, cure us of blindness, and show us his own glory. The reason Jesus saves those who believe is for the sake of God's own name and his glory and his praise.

So come, let us bow our heads. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you to sing a new song, O Lord. We sing your praises with all our hearts, with our lips. We bring you praise from all the ends of the earth. May your praise fill the land and the seas. the coastlands and every island, from the deserts and the mountaintops, the cities and the villages and all their inhabitants, may we all shout for joy and give glory to the Lord, because you are mighty to save. Your holy name will be remembered for all generations. So we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.