Context for Isaiah 42:1-43:13
Part of God’s promise to Israel, really to all people, was the promise of a Savior. God reiterates that promise in the words of the text as He promises His people redemption.
An important part of our understanding of Jesus as our Savior is the fact that He was promised beforehand through God’s word given through His prophets. Among those prophets, Isaiah certainly ranks at the top as far as the promises of for a Savior that Jesus fulfilled through His birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Because we can see that Jesus is the promised Savior, we have that much more faith that He will fulfill His promise to return to us.
This understanding we gain through prophecy reminds us of an important part of understanding Scripture itself, and that understanding is that Scripture is understood through the lens of the rest of Scripture. There is no part of Scripture that can be taken out of context and used alone without the rest to back it up, explain it, elucidate it, and make it relevant.
That is why constant Bible study is so important to our faith. As we read the Bible over and over again, we come to understand the words in their context, and that is the context God intended for us to understand them in.
DLH
