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Sermon: A Light For The Nations

This Lord’s Day we are exploring Isaiah 49, a prophecy formed of a number of distinct parts. This morning we will be considering parts one and two – the people of Israel’s disbelief and rejection of God, and God’s gracious love to the Gentiles - and this evening we’ll consider parts three to five. I hope that, by the end, we will see how this prophecy came to be fulfilled both in the Lord Jesus and also in the Church He left to follow Him.

The People of Israel’s Disbelief and Rejection of God

So what have we just heard? Turn with me, if you will, to Isaiah 49, and follow along as we explore the text. This text begins with the words “Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar” (v1), showing us immediately that (unlike some of the other prophecies in Isaiah), this message is for not just the people of Israel, but the peoples of the world. Compare it, if you will, with Isaiah 40, “Comfort, comfort my people, says the Lord” (Isaiah 40. 1). This prophecy follows in a line of prophecies concerning the restoration of their kingdom, beginning with Isaiah 45’s declaration that, post exile, the nation of Israel would be rebuilt by Cyrus’ decree.

The first important thing to understand, as we read this text, is that it is spoken primarily by the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I am often uncomfortable about reading Jesus into Bible texts, as I am not convinced that He can be found in all of them, but there are some texts where it is clear that it was the Lord Jesus and He alone who was the intended subject. As we continue through this study I hope you will conclude the same as I do. Of course, as a prophecy it was written many centuries before Jesus was born, so wasn’t spoken by the man Christ Jesus, but was instead used by God, through Isaiah, to show us what the Lord would be like.

In this prophecy, Jesus declares that He was born for this purpose: “The Lord called me from the womb” (v1b). It is as though the Lord was saying, “Before I came out of the womb, God had determined that I should hold this office.”1 The fulfilment of this prophecy was why Jesus was here. Furthermore, it was not something that was thrust upon Him when He grew up – the fulfilment of the prophecy was central to His incarnation. Before even He was born, He was set apart. We can see another example of this earlier in the Old Testament, where Elkanah and Hannah had a son, Samuel. In 1 Samuel 1. 11, the barren Hannah made a tearful vow to the Lord as she prayed in the Temple, promising that if God gave her a son, she would give the son back to Him as a thank-offering. “I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.” (1 Sam. 1. 1).

Therefore, once the child was born and weaned, she and her husband presented Samuel at the Temple, to minister “before the Lord, a boy clothed in a linen ephod.” (1 Sam 2. 18). This was no rash decision: she did not see the child and decide it should be given to God. Samuel did not grow up and decide to candidate for Temple ministry. It was pre-decided before his birth. This is nothing new to us, for as Christians we are all too aware of the doctrine of Predestination: that God decided before the foundation of the world those to whom He would reveal Himself and those to whom He wouldn’t. We can see this in the Confession of Faith:

All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased, in His appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by His Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ.2

Not only was Christ born for this purpose, but as we continue in the passage we can see that God “made [Jesus’] mouth like a sharp sword” (v2). Jesus’ weapons, in accomplishing His purposes, were not the traditional weapons used to subjugate a kingdom or impose your will on a people, but were instead “the truth of His Word”.3 We can see similar imagery in the Book of Revelation, where Jesus returns upon a white horse to judge the nations. Turn with me to Revelation 19: at verse 15 we can read that “from His mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.” Furthermore, returning to Isaiah 49, we can see that Jesus compares Himself to “a polished arrow” (v2b). The fact that Jesus uses both ‘sword’ and ‘arrow’ to describe Himself shows that his weapon (the Gospel, the Word of God) is useful both in hand-to-hand close combat, and also as a long distance weapon. This is how His message is not just for those of the nation of Israel, but for those “peoples from afar” (v1).

Having described Himself as a sword and as a polished arrow, Jesus declares that “in His quiver [God] hid Me away” (v2b). Turn with me to Luke 2. 52, where we find the immortal words, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man.” This is the only insight that we have into Jesus’ childhood and young-adulthood. There is no account of His teenage years, nor His education in the Temple, nor His plying a trade in His step-father’s workshop. In many ways we could consider those years between Christ’s infancy (with the one exception of the boy Christ in the Temple – 2. 41-51) as (in the words of David Guzik) the “hidden years of Jesus, when He lived in obscurity, as a polished shaft waiting [to be used] in the quiver of the Lord.”4 We don’t know what Jesus did in that time, but we do know that the Lord God kept Him safe (at a time when so many died in infancy and childhood) until such a time as His ministry began.

Returning to Isaiah, we now hear another voice in the prophecy. Until now the voice has been that of Jesus, but in v3 we hear the Lord God (God the Father) speaking: “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” Now, this verse has caused much debate among Biblical scholars over the centuries. Some people say that, in calling the servant ‘Israel’, it suggests that it is not Jesus that the prophecy refers to, but rather the Jews, God’s OT chosen people. In many ways this would be an understandable conclusion to reach. After all, it was written for the Jews in a time of exile, when they needed hope and restoration. However, vv5-6 would imply that this servant (named Israel) has a mission to restore Israel to the Father: “to bring Jacob back to Him” (v5). Therefore many readers, Guzik and Calvin included, believe “the view that Israel is a title of the individual messianic Servant harmonizes most satisfactorily with the passage and context.”5

However we cannot escape the fact that the prophecy names the Servant of God as Israel. What do we know of the name Israel? In Genesis 22 we see that Jacob is renamed Israel by God, and we know that the Jews as a people become known as Israel. Therefore we can conclude that the name Israel can be applied to an individual and to a people without any issue.

In saying, of Jesus, “You are my servant, Israel” (v3), God the Father is showing that this prophecy applies not just to Jesus, but also to His people (the Church, you and me). This should not surprise us, for we know that the Church (and by Church we do of course mean the family of the elect, not the building) is the ‘bride of Christ’. Calvin explains this: “In a word, the Lord honours by this name the Church, which is the spouse of Christ, just as the wife is honoured by bearing the name and title of her husband.”6 I suppose you could think this through by saying that my surname is Topple, but in describing my wife and me you could legitimately say ‘The Topples’. Similarly Jesus’ name is Christ, and His people are Christ-ians. At this time, of course, the name ‘Christ’ was not known, nor was Jesus, so it is unsurprising that God didn’t use those names. So He described both the servant, His Son the Messiah, and the people who live in and through Him, in the one word: God’s chosen people, Israel.

Yet this nation (the Church) is “the true embodiment of what the nation [of Israel] failed to be, namely, “the one in whom I will be glorified”.”7 We know from the Old Testament that, time and time again, the people of Israel refused to walk in the Lord’s ways. Time after time they turned aside from His righteous judgements and decrees and went after their own wills. God may have chosen the people, but the people rarely chose God, apart from when they needed help. This servant, spoken of in Isaiah 49, and the people incorporated into Him, will be different. In Christ, God is glorified. In the Church, God is glorified.

Yet the image is not one of undiluted joy. Having named the Servant as Israel, and shown how, through Him, the people would give Him glory (49. 3), the Servant cries out in complaint, “I have laboured in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity”! Dear friends, I dare say you and I have known that feeling from time to time, as our attempts to share the Gospel with someone have fallen flat on their face, when the Church building develops a leaky roof or faulty electrics, when a promising convert backslides and returns not again. At times like those, the temptation is to cry out to God, ‘Why?’

This cry, “I have laboured in vain” is the cry of the Church, incorporate in the Servant. It could so easily have been the cry of Jesus Himself, were it not for the fact that He had the kind of unhindered relationship with God the Father that such cries were not necessary. However, as Christians is it important that we remember that, although our labours in the Gospel may appear fruitless “the fruit… is not always visible to the eyes of men”.8 None of us can see how the Lord is working in the hearts of the un-generate, in the process of regeneration. And yet, we can see the result once He’s finished His work. In that inbetween period, however, when we can see no results from our labour, it is tempting to give up, but the Servant in the prophecy does not turn away from God “in cynical unbelief”, so nor should we.9 Calvin echoes this thought in summing up the phrase:

Though my labour be unprofitable, and though I have almost exhausted my strength without doing any good, yet it is enough that God approves of my obedience.10

Having considered that the nation of Israel is not the sum total of God’s people, that is, not the only nation that God is interested in, it is important for us to note that it does have “an enduring place in God’s plan”.11 We can see this from v5: “And now the Lord says, He who formed me from the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob back to Him.” This way of thinking is found in the New Testament as well, where Paul declares:

And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,

“The Deliverer will come from Zion,

He will banish ungodliness from Jacob”;

“and this will be my covenant with them

when I take away their sins.” (Rom. 11. 26-27)

God’s Gracious Love to the Gentiles

Isaiah 49. 5 is linked closely with v6, where we can read:

It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel. I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. (v6)

The Lord Jesus Christ has a twin purpose, says Isaiah. First of all, He will restore Jacob, that is, the people of Israel to God. God’s chosen people will, once again, choose the Lord and be in covenant with Him, but also Jesus will unite the nations of the earth into the covenant as well. Jesus is too great, His power too infinite, and God’s love for mankind is too strong, “to redeem only… ethnic Israel”.12 Instead He “has a calling to serve Israel and beyond.”13

We, of course, are the beneficiaries of this Good News. For we (and I admit I am making an assumption here) are not Jewish converts to Christianity. We instead were born to Gentile, that is, non Jewish, parents. We did not undergo the rites and ceremonies of Judaism before pronouncing faith. We are, therefore, Gentile converts to Christianity. If it wasn’t for Jesus being “a light for the nations” (v6), we could not be incorporated into God’s salvation plan. This prophecy is fulfilled in the words of Simeon: “For my eyes have seen Your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light of revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to Your people Israel.” (Luke

  1. 30-32), and is quoted by Paul (Acts 13. 47).

This is why, in God, “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all” (Romans 10. 12).

However, having considered this, the scene turns darker:

Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and His Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers:

Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you. (Isaiah 49. 7)

Here the Lord God (‘Thus says the Lord’) is speaking directly to Jesus and His Church (‘to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers’), warning of the horrible times to come. We know from the life of Jesus how much He suffered for the Gospel, for our salvation. We know from the lives of Christian martyrs down through the centuries the lengths that mankind will go to in order to expunge Christianity from the face of the earth. We may know rejection in the world today, as more and more our land, once known as ‘The Land of the Book’ turns away from God and His righteous decrees, but One who knew rejection and pain to a far greater degree was the Lord Jesus, on whose shoulders were the governments of the world (Isa. 9. 6).

However, the prophecy continues by declaring that the darkness will not last for ever: “Because of the Lord” (7b), the peoples will one day realise that the suffering and patient endurance of the Jesus, of whom the prophet speaks, was actually a sign of great strength. “The most exalted princes of the world”, says Calvin (and, we can take from this, those beneath them) “shall be aroused to perceive that the restoration of the nation is an illustrious work of God, and worthy of reverence.”14

Then, turning to verses 8 to 12, we see clearly how Jesus relates to us. By referring to the Servant as “a covenant to the people”, we can know for certain that the Servant subject of Isaiah 49 is the Lord Jesus; “for He has been appointed to be the Mediator of the covenant, because the Jews by their sins has revolted from God, who had made an everlasting covenant with them.”15

In the letter to the Hebrews we see this spelled out for us:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering,… and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12. 22, 24)

The blood that Jesus shed for us, you and me, on the cross of Calvary, is the sign of the covenant. And where the blood of Abel cried out to the Lord in Genesis (4. 10), so too the spilled blood of Jesus calls out to the Lord. And this covenant is a promise: God will “establish the land” (8b), He will say “to the prisoners, ‘Come out’”, and “they shall not hunger or thirst”. These are promises.

We know, of course, how Jesus (in His ministry) fulfilled many of these promises. In Mark 5(. 1-15) we see how “Jesus set the demon possessed free from the bondage of chains and demonic torture”,16 while in Luke 13(. 16) we see how Jesus healed the sick and diseased, setting them free from the bondage of their sickness. In Ephesians (4. 8) we see how Jesus rescued the righteous from Hades (hell) and restored them to heaven, and in John 8(. 33-36) and Galatians (3. 22-23) see how those who are in bondage to sin and the law are set free by Jesus and Him alone. Remember the call:

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. (Matt. 11. 28, KJV)

This freedom, friends, is the promise of Jesus; and here, thousands of years ago, and many centuries before His birth, we see it foretold!

So what? We have studied the first half of this text, and there may be some here who are not sure why I’ve taken us down this path. What can we learn from this? Well, we can know for certain that, while Jesus Himself acknowledged that His first priority was to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15. 24), Jesus’ message is for all peoples and nations, including Dumfries! Jesus conquered sin not by might or physical strength, but by His Word, releasing people from burdens and imprisonments to sin as He did so. This is His offer today: are you sick or burdened? Are you in bondage to sin or the law?

Friends: be encouraged!

In verse 4 we saw how easy it is, when we feel that our labours are not bearing fruit, to give up. It is so easy to lose courage in the midst of our endeavours. “Christ exhorts and encourages godly teachers [and, indeed, every Christian] to strive earnestly till they rise victorious over this temptation”.17

Furthermore, we can take v6 as a promise in our lives: don’t forget that while the prophecy is speaking of the Lord Jesus, it is speaking also of His Church. That is you and me, brothers and sisters. Therefore where we read of Christ’s work in raising “up the tribes of Jacob… as a light for the nations, that [God’s] salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (v6), we can take heart that this involves you and me too! However fruitful or fruitless we feel that our endeavours have been as a Church, we can know for certain that “the Lord will cause some fruit to spring from [the labour of Christ and the Church] contrary to the expectations of men.”18

Dear friends, hundreds of years before His birth, Christ’s ministry and purpose was set out through the Prophet Isaiah. In His life, Christ fulfilled all of this, and in so doing has won for us everlasting life through His blood. We can take encouragement from this, seeing that He is the covenant by which we are saved, and we can also be encouraged that the Church, in His Name, is part of God’s gracious plan to not only bring His chosen people (Israel) to faith in Christ, but also to spread the light of His Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Let us pray:

Grant, O God, that these lessons from Your Word may abide in our hearts and minds, and bring forth fruit in our lives. Increase in us faith, hope and love, with a careful keeping of Your commandments, that we may be constant in our obedience; And grant, O merciful Father, that our life’s labours ended we may find welcome and rest in the home eternal where Your redeemed ever live to glorify You. We ask this, with all our prayers, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

  1. Jean Calvin, Isaiah 33 - 66, vol. 8, Commentaries (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1981), 9. 

  2. Westminster Divines, ‘The Westminster Confession of Faith’, in The Confession of Faith (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons Ltd., 1969), chap. 10. 

  3. Lane T. Dennis, Wayne Grudem, and J. I. Packer, eds., ESV Study Bible, Personal Size, First Edition (Crossway, 2015), 1330. 

  4. David Guzik, ‘Isaiah 49’, accessed 18 June 2024, https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/isaiah-49/. 

  5. Ibid. 

  6. Calvin, Isaiah 33 - 66, 8:11. 

  7. Dennis, Grudem, and Packer, ESV Study Bible, Personal Size, 1033. 

  8. Calvin, Isaiah 33 - 66, 8:12. 

  9. Dennis, Grudem, and Packer, ESV Study Bible, Personal Size, 1033. 

  10. Calvin, Isaiah 33 - 66, 8:13. 

  11. Guzik, ‘Isaiah 49’. 

  12. Dennis, Grudem, and Packer, ESV Study Bible, Personal Size, 1330. 

  13. Ibid. 

  14. Calvin, Isaiah 33 - 66, 8:20. 

  15. Ibid., 8:24. 

  16. Guzik, ‘Isaiah 49’. 

  17. Calvin, Isaiah 33 - 66, 8:13. 

  18. Ibid., 8:17.