The Great Work of Christ in the Redemption of the Nations - Isaiah 49

One of the dangers Christians fall into when reading the Bible is the temptation to interpret the Scriptures in light of their own circumstances.  In order for us to really understand what the Bible is saying, we must interpret it in the context in which it is written.  One example of this is the constant abuse by televangelists of the parable of the sower in Luke 8.  These false teachers prey on their viewers by twisting that parable beyond recognition.  They are infamous for telling their viewers they need to sow what they refer to as “seed money” into the TV ministry.  Then, according to their misinterpretation of that passage, donors will receive in return one hundred times what they give to the ministry.

For nominal Christians, or cultural Christians who aren’t truly converted, who happen to be poor and who don’t take the time to read the biblical text, many can be persuaded that their financial woes can be solved by sending seed money to Reverend Whatchamacallit.  Then God, who always keeps His promises (they say) will return to them 100 times more than the amount they send in.  Never mind that the text gives an explanation of what the parable means, and that the seed sown in the parable isn’t money at all.  It is the Gospel message.

In other words, circumstances and con artists can cause people to believe things the Bible doesn’t teach.

•    Serious illnesses provoke people to seek out preachers who claim to have the same miraculous abilities as Jesus and the apostles. 
•    Money problems cause every teacher that says anything about the Bible and money to suddenly become the answer to their prayers. 
•    Marital difficulties move many people to pay particular attention to nearly anyone who can quote a Bible verse and somehow apply it to marriage.

The classic example of this kind of Bible misinterpretation is given of a man who is seeking the Lord’s will concerning his life.  So he grabs a Bible, closes his eyes, opens the Bible, puts his finger on the page, and then opens his eyes.  Unfortunately, his finger has fallen on Matthew 27:5, “And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.”  Not convinced that that verse really applies in his case, he closes the Bible, closes his eyes, and repeats the process only to have his finger fall on Judges 7:17, “Look on me, and do likewise.“

So random Bible text selection and TV evangelists are not the best means of determining God’s leading in your life.  Attempting to read our circumstances as indicators of God’s guidance is not often very reliable either, mostly because it is so subjective.  It’s difficult (impossible?) to be unbiased when you’re trying to read what God may be saying, especially if He’s saying something you don’t want to hear.

In our text today, Isaiah 49, there are a couple of things there that I could claim as my own, which seem to fit quite well into my present circumstances and my current emotional state.  For example, the first half of verse 4 says, “But I said, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.”  You know, that seems quite appropriate for me right about now.  I’m really tempted to feel that way.  Please forgive me for admitting that to you because I know how that must sound.  It certainly sounds like I don’t appreciate you.  I love all of you, and I thank the Lord for you all.

But if I were to lift that verse off the page and out of its context, and dwell on that for about 30 seconds, I could get really depressed.  After 11 years of ministry, and after seeing only 10 or 15 people in this service week after week, and year after year, it would be easy for me to believe my labor has been in vain and for nothing.  At least according to evangelical standards of what success is supposed to look like.  Neither you nor I can afford to be led astray by a verse taken out of context.

But listen to me very carefully.  Even when Israel had real, live, bonafide, card-carrying prophets who really and truly spoke infallibly for God to the people, as we saw last week, they were routinely ignored.  Here they had real prophets, genuine spokesmen for God to His people.  They also had the word of God as it had been given to them by Moses right from Mt. Sinai.  They had clear, infallible, divine revelation directly from God as to what His will for their lives was.  And yet, God’s charge against the people of Judah was that they dismissed His commandments and followed false gods instead.

So the possession of divine revelation from God is no guarantee that those to whom He speaks will submit to what He says.  That includes us.  We want to think that if God were to send us an angelic messenger directly from heaven with a word straight from the throne of God, THEN we’d be quick to bow down and submit our wills to the supernaturally revealed, divine will of our Master.  If God would just PROVE His existence, THEN we’d all believe and obey.

Israel had all of that.  The writer of the book of Hebrews refers to the Law of Moses as “the message declared by angels.“  I’m not sure exactly what that means, but in any case, Israel didn’t listen to God.  Judah didn’t listen to God.  The only revival I know of in the Old Testament where the people actually listened and took God’s prophet seriously on a national scale was in Assyria of all places!  Jonah goes (reluctantly), preaches nothing but doom and gloom, and the entire nation repents.  That is the singular exception of real national revival that I know of.  And they aren’t Jewish.

In Isaiah 48, God calls yet again for His people to listen to what He is saying to them.  In verse 1, He says, “Hear this, O house of Jacob!”  In verse 12, “Listen to me, O Jacob!”  In verse 14, “Assemble, all of you, and listen!”  In verse 18, He reminds them of their past stubborn deafness to His words: “Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments!”  And the chapter wraps up with God’s assessment of Judah’s spiritual condition: “There is no peace for the wicked.”

Ignoring God’s word is wicked.  Not only is it wicked, but it always leads to further wickedness and misery and woe.  I want to give you a modern day example of the kind of wickedness God is speaking of which eventually leads to the forfeiture of His blessings. 

On September 20th, Dr. Albert Mohler of Southern Seminary commented in a book review about Christians and the practice of Yoga.  He said this:

“[T]he growing acceptance of yoga points to the retreat of biblical Christianity in the culture.  Yoga begins and ends with an understanding of the body that is, to say the very least, at odds with the Christian understanding.  Christians are not called to empty the mind or to see the human body as a means of connecting to and coming to know the divine.  Believers are called to meditate upon the Word of God -- an external Word that comes to us by divine revelation -- not to meditate by means of incomprehensible syllables.” 1

This past week, the Associated Press reported on what Dr. Mohler said about Yoga back in September. A lot of people responded, thousands, many of whom claim to be Christians.  Dr. Mohler said this:

"I have heard from a myriad of souls who have called me insane, incompetent, stupid, vile, fundamentalist, and perverted.  Some others are best left unrepeated.  These souls claim to be Christian, but offer no biblical argument nor do they even acknowledge the basic fact that yoga, as a spiritual practice, runs directly counter to the spiritual counsel of the Bible.  Instead, I have been treated to arguments like these.  From a 'devoted Southern Baptist church member who resents your ignorance': 'I get much more out of yoga and meditation than I ever get out of a sermon in church.'  From 'a Christian who goes to church every service': 'My favorite image I use in yoga is that of Jesus assuming a perfect yoga position in the garden of Gethsemane as he prays.'  And, to cap it all off: 'How do we know that the apostles and early Christian guys did not use yoga to commune with Jesus after he left?'"2

Dr. Mohler is not an angelic messenger from the throne of God.  But the Bible IS a message given to us by God so that we may be able to discern truth from error.  Ignoring it causes this kind of anti-Christian, anti-biblical, anti-God, mindless ranting and raving about personal and emotional convictions based upon experience without even considering that what Dr. Mohler is saying might just be true!  3

There is ZERO doubt in my mind that this is EXACTLY the kind of response the prophets of old received when they called Israel and Judah to repentance from their idolatrous worship and practices.  And God called them wicked.  Today, we are seeing a repeat performance of the spiritual implosion of the nation of Israel.  Many of these people who are vilifying Dr. Mohler are the same ones who get upset when our President says we’re not a Christian nation.  When we as a nation refuse to listen to what God says simply because we don’t like what He says, we’re doomed.  God says we are wicked and He won’t bless us.

Ultimately, no one has any legitimate basis for the rejection of God or the Scriptures.  There is no justifiable reason to reject the Bible as the word of God.  Ultimately, the reason why people reject the Bible and God is because the Bible teaches things that are at odds with the things men love (like Yoga).  People don’t have or need a logical, justifiable, scientific reason to reject God and His prophets and His preachers and His Bible.  They reject it all simply because they love the world and they hate God.  This is precisely what Paul refers to in Romans 1 when he says that unregenerate men are haters of God.  And he goes on to say they hate God in spite of their understanding that their rejection of Him for the sake of their sin deserves His judgment.

This is just how evil and wicked it is when men reject God and His word and refuse to listen to what He says.  In Isaiah 48, the people of Judah are called to “Listen up!”  In chapter 49, that same call goes out to the rest of us.

    [49:1] Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar.
    The LORD called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name.
     [2] He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
    he made me a polished arrow; in his quiver he hid me away.
     [3] And he said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
     [4] But I said, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
    yet surely my right is with the LORD, and my recompense with my God.”
 
    [5] And now the LORD says,
    he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him;
    and that Israel might be gathered to him—
    for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD, and my God has become my strength—
     [6] he says:
    “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.”  (Isaiah 49:1-6 ESV)

It has never been, since the creation of the world, God’s plan to limit Himself and His salvation to the tiny little group of people known as the Jews.  Before Genesis chapter 1, one of God’s purposes has been the redemption of His people from every nation on earth.  That has not always been obvious, but it is an unmistakable theme that runs through all the Bible.  It is easily seen if one takes the time to study the text.  Just like it is easily seen that Yoga and the worship of Jehovah are not compatible.

The Person speaking in this text is the Lord Jesus, the Servant of God, the Holy One of Israel.  It is Jesus Himself who addresses the nations in verse 1: Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar.  And what He says here is not what we’ve come to expect in regard to the Gentile nations.  It is not a word of woe but of weal, a word of hope, a word of blessing. 

God has sent the Messiah into the world as His Servant, in whom I will be glorified.  God will glorify Himself through the work of the Lord Jesus, and specifically through His work on behalf of His people Israel.  But it seems Jesus is not satisfied with the fruit of His labor, the redemption of the Jewish people.  Notice what Jesus says in verse 4: “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my right is with the LORD, and my recompense with my God.”

Here is my paraphrase of verse 4: “This is it?  This is all?  I work this hard for the sake of Your glory, and all I get for it is this tiny little remnant of the nation of Israel?  I’ll go to the cross to redeem only these few people?  This isn’t worth the effort!  Surely, there is more fruit for my labor than this.” 

Then the Father answers His Servant in verse 6:

“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.”

Yes, you are correct, My Servant.  Your work will result in far more than just the microscopic band of faithful Jews.  I send you as a light to the entire world, so that MY salvation might extend to all the nations.  The apostle John understood this perfectly.  Look at John 11 and read with me what he says about this:

[45] Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he [Jesus] did, believed in him, [46] but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. [47] So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the Council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. [48] If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” [49] But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. [50] Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” [51] He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, [52] and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.  (John 11:45-52 ESV)

Jesus would die, not only for the people of Israel, but for the Gentile “children of God” as well, and gather them all together into one.  Into one what?  Into one Church.  That, beloved, has been the plan from before day one.  God sent His Servant to redeem the people of Israel who believed in Messiah, and He sent His Son into the WORLD to redeem the children of God scattered throughout the nations.

Peter says virtually the same thing when he goes to the house of Cornelius the Centurion in Acts 10. 

“Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, [35] but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.  [43] To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”  (Acts 10:34,35,43 ESV)

Please turn once again to Revelation 5.  I want you to take notice of this verse because it reveals a lot about our understanding of the last days.  The heavenly song that will be sung to the Lord Jesus will be this:

[9] . . . “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, [10] and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”  (Revelation 5:9-10 ESV)

The main point being made here is that God sent the Lord Jesus to save people from all the nations of the earth, or as Isaiah says, from the ends of the earth.  And as we saw in the gospel of John where he said that Jesus would die to gather into one all the scattered children of God, here we read that Jesus actually ransomed a people for God.  He did not just make their salvation possible.  He also actually redeemed people from everywhere, not just from Israel.  Thirdly, He took all those whom He saved by His blood and made them a kingdom, not two.  And finally, it is the inhabitants of Heaven gathered around the throne who are singing of Christ’s work. 

Yes, it would be a relatively small thing for such a great Savior to save a relatively small group of people from their sins only from Israel.  But in fact, the Lord Jesus has ransomed MANY, some from every nation, to make them all members of His Kingdom on the new earth He will create for us.

Now turn back to Isaiah 49, and look at verse 7.

[7] 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 ESV)

The Father is speaking to the Son and acknowledges that His Servant will be despised by the people of Israel.  He will come to His own, and His own will not receive Him.  On the contrary, they will crucify Him because they deeply despise Him.  He is abhorred by Jews and Romans alike.  The King of glory will be beaten like a slave by the rulers of Israel.

BUT!  The day is coming when the kings and the princes of this world will bow the knee and fall on their faces in worship before the One whom they have pierced, the One whom God chose to be the Savior of the world.  The work of the Lord Jesus will accomplish all God has intended for it to do.  Listen to what Isaiah says in chapter 55:

[10] “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, [11] so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.  (Isaiah 55:10-11 ESV)

And John tells us the Word of God that was sent to us became flesh, dwelt among us, and He did indeed accomplish everything He came into the world to do.  He came to save His people out of every tongue and tribe and nation from their sins.

Let’s close by reading the rest of this chapter together.  Listen to the hope that God gives to Israel, and the plans He has to increase their numbers and bring their children from the ends of the earth:

    [8] Thus says the LORD:
    “In a time of favor I have answered you; in a day of salvation I have helped you;
    I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people,
    to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages,
     [9] saying to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’ to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear.’
    They shall feed along the ways; on all bare heights shall be their pasture;
     [10] they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them,
    for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.
     [11] And I will make all my mountains a road, and my highways shall be raised up.
     [12] Behold, these shall come from afar, and behold, these from the north and from the west,
    and these from the land of Syene.”
 
    [13] Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing!
    For the LORD has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted.
 
    [14] But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.”
 
    [15] “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?  Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
     [16] Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.
     [17] Your builders make haste; your destroyers and those who laid you waste go out from you.
     [18] Lift up your eyes around and see; they all gather, they come to you.
    As I live, declares the LORD, you shall put them all on as an ornament; you shall bind them on as a bride does.
 
    [19] “Surely your waste and your desolate places and your devastated land—
    surely now you will be too narrow for your inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away.
     [20] The children of your bereavement will yet say in your ears:
    ‘The place is too narrow for me; make room for me to dwell in.’
     [21] Then you will say in your heart: ‘Who has borne me these?  I was bereaved and barren,
    exiled and put away, but who has brought up these?  Behold, I was left alone; from where have these come?’”
 
    [22] Thus says the Lord GOD:
    “Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and raise my signal to the peoples;
    and they shall bring your sons in their bosom, and your daughters shall be carried on their         shoulders. [23] Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers.
    With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you, and lick the dust of your feet.
    Then you will know that I am the LORD; those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.”
 
    [24] Can the prey be taken from the mighty, or the captives of a tyrant be rescued?
     [25] For thus says the LORD:
    “Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken, and the prey of the tyrant be rescued,
    for I will contend with those who contend with you, and I will save your children.
     [26] I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine.  Then all flesh shall know that I am the LORD your Savior, and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”  (Isaiah 49:8-26 ESV)

The little nation that was given over to her enemies, who was all but destroyed, who was made subject to foreigners and served other kings, and was powerless to defend herself; that little group of Jews will become the greatest nation in the world.  It will be a spiritual nation, a kingdom of priests, made up of all those for whom Christ died.  They will speak all the languages of the world, and they will be from every race and nation.  Anything less than that would not be worthy of the work of Christ upon the cross.  Then all flesh will know that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior and King, our Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.  Hallelujah!  Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

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1. http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/BPnews.asp?ID=33834
2. Ibid.
3. According to Wikipedia: The goals of yoga are varied and range from improving health to achieving Moksha. Within Jainism and the monist schools of Advaita Vedanta and Shaivism, the goal of yoga takes the form of Moksha, which is liberation from all worldly suffering and the cycle of birth and death (Samsara), at which point there is a realisation of identity with the Supreme Brahman. In the Mahabharata, the goal of yoga is variously described as entering the world of Brahma, as Brahman, or as perceiving the Brahman or Atman that pervades all things. For the bhakti schools of Vaishnavism, bhakti or service to Svayam bhagavan itself may be the ultimate goal of the yoga process, where the goal is to enjoy an eternal relationship with Vishnu.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga