Isaiah 49:1-6
Amen. Turn to Isaiah 49. I believe in your bulletin, it
just says Isaiah 49, but our specific passage tonight will
be verses one through six. So Isaiah 49, one through six
in the book of Isaiah. Got two big breaks, chapters
one to 39. Remember our funny way of saying
it, chapters one to 39, God yells at all the nations. Every nation
gets yelled at by God, one through 39. And then chapter 40 to 66,
God gives his plan of salvation. And remember, there are two really
big problems that Israel has. There’s a geographical problem.
They’re stuck in Babylon because they were bad and went into exile.
And how does that geographical problem get solved? It’s through
Cyrus, the Persian king who makes a decree that Israel, or Judah
in Jerusalem, can go back and rebuild their cities, rebuild
their wall, and restart their worship. So that’s what the books
of Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah are about. The other problem they have is
a sin problem. So while Cyrus solves their geographical
problem, Their sin problem can only be solved by Jesus. And so we got in the end section
of Isaiah the suffering, or I’m sorry, the servant songs, Isaiah
42, we’ve done. Tonight, Isaiah 49. Of course,
you know, 52 and 53, the suffering servant, often read at Easter.
And then one more. So let’s give our attention to
Isaiah 49, one through, So this is the servant speaking and he
says, listen to me, O coastlands and give attention you peoples
from afar. The Lord called me from the womb
and from the body of my mother. He named my name. 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. And
he said to me, you are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified. But I said, I have labored in
vain. I have spent my strength for nothing in vanity. Yet surely
my right is with the Lord and my recompense is with my God.
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 God has become my strength. He says, is it too
light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the
tribes of Jacob, to bring back the preserved of Israel? I will
make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to
the ends of the earth. Amen, God’s great and gracious
word. I think the longer you’re a Christian
and the longer you sit in church, the longer you come to Sunday
school, maybe read table talk, sit under preaching, that sort
of thing. Maybe listen to other stuff. You begin to realize the
Bible is a very simple book in that we can read it, discover
we’re sinners. We can read it and we can discover
Jesus offers salvation through faith in him, forgiveness of
sins and everlasting life. But we also realize the Bible
is a very complex book. It’s a book of books, 66 books,
27 in the New Testament, 39 in the Old. It’s a book of books. There’s poetry, there’s history.
There’s laws, there’s wisdom literature, there’s stuff that
is really clear, stuff that is not so clear. The Bible is a
very simple book, points out sin and salvation, but the Bible
is also a very complicated book. And one of the ways the Bible
maybe is complicated is sometimes you read a passage like this,
And you say, well, first of all, who is speaking here? I gave
you the clue. It’s the suffering or the, it’s
the servant of Yahweh who’s speaking. But then you’ve got things like,
okay, he’s, he’s calling somebody my servant. He’s calling somebody
Jacob. He’s calling somebody Israel.
He’s calling somebody, um, this or that. And so we kind
of need a glossary. What does God mean in this case
by this word? And I’ll give you the clues and
the answers in just a second. But I want you to think of this
big picture for a moment. Israel, the nation was called
by God, my servant. Israel, the nation was God’s
servant, And they were called out of Egypt. And when they were
called out of Egypt, they passed through the sea. They passed
through the waters. In fact, the New Testament says
it was a baptism of Moses. If that doesn’t confuse our catechism
discussion just a few moments ago. And it was pretty dry too. There’s
another little clue. I’m joking about that. But then
they not only passed through the waters, they went into the
wilderness and in the wilderness they were tested. Now, God rescued
them, God brought them through the sea, and he also brought
them through the wilderness, but did they obey in the wilderness? Not so much. In fact, he was
so angry with them, he let a generation die, and the next generation
went into the promised land. Well, once Israel got into the
promised land, what did they do? Did they cross the boundary
and say, now we’ll behave? Now we’ll be a grumble-free nation. Now we’ll be a moaning and groaning
free country. We’ll like the food he gives
us. We won’t worship idols. None
of that stuff. No, Israel got into the promised
land and they disobeyed God, even though he gave them commandments.
They said, we’ll do them. He sent prophets and they said,
we’re fine. We’re doing what we want, when
we want, how we want. It’s great. Kind of a repeat of Adam and
Eve, wasn’t it? So you get to the beginning of the book of
Isaiah. And what does God say of Israel? He says, I found a
really nice piece of land on the side of a mountain. I kind
of hoed it up and tilled it up and tossed out all the rocks
and the rubble, put it fertile soil there. I bought the best
grapevines that one can buy and I put them in the ground and
I tended them and I gave them everything they needed to grow
to bear fruit and I even brought in a wine press, even built a
wall up so that nobody would steal my grapes and my vintage.
And when I went to get my crop and make the vat of wine, I got
sour grapes. And what does God say? What else
was I to do? I did everything I could and
yet they rejected me. So now, replace everything we
just said about Israel and put Jesus in the picture. Jesus is
the true Israel. Jesus is the true servant. And
I don’t know if you recall this, but when Jesus was born, you
remember the wise men came to see and they go to Herod’s temple
and who’s this born King of the Jews? What King of the Jews?
And look it up. Oh, he’s born in Bethlehem. So
they send them over to Bethlehem and Herod says, swing back by.
and tell me where he is because I too want to go worship him. Well, we all know he’s the seed
of the serpent and he wanted to kill Jesus. So the wise men
being warned in a dream went back home another way. And what
vision, what word comes to Joseph? He says, take your son and go
where? To Egypt. And if you’re reading your Bible
along and it says, so that the words of the prophet Hosea could
be fulfilled, What were those words of Hosea? Well, it’s Hosea
11, one out of Egypt. I have called my son. Well, you can take that two ways
out of Egypt. I called the nation Israel and
he did call them out of Egypt and up out of Egypt. They came
by his power and by his mighty arm and his outstretched hand.
And God did bring Israel out of Egypt, his servant. But this
time it’s Mary, And it’s Joseph and it’s baby Jesus. And after
a time in Egypt when Herod had died and those with him, what
did God say to Joseph? It’s time to go home. And so
he went back to the promised land. So out of Egypt, God delivered
Jesus. And they went back by a different
way through the promised land. And where did they go? Not to
Bethlehem. but to Nazareth. And it said to fulfill another
prophecy, which was, he shall be called a Nazarene. And so you begin to see very
quickly the parallels between Israel as the nation and Jesus
as the true Israel. Israel is the servant of God
and Jesus as the servant of God. And so just as both were called
out of the nation of Egypt, the Exodus, both passed through the
waters. So Israel went through the Red
Sea. The baptism of Moses, Jesus went into the Jordan river where
he was baptized in order to identify with sinners. He was baptized
with John’s baptism, not to be confused with our baptism, but
he was baptized with John’s baptism, a baptism of repentance. And
so he passed through the waters and immediately what happened
is he came up out of the waters. There was the voice, there was
the dove and there was the God man. And the spirit of God descended
on him in the form of a dove. But what did the voice from heaven
say? This is my son with whom I am well pleased. And there’s
yet another word. So you got servant, right? You’ve got Israel, you’ve got
all these things God calls the nation. Well, guess what else
God calls the nation? He calls the nation his son.
And so here’s Jesus. This is my son with whom I am
well pleased. And what has God been saying
to Israel this whole time in the book of Isaiah? This is my
son with whom I am not well pleased, right? So in the coming of Jesus,
we see true Israel. We see righteous servant. We see the true sonship. And how are we made sons? It’s
through adoption, it’s through the work of the Spirit based
on the work of Jesus. And so you begin to see these
parallels. Well, two more things to mention
before we get into this passage. One is the idea, and I think
we saw this months ago when we first got into the shorter catechism
on Sunday nights. Jesus is a prophet, priest, and
king, but he has two states. He has a state of humiliation
and he has a state of exaltation. So exaltation would be, he’s
the eternal son of God who left the riches of heaven and humiliated
himself, humbled himself, became in the form of a, what’s the
word? Servant. You begin to see the themes really
quickly. So he became a servant to serve God on the mission of
seeking and saving. The lost and so he was exalted
in heaven humiliated in his becoming man Humiliated by being born
of a woman humiliated by living in a poor and low condition Humiliated
by as we’ll see Just getting beat up for being Jesus and for
being God’s Son doing work on earth Ultimately humiliated in
his shameful death at the cross and bearing the curse for sins
that he did not commit, but then he’s exalted. And y’all know
my little funny thing. I believe Jesus’ exaltation began
not at the resurrection, but being buried in a rich man’s
tomb instead of being dumped outside the city as other criminals
would have been. Joseph of Arimathea came and
took his body, prepared it and laid it in a brand new rich man’s
tomb. And so I kind of think The exaltation
began there, but his exaltation really got a jump when he was
raised from the dead. And then of course, when he ascended
to heaven and now sits at the right hand of God Almighty, we
have his exaltation, but we have Jesus’ humiliation. We have his
exaltation. We see his humiliation in these
suffering servant songs. Okay. And then the last thing
to mention before we deep dive into the passage, we read this
in Hebrews four, Jesus, the God man, was made like us in every
way. He was tempted just like us in
every way, except one thing, he did not sin. And so when we
think of the servant of the Lord, he is a very relatable person. You know, we just got through
a nasty political season, you know, back in the fall, November,
you know, what does it last two years now? And I always kind
of laugh when I see a politician who wears jeans And then he wears
a French collar dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, like he’s
a farmer. It just doesn’t work. You know,
they did a little better with it. Was it Tim Waltz? You know,
they at least put some Carhartt on the guy, make him look like
Farmer Waltz. But anyway, you can’t fake it,
right? People see through it. And with
Jesus, you get the real deal. He was a true man in the flesh. And when he comes to be the servant
of the Lord, there’s a couple of things this passage shows
us very well that I think are helpful. He begins in verse one
and calls out, listen to me, O coastlands. These would be
the lands around the Mediterranean sea. And then he says, give attention
peoples from afar. Now later in the book of Isaiah,
it’s going to talk a bunch about the ends of the earth. And so
Jesus’ mission is not just in Israel. So Israel’s mission,
remember, was to be a little bitty teeny tiny nation where
everybody looked in and peeped over the fence and said, oh,
look at them. They fear Yahweh and look how wonderful their
life is. So you remember with Abraham,
Abraham was the one man, but what did, was it a Bimelech say? Bimelech comes to him and says,
Abraham, I see that your God prospers you. I want what you’re
having making a treaty with me. And so they do. And the blessings
of God or Yahweh on Abraham kind of ooze around and even pagans
like Abimelech get some of that blessing. Well, Israel was to
be like Abraham on steroids, a little bitty nation state where
God blessed them, they obeyed and the nations would come in
and look and say, wow, we want that. And that’s why when David
and Solomon, built up the city of David, they
built the temple, they built the palace, and they had people
like the queen of Sheba come to see this. experiment, if you
will, of a nation that would fear Yahweh and walk in his ways. Well, what happened to that witness
after David and Solomon? It just went down, down, down
and kind of spiraled and spun until it went down the tubes.
And then Israel went off in great shame, Northern tribes to Syria
and the Southern tribe off to, to Babylon. So now God is saying,
listen to me nations, I, the servant, not the failed nation,
but I, the servant, the man, uh, I have been called from the
womb. Uh, God is making his name famous. This isn’t like, you know, getting
a baby book out when you got babies on the way. And you know,
if it’s a girl, this, if it’s a boy, that this is the Lord
saying, I’ve announced the wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting
father, prince of peace. I’ve announced Emmanuel, I’ve
announced, and I’ve made his name known, but now in the coming
of him, there will be real fruit from the ministry. And so verse
one tells us of this sort of a divine announcement of the
one who will speak. The second thing it mentions
in verse two is his prophetic ministry. He says, he makes my
mouth like a sharp sword. What do we know from Hebrews
4.12? The word of God is like a sharp two edged sword. And what does it do? It cuts
deep, it exposes. And so Jesus’ mouth is like a
sharp two edged sword. He’s the living word. In fact,
when he comes back in Revelation, what does it say about Jesus?
I think it’s like something about a sword in the mouth kind of
sort of thing. So it’s a big theme that pops up in the scripture,
but his ministry will be prophetic. His sword will be sharp. And
at the right time, God will reveal the sword out of the shadow or
out of the sheath. But he also is like a polished
arrow. you know, get rid of all the
drag, get rid of all the rust, you know, on arrows and the thing
will fly true, it’ll fly straight. And what could we say about the
words of Jesus as an arrow? If the sword cuts precisely and
does its work, what will the arrow do? It will land its target. That’s right, it will hit its
target. And so Jesus’ ministry here is pictured as precise and
prophetic. and very powerful. It’ll be a
message of salvation. It’ll be a message of judgment,
but God’s man will do God’s errand. And we’re, we don’t want to say
Isaiah failed because God, what did God tell him at his call?
You’re going to speak and people aren’t going to listen. You’re
going to say stuff and they’re going to, they’re just going
to, they’re going to be dull of hearing. These people, they can’t see,
they can’t hear, and they can’t perceive, and they can’t believe.
And Jesus will face that some, but we love the gospel of Jesus. And then finally, we have in
verse three, a very big statement. Yahweh, or God the Father, says
to the son, you are my servant. All right, he’s gonna say in
other places, you’re my son. He says, you are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified. So we’ve just watched the new
current president fill his cabinet, not with Campbell soup, but you
know, the people cabinet, you know, he’s got them all in, they’ve
all passed Congress or whatever. You could say in a sense, Jesus
is a member of God’s cabinet. His servant is his emissary.
He’s the one that when he comes and when he speaks, whatever
he does will glorify Yahweh. And we’ve seen this, you know,
maybe Marco Rubio, I guess, is our current Secretary of State.
When he goes and frees Russian prisoners with the help of others,
it makes our current president look good. And you could go back
through history. It’s not just got to be the current
president, but when their emissary goes, does good things, it makes
the president look good. And so you can say, Jesus, the
servant of Yahweh in his work, in his success makes his father
appear to be glorious. And don’t we know that from the
life and ministry of Jesus? What does Jesus want to do? Does
he want to make a name for himself? Does he want to set up a kingdom
on earth and say, everybody come gather around me like maybe Absalom
did to David? No, Jesus says, I’ve come to
do the will of the father and the will of the father is a pretty
nasty errand. And so how is God most glorified?
It’s when the servant is most humiliated and put to death.
And so verse three is so, so loaded. The mission of Jesus,
you are my servant. Israel and whom I will be glorified. And of course, we know the life
and ministry of Jesus wasn’t rosy. And verse four tells us
that. He says, I’ve labored in vain. I’ve spent my strength
for nothing and for vanity. I’ve labored in vain. I’ve labored
in emptiness. I’ve spent my strength for nothing.
One of these words is this exact same word that’s used in the
very opening chapter of Genesis. where God made the heavens and
the earth, but they were formless and they were empty. They were void. Jesus is saying
here, I’ve done all this and I got nothing to show for it.
Got absolutely nothing to show for it. I’ve spent my strength
for nothing. I’ve spent it for vanity. If
you’re a reader of the Proverbs, if you’re a reader of Ecclesiastes
and Song of Solomon, the wisdom literature, Vanity is a popular
word and it means vapor. It means poof. I’ve done all
this work and it’s for nothing. This is Jesus speaking and we
know, don’t we, that his work seem to be like the work we might
do where we might say, where, where is a wall? I must beat
my head against it. These people don’t hear, they
don’t see, they don’t believe. And what does Jesus say exasperated
to his disciples a time or two? What are you going to go away
to? And we, we recognize ourselves
in those places. Well, there’s the humiliation
and the, the hardship that Jesus faces, but verse four doesn’t
end with just the groaning. He says, yet surely my right
is with the Lord and my recompense is with my God. What does Jesus
say? What does it say of Jesus in
the scripture? It was for the joy set before him that he endured
the cross, that he endured the shame. It was for the joy set
before him that he went through his humiliation because he saw
an exaltation ahead. That’s in a sense what we thought
of this morning, isn’t it? We have good comfort in eternal
Hope. Remember Paul from our second
Corinthians, we may be pressed down, shaken down, beat down,
dragged down, all the rest, but we don’t give up because we look
at the eternal weight of glory. And so now God speaks in verse
five, and now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb
to be his servant. So here’s more of this God language,
not about the nation of Israel, not about Jacob way back in,
Genesis, but this is Jesus. He formed me from the womb to
be his servant. He formed me in his womb to bring
Jacob, that’s the nation, back to him. Remember where they are.
They’re in Babylon. They’re hauled off because of
their sin. He has formed me in the womb
that Israel might be gathered to him. So you get the picture
of the shepherd. We’ve had the prophet. Now we
get the picture of the shepherd. He’s going to bring his people
back. Remember there are two problems.
One is geography. And the other is sin. So God
will bring Jacob back to him through the blood of Jesus. Israel
will be gathered back to him through the blood of Jesus. And
so just as he goes through this humiliation, not just becoming
man, not just living under rough conditions in this sin-filled
world, East of Eden, he also gets exalted. It says at the
end of verse five, I’m honored in the eyes of the Lord. And
God has become my strength. We remember everything Jesus
went through. It was through prayer and he
sought the will of the father, but he sought the strength of
the father. And that’s a good way to live life. Well, what
does God console the son with? Is it too light a thing that
you should be my servant? Is it too light a thing that
you should raise up Jacob, that you should bring back the preserved
of Israel? Is it too light a thing that
I will make you a light to the nations? You begin to see the
point of bringing Israel back to Judah and back to Jerusalem
and to rebuild the temple is not So little bitty nation state
Israel can be a light to the whole world. It’s preparing for
the coming of Jesus. and the scattering of the people
in the world, right? That was the point of the Old
Testament. It was a little bitty Israel. Everybody looked in and
said, Oh, neat. Can we have that? Now Israel is scattered. We had
the persecution in Jerusalem just after Jesus’ resurrection. We had the famine in Jerusalem.
And what did that do? It created this big diaspora
or spreading of God’s people all around the world. And so
when Paul went all around and did his missionary work, where
did he go first? He went to the synagogue and he preached Christ
as Messiah from the scriptures. And then he went from the Jew
to the Greek and to the Gentile. And so you begin to get this
picture of the mission of God going broadly into the world,
that we will be a light to the nation, salvation will reach
the end of the earth. But back to the Israel-Jesus
comparison, what was the sin of Israel? It was unbelief. What was the success of Jesus?
It was belief. What was the sin of Israel? It
was unfaithfulness. What was the righteousness of
Jesus? It was faithfulness. And so we see a couple things. One is we can’t do what God demands. Can’t do it. Might say we want
to. The spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. We can’t do what
God requires, but there is one who can, and that is Jesus. And
we ought to give thanks very often as we remember that in
Christ, when we look to him in faith, we are laying hold of
his obedience. He obeyed, he lived a life of
obedience we could never live. And then he paid for our sins,
a sacrifice that we could never pay. We owed it, but we could
not pay it. And so the beauty of justification,
I love how the, I believe it’s the Heidelberg Catechism phrases
it. God sees us just as if we never
sinned, that’s the atonement, but he also sees us positively,
just as if we always obeyed. And so we get the benefits of
the sacrifice of Jesus. but we also get the benefits
of the obedience of Jesus. And so let’s pause and give him
thanks. Lord, we do thank you for the glimpse into the life
of the suffering servant. There is none like Jesus, none
like our savior who lived and obeyed in our place. Where we
failed, he fulfilled your righteousness. And we thank you that you have
granted that to us by faith. and that you see us as you see
Jesus. You see obedience and you see
righteousness. Lord, there’s no other place
we could get that except from your son, your servant, our savior.
And so we give you all our thanks and pray that we live up to the
high calling we have. Pray it in Jesus’ great name,
amen.