Isa_49

Isaiah 49:1-6 (ESV)
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.”
 

A¹ The glorious servant of the Lord: a light for the nations (49:1–6)

1. A new beginning, a discouraging effort (49:1–4)
2. A divine purpose, worldwide impact (49:5, 6)

A² The despised servant of rulers: a covenant to the people (49:7–13)

1. Worldly rejection reversed by divine choice (49:7)
2. Divine favor through worldwide ingathering (49:8–12)
3. Cosmic delight unleashed by divine comfort (49:13)

B   The despondent people: kept by the power of God (49:14–50:3)

1. The despondent people (49:14)
2. The mindful Lord (49:15–21)
3. The triumphant Lord (49:22–26)
4. The powerful Lord (50:1–3)

V.1 – Listen to me, all you in distant lands?  Israel failed 

Jesus Christ is our substitute not only in his death but also in his life…  –  1 Corinthians 1:30-31 (ESV)
³⁰  And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,
³¹  so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

V.3 “you are my servant, Israel – It would be the Messiah that embodies all that historic Israel should have been.  The whole Bible is about Christ. 

V.4 – Reveals something of the views of the Messiah while he was the very center of God’s purpose. 

Matthew 17:17 (ESV)
¹⁷  And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.”

V.5 –  The Servant here is not Israel per se, for he has a ministry to Israel.

V.6 –QUOTE:  John McArthur wrote about “Isa 49:6  -“It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make You a light of the nations so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.””

V.6 – “It is too light (H7043, to be trivial) a thing that you should be my servant…”  The restoration of Israel mentioned often in Isaiah and more to come in future chapters.

Point:  Israel has light but needs restoration, while the Gentiles need both light and salvation.

The church mission to the Gentiles to be viewed in context of the mission of Jesus…  John 20:21 (ESV)
²¹  Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

Isaiah 49:7-13  –  The Despised Servant of Rulers

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.”
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.
V.7 – God’s ways are frequently strange.  Christ’s strategy was not to overwhelm the arrogant world with even more formidable arrogance, but emptied himself and to the form of a servant.  His meekness is real and can be misunderstood.

Matthew 11:28-30 (ESV)   – ²⁸  Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
²⁹  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.   ³⁰  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

The unique servant’s ministry was in fact rejected by the nation.  Christ came in subject to God and the earthly rulers while here.  However, as a result of his work now every knee will bend to him.

V.8 –  In the NT Christ was rejected and crucified by men and raised by God in Vindication.
Acts 2:23 (ESV)
²³  this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Note quote of V.8 showing the favor of God to the unique Servant in 2 Corinthians 6:2 (ESV)
²  For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

V.9-12 – Think of the worth that Christ is to us.   The new conditions of the people are described here. These verses echoed and applied to Christ in Revelation 7:16-17.  Isaiah shows that Christ is himself God’s covenant with weak people who have failed to keep their end of the bargain.

Revelation 7:16-17 (ESV)
¹⁶  They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat.
¹⁷  For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

V.13-Christ is a comfort to us and we need to respond toward Him.

Quote R. Orland:
Isaiah’s prophetic vision sweeps across the history of salvation. He sees God, through the covenant man Jesus Christ, restoring the ruins that sin has made of us. He sets us free from our self-imposed prisons. He leads us forward into a new way of life, caring for us moment by moment, providing for us fully, overcoming the obstacles, getting us all the way home to his eternal presence (Revelation 7:9–17). And this liberation gathers in not only the Jews of ancient Babylon, not just the isolated straggler along the way, but masses of people from all over the world as history rushes toward The End. Can you see what Isaiah sees? God is doing something new and constructive and lasting in our messy human scene, and anyone can be a part of it. God is out to prove how kind he can be through Jesus Christ. And there is room there for you.^[1]

Isaiah 49:14-20 –  The Despondent People

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.’

V.14 – God will NOT forget us!

What does God do?  He goes on and on, proving himself as no one less than God.

V.15-16 – God addresses Zion with 2 illustrations:  1) nursing a child  2) engraving our names in His hands

Isaiah 49:21-26 (ESV)  God’s Endless Love…
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 arms, 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.”

V.22-23 – God will no fail his people who trust in him.

1. Orland Quotes:

Far from neglecting us, God swears by his very life to surprise us with the expansion and growth of his church. Isaiah imagines it like a childless woman delightedly astonished at the multitude of happy children gathering around her as their mother, replacing her devastation with fullness (49:17–21). This is the future of the church, by God’s decree. His people will someday look around and blink with amazement: “Can it be? All these multitudes gathered into the bosom of the church, even in our barrenness and futility? What on earth has happened?” The growth of the church will be too vast to be explainable by any human plan, too massive to be accommodated by any human program. It won’t be our faith that grows the church but only God’s deep resolve to show mercy to more and more sinners. In the final triumph of grace, we won’t congratulate ourselves on a job well done; we’ll stutter in amazement, “Behold, I was left alone; from where have these come?” (v. 21b).^[2]

V.24-26 – Echoes of the Exodus constantly appear in this part of Isaiah.

Isaiah 50:1-3 (ESV)   God Challenging his exiled people to think….
¹  Thus says the LORD: “Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce, with which I sent her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.
²  Why, when I came, was there no man; why, when I called, was there no one to answer? Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, by my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert; their fish stink for lack of water and die of thirst.
³  I clothe the heavens with blackness and make sackcloth their covering.”

V.1-3: )   God Challenging his exiled people to think….

Ray Orland Quote:

God is challenging his exiled people to think. They feel abandoned (49:14). And yes, they had been disciplined—but not abandoned. So God says, “Okay, pull your mother’s divorce certificate out of the file. What does it say? What are the charges there? Was it my failure as a husband that ruined the marriage, or was it your mother’s? Is it really fair to me, is it even helpful to you, for you to keep blaming me for your captivity in Babylon? Or if you feel like property that’s been sold off because my creditors were putting pressure on me, think that one through too. Do I even have creditors? To whom do I owe anything? What are you thinking?” What explains their exile is not the failure of God. The truth is this: “Behold, for your iniquities you were sold, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.” When we are under God’s discipline, we never have a reason to find fault with him.

God presses the point. In his many approaches to his people and his many offers of help, why was there no clear and glad answer from them? When his outstretched hand provided everything helpful, relevant, and encouraging, why was his hand not grasped? Is his hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or has he no power to deliver? He is the powerful Lord. If we aren’t experiencing that power, it isn’t because of weakness or reluctance in him. God is both ready and willing to meet us with saving power, if only we’ll stop hanging back in sullen reluctance and haughty fault-finding and step forward in the eagerness of repentance and faith.

Luther was right: the root behind all other manifestations of sin is compulsive unbelief—our voluntary darkness concerning God, ourselves, his relationship to the fallen world and his redemptive purpose.

The faith God wants to find in us is childlike, uncomplicated by our calculating grudges against God. How could it be otherwise? Isaiah has shown us that we are mere children in God’s family, loved beyond calculation. And if God is our Father, isn’t the greatness of his love enough for our faith to become simple? Jonathan Edwards expressed the beauty of this spirit of faith: “I very often think with sweetness and longings and pantings of soul of being a little child, taking hold of Christ, to be led by him through the wilderness of this world.”

If Isaiah’s vision of God is true, and it is, why do we cling to our resentments and anger? Isn’t this a way of passing the buck and excusing our own mediocrity? Doesn’t that sourness bind us further to what we are? But God has given his servant Jesus Christ as a light for the nations and a covenant to the people. He loves you more than you love yourself. Let go of your self-pity, and rest in his mighty arms.^[3]

Isaiah 50:4-51:8 – Why Do We Have Ears on the Outside of Our Heads?  (Because, we are not to listed to ourselves.)

^[1] Ortlund, R. C., Jr., & Hughes, R. K. (2005). Isaiah: God saves sinners (p. 328). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

^[2] Ortlund, R. C., Jr., & Hughes, R. K. (2005). Isaiah: God saves sinners (p. 329). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

^[3] Ortlund, R. C., Jr., & Hughes, R. K. (2005). Isaiah: God saves sinners (pp. 331–332). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.