Christ Unveiled as Restorer of Israel and Light for the Nations

Isaiah 49

[The Lord] says, “It is not enough for you to be my servant raising up the tribes of Jacob and restoring the protected ones of Israel. I will also make you a light for the nations, to be my salvation to the ends of the earth.” (Isa 49:6)

Main Idea: It is insufficient for the servant of the Lord (Jesus Christ) merely to restore the exiles of Israel; besides that and against all obstacles, he will extend God’s salvation to the ends of the earth.

1. Christ Unveiled as God’s Salvation to the Ends of the Earth (49:1-7)
   1. The servant of the Lord calls to the nations (49:1).
   2. The servant of the Lord is concealed and prepared (49:2).
   3. The servant of the Lord is called “Israel” (49:3).
   4. The servant of the Lord is apparently discouraged (49:4).
   5. The servant of the Lord is prepared to restore Israel (49:5).
   6. The servant’s mission extends to the ends of the earth (49:6-7).
2. God’s Day of Salvation for the Exiles (49:8-13)
   1. God’s day of salvation (49:8)
   2. The joyful restoration of the exiles from the distant lands (49:8-13)
3. Despite All Appearances, the Exiles Will Return (49:14-21).
   1. The Lord’s sworn oath: I will never forget Zion (49:14-18).
   2. Despite all appearances, the exiles will return (49:17-21).
4. The Gentiles Will Aid the Redemption of Israel or Be Destroyed (49:22-26).
   1. God calls on Gentiles to honor and help his people (49:22-23).
   2. The vicious captors are plundered and slaughtered (49:24-26).

Christ Unveiled as God’s Salvation to the Ends of the Earth

Isaiah 49:1-7

This is one of the greatest missionary chapters in the Bible, for it takes us into the secret counsels of the triune God for the extension of the glory of Christ to the ends of the earth. Here we are privy to an immeasurably deep conversation between the Father and the Son concerning Jesus’s glorious mission on earth. Here God the Father tells the Son that it is insufficient glory for him to be merely the Savior of the Jews. God did not send his only begotten Son into the world to save Israel alone. But God has commanded Jesus Christ to be also the light for the Gentiles, that he may bring his salvation to the ends of the earth. So, at present, the glory of Jesus Christ is great—he sits at the right hand of God the Father. But there are as yet many elect peoples from unreached nations who have not heard of his fame or seen his glory, and that is intolerable. God wills that Jesus be a light for people from every nation on the face of the earth. God wills far greater glory than Christ presently has.

The chapter opens with the servant of the Lord calling to the “coasts and islands” and “distant peoples” to listen to his words (v. 1). This servant of the Lord is none other than Jesus, for verses 1-7 speak clearly of an individual. This individual is called “Israel” in verse 3 (which we will explain in a moment), and this might lead the reader to think Isaiah is writing of Israel. But verses 5-6 make plain that this servant of the Lord was sent in part to gather “Israel” back to God, so these verses read most sensibly as referring to a single individual. Given that Simeon called the baby Jesus “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32) and the book of Acts twice quotes this passage and applies it to Jesus (Acts 13:47; 26:23), Christians do well to understand Isaiah 49:1-7 as speaking of Jesus Christ, the servant of the Lord. And Jesus has a message for “the ends of the earth” (v. 6).

The text tells us that the Lord called the servant by name before he was born. God the Father had chosen Jesus from before the foundation of the world to die for the sins of his people (1 Pet 1:19-20) and told Joseph (Matt 1:21) and Mary (Luke 1:31) that his name would be Jesus because he would save his people from their sins. God prepared the mouth of Jesus to be a honed sword and a sharpened arrow, not to slaughter his enemies but to pierce the hardened hearts of his elect with the words of the gospel. Jesus grew up before his heavenly Father, concealed from the eyes of the world, protected in the shadow of God’s hand. Twice in Isaiah 49:2 the text says God “hid” him until he was ready to unleash him on Israel. And his words would mean life to all who heard them with faith.

God also called his servant of the Lord by the name of “Israel,” as we mentioned above (v. 3). This has led some people to think the “Suffering Servant” of Isaiah 49–53 is Israel. But we already refuted that notion by the clearly different use of the word Israel in verses 5-6. The best way to understand Jesus being called “Israel” in verse 3 is to see him as the perfect fulfillment of all that Israel was meant to be. God called his people in Egypt “Israel” and his “firstborn son” (Exod 4:22). God chose Israel to be a priest nation (Exod 19:5-6) by which the promise to Abraham would be fulfilled: “all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 12:3). But because of Israel’s sin, they failed in that mission. Jesus would perfectly embody all that Israel was meant to be as God’s “firstborn Son.” This is made clear in that the prophecy of Hosea 11:1, “out of Egypt I called my son,” is applied to Jesus (Matt 2:15).

Isaiah 49:4 speaks surprisingly of the apparent discouragement of the servant. He laments that he has spent his strength to no apparent purpose. The hiddenness of the work of God is paramount here, for the kingdom of God is often an apparent failure. Missionaries labor for years seeing almost no fruit. Pastors labor for years and wonder if their many sermons have accomplished anything at all. Parents labor for years only to see their children wander into rebellion. The apparent failure of the kingdom of God is nowhere more stunning than when it comes to the life and death of Jesus Christ. Jesus lived the only perfect life that has ever been lived; he preached the only perfect sermons that have ever been preached; he did a river of signs and wonders in number and in magnitude that boggles the mind; he poured himself out day after day for the Jewish people. Yet they despised and rejected him (Isa 53:3) and formally condemned him to death (Mark 14:64). When he was arrested, even his own apostles deserted him and fled (Matt 26:56); his best friend denied knowing him (Matt 26:69-75). As he was dying on the cross, all that remained of his ministry was a single apostle (John), his own mother, and a few friends of the family. It would have been easy for him to look at that meager outcome and say the words of Isaiah 49:4: “I have labored in vain.” But as he died, he entrusted himself to God and said in effect, “Into your hands, I commit my ministry. Make something of this tiny grain of wheat that is falling into the ground and dying.” Verse 4 concludes with the hopeful words, “yet my vindication is with the Lord, and my reward is with my God.” God the Father took the death of Christ and used it to atone for the sins of a countless multitude from every nation on earth.

So verses 5-7 address the glory of Christ in bringing the salvation of God to the ends of the earth. Jesus was sent to bring back Jacob to God so that Israel might be gathered to him. But the Father has declared for all time that that alone is not weighty enough (literally, “too light a thing”). The Hebrew word for “glory” means something massive; so it is insufficiently glorious for Jesus to be merely Savior for Israel. God has ordained that Jesus also be a light for the Gentile nations so that he may be the salvation of the ends of the earth (v. 6). So God will see to it that the one who was despised and abhorred by his own people (the Jews), called the “servant of kings,” would be in the end so honored that kings see him and rise out of their thrones to pay him homage, bowing down to worship him (52:15).

God’s Day of Salvation for the Exiles

Isaiah 49:8-13

This gospel of Jesus Christ is advancing even now by the Holy Spirit’s power. Quoting verse 8, the apostle Paul says, “At an acceptable time I listened to you, and in the day of salvation I helped you. See, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). This is the era of God’s grace, extending to the nations by the proclamation of the gospel of Christ. As sinners hear that gospel, they are moved by faith to call on the name of the Lord, crying aloud to Jesus for salvation from their sins. But Isaiah 49:8 is addressed to the servant, not the sinner! God is promising to hear Jesus in this “time of favor” and “day of salvation.” So Jesus is our Mediator (1 Tim 2:5), and as we cry to him, he in turn will intercede for us to God, and God will hear his beloved Son and save us.

This “day of salvation” was pictured in history by God’s restoration of the exiles from Babylon back to the promised land. Jesus was made by God to be a “covenant for the people” (v. 8) with the result that “spiritual exiles” will return and again possess the desolate inheritances of the promised land. Christ will speak a sovereign word to the prisoners (exiles) and lead them from darkness to their inheritance. These exiles will come from far away, from the north and west, even from the “land of Sinim” (some scholars believe this might have been China; cf. Young, Isaiah Chs. 40–66, 294). The regathering of physical exiles to the promised land was a picture of the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth and of the spiritual pilgrimage that all disciples make in following Jesus from sin to heaven (Matt 7:13-14).

This “day of salvation” and the resulting pilgrimage of former exiles (both physical and spiritual) is worthy of exultant praise and worship by the heavens and the earth, set free at last from decay (v. 13; Rom 8:19).

Despite All Appearances, the Exiles Will Return

Isaiah 49:14-21

We have already seen how the Suffering Servant could look around from the cross and see little evidence of the greatness of the kingdom of God; so also Zion (the City of God—Jerusalem) could look at her own rubble-filled and vacant streets during the exile to Babylon and say, “The Lord has abandoned me!” (v. 14). This is the way it is with the spiritual advance of Christ’s kingdom, with cities of teeming millions and only a handful of known Christians in each one meeting in secret. How could there ever really be a multitude greater than anyone could count from every nation on earth (Rev 7:9)? So if Zion only looks at the outward circumstances of a desolate condition during the exile to Babylon, she may well conclude that God has forgotten her.

But God swears by himself—“‘As I live’—this is the Lord’s declaration” (v. 18)—that a mother is more likely to forget her nursing child (v. 15) than that God will forget his covenant promise to Abraham. God also took a solemn oath when he made that promise (Gen 15:17), implying by the movement of the fire pot through the pieces of the sacrifice, “May I cease to exist if I fail to keep my promise to you.” God has inscribed his people on the palms of his hands, and he never forgets the walls of Jerusalem (v. 16). Despite all outward appearances, the exiles will return and the earthly Zion (Jerusalem) will be populated, so populated, in fact, that she will become too small for all her people (vv. 19-20). So also the heavenly Zion will look on all her children and wonder where they came from (v. 21; see Zech 8:5).

The Gentiles Will Aid the Redemption of Israel or Be Destroyed

Isaiah 49:22-26

The chapter ends with both a promise and a warning to the Gentile nations on earth. God will lift up his hand to the nations and raise his banner, commanding the Gentiles (both rulers and people) to assist him in gathering his scattered people and returning them to Zion. The very ones who are journeying in pilgrimage to Zion will lift up and carry others along with them, so also here in verse 22 Gentiles will carry the sons and daughters of Zion from exile home to the promised land. Literally, Cyrus the Great and all the Persian sub-rulers and people are called on to aid the resettlement of Jerusalem by any means possible. In the same way, Gentile converts to Christ are called on to be involved in evangelizing unreached people groups, giving special focus to the lost among the Jews. Believing monarchs will aid in the spread of the gospel (v. 23).

Conversely, some Gentiles will use their positions of power to resist the streaming of exiles back to Zion. Verses 24-26 speak of tyrants who hold the exiles captive and have to be crushed in order to let the children of God go free. So either the Gentiles will aid the streaming of the exiles back to Zion (in which case they will be blessed), or they will resist it and be destroyed by an avenging God.

Applications

The driving force for missions is written in this chapter, namely, that Christ’s present glory is too small. “It is too light a thing” for Jesus to be worshiped at his present level; he is deprived of his glory when there is any unreached people group or any elect person who has not yet come to faith in Christ. A yearning that Christ receive all the glory he is due from all the people he has chosen should drive us in missions day after day. God the Father has ordained that Christ be a light for the Gentiles, bringing God’s salvation to the ends of the earth. The apostles Paul and Barnabas took this statement (made from the Father to the Son) as their personal marching orders in Acts 13:47: “For this is what the Lord has commanded us [plural]: ‘I have made you [singular] a light for the Gentiles to bring salvation to the end of the earth.’” The Greek is ­singular—Jesus is the only light for the Gentiles. But because we are his body and he is our head, his commission from the Father moves us to action to make it come true.

Along with this, we should feel fully the weight of Christ’s apparent discouragement in verse 4 that gets resolved in that same verse by trusting in God’s final plan. The kingdom of God will always appear underwhelming and somewhat disappointing in this present age compared to the grandeur of the King and the perfection of the promises he has made to us. So pastors, missionaries, evangelists, parents, and Christian laborers of all types will have to battle discouragement constantly when the results are far less than we feel they should be. Adoniram Judson was so depressed in Burma that he dug his own grave and waited for God to kill him (Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 378). Martin Luther was so discouraged at the poor response to his preaching in Wittenberg that he gave up preaching for more than nine months in 1530 (Meuser, Luther, 27–34). The kingdom of God seems so unimpressive compared to current events and mighty world empires. But don’t be deceived. When we are finally in the heavenly Zion, we will be amazed at the stunning multitude of the redeemed there.

Finally, we should proclaim to the lost around us that today is the day of salvation, as Paul quotes in 2 Corinthians 6:2. We should be urgent in evangelism and not allow the unrepentant to comfort themselves that there’s “always tomorrow.” No, now is the season of God’s grace, today is the day of salvation.

Reflect and Discuss

1. How does this chapter present the glories of Jesus Christ?
2. What is the significance of Jesus’s words being like a “sharp sword”? How would you relate it to Hebrews 4:12, which says the word of the Lord is like a “double-edged sword”?
3. How do you understand Jesus’s apparent discouragement in verse 4: “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and futility”? How does the end of the verse resolve this and show that what really matters is the final glory the Father had planned, not how it appears in the middle of the unfolding plan?
4. How could Christian workers feel tempted to be discouraged at the paltry level of their fruit after so much sacrificial labor? How could verse 4 help them also to resolve their discouragement and continue to labor for the hidden advance of the kingdom of God?
5. What does verse 5 teach us about Jesus’s role among the chosen people?
6. How is verse 6 a foundational verse for missions? How is it “not enough” for Jesus merely to be the Savior of Israel? How is Jesus also the “light of the Gentiles”?
7. How does verse 7 help us understand the final glories of Christ, though he is presently despised?
8. What does verse 8 teach us about urgency in light of the gospel? How does Paul apply this verse in 2 Corinthians 6:2?
9. How does the physical restoration of the Jewish exiles from Babylon back to the promised land also give us a picture of the advance of the gospel to the ends of the earth?
10. How do verses 15-16 personally encourage you about Christ’s changeless love for you?