Going to invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me to the
book of Isaiah in the Old Testament.
Specifically, we're going to be looking at chapter 49 today,
Isaiah chapter 49. You can find the page of where
that is in the red Bibles in the bulletin.
I want to thank Elder AC for filling the pulpit for us last
Sunday. So ably.
Stephanie and I were able to listen to the sermon as we were
coming home from the airports. You heard an excellent
exposition of Isaiah 48 with some very helpful and good
applications. And because he covered Isaiah
48, we're looking at Isaiah 49 today.
Just a quick snapshot of what's coming up over the next six
weeks or so. Next Sunday begins the season of
Advent, so we'll be taking a break from the book of Isaiah
for the four Sundays of Advent. We have a guest preacher the
last Sunday of December, and we have a guest preacher the first
Sunday of January, and then our men's retreat speaker is going
to be preaching the second Sunday in January.
At that point, we'll come back and jump back into Isaiah.
But today we're looking at Isaiah chapter 49.
As I've mentioned to you before, it's good as we're looking at
these verses, to be thinking about 3 different time frames.
The 1st is the time frame in which Isaiah ministered.
That was around 7:40 to 700 BC, the people originally hearing
Isaiah's words and prophecy. Secondly, the time frame of the
people that Isaiah is addressing in this last section of the
book, chapters 40 through 66, those were the people of God who
were in exile in Babylon from 586 to around 539 BC.
And then the third time frame is today, God's people today.
So what does Isaiah have to say to us?
What does Isaiah have to say in all three of those time frames?
Let's look and see what God's Word says.
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.
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 laboured in
vain, I have spent my strength for nothing in vanity, Yet
surely my right is with the Lord, in my recompense 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 honoured in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become
my strength. He says it is to 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 ends of the earth.
Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his holy 1 to 1
deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers.
Kings shall see and arise, Princess, and they shall
prostate themselves because of the Lord who is faithful, the
Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.
Thus says the Lord, in a time of favour 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, saying
to the prisoners, Come out to those who are in darkness
appear. They shall feed along the ways,
and all bare heights shall shall be their pasture.
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 he will guide them.
And I will make all my mountains a road, and my highways shall be
raised up. Behold, these shall come from
afar, and behold these from the north and from the West, and
these from the land of Syene. Sing for joy, O heavens, and
exalt, O earth, break forth, O mountains, into singing.
For the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion
on his afflicted. But Zion says, the Lord has
forsaken me. My Lord has forgotten me.
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.
Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.
Your walls are continually before me.
Your builders make haste, your destroyers and those who laid
you waste. Go out from you, 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. 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.
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.
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? Thus says the Lord God, Behold,
I will lift up my hand to the nation's and raise my signal to
the peoples, and they shall bring your sons in your in your
in their arms, and your daughters shall be carried on
their shoulders. 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. Can the prey be taken from the
mighty, or the captives of a tyrant be rescued?
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. 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. Let's pray together.
Father, we thank you for the power of your word.
We pray for your Spirit to be at work taking it this morning as
we read it, as we meditate upon it.
And we pray that the Spirit would press it deeply into our
hearts and minds such that we grow in our understanding of who
you are, that we would grow in our love for you, that we would
grow in our desire and our ability to live lives that are
pleasing to you. All this we ask in the name of
our Savior, the Lord Jesus, Amen.
Have you ever felt forgotten? Maybe by your friends, maybe by
your family, maybe even by the Lord?
William Carey, considered to be the father of modern missions,
lived from 1761 to 1834. He was born in England, and as a
Baptist missionary he went to India in 1793.
Now he went expecting and planning for hardship and
difficulty. But what he didn't expect was
silence. Feeling like he had been
forgotten, he ministered for seven long, hard years.
He preached the Word. He translated the Bible into
various languages. He learned the languages of the
people. He served among the people.
And there was no response to the gospel.
No revivals, no converts, no letters from home.
Even his own mission board rarely contacted him.
He wrote in his journal at one point.
I feel as if I am forgotten by the world and perhaps even by
God. He said he felt that the Lord
had hidden his face from him. His wife suffered a mental
breakdown, he had a child die from disease and his financial
support dried up. He said he often felt like he
was burying himself alive. Where was the Lord?
Had the Lord forsaken William Carey and the work in India?
Had the Lord forgotten him? After seven years, Kerry
witnessed his first convert to Christianity.
Krishna. Paul came to faith in Christ and
was baptized in the Ganges River.
Within a decade, the Bible had been translated into several
Indian languages. Schools for children and
theological schools have been established and a foundation was
laid for generations of gospel ministry in the country of
India. And years later, Kerry wrote
that he could see at that point God had been at work all along
and had not forgotten him, that God had been faithful.
God's people that Isaiah is addressing in this chapter.
We're living in exile in Babylon.
They were away from the promised land.
They were away from the temple. They were away from the
sacrificial system. They no doubt had been separated
from friends and loved ones. They were living in a foreign
land under a Pagan king, foreign language, a land full of idols
and Pagan gods. It's no wonder that they said,
as we read in verse 14, the Lord has forsaken us, The Lord has
forgotten us. They felt forgotten.
They felt forsaken. They felt abandoned and
disowned, like the Lord was hiding his face from his people.
And the Lord spoke to his people then, and he speaks to his
people today. I have not forgotten you.
I have not forsaken you or abandoned you.
Rather, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.
And in fact, I am sending my servant to you to rescue and
redeem you. I am the Lord, your Savior and
your Redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob, he said.
I am faithful to my covenant promises.
I am faithful to you, my people, ever and always.
That's still true for God's people today.
So let's look at this passage and see if we can be filled with
encouragement and hope and motivation for loving and
obeying the Lord today. As we read these words, let's
look and see the the call of the Lord's Servant, the mission of
the Servant, the success of the Servant, and then let's ask, So
what? So first of all, the calling of
the Servant. You can see this in the 1st 4
verses of chapter 49. Now the first thing to notice is
that this is the second of what is referred to often as the
Servant songs of Isaiah. The first one was back in
chapter 42. The most well known ones are
ones that are coming up in a little while in chapters 52 and
53 and as we read about the servants.
In Isaiah's words, the servant is serving a dual purpose.
The Lord spoke about His servant, referring at times to
the prophet Isaiah specifically. Even here Isaiah is being
referenced. Isaiah is speaking.
He also called Cyrus his Servant, the one who would
release His people, Israel to return home.
But even though there were often specific human people that were
being referred to as the servant of the Lord, more importantly
the the servant of the Lord and here in chapter 49 pointed
forward to a greater and ultimate servant who would come,
one who would come to redeem God's people from their sins and
bring reconciliation between God and His people.
The the servant spoken of in these chapters points us
ultimately to the Lord Jesus Christ, the greatest servant of
all. So we have a servant in these
chapters that has a human earthly connotation, but also a
divine and supernational supernatural connotation.
And as we look at the 1st 4 verses of chapter 49, we we read
about the call of the Lord's servant, Isaiah.
We're told that Isaiah was called he that Isaiah called out
to the coastlands and to the peoples from afar.
He was, he was calling on the whole world to listen to him.
And what did he say? Well, he announces that the Lord
has called him from the womb. He says while he was still in
his mother's womb, the Lord named his name.
That is personal, that is intimate language.
And the Lord prepared Isaiah. See, he says that his he had his
mouth made like a sharp sword. The Lord hid him in the shadow
of the Lord's hand, and the Lord declared him to be the Lord's
servant. He named him Israel here in
these verses because what the nation of Israel failed to do
and being faithful to the Lord. This servants would fulfil
living faithfully for the Lord God Almighty.
And did you notice here as well in these verses in verse 4 in
particular, as the as is the case with many who are called to
serve the Lord. Isaiah doubted his
effectiveness. He he didn't see much fruit.
He says in verse 4 I have labored in vain.
I have spent my strength for nothing in vanity, he says.
But notice, even as he looks out, and he believes that he is
laboured in vain, he reminds himself of what is true.
The end of verse 4. Yet surely my right is with the
Lord, and my recompense with my God.
He recognizes. I look out and I feel like I
have laboured in vain, but I know in my heart of hearts my
reward is with the Lord, so I will walk faithfully with him.
The Lord called His servant Isaiah and set him apart for
work to be done. So what was the mission that He
was given? What we see that in verses 5
through 7. It was a 2 fold mission.
The first part of it is in verse 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. The first part of the mission
that the servant Isaiah was given was to bring Jacob, to
bring Israel back to the Lord to to gather God's people back to
him. That through God's word that was
proclaimed by Isaiah, God's people to a lesser degree then
and hopefully to a much greater degree today, would know the
Lord, would know the Lord's character in his works and
understand and believe the gospel and learn of God's grace
and be motivated and empowered to faithfully follow the Lord
all of their days. That was the first part of
Isaiah's mission. But but notice as we come to
verse 6, the Lord said something amazing.
He says in verse 6 that although that was part of the mission for
Isaiah's words to be used to release the people of God, that
they might come back out of exile.
The Lord says that that's too light of a mission, that's too
small of a mission. There there's something bigger
happening. What does he say the second part
of the mission is? He says the second part of the
of the of the mission in verses 6 and seven is he will bring
light of God's word and the truth and the grace of God's
word to the nations. He would proclaim the Lord's
salvations to the very ends of the earth.
Yes, he says the beginning of verse 7, Isaiah will be deeply
despised and abhorred by the nations, but God will be at work
through him such that at the end of verse 7, kings and Princess
and leaders of the world will see and to rise and prostate
themselves before the Lord. They will bow before the Holy
One of Israel and worship Him for His faithfulness.
This is the mission of the servant of the Lord.
The last part of the chapter from verse 8 through verse 26,
details the success that the servant will have in his
mission. We see first in verses 8 through
8 through 13 that indeed the Exiles will return.
The the language that we read here in verses 8 through 13 it
it is language that is very similar to what we read in
Leviticus chapter 25 and in Leviticus chapter 25.
What is described there is what's called the year of
Jubilee. It was a time when the prisoners
would be set free, inheritances would be restored and land would
be re established for the people.
It's a language that's being used here about the Exiles
returning from their exile. Their their, their coming out of
exile will be like the year of Jubilee.
God will re establish and bless and fill his people.
But it's not just the language of the year of jubilee that we
hear there, hear, hear. It's the language of these
verses takes us back to God leading His people out of Egypt
in the Exodus. Look at what He says here in
these verses and verses 8 through 13.
The Lord will lead His people back home.
He will provide for them along the way.
They will not hunger, they will not thirst.
No scorching wind or sun will harm them.
The Lord will have pity on them, and He will guide them through
springs of water and provide a safe, safe highway for His.
For their return. the Exiles would return, the servants would
be successful. And of and of course, the
appropriate and right response to this incredible news is what
verse 13 Sing for joy, O heavens and exalt, O earth, Break forth,
O mountains into singing. For the Lord has comforted his
people and will have compassion on his afflicted.
Sing for joy, he says, break forth in song, exalt and praise
the Lord. Why?
Because He has comforted His people, He has compassion on
those who are afflicted. The success of the ministry of
the servant is that the Exiles would be brought home.
But then notice in verses 14 through 26 we see here the
secure and unfailing and committed love of God for His
people. Notice the contrast first
between verse 13 and verse 14. Verse 13 is breaking out in
praise because of God's faithfulness to his people, not
forgetting them, not forsaking them, but returning them from
exile. And immediately in verse 14,
Israel speaks out, But Zion said the Lord has forsaken me, my
Lord has forgotten me. The people of God doubted that
the Lord could forgive them. They feared that they had sinned
too much, that they had forfeited the Lord's blessings
that had been theirs. They assumed that the Lord had
forsaken them and forgotten them.
And how did the Lord respond to their fears?
What does He say to them? Could a nursing mother forget
her own child? Could a mother fail to have
compassion on the her own child from her own womb?
And Isaiah says as far fetched as that would seem, I suppose
even that could happen. A fallen sinful mother could
even forget her own child. But he says the Lord will never
forget you. In fact, in verse 16, the Lord
says that He has engraved his people on the palms of his hand.
What an extraordinary statement. And that ancient culture,
servants often had the name of their master engraved on their
arms or their their hands or other parts of their bodies.
But here the Lord says that he has engraved the names of his
people on the palms of his hands.
And of course, as God's people today, when we hear this
language, it's meant to take us to Jesus, who didn't have names
engraved on his hands, but had spikes drilled through them,
marks that remain with Him until this very day.
Reminders to us of His glorious promise in Isaiah 49 verse 16.
The Lord continues to show His unfailing and committed love for
His people. As we go on in these verses, we
read that as they come back from exile, builders will make haste,
destroyers will be sent away. The wasted and desolate places
and devastated land, it wouldn't be able to contain all of the
people who would return. Those who are bereaved and
barrens and exile and put away and alone will once again be in
a land of milk and honey, a land teeming with abundance,
abundance for God's people and blessing.
Even nations and kings and Queens will bow down to the
people of God. He says those who are who
oppressed the people would be destroyed.
And the result of it all is the end of verse 26.
Then all flesh shall know that I am the Lord, your Savior and
your Redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob.
All this language that we're reading here shows us the
success of the servant of the Lord.
The promise would be fulfilled. the Exiles would return home.
But the language that is here is bigger than just this one
historical event, the return from exile.
The language here is meant to point us forward to the greater
and ultimate servant, the Lord Jesus, our Savior in Redeemer,
His completed and finished work on the cross and through His
resurrection from the grave. So what do we do with all of
this? I've got 4 things for us as we
finish this morning. The 1st is this.
We need to trust. We must trust the Lord's
faithfulness when we feel forgotten.
That's really what the Lord was telling His people who were
living in exile. He says to them, you say that
you feel forsaken. You, you say that you feel
forgotten, but I have not and I, I will not, and I cannot forget
you. Trust, the Lord says, trust in
my faithfulness in the moments when you feel forgotten.
That's what the Lord says to us today as his people, when we
feel forgotten, forgotten by the people of this world, forgotten
even by the Lord Himself. When we feel that way, the Lord
calls us trust, his faithfulness more than our feelings.
It's even more true for us today because we know about the
engraved Marks and the wrists in the hands of our Lord Jesus
Christ. How could the Lord forget his
people? How could the Lord forsake his
people if he went to that extent to make us His own?
Think of all that Jesus went through in this life on this
earth, what he endured, what he experienced going through human
frailty, hunger, thirst, abandonment, ridicule, threats,
being falsely accused, beaten, mocked, nailed to a cross and
crucified, stabbed, killed. And all the while, all through
it all, He had your name on his mind.
I'm doing this for Andy, doing this for Miriam, doing this for
Keith, doing this for Chris, doing this for Martin.
I'm doing this for Loreen. He has your name engraved in the
palms of his hand. Trust in the Lord's
faithfulness, especially when you feel forgotten.
Secondly, God's faithfulness should move us to praise.
That's what happened in verse 13.
As the faithfulness of God is being declared, the faithfulness
of God to His promises, to His works, verse 13 breaks out and
praise to the Lord. The faithfulness of the Lord
must move us to praise and to worship.
Is is your worship of the Lord cold and dull, lifeless and
monotonous? He calls on you to meditate on
the faithfulness of the Lord, that the faithfulness to his
promises, to his covenant with his people, that he would
provide a Messiah, He would provide redemption for his
people. Think of it this way, You are in
a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe, with
the Mighty One of Jacob, with the Holy One of Israel.
He is the Lord, He is Yahweh, and He is your Savior, your
Redeemer. He knows your name.
He has known you since before you were in your mother's womb.
He has your name engraved on His hands, and He will never forget
you. And He is faithful to all of His
promises. Those promises include things
like Philippians 1/6 and I'm sure of this, that he who began
a good work and you will bring it to completion at the day of
Jesus Christ. He's faithful to his promises
like the one in Romans 8 chapter 28.
We know that for those who love God, all things work together
for good. For those who are called
according to his purpose. He is faithful to His promises,
like what we read in chapter 8 of Romans, verses 29 and 30.
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed
to the image of His Son, in order that he might be the first
born among many brothers. And those he predestined he also
called, and those he called he also justified, and those he
justified he also glorified. God is faithful to His promises,
like the one given to us in Romans 8 verses 38 and 39.
For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, will be
able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our
Lord. Those promises that the Lord has
made concerning you, He is faithful to every one of His
promises. Meditate on that truth and that
reality and let the faithfulness of God move you to praise and to
worship your God. Thirdly, a question, how are you
involved with bringing a light to the nations?
Now in verse 6, we're told that that's part of what Isaiah's
call was. None of us is called in the same
way that Isaiah was to take the word of the Lord to, to be a
light to the nations. But all of us are called to be a
light to the nations in some way.
All of us are called to be ready to to be prepared to tell the
nations about the hope that we have because of the gospel.
So the question that we have to ask is how are you involved with
that mission? How are you being or bringing
the light of God's truth and grace to the nations?
But we can use those 3 little overused words because they so
aptly sum up how we can be involved.
We can pray, we can give and we can go.
We can pray and that means being informed.
What are the needs? What what are the prayer
requests of those that we support here as a church family?
In order to know that, you need to become informed, Get on the
newsletters of those that we support.
Correspond with them. Pay attention to the Prayer
Journal, which regularly, often weekly, has prayer requests of
our missionaries and ministries that we support.
Go regularly to the bottom of our TPC Connect page, where
updates from all of our the folks that we support are listed
for you on a regular basis. We can give you could pick one
of our church's supported missionaries or ministries that
we support and support them as a family or as an individual.
If you have kids, you can involve them.
This is a good time to be thinking about that as we're
coming to the end of the year, but also as we're thinking about
the coming year, we could think about making a plan to support
specifically one of our supported missionaries or
ministries. You can go go on a short term
medical missions trip or go visit one of our supported
missionaries. You can even pray about the Lord
calling you to go long term to the mission field.
What a blessing and privilege it's been over the 40 plus years
of this church as we've seen the Lord raise up a number of people
from within our church family to go and serve the Lord in another
place. Maybe the Lord's calling you to
do that. Going could simply also just be
connecting with one of our locally supported ministries,
many of who are ministering to nations right here in our
community. Going could be simple, as simple
as just getting to know your neighbors and your neighborhood.
What a unique opportunity we have living in southeastern
Minnesota. The Lord is bringing the nations
here. How are you involved with
bringing the light to the nations?
Lastly, one final take away in particular for those who are in
some sort of a ministry related position.
Faithfulness in ministry is not contingent on success.
For any of you who are involved in ministry either vocationally,
full time or even just as a volunteer in some way part time.
Faithfulness in ministry is not contingent on seeing success and
seeing fruit. Isaiah felt that tension.
He said, I have laboured in vain.
I have spent my strength for nothing in vanity.
And if you're in some sort of ministry position, at some point
you'll likely feel that way too. You'll look around and not see
any visible success or fruit or progress or traction.
But as Isaiah reminded himself, his right, his recompense, his
reward is with the Lord. The Lord calls us to his work.
He calls us to be faithful in what we are called to do.
If you're in ministry in some way, you should work with
diligence and purpose and focus and seek to be faithful.
But it is the Lord who accomplishes what He chooses to
accomplish. It is the Lord's work and not
ours. It is the Lord who is at work in
and through us to accomplish His purposes.
And if it takes 7 hard years like William Carey, or even
entire lifetime. Or if you never see fruit, it
should not cause you to despair or to doubt that God is at work.
We are called to be faithful to the work that the Lord gives us
to do, to work diligently in that calling, and to leave the
results to the Lord God Almighty.
Let's pray together. Father, once again, we come with
thankful hearts for the ministry of Isaiah.
And even though he ministered such a long time ago in a place
that is so remote from where we are today to a people that we
often feel are very different from ourselves, we we come as
your people knowing that your word applies to us today.
So we do pray for the Holy Spirit to take the word that
we've heard, the word that we've reflected on today and use it,
Father, for your glory and for the good of your people, as you
would build us up to send us out to love and to follow and to
serve You well. All this we ask in Jesus name,
Amen.