A Light for the Nations

The prophet Isaiah described the Messiah as One who would be forsaken so that people from every nation could be accepted before God. Today, Sinclair Ferguson marvels at Christ, whose alienation has accomplished our welcome.

Welcome today to Things Unseen. And let me say, as I do only occasionally, that if this is your first time joining us on the podcast, you’re really very welcome, and I hope you become part of the online community of people who benefit from the tremendous resources that Ligonier Ministries provides for us all. Now, this week, our thoughts have turned to a very remarkable series of prophetic poems or songs that you can find in the second half of the prophecy of Isaiah. We call them the Servant Songs, and we saw the first of them yesterday in Isaiah 42.

Today’s song is in Isaiah 49, and I hope perhaps later on in the day you’ll read it through, because this song is a little different. In the first song, it’s God—God the Father—who says, “Behold, look at my servant.” But in the second song, the Servant himself begins to speak, and at one point, He even dialogues with the Father who says to Him, “You are my servant.”

And then amazingly, the Servant is described as “the Lord,” even when He’s talking about himself as honored by the Lord His God (Isa. 49:5). Remember how in the Gospels there comes a point at which the religious leaders try to trap Jesus by asking Him trick questions, questions they think He won’t or can’t answer? And at one point He challenges them in return. He says, “Okay, tell me this: explain Psalm 110:1.”

These leaders had been rightly taught that the Messiah would be the Son of David. “Well, how then,” Jesus asks, “can David say through the Holy Spirit, the Lord said to my Lord—the Lord said to David’s Lord—sit at my right hand? If David calls the Messiah, Lord, that is God, how can he also be David’s son?” Well, you can see the point Jesus is making. You don’t call your son “Lord.” If anything, it’s the other way around. The only answer to Jesus’ question was this: Psalm 110:1 must mean that the Messiah would be born in David’s line, but He would be Himself the very son of God. So, if you think about it, these words in Psalm 110 can only mean one thing: the Lord God would become incarnate. He would take human nature from the family of David.

Now in Isaiah 49, the Servant of the Lord, the Messiah, is also being presented as divine. But what’s so amazing about this passage is that in the very same context—the same context in which the Servant is clearly the Lord God Himself—He’s equally clearly clothed in the weakness of our flesh and exposed to humiliation. The passage speaks about the Servant feeling He has spent His strength in vain. There seems to be no fruit.

Do you remember how the Gospels tell us everyone deserted Jesus, and at the end, He cried, “Why have you forsaken me, O God?” This passage in Isaiah 49 answers that question, for here the Lord God replies that because His servant has been willing to experience all this, God’s people will be accepted and welcomed back. His sense of alienation is the root of our sense of welcome. And He goes on to say that this will not be limited to bringing back the elect or the preserved of Israel. Listen to what He says here in Isaiah 49:6–7: “I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” Reminds us, doesn’t it, of the promise the Father gives to the Son in Psalm 2:8: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance.” You see, Christ’s path of suffering was to be His path to glory, the very point He made to those two disciples on the Emmaus Road, and this salvation will reach to the ends of the earth.

We’re living in days when this prophecy is being fulfilled. And you know, that’s true despite all the doom and gloom we hear about the church. Yes, it’s true we haven’t yet fully fulfilled the Great Commission, and the church often fails, but God’s promise to His Son that He will give Him the nations for His inheritance has not failed, and it will not fail.

I happened to be teaching a one-week intensive course in seminary the other week. It was exhausting teaching for six or seven hours every day, I can tell you, but the fifty or so wonderful students in the class kept me going. And one of the things that was wonderful was that they came from Latin America, from India, from the Far East, from Nepal, from Uganda, and yes, from the United States and Canada, too. And there I was in the middle of them, from Scotland. We were not only a group of students together, we were a visible expression of the way these words in Isaiah are being fulfilled today.

So, let’s not lose heart:

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun Does his successive journeys run; His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

He’s promised it, and so it will be.