2nd Sunday after Epiphany
January 16, 2005
Isaiah 49:1-6

^49:1Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born the LORD called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name. ²He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in his quiver. ³He said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendour.”

⁴But I said, “I have laboured to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing. Yet what is due me is in the LORD's hand, and my reward is with my God.”

⁵And now the LORD says—he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honoured in the eyes of the LORD and my God has been my strength— ⁶he says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.” (NIV).

God's Relief Agent.

  I think I can safely assume that all of us are quite familiar with the earthquake and resulting tsunamis that devastated the Indian Ocean basin a few weeks ago. That disaster killed over 150,000 people and devastated huge areas. Now the world’s attention has been turned toward relief efforts, and in some ways the relief effort is even more amazing than the disaster! The governments of most countries have contributed huge sums of money and many have deployed some of their military. Hundreds of private and religious organizations have sent money, materials and people to Asia. People have gone to the ends of the earth on a relief mission.

  This disaster and the world’s relief effort can help us understand God’s Word spoken through the prophet Isaiah. God has sent his Servant to the ends of the earth to bring salvation to the nations. The disaster is not a tsunami in one part of the world. Rather the disaster is sin that has swept over the whole earth leaving destruction and death in its wake. The relief agent is not Canada’s DART or the Red Cross. Rather it is God’s special Servant. And the salvation he brings is not just food, water, medicine and reconstruction. Rather he restores all nations to God. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.

  Thank God, we have not suffered a tsunami like in Asia. But together with rest of the world, we have suffered the devastation caused by sin. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, there was a shock greater than any earthquake followed by a wave of disaster greater than any tsunami. God said to the woman, I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. And to the man he said, Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat of it,” Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

  Many people consider that to be a legend, a mythical story from ancient times that tried to explain phenomena like death. But Jesus and his Apostles insisted that it was true, that this disaster, like the flood in Noah’s day, really happened. As a result, in Paul’s words, Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned. (Romans 5:12). We’re not talking here about the death of 150,000 people around the Indian Ocean. We’re talking about the death of all who have ever lived and ever will live, about your death and my death!

  Plus, the ground was cursed. Paul says, The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. (Romans 8:19-21). The earth itself suffers from sin. The earthquake and resulting tsunamis were not just natural disasters. They too are the result of sin and God’s judgment.

  What can we do about this disaster? Precious little! We can set up systems to give a few minutes or hours warning about a tsunami. But we can’t stop a tsunami! As for death, against what have we been striving longer than death? Every person who has ever lived has mounted his own relief effort against death. Clearly our relief efforts to a world devastated by sin have been impotent!

  So God, in his mercy, has taken up our cause. And now the LORD says—he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, . . .—he says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

  Sin, death and the physical corruption of the earth is beyond what we can handle. So God has mounted his own rescue operation and sent his own relief agent. As I mentioned last week, the prophet Isaiah spoke several times about a figure that he calls God’s Servant. Sometimes he seems to be speaking of the ancient nation of Israel, sometimes of one we have come to call the Messiah or the Christ. In fact, there is a sort of identification of the two. The Christ is the true Israel who in some ways worked through the nation of Israel and who now works through his Church.

  Isaiah knew the Christ only as God’s Servant because the Servant had not yet come into the world. But John the Baptist identified him as Jesus of Nazareth. The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

  What was the relief mission of God’s Servant? It was not to set up water purifiers and a clinic. We can do that. It was not to rebuild what a tsunami destroyed. We can do that too. In Isaiah’s words, his relief mission was to restore Jacob to God and to take God’s salvation to the nations. In the words of John the Baptist, the Servant came to take away the sin of the world. He came to remove the rebellion and disobedience that brought on God’s curse and our separation from him.

  To some extent, Israel understood this. Since the time of Abraham, Israel had been the special people of God, the people called to be God’s voice and hands in the world. Israel understood the nature of the sin disaster. Israel understood also that from its midst the Servant, the true Israel, was coming. They were waiting for the Messiah. So when John says, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” Andrew announces the Good News to his brother Peter, We have found the Messiah!

  We non-Jews however, were not expecting this Servant. We lived in ignorance. We came up with real myths to explain things, you know, myths about gods like Zeus and Hercules and Venus. We didn’t understand God. We didn’t understand the cause and nature of sin. We didn’t know we had been hit by a tsunami! Many of us still don’t understand these things. We’ve changed our explanatory myths from Poseidon to evolution, but we’re still in the dark! So God says, “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

  We got a special bonus! We didn’t and do not have to go through everything Israel experienced. We don’t have to learn the hard way like they did, through plagues and wars and exiles. We don’t have to experience the tsunami of God’s judgement like Israel. We received the Gospel! The Servant came and accomplished his relief work. He took our death and removed our sin. He died in our place and then rose from the dead in complete victory over it. He put a time limit on the curse. He restored us to God. That message is the power at work to rescue us. It is the truth that sets us free from death and destruction and gives us the hope of a new, eternal life.

  Jesus is our light! Old Israel failed to be a light to the Gentiles. They gradually abandoned the truth and adopted the mythical gods and beliefs of the nations. They too fell into darkness. That is no doubt the cause of the sentiment of frustration expressed in verse 4 of our text from Isaiah, I have laboured to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing. The Servant working through his people Israel did not accomplish his goal. So he himself came to our aide. The Son of God became the Lamb of God and took away the sin of the world! God’s plan is not thwarted!

  Unlike the current tsunami relief efforts, this was no surprise mission. No one predicted and planned for the tsunamis. But God knew what the problem of sin would be and planned to send his Son into the world before the foundation of the world. The phrases “Before I was born the Lord called me,” and “he who formed me in the womb to be his servant” point to the fact that this plan was in the mind of God from eternity. It’s what John said, He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. In other words, Christ is not a reaction to an unforeseen problem, a patch job that might have been better handled in another way. He is not one of many possible relief workers from many faiths who might equally deliver us from the devastation of sin. An Indonesian in the area hit by the tsunami likely doesn’t care whether the Islamic Red Crescent or the U.S. military comes to his aid. Either can help him with his physical need. But only Christ can save him and us from sin.

  It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth. Brothers and Sisters in Christ, God spoke these words to save us, to encourage us, and to give us hope. We have suffered the destruction of sin in our world, a destruction greater than any tsunami. But we have also received a salvation far greater than any human relief effort. Jesus, the Servant of God, has set us free from sin and promised us eternal life. So let his word dwell in your heart. Let him be your light.