The Servant of the Lord who gathers Israel & the nations

Preached at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Uniontown, PA on World Mission Sunday.

    Isaiah 49:1–7

    Psalm 67

    Acts 1:1–8

    Matthew 9:35–38

Good morning.

It’s World Missions Sunday! Not to be confused with Super Bowl Sunday. 

I’m Cariño Casas, the director of the Church’s Ministry among Jewish people. CMJ is the oldest of the mission agencies reaching out to Jewish people. We were founded in 1809 by a Jewish believer named Joseph Levi Frey. We’ve been active in the U.S. since 1982. Our call is to remind the church that 

• Jesus is Jewish and the New Testament is a Jewish text.
• These truth about Jesus and his Gospel message being Jewish must affect how we as Christians engage with our Jewish neighbors… especially now as antisemitism is at an all time high. 

So on the World Mission Sunday, I’m here to remind you of a people group the church has struggled to engage with since the book of Acts – the first hears of the Gospel, the Jewish people. 

Jesus IS Jewish. Let’s not say ‘was.’ We are people of the resurrection. We know Jesus is alive, sitting at the right hand of the Father. We know from the Gospels that Jesus is alive in the same scarred body that was dead and buried. That body has Jewish DNA for all eternity. 

This truth is important for us to hold in the front of our minds as we read the Bible, the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. This context helps us better understand Jesus and his message and reminds us that the Gospel is as much for our Jewish neighbor as it is for a pagan in a far away land. 

Today, I want us to walk through Isaiah 49:1-7. Here, in the words of an ancient Hebrew prophet, we see and hear a clear proclamation of the Gospel, the good news that God has for Israel and the nations. 

When I say Israel in my sermon today, I mean the collective, physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The modern state of Israel is related but not what we are discussing this morning. For the purposes of today, when I say Israel, I mean the Jewish people.

Now let’s begin in Isaiah 49. I encourage you follow along in your Bible. 

1 Listen to me, O coastlands,

and give attention, you peoples from afar.

Listen up, people, because this verse is talking to us. The word coastlands appears several times in this section of Isaiah. It literally means islands and sea coast. Poetically, the Hebrew prophet uses it to refer to far away lands.¹ We see this meaning in the parallel line, “give attention, you peoples from afar.” This is a poetic way of saying, “Hey you, Gentiles, listen up!” Gentiles just means nations. So, “Pay attention, nations, I’m talking to you.”

Who is talking? Someone called the Servant of the LORD.

Isaiah 49 is in the middle of chapters that contain the Servant Songs, poems that speak of the Servant of the LORD. Chapters 41 to 53 of Isaiah speak of the Servant of the LORD.

The most famous Servant Song among Christians is Isaiah 53, the Song of the Suffering Servant.

3 He is despised and rejected of men, a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. … He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.

5  …He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.

6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53 is the climatic last passage telling of the call and mission of the Servant of the LORD.

There is a disagreement between Jewish and Christian commentators on whether the servant is the people of Israel or an individual. I believe both are in view. I will explain that as best I can in our short time.

The first mention of the Servant is in Isaiah 41. Chapter 41 begins like 49, “Listen to me in silence coastlands…” Then later God says,

8 But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; 9 you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”

Isaiah is clear here. The servant is the people who descend from Abraham, friend of God. Here in Isaiah, we must read Israel as the physical descendants of Abraham. God reiternates this in Isaiah 44:

21…for you, Isra’el, are my servant. I formed you, you are my own servant; Isra’el, don’t forget me.

In other places, the servant appears to be an individual. The clearest case for this is in the passage we read in Isaiah 49:

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—

In Isaiah 49, the servant is an individual called to bring the people of Israel back to God. One man is called to regather all the people of Israel.

So the servant is a people, and the servant is an individual. Especially in Isaiah 49 the servant is an individual.

What do we know about the individual servant?

1. He’s human. It says twice that he has been called from the womb.
2. He is called to bring Israel back to God.
3. The servant is despised and hated.

This certainly can apply to Isaiah. Isaiah lived about 200 years before the destruction of the first Jerusalem temple. He is called by God to prophesy to a wayward people (Isa 6). Like all true prophets of God, he was hated by those he was calling to repentance. Jewish legend says he was killed by Manassah, the most wicked king Judah ever had.²

Elsewhere in the Servant Songs, there are hints that the singular Servant is divine. The Servant may be the Arm of the LORD that freed Israel from Egypt (Isa 51:9) and the one who is given the Word of God to establish the heavens and the earth (Is 51:15-16).³ Isaiah 53 tells of how the Servant suffers for the sins of the people.⁴

Who is then the Servant of the LORD?

The New Testament proclaims that this servant is Jesus of Nazareth.

Earlier last week, the church celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. It’s the same day as Groundhog Day. Every year when you see them drag Punxsutawney Phil out of his hole, I want you to remember Mary and Joseph taking Jesus to the Jerusalem temple for the first time.⁵

One of the first people in the temple to see Jesus is a Jewish man named Simeon. He was in the temple waiting for the consolation of Israel (Luke 2:25-35). And when he sees the baby in Mary’s arms, Simeon exclaims:

30 … my eyes have seen your salvation…
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.

That’s a reference to Isaiah 49, the Servant who is a light to the nations!

After Jesus is resurrected and ascends to the right hand of the Father, the apostles can’t help but see Jesus all over the Servant Songs.  Matthew sees that Jesus is the Servant who with the Holy Spirit announces justice to the non-Jews, noting that the Servant will not fight or shout and that the Gentiles will put their hope in him (Matt 12:15–21, cf Isa 42:1-4).⁶

Isaiah 53, the last of the Servant Songs (Isaiah 52:13–53:12), appears over and over throughout the New Testament. In Acts, there’s the story of an Ethiopian reading the scroll of Isaiah on his way home. He’s reading from from Isaiah 53:

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter
  and like a lamb before its shearer is silent,
  so he opens not his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
  Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.” (as quoted in Acts 8)

Then Philip comes along side and asks, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

“How can I, unless someone guides me? About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip, beginning with this Scripture, told him the good news about Jesus (Acts 8:26-40).

Isaiah 49, which we read today, is quoted by Paul to explain why a Pharisee was preaching a Jewish message to the Gentiles in the Roman empire. Paul actually quotes it angrily at the Jewish leadership that rejected him in Antioch Pisidia:

Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,

“‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles,
  that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’” (Acts 13:46-47)

Unfortunately, Christian responses to our Jewish neighbors have looked more like angry, hurt Paul than the heartbroken, compassionate Paul we see in Romans 9. There, he laments:

1  I am speaking the truth in Messiah —I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. 4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

So Paul here has this anguish because the Jewish people can’t see the individual suffering servant that has come to save them.

I could keep going because these passages excite me and I pray that the LORD would stir up an excitement for them in you, too! Read the Servant Songs at home, meditate on them, and notice how their themes show up in the New Testament.

Here are the takeaways:

1. The Servant of the LORD is called first to gather the scattered sheep of the House of Israel. Jesus says this himself in Matthew. (Matt 10:6, 15:24).
   
   This is reinforced by our Acts reading, in that Jesus sends the apostles first to the peoples of Jerusalem and Judea. Later in Acts, we see Paul always go first to the synagogue in every town he visited. Paul says the Gospel is the power of salvation, to the Jew first and also the Greek (Rom 1:16).
   
   
2. God’s salvation plan always included us Gentiles. Since the Tower of Babel, God has been working toward regathering the rebellious nations. God tasks the Servant with this mission when 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.”
   
   The Servant brings salvation to all the nations of the earth.
   
   
3. We, here in church, are those among the nations who have answered God’s call of repentance. We worshiping together today are the fruit of the work of the Suffering Servant who died for our sins.

And like the apostles in Acts 1, we have a call to go proclaim the Good News we have received to others around us – Jew and Gentile.

I realize there is no defined Jewish community here in Uniontown. So I exort you to share the light of Jesus with those neighbors that do not yet know him. God longs to regather every scattered soul wandering lost and alone.

I also ask you to remember our Jewish American neighbors, wherever they may live. Antisemitism – acts and words of Jew-hatred – are at an all time high. Many Jewish Americans are worried about their safety.

When Jesus saw the crowds coming to him for healing, “he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt 9:36). That’s how I feel every time I read a news story of antisemitic vandalism or assault. That’s how we should feel when we see any people group being harassed and attacked for their ethic or religious background.



Every single human is made in the image of God. Every single human – black, white, or brown, Gentile or Jewish – is loved by God. He wants every single one to come to him for rest, refuge, and cleansing.

We are called to imitate the Servant of the LORD and gather Israel and the nations to our God. Let us go work the harvest fields with Jesus.

Let us pray.

O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the nations into your fold; pour out your Spirit upon all flesh; and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Messiah our Lord. Amen.