God’s Servant will save God’s people despite how it appears

I don’t cook often, but when I do, I do it with absolutely zero confidence. From the moment I look at the recipe and start gathering the ingredients, I’m thinking, “This is absolutely not going to work”. Now most of the time, that’s true. It does not work, it’s bad. But OCCASIONALLY! It turns out ok. And it’s edible despite how it appeared. It’s a bit of a surprise.

Another way I occasionally experience this surprising success is when I’m preparing a sermon. Now let me share with you a little secret about how the sermon preparation process works. Unlike cooking, I start off very confident, excited to dive into scripture and bring it to you. But then by Thursday morning, I’m mostly sitting in my office with my head on my desk saying, “I have no idea what I’m doing. None of this makes sense. This will definitely fail.” But then in God’s good grace he may make the sermon successful despite how it appears.

I think this is a pattern of how God works. He tends to work in ways that at first glance don’t appear to be successful. And we’ll see that today.

We are in our Servant Songs series and we’re looking at how God described who his servant would be, long before that servant was born as Jesus in a manger. Last week we looked at Isaiah 42 and we saw how God’s servant will humbly bring about justice for God’s people. This morning we will be in Isaiah 49, our second servant song. And here’s what we will see…

Main Point – God’s Servant will save God’s people despite how it appears

Text – Isaiah 49:1-13, page 570 in your pew Bible

Prayer

If you remember last week, I told you that the only commands that were in our text were “Behold”. It was in the first verse it was in the last verse. So our goal for that sermon was to “behold”. Today we have commands given in the first verse and last verse again. This time it starts with “listen” and “give attention” in verse 1. It describes what God is doing through his servant. Then it ends with “sing for joy!” in verse 13. So again, I’m not telling you to go do something this week, but I want you to listen and it ought to cause you to rejoice.

Now, this is a big text. There’s so much in here. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. So I want you to focus on just two verses. Look at verses 3 and 4.

READ VS 3-4

We’re going to call these our core verses. God promises to use the servant (that’s why this is a servant song). The mission seems kinda iffy. Then there is confidence in the success. So, the Promise, the Iffy, and the Success. We’re going to trace those three things in order through this text. Starting with the first.

Point #1 – Long ago, the salvation of God’s people was promised

This is the first part of our core verses, verse 3, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” Now don’t be confused, he’s talking to the servant, not the people of Israel, here. He calls the servant Israel because he will represent them, but it’s clear in the rest of our passage that the servant is different from the people of Israel.

So God promised that he would be glorified and he promised that he would use his servant to do it. He tells us in verse 1,

“The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name”

And he says this again in verse 5,

“He who formed me from the womb to be his servant”

So it’s pretty clear here that the servant is a human and that his whole life has been designed by God for one purpose. God spends his time shaping and equipping this servant for the mission.

Verse 2, “He made my mouth like a sharp sword… He made me a polished arrow.”

You can see how this servant is being made ready for his mission, his singular purpose in his whole life. And what is that mission? What does it say that God is preparing this Servant to do? Well we saw it already in our core verse, verse 3 - to glorify God. But he explains further how he’s going to do that.

Verse 5, “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.” Remember Jacob and Israel are just different names for the same group of people, God’s people. The mission is to bring back his people. This mission is confirmed in verse 6. “You should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel”

So here’s where we’re at. God set aside a special servant for the task of bringing back his people. They’re lost. They’ve been captured. They need someone to save them. Have you ever seen a movie or a tv show that features Spartan warriors? The ancient Greek warriors of the city of Sparta. They were known for being trained in war their entire life. They weren’t like those of other towns, farmers who sometimes had to fight, but they were warriors who sometimes had to farm. And this servant has been raised up for a singular mission. He’s not a regular guy who sometimes saves people. He’s a Savior through and through. This is the purpose of his existence. He is sent on a mission to bring back the people of God who are lost, to bring back the ones who are scattered.

So we see a God who has plans and promises to fulfill those plans. This is completely distinct from the way that we speak about the future. When someone is in trouble and they say, “Can you help me out?” One very common response we might use is “I’ll see what I can do.” In this way we’re saying to them, “My feelings go out to you. I want to see you helped. But I don’t know if I have the time or resources to solve your problem. Maybe I can help a little bit.” But that is not how God responds to people who cry out to him for salvation.

He says, “I see your problem and I promise you that I will make it right. I’m training up someone whose sole mission in life is to bring you back to me and to save you.” There aren’t any other things that are distracting God from this mission. His resources and time aren’t being tied up in other areas.

And this promise has been consistent and unchanging. Look at verses 8 and 9.

READ 8b - 9a

These are the same promises he made in the first servant song from last week. We saw these words in Isaiah 42. And if we wanted we could trace this promise back all throughout history of God saying, I’m going to bring you back to me.

Back it up a few hundred years to king David

READ 2 Samuel 7:10

And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly,

He’s going to bring his people back and put them in a safe place. Let’s back it up a few hundred more years to Moses

READ Deuteronomy 30:3-4

then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. 4 If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will take you.

He’s going to gather his people from all the places they are scattered and have mercy on them. But let’s back it up all the way to Genesis. This is God speaking to Jacob in a dream, he says:

READ Genesis 28:14-15

14 Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, … 15 Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

God has always promised to save his people. This isn’t new. He’s going to save his people and bring them back to him. That’s always been his promise.

Now the astute reader (of whom I sure you all are) will say, “But Shane these promises are all just about Israel. I’m not Jewish. This doesn’t include me.” Good I’m glad you pointed that out.

Look in verse 6 of our passage in Isaiah.

READ Isaiah 49:6

His promise is not merely for the Jews. It has extended to the whole earth. In fact Paul will quote this exact verse in the book of Acts to say “See this salvation is for everyone”.

But here’s the big problem. If you’re living life in 2025. It doesn’t seem like this salvation is happening right now. And that’s the second thing our passage addresses

Point #2 – Right now, the salvation of God’s people appears iffy

Let’s take a look at our core verses again to reorient ourselves.

READ vs 3 - That was God making his promise

READ vs 4a - Now we see that after the promise is made, it seems that it’s not going to come to fruition.

The servant himself is speaking here and he says, “It seems like all of my efforts have been wasted. I labored hard. I spend all of my strength. And what has it amounted to? NOTHING!” The people aren’t saved. No one has been brought back from being scattered. Nothing is going the way that was anticipated. I know you’ve made this promise, God, but honestly, right now it seems pretty iffy.

Even back up a couple verses to verse 2.

READ vs 2 - He makes the servant a great weapon and then he hides him! And this isn’t like the kind of hiding where you wait to ambush someone, but when this word is used throughout the Bible it’s used of people hiding who are scared for their life. They think they’re going to die. This is confirmed when we jump forward to verse 7

READ vs 7 - The LORD is about to say something to his servant, but first he describes him as despised and abhorred by the nation.

Look this guy is on the run. He’s hiding. He’s hated by absolutely everyone and it seems like all of his efforts have been worthless. This is not how the mission was supposed to go. This really seems iffy.

Because how do we tend to expect God’s mission will work? We think it may start off small, but then it will just grow and grow and defeat any opposition and spread until God’s work has been successful in all the world! Right? Maybe our church says, “Hey, let’s plant a church in Louisiana!” And we expect that this ministry is going to start with a few small Christians who will meet for a little bit alone, but then steadily we’ll see that number grow and grow and before you know it, we’ll have a wonderful 100 person church meeting regularly that is self-sustaining.

And it could have something to do with our modern American entrepreneurial spirit. We think that if it’s a good idea and you put in the hard work. Anything can steadily grow over time to become a huge success. And that success will be visible in profits, in influence, in reach, and in any number of very visible ways. That’s how successful missions happen.

We intuitively expect that if God desires for something to happen. If he has made a promise for it to happen. Then it will just steadily grow without significant opposition and it will grow in pathways that make sense to us.

What we don’t expect is that the grand mission of God, his plan from all eternity past, the servant he sends to carry out his will, will be absolutely hated by everyone. We don’t expect that it’s going to appear to be completely in vain. We don’t expect it will be hidden where no one can see it.

But friends, is that not precisely how Jesus’ ministry worked. It began ever so quietly with a baby in a manger. And immediately it faced opposition. He was sent into hiding, running for his life. Herod wanted to kill baby Jesus and he had to flee to Egypt. Not a good start for the grand mission.

As he grows up he is hated by the very people he came to save. They try to stone him and kill him more than once. His own family thinks that he has lost his mind. His disciples don’t understand a word of what he’s saying to them. In the garden before his crucifixion, Jesus, the servant himself says, “My soul is sorrowful even unto death” and he asks God, “Remove this cup from me”. And in a moment that couldn’t have felt more like absolute and complete failure of the mission the servant is beaten, crucified, and killed.

And that’s the end of God’s mission to save. I think at this point using the word “iffy” to describe this mission to save people is far too weak of a word. I think we would have to use words like hopeless, fatal, unachievable, utterly doomed, and impossible.

But praise God, that’s not the end of this passage. What’s next?

Point #3 – In the end, the salvation of God’s people will succeed

Let’s jump to our core verses one last time.

READ vs 3 - there’s the promise

READ vs 4a - there’s the iffy

READ vs 4b - and there’s the success

The servant knows that God has made a promise. And though he’s currently experiencing a time of great uncertainty or perhaps grave uncertainty. He entrusts the outcome of his mission with the Lord. He says in no uncertain terms, my feelings about this mission aren’t what determines its end. What happens to me is in the Lord’s hands. My recompense, that’s a word that means reward or your wages, is with God. He’s the one who determines the outcome here.

Look at the end of verse 5 with me.

READ 5b

He knows that God honors him and is the one providing the strength for him.

What is the servant doing here? What he’s doing is speaking truth to himself. In the midst of feeling like everything is going wrong. He’s hiding. His efforts are worthless. He’s hated by everyone. He knows that his feelings aren’t the truth. He knows that the appearance of these current circumstances aren’t the whole story. And so to snap his mind out of that feeling of hopelessness, to snap his mind out of that feeling that this mission is really iffy and might not succeed. He’s rehearsing what he knows to be true against what he feels.

You’ll probably hear me give this advice often, but one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned from the world of biblical counseling is this simple phrase: stop listening to yourself and start talking to yourself.

By talking to ourselves, I’m not suggesting that we all act like crazy people. But what it means is that your mind will always be flooded with impressions, thoughts, and feelings. It happens basically from the moment you wake up. “I’m not good enough. This is hopeless. I shouldn’t have to deal with these difficulties. God is treating me unfairly. I’ll never ever be satisfied or happy.” These are the thoughts that assault our minds from sun up until sun down. Like a leaky faucet that we can’t seem to stop dripping.

And then throughout the day, our thoughts seem to be confirmed by our experiences. Things that were bad get worse. We fail often. We sin again. A new problem arises that we didn’t anticipate. And just like the servant we look at our life and our efforts and we say, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity”

But this is the place that you arrive at when you merely listen to yourself. You take whatever thought that comes into your head and you assume it’s true. Praise God this is not how the servant goes about his mission. Because when he hears something discouraging, he recognizes it as false, and he speaks truth to himself. He stops listening to himself and starts talking to himself.

“This may feel worthless, but God has given me this mission and he will see that it succeeds.” “My right is with the Lord and my recompense with my God” “I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has become my strength.”

Do you see how he’s not merely listening to whatever pops into his head? He’s countering falsehoods with truths. He’s not listening to himself. He’s talking to himself.

And when the servant gets a handle on the truth, how does God respond?

Explain - READ Vs 6 - I’m going to make your mission a greater success than you ever imagined.

READ Vs 7 - I know you feel despised, but those wicked rulers who hate you now will bow before you in the future. Why? Because I am faithful! I have chosen you! That’s what the truth is despite how you felt.

READ vs 8a - You did the right thing! You called out to me. I answer. I send my help. It happens every time.

Will the mission be accomplished? Will God finally bring all of his people back to himself?

READ vs 9-12 “Syene” is just a place that’s far to the south.

The answer is yes! In these verses he’s leading all the people back. He’s found them in all the places that they’ve been scattered and their return to God is certain.

The mission of the servant, the salvation of God’s people will certainly succeed.

Now there’s one final thing that I want to consider before the end of this passage and that’s the simple question…

Where are we?

Because you may walk away wondering, who exactly am I supposed to identify with here? Am I the servant? Will kings and princes bow themselves to me? Is whatever mission I feel like God has given me guaranteed to succeed?

I don’t think we have to allegorize this passage or pretend we’re somewhere in here that we’re not. We don’t have to force it to fit our modern day in some way that’s foreign to what Isaiah ever intended.

Because we, the Christians who are a part of FBC Ashdown in 2025, are very explicitly mentioned in the text. Remember verse 6?

READ vs 6 

Who are the nations? Who are the people at the ends of the earth? Well, it’s us! It’s the Gentiles who were not part of the nation of Israel who would one day come to believe because of Jesus’ work. And so when it talks about people being led by the servant back to God, that’s us. We’re right there in verse 9 through 12.

We are the people who are following the servant. He is leading us to God. We’re on the road and the journey to heaven. And the one who had pity on us is our guide. And if we have turned from our old life, if we’ve repented and called Christ Lord, here’s the promise that he makes to you and to me. He’ll feed us on the way. Even in places that appear to be barren, we will make sure we don’t go hungry. He’ll protect us from the dangers of wind and sun and at the right intervals he’ll bring us to springs of water to refresh us. There is no mountain that he will not create a road through. And there is no one so far away that he cannot lead them, if only they’ll turn from their sin and follow.

It’s clear in this servant song that God’s servant will save God’s people despite how it appears. So church, stop listening to yourself and start talking to yourself. Fill your mind with the truths of who God tells us he is and what future he promises he will accomplish.

If Jesus Christ was able to conquer death to accomplish his mission, then there is no seeming setback or feeling of hopelessness that he is unable to overcome in bringing us safely to God.

If you’ve listened, I pray that this gives you cause to rejoice. I’ll close with the final verse from our passage, verse 13.

Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;

break forth, O mountains, into singing!

For the Lord has comforted his people

and will have compassion on his afflicted.

Prayer