Isaiah 49:6

And He said, It is a light thing that Thou shouldest be My servant

The evangelical prophet: his wide outlook

In the whole of this prophetical book there is not a single verse in which the character of the evangelical prophet is more conspicuous than it is here.

How must he have been transported beyond himself--how far must he have been raised not merely above the vulgar passions and prejudices, but above the noblest and purest aspirations of his contemporaries--how deeply must he have been permitted to enter not only into the secret purpose, but into the heavenly spirit of the Divine counsels, before he could have given utterance to such words as these! Try to realise in some measure the import, the power, the charm of those names--the names of Jacob, of Israel, in the mind of every faithful Israelite. Think how not only his human affections, but his deepest religious feelings, were centred in the prosperity of Zion and the peace of Jerusalem. Think of the grief and the longing, the prayers and the tears of the exiles in their captivity, when they remembered Zion. What joy could there be to such an one comparable for a moment to the joy of raising up the tribes of Jacob, and bringing back the preserved of Israel? And yet he was called upon by the voice of God to regard this as a light thing, and in comparison with what was it a light thing! What object was so far to transcend that which must have appeared in his eyes as the greatest of all? It was that he should be given as a light to the Gentiles, and that he should be the bearer of God’s salvation unto the ends of the earth. How doubly strange must such a commission have seemed to the prophet who received it! Like every child of Abraham, he had been wont to look down with mingled aversion and contempt on the mightiest and wisest of the nations. He had directed his bitterest sarcasm against their idols; he would have held himself defiled by sitting down at the board even of their nobles and princes. Yet now the honour and welfare of the Gentiles is to be set far above the deliverance and exaltation of the chosen people. He must break the bands of prejudice, and learn a new estimate of life. (Bp. Perowne, D. D.)

Missions to She heathen

I. I venture to say, looking at the diffusion of Divine truth and its attendant blessings which are shadowed forth in the words of the prophet, EVEN OUR NATIONAL GREATNESS AND GLORY IS A LIGHT THING. Consider what m the true test and measure of real glory. I am not now speaking of it as it appears in the sight of Him by whom the nations are counted as the small dust of the balance, and who taketh up the isles as a very little thing. I would have you look at it from a human but still manly and reasonable point of view as it appears in the estimate of strangers, in the eyes of posterity, in the pages of history, in your own sober judgment, when applied to other instances where you are not under the bias of personal feeling or national prejudice. Take the case of an individual. Would you seriously count it a glorious thing for a man to have amassed great wealth, to have risen to a high station, to have acquired extensive authority? Or, do you think it necessary to inquire what use he has made of these advantages, what traces he has left of his passage through the world? It is not a sufficient title to glory that our name, our race, our possessions, our power, our influence have been extended to the end of the earth, and that every quarter of the globe has yielded its tribute to our arms, our industry, and our commerce. There still remains the question, What use have we made of all our gifts and opportunities? What are the things we have carried with us abroad in exchange for those which we have brought home? What are the tokens and monuments of our presence in the land where we have settled and borne rule? The ampler our means, the greater our power, the more commanding our influence, the greater is our responsibility and the stricter the accounts which we must render at the bar both of Divine and of human judgment. It is the proper object of a Christian State to encourage all efforts for the extension of Christ’s kingdom, to place no obstacles in the way of that extension.

II. But how is it as regards the Church? There can be no question that THE SENDING FORTH OF THE GOSPEL BELONGS TO THE PROPER WORK OF THE CHURCH. It may truly be said, in a certain sense, that all the rest is a light thing in comparison with this. Let us suppose a Church pure, sound, and flourishing in all other respects. But if a Church thus favoured puts forth no expansive energies, if she is content merely with the enjoyment of her internal prosperity, then the fulness of these blessings only renders the deficiency in its outward action the more glaring and reprehensible. Whatever appearance there may be of health or vigour in a motionless Church, all such indications must be hollow and fallacious. Such a Church deceives herself, like that of Laodicea, saying, “I am rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing”; being, in truth, “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” And lukewarmness is the cause, at once, of the misery and the self-delusion. It was such a Church that received the warning, “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.” Is that too much to say of a Church which, so far as regards those who are without, is deaf and dumb and blind and palsied?--without an ear for her Lord’s commission, without a voice to proclaim His message, without an eye for those whom He came to seek and to save, without hand or foot to stir in His service--or rather, to speak more plainly, without faith to trust His Word, without hope to abide His time, without love to spend and to be spent for His cause. (Bp. Perowne, D. D.)

The missionary enterprise

1. To look at the question, even from a comparatively lower plane, is there not something elevating in the whole history of missionary enterprise? Is it not a good thing, an inspiring thing, to have lifted up before our eyes the noble examples of the men who have gone forth sacrificing their earthly prospects and encountering privation and suffering and the martyr death that they might preach among the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ? They have gained no earthly reward; they have looked for none. They have reformed men sunk in the lowest depth of degradation, misery, and crime. They have exhibited the Christian graces of domestic purity and truth and love. They have, indeed, enriched the world; they have been the pioneers in civilisation. The splendid heroism of our missionary martyrs has given us a loftier conception of duty, and made our hearts throb with holier emotions, and put to shame the weakness, the cowardice, the selfishness of our lives. Surely on this ground alone we may say that the work of the Church at home is a light thing compared with the mission work of the Church abroad.

2. This mission work abroad gives us new impulses and new motives, because it is done in simple obedience to the command of our risen Lord, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature,” and a simple trust in His promise, “Lo, I am with you.”

3. This mission work is a greater work because of the grandeur and far-reaching compass of its conception, as putting no limits beyond those of the habitable globe to its aims; greater, because it is not bounded by the bounds of a parish or Church; greater, because it bears in its bosom the inspiring truth that the kingdom of God is one, and that all work for Christ is essentially one in its range, and power, and objects, however manifold it may be in the forms which it assumes, or in its application to the various phases of society, and the infinite diversity of the needs which it meets.

4. It is greater because, as all experience shows, it breathes a new life into all the work at home. It is a sovereign, antidote to that selfishness which is so often a canker in our work.

5. The missionary work of the Church is a greater work because of its regenerating power m the revival of the whole Church. No one can question this who has watched the development of missions and the relation of that development to the work of the Church at home. It must often have awakened our surprise that at the great Reformation which shattered the fetters of superstition and brought out a nation beloved of God into the glorious liberty of her children, and gave them the Word of life, no attempt was made to carry the precious treasure to the rest of the world. It may be that the work they had to do at home was the work to which God had called them, and that it so absorbed all their thoughts and interest, it left no room for anything else. There is no more striking instance of the reflex action of missionary efforts than this, that it has been made in God’s hand the instrument of a mighty revival in the Church at home. Compare it with that other revival which dates from Oxford some sixty years ago. The earlier Evangelical revival, striking as were its results in the awakening of souls, and turning men from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, left out of sight the corporate unity of the Church. Its weakness was there. It was mighty in its spiritual intensity, but it forgot that Christ came not to convert individuals only, but to establish a Church. The Oxford Movement on the other hand dwelt too exclusively on this aspect of the truth. Ritual darkened the spiritual life. The work of God the Holy Ghost held a subordinate place in its teaching. The power of the Great Commission has gone forth. The Church is sending forth missions, and it is the reflex action of missions which is not only winning fresh victories for Christ abroad, but is breathing a new life into the Church at home. It does not despise sacraments or ordinances, but it puts them in their proper place. (Bp. Perowne, D. D.)

Redemption, an eternal purpose

A capable artist can find no worthier exercise for the highest order of powers, than in depicting the scene in the cabinet-council of some earthly monarch, at the moment when it is determined to risk the hazard of war, in offence or in defence, to unsheathe the sword, with the consciousness that the earthly fates of many kingdoms may hang upon the issue, and that the sword may not return to its scabbard until it be bathed red, and made drunk in the blood of myriads of slain. But in this august conference, it is not the fate of one or two kingdoms that is at stake, but of the world in all its extent, and in all its generations, and it may be, of far more than this world; for it seems probable, that, whilst Christ, in His coming into this world, laid not hold of the nature of angels to redeem them, all the intelligent creatures of God have had their condition and destiny modified by the incarnation, and life, and sufferings, and death, and resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. (T. Smith, D. D.)

The Gospel for all

I. THE FIRST CLAUSE DOES NOT SEEM TO US TO DECIDE, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, THE QUESTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN OFTEN PUT AS TO THE FUTURE DESTINY OF THE JEWS. The acceptance of the Gospel by the Jews as a nation, or by the great body of the people, were comparatively a small matter, if it were placed instead of the diffusion of the Gospel all over the world, and the gathering of the elect out of every people. The two are ever to be viewed as great and important parts of a greater and more important whole, and they are so joined together by the appointment of God, that the one could not be effected were the other neglected. The times of the fulness of the Gentiles are appointed to be the times of Israel’s gathering.

II. Although it seems to be represented as if God had made the offer of the Gospel to the Gentiles conditional upon its rejection by the Jews, this must certainly be understood as spoken after the manner of men, and NOT AS IF GOD HAD MADE THE EVANGELISATION OF THE WORLD DEPEND UPON A CONTINGENCY.

III. THE TERMS IN WHICH CHRIST’S OFFER TO THE GENTILES, AND THE DIFFUSION OF HIS GOSPEL AMONGST THEM, ARE DESCRIBED. He is to be “a light” and “salvation” to them. This implies their condition without Christ as one--

1. Of darkness.

2. Of perdition.

IV. THE ADAPTATION OF CHRIST’S GOSPEL TO REMEDY THE EVILS, AND SUPPLY THE WANTS OF THE GENTILE WORLD. The perfect catholicity of the Christian system is one of the grandest guarantees of its Divine origin. (T. Smith, D. D.)

God’s salvation a light to the Gentiles

The subject of this chapter is “Messiah God’s Light” to the ends of the earth (John 8:12)., In orderfully to enter into our text, we will illustrate its meaning by St. Paul s own Acts 26:18). Comparing both these passages, we find the design of God’s salvation to be that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs Ephesians 3:6).

I. THE PURPOSE OF GOD IN THIS SALVATION.

1. To make men to inherit the kingdom of God and home of the Redeemer.

2. To offer this glory to the Gentiles.

II. THE GROUND ON WHICH THIS SALVATION IS OFFERED. “My salvation,” or, as in Acts 26:18, “By faith that is in Me.”

1. The object of this faith. “In Me.” Jesus Himself.

2. The nature of this faith. Believing in His life and work; receiving for our own salvation His offer of mercy; trusting Him wholly.

III. THE NATURE OF THE SALVATION THUS OFFERED.

1. “To turn them from darkness to light,” i.e conversion.

2. Forgiveness of sins. (H. Linton, M. A.)

Israel God’s conduit-pipe

“That thou mayest be My salvation,” &c. That thou mayest be the conduit-pipe of My salvation to convey it to the end of the earth. (W. Day, M. A.)