Isaiah 49:5-6: What the Old Testament Teaches about Missions Today…
Have you ever read a passage of Scripture a dozen times and then on the 13th time you discover something wonderful? I did the other day at a friend’s Bible study for the group leader was examining the prophetic significance of Isaiah 49. Steve did a great job; however, I was struck by two verses in the middle of this Servant Song prophecy – verses 5 and 6. Can we take a look at them and see if perhaps the missions structure of Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8; and Romans 1:16 was also found in the lines of the Isaiah scroll written around 600 years before Jesus?
Pay close attention to the words of the Servant Singer (i.e., Jesus) and what He says His mission will accomplish. The Servant’s first task is to bring Jacob (the Jewish people) again back to God. The second task is for Jacob to be a light to the Gentiles so that the THIRD TASK will be accomplished – “salvation unto the end of the earth.”
So just what does the Isaiah 49 prophecy have to do with missions today? The same thing that was mandated by Paul, under the inspiration of the Lord God, when he wrote – “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16b). The same thing when Matthew remembers Jesus giving the disciples the Great Commission in 28:18-20. And the same thing that Luke wrote when he chronicled the earliest days of Church history in Acts 1:8. If we want to reach the world with the salvation message of Messiah Jesus, we must first begin with His Chosen Ones.
I can speak from personal experience that in the 10+ years since I surrendered to Jewish evangelism and missions that my heart’s burden for all the lost of the world has increased tenfold.
So do we really want to reach the world with the Gospel?
If so, let’s remember the promise of Song of Isaiah 49.
