Too Light a Thing

“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 Father is speaking to his Son. When that happens, we all need to prick up our ears. It’s bound to be important.

There are some stunning examples of this in scripture, all regularly quoted in worship services around the world.

Speaking to the Son

There’s Psalm 2, with its priceless “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” There’s Psalm 45’s “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” or Psalm 110’s “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” In the New Testament, there’s John 12’s “I have glorified it [God’s name], and I will glorify it again.”

Without doubt, the deliberations within the Godhead are far more extensive and perpetual than the tiny fraction we are privileged to listen in on, but nothing the Father says to the Son in scripture is ever trivial. All the great theological truths are in there for the devout of all ages to tease out, hold up to the light, and enthuse about to the glory of God. We dare not skip over any of it.

Two Distinct Missions

One of those precious truths is on display in this passage from Isaiah 49, and it is this: the Son was doing two distinguishable things at the cross, as the words of the Father make plain.

1/ The First Phase: Israel

The first phase of God’s plans and purposes was emphatically and only Jewish. Hear the Lord Jesus concerning his mission on earth the first time around: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Consequently, when Jesus sends out the twelve, he tells them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That was the job at hand, and the Son stuck faithfully to his instructions.

That task is still in progress because Israel refused its Messiah, but far from voiding the promises of scripture in response to rejection from his own, the Son continues his mission. He will raise up the tribes of Jacob. He will bring back the preserved of Israel. History tells us this has never yet occurred, and so we look for it in a future day. If it does not happen as the Father has solemnly promised his Son, then the Son has failed in his mission. God forbid that will ever be the case, and there isn’t the slightest hint of it here or anywhere else in scripture.

2/ The Second Phase: The Church

The second phase is this: “I will make you as a light for the nations.” The salvation of God must reach the ends of the earth. This is where you and I come into it, thanks be to God. He always planned to bless the Gentiles through Abraham, as he promised all the way back in Genesis. He has begun to do so already, and we praise him for the message of salvation that has reached our ears and transformed millions of lives all over the world.

However, though the blessing of the Gentile nations was every bit as foreordained as the blessing of Israel, note that this is not merely a seamless continuation of the mission to raise up the tribes of Jacob and bring back the preserved of Israel. It plainly does not fulfill those promises either literally or figuratively. It is a new and distinct honor conferred by the Father on the Son. It is value-added. Likewise, it is no mere swerve, replacing one mission with another because the original mission failed.

The mission has not failed. How could it possibly?

A Mission Too Small

No, the original mission was too small in its scope. This was not because God was unable to see all the possibilities available to him through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, but because until that great once-for-all offering had been accomplished — until the Son had been made perfect through suffering, his work completed by being actualized in the world — no eternal salvation could be offered either to Jew or to Gentile. Only then could the Lord Jesus bring many sons to glory.

He could certainly offer the kingdom to Israel, and he did just that. The Lord Jesus did not need to bear the sins of the world in order to sit on David’s throne and call back the Diaspora Jews and Israelites to their homeland. He was fully and perfectly qualified before God and man to do that merely by the circumstances of his birth and impeccable life, and could have assumed that throne at any time prior to his death if he had only demonstrated his capacity to enforce his rule. If it had not been so, he would have posed no danger to the Jewish establishment, and they would not have taken the risk of having him crucified.

Is this not what he was saying to Peter in the Garden? “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” or to Pilate when he told him, “My kingdom is not of this world”? The servants were there, at least potentially, ready to defend him. But he would not have it. He did not choose it.

Instead, he offered himself a perfect sacrifice and assumed his seat at the Father’s right hand, a higher and more glorious exaltation than anything with which Israel might have honored him. Yes, the original mission was too small, and it was intentionally undersized. We can tell that because the entire Old Testament testified to the greater mission that Christ would eventually accomplish.

A Temporary Change of Mission

So the temporary change of mission was always the plan, but where did it happen? Where was it formally announced to the Son? Not in eternity past. Look carefully at Isaiah 49. The key is in the little word “now”, which locates it at a point in history. (Yes, it’s there in the Hebrew too.)

Follow the order. Christ is called from the womb, named “from the body of my mother” (v1). He comes into the world in humility, “hidden away” in the quiver of the Lord (v2). His destiny is to glorify God (v3) and so he declares him faithfully in this world for three years. What is the outcome? Rejection and the cross. All looks lost, but the servant entrusts the outcome to God:

“I said, ‘I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my right is with the Lord, and my recompense with my God.’ ”

It’s not until verses 5-6, with the resurrection, that his new mission is announced, beginning with “And now the Lord says …” The Father cannot leave the Son in the grave. His service was perfect, his person impeccable, so he must make him a light to the nations.

But he says it not just privately, within the counsels of the Godhead in eternity past. No, he proclaims it within time, for all who are paying attention to see and marvel.

The Original Mission Restated

We live in the Age of Grace, and that light of Christ still shines in our world. But note that the original mission to restore Israel is still in play. It is not a failure. It has not been abrogated. The Father restates it in verse 5 after the “And now ...”, even as he makes the Son a light to the nations and honors him by seating him at his right hand:

“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 — for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength — 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.’ ”

When God says something twice in two verses, we ought to take it seriously. Israel will be gathered back to God, not merely during this age in ones and twos here and there to be incorporated into the Church, but as Paul puts it, “all Israel will be saved”, yet not until after the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. Old and New Testaments are in harmony on this subject.

Success in Two Spheres

The Church is a wonderful thing, our blessings immense and our calling as certain as God’s own character. But the Church was never God’s entire end game. Those who believe it is are simply thinking too small. Let me respectfully suggest that if it is too light a thing for the Son to only raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore Israel, then it is also too light a thing for the Son to only be a light to the nations. The Son must accomplish both missions, and he will.

Any system of reading the scriptures that does not acknowledge our Savior’s ultimate success in both his spheres of service to the Father falls short of what the scripture teaches about the work of God’s perfect Servant.