ISAIAH 49: 8-13
COVENANT RESTORATION
[Revelations 7:16-17/Leviticus 25:8-22]
The role of this Servant of God is pivotal. The Servant’s great task is stated here as making it possible for people to come to God. How can such an impossibility be accomplished? This formed and chosen Servant of God is exchanged for a covenant with the people.
The prophecy is far too wide reaching to be exhausted by the return of the exiles. It is thus intended to indicate the wider fuller redemption and the true return of the real captives. These and the previous promises all find their fulfilment in the experiences of souls on their journey back to God. Here we have some characteristics of that journey.
What should be our response to the fulfilment of God’s covenant of grace? The response to the Servant’s work on behalf of God’s people is joy in which nature itself participates. [Yet the final fulfilment of the prophecy seems to await the millennial kingdom.]
I. THE COVENANT WORKER, 8a.
II. THE COVENANT WORK, 8b-9a.
III. THE COVENANT’S WORKING, 9b-12.
IV. THE COVENANT’S WONDERS, 13.
In verse 8 with the world listening in, God address His Servant directly. Thus says the Lord, “In a favorable time I have answered You, and in a day of salvation I have helped You. And I will keep You and give You for a covenant of the people, to restore the land (earth), to make them inherit the desolate heritages.
So certain is this prophecy that God speaks as if it had already occurred but it was obviously a future event. In the time of God’s favor and the day of salvation are similar or parallel events. The Lord promises that in the hour when He moves to save the world, He will answer and help His Servant (verbs refer to continuous action). In a time of favor reflects the idea of the Jubilee Year (Lev. 25:8ff), that time when the captives were freed, and inheritances restored to the rightful stewards under God’s ownership (see also Isa. 62:2). The day of salvation is the day God accomplishes salvation for His people.
How does the LORD intend to answer and help? God will enable the Servant for a series of tasks [all indicated by a preceding lamed]. Above all, He is to be God’s covenant to the people. [Israel has broken God’s covenant again and again, so that legally speaking it is null and void. Yet God still intends to offer it in a new form (42:6; see Jer. 31:31-34 for the New Covenant).] The Servant Himself (42:6, appoint-natan) will be the embodiment of God’s covenant with His people, that is, the personal bond and means which unites God’s people and God in a new relationship. This will happen because the Lord will empower the Servant to be a covenant for the people. This new covenant is the result of the Servant being heard and helped.
II. THE COVENANT WORK, 8b-9a.
As the embodiment of the covenant, the Servant will do several things. First (8b) He would restore the land, and allocate desolate heritages. The extent of the restoration is the earth. [Earth could also be translated land. Land would localize the restoration to Palestine or it could infer the metaphorical promised land. If so it is the restoration of the way back to living under God’s will and receiving His promises on a journey to the promised land of heaven.] [Oswalt, Isaiah 40-66, 297]
[Paul’s use of this verse (2 Cor. 6:2) shows that he clearly understood it to apply to the messianic age (which had come with Jesus).]
The first half of verse 9 continues identifying the work of the Servant. Saying to those who are bound, ‘Go forth,’ To those who are in darkness, ‘Show yourselves.’
The imagery goes far beyond any merely physical release. As the embodiment of the covenant the Messiah would also set the spiritual captive free. It is the Son who makes us free, and then we are free indeed (Jn. 8: 32-32). The imagery is also that of spiritual blindness, desolation, disinheritance, and imprisonment that is far more permanent and deadly than any thing temporary or physical. As in 40:3-4, this freedom seems to signify a change in the people’s spiritual lives.
Notice the way the prisoners are freed from sin and those in the darkness of ignorance are enabled to come to the light. It is by the word of the Servant. The mighty word of the Servant of God brings to us the light of liberty.
Does your soul need to be free from the bondage of sin and guilt? Jesus Christ, the Servant of God, can bring the glorious freedom and empowerment of His new covenant into your life.
III. THE COVENANT’S WORKING, 9b-12.
The second half of verse 9 begins to speak of the return to God’s land that the Servant will have made possible. [That discussion extends through v. 12.] Along the roads they will feed, And their pasture will be on all bare heights.
The people who return home under the new covenant established by the Servant of God are represent as a flock of sheep. [The language is frequent in Isaiah. Four common images are used: flocks safely grazing (17:2; 40:10-11; 41:18; 43:19; 63:11); the provisions of the exodus (43:19-20; 51:10; 63:11-14); an easy, well-graded highway (11:16; 19:23; 36:8; 40:3-4; 42:16; 62:10).] All this imagery is to be encountered by those who enter into the covenant relationship and are set free to follow God. It is easy to talk about restoration, but how do we get from where we are to where we need to be? The Servant’s ministry is not merely to set them free from the bondage of sin but also to lead them the full way home to God’s presence.
The idea of grazing on the paths and the bare heights is that the Lord’s provision will be so abundant that no matter how apparently barren the circumstances, the flock will not even have to turnoff the road to find plenty of green pasture to eat. As they journey toward the land they will find nourishment. Those who follow Jesus, says the text, will find in the dusty paths of common life and in all the mundane and distractions of daily duty, nourishment for their bodies and souls.
That is not all. The top of the mountains is not the place where grass grows. The great and blessed principles which belong to the Christian pilgrimage, and the flock that follows Christ is the promise of sustenance of a higher kind, a supernatural sustenance.
If a man would grasp the fulness of spiritual sustenance which lies in the word of Jesus Christ, let him follow the path of the Gospel, and he ‘shall feed in the ways,’ and common duties will minister strength to him instead of taking strength from him. He will have food to eat which the world knows not of (Jn. 4:32), and those who overcome will be given that hidden manna (Rev. 2:17).
Verse10 continues and expands the thought of abundant provision to include that of protection. “They will not hunger or thirst. Neither will the scorching heat or sun strike them down for He who has compassion on them will lead them, and will guide them to springs of water.
Wherever God leads His people He will take care they will want nothing that is good for them (Ps. 34:10). So well will they be provided for that they will not hunger nor thirst, for what they need they will have seasonably, before their need becomes extreme. God, through the Servant, will supply every need.
[The language is a combination of the Shepherd Psalm (Ps. 23) and the exodus. He will guide them and protect them, as with the pillar of cloud and fire (Ex. 12:21). He will lead them to water, as in the wilderness (Ex. 17:6).] He will protect them from the striking of searing heat or sun and lead them to sheltered places. The book of Revelation tells us that this promise is still in the process of being kept as we wait for the final consummation (7: 16-17).
What is the reason (ki) God so lovingly provides and protects those on pilgrimage with Him? He so acts for He who has compassion on them, on us. He is tender toward His people and touched by their needs. He will lead and guide them to springs of living water.
Additional provisions for the sojourners is found in verse 11. “And I will make all My mountains a road, And My highways will be raised up.
They are “My mountains.” All the world is His. Our way lies over the mountains of this world. There are difficulties. The Christian course seems too hard, too high, too insurmountable at times. He that in times past made the Red sea a way, now with as much ease will make the opposing mountains of life a way, though they seemed impassable. He who made them can level them at the right moment. Likewise, highways or causeways are His, and He is able to lift them high above the surrounding desert and make them both plain and straight to their eternal destination. He will sustain in valleys and make sure they don’t get too deep nor be too steep. Isaiah uses the language of the near (the return from exile) to express the distant (salvation and sanctification through the servant and eventually a literal restoration of the Holy Land).
This restoration through returning to God involves people from all times and parts of the earth. Verse 12, “Behold, these shall come from afar; And lo, these will come from the north and from the west, And these from the land of Sinim.”
The people will proceed to Zion, to the new Jerusalem, not only from Babylon, but from all places of exile (including Syene or Aswan in southern Egypt). There is no limit to the Lord’s compassion. The return of the Jews from Babylon is only a foretaste of a return to God from every tribe, tongue, and nation of the earth.
IV. THE COVENANT’S WONDERS, 13.
Shout for joy, O heavens! And rejoice, O earth! Break forth into joyful shouting, O mountains! For the Lord has comforted His people, And will have compassion on His afflicted.
God’s glorious liberty and guidance turns to the ecstatic praise of joyful shouting and exulting. The joy of God’s people becomes the joy of heaven and earth. Because of the universal way of redemption the universe is called to rejoice. Nature personified is called to rejoice. Even mountains are rejoicing (44:23). The reason for rejoicing is that the Lord comforts (40:1) and has compassion (49:10). Whom the Lord continually comforts and has compassion on are His afflicted people, on those who follow His way and need His help.
CONCLUSION / RESPONSE
The book of Isaiah rings with the certainly of God’s ultimate triumph. His triumph is for the sake of His redeemed covenant people. He leads His covenant people in triumph through all circumstances, over all enemies.
God’s victory though is for those who follow His marching orders. They leave the bondage and darkness of sin, self and Satan and sojourn with God to His eternal promise land. He promises those sojourners His leadership, provision, and protection. Who will be His followers, His disciples? The jury is still out.
