January 23, 2019: Day 53 – Isaiah 49

This is a pretty famous chapter for a number of different reasons.  First of all, if you read it from beginning to end I hope you sense the feeling of unease that I felt as it described a very graphic ending to the enemies of the Lord, especially as we look at vs.24ff.  But all of this is within the context of the Lord restoring the former glories to the people of God.

The former is actually not two of the things that I wanted to talk about.   The first is found in vs.6 where we read one of the few times a quasi evangelistic tone to a Hebrew Scripture.  Jesus often said go and make fishers of men and women and there was always a sense of evangelism within the Christian Gospel that we do not find in Hebrew Scripture.  In Hebrew Scripture there is a designated people of God, and the story ends with those people.  There is no real need to bring others on board who are  not the people of God simply because they were not chosen by God to be His people.

But when we get to vs.6 we see that there is an outreach to people of other nations who have not been automatically included into the moniker of the people of God.  “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”  That is a pretty radically evangelistic statement for the Old Testament.  I like it.  

I think the second topic will come up later.  I’ll address it later if it does.