JY: Welcome to Gear Talk, a podcast on biblical theology. This is the second episode in our “A Month in the Servant Song” series. There are four Servant Songs in Isaiah, and last week we talked about the first Servant Song. This week, Jason and Tom talked about Servant Song number two. Our text is found in Isaiah 49:1–13. We’ve created an album cover for this month in the Servant Song series. Be sure to go to our show notes and download the album cover. Tom and Jason refer to this album cover throughout this podcast. You’ll also find other Jason DeRouchie lecture notes on the Servant Songs.

TK: Jason, we are back for our second episode in our month in the Servant Songs.

JD: I love it. Isaiah is so rich and just a joy to be able to partner with you in this ministry, Tom.

Song 2 Album Cover

TK: It really is. We certainly would encourage you to go back if you didn’t—if you missed the first podcast in this series on Isaiah 42. But there’s an album cover, you can download it in the show notes. We’re not going to spend a lot of time going through it today because we did that in our first podcast. But real quick, Jason, what will they see when we consider the Second Servant Song here on this album cover?

JD: They’re going to see a man who is an archer, and when you get into the Servant Song, what we realize is that the archer himself is the Father, is God the Father. And the Servant is talking about himself. This is an autobiographical song where the servant mentions that Yahweh made my mouth like a sharp sword. He made me a polished arrow; in his quiver he hid me away. So what we have is this image of an archer, and the album cover is in yellow because yellow is the color that we’ve associated with the second portion of the Old Testament—our second gear, the prophets, and Isaiah, is part of the prophets. And yet on this picture we have—the quiver and the arrow are a little bit lighter. They’re shadowed just a touch in order to highlight that’s where the Servant is found in this picture. The Servant is the arrow within God’s quiver, and he is the arrow that God has sharpened and readied for his specific pointed purpose. And when God shoots the Servant, he hits the target, he fulfills his mission as we read back in Isaiah 42. He doesn’t grow weary, and he finishes what God called him to finish in saving weak and broken and needy people.

TK: It’s interesting, that thought of what God aims his arrow at, he hits. Because we’re going to see it in this Servant Song here in Isaiah 49, it appears like he didn’t hit the target with the ministry of the Servant. So we’re going to see this part in verse 4, it says, “But I said I have labored in vain.” So there’s something you say, oh, I’m not sure you succeeded in what you said you were going to do.

JD: Well, he’s in the midst of—yeah there’s something that is challenging the mission and yet he declares, “Surely my right is with Yahweh, my recompense with my God” (Isa 49:4). He is putting his trust in God, and confident that God will indeed make everything right, even though he is questioning the mission. There’s something, some type of an obstacle, and even when we get to verse 7, we’re going to read more about the nature of that obstacle because he is one—the Servant is one who is deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, and that nation is his people. And the very ones he came to save—among whom he came to save, are the very ones who are despising him and causing him to feel like I’ve labored in vain. But ultimately that is not the result.

The First Testimony: Israel the Person Brings Light to Israel and the Nations

TK: So our parameters for this, we’re saying this song, are 49:1–13. What’s the first chunk you’d like to talk through, Jason which verses?

JD: Well, I think it’s important that we recognize that the Servant—we find him calling first the coastlands to receive his mission, he says, “Listen to me O coastlands” (Isa 49:1). The very coastlands that in Isaiah 42, were waiting for his law. So his word is going to the coasts, the farthest reaches of the globe, and he’s calling them to listen up. And he has a message for them that’s going to reach all the way down to verse 12. But then this same Servant calls for the heavens and the mountains to exalt and sing in what God is accomplishing. So there’s a call to the coastlands and then a call to the universe to rejoice in this mission. But I think it’s important that we begin with the first testimony that happens in verses 1 to 6.

TK: All right.

JD: So we open here with the Servant talking. In Isaiah 42, God talked about the Servant, and we noted how in the beginning of Isaiah 42 the Servant appears to—he’s a person who is working justice. He’s caring for the broken, not abusing them. He is indeed one in whom God is pleased, and God called him in righteousness to be a covenant for the people, singular, which appears to be the people of Israel. But not only that, to be a light for nations, so his ministry is global, not restricted, but global. But then we also saw in the beginning of the last podcast that there’s another servant in the book, a servant who is deaf and blind, a servant that is rebellious. And we specifically find out this is God’s people. So there is a servant people who is not operating as a true servant of God. And then there is a Servant person who is operating as a Servant of God. So as we open up here and we hear these words, the question becomes who’s the servant that we’re going to hear from right off the bat?

TK: I need to keep the servants straight.

JD: I need to keep the servants straight as we move through Isaiah 40 through Isaiah 53, where the term servant shows up twenty times, but always in the singular, sometimes referring to a person and sometimes referring to a people. So we open up here. We’re going to learn that the Servant is talking, he says, “Listen to me, O coastlands; give attention, you peoples from afar. Yahweh called me from the womb, from the body of my mother, he named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow; in his quiver he hid me away. He said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified’” (Isa 49:1–3). So there we have it. Who is the servant? He is one who is named Israel. We learn that God has declared, I will be glorified through you, my servant Israel. Now, not only that, we have the mention here of being called from the womb, “From the body of my mother, he named my name.”

Now the mention of the mother here is just fascinating because it does a number of things. It makes us think about this Servant as one who was once a child. He is one who came from the womb, from a mother and this puts two things into my mind. One, the beginning of Isaiah, where it mentions that a virgin will conceive and bear a child whose name will be Emmanuel, God with us. Indeed, Isaiah 9 then says this child will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. We have a child mentioned in the book and, not only that, though, there’s the mention of this mother, and that pushes me all the way back to the promise in Genesis 3:15 that an offspring of the woman would crush the Serpent’s head. A mother is mentioned there and here we have a mother mentioned who would bear an offspring and it at least raises the question, is this Servant, who’s named Israel, in some way associated with that child king at the beginning of the book, whose own life is an echo of Genesis 3:15 and the promise made there of an ultimate offspring-deliverer?

TK: And it’s—I think it’s significant here—just jumping ahead to verse five—that we’re going to get a repeat because it says, “And now the Lord says.” And so this is the Servant talking, and he says, I’m going to say what Yahweh said, but he doesn’t go right into Yahweh’s words. He’s going to repeat this idea about being formed from the womb. He says, “He who formed me from the womb to be his servant.” So it’s not an accidental or an incidental thing here. It’s been repeated two times.

JD: That’s right. That’s right. So, I just want to before we move ahead, Tom—who is this servant who was formed from the womb, called from the womb? What’s his name?

TK: So his name is, and this is the strange thing, his name is Israel.

JD: So that would lead us, initially, to think oh the servant here is the people.

TK: He’s the nation of Israel.

JD: He’s the nation of Israel, but, right away, this very one called from the womb to be God’s servant lets us know, no, I’m not the—I am one who has a mission to save the people. How do we get there? Tom, what do you see?

TK: Well, so we hear this, he says in verse 3, “He said to me, you are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” And then if I go further, I’m going to skip over verse 4 for a second, verse 5, “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.” So what we have here is a different Israel in verse 5 from the Israel talked about in verse 3. So what I have to do as a reader is say Ok, clearly the word can be applied to different groups or people. But the Israel in verse 3 is different from the Israel in verse 5: Israel in verse 3 brings back the Israel in verse 5.

JD: Right. The mission of Israel is to save Israel, and so the only—what we want to remember is that he mentions here, “Yahweh, the one who called me from the womb to be his servant, the one who called me to bring Jacob back. And that Israel might be gathered” (Isa 49:5). Jacob was Abraham’s grandson: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And God renamed Jacob the person Israel, and then his personal name became applied to a new people of God, the nation of Israel. But before it was ever the name of the nation, it was the name of a person. And what appears to be happening here is now we have a new person—not Jacob the betrayer, but rather a new Israel-person whom God will use to reshape a transformed people who bear his name. That is, it may not be that he bears their name, but rather they bear his name. He is Israel, and this new people are going to bear his name. But the association is bound up—he identifies with them like a king identifies with his people. Just like Adam was the head of a covenant, and what he did impacted all who would follow him, who were part of that covenant, who were in Adam. So too, we learned in Isaiah 42:6 that the Servant would be a covenant, and he—and all those who are in him would be impacted by him. And so it appears as though here what we have is the Servant who is called from the womb—he is a human yet closely related to God. Indeed, the very word of God is in his mouth. “He made my mouth like a sharp sword” (Isa 49:2). He is speaking and God is sending him forth to fulfill his purposes. This God has set this Israel person aside to save Israel the people. But what’s really beautiful is when we get to verse six, he says, that is God—so the servant is talking, “The Lord who called me”—the very one who set me apart as his servant says, “It’s 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” (Isa 49:6). That’s too little of a thing.

TK: Too small a job.

JD: Too small of a job. I didn’t raise you up to just restore ethnic Israelites into relationship with me; I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. The purpose of this Servant, in the same way that we saw it in Isaiah 42, is global. He’s going to bring justice to the nations, the coastlands wait for his law” (Isa 42:4). Here, he will bring light, as it said in Isaiah 42:7, “He would be a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open up blind eyes and to set prisoners free.” That is his mission. It’s a global mission. It recalls for us, the promises in Genesis that, through Abraham, God would raise up an offspring through whom all the nations of the earth would regard themselves blessed. God would help Abraham move from the father of one nation to becoming a father of a multitude of nations through the work of this individual offspring who is now being called God’s Servant. And how will he serve God? He will serve God by saving a remnant not only from ethnic Israel, but from the nations, that God’s salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

TK: The idea—I’m looking at the album cover, and the idea of the arrow being aimed, and you say what’s the target? And the target is the world. That is what God is aiming at here and there’s that that thought of, it’s too light, it’s too small—just saving one people. Your goal is to bring salvation to the end of the earth like we saw at the end of Isaiah 42, the first Servant Song, so that God will be glorified. Just backing up a second—so his mission is to—he’s been raised up to save Israel, but he’s going to say in verse 4, “But I said I’ve labored in vain, I’ve sent spent my strength for nothing and vanity” is that picture of the Lord Jesus coming and being rejected by the nation. Thinking of different passages, even Jesus saying to his disciples after the—in John Chapter 6, for instance, and turning to Peter and saying, are you guys going to leave too? And Peter says, where would we go? (John 6:67–68). That that thought of, I’ve labored in vain. It hasn’t worked. But he’s not thinking that deep down. He knows that God is going to guarantee success here because I’m looking to him to fulfill it.

JD: And what’s amazing, and the rest of Isaiah actually plays this out, is how does he fulfill it? I mean, Jesus rises from the dead. He conquers death itself. But then he ascends, he leaves the earth. Yet then he sends his Spirit. The same Spirit that rests on him will rest on those that Isaiah is going to call his offspring. In Isaiah 59:21, the promise is made specifically—God declares to his, the one he had called his Servant, he declares to him the same Spirit that I have put on you and the words that I have put in your mouth I will place on your offspring. That is the Ministry of this is real, this super Israelite. The person—the Messiah will become the mission of all who are in him, and I just want to meditate on that for a second because Paul does. Paul goes here explicitly in Isaiah 26, he recalls in Isaiah 26:22–23. He says I’m speaking nothing else to you than what the prophets like Isaiah and Moses said, would come to pass.

TK: Or you say Acts, to Acts 26.

JD: Where did I say?

TK: Isaiah.

JD: Oh, I meant Acts, sorry. In Acts 26, yes, Paul says in Acts 26, I’m speaking nothing but what prophets like Isaiah and before him Moses said would come to pass. “That the Christ must suffer and that by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light to both our people and to the nations, to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:23). Jesus is the fulfillment of acts of Isaiah 49:6. Jesus is the one who comes to proclaim light. But it’s not only Jesus, it’s the one who—those who are in him. And that’s why Paul, earlier in Acts 13 recalls why it is that he and Barnabas are turning from the Jews who’ve rejected Christ, turning to the Gentiles, “For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth’” (Acts 13:47).

TK: And I could jump in right there, Jason, and I could say, wait a minute, Paul, you misquoted that because that applied to the Servant singular. So how do how did Paul get there?

JD: Well, it’s just so beautiful. God makes promises to Israel. As King, Christ represents the people of Israel. He’s the one to whom promises like Isaiah 49:6 are given. All the promises find their yes in Christ (2 Cor 1:20). Faith unites us to Christ, and now all those who are in Christ enjoy the very promises that were given to Israel. So, if God promises that his Servant would be a light to the nations, and Christ is the Servant who brings light—faith unites us to Christ, union to Christ makes us servants with him. Now we join as lights to the nations. That’s how it works. That’s how Paul is seeing it. So Paul is envisioning, and all of Luke-Acts is built this way, Luke opened with saying, Oh Theophilus, you know what I wrote to you in my first book (the Gospel of Luke) of all that Jesus began to do and to teach (Acts 1:1). The Gospel of Luke from Jesus’s birth all the way to his ascension is what Jesus began to do and to teach. But now the book of Acts and on into the church that you and I are now a part of is what Jesus continues to do by his Spirit through his apostles and through his church. And it’s not only Paul as an apostle who is one of these servants, carrying out the work of the Servant, it’s even people like Barnabas. And that’s why I see this is applicable more broadly than just Christ Jesus and the apostles—his twelve apostles, who make up, as it were, a new Israel, that then he sends from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth. It’s all those who are associated with Christ, through the apostles, that are making up this new united people in Israel, the person who is Jesus and his mission, which was global, becomes the mission of the church, which is global to bring light to those who are in darkness.

TK: Ultimately, like we ended the last podcast that God’s salvation, that his glory might reach to the very end of the earth. I’m thinking, just a thought here—looking at the Archer aiming the arrow with the quiver—thoughts people might have about my life is not very important. When the Servant says he made me like a polished arrow and has me in his quiver, that thought of because we’re in Christ, Paul would have identified with that and say no, I am being pointed like an arrow because I’m in him. I have a purpose. But like you said, that’s not just Paul. He’s able to apply it to Barnabas—be able to apply to anyone who is in Christ.

JD: That’s right. We take up, as we’re we’ll see even as we move through the rest of the Servant Songs—the Servant gives birth, spiritually, to offspring who are counted as his servants. Paul was one of them. Barnabas was one of them, and you and I and all who are in the church are those servants who carry on the mission of the Servant with a charge to be light as we see his light overcoming darkness in our neighborhoods and among the nations.

The Second Testimony: The Servant Gathers and Saves from the Ends of the Earth

TK: Jason, are we ready to move to verse 7?

JD: So here we have a new speech, but God, who was talking in the previous unit, talks again to the Servant, the Servant person, “Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One” (Isa 49:7). And here we have Israel mentioned again. It could be Israel, the person who is redeemed, or it could be Israel, the people. But what we read is, “The Lord says to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: ‘Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of Yahweh, who is faithful, the holy one of Israel, who has chosen you” (Isa 49:7). So there we see God is actually talking again to his Servant. He’s talking to the person, the Servant person and saying, I’m talking to you, to one who is deeply despised and abhorred by the nation—the very peoples, he came to save, we’re told here already he is abhorred and despised, and yet he is the servant not only of the nation, he’s the servant of kings who will rise and see him, princes who will ultimately worship him, prostrating themselves before him. Why? Because of Yahweh, who is faithful, who’s chosen this one. That recalls for us Isaiah 42:1 where God specifically says, “You are my servant, my chosen one in whom my soul delights.” And here we see a testimony that nations, kings of nations will rise and worship before this Servant whom God has chosen when God proves his faithfulness, even though his ministry is in the context of a nation that despises him and abhors him.

TK: I think a picture of this is at the beginning of Matthew where we have the wise men coming from the east and they go to Jerusalem and they say, where’s the king we’ve come to worship him. And it says that all Israel heard, Herod, the chief priest, the scribes, they all rejected they. Yet they did come, and they did exactly what happens here. The people from the nations, they came, and they prostrated themselves before him. So that’s a sign. This is the one we’re talking about.

JD: That’s right. These words anticipate how the fourth Servant Song is going to open. Speaking about—God talking about his servant who will be high and lifted up and exalted above many. And then it says, “Just as many were astonished at you”—talking about Israel, the nation, so many will be astonished at him—“So he shall sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand” (Isa 52:14–15). That is the testimony that Paul declares in texts like Romans 9:30 and Romans 15:21 where the nations, even though they never had the word of God, are now embracing Christ. And yet the nation of Israel, to whom Jesus came, born under the law in the fullness of time, the majority of them rejected him as their savior. The very one they abhorred, even though their own scriptures bore witness to him, the nations will see and savor.

TK: So moving on to verse 8. “Thus says the Lord: ‘In a time of time of favor, I have answered you; in a day of salvation, I have helped you; I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages, saying to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’ to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear’” (Isa 49:8–9). This is all stuff we’ve already heard in the first Servant Song.

JD: That’s right, in Isaiah 42:6–7 God talked to his Servant there, and he’s talking to him here—all these in masculine, singular you forms: I will keep you. I will give you as a covenant. And then as we saw in Isaiah 42 to bring out the prisoners from the darkness. That’s exactly what was promised; what God said he would do, ultimately through his Servant.

TK: Moving on it, it says here, “They shall feed along the ways; on all bare heights shall be their pasture” (Isa 49:9). I have a note here that just draws attention to the feeding of the 5000 at this point. And it follows that portion—and I’m thinking, is it Matthew—but it follows where Jesus has been teaching in Gentile areas and it says he became famous in Syria and all were following him and then we move right into—let me see, we move right. Sorry, I’m looking right now. It says so I’m at 4:23.

JD: In which book?

TK: Matthew and it says, “And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics and paralytics, and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis (that’s the Greek cities), and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from around the Jordan from beyond the Jordan” (Matt 4:23–25). Then it goes right into “Seeing the crowds he went up on the mountain and when he sat down, his disciples came to came to him” (Matt 5:1). But it’s a very mixed crowd he has there. It’s saying all Syria’s following him.

JD: Yeah, that’s beautiful. And it’s just it—what leads into that are a series of quotations from Isaiah about light coming into the world, that’s exactly what is on Matthew’s mind. Jesus is the one. It says, “The land of Zebulun, the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan … the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region of the shadow of death on them, a light has dawned” (Matt 4:15–16). And that light is spreading, like you said, all the way to Syria—that’s Isaiah chapter 9—and it kickstarts, in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus’s entire ministry that reaches the nations.

TK: And so we’re going to get, we’re going to get him feeding these people on the bare heights. And Isaiah would have said if somebody said, hey, did you expect this out of Jesus, he would have said, yeah, I knew the Servant would be reaching the nations and he would be not only—it was too light for him just to reach Israel.

JD: That’s right. And this language, “They shall not hunger or thirst anymore, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water he will guide them” (Isa 49:10). This this is picked up in Revelation 7. And I just love that when we’re in books like Isaiah, we’re just going all over the canon. We’ve reached back to Genesis. We’ve been in the Gospels and Acts. Now we’re jumping ahead to Revelation and in this culminating vision of God, of the Lamb, seated on the throne in Revelation 7, of a great multitude that no one can number from every nation and tribe and people and language. We read, “Therefore they are before the throne”—who? “Those whose who have been washed, whose robes have been washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb. They are before the throne of God, and they serve him day and night in his temple; he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev 7:14–17).

John in Revelation 7, as God just testifies through him, is drawing directly from this vision of the Servant’s ministry in Isaiah 49. It says, “Behold, these will come from afar… I will make all my mountains a road, and my highways shall be raised up…. They will come from the north and from the west and from the land of Syene” (Isa 49:11–12). The image here is it’s like a new exodus, Tom, an ingathering of peoples. But it’s not just of ethnic Israelites, it’s peoples from the farthest reaches of the globe. And they will not be hindered from coming because the mountains will have become a road, the highways will have been raised up. And it will be clear passage, and there will be full satisfaction. You will neither hunger anymore, nor will you thirst because the bread of life will have showed up. The living water will have flown and, ultimately, the images of absolute new creation, absolute satisfaction in the presence of the servant King who is filled with the presence of God. To be with him is to be in the very presence of the Lord. And so it is we come to the very end of this this unit, and we just read, “Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted” (Isa 49:13).

TK: I think if you asked Isaiah at this point—when this spot, what do you imagine, Isaiah, it’s going to look like, because it says the prophets, in 1 Peter, longed to look into these things. They knew far more than they’re given credit for—what they were writing about. I think he would have used language like John, saying I’m imagining a people no one could count from everywhere gathered together, because of the work of this Servant who’s been named Israel in this passage.

JD: Yeah, peoples, I mean, seeing and arising, prostrating themselves because of Yahweh, who is faithful. And God is getting all the glory through the work of this Servant person, this ultimate Israelite who is working, just like God promised through Abraham, to save not only some from the single nation, but some from all the nations of the globe. Abraham is receiving his full inheritance. God had promised him that he would inherit the world, and he’s doing it through this offspring of a mother, called Israel, who is serving God in the perfect way, fully obedient, fully serving, and bringing God the greatest glory.

The Servant Fulfills the Father’s Mission

TK: Amen. It is beautiful, Jason. As we close, just a thought. We had the name—and you said it in our last podcast—that he’s called Emmanuel early in the book, in Isaiah—God with us. And here we have these Servant Songs where the Lord Jesus—the title applied to him is Servant. Obviously Israel happened here, but what does—why servant instead of just repeating the King title here? What does servant say that’s different to you?

JD: Servant really captures the missional component of the King’s role. He’s not just sovereign over all things, but he has a mission that has to be accomplished. And that mission is perfectly obeying the purposes his father has set for him. And it seems to me that is specifically what’s involved in calling him God’s Servant. Elsewhere the king is called God’s servant. Prophets are called God’s servant. And he is embodying such a role. In his task, he has a ministry associated with his mouth, a prophetic ministry. His mouth is what is like a sharp sword. God has made him a polished arrow and hidden him in the quiver, so that when it’s time he will speak and things will change, justice will be wrought. Life will be brought. That’s part of his role as servant. It’s a service that is wearying, that experiences abuse and suffering, where he even feels at points things are in vain. And yet it culminates in glorious victory.

And indeed it’s working its way out now, as the resurrected Christ, by his Spirit, empowering his church, allows his temple people—he was the temple in whom the spirit of God, according to Isaiah 42, was resting. But now those who are in him become that temple, and that temple has spread, and the mission is continuing: to see the temple presence of God, through the people of God, exalt the glory of God and the mission is what is taking place in this age of the church. As more and more peoples from every tongue and tribe and nation are being gathered to the throne. And these are peoples who are weary, who are broken, who are faintly burning wicks and bruised reeds, as we read in Isaiah 42, and yet they are the objects of this mission. Indeed, we become objects of God’s delight even as he takes delight, pleasure in the mission of his Servant. So that’s what I’m seeing in this language, not what—why God chooses to not only call him King—fully able, full authority in heaven and on Earth, but choose and having that it’s globally, right. But choosing to call him servant because he is here to fulfill the mission of his father. And he’ll do it by the Spirit.

TK: Amen. I’m again just looking at Mark’s album cover here and looking at the image of the person in prison and thinking, all of us were like that. But Paul, using his words, going from being the prisoner who is totally an enemy of God to being a spot of, no actually being one that God would use like an arrow to bring light to the nations. How remarkable this servant’s work is that it would turn prisoners into vessels of mercy for the earth.

JD: Amen. All of a sudden moving from vessels of dishonor to, though we’d be clay pots, vessels of honor. And we have the treasure of this light of the gospel, of the glory of God in the face of Christ, in our jar of clay in order to show that the surpassing power comes not from us but from him.

TK: All right, Jason, it has been a joy. I look forward to being in the next Servant Song, which is Isaiah 50, and if you check the show notes, you can again find the album cover and we have notes, Jason’s lecture notes there, which you’ve been gracious to share with us. So, thanks for doing that. All right. We’ll see you next time.

JD: Bye friends.

JY: Thank you for joining us for Gear Talk. If you haven’t done so already, go to our show notes and download the album cover and the lecture notes for our month in the Servant Song series. Next week, Jason and Tom focus on the third Servant Song. Hope you can join us.