Advent Devotion – December 16 – Dot Jenkins

And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”

Isaiah 49:1-6

Scripture: Isaiah 49:1-6

In this time of chaos and distress we have cried “Peace, Peace!” but there is no peace. Where can we turn for help? Like the Servant in Isaiah 49 we feel we have “labored in vain and spent our strength for nothing.”

The Servant has been prepared for God’s service since before his birth, to bring God’s people back to God. Are we, like the Servant, prepared to bring people back to the Lord?

The Lord tells the servant that God is giving him (the servant) a greater responsibility. He says, “it is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribe of Jacob and
to raise up the tribes of Jacob: I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

The Servant, created and named in the womb by God, was called to speak the word of God to other nations. Salvation would not be for Israel alone, but for the whole world. In
Advent, we wait for Jesus, confident that one day Jesus will come again to save the nations.

While the servant voices his despair to the Lord, as many of us are doing today, the Lord responds to the Servant’s despair with a call to responsibility: “Raise up the tribes . . .”

The Servant finds strength in God, so we do too. God’s strength will allow us to be a light to the nations. God’s strength will ensure salvation will reach the ends of the earth.

Dot Jenkins

Core Idea: Jesus comes to bring restoration